Deceptive store practices, Turbine?

[Dworkin_of_Amber]

I was one of the lucky ones, and realized early how good a Huge Bag was, when BtA.

It breaks several things.. including the fact that BtC items that can go into a bag, now can go in the Shared Bank, and move across characters...

Think about the things that might be BtC that go in Huge Ingredient Bags....

And you will see why they had to get rid of BtA Huge Bags, as long as the Shared Bank exists.

[Dworkin_of_Amber]

That's a great story...

But boosting the price on the "value" of a mistake is a dishonest move too.

Sorry to disagree... but that' business.
If you don't have anything in writing that makes you publish price changes, then you can change them, in any direction, at any time. Does this suck for the consumer, yes, but that's the way things work.

You didn't let anyone know about the added value, yet boosted the price because of the added value? No, that only works if you advertise the item as being more-than-average ie premium. The item was inflated in price without telling the player base why.

Again, there is no valid BUSINESS reason to do so.
If they did, then they announce a potential 'exploit'... and then are forced to retro-change BtA bags to BtC, thus ****ing everyone off... or they stay quiet, and leave the others alone.

Supply and Demand... that's what it is all about.

Nowhere in the TOS or the announcements about F2P or the TP Store did it EVER say that prices can't/won't change.

Hell, given your reasoning here, I should be complaining that I bought a +1 Longsword last Friday and it wasn't on sale, but this Friday it is... and I want my 25% back?!?!

In this particular instance I'm going to assume the worst, not the best, because it was not done transparently. Had you made an announcement that "Huge Bags have inflated in price because they are currently more valuable than anticipated," everyone would have ho-hummed and thought about it. Even a "Temporary Value Increase" post would have clued players in without stating, "Yeah we're going to remove that bind-to-account feature." Hiding all of the operations behind the bag's situation was not transparent.

I also conclude that most VIPs will not be purchasing your Huge bags anymore as we can do better with Medium/Large Bags that can be shared.

PS: Please don't make those bind -- it would only make the Huge Bag issue an absolute deception.

I think you misse the point... NONE of the Bags were supposed to be BtA. They are ALL meant to be BtC. Even a small BtA bag breaks things.

And are you really whining about a few TP's, when you got them for free anyways?!?

And are you really whining because you didn't look carefully before you bought something?

[Lifespawn]

Sorry to disagree... but that' business.
If you don't have anything in writing that makes you publish price changes, then you can change them, in any direction, at any time. Does this suck for the consumer, yes, but that's the way things work.



Again, there is no valid BUSINESS reason to do so.
If they did, then they announce a potential 'exploit'... and then are forced to retro-change BtA bags to BtC, thus ****ing everyone off... or they stay quiet, and leave the others alone.

Supply and Demand... that's what it is all about.

Nowhere in the TOS or the announcements about F2P or the TP Store did it EVER say that prices can't/won't change.

Hell, given your reasoning here, I should be complaining that I bought a +1 Longsword last Friday and it wasn't on sale, but this Friday it is... and I want my 25% back?!?!



I think you misse the point... NONE of the Bags were supposed to be BtA. They are ALL meant to be BtC. Even a small BtA bag breaks things.

And are you really whining about a few TP's, when you got them for free anyways?!?

And are you really whining because you didn't look carefully before you bought something?

this all from a guy that got one of the broken bags and can still use them make them all bta or make them all btc and announce when it will happen giving those players the chance to put them on who they want.

If it's exploitable because of the shared bank then the people that bought them and were not retro fixed have a distinct advantage and thats not cool with me.

[adamkatt]

Hi everyone,

We've been reading this thread, and wanted to clarify the pricing changes for huge bags that you've been seeing over the past few days.

Before Monday, huge bags were priced at 595 Turbine points and bound to account. This was a mistake as the bags were always meant to be bound to character. When we realized we were charging a bound to character price for a bound to account item, we raised the cost by 100 Turbine points (to 695) to better reflect the value of the item you were buying. This coincided with a sale we were having on bags which brought the price down to 521 points, and with the wisdom of hindsight we acknowledge this may have appeared deceptive. For that we apologize. With yesterday's patch and the fix to huge bags, we were able to bring the base price back down to 595 turbine points, which was our intention all along.

Had we told you in advance that the change was coming to the bags (and so the reason for the price increase), it would have been akin to letting you know about an exploit before it was fixed. For obvious reasons we decided not to retroactively change the bag that some of you had already purchased, but the bag you see in the store now was always the intended product.

I hope this explains everything for you. And as always, thank you for your feedback!

Its good to hear ease of having and moving around lots of collactables in a bag is considered an exploit...

[Kistilan]

Sorry to disagree... but that' business.
If you don't have anything in writing that makes you publish price changes, then you can change them, in any direction, at any time. Does this suck for the consumer, yes, but that's the way things work.



Again, there is no valid BUSINESS reason to do so.
If they did, then they announce a potential 'exploit'... and then are forced to retro-change BtA bags to BtC, thus ****ing everyone off... or they stay quiet, and leave the others alone.

Supply and Demand... that's what it is all about.

Nowhere in the TOS or the announcements about F2P or the TP Store did it EVER say that prices can't/won't change.

Hell, given your reasoning here, I should be complaining that I bought a +1 Longsword last Friday and it wasn't on sale, but this Friday it is... and I want my 25% back?!?!



I think you misse the point... NONE of the Bags were supposed to be BtA. They are ALL meant to be BtC. Even a small BtA bag breaks things.

And are you really whining about a few TP's, when you got them for free anyways?!?

And are you really whining because you didn't look carefully before you bought something?

You're not making a lot of sense to me.

I have those BtA bags. I'm disappointed (and a little shocked) by the lack of transparency with Turbine in this matter. It's much akin to renegotiating on promises. If this was a break, they should have announced it. Because they didn't want everyone buying the BtA bags, they didn't announce it (and raised the price).

The problem is there are too many conspiracy theories because of how they handled this. Did they really raise the price because of the added unintentional benefit? Or were they trying to make a quick buck and then realized later they could make more if they made the bags BtC (or so they thought). They've just cut their profits.

If it was an exploit with the USE of the bag as a BtA item, then why are we (myself included) allowed to keep these bags as-is?

I totally understand it was a "mistake" with the BtC label & BtA effect, but they didn't do the MOST SENSIBLE thing (which Turbine has done in the past) and temporarily REMOVE the item (much like turning the Shroud off). Instead, they quietly raised the price and now that we've voiced our opinions they have offered a story on why the price was raised. The story sounds reasonable because they also made the bags BtC, but the story can easily be convenient truths covering a disparaging practice.

So, while you may think it's legitimate, it was less-than-savvy on how it was handled. Turning off the bags and refunding the previously-purchased would have been the correct method. Instead, they wanted money.

[Hafeal]

Amen.

You're not making a lot of sense to me.

I have those BtA bags. I'm disappointed (and a little shocked) by the lack of transparency with Turbine in this matter. It's much akin to renegotiating on promises. If this was a break, they should have announced it. Because they didn't want everyone buying the BtA bags, they didn't announce it (and raised the price).

The problem is there are too many conspiracy theories because of how they handled this. Did they really raise the price because of the added unintentional benefit? Or were they trying to make a quick buck and then realized later they could make more if they made the bags BtC (or so they thought). They've just cut their profits.

If it was an exploit with the USE of the bag as a BtA item, then why are we (myself included) allowed to keep these bags as-is?

I totally understand it was a "mistake" with the BtC label & BtA effect, but they didn't do the MOST SENSIBLE thing (which Turbine has done in the past) and temporarily REMOVE the item (much like turning the Shroud off). Instead, they quietly raised the price and now that we've voiced our opinions they have offered a story on why the price was raised. The story sounds reasonable because they also made the bags BtC, but the story can easily be convenient truths covering a disparaging practice.

So, while you may think it's legitimate, it was less-than-savvy on how it was handled. Turning off the bags and refunding the previously-purchased would have been the correct method. Instead, they wanted money.

[Riggs]

As someone said, spending cash/TP on 'bind to character' consumables is one thing - you reroll you lose the items.

But something that costs a lot of real cash, and is only valuable on an account wide basis - people are willing to spend cash to make managing the massive amount of collectables from many characters manageable, but probbaly few to none will spend that for a single character, esp if you are not 1005 sure you will NEVER reroll that guy EVER. Which given the constant class nurfing every other mod is far from guarenteed.

There are way too many collectables and inventory **** to gather for stuff as it is, and small/medium bags are next to useless because they overfill by level 5 pretty much, then your stuck constantly stopping to mail **** or dump inventory in the middle of a quest because you cant loot anymore.

People were obviously very happy to spend on a bind to account 'inventory management tool' - that would be far less useful as it is now, hence not worth buying.

What option would make more money and make more people happy at the same time? Not what the patch did...

[Paxtor]

Before Monday, huge bags were priced at 595 Turbine points and bound to account. This was a mistake as the bags were always meant to be bound to character. When we realized we were charging a bound to character price for a bound to account item, we raised the cost by 100 Turbine points (to 695) to better reflect the value of the item you were buying.

So the item was intended to be bind on character, not bind on account. The correction to this was the change the price (not how it was bound obviously). The difference between a bind on character and bind on account item's value is about 100 points(?). So, instead of correcting the issue and making the item bind on character (as per original intent)... a change was made to increase it's cost by 100 points (simultaneously with a sale that happened to bring it back down to its original value).

Cool story, bro.