Special Offer for Non-Monthly Card Players

AviTrek

DB, I love that you keep trying with these different special offers, but if your goal is to increase the number of players spending money, the offers continue to fall short. I finally got the 10 for $10 offer everyone loves, but here is the problem, it's still not as good a deal as the monthly card. A monthly card costs $4 and gives me 3000 DIL, that's $0.0013/DIL. So a 650 portal costs $0.867 and I get the benefit of using it on event/special portals with guaranteed crew. The 10 for $10 not only costs more per pack, but it limits me to the general portal with the increased chance of getting either a random 1/4 I can't keep or a 4/4 that is only worth the honor.

If you want to get me and other non-monthly card players to buy an offer, you need to create an offer that is better than the monthly card. A couple thoughts:
1) $5 for the 6500 DIL all behold portal
2) $5 for a monthly card + 2 premium portal
3) $5 for a monthly card + 5 crew slots

Once you're already targeting people with specific offers, it should be easy enough to only target these offers at players who haven't purchased a monthly card in X months.

If you were to give me one of these offers I would jump at it, but until then I keep seeing the offers and thinking, why should I buy that instead of a monthly card I'm not currently buying. Hope you consider the suggestion. Thanks.

Thessair

Making some sort of monthly card+ that is better than the regular thing just to appeal to players who aren't inclined to spend money at the potential cost of alienating all the people who already do pay for the monthly card doesn't seem like a very sound business decision.

The Fish

Someone who is VIP 0 is unlikely to be tempted by any offer I would not expect to see a bunch of offers designed to them parting with $5. Not that I would complain about elusive treasures for $5 lol.

Nikita Mears

I doubt the goal is to max. the number of people that spend money, but the goal is to max. the Profit.
If I sell it for 5 and 10000 people take it, it is better to sell it at 10 and only 6000 take it, for example.

Farmogoyf

If you already aren't spending 4 bucks on a monthly card, there is no way they will try and tailor an offer to you. They need to find ways to get people to who will spend to spend more, not haggle a buck or so and change things around a bit on an offer for someone to maybe start buying who isn't already.

You buying isn't a sure thing to them, because you haven't proven you are open to spending. Sales 101 is you sell to the easiest customer to maximize prophet in the quickest way. Much as I would love to see the offers appear you are proposing, I can pretty much guarantee they won't happen.

Jim Steele

I'd like to see better deals regardless of VIP but if people keep buying them, they must have some mileage?
Needless to say, I declined to purchase 1400 schematics for 25$!
Jim

AviTrek

First of all, I'm not VIP0. I'm VIP2 and did buy a monthly card at one point. So the purpose would be to get me and people who have spent, but are not spending to spend again.

Also, supposedly the majority of players are supposedly VIP0. So selling for $5 and 15000 taking it is better than $10 and 6000 taking it. Are they more likely to sell 10k or 15k of the $5 offer, that depends on the elasticity of demand. I don't know the answer and neither do you. The only way to tell is for DB to run a test which is exactly what these special offers right now are supposed to do.

And there are plenty of examples of low introductory offers to get people to signup/spend for the first time. The first year discount that the cable company charges comes to mind. This would be an example of that. Sign up, see the benefits of VIP, hopefully convert some percentage to longer term spenders, but for everyone else you at least got some money out of them.

Erikbert

I wonder how much money they would make if they had a value pack offer that had no VIP attached to it?

FutureImperfecta

I would like the ability to buy two monthly cards at the same time, or a double Dilithium, double the cost (or discount it, I'm good with that maybe 1.75 vs a standard monthly) monthly card. If be open to that at least some months
And the standard when I'm not.

Capt. Chaos

How about a premium monthly card for $10 with 250 dilithium a day?

South of Sulu

This is a 90-95% reduction in price. You realize that players spend $70 for this will now spend $5. So it will take 65 increased spenders or (14 new spenders) to make the revenue for every player who will now get the same offer for 95% off. Just to get you to spend $5 instead of $4.

Since only 1-5% of players spend any money at all, the numbers are not there to make up the shortfall.
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/03/23/free-to-play-games-are-not-the-way-forward-for-mobile-gaming/
https://venturebeat.com/2015/04/09/in-mobile-games-60-of-revenues-come-from-0-23-of-players/

They already have a low introductory offer. Its called the monthly card.You want offers better than the monthly card? Thats not how introductory offers work.

If they do this you just going to come up with a reason why that deal is not good enough. Thats how the downward price spiral works. It has been stupid in business schools for decades.

[ISA] Raven

just an idea....
skip Starbucks ONCE a month.
skip McDonalds(or insert favorite fast food place) ONCE a month...

we are talking about $4... a month...

either you don't want to spend any money.... in which case changing the offer isn't going to change anything....

or you can't spend money(minor, unable to make purchases or have a job to earn money) in which case changing the offer isn't going to change things....

so AviTrek.. what is truly holding you back from $4 a month?...
spreading out the cost over a month... thats $40 of dilithium (2x1500 offer for $20 apiece) for $4
a 90% savings...

AviTrek

I could afford to spend $4 a month. I could afford to spend a lot more than $4 a month. But I place a value on my money and don't spend just because I can. I don't value any mobile game at $4/month. A year at that rate and you're now talking the same cost as a full console/pc game, and STT or any other mobile game just doesn't compare.

I did buy a monthly card at one point because the benefits of that first monthly card were worth it to me. But with the increased cost of further crew slots and the likelihood of getting useless cards from portal pulls, the value of another monthly card does not cross my threshold.

And I have to say, the attitude on this forum that unless you're spending $25/month on this game your opinion is worthless is really disturbing. I'm still a paying customer. The offers being presented to me are not enough to get me to pay more, so I offered suggestions for how DB could entice me and people like me to pay more. The offers already are being targetted. All I did was suggest that DB could target another large portion of the player base. But I guess since I'm not a VIP14 I don't count.

AlloyIV

Your suggestions devalue the people spending money on the game hold.

Monthly cards are an investment that gives a greater value long term versus instant gratification of just buying a set number all at once.

You can already buy extra crew slots with d that scales up until it levels off to a consistent number. Your 5 dollar card with plus 5 crew slots devalues that aspect of the game. The max is 3000 d so you want 3000 plus another 3000 which is two month cards at 8 bucks which is a 60 day plus investment before it pays off.

Your 5 dollar card for a 6500 d all behold pull when a 4 dollar monthly card is 3000 d total is you wanting 2 monthly cards plus another 500 d plus a special pack with multiple character choices. 700 d is 10 bucks so rounding down you want 8 bucks plus another 7 bucks plus 10 special picks. If I do the math with it being the instant gratification not a 2 month investment the economic numbers get higher.

Your 5 dollar card plus two premiums pulls is the 3000 d plus another 1300 d as the premiums are 650 each. I could also do the maths for this as well but I am tired now.

[QH] He-Who-Meows

AviTrek wrote: »

And I have to say, the attitude on this forum that unless you're spending $25/month on this game your opinion is worthless is really disturbing. I'm still a paying customer. The offers being presented to me are not enough to get me to pay more, so I offered suggestions for how DB could entice me and people like me to pay more. The offers already are being targetted. All I did was suggest that DB could target another large portion of the player base. But I guess since I'm not a VIP14 I don't count.

I don't see where in the responses it says your opinion is worthless because you don't spend a certain amount. I wouldn't take things posted on a forum too personally...

However, they do point out a few incorrect assumptions in your suggestion... the mobile game profit model does not target a large group of small to little spenders, it targets the larger ones... most of the profit on mobile games comes from less than 1% of players. The goal of most of these deals is to convert moderate into large spenders after getting them started with the monthly card...

I'm sure if the deals proposed were offered, most spenders would buy them... myself included, but that would devalue both the monthly card and the other premium offerings... which makes it very unlikely for DB to implement those suggestions...

eXo | Cadet Matt

I would spend $5 for the 6500 dilithium pull pack every day.
This will also never happen.

Maybe $25? I think about a year ago they offered 2 Elusive Treasure pulls (6500) for $49.99. So, maybe offering some of the 6500 dilithium pull packs for $25 isn't too far off.

AviTrek

AlloyIV wrote: »

Your suggestions devalue the people spending money on the game hold.

Monthly cards are an investment that gives a greater value long term versus instant gratification of just buying a set number all at once.

You can already buy extra crew slots with d that scales up until it levels off to a consistent number. Your 5 dollar card with plus 5 crew slots devalues that aspect of the game. The max is 3000 d so you want 3000 plus another 3000 which is two month cards at 8 bucks which is a 60 day plus investment before it pays off.

Your 5 dollar card for a 6500 d all behold pull when a 4 dollar monthly card is 3000 d total is you wanting 2 monthly cards plus another 500 d plus a special pack with multiple character choices. 700 d is 10 bucks so rounding down you want 8 bucks plus another 7 bucks plus 10 special picks. If I do the math with it being the instant gratification not a 2 month investment the economic numbers get higher.

Your 5 dollar card plus two premiums pulls is the 3000 d plus another 1300 d as the premiums are 650 each. I could also do the maths for this as well but I am tired now.

Ok, I'll do the math.

1) $5 for the 6500 DIL all behold portal
A monthly card gives 750 DIL/$. So $5 = 3750. I suggested 6500 DIL in value. That's 173%. The 10 for $10 DB claims is 400% value, somehow my discount doesn't seem that extreme.

2) $5 for a monthly card + 2 premium portal
Month card(3000) + 2 portals(1300) = 4300 DIL. Plus this even preserves your having to wait for the monthly card. 4300/3750 = 115% value. This one is barely even better than the monthly card.

3) $5 for a monthly card + 5 crew slots
5 crew slots range from 350 DIL to 3000 DIL. For me it's currently 1750 which is also the first level you couldn't reach with a single monthly card. So I'll put the 5 slots value there.
3000 + 1750 = 4750. 4750/3750 = 127% value
Even at the full 3000 cost it's still 6000/3750 = 160%

If you value DIL at the cost of a monthly card. none of my suggestions are out of line with the value DB claims on its other offers. It's only if you're thinking about the cost of purchasing DIL otherwise that the offers seem overly generous. But that's exactly my point. If you're only ever considering a monthly card, then all the other offers are BAD value. DB has created offers to cater to people buying a lot of extra DIL. If it wants to sell to more people it needs offers that appeal to people who at most would only buy a monthly card.

eXo | Cadet Matt

[ISA] Raven wrote: »

just an idea....
skip Starbucks ONCE a month.
skip McDonalds(or insert favorite fast food place) ONCE a month...

we are talking about $4... a month...

either you don't want to spend any money.... in which case changing the offer isn't going to change anything....

or you can't spend money(minor, unable to make purchases or have a job to earn money) in which case changing the offer isn't going to change things....

so AviTrek.. what is truly holding you back from $4 a month?...
spreading out the cost over a month... thats $40 of dilithium (2x1500 offer for $20 apiece) for $4
a 90% savings...

Skip Starbucks?!?!?!?!?! Never.

esch

AviTrek wrote: »

AlloyIV wrote: »

Ok, I'll do the math.

Your math is correct, but the underlying assumptions are off.

The Monthly Card is a one-time outlier to target a revenue stream that is not open to normally priced offers. So the goals/value there is different from other offers. Doing math based on the Monthly Card value, which is already a great deal is faulty and won't convince DB that they should do it. % values for potential offers should be taken from the common base used to calculate value. So to the DB folks the % for a "6500 DIL-type offer for $5" is more like 5000%, not 173%

Even if the above isn't obvious, offering 6500 DIL for $5 would clearly destroy the value of the normal offers which wouldn't make much sense to DB.

Valuing DIL at the cost of a monthly card is not a practical assumption for generating viable offers since it doesn't, among other things, account for the time aspect of spreading the dil over 30 days nor does it account for the one-time aspect of it that caps the impact to other offers.

I'm not saying DB shouldn't offer other deals, but trying to justify it with the math presented has core issues.

AviTrek

esch wrote: »

AviTrek wrote: »

AlloyIV wrote: »

Ok, I'll do the math.

Your math is correct, but the underlying assumptions are off.

The Monthly Card is a one-time outlier to target a revenue stream that is not open to normally priced offers. So the goals/value there is different from other offers. Doing math based on the Monthly Card value, which is already a great deal is faulty and won't convince DB that they should do it. % values for potential offers should be taken from the common base used to calculate value. So to the DB folks the % for a "6500 DIL-type offer for $5" is more like 5000%, not 173%

Even if the above isn't obvious, offering 6500 DIL for $5 would clearly destroy the value of the normal offers which wouldn't make much sense to DB.

Valuing DIL at the cost of a monthly card is not a practical assumption for generating viable offers since it doesn't, among other things, account for the time aspect of spreading the dil over 30 days nor does it account for the one-time aspect of it that caps the impact to other offers.

I'm not saying DB shouldn't offer other deals, but trying to justify it with the math presented has core issues.

Again, these are targeted offers. I wouldn't suggest targeting them at everyone who is jumping at the existing offers. The point is to target players not currently spending anything. Let's say to get the offer you need 0 purchases in the last 90 days. Players dropping $25/week and/or regularly buying the $10 offers wouldn't get them so it wouldn't destroy their purchases. But for players who haven't spent in 90 days and have the option of buying a monthly card, this presents an offer that is at least worth considering instead of saying, "why should I buy this over a monthly card".

Captain_Who

I'd get a second, or enhanced monthly card if it was offered. The cash price for direct dil is too high for me (too little value), and even the $10 for 10x packs is no longer attractive because of the worthless amount of honor dismissed crew provide, my last couple sets netting me nothing of value, and no new crew added to the packs. FFS Hollywood releases DVDs in 'murica after a couple months, a couple weeks over seas in places like Russia, but DB takes 6 months to drop event crew into packs.

Just my perspective and my 2 cents. Probably not even worth those pair of pennies.

AlloyIV

AviTrek wrote: »

AlloyIV wrote: »

Your suggestions devalue the people spending money on the game hold.

Monthly cards are an investment that gives a greater value long term versus instant gratification of just buying a set number all at once.

You can already buy extra crew slots with d that scales up until it levels off to a consistent number. Your 5 dollar card with plus 5 crew slots devalues that aspect of the game. The max is 3000 d so you want 3000 plus another 3000 which is two month cards at 8 bucks which is a 60 day plus investment before it pays off.

Your 5 dollar card for a 6500 d all behold pull when a 4 dollar monthly card is 3000 d total is you wanting 2 monthly cards plus another 500 d plus a special pack with multiple character choices. 700 d is 10 bucks so rounding down you want 8 bucks plus another 7 bucks plus 10 special picks. If I do the math with it being the instant gratification not a 2 month investment the economic numbers get higher.

Your 5 dollar card plus two premiums pulls is the 3000 d plus another 1300 d as the premiums are 650 each. I could also do the maths for this as well but I am tired now.

Ok, I'll do the math.

1) $5 for the 6500 DIL all behold portal
A monthly card gives 750 DIL/$. So $5 = 3750. I suggested 6500 DIL in value. That's 173%. The 10 for $10 DB claims is 400% value, somehow my discount doesn't seem that extreme.

2) $5 for a monthly card + 2 premium portal
Month card(3000) + 2 portals(1300) = 4300 DIL. Plus this even preserves your having to wait for the monthly card. 4300/3750 = 115% value. This one is barely even better than the monthly card.

3) $5 for a monthly card + 5 crew slots
5 crew slots range from 350 DIL to 3000 DIL. For me it's currently 1750 which is also the first level you couldn't reach with a single monthly card. So I'll put the 5 slots value there.
3000 + 1750 = 4750. 4750/3750 = 127% value
Even at the full 3000 cost it's still 6000/3750 = 160%

If you value DIL at the cost of a monthly card. none of my suggestions are out of line with the value DB claims on its other offers. It's only if you're thinking about the cost of purchasing DIL otherwise that the offers seem overly generous. But that's exactly my point. If you're only ever considering a monthly card, then all the other offers are BAD value. DB has created offers to cater to people buying a lot of extra DIL. If it wants to sell to more people it needs offers that appeal to people who at most would only buy a monthly card.

You are deliberately ignoring economic reality as you can't just frame this through the lens of what a monthly card is valued at. You deliberately left out the instant gratification costs of buying D when I pointed out the maths because it makes a shambles of your suggestions. The reality is the game is not built around the monthly cards as a primary revenue source. If you can't accept that simple fact when you make your suggestions then I have nothing else to say about it.

Commander Morak

I (and those like me) am the reason you'll never see your offer. I buy once a month, either the 50 dollar midweek promo or a 25 dollar minimal event pack if I'm having a bad event and want the placement 4* FF. I'll jump ship on those offers in a heartbeat for a 5 dollar weekly pack like that.

And despite what you believe, the ability to only buy a monthly card on occasion puts you in a very small group. The vast majority of people either stay completely free or open their wallets regularly. For every impulsive spender such as myself, they'd require 2 of you. It's just not going to happen.

esch

.

Farmogoyf

I have now played dozens of top mobile games, and the one thing they all have to entice people to buy is some kind of monthly card, that usually offers WAY more in-game currency than any other in-game deal, dollar for dollar. Taking that exchange rate as the standard for future potentially offered deals makes no sense, as that monthly card IS their best deal, and is designed to entice people to start spending. Essentially you are asking for their "best case" deal to be even better, but I can tell you from playing and paying way more than I should have in mobile games, you won't get a better rate than the monthly card.