Black Friday Gift from Inno

[Silver Lady]

I want to see some artifacts for sale!

The other thing, what a silly sale in that single artifacts haven't been offered. I already have 4 artifacts for one of the sale items and in Canadian, an outrageous $110, but why not single artifacts for say $15? Or one for $20, 3 for $50 and 5 for $75? Or something like that...

I too was hoping for single artifacts for sale. Perhaps in as a mix and match; so I could pick 2 Coldfire Phoenix and 1 Wise Golem with price cheaper than buying them separately. (Pretty please with sugar on it Inno.)

 

[Knight of Mystra]

I don't know if it just me but I didn't find one single item that was worth taking a second look at. To be honest the completed set are reasonable price but I just deleted seven better buildings that those.

Edit: Two of the buildings I deleted was two that are being offered, so not better but the same.

 

[LisaMV]

Looks like the Nightfur Unicorn is a free gift and not a daily prize in the Winter event. And as usual, these gifts are one per account, not one per city, so if you see this before your first log-in on Friday after 9:30am eastern time, make sure you log into the city where you want the gift to go.

ugh!
Great advice, way too late for me!

 

[OneNastyme]

Interesting... I have an offer to buy a Dwarven armorer and it says it's marked down from 1,000 to 800 diamonds.
Except... when was it ever offered for 1,000?
In Canada at least that's against the law. You can't just make up a BS price that never really existed and then offer a "discount" from that price.

Obviously, Inno would never get in trouble for such an infraction, but the point is that such laws exist for a reason: it's a scummy practice that preys on customers. Shame on you inno.

I say that it's not a BS price. The Dwarven armorer can be crafted in the Magic Academy. If you don't have the required items to craft it, it would cost you 1000 diamonds. That's the price that shows in my Magic Academy.

 

[Yogi Dave]

The Dwarven armorer can be crafted in the Magic Academy.

Dwarven Armorer is only available in the spire. The Unleased Unit Upgrade can be crafted in the MA.

 

[Dominionofgod]

honestly, i find those 'sales' to be very underwhelming and maaaassssivly over priced. And dont get me wrong, im not saying things should jsut be handed to us. And i have no issue with inno trying to make some money out of it. But theirs a certain quality/value standard i would hope for. And these deal arnt even close.

I have all 4 sets they are selling. All the pieces or all the artifacts for upgrade. And they have still been sitting in my inventory since i got them. True, maybe someone else might think differently then me about them.. but its not a promising start from my point of view. Then they tack on prices from $30 to $80?? Seriously? I wouldnt pay 80 for any building or set in this game. Even the fire phoenix, which i consider the best building iv seen since i started playing.. i wouldnt pay $80 for. Even $30 would be an internal debate because i know im still getting screwed over; but it is a nice building.

 

[SoggyShorts]

The Dwarven armorer can be crafted in the Magic Academy.

No, it can't.

 

[SoggyShorts]

But theirs a certain quality/value standard i would hope for. And these deal arnt even close.

I'm pretty certain that the only paying customers inno gets from these sales are ones who don't play any other games.
I can't imagine that someone who buys AAA titles for their Xbox/Playstation at $50 a pop would buy a mermaid for $100.
Two decent buildings vs a 1-year subscription to WoW or Netflix?
If you have 2 cities, you could get them each the gingerbread house and the Mermaid or.... a new 50" Tv
And these are the sale prices! For $100 you can buy a dozen Lego games on steam this weekend with money left over for a pizza.

 

[ajqtrz]

I took a look at Inno's explanation and what a bunch of .....I'm too polite to even use the initials. LOL.

NOTHING has an intrinsic value. Value resides in the one valuing and is a pretty much psychological evaluation of the comparative worth of two things against each other in the mind of the evaluator. Yes, groups can determine a value of something for their group, but market forces will often eventually destroy that relationship. In any case, neither of the two things being compared have any intrinsic value and even Inno's explanation acknowledges that they use a "complex" and "complicated" formula to determine the intrinsic value of a virtual thing. Using any formula must, by the nature of a formula, say that Y is equal to X number of Z's. No formula measuring value can do so without comparison or it wouldn't need the equal sign. The long and short of it they make it even if they make up a "complex" and "complicated" formula to justify the result.

Sigh.


AND I agree with Soggy. Prices are too high. I might have been tempted by a 50% discount but 10, 15 and 20 percents are not the "Black Friday" level discounts I have come to expect.

AJ

 

[SoggyShorts]

even Inno's explanation acknowledges that they use a "complex" and "complicated" formula to determine the intrinsic value of a virtual thing.

This is the genius of it, right?
Here's how the "formula" can look for all of their statements to be technically true
Price= 1*(a+b+c+d...zz)
a= if name is "Dwarven armorer", 1,000 if not, 0
b= if name is "Portal profit 50%", 1,600, if not, 0

and just keep adding to it.

 

[cindywillow]

I love my little Nightfur Unicorn !

 

[DeletedUser27062]

@MinMax Gamer
That was a good read, about what I expected.

So basically the law is that you can't make up a BS price and reduce it to give the illusion of a sale.
Unless you have that BS made up price on an internal secret list somewhere, then it's ok.

Amazing.

To be fair, that condition wasn't the one the community manager said applied to the building being sold at an apparent discount.
(note: I've bolded and underlined the relevant sections)
She said:
"Competition law on discounts/rebates applies regardless of whether the product in question is a physical good or a virtual good.
Regardless of whether the item is a physical or virtual good, we need to make sure that the original price is accurate (Sec. 5 (1) No. 2 UWG), which it is.

The original price is accurate if

• The original price has actually been charged in the past (for an item that has been sold before).
• The original price will be charged in the future for at least several weeks or months (for an item that has never been on offer before, such as this building).
• If the price is fixed and assigned in internal pricing lists (for sale-only items).

We assign every item a value once it gets created for whichever purpose. Every event item has a specific value assigned to it. That value is kept consistently from its creation until the items go on sale. We are not exempt from applying inflation, etc, to these set prices, but in practice this is barely done. "

However, there's a glitch in their legal strategy...

In an earlier comment she said this is how they determine the original price:
"The calculations are done from before any item is even introduced to the game to make sure that everything is taken into consideration. A term we call balancing as this takes into consideration the power of the building, how common or rare it will be, how hard will it be for a player to get, as well as its footprint and of course the maths formula that each aspect of this creates.
As a company we have to be able to use a consistent formula all across the game ''balancing'' is exactly this.
Therefore when any offer is made like today, this is based on a set of known and fair pricing that adheres to legislation."

Given that they can't possibly know how many of these buildings will sell they have no accurate means of determining rarity or how hard it will be for players to get the building. The sale effectively makes their algorithm inaccurate therefore the original price is inaccurate (and the discount meaningless and illegal).

 

[SoggyShorts]

To be fair, that condition wasn't the one the community manager said applied to the building being sold at an apparent discount.
(note: I've bolded and underlined the relevant sections)

• The original price will be charged in the future for at least several weeks or months (for an item that has never been on offer before, such as this building).

I'd believe that story except that this isn't the first time they've had such sales, and the items were never available for purchase ever again, certainly not for "several weeks or months"
Maybe it's different this time and we should be expecting an offer on the side of our screen for 1,000 diamond Dwarven Armorers for the next "several months"?
Also, what does "in the future" even mean? From March 18, 2087, to Dec 12, 2087, but.. oops, the game didn't last that long, sorry?

Have a look at the 3 diamond sale offers I got on 3 separate accounts and tell me what the intrinsic value of a diamond is:

 

[DeletedUser27062]

I'd believe that story except that this isn't the first time they've had such sales, and the items were never available for purchase ever again, certainly not for "several weeks or months"
Maybe it's different this time and we should be expecting an offer on the side of our screen for 1,000 diamond Dwarven Armorers for the next "several months"?
Also, what does "in the future" even mean? From March 18, 2087, to Dec 12, 2087, but.. oops, the game didn't last that long, sorry?

Have a look at the 3 diamond sale offers I got on 3 separate accounts and tell me what the intrinsic value of a diamond is:
View attachment 8700

Don't get me wrong; I'm not justifying their underhanded tactics - not at all. I was pointing out how their elaborate legal shenanigans falls on its face when you consider how they calculate the original price. Their legal team is rubbish if they didn't notice the flaw in their "logic".

Basically they've found a loophole they think they can exploit but on closer inspection they've screwed up by including rarity as a variable in their pricing algorithm.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Basically they've found a loophole they think they can exploit but on closer inspection they've screwed up by including rarity as a variable in their pricing algorithm.

I see where you're going with this now, but they're still covered by being so vague. They can always offer the sale but only to the first 1 billion customers therefore controlling the "rarity."
Or they could mean only offering the sale x many times per decade and calling that "rarity"
Or they could just mean that little purple ribbon on the corner of items that denotes " item rarity" like "epic" or "legendary"

 

[DeletedUser27062]

I see where you're going with this now, but they're still covered by being so vague. They can always offer the sale but only to the first 1 billion customers therefore controlling the "rarity."

haha nope. The algorithm demands a set value for rarity and to have a set value they must control supply. There is no way they can control how many buildings will be sold. Even if they only offered it to to the first billion customers they can't predict how many will accept the offer. The best they can do is estimate probability which would still change the original price therefore making the discount inaccurate & illegal.

 

[SoggyShorts]

haha nope. The algorithm demands a set value for rarity

Or they could just mean that little purple ribbon on the corner of items that denotes " item rarity" like "epic" or "legendary"
Therefore a blue "rarity" has a value of 1, yellow 1.1, purple 1.2 or whatever

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Since some of the items in the sale can also be crafted in the MA, there is a value for them based on how many diamonds it takes to craft one, if you have none of the needed items. And Inno can take the individual diamond costs for CCs and relics and broken shards and spell fragments and make a crafting value in diamonds for anything in the game and then convert that into cash value.

 

[DeletedUser27062]

Or they could just mean that little purple ribbon on the corner of items that denotes " item rarity" like "epic" or "legendary"
Therefore a blue "rarity" has a value of 1, yellow 1.1, purple 1.2 or whatever

It would be interesting to see the legality of setting rarity using "because I said so" metrics. I personally don't think they'd have a leg to stand on if that was the case. Rarity and its sister variable "how hard is it for a player to get the item" would need to be justifiable, those terms, in a legal setting must having meaning beyond the semantic. The loophole they're attempting to exploit doesn't require that they include these variables - that was their explanation of how they assign value to determine the set price. To abide by the law they simply have to have a fixed value from which they can deduct a certain amount to be able to claim a discount has applied.

If, as you say, they've literally invented the value and haven't relied on a numeric value to determine rarity then they're not breaking any laws (regarding the discounted item) but they have lied to the community about how they determine the original price. If they claim something is rare when in fact it isn't then that's another legal no-no like saying there's only five left of a sale item when you have 1000 under the counter.

Either way my basic philosophy is to put my back to the wall whenever Inno announces they have a 'good' deal.

 

[Alram]

Si

I love my little Nightfur Unicorn !

I love it too! Great gift!