Darth_Khasei

Originally Posted by Doctor Roswell

Right up until you factor in the merits that come in the packs themselves. I bought the 24-pack and came away with over 1,000 merits yesterday -- 175 from a single pack. Sure, that just gives more incentive to do things like... buy more packs, or run the WST (and this week, the WST is VIP-only! Probably not a coincidence -- subscribe now and you can earn all these cool new enhancements with your merits!), but you have to know they want us to do those things anyway.

I often have close to 200 merits sitting around that I accumulated "by accident" just from normal play. If I were actively trying to earn them? A few hundred in a week wouldn't really be much harder than earning fifty or so Astrals or a handful of alignment merits every couple of days. ATOs are still easier to get than purple/PvP IOs, at any rate.

To me, 400-500 merits honestly doesn't seem out of line for the things. The VIP requirement is kind of a pain, and the length of the timer seems a little harsh, but the price itself? Actually not too bad.

Originally Posted by DarkGob

The difference is that when you bought those you knew what you were getting and you knew how much it cost. Not the case anymore.

Originally Posted by Snow Globe

I'm taking Zwillinger at his word:

Their motives behind the packs seems clear to me...


ATOs directly affect powers and auto-level with the character. They are more powerful than almost anything else in the game, and Synapse has said on today's UStream that the future packs will have newer ATOs with different/better advantages.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

But how else can they get people addicted to card flipping, and make moar money by them having to buy packs and packs alone to get the costume and wolf pet?

Originally Posted by Machariel

brofist o/ \o

I do wonder how the substantial differences between EVE's ingame economy and CoH's would affect that, though. It's an interesting question.

Originally Posted by Bru_Tal

So why are we complaining again?

Originally Posted by FlashToo

You know what would make this all better? If the unopened packs were tradable. I would spend inf on this, if not real money... but if I spent inf on it, that means SOMEONE spent real money on it, so there's no loss of profit.

It worked for EVE.

Originally Posted by Slazenger

Where did they say these costume pieces would be sold normally?
If people purchased these costume pieces on the basis that they were only available via the super packs, there are going a hell of a lot of p'd off people looking for their money back.

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm

I don't know that it can properly be called "buyer's remorse" when someone who hates this kind of product knowingly buys this kind of product and then complains that they hate it. That's more like "self-flagellation".

Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven

"the G word"

Originally Posted by Miuramir

So, for discussion purposes, something around 1 in 250 for the Wolf is a convenient approximation. Philosophically, I'm not happy with random-box items that rare, but I'm aware that there are successful MMO games with dramatically rarer items.

Originally Posted by Casual_Player

I'd like to thank all you people who are blowing money on this stuff for supporting the main game that I enjoy.

Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven

You tell me. If he doesn't think gambling is bad then why does he even care in the first place? Let alone the fact that CCGs or anything like them (like Super Packs) really are not even in the first place.

Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven

Using their own logic, I've already pointed out that everything is gambling. And since gambling is wrong, that means that everything is wrong. And the universe is one giant duck.