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Why kill Synthweaving and Armormech with free Tionese sets?


Maestrodomus

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Ahh, that makes sense - a marketing scam!

 

Thanks for pointing that out, I should have known.

 

For sure. They knew what they where doing when they did this. You could go your entire lvl 1-49 with all blues and be fine. They needed something there at the end to try and get some kind of money out of you. If not, a f2p player would just roll another character and be done with it. This way, they are enticing you to try hard modes out and waive some free purples in front of your face. Hopefully you bite, buy the gear requisition unlock or sub for a bit to try it out. I bet this was planned back when they decided to make recruit 2 blues. You wait, after a while starting pvp gear will be war hero and by then thry will have the hooks in f2p players. A set of purple pvp and pve gear ready and waiting at level cap, with a little note that says, "Congratz, you made it, now give us some money lol!"

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I imagine you're right- we will eventually get to a point where the first PvP set is artifact grade. - but it will be because of gear inflation.

 

Let me get this straight, this forum is full of people who believe EA/BW is too incompetent to make the game a success, but you think they're smart enough to "scam" the F2P crowd with free Tionese gear?

 

Who's scamming who? I can't for the life of my understand why they made it F2P all the way to level 50, when the story content is the biggest draw to the game. If they had cut it off at the end of Act 2, they would have got more money out of F2P kids. And it wouldn't have impacted endgame crafting at all.

 

They gave the sets away because a fresh 50's in level 50 mods can't keep up with the 733t douche bags they meet in group finder. They introduced another tier of engame gear - so they retired the first tier No conspiracy... no marketing geeeneeeeusing.. ~ end of story.

 

Crafting is never going to keep up with engame gear - because if it does, there is no reason to play at at endgame. It never has -- it never will. I like to craft - I do it on all of my toons, but I've aceepted that as a fact.

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I'm sorry dude, but I truly believe you are wrong. I spend alot of my time at work with our marketing team and this is exactly the sort of thing I see them do on a day in, day out bases. You think they don't charge for the gear acquisition for a reason? And then after f2p hits, they release this?? The hurdle wasn't that high. You had purple boes that people sell, daily mods and all kinds of ways to gear up for hard modes.

 

It's cool you can't see this for what it is. You believe that they devs aren't smart enough to make a competent game, so how could they have cooked up something like this? Well, bioware didn't come up with this idea, the suits at EA did. And they have been doing this a long time. Look at ship parts in the cartel market, or the level 10 +41 color crystals, or all the better looking gear in the cartel market. This all screams marketing. It's plain and simple. The best money makers out there, find ways to get you to part with your money without you fully knowing it. You think Amazon Prime free 2 day shipping was cooked up by someone who just wanted to give everyone free shipping? Do you think free shipping is trully free? I suggest you look into marketing more. It might help you save some of your money in the future.

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You could have said "P2W Cartel market Items" or the "timing of the RotHC announcement" in relation to marketing Blah..Blah ... Blah and it would have been 100% true.

 

You start talking about handing over decisions about changes to gear progression & then all you can say to back it up is, "I spend time with my marketing people"?

 

This idea you have about "free Tionese gear is a scam", is just tinfoil hat BS.

 

The F2P players already had to buy the artifact unlock just to spend daily comms on anything other than schematics, or just to equip the mods that drop from the daily heroics. They were already buying that unlock if they wanted to continue their toons into the endgame AT ALL. Giving them Tionese, just let them skip the dailies and get straight to doing HMs & OPs.

 

If you had said they gave away Tionese to boost the purchase of HM and OPs weekly passes... I might have believed that. But guess what.... they were going to start buying those after 5 runs through the dailies anyway. Forcing them to buy an unlock or watch all their ingame credits go into escroe. If they passed on doing the dailies because of the free Tionese ~ why would they go back and buy the unlock for Section X? Just to get HK-51? If they havn't bought crafting & GTN unlocks the comp & schematics are worthless to them. So-- how exactly again did giving away Tionese boost money revenue from the CC market? If anything it probably hurt cash shop revenue.

 

If you've spent any time with any marketing people and you've acted on more than %0.1 of their ideas about how your existing products should be changed ~ you've made them into product designers when their job is to SELL the product in front of them, and figure out why people do or don't buy it. Letting marketing people design a product is like watching little kids pretend to drive a car. If EA/BW is stupid enough to let the marketing department design products, why did they bother hiring any engineers? I ask, because if their marketing department designs better content than their engineers, they could sell anything. So again you're saying that EA/BW is "just that stupid" & "deviously brilliant" at the same time.

 

This game doesn't even have a marketing budget anymore beyond what it takes to moderate and maintain the SWTOR web media pressence, banner adds, and attend game cons. It's been that way for eleven months. And given the wonderful job that the SWTOR market analysis team has done at understanding the behavior of this game's consumers, I doubt any EA/BW exec will even let them design a used tissue when it comes to this game. Most of them have probably been fired over it.

 

Any F2P player smart enough to itemize their gear isn't going to buy any of the cartel unlocks into the endgame- they're going to see they need to sub or quit. The prices of the cartel unlocks are calculated to encourage that decision.

 

They're giving away Tionese because the gear gap between Tionese & BH itemized with campaign armorings ~ is too big.

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Let me get this straight, this forum is full of people who believe EA/BW is too incompetent to make the game a success, but you think they're smart enough to "scam" the F2P crowd with free Tionese gear?

 

Any used car dealer can scam, but not every used car dealer can code. Skill requirements are vastly different. ;)

 

Cartel Market is the biggest scam so far - objectively, you are much better off buying from the gold spammers than buying cartel coins (and by no means do I support or encourage gold spammers!).

 

So yes, I believe the bait-and-switch tactic with Tionese gear - it makes "corporate" sense.

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You could have said "P2W Cartel market Items" or the "timing of the RotHC announcement" in relation to marketing Blah..Blah ... Blah and it would have been 100% true.

 

You start talking about handing over decisions about changes to gear progression & then all you can say to back it up is, "I spend time with my marketing people"?

 

This idea you have about "free Tionese gear is a scam", is just tinfoil hat BS.

 

The F2P players already had to buy the artifact unlock just to spend daily comms on anything other than schematics, or just to equip the mods that drop from the daily heroics. They were already buying that unlock if they wanted to continue their toons into the endgame AT ALL. Giving them Tionese, just let them skip the dailies and get straight to doing HMs & OPs.

 

If you had said they gave away Tionese to boost the purchase of HM and OPs weekly passes... I might have believed that. But guess what.... they were going to start buying those after 5 runs through the dailies anyway. Forcing them to buy an unlock or watch all their ingame credits go into escroe. If they passed on doing the dailies because of the free Tionese ~ why would they go back and buy the unlock for Section X? Just to get HK-51? If they havn't bought crafting & GTN unlocks the comp & schematics are worthless to them. So-- how exactly again did giving away Tionese boost money revenue from the CC market? If anything it probably hurt cash shop revenue.

 

If you've spent any time with any marketing people and you've acted on more than %0.1 of their ideas about how your existing products should be changed ~ you've made them into product designers when their job is to SELL the product in front of them, and figure out why people do or don't buy it. Letting marketing people design a product is like watching little kids pretend to drive a car. If EA/BW is stupid enough to let the marketing department design products, why did they bother hiring any engineers? I ask, because if their marketing department designs better content than their engineers, they could sell anything. So again you're saying that EA/BW is "just that stupid" & "deviously brilliant" at the same time.

 

This game doesn't even have a marketing budget anymore beyond what it takes to moderate and maintain the SWTOR web media pressence, banner adds, and attend game cons. It's been that way for eleven months. And given the wonderful job that the SWTOR market analysis team has done at understanding the behavior of this game's consumers, I doubt any EA/BW exec will even let them design a used tissue when it comes to this game. Most of them have probably been fired over it.

 

Any F2P player smart enough to itemize their gear isn't going to buy any of the cartel unlocks into the endgame- they're going to see they need to sub or quit. The prices of the cartel unlocks are calculated to encourage that decision.

 

They're giving away Tionese because the gear gap between Tionese & BH itemized with campaign armorings ~ is too big.

 

I guess your not familiar with the marketing term "Call to Action.". A call to action is something that makes you feel compelled to do something. Buy now and GET free shipping today, pre order today and get 5 days of early access. What do you think a magic quest at 50 that gives you free purples is? Can a f2p player use them right away? No. Why? What do they need to do?

 

It's okay you don't get it. Your an educated cosumer thwt beleives you are smarter than the educated people trying to get your money. By the way, I love free shipping too. We made over 50k this quater on free shipping. ;)

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What unlock did giving away Tionese gear force F2P people to buy ~ that they didn't already have to buy when they dinged 50?

 

They already had to buy the same unlock just to spend their daily comms on anything besides schematics . Or to equip the exotech gear or the columi implants that drop in any of the SM lvl 50 FPs.

 

You can't do ANY endgame gear progression without that unlock - and it starts BEFORE you even get to Tionese. The "Call to Action" was already there.

 

/facepalm it's not difficult people

 

I never said I trusted anyone trying to sell me anything. And I certainly don't trust EA/BW. This is the first product either company has released since the early 90's that I paid more than $20 for.

 

But this Tionese gear conspiracy theory doesn't even make any sense. All the gear grant does is save people the hassel of grinding dailies for a week.

Edited by Cleet_Xia
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There are some interesting comments above and they are worth thinking about.

 

I guess, to me, I felt that the free Tionese sets were introduced to address a problem. That being that the relative number of people who were raiding or running HMs was very small. Many players have left or were leaving the game because to them level 50 was the end of the game and there was nothing else to do other than go back and level alts (which runs out of steam pretty quickly). The free Tionese gear was then just an attempt to get more people to play end game content by giving entry level gear for such content.

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Is anyone else concerned with this? I've been a Synthweaver (added an Armormech sometime along the way) since launch. I've made a nice sum to support myself and our guild by crafting epic 49 belts, bracers, boots, and gloves for all classes and specs through Synth/Armor. You can make and sell these for reasonable costs and it keeps a healthy economy and money sink flowing.

 

Why would they kill this by giving every fresh 50 a set of Tionese which renders these useless and leaves Synth and Armormechs with only the annoying augment market to make any money?

 

Why you ask? Simple answer, Artifice was destroyed a while back, why not destroy Sythweaving, Armormech, and Cybertech as well they thought?

 

Poorly thought out decisons on bioware's part... However at the time of this all they were thinking was...... money, money money.... and more money. Good for game what? Oh no... LOL this was all about money nothing more or less. If bioware had a parent or sibling they would have been auctioned off along with the remaining crew skills. But not to fear... I am sure Bioware is developing a way to **** biochem up as well as it seems to be the last and only functioning crew skill in the game that makes money/ credits.

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What unlock did giving away Tionese gear force F2P people to buy ~ that they didn't already have to buy when they dinged 50?

I didn't say forced. I said encouraged. Helped along. Nobody is forced to do anything.

They already had to buy the same unlock just to spend their daily comms on anything besides schematics . Or to equip the exotech gear or the columi implants that drop in any of the SM lvl 50 FPs.

 

You can't do ANY endgame gear progression without that unlock - and it starts BEFORE you even get to Tionese. The "Call to Action" was already there.

No it wasn't. All those things are slow and require user input. Do a daily, more like a few, run some regular flashpoints. None of those things are fast, instant or cause any immediate reaction. They take time. A magic quest with instant gear on the other hand...

/facepalm it's not difficult people

 

I never said I trusted anyone trying to sell me anything. And I certainly don't trust EA/BW. This is the first product either company has released since the early 90's that I paid more than $20 for.

 

But this Tionese gear conspiracy theory doesn't even make any sense. All the gear grant does is save people the hassel of grinding dailies for a week.

 

I would bet the farm that the conversion rate on gear acquisition unlocks jumped up alot after this quest was added. To bad we will never see the numbers, but that's okay, I've seen enough of these types of conversion numbers to know I'm right.

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I'm sorry dude, but I truly believe you are wrong. I spend alot of my time at work with our marketing team and this is exactly the sort of thing I see them do on a day in, day out bases. You think they don't charge for the gear acquisition for a reason? And then after f2p hits, they release this?? The hurdle wasn't that high. You had purple boes that people sell, daily mods and all kinds of ways to gear up for hard modes.

 

It's cool you can't see this for what it is. You believe that they devs aren't smart enough to make a competent game, so how could they have cooked up something like this? Well, bioware didn't come up with this idea, the suits at EA did. And they have been doing this a long time. Look at ship parts in the cartel market, or the level 10 +41 color crystals, or all the better looking gear in the cartel market. This all screams marketing. It's plain and simple. The best money makers out there, find ways to get you to part with your money without you fully knowing it. You think Amazon Prime free 2 day shipping was cooked up by someone who just wanted to give everyone free shipping? Do you think free shipping is trully free? I suggest you look into marketing more. It might help you save some of your money in the future.

 

Amazon prime is a good service. I did the calculations what it would cost me to have to pay individually for two day shipping for books for the three quarters. It was a lot cheaper to buy amazon prime than to pay for individual shipping. Plus, I also order many other items. Likewise, I don't pay taxes on computer hardware, at least when I bought hardware a few months ago. Amazon prime saved me a lot of money. However, I wouldn't call what BW is doing a scam. All corporation do what BW is doing. It's like buying in bulk vs singles or give away samples after a customer buys a product.

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you might not realize it....but there is craftable stuff from 1-48. not just 49-50.

 

also my Armormech makes about 150k a day just selling rk-6 Augment Kits.

 

your crew skill is not dead.

 

Your absolutely right but nobody seems to care. They got a reason to ***** and they are gonna. Crazy thing is this is my most profitable crew skill raking in 300 to 500 k a day for me with very little work 20 minutes tops. What's even crazier is I am able to sell most of the mats I gather and am still able to make a huge profit buying the mats I need off of the Gtn to make my bread and butter items.

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Amazon prime is a good service. I did the calculations what it would cost me to have to pay individually for two day shipping for books for the three quarters. It was a lot cheaper to buy amazon prime than to pay for individual shipping. Plus, I also order many other items. Likewise, I don't pay taxes on computer hardware, at least when I bought hardware a few months ago. Amazon prime saved me a lot of money. However, I wouldn't call what BW is doing a scam. All corporation do what BW is doing. It's like buying in bulk vs singles or give away samples after a customer buys a product.

 

I'm sure. Amazon prime just gives you a nice nudve into shopping with them. You already paid for prime, might as well cash in right? The scam there helps tip the tides for you to speed your money with amazon instead of somewhere else. You already paid, might as well. Their was a huge article about Amazon prime in internet retailer and how much money it was making them.

 

Look, I'm not saying you can't make credits off of sythweaving. Alot of people do. I was just commenting on why I think Bioware added the free Tionese gear. Nothing more. I beleive it was a digital marketing scam. Are people still making some credits off of synthweaving? Sure. Just like Artifice still manages to sell some color crystals. Level 1-49 purples most people don't care about or go out of thier way to get. You level past them, what's the poi nt? If you get them, great, if not, o well, the next tier of blues are just as good as the previous tier of purples.

 

Maybe color crystals are an exception to this, since more crystal tiers are like what, 7-9 level gap?

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I'm sure. Amazon prime just gives you a nice nudve into shopping with them. You already paid for prime, might as well cash in right? The scam there helps tip the tides for you to speed your money with amazon instead of somewhere else. You already paid, might as well. Their was a huge article about Amazon prime in internet retailer and how much money it was making them.

 

...

Cynical much? You're calling it a "scam", which by definition is a "fraudulent business scheme". Where the hell is the "fraud" in the free shipping?

 

I'm a careful shopper, and will only purchase from Amazon if their prices are comparable to other places. Which they usually are. In many cases their prices are better than most.

 

"Scam" indeed. One might even suspect you're an advocate of a full blown communism. All these hateful business practices, designed to do the most EVIL of deeds, make money! Oh, the horror.

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Cynical much? You're calling it a "scam", which by definition is a "fraudulent business scheme". Where the hell is the "fraud" in the free shipping?

 

I'm a careful shopper, and will only purchase from Amazon if their prices are comparable to other places. Which they usually are. In many cases their prices are better than most.

 

"Scam" indeed. One might even suspect you're an advocate of a full blown communism. All these hateful business practices, designed to do the most EVIL of deeds, make money! Oh, the horror.

 

Okay, scam was the wrong choice of word. Marketing scheme. And there is nothing wrong with a good marketing scheme. It works. People buy and the company makes money. I'm just a little turned off by all the marketing schemes I see these days. Big business allready makes lots of money off us, so when I see the newest scheme, it just tiffs me.

 

Scam was a bad choice in words. Marketing scheme was what I ment to describe Amazon Prime. A very clever marketing scheme designed to get people to spend more of their money with them. Kudus to their team, they are on the ball.

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Cynical much? You're calling it a "scam", which by definition is a "fraudulent business scheme". Where the hell is the "fraud" in the free shipping?

 

I'm a careful shopper, and will only purchase from Amazon if their prices are comparable to other places. Which they usually are. In many cases their prices are better than most.

 

"Scam" indeed. One might even suspect you're an advocate of a full blown communism. All these hateful business practices, designed to do the most EVIL of deeds, make money! Oh, the horror.

 

Yes, it's called a "business scheme" until the law says it's a scam.

 

Usury was once legal, so were the pyramid schemes and false advertisement.

And there is a whole flurry of financial "tools" Wall Street and the banks use today that skirt legality by a hair.

 

This has nothing to do with communism.

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Yes, it's called a "business scheme" until the law says it's a scam.

 

Usury was once legal, so were the pyramid schemes and false advertisement.

And there is a whole flurry of financial "tools" Wall Street and the banks use today that skirt legality by a hair.

 

This has nothing to do with communism.

@Totaltrash,

 

A friend of mine was burned by false advertising, got ripped off on an advertised product that was inferior and broken. Another was taken in by a $500 rebate that never arrived. Yet another was burned in by the "LA Fitness" marketing machine and they refused to cancel her service -- she actually had to report her card stolen and change the bank account just to stop them from charging her account every month.

 

All of this is dishonest crap.

 

Are you trying to compare this sort of stuff to free shipping from Amazon? Are you high?

 

To quote Samuel Jackson: "Ain't the same f****n' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same f****n' sport."

 

P.S. @Aiden -- I totally get what you're saying there by the way. No argument here.

Edited by Khevar
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<snip>

Are you trying to compare this sort of stuff to free shipping from Amazon? Are you high?

<snip>

 

I don't do drugs, I don't even drink - thanks for the concern, though. :)

 

Lol, I never said free shipping was a scam, that was the other guy.

I just pointed out that your Teaparty rhetoric is misplaced here - he's not a commie, no matter what Rush tells ya! ;)

 

Anyway, EAware marketing the free Tionese, so F2P'ers buy the artifact perk, might be legal but it is still a pretty seedy scheme.

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The ones believing that free tionese isn't a marketing scheme haven't a clue about anything.

The whole concept of gear progression and class based leveling is a marketing scheme. It's basic behavioral psychology people. Ever heard of a dude named Skinner?

We're pushing buttons to recieve gratification, tionese gives a fix that will give more people a reason to keep pressing buttons in this particular game.

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I love in what direction this thread went. ;)

 

Honestly, isn't the whole game a marketing scheme? I mean, BW/EA is a business or two businesses. They want our money. As much of it as possible. I believe everything in this game that they do, they do mainly because they want to get profit out of it. Especially with F2P. F2P probably brings much more money than the subs do.

 

So, yeah, free Tionese gear is a sca... I mean clever marketing idea. ;)

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