FOMO sucks.

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, Malvod.2950 said:

Agreed, FOMO marketing is bad and I don't know if it even psychologically work on all people. For example on me it doesn't, I would've spent more money if I had all skins in the shop. If half of the playerbase is like me then you are losing money with this marketing strategy, Anet 🙂

So you assume there's more people like you than the ones it works on? That's a mighty big if and I don't think that's true to begin with.

[Khisanth.2948]

Temporary availability is used because people will impulse buy. As long as people continue to buy stuff just because it is only temporarily available this practice will continue.

A less annoying variant is permanent availability with temporary discount. Probably less profit depending on the price difference but it doesn't really provide much benefit for the business. It just changes the complaints about temporary availability to complaints about price.

[DexterousGecko.6328]

Yes, FOMO sucks and i dislike it very much. Yes, we all know how it works, and why developers use it, that doesn't make it okay.

[kharmin.7683]

29 minutes ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

Yes, FOMO sucks and i dislike it very much. Yes, we all know how it works, and why developers use it, that doesn't make it okay.

Well, not ok for some, but apparently it works well enough as a marketing tactic to be profitable; otherwise, it wouldn't be used with such prevalence.

Edited December 20, 2022 by kharmin.7683

[robertthebard.8150]

On 6/4/2022 at 8:30 PM, AgentMoore.9453 said:

They think it'll make people impulse buy and spend more, but I dunno if that actually works or if they just wish it did. Personally, I'd prefer to just have a catalog of everything and buy whatever directly or, at minimum, have it on a predictable schedule like most retail shops do instead of the randomness we have now.

This game is a great value for the price you pay, but they're also weirdly allergic to letting you give them money. 🤔

There's a really simple way to find out:  Do they keep doing it?  If the answer is no, then they've discovered that it doesn't work.  If the answer is yes, then they've discovered that it does work.  Since this is far from the first instance of this thread over the years, I'm going to have to go with "it must be working".

[AgentMoore.9453]

58 minutes ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

There's a really simple way to find out:  Do they keep doing it?  If the answer is no, then they've discovered that it doesn't work.  If the answer is yes, then they've discovered that it does work.

This thread came back from June; threw me for a loop to get quoted here - hi.

But nah, I don't think that's a rock solid theory. It relies too much on the idea that ArenaNet is flawless in some way and incapable of making a decision that isn't wise/profitable. Doing something repeatedly or for a long time doesn't mean it's a good or logical thing to do, even when it's a company doing it.

ArenaNet's long tried to reinvent the wheel over and over and over with various types of content and systems that have failed in the past, and they often re-make mistakes that were solved years prior either because of a lack of oversight or turnover with staff. I don't believe the company is infallible, and therefore I think it's entirely possible for this to happen with their sales and marketing tactics too.

It doesn't mean your theory of repetition can't be true, I just don't think it is based on how much money they're currently not making from me and others while they play FOMO roulette with the gem shop rotation. Watch lists, more predictable gem shop offerings, or a stationary catalog would all be good ways to address the issue; it works well for other retailers, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't work here.

1 hour ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

this is far from the first instance of this thread over the years, I'm going to have to go with "it must be working".

I dunno man. If I ran a restaurant and once a month my customers left feedback complaining about the random rotation of my menu, my first thought would probably be 'maybe we should look into that' instead of 'it must be working'. If I changed nothing, I'd undoubtedly still be making money, and people would still be eating the food, but they'd probably be more confident giving me their business if I considered making changes.

At minimum, I'd try it out for a while and see how it went instead of just assuming I was right.

[robertthebard.8150]

8 minutes ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

This thread came back from June; threw me for a loop to get quoted here - hi.

But nah, I don't think that's a rock solid theory. It relies too much on the idea that ArenaNet is flawless in some way and incapable of making a decision that isn't wise/profitable. Doing something repeatedly or for a long time doesn't mean it's a good or logical thing to do, even when it's a company doing it.

ArenaNet's long tried to reinvent the wheel over and over and over with various types of content and systems that have failed in the past, and they often re-make mistakes that were solved years prior either because of a lack of oversight or turnover with staff. I don't believe the company is infallible, and therefore I think it's entirely possible for this to happen with their sales and marketing tactics too.

It doesn't mean your theory of repetition can't be true, I just don't think it is based on how much money they're currently not making from me and others while they play FOMO roulette with the gem shop rotation. Watch lists, more predictable gem shop offerings, or a stationary catalog would all be good ways to address the issue; it works well for other retailers, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't work here.

I dunno man. If I ran a restaurant and once a month my customers left feedback complaining about the random rotation of my menu, my first thought would probably be 'maybe we should look into that' instead of 'it must be working'. If I changed nothing, I'd undoubtedly still be making money, and people would still be eating the food, but they'd probably be more confident giving me their business if I considered making changes.

At minimum, I'd try it out for a while and see how it went instead of just assuming I was right.

Yikes, didn't notice it was that old...

The thing is though that ANet is far from the only company that does rotation sales like this.  There are complaints, but despite that, it continues.  Evidently it's making enough money to be feasible, if not optimal.

[Gibson.4036]

26 minutes ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

This thread came back from June; threw me for a loop to get quoted here - hi.

But nah, I don't think that's a rock solid theory. It relies too much on the idea that ArenaNet is flawless in some way and incapable of making a decision that isn't wise/profitable. Doing something repeatedly or for a long time doesn't mean it's a good or logical thing to do, even when it's a company doing it.

ArenaNet's long tried to reinvent the wheel over and over and over with various types of content and systems that have failed in the past, and they often re-make mistakes that were solved years prior either because of a lack of oversight or turnover with staff. I don't believe the company is infallible, and therefore I think it's entirely possible for this to happen with their sales and marketing tactics too.

It doesn't mean your theory of repetition can't be true, I just don't think it is based on how much money they're currently not making from me and others while they play FOMO roulette with the gem shop rotation. Watch lists, more predictable gem shop offerings, or a stationary catalog would all be good ways to address the issue; it works well for other retailers, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't work here.

I dunno man. If I ran a restaurant and once a month my customers left feedback complaining about the random rotation of my menu, my first thought would probably be 'maybe we should look into that' instead of 'it must be working'. If I changed nothing, I'd undoubtedly still be making money, and people would still be eating the food, but they'd probably be more confident giving me their business if I considered making changes.

At minimum, I'd try it out for a while and see how it went instead of just assuming I was right.

Hey, don't question the fantasy of rational self interest. Knock down that idol, and our entire economic system unravels.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Doggie.3184]

If only all companies loved money as much as Bethesda. It's funny that Fallout 76 does FOMO all the time but if you ask to buy something that wasn't in the shop anymore through support they're like "You want to give us money!? Hell yeah we'll take it!" and sells you the item through the ticket. XD

Then you have really serious cases like PSO2 who literally sell an item for one day and never return it. Not only is it annoying and new/busy people miss out forever never having the chance but it also wastes the efforts of the designers to make an item just to not sell it to people offering money.

Edited December 20, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Ashen.2907]

1 hour ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

. It relies too much on the idea that ArenaNet is flawless

It relies more on being used successfully by many companies in a broad variety of businesses across multiple industries. ANet does not need to be without flaw to benefit from others' research involving potentially many millions of data points.

And, to be clear, I dont care for this sort of sales driving technique either.

[Arnox.5128]

7 hours ago, Drok Kindleshot.1496 said:

well all this scarcity doesn't work on me.....i can buy gems and have them in my account in seconds so I don't know what they hope to accomplish because right now I don't want to buy a single thing from the cash shop the only thing I want right now hasn't been in the gemstore since September and i don't know when it will be back.

Maybe, but you still had to dump a whole bunch of money into the gem shop at one time, and not everyone can or wants to do that.

-

There is just one thing I will say in favor of this system though. If GW2 wasn't profitable to NCSoft, they would have canned GW2 a long time ago. By ensuring that GW2 continues to constantly make a lot of money, it's much easier for NCSoft to stomach the high costs of running, maintaining, and developing for the game. (And trust me. The costs are high.) By metaphorically drawing some blood with the gem shop here, ANet is ensuring that it constantly stays up and running. That said though, this is just a guess. I don't actually have any hard numbers.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Arnox.5128

[Rogue.8235]

Just here to say FOMO marketing is proven to be effective, and I still dislike it.  Can't wait for the next marketing fad.  When I was getting my degree, the fad then was guerrilla marketing.  I miss that marketing, it was better for everyone.  Note, I refuse to categorize native advertising with guerrilla marketing.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

13 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

As long as consumers empower such systems to work for producers they will continue to exist.

That's an equivalent of "always". The situations where customers can truly "vote with their wallet" on such disgusting marketing methods are, unfortunately, extremely rare. That's why to make companies behave with any decency, market regulations are necessary - anything below that just does not work.

I mean, there are companies that in the business are pretty much a poster child for the "bad marketing practices" and "gouging their clients", to the point where everyon uses those names in comparisons about how evil a company can be. And guess what? People still buy from them, and give them so much money they will never see a reason to change their ways.

Any bad market practice that's still legal, you will find people that will defend it, people that won't defend it but won't actively speak about it, and people that do complain against it, and yet still fall prey to those on regular basis.

Good company opinion just does not matter nowadays, people are way too easily distracted by shinies to care about those. And if outrage wave about something appears, the companies can just pretend to give way a bit (without actually doing so), paint something in different light, and wait, because in few months noone's going to remember anyway.

That's why the only way to actually make some positive changes is to lean on your local (and not so local) politicians, in hope that eventually enough of them get persuaded to vote a more stricter market regulation. It's just that this specific case would be extremely hard to regulate. It's not like we can just forbid companies from making changes to their designs, and obsolete old ones, after all.

[Dreams.3128]

13 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

If only all companies loved money as much as Bethesda. It's funny that Fallout 76 does FOMO all the time but if you ask to buy something that wasn't in the shop anymore through support they're like "You want to give us money!? Hell yeah we'll take it!" and sells you the item through the ticket. XD

Then you have really serious cases like PSO2 who literally sell an item for one day and never return it. Not only is it annoying and new/busy people miss out forever never having the chance but it also wastes the efforts of the designers to make an item just to not sell it to people offering money.

PSO2 and its new kin NGS is absolutely disgusting when it comes to FOMO. Yet, their community feeds into it and is the reason why I left. SEGA is just too aggressive with the FOMO and it was taxing on my mental. That game legit preys on people and people defend it to the absolute death. It's asinine. I'd take GW2 Anet's WAY lighter and less stressful FOMO any day of the week since it can easily be ignored and won't put a damper on my gameplay unlike NGS/PSO2.

[Sobx.1758]

20 hours ago, AgentMoore.9453 said:

This thread came back from June; threw me for a loop to get quoted here - hi.

But nah, I don't think that's a rock solid theory. It relies too much on the idea that ArenaNet is flawless in some way and incapable of making a decision that isn't wise/profitable. Doing something repeatedly or for a long time doesn't mean it's a good or logical thing to do, even when it's a company doing it.

ArenaNet's long tried to reinvent the wheel over and over and over with various types of content and systems that have failed in the past, and they often re-make mistakes that were solved years prior either because of a lack of oversight or turnover with staff. I don't believe the company is infallible, and therefore I think it's entirely possible for this to happen with their sales and marketing tactics too.

It doesn't mean your theory of repetition can't be true, I just don't think it is based on how much money they're currently not making from me and others while they play FOMO roulette with the gem shop rotation. Watch lists, more predictable gem shop offerings, or a stationary catalog would all be good ways to address the issue; it works well for other retailers, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't work here.

I dunno man. If I ran a restaurant and once a month my customers left feedback complaining about the random rotation of my menu, my first thought would probably be 'maybe we should look into that' instead of 'it must be working'. If I changed nothing, I'd undoubtedly still be making money, and people would still be eating the food, but they'd probably be more confident giving me their business if I considered making changes.

At minimum, I'd try it out for a while and see how it went instead of just assuming I was right.

No, it doesn't rely on the idea that it's flawless, it relies on research done about it. Do I like it? Not really. Does it work for me? I don't think it does. But that still doesn't mean it's hard to understand why it's happening.

Edited December 21, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Khisanth.2948]

11 hours ago, Rogue.8235 said:

Just here to say FOMO marketing is proven to be effective, and I still dislike it.  Can't wait for the next marketing fad.  When I was getting my degree, the fad then was guerrilla marketing.  I miss that marketing, it was better for everyone.  Note, I refuse to categorize native advertising with guerrilla marketing.

 

Is it a fad? It has been going on for at least decades.

5 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

PSO2 and its new kin NGS is absolutely disgusting when it comes to FOMO. Yet, their community feeds into it and is the reason why I left. SEGA is just too aggressive with the FOMO and it was taxing on my mental. That game legit preys on people and people defend it to the absolute death. It's asinine. I'd take GW2 Anet's WAY lighter and less stressful FOMO any day of the week since it can easily be ignored and won't put a damper on my gameplay unlike NGS/PSO2.

but in another thread you said ..

6 hours ago, Dreams.3128 said:

But this is not a complaint because I personally feel that way, but more something I noticed going on eight years of playing GW2 thus far. Select groups wants what they didn't exactly work for and then players that ACTUALLY have it now loses that sense of prestige. Now am I saying to make ALL end-game items prestige? No, but some sprinkled here or there wouldn't hurt either.

Look! Opportunity to have a thing no one else will have and won't be able to obtain! Seems like GW2 needs to take some notes from PSO2 and get on with the sprinkling. Offer the prestige players desire and make money at the same time. It's perfect.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 6/4/2022 at 8:30 PM, AgentMoore.9453 said:

They think it'll make people impulse buy and spend more, but I dunno if that actually works or if they just wish it did. Personally, I'd prefer to just have a catalog of everything and buy whatever directly or, at minimum, have it on a predictable schedule like most retail shops do instead of the randomness we have now.

This game is a great value for the price you pay, but they're also weirdly allergic to letting you give them money. 🤔

Personally, I think the gemstore should go away and you should be able to buy the item directly through the UI.  See a skin you like in the wardrobe?  You can buy it for the price set.  It should function just like how bank and bag tabs work.

[Kattliadi.1507]

All I ask is that they have a better rotation system if that is how they're gonna play it....like an ACTUAL rotation system.  Because right now some things go a year or more without being seen while others show up again after just a month. We've had that recently with a few outfits and even the peg leg and some maguuma armor pieces and some other stuff JUST recently.  Meanwhile, the hummingbird mount skin I want to give them my money for?  Its been nearly a year.  Like ok, FOMO, things available on a rotation...now make the rotation make SENSE.  Offering me stuff to buy which I was JUST given the chance to buy and did not want just makes me irritated. I should be logging in and checking the gem store excited and wondering what might be available to buy....not whatever this is.

[Dreams.3128]

18 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Is it a fad? It has been going on for at least decades.

but in another thread you said ..

Look! Opportunity to have a thing no one else will have and won't be able to obtain! Seems like GW2 needs to take some notes from PSO2 and get on with the sprinkling. Offer the prestige players desire and make money at the same time. It's perfect.

..You really took a quote from another thread in a completely different topic to try and apply it somewhere else. Amazing. Well, since you want to do that, let me clarify.

The reason why I said what I said in THAT specific thread is because what I said WASN'T wrong. Almost 90%, close to ALL of the few items that we had was made so they were no longer prestige at ALL. They were taken from the few bosses that they were dropped and basically HANDED out or tossed on the tp. Several of the older Halloween items come to mind. Tequatl Wings and I believe one novelty item that I forgot the name of, was the ONLY one that wasn't thrown in the shop randomly. Those things are old at best and veterans hold love for them. Those VERY few items are easily replaced by the thousands of look-a-likes we have because of the quality while still holding value to older players.

PSO2, since we are playing ignorant, has that happen with almost EVERY OTHER SCRATCH GACHA. It's not sprinkling. It is emptying the whole sprinkler onto a plate of food and then being expected to eat it. If you don't have enough in game currency (and if you are f2p you're not going to unless you grind for actual HOURS on end or get access to the shop which you don't because they are locked to f2p so you can only get a MONTHLY shop access ticket) it's gone. Forever. Only REALLY REALLY popular items ever come back. And too bad for you, if that item is not a long hair piece or some kind of overly lewd outfit then it is NEVER coming back, so good luck. That's not prestige, that is not working hard for anything, heck that is not even buying it straight out, that is literal GACHA mechanics coupled with FOMO in the absolute worst way possible. PSO2/NGS is and will forever be known as THE FOMO game because how much they aggressively put the idea in your head that you WILL miss this item and it WILL never return.

But yea, surely what you quote makes total sense and not pulled out of context from a completely different thread to state a completely different point. Also, if you are going to quote me, make sure you don't cut out the whole thing that I typed so people can actually understand that my stance was to explain what kind of aggressive FOMO was to whatever you were trying to point out here. 🤨🙄