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Post by ronnyberry on Apr 27, 2015 15:50:11 GMT -5
I thought they they were at a low point when they started splitting their parallels into multiple packs to squeeze money from the top paying customers, but today's latest money grab took the cake.
The Galactic Moments set is not longer available in anything lower than 5,000 coins packs. The odds, of course, are staying the same at 1:25 packs. So that Galactic Moments card (one of the lower end marathon sets) that you were able to pull for about $3.00 in coins will now cost about $15.00 in coins.
I am fully expecting all of the other marathon sets to be done the same way (except maybe the Fan's Choice). It used to be fun to buy a bundle and grab some nice cards, but it looks like they are pricing themselves out of my comfort level. The Vintage will probably keep the 1 in 85 packs odds, but will now cost an average of $50 to pull with the other weekly inserts in the $15 - $35 range. I could understand if there was some game play involved, but it is just collecting digital cards for the sake of collecting.
One of two things will happen from this
Scenario 1
Everyone goes away and Topps successfully takes an app that was rolling in the money for the first month and drives it into the ground. The only hope is to latch onto 10 users that keep paying whatever Topps asks.
Scenario 2
Inserts remain in packs for well over a week so you get a shot at a lot of inserts when you pull and people stick around. In which case, you would base you pack pulling on how close a card is to selling out. Topps ends up getting the same amount of money as before since people wait to pull packs until there are 4 or 5 inserts that aren't sold out
Most likely, it is a combination of both, but you can include me in Scenario 1
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Post by djshazz on Apr 28, 2015 2:58:16 GMT -5
we were discussing this exact move we suspected Topps would pull off, earlier in your "Suggestions/Advice..." thread, ronnyberry! They definitely wanted to clamp down on Mace-Pack pulling for inserts and make it harder/more expensive to play the game. Us more-casual F2P players are made to suffer, it's our lot in life!  I think Topps caught onto this as they put the Movie Quotes into its own pack. No more budget pulling in the Mace Windu Pack anymore.  I bet they saw a huge spike in Mace Windu pack buys when an insert was in them and corrected this loop hole...Forever now we will talk about the good old Mace Windu pack days.. I feel the same way. It seemed significantly harder for me to pull a Fett Bounty via Mace packs (missed the Film Quotes stampede while asleep  ) than previous inserts, even considering the odds and probability laws. Is this something they've corrected in Bunt/Kick? I'm not on either so would like to know from those who play all three. |
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Post by agee1131 on Apr 28, 2015 7:53:53 GMT -5
Reminds me of the first time watching Anakin fall in Episode 3. You knew it would happen, it had to happen, everything you had seen before told you it would happen. Even with all that when it did, I still wanted it to stop...
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Post by SCUncensored on Apr 28, 2015 11:00:25 GMT -5
Reminds me of the first time watching Anakin fall in Episode 3. You knew it would happen, it had to happen, everything you had seen before told you it would happen. Even with all that when it did, I still wanted it to stop... This is about as well as anyone can put it. Bottom line, they are a business, and they want to figure out the best balance for making money and keeping the community happy. I bet it also has to do with server load during the vintage release and the onboarding of so many new android users, I dont think it could get much slower, and new server space to handle that kind of volume is so expensive, its almost unavailable. Am I happy that this is happening? No, obviously I want to continue pulling the best cards in the cheapest packs. Do I understand WHY its happening? Yes, and I have no issue with that piece of it. Will a ton of people leave? Some, but not even close to what you would think. Remember, in 2013, Huddle and Bunt were all inserts in all packs. They did just fine when they switched to the new format. This isnt even close to that transition. |
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Post by ronnyberry on Apr 28, 2015 13:02:45 GMT -5
I personally would have cut down the daily reward from 25,000 to 5,000. You have the same impact on the FTP players, yet still keep your paying members happy. I would have found keeping the paying members happy would be a better business model than just pissing everyone off.
I understand their reasoning, I just feel it was very VERY poorly executed way of doing it and then having social media black out was an extremely cowardly way of handling it
On the plus side, I have a ton of early inserts I can dump off at huge prices now that that is the norm and I can get out without being out any money
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Post by agee1131 on Apr 28, 2015 13:47:38 GMT -5
I think the let TOPPSMIKE in a board meeting...
He will show up in a month as EMPERORMIKE
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Post by agee1131 on Apr 28, 2015 13:48:53 GMT -5
Reminds me of the first time watching Anakin fall in Episode 3. You knew it would happen, it had to happen, everything you had seen before told you it would happen. Even with all that when it did, I still wanted it to stop... This is about as well as anyone can put it. Bottom line, they are a business, and they want to figure out the best balance for making money and keeping the community happy. I bet it also has to do with server load during the vintage release and the onboarding of so many new android users, I dont think it could get much slower, and new server space to handle that kind of volume is so expensive, its almost unavailable. Am I happy that this is happening? No, obviously I want to continue pulling the best cards in the cheapest packs. Do I understand WHY its happening? Yes, and I have no issue with that piece of it. Will a ton of people leave? Some, but not even close to what you would think. Remember, in 2013, Huddle and Bunt were all inserts in all packs. They did just fine when they switched to the new format. This isnt even close to that transition. I agree, they had to do something. Most of us we already figuring out to pull multiple inserts from the 1K packs and then trade them off for Rebels and Planetary carfds that cost more coins but were the same print run and rarity. I am with Ronny, time to sell while the price is high. I am selling all 4 apps due to time. Anyone on here interested let me know. I will try to pop in here from time to time and will keep getting all my coins . |
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Post by darkhugh on Apr 28, 2015 19:34:49 GMT -5
This is my first Topps app and I was really enjoying it. Totally heartbroken and disgusted by this move. Changes the entire game and makes it impossible to collect everything without dumping a truckload of cash.
I'm selling my whole collection before I get institutionalized and accept this way of play.
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Post by SCUncensored on Apr 29, 2015 11:06:55 GMT -5
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Post by btownj on Apr 29, 2015 11:30:10 GMT -5
Great well thought out article! Thanks for posting it. I agree with most of your sentiments. The way vintage releases have been, you knew major changes had to be made. It has been nearly impossible to open packs during the 30-40 minutes the vintages were available. Ultimately I understand the change, but think Topps could have gone with a halfway point to put the inserts in the 3,000 credit packs first and see how it went from there. This still would have cost people 3x as much to pull inserts and would have resulted in a shift in collecting, but not as drastic as this. Then after another 7 weeks or so of 3k packs, then re-evaluate. The Tuesday Galactic Moments release had similar odds as past Galactic Moments releases (1:25), but the Bounty release yesterday was substantially less than past Bounty releases. I definitely hope to see the odds continually drop since the packs are 5x more expensive. Maybe a 1:3 packs for the Fan's Choice (instead of the previous 1:10) and a 1:30 packs for vintage (instead of 1:85)... |
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Post by thecollectorguy on Apr 29, 2015 19:39:41 GMT -5
Reminds me of the first time watching Anakin fall in Episode 3. You knew it would happen, it had to happen, everything you had seen before told you it would happen. Even with all that when it did, I still wanted it to stop... This is about as well as anyone can put it. Bottom line, they are a business, and they want to figure out the best balance for making money and keeping the community happy. I bet it also has to do with server load during the vintage release and the onboarding of so many new android users, I dont think it could get much slower, and new server space to handle that kind of volume is so expensive, its almost unavailable. Am I happy that this is happening? No, obviously I want to continue pulling the best cards in the cheapest packs. Do I understand WHY its happening? Yes, and I have no issue with that piece of it. Will a ton of people leave? Some, but not even close to what you would think. Remember, in 2013, Huddle and Bunt were all inserts in all packs. They did just fine when they switched to the new format. This isnt even close to that transition. Hopefully, however, the situation gets better. I'll use a Star Wars analogy, too. Anakin did fall, but he still had good in him, I believe the same is with Topps, however, like luke Skywalker, we have to find a way to turn topps to good before it's too late. The good, in this case, is the way topps was before 2014 mainly, more card friendly, available to users who couldn't spend, hopefully, this can happen again. |
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Post by ninfang on May 2, 2015 22:03:54 GMT -5
Honestly, i agree with the move. This is a trading card app based off the actual trading card game - where you had to spend money for cards, nothing was free, so it wasn't really fair that players get to spend little to nothing and build an amazing collection. The change is fair, it's not too crazy. You still get free packs. This change simply makes it more like an actual trading card game.
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I bet they saw a huge spike in Mace Windu pack buys when an insert was in them and corrected this loop hole...Forever now we will talk about the good old Mace Windu pack days..
) than previous inserts, even considering the odds and probability laws.
