From Reddit: "PSA: Buying premium ships on sale for cheap doubloons... it might be over"

[MrConway]

1 minute ago, zaaaaaaP said:

 

Congrats! But wont that be quite a trip daily from Paris to Prague? ...

 

 

As expected, but atleast we get some form of feedback. Appreciate it.

 

The entire Warships Europe teams is/has relocated to Prague ;)

[zaaaaaaP]

4 minutes ago, MrConway said:

 

The entire Warships Europe teams is/has relocated to Prague ;)

 

Ohhhh! Well thats some news :D

[mrk421]

@MrConway I wonder how switching from wine to beer will affect the quality of the Warships Europe teams...

[Aragathor]

59 minutes ago, mrk421 said:

@MrConway I wonder how switching from wine to beer will affect the quality of the Warships Europe teams...

One thing is certain, based on my experience with Czech cuisine, the team will "grow".

[Verblonde]

2 hours ago, MrConway said:

 

The entire Warships Europe teams is/has relocated to Prague ;)

Fine beer in Prague, if my (rather hazy) memory serves me correctly...

[Yedwy]

48 minutes ago, Verblonde said:

Fine beer in Prague, if my (rather hazy) memory serves me correctly...

I second that m8 

[mrk421]

I wonder if this relocation means that we'll be finally getting the long awaited czechoslovakian navy introduced into the game?!?

[Bellegar]

I just hope this means the server hamsters will be on strike less often.

France is a nice country, but my god the strikes  

[Panocek]

4 minutes ago, Bellegar said:

I just hope this means the server hamsters will be on strike less often.

France is a nice country, but my god the strikes  

Server movement is very unlikely. Though Czech beer might make WG team bit more talkative

[Bellegar]

3 minutes ago, Panocek said:

Server movement is very unlikely. Though Czech beer might make WG team bit more talkative

Well server doesn't have to move.... they just have to employ Czech hamsters

[Panocek]

25 minutes ago, Bellegar said:

Well server doesn't have to move.... they just have to employ Czech hamsters

I'm not sure drunk Czech hamsters is what you need for reliable server

[mrk421]

Oh boy... I fear I have contributed to the derailing of this topic

 

So, in an effort at redemption I would like to make a more serious point concerning the original subject matter.

Personally, even though I have spent quite a substantial amount on this game (around 200€ over the two years that I've played), I have always felt like the prices in the premium shop were rather unreasonably high. I was never hugely bothered by this however, because there have always been plenty of "discounts" available for the patient ones, so I have never actually bought anything at "full price". My impression has been, that if you can afford to wait, you can get the stuff at a fair price - and the ones that need the stuff right away must pay a premium for it . Which I find quite fair actually. And up until now it seemed this was how WG saw things as well (although removing most premium ships from the in-game tech tree already undermined this philosophy substantially). Another positive side effect of the way things were was that, even though the "discounted" price was usually close to what I'd consider a fair price rather than a great deal, psychologically, when using those discounts, you felt like you were getting a great deal. Which means you felt good after making a purchase, which in turn increased the chances of you making another purchase in the future.

 

So if they do decide to keep this change (which, to be fair, at this point I feel is not very likely), they'll be shooting themselves in the foot and losing a lot of potential customers. I mean, isn't for example 20€ that's spent worth more than hypothetical 40€ that are never spent? I'm sure there are people in the WG office who know this, let's just hope their voice is heard... @MrConway?

[Aragathor]

4 minutes ago, mrk421 said:

So if they do decide to keep this change (which, to be fair, at this point I feel is not very likely), they'll be shooting themselves in the foot and losing a lot of potential customers.

Here's my example:

I own 56 premium ships. Out of the premiums I don't own and can buy only the Gascogne is interesting to me. But what I really need is doubloons for perma camos on my T10s. Now, I don't need perma camos on all T10s, I can get by on having it on a few ships I really like (and right now I only need 5k doubloons and I'll be alright). With the discount doubloon compensation, I could get doubloons in a less expensive way, leading me to buy more perma camos. And planning to buy them in the future.

If this change gets permanent? I won't be buying anything, as I'm not willing to take a loss on my purchase. So it's not me who will be losing anything. Because I don't need to spend more cash on the game, I've spent a boatload, pun intended, already. But if I can get a good deal I may be willing to. But not if WG keeps asking for more money for less content.

[JG4_sKylon]

Did the same with the Steam-DLC bundles, bought them to get cheaper doubloons to get premium camo on the Montana.

If they really changed it, i certainly will never buy a premium camo again.

[MrConway]

15 hours ago, mrk421 said:

@MrConway I wonder how switching from wine to beer will affect the quality of the Warships Europe teams...

 

Its much easier to get good wine in Prague than it is to get good beer in Paris - make of that what you want... ;)

 

14 hours ago, Aragathor said:

One thing is certain, based on my experience with Czech cuisine, the team will "grow".

 

It will be offset by the lack of croissant!

[Aragathor]

7 minutes ago, MrConway said:

It will be offset by the lack of croissant!

I have only one thing to say to this -> knedliky.

[MrConway]

Now on to a more serious note, after some internal discussion we have decided how to proceed from this point.

 

First of all we would like to clarify the situation with premium ship doubloon compensation, as it has been causing some unintended confusion. It’s true that for a long period of time we have been offering full doubloon compensation for most cases where you bought a package containing a ship that you already owned on your account. This included packages which were discounted. However, we’ve recently noticed that a portion of our players have been using these mechanics to purchase discounted doubloons – a procedure we had not intended, but which we had tolerated until it reached a certain scale. Experience and data has shown that we cannot keep these mechanics, as well as keep offering packages with significant discounts. This prompted us to request changes from our Premium Shop team, which would alter the compensation for all ships to correspond to the actual cost of the content at the time of purchase (i.e. to compensate players who intentionally bought packages containing a ship they already owned with the discounted value of that ship). Unfortunately, while we had initially planned to implement these changes at a later date, they were applied to the shop in early May, catching everyone off guard.

 

We sincerely apologize for having failed to inform you about this change ahead of time. We do understand that while compensation amounts are not directly regulated, when a system behaves a certain way for a long period of time it contributes to creating habits and informing purchase decisions.

 

To that end, we would like to inform you that shortly after the release of update 0.7.6 we will compensate everyone who purchased discounted packages and received compensation for the ships therein, with the difference in doubloon value they missed out on. This will apply to all purchases made between May 1st and the release of update 0.7.6. - we are aiming at delivering this compensation during the first week of July.

 

At the same time, together with that update, these new compensation mechanics will be formalized and fully come into force, applying to all discounted packages going forward. This change will be stated in the update notes.

 

To prevent further confusion and remain transparent about the value you are getting, from that moment on we will also list all compensation values for Premium Shop content in all package descriptions, regardless of whether they are discounted or not. We will also update our Terms of Service to make sure they are not ambiguous about which content is compensated, when that compensation applies and which currency will be transferred to your accounts. 

 

We’re committed to improving communications and transparency, as well as maintaining a level playing field between regional communities. This yet again shows us how far we still have to go, but we sincerely hope you’ll all stay with us and guide us along the way.

[Allied_Winter]

I assume the "Steam packs" were of too much liking and tipped the scale in the wrong direction 

[Juanx]

21 minutes ago, MrConway said:

TL:DR

 

Players were getting too much doubloons for cheap, so our doubloon storage is being emptied, so we decided to stop doing something that benefitted the players and we will be looking at ourselves even harder from now on.

Enjoy...

 

Edit to add: well then those € back then were the last ones you got from me, thanks for making it so easy.

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

23 minutes ago, MrConway said:

Now on to a more serious note, after some internal discussion we have decided how to proceed from this point.

 

First of all we would like to clarify the situation with premium ship doubloon compensation, as it has been causing some unintended confusion. It’s true that for a long period of time we have been offering full doubloon compensation for most cases where you bought a package containing a ship that you already owned on your account. This included packages which were discounted. However, we’ve recently noticed that a portion of our players have been using these mechanics to purchase discounted doubloons – a procedure we had not intended, but which we had tolerated until it reached a certain scale. Experience and data has shown that we cannot keep these mechanics, as well as keep offering packages with significant discounts. This prompted us to request changes from our Premium Shop team, which would alter the compensation for all ships to correspond to the actual cost of the content at the time of purchase (i.e. to compensate players who intentionally bought packages containing a ship they already owned with the discounted value of that ship). Unfortunately, while we had initially planned to implement these changes at a later date, they were applied to the shop in early May, catching everyone off guard.

 

We sincerely apologize for having failed to inform you about this change ahead of time. We do understand that while compensation amounts are not directly regulated, when a system behaves a certain way for a long period of time it contributes to creating habits and informing purchase decisions.

 

To that end, we would like to inform you that shortly after the release of update 0.7.6 we will compensate everyone who purchased discounted packages and received compensation for the ships therein, with the difference in doubloon value they missed out on. This will apply to all purchases made between May 1st and the release of update 0.7.6. - we are aiming at delivering this compensation during the first week of July.

 

At the same time, together with that update, these new compensation mechanics will be formalized and fully come into force, applying to all discounted packages going forward. This change will be stated in the update notes.

 

To prevent further confusion and remain transparent about the value you are getting, from that moment on we will also list all compensation values for Premium Shop content in all package descriptions, regardless of whether they are discounted or not. We will also update our Terms of Service to make sure they are not ambiguous about which content is compensated, when that compensation applies and which currency will be transferred to your accounts. 

 

We’re committed to improving communications and transparency, as well as maintaining a level playing field between regional communities. This yet again shows us how far we still have to go, but we sincerely hope you’ll all stay with us and guide us along the way.

 

Thx for the info!

 

While I understand the reasoning, I am not quite certain if it is a good decision.

I spent an awful lot of money on the game already, but only when I saw nice ways to get the most doubloons for my money. It actually made me spend a lot more, because I wanted to take advantage of the situation. And when you are sitting on that many doubloons, you continue spending those carelessly. 

 

So in fact, exploiting these possibilities made me spend way more money on the game overall.

 

 

[Klopirat]

while I am not happy about it, I can understand this policy change and basically it is logical to get only the discouted amount of doubloons...

 

@MrConwaybut perhaps you can make this change a little bit less "harmful" by replacing the credits in the big bundles with doubloons

[Aragathor]

If you think that doing this will improve your income, you are very naive. But it has been proven time and time again that WG takes one step forward and two steps back.

Since now people are not going to profit from special offers on buying doubles, they will stop spending money as they will not receive any benefit from them.

 

PS: I'm certain this decision will be reversed after the sales numbers drop. No one can argue against cold hard numbers and we all see how the removal of premiums from shop and tech tree worked out, haven't we?

[__Helmut_Kohl__]

9 minutes ago, Aragathor said:

Since now people (who already own the ships) are not going to profit from special offers on buying doubles, they will stop spending money as they will not receive any benefit from them.

 

It is a very qeustionable decision.

The person responsible is probably thinking that one will always buy a certain amount of doubloons overall, and not realizing that good deals make people buy stuff they don't need.

[Aragathor]

Just now, _Helmut_Kohl_ said:

 

It is a very qeustionable decision.

The person responsible is probably thinking that you will always buy a certain amount of doubloons overall, and not realizing that good deals make people buy stuff they don't need.

Indeed. Now people will consider whether they need the doubloons, or wait until a doubloon sale is on. WG is not going to profit from this change.

After thinking it through, it seems to me that the change was instituted because it lowered the price of the economic flags you can buy in the client with doubloons.

[_DemonGuard_]

29 minutes ago, _Helmut_Kohl_ said:

 

Thx for the info!

 

While I understand the reasoning, I am not quite certain if it is a good decision.

I spent an awful lot of money on the game already, but only when I saw nice ways to get the most doubloons for my money. It actually made me spend a lot more, because I wanted to take advantage of the situation. And when you are sitting on that many doubloons, you continue spending those carelessly. 

 

So in fact, exploiting these possibilities made me spend way more money on the game overall.

 

 

Same for me: I used the cheaper doubloons to buy stuff i would normally not have bought. I'm not going to buy any bundles in the future, if they keep this change. The loss is definitely not on my side...