I've enjoyed playing on my Hero, Paladin, and Dark Knight because I can move my stuff around when I need it. I picked up Marksman and that was fun too. I played with my characters I made in 2006 and that was pretty enjoyable too. All this was possible because I got to use things that I already paid for.
But these new classes? I'm being restricted from things that I've already paid for and now you are asking me to pay for them again.
So, I've detailed several arguments why right now, the Cash Shop inventory system is terrible... for us and Nexon.
-
Argument 1: Nexon is handicapping portions of their playerbase.
I've used this argument/example in the Maple-News interview thing that happened a couple months back:
The following players buy a permanent Hyper Teleport Rock.
Player #1 has two Explorers.
Player #2 has an Explorer and a Mercedes.
Player #3 has an Evan and a Mercedes.
Player #1 can use their Hyper Rock on both their characters while Player #2 and #3 can only have it on one. Player #2 has the benefit of moving the Rock to another Explorer but Player #3 is totally screwed.
The point is, these three players have paid Nexon 30k NX: nothing more, nothing less. The fact that Player #2 and #3 are restricted even though they paid the same amount as Player #1 is by itself extremely unfair and stupid.
-
Argument 2: Newer classes that release in the future suffer the most repercussions.
Say a player looks at the KMS blogs and says "wow! Angelic Burster is so cool!" and decides that AB is going to be their main. They go to BannedStory to plan out a look that they were content with and they then wait patiently for AB's release. However, there's a sale going on: suddenly there's permanent versions of all the clothes you want! But the sale ends in 1 week, nowhere near the release date of AB. So we have several problems here:
Should they wait until AB releases, the clothes they want won't even be in the Cash Shop for them to buy. (These new sales are going "out of stock" after the sale ends because... IDK why... It's stupid. Ask Nexon.).
If they have this insight and buy the clothes in advanced, there's no way for them to transfer them because of this stupid exclusive cash shop system.
There's also reluctance to buy NX for new classes, like this thinking for example: "Brand new class? Exclusive GMS class? Aliens and Lasers?! Oh man, I gotta play!... oh wait, I can't move my pets over... or my facial expressions, or some of my old NX clothes... oh well, another mule then. I don't have to spend money on buying new stuff like hair/face and inventory expansions because it's a mule now. I had a new look in mind but now I don't want to spend the money because I'll never have all my other stuff and I'll never be able to move that look back to my other characters if I wanted."
This system just hurts new players and especially players willing to spend money on NX. All it does is cause a great deal of reluctance towards actually NX gearing new classes as well as further lower the opinion of Nexon.
-
Argument #3 : It cheapens their own product.
What is the value of something that cannot be traded? In the economy, it would be effectively worth nothing. When you have the inability to move your own belongings, they are pretty much dead to the economy. The only value it has is what you give it.
So why does Nexon sell Royal Hair Coupons by the bundle? Say if you bought the bundle of 11, you get your dream look on your Phantom with 4 coupons. What about those 7 left? You can't trade them to other people and you can't even trade it to your own characters. You certainly don't want to ruin the dream look you just achieved and there's nothing else to really blow it on since Androids can't use it. So... those 7 coupons are worthless meaning you overpaid for what you got.
You might be saying "you're stupid to buy 11 in the first place! Of course you should suffer the loss!". That's my point. It's a stupid deal. You can't even justify the extra money because you have a much better chance to get what you want in less than 10 coupons anyway. All this system really does is make certain deals worthless. There's absolutely no reason to spend more money on anything with no value.
If, however, you can trade these within your account, suddenly the bundle and saving money on 1 coupon seems a lot better. Perhaps you like having those coupons just in case things don't go your way and if you do get lucky, you can easily justify the rest of the coupons by primping your mules or secondaries. Even if you don't have mules or secondaries, the option is always there so they aren't totally worthless. People who don't see the value of having those coupons for mules simply won't buy them but there exists many who can justify the package.
Even better, if those coupons were fully tradeable, suddenly everyone can justify buying the package. That guy who didn't care for primping his mules and secondaries can suddenly justify the package because he can get whatever he didn't spend back in his pocket. They wouldn't feel cheated or feel like it was a waste of money. This kind of thinking would motivate them to actually buy NX. Suddenly, buying 11 coupons isn't so bad because you can always sell them to people who want them.
-
Argument 4 : Surprise Style Boxes completely contradict any support for this old system.
This one argues more than just the inventory.
Surprise Style Boxes are pretty great: fully tradeable, permanent, and they're affordable. People buy them because of these reasons. You're buying NX clothes in the same way you get Gachapon: you pray to get something you like and sell whatever you don't like. The system works and everyone's happy.
The box itself is a huge contradiction to the old system: it makes the old system look incredibly stupid.
Fully tradeable -> You can't monetize cash shop nx: people have to resort to gifting. Surprise Style fully monetizes its clothes so people can trade NX for money, something unthinkable several years back.
Permanent -> Why would you want to buy expiring clothes (or equally, rent clothes for a limited time)? That hugely diminishes the incentive to actually buy those clothes. Who knows, maybe the person won't even play for more than a month... but having clothes without an expiration date will always look better to people and actually prompt them to spend money. Even the people that do play for more than 90 days, there are so many more outfits in this game that it doesn't even matter. Almost no one settles for 1 outfit, 1 character, 1 account even: permanent stuff will always look better and people will buy it even if they have a vast library of clothes. For that reason, premium Surprise will always look good in the eyes of the buyer.
Affordable -> Expiring clear face is like what... 3k NX? Permanent version from Surprise Box is like 150mil ish which is like... 3k NX. Why is that? It's because Surprise Style boxes are affordable. Actually I lied: you have a much better chance in losing money from a Surprise Style Box run, yet people buy them buy the hundreds. Why? Because of they can make up their loss by selling it. Because of that, people buy more which means there's a huge supply which means there's affordable NX for everyone.
All these points completely go against the old system and it's very successful in my eyes: why does this old system even need to exist? What they could do is make the cash shop the same way: Why not make NX fully account tradeable so that NX clothes have a much higher value? Why not offer the permanent option to every NX item so that they actually look enticing enough to buy? Surprise Style Box shows that it can work.
IMO Surprise Style Box is hugely successful at the expense of the old system: Nexon could balance out that success by improving the old system while keeping Surprise Style boxes with their exclusives so that both are valuable. They could easily add the features that made Surprise Style Boxes so likeable onto all their cash shop items so that they can actually have a healthy balance between the two and have the best of both worlds and not just one of them.
Everyone will be happy to have NX clothes and Nexon will be happy selling NX items and Surprise Style Boxes while looking respectable.
-
So TL;DR section:
Nexon, you should get rid of the Exclusive Cash Shop Inventory because of these problems:
-It hurts the players that support you because their content gets limited while others don't.
-The way it is now, people will feel cheated from the Cash Shop and thus never have the motivation to buy NX.
-It cheapens your own NX deals.
-It cheapens your content such as new classes and ultimately all the content that goes with those new classes.
-It lowers everyone's opinion of you (and if you have ever checked the Maple fansites, their opinion of Nexon is quite low).
-You're relying on the success of one system at the expense of another.
What you should do is the following:
Get rid of exclusive Cash Shop Inventories OR make NX items account bound and be able to be stored in the town banks/storage. This means make all NX clothing tradeable (make them account-bound on equip) and make all coupons tradeable.
Bookmarks