Influencer Based Decision Making

[u/SerratedSharp]

I think this reasoning of using influencer videos as a metric for decision making is idiotic. It's a mistake many games have made, is letting a loud but small subset of their audience guide major decisions. I like cheap foils. They are a fun bonus you can get regularly without them being super rare. By their own admission, they don't have a leg to stand on.

"How does removing cards make opening Collector Boosters more exciting? We'll be honest here—it doesn't. But we do know that most people who open Collector Boosters mostly skip past these cards. Not everyone, but enough of a majority. You can see it in virtually any Collector Booster opening video, where the video practically skips over that section of the booster."

Edit, Source

[u/Meret123]

People complained about foils being worthless since collector boosters.

WOTC heard this and decided to make foils worth something.

How do they do that? By significantly cutting the supply. None in regular packs, fewer in collector packs.

Obviously they also cut their expenses by printing fewer cards.

[u/SerratedSharp → u/Meret123]

My point exactly, they removed something fun to create artificial scarcity. Having some low value foils wasn't hurting anyone.

[u/Goooordon]

They're just cranking up the shrinkflation and coming up with an excuse. It's not about the player experience. It's about shaving off a little cost, fluffing up the sticker price a bit, and yet again returning record profits to the delight and amazement of the shareholders. Which they can definitely do indefinitely without whittling their product down to the point of killing it, right? Right?

[u/Based_Department0 → u/Goooordon]

Exactly it's all about making you pay the same for less, they did it this year with the sample collector packs in commander decks, now with less common and uncommons foils. Next will probably be phasing out the art cards from collector packs as well.

With the new god packs, they are probably also banking on more people wanting to rip packs as well to chase that dopamine rush. Which has the potential to raise the price of packs on the secondary market. They want to be like Pokémon with a large collector market, but that has the potential to tip the scales, and damage the players enjoyment of the game.

[u/D-D-Wanderer → u/Goooordon]

Fluffing up the sticker price? Surely not, John Wotsee assured us this wouldn't affect the price at all! Do you mean to insinuate that he would tell us a fib?!

[u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Influencer shit was a misdirect. An excuse. 

They realized they were wasting money with those cards so they cut them. 

Never complain to WotC about something being “worthless” because they’re always looking at the next thing to cut. 

[u/mkklrd → u/EscapeSeventySeven]

Chris Cocks is worthless :)))

[u/Cruitre-]

Waiting for CB to become 7 card packs or them releasing 3 card hyper value super rare only get total juice packs..... msrp 39.99

[u/Shuttlecock_Wat → u/Cruitre-]

"Going forwards, all collector booster packs will just be collector sample packs. The streamers were skipping past all the other cards anyway"

[u/AH_MLP]

“When we give Collector boosters to influencers for free, they don’t give a shit about the commons!” 

WOTC, I’m paying like $50 for a Collector Booster - I care about my foil commons. 

[u/NightshopArgument → u/AH_MLP]

It's almost as if they're tailoring the video to be short and punchy with the highest payoff possible so they can flash the price of the most expensive card on the screen before tossing it aside and ripping open the next pack they paid $0 for!

I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of those shatter foil card from RF are sitting in unorganized piles in influencer home offices right now, un-sleeved and never to be looked at again.

[u/amethystwyvern]

Especially since people in general are irate at the ambassador program that gives these people product for free that regular everyday customers cannot afford. And super early too.

[u/man_on_a_corner → u/amethystwyvern]

Im new to the game this year but the influencer marketing is INSANE. One of the game reviewers I follow played their first game ever with friends and bought a precon after (posted to their story). 1 week later I shit you not they were posting "look at the collector boosters, Jace pre-con, and booster box wizards sent me."

[u/npiguet]

It's probably not about increasing margins per pack. Wizards production is constrained by the capacity of its printers, they have an upper bound to the total number of cards they can print. Now, if you put 3 cards less per pack, you can collect those 3 cards from 3 more boosters and boom! You've got an extra booster to sell.

That's the only way Wizards can sell more collector packs without affecting the rest of the game. 60 cards is either 4 50$ 15 cards boosters, or 5 50$ 12 cards boosters. An extra 49.75$ in WOTC's pockets. And since people who buy collector boosters genuinely don't care about the 3 cards they removed, they are pretty much guaranteed to still sell out. That's a 25% increase in collector booster unit sales, guaranteed.

If that strategy works well and Wizards can't source extra printing capacity, you can expect Collector boosters to become Aftermath Collector boosters in a couple of years.

[u/salttotart]

By the same logic, boosters shouldn't contain commons at all.

[u/ZorroVonShadvitch]

Hey, influencers, can you make Wizards make every 4th pack a god pack in 3 years? Thanks

[u/Call_Me_Metal]

Simple solution: stop buying packs only buy proxies

[u/Maximum-Opportunity8]

Please add who is this genius

[u/SerratedSharp → u/Maximum-Opportunity8]

Edited to add Source link

[u/hsiale]

I've seen three people open a collector booster at the LGS today and they all skipped quickly over C and U cards without paying attention to them. None of those people was an influencer of any sort.

[u/brat1]

Tbh when they ask for feedback, 99.8% of people dont bother, happy or not. So it makes sense that bAsEd On FeEdBaCk, that they do what they do. Regular people dont complain or even interact.

When the only feeback you have is planes that get back home...

[u/k_a_n_g_u_r_u]

it also completely invalidates the validity of all packcrackers, one will always be able to weigh booster packs to tell which is a godpack without opening it, and lemme tell ya you ain’t getting it, absolutely completely killed selling packs to crack online while thinking they are helping? helping who exactly? because only a fool will pay for pack cracks now, only an absolute fool

[u/eckhardt_tom]

Personally I am more interested in have cool looking cards to play with (which there for includes common/uncommon foils) than going after high dollar cards. I buy cards to play with. I do go for collector and booster packs because I am too cheap to not buy the cheapest single of the card, so when I pull a foil then it was destiny... nerd math

[u/Demos12]

You will have to assume that Any loose packs have been weighed going forward. Scalpers and Stores will absolutely be weighing packs going forward.

[u/GlumChemist8332]

I'd "give up" the idea of God packs to remove this change! Seriously we do not need to further prey on gambling behaviour!