2017 KI Community Fund Update

The first part of your statement is nonsense because we all knew Kilgore would be dropping in price to $5, based upon the existing pricing of other characters and IG’s transparency on “this a community fund we’ll be running for some period of time”. The period of time was left vague, but I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t trying to blow smoke got the impression this was a permanent pairing.

Comparing this situation to a full game’s release that randomly gets discounted without warning… is still crap. Titanfall 2 sold for sixty on release and was discounted across several mediums in varying degrees to $30. There was no uproar. There was no rioting and mass coverage. It happened randomly and no one cared.

And finally… you’ve never run a garage sale, have you? Prices drop throughout the day because people want to get rid of crap.

So yeah, your post made no sense whatsoever there bud.

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You know I have the utmost respect for your thoughtful posts, but refresh me on the lesson that was learned? I remember a small number of people being upset and then Shago showed up on the store and everyone complained he was too expensive. But as far as tournaments go it didn’t seem to take the community too long to lift their ban and get back to business running tournaments with Shago.

And I think this is a little different since every TO running a KI tournament has already tweeted a half dozen times to try to get people to kick in to the community fund.

My interpretation of “to add value to those that purchased Kilgore and supported the community fund” is “to add value for those people who are on the fence and might think they should wait for the price drop to hit.” This is the only logical explanation for not announcing his future availability (other than they don’t know themselves). If I had to guess it will be sooner than everyone thinks and this is all about trying to get as many people as possible to buy into the community fund - which is good for tournaments. With Shago, I seem to recall the line was “he’s gone - you missed him” up until they decided to put him in the marketplace.

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The lesson was that withholding actual gameplay content from people based on timed exclusives is a bad idea. It messes with tournaments (they had to ban Shago until he was permanently available). It created lots of confusion and bad marketing around the game. The backlash was strong enough that they actually reversed their decision to not have Shago just be sold during special events within like 48 hours or so. He became available on the store for $5 and everything was fine.[quote=“BigBadAndy, post:63, topic:18669”]
But as far as tournaments go it didn’t seem to take the community too long to lift their ban and get back to business running tournaments with Shago.
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Right, it was because MS reversed their decision quickly after the backlash.

I mean… I guess so. To me, it seems like they are trying to trick people into investing the extra $5 to tournament pots, rather than letting people make that decision for themselves. And if they decide that they don’t want to invest in the pot, then they have to suffer the penalty of not having access to Kilgore for an undetermined amount of time. That seems more than just a little messed up to me, not even counting the other problems with the decision (people wanting to give you $5 for the character, MS says “no, not interested; try again in a few months”).

As it stands, if you’ve wanted Kilgore at any point in the last 2 months, your only option was the extra $5 donation. That seems like enough incentive for me to get people to invest. And after the 2 months expires, then okay, the fund drive is over and now the character is available for everyone else. To take the fund drive away AND also make it so that people who didn’t donate during the window now have to wait extra long, it’s just a universally bad idea.

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Were Jill and Shuma banned from marvel tournaments when they were permanently removed from being purchasable?

I’m sure some tournaments banned them (probably many didn’t even have access to them). They weren’t banned from Evo. I wouldn’t have faulted any tournament for banning them, though.

In the case of Marvel, it’s a little different. The license was ripped out of Capcom’s hands, so they kind of had no choice but to remove the content from the store. The Marvel scene worked to keep the game alive despite these hurdles. In this MS case, it is an active decision they are making (and then planning to reverse at some point in the future) at a point where game growth is still happening. Think about it; they are removing Kilgore from the store 4 days before KIWC starts! A tournament where many fresh eyes will see the game and some of them might want to buy the character. What a terrible time to remove content from your store, at a time when purchasing interest might be at an all-time high outside of the release itself.

So to me, the message is different. In the Capcom case, it’s “sorry, nothing we can do, we don’t have the license.” In the MS case, it’s “we don’t feel like it right now, come back in a few months.” In both cases, tournament bans make sense, but one of these cases sends a really terrible message while the other is crappy but unavoidable.

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Seems like a relevant question to me. I don’t know the answer.

@Infilament I wouldn’t argue that they are making the right call. I agree it’s not a sensible thing to do and I’m fine if they put him in the store yesterday. Hell, I’m fine if they give everyone but me their five dollars back. At the same time I know they will get flack for dropping the price. I don’t think avoiding negative feedback is a good way to make decisions, but they didn’t come and ask me for my advice beforehand, lol.

But I still think TOs have a choice here and I think the actual number of people who are going to show up and say “I don’t have Kilgore, this is unfair” is going to be vanishingly small.

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I believe that even when they take Kilgore out of the store you will still be able to practice against him in the dojo, or in single player matches, survival mode, shadow survival mode, and also against other people online who own him. So im Not sure why he would or should be considered banned from a tourny with all those options or why everyone is hetting all upset about this. Maybe there’s something I’m missing cause I’m not to familiar with the tournament scene rules. That being said…we raised a ton of money and Ultimates are out today. So much awesome let’s enjoy it yall!

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Well, there will probably be some people who are mad that they paid $10 for a character that got dropped to $5 later. Maybe they didn’t understand clearly that they were donating to tournament pots, or they could argue it wasn’t clear at launch that the price would drop in 2 months, or whatever.

But the much bigger problem is that there will be many people who want to purchase the character, but now can’t. Many of them will have no idea about the $10 thing, because they find out how cool Kilgore is by watching KIWC, or maybe in the months after. Some of them will be people who wanted Kilgore, but actively decided against making the $5 donation to pots. And I think this is far more negative (and a much bigger group of people) than those who will be upset that an item went to a cheaper price some time after it was launched.

Yes, they do have a choice. Even with Kilgore not available for purchase, some tournaments will likely allow him and tell players who haven’t been able to practice with him that they are simply SOL. This is, after all, what the Marvel community has to tell people who fight against Shuma (though, interestingly, this problem is now fixed with the re-release of the game on modern systems, yay). But again, it comes down to message, for me. Telling people why they have to be SOL is important. Some reasons (such as multi-million dollar licensing deals) are more acceptable than whims of a marketing committee.

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Yeah it’s definitely a we chose this versus we didn’t have a choice. I was just curious how it was handled.

I feel like saying it will be $10 for two months, then unavailable for 1 month, then $5 until the end of time would be good for all? They should do that for the next two characters as well, that would be cool

Stuck on the purchase screen like forever…

I just wish something would go smoothly for once after releasing new stuff. Guess I have to check YouTube instead to get the ultimate KI experience.

everything you just said is exactly what I said. I’m not sure how it Dosent make sense? maybe read the comment I was replying to for context?

One big problem regarding tournaments that I don’t think was mentioned yet, besides the whole “well you can’t practice him” is the fact that you can’t access him period, meaning for people getting late to the party it will become difficult to supply a complete setup for tournament purposes, and people will just have to hope some guy happened to bring his Xbone to the event and he happens to have Kilgore. I already run into this problem with DLC characters in Arcsys games and I’d rather the same issue not be here as well. At least in that case somebody can just drop the cash real quick to download the character. With Kilgore it’ll either be pray you can find a setup that has him (and slow down the tournament as a result) or just hold that and play someone else. The obvious choice would be that you just have to simply ban him. Well, the real obvious choice is to not take him off the store to begin with.

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Kilgore is not going away forever. I think we need to see that.

they said in the original post. that he wasn’t going away forever.
Now if they say oh he will be gone for a week. (just so they can fiddle with pricing or whatever) sure… but lets say its month or so its a bad call cause… from the kiwc we could see a flux of people interested in him.

that or if they push the fund back so it ends a week or so after the world cup would be preferable. (though the most preferable thing would be not having him off the store at all)

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Huh, we are talking about the same thing. Odd.

Apologies.

no need to apologize bro. you were merely expressing your opinions. if we didn’t throw around ideas and perspectives, we’d be screwed as a species lol

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Maybe it’s just me but 50k seems extremely disappointing. I mean what 6 million people have this game and 10k bought Kilgore that’s like less than 10% of the fans.
Also what’s wrong with he’s $10 if you want him buy him if not your going have to wait 6 months.

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Let’s see. A combo breaker pack is 20$ and has 8-9 characters depending on the season. Kilgore is a remix character that is 10$…would still be fine if they didn’t take it away though. Let’s say someone happens to see KI World Cup and remembers they used to play it in the arcades. Kilgore interests them. They download the game and want Kilgore…oh wait he is gone. Guess he can just move on to another game right? Do you not see the problem. Also the Shago fund raised 100k in 3 days. It is really surprising that Kilgore only raised over 50k in a few weeks.

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I had that issue to some extent when I got MK9 on PS3. I got it right as the famed security hack that the PSN shut down for nearly 2 months struck…like the week before. It honestly killed nearly all hype for the game, especially when it came to online play and DLC. I don’t recall playing with any of the DLC characters more than just to demo them pretty much.

So yeah, I could definitely see pulling Kilgore being a huge buzzkill, even if it is just for a short period of time.

you are right. It is. i was expecting like 50000-100000 people to buy him so 250K-500K.

THe issue with the 6 million players, the game is free. technically more people could play this fighting game than any other fighting game, IF all Xbox One/PC owners play it. Issue is, we dont know how many of the Xbox One players pay for content, even just a small amount of money for 1 or 2 characters.

Maybe its cause, as myself and others have said, tournaments mean nothing for how popular a game really is; the KI community may be a large number of casual players who only pay for larger expansions (ie. season bundles) and not smaller higher priced (relatively speaking) content upgrades…