Love it. Had a couple of ideas I wanted to throw out there.
What about a Mini-Starter Pack? 1,250 DEC for 5 Cards (80% chance common, 20% chance Rare only and no GF)? If people want to save a bit they will go with the standard starter pack for 5,000 DEC and 25 cards (80% chance common, 20% chance Rare).
What about allowing us to prepay to upgrade our wagons at a discount? Say it costs 2k DEC per wagon to upgrade them to Conclave, maybe we can pay 1500 DEC now? I think getting DEC off the market is critical right now.
Excited for the future of Splinterlands.
I didn't really see a need for that. When I think about giving players cheaper options, to me that means cheaper on a per card basis, which is what the Starter pack accomplishes, and having another pack type that is very similar would just cause some confusion for little real benefit - in my opinion.
I don't really think the problem is that players want to only spend $1 and don't have an option for that (in fact, they do have the option to buy quite a number of cards on the market for that), it's that they might only want to spend $20 but getting 5 booster packs (25 cards in total) seems like it's not worth it. So now they have the option to spend the $20 on 4 Starter packs, and get 100 cards in total.
That's definitely a possibility but I wouldn't want to do it now. Things can change a lot between now and when the new set is released so I prefer to wait until it's closer to make any pricing decisions. As for DEC demand, we have three more promo card sales plus the 100 day auction sale coming up, and I don't want to rush future decisions just for a temporary increase in demand now as that tends to cause more problems for us down the road.
Matt, the $1/5 card starter pack fills a void we have not offered for years, since the $2 untamed pack... the impulse buy affordable item. The value proposition remains exactly the same as the $5/25 card pack, but players can spend $1 on impulse. You simply cannot understate the psychology of numbers and the effectiveness of this kind of marketing. Why do you think every single retail store in the US has a TON of low priced items right in your face at the checkout line? Because people buy these on impulse. "Sure, I'll grab a pack of gum for $1". It's the same here. Players will GLADLY spend a quick $1 for a pack given the opportunity to do so, where a $5 pack is a much larger expense which psychologically restricts buyers. And do not forget packs are FUN. Saying players can buy other 'cheap stuff' off the market completely fails to recognize the fun and addictive element involved in opening packs. We need to embrace this!! I'd be willing to bet you anything that if we offer both $5/25 card packs and $1/5 card packs, we generate more revenue with the $1 packs.
We also have to remember that we want to attract people from all over the world, and $5 being the lowest pack price eliminates an extremely large percentage of the global population from participating. Consider our large PH player base, where minimum wage is about $7/day. Think about how they may literally not be able to spend $5 on a pack, but can buy a $1 pack WAY more easily with the same earnings.
And this would not cause any 'confusion'... it's just one more purchase option!!
I see no issue with doing $1 / 5 card starter packs instead of the $5 / 25 card version. If the community agrees I would be happy to change that.