Why Does The Promo Event Sold Lower Than Expected?

With the Auction Event finally over, marks the end of the Promo event which started with the Hall Of Legends Event that Hive account@sps.dao has paid SMC 600M DEC for the development of promo cards under the Proposal #155. Overall, the two events was a success for selling a total of 719,454,900 DEC giving the DAO 119,454,900 DEC profit from their investment. However, the talk was that the previous promo events has sold for about 200M DEC and with the event having 5 Phases, it could lock up as much as a Billion DEC but even after the addition of the Auction, we are still 280M DEC short from the projected sales. What are the potential reasons why the promo event has sold lower than expected. That is what I will try to figure out on this post.

By the way, the goal of this post was not to throw shade to matt and the team but to help figure out how we can improve things cause I expect that it will not that be the last time that we will have a promo event as big as this one in the future.

The Hall of Legends promo event which is part of the original proposal was divided into 5 separate phase which is expected to generate 200M DEC for each phase or 1 Billion DEC for the entire event based on the previous promo events held but at the end of the event, it only has managed to sold 576,629,000 DEC so if we exclude the 142,825,900 DEC sales from the Auction Event, we are 23,371,000 DEC short of the 600M DEC that the DAO paid SMC. To have a better idea how the sales go through, below is a breakdown of sales for each phase and how many BCX were printed for each promo card.

Hall of legends Phase 1	113,683,000 DEC
Hall of legends Phase 2	142,832,000 DEC
Hall of legends Phase 3	96,220,000 DEC
Hall of legends Phase 4	106,608,000 DEC
Hall of legends Phase 5	117,286,000 DEC
Auction House	142,825,900 DEC
Total Sales	719,454,900 DEC

Looking at each phase of the event, none has managed to reach 200M DEC. To me, this is not a good sign and I think that we should be more thoughtful about the terms of the deal before we agree into it. On the other hand, the results of the Auction was more or less within my expectation since 100 cards can only generate as much based on how they were valued by their owners.

Car Name	Regular Foil	Gold Foil	Total BCX
Sanctus Vicar	11,264 BCX	597 BCX	11,861 BCX
Elanor Bravefoot	1,487 BCX	75 BCX	1,562 BCX
Night Stalker	24,449 BCX	1,245 BCX	25,694 BCX
Delya	1,252 BCX	63 BCX	1,315 BCX
Rune Arcanist	9,180 BCX	460 BCX	9,640 BCX
Riklauniman	1,287 BCX	59 BCX	1,346 BCX
Meriput Mossmender	15,233 BCX	803 BCX	16,036 BCX
Nephket	1,112 BCX	58 BCX	1,170 BCX
Warborn Shaman	12,371 BCX	640 BCX	13,012 BCX
Fizbo the Fabulous	1,487 BCX	78 BCX	1,565 BCX
Heloise the Hollow	95 BCX	5 BCX	100 BCX

🔸 Low Player Base

It's an undeniable fact that we have lower player base now compared to the previous years which may have affected the promo sales like if we just have double the player base that we have now and half of them want to invest to the project, we can easily hit the 1 Billion DEC in sales. On the other hand, we will soon have our big marketing campaign with the goal of increasing our player base.

🔸 Reduced Leaderboard Prize

Before this promo event, the last event we have was the Bilcoin Halving Promo Event in celebration of Bitcoin Halving and if we compare them, The Bitcoin Event has printed more cards than any of the Hall Of Legends phase, given Baron Fyatt was only sold for 31,250 DEC per BCX which is cheaper than any of the legendary promo card that is sold for 50k DEC but when we look at Henchling Enforcer, it has sold for 3,125 DEC which is higher than any of the rare promo card but still printed more copies.

Car Name	Regular Foil	Gold Foil	Total BCX
Henchling Enforcer	30,794 BCX	1,518 BCX	31,048 BCX
Baron Fyatt	6,421 BCX	299 BCX	6,597 BCX

Why do I think that they sold more? I think that is because on the previous event, the team is providing additional prices such as land plots, card packs and Runi. Furthermore, the top 20 leaderboard spots receives additional copies of cards as well as titles for the top 200 leaderboard spots. Meanwhile, the rewards for Hall of Legends are only titles for the top 500 leaderboard spots. I don't necessary dislike it because with less rewards, players will buy only the cards they need.

🔸 Short Event Timeframe

Based on the proposal, the promo event will run for around 6 months with the first phase to start at September 3^rd that goes for two weeks before it rotates out and another two weeks time before it follows the second phase. Should the time frame be longer, it could provide players more breathing ground to save more money to spend specially for smaller players that has limited resources to spend in the game.

🔸 Rebellion FOMO

If we look on the Hall of Legends sales breakdown, we can see that, Phase 3 has the lowest number of sales with only 96,220,000 DEC worth of sales but by any means, I do not think that it was because the cards were weak or anything. The reason why I think that it has a much lower sales was due to the end of the Rebellion sale that some players rather spend on the Rebellion packs than to purchase the Phase 3 promo cards.

🔸 Card Pricing

Could the pricing of the pricing of the cards be reduced, we may be able to have a higher sales as it makes more affordable for smaller players and to make that possible, the team could just chance the rarity of cards to common and epic rarity so even if the price of the card is lower, players will still need to purchase more copies of the card.

🔸 Card Design and Balancing

Another I could think of why the event has lower than expected sales was due to the balancing of some of the promo cards. In particular, with the last legendary promo card Fizbo the Babulous.

In terms, of the art, I think it has the worst among all of the Hall of Legends cards but I do not necessarily mind it as its looks fits just right for its lore but the major issue that many players have with this card is that at level 3, it has 99% of its value, giving them no reason to max the card. Like for spending and additional 250k DEC to max the card, the only thing that they will get is an additional magic damage. Furthermore, while it has a new ability called Deflection Shroud that gives the Deflection ability on adjacent units, making it another Earth element unit that only makes Eternal Tofu more powerful instead of moving it to other element , removing any semblance of balancing to the game.

🔸 Maintenance Hindering Auction Sales

The team conducting weekly maintenance just shows how much they want to provide a good product to its players but I do not know why the maintenance needs to make all pages of the game offline, particularly the Auction page that prevents players to bid during the down time, particularly with the last maintenance which lasted for 6 hours. By the time that the maintenance was over, the auction has also supposed to end but was extended by 1 hour which I think was very short extension. For one, not every player are on discord or that they are in the middle of work or sleep which may result to potential bidders to miss the announcement.

At the end of the auction, the last gold foil Heloise the Hollow was sold for 9,123,456 DEC by Hive account@yabapmatt but does the Auction extended for a longer time, we may be able to see the price goes for more than 10M DEC.

At the end o the day, the DAO has still profited with this event but I was just hoping more from it to generate more demand for DEC. Since the event was already over, the only thing we can do is to reflect on the event and think for things that could be done to make future events more successful. For those that have participated, I hope that you were happy with the cards that you have and the rewards that you get from the leaderboard.

Thank you and see you at the next post.