I belive the best solution is to create a new member level, quadruple diammond member our something similare :D... Which allow you to buy special cards.

I`m a costumer who prefer quality over quantity. I don`t know how common me as a costumer is. But Totem obviously try to get there costumers to buy more cards. Because Totems business model is not good if most of their costumers prefer to have a smaller collection than a large one.

Are you trying to say they should give us the cards for free? Or are you saying the cards are too expensive?No, I am saying that both the games and the normal selling of cards are both intended to produce a profit. Totem is not a charity.

Obviously both gambling for the cards and buying them outright are intended to make a profit. To say whether gambling for them is greedy or not, is subjective. In my personal opinion, it is greedy.

it took me 840 credits to finally het the card...
I thought I would have a chance for a Joker but forgot how many iStrippers thre were..
So no Joker for me...
I must say I like the show ,but will not spend this much credits for 1 show ever again..

Obviously both gambling for the cards and buying them outright are intended to make a profit. To say whether gambling for them is greedy or not, is subjective. In my personal opinion, it is greedy.

To my mind both are greedy, the gambling games being slightly, but not greatly, more greedy. But neither are, to me, in any way objectionably greedy.

Obviously both gambling for the cards and buying them outright are intended to make a profit. To say whether gambling for them is greedy or not, is subjective. In my personal opinion, it is greedy.To my mind both are greedy, the gambling games being slightly, but not greatly, more greedy. But neither are, to me, in any way objectionably greedy.

Would you say you don't find it objectionable because you don't find an interest in it and thus don't participate? What about the people who have an addiction to gambling? I think it is unethical to prey on those individuals.

@SittingDuck

I said i do not find it objectionably greedy. I do, in fact find it somewhat morally objectionable but that is a different matter. However, I find it no more objectionable than, for example, a soft drinks company running a lottery based on numbers printed on the inside of bottle caps.

In fact, if Totem is doing this to get more money, why doesn't it just increase the cost of buying cards per unit a little?/quote]

I agree. A 10% price increase would not bother me. I presently pay $1.15 per card. $1.27 is still less than the cost of a Hershey bar.

[quote]Personally I'm against hazard games.

I don't gamble for entertainment. I think government sponsored gambling is a case of cowardliness on the part of politicians who don't want to raise taxes. I will participate in a game of chance when I think the expected value exceeds the cost. This is why I like to know the probability of wining before I play.

Don't be shy about telling us what it cost you to try to get Melena Tara Rya's card.

Thank you for encouraging me to calculate what I spent on these games. I spent 490 credits and won 3 special event cards including Melena's. I also "won" about a dozen cards I didn't want with I will ignore. That works out to be about $45 for me or about $15 per special event card. I had a similar experience about 6 months ago when I "won" 3 special event cards. I might have been willing to spend $10 for the Red Fox card, but not the others. So, Totem's game was very successful in that it got me to spend much more for these cards than I would have spent if they had a fixed higher price. In the future I will assume that the cost of "wining" a special event card in one of these games is $15 and act accordingly.

Whales

I buy about 220 cards per year. That means I'm worth about $250 per year to Totem. Clearly Totem's business model is high volume/low cost. I suspect as @Wyldanimal suggested that new customers are a larger income source for Totem than customers who have already both all the old cards that interest them. Certainly most of the promotions Totem offers are aimed at customers who own only a small percentage of the available cards.

I must have spent about 50 US, buy 2 packages of 250 credits. I won and lost in the middle until I try 118 to win a Special Card (Geneva) In total I won 28 Cards of which I was only interested 6. At that cost one must have won the Mane Card.
Now if this focused on new customers, even worse because it was debut and farewell to them the reason is obvious.
I think that a company to see this, should react, release the letter, put it at a reasonable value and that all those users who spent more than 250 credits send them a free joker.
On the other hand, if the cards I won had changed them for my preference, my perception would have been different.
I didn't win any Cristal + card, did anyone win any?
This could have been an entertaining game, cards and others could have been changed, but not what it was.
Today they won a lot at the cost of this game, but the cost of assuming both dissatisfaction and users who stop buying is a very risky move.
Users have the power in this regard. WE HAVE THE MONEY THAT THEY WANT that for my part, I don't give it to them anymore, unless this is solved.

For my part, I expect from Totem, that someone on the team gives clear answers to our questions, here on the forum, in connection with these special event cards, without issues, which apparently have no other purpose than to get us out of money, without being assured of own these so-called cards.

I've been ignoring my ticket for five days.

Is Totem going to play the ostrich for a long time?


Pour ma part, j'attend de Totem, que quelqu'un de l'équipe donne des réponses claires à nos questions, ici sur le forum, en lien à ces cartes évènements spéciaux, sans issus, qui en apparence n'ont d'autres but que de nous faire sortir de l'argent, sans être assuré de posséder ces dites cartes.

Cela fait 5 jours qu'on ignore mon billet.

Totem va t'il joué à l'autruche encore longtemps ?

I think it would be completely acceptable to increase the price to some absurd amount as an alternative. Could be 500 credits for one card, but at least you are guaranteed to get it and not throw your money down the drain just for the possibility.

I wouldn't object to that but others may. It isn't just the price, it also a matter of trust between those who have the SECs and Totem. Totem said that these would never be available for sale. Many of us jumped through hoops and made significant outlays to obtain those cards because of that statement.

The Melena Card cost me around 250 credits. I would certainly be upset if Totem offered it for sale for any less.

I am a loyal customer who has all the currently available cards (plus a few) who is willing to outlay what I believe is a reasonable amount (to me) where necessary for the SEC cards.

How would it be fair to me (and others who possibly spent more) if Totem were to put these cards on sale for even 2 or 3 times the normal price?

I will admit I do not particularly like the non-defined paths (i.e. scratchcards or slot machine or similar) to getting SECs. In this case my biggest grumble wasn't the actual cost (I was prepared to go higher) it was having to scratch 450 scratchcards to get there. It became mind numbingly boring after a while.

If they want to continue with the games of chance with SECs perhaps Totem should offer the current SEC card for the game either for sale at say 350 credits or you can take your chance with the Scratchcards. The sale would only last as long as the promotion (1 week). The Card would then be retired permanently from sale and become a chance win in future games.

Just my thoughts.

Google translate

Je ne m'y opposerais pas, mais d'autres le peuvent. Ce n'est pas seulement le prix, c'est aussi une question de confiance entre ceux qui ont les SEC et Totem. Totem a déclaré que ceux-ci ne seraient jamais disponibles à la vente. Beaucoup d'entre nous ont sauté à travers des cerceaux et ont fait des dépenses importantes pour obtenir ces cartes à cause de cette déclaration.

La Melena Card m'a coûté environ 250 crédits. Je serais certainement contrarié si Totem l’offrait en vente à un prix inférieur.

Je suis un client fidèle qui dispose de toutes les cartes actuellement disponibles (plus quelques cartes) et qui est disposé à dépenser ce que j'estime être un montant raisonnable (pour moi) si nécessaire pour les cartes SEC.

Comment serait-il juste pour moi (et ceux qui dépensent peut-être davantage) si Totem mettait ces cartes en vente à un prix deux ou trois fois supérieur au prix normal?

J'admets que je n'aime pas particulièrement les chemins non définis (c'est-à-dire les cartes à gratter ou les machines à sous ou similaires) pour obtenir des SEC. Dans ce cas, mon principal reproche n'était pas le coût réel (j'étais prêt à aller plus haut), il fallait gratter 450 cartes à gratter pour y arriver. C'est devenu ennuyeux au bout d'un moment.

S'ils veulent continuer avec les jeux de hasard avec les SEC, Totem devrait peut-être proposer la carte SEC actuelle pour le jeu, soit en vente à 350 crédits, soit vous pouvez tenter votre chance avec les cartes à gratter. La vente ne durerait que pendant la promotion (1 semaine). La carte serait alors retirée définitivement de la vente et deviendrait une chance de gagner dans les jeux futurs.

Juste mes pensées.

@ComteDracula I share your feelings here, but not your thoughts. Yes, I'd like to own Melena's special event card and I'm disappointed that there's no guaranteed way for me to obtain it, even if I spent thousands of credits. However, I don't believe that Totem is obligated to provide this for their customers, even the most loyal ones, nor do I believe it is necessarily a bad business model.

The SECs make iStripper somewhat similar to "collectable card games" (CCGs) like Magic the Gathering (MtG) or Pokemon. Players buy the base set of cards and can then purchase booster packs containing random cards (12 common, 3 uncommon and 1 rare). Every purchase of a booster pack is basically a gamble. A player could buy crates of booster packs but never get the rare card he wanted, let alone an even rarer foil version of it. MtG has been around for over 25 years, has ~20 million players and has produced over 20 billion cards, yet (to my knowledge) they have never provided customers with a guaranteed way of getting specific rare cards. In fact, they don't even give discounts for long-time, loyal customers like Totem does. Someone who has been playing MtG for 20 years and has spent $10,000 on cards doesn't have any more discount opportunities than the guy who just started playing yesterday.

Totem's introduction of Joker cards sets the stage for many more SECs and gambling games in the future. It's likely we will see SECs for Black Friday and the 2019 advent calendar, with Joker cards being the reward for special scratch cards and BF promotions. Although I have terrible luck at gambling, I still believe iStripper is a good product and a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment.

I've said as much in other threads but:
Games can be fun if presented properly. Scratch Offs and the board games were interesting ideas. Needs a little work, but they can be fun activities.

I don't even mind the existence of exclusive cards, as long as they're TIMED exclusives. Like, Niemira's christmas card. If it becomes available for regular purchase after a certain amount of time (1 year? 2 years?), that would be mildly acceptable, right? You've got your set of people that are pleased because they have something that nobody else does. Yet, after a while, it becomes available to the masses, either at regular or increased cost. We already have a handful of special outfit cards that are higher in price.
Just remember, back at the time of Niemira's special event card (and Alyssa Kent, etc), Totem didn't actually tell us which card was exclusive. At least now they are, so there is a tiny bit of movement in the right direction here.

Or another incentive based idea: Special card becomes available for purchase once you hit triple diamond (or double, or single, whatever). You can jump through the hoops of the game now (like seems to be happening with the new users), and the long time people who would otherwise not get much benefit from these games, have the option to just buy outright.

Just a couple of ideas and thought starters.

In the end though, I just want to be able to buy the bleeping cards that I want. Feel free to substitute your favorite profanity in place of the bleeping.

@guvato

Those ideas are, I think, quite sensible for future Special Event cards but they can not be applied to most of the existing ones because of the terms (constituting a contract) under which they were originally issued.

When the previous Special Event cards were distributed, they were marketed as "one time only" with the advent calendar. Now, they're available if you get really lucky on the scratch cards. So, the rules have already changed. Let's change them again.

@Corbomite The big difference is that collectable cards like MtG are physical objects, you can deal cards with other collectors, and even buy cards on eBay. iStripper is software-based cards (shows in fact) so you can't own a card twice or deal cards. Also since it is software-based and most importantly server-based, what would be the contingency plan in the case of a iStripper business closure even though you're still the owner of your cards. This kind of collection is valuable as long as iStripper server exists and you cannot even sell your collection.

what would be the contingency plan in the case of a iStripper business closure

@Rex has stated that in such a case an unlocked version of the software would be made available to allow you to continue to use your cards.

@gkar45 - My memory is that Rex said it would be free.

@Number6

I agree with your Thoughts..

If they want to continue with the games of chance with SECs perhaps Totem should offer the current SEC card for the game either for sale at say 350 credits or you can take your chance with the Scratchcards. The sale would only last as long as the promotion (1 week). The Card would then be retired permanently from sale and become a chance win in future games.

Just my thoughts.

@Rex has stated that in such a case an unlocked version of the software would be made available to allow you to continue to use your cards.

That would be ideal, but all this would have to be done on the willingness of those in power at that moment.

I have posted of my issues with the "gamble to acquire" approach in other threads. I won't particpate in that approach so I'm shut off from four cards for now.

I also prefer the buy ahead option to guarantee a special card. Yes it is buying blind, but I'm willing to trust in Totem's intention to provide me with quality shows. I think in recent years they've justified that trust. So I would support this method to positively effect their monthly revenues. I'd support this even if the special card was at a premium price in the buy ahead amount. For example, no discount applied based on cards purchased status or even an addition beyond regular full credit cost. Perhaps the repsonse to this approach would justify reasons for more special cards to be offered.

Just provide an equitable way of obtaining current and future special event cards.

@1VGconvert

The Buy Ahead Option in the form of an Advent Calendar and a couple of similar offers was how the Special Event Cards were originally offered. This led to a few quite vociferous protests about that being the only way to obtain those cards. Presumably at least partly as a result of those criticisms Totem added another way to obtain them - this only led to even more protests.

@TheEmu

That only means that Totem hasn't found the best solution and not that there isn't one that's workable for all. However the games of chance approach is certainly not the way.

The development of another tier, quadruple diamond or some other specialized title, issued to anyone that obtains a minimum of 4,000 cards should be considered as a possible resolution. Issue 1 random SEC as a reward for this accomplishment, & allow the purchase of all SEC's at whatever premimum price that is established by TOTEM to the 4 diamond members. A lot of members would have so much incentive to get that 4th diamond that the additional bulk sales should offset any possible losses from issuing the free card. This would satisfy the collectors, motivate new & old purchasers, & provide a clear path to the acquisition of these cards without gambling, for both those who are opposed to it & for the unlucky. I happen to fall squarely into the unlucky category. Those that may not want or might not have the means to gain a 4,000 card collection could continue to enjoy the games of chance if desired.

It's no secret here on these forums that I too am frustrated at not being able to get a SEC, without spending a ton of money, but some members are suggesting paying like 350-500 credits for the card as an alternative. I would gladly pay more than a normal card costs but up to 500 credits? Thats crazy from my standpoint. I have no knowledge of Totem's operational costs but as a 3diamond member I would gladly pay 3-4 times the amt. of a normal card. That to me is reasonable. I appreciate this site immensely as a very unique product, but come on guys and gals I'm just a working guy paying the bills too. I don't have a money tree in my backyard. My 2c

I should also say I won't be boycotting Totem. I enjoy and want to continue to support it. I am just dissapointed about this situation.

The development of another tier, quadruple diamond or some other specialized title, issued to anyone that obtains a minimum of 4,000 cards should be considered as a possible resolution. Issue 1 random SEC as a reward for this accomplishment, & allow the purchase of all SEC's at whatever premium price that is established by TOTEM to the 4 diamond members. A lot of members would have so much incentive to get that 4th diamond that the additional bulk sales should offset any possible losses from issuing the free card. This would satisfy the collectors, motivate new & old purchasers, & provide a clear path to the acquisition of these cards without gambling, for both those who are opposed to it & for the unlucky. I happen to fall squarely into the unlucky category. Those that may not want or might not have the means to gain a 4,000 card collection could continue to enjoy the games of chance if desired.

This would be rather sensible idea for Totem to consider. But rather than having a defined numbers of shows to own, the limit could be set in percentage of the available shows offered for sale. For example, if you own at least 75% of the cards available for sale, you could get access to the SEC at whatever price.

It could also combine an age limit so that the card is not accessible until through this until it gets "old". That might be tricky to code in the software, but I'm sure it can be done.

I feel like we just handed out the stick to be beaten with...

The development of another tier, quadruple diamond or some other specialized title, issued to anyone that obtains a minimum of 4,000 cards should be considered as a possible resolution. Issue 1 random SEC as a reward for this accomplishment, & allow the purchase of all SEC's at whatever premimum price that is established by TOTEM to the 4 diamond members. A lot of members would have so much incentive to get that 4th diamond that the additional bulk sales should offset any possible losses from issuing the free card. This would satisfy the collectors, motivate new & old purchasers, & provide a clear path to the acquisition of these cards without gambling, for both those who are opposed to it & for the unlucky. I happen to fall squarely into the unlucky category. Those that may not want or might not have the means to gain a 4,000 card collection could continue to enjoy the games of chance if desired.

Agree, a new level is something I have been thinking about to suggest now when we are severel with over 4000 cards. And this could be a really good thing to include in a 4000+ level.

Edit;
4420 cards at this moment.

And I think this is the wrong topic to say that I did earn more credit than it cost me to get the latest SEC...

Curious, I see here many people who offer suggestions for solutions to the problem raised, and I have not yet seen any intervention from a member of the Totem team, to tell us how they see this situation and explain to us clearly their gait.

Is their strategy to wait for there to be a breathlessness, hoping that people will move on, until the next crisis, which will be inevitable, if nothing changes?

I don't think it's very serious.

By the way I didn't ask anyone to make an embargo with Totem. Everyone is free to think and act.

The sole purpose of this thread is to share my frustration and give Totem a chance to explain itself, if they obviously want to.

In the hope that a satisfactory solution will arise, and will settle once and for all the subject special event cards impossible to obtain, without a clearly defined path beforehand, which will ensure the obtaining of this card.


Curieux, je vois ici plein de personnes qui offrent des suggestions de solutions pour le problème soulevé, et je n'ai pas encore vu aucune intervention d'un membre de l'équipe de Totem, pour nous dire comment eux voit cette situation et nous expliquer clairement leur démarche.

Est-ce que leur stratégie est d'attendre qu'il y est un essoufflement, en espérant que les gens passent à autre chose, jusqu'à la prochaine crise, qui sera inévitable, si rien ne change ?

Je trouve que cela ne fait pas très sérieux.

En passant je n'ai demandé à personne de faire un embargo auprès de Totem. Chacun est libre de ses pensées et de ses actes..

Ce fil de discussion a comme seul but de partager ma frustration et de donner une chance à Totem de s'expliquer, s'ils le désirent évidemment.

Dans l'espoir qu'une solution satisfaisante surgira, et règlera une fois pour toute le sujet des cartes évènement spéciaux impossibles à se procurer, sans un chemin clairement défini au préalable, qui assurera l'obtention de cette carte.

...and give Totem a chance to explain itself, if they obviously want to.

They may only explain themselves to the silent majority, in a universal language. Hush now. ;)