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Narsham posted:I’m sure someone will identify one or more games that already do this, but there’s ways to handle “advancement” in an RPG that go beyond the boundaries of a character sheet. AD&D had “name level”, where you were assumed to gather followers and have some sort of political presence, though D&D has never done a great job articulating these systems or perceiving them as being advancement in the same way as getting more powerful spells. This is why troupe play and games like Legacy: Life Among the Ruins rule.
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Feb 8, 2023 17:44
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Wasn't it a BofA report that claimed D&D/WotC were "undercapitalized" in the first place? It's entirely possible for BofA to have said both things and not been saying anything unreasonable at the time, of course. Earlier they could have said "Based on where the market is currently at, it seems like they're undermonetising Magic and D&D", and now they can say "Given that they've tanked customer trust, they shouldn't be trying to overmonetise Magic and D&D", and those would be consistent positions if you believed there was a way to monetise D&D more without tanking customer loyalty, but which now won't work because of what they've done.
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Feb 8, 2023 18:21
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Wasn't it a BofA report that claimed D&D/WotC were "undercapitalized" in the first place? Nah this is the second analysis in a row from BofA that said Hasbro is loving up. The "under-monetized" comment was from Hasbro execs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srr6xmZ828k
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Feb 8, 2023 18:26
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I imagine there's some forums/Twitter nerd who's telling everyone else at bofa (lol) all the hottest and tastiest nerd gossip and influencing their hasbro forecasts. Maybe they're reading this very thread???!
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Feb 8, 2023 18:33
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I know anecdotal evidence isn't evidence, but I saw the 40k Commander decks at a Walmart and thought "Why not get back into Magic?" And immediately bounced right the hell off. Because it rang up at seventy loving dollars. At Walmart. Is there a word for the opposite of a loss-leader? Like an introductory product that tells you to gently caress off an never look back?
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Feb 8, 2023 18:44
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Splicer posted:I've only ever played the 3rd edition of wfrp but I've wondered if it could work treating levels similar to how wfrp3 treats jobs. Level 3 has a combat feat, a non-combat feat, and a new class ability. You pick up one or two of your choice at each skillup moment and when you've got the full package you hit level 3 "proper" and your boring hp/damage/to-hit stuff kicks in. Fading Suns 4e went class and level based, and milestones for advancement. While you can wait and grant players full levels to advance, the book recommends pacing out "partial" advances where they can buy a slice of that level - usually a perk, a skill, an ability score, etc. - and then any they haven't bought with partials get filled in automatically when the GM finally hands out the full level. Levels are class-agnostic, everyone having the same advancement scheme and their class setting the terms on what you pick for that scheme. Classes are very broad, and more about social class in the setting (Noble, Priest, Merchant, and Yeoman being the four classes), and each has a bunch of callings (subclasses) that narrow their advancement choices further. You can change calling much more readily than class, and are kind of expected to. So it sort of fits what you want, but not as strongly as you might've been hoping. As a class-and-level scheme it's... pretty simple and not too restraining, and mostly there to get around the problem older editions had where character creation was point-buy based, where the points were not spent the same way as XP during advancement. Meaning it wasn't that hard to min-max your creation points to have your character be worth a lot more in XP than someone who didn't, and thus also be way better in your chosen areas of expertise than the other person is in theirs.
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Feb 8, 2023 18:48
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Yeah the 40k stuff wasn't pitched as an introductory product - take a look at Jumpstart for an alternative - but one of the serious problems with Magic (and part of what BofA's analysts are talking about) is the bewildering array of products. It's bad that you can't look at a shelf of Magic stuff and clearly identify what is supposed to be introductory product, what's mainline stuff for players to build on, and what's "collectors only" premium stuff you should ignore unless you're a whale. Like there's five current kinds of booster packs and you need a guide to figure them out. Note that each new set or expansion release of Magic includes several (four or five, I think?) of these booster types, so Wal*Mart's shelf may have e.g. one each of Draft, Set, Jumpstart, Theme, or Collector boosters from several different sets simultaneously. And then there's also the Secret Lairs (limited edition stuff I don't think you'll find at Wal*Mart?) plus core sets, commander packs, duel decks, Pioneer Challenger Series decks, it just goes on and on and on. A single warhammer 40k commander deck is currently $57 to $88 on Amazon (depending on which deck, they seem to be priced based on popularity?), it's positioned as a premium product (and commander decks have 100 cards, plus some extras like 10 token cards, a life tracker, a deck box, a foil "display commander", etc.). It's not "supposed to be" an entry-level product... but it's obviously a lot of money to pay if it's the product that grabbed your attention and made you think about trying out Magic!
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Feb 8, 2023 18:57
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They did release a line of Commander starter decks a few months back. In theory you could see "starter deck" and pick one up but it provides no guidance on how the game works.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:00
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Leperflesh posted:It's not "supposed to be" an entry-level product... but it's obviously a lot of money to pay if it's the product that grabbed your attention and made you think about trying out Magic! I think a big factor for me was that it was on the shelf by the checkout, along with other impulse purchases like beef jerkey and energy drinks Which is especially weird because Walmart will typically keep a $17 Switch cartridge locked up behind glass.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:08
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aw frig aw dang it posted:Nah this is the second analysis in a row from BofA that said Hasbro is loving up. The "under-monetized" comment was from Hasbro execs: Ah, thanks.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:13
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moths posted:I think a big factor for me was that it was on the shelf by the checkout, along with other impulse purchases like beef jerkey and energy drinks That sounds like a failure of communication between the vendor and the manufacturer. $100 products aren't impulse buys you put with the gum and tabloids.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:20
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Megazver posted:And then there is, sigh, Cool Name Goes Here, which is already Kickstarting: Robin Laws does good work, but he's a stretch goal, not a core designer. They're leaning into "the community" being a central design consultant. I don't trust most of the RPG (or, uh, board game) community to design their hands into a wide-open cookie jar.
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Feb 8, 2023 19:23
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homullus posted:Robin Laws does good work, but he's a stretch goal, not a core designer. They're leaning into "the community" being a central design consultant. I don't trust most of the RPG (or, uh, board game) community to design their hands into a wide-open cookie jar. weird goatse, but you do you
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Feb 8, 2023 19:32
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moths posted:I think a big factor for me was that it was on the shelf by the checkout, along with other impulse purchases like beef jerkey and energy drinks I am surprised they are still at Walmart, at Target they apparently got rid of them as they were a "shrinkage" epicenter. I think for a lot of people, Magic monetization jumped the shark with the Walking Dead tie-in set from Secret Lair.
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Feb 8, 2023 22:42
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Name Change posted:I think for a lot of people, Magic monetization jumped the shark with the Walking Dead tie-in set from Secret Lair. That or 30th Anniversary Edition. 30A was big news outside the hobby. It required zero background knowledge or generational membership to understand how completely ridiculous it was to buy 4x $250 lottery tickets that could contain a Thoughtlace. This was after TWD ripped off the bandaid and left no room to doubt their naked shameless avarice, and 30A still managed to shock just about everyone.
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Feb 8, 2023 23:02
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30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent. However Wizards appears to have so badly mismanaged messaging on this that tons of people keep talking about it as if it was a $1k product, including here on SA where the above sentence has been typed in some form or another repeatedly for weeks. So I lay that on Wizards for loving that up so badly.
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Feb 8, 2023 23:10
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Leperflesh posted:30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent.
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Feb 8, 2023 23:32
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Leperflesh posted:30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent. nah
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Feb 8, 2023 23:37
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Certainly open to being corrected! Did they not restrict sales to like an hour, on their site?
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Feb 9, 2023 00:01
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Leperflesh posted:Certainly open to being corrected! Did they not restrict sales to like an hour, on their site?
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Feb 9, 2023 00:57
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Leperflesh posted:Certainly open to being corrected! Did they not restrict sales to like an hour, on their site? Why is it up to us to correct you? Why aren't you providing any support of your weird claims? Even without direct evidence: If this were the case, wouldn't Wizards have tried to have gotten ahead of this with a benevolent explanation? Sure, the OGL issue was muddied by the fact it was a leak and legalese is difficult, but there is no such confounding element here. This was comparatively incredibly simple. Anyhoo, now to correct you: Leperflesh posted:30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent. Local game stores got one per store. Though this link is a Prof vid, this is not speculation. It includes the clip from the official Wizards stream with Blake, Maro and a woman I don't recognize and isn't named. They directly say the stores will get one, three if they're a premium, which are rare and mostly irrelevant to the greater point. Sure, we could speculate on the size of print runs to try and gauge the level of generosity here, though Prof says that's dumb because stores might have more than one person who wants to buy it. In my opinion, when you're selling something for 44 times the normal price while giving away numbers in the single digits, it's almost impossible to imagine any way that the equation could look favorable to Wizards. (Source for x44: There's no MSRP anymore but $169.50 is the list price of a box on Amazon for the latest set containing 30 packs. $169.50 / 30 = 5.65, $250 / $5.65 = about 44.24.) As for whether it sold out, Pleasant Kenobi (and others I'm sure) talk about the nebulousness of that claim. Basically, they stopped selling it after about 30 minutes and did not claim it sold out in as many words. Of course, most direct sale products (except 30A) are print-to-demand so it's not clear if ''selling out" is even possible in other cases, so maybe this is a distinction without a difference. The facts will likely remain secret forever. Also, the idea that it's "not intended to be an actual product people bought" is completely ludicrous. First, the price is here so the price is not really in dispute. Here is the marketing video with Kibler and Gobert-Hicks saying the price and talking about putting it on 'your mantlepiece' among other things so it sure sounds like they intend for people to buy it. (Also, if you use an extension to restore dislikes, you can see it has 13K dislikes to 651 likes. lol) For that matter, it's a consumer discretionary product; who else is supposed to buy it besides people? This isn't a decade-long elevator repair service contract that is only ever purchased by a corporation. Secondly, this product was a celebration of Magic's history. Sure, we all know that not every product is for everyone. If you don't like Innistrad or Ravnica, sure, maybe you don't buy cards from a set on that plane. You don't like Fortnite or The Walking Dead, you don't buy those products. A celebratory product of the game itself should not face those barriers of personal taste to the same degree. Sure, maybe all you zennials think the old cards are dumb, but they appeal to a common core of the audience: people who love the game. A big exacerbating issue here to this is this marketing choice lead many to feel excluded by that price. I think someone said, "Never has 'everyone' been so few people." All that is to say: Yes, I think it is fair to imagine that they probably actually wanted people to buy this expensive consumer product. I don't actually want to re-litigate this. I just want to laugh at Wizards and Hasbro for sprinting through a cornfield of rakes.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:11
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Leperflesh posted:30A was a giveaway to stores, they nominally "sold" sets on their site for like an hour in order to officially legally be able to say that a box was $1k, but it was not intended to be an actual product people bought. Many stores gave away the product as prizes, which I believe was the intent. If it was a post facto excuse, as it reeks of being, then they deserve to eat poo poo over it and eat poo poo over the excuse. Wizard deserves nothing less than a diet of unending poo poo until they stop heaping poo poo on their own dinner plate.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:18
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OKLeperflesh posted:So I lay that on Wizards for loving that up so badly. like this I guess needs to be reiterated because obviously different people got different messages
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Feb 9, 2023 01:20
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Leperflesh posted:Certainly open to being corrected! Did they not restrict sales to like an hour, on their site? Yes, but evidence suggests the reason they did is because they sold TERRIBLY and so when it became apparent they were not going to sell out they took them all offline and then gave the weird, CYA, non-commital language immediately afterward about how the sale "concluded" so the PR black eye they got from selling it for a  *100 wouldn't turn into a double black eye of "And not even the whales went biting!". Allegedly a couple of the foreign language websites listed how many naked cash grab packs were available, and after half an hour when the pump was most primed they didn't even manage to sell half of them. Meanwhile, love them or hate them, Secret Lair drops pretty much always sell out and do gangbuster sales.And make no mistake, the product was previewed as retailing for $1000, there was no hide nor hair of them being sent out a special promotions or thank you gifts in the lead up to the sale. There was nothing about how this is $1000 value prize, it was entirely about how this was $1000 to purchase. Everything in it was talking about how wonderful and exciting and big the anniversary is and how great a nostalgic and cool it is to open these old packs and get old cards etc. so give us an enormous amount of money. See also the fact that Wizards made absolutely no effort to get positive promotion from MTG influencers, the people on YouTube they aimed for were people who were known for playing Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh or other TCG's, and those people who received promotional M30 packs were not told that the booster they opened on camera to promote it was going to be retailed in a $1000 4-pack and upon being told of the pricing pretty much every single one of them immediately walked it back, deleted their videos, and issued apologies. All of that altogether makes me think that there is no doubt from all the lead up that Hasbro/Wizards truly did believe they could make an easy bundle whaling by cashing out on the anniversary of their game, and I have absolutely no reason to believe the people who offered them $1000 did not have their money taken. The idea that it was all a stunt to try and make them being given out as prizes look more valuable feels like an after-the-fact rationalization to try and make it less calamitous. And the hell of it is that they just released those M30 packs at a reasonable loving price people would be all over them! Give enough of them out and let people do a fun ultra retro sealed/draft night and they would've gotten an unbelievable amount of free goodwill! But no, that's not even close to what happened. They could have said "this is a $1000 value!", But instead they said "this is $1000!" and the difference was not lost.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:21
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a pretty embarrassing episode for wizards of the coast, we can all agree
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Feb 9, 2023 01:24
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I’m starting to feel like they aren’t even actually wizards
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Feb 9, 2023 01:26
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Leperflesh posted:a pretty embarrassing episode for wizards of the coast, we can all agree 
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Feb 9, 2023 01:28
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Leperflesh posted:like this I guess needs to be reiterated because obviously different people got different messages Hey little man, why not put the whole quote? Leperflesh posted:However Wizards appears to have so badly mismanaged messaging on this that tons of people keep talking about it as if it was a $1k product, including here on SA where the above sentence has been typed in some form or another repeatedly for weeks. So I lay that on Wizards for loving that up so badly. Oh right. "As if." Which is to say, you thought it wasn't actually a $1K product. Which is to say, you were wrong and talking about something confidently when you actually did not know or had forgotten. But fortunately, you're: Leperflesh posted:Certainly open to being corrected!
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Feb 9, 2023 01:28
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What the gently caress is this post lmao.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:30
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Hey come on now, what's with the insulting attitude? Little man? Seriously? Thanks for posting good info a few posts up. I appreciate it.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:30
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Which Hasbro execs are you? Post on your main.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:30
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Boba Pearl posted:Which Hasbro execs are you? Post on your main. why, I'm Chris Cocks of course
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Feb 9, 2023 01:31
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Magnetic North posted:Hey little man, why not put the whole quote? I also think that WotC royally screwed the pooch rather than playing some 11D mastermind chess game that got out of hand but unless Leperflesh killed your dog this seems pretty weirdly mad for no reason.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:32
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Boba Pearl posted:Which Hasbro execs are you? Post on your main. I legit wonder if the Wizards defenders here own positions in Hasbro. I have heard more than one nerd talk about it, though not on SA.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:42
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I actually know a guy that does wom marketing as a free lancer and it's a pretty good gig if you're a good enough poster, and your paid by post and engagements so I could see a savvy freelancer using quotes as engagements. He worked as part of a team to hype up AC Odyssey.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:44
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Boba Pearl posted:I actually know a guy that does wom marketing Read that as Worm Marketing. "Hey, do you need any extra annelids? No? Yeah, figured..." 
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Feb 9, 2023 01:48
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Magnetic North posted:Read that as Worm Marketing. "Hey, do you need any extra annelids? No? Yeah, figured..." Thank gently caress I'm not the only one.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:49
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Feb 9, 2023 01:54
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e: Oh, I think this was already getting discussed, lol
Golden Battler fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Feb 9, 2023 02:02
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"Even though doing this got you everything you wanted in this situation, please don't do it again. Because uh... it was just a coincidence! That it happened! We were gonna 180 and give up anyway, nothing to do with the bad PR and the actual hit to our bottom line!" EDIT: Okay now this post looks like it came out of nowhere.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:15
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