Read more about our plans for the year in a new Producer's Letter!

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Originally Posted by mbartol

Thanks for the info, Bel.

Some of this really belongs in the Producer’s Letter, and would have prevented at least some of the negative feedback. Sure, it’s not all fleshed out, but even including a section for “potential effort” or “ideas we’re exploring” would give the players something to get excited about—just reinforce that it’s not a promise. I mean, the Executive Producer is stating the information in a SSG outlet/platform, why not in the letter?

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+1

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Originally Posted by capsela

DDO is the most expensive game to play ever [blah blah blah] I can't believe they have stayed this long. A sizeable amount of the playerbase is clearly codependent. But, can't leave their abuser. DDO prices are abuse.

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Hi... I'm a game called Gemstone IV. I am *LITTERALLY* a text-only pathfinder style game that has been active for nearly 3 times as long as DDO, and Customers tend to spend $25 A MONTH to maintain their subscriptions, and most players have more then 1 subscription active

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Originally Posted by HoopleHeadMan

Hi... I'm a game called Gemstone IV. I am *LITTERALLY* a text-only pathfinder style game that has been active for nearly 3 times as long as DDO, and Customers tend to spend $25 A MONTH to maintain their subscriptions, and most players have more then 1 subscription active

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Well, to be fair, Gemstone IV has only been around since 2010.

The Gemstone series itself has been around since 1988, so 35 years.

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Originally Posted by Arkat

Well, to be fair, Gemstone IV has only been around since 2010.

The Gemstone series itself has been around since 1988, so 35 years.

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Fair enough.... I was playing back when Prodigy and Compuserve were duking it it out in competition to build the biggest user-base..

...fun times

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Originally Posted by Memnir

Isn't this pretty much what y'all said last year?


*sigh*

Really glad I didn't try the "wait and see what the PL says" route. This and the Producer's Letter is simply anemic, to put it as nicely and politely as possible.

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I think this producers letter fits the definition of "mailing it in"

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Originally Posted by Arkat

It will either be a ToD (Tower of Despair) update to Legendary or a Titan (The Titan Awakes) update to Legendary.

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A Devils of Shavarath upgrade to Legendary would be very cool. Some of the best quests in the game that are not run enough because they are at that really unfortunate Heroic/Epic divide. Make them level 33-34 and they'd get run a lot because they are entertaining to run and the loot would likely be very good.

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Originally Posted by BurnerD

I think this producers letter fits the definition of "mailing it in"

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It sure looked like something someone could have written with ChatGPT after a few mins.

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Originally Posted by HoopleHeadMan

Fair enough.... I was playing back when Prodigy and Compuserve were duking it it out in competition to build the biggest user-base..

...fun times

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I got into Gemstone III back on Prodigy, when gaming cost $3/hour. That's like a million bucks in today's money!

Kids these days don't know how good they have it. :)

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Originally Posted by SocialRipple

I got into Gemstone III back on Prodigy, when gaming cost $3/hour. That's like a million bucks in today's money!

Kids these days don't know how good they have it. :)

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Then AOL came along with better speeds and suddenly people were missing mortgage payments.... :eek:

Now people flip out over $100 a YEAR?!?!

Folks were shelling out 300-600 a month on AOL when they dumped charter accounts and started charging by the hour... with additional fees depending on how far away you were from the portal you were accessing...

It was a freaking bloodbath. People defaulting on their bills drove AOL from being THE service hub that bought AT&T and Time Warner... to utter financial collapse

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Originally Posted by HoopleHeadMan

Then AOL came along with better speeds and suddenly people were missing mortgage payments.... :eek:

Now people flip out over $100 a YEAR?!?!

Folks were shelling out 300-600 a month on AOL when they dumped charter accounts and started charging by the hour... with additional fees depending on how far away you were from the portal you were accessing...

It was a freaking bloodbath. People defaulting on their bills drove AOL from being THE service hub that bought AT&T and Time Warner... to utter financial collapse

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Just because things we bad back then, doesn't justify this treatment of people who pay SSG money.
If VIP was always this crappy and we suddenly start complaining - sure. But VIP used to have actual value. We had an option of paying for VIP monthly to get content, or paying upfront to buy the content. Now we need to buy all the content regardless of VIP status. None of the remaining bonuses are enough to justify the VIP price.

As you said it yourself, predatory behavior like this brought AOL to ruin. And that's where SSG is heading.

The VIP thing could have been done a long time ago. There is no "engineering" involved bolting-on another Pay scheme onto the user interface.

What SSG is doing right now... is to try and see how their subs are doing and responding to potential VIP changes.


That is to say, they gained a whole lot of subs during the free gold dice rolls bonus last year, they are checking now how many of those VIP accounts gained are being retained and how many are dropping off.

This is basically SSG's version of the OGL 2.0 leak. If there is enough backlash (and account cancellations) they will quickly start adding on goodies to VIP to plug losses and get people back to subbing. If the subs continue as is they will be slower to respond if at all.

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Originally Posted by Stradivarius

The VIP thing could have been done a long time ago. There is no "engineering" involved bolting-on another Pay scheme onto the user interface.

What SSG is doing right now... is to try and see how their subs are doing and responding to potential VIP changes.


That is to say, they gained a whole lot of subs during the free gold dice rolls bonus last year, they are checking now how many of those VIP accounts gained are being retained and how many are dropping off.

This is basically SSG's version of the OGL 2.0 leak. If there is enough backlash (and account cancellations) they will quickly start adding on goodies to VIP to plug losses and get people back to subbing. If the subs continue as is they will be slower to respond if at all.

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I keep reading this and thinking subs must mean submissives. I does feel like that sometimes though.

I keep saying.... want to give value to 'VIP'?

Give VIP significantly reduced cost on items in-store like boxes & shards, and in-game chest re-rolls. Also let VIP have re-rolls on chests in Raids

As per EP Severlin,
Severlin said "the amount of items being accumulated is an inventory issue & not fiscally responsible"

ok, I get the inventory issue, but isn't that already an issue not being addressed? Not flaming him, just making an observation.

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Originally Posted by Retired_Old_Gamer

As per EP Severlin,
Severlin said "the amount of items being accumulated is an inventory issue & not fiscally responsible"

ok, I get the inventory issue, but isn't that already an issue not being addressed? Not flaming him, just making an observation.

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Not sure what he meant by the "fiscally responsible" portion because I bought a ton of extra inventory for the sheer fact that I had a ton of gold roll stuff coming in.

1. I dip into the forums occasionally, mostly for reference.
2. I enjoy the Producer's letters, including this one, because, unlike the few posts I skimmed out of this thread, I exist in a vacuum of knowledge and now I know the projected timeline of the next few quarters. Even if all this information is "already known", it wasn't "already known" by me.
3. Refering back to point 1, here's the reason for me actually posting this time instead of just reading posts from what I assume are the "loud obnoxious minority". (And I say that because I disagree with almost every complaint and criticism I see. Almost.)

So, the forum revamp I heard about some time back is now on a roadmap. What exactly does this mean for my reference posts? The one reason I really use the forums? Do I need to make backups of all of them? I mean, honestly, I still reference builds from before the enhancement overhaul (don't ask me why if you don't already get it). I'm going to potentially have to back up a heckuva lot of stuff to word docs and excel spreadsheets.

Can anyone with credentials (looking at you devs) detail exactly what's coming in the way of the revamp? I don't want to waste precious gameplay time backing stuff up that doesn't need to be, but I also don't want to miss out on backing stuff up that is suddenly "gone" because I didn't start early enough.

Thanks, and as one of the "silent majority", keep up the good work! And thanks for keeping us in the loop!

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Originally Posted by Retired_Old_Gamer

What about ViP?

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SSG: "The first rule of VIP is we don't talk about VIP."

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Originally Posted by Arkat

SSG: "The first rule of VIP is we don't talk about VIP."

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Too late for that

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Originally Posted by Oxarhamar

Too late for that

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As far as I can tell, SSG is adhering to that rule quite well.

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Originally Posted by systemshaker1941

I'm open to suggestions.

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Are those allowed here? I could tell you what I've been playing instead of spending my time and money on a game that no longer respects either.

I pop in here from time to time to see if they're changing course, but I've yet to see any evidence that they will.