Free to Play Sunday

[Kintro]

Other games have "Welcome back weekends" where old players can come back and play for free for a couple of days. In DDO we could have Free to Play Sunday every so often.

On these days all free players could sample any of the adventure packs without having to purchase them. This could encourage free players to find fun content and purchase it! We could also see the return of old players who gave up around levels 12-15 due to lack of free to play content.

[Lorz]

I'm thinking you missed the whole free to play model ddo has gone too.

Go read up....turns out ddo has had a free weekend for MONTHS now..and the cool thing ....it's not just weekends.


Who knew!

All you gotta do is unlock them....and since it costs no money what so ever.....

/face palm.

[Aurora1979]

/not signed

I want more stuff free! Im not getting enough for the money im not paying!

Seriously though, no, i think F2P should be a tempter trying to get people to pay for stuff.

I get your theory about, if you let them try it they might buy it but turbine has already done that. They give you enough free game to sample and then if you want the rest you have to pay for it.

I think if people left at level 12-15 because they were bored and wouldnt buy more content then giving them a sample wont entice them any more. If it would then why didnt they buy the packs before? They enjoyed the game until level 12-15, which is a couple of weeks at least for a newbie. Yet werent interested enough to purchase. Therefore i think its unlikely you would change their mind.

[Cyr]

An interesting idea although I would limit the free content to the high level range to prevent people from playing something like catacombs and realizing they will never run it again so why buy it.

[Snorre]

Who knew!

That was kind of rude.

Some free trials of P2P dungeons would be great. I wouldn't have purchased Catacombs if a guildmate hadn't given me a trial pass.

[Kintro]

All you gotta do is unlock them....and since it costs no money what so ever.....

Not all adventure packs are free, they either cost you real money or time to grind out the points to make the purchase. Once people are in the game it can't hurt to use additional techniques to get them to make a purchase.

Access to unowned quests could be limited to a single completion and free access days infrequent enough so FTP players couldn't rely on them. Alternatively Turbine could just open access to selected adventure packs that weren't selling very well on these days.

[MrLarone]

i mainly agree with Lorz

but i think there's something to be said for the OP's suggestion encouraging purchase of packs.

maybe the best implementation would be a wholesale on quest passes (perhaps limited to 1 pass per quest per account)

or

a free "open day" where all quests can be accesed but don't give any XP/loot/favour.

as it stands i actually have most the packs now, but i know i would've found it useful to have some sample of them first.

[AZgreentea]

Not a terrible idea, though it does bug me a little that I bought all the packs and they would be able to play them sometimes without paying for them.

Still, doing something like having guest passes for some dungeons in the lottery or as a special event reward might be one solution.

[Antheal]

It would be nice if there was some kind of preview server where you could, well, preview things like the Classes, Races and Adventure Packs you don't already have.

How else will you know if they're worth spending your hard-earned money on otherwise? I'm not paying money to buy the Monk class if I'm only going to find out I don't like it after all...

And of course being a preview server, everything is subject to change and there's no guarantee your character may not get lost on the server at some point during an update.

Isn't that the general disclaimer for Lamannia regarding characters on there?

[Sleepingcap]

Well actually there could be some idea fragments picked from this topic and attached to another, already existing feature.

Every week, on (lets say for the sake of this topic) the weekends, there is a lottery, starting on the midnight of Friday and ending on Saturday midnight. And the prizes would be 90/180 minute guest passes to different adventure packs.
That way people can visit the content without actually having their friends purchase the passes with their hard-earned points.

Just an idea.

[Eelpout]

Other games have "Welcome back weekends" where old players can come back and play for free for a couple of days. In DDO we could have Free to Play Sunday every so often.

On these days all free players could sample any of the adventure packs without having to purchase them. This could encourage free players to find fun content and purchase it! We could also see the return of old players who gave up around levels 12-15 due to lack of free to play content.

If they ever did something like this, I would like to see it coincide with the Updates. I would also like it to be just the first quest in a chain series or 1 quest and maybe the explorer area. For example, when Update 5 goes live with it's new quests, which only VIPS can play for the first few days, open up the first Delera quest (not the chain) for F2P accounts during that time. They are already going to have less grouping opportunities do to others trying out the new content, this throws them a little bone and hopefully drums up some more cash.

I am not pushing for this necessarily, I am just saying if Turbine opens up pay content for free every once in a while, that this is how I would like to see it implemented.

[Kintro]

I get your theory about, if you let them try it they might buy it but turbine has already done that. They give you enough free game to sample and then if you want the rest you have to pay for it.

Having never actually been FTP I'm just theorising here based on experience with other things. I don't like to buy things "unseen". What if it's complete rubbish? How do I choose between multiple adventure packs I've never played, especially ones I don't really need in order to progress?
I think Snorre said it best:

I wouldn't have purchased Catacombs if a guildmate hadn't given me a trial pass.

I think if people left at level 12-15 because they were bored and wouldnt buy more content then giving them a sample wont entice them any more. If it would then why didnt they buy the packs before? They enjoyed the game until level 12-15, which is a couple of weeks at least for a newbie. Yet werent interested enough to purchase. Therefore i think its unlikely you would change their mind.

Good point, people leaving after 12-15 is probably a separate problem. Maybe one that doesn't need addressing since they played for that long and still didn't want to spend anything. It could, however, help people who get to level 12-15 who want to purchase something but don't know what.

I think this suggestion could also be good for encouraging people to purchase packs which aren't really needed in order to level up but are a lot of fun (e.g. STK, Tangleroot, Sorrowdusk).