Change Raid Timer for VIP

[Duagrim]

I do not see how giving ViP's perks reduces the fun levels on F2Pers. Some people just cannot stand to see others get any bonus. ViPers pay alot for this game, both in monthly fees and extra TPs. The perks, as has been pointed out, are minimal. I continue because I do not care to see my extra toons deleted and I don't want to have to keep buying updates- also I think it would be nice if Turbine stayed in business and kept providing my game fix.

Raid timers suck anyway.

[Darlor]

As a VIP, I have to say that I strongly disagree with this idea. Raid timers set an upper bound for how quickly you can acquire loot from that raid. Raising that upper bound for VIPs is essentially selling power.

[ExK444]

No thank you. This would allow VIPs to grind much faster. They could get their epics, for example, in about 2/3s the time. Might as well sell one of shards, scrolls, or seals in the DDO store. Hell, at that rate, might as well sell larges in the store. It's principally the same. More grind items sooner for a premium.

/definitely unsigned

[licho]

I doubt it would ever happen, but i like the idea.
Im not sure if 50% shortcut or less would be best.
However, its one of perk which is nice and convienient, but still allows premium to own the game.
Of course it makes VIP life easier, but so does no life playing. Or multitoon grinding.

It would be nice to be able to buy onetimeuse ticket for faster ride in shop.

[Unreliable]

As a VIP, I have to say that I strongly disagree with this idea. Raid timers set an upper bound for how quickly you can acquire loot from that raid. Raising that upper bound for VIPs is essentially selling power.

Agreed.

[testing1234]

OP makes me think of the saying
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"


yes make DDO into one of the many F2P with a pay-to-win button
luckily seen no signs from turbine they are looking to go towards this.

wouldnt take to long before we had vip only guilds, vip raid channels and so on if you think it wont happens just cruise around a couple of other F2P games were you can buy crafting equip or loot bonuses the "good" guilds consists of 100% people who buy the best equip boosts.

[Seikojin]

I see your logic, but I think in the end result would be the opposite. VIPs would tend to wind up more or less on the same raid cycles. Couple that with getting better gear faster, and you're gonna have a big divide between VIPs and premium players; it'll be like two absolutely different groups of players that just happen to share the same servers. That works against the whole social aspect of the game- and if you lose that in an MMO why are we even bothering to play?

If a vip could run the raid every day or two days for that matter, they would post said lfms up then. Other vips would join, but that doesn't stop premiums and f2p from joining. Just because you have two different timers would not socially impact the game as dramatically as people pose.

If I had some hard data on the number of vips versus non, it would be easier to math out. But if you took 30000 people on any given server, say half pay, half dont, then you have two crowds @ 15k each. Let us then say at any given time, 100% of them are not on timer for their time zone. Then let us say that there are four time zones to apply this too. That would be 15% of 15k, or 2250 per time zone, per half.

Of those 2250, let us say 33% are off timer. That is 742 people, per half. Let us then drill down to 1%, or 7 people at any given time on non paying and paying side will be lfming or grouping for a raid. That is 14 people, more than a raid. Also, that means they could be bringing more of the 742 into the raid (which happens), etc...

At this point you have a little over 1400 people available for raiding. If they only had capped characters, doing raids when they can, they would only play 33% of the available time. If there was another option to change that, they would have more than 33% of the available time to play the game, more than 33% of an incentive to play, and more than a 33% time investment for their rewards.

Changing the timer only means they would have more chances to roll the .001% to get the item they want.

I think altering vip timers would definitely change how often a group is up for lfm. But it wouldn't make it less often, it would make it more often. And that is never a bad thing.

[Seikojin]

I think the only reason people would disagree with this is if they are not vip or if they feel this would 'devalue' their work. That is a poor reason to give vips something unique for their paid sub.

[hyenaboy]

I like the idea of giving ViP's something more. I have been contemplating going back to premium myself. The 500 TP is not all that great imo. Yeah having elite openers is nice but I group up with TR's and grinders alike to give them that chance to get into elite faster to get the favor. The grind though is just that a grind and it is never going to change not in the 3 years I have been here. I do like the idea of a change to something though be it timers or something.

/signed

[Dysmetria]

I like the idea of giving ViP's something more. I have been contemplating going back to premium myself.

I dislike the idea of giving VIPs anything more. Thousands of former VIPs contemplated and then decided to go premium based on the existing plans, and have spent tons of money buying outright the perks they were renting as VIPs since. It would be very unfair to them for Turbine to improve the VIP plan in any way now.

[altrocks]

OP makes me think of the saying
"the road to hell is paved with good intentions"


yes make DDO into one of the many F2P with a pay-to-win button
luckily seen no signs from turbine they are looking to go towards this.

wouldnt take to long before we had vip only guilds, vip raid channels and so on if you think it wont happens just cruise around a couple of other F2P games were you can buy crafting equip or loot bonuses the "good" guilds consists of 100% people who buy the best equip boosts.

Not sure what game you've been playing, but if you want to even run a raid outside of Tempest Spine, you need to buy an Adventure pack. That's either time or money spent through TP just to get into the raid. So F2P are already left out. The point here is that the difference between Premium and VIP is minimal at this point. Ability to open elite on any quest, first time out, and maybe more auctions up at once are the only real difference. Everything else you can get with TP, again through grinding or buying with cashy money. No F2P will ever do a timed Raid. This does not effect them in the least.

I am all for the reduced timer, even if it's only by 12 hours, 18 hours, etc. Give us a 2 day timer instead of 2 days and 18 hours and I'd be happy. Cutting it down to a day and a half is basically the same thing unless you're one of the people who's as likely to be playing at noon as they are at midnight.

/signed

[Cyr]

/not signed

Raid timers should never be tied to how much you pay or how you pay. If something is set up one way for game balance or to prolong the content then it should be the same for everyone.

[Calozz78]

VIP's subscription is what keeps the developers employed. They know they have that guaranteed income.

I have friends that have gone F2P and thats fine, your money you do as you see fit. I enjoy this game and 10 dollars a month is a steal for entertainment. What does a movie cost you at the theater? You can spend 10dollars a month to keep a game you love going or you can get 50 chicken nuggets at McDonald's.

I think Turbine should increase benefits for VIP's because we are the solid financial ground that they can count on every month..the more VIP's the more GUARANTEED INCOME that will generate more content. And who dosn't love more Content

Pls Devs, make VIP worth it. I pay you every month for the great job your doing. F2P only leave a tip if you did a good job and they want it. Loyalty should get me more than opening content on elite (i can always get someone to open it anyhow)

[krtkoo]

wouldnt take to long before we had vip only guilds, vip raid channels and so on ...

don´t want to disapoint you, but there are already some "VIP" channels but pple there dont need to be VIP in terms of how to pay for the content but in terms how capable players they are. nothing will change in this way.

and who cares if u will grind faster some precious loot you want / need? would it matter if VIP have for example 50% timer for epics? I dont think so, I am playing as VIP and I wouldnt even notice if my epic timer would be cut down to 1/2 time, cause I play only at evening / night and during daytime I am at work.

another nice perk would be for example to give VIP players every 6 month of being VIP without interuption +4 BTA tome. would it be too much? would it be overpowered? in which way? that VIP player after 2 years of uninterupted paying for a game would have four +4 tomes? But I bet even in this case there would be so much whinning how overpowered and unfair it is...

lets face it, VIPs need to have something to make them feel they are VIP. tbh I am VIP just because I am too lazy to buy things on sale and 10 USD per month is really cheap for such game like DDO. elite opening is nice but thats all I got from beeing a VIP and with pugging or via lfm its easy to enter q on elite for everyone.

[Tumarek]

Vip's already have tons of perks. Really no reason to give em more. If you are premium and keep up to date with content, classes, races and so on you pay about the same amount a vip does.

If you dont think VIP has already enough perks just make a premium account and do the math...

[Drona]

I m currently a premium player. I buy the packs whenever they are on sale. I would defenitely go VIP if there are more perks. currently being VIP is meh...

[Irongutz2000]

I am all for the raid timer thing, i mean like 1000000000%, but it would unbalance the game, power gamers, myself included, would get gear faster, therefore widing the gap even futher between the uber, and the week end player,


so have to say /not signed

[Gauthaag]

Heh, no.

Imho there s no reason for VIP have to have another perk. Being VIP or premium should be just choice of payment based on preferences.

And imho not the VIPs but premiums are the main motivation for bringing new content. VIPs will spend their tenbucks no matter whether there is new content or not. Actually the more content game have, the less u pay. Premiums are those paying for new content.

[Musouka]

VIP's subscription is what keeps the developers employed.

I keep seeing that same statement or something similar, yet never see anything that backs it up. Why do people keep saying that?

Then I read all of Seikojin's numbers, and hope no one actually believes that math, because it is all made up numbers.

[kyleann]

I'm so confused by this entire debate...What is this "Perk" we are speaking of? Letting people run raids more often? Letting them actually play the game and collect the best loots without having pointless time constraints put on them? I don't see what the big deal is here...How would this at all change the balance of the game? VIPs would have better loot so they can kill more mobs quicker and get xp faster?

It's a PvE game where you can repeat adventures forever and ever...*** does it matter what loots you have? Kill counts are arbitrary at best. You get to complete faster and get more xp quicker...so what? You still cap out at 20 like the rest of us. It's still a pain to be a 3xTR regardless of loots...I just don't understand what, other than epeen envy (and greed on Turbine's part), the big deal is about VIP getting a perk that takes a few hours off an entirely pointless waiting period to run quests we all want to run more often...

It has nothing to do with "balance". It has to do with those who have put in 5 years not wanting everyone at their same level of uberness without having to put in 5 years themselves, even though quite a few of them are playing Premium accounts and admittedly don't spend a dime on this game. It's about Turbine wanting us to do 20 runs in 60 says instead of 20 runs in 3 days because it keeps us in the game 27 days longer. It's about grind for the pure sake of grind, because grind = money in any MMO.

I don't particularly care if its a VIP only lowered Raid Timer or if they remove the timers altogether. I'm mainly annoyed at the many people who believe it would wreck the "balance" of a game they don't pay for...It's like voting. If you don't do it, you don't have the right to complain about the results. Those who pay for the game to allow it to be free for the others to take advantage of should receive the game, in its entirety, as if they had bought it off the shelf at WalMart.

There are no arbitrary timers in games like Diablo 2, which is pretty "balanced" game for a game that's been out over 10 years...And we pay a LOT more for this game than you would for that one, so quit holding out on us and let the full-price paying players actually play the game without pointless constraints thinly veiled behind this bogus idea that it somehow upholds PvE game balance.

/rant off

After reading this, I realize I'm going to likely receive some neg rep. It was worth it to get it off my chest. Everyone's gotta let loose sometime, right?.