Trying to hit a wall...or a pack refund...

[knightgf]

I completely understand that Turbine does not refund purchases of adventure packs at the moment, and for good reason: If someone were to buy a adventure pack in its current state, they could get whatever they want out of it and get a cheap refund. But...what if we could find a way to make adventure pack refunds work? Or at the very least, explain why this service would never, even in theory, come to light? I wanna give a shot at this and see if there is a way to make it work out.

Plan A, which I propose, would be this: If you baught a adventure pack within, say, 7 days or so, and you didn't like it, you could 'refund' it to the DDO store for a full reimbursement of points. When you return the adventure pack:

• All XP gained is lost.
• All named items, as well as DDO-store themed items in any chest, would be lost.
• Any guild renown gained would be lost.
• Normal loot gained from chests, including collectables and such, would be lost as well. However, crafting ingrediants gained from deconstructing items obtained in the refunded pack would be kept.
• The Turbine Points used to purchase this will be reimbursed in full on the price you originally purchased it for.

This seems like the best option for refunding, as it would basically give back anything you did in the adventure pack to the DDO store in exchange for your points. If it is introduced, old adventure packs can be refunded 7 days from the release date regardless if there is a log of what was gained in that particular adventure pack.

Plan B is a rather interesting idea; rather than 'refund' a existing adventure pack, once a year, you may 'exchange' the one adventure pack you would like to swap out for those of equal or lesser value. The rules would work like this:

• No sale prices are allowed whatsoever. There will never be any discounts, the exchange is equal to a full price purchase.
• If you decide to get a adventure pack of greater value, you must pay the difference in full with Turbine Points. The only discount allowed is the original value of the content pack being traded.
• Everything gained in the previous content pack is kept.
• If there is enough Turbine Points remaining after you exchange a content pack, you may use the remaining points to get another content pack; however, it cannot be used for any other purchases, and no matter how many content packs you exchange from the initial pack, you can still only change one; other content packs cannot be combined.
• The remaining points from exchanging a content pack cannot be used for any other DDO-store purchases, and are part of a different pool of Turbine points; these points do not expire.
• If you recently purchased a content pack that was on sale for any % amount, or used a coupon to get a discount on that content pack, you may not swap that content pack for one year.

In theory, this could be a much better way of handing adventure pack refunds, since you basically exchange one adventure pack for one or more of lesser or equal value. They cannot be used to buy any other products in the DDO-store, and the cooldown of exchanging adventure packs is slow enough to help minimize abuse yet remind players to make good choices when purchasing adventure packs and allow them to undo a mistake.

Apart from abuse, and maybe a few legal issues, I can't find much of a reason to limit restrictive refunding or exchanging of content packs. It's a great idea, no doubt, as it allows players to undo a mistake of content pack purchasing and lets them try out new things. But if done wrong, it can cause Turbine to lose a great profit in Turbine Points. It's definately worth something investing in for customer satisfaction and a tiny bit of profit.

[Phidius]

Both plans sound very complicated, and I really don't see any advantage over a simple "Are you sure you want to buy pack [XXXXXXXX]?" prompt?

I'd like the option to buy my own guest pass, though.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

What happens if, in your scenario, that i was vip and got xp and loot. But then i went free to play and got the pack then wanted a refund? How does the system account for that? Not to mention i doubt the system tracks where your xp and renown came from... Your idea has some very large holes in it before i would sign it.

[Grifarr]

Interesting thought and well broken down methods but I can't see Tubine wanting to engaging in this for a number of reasons. I always thought it odd that they didn't have trial passes like guest passes so that people could sample a quest or adventure pack before purchasing without having to find a friend with TP they want to give away.

[madmaxhunter]

What happens if, in your scenario, that i was vip and got xp and loot. But then i went free to play and got the pack then wanted a refund? How does the system account for that? Not to mention i doubt the system tracks where your xp and renown came from... Your idea has some very large holes in it before i would sign it.

This, the servers can't always handle what they need to do now. No need adding to the poor bugger's workload.

[knightgf]

I always thought it odd that they didn't have trial passes like guest passes so that people could sample a quest or adventure pack before purchasing without having to find a friend with TP they want to give away.

I do as well. The irony in this is that I actually won a guest pass in the DDO lottery that I don't have a content pack for and I can't use it on myself. It would be nice if they would let you 'try out' something as well with the guest passes.

[BOgre]

buy any video game from a box store and try to take it back later on. good luck.

[Doomcrew]

What happens when you buy amrath, hit 20 with the xp and TR?
back to 18? what about the true heart?

A logistical bad place. I agree, buying our own guest passes might
be a good idea.

[Fomori]

buy any video game from a box store and try to take it back later on. good luck.

You can when you own a shrink wrapper. That is as long as there are not any other visible seals on the package that you have to break...

In college there was this guy that had one. What he would do was buy a video game system and games to play for a party. Then shrink wrap it and take them back the next day for refunds.

[Uska]

HUGE waste of dev time and pointless if you doubt you will like a pack DONT BUY IT

[Chai]

You are assuming that they have a method in place to see the itemization of xp, renown, and loot gen items, plat, etc, gained from a specific pack.

Also assuming that they have the ability and personel ($$$) in place to remove all itemized assets gained due to giving the refund. How many operators would be needed for this. It will cost money to refund people money, heh. Bad business decision.

The plans you bring up are far more complicated and contain far more loopholes than "all sales are final" - as a business they want to have as few gray areas as possible for the microtransaction aspect. Im not saying this is right or wrong, but it is what they are going for.

This opens the door for people to buy a pack on a trial basis and demand refunds. - it WOULD be cool if they had a 1 day free trial instead of a guest pass for points or some such.

This would also open the door for people who riot during nerf season to mash their refund buttons and try to take their money back due to no longer wanting to support the product on a knee jerk style reaction to whats currently going on.

[Phidius]

You can when you own a shrink wrapper. That is as long as there are not any other visible seals on the package that you have to break...

In college there was this guy that had one. What he would do was buy a video game system and games to play for a party. Then shrink wrap it and take them back the next day for refunds.

And basically, this thread is a request for Turbine to sell shrink wrappers in the DDO store

[Uska]

You can when you own a shrink wrapper. That is as long as there are not any other visible seals on the package that you have to break...

In college there was this guy that had one. What he would do was buy a video game system and games to play for a party. Then shrink wrap it and take them back the next day for refunds.

A lot of shrink wrap I see now defeats that as it has a device or barcode built into it. and they can tell when the original wrap has been broken

[Enoach]

I understand the "All purchases are final" stance that Turbine has issued with the DDO store. Its an unmanned 24-7 store front. They have multiple places through the process that you can abandon the purchase.

I would agree that it would be nice to let people purchase a "Preview" of a pack themselves using their own TP. I would even be on board with it being more restrictive on the time limit. But to keep with marketing it should be cheaper to buy the pack then purchase a "Preview" multiple times...

[Cauthey]

Large expenditure of energy and effort so that unhappy customers can have their money (TPs, really) back? Not likely to happen, nor is it viable. Especially since a refund of TPs is not a refund of cash, and the profits from TP purchase have already been reported.

[knightgf]

So from what I understand, giving players either a refund or exchange is not a good idea because:

• It will cost unnessicary resources to put a system in place.
• It has 'loopholes' in it.

However, the support of 'previewing' the content before buying it with self-use guest passes is a good idea, and I have to agree. Being able to 'try it' before you decide whether or not you want to buy it is a good idea, as it can be a precautionary measure as to whether or not you want to buy system.

I suppose I could understand the fact that implementing a system to refund point purchases would take up too much resources, which would leave the idea of refunding TP 'theoretical'. However, loopholes? That's what I am trying to understand. When it comes to refunding, it can only be 7 days max that you can qualify for one. In fact, maybe its best not to have 7, how about oh...3 days(In which a day only counts if you actually use the content, not just log in.)? The idea of getting your TP back from the refund to use on whatever is intentional. On the other hand, the exchange idea may have loopholes; after all, you can exchange a high value adventure pack for more than one pack, as long as it doesn't exceed the total value exchanged. That on top of the 1-year exchange timer minimizes abuse. There is probably no doubt I am missing something.

While the DDO store may manually change the prices on some items based on promotions, popular demand, as well as new in-game mechanics, it's not a real-life store at all, and thus a few things change.

[Cleanincubus]

Step 1) Wait for Lamannia to come online (as it is right now), transfer a couple characters of various levels.

Step 2) Talk to the NPC below the bridge in the Harbor, get free Lamannia based TP, once a day.

Step 3) "Purchase" every pack you don't have.

Step 4) Play every quest in those adventure packs.

No need for them to waste time on creating a refund or store bought live server adventure pack preview system, rather than spending it on fixing bugs. No need to waste TP on either of those options. Simply download the Lamannia client, transfer characters over, and do steps 1-4.

/thread?

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

Step 1) Wait for Lamannia to come online (as it is right now), transfer a couple characters of various levels.

Step 2) Talk to the NPC below the bridge in the Harbor, get free Lamannia based TP, once a day.

Step 3) "Purchase" every pack you don't have.

Step 4) Play every quest in those adventure packs.

No need for them to waste time on creating a refund or store bought live server adventure pack preview system, rather than spending it on fixing bugs. No need to waste TP on either of those options. Simply download the Lamannia client, transfer characters over, and do steps 1-4.

/thread?

BAM! and the suggestion is gone! I've never used Llamaland so I didn't think of this or I would have mentioned it sooner.

[Nerate_Mireth]

Being able to 'try it' before you decide whether or not you want to buy it is a good idea, as it can be a precautionary measure as to whether or not you want to buy system.

Hello mister grocery store guy....can I try a bite of that steak before I buy it as I don't know if I will like it.

With how EASY it is to get enough TPs (grind out 400 favor on each server on one toon and you have enough to buy MOST of the packs for your server and toon) I doubt you will see a try it before you buy it.

Despite that, yes, let you buy your own guest pass, ok. That they should have done from the start. But obviously they have reasons for that.

[LordKalkin]

These ideas (in the original purpose) server no logical business use.

The first case introduces nothing of value to turbine. Its what a guest pass if for.
Otherwise you make them add processing to "sanitize" your characters of the content you didnt want.

The second case is more of the same. They already give us the ability to buy anything we want
via earned TP, and you want more. Sorry.