Bravery bonus and F2P/Premium

[BOgre]

Actually, if I cancel my subscription I get downgraded from VIP to Premium. Ehem. Premium is second tier, and F2P third.

You could look at it that way, or you could see it as, when you paid your first month of sub, you became Premium, as we all did when we paid any amount for the first time. During the course of your sub you were granted access to everything, and when you cancelled that, you lost access, but retained your Premium status. Not a DOWNgrade, just a move. It's this UP/DOWN idea that seems to be fostering the elitist attitude of certain VIPs.

[Lobster5]

I'm inclined to agree. VIP accounts thinking that they deserve special treatment just because of their style of payment is disappointing.

I think you know this isn't what I meant

Any premium player who is paying MORE than they would via VIP is doing it wrong.

[Dandonk]

I'll open Elite for you Dan. (Let's just not tell anyone that we'll both die in there... again and again and again )

Suicide is painless...

or so they claim

[pocki666]

just out of curiosity, how much is a single charge of "open hard/elite" in terms of dollars?

[theboatman]

just out of curiosity, how much is a single charge of "open hard/elite" in terms of dollars?

65 turbine points for hard. 95 turbine points for elite. In terms of real life currency, it depends on how many tp's you get per unit.

[Mercules]

yet its simple facts the past shows it hungh LMAO

@ALL those sayin we premium are crying its nt such thing we are just providing the mirror to some of the VIPS arrogant pedestal like mentality of im the one keeping the game running , garbage stop being vip the whole lots of you and i am sure ddo will survive LMFAO you all just need to get yourselves out of ddo and look at other games XD

vip keeping the game goin for us poor premium shenanigans i say!

personally i dont care if vip i gets it im just really tired of the arrogant elitist attitude of some vips, get over yourselves already

Care to add up our purchases? I think you will see I have put more money into this game than yourself.

I don't just pay $9.99 a month but I also purchase extra bank slots for the majority of my 21 characters. Speaking of which have you unlocked 11 character slots above and beyond your free ones? The monk in my signature has 2 different armors with appearance kits applied and that is just one character I have many more with appearance kits. Most of my UMD characters have Bunny Hats and I've bought other hats for other characters just for fun. I've purchased the full shared bank slot ammount, countless SP potions, XP potions, TR, LR, and frequent convenience items like Teleportation wands. I purchased Favored Soul when it first came out, since I had re-rolled my highest favor character just before and didn't want to grind all the way up. I purchased 32 point build so I could have it on alternate servers.

While some of this has come from the points I gain each month I would say most of that gets spent on consumable items and the real meat and potato items come from TPs I have purchased.

Add that into subscription costs since the game started...

Now, I am not even overboard on my purchases. A close friend of mine has been known to drop $50 on TPs just because. He is VIP.


Premium players didn't save DDO. F2P didn't save DDO. Micro-transactions saved DDO and VIP players are part of that Micro-transaction process in addition to their monthly fees.

Look, you seem to be able to -almost- put together an actual sentence, so I suppose you might be intelligent enough to get it. I spend a ton in micro-transactions and I pay a fee to get something you don't. Want what I have? Pay the same.

[BOgre]

Oh? I never saw a hard unlock in the store, and I thought I'd browsed everything. Well, color me corrected

[Isolani]

I'm inclined to agree. VIP accounts thinking that they deserve special treatment just because of their style of payment is disappointing.

Wasn't that the whole point of staying VIP instead of going premium?

[BOgre]

Wasn't that the whole point of staying VIP instead of going premium?

No, to me the point of VIP is to play the whole game unrestricted for only as long as you subscribe, 1 month, 3 months, whatever. Stop paying, loose access. Renting.
Versus Premium, where you buy the parts of the game you want to play, and keep them forever.
Perks should not enter into it.

[Lobster5]

No, to me the point of VIP is to play the whole game unrestricted for only as long as you subscribe, 1 month, 3 months, whatever. Stop paying, loose access. Renting.
Versus Premium, where you buy the parts of the game you want to play, and keep them forever.
Perks should not enter into it.

I could do a lengthy piece here on the decisions of rational agents in a known market, but that would take too long.

So the shorthand is that perks do enter into because that is the model Turbine have applied. So there.

[Jandric]

I'm having a hard time understanding the viewpoint of the players that think they're getting screwed. Everyone is getting something they didn't have before (better 1st time bonuses on hard/elite). If you're VIP or get an elite opener you can also get the bravery bonus. This reminds me of kids squabbling at Christmas because their little brother got a GI Joe with *TWO* guns, and his only had one.

Everyone just got something for free. Non VIP's can still get the extra perk by putting in a little extra work- which is pretty much in the the same spirit as before.

[Hokiewa]

I'm inclined to agree. VIP accounts thinking that they deserve special treatment just because of their style of payment is disappointing.

You didn't get it.

[gloopygloop]

You didn't get it.

No, I got it.

[Razcar]

It also suggests that previously the pricing point may have been wrong, which is why all the smug premiums (myself included) are having to reconsider.

Yeah. Previously a VIP was either a sucker, lazy or a rich bastard (I'm unfortunately only a lazy bastardly sucker myself). With this change there's now the added excuse of being an "xp-strumpet" (as they were known in medevial times) as well. And that's cool.

[BOgre]

I could do a lengthy piece here on the decisions of rational agents in a known market, but that would take too long.

So the shorthand is that perks do enter into because that is the model Turbine have applied. So there.

Well, it's tough to predict the actions of rational agents at the best of times, when the agents are human. And since this particular known market is subject to the secrecy of its developers, AND since the conditions and benefits of the decisions aren't static, any discussion in that vein would be so far into the theoretical as to be completely useless. Suffice it to say that based on the information provided at signup, we're making the best decisions we can, and our reasonable expectation is for equity of service. Changing the rules midstride is what's caused this uproar, and it won't go away until a DDO rep of some sort chimes in with an official statement.

[Calebro]

No, to me the point of VIP is to play the whole game unrestricted for only as long as you subscribe, 1 month, 3 months, whatever. Stop paying, loose access. Renting.
Versus Premium, where you buy the parts of the game you want to play, and keep them forever.
Perks should not enter into it.

No, but basic game mechanics such as how XP is acquired certainly should enter into it.

[pocki666]

65 turbine points for hard. 95 turbine points for elite. In terms of real life currency, it depends on how many tp's you get per unit.

so at 100 TP/$ (5k points for 49.99$) i'd be spending 95 cents for an elite unlock and 65 for a hard unlock? while it doesn't matter to me all that much (when i TR i'll TR with my GF and she's VIP, cause subscription fits her better than premium), it's priced quite steep from that point of view.

while a lot of people say "d3 is pay to win", i can't really see the difference between ddo-vip and d3 in regards to this specific XP change. don't get me wrong, i like the idea of making TR possibly faster and harder at the same time, but the exlusiveness of it, since only vip can make sure to have the bonus all the time, without paying or bothering someone else for unlocks, it's got that "pay to win charme".

i really don't see why leveling in general, TR or not, should be made faster and more challenging for VIPs only. the previous hard/elite unlock had just a slight impact on leveling speed, and i've never felt like i missed it as a premium player. these bonus xp however i will want to have while leveling as much as possible.

[BOgre]

No, but basic game mechanics such as how XP is acquired certainly should enter into it.

Couldn't agree more.

[Mercules]

Well, it's tough to predict the actions of rational agents at the best of times, when the agents are human. And since this particular known market is subject to the secrecy of its developers, AND since the conditions and benefits of the decisions aren't static, any discussion in that vein would be so far into the theoretical as to be completely useless. Suffice it to say that based on the information provided at signup, we're making the best decisions we can, and our reasonable expectation is for equity of service. Changing the rules midstride is what's caused this uproar, and it won't go away until a DDO rep of some sort chimes in with an official statement.

They didn't change the rules though. They have always stated that VIP players will have access to things Premium and F2P players do not. The ability to open quests on Elite is one of them and has been for a while. This has been a feature of being a VIP player that Premium players did not get.

You gambled on Turbine never making VIP worthwhile and lost the bet. Others decided that sooner or later Turbine would add an incentive to VIP.

[Uska]

Then forget the analogy and just look at the raw numbers.

How much does it cost to buy all content even at 20% off and assuming a PAX point deal?
How much does it cost to buy 6 months of VIP access?

I'll give you a hint: VIP is cheaper.



If you're going to stay in the home for 20 years, then you're still better off owning for those 20 years than renting for those 20 years - even if you bought your home in August of 2008.

The same thing is true for stocks. Check out the 30 year return on investment for the DJIA starting on October 28, 1929. $381.17 on October 28, 1929 (the day before the great crash) turned into 679.36 on December 31, 1959. Owning makes sense in the long term.

The thing about most MMO players, though, is that they won't be playing DDO 20 or 30 years from now. I suppose it's possible that they'll be playing DDO2 (or DDO 12, perhaps), but those will be different games where players will have to invest in entirely new Premium accounts for each incarnation of the game. If Everquest had a Premium option, you can be sure that they wouldn't have carried over the same account options to Everquest 2 (or at least they wouldn't have done so for free. ) VIP really does make better financial sense for most DDO players. That's why Turbine wants most players to sign on as Premium players.

over five years subscribing I am sure I have spent more than most premium players and for our first 2 years it was 14.95 or so a month then I took special price plus spent money in store so maybe 800.00 or more and I am not the only one plus I preorder the best editon out so another 60