Bravery bonus and F2P/Premium

[Dandonk]

People readily forget that Turbine is running a business, not a charity. F2P is only an entry point. I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with this model. It promotes purchasing a feature of the game that is not required at all.

Yes, F2P is only an entrry point. But premium are paying customers, too.

I'm premium, and I'll survive without the new bonuses, but I think it's fair to remember that premium players are customers, too.

[grodon9999]

Yes, F2P is only an entrry point. But premium are paying customers, too.

I'm premium, and I'll survive without the new bonuses, but I think it's fair to remember that premium players are customers, too.

perhaps sell a cheap "6 hour opens on elite Elixir"

[Dandonk]

perhaps sell a cheap "6 hour opens on elite Elixir"

Sure, or keep it as it is proposed now. I'm not really fussed about this - I just wanted to counter the feeling I got that some posters don't think premium should be counted as customers. We are.
If Turbine wants another perk for VIPs, fine - as I said, I'll survive just fine. It's still more xp with the new bonuses, eve if I might not always find direct elite openers.

[Zharfie]

Do note that not everyone *can* get VIP subscription even if they wanted to... my credit card won't work with turbine for some reason, and they won't allow paying with paypal which is just ridiculous.

(NOT AN AMERICAN)

[darksol23]

I call Bait and Switch.


It's like this:

Your cable company comes to you and says, "For all the channels it's $50 a month. For just the channels you want, you can pay us $500 for the year."

You decide to pay the $500 for the year.

Then, 3 months later, the company adds a single new channel. You want that channel. So the Cable Company says, "Sure, you can have that channel if you pay us $50 a month to get all the channels."

They say this as if the $500 you've put into their service has no value.

And to make things worse, the customer service rep tells you, "Well, if you want to pay $5 for 1 hour of viewing the channel you want (buying the Elite Unlock from the DDO store), we can do that."

I'd leave a cable company that did that to me.

And I think most of you would, too.

+1

This is exactly how I'm feeling right now... I really hope they reconsider how they've implemented this.

EDIT: To make this clear, I understood when I went premium I'd have to buy future content (classes/races/packs etc). I did not expect to be excluded from new game mechanics.

[Calebro]

+1

This is exactly how I'm feeling right now... I really hope they reconsider how they've implemented this.

Except that it isn't bait and switch at all....

[MartinusWyllt]

+1

This is exactly how I'm feeling right now... I really hope they reconsider how they've implemented this.

EDIT: To make this clear, I understood when I went premium I'd have to buy future content (classes/races/packs etc). I did not expect to be excluded from new game mechanics.

You're not excluded, you just need someone else to help you use this game mechanic....have a guild or subscriber friends and you're getting the exact same experience....AND you already knew you couldn't open on hard or elite and found that acceptable.

[Truga]

+1

This is exactly how I'm feeling right now... I really hope they reconsider how they've implemented this.

EDIT: To make this clear, I understood when I went premium I'd have to buy future content (classes/races/packs etc). I did not expect to be excluded from new game mechanics.

Hahaha oh wow, this thread.

Ok here's the deal: I'm premium, I have no agenda here against myself and definitely I don't favour VIPs as a premium players.

There's plenty people around that can open hard/elite. I have a wizard dude that can open any quest in the game, minus a couple really annoying ones on elite. If a guildie wants to run something on elite, all they have to do is ask, and they can. VIP has nothing to do with it. All VIP is in this case is convenience of not having to ask someone to open it for you. Nothing more nothing less.

Therefore, I think VIP should keep their perk of having the ability to open E/H off the bat, and premiums not.

[Calebro]

You're not excluded, you just need someone else to help you use this game mechanic....have a guild or subscriber friends and you're getting the exact same experience....AND you already knew you couldn't open on hard or elite and found that acceptable.

But some people are excluded.
You don't seem to be considering that many people which would otherwise be taking advantage of this new feature will not be able to because they're running solo.

Maybe you don't have a second account to open it yourself. Maybe no one from your guild is online. Maybe no one within your guild is of the proper level to run with you. Maybe no one from your guild wants the inconvenience of joining your groups every few minutes to allow you to enter a quest. Maybe you have no idea if any of your friends are within your level range because the Friends List panel shows total character level due to TR'ing rather than true character level. Maybe you don't want to pug it because it's faster and more efficient to solo it. Maybe you just like to solo.

Not being able to take advantage of a game feature = being excluded. So Premium soloists are certainly excluded, and to claim otherwise is absurd.
F2P should be able to open normal.
Premium should be able to open hard.
VIP should be able to open elite.

[Truga]

But some people are excluded.
You don't seem to be considering that many people which would otherwise be taking advantage of this new feature will not be able to because they're running solo.

Maybe you don't have a second account to open it yourself. Maybe no one from your guild is online. Maybe no one within your guild is of the proper level to run with you. Maybe no one from your guild wants the inconvenience of joining your groups every few minutes to allow you to enter a quest. Maybe you have no idea if any of your friends are within your level range because the Friends List panel shows total character level due to TR'ing rather than true character level. Maybe you don't want to pug it because it's faster and more efficient to solo it. Maybe you just like to solo.

Not being able to take advantage of a game feature = being excluded.
F2P should be able to open normal.
Premium should be able to open hard.
VIP should be able to open elite.

No. Again, this is merely a convenience, and VIPs deserve it. Solo or not, you can always put up a LFM saying "need someone to open this on elite for me". I join such groups often, wait for the person to enter dungeon and drop it. It costs me nothing while I'm running quest <-> quest, and it helps other people out.

[Calebro]

No. Again, this is merely a convenience, and VIPs deserve it. Solo or not, you can always put up a LFM saying "need someone to open this on elite for me". I join such groups often, wait for the person to enter dungeon and drop it. It costs me nothing while I'm running quest <-> quest, and it helps other people out.

You can attempt to justify it any way that you want to, but you're simply wrong.
Premium soloists are excluded. There is nothing else to say on the matter.

[Uska]

All these analogies are making my head spin...

Just to be clear, your claim is that you're acting like a 5 year old?



Seriously, though, are you saying that all ViPs get over premium is the ability to open on Hard/Elite? You guys are way overpaying.

Well we get a little more 500 tp early access to new packs(not very early) ummm monks,warforged and I think artificers bit more but we could use some love and no its not good to give away or sell our elite opening ability

[Uska]

No. Again, this is merely a convenience, and VIPs deserve it. Solo or not, you can always put up a LFM saying "need someone to open this on elite for me". I join such groups often, wait for the person to enter dungeon and drop it. It costs me nothing while I'm running quest <-> quest, and it helps other people out.

I do this to sometimes

[MartinusWyllt]

...
Not being able to take advantage of a game feature = being excluded. So Premium soloists are certainly excluded...

True, not everyone can have their cake and eat it, too.

This is a bonus you can't always have because of your chosen payment method/playstyle.

So?

Is anything being taken from you that you currently have?

[Truga]

You can attempt to justify it any way that you want to, but you're simply wrong.
Premium soloists are excluded. There is nothing else to say on the matter.

I solo a lot. I'm excluded from A WHOLE LOT OF THINGS while solo, and opening elite off the bat is the least of my concerns when I'm solo.

Look, I don't really care if you think I'm right or wrong, fact is VIPs need some kind of a bonus. This might be the bonus they need, and I might even subscribe if I ever bother running for completionist, if there's this bravery bonus. It's a nice convenience, worth the 10 bucks/mo. Everything else VIPs get is just worthless fluff, seeing how you can get the entire game for 50 bucks plus some patience and waiting for the cheapo sales.

[Gabriel_Black]

Firstly, everyone is looking at this under the current model. After this goes into effect, there will be PLENTY of elite/hard LFMs up. Just join one, finish it then repeat it solo as often as you want.

I'll be interested to see how this will affect more difficult quests. As of now it's pretty common for quests like The Shroud or VoD to be run on normal. With people not wanting to break their streak, there will be a higher demand for these more challenging quests to be run on hard/elite.

[phum]

You can attempt to justify it any way that you want to, but you're simply wrong.
Premium soloists are excluded. There is nothing else to say on the matter.

Except what Phidius said on page 2..

the subscription-model was an alleged failure, so it doesn't make sense to cater to them at the perceived cost to the new F2P crowd.

[Calebro]

Is anything being taken from you that you currently have?

No, but there's about to be something that I'll be excluded from in comparison to everyone else. Namely, a bunch of XP.
Would you like it if your account never added a first time completion bonus whenever you played solo?
This is essentially what will happen to soloists. They'll lose XP that everyone else has access to, simply because they're playing solo.
This is a bad way to implement a proposed bonus.

I solo a lot. I'm excluded from A WHOLE LOT OF THINGS while solo, and opening elite off the bat is the least of my concerns when I'm solo.

I don't care about opening elite. I care about not having access to XP that other players have access to.

This is specifically why I said that premium should be able to open hard, leaving the opening of elite for VIPs.
This gives soloists access to some of that extra XP, while keeping the juicy bits for subscribers.
As it stands, this is only available to solists if they subscribe, even though many premium players actually spend more money than VIPs do. There's a problem somewhere in there that you seem to be missing.

[darksol23]

You're not excluded, you just need someone else to help you use this game mechanic....have a guild or subscriber friends and you're getting the exact same experience....AND you already knew you couldn't open on hard or elite and found that acceptable.

BUT at the time people decided to go VIP or premium there was not a significant game mechanic that favored having access to hard/elite. Heck, at the time I went premium, VIPs didn't have access to elite either.

Having a "pocket VIP" is not going to be a viable solution for most players. I'm in a large guild and I can only imagine every 5 minutes in guild chat seeing "Hey can a VIP group with me so I can open elite, I don't want to loose my bravery bonus." *puke* While it's quite obvious the outspoken majority of the forum may be VIPs in favor of this change and want to feel some return for their paid subscription, I'd wager that the vast majority of players both in numbers and revenue are premium. I really hope turbine doesn't screw over the population that brought this game back to life (yeah I was here for the "dark ages"). Personally, even if they don't make a change it won't affect me much, I have a second account opener, but most people do not.

I'm guessing this change was implemented to help TR's; hopefully, without wanting to ignite a premium/VIP holy war. In that case I'd offer the following suggestions:

1) Someone else has suggested give TR's access to hard and maybe TRx2+'s to open elite, although I'd expect a similar thread from angry VIPs if this was done.
2) Lower the price of elite unlocks in the store to something reasonable. Approx $1 (they are 95 TP if IIRC) for a single use quest unlock is no where near reasonable. Especially not for a mechanic that was designed for people the run 100's of quests a month.
3) Sell a permanent elite unlock in the store. I understand turbine is a business and has to make money, and I certainly cough up my share and will continue to do so to support the game. Sell an account unlock or even single toon unlock for 2K TP or 4K TP, as long as its permanent and persists through TRs.

[Truga]

I don't care about opening elite.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to just open elites, or even hard, on my premium account, but what's left for vips then? Couple days earlier access to content? Hah!

I guess reaching 3500 favour could have the effect of letting you open hard on that character in subsequent lives...