Loyalty program

[Nibor]

Playing in-game can earn you TP. Or you can buy TP. Or both.

Sounds like we already have a system to draw in players and keep them playing - I don't think we need to build another complicated reward system on top of it based on TP purchased. Rewards for buying TP are done as bonuses weeks where they have a sale on TP. It's not a reward for buying TP over time but it's a reward for being around at the right time; and if you're around more you're more likely to be around during the sales.

[Musouka]

Playing in-game can earn you TP. Or you can buy TP. Or both.

Sounds like we already have a system to draw in players and keep them playing - I don't think we need to build another complicated reward system on top of it based on TP purchased. Rewards for buying TP are done as bonuses weeks where they have a sale on TP. It's not a reward for buying TP over time but it's a reward for being around at the right time; and if you're around more you're more likely to be around during the sales.

I would say that someone that farms Favor throughout the game is a more loyal player than someone who buys TP.

[Syrrah]

I would say that someone that farms Favor throughout the game is a more loyal player than someone who buys TP.

Why should Turbine reward loyal players? As you say, the favor TP already does that.

A loyalty program usually rewards loyal CUSTOMERS. Exchange of money is key.

[Musouka]

Why should Turbine reward loyal players? As you say, the favor TP already does that.

A loyalty program usually rewards loyal CUSTOMERS. Exchange of money is key.

As you say, the monthly stipend already does this, and so do Bonus points that are better the higher the tier you purchase for TP.

[arkonas]

^This. Exactly this. We do not need more things to divide the player base. I do not mind people being rewarded for being VIP, but any sort of reward program outside of bonus points for larger purchased points packages(like they do every once in a while) is just not a good idea.

but honestly its a great idea. you can think it will split people up but it doesnt. It worked great on rift. It rewards the people who have been vips for years or people dropping money into the game for others to enjoy or so start new. it helps both customers and turbine. You give someone a reason to spend money on the game they will. give them more money maybe they can keep people from getting laid off like in october last year.

[arkonas]

As you say, the monthly stipend already does this, and so do Bonus points that are better the higher the tier you purchase for TP.

but the thing is to some that isnt enough to keep them spending at all. some people only buy points when things are on sale or they ran out. Other then that most just keep their money in their pockets or pay the basic cost per month. Also people who farm favor tp is not the same as someone paying for them to do it. favor farming does nothing for the game to grow. giving turbine $ does. So before some of you think you know what your talking about go check out other games that have reward programs like what i mentioned. you will see not one person is complaining about it. this would be free or easily attained by people who will pay monthly or always buys points. its not like this would just vanish.

anyone could earn it. there is no specialty. So please before you start bashing the idea think about it more. go view other games that provide what im talking about. it feels nice to get something after you have been good to the game or you chose to give them cash for like a year worth of service.


Also think about this. the game is changing as we speak things will evolve so will the need to bring or keep people in. MOTU made people leave the game as well as bring new clients/old clients in. Eventually the game will add new stuff like Astral shards. Who says there won't be something new coming out like it? Another system. i played another game that had 9 levels of vip longer you paid you got more benefits and you got weekly gifts from them. every day you checked in you would get yourself closer to a nice bundle. im just saying the game can reward you, but you have to be willing to support them to make a change like that. So this is why i wanted turbine to think of doing something like this.

[psykopeta]

what does loyal mean?

spending money every month? doesn't that mean that you have the disposal?
playing 25 hours everyday? doesn't that mean that you don't have life?
and what happened with forumites? isn't forum a way of loyalty? because you can wait 35 years til someone answers your questions "because its a noobish question" or things like that, you see 2423423 visits and 0 answers poor guy U_U

when i think about loyalty, the first that comes to my mind is a dog, really
and why should turbine spend time and effort with that when half of things out there don't work? to focus on getting more money? that would bring troubles, big ones, to the community

just can imagine the posts "so we have been XXXX time asking for you to change the seals/shards in LOD chain(example)" and nothing, but when it's a way to get more money, turbine does it w/o thinking

exoddus, only because you want more tp(useless for vips, since they can't buy packs or things already included in vip) to buy dunno why, tomes i guess

thats another great point rofl "loyalty program" to get more money, but when a vip wants to leave being it will have to wait XXX to recover character slots and adventure packs, if you think about it, vip is the biggest loyalty program you can find in rift (interesting, so you BUY the game, and you have a loyalty program if you pay more, seems turbine has a ton of things to learn about brainwashing, hey its players come with that suggestions as it were good lol) because once you leave being vip you are raped against the wall

bad ideas for bad games pls, turbine can't afford messing more the game, i would like to see the current login numbers in all servers, pretty sure less than 10k lol

[squishwizzy]

i know i have talked about Rift before, but when i was playing it the other day i noticed something they did. They have a loyalty program. Now it works for both company and player. each mark you hit you got rewarded for hitting that mark so 1 month 2 month third month 6th 12 18 24 30 36 months. Each time you hit each one you got some type of reward for being loyal to the game or paying for that much time.


So it got me to thinking Turbine what happens if you were to get a loyalty program like Rift whether they can earn it or pay for it to get it all for each mark. It gives more to the customers and it pays your bills at the same time. im not saying this is a perfect idea but with some work it would bring in new customers and keep old ones happy if it was worked out correctly. im ok if someone payed 2 years for a subscription or if they are paying as they go. either way you have money coming in from those people. But if you were say to reward them through whatever in game maybe it might make people buy more turbine points or become vip.

now if it was to be done i would say the marks would be like 1 month/500 tp (points bought would add up in totals to count for other marks once you hit it) for premium players. etc. Set marks like that. so more vip bought more they got. more premium paid in more they earned from the perks. it keeps both sides happy. only people who would not get anything would be f2p since money is sadly what keeps this game going. So maybe as a community this idea could work.

so something like this 1 month/buy 500 tp
1x lesser xp elixir
1x hair dye
1x siberys cake

2 months/ 1k

2x lesser xp elixir
2x hair dye
2 siberys cake
1x mummy tonic

im just throwing out numbers and items no real balance either. its just an idea to expand is why i wanted to give ideas. these of course would be per account and one time bonuses.

i would post what i found on their site but i dont want to advertise for that game. my point is i liked what they did and just wanted ddo to do something similar to support their customers and customers get something worth it for paying for a game they love whether they have been playing for 6 years or 2 months. spend $20 or $1k

Turbine already has a loyalty program. It is called "VIP."

To start out, I just want to clarify that I'm not slamming VIPs, F2P people, or Premium accounts. I'm just pointing out how Turbine's current business model works, and what the pitfalls are with these three account types.

Incentives are used to encourage a defined behavior. A loyalty program is little more than an incentive.

Loyalty programs are used to encourage repeat business. They really only work after a customer shells out monet for a product over, and over again. The point of the program is to KEEP them shelling out monet for that same product by making them feel special in one form or another.

The more people who play DDO, the more resources they consume that the compeny has to pay for. This inclues bandwidth, power for the servers, maintenance, and so on. Every time you play DDO, that costs Turbine money in one form or another.

Since F2P accounts play without paying anything, the last thing you want to do is to provide incentives to continue that behavior. That would eventually bleed Turbine dry. F2P is a "loss leader," which is simular to providing trial versions of software. People get a feel for the product by going F2P, and if they want the goodies they pay for them.

Premium accounts are a little trickier. Say you go premium, and you pay $300.00 up front to play the game. If you pay nothing more into the game, eventually you'll eventually go from being profit for the company and turn into a loss. So, if you want to incentivize premium players, you have to keep them paying money each and every month to a) cover your costs, and b) pull a profit. Because of Turbine doesn't pull profit, you can forget growth, and thereby expansion of the game. This is just a fact of life.

VIP is really easy to quantify and monitor. You pat a subscription each month. The amount they pay should (ideally) cover the costs of their use, and provide a profit to the company. Whether a VIP player plays every day of the month, or never their costs are covered and then some. Their loyalty program? It is call free access to all content. All new content is their incentive to keep paying every month. So technically, their loyalty program is built-in to the account.

(Which is why I pitch a fit over the MotU expansion being witheld from VIP accounts - it undermines the incentive to be a VIP).

The only reasonable way that Turbine would be able to provide a loyalty program for F2P and Premium models, and be consistent is if Turbine changed its business model such that they somehow make money over constant activity on their servers. The only real way to do that would be to start advertising in the game. They would then incentivize people to get connected more often, and stay connected longer so that they could take those activity numbers and use them to sell advertising space on their product.

So, the reality is that VIP is kinda their "loyalty" program. Otherwise, they'd have to change their current business models.

[arkonas]

what does loyal mean?

spending money every month? doesn't that mean that you have the disposal?
playing 25 hours everyday? doesn't that mean that you don't have life?
and what happened with forumites? isn't forum a way of loyalty? because you can wait 35 years til someone answers your questions "because its a noobish question" or things like that, you see 2423423 visits and 0 answers poor guy U_U

when i think about loyalty, the first that comes to my mind is a dog, really
and why should turbine spend time and effort with that when half of things out there don't work? to focus on getting more money? that would bring troubles, big ones, to the community

just can imagine the posts "so we have been XXXX time asking for you to change the seals/shards in LOD chain(example)" and nothing, but when it's a way to get more money, turbine does it w/o thinking

exoddus, only because you want more tp(useless for vips, since they can't buy packs or things already included in vip) to buy dunno why, tomes i guess

thats another great point rofl "loyalty program" to get more money, but when a vip wants to leave being it will have to wait XXX to recover character slots and adventure packs, if you think about it, vip is the biggest loyalty program you can find in rift (interesting, so you BUY the game, and you have a loyalty program if you pay more, seems turbine has a ton of things to learn about brainwashing, hey its players come with that suggestions as it were good lol) because once you leave being vip you are raped against the wall

bad ideas for bad games pls, turbine can't afford messing more the game, i would like to see the current login numbers in all servers, pretty sure less than 10k lol

in rift they dont call it a loyalty program either. Veteran Reward program. Its very successful so that really shuts your thought down. They download the game like ddo from the site. what makes them different from DDO is their f2p is limited and that's it. You want to really play you need to pay the monthly fee. so compare to DDO its vip. So far its the same. mmmm. So they have 2 versions of the game like DDO Motu. Ok that is fine. they have a refer a friend like us. Ok so the same. DDO vip gets perks. Rift doesnt. They added the Reward program and people loved it. People would love it here too why because they could actually get something worth it if DDO does it right.

So i fail to see your opinion really being worth it. Also just so you and everyone else can understand. You already PAY to play this game if your vip or pay yearly blah blah. Premium will always buy points no matter what. So what is the issue adding a system to reward those people like what Rift did? this could bring in more people actually. which means turbine will have more money to get people to work on the game i would hope.

So im sorry but until i actually see you give a really good reason i will keep pushing this because it made Rift work it can work for DDO as well.

Coming to the forums or farming in the game provide no money to the game. So please try to actually give a good comparison. I want this game to stay f2p. I want to see this game expand and improve. I want the customers to feel that when they pay money to this game its worth it. you want this game to survive you have to support it.

[arkonas]

Turbine already has a loyalty program. It is called "VIP."

To start out, I just want to clarify that I'm not slamming VIPs, F2P people, or Premium accounts. I'm just pointing out how Turbine's current business model works, and what the pitfalls are with these three account types.

Incentives are used to encourage a defined behavior. A loyalty program is little more than an incentive.

Loyalty programs are used to encourage repeat business. They really only work after a customer shells out monet for a product over, and over again. The point of the program is to KEEP them shelling out monet for that same product by making them feel special in one form or another.

The more people who play DDO, the more resources they consume that the compeny has to pay for. This inclues bandwidth, power for the servers, maintenance, and so on. Every time you play DDO, that costs Turbine money in one form or another.

Since F2P accounts play without paying anything, the last thing you want to do is to provide incentives to continue that behavior. That would eventually bleed Turbine dry. F2P is a "loss leader," which is simular to providing trial versions of software. People get a feel for the product by going F2P, and if they want the goodies they pay for them.

Premium accounts are a little trickier. Say you go premium, and you pay $300.00 up front to play the game. If you pay nothing more into the game, eventually you'll eventually go from being profit for the company and turn into a loss. So, if you want to incentivize premium players, you have to keep them paying money each and every month to a) cover your costs, and b) pull a profit. Because of Turbine doesn't pull profit, you can forget growth, and thereby expansion of the game. This is just a fact of life.

VIP is really easy to quantify and monitor. You pat a subscription each month. The amount they pay should (ideally) cover the costs of their use, and provide a profit to the company. Whether a VIP player plays every day of the month, or never their costs are covered and then some. Their loyalty program? It is call free access to all content. All new content is their incentive to keep paying every month. So technically, their loyalty program is built-in to the account.

(Which is why I pitch a fit over the MotU expansion being witheld from VIP accounts - it undermines the incentive to be a VIP).

The only reasonable way that Turbine would be able to provide a loyalty program for F2P and Premium models, and be consistent is if Turbine changed its business model such that they somehow make money over constant activity on their servers. The only real way to do that would be to start advertising in the game. They would then incentivize people to get connected more often, and stay connected longer so that they could take those activity numbers and use them to sell advertising space on their product.

So, the reality is that VIP is kinda their "loyalty" program. Otherwise, they'd have to change their current business models.

im sorry but i dont agree with that. so in rift they would be "vip" since they own everything anyways and are rewarded with various things. So its the same as Vip in DDO. Vip is exactly monthly subscription like any other game. What makes DDO stand out from other games is its f2p and Premium have a chance to pay to own it not rent the game. f2p allows for players to play the game all the way to cap tr unlock everything freely.

f2p doesnt pay for anything. premium and vip is what supports the game. so like i responded to the other poster above. I gave my reasons about rift and ddo. DDO could in fact earn more business this way. This could bring in new clients as well as old ones. So please until i see a valid argument i will continue to point to my post above which compares the 2 games. I always added premium to the fight because they also add $ to the game. So since their system would be based on points bought.

[Musouka]

So im sorry but until i actually see you give a really good reason i will keep pushing this because it made Rift work it can work for DDO as well.

Refusing to acknowledge other people's arguments does nothing but diminish your presence for your cause. You have yet to give a good response to "I pay more than you, so I deserve more than you." It will just add more separation between players, and be a root cause of more elitism. Yet you seem refuse to consider that, and just ignore it.

Rift and DDO are two different games. This game is not Rift. Rift's F2P has a blockwall once you hit a certain point, then you can go no further. To really play the game, you need to pay for it. DDO's F2P has a wall, but at least gives you a hammer to chip at it until it falls.

[Uska]

First, what is an antidecay kit and what does it do? The more I learn about SWG, the less I like.

Second, I'm VIP and I love the boost to non-quest running speed! Opening any diff is nice, too, but any 3rd TR can do that. The 500 TP per month is nice. I find that my favor tops it off to actually make favor farming worthwhile. And, I guess, all the quests. I'm kind of stupid, though. I thought I was going to go premium about a year ago and bought all the quest packs at that time. Then they came up with a deal on VIP, so I bought that...then we had to buy the expansion pack with cash...and...sooooooo I didn't really feel super Vip at that point.

But, yeah, here I am and I love the game

Apologies for the rambling nonsense.

There were certain rare items some looted some built that added some power to your character they would decay or become damaged over time antidecay kits prevented this you got one as a reward for playing so long but some people sold theirs and you had some people who's gear would never go away there was more to it but its been so long that I forget some of it but they were a bad idea.

[Zonixx]

For Turbine (and any company I would imagine) this "Loyalty" = $

[arkonas]

Refusing to acknowledge other people's arguments does nothing but diminish your presence for your cause. You have yet to give a good response to "I pay more than you, so I deserve more than you." It will just add more separation between players, and be a root cause of more elitism. Yet you seem refuse to consider that, and just ignore it.

Rift and DDO are two different games. This game is not Rift. Rift's F2P has a blockwall once you hit a certain point, then you can go no further. To really play the game, you need to pay for it. DDO's F2P has a wall, but at least gives you a hammer to chip at it until it falls.

when i said i refused to agree with their point is because it meant nothing. it had nothing with doing anything about being elite. When they tried to compare the 2 games there was no actually comparison. I understand Rift is another game and their f2p is limited. Remember that doesnt pay their bills either. Actually yeah i dont see why people paying more don't deserve more. Why not? shouldnt there be a reason why they should pay for a game?

When i first started DDO i was a f2p player. I came in with a friend from another game just looking around because of the DnD nature to the game. I loved it so i went vip for a while. Eventually i dropped vip for premium and have been ever since. I never regretted one choice i ever made. I continue to buy points and pay for the game as i see fit.

Then i started Rift as well while owning DDO. I paid what you could consider their vip since there is really only one way to pay. there is no premium or favor unlocking. So you either pay or don't play the game. I liked the game then took a long break. Still played ddo to this day and wont ever stop. So i went back to Rift when i heard about their expansion and found this Veteran Rewards thing they started. It was retroactive to the time i put in. I actually thought that was the coolest thing. They supported their customers by giving them gifts for the time they paid for.

So then the idea came to me. I love DDO hence the reason i own every single thing. So if the Veteran Rewards worked for Rift. Why couldn't DDO apply a similar idea to their customers both vip and premium since both support the $ that keep this game a float. Some of you just dont get it and think bigger picture that is fine. But to marketing, this is a wonderful idea. if they did start this who says some of those f2p players who thought vip wasnt enough or didnt see a reason to buy points this was the reason to start.

so my point is dont try to tell me its a stupid idea when i know it works because Rift is NOT the only game with this idea. there are other ones out there with this. So until i see those games die its a good idea.

[arkonas]

For Turbine (and any company I would imagine) this "Loyalty" = $

Exactly they are a business and $ is what makes this game exist for all to play. I just don't understand why some people are getting bent out of shape for incentives for paying for a game they love. Omg i get free stuff for paying for something i already do. NO NO that is evil. Such a bad idea. That would just make um um things worse yeah that's it. yeah i dont want more free stuff for paying vip for the last 3 years. Yeah i dont want more. Premium have nothing so its just a huge bonus for them to hit certain point marks.

to a new person or returning player- ooo i could earn this if i hit this mark or paid this amount of money. I like that sign me up.


yeah that is just such a horrid idea. free stuff for your support equals bad. gotcha. that is what im hearing from some of the players not agreeing with me. I only gave an idea. Marketing would be the one to actually work the details/rewards out.

[Musouka]

So until i see those games die its a good idea.

Well DDO is not dieing, so why does DDO need it? Seriously, why fix something that isn't broken?

You still have yet to consider a solution to the "I pay more than you, so I deserve more than you."

I just want to know how you would counter that way of thinking.

SWTOR went F2P, and they did something for 'loyalty.' Well a Subscriber would get a stipend each month to spend in their cash shop. Wow, that was a great way to give back to those who continue paying for the game. They also did a retroactive stipend of cash shop coins for all of the months you had paid for, and even a bonus for buying the game. Wow, great way to start rewarding for the loyalty, by giving a monthly allotment of cash shop coins and a bonus. This is what VIP does here. That is like what was brought up before by squishwizzy. VIP is the "loyalty" program.