Remove ingame reincarnation vendors and reduce the pricing for reincarnation

[Forzah]

I believe the problem Turbine faces is the following: TR'ing is extremely popular but it is hardly profitable for Turbine. The reason for this is threefold. First, it is relatively easy to obtain TR hearts for free ingame by running a series of epic quests. Second, the price of a TR heart in the store, 1495, is too high to be a serious alternative. Third, the person who TR's has the option to regain 800 TP from favor rewards, which reduces spending by players considerably. Hence, Turbine is making little money on one of their most prominent features.

TR'ing is one of the few features that people are willing to pay for; but at the moment it is completely free and it actually gives players MORE money. Hence, it makes sense to change the system to actually make players pay for TR'ing. As a response, Turbine seems to want to make the free ingame option less interesting, to trigger people to buy TR hearts from the store. However, the proposed way through epic sagas seems very dishonest to me. I think there are better ways to achieve this.

Therefore, I propose the following. Instead of making a dishonest new system, be honest about your profit maximizing goals. Don't create a tedious new system for obtaining reincarnation items ingame, but remove ingame vendors for hearts completely. Correspondingly, reduce the cost of TR hearts in the store to 700-800. This is a reasonable price, as you can gain back these costs from the favor rewards that you are allowed to regain. Then you are at least honest about your profit maximizing aims, while asking a defendable price for your product. Such honesty will be appreciated and players are more likely to live with this than with the proposed new system.

[Lauf]

Here's the problem with your proposed solution:
DDO has made a living out of being f2p. I.E. it has attracted players that are willing to invest time instead of money, and a large part of the community is such.
creating something that can only be had through paying is going down a different path than that f2p model, and would inevitably drive a part of the community away from the game.

now you might ask "who cares, as they're not paying anyway?"
well, those I know that are f2p do pay on occasion, but not often. and certainly won't be willing to shell out cash every life.
but lets assume they weren't paying at all. by diminishing the size of your player pool you're hurting the players you have, as there'll be less LFMs, trades, guilds, friends etc.
no one likes a ghost town.

so going for a pure p2p option seems to go against what DDO is about, and would place it in the same market as WoW, Rift and the likes. and lets face it, in the p2p world, DDO doesn't have a good chance of competing.

also, as a side note, the 800 or so TP you can gain per life is a reasonable number assuming you're a 3rd+ lifer and have purchased all the content.
this is not a reasonable number for TP earned by players who aren't yet 3rd+ lifers, or are still missing content (most premium/f2p players)
so unless you want to trap those players in a situation that forces them to pay (see first 3 paragraphs of my post) pricing the heart of woods at ~800 would not be a wise move.

[PermaBanned]

You're joking, right?

•How many Ottos boxes sold specifically because of TRing?
•How many XP pots?

[Forzah]

Here's the problem with your proposed solution:
DDO has made a living out of being f2p. I.E. it has attracted players that are willing to invest time instead of money, and a large part of the community is such.
creating something that can only be had through paying is going down a different path than that f2p model, and would inevitably drive a part of the community away from the game.

now you might ask "who cares, as they're not paying anyway?"
well, those I know that are f2p do pay on occasion, but not often. and certainly won't be willing to shell out cash every life.
but lets assume they weren't paying at all. by diminishing the size of your player pool you're hurting the players you have, as there'll be less LFMs, trades, guilds, friends etc.
no one likes a ghost town.

so going for a pure p2p option seems to go against what DDO is about, and would place it in the same market as WoW, Rift and the likes. and lets face it, in the p2p world, DDO doesn't have a good chance of competing.

also, as a side note, the 800 or so TP you can gain per life is a reasonable number assuming you're a 3rd+ lifer and have purchased all the content.
this is not a reasonable number for TP earned by players who aren't yet 3rd+ lifers, or are still missing content (most premium/f2p players)
so unless you want to trap those players in a situation that forces them to pay (see first 3 paragraphs of my post) pricing the heart of woods at ~800 would not be a wise move.

TR'ing is completely optional; it is not a requirement. TR'ing is content just like buying packs or a class. I don't see much need to make it free for everyone. You can already experience enough of the game without TR'ing.

You're joking, right?

•How many Ottos boxes sold specifically because of TRing?
•How many XP pots?

They could be making a lot more than that. And imo it's better to pay for content (TR) than to pay for bypassing of content (exp pots, boxes). In any case, the store bought TR heart should become more interesting than it is now. Reducing the price will achieve that.

[-Zephyr-]

I believe the problem Turbine faces is the following: TR'ing is extremely popular but it is hardly profitable for Turbine. The reason for this is threefold. First, it is relatively easy to obtain TR hearts for free ingame by running a series of epic quests. Second, the price of a TR heart in the store, 1495, is too high to be a serious alternative. Third, the person who TR's has the option to regain 800 TP from favor rewards, which reduces spending by players considerably. Hence, Turbine is making little money on one of their most prominent features.

TR'ing is one of the few features that people are willing to pay for; but at the moment it is completely free and it actually gives players MORE money. Hence, it makes sense to change the system to actually make players pay for TR'ing. As a response, Turbine seems to want to make the free ingame option less interesting, to trigger people to buy TR hearts from the store. However, the proposed way through epic sagas seems very dishonest to me. I think there are better ways to achieve this.

Therefore, I propose the following. Instead of making a dishonest new system, be honest about your profit maximizing goals. Don't create a tedious new system for obtaining reincarnation items ingame, but remove ingame vendors for hearts completely. Correspondingly, reduce the cost of TR hearts in the store to 700-800. This is a reasonable price, as you can gain back these costs from the favor rewards that you are allowed to regain. Then you are at least honest about your profit maximizing aims, while asking a defendable price for your product. Such honesty will be appreciated and players are more likely to live with this than with the proposed new system.

Epic reincarnation won't allow you to regain favor.
Oh, and I disagree with your idea.

[Lauf]

TR'ing is completely optional; it is not a requirement. TR'ing is content just like buying packs or a class. I don't see much need to make it free for everyone. You can already experience enough of the game without TR'ing.

you don't seem to get it, but I'll try to help...

reasons why allowing TRing is a good thing:

• TRing increases the amounts of xp needed to cap
• f2p quests don't offer enough xp for a 3rd lifer
• people get attached to characters they play
• allowing f2p players to TR is a great way of getting them to buy packs, and getting them invested in their characters, or more specifically - the game

reasons why not allowing TRing is a bad thing:

• there is currently no end game, TRing is the end game
• epic content is primarily p2p
• not allowing new players to TR = leaving them with no content to run, and no options to gain said content, unless deleting their character and starting a new one.
• showing new players the door isn't a good policy

now all of these are easily solved if you just have players pay for everything, but then DDO would cease to be a f2p game .. so if that is your thinking I suggest you read my previous post again.

hope this helped

[Gremmlynn]

you don't seem to get it, but I'll try to help...

reasons why allowing TRing is a good thing:

• TRing increases the amounts of xp needed to cap
• f2p quests don't offer enough xp for a 3rd lifer
• people get attached to characters they play
• allowing f2p players to TR is a great way of getting them to buy packs, and getting them invested in their characters, or more specifically - the game

Is buying a few packs one time enough though. Really, the games been around 7 1/2 years, how many new players is it attracting to make that a feasible revenue source?

reasons why not allowing TRing is a bad thing:

• there is currently no end game, TRing is the end game
• epic content is primarily p2p
• not allowing new players to TR = leaving them with no content to run, and no options to gain said content, unless deleting their character and starting a new one.
• showing new players the door isn't a good policy

If they aren't spending money it may be.

now all of these are easily solved if you just have players pay for everything, but then DDO would cease to be a f2p game .. so if that is your thinking I suggest you read my previous post again.

It may be they simply didn't estimate the effect of new players tapering off when they formulated the system, so now have to make some changes to it to justify their costs.

I'm not in any way supporting the new plan. But if WB can see a better return on DDO's budget by putting out more Bugs Bunny cartoons, that's where it's going to go. It's not enough that they make money off the game, they have to make at least as much as anything else their budget could be invested in or it will go to that other thing.

Personally, I think 3 things can happen. Stay with the current system and the games goes away, the new one fails and the game goes away, or the new one succeeds and the game stays around. Don't like it, but that's life.

[Lauf]

If they aren't spending money it may be.

that's very shortsighted... if people play the game, get invested in it, then eventually they'll be willing to spend money on it, assuming you make it worth while / attractive enough. getting someone who isn't willing to immediately shell out money to leave the game is a failure, not a success.

Personally, I think 3 things can happen. Stay with the current system and the games goes away, the new one fails and the game goes away, or the new one succeeds and the game stays around. Don't like it, but that's life.

like I've mentioned in a different thread, i think the answer is creating more content. doesn't have to be anything large scale like the new expansion packs, and it doesn't have to be epic. just keep creating small adventure packs for all levels, and people will buy them.

why would they? because if you're a new player and your party is now about to run tangleroot and you don't have that pack, at first you'll simply drop and find another party. after 3-4 times that this happens, you'll really want to buy that pack...
and if you're a veteran you'll really want to buy that pack just to have some variety when leveling.... TRing can get tedious.

the problem with the expansion packs is that they push the cap further away. essentially making them completely irrelevant to f2p players and to veterans who are working towards a heroic completionist.
so it's a massive developmental effort and investment, going mostly to waste.
making TRing harder isn't the right way to go about encouraging people to play those epics. IMO.

[Gremmlynn]

that's very shortsighted... if people play the game, get invested in it, then eventually they'll be willing to spend money on it, assuming you make it worth while / attractive enough. getting someone who isn't willing to immediately shell out money to leave the game is a failure, not a success.

What new players? The games been f2p for 4 years now, how many are coming in every month at this point?

like I've mentioned in a different thread, i think the answer is creating more content. doesn't have to be anything large scale like the new expansion packs, and it doesn't have to be epic. just keep creating small adventure packs for all levels, and people will buy them.

why would they? because if you're a new player and your party is now about to run tangleroot and you don't have that pack, at first you'll simply drop and find another party. after 3-4 times that this happens, you'll really want to buy that pack...
and if you're a veteran you'll really want to buy that pack just to have some variety when leveling.... TRing can get tedious.

the problem with the expansion packs is that they push the cap further away. essentially making them completely irrelevant to f2p players and to veterans who are working towards a heroic completionist.
so it's a massive developmental effort and investment, going mostly to waste.
making TRing harder isn't the right way to go about encouraging people to play those epics. IMO.

You seem to be missing the point. The idea isn't to make it harder to TR or push players into running epics. It's to make it even easier by getting them to use the DDO store option to avoid having to do epics. The games been out of balance since multiple epic difficulties make getting those tokens so easy. Something needed to be done to make a true heart more than an evening or two of game play even for a scrub like me.

Frankly, with what we have for a player base, I doubt they could create content at a reasonable cost and make a profit. Hence the less than GH last expansion they are selling for 2.5x the cost of GH.

[kanordog]

[*]allowing f2p players to TR is a great way of getting them to buy packs, and getting them invested in their characters, or more specifically - the game[/LIST]

One of them is here... and I did not buy one pack!
I bought quite a few by paying MONEY

[Melli]

It's very clear that the basic problem is that it's too easy to earn the heart for Heroic TR without buying it, and that Turbine needs to make money from TRing.

I've been wondering if the answer isn't to charge a very low surcharge on each TR, one that we really won't mind paying, but which earns Turbine money through volume rather than the ridiculously high price of hearts.

Suppose you still needed a True Druidic heart, earned through tokens of the 12 ... but the heart had to be bound with a strand of ivy grown on an oak tree (it's a druid thing, right?) Said ivy is only available in the DDO store, but it costs no more than 95 TP.

Would people be willing to pay an extra 95 TP to TR if we still could earn the hearts the old way?

Of course the huge downside to an idea like this is that it requires coding, however minimal, and Turbine has proven they can break anything.

I'd be willing to buy Epic TR hearts for 495 points ... not the 1995 that I'm sure the DDO store will try to change.

[erethizon]

This is definitely a terrible idea, but if they were going to go this direction (making it so that you had to use the store as there was no in-game way to earn a reincarnation) then I would say the most expensive type of reincarnation (which I assume would be epic reincarnation) should cost no more than 495 tp tops. This would still be a horrible change as I prefer earning things in a game rather than just paying real money for stuff (which feels like cheating), but anything more than 495 tp is just too much to even consider.

[Forzah]

This is definitely a terrible idea, but if they were going to go this direction (making it so that you had to use the store as there was no in-game way to earn a reincarnation) then I would say the most expensive type of reincarnation (which I assume would be epic reincarnation) should cost no more than 495 tp tops. This would still be a horrible change as I prefer earning things in a game rather than just paying real money for stuff (which feels like cheating), but anything more than 495 tp is just too much to even consider.

Buying TR hearts is just as much "cheating" as buying packs and classes: you pay to unlock new content. Hearts can still drop as random loot, so there remain ways to obtain hearts ingame.

Face it, if you're not even willing to pay for content when you hit lvl 20, then you are probably never willing to pay anything for this game.

[kanordog]

I understand they (Turbine) want money for TR.
They have to pay their staff, their shareholders etc.

On the other side: I paid for TR in the form of purchasing adventure packs for money.
And I plan to buy more (actually the MOTU Standard ED which along with GH - I own already- would keep me being able to FREE TR).

But the current price of the Heart of Wood is a bit too high for my taste (esp. since I bought packs).