Quest Opening For Premium

[SpardaX]

Hey, I know this is unlikely at this point, but I was hoping someone might see this and consider giving premium players the ability to open quests on more than normal. Or making it a purchasable perk in the DDO store. I know there are one time use items going for 50 cents or whatever, but they don't cut it anymore. In the days of Reaper being the new Elite, and Running quests at level -2 being the new Running at +2, I find myself sitting with an LFM up that goes unnoticed more and more. I swear these days, I spend more time waiting than playing. On average about 2 - 3 hours of my play time, is waiting for just 1 other person to join my party so they can open it for me.

Once upon a time, this was fine, but because everyone just solo's these days, it's seemingly impossible for a first life character to ever get anywhere. At least on my server. You guys did away with this rule for Epic content, and it didnt seem to break anything. And I'm sorry, I don't want to sign up for ViP, because I already own the Entire game. If I had known this is how it was when I started, maybe I would have just been a ViP member, but right now, I would be paying the ViP membership only for the ability to open elite, and that seems like a waste.

Please either give Premium members the ability, or let me throw another $10 at you to have the ability, I dont mind either way, but waiting for 3 hours for no one to join, and then going to play a different game, which is my current experience, isn't good for either of us.

[xCataluna]

Premium players can get elite opening via TR. If you TR twice, that character can open on elite for all future lives.

[tafla421]

Premium players can get elite opening via TR. If you TR twice, that character can open on elite for all future lives.

the original poster did say first lifers. and yes while 3rd lifers can open on elite it would be great if there was an option in the ddo store to get a perm elite unlock for a fresh character that I have a bunch of bound to account gear I could throw at him to run elites or reaper 1

[SpardaX]

Premium players can get elite opening via TR. If you TR twice, that character can open on elite for all future lives.

I have 40 characters. (And sure, you can say thats my fault / choice and I know it)

I can open elite currently on 1 (my completionist in progress) so thats fun, but 39 cannot. I would like the ability. Because as of reaper being released, the community has segmented. In this game currently, it's almost expected to run at least hard (preferably elite) for the streak. But at the same time, the people able to open a streak, are only doing reaper now. First life people, the ones who can't open on their own, and need the help, are now the one's not getting it, instead getting left behind, because the people who could help them want to be no where near them. (Cant take many first lifers into -2 level R1!)

And as long as this is the case, new players are not going to want to stick around, which means a playerbase already quite small, is going to only get smaller, not bigger. And that is a seriously bad issue.

But more specifically, my point is, I couldnt even TR these first life characters if I tried. TRing requires me to complete quests. I can't do this, because my entire game play time is spent with an LFM up, waiting. For literal Hours. Waiting. Not playing. Until I give up for another day, and go play something else.

As it stands, I've played this game for almost 6 years I think, half of it's life. I've seen Monks as kings, monks as peasants, the game change, the game break, and the game mutate and lose and gain. Right now even, I see it have a super annoying memory leak, which means I can only play it for about 3 hours at a time before I need to restart my entire system lest it crash. But even with that, I dont care. I love this game, I plan / hope to stick with it right to the very end of it's life as long as I get to play it, in whatever form it takes.
But right now, I dont get to play it. I get to wait for 3 hours, with an LFM that hasn't been touched, while my memory fills up, hits 100%, and I have to restart my PC for the privilege to go through that all again. Or play something else.

[Nebless]

consider giving premium players the ability to open quests on more than normal.

OK, maybe I'm not understanding, but I'm a premium player and after opening a quest on normal, can then do hard and then elite. In fact I've been going back and redoing all my quests up to and on elite for the points.

Or are you asking to just skip normal & hard and only do it on elite?

[EllisDee37]

I have 40 characters. (And sure, you can say thats my fault / choice and I know it)

You could create a dualbox account to open elite for all your first-lifers. That's what I did, and even though all my characters are now legend builds I still get great mileage out of my dualbox openers.

It's a slow and steady process to buy the expansions and adventure packs on the dualbox account.

[asdfghhjkl]

First life characters don’t need the extra xp from a hard/elite streak. If you spent those hours starting quests on normal instead of not playing, you’d have plenty of xp. Especially with the first time bonuses on each difficulty.

If you have a streak going, pause it at the bravery Marshall and try running without it for a level. You won’t miss it.

[Saekee]

The OP has an excellent point. I think they should just put the option in the DDO store. Moah money, why not? But I suspect that they will charge a lot, since favor running needs elite opening (usually).

Even if a premium player could open all quests on Hard instead of normal, you would still be waiting forever for people to join. I recommend that you steamroll them on normal and hard while waiting for folks to join.

[tafla421]

First life characters don’t need the extra xp from a hard/elite streak. If you spent those hours starting quests on normal instead of not playing, you’d have plenty of xp. Especially with the first time bonuses on each difficulty.

If you have a streak going, pause it at the bravery Marshall and try running without it for a level. You won’t miss it.

the point isn't that they need the extra experience, the point is I just rolled my 30th+ character it would be nice if I could just open on elite so I can level faster. and guess what they already sell single use elite unlocks so why not permanent elite unlocks per character and/or server. cause seriously if I only needed 1 elite unlock I would ask a guildy or even post up an lfm, so the way I see it they would actually make some sales if they implemented the changes.

[xCataluna]

Opening elite on a first life is one of the perks of VIP. VIP, as you've pointed out, is already questionably valuable to many people.
They're not going to further devalue VIP subscriptions to let premium buy it when you can already "earn" it.

[Qhualor]

First life characters don’t need the extra xp from a hard/elite streak. If you spent those hours starting quests on normal instead of not playing, you’d have plenty of xp. Especially with the first time bonuses on each difficulty.

If you have a streak going, pause it at the bravery Marshall and try running without it for a level. You won’t miss it.

OP was talking also about Reaper. You have to be VIP, reincarnated 2 times, buy a store item or have someone in party that can unlock it.

I do think it makes no sense to put in a barrier to unlock higher difficulties and before Reaper I would have argued that new players really should be playing norm/hard to get to know the game first before going into tougher difficulties. When grouping used to be much better than it is now, it wasn't really a problem, but Reaper, static grouping and soloing has become the new norm.

A store item for a single elite unlock slightly devalues VIP. When it was pretty much easy to get an opener it devauled VIP a little more. A permanent elite unlock store item would devalue VIP a lot more. The barrier really should go away and it might help grouping a little more, but I don't want to see VIP lose more value. Maybe if SSG was willing to revamp the sub than elite unlock could be removed.

[tafla421]

Opening elite on a first life is one of the perks of VIP. VIP, as you've pointed out, is already questionably valuable to many people.
They're not going to further devalue VIP subscriptions to let premium buy it when you can already "earn" it.

but they already devalued VIP by having one time use elite unlocks. not to mention that you can get elite locks by group with other people that have already ran it, or running it with a VIP.

[EllisDee37]

Just spitballing here, but would the following subscription ideas have any value for players?

$5 / month: Elite unlock, +5% xp, shared bank, 250 TP / month
$10 / month: Same as VIP is now (Elite unlock, +10% xp, 500 TP / month)
$15 / month: Entire game, elite unlock, +15% xp, 750 TP / month

• All adventure packs, challenges, and expansions
• All classes and races (including all iconics)
• Shared bank and shared crafting storage with all upgrades for both
• All character bank and inventory upgrades for all characters
• Max character slots
• All monster manuals
• Anything else I forgot; essentially "everything except consumables"

The current VIP would remain unchanged both in price (for all ways to buy it) and in effect. The two new versions would only be available as a recurring monthly payment. No "buy 6 months at once for cheaper" deals; just a flat subscription. In other words: predictable revenue.

[tafla421]

Just spitballing here, but would the following subscription ideas have any value for players?

$5 / month: Elite unlock, +5% xp, shared bank, 250 TP / month
$10 / month: Same as VIP is now (Elite unlock, +10% xp, 500 TP / month)
$15 / month: Entire game, elite unlock, +15% xp, 750 TP / month

• All adventure packs, challenges, and expansions
• All classes and races (including all iconics)
• Shared bank and shared crafting storage with all upgrades for both
• All character bank and inventory upgrades for all characters
• Max character slots
• All monster manuals
• Anything else I forgot; essentially "everything except consumables"

The current VIP would remain unchanged both in price (for all ways to buy it) and in effect. The two new versions would only be available as a recurring monthly payment. No "buy 6 months at once for cheaper" deals; just a flat subscription. In other words: predictable revenue.

personally I think VIP should have something real special that doesn't lose value like elite locks does when you reach 3rd life, the problem being what seems special to me might be garbage to someone else but here is an idea on what they can add to VIP that might convince more people to become VIP. I think there should be an extra loot chest in quests that only VIP can access. the loot table for the extra chest should only contain the named items from the quest so it basically gives you 1 more chance per run to get a named item from the quest. put some restrictions on it like the item cant be traded, and depending on how game breaking this is make it so that if you got an item in the main chest you cant get one from the extra one. make it so you cant use the chest until you loot from the main one. if the main chest gives bound to account crafting mats or runes make the bonus chest give some more. again I don't know how much this would affect ddo store sales or game economy but its just a suggestion on how to make VIP seem all the more shinier to get more people in

[SpardaX]

Just spitballing here, but would the following subscription ideas have any value for players?

$5 / month: Elite unlock, +5% xp, shared bank, 250 TP / month
$10 / month: Same as VIP is now (Elite unlock, +10% xp, 500 TP / month)
$15 / month: Entire game, elite unlock, +15% xp, 750 TP / month

• All adventure packs, challenges, and expansions
• All classes and races (including all iconics)
• Shared bank and shared crafting storage with all upgrades for both
• All character bank and inventory upgrades for all characters
• Max character slots
• All monster manuals
• Anything else I forgot; essentially "everything except consumables"

The current VIP would remain unchanged both in price (for all ways to buy it) and in effect. The two new versions would only be available as a recurring monthly payment. No "buy 6 months at once for cheaper" deals; just a flat subscription. In other words: predictable revenue.

Honestly, I quite like this. I could see myself paying for the $5 tier.

As to the person who said try Dualboxing, I actually kinda like that idea, right up until I got into the game and realised my second account has nothing unlocked XD Since the point of this is I dont want to spend more money on ViP, I dont really want to spend even more money than a ViP sub, getting a 2nd account to where my first one is.
But at least for the free quests, I think next time my Completionist in Training hits level 1, I'll pull out my 2nd account and get a character up with it. Though as I said, Im currently enjoying a memory leak with a 3 hour time limit, I imagine having 2 DDO's running is going to cut that time probably in half. So that'll be fun.

(Additional Info on the Memory Leak: It apparently stems from just "Windows 10", I reinstalled W10 from scratch, Memory leak goes away. W10 Updates to current, Memory leak comes back. Yay. If anyone knows a way to fix this without saying "Reinstall W10 again, and dont update it", I'm all ears)

To asdfghhjkl and nebless, yes, I'm essentially asking to skip normal, at least. I could live with opening hard to start with, but normal is boring and tedious at best, and I hate grinding quests, unless they're quick 5 minute or less quests, so if Im doing playing normal, Im probably only going to be playing normal, maybe hard, I dont really want to do most quests a third time, unless I need that CoinLord favor, and even that is a slog.

Which means 2 things, Im effectively wasting exp, or at least, if im not running my streak at least on hard, thats how it feels to me, while also being bored out of my mind by normal. Or to put it another way, my playing of the game is both longer than it should be (less xp), and also almost completely unenjoyable while I play it.
(It was fun once upon a time, when the game was a new experience, but now that I'm 6 years deep, and Iv done everything the game has to offer at least 5 times over, minimum, it loses that new content smell.)

And playing a long and boring game, is to me, worse, than my current choice of waiting 3 hours for nothing to happen. That's -WHY- I wait 3 hours for nothing to happen, and then go play something else. I'll take that over long boring hell any day. At least while Im waiting, I can watch youtube or something.

[Memnir]

I have no issues with the current situation: either invest the time to TR or the money for VIP.

[EllisDee37]

As to the person who said try Dualboxing, I actually kinda like that idea, right up until I got into the game and realised my second account has nothing unlocked XD Since the point of this is I dont want to spend more money on ViP, I dont really want to spend even more money than a ViP sub, getting a 2nd account to where my first one is.

That was also me.

There are a lot of F2P quests in the earlier levels. Even if you own no content at all, the dualbox account is still worth starting. It took me around a year-ish to get mine caught up to where I wanted it to be, but it was immediately useful when I created it. Even when I only to had a single level 7 dualbox character, that still let me solo Xorian Cipher. (Both alts bring a different hireling.)

As for buying content, you can target specific "trouble" packs where you could really use a dualbox alt. For example, necro1 with that "stand on 4 plates" mechanic, or Sharn Syndicate where it's super nice to have a trapper for Bookbinder and Repossession. Both those packs are cheap, as in affordable with the bonus TP you get from leveling. (But definitely wait for a sale on packs before buying them, or anything.)

For me, as soon as I made the account and leveled my first dualbox alt, the very next life I was beyond thrilled to be able to one-and-done Korthos and all the harbor 2s. That alone got me motivated to keep the dualbox train rolling.

[SpardaX]

I have no issues with the current situation: either invest the time to TR or the money for VIP.

I have invested the time. I have a character that can open elite. I dont want to invest the time again. And again. And again. x39. If I -Liked- TRing, I would not have 40 characters. Even if they make it that once one character can, they all can, I think that's pretty fair. Sort of like a Favor reward, that unlocks Server Wide. That'd be cool.

I have also invested the money. More money than it would take to be Subbed, for the entire life of the game in fact. And whenever bonus points time starts, they get more. Not to mention this is me saying "If you make a thing that says I can do it, and you charge me $10, I will buy that." Which again, is more money.