VIP vs Preferred Vs FTP

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

VIP is expensive and needs more to elevate it above the Preferred and FTP - it is a monthly pay out - the gold roll is a nice perk that adds value to VIP which suffers from the paradigm being constructed back years ago when the FTP model was created. It worked then, but games and the internet have matured. Many of the best VIP perks in other mmos offer unlimited storage. Could we have unlimited storage in DDO? In DDO Everything is so over-monetized and pay to use, money grabs like loot rerolls (don't get me started on how I hate chest rerolls) - what harm does a free VIP gold roll do? It doesn't provide anyone with any unfair advantages, all it does is say to the loyal players who pay, 'hey, thanks for subscribing, we appreciate you. Here's a little gift.'

[Sylvado]

VIP is expensive and needs more to elevate it above the Preferred and FTP - it is a monthly pay out - the gold roll is a nice perk that adds value to VIP which suffers from the paradigm being constructed back years ago when the FTP model was created. It worked then, but games and the internet have matured. Many of the best VIP perks in other mmos offer unlimited storage. Could we have unlimited storage in DDO? In DDO Everything is so monetized and pay to use - what harm does a free VIP gold roll do? It doesn't provide anyone with any unfair advantages, all it does is say to the loyal players who pay, 'hey, thanks for subscribing, we appreciate you. Here's a little gift.'

F2P was the worst thing that ever happened to online gaming.

[Eantarus]

F2P was the worst thing that ever happened to online gaming.

Yeah but its gotten so many more people into the games than pure subscription-based gaming.

[cmecu]

Yeah but its gotten so many more people into the games than pure subscription-based gaming.

yup and companies really hit the nail on the head, because the micro transactions is a smart way to still get peoples money. Just not this game, but just about any game these days has some kind of micro transactions. Even simple games on the phone like say Candy Crush, or Summoners war, Diablo Immortal .. Texas Holdem.. SLots... whatever.. all of them have some kind of buy something with real money to get virtual something.. in a world of what 8 billion people its not hard getting a couple millions people paying for some game.

[Halciet]

yup and companies really hit the nail on the head, because the micro transactions is a smart way to still get peoples money. Just not this game, but just about any game these days has some kind of micro transactions. Even simple games on the phone like say Candy Crush, or Summoners war, Diablo Immortal .. Texas Holdem.. SLots... whatever.. all of them have some kind of buy something with real money to get virtual something.. in a world of what 8 billion people its not hard getting a couple millions people paying for some game.

Quite glad DDO has not entered into the common modern microtransactions. Can you imagine if we had a stamina meter that depleted as you ran quests, but you could buy more stamina...

[yfernbottom]

I have really been enjoying the daily gold rolls. It gives me a good reason to log in every day even if I don't have time to do much but plan for the next time I have some spare time. It keeps me engaged with the game.

Apart from that VIP, doesn't really give me much that I care about. I already own almost all the content permanently, so for me Premium is nearly identical to VIP.

Any character on their third life on can open any quest at whatever difficulty I like. It's nice for opening stuff on hardcore, but once I hit whatever my goal for a given season is I immediately have been cancelling in the past, and hardcore is literally the only time I have been subbing. However last HC season I found I enjoyed the daily gold rolls enough to keep my sub going even after it ended and I was back to playing multi life characters on my home server.

So my advice to SSG would be to make daily gold rolls a permanent feature of a sub. They have been doing it all year and it didn't break the game. It seems like an odd choice to annoy us by taking it away now that we have gotten used to it. Most FtP MMOs bend over backwards to give you a reason to log every day.

Now there are other things they could do. Most sub optional MMOs have a system where you earn loging rewards every day that aren't random. ESO has one of the better versions of that kind of system, but the majority of FtP MMOs I have tried recently have something like that. They don't do it becuase they are stupid or charitable. If SSG wants to roll out a system like that to replace daily gold rolls, it might even be better. For example, put cosmetic rewards we can work towards on an in game advent calendar. However since SSG will likely do no such thing, simply leaving a switch turned on seems like a good alternative . . .

[Maldorin]

Quite glad DDO has not entered into the common modern microtransactions. Can you imagine if we had a stamina meter that depleted as you ran quests, but you could buy more stamina...

Not too dissimilar: There are way too many quests with too few shrines which strongly incentivises purchasing mana pots. In game drops are rare, maybe get a few here and there. And maybe it's my imagination but I feel sometimes that lost souls in reaper aren't showing up as much as they used to as well.

[Marshal_Lannes]

VIP needs to have value. Everyone agrees on that from players to developers. The daily gold rolls were a bandaid. I'm fine with it going away for a while, I've run out of places to store the XP stones anyway. But VIP still needs value. As I've said on this topic for years now, the XP bonus should be increased to 25% - that is basically the industry standard for VIP/subscription. After that, whatever, I'm fine with another bandaid then gold rolls coming back in the fall.

[systemshaker1941]

VIP needs to have value. Everyone agrees on that from players to developers. The daily gold rolls were a bandaid. I'm fine with it going away for a while, I've run out of places to store the XP stones anyway. But VIP still needs value. As I've said on this topic for years now, the XP bonus should be increased to 25% - that is basically the industry standard for VIP/subscription. After that, whatever, I'm fine with another bandaid then gold rolls coming back in the fall.

The problem is they are not giving us another bandaid. They are taking away the one they did give us and letting the wound fester.

This is actually worse than if they'd done nothing.

[Nebless]

Originally Posted by Sylvado
F2P was the worst thing that ever happened to online gaming.

Yeah but its gotten so many more people into the games than pure subscription-based gaming.

It's also what kept DDO alive, since the very first major game to go to the subscriber to F2p model was DDO. LotRO followed after Turbine saw that the new system was a money maker.

[Kza]

The nice daily gold takes away tomorrow. Hopefully they have an even better and funnier perk as a surprise for 2023? :-)
Lets see tomorrow if some good perk(s)come to VIPS in excange for the daily gold.

[axel15810]

I always liked the idea of adding a "VIP Lounge" and I'll continue to pitch this idea.

Have it be special public area that requires VIP to enter. Add it as a teleport location. Put in there all relevant vendors of all types, all saga givers and perhaps even event vendors in there year round. Jazz it up as well and put some fun stuff in there like some cool artwork, a snowpeaks esque VIP obstacle course for funsies, test kobolds with tons of HP for testing, raid/harder quest puzzles for VIPs to practice or play with and probably a bunch of other stuff I am likely not thinking of. Shouldn't take too much dev effort, wouldn't be power creepy and would incentivize VIP with lots of added convenience.

[Deathromancer]

Sad to see the daily gold roll gone, When your a grown adult with a good job the price of VIP is nothing to you, and buying more stuff from astral shards to augments and pots from DDO store easily exceeds the monthly VIP fee, and when you also buy the most expensive versions of the expansion, have already purchased all the bank and inventory options for your account and you have been playing long enough where plats no longer an issue, then the only noticeable bonus for having VIP was heroic elite quest entry and the daily rolls as if your buying all the new stuff at max pack lvl you can enter those areas even if ftp. Most of the older content no longer drops gear thats comparable to new content drops and theres so many quest in game theres lots of quest and chains ppl don't even do anymore unless on hardcore and with the TR ED Train most ppl only focus on a few tunes so extra character slots are mostly used for storage and if you got bank and backpack expansions when on sale for storage purposes extra char slots are not that big of a deal anymore unless your a Hoarder (cough cough) Vip bonus is no big deal as a well built well geared tune witch most old players have can zerg thru quest so not a big impact there.

and xp bonus has zero impact on hardcore as you spend most of your time hardcapped if your playing for the favor anyway. so all that said the main benefit for me is the elite entry and the price of vip is the fee to access it. There really needs to be something more tangible as a VIP bonus, something that can not be bought in DDO store so the pay to win crowd can't clean up on it and it entices Ftp yo play vip, daily gold rolls and elite entry where two of the bigger draws to get ppl to play vip a lot of Harcore players got vip just for the daily gold rolls during event.

Cutting back on bonuses for vip and the constant nerfs are chipping away at the reason to pay a monthly fee, and this trend needs to be reversed, not accelerated. DDO can be such a fun game and has so much history to pull from for future expansions to game, but it needs to be more stable and stop going after success strategies targeted and benefits cut, Like the USA going after Oil Rich Nations!

I think if polls where done on forums and some of these changes where accessed here SSG would be shocked at how many ppl get annoyed or are dissatisfied with them , yet the same ppl keep making these decisions again and again, without concern of the customers feelings. Ive seen stuff nerfed over a minority of ppl complaining if they are loud enough or a main streamer supports the nerf. and this is not a good business model caving in to the loudest voice instead of polling your customer base and getting some true %s to support these changes.

I'm not saying you have to do a poll and listen to it, but doing highly publicized polls with only 1 poll per account will give you an idea of how many ppl your going to **** off and maybe get you to consider a compromise, instead of continually kicking us in the family jewels! this would give the silent majority the feeling that our opinion matters if it occasionally gets something truly unpleasant moderated to something only mildly annoying or heaven forbid something we actually like, enjoy and feel good about.

[Grindflayer]

F2P was the worst thing that ever happened to online gaming.

Yeah but its gotten so many more people into the games than pure subscription-based gaming.

Not trying to make any general assumptions here, but just make my own story known. I'm one of those peoples. When I was poor and searching for games to play, I found LotRO, which then recently had gone f2p. I liked Tolkien's world, and thought maybe I should create a character there.

Long story short, I paid hundreds of Euros to Turbine/SSG during my time in that game, and after they made this game more accessible to f2p too (with the codes), I wanted to support them and have been a VIP since.

[Halciet]

Nothing quite like using a discovery potion, rolling the wrong item in a chest then spending 45 shards to get nothing, and then doing it 7 more times.

Wonder if they ever considered giving VIP the first reroll for "free" Probably too OP

[songswrath]

Nothing quite like using a discovery potion, rolling the wrong item in a chest then spending 45 shards to get nothing, and then doing it 7 more times.

Wonder if they ever considered giving VIP the first reroll for "free" Probably too OP

i like this nice add. also gold daily's for vip need to stay to add to that some kind of reward for logging every day for 7 days is cool too. maybe free pick of things random or say a 10k exp gem.

[Captain_Wizbang]

- what harm does a free VIP gold roll do? It doesn't provide anyone with any unfair advantages, all it does is say to the loyal players who pay, 'hey, thanks for subscribing, we appreciate you. Here's a little gift.'

[Eantarus]

Really sad someone pulled the plug on the daily dice. WTG SSG.

Did they? I got my daily gold role about an hour ago when I logged in on HCL(free transfers, baby!). My game client is now broken so I can't tell if its working or not on my actual server.

[DreamingReality]

So, every month VIP players get 500 free DDO points, which normally cost $7.99. Since VIP is $9.99, the extra $2.00 is what you are paying to get XP boosts, extra bank and character slots, the ability to list more items at once on the shard exchange, the ability to create a new character and instantly have heroic elite available without searching for someone to open for you or without slogging through 20 levels, reincarnating, slogging through another 20 levels, reincarnating again, instant access to all new quest packs without forking over any of those DDO points...PLUS you get your weekly gold rolls. For $2.00, that seems like a whole lot of value to me.

[SavageDoom]

So, every month VIP players get 500 free DDO points, which normally cost $7.99. Since VIP is $9.99, the extra $2.00 is what you are paying to get XP boosts, extra bank and character slots, the ability to list more items at once on the shard exchange, the ability to create a new character and instantly have heroic elite available without searching for someone to open for you or without slogging through 20 levels, reincarnating, slogging through another 20 levels, reincarnating again, instant access to all new quest packs without forking over any of those DDO points...PLUS you get your weekly gold rolls. For $2.00, that seems like a whole lot of value to me.

^^^
Absolutely agreed.