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Grandfather in gold subscribers
sterga
Posts: 2,353 Arc User
Let all gold subscribers keep all of their gold characters as gold characters even if their subscription expires.
Telling people to pony up $200/$300 to keep their gold characters as gold when life happens is an unbelievably trash way to treat people that gave you money. When Rift went F2P, I kept all of my character slots, bag slots, and role slots. I also got a bunch of credits to spend in the cash shop and gained some loyalty levels based on my past subscription time. And that was Trion. People hate Trion. Don't be worse than that.
And I would still like to see 800+ day gold subscribers just get their accounts updated to LTS. Those accounts are probably already messed up (I know mine is) because it is assumed by some of the coding that those people ARE LTS. And none of it to player benefit. I won't be surprised if more things get messed up with the sub update. None of it has been fixed in all of these years, it won't be fixed on June 7th. Anyone spending that much on gold subs has paid for a full price LTS and then some. Think of it as Rent-To-Own with interest.
Telling people to pony up $200/$300 to keep their gold characters as gold when life happens is an unbelievably trash way to treat people that gave you money. When Rift went F2P, I kept all of my character slots, bag slots, and role slots. I also got a bunch of credits to spend in the cash shop and gained some loyalty levels based on my past subscription time. And that was Trion. People hate Trion. Don't be worse than that.
And I would still like to see 800+ day gold subscribers just get their accounts updated to LTS. Those accounts are probably already messed up (I know mine is) because it is assumed by some of the coding that those people ARE LTS. And none of it to player benefit. I won't be surprised if more things get messed up with the sub update. None of it has been fixed in all of these years, it won't be fixed on June 7th. Anyone spending that much on gold subs has paid for a full price LTS and then some. Think of it as Rent-To-Own with interest.
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I think that there should be clear information on the following:
1) If you are continuing your sub, and your card expires and you get a new one...where can this information be updated? Payments? If so, will it carry over for sub information if that service no longer exists?
2) The conversion tokens mentioned in the news article...59 tokens should be free for players who are currently gold and lapse and then wish to continue playing as Gold.
3) What is the aim of these changes?
4) Why are we being notified so suddenly? Shouldn't this have been known at least several months ago? (Is this an indication of a restructure or a bad shift for CO?)
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Cryptic / PW clearly wants to dump the gold subs, which is fine, but this is a crap way to do it. Frankly, this would have gone over much better if subs were dropped 100% with no option to keep subbing and everyone that has a gold sub was simply grandfathered in, allowed to keep all of their gold toons as gold toon with extreme situations where sub time is equal to or greater than the cost of an LTS getting their account bumped up to LTS, which wouldn't even be a free upgrade, but one paid over time. Instead of losing access to all their gold toons as gold toons, they would lose a stipend they aren't paying for anyway.
Grandfathering people into a new system is a goodwill gesture that shows the company actually cares about customer loyalty. This is just another corporation treating people like walking wallets.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
If by pay you mean dump $300, yeah you SHOULD be able to see why thats an issue.
42 40s, LTSer.
But I do feel as a long time customer I have the right to ask questions about a big change like this. $200 to $300 is a big investment to ask of players at the last minute.
Because they're asking subscribers to pay the same fee, on an inflexible basis, for much less value. It's a massive downgrade, and why should anyone be happy about that? If you've subscribed on a monthly basis for more than 725 days you've paid more than an LTS player would have done for their deal, and now you're being told you have to keep paying for less or lose the lot. That, frankly, stinks.
I may not be subscribed as I was a perma silver, But I would really hate the vets of the game with 60+ toons over several years of playing CO just to be slapped in the face with such a bold and not well done move.
Hell I'm even considering to reactivate my subscription before the 7th just to give me one more month to think this through and see if PW/Cryptic is willing to do something about it.
I'm a gold sub and have been for years without lapsing my sub. Early on I managed to get a discounted monthly subscription and kept on that ever since.
My personal reasons for staying on this monthly model is that I really don't notice paying just under $10 a month and $200/$300 would have been too big a chunk at once to justify it to myself. I didn't save up and wait until I had the necessary funds for an LTS because I wanted to play as a subscriber then and there and not wait months to do so.... free-form and character slots on reaching lvl 40 being my main motivation for subscribing.
Obviously I have paid far, far more for my sub in the long run than an LTS but I was fine with that as I loved the game and didn't begrudge it. I also have had periods recent-ish where I wasn't very active and didn't play much for a month or two here and there. What kept me subscribing during these hiatus was the monthly gold bonus items (I had already achieved max vet rewards by that time).
I haven't only paid for my sub though. I've bought a hell of a lot of Zen over the years.
I know many people in-game that follow this model.
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So yeah, I may haven't been a sub since 2016 but that's still more than 1000 days as a Gold sub. So way more than a LTS subscription cost.
EDIT: Actually it's a LOT more than 1000 days:
Sorry it's in French, but it says 1714 days as a Gold sub! And what do you get after paying for 1714 days? (more than 4 years!) "Please buy a LTS or lose all your Gold FF characters".
the premium pack gives you all the same costume sets you get free as gold now. And, unless they take away titles, you're actually gaining two more. For those of us who have earned titles in game or through veteran rewards, we should not lose them. The loss is the heart and sole of the game - the freeform characters we have spent so much time and money building. I can do without costumes and titles, give me access to may toons!
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[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
What was CO's tagline? "Be the Hero you want to be!" Losing Freeform means you're losing that and in a huge way. As a subscriber, let me keep doing that!
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Nobody is losing access to freeform. Everyone will still have that. It's weird that I keep seeing these statements pop up that talk as if they're removing freeforms from the game. The rumor mill must be going nuts right now.
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They are removing easy Freeform access from the game. It's just only from people who aren't Lifetimers, and who aren't playing their characters from purchased Freeform slots.
Us idiots who subscribed to the game for any length of time can quite possibly lose access to their Freeform characters forever without spending $300 for a Lifetime (yes, I know it's on sale right now - that's not the point).
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The context of the discussion matters. We are talking about the gold subscription and the fact it is going away. No longer available. This is what the news post clearly states. The news article also clearly states that you will not be able to re-sub if your subscription lapses after June 7th and the only way to player your FF toons as FF toon is to pay more money for an LTS.
This is not a discussion about the $50 FF slot. This is a discussion about the sub FF slot.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
It's a big change and the announcement was unclear and badly worded. They've clearly done some C&P from the STO changes and not actually thought about how it will all relate to this game. I'm not worried about losing my FF characters or being locked - my sub rolled over yesterday and I extended it to 3 months - but I know you agree that they do need to look at people possibly getting locked out (or having to pay a fortune to get back) in if their sub lapses.
Wrong, you will still have access to Freeforms via Freeform Character Slots.
Whether you want to pay for them or not is irrelevant, everyone will still have access to Freeform, that isn't changing. Nobody is "completely losing access to Freeforms". Stop spreading bad information that's just gonna make people go nuts in unproductive ways. If this is simply a problem of how you're stating the issue, then start stating it correctly and stop being deceptive:
"Subscribers will permanently lose access to their current non-FF slot FF characters if their subscription ends."
This is the actual problem. Fabricating problems to freak out about helps nobody.
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At £35 per slot from the Zen Store, or £225 for an LTS.
Context of subject matters for terms of conversation.
This conversation is not about $50 FF slots. It is about the gold sub FF slots which will be locked and unplayable for gold subscribers that lose their sub after June 7th. The only option at that point is to pay $200/$300 to re-activate their subscriber FF slots. Slots that were actually paid for and will then require an additional, much larger payment, which is 100% relevant to this conversation. $50 FF slots do not matter for this conversation as they cannot be used to re-activate existing gold sub FF slots which are locked.
Anyone that cannot afford $200/$300 LTS sub has effectively lost access to their paid for, gold sub FF slots as gold sub FF slots.
If you, Spinny, would like to criticize clarity and accuracy of statements, perhaps it would behoove you to start with yourself. Introducing elements that are not relevant and do not pertain to this conversation do not promote clarity of statements. Not acknowledging the distinction between different types of FF slots does not lend itself to clarity nor accuracy.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Yep. I bought five of the first, and then I bought the second.
That would be exactly my point. Glad you agree. Saying "People will lose access to Freeforms" does not promote any clarity on the issue, and it does not acknowledge the distinction between different types of FF slots. I'm glad that you too are keen on promoting accuracy in the statements that people make on this issue. We'd hate for the rumor of "they're getting rid of Freeforms" to spread due to inaccurate statements, wouldn't we?
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Well, if the expectation is that everyone is willing to spend £400 on a computer game, then the game is toast.
Especially a 10 year old computer game whose owners just pulled this stunt on some of it's most loyal playerbase. Some of which have already paid large amounts.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Do you agree or disagree with the premium pack idea? Do you agree or disagree with the changes to character slot unlocks? Do you agree or disagree with how Freeform is handled for gold accounts after this change? They've created a situation that complete disregards the expression, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" by lumping all of these changes together. That is undeniably a bad move no matter how you slice it.
You know magpie, you might want to consider the possibility that I was telling you what I did, not setting some sort of standard. Take a moment, think about it, and get back to me.
I'm pretty sure that the expectation is "Buy what you want to, don't buy what you don't want to". Anything beyond that is just hyperbolic panicmagination.
Me personally, I spent about a hundred bucks in the last two or three days. If you want to imagine that that's some sort of expectation or standard, feel free. It certainly sends a clear message about my feelings given the game's value. However it gives no message about my feelings on the game's longevity which is still: It'll be up for however long it'll be up, I'm purchasing these things because I want to use them now, not because I expect the game to be up for X more years.
1. I think it's great. Color changing without a sub or lts, didn't think we'd get that... well, ever.
2. I agree with them. What the software/hardware can handle is more important than our nostalgic connection to our characters or the desire to create 100+ more of them. I might at some point have ended up making 100 characters - recently my creation of new characters has accelerated. I'm okay with the fact that I'll likely never get to do that, I can have plenty of fun with 59.
3. I think it's nuts that they're even mentioning the possibility of subs permanently losing their freeforms - it amazes me that at no point did they talk to someone who told them "That's insane, you're insane, don't do that". They should have looked into a conversion method and had it ready and released before announcing the rest of these changes, not after. With a conversion method already in hand players would already have the method to solve the issue and the only discussion would be about the price. Because they did it in this order, everyone is panicking because we don't know if that conversion method will even materialize. That question should already have been answered, and they should already know if it can't be done, and found some other solution to a glaringly obvious problem, i.e. they should already have a method in place for subscribers to purchase permanent access for their characters in small monetary amounts because that is how subscribers have been spending their money thus far so it stands to reason that is the only way they are able to spend it. Many people simply won't ever be able to drop 200 dollars on a luxury expense, and even those who could save up their monthly 15 bucks for it don't really want to spend over a year waiting to get their FFs back.
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$15/mo is affordable to most people... $300 one time fee is not affordable to most people... $50/character is not affordable to most people... the cost that the Silver to FF token will undoubtedly have is unlikely to be affordable to most people...
Unless the FF slot has it's priced reduced, I guarantee you the Silver to FF token will cost around 4,250zen... Why? Simple... 1 character slot = 750zen, 1 FF slot = 5,000zen... 5,000-750=4,250... if they price the Silver to FF token any lower, then it's cheaper to buy silver slots and conversion tokens than to just buy the FF slot.
So that means that anyone who's subscription lapses would have to spend $42.50 per character to regain access to their FFs. For anyone with more than 7 FFs the LTS is the better financial option...
You can also look at it this way... Even if they dropped the FF slot cost and were able to sell the conversion tokens at 1500zen... subscribers go from having previously had the option to pay $15/mo for ALL of their freeforms, to paying $15/mo to reclaim 1 FF each month if they lapse their subscription, with the option of paying an additional $15 for each additional FF they want to reclaim that month.
It is simply NOT a good decision.
Grandfathering in subscribers is an absolute necessity if they are going to remove the option to resubscribe. Otherwise they are guaranteed to lose players, guaranteed to lose money, and ultimately the game very well could shut down due to this short sighted change.
Now for those who've been subbed less than year they indeed deserve a better deal than the $300 LTS or $50 unique slot. For them indeed it should be about setting a reasonable price to allow them to keep playing their FF.
Sales and questionite can reduce the price of a slot. I don't know why somebody would be so insistent on paying full price for those things.
That would be nice, and very generous of them.
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And i just cancelled it.
There is no way i will keep giving money to a company that resort to such practices.
This change is them tellling me :
"you already paid for a lot more than a LTS, have been loyal for years, but now if u wanna keep playing we leave you a simple choice :
never unsub, or pay 200 dollars now".
Only appropriate answer to this is to leave before it get even uglier.
When a game company has to resort to this kind of blackmail to grab a few more dollars, it simply doesn't deserve a single cent.
MMORPG genre is in bad enough place already. We really don't need to encourage the worst of it with our addicted lethargy.
It would in fact be generous because there's nothing unfair about expecting people to pay for permanent access, since all this time they've been getting the temporary access they've been paying for already. Just because a rental period ends doesn't mean you own the thing you rented if your accumulated rent equals the total value. Part of the value one gets from rental is the ability to have access to something they could not afford to purchase in full - every single subscriber received this value every month that they paid their sub fee. Simply put, they already got what they paid for and the company has no obligation to stack more value on top of those fees.
If I was renting you a bouncy castle for several months and then I decided to just give it to you for no further payment that would absolutely be generous. I had no obligation to give you the bouncy castle just because I decided I no longer wanted to rent out bouncy castles and only wanted to sell them. Giving people things with no obligation to do so is pretty much how generosity works.
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Recognition is not generosity. Generosity doesn't belong to the world of business. It's not because you don't have a legal obligation to do something that you're automatically being generous. I'm not a homeless guy who's starving, I'm a client. And a good one given how much I've spent here (time and money). Grandfathering is not generosity, it's simply good business practice. And that's enough for me I'm not asking for more commitement on their part. Just trying to act like decent shopkeepers would be a lot already.
Eh, you got a little mixed up there. I imagine you're claiming that LTS costs more than it is worth, which is just objectively not true - the value of what you get with LTS far outstrips even the full price, even without infinite slots. Second, the bouncy castle is your account, not the game itself - you're not buying ownership of the IP.
Recognizing that you were only renting your account is perfectly valid. Giving it to you for free even though you yourself made it perfectly clear that you were willing to keep paying for it is absolutely generous. Let's go back to the bouncy castle - you make it clear that you were willing to keep on renting it for the next ten years, but I say I won't take the money and you can just have it. How is that not generous? In the case of the account, you were clearly willing to keep paying for it, so them deciding to just give it to you for free is similarly a generous act.
If you want to keep debating the nature of rental vs ownership I'd be happy to, but they just delayed the changes and are looking at them again, so as a "let's talk about the changes" conversation this thread just became pointless.
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The sales are irrelivent to the point of my post. Even at the discounted prices of $200 LTS and $25 FF slot, they are STILL not affordable to most people. $25 for a single character slot is too expensive.
As for questionite... not everyone has the time nor the patience to farm the millions of questionite required to purchase a FF slot... and before you say "they can just farm part of it to reduce the price"... it's still an insane amount of questionite to farm for just 1 slot. lets say you payed for half of the slot with Q and the other half with cash and bought it on sale... that is still almost 600k Q at the current exchange rate.
Also, just to be clear, incase you forgot... I have an LTS... I will never have to pay the exorbitant price for a FF slot... I will however never be able to buy more than 1 additional character slot after the 7th since I currently have 58 slots.
It's a little something known as good faith business practices... any reputable company, when they change their service policies in a way that would negatively affect existing customers will either A ) grandfather in existing customers with the older policy and a grace period if they have to drop service in which to renew service under the old policy or B ) grant the older customers a significant deal upon switching over to the new policy.
In this case, they are removing a subscription service that many customers actively use. This isn't simply a change of policy, it is a removal of service. Sure, existing subscribers may be able to retain their subscription, but should their subscription ever end for any reason at all, they are screwed. There is no way to renew a subscription once it has expired under this new system, there is no sort of grace period to allow a customer to renew service, there is no deal offered to existing subscribers upon switching to the new policy either.
When a company makes a giant change like this to their service, it is expected that they will make every effort possible to retain the loyalty of their existing customer base. Generally these types of changes are made to improve profit margins and to help attract new customers. However, these types of changes have a very high risk of losing existing customers, so it is within the companies best interest to reach out and offer a boon to their existing customers to keep them from leaving.
You don't have to farm the entirety of the questionite required to purchase a FF slot, just enough until the point that it becomes affordable. Maybe it becomes affordable at 15 dollars for someone, in which case they only need 1000 zen worth of questionite. I've farmed that much casually before.
And for all we know B would have been the case. It's important to recognize that the possibility of an exchange token was immediately part of the announcement and we don't know if subs would have gotten a discount or some sort of special sub version, or even gotten a bunch for free. Also, LTS has always been a significant deal, so in a way B was already in place as an extremely generous package.
Of course, the changes have been delayed so we're literally talking about nothing now since we don't know how it will change. Been fun debating though o/
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Yes they have the right to act as if everything I've spent means absolutely nothing and treat me as if I was just a new client who barely bought anything from them. That is their right indeed. But that's not what any decent business company would do. That's how you tell those who care about their clients from those who only see them as walking wallets. Now if for you not treating your clients like walking wallet is being generous then fine...
And you're missing two other crucial points:
- until now they never said that they would end the service
- they are intentionally pushing gold subscribers into buying LTS, a move only motivated by the intent to squeeze even more money from them. Quite the opposite of being generous.
No, you're just wrong when you say giving a renter the option to buy when you end the rental payment method isn't a good business practice. It's completely fair and recognizes the reality of the situation. Giving things away is generosity, which apparently is what you don't understand.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The reality of the situation is that PWI is in a position of strength, they know we care about what we have through our subscription and they're taking advantage of it. I'll say it again but you're obviously deaf to that argument, choosing not to use a position of strength in order to squeeze more money out of your clients is not being generous, having a fidelity program with various bonuses and rewards is not being generous, not treating your long time customers like they're meaningless is not being generous. It has a name it's called good business practice, and that's actually quite precious todays so I'm underestimating its meaning.
Now if they ever decided to pay my bills, then yeah I'd call that very generous of them.
But we'll see what they'll come up with the premium pack 2.0. Maybe a pleasant surprise. I hope.
It's Rent-To-Own not a Rent-To-Buy-Again-At-Full-Price. The former is accepted as OK, the latter is a stupid business decision that pisses people off.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Your account is a luxury expense that you can live without, and so is a bouncy castle. That's why I chose that comparison. I was originally going to go with a house, but that wouldn't have been accurate.
It's done in the real world every day. You may not like it, but it is a commonly accepted practice. If you didn't agree to a rent-to-own deal at the outset, then you can't expect it to become one with a formal alteration to the agreement.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Your whole argument revolves around "It's not in the contract, they don't have to do it" we get it. Don't worry you got your point across. Now what I'm saying is that it is the very definition of commercial gesture/good business practice. All the bonuses you get that were not in the initial deal are exactly this. Many companies and stores do that, not all that's true, but it is not rare either. Some do that formaly with a fidelity program, some other just do that spontaneously. It's not just about being nice, showing to your customers that you care and respect them builds trust and fidelity. It's win-win.
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They do their jobs in an acceptable fashion, and don't owe you anything more simply because they're human beings with needs of their own.
Yes, sometimes businesses do choose to be generous. That was never in dispute. You were disputing whether it was generous or not to give somebody something for free when you don't have to, remember?
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Way to not read my post completely. Note the bold part that you clearly didn't actually read... I already adressed that.