According to
this PTS Update there will be a vendor where one costume piece will be given to players who are subscribed. At the start of every month the piece will be cycled out for a new one.
Will we see cycled out costume pieces ever again?
Will players have to subscribe every month to get each exclusive piece?
Possible Solutions:
Let the costume pieces remain in the vendor but add an ever increasing price onto older pieces as newer ones are added.
What are your thoughts?
UPDATE:
Lifetimer subscriptions will now be able to unlock any old pieces they may have missed even after the month of release. The new pieces will now no longer be lost forever.
Thank you for your input.
Comments
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Ya, anyone who's the kind of costume hound that would be influenced by this would likely have subbed already to get all the costume pieces in the z-store.
Those will have to be some pretty amazing monthly pieces to get anyone to sub over them.
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Exactly that. We value our subscribers, and we want to make sure they feel awesome month over month, especially with a little kick of something new and fresh.
These are going to be exclusive to subscribers, and exclusive to the month they are released. We will not be re-releasing them later on, either in the vendor or in another system -- these are planned as exclusives that are available only for a limited time. We're really looking forward to seeing the costumes that subbers make with these, they'll be nice little bonuses for them to play with.
*throws plastic ball*
.. this is how it works, right?
Anyways, thanks for this addition, CN. It'll be cool to scope out, at least.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Ouch. That... honestly really sucks. There are any number of ways things can go wrong for someone to make them miss a month - maybe they don't have the cash on hand for a sub that month, maybe they got sick and just couldn't log in to pick it up...
I'd suggest an alternative: Make 'em exclusive for, say, six months to a year. Then put the piece in the Q store for... oh, 100,000 Q or something similarly exorbitant. That way you get to reward your subscribers now - and fuel Q usages later on.
The people who got it as a subscriber benefit can feel smug that they got it earlier and vastly cheaper, everyone else can get it eventually if they really want it, and there will (in six months to a year) suddenly be a steady supply of new things in the Q store to give people a reason to consider trading Zen for Q.
I think a more reasonable approach would be to offer the new one each month free to gold, and then later charge zen (say 100) for each one but limit the purchase to current gold members. That way a person has to subscribe and feed zen into the system to catch up, and then will hopefully keep the sub for the bonus parts going forward. EDIT: Or what morigosa says above me.
I love the idea of more costume pieces! I also like the idea of exclusivity for subscribers (membership should have its privileges, after all) to encourage game support. Thumbs-up!
Hmmm... Personally I doubt I'd miss a month, really it's pretty easy to log in one day a month to unlock. That being said... If people sub month-to-month and have a cash-flow problem for even one month, they'll be in out of luck, or if new people join the game, there could a a long back-log of missed pieces that could never be recovered.
I'm all for leaving the items exclusive to Gold Members, but I feel it bit too extreme to truly never re-release items. Some system of re-release for Gold Members should be available anyway... Possibly bring them back annually or something similar... (Like re-release June 2014's item when you release June 2015's).
Anyway, good show and thanks for the gratitude/awesome-feelings.
:biggrin:
When XP earnings during a Double-XP Weekend still feel like I'm underperforming,
there's something terribly wrong with the reward system...
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Original Join Date: Feb 2010.
PS: Exclusive items is what many other game companies do in the industry to get people come and stay or at the very least come back. They do this because it works.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Have to admit my first reaction to this was pretty much "Tuff" In retrospect I do still fell its a case of tuff you missed it but maybe they could be a little bit nice with there time maybe have last months part available for a very short period of time the following month a kind of l"ast chance feature"
It is.
Also, happy 1300+ day subscriber (not lifetimer) here. Yeah, I'm kinda nuts with not going lifetimer somewhere down the line, but Cryptic keeps me coming back, along with all my friends and such that I know.
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Thought it was the competition keeps upsetting you because they keep suckering you in and I get to go I told you so
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Yes, there will be some envy, just as I envy some things that lifetime subscribers get that I don't. Okay by me. Not everyone gets everything.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Anyway, if they want to reward being gold why not automatically give the pieces to LTS? It's not like they'll drop the sub, and it solves the problem of people wanting to catch em all retroactively. Put a past costume pieces vendor in the LTS lounge or something.
Why don't you try bringing back stuff that you took out with On Alert? Then we'll talk about resubbing.
People are broken. - Lum the Mad
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Cryptic, I admire your effort to add value to a subscription, but I dont think this is the way to do it.
If you decide to go forward with this approach please consider counting Silver Player Zstore purchases as a means of qualifying for a given monthly costume piece. Spend $18 (I think it is reasonable to set the threshold higher than the cost of a sub due to the consistency of a sub) in the Zstore in a given month and you get the reward.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
That's something like how CoH worked when it went hybrid/freemium, spend $x or be subbed for a month and you get a token to unlock something in the rewards tree.
One time only exclusive costume pieces just seem like a waste of potential. Personally I don't have to worry about it but it would suck for someone that saw the perfect costume piece and then found out there was no way to obtain it anymore. There should be some sort of rotation on the vendor and not just removal.
If someone wants to acquire the pieces they missed months down the line, they can pay for the sub and spend the questionite for each missed piece! Making them disappear forever only adds to the mound of contempt for Cryptic.
Please talk to your superiors about this!
There isn't enough new content being regularly added to the game to warrant a sub every month. A single costume piece doesn't warrant this. It would take a WHOLE costume set every month to justify this.
Exclusives are only okay if it comes with content to play when that exclusive comes out! Doing anything short of that makes you an amoral company.
This. Gold only is a good idea. Miss it and you're screwed is a bad idea.
Also, I think the zen store would make a boatload more money if you started selling per-character color tinting and per-character resource unlimiters.
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Though I doubt. Giving small costume parts it's not something that keeps people subscribing.
Making a game of quality that justifies paying subscription fee is. And that's where CO has problems.
Oftentimes that's simply not the game of quality and content on the level of polish high enough, when compared to other mmo titles.
Making small rewards time exclusive and available only for a limited time?
What you are trying to do, Cryptic? Annoy and antagonize subscribing part of your playerbase more? "No, you can have it never because it was two months ago, ahahahahaha!" <--- That's not gonna turn your players more loving or liking you.
Also consider what ashensnow said about CoH/V loyalty rewards per money spent on the game, no matter the form in which they were spent.
You are taking advantages from CO f2p format, selling Zen, lockboxes and, more important, very expensive freeform slots and less expensive, but broken, archetypes. Yet, you are still alienating this large part of your playerbase that is spending. Things like no global cap increase and generally broken Z-store and no wonder CO can't succeed even as a f2p title, let alone a subscription one.
1 Piece Per Month.
And give the full Sets straight away to LTS.
*robotdances to the sunset*
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
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To some costume designers, there is a tangible benefit in "catching them all" because each new item you get increases the odds you can realize an envisioned design or potentially inspire an entirely new one.
This.
They should just make them boe if the above can't be done.
Either way meh, have too may ff slots now so subbing just won't work for me.*
*I would resub if new playable content was cycled back into development, but short of that....no a few costumes won't cut it.
This is totally true for most of my friends and acquaintances in-game. However, I really don't see the problem with logging in for a bare minimum of once a month to get these costume pieces.
As a subscriber I like to see the adding of value to Gold, but I really think these pieces should be available to Silvers too...at a price.
I wonder if this new addition for Gold members is because Cryptic have plans to improve things for Silvers......perhaps raising of the G limit and/or power colour tinting.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
With that said, I say a retention program is a great idea. We haven't veterans awards in what, 2? 3 years? I think its past time for them to release new content to subscribers to leep them invested in the game. It gives them another reason to incest in the game.
That said, losing out on a costume piece because you forgot to claim it is pretty sucky.
My suggestion is that every 12 months, the new costume bits should be made available as part of a costume pack in the c-store. In this way subs would get first pick of the new toys, but silvers could get it with a certain amount of patience.
Also feel the pain that may result if the pieces disappear forever.
No concern for those who don't put money into the game missing out. The reward should not be achievable by farming in-game currency.
My suggestion would be that anyone who puts $10/month into the game (I think that's the minimum subscription cost if you have the 3 month recurring special deal) can get the piece each month and that there be special events where older pieces become available again, but again be limited to those contributing financially to the game.
Clearly though this setup is a pay and not play model in mind.
If you don't want a sub, don't get one. That means you'll miss certain benefits. Seems reasonable to me, especially for just one costume piece. This isn't a power set, travel power, vehicle, or mod.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
They are available for a price. It's called a subscription. If you want the costume bits, get a sub simple as that. If you don't want to sub, then you don't want the costume bits. And no, I don't think it's harsh that you have 30 days to get one costume piece each month for the price of having a subscription.
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This would fit in STO and Neverwinter for sure since content is always available that players have never done before.
Another way of looking at this is players should invest in a lifetime sub. That way they never have to put another cent into the game beyond that. Use their stipend to buy the costume set that comes out at a rate of one every few months, use the rest to purchase the lockbox items, and login once a month for the Gold only exclusive piece.
Check that off as another player that won't invest since lifetime sounds better than $15 a month to make sure they get the piece.
If they are doing this because sub sales are dropping, then they aren't paying attention as to why.
You're assuming they don't have anything in mind or plans to add anything.
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A clever comany however would have a LTS discount and fire back up the $10/month forever option right before implementing this.
but I guess it's just for a single costume piece once a month from a vendor who isn't even on Live yet.
How silly of me for thinking otherwise.
Oh, sure, and I'm a guy that's primarily about character design. But I'm also an adapter. You work with what you've got. I hate the whole lockbox concept, so I just pretend the stuff in those don't exist, for example.
"Flourishing" is the key word there, and it doesn't come close to describing CO. "Living hand-to-mouth" is closer to the truth, so perhaps Cryptic shouldn't be adding Sucks To Be You to the subscriber perk business model.
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It might not be enough to get people to sub but it isn't likely to chase away any subscribers who are already subscribing.
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Cool though that would be... eminently not feasible, the resource allocation wouldn't make any sense. Making an entire themed costume set just for golds wouldn't have enough returns, especially given that golds basically get a free set a month with the stipend.
The nice thing about this incentive program is that it's pretty easy for the devs to come up with an idea -- "Wouldn't speedster goggles be cool?" -- and they can make them, polish them, and release them. They don't have to invest the extra time designing an entire costume set as well. Gold players get something awesome, the dev team doesn't have to take too much time away from upcoming content, it's very efficient.
I'd like to emphasize that this is a bonus. We're not saying the subscription is only given value by this costume piece -- a number of you are telling us, month after month, that you like the subscriptions and the benefits they provide. We like when players are happy with a service we provide (and I like when my revenue stream is a consistent, happily large number :biggrin:), so we're making the subscriptions a little more valuable for the exact same price.
A silver player is just as important to us, and we'll reach out to them in a number of other ways, but we also want to look out for the gold players and make sure they're enjoying their benefits.
You guys know the drill by now -- our plans are always within scope (so no new zones or level cap), but I can say some cool stuff is on its way. The dev team has hit their stride, and while they're cranking out awesome C-Store releases like the Tactical Armor and the Smoke Aura, they're hard at work on new non-monetization content as well. Stay tuned, heroes...
Nifty.
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An issue that's being pointed out (that I can totally relate and understand), is possibly missing out on one of these for various reasons (traveling, other RL stuff, returning players...), happens to be one you'd have loved to have gotten, and you'll never have that chance again. Sounds a bit... harsh, too strict? Might generate some dissatisfaction, especially on the long run, I see how that could become a problem.
I'd maybe suggest, periodically (every X [6?] months or longer), not a lot unlike weekly sales, putting those last (6-month, in that case) cycled out items up for sale again, at an increased price, for like a week perhaps. A time of the year players would know these would be available again, but as a "last chance" kind of deal; and then that'd be it! What do you guys think?
If Cryptic just wanted to add this in as a bonus, why don't the costume bits just magically show up in the tailor every month for gold / lts? And why make it limited time? There is a reason why you have to actually log into the game, walk over to a vendor, and click to get the pieces.
First of all, it forces you to actually log into the game. More important in the case of LTS members who are probably leaving, never to return. Having the game look populated means that new people are less likely to see this as a game on it's death bed and stick around instead of 1 hour and gone. Another thing, is if you are bothering to log into the game for this stupid costume bit, you might actually play the game for a bit. If you play the game for a bit, you might drop some money on the cash shop.
Second, I suspect that subs are dropping off and have been for a long time. I bet there are a lot of those former subs who hang around as silver players. Having this vendor COMPLETELY ignores the reasons people drop their subs but stick with the game.
Third, the vendor itself is a "Hey, sub and get limited time cool stuff!" beacon. There is plenty of this already, but in a different fashion. Lockboxes say "hi". And... the last one totally bombed VS the one before it. The Foxbat box, which kept the q to zen prices high for a long time, had something to do with it. The Steel Shadow did not and prices are already dropping back to the new normal. They might even get below 300 q/zen before the 4th of July lockbox event. There is nothing to DO with the addition of these costume pieces which is why I think this is going to fail.
Fourth, Cryptic has been trying to push players from silver to gold since the game went F2P and it's done nothing but fail. Once again, they are making business decisions that is very unlikely to work instead of playing to the strengths of the F2P model.
Knowing all of that, yes, I hate this retention mechanic because it doesn't do anything to solve the actual issues with the game and player population.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009