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CDP Topic: VIP
nitocris83
Member, Cryptic Developer, Administrator Posts: 4,498Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
In the first phase of this CDP we would like you to think and comment about these questions:
- The rate of free keys
- We currently grant a key a day, which is 30 a month. We want to preserve the value of VIP, so if lockbox odds are improved by 2x or even 3x, how would you view altering the rate of free keys to keep a similar value?
- Alternates to keys
- How would you feel about getting a currency with VIP that allowed you to get items other than keys from your daily login? Would you choose to get wards, enchanting stones, or other valuable items instead of keys if you had that option?
- Ranks
- How would you feel about the removal of ranks on VIP, granting full benefits of VIP 12 while active? What do you value about ranks?
- Current Benefits
- Which of the current benefits of VIP do you value and why?
- New Benefits
- What would you like to see added in terms of benefits?
- Auction House
- Having one group able to list an item, de-list, and re-list again at no cost/penalty to undercut is not healthy for the Auction House and we’d like that to be a better experience for everyone. What are your thoughts in regard to this statement?
Here is an example of how VIP could look. Note: this is just an example but it is here to help provide insight and context into some of our thoughts:
VIP Example- Instead of directly getting reroll tokens, VIP would be given a VIP currency and would have a store. The contents of this store would adjust over time but would likely start with things such as Preservation Wards, Enchanting Stones, Companion Upgrade Tokens, and yes Reroll Tokens.
- 10-15 Lockbox Keys per month – These would now be in the new VIP store and players could go all in on keys only to max out at 15, or could opt for fewer keys and more of the other rewards which gives players more flexibility in what VIP offers them.
- Increased odd chances on items in Lockboxes moving forward.
- A higher cap on refined AD per day for VIP, 15% more for a cap of 115,000
- Ability for VIP to change loadouts away from campfires
- Increased health gain from VIP – grants every member of your group 1% of their base HP as additional Max HP. Maximum 5% with a full group of VIP.
- Removal of VIP ranks meaning that anyone who purchases VIP gets full benefits immediately.
Note: Using the feedback format below allows us to better identify commonalities/differences and generate summaries and proposals more efficiently. As a reminder, the format is for feedback proposals, not for discussions/replies to another user’s proposal.
Feedback Format
Feedback Overview (short description of the proposed feedback)
Feedback Goal (what this feedback would target and accomplish)
Feedback Functionality (how would your feedback work in relation to the current design of Neverwinter)
Risks & Concerns (what problems can you foresee with implementing your feedback that you would like input on from members of this subforum)
Topic Discussion End Date: January 31, 2020
Reminders- We will not disclose information regarding unreleased or in-development content. This includes specific business-related metrics, dates or timelines, or licensing agreements.
- Game development is the primary focus of the team - developer presence on these subforums cannot realistically be as frequent as the community would like. This does not mean the team is not invested in this initiative; it is taken very seriously. Thread summaries and actions plans developed once a topic has concluded its run are extremely valuable in maintaining the development team aware of the focused feedback, discussions, and community sentiment.
- These subforums are meant to be a collaborative discussion where we all learn from each other, share perspectives, and come to the table with ideas for the improvement of Neverwinter. This does not mean that we will take action on every proposal or that positive comments from the development team are to be construed as promises.
- Keep comments and discussions on topic and follow the CDP Conduct and Expectations.
- What would you like to see added in terms of benefits?
Post edited by cwhitesidedev#9752 on
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Comments
and frankly I don't trust that the odds would stay increased. you'd say they're increased when really it was just a way to rob us of our keys. this company has a very poor track record. this proposal is one that asks us to take a devaluing of something we've already bought and paid for. I'm over a year out with vip. this is something you should hold a very dear value on as it brings you money. I think there should be more ranks not one that everyone has instant access to. I had to pay money for my original ranks of vip. why should others NOT have to to get the benefits? the auction house is something we have paid the right to have no listing fees. I want my 30 keys a month. I want more keys not less. if i had a choice.
Rough ad should not have a higher cap for anyone. there needs to be more constraints on ad in the game not a loosening up of it. that will just hasten inflation.
you say a vip store. what that tells me is the price will go up and I will not get the same value that I get daily from my rerolls. I'm happy with my rerolls thanks. unless you want to give me more.
wow, I'm honestly pretty angry over this. enough where walking away is a potential outcome for me.
I would like to talk about more ranks and more things that could be added. I don't want to talk about you taking things away from a service we've already paid for in good faith.
further more what happened to the MEANINGFUL cdp topic we were promised?
Chris
The bottom line comes down to value.
As far as less keys but better odds. In theory this might sound good, but currently (see Rainers vidoes on youtube) the odds of getting the best thing from a lockbox is .17 percent on any given key. Even if that was tripled, still comes out to less than ONE percent (.5 percent). That is one half of one percent but with less chances to try. IDK? Would probably work out to be about the same as is it is now with more mid-level items becoming more common which might be ok.
I like the idea of a higher cap of rAD but again this might be a wash due to inflation.
Don’t use loadouts so, that has no value to me.
Most of what I do on NW (95%) is solo so while the HP gain might appeal to others, a measly one percent to me is so-so. Give solo peeps 5% more. OH YEAH! Take my money.
As far as removing ranks? Sounds good for new players for us who are paid in advance less value.
The currency thing is good/fair as long as you don’t make the most wanted items too proportionately higher than most of the other stuff that won’t be used that often.
Some things that would have high value to me would be:
Access to SH Bank from VIP or for that matter ANY love for the SH experiance.
Access to the SH coffers from VIP. (This sounds like a no brainer to me, not only would it be easier on players it would save bandwidth because there would be less trips to the SH to deposit stuff in the coffers)
Permanent discount for the Zen store. Even if just 1-5%
Anyway my 2 pence. Hope it helps.
Let me reiterate....I PAID for that....I do not expect you to change anything about it.
I would argue that VIP is at the moment, effectively unranked, because you buy the time and the rank in the same time (except very specific bundles and packs). You get things gated off for the first few purchase, but in essence, you can't stay at a Rank or lose a Rank and if you are a hard invester, Ranks does not matter. Ranks might be a problem for those just want to get in with a month and only get a key and a few potion, which is a problem, but I think the problem is that the system expects them to pay in advance for a full year to get benefit for the full year from it.
I say this because I would like a VIP system that has hardly separated Ranks that can be scaled by the player's need or convenience. For example, I don't really expect much from the keys and I hardly ever bought keys even in sale, but I always keep up my VIP for the summonable vendor and stuff, not get injuries and other things. And it's a good value, so logical to try and keep it. If there would be a Rank 1 VIP that is the "value Rank" and a Rank 2, where less extra value, but more convenience, I would absolutely consider Rank 2 and gaze upon Rank 3 as an actual "VIP place" to be in, with a ton of cool stuff, but not really much extra "value".
But if VIP upgrades itself into the cap automatically, well, maybe removing the Ranks is a good idea if there won't seem to be a reason to keep off the later benefits. But also, because VIP is not really a scaling system, you can try and balance the value in it, but it will never incentivise players to not see it as an investment, but cool perks to be had.
So, I'd like Ranks, but actual distinct Ranks that scales with the players priorities about why they would like to be "VIP".
I asked weeks ago if we couldn't get more reroll tokens for chests in the tradebar store purchased by tradebars but to that I got a reply saying the game needed an AD sink and that was the end of it. The issue with this is that most players, when they run out of reroll tokens, just plain don't reroll in chests once they are all out of them. Including packs of this in the tradebar store or even making all reroll tokens bound to account (so that you could transfer them to characters who actually needs them instead of some alts that were only made for storage) would be a great approach.
The idea of getting less keys and having everything bundled up in one great big purchase instead of different ranks sounds great for a new player although as someone who has consistantly bought VIP ever since it was introduced; it doesn't really make my wallet tingle. This could perhaps be made into a "new player VIP bundle" kind of deal in the zen store, but in terms of those of us that have VIP rank 12 we like our ranks. What I value the most is the signpost, no posting fees, bank portal and of course the keys and reroll tokens. I do appreciate the bazaar discounts but I feel like most of those rewards could be updated, the "change loadout anywhere" feature sounds like a great addition.
As for the VIP store, I would rather see the tradebar store being updated instead, it needs a big overhaul. How about looking at all of those artifacts and maybe upping the price of tradebars for them but also raising their stats to be more aligned with the newer artifacts such as the Staff of Flowers and Trobriands Ring? (cough, bring back pres wards into the tradebar store, cough) Don't forget that the tradebars are a currecy that players has to open lockboxes in order to get, it ties into the AD and even real life money sink whereas if you have nicer shiny things in the tradebar store: players will want to pop more lockboxes in order to get them.
Posting fees, don't touch that. If you must make it so that players cannot relist the same item over and over, have there be a very short cooldown period to where you can post things again. Taking away the free posting fee option is not something VIP users would be happy to see reversed.
Hopefully my reply to this topic wasn't too messy o/
I would be fine if they kept the key count the same, 1/day and increase lockbox odds for everyone. This wouldn't increase the value of VIP, but would affect the value of Keys in general, as well as the drops from them, idk how, I'm not an economist.
The idea of VIP currency sounds like a spin on the Trade Bar Store, why not expand on that since TB's are already a thing, and you get TB's from lockboxes with keys from VIP. Perhaps put Reroll tokens in TBS.
I love the idea of switching loadouts anywhere.
I don't mind changing the rank system, as long as it's interesting. But having certain benefits at higher ranks does have feeling of exclusiveness which is the whole idea behind VIP, being "special". Although I understand wanting more inclusivity as well.
Maybe some add some good Zen store coupons to daily vip rewards, something better than what you'd get from invoking.
Lower gold cost for removing enchants from gear.
Small boost to professions task chance/quality.
The trouble with the Auction House are these:
Trade Cabal - Groups of high AD players with large buying power who purchase in groups with the goal of relisting.
Price fixing and Collusion - They buy x and relist in unison to control prices.
Insider/Advanced Leaks - These guys know which items will be nerfed, buffed, offered in they future so they know which to sell or buy. I'm not talking about preview servers. Long time NW problem!
Pump & Dump operations - do all sorts of in-game gimmicks/acting/testimonials (pretending to be newbs & experts - like a play) to inflate value of items they want to get rid of or sell what they are controlling.
Thus, in short, the main problem with the AH is the accumulated buying power of groups of players. who chose to manipulate the market prices.
If you want to research a superior AH model, it would be worth it to check Black Desert Online's. If you implement something like DC Universe Online auction house where players pay a nominal listing fee (commensurate fraction to the price regardless if it is sold or not sold), it won't solve the price fixing problem due to focus on highly valued, coveted limited supply of items and the high, aggregate buying power of groups that collude.
Just check the Alpha Compy that came from the old Chult expediton box. Those expedition boxes were reintroduced briefly this Christmas, but supplies used to be very low.
In short, once an item is identified as prized (depending on game changes), it is easy to corner the market due to high group buying power. The ability to resell will overcome price controls and incoming new supply from other players.
PS. If you want a quick fix on the AH listing choke, check your 40 item AH/Mail limit PER character! New players and low item level characters should be limited to 10 listings at first. Multi-accounts with the "guild" storages are being abused to spam action house listing.
I don't like the currency store idea.
I am indifference of the rank change because I'm already rank 12 since the beginning.
I value the QoL services the most.
I don't mind to have a choice to pick among re-roll token, p-ward, ... (as long as you don't touch the 30 lockbox keys).
I don't want better odd for the lockbox if you touch the amount of lockbox key.
I like higher AD cap.
I like the ability to change loadout away from camp fire.
I like health gain.
I am indifference of removing ranking (because I'm already rank 12).
So, if I have to give up something to gain, it is a big NO.
If you want to make VIP better with NO set back in the existing benefits, it is a big thumb up.
For the cheap improvement (as ease of implementation and not gaining too much to (say) alter the economy), I would like to
have the following (order by my favorite) and without losing any current benefit:
change loadout away from camp fire
Health gain
higher AD cap
Chris
Direct Travel to the Workshop: I do like having the ability to do this (even more so on xbox due to the lengthy load time of Protector's Enclave). Invocation: Being able to invoke as soon as I can no matter where I'm at is nice. Immunity to Injuries: This was the thing I looked forward to most after the Signpost when I was initially buying VIP.
I also don't see undercutting as being unhealthy for the Auction House. I do agree that some people take it to an extreme, but in the end they are only hurting themselves.
Feedback Goal: Players will see more value in the VIP and will be more apt to invest, especially for longer periods of time.
Feedback Functionality: Regarding the daily keys, I think that the lockbox rewards themselves should be increased to how they were when VIP was introduced. A low end box could have 20k-45k ad of stuff. Something as simple as more chances of blue enchanting stones, or other enchanting reagents. Something other than the increasingly devalued RP gems.
I also think that much of the convenience rewards of VIP should be available at rank 1, however to reward VIP members who have had a long period of time of holding VIP, there should be some sort of reward like a high quality transmute and a title. (I am thinking along the lines of a cloak that might have the appearance of wings or a cloak of flames or butterflies once every year or 6 months)
Risks and Concerns: High quality Transmutes may take time to develop and get working properly, especially if they have any visual effects.
Any added low end items in lockboxes could end up driving AH costs down
Those with a lot of comulated VIP time would not be investing more and would just up waiting for new transmutes to develop.
Edit: I am a long term player (from closed beta, Feb 2013) casual endgamer.
Feedback overview:
However, to me VIP definitely needs improving, its still very good value zen wise, but honestly, I think that is only because the zen store is so massively over pricing things, especially things that you can ONLY get through Zen in some form. But it think the Zen store needs to be a whole different CDP.
Current Benefits
VIP is nice to have, but it doesn't really offer anything consistent other thank the VIP rank perks and these are not 10 dollars worth in my opinion., It doesn't seem like its valuable ENOUGH to persuade your average joe to spend 10 dollars a month on it.
1 free gamble lockbox key per day, 3 gamble tokens,and a few QoL perks, while its good value compared to buying keys straight out, lockboxes are really poor value for money in the long run. you lose 99% of the time from every box, so in my opinion it shouldn't be the sole enticement to buy VIP.
End of the day, I like to see up front what I pay for, paying for RnG doesn't interest me and there is waaaay too much of it.
Lockboxes
refinement packs
Insignia packs
profession packs
these are all just flat out gambling, and I wouldn't be surprised 1 bit if the whole reason you as a company are looking at changing the lockbox system is because the industry as a whole is coming under a lot of scrutiny recently over lockbox type rewards and children playing/paying. I highly doubt this is every gonna be an 18+ only game.
So back to VIP specifically.
Feedback Goal: to make VIP valuable enough that EVERY player wants to have it and buy it.
New benefits:
I would be much more willing to spend money on VIP regularly if for instance , for 30 days you got:
All the current perks - I actually like the VIP rank system but I am also not against it being an all or nothing thing without ranks.
1 enchanted key per day ( or 30 each purchase up front)
1-3 preservation ward per day ( per account, not per character depending on VIP rank) - there is not enough ways in game to get wards, and you need thousands of them. 30 wards ( bind on account) a month would be a nice little bonus for VIP
1 legendary dragon key per day ( per character) - grinding out old campaigns for keys is so dull, 1 free dungeon chest isn't exactly a big ask. you would still need to grind out bonus keys if you want to run multiple dungeons.
1 Zen market voucher 40% discount with a 30day expire date per 30days purchased, limited to a value of 2500zen so you couldn't use it on the multi bundle stuff. And because it has a 30day expire, you couldn't stack them up for sales and abuse them, you either buy something that month, or you lose it.
1-3 companion Tokens per day ( per account )
So in summary , for every 30days of VIP purchased, you get
Access to VIP rank perks
30 x enchanted keys
30-90 x preservation wards
30 x legendary dragon keys
30-90 x companion tokens
1 x 40% Zen market voucher
ALL Bind to Account
Sounds good value for 10 dollars right?
Feedback Functionality:
Here will be the controversial part
VIP would no longer be purchased with ZEN, but as a direct payment though ARC or whatever ( same way you buy zen)
The idea behind this is that VIP is rewarding enough for everyone to want to have it, but not NEEDED
If you want it, you pay for it, regardless of how much zen/AD you happen to have exploited over the years.
Risks & Concerns
1)The only real risk is that less money would be spend through the zen store on wards, BUT ideally a lot more players will be spending REAL money on VIP
2) People will cry they have to spend real money on VIP not just ZEN but honestly the game is free, you don't need VIP
in the past vip has been attached to key bundles and things without rank. why not just do more things like that but also give ranks with them.
the current lockboxes themselves are bad. the way it was before was better pre this model where it randomly spews things. it's basically made it so the lockboxes themselves aren't worth it anymore. when things were in bundles like enchantment packs and comp packs they retained more value. i.e you have a glorious resurgence box. has a chance of mount or comp pack. various packs. lets say you get an enchantment pack. that means a guaranteed r4 mop. yay. that's some minimal value in those packs. now you have the halaster pack. the most common roll is 3 different gemstones. that are worth about 1200 each.
there has been a steady devaluing of the economy from cryptic. the economy is good for whales and it is good for people trying to level up. it used to be there was some value in Rp. low level enchantments and what not. simplifying the refinement process made everything worthless more or less. i'm more interested in talking about ways to bring back value to things that have becomes devalued.
the ah cabal that someone above was talking about isn't something I've witnessed on xbox. but economy is about supply and demand and that goes for everyone. if you are a low level player the economy is how you will make money. if you introduce means to flood the world with more ad and more things then all of a sudden that low level player can't afford anything even harder than he could not afford it before.
right now there is no good way to make ad in game for lower level people. master craft supply was one of the big ways lower levels could make money to advance. that's been taken away. add it back quickly.
Vip isn't the reason that you're not able to retain new people. the changes to the game especially since mod 16 but from a bit before that in the economy are the reasons things aren't working. basically the economy has been ravaged by taking away the things that make it tick. Vip has been working well for years now. it's not broken. breaking it will just add to the crumbling house of cards.
if you want more new players to buy things add things to the ranks that a new player would want, put in a new pony at rank 1, a bag at rank 2, a r12 bonding stone (account bound) at r3, etc. a new player WANTS that sign post. they WANT that posting fee. I remember when this was introduced. I wanted those things. it took awhile to earn (And buy) but I did buy them. things need to have value. you need to have something to work for in a game like this. making everything one rank available right away.. does not have that carrot and stick incentive. if you give them the carrot instead of holding it a couple feet out.. they'll walk away bored.
what I would like to see is a revisiting to how refinement works. there needs to be some better sinks for refinement and lower level enchantments to get some of this stuff out of the economy and give it some value. maybe roll them into mastercrafting somehow if not going back to a more complex system of refining enchantments and artifacts. (artifacts yet another thing rendered valueless by the change to refining system that lower levels used to be able to make money on from drops)
there may be 12 ranks and the 12th rank the bank is nice but functionally you have everything you need by rank 8.
-> What I value most is the 0 cost posting fee, its the only reason i got VIP in the first place. Leave us with our 0 cost AH posting fee benefit, but perhaps put a cooldown timer on items being re-posted, as mentioned earlier.
-> Don't remove our daily key, prefer to keep it than said "lockbox chance increase". Other items instead of my key? Hmm, it would have to be worth it. Do the math on exactly how much AD one key is to the current lockbox, you'd have to give us the option to get something of the same value. I would take more rerolls instead and just forget that lockboxes ever exist in the game. On that point, I strongly disagree with the whole lockbox "gambling" thing anyway, and would never buy keys regardless of the chance, and also not showing the drop chance is just fowl-play. Wish they would finally get marked as illegal without given drop rates. Don't get me started.
-> Removing VIP ranks, sure whatever, Your looking at investing nearly 120 bucks to get all the ranks, a new player isn't going to want to spend this just to access all the benefits.
-> Reroll tokens, love them, and yes, I never use AD to reroll my chest if I run out. Its more of a time sink than an AD sink.
-> More Hp, not gonna make a difference, you could fix Con ability score while your at it, gives less Hp than Cha.
-> Changing loadout while not at a campfire. Well sure, why not, but you'll be making fireplaces completely pointless, the +1 to ability scores for 15 mins is rather useless unless your try hard dpsing in ToMM vs, others.
# In my opinion, leave VIP how it is, perhaps remove ranks, or at least remove the amount of them. By all means add more benefits if you so wish but don't remove the existing ones. We paid for them.
Regards,
Aragon-Neverwinter.
Orange text outlines what I feel most strongly about, in case your eyes are tired and you don't feel like reading it all.
The rate of free keys
Even tripling the odds from lockboxes doesn't really increase the chances very much. I would not be happy to receive less keys, even though I consider keys one of my least valued things about VIP. It is one of the main perks that drive people to buy it, after all.
Alternates to keys
It depends how much of this currency the items would cost. If I have to save up a week of currency just for one rank 5 enchanting stone, which I can get 2 of from doing random queues each day, I'm not interested. If everything costs 1 or 2 of said currency, I would consider buying the other things. I think this is mostly beneficial for newer/mid-tier players, though. In your example, you suggested this currency would replace reroll tokens - I greatly dislike that idea. In that scenario, I would choose the reroll token every time without question. If anything, it should be an addition to the reroll tokens.
Ranks
As others have said, those of us with any VIP rank higher than 1 did pay extra to have those higher ranks with more perks. Unless there is some form of equal compensation, such as a zen refund, I don't think this would go over very well for existing players. For newer players, or those without VIP, they would obviously consider it a great thing. But people who do have VIP are often the ones driving the new players to buy it, and if these customers feel their value was taken away....well, yeah.
Current Benefits
The VIP benefits I value the most are as followed, in order of valuance (definitely a word):
- Travel signpost/bank portal/mailbox (all equal, most heavily used perks) - these are HUGE quality of life improvements and make the game so much better. These perks are the main points I use when telling someone about how nice having VIP is.
- Auction house posting fee removal (explanation below)
- Injury immunity It's so great to not have to worry about carrying around injury kits. Inventory space is already difficult to manage as it is.
- Reroll tokens One of the better features added recentlyish. It makes me feel like I'm getting more out of my dungeon runs, by giving me multiple chances to get something to sell that would make my time worth it.
- Bonus RAD/invoke anywhere The Bonus RAD is not something I pay a ton of attention to, but bonus currency is bonus currency and it adds up. Invoking anywhere is another great quality of life thing, it's very nice to not have to run to a campfire to invoke. When it comes off cooldown and I'm in a dungeon or something, I'm likely to forget to do it if I can't do it right then.
- Profession vendor (just to sell random stuff)/travel to workshop more quality of life stuff. I don't use the workshop frequently enough that it would be a thorn in my side to not have, but it's nice knowing it's there when I need it. I just use the professions vendor to sell all the garbage I pick up while running around.
- Wondrous bazaar discount Would probably be better if the wondrous bazaar was updated, most of the prices are so outrageous that even having the 40% discount during the event doesn't make half the stuff worth buying (special items tab specifically). The only thing I buy from here is rank 6 &7 marks of potency, and infrequently.
- Seal trader for awhile I forgot this existed because it hadn't been updated to sell protege etc gear. I would have valued this a lot more when salvage was a thing, but now I just leave my seals capped and don't pay attention to them. I have this bound to the same key the salvage anvil used to be. I miss the salvage anvil.
- Lockbox keys I consider this the fun part of VIP, to see if I'm lucky at all. But I think it's the other primary reason people buy VIP. It was one of the reasons I got VIP to begin with.
Any others aren't valuable to me at all, or I use them so infrequently that they aren't worth mentioning.
Auction House
Having one group able to list an item, de-list, and re-list again at no cost/penalty to undercut is not healthy for the Auction House and we’d like that to be a better experience for everyone. What are your thoughts in regard to this statement?
- Not having a posting fee has been a huge improvement for me. I hated having to keep extra diamonds on hand just to sell stuff. For example, getting an epic mount from a dungeon and then not even being able to sell it because I don't have enough AD for the posting fee. If this perk was removed, I would be very upset, as I feel a lot of people would. One idea is to have a cooldown on how often the same item can be removed and re-listed, like 8 hours. However, this would inconvenience those who make mistakes while listing their items. It would suck to accidentally list a legendary mount too cheap, remove it, and then not be able to list it again for awhile.
A higher cap on refined AD per day for VIP, 15% more for a cap of 115,000
Funny, I thought of this while reading through your post and bam there it was. Really like this idea. 100k AD refinement cap has been a drawback for me. Would be nice to have it give you even more of an increase as your VIP rank goes up.
Ability for VIP to change loadouts away from campfires A quality of life thing, I think a lot of players would appreciate this.
Increased health gain from VIP – grants every member of your group 1% of their base HP as additional Max HP. Maximum 5% with a full group of VIP. I think everyone would appreciate this, too. More HP is more HP, and more HP means less dying, usually.
Risks & Concerns
The only risk is with taking away value from what players have already purchased, really, which ties in to my comments above. This applies to anything you're thinking about changing without adding to, for example reroll tokens -> VIP currency, less lockbox keys, no more AH fee removal, etc. If you want more people to buy it, you need to improve it, not "improve" it. Players will see through any attempted improvements that end up being a lesser value.
Personally, I feel that VIP is one of the things needing the LEAST updates right now.
Also, I saw someone suggest that VIP be purchased through the arc store, and not with zen, and I just want to say that I think that's a terrible idea. It's taking away the free-to-play freedom from a lot of players who buy vip this way, and NW is a free-to-play game after all.
Hope this all made sense!
Silv3ry on YouTube
You can maybe earn additional currency as part of a streak bonus for logging in consistently or upkeeping you VIP status can increase your rewards as well.
Currency can be saved or spent right-away either on keys and other useful items, or, VIP promotion items added into the store.(move the 50% VIP sales to the new store)
Discounts from more vendors like the trade bar store and maybe even seal vendors too.
The increased cap on refining AD, along with the group HP and swapping loadouts anywhere sounds like a good idea to me.
More opportunity to add variety through cosmetic items as well, such as different visuals for the signpost and bank summons.
Some concerns would be players finding their ranks of VIP devalued if not done properly, because it took multiple purchases of
to accumulate the benefits they have now. Also, it needs to feel like its not a "cash grab" and that there's more to get to what you put into the initial cost. It would need to be continuously updated to keep it fresh and interesting
-Thalor
personally I'd be fine if they got rid of the auction house fees for everyone on the front end. maybe take a little less of a cut on the back end for people who have vip and just get rid of the posting fee for everyone. Undercutting is healthy. it can get ridiculous but it's supply and demand. the market sets the price. there would just have to be relevant ad sinks elsewhere to make up for it. the posting fee is ridiculous though.
this is an old drum so I'll bang it again now that we have a new audience, but another good sink would be to add coal wards to the wonderous bazaar and preswards. the price structure there needs a serious rework and more things should be added to it. that would go far towards ad sinks.
most importantly dont touch the keys (do what you will with the odds on the boxes or what is contained in the boxes in the first place (can we get pres and coal wards in a box??))
Vip Value for me includes my 1 key, the bank, the sign post, reroll tokens (tomm players stand up)
just under that the mailbox
and if you ever fix professions to what they should be and unify all the seal vendors so they all have the same stuff those could become fairly useful as well
I do like the idea of scaling values of RAD increase maybe 2k per rank?
in reality i've never really heard a big outcry on the VIP system needing change
there are other more pressing issues but if you wanted to venture into something like this than
1. Tradebar Store
1A. wondrous Bazaar
1AA. for the love of god the vault of piety
are the 3 areas that need work first over the VIP system
also dont touch the posting fees
would rather a cool down timer as mentioned etc
Chris as an aside:
i know you are very active with content creators, i hope that you are in tune with
what is going on with consoles as much as PC - all platforms very unique in their own way (see the ad exchanges for exp)
in future cdp's it might be beneficial to understand this when proposing ideas that might
sound good to players on one platform but not the others or the others dont see it as that big of an issue etc
I’m like many above, I have over 600 days of VIP left.
This is a two way conversation. I agree VIP could use some tweaking/modern updating. But I’m betting our goals are not aligned.
I have suggested that lock boxes should be set up similiar to DOTA2,
where these have say 20 possible items in the box and you get one random item each time you open one BUT you do NOT get duplicate items UNTIL you have received one of each available item.That means that you ALWAYS get one of each out of every 20 boxes opened.In this way it is not truly random,nor is it gambling since you can guarantee getting everything in the box after opening a fixed number of boxes.
As Valve discovered this change away from gambling lock boxes had the opposite effect from what many believed...instead it meant that many more people buy lockboxes to open than ever before because they could now guarantee they would get what they actually wanted ,without having to buy $1000 (of real money) to open vast numbers of lockboxes and still NOT get what they wanted.
Personally the gambling part of opening lockboxes caters to the minority,VIP was a good step to allow a fixed cost for majority to get keys at a reduced cost ,thats really the main feature of vip.
And so if you got lucky and get some good rewards from VIP keys (like legendary mount) you could sell that for more than youre VIP cost and wind up with an astral diamond profit.
The other features of vip are simply annoyances that should have been scrapped years ago anyway.Things like posting fee for auction house listings,VIP removes it but it should have never been there anyway.The point of the AH is to sell something for AD...so why should it cost AD to list an item for sale when you get that AD back anyway if the item sells...it just screws over anyone trying to start out and is new to the game.
To me VIP should only be convenience things LIKE the portable bank/mail/teleport/proffesion vendor etc,the discounted marks etc really are useless since the same items are cheaper in the AH usually cause so many of them drop from lockboxes as low rank rewards,
tarm trade bars like wise are a useless extra economy shop.since trade bar shop is only there as an extra incentive to open lock boxes and you only get random amount of tradebars from each lockbox opened.
Back when the trade bar vendor also sold coal wards then trade bars were at least useful,now the only thing people do with trade bars is buy things to sell to get AD out of the trade bars...i seriously doubt there are many people that actually use trade bars to buy items to use themselves .
The majority of players do NOT like gambling becuase it only benefits the minority...people like me who did mastercrafting and battled the crafting RNG and won to make huge profits...who bought vip and got lucky with legendary mounts etc and sold them all for more profit...
I have 250,000 zen earned legitimately playing the game the way it is,buying/selling/crafting/etc (NOT by spending real money) but i am smarter than average and most players simply dont have the intelligence or the patience to work their way thru the games minefield of RNG randomness and AD sinks to actually win at playing.
Instead they are trying to have fun and failing cuase they cant get the items that make playing fun.Or spend an inordinate amount of available play time trying to get ahead of the curve.
IT is time to level the playing field so there is less profits to be made by minority who are profiting from the majority by playing the games randomness and winning.
RNG has a place ...like weather your hit does a crit of not ...but DOES NOT belong in whether or not you get a valuable useful item you actually NEED.
If everyone played for free, no one would ever get anything off the zen market
Someone HAS to buy zen and sell it on the exchange, or the whole thing falls apart. You are buying zen from players, not the company.
That's why theres a 4+ week waiting time on the exchange, a lot of whales are leaving, and that wait time keeps going up
I’ll just say it. You show me you can release awesome, bug free content. Bring back my old feat tree, give me real choice - I’d be more than happy to pay a monthly subscription fee. I used to open hundreds of lockboxes at a time and give the contents away. I got money, give me an excuse to spend it!