I am sorry to say that I don't have many positive things to say in this feedback post. The more I thought about this since I read it last night, the more I am disappointed and baffled.
However, since it seems to be the way things are and it looks locked in after a year of basically no changes to it, here's a few things to make it more appealing without fundamentally changing too much:
A) If someone buys 12 months now or has VIP for 12 months running, let them get everything in here right away. The current suggested proposal operates like a saltmine and has a ticking timer on VIP players' head threatening with loss of goods if they don't remember to talk to some obscure npc in hall of heroes.
B) Remove or improve some of the hilariously out of touch rewards like 300 sent xp and in general the normal bag rewards. How is maximum value of a full month ~150-225 DDO points for ONE character if they were able to choose how to spend it? Even some of the stronger rewards like the 12 hr xp/discovery pot is worse than 4x 3 hr pots; splitting into smaller chunks would be more player-friendly. Raiding, helping, etc is penalizing to the player if they have a 12hr 50% pot running. This item is imo the best choice by far and locks them to GOGOGO mode for 12 hours of playtime. 4x 3hrs > 1x 12 hrs. Be player friendly, it makes the game better.
C) I would like if you let us curate it more in the future. Some people love char slots. To others they are useless. You could have let us choose between extra bank space and characters for instance.
All in all, even as a VIP already, I wish this was not a thing.
Some of it is cool stuff - credit to the gfx/model designers, good job. Most of it is meh at best. Months 2, 4, 5, 10 are a joke. Month 9 is troubling as a precedent, gathering a lot of named item drop rates over time seems like a can of worms, where at first it's invisible and later it's significant that relates to how you would design future droprates. Almost all of it is nice only to some people, and even those that like some of it - mostly seem to like it only because they would have been VIP anyway and consider it free real estate for themselves "better than nothing, eh".
To me it feels worse than nothing and I say this as a permanent VIP because it takes design space away and creates artificial fomo sources that are completely unnecessary and display a complete lack of understanding and comprehension of what players need/want and shows that devs have a very different valuation to things than players do. 300 xp sentient xp? An eternal rest thing, as a full benefit for a month? 10% repair in a game where it's mostly irrelevant? Is Myth Drannor going to be full of acid monsters and item damage to make people begrudgingly appreciate this and feel even more fomo?
I think the whole system is a step in the wrong direction by giving a onetime bonuses like +20 hearts or valuable elixirs (12h 50%) and such on a reward track instead of permanent VIP QoL/Access boosts that relate to playing the game as long as you are VIP.
In the end, I'm almost glad they don't offer something I would appreciate a lot like relevant amounts of storage space, access to paid content like iconics/older expansions, permanent buddy boost bonus to items/xp, instant healing/resting when passing by a tavern/guildship after releasing, vendor access from any public area from your position or ease of access to iconic class selection at creation in the VIP - if I wanted something really bad from it I would be unable to ignore this thing. I just hope this doesn't mean that VIPs will garner benefits that nobody else can catch up to once this fomo track of awful grows into a corrupted monstrosity overtime.
To me it feels worse than nothing and I say this as a permanent VIP because it takes design space away and creates artificial fomo sources that are completely unnecessary and display a complete lack of understanding and comprehension of what players need/want and shows that devs have a very different valuation to things than players do. 300 xp sentient xp? An eternal rest thing, as a full benefit for a month? 10% repair in a game where it's mostly irrelevant? Is Myth Drannor going to be full of acid monsters and item damage to make people begrudgingly appreciate this and feel even more fomo?
I think the whole system is a step in the wrong direction by giving a onetime bonuses like +20 hearts or valuable elixirs (12h 50%) and such on a reward track instead of permanent VIP QoL/Access boosts that relate to playing the game as long as you are VIP.
In the end, I'm almost glad they don't offer something I would appreciate a lot like relevant amounts of storage space, access to paid content like iconics/older expansions, permanent buddy boost bonus to items/xp, instant healing/resting when passing by a tavern/guildship after releasing, vendor access from any public area from your position or ease of access to iconic class selection at creation in the VIP - if I wanted something really bad from it I would be unable to ignore this thing. I just hope this doesn't mean that VIPs will garner benefits that nobody else can catch up to once this fomo track of awful grows into a corrupted monstrosity overtime.
However, since it seems to be the way things are and it looks locked in after a year of basically no changes to it, here's a few things to make it more appealing without fundamentally changing too much:
A) If someone buys 12 months now or has VIP for 12 months running, let them get everything in here right away. The current suggested proposal operates like a saltmine and has a ticking timer on VIP players' head threatening with loss of goods if they don't remember to talk to some obscure npc in hall of heroes.
B) Remove or improve some of the hilariously out of touch rewards like 300 sent xp and in general the normal bag rewards. How is maximum value of a full month ~150-225 DDO points for ONE character if they were able to choose how to spend it? Even some of the stronger rewards like the 12 hr xp/discovery pot is worse than 4x 3 hr pots; splitting into smaller chunks would be more player-friendly. Raiding, helping, etc is penalizing to the player if they have a 12hr 50% pot running. This item is imo the best choice by far and locks them to GOGOGO mode for 12 hours of playtime. 4x 3hrs > 1x 12 hrs. Be player friendly, it makes the game better.
C) I would like if you let us curate it more in the future. Some people love char slots. To others they are useless. You could have let us choose between extra bank space and characters for instance.
All in all, even as a VIP already, I wish this was not a thing.
