So, I'm really not a fan of the proposed VIP perk changes. It's like they wanted to do a battle/season pass that many games do successfully, but didn't quite know how they worked. Other games with season passes offer a large array of FREE rewards for doing basic things in-game. Overwatch has daily easy challenges, mobile games have playing their limited events you were going to do anyway, call of duty has just playing the game and getting xp, along with challenges. Then, for a monthly charge, you can earn simultaneous awards alongside the free ones.
DDO can't really do that without a whole new system of login bonuses or new daily challenges to do. Which, would actually be cool, like run a quest on reaper, loot 10 chests, etc.
So without a battlepass, what kind of VIP perks do I think would be worth it? Quality of Life improvements would be the biggest draw to VIP. I whipped up 3 tiers of reward suggestions, and think some combination of 4 (with a minimum of one 2) would make VIP worth it again.
For what it's worth, my 3 friends and I have cancelled our VIPs. It's not that VIP had nothing for us before, it's that the devs have acknowledged that VIP is lacking and needs to do more for players, especially in light of the code giveaways (which I think are great!). The proposed vip system was full of bad "perks" that 99% of people don't care about, like fletching and hireling durations. And then every, I think 3 months, there was a halfway passable box that you could get a store item from. Even if you got that box every month it was still a very bad system and very bad rewards. Not to mention it was a progression and you had to VIP for a lot of months to get the later rewards. Again, this isn't how a battlepass works. People that VIP in DDO do it because they play the game a lot, and want persistant rewards (or maybe some new people that are just trying out), people don't VIP for 4-5 months and then stop, play the game for 6 months still, and vip again.
Tier 3: big juicy qol updates
***Teleport to quests from the quest giver***
-Or rather, have the quest giver just open up the entrance window. This would be a huge qol and would let people actually PLAY the game more, instead of spending time going to and from quests. Horses are nice and all, and you'd still use them to get around town, but not having to trek to chains of flame or (shudder) what goes up would save so much time. I've heard people argue that that's what wildernesses are for, but people don't slay much, if at all, in wildernesses when they're heading to a quest. Everyone just invis/horses/prays and runs.
-Another variant would be to have something like quest sharing. Be able to right-click a party member and invite them to the quest. Then they could click it and enter that way. Then, one person would still have to get the quest, but there'd be much less wandering the wilderness lost, and you wouldn't have to wait around for people to hit the bank, level or go to the bathroom.
***Start at lv 4+ after reincarnating***
- Another big qol, especially in a game all about reincarnation. My group xp crystals to 3 or 4 anyways, and it's not that much time to get to 4 honestly. What this does is save a lot of time (again, after reincarnating) spent getting ready. I'm sure many people don't bother equipping much til 5, but with this you wouldn't need to! Actually, starting at 5 would be all sorts of awesome lol. Get your fey gear ready and good to go.
***Buddy bonus upgrade from 1% to 5%***
- Simple, but effective. Would encourage grouping more as well. People have argued that more xp boosts mean you play the game less, but again, it's all about reincarating. Boosts are about reincarnating more/faster.
***Past Lives Sharing***
- Super longshot but what the hey. People don't play alts much because DDO is so centered around reincarnation, and all the power of past lives is basically btc. Honestly this shouldn't be tied to vip anyway, it's like a tier 10, but there would be much more variety if you weren't stuck to a "main".
-What would be cool is if DDO modified Diablo 3's paragon system. In D3, after you hit max level you earn paragon levels, that are shared by any character you have/make in the future. Each character can just choose how to spend the points (though at some point you get everything and just raise a couple stats), and it makes the line between main and alt just the gear you have.
-For DDO, we could have a reincarnation grant you 1 reincarnation point, and then any character you have/make would be able to spend said points. Maybe they want all 10 to go to racial PL, maybe 9 for the AP and 1 into an epic pl for some passives.
-Another option would be to have racial, epic, or heroic PL be gained for your account/server, and have VIP make the 2nd type shared, and then maybe sell the 3rd in the store or something.
Tier 2: good qol updates, but not enough to be on their own
***Better Saga Rewards***
Including cursed cards in legendary sagas is the main thing here, but other saga rewards could be added in.
***Pause various potions***
Like the old bravery bonus pauser, it'd be a big qol to be able to pause experience/slayer/loot pots. If it's not possible to code that, maybe pause all potions. It would mean less worrying about what to run because of ongoing pots. I know I've wasted plenty of slayer pots running to quests, and xp pots when I hit cap and run raids.
***Loot bonuses***
- Either a small increase in the chance at named loot, say 2~4%, or maybe a better ransack timer, 4 days instead of 7. Many of these QoL suggestions are aimed to get people to play more instead of just hopping on to do a raid or ransack a chest once or twice a week.
***2 way Ddoor***
- Not changing the spell, but an item like harper pin maybe, 1/rest, that lets you get someone from the entrance to you. Or like a bracelet of friends that works in quests only. There are many times where, either someone gets lost, or joins late, and now everyone's waiting for them. Kind of a Big Deal, quests with a gather at the end, or just giganto quests like elemental evil/slave lords. It's not letting anyone one shot bosses, it's just a qol upgrade that cuts down on everyone waiting around.
***More DDO pts/month***
- another 500 would be a nice big bonus and give players freedom how they want to use them. I'd assume xp pots, raid bypsses, and astral shards lol.
***Free chest reroll/day***
- It'd be a nice perk for when you're hunting something you really want, but since it's just once/day I doubt it's going to be super cutting into astral shard sales. I figure if someone was going to whale out a bunch of rerolls per run, they were going to do it anyway (and this would just be one more shot). Everyone else that farms is mostly running a quest 8x and then waiting a week. So again, it's a nice little boost but not game-breaking.
***VIP hireling***
- Something like Eleri. Doesn't have to be a healer or have divine vitality. Just someone we can call at will to pull levers and stand on plates and such. Unseen servant?
***Cosmetics***
- I'm not going to count this as QoL, but there are definitely people out there that are fans of cosmetics ($200 raptor mount anyone?). So I can see adding in some options for cosmetics for VIPs being appealing to people.
- Maybe a cosmetic box that changes a few times a year, kind of like the raider's reward box, that lets you pick something out of it. Or have VIPs get a cosmetic coin or something every month, and then have an NPC that accepts those for various cosmetics. With cosmetics from dice being bound this would give a nice way for people that really want a ninja suit or something another way to get it. And SSG could still crank out fancy/cool ones like the floaty cloud thing they had talked about, and make that cost 6 coins or something.
Tier 1: nice but need a lot more to make VIP worth it
***Raid Timer Cooldown***
- Down to 1 day instead of 3, even 2 would be a nice bump. For a lot of people, raids are endgame. Some people only log on TO raid. Another qol updgrade that would result in people playing the game more. I'm sure people buy raid timers, but I think that the majority of people do that to run raids a bunch of times in one night.
***Skip a quest flag***
- Skipping a quest for saga is great, but being able to count a quest as flagged would be pretty awesome too. Many people groan when it's time to run chains of flame, just business, etc. Might be tricky to code but if possible it would be a nice qol to know you never have to step foot in wrath of the earth (if your PC sucks) again.
***Faster loading bars(not zoning)***
- I don't know if it's technically possible, but man it would be super handy if we could do things like search, disable, open ravenloft doors, etc. 2-3x faster. It's not game breaking (as far as power goes), doesn't clash with the store at all, and would just be qol.
***Store Discount***
- VIPs get 500 pts a month, which is nice, but a 10% discount on store items would be a little extra icing on the cake. 10% off xpacs would be good too. The 10% on saltmarsh was meh, but if it applied to ALL xpacs, mini or otherwise, that's better. Of course, this would require a fix to let you buy stuff VIP grants, such as adventure packs. Or instead of a blanket discount, maybe a 25% discount on the point version of the big stuff: xpacs, and stuff that came in the special editions of xpacs like universal trees, EDs, tomes, etc.
***Custom teleport***
- Like a VIP ticket with a few handy locations. Your guild ship, portable hole, trainers (somewhere with a fatespinner too, maybe sharn?). Nothing crazy, but again, a qol to help people get around and get to questing. It'd be nice to not have to teleport to the 12 and run to your ship, or try and beg a greater tele for a low level wiz. And I can't imagine guild beacons sell very often, and this wouldn't let you bring other people anyway.
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***Custom zone***
- Going off the vip ticket above, it could just teleport you here to a small area that has an airship door, trainers, warp to portable hole, Fred, etc. Maybe have a warper of some kind that offers more options than an airship, like reaver's refuge (inside), lordsmarch plaza, gatekeepers grove?
- Could also have access to training dojo. Either ship amenities like the lamannia kobolds, or just have the test dojo kobolds be IN this custom zone.
- ALSO, could maybe add a VIP floor to airships to have all of this? Then, it could have an actual training dojo area where you can use any attacks/abilities that are normally unusable outside of towns. Maybe need VIP to access to the floor, with a bouncer?
***Elemental Resist Shrines***
- I know they were removed for various reasons, but maybe with upgraded house P buffs, they're not as bad anymore? Could even make them 100k plat or something to make them a plat sink.
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***Special Shop***
- Going off the above resist shrines, could also have a shop with some of the weirder items we don't see/get, like hand sanitizer, elemental shrines, um...maybe bigbys? I have no idea how often they sell on the store, but I feel like they should be a plat item, if not a free feat everyone gets at lv 1 lol. I guess people could get annoying with them, littering a quest with them. But then again, people who want to spend a bit of pts can do that anyway. Maybe add an option to not see bigbys?
- Older raid loot could be available here, raids people rarely, if ever, run anymore. Stuff from hound of xoriat, abbott, etc. Vets could probably plow through these easily, but for newbies the idea of running 20 abbotts when they never see it in the lfg is pretty daunting.
***Auto loot junk***
- Mysterious remnants, treasure bags, +3 full plate of swim. I guess the actual items could be excluded since those appear for everyone, but man it's a pain to have to manually click the rest. I had heard that it was a coding technicality that prevented items in stacks bigger than 1 from being auto-looted but not sure if that's true.
***Tree/gear Saving***
-I remember lyn talking about it years ago and how it wasn't possible/feasible, but might be something to look at again. Being able to save/load your enhancement/destiny/(to a lesser extent) reaper tree would be awesome too. Would be great if it were available to everyone though, and then VIPs just got to save more.
- same deal with gear. Diablo 3 has a system for that and it makes it very easy to swap builds. DDO has way more gear all over the place, but if this could be worked out and able to draw from your various banks that'd be crazy. Especially for people that do the same thing multiple lives.
***Remain flagged for raids***
- Would be nice if you just stayed flagged for raids through reincarnation. Similar to skipping a quest for flagging, but raid-specific. I definitely don't bother flagging for stuff like abbot or vale every life (unless I'm desperate and someone's flagging for it lol), so would be nice to be able to just hop into a raid group.
***Bank more xp***(zounder)
- Be able to bank more than 1 level, to allow more freedom in leveling in general.
***Remove raise timers after quest completion***(eoin)
- No real reason to make people wait for a res after the quest is over. Especially in raids/higher reapers where everyone's now waiting for you.
***Cosmetic Bank***
- Even though this is HIGHLY desired, I'm putting it at tier 1 because it's so basic that it should be a given. I've heard from different devs over the years that it's difficult/complicated, cosmetics are coded weird, etc. But if you could get this working it would save a lot of storage hassle. People are still going to want all the storage slots lol, this isn't going to cut into $$ it's just a huge QOL, HUGE! You could always make a small cosmetic bank and give VIP access to more.
***Keep Bank/Inventory Slots***
- A lot of people go through this chore every life, and keeping your house k/coin lords slots would be a nice qol feature that would save people maybe an hour of work, but each life would add up. It would definitely feel like you're getting a perk.
***Unlimited Feat Swaps***
- Siberys shards aren't difficult to get, and most people don't need to change feats that often. Also, the 3 day timer is a hassle. Why not let VIPs just be able to swap feats without the timer? Or have it cost a siberys shard but then give them an hour to fiddle with feats. The whole feat reset system is outdated and clunky.
***No tax on Astral Shard exchange***
- 30% is such a giant chunk of a tax. You already can't even access the exchange unless you're a vip, slapping on a huge tax is just unnecessary.
Tier 0: Should just be included in VIP already.
***Perma weekend bonuses***
- I mean the less desirable ones, like crafting xp, challenge mats, etc.. These should just be always on, not count towards how much stuff VIP get. Can also put the mimic and remnant traders in the vip zone also?
***More Color Options***
- Just let us use hex code or something to pick a color. Let that be the reward for guild 150 or whenever the actual rewards die out, and then you can talk to an NPC on your ship to change your guild's colors.
***Able to mount a horse after a quest is complete***
People wander, enter late, or do optionals on the other side of the map. It wouldn't help you complete the quest because it'd already be over, and just get to the end chest faster. It's no fun being in wiz king's chamber waiting for everyone else and not having ddoor or wings or anything to get back fast.
***More toggled options***
- There have been a lot of UI changes in the last year or few, such as XP bar being removed from char sheet, item descriptions showing everything you have on, and even the new ?! for spotting traps and doors and such. Would be neat if VIPs had an option to just not have those changes. If it's not possible to fiddle with the actual options, can just make a feat to toggle it off like with elemental forms.
***Breaker***
-I know cacophonic verge exists, and many classes have good ways to break stuff, it'd be nice to have a clicky/feat/something that just shoots out a nice box breaking blast. Not gamebreaking, and just makes some lives, like archer, more palatable.
***Multiselector***
- Have multiple options to cater to different groups, being able to swap each month.
- New people focused vip: more about xp, elite opening,
- Vets: might not care about elite opening, still want xp, but maybe loot boost, raid stuff, etc.
Tier -1: Like free advertising
***Guest Pass discount***
- There are a lot of new people, and without all the quests. Giving VIPs a big discount on guest passes (like 10 pts), or giving them a free one every week or something, would just be incentivizing more people to GET VIP or buy more adventure packs. Yeah I guess you could power through threnal or something once for your cloak/ratcatcher/whatever and never go back, but it's unlikely.
VIP Shop:
- Using multiple suggestions from this thread, you could also offer a shop where VIPs could choose what to get. So say...each month of VIP gets you 5 coins. You could use 2 coins to get a feat for a month that lets you reincarnate to lv 4, or 2 coins to get a feat that givess an extra 10% xp for the month. Or could spend 3-4 coins to get some new cosmetic. That way people could customize their perks to what they're doing. Someone doing a lot of endgame raiding isn't going to care about reincarnating much, and vice versa.
