VIP Perk Suggestions

[erousted8]

In other mmos I've played (ragnarok online), VIP gave you coins you could spend in a special vip shop. Some people spent them on cosmetics, others boosts to xp/drops, and then there were a variety of QoL items you could get as well. Using the same list O suggestions, they could use a similar system where VIPs could choose what they want. Adding this to the list.

I'd like to see them sell OLD raid items in such a store. I'm talking Heroic Hound, Heroic Shroud, the raids no one ever runs. I'd buy VIP for that.

 

[seph1roth5]

Wouldn't heroic shroud items just be mats? I can't think of much/anything I'd want from heroics, or that can't be run too easily other than abbott, but seems like a small enough perk to not make a big wave.

 

[Smokewolf]

I'd be thrilled not to have to grind faction every life just to open up my bank slots. This is especially problematic for iconics races that have no real reason to run those lower level quests. IMHO, it's one of the main detractors of running an iconic and why in all these years, I've only run 7-8 iconic lives.

-Smoke

 

[FixBows]

My suggestion is for them to do something rather than nothing that they are currently doing.

 

[Reaped and Ravaged]

Lower the cost to $7.99/month and break out opening on Reaper/XP boosts & discounts into a separate subscription. VIP already gives a ton of DDO points beyond the 500 automatically awarded just for playing the game. A big problem with this is the overpriced DDO store, which alienates new players tremendously.

 

[seph1roth5]

I definitely like the idea of keeping your house K bank slots, and coin lords too. It'd definitely feel like a qol update since it would save you work every life, but it's not THAT crazy good where it's unbalanced. That's the kind of thing I think vip perks should help with.

 

[Dandonk]

Do something. Anything. Or at least start by acknowledging the issue.

Let's see for VIPs this year:
U58: Free to all quest.
U59: Droaam update, no new quests as such, free to everyone who has the quests.
U60: Preorder for Vecna. No new quests.
U61: "Mini-expansion" that everyone has to pay for.

Roadmap lists an adventure pack later on this year. That one might be free-to-VIPs. So... one free adventure pack this year, and that's it, as far as I can tell. Awesome.

But I'm sure SSG will go back to denying that VIP needs improvement. Then change their minds again around producer's letter next year. And then forget about it again for another year.

Rinse and repeat.

(Yes, I know there are sad reasons why the proposed system hasn't arrived. That doesn't mean SSG couldn't take five minutes to acknowledge this and then start on a new plan that could then also be communicated. Oh right, communication is a profanity-filtered word, sorry)

 

[Altra]

It's been a long time since I read through this thread, so I'm unsure if it's been mentioned but I have been SO angry about this many, many times.
Guarantee VIPs a named item on reroll.
If you spend the shards to reroll 4 times and get 4 green items, makes me wanna just log off.

 

[Col Kurtz]

It's been a long time since I read through this thread, so I'm unsure if it's been mentioned but I have been SO angry about this many, many times.
Guarantee VIPs a named item on reroll.
If you spend the shards to reroll 4 times and get 4 green items, makes me wanna just log off.

vip get chest reroll sounds like a good idea+1

rerolling with shards makes me wanna puke !
I never reroll; ...shards are pretty pricy ...
...and, With ddo drop rates you could reroll 10 times and get nothing.

But, lol... ddo was smart enough to see that people are anxious and lazy and will pay cash to save time, in real life and a game.

Not sure DDO makes $cash$ off these rerolls any way> my guess its players that earned their shard piles through the auction that are the ones rerolling chests. Im fairly casual and had about 2800 shards from auctioning stuff... and finally spent a few on my airship buff upgrades

 

[Altra]

I get SO disgusted with it, I refuse to buy shards for 3-4 months, then I try again.
One time of getting 3 green items for 3 rerolls on the same chest, and I back off buying shards AGAIN. "Forget this, I'm just keeping what I get initially."
It's just a maddening roller coaster for me.
I'd spend a lot more on shards if I knew I'd at least get some named item. Doesn't have to be the best of the best, just something, anything named.

 

[Col Kurtz]

I get SO disgusted with it, I refuse to buy shards for 3-4 months, then I try again.
One time of getting 3 green items for 3 rerolls on the same chest, and I back off buying shards AGAIN. "Forget this, I'm just keeping what I get initially."
It's just a maddening roller coaster for me.
I'd spend a lot more on shards if I knew I'd at least get some named item. Doesn't have to be the best of the best, just something, anything named.

I want DDO to make money... but, I suggest no one rerolls chests.
Drop rates are so low its like doubling down on a scratch off lottery ticket. I finally started farming items for lvl32 about 2 months ago.
Holy moly >I went 3 ETR cycles ransacking chests and had to bust out an alt too, before the key item I was seeking dropped.
Somewhere between 28-35 tries? At 15 shards a pop... you could blow a paycheck or more on rerolls for 1 item.

*I can understand rerolling on raid chests. Rerolling on regular dungeons feels like a bad idea.

Maybe a good VIP perk would be 1 free reroll per chest, each day

 

[Douglas Glyndwr]

Maybe a good VIP perk would be 1 free reroll per chest, each day

I know five people who'd VIP tomorrow if this was implemented.
Another one that was floated in our group was a 1 a week 30% off DDO Store coupon code since that's a whole thing now.

 

[seph1roth5]

Yeah 1 reroll per day would be pretty good. Not something I'd use every day (don't play every day). And you can't use it in raids anyway so it's really just buying you 1/7th of the time spent on a quest.

On the one hand, that doesn't seem like much, but on the other hand, it's a small nice perk that is exactly what a lot of people would like.

 

[erousted8]

1 reroll per day by itself wouldn't get me back, but its a lot better than the perks they suggested with that stupid "battle pass" system.

What VIP needs is a constellation of perks that appeal to many people on many levels. No one thing is going to attract everyone.

 

[Tilomere]

I'd be thrilled not to have to grind faction every life just to open up my bank slots. This is especially problematic for iconics races that have no real reason to run those lower level quests. IMHO, it's one of the main detractors of running an iconic and why in all these years, I've only run 7-8 iconic lives.

-Smoke

Just feed 40 items to your sentient gems. Problem solved. I almost exclusively run iconics, and skip into legendary reaper at 20, so almost never run House K at all.

 

[Mol]

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

***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.


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.


***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.



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.

Took 10 mins to read the post. By the time I finished, I had to re-read what the post was trying to convey. I'm ready for a pop quiz now.

 

[Viamel]

Hello I'm a VIP and I've come to suggest perks.
I would like quarterly cosmetics exclusive to that quarter, you weren't a VIP at that time? No cosmetic for you.

That's all I want, doesn't have to be a set, give me an armor or a cloak or a hat or a weapon aura or some fancy wings. I'll take 1 per quarter, thank you DDO Art team, I love your work.

 

[rabidfox]

I would like quarterly cosmetics exclusive to that quarter, you weren't a VIP at that time? No cosmetic for you.

One per quarter that you get to make a claim off an ever growing list.; no risk of losing out then but will only have limited ones unlocked if you weren't VIP non-stop. I'd be all over that, love me some costmetics.

 

[Viamel]

One per quarter that you get to make a claim off an ever growing list.; no risk of losing out then but will only have limited ones unlocked if you weren't VIP non-stop. I'd be all over that, love me some costmetics.

Just be VIP for that quarter and have perma access to that cosmetic from a trader? Love it.

 

[seph1roth5]

Hmm I'll add it but it seems like the opposite of what I personally am looking for lol. If anything that would be more for a complete VIP overhaul where all the quests are free and $$ is only used for cosmetics. That's the system they (mostly) use in diablo and overwatch 2.

I know some people definitely value cosmetics a lot more than the rest though, and they did have some sort of floaty cloud idea in their VIP package, but it was only after VIP-ing for a whole year, which is a bit crazy. The art team does seem to put out a lot of stuff, I bet there's 100+ outfits and headgears and stuff that people have just never seen before too, so having some way to choose from a list would be cool I guess. Just as long as that's not the ONLY new perk included heh.

But again, my friends and I aren't really looking for a huge giant super chunk, we'd be happy with just a little more XP boost lol. DDO is all about reincarnating and it would lessen the grind and make leveling alts less bleh.