Arcanaverse
Solver of Secrets
I'd argue things improve all the time overall, but good news... SSG is hiring.
Also, a little unfair to claim SSG is sticking to pre-published stories. Ravenloft and Saltmarsh was the list pre-published content aside from Isle of Dread which... honestly did not follow existing stories. They took a lot of liberties and is largely only using the source material to fill out the background. Vecna Unleashed is shaping up to being completely homegrown as well. Aside form new stuff, to my knowledge, the vast majority of the game is custom stories.
Came back to this game last July after a ten year "hiatus". I bought a year subscription for VIP immediately. I had apparently just missed the free content code by a week or so and only owned a handful of adventure packs and MotU. The daily Gold Rolls were fun (though I didn't get anything I would have spent DDO points on otherwise) and having access to all the adventure packs gave me a lot to play with while getting back into the game. What really got me to commit to the whole year at once was my experience with customer service before I got back into the game. I had lost access to my old AOL email that was tied to my account and the CS rep who handled my ticket was able to get my DDO account hooked up to a new email. The process took about three days and I was so grateful to be able to have my guild, characters and gear back (even though everything was so outdated I had to start over fresh anyway :LOL. My usual experience with CS in other games is yelling into a void or getting a response akin to "tough, but we won't do anything about it".
My sub expires next month, and I have no intention to renew it. Taking away the gold rolls ultimately decreased the value of VIP without replacing it with anything (especially when SSG has admitted that the VIP system needs an overhaul). 6 months of 'nothing' and a proposed VIP plan that seemed largely negatively received does not give me a reason to renew. Even before the adventure pack code was given out, I would not have continued subbing for the new VIP system; it was not worth the investment. I bought the old expansion bundle and Sharn expac last winter and that I had enough content between that and what I had previously bought to get from level 1-30 comfortably without repeating quests. I don't speedrun through quests or lives to get completionist, so I'm not worried about how long it takes to get through a life so long as I'm enjoying it. I also came to realize that most of the relevant gear I wanted was tied to expacs, which VIP doesn't grant access to (I still remember how upset some of the VIPs I played with were about that back in the day when MotU came out).
If I am going to continually spend money on a product, then that product needs to be a good one. Archetypes have been coming out over the last year and I have not been impressed by them as a product. Blightcaster was fine, Stormsinger was okay (my biggest gripe was not being able to bypass electrical immunity and the cold spells being tied to the enhancement tree itself, but Dark Hunter had a tree that was entirely avoided because there was no compelling choices to make an argument to use it over a base tempest build since the feature of trapping was tied to the class itself and not the tree. Acolyte of the Skin was a neat concept but the eye beam shape was finicky to land compared to base blasts, cone, or chain shape, the cooldown on the fiend form was too long and underwhelming compared to giving up pact spells and too squishy to be in melee without access to more than light armor or some special class feature to add to its survivability. I'm currently playing a Sacred Fist and it feels like a joke compared to Knight of the Chalice: no trance, a straight downgrade from censure outsiders, nothing that comes close to being comparable to Ascendancy, poor ki generation that makes the cleaves and ki spells impractical or inaccessible compared to cleave attacks on other classes or cleaves from feats. I can't even figure out why Radiant Servant is a tree for this type or a viable way to bring the concepts proposed by this archetype together into a cohesive build. It feels like the designers were throwing darts at a board and putting out whatever to keep people on the past life treadmill rather than putting an effort into designing unique but cohesive concepts on alternative ways to play a class. It's disappointing to say the least.
Then there is the problems that arose when they opened up free transfers to Orien and Sarlona. Lag was so bad the game wasn't playable on the weekends and evenings when my group usually played because the lag was so bad. After evening after evening of 6-10 second lag spikes where everything we as players did ghosts, but we're all dead at the end of a lag spike because everything the enemies did lands caused some of the group to flat out quit the game. The experience was not worth their time or their money.
Ultimately, SSG is running a business, not a charity and subscribers are investors, not donors. In this economy, the average person is looking to stretch their dollar as far as it can go, and I can think of many other ways to spend $10-15 a month that are more enjoyable than the cycle of lag-related deaths that has become the centerpiece of my DDO experience. If I continue playing, I would need to see and experience structural improvements that reduced lag and perhaps a more enticing VIP plan than the one proposed in order to justify investing again.
Alright. two things.
1. Subs aren't investments nor are they a charity. Its an exchange. You give them $, you get goods and/or services. That's it. If you don't want the service, then not paying for it. Nothing wrong with that.
2. Daily Gold Rolls, they were a free bonus to vip. I suspect it was so people didn't rush out to try to cancel/refund their sub early in the hopes that folks would let it expire naturally. The more stuff they make free, the more subs SSG plans to lose. In the meantime, you lost nothing and got even more free stuff for a limited time. Why are we mad about this?
I empathize with having game issues. Lag and what not need fixed much quicker than what they are. I can't justify duration, unacceptable how long some of these major issues are still impacting the game. They're working on it and there have been improvements, but its been years now. Not buying into a product you don't plan to play because of said issues... fair. I'm with ya.
However... I don't understand how archetypes (that are free) impact a decision to sub or not. You're not the first to make this argument so I'm really asking the whole of the community here.
This is what they're leading us to no? They're fine with people cancelling their subs (at least to a certain extent). DDO is a FTP game. Having both ala cart and a sub is kind of silly anyway.
Originally it was a way for people to keep their experience during the transition to FTP. Now it exists mostly as a sampler platter and/or a small bonus+some goodies for folks that want em. I don't know the behind the scene financials, but protesting with subs seems like the wrong way to go about protesting. I recommend treating it like the cart item its actually is.
End of the day, they're not going to prioritize VIP over making new stuff to sell. That's just not how their model works. And frankly I'm not even sure if we should want them to.
