VIP value and new content

Dragavon

Dragavon

Well-known member
The cornerstone of VIP value has always been that new quest packs have been free.

But in 2023 VIP have gotten exactly ONE FREE QUEST, the Kill Ten Rats quest in Sharn. The last free to VIP quest pack before that was Grip of the Hidden Hand in November 2022.

You people at SSG keep talking about adding value to VIP subscription, but all that talk is wasted as long as you do not give us the basics, new content on a regular schedule.

In 2023 you have wasted your time on making Drooam legendary, something noone wanted. Then Amber Temple is getting changed to another boring linear quest. A lot of developer time wasted on changing old content that did not need changing. That noone wanted changed.

If you want people to think VIP has value give us what we want, new quests 3-4 times a year.

You keep talking about VIP value, but that talk has no meaning when you do not give us new quests.
 
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Dandonk

Dandonk

This is not the title you're looking for
I agree. But it seems nothing is going to happen.

Maybe next year. Or the one after that. Or in the 2030s sometime.
 
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erousted8

Well-known member
I don't expect it will be fixed ever. SSG's idea of "fixing it" ignored every single suggestion we gave them and was bad. It'd be an easy enough fix but even in the short-term they can't do it.
 
T.O.

T.O.

Well-known member
Priced for inflation VIP is cheap. As a vet that owns everything pretty much since before the free codes. It comes out to around .33 cents a day for me since I pay every 3 months. I give them .33 cents a day for 10% xp boost. That's pretty much it. Some say it isn't worth that. What ever
 
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seph1roth5

seph1roth5

Well-known member
I love the free quest codes, i think they're great for the game. The problem is devs have acknowledged that VIP needs more to it. Free gold rolls were fun but apparently bad for the store (though I don't think it affected my or my friend's spending at all). And even after a year of bought time there was nothing waiting for VIPs after gold rolls ran out.

The proposed 12-month progressive system was, I thought, awful, and I'm pretty sure there were VERY few people that were actually excited by it. At best, some people were interested in the cosmetic you had to VIP for 12 months to get. The boxes every few months for a store item was meh, and the others like slight bonuses to hirelings/ammunition was laughably bad.

If anyone has any more ideas for VIP perks post em in the thread in my link, I'm trying to keep a big ol list.
 
Darksteel

Darksteel

Well-known member
It is your fault for being VIP. Companies have realised they can make more from battle passes, DLCs (Xpacs) and cosmetics. There is no evidence the money is being spent on things we need in this game. DDO revenues were released last week and it paints a bleak outlook. Even LOTRO revamp is binned citing lack of money from EG7. It is only a matter of time.
 
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somenewnoob

Well-known member
Back when they did the "Super VIP" or whatever it was, where if you got it for a year or something, and it included OWNING all the new packs/races/classes (correct me on the details if I'm wrong, I didn't buy it) that came out DURING THAT TIME, I knew with 100% certainty that was the death knell of the adventure pack. We get expansions and "mini-expansions" mostly. With maybe what, one pack PER YEAR since then?

It was pretty clear what was going to happen if you already had been to a rodeo and had your cowboy hat on.

(Season pass? is that what it was called?)

Pro level bait and switch from SSG on that one. It is clear and obvious that selling overpriced ultimate bundle expansions are going to be the future of the game for them. And as long as you're buying them, you are giving them the rubber stamp of approval on that paradigm.
 
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dur

dur

aka Cybersquirt
Lots of changes to be sure. The death knell was FTP. But who can blame them?

Now it's all about who buys Astral Shards, etc. Which was death knell 2.

3: MMO's are something to behold until 'it never ends.'

eta: time to find a respectable MUD
 
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Br4d

Br4d

Well-known member
Darksteel said:
It is your fault for being VIP. Companies have realised they can make more from battle passes, DLCs (Xpacs) and cosmetics. There is no evidence the money is being spent on things we need in this game. DDO revenues were released last week and it paints a bleak outlook. Even LOTRO revamp is binned citing lack of money from EG7. It is only a matter of time.
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Game decisions that are made by bean counters are bad for gamers. It's always been that way, not unique to DDO in any way.

What we're missing in the gaming space right now is independent developers who make successful games and then plow the profits into making better and bigger games. These ventures almost always get bought out by a publisher or multi-national and then the bean counters water down their product and make uninspiring sequels that are cookie-cutter and gamers get shafted.

Brad McQuaid. Feargus Urquhart. Michael Morhaime. These were the guys making content decisions in the 90's for their companies. They routinely pushed back release dates to ensure that the quality of the end product was up to snuff. Some times they were also the chief bean counter but even if they were not their decisions were respected and quality and originality was maintained.

Then slowly the financial community woke up to the fact that there was big money to be made in video gaming as long as making money became priority one. Games that had been designed to be challenging for gamers were made simpler for non-gamers to attract that very large group to the product. Often the company was bought out by a larger company or sold to a publisher where the only thing that would matter was how the bottom line was affected.

Having watched this in real time I can recall not being aware of the end effect for years. WoW became better with Burning Crusade but the insidious effect of prioritizing 10 and 25 person raids over 40 person raids had already been introduced. With Wrath of the Lich King the effect was further prioritized. EQ became better for the solo player as the expansions rolled by and AA's were added but this caused grouping to become less of a priority, although end game content still mostly required a group or a raid. The re-popularization of MMO's as a show case for the individual as opposed to great group content was well underway.

It's much easier to market your products to individuals once you have made the individual the important unit in your game. It's easier to find new targets for successful marketing strategies as you increase the number of people who play the game by changing the meta to make it simpler and easier.

Probably the worst effect was that in the new paradigm the publishers and gaming consortiums dominated the overall marketing scene making it harder for small companies to find their niche. If they did finally find it they became buyout targets and the monies that were offered were irresistible.

This is how great games for hobbyists turned into mush for the masses.
 
Fhrek

Fhrek

One Badge of Honor achieved
Br4d said:
It's much easier to market your products to individuals once you have made the individual the important unit in your game. It's easier to find new targets for successful marketing strategies as you increase the number of people who play the game by changing the meta to make it simpler and easier.
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That!
MMOs are focused on group play, right. But targeting the solo audience will bring more players than focusing on group endgame content.

Endgame group should be a consequence, not the main course.

As I can see, the games that are more popular and makes the most money nowadays are focused on giving the solo players the opportunit to growth before jump on the group/raid scene. FFXVI does it pretty well.
 
Br4d

Br4d

Well-known member
I used one person from each of the companies that popularized the PC/Mac gaming market in the 90's.

Fargo was definitely part of that but I chose Urquhart because he was the producer of the Fallout series. I could definitely have added John Smedley also but McQuaid was the guy who made the development decisions that made EQ great. There were many great contributors to WoW in it's development cycle but Morhaime was the guy who let them all have the time needed to do it right.
 
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D

DDO Gaming

Well-known member
Big unwieldy game combined with small playerbase and dev team, that is financially unviable. Thus the fact DDO is still running is a big thing.

So stop complaining. If anyone has a really great idea that costs nothing (or close to nothing) and will likely attract a bigger playerbase then you know how to contact SSG :)
 
D

DDO Gaming

Well-known member
And revenues aren't flat...they've plateued, something one expects from a big unwieldy game that is 15+ years old
 
dur

dur

aka Cybersquirt
I wish I knew (or maybe I don't) how much $$$ it takes to have a server farm or whatever it takes to run this game. But it's more than that..
Baldur's Gate and it's ilk set a standard but it came with characters you'd meet along the way. Unlike here.

I remember the first day I played this game: a dancing warforged guided us through a few quests. My previous experience with an mmo was Gemstone.

This game has changed a lot. Were I to develop a game, nothing but the game would be bought with actual dollars but it would probably fail because, yeah, there needs to be a base. That used to be VIP, here, until it failed. Then SSG-Daybreak Games fractured it further.

I say the beginning of the end, as far as PTP, was Astral Shards. Had to buy them to start? I know there was a time you could get them on a roll..
 
dur

dur

aka Cybersquirt
somenewnoob said:
Back when they did the "Super VIP" or whatever it was, ...
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Dunno but this https://ddowiki.com/page/Founder , in many ways, seems like a big F U to folks in retrospect. I had my whole guild leave and that's how I have it :/ That signaled the end to VIP in any meaningful way. Not long after that (at the same time?) Underdark came out. I remember being VERY ANGRY when I could not continue a quest (Prison) because I hadn't paid...
 
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Br4d

Br4d

Well-known member
DDO Gaming said:
And revenues aren't flat...they've plateued, something one expects from a big unwieldy game that is 15+ years old
Click to expand...

According to the latest EG7 investor presentation DDO's revenues have declined significantly over the last quarter. The revenue is flat compared to the pre-pandemic total but less than half of the peak total in the last 3 years.

LotRO's revenues have also declined sharply in roughly the same timeframes.


At a guess the primary culprits in both cases would be the release of Diablo 4 and Baldur's Gate 3, which soaked up a lot of the available cash in the FRPG player community over the last 6 months, and general fatigue with older titles trying to monetize every breath we take.
 
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