Discussion - IMPORTANT: Paragon Rewards Program Update - 9/12/2011
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2011-09-12 10:44 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Sad face 
I needed the bolus of rewards points to get T9 VIP straight away, and was more than happy to drop that amount of money on sub time, less happy than just a straight up points purchase which I may have to do now.
Zwilly, is this a technical limitation people will keep trying to overcome, or is it impossible, and the effort is spent?
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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
[*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*
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Same here. Having to wait a year to get my annual subscription reward tokens while others were getting them right now would have been a slap in the face. Slap. In. The. Face. Oh yes. I'd almost certainly have cancelled my subscription over that.
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Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
Just as well for me. I did some prodigious swearing when I saw that my 12-month auto-rebill had happened on August 29, instead of 3 weeks later when I would have theoretically gotten enough points to put me through Tier 9 shortly after launch.
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And if they told you: "we're sorry, we don't have the attachment in stock, but we thought you might not want to wait on the vacuum just to get them together; we'll ship it at a later date" you'll likely accept it and perhaps even be grateful that you got the vacuum quickly.|
Originally Posted by Dromio
If that vacuum cleaner shows up and it doesn't have a hose attachment, is it beyond understanding that I might ask where it is?
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You won't be losing any tokens from this change, you'll just get them more slowly.
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+1
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Originally Posted by Moly
Extremely disappointing. Since character customization is a high priority for me, and I will now be locked out of the VIP costume sets for several years, I will have to give some serious thought as to whether I will continue my subscription.
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I'm not going to ragequit or regret my annual renewal... But I *am* angry about the way they handled this.
As I said in the other thread, if they didn't have this in place and knew it might be a problem they SHOULD NOT have been telling us for the last few months that we'd get the tokens up front.
I'd still be disappointed about not getting to use those costume bits (I'm at least a year out from Tier 9 as things stand now-), but I wouldn't be nearly as ticked about it.
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Those of us who aren't getting the correct amount of reward tokens. Do we just raise a ticket to support and wait?
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I'd say wait at least until Freedom launches and you know how many reward tokens you get. Presumably you're basing this question on the beta. If you still think the number is wrong, support would be the place to go IMO.|
Originally Posted by Sapphic_Neko
Those of us who aren't getting the correct amount of reward tokens. Do we just raise a ticket to support and wait?
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I just went to my account and was happy to see I got veteran rewards for the account I just reactivated and didn't have any. I even got one for a month I didn't play (I think they rounded the time up in some way).
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You know, they specifically stated that the costume sets on the VIP level may not be the same you get in live.|
Originally Posted by Moly
Extremely disappointing. Since character customization is a high priority for me, and I will now be locked out of the VIP costume sets for several years, I will have to give some serious thought as to whether I will continue my subscription.
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Also, multi-month plan saves you money in the long run so, ... Eh, you wanna pay more per year, that's your choice.
The Beta is full of bugs?
How can that be?! This is a disappointment. I just renewed my subscription for enough time to put me into the costume options for T9 last week. Waiting until the day before to drop this decision is a bad call (I'm assuming marketing made it, so they can milk it to the last possible day). I'd have still paid for subscription time, but I'd have done it monthly and drop the money I spent into the points to get tokens. This is dumb.
I'm surprised more people don't see this for what it is.
The studio knows that there are a group of players who want to get a number of tokens right away, and would be willing to do whatever it takes to get them.Without the ability to get lump-sum reward token awards from multimonth subscriptions, that player group is forced to buy points to get the tokens. This "technical limitation" is a good thing for Paragon Studios.
This is an effective way to shift emphasis to the cash store to get tokens. Doesn't bother me any, as I intend to buy a couple hundred bucks worth of points the second they let me, but let's not pretend that this is something it isn't. It might actually be a bug or a technical limitation, but it's one that has happy side effects for Paragon Studios and as such it won't be fixed anytime soon. Besides, there are still really good reasons to buy multimonth subscriptions. As long as I am playing, I'll be paying annually.
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I think a more accurate, though admittedly still imperfect, analogy would be that you buy a minivan with the promise that you will get a gift certificate worth $1200 that you can use at the dealership at any time for anything from car washes, to routine service, to upgrades such as a DVD player. A few days before the van arrives the dealership calls you up and tells you that the manufacturer recently changed the terms of the promotion. Now, instead of one $1200 gift certificate upon delivery, you'll get a $100 gift certificate every month for a year. You can save them and they are good for all the same things, you just can't spend the $1200 immediately.|
Originally Posted by Dromio
I go to buy a minivan. The dealership's ad says that I can get a free DVD player if I buy it. The salesman says I can get a free DVD player if I buy it. So I buy it, only to find, on delivery (or say, the day before delivery) that the minivan doesn't have the DVD player. Now, that's a luxury item, it's not integral at all to the purpose of the car. What do you feel would be an understandable reaction on my part in that case? Paying them to install a DVD player so that they can maybe have the resources to install that DVD for someone else in the future?
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Now that might be disappointing from an instant gratification standpoint (it is for me with the recent rewards announcement), but is it a reason to cancel the minivan altogether? It wouldn't be for me, but I don't have to ride around with annoying whiny little kids in my car. lol
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I think that's a perfect way of putting it. When I make purchases, I tend to look for bargains, deals, promotions, whathaveyou... so I may very well only purchase something because of the bonus it's coming with. I think that's being a smart consumer. |
Originally Posted by mousedroid
I think a more accurate, though admittedly still imperfect, analogy would be that you buy a minivan with the promise that you will get a gift certificate worth $1200 that you can use at the dealership at any time for anything from car washes, to routine service, to upgrades such as a DVD player. A few days before the van arrives the dealership calls you up and tells you that the manufacturer recently changed the terms of the promotion. Now, instead of one $1200 gift certificate upon delivery, you'll get a $100 gift certificate every month for a year. You can save them and they are good for all the same things, you just can't spend the $1200 immediately.
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It really bothers me that they came to the realization that it wouldn't work 1 day before i21 launches. You would think that it would've been something that was realized much sooner.
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The problem with your analogy is that you've constructed it specifically to support your opinion that this is not a significant problem, therefore it doesn't reflect the reality for some (many?) of us who were counting on the upfront delivery of reward tokens as an important factor in our enjoyment and acceptance of the new reward program.
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Originally Posted by mousedroid
Now that might be disappointing from an instant gratification standpoint (it is for me with the recent rewards announcement), but is it a reason to cancel the minivan altogether?
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The promise of getting the tokens up front was THE major factor in my decision to pay for time in advance and not month to month. I wish my sub had been up tomorrow, Tuesday, and not last week. If the Celestial armor is rotated out any sooner than 6 months I'm going to be extremely disappointed.
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Originally Posted by Moly
The problem with your analogy is that you've constructed it specifically to support your opinion that this is not a significant problem, therefore it doesn't reflect the reality for some (many?) of us who were counting on the upfront delivery of reward tokens as an important factor in our enjoyment and acceptance of the new reward program.
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The shrinking sub base is hardly an academic, minimal issue. People do follow up on their statements. Was it academic a year ago, for example, when people complained over the forum changes and actually followed thru on their threats to quit?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Head start is tomorrow. At this point, and to be honest for a while now, people have been claiming cancellation over either trivial things, inevitable things, or very uncommonly things that simply mean the game has chosen a direction incompatible with their entertainment. In all three cases, I consider that loss in the same way I consider the loss of resources the devs can use to make a better game that is due to general inflation. Academic, unfortunate, minimal, unavoidable, and mostly irrelevant.
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I doubt that there's such a thing as a trivial element where entertainment's involved. Everyone's pleasure threshold is different. What you can tolerate because you've decided to be loyal to this game forever is different than those who easily see themselves playing another game that won't frustrate them as often as this one seems to do.
In other words, rational thought can't always explain the x-factor that results in fun.
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I'm not sure how concerned NCSoft will be your intention to pay them $179.88 over the course of the year, rather than $143.88 up front.|
Originally Posted by Dromio
Personally, I was going to do a year subscription tomorrow. Now I'm not. The expectation set by the company I was going to give the money to turned out to be false, and admitted as such by that company. I think that's a valid reason to withhold any larger investment and approach further investment cautiously.
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Originally Posted by Shadowpuff
The shrinking sub base is hardly an academic, minimal issue. People do follow up on their statements. Was it academic a year ago, for example, when people complained over the forum changes and actually followed thru on their threats to quit?
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Yeah, I'm on annual plans because they're cheaper, not because of the rate at which they produce reward tokens.|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
I'm not sure how concerned NCSoft will be your intention to pay them $179.88 over the course of the year, rather than $143.88 up front.
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Look at it this way: You can have a credit card with pretty abusive rates, put the $143.88 on it, and make minimum payments all year, and STILL spend less money than you would paying the $179.88.
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I thought that was a one time deal. Is this still an option?
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Originally Posted by Plasma
Getting sub prices down to barely over $10/mo with the 12+2 was a pretty good bone to begin with.
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It was available both of the last two "winter holidays".
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Originally Posted by Ukaserex
I thought that was a one time deal. Is this still an option?
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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That is, of course, presuming that he maintains a monthly sub for the course of a year. He may not. Whereas the $144 up front was pretty much guaranteed. They could get $0, $180, or anything in between.|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
I'm not sure how concerned NCSoft will be your intention to pay them $179.88 over the course of the year, rather than $143.88 up front.
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And I'm getting pretty jaded in my old age. Because I can't really see "technical limitations" being behind this. Especially when they drop yet another bombshell on us (also a day before) Issue 21 goes live.
IF paid_submonths = 12 THEN reward.token = reward.token + 20
Overly simplistic I know. But it doesn't really seem like it's all that hard of a problem to figure out. You would think if it was truly a "technical issue" there would've been more time between knowing it wasn't ready and being allowed to inform us of said issue.
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There are reasonable decisions and there are shoot-themselves-in-the-foot decisions.
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Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
If the devs made sure that they never did anything that caused players to threaten to quit, they could've called it a day back in 2004.
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I don't know whether this is some Sinister Plot or just an amusing technical error, but I don't much care. I'm not buying more points than I would otherwise anyway.
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I always make note of when someone tosses that one in there, particularly when its irrelevant. It tells me you're scraping the bottom of a very shallow barrel.
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Originally Posted by Shadowpuff
In other words, rational thought can't always explain the x-factor that results in fun.
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I did say it was imperfect, but I still stand behind it. The new reward system is only one part of the I21 upgrade, and comparitively speaking, it's a tiny portion of all the great features this game has. Kind of like how a dvd player is a tiny portion of a new vehicle. Now some people may let the temporary abscence of that small feature overshadow all the other great stuff this game, or that new vehicle, has to offer, and that's their prerogative - everyone has their own priorities and opinions. My opinion is, it's kind of a silly thing to cancel your subscription over unless you really don't enjoy the game otherwise.
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Originally Posted by Moly
The problem with your analogy is that you've constructed it specifically to support your opinion that this is not a significant problem, therefore it doesn't reflect the reality for some (many?) of us who were counting on the upfront delivery of reward tokens as an important factor in our enjoyment and acceptance of the new reward program.
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(Sometimes, I wish there could be a Dev thumbs up button for quality posts, because you pretty much nailed it.) -- Ghost Falcon
I can appreciate that there's a last minute bug that can't be fixed, but I am a little disappointed. Would have filled tier 8, and I would have bought enough points to fill tier 9, but I guess I'll have to wait for it...
I find your lack of signature disturbing.