The VIP vs Freemium Debate as a Tier 9 Vet

lover level conent....... in space...... ??

doubtful, but heres to hope lol

To be fair - he's in RO - the SG part is pretty much a moot point.

Now, if it was a point about the naughty Zoot, well, then it would be Zoot point and he'd be up for some peril, then I bet.

DA isn't supposed to be able to come close to the trials (look up any GG post, she's been unfortunately right more often than not).

If DA is going to be less desirable than the trials and I have *NO* desire for doing trials, DA cannot be desirable.

Well yes, they'll be slower. But there's degrees there, and it doesn't have to be "glacial." If the DA experience is more enjoyable to you than the trials, then you can afford a slower pace of rewards because it's more fun. Obviously not too much slower, because there is still a cutoff at which it becomes BS.

Now, if the only metric by which you consider content desirable is how fast you earn rewards, I got nothing to say about that.

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My suggestion is wait for i22. See how that plays out. You don't care for iTrials, but do you like the incarnate abilities?

If so, i22 is suppossed to give a solo path, and one worth waiting for and checking out. Though, I would suggest maybe laying out the 50 dollars (or purchase 15 dollars worth 3 times) to get the Celestial Armor slots unlocked before that time, because I believe that's when they go off the market.

I thinlk the devs have said that the celestial armour will be available in parallel with the new fire and ice stuff, at least for a while.

Tier 8/9 VIPs are a small (but important) portion of the revenue. The perverse marketing logic would be that most of the folks who have maintained a subscription for 6+ years continuously are likely deeply invested in the incarnate system. Or SG leaders and would want to be able to pay base rent. Or enjoy posting in all the Forums. Or....

The segment of Tier 8/9 VIPs that are not motivated enough to maintain a subscription would still need to drop a fair bit in the Paragon store to unlock a bunch of character slots. New powersets, new costume bits, and such. Actually I suspect that most of the tier 8/9 VIPs that drop will still end up subscribing part time when new content launches. In the end I suspect that most folks total spend actually increases.

And ultimately most of the Playerbase tends to let subscriptions lapse for a while occasionally and then re-up for a time. If some of the continuous subscribers transition into this catagory but still, through the Paragon Store, equal or exceed their historical spending its all good.

Also, Marketing wise, this is a social game. If your friends and SG mates and such are still logging in and playing, you are more likely to keep logging in. So giving folks who have spent two, three, four hundred dollars and likely have many in game friends access to 95% of the game seems justifiable from a business stand point.

You say that like its a bad thing.

If *no one* ever went premium, that would imply the whole premium option was a false option: that no one would or could possibly find it to be a valid choice to play the game. Granted: Paragon probably doesn't want a mass-exodus to premium status, because they still believe the subscription system is their core model. But for the premium option to not be meaningless, someone has to think its worth taking. If you don't like the extras that VIP status confers, but you do still like playing the game *and* are willing to spend money on the extras beyond the base premium game you do want, then premium is a reasonable choice. That's who Premium was made for.

The whole point of having the tiered access, and the ala carte store, was to provide *options* for players. Sometimes I think a lot of players aren't treating them as options: that if there's something there they don't like, obviously that's a problem with the game that demands a remedy. But it might not be there for you. It might be there for someone else who's perfectly happy with it. In making something for everyone, they by necessity cannot make everything for everyone.

As a tier 9 VIP, I get 550 paragon points a month, worth approximately $6.88. I renew annually, so I pay $11.95 a month. I pay $5.07 to maintain VIP status above the point stipend I get, which I would almost certainly be buying as a premium if I did not get them as part of my subscription. For $5 a month, I get transfers, slots, the incarnate system, signature story content, reward tokens, and a bunch of other stuff I barely keep track of anymore.

I'm honestly not even sure by how much the value I get from continuing to subscribe is higher than the incremental cost of actually subscribing. Its just pretty clear that at least for me, given that I actually use most of the extras that VIP subs get, the extra value is more than worth it.

The logic may seem perverse to you because you don't see the same value in the benefits VIPs get, but that's a personal preference on your part. Judging the system perverse because it doesn't exactly align with your personal preferences simply means you don't recognize that a lot of VIPs - probably the majority of them** - don't have that problem.


** Because its so easy to unsub, and so easy to reverse that decision and resub, there's no reason to subscribe if you genuinely do not believe the value is worth it. So I doubt many players do when they don't think its worth it.

But I thought you knew everything that was ever going to happen in future updates.

Got a link to where I said that?

Ah, I hadn't noticed epic ATs weren't included in the veteran rewards unlocks. That adds a few more Paragon Points I would need to 'play for free forever' the way I would want. Still, would be cheaper overall in the long run if I didn't mind missing out on incarnate content.

Signature Story Arcs I would likely just skip, and being involved in a large player network, I wouldn't need to worry about base rent (and even then, I never use them anyhow).

I know! And that will definetly be the selling point for me. I'm looking forward to it. If I can continue to progress in incarante abilites in small team and/or solo content, I will be on VIP status in a heartbeat. I am hoping not all of it features the 'auto kill' mechanics of the current iTrial implementation, but even so, it would likely be fun nonetheless.

Don't get me wrong, iTrials have some charm, and I'm currently doing a fair share of all of them, it's just, I don't think I would 'miss' much if I stopped grinding them for iXP. The newer ones tend to just frustrate me with losing them in ways that I 'feel' I can do little about (e.g. giant league, each individual can only contribute so much to the greater outcome).


I have no doubt it will be slower, but as long as it is 'fast enough', it will be both fun and profitable. As it stands, iPowers unlock 'relatively quickly' doing iTrials. If I could unlock them a fair bit slower while doing things I enjoy more, I think it will be a win/win.

Aye, I do enjoy having perma Clarion on my squishies, and I don't 'mind' especially grinding iTrials (BAF and LAM are enjoyable enough for me, others if I see a leader/league I 'know can lead us to a win'). I 'do' want celestial armor, and could either unlock with buying points or just keeping subscription 3 months 'and' getting the Statesman Loyalty bonus, albeit with less points.

I do much look forward to the solo path, although leveling lowbies up to 50 will remain my primary love.

And indeed that is how it is! I've put in my time and money, and can essentially now 'play for free'. Extras are available if I want them (incarnates, etc.) I do think VIP status could use a little more oomph for it's cost, but I suspect it will do well enough as is.

And, of course, us super veterans are the most likely to be heavily invested in the game anyhow, and the most likely to want the extra goodies, so, they either retain us by allowing us the play for free, or they continue to sell us the little extra goodies they add to the game. I love being here, and have great options available. Either choice looks good to me. I either keep paying extra for VIP and access incarnates or I have everything I essentially want already for free. Excellent!

Anyhow, thank you all for the input.

Hmm...
This could mean, low levels will be getting a room that is affected by a temporal disturbance, causing time in the vicinity to increase exponentially or stop entirely.

Or...
It could mean low levels will be getting a new emote, that allows for humorous mocking of long-winded lectures.

Or....
It could mean that I'm just a weirdo that has nearly every scene of Trek memorized and ZWill was just using that gif as the 1st one to pop up for 'winking'. *Shrug*

She's got Harry Redknapp in her eye

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I'm really glad many of the long-standing vets, myself included, have chosen to remain VIPs. I think my original post came off more harsh than I intended. I'm keeping my sub to support the game, because I want to be sure it's around for as long as possible. What I was trying to explain is that it seemed to me that the incentive for long-standing vets to remain VIPs was somewhat lacking. You've made a decent point. Maybe, like me, most of the long-standing vets will remain subbed to support the game regardless, or if they unsub they will eventually return and resub for a time. Maybe I'm in a minority that sees less incentive to remain VIP the longer an account has been active.

I've seen other people make similar comments as the OP, though, here and in the game. And it just seems to me that there is more incentive for a new player to become a VIP than a vet. Perhaps that is intentional, though.

If you already have them created, you can still play them. My VEAT main is perma-unlocked for whenever I alternate between VIP and F2P, because it only locks you out from character creation.

That's a change from when they tested it in beta, then: I had a level 50 WS copied over that I was unable to play when they did their "everybody gets set to free play" test - the error was that the AT wasn't unlocked.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Oh counsellor Deanna Troi, counsellor Deanna Troi...
*has a moment*

*has a second moment*





*has multiple moments*









*is spent*

It is intentional, because its a natural consequence of having a veteran rewards system that grants permanent rewards that do not require continuing to keep veteran status.

Or, to put it another way, we expect and think nothing strange of the fact that if you are a VIP, and for whatever reason choose to drop down to premium, the longer you've been a vet the more stuff you'll be able to keep when you do drop down. We expect longer veteran status to have some benefit, even for players that revert to premium.

But if a vet gets to keep more things when they drop to premium, they have to get back less things when they resubscribe. That's only logical. The only way to make it *more* valuable for VIPs to stay subscribed than new players to subscribe in the first place would be to take more stuff away from longer VIPs than shorter ones, which is somewhat nonsensical.

More to lose is more to gain, and vice versa. So what's important is that the value of remaining subscribed is enough because its not likely to rise, at least not in the sense being described here. It goes down because it has to, to prevent the opposite and possibly more perverse problem of long term vets losing more than short term ones when they drop to premium.

I'm full tier 9, all Celestial etc, I don't have a single incarnate and I rarely bother with IO's....

I'll be ViP til the day they shut em down or I can't afford the cost!

I've continued to pay for months on end, even when I was without a computer, just to support the game I love, no reason to stop now.

Really? How about hero-side epic archetypes--that is, Warshades and Peacebringers? You mean, a subscriber who has a Warshade and/or a Peacebringer can switch to Premium and then unlock those toons and play them?

It was my understanding that Warshades and Peacebringers were not available for Premium players--am I incorrect?

This is correct. The only 2 AT's you would need to purchase before being able to unlock are Masterminds and Controllers.