I don't feel VIP at all

xx

Yawn.

Reducing the pay for powersets would cut off the increased funds the devs have to make more powersets. Full stop. Dropping back to only 1-2 free powersets a year would make the VIP option compeletely and utterly worthless trash compared to what we have now. This isn't rocket science.

*sip*

I have some.

xx

Nahh, coffee makes me actually sleepy. It has that effect on many folks. Think I'll go to bed now.

also once again:

Reducing the pay for powersets would cut off the increased funds the devs have to make more powersets. Full stop. Dropping back to only 1-2 free powersets a year would make the VIP option compeletely and utterly worthless trash compared to what we have now. This isn't rocket science.


night night

Fixt.

hey I'm a VIP dangit, don't you forcefeed me actions to do, I take offense to that.

No, that's not the goal. The goal of F2P/Hybrid is to extract every dollar a player, every player, is willing to spend. You can afford a subscription, well here are some things you may also be interested in. You can't afford or rationalize a subscription, well do you need another character slot? How about tells? larger money cap? How about an "epic" or a pet class?

The goal may be at least $10-11 a month (large subscription plan) but that's less than three Premium players buying monthly IO and Auction house licenses every month. How about the sale of the new costume and power sets. How many player subscription months does that translate into?

And yes, a steady and or predictable revenue stream is better than a sporadic one, so subscriptions need to include some items for "free" that F2P would need to pay for but there has to be enough item variety so there is at least one carrot for everyone, whether it's unlocked ATs, powersets, costumes, character slots, story content, entire zones, high level content, crafting, player mission creation, etc. Some of which is subscriber only. A player may not care about all those things but enough things may push them into becoming subscribers.

Lastly, people a generally short sighted when it comes to small periodic costs versus large one time costs. Can't afford to spend $500 on a big TV but I can rent one indefinitely for $25 a month. Make the fix cost large enough, the monthly fee seems like a bargain.

It doesn't seem to be a link, it's just bolded and underlined for emphasis.

xx

The extended parade of missing /quote tags is giving me a headache.

i don't understand how those who think a subscription should unlock access to everything in the game expect that to work. That's not how it was the seven years prior to Freedom launching, and i don't understand how that would work in any sort of plausible funding scenario. The Devs have added more content/powersets/costumes/story/systems in the past year than any year prior. That costs money. Most of the significant content and powerset additions before Freedom required buying an expansion for access when they were released and only happened every couple of years or so, and required being a subscriber/VIP to play the game at all.

In what plausible scenario could PS afford to continue producing new content at a far greater pace than previously while charging less for it than ever before? How would you even convince those who control the funding of the game that it's a good idea?

If I recall correctly I think you can come along on story arcs that you haven't paid for, but can't access them. I think you can enter First Ward without paying for it, but you can't actually do any of the missions.

I'll go check on one of the two freebie accounts I have to verify.

Yup, you can get into the First Ward zone even without having bought the content.

The lack of spiky rocket boots makes me a sad VK. I wish to purchase spiky rocket boots from the Paragon Market to make up for this dire lack of spiky rocket boots.

Originally Posted by reiella Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right .

The goal is NOT to retain subscribers, but to maintain or increase subscriber numbers.

It doesn't matter if the same people remain subscribed, or if everyone quits and the same number starts, the bottom line remains the same.

You realize that nobody has told you to quit playing, leave, or anything else like that?
You keep saying that Premium offers a better value because VIP includes nothing of worth to you except the points, of which you get a greater amount as a Premium. Therefore, people are telling you to unsubscribe, and give Paragon your $15/month as a points purchase insteade of a subscription fee.

If quelling that "slow bleed" of VIPs prevents an equal or greater number of new VIPs from joining, then allowing the slow bleed is NOT doooom.
And the fact that we've got multiple devs in positions that used to be filled by only one, we're getting more content, more powersets, and more bugfixes than ever before is proof that Paragon Studios is making more money than ever before.

The system isn't here to maximize subscribers. It's here to maximize profits. And though you refuse to see it, you're trying to plug the leak by making it bigger.

Think about it: If the average player (all numbers from here on are made up) uses 600 points a month, at the current subscription stipend, VIPs need to buy 2400 points a year and T9 VIPs need to buy 600 points a year to reach that amount. That's $5 to $30 PER SUBSCRIBER extra on top of whatever the subscriptions bring in.
Your ONLY suggestion so far to "improve VIPs" has been to increase the number of points a VIP gets. While some people would continue to buy more points on top of that, many, many others would suddenly see no need to buy additional points.

Suddenly, profits are far lower.

I think you're taking the whole thread too personally. Granted, some of the later replies ARE personally directed at you, but initially, few if any were.

At the start of august i had 32 tokens. Now I have 34 just checked my billing summary and my last purchase of points was at june and it was a 9600 points one. I got 34th toke in this week and somewhere between I got 33rd I know it was before 15th august since for some reason I couldn't enter game between 5th and 15th. When I log on at 15th I had 33 tokens and my stipends according to my billing summary granted on 11th.

Welcome to the CoX forums! Hope you survive the experience! TM Chris Claremont

**eyeballs join date**

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

And that would fall under miscounting the rewards he had.

You've posted that three times, yet it isn't anything anyone's suggesting. My only concrete suggestion was to *increase* the number of powersets that need to be paid for.

If anything, making all the powersets for-pay, while giving VIPs the equivalent PP, would be revenue-neutral. It would just allow VIPs to skip paying for powersets they don't want, and apply those points to something they do.

I'm done with this discussion, but let's not end it with ridiculous strawmen in bold and underline. If you need to misrepresent reality to make your point then you're not doing your own side any favors.

So your suggestion is that the devs should continue what they are already doing.

They are continuously adding new power sets as fast as they can make them available, and all of the ones added since Freedom launched have to be purchased to use.

And the devs alreay give VIP's a free stipend of points they can save up to buy the new power sets or apply to something else if they don't want the power sets.

Ooookaay . . .

<backs away slowly in a non threatening manner>

The answer is "with an iron fist".

I24 introduces a new AoE inherent that's exclusive to VIPs - all Premiums and Freebies ae forced into the /e praise emote if they're within 180 feet of a VIP, so that's another exclusive perk that makes the sub worth it.

Wrong. I've already unlocked 48 slots on my favorite servers and have been forced to move characters off to make room for more. And anyone that bothers to check the suggestions section to read the request for more slots per server will see that the majority of players agree that we need more slots.

And as the overwhelming majority of responses in this thread say otherwise you once again are wrong. It is the opinion of a handful of people, and the truly funny thing about it is that those who are complaining the loudest are still paying to be VIP's. Even funnier is that some of them are so unhappy with subscribing they are willing to sub for a year in advance.

That's as funny as when P_P bought a lifetime sub to another super hero MMO even tho on our forums she professed she hated that game so much, then got caught lying about how she cancelled her LTS and got a refund, then claimed she couldn't cancel it because she forgot her credit card number.