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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Game Design/Development  |  Topic: Buying Veteran Rewards 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Buying Veteran Rewards  (Read 6288 times)
stark
Terracotta Army
Posts: 86


on: March 14, 2008, 01:20:11 PM

In a few of the MMO's I've played they've had the concept of veteran rewards.  Typically aesthetic features or non-required gameplay perks for the players that maintained a long subscription.

What do you guys think about the ability to buy veteran time?

Example Case:
Charge $5 per month of veteran time.
Player has 6 months of actual vet time and decids to catch up 18 months
Player pays $90 and gets 18 Months Bought
Player gets rewards out to 24 months of play time

Pros:
  • Free money for developer
  • As a new player, there is no possible way to catch up on veteran rewards, which is a big turn-off.   This provides a way to circumvent that.
Cons:
  • Veteran status is tied not only to the money that a player has invested in the game, but the commitment as well. To circumvent the commitment is to cheapen the rewards.
  • May make players feel like they need to spend extra money to compete/be on par with those who do

    What are your guys thoughts?  Do you think it would work or fail in actual application?
    Mrbloodworth
    Terracotta Army
    Posts: 15148


    Reply #1 on: March 14, 2008, 01:25:18 PM

    Not sure it would be called "Veteran time" after that.

    Besides, their is already a way to do this. Its called ebay.

    Today's How-To: Scrambling a Thread to the Point of Incoherence in Only One Post with MrBloodworth . - schild
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    Kail
    Terracotta Army
    Posts: 2858


    Reply #2 on: March 14, 2008, 10:31:55 PM

    Seems to defeat the purpose of Veteran Rewards.

    One player might subscibe to the game for a month.  Another player might subscribe to the game for the duration of it's lifetime.  A person who is second kind of player is going to earn the company far more money than one who is the first kind of player, so veteran rewards are one way to encourage people to become the second kind or player.  You want your magic sparkle donkey, you have to stay subbed for six months.  That encourages people to stay subbed for six months... and hopefully by then your game has it's hooks firmly planted in the player, and if it doesn't, well, take a look at the veteran's reward you get for subbing for a year, now only six months away...

    You can't grind for these, can't speed it up.  That's the point.  If you want to put RMT in to the game or something, that's one thing, but it's very different from the reasoning behind including veteran's rewards.  Especially with your provided pricing scheme, where you only have to pay 1/3 of the (presumed $15) sub cost to catch up; nobody's going to be stupid enough to stick around to earn their veteran rewards if they can just buy them for less money than the sub would cost them, and on top of that they'd get to have them RIGHT NOW.

    This sounds more like a convoluted RMT setup than a veteran's reward program, and if you're going with RMT, why bother with all this business of months and buying time when you could just say "Unicorn Hat = $25"?  Seems much simpler.
    Typhon
    Terracotta Army
    Posts: 2493


    Reply #3 on: March 18, 2008, 04:17:15 AM

    No one answered the drawback of veteran's awards - "As a new player, there is no possible way to catch up on veteran rewards, which is a big turn-off."

    A similar mechanism was DAOC's RPs.  Similar end result - if you weren't an early adopter you were always going to be a second class citizen  (granted that DAOCs had a much harsher impact then CoXs veterans awards).

    From a business perspective - is it better to retain the same core of players longer, or is it better to sell boxes/downloads throughout the life of the game?  I think arguments can be made for both, and how you structure you game should be heavily influenced by what type of game you want to be.

    From a player's perspective - it's nice to be recognized as being a faithful customer.  On the otherhand, I have in the past decided against buying a MMO game that has been out for awhile largely because I don't want to deal with being late to the game/early adopters.

    I would say that a good way to bypass the conversation is to make available via purchase cosemetic enhancements, and make clear at the time of release that veterans will be getting a "veterans" version of the same content.  To use CoXs character pieces as an example - release a Viking set for purchase, and release pieces in that Viking set that are made available as a veteran's award).
    Jerrith
    Developers
    Posts: 145

    Trion


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    Reply #4 on: March 22, 2008, 09:23:11 PM

    I heard a similar idea to this a few years back that put an interesting twist on this.  Instead of being some abstract "veteran time", it was actually buying your subscription in advance.  You could then effectively access the veteran rewards out to the point you had purchased a subscription to.  There were some problems, such as what do you do about people who buy a ton of time, to get lots of rewards, and then ask their credit card company to reverse the charges once they were done playing. 

    I think it's probably one of the least intrusive ways you could add RMT into a game.  Whether that's good or bad is a matter of opinion however... :)
    Grimwell
    Developers
    Posts: 752

    [Redacted]


    Reply #5 on: April 08, 2008, 05:36:34 PM

    I'd think it would be easier to just assign a $$ value to those veteran rewards and give folks two options:
    1. Get them for free by being active for X amount of time.
    2. Get them now for $$

    This would allow people to buy the rewards that they want now, and wait on rewards that they aren't as interested in.

    This would create a whole new problem though: People asking for more veteran rewards early. "Hey, can you put the 10 year rewards in? I know the games only two years old, but I'd like to buy them now!"


    Grimwell
    Llava
    Contributor
    Posts: 4602

    Rrava roves you rong time


    Reply #6 on: April 10, 2008, 11:13:39 AM

    Cons:
    • Veteran status is tied not only to the money that a player has invested in the game, but the commitment as well. To circumvent the commitment is to cheapen the rewards.
    • May make players feel like they need to spend extra money to compete/be on par with those who do

      The first one, I think, isn't really a con.  I'm not sure that a player who's been subbed to a game since release can be said to be THAT much more committed that someone who's been subbed since a year after release, but also dropped an extra $60 into the developers' pocket just for some fluff.  Hell, he wasn't even eating up bandwidth for the first year.

      But yes, there is the issue of making players feel like the company is forcing them to buy the things that, from their perspective, everyone else is getting for free.

      That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell. -Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
      DarkSign
      Terracotta Army
      Posts: 698


      Reply #7 on: April 11, 2008, 05:53:24 AM

      Veterans are already rewarded with the power they have inside the games. Recognition in a way that doesnt translate to an advantage is one thing, but slanting the game for the people who already know how to work the system is retarded. And I say that as a veteran of many MMOs.
      Typhon
      Terracotta Army
      Posts: 2493


      Reply #8 on: April 12, 2008, 07:34:41 AM

      I don't think anyone is talking about giving veteran's an advantage.  We're talking about giving access (via time enrolled or rmt or mix) to special costume options, non-combat pets, titles, free respecs, enhanced travel options (e.g. a special mount, where everyone else gets the "normal" mount), access to convenience travel options - i.e. cosmetic and convenience items only.

      At least that's what I was talking about.  I think Grimwell's take is decently reasonable.
      DarkSign
      Terracotta Army
      Posts: 698


      Reply #9 on: April 12, 2008, 08:57:16 AM

      I don't think anyone is talking about giving veteran's an advantage.  We're talking about giving access (via time enrolled or rmt or mix) to special costume options, non-combat pets, titles, free respecs, enhanced travel options (e.g. a special mount, where everyone else gets the "normal" mount), access to convenience travel options - i.e. cosmetic and convenience items only.

      At least that's what I was talking about.  I think Grimwell's take is decently reasonable.

      That I agree with. As long as it doesn't give an advantage and is purely cosmetic. Sorry if I was being dense.
      Buying those rewards forward would cheapen them, imho, because it would only serve to line the coffers of the company. Say someone buys 2 years worth of rewards, acts like an ass with them, then quits after 2 months, the only thing they've done is make people with vet rewards look like retards and paid the game for the experience.

      Koyasha
      Terracotta Army
      Posts: 1363


      Reply #10 on: April 24, 2008, 04:32:12 AM

      Personally, I liked EQ's veteran AA's.  They do give advantages, and I never had a problem with that.  However, some method to track back to your original purchase of the game and share it to all your accounts would be nice.  My main character in EQ didn't have a hell of a lot of the veteran rewards because I had created new accounts over the years, and my current main was on an account that was only created in the Luclin Age, rather than the First Age.

      The other thing I'd like is some warning about it.  If I'm aware that there are going to be veteran rewards someday, I may consider doing things differently.  If I had known since the beginning that someday I would get veteran rewards based on the amount of subscribed time I had to EverQuest, once I had been playing a year or two and come to the real understanding that I would be playing this game for a long time to come, I probably never would have unsubscribed, ever.  If at that point they had offered a lifetime membership, I would have bought it.

      So, as to veteran rewards, I'd say - decide how they're going to work early, tell your user base about them and how they work early, and if they - like EQ's - are related to active, paid account time, you'll probably see a substantially lower number of people cancelling their account when they go away for a while to try out the latest game.

      -Do you honestly think that we believe ourselves evil? My friend, we seek only good. It's just that our definitions don't quite match.-
      Ailanreanter, Arcanaloth
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