All About the VIP Membership Program - Questions & Discussion

[Drex]

The devs could add 100 slots and players could fill them and then ask for more. If they were removing slots from players then selling our old inventory slot count, you would have a point. But the game has been played and balanced for years around the current non-VIP inventory slot number and the inability to export text files.

The difference here is that they are adding the additional slots for money. Giving an advantage to players that can afford it. It might not be a big advantage, but it's still an advantage all the same. That's the main issue I have, adding systems to games that give players any level of advantage by making them pay for it with real money. Now if there were say, a way to pay for those extra slots with in game money, but VIP gives them for free, that would at least be a little better, and technically I guess that could be possible if players are able to trade the VIP tokens. But it sounds like the tokens are going to be pretty rare and as such will be super expensive to buy most likely. So only the top players will be able to afford them while new players or casuals probably will never be able to, so they have to open their wallets.

PG has technically had log in rewards for ages. Or more, log out rewards via hang-outs. The other fears you have about changes if the VIP isnt successful enough absolutely applies to games owned by private equity firms, but I don't think it applies here. The fears about if the VIP system failing is moot because, from what I've read, the dev team has been extraordinarily careful with the funds they've earned from backers and purchasers and they can continue to make PG at their current rate of development indefinitely. But I get that sounds a lot like marketing speak, ergo people will have a hard time believing that.

The hang outs are fine. You don't have to pay for them. Log in rewards on their own are fine, I don't care about them, but if they tie it to the VIP system, it'll be an issue. But that's hypothetical since they may never do that. The issue with the idea that they are fine with money is that they said themselves they are planning to hire a team now. That funding will be gone very quickly if they are hiring new devs to work on the game. There's no way the small amount of money they have received will be enough, thus why they announced hiring new devs at the same time as they announced the VIP system. The link is obvious there. The VIP system is there to hopefully fund the new devs. So what happens if people don't buy VIP? They fire the new devs? They keep them and make VIP more desirable? Both are very possible options here.

The solutions you offered, I think, would make the subscription a more significant change and would probably tank the community. Most players around level 35 are not invested in the game enough to sub.

I mean, depending on the sub price, I don't think it would tank the community that badly or at all. But that option is just the one I prefer. You could still have a VIP system that's cosmetic only too, but that has its flaws as well. There's no perfect system out there, but I do think that the current VIP idea isn't the best option. At least in my opinion.

I hope you're not suggesting that the devs take away the game we already paid full price for and make us pay a monthly sub to continue playing it.

I mean, it's not like that's not something that has never been done before. All older MMOs used that exact same model. New ones still do that with expansions all the time. It's really not that unrealistic of an expectation for a game that is constantly being updated with new content. Your initial purchase has gone way beyond what you initially bought by now depending on when you bought it.

Anyway, if that bothers you, they could easily add some sort of reward for early adopters of the game that paid the price. Many other MMOs have done this in the past. Just give players something equal to the price of the game. They could give X months of game time for example.

Or they could just make it so players that bought the game have access to the full current game but any future content will be locked behind the subscription.

Or if they just went with a cosmetic only subscription method, that would be fine too. It's when people start to get an advantage for a subscription that I start to have an issue.