jez

I've put this on the EU forums, but it could apply to all three zones. This is my idea to fight fire with fire if they really don't show some signs of listening soon. I've listened to yesterday's podcast and I'm afraid I feel no better hearing the executive squirm and try to spin the situation. So, having thought about it all night... here goes:

If they implement FoD for PvP, especially if there's any hint of following up with perfume prices ANYwhere near the US prices then don't rage quit. Instead:



1. Refuse to engage in PvP.

2. Start *helping* the other side to kill mobs in PvE.

3. Stop doing dungeons that lock if you leave.

4. Most of all - DO NOT BUY PERFUMES. if you don't buy, they make no money, and must reconsider their prices/development plan.

5. If you have the in game money (i.e. Gold) to buy stacks of Myrrh, buy it, and GIVE IT AWAY. Its not real money, after all.



Essentially, just help as many people as you possibly can avoid getting FoD in the first place. Those that get it become able to buy their way out of it with in game stuff.



Act like a *community* and look out for each other. Don't stop playing. Empty world=dead game. What I'm proposing is completely circumventing the 'force you to spend money' mechanic until they change it. If we all do this for a while immediately following FOD/Cash shop implementation, we'll know whether they're paying attention at the very next update because they'll do one of two things:



1. Change the mechanic or prices to something more rational and sensible

2. Bring in other changes that stop the above suggestions working.



If they go for 1, you can all go back to ganking each other, kill stealing and generally acting like two factions at war.



If they go for 2... ragequit.



Thanks for listening. Pass this idea around your guilds, fansites, blogs, etc if you agree. I have only just started playing this game, I want to keep playing it, and I don't want to be blackmailed in the process. If we have to blackmail them right back in order for them to get the message, then so be it.

I meant to add to my last post: Gpotato need to understand that 'value' has to run both ways. You can't just say 'we must get investement $ value from our players to ensure we break even'. That clearly must be an aim. Of course it does. But their economics are seriously flawed given what conclusion that has led them to - "only our paying players matter to our bottom line, and since there won't be many of them, we're going to treat them like dirt". Nice one, that'll keep those minority paying players in the game, right? *facepalm*

This is not the luxury fashion market, with only a few pretentious and flamboyant designers able to charge thousands for a single item of clothing to keep the obsessive and very rich fashionistas in the tabloids. Its the MMO market. Its flooded and is, as the exec was saying, full of 'the masses'. The masses won't put up with that crap, and they know when they're getting a raw deal. Your players must perceive value in the purchases themselves - the rest of the content pretty much doesn't matter if people feel ripped off. Look at our lovely safari park! Its even better than the actual serengetti in Africa! It has a pushmepullme and a gryphon in it! No-one else have those, do they? I can see you're drooling to get in, so in you come! Now, all you have to do is cut off your little finger to stay, that's ok, right? Hey! Where are you going?

Give the players value for money, and more of them will spend that money. I spend money in DDO. I was spending, in fact, more than a subscription - so I subscribed. Now Turbine have guaranteed income from me, and I have the best value for my buck. If I let my subs lapse, I will be buying more stuff from their store, because the content is worth it. But I'm not buying uber-buffs, and I'm especially not buying buffs whose purpose is are pretty much solely anti-penalising. I wouldn't. I'd just quit playing, because I don't appreciate being blackmailed.

They used historical data from their other products. Bad move. They should have used fresh data. DDO is making money hand over fist. Majority of players do play for free, its true, but there is a significant percentage which pay, rather than a tiny minority as with many other cash shop games.

Why? Because they don't blackmail players into playing by breaking the game if you don't spend money. They just make sure that the things you buy *add* to the game experience, rather than simply bringing the game experience up to a playable one. You buy stuff and it tends to be account-wide, content based.


Gpotato seem to be saying 'on our other games a tiny minority pay any money at all. This game was expensive to make, so we're going to ask that tiny minority to pay LOTS, and force everyone else to pay SOMEthing.

Wrongwrongwrong. The maximum spend in a cash shop for a single item ought to be about $5. People don't think about spending that if they're serious about the game. $20 for ANYthing for a single character is way, way too much. That's half the price of a full expansion set for most games. That bag should be a couple of bucks at most.

Even having said that FOD isn't really the problem. Its a death mechanic. Its a harsh one, but its just a mechanic. Its the way you remove it that is the problem. Its the way that its CLEARLY designed as a revenue generator, exploiting an oft-occuring event in any MMO - character death.

But... if each character realistically had to spend, say, $2 for a permanent five per day perfume item, probably everyone would buy one. Additional one shot perfumes would be a tenth to a hundredth of that - 2-20c each. People would then, again, not even think about buying them when their 5/day batch was used up in a day. In fact, at 2c each people might just but hundreds of them - regularly. Microtransactions are the ONLY way to make this work but it does rather require a layman's understanding of the word 'micro', not a corporate moneyman's understanding of it.

While spends are 'big', affect only one character and so on people think twice. They think three times. Then they leave for another game.

Well I'd have lost that bet.

However, the podcast doesn't appear to be actually up on the massively speaking page, so you can find it here:

http://podcasts.aolcdn.com/massively/podcasts/02-24-10-massively-E90.mp3

Not that its going to make many people happy....

I lay.. oh, lets say 2:1 odds that they will refuse to do the podcast.