I pay for my offline levels so do not you dare touch them without any compensation.
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I pay for my offline levels so do not you dare touch them without any compensation.
So lets compare old and new membership benefits
Remains to be seen what these sales include, but I guess this must count as a good thing.
I don't see any real problem with bonus PvP XP, but while I am sure many players will like the bonus to PvE XP I am not one of them.Quote:
[*]A passive 30% bonus to PvE and PvP XP, including AA for as long as you’re a member. This replaces the Blessing of Asura. The Blessing of Asura will be removed from all characters.
For new players it will cause them to outlevel content too quickly, reducing the experience of the leveling content. The leveling pace is actually quite good in this game.
Old veterans who already have a character of each class maxed out will get no benefit from an XP bonus.
Those who can benefit from it are those leveling their eigth (or so) alt, who has already done every single quest and instance in the game twice or more. They will probably want to skip some stuff, but for them offline levels (which are being removed) would likely be a better solution.
Removal of Blessing of Asura is a bad thing. It provided a nice XP bonus - but only when one wanted to use it, so it had no drawback unlike a permanent bonus.
Nice I guess, but not really an improvement of the old situation where teleports were cheaper in the store and we got bonus points to pay for them - plus veteran points to buy some permanent paths.Quote:
[*]15 Teleport Coins, per character, each month for free.
Those are nice benefits.Quote:
[*]Boosted Token gains from Raids, PvP and Khitai areas.[*]A passive 30% increase to all faction gains.
I don't remember people complaining much about grinding for factions so I am not sure that ever was much of a problem, but still...
Nice for those who don't play much. Those who play a lot won't have time to unlock many of the perks this way before they reach level 80.Quote:
[*]The ability to unlock Alternate Advancement perks via time, starting at Level 20.
Gives no benefit at all to those who already are at level 80
I think membership already gives all of these, don't they? So no change thereQuote:
[*]An additional AA point per level gained.[*]+7 Character slots. New, Free accounts made after the transition start with 1 character slot by default. All existing accounts will keep however many slots they had.[*]Increased Quest Journal capacity.[*]Unlimited gold capacity.
These are all bad.Quote:
Important: Offline Levels are being completely removed from the game once the new membership system goes live. We’re aiming at the end of June or shortly after; this is subject to change, but you should use your offline levels by then, as they will disappear after the changes go live!
Monthly bonus points are not a part of Membership.
Veteran Tokens are no longer gained with Membership, but players will keep what they had and may still use them at Veteran vendors.
Removal of bonus points is especially bad when you take into consideration that many store prices have been increased.
I guess we will have to wait and see what these rewards will be, but a mount as top-end reward does not sound all that impressive.Quote:
Instead of Veteran Tokens, Members will be enrolled in The Loyalty Rewards program. This offers awesome new rewards for our Members at 30, 60, 90, 180, and 360-day tiers, including a brand-new mount type as the top-end reward. Additional rewards will be unveiled every 6 months.
I am not really a fan of daily rewards - provides extra pressure to login each day instead of just when you feel like playing, but since one can ignore them, I suppose this must be classified as a good thingQuote:
We are also implementing a daily login reward and challenge system which will grant various rewards for free, including consumables, tokens, AA XP, and more.
This is great for all F2P players, no doubt about that. It does remove some incentive to buy a membership though.Quote:
An active membership will not be required to enter *any* content you have already purchased. This means any Rise of the Godslayer or Dragon’s Spine playfield, including associated raids and Unchained dungeons.
Dragon’s Spine will be sold separately in a new content pack. UPDATE: If you have ever made a purchase in Age of Conan up until the new system launches, you'l get Dragon's Spine for free!
Membership and Rise of the Godslayer are no longer required to use the Alternate Advancement system.
Lower prices are always nice, but we don't know yet how much lower, and I note nothing is mentioned about membership periods longer than 30 days.Quote:
And, last but certainly not least, we’re going to have a new, lower price point for the 30-day membership. More info to come.
All in all a mix of good and bad changes (unlike the store revamp which is all bad), but the good changes are mostly minor goods, and the bad ones mostly major bads. Some details are still unknown, but unless those unkowns turn out to be really, really, super-awesome they are unlikely to change my evaluation that overall these membership changes will actually DECREASE the value of a membership compared to the situation today
This.
Comparison to TSW: I do not know the prices of the memberships in TSW, and we do not know the new prices for AoC. Because of that we can not know how many bonus points per month,if any, would be fair.
I am still waiting for a plan for people who have gametime left. My sub runs untill september 2017. I payed more money for this 15 months then they will cost from July on, and I will get less service and things then I agreed on and knew about when I made the purchase. I am almost certain that taking away things that were part of the contract at that time is legally allowed, but it is just a bad move on customers.
Giving at least the bonus points to us is a good first step. Of course I expect that you dump any time frame on those.
When we know the new prices I will calculate what my allready payed 15 months will be worth in "new months", and add what I am loosing on service and content. I am really curious about the gametime that will come out of that. Better have a plan ready and rolling untill then.
Funcom, you have some options now. I am waiting.
There's no reason for removing the already gained offline levels.
I'm sure I'm not alone in that they're absolutely necessary for Purist when you're on your 14th alt on a toon you don't need and can't stand playing the lower levels anymore. I don't care what kind of XP bonus I'm awarded for being a subscriber, I can't shut XP gain off and if it levels me out of the necessary bracket range for a dungeon I'm going to be really pissed. Your decisions are always geared for new players that rarely ever stay and you continue to alienate the ones that have been here and supported you since the beginning.
Those are my thoughts. Basically, I don't see much incentive to keep subscribing. You're proposing to give F2P almost everything you can get through membership. Giving F2P full access to DS and Khitai is a total slap in the face to those of us who have been loyal subscribers for years. I suggest you re-think a lot of this. Subscribing is supposed benefit you, which I'm just not seeing .. unless you're going to offer yearly subs for $5.