SOE Asks: Supporting Returning Players and ideas for Refer-a-Friend?
From Windstalker on the EQ2 Forums:
Howdy Norrathians!
The team has been brainstorming ideas that would ease the re-entry back into the game and soften the learning curve for returning players as well as creative options for a Refer-a-Friend program.
- What would float your boat if you are, or were, a returning player at some point? Creative suggestions?
- And do you have ideas that would make you excited to not just refer a friend, but play with them too?
Post your thoughts and ideas here. Answer one or both if you like!
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Comments (42)
Nrgy
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Make the Mentoring work both ways … except share the stats of the player your up-mentoring becasue thier alogrithim is clearly broken mentoring down.
Or SOE could always go Agnostic as far as levels are concerned, but Im sure they are holding that one for EQN.
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Landiin
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I agree, instead of mentoring down, they should allow mentoring up. Disallow mentoring in raid and HM zones through. Why you ask? Well there has to be a goal for reaching tip lvl, might as well make it so your able to raid and to HM instances /shrug.
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Trueflight
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They should take a look at how mentoring down works in GW2. I’m not sure the formula that they use for it, but they definitly have it much more in tune than the EQ2 version. You can actually take a level 80 character into a level 5 zone and get your butt kicked on a regular basis if you just charge headfirst into battle.
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zerigo
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Lol, stick a fork in it, this ones done.
Next time, dont run all your customers off.
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milliebii
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1. Abandon Prosiebensat deal
2. Sack Smoke Screener
3. Give an early retirement to Smedbucks.
4. Return the difficulty in the game, not dumb it down further.
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Aseoshi
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Give the players a bonus to return! kill the grinding how about 3X xp weekend? Give the PVP comumunity a bonus weekend!! show PVP some love 2x battle tokens or some thing. think outside the box!! I know its a community but we are the world and times to meet as a group are limited. Its hard to get everyone togeather and do a RAID!! Just to have someone Leroy us and waste 2 hours of setup time. I play as a casual player in a guild on a pvp server and get owned all the time and its frustrating. heck if I can just outright buy gear for plat eve if its cost station cash to keep up with the rest would be good. I know it may unbalance the game to a POINT! but so many hours to grind to a piece of gear is like a job after 3-4 years of work. I have other suggestions you can hit me up but this is just the tip of the iceberg!!! Innovation is what will keep this game alaive!!!
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Aseoshi
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here ya go make trade skill a mobile app and yyou can lev up and make stuff on iPhone or Android!!! OUTSIDE THE BOX!!!
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Aseoshi
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It’s a community game…make it so!! you have server separation…have events where everyone can contribute..WORLD events that may effect certian outcomes. Ultra RAIDS accross servers that must unit the community for the greater good or bad!!! Give it a risk take all event!!! if a zone is compromised it has to be retaken…war is war it must feel real and involved to be immursive. Fight for the greater good on either side.
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Aseoshi
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Video Games are all cause and effect and I feel that no matter what I do in EQ2 recently has niether I can not either help nor hinder the path I choose and then in effect disengages the players as a whole. We have to know what we are fightint for…to save the universe….???? or help to destroy it.. either way we mus feel ENGAGED!!! now it just feels like i grind to see who can be top dog!!! BTW Indiana Jones shot the dude with the sword!! dont bring a knife to a gun fight!! you have to engage the player bar NONE!!!!
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Aseoshi
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Another crazy idea make it comtpetive accross servers the more mining and assets you gain the stronger the guild/server you are in the world. I know the trade skill folks have passion imagin if they were competeing against each other to further thier purpose just saying…
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Steve
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Button that activates every five minutes that allows you to send an electrical shock to Smoke Blowers’ balls.
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bhagpuss
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Short of some kind of timewarp device that gives me 48 hours in a day, I can’t see what can be done. Too many alternatives and too many of them too attractive to stick with any one MMO any more.
The one thing I can think of that’s been proven to get former players to come back and stay for a while is EQ’s Progression Server project. EQ2 doesn’t quite have the back-catalog of content that EQ does, but coming up to eight years in there should be enough by now. Of course, it’s a spurt of interest that won’t last, but what would for an eight-year old game in a market currently bursting with fresh options?
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Pengefinchess
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the learning curve is soften enough – if anything people might return if we toughened it back up!
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baddabing
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First thing would be free gold sub for first month for a returning player with a break of more then 3/6 months if referred by a current gold member of more then 3/6 months limited to 1 per month for the current player
new player 1 week of gold member ship up to level 80 starting at level 20
guide run groups / raids for new players at different levels teaching the methods needed to play there class and the game with reduced exp at low level so they can explore the content rather then level right past it.
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FlugZug
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I’d be happy to re-sub my 3 accounts once the RMT beancounters are replaced by people with a passion for the product.
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Ritten
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What Zerigo said. What are you smoking, jumper?
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Modus
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Well lets see…
1. Return the difficulty to something more challenging.
2. Lower exp gain and make use of the 8 years of content you have.
3. Lower the amount of gimmick carnie games you keep throwing at us, Make it
an enhancement of the game not the focus.
4. Content updates that are spread across the level ranges… Art revamps don’t count. Use scale-able instances if necessary, Hell make scale-able shared dungeons if you’re feeling whacky lol
Honestly i could go on but the problem you will encounter with returning players is this. they return and lets assume roll a new character. After entering the game they will get an invite from their recruiting friend to join a group. that person almost certainly be on an SK/serker/Pally and begin mass pulling to get them to 20ish asap.
Next they will go to a higher dungeon or instance and repeat to teir 3..ect…ect. This will proceed until the new toon is level 90, 92 if they have a really good friend or lots of plat. They will spend a month or so in Skyshrine running circles with the rest of us until they get bored and not resub.
Until you stop and attempt to make the game into something a player of any level can enjoy no gimmick recuiting bonus, mount, title, discount to sub or whatnot will make them stick around more than a month at most.
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Avianna
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I agree with flugzug completely get rid of the marketplace, put new stuff into the game weekly rather than on the smedbucks market, fix the known bugs, improve framerates, and yeah nothing “NEW” needs to be done, just fix what’s already here and this will by far be the best game out there.
Don’t take it out on Smokejumper yeah he is the name behind the changes however he is not the drive, the beancouters are up his arse like white on rice I am sure, I think he honestly does have a passion for the game but is trying everything he knows to meet the demands of the higher ups and make both the players and the boss as happy as can be. I do not envy him or his job.
In short, you want people to return then give those of us that are left something to boast about rather than complain about.
I do a lot of complianing that I pay my sub every month and if I want the cool looking mounts or gear or furniture or or or then I gotta pay extra. and guess what? My friends don’t play because of my complaining. Now if instead I went to my friends and said oh guess what new items got added to the game today? Check out this mount that is a new quest today, or look at this Item unattuner that the gnomes mailed to me today, or yeah, you get the idea, turn around the word of mouth with what is already here and you will see players return.
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Madcat
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less buisness, more game 😉
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Vortix
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With all the news about the PS3 price increase because of “customer confusion,” and the new sliding abomination that makes it less entertainment center friendly … SOE needs to stop abusing their franchises with the prosperity gospel vision of profit. Start thinking from a gaming perspective, not how to take advantage of your customers.
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Necromancer
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Make Feldon a producer.
Problem solved.
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Seffrid
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I’d tackle the issue of supporting returning players a different way. Instead of creating the issue in the first place, why not support the existing players so they don’t need to return as they’ll not have left?
Unfortunately, the way SOE are discarding the European players and alienating a lot of the American players by doing so, after having already dumbed the game down to the lowest possible level and introduced a “nickel and dime’em” approach to F2P which in itself was a clear breach of faith with the players, it’s not difficult to see why they have now woken up to the need to find ways of getting more ex-players back into the game.
My advice would be simple – undo the mistakes of the past before dreaming up any more mistakes for the future!
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skippydippy
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Thought the game was doing so well with its F2P model it didnt need anyone back?
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milliebii
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Really silly request “soften the learning curve for returning players” when the reason a good number of us left is because dumbing down. So “Windstalker” and SOE think that making it dumber is going to attract us back?
They need to take a good hard look at why players left and fix that. Not continue heading in the direction they are.
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Risi
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Do useful past content.
Give option to chronomentoring for challenge and hard mode.
Give appropriate reward for playing in it. Tokens or loots for the original level of the chronoed character.
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Snowdarc
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That.^^^^^^
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Seffrid
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Incidentally, SOE also need to get back to the days when they listened to criticism rather than burying it as they do nowadays. If I had posted my earlier comment on the official board a few years ago there would have been a decent debate about the whole thing and a couple of the team would have contributed to it including the Producer. If I’d posted the comment on the official boards today it would have swiftly disappeared and I’d be enjoying another ban.
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Madcat
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that remember me a guild, telling to member if your not happy you can leave the door is here… but when everyone is gone, they start to carre…
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striinger
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Returning players have hit our guild in large numbers recently only to leave again…for the most part. They don’t come back to start new characters, and it’s not the learning curve that’s keeping them away. It’s not really station cash crap either.
It’s that they log in to mostly dead servers full of gimp toons LFG (many times returning players learning again) or groups who only want someone that’s not them. It’s not totally about population, either, because even AB feels dead.
So, to give people the ability to get on and find a fun game more often:
1. enhance instances to scale mobs based on group size, dps, hps, etc. PQs didn’t get the right amount of love.
2. Make all single target spells usable outside group and all group spells AE with ground markers (like GW2). It makes playing together more fun without the commitment of a group. I recall how cool it was when I started EQ1 and higher level toons buffed people as they ran bye.
3. Balance risk, effort and reward. Get rid of distractions like LoN and the other cancers to put focus into the dying core.
4. Tighten up the ‘silly’ crap and get back to the design standard of ‘realistic’ high fantasy. Most of their competition now slips into alien manga erotic fantasy. Not much competition in the pure genre and that’s what brought back a lot of the people who returned for a bit.
5. Dynamic loot tables. Give a chance for an upgrade no matter what you’re doing, just make sure that chance only gets really good for the challenging content with others. ie make lot sensible if not smart. A level 92 in 65 content may get occasional 92 gear that’s mute crap.
6. Give old dungeons new life. Auto mentor people to an appropriate level by instance. SOS is more interesting if mobs are red/orange to the mentored people. Most people mentor too high so mobs are barely yellow or lower.
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Dreiden
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I honestly don’t see the game rising in numbers no matter what Sony does. I think the only road to success is to maintain the player base they have. Adding new distractions(pvp arenas(kingdom of sky), make your own dungeon, this new goblin ticket game thingy, to the game is bad I think.
They need to focus on the core of what eq2 is. Solo, group and raid content.
Make it easier for guilds to recruit and find new members.
Make looking for group more like a fps lobby perhaps. When you /lfg you get a new interface up with a chat channel of people who are also lfg, preferable make this cross server. Make it so you can see the groups actively looking for new member in this interface so you can get an idea of what that group has in it already. Allow players to examine those in the group and join. Make it so the group gets to accept or reject the join request. Don’t just drop people in a queue. Replace dungeon finder with this.
And last keep adding new content into the game. By content I mean zones/quests/gear mechanics/etc.
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Gourdon
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By default, put all of the low level characters on the same server, then make them transfer (for free) to a regular server when they hit level 80 or so.
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Ragefighter
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I liked the Chrono task’s but wish they would flesh that out more. like make a heroic version where maybe you do some old raid instances with a limited number of players. and make better reward merchants with interesting items.
Maybe scale some zones up to 92/95. (with token rewards so they don’t need to make all new loot for every zone/level range. maybe add rare items in a random box like an un-adorner or un-atuner, to get even some raiders interested).
This is just something I would enjoy, at the moment I just hunt for achievements. I like all the content in this game but once your 92 max aa and geared out, there is only like 1 or 2 zones in the game. and chronoing down just makes everything a total joke. (I like the idea of zones that scale to your level like in loaping and everfrost and I think lavastorm. cause its something that will always drop some kind of items even if your 80, 90, 100 whatever.)
This game is large but also very tiny.
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Dark
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Personally why I left and refuse to come back is just the blatant lack of content and obvious fact that they have ZERO QA. That’s something SoE won’t fix, so their best bet is to just keep whoevers actually left playing, happy.
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@ Dreiden
I never understood why Sony fails so hard with the LFG tools, they are like the only company I have ever heard of that got it COMPLETELY wrong 3 times in a row. It’s really not a difficult concept..
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MichaelD
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If SOE *REALLY* wanted to get old players back, and to keep them, they would have to press the reset switch and start it over.
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Kwill
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Fix dungeon finder. I have been trying to use it lately, leveling up an alt, because occasionally it will put you in a heroic dungeon with your merc and give the 25% exp bonus. Other times, there might be one person with me. Unfortuately, it’s completely broken for the most part, queing you for hours, giving you false dungeon abandonment messages, and putting you in the same dungeon every time — and some of them are so short that it only takes 15 minutes or less to complete!
It’s like the made DF and then completely abandoned the project and left it broken.
There is a lot to do until you get to 92, and then it’s as the other poster said, run in circles in SS. More desireable drops in other zones would fix some of that — give the 92/320s a reason to leave Skyshrine, which I personally find boring art and content-wise.
How about more x2 raids for casual guilds? TOFS x2 gets really, really, really old.
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Anaogi
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For certain, unlock all currently attuned Leg+ gear. This has been one of the demoralizing things for returning players, that they can’t use the gear they earned and equipped previously. Subsequent stuff as normal, if you simply must continue with that whole ridiculous paradigm.
Beyond that, I got nothing that doesn’t involve either a road to Damascus moment or a complete restaffing at the top.
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Trueflight
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Whatever happened to that 300% increase in players they were bragging about when the game went free to play? I think I met one in the last year.
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uncle
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@ trueflight
im certain the 300% happened until ppl firgured out to do any thing they had to resub…
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Flatley
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For me, personally, only the scrapping or rethink of P7S1 is going to keep me playing now. But that’s not going to happen.
I’m playing GW2 a lot now and, you know what? I don’t miss EQ2 all that much.
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Ratzilla
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improve the performance of the game not everybody has a new computer . the memory used if lowered is good start because this game is a ram hog . if soe could do this they would get more on the game along with the mentor up is a good plan . can’t play if the game wont run good and this could be a large player base gain .
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G
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1. Ditch Prosieben! I cannot recommend EQ2 to ANY of my friends (here in Europe) – it is hanging over my accounts like an axe over my neck and i dunno if it’s gonna fall down or not.
2. Fire the SoE leadership and use the money saved on something useful, like developers.
3. Get rid of the community managers and hire people with actual communication skills that respect customers and don’t just blurt out “It will be fine, trust us” or “Its rather technical so you do not need to know about it”.
4. Reinstate SC as a valuable payment currency for expansions and stop deflating its value by GIVING it away, all we can us it for now is useless trinkets that have no effect on gameplay. Either that or give us another currency.
5. Update the graphics engine. (probably wont happen but, i hope)
6. Let us have more than one merc active (If you can afford it, why not? at least until the server populations start to grow back – if ever)
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ianiention
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Agree with the comments posted so far. Now that GW2 is here there’s no reason to put up with SOE’s nonsense anymore. Personally most of our casual raiding guild have more over to GW2 and it’s unlikely we’ll move back unless GW2 sucks at end game.
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