Optional Monthly Service Fee for no Content Lockouts. ^^

[Stormblossom]

I do find it amazing the rose-tinted glasses a lot of people seem to have regarding MMO 'hardcore' progression. I played EQ1 from late beta, and it had plenty of 'hardcore' moments in its history, especially during the Velious and Luclin expansions. The problem was they didn't do instanced content in those days. So not only did you have your insane grindfests for leveling and AA points, along with insane key camps .. (Gotta get all 36 people in the raid force that dragon drop off one of the three mobs who only spawns once a week that every other guild is also hunting so we can all be keyed to go into Sleepers! Don't even get me started on Vex Thal...) but once we were keyed, we either had to deliberately fight to lock other guilds out of completing their key quests, or risk losing our once a week shot at the raid content! Was there something for your raid force to do every raid night? Probably. Was it fun? Sometimes, but sometimes it was killing Emp for the 2320325th time to make sure people couldn't complete their VT keys when nobody in the raid needed a drop anymore.

[Shneibel]

I'd rather they just completely remove the lockouts and create worthwhile content that can't be completed in one night.

you dont want it to be like 1.0, trust me. No lock out content with 1% drop rate is...well, ppl will complain about that for sure and eventually a thead say pay xx$ to increase drop rate

[Tupsi]

I do find it amazing the rose-tinted glasses

Stopped right there. I'm sure you made a good point but whenever someone says this it's usually their own bias about the subject they're commenting on.

You are paying to be ahead of everybody else.

Let's be real, in this game everyone is equal and even if you're "ahead" it doesn't matter because the game is designed to treat everyone equally pretty much. You act like you're going from:

- Someone who doesn't "pay the extra fee"

To

- Someone who does pay the extra fee.

If there were gear like the 2nd link, then it would be 'pay to win' as they would get ahead of the curve and get "amazing gear" without fear of lockout.

[snakey77]

For a one time payment of $4.99 I can tell you where you shove this idea.

OHH SNAP!! this thread just got told!

[o3o]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=p2w

This made me lol.

the ones who dont think its p2w are just plain ignorant.

Your basicly paying to be i90 in a week.

[Felis]

Only if also the dropchance get reduced to 1% if you pay for the lockout remove option. Something like 99% chance that you can only choose "Pass" (so that the other players in your party who don't pay for free lockout have the normal droprate). Add a negative effect to the positive effect or it would be P2W

From an interview:

Yoshida:
For example, I get a lot of people telling me "why do you set limits on items you can get each week?"

4Gamer:
Ah.

Yoshida:
And I understand how they feel. They're thinking "this part of the game is actually fun, so why would you make it so we can't get the item we want?" However, let's say if we try to control the distribution of rare items not by a lockout, but via drop rates instead. If you do this, then the game will simply become one-sided favoring those who can play longer.

4Gamer:
So it's a choice between having the drop rate being 1% but unlimited, versus getting a 100% drop only once each week. And having to decide which one serves the players better. It must be a hard question to answer.

Yoshida:
And having a drop rate of 1% does not necessarily mean you'll get 1 guaranteed drop out of 100 tries. It's simply an expected rate. So for example if you have a player who does nothing but play 24 hours a day, it can actually be a pretty high drop rate for that person. But then if you end up with a ton of these rare items in the game, it would cause problems with the game balance too, so then you'd end up having to make adjustments, so you reduce the drop rate to something like 0.1% because there are too many of these items, and now you just made it impossible for people who don't have a lot of time to play to get that item.

4Gamer:
This was exactly the kind of problem Diablo III had when it first started, wasn't it?

Yoshida:
Yes. Of course, we don't want to turn our backs on players who play a lot. We have players who play a lot, and players who can only play a bit, and many other customers each with their own play style. What we tried to do is to launch with something that we feel was "the best choice that appeals to everyone". Beginning with patch 2.2, we will try to include more contents for those customers who tell us "I want to spend more time playing" and "we want to see more useless/trivial things". We do want to have something to address both of those needs. But these kind of intentions can sometimes be difficult to get across to our players.

4Gamer:
But if you just tried to explain your reasonings to your players like you did just now, wouldn't they understand?

Saito:
Yeah, but that's still really tricky. Even if we explained all of this to them, from the perspective of a serious hardcore player, all that person would hear is how we're still going to put a damper on their desire to play more. At the end of the day, you'd still need to look at the whole picture from the service provider's perspective in order to know whether or not you made the right choice. The wishes of each individual player does not always translate to merits for the game.

4Gamer:
And there's the fact that resources in the game such as items and experience points really only begin to hold value when the game is properly balanced.

Yoshida:
And even that balance too is subject to each person's perceptions. You have people who think it should be normal for someone to become stronger the longer they play, just as you'll have people who think it's discouraging to have a system where those who started earlier has an unfair advantage. Both are right in their own ways, and its ultimately a matter of how they perceive things.

4Gamer:
That's true.

[Tupsi]

Your basicly paying to be i90 in a week.

You do realize if when they remove the Myth cap this month (if patch is on time) and they make no other changes people will be i90 in less than a week..right? So in reality, nothing actually changes in the grand scheme of things, SE is a business after all, they're not your friends - if they see a way to make money they'll take it.

Hence why they remade ARR into exactly this style of MMO in the first place.

[o3o]

Fine

your basicly paying to be able to hit the new ilvl cap faster then those who dont.

happy now?

[Felis]

You do realize if when they remove the Myth cap this month (if patch is on time) and they make no other changes people will be i90 in less than a week..right? So in reality, nothing actually changes in the grand scheme of things, SE is a business after all, they're not your friends - if they see a way to make money they'll take it.

Hence why they remade ARR into exactly this style of MMO in the first place.

Then he pay to be ilevel 110 (as example) in a week

[IzumiRaito]

Paying to have better gear faster than others? PURE PAY 2 WIN! I hope they never ever do this, otherwise im out.