OGHub feature: Veteran Rewards - Customer Appreciation or Seniority Stick?
https://oghub.org/loa/2018/06/01/veteran-rewards-customer-appreciation-or-seniority-stick/
Would love to hear any ideas you might have to add!
Would love to hear any ideas you might have to add!
Comments
The current system in Aria is based on account history since there is no subscription. Here is an overview:
-All existing pledges will be granted a spot loyalty reward equal to 30 points per month since they’ve pledged.
-Going forward, loyalty points will be rewarded monthly (100 points per month) for active players.
-Reporting previously unknown exploits (via the in-game bug reporting tool). Put EXPLOIT in capital letters to make sure it doesn’t go unnoticed.
-Keep an eye on the calendar for official in-game events.
This was right after the re-branding(source): https://www.legendsofaria.com/steam-head-start/
I'm looking forward to ethereal mounts, special cloaks, and unique titles in the long run of Aria. Prior to the new founder packs it was difficult to earn just 100 loyalty points but now the highest pack grants you 2000. I hope down the road points will not be purchasable. The long standing sense of accomplishment and flashy cosmetics I see as a perk for being around so long, plus since there is no real endgame in the sandbox world, new players get to see these things and set their own long-term goals to how cool they want to look with veteran rewards.
Also on the subject of vet rewards, I do hope CS has plans for the players they lost from the Shards-era. I think vet rewards is one thing that will bring some of the old players back.
I think CS should stay well away from loyalty type rewards until they actually understand what they are trying to achieve and how best to go about it. Because so far every attempt had the opposite effect and drove existing players away and made them angry.
Most of the time CS could have done almost exactly the same thing, and framed it in a more appealing way to the playerbase. Perception is a very subtle but powerful force in marketing. Selling purely cosmetic stuff is a great way to sustain the game.
But loyalty for sale? That fails on many levels.
@Nocturn I hope we get to play again, I miss the old days with you and the guys. I'm still envious of your smooth wall walking technique!
Your modus operandi of continuing to create new income/players and leaving all past players in the dust is disgusting and shameful. What's the worst part? You refuse to acknowledge how poorly you handled these situations.
This.
Maybe that? Who knows...
I sure do hope something is planned. We never heard a word about Tim Cotten's shard veteran memorial idea since he last showed up over a year ago. The current founder packs are okay to try and get more players but I also hope that's the last of loyalty for sale and there won't be 500 LP/$10 in the store. It was also nice to hear we get a 7 day steam headstart before others when LoA took over but crowdfunding ended and the 7 day headstart is still being offered in the new packs, so that kinda backfired for the shards crowd. Only thing I can say anymore is we'll see what happens between "final" wipe in July and come fall for steam.
Not even our loyalty points are of any meaning since you can just buy loyalty. Can anyone tell me what is special about owning an account 4 years ago and buying one today?
You may call this head start a slap in the face, but it is what it is: a head start. Even if CS continues sales during head start and allow players to join the head start after it's already started? That is still a head start!
I am not saying things are 'fair' for veterans. Quite the opposite, in fact. I think veteran rewards need some serious revisiting before head start, in my opinion. And one could certainly argue that head starts are not a reward but merely a marketing tactic. And that's fine, but I would much rather continue discussing the topic of veteran rewards, and your ideas of how CS can improve them.
Yes, people who have been around since the kickstart probably have some valid points to bitch about, but I created this thread for adding constructive ideas and feedback toward the potential of improving veteran rewards, for all veterans.
If you feel you have a valid point bringing up where CS has failed you as a veteran, then offer some suggestions on how they can rectify the situation for you, what would satisfy you? What would make you happy? What do you think would be fair and reasonable?
You don't really think that if you publicly explain how feel like you're being shit on by a game company, that they are going to turn around and reward you with all kinds of cool stuff, do you? If you want to see better rewards, lets hear your ideas about them!
P.S. - this is for everyone, including you @Sigmund Ringeck , it was not my intent to single anyone out, I just happened to start on the 'head start' issue.
Fair enough. Here is what I think CS should do then:
Separate rewards into two categories:
a) Cash-loyalty rewards - This would be the cash shop where you can purchase cosmetic-only items like hats and whatnot and the point is to provide money for food to CS employees while receiving a "somewhat cool" in game item that doesn't give any advantages other than looks.
b) Account-loyalty rewards - This would be unique items that can NEVER EVER be purchased with cash. The ONLY way to get them is by having an account of a certain age. The older the account the more awesome the items you have access to select. I would even venture to say that I would be ok seeing items that do affect gameplay as options in this category provided they are minor.
It makes me cringe to think that someone who just so happens to be well off in life financially can buy a brand new account and purchase any loyalty rewards that someone else had to wait 4 years to get using the loyalty received from account age. I think accounts should hold value outside of just what skills and characters you have and owning an old account actually has some meaning.
As it stands right now, in my opinion, based off loads of comments over the past several years from early backers - the general feeling they have is that they weren't valued by CS. And actually if you know the history were actually screwed over many times and they felt CS only shrugged it off and they've never since came up with a way to make things right with their early supporters.
Maybe CS has already planned something like this and I just haven't heard about it, because all I've heard is that you can "buy loyalty" and use it to buy loyalty rewards...which to me sounds like anyone can spend money and get whatever they want regardless of account age which I am sorry, is just dumb even if it is cosmetic items.
With all due respect, you have no idea what you're talking about regarding the 7 day headstart. It's not really your fault since all the previous conversations on this was conveniently wiped from the forums, that should give you an idea on how much they cared about discussions and feedback from the community.
Previously many players sunk 100's (some 1000s's) of hours into the game with absolute assurances there would be no further wipes. I even traded an unused Albion $100 account with a friend of mine for his house plot in a prime location, close to Eldair village. Back then I felt Shards Online was a superior game, and easily worth it for me.
The part that really pisses me off though, was that I, and many other helpful veterans convinced new people to sign up and play by guaranteeing them there would be no more wipes! If you were around back then I'm sure you'd have done the same. And it's not a nice feeling finding out you've been inadvertently lying to new players.
Getting suddenly wiped after several months, then offering a 7 day headstart as compensation for all effort spent felt like a slap in the face both new and old players alike. The follow up swift kick in the balls was giving the same headstart everyone in the future too, so it wasn't even compensation at that point. Rewards and cool stuff does't buy my loyalty. They had that for free before.
I could have got many more loyalty points if the referal page on the website actually worked, it never gave me any for the people I got to sign up. But I never cared much because I just wanted to encourage people to play, loyalty points was just a bonus, until they started handing it out like candy and selling it.
Now I can put a price tag on loyalty. Which is exactly why it shouldn't be sold.
All those referrals I didn't collect has a dollar value. All the bugs players reported and didn't ask for loyalty points in the past was wasted value they can now calculate and get annoyed about.
It's more beneficial to sign up today, than to have signed up several years ago and waste time trying to help out. 2000 loyalty points account is the same as a 5.5 year old account at 30 points accrued per month, with bonus items and furniture, all things that matter in a game where collecting rare items is a huge reason for playing. Something I'd assume is obvious to all involved. Chances are they have screwed up past the point of no return on this, as they have created a fuzzy situation where there's no identifiable metric to properly evaluate loyalty or reward past effort. A starting point would be.
*Don't sell loyalty points, create a seperate cosmetic currency.
*Don't offer benefits or items to new accounts that older accounts don't have.
edit: beater07 detailed it better.
Also in this topic, you must remember Veronica that many old pledgers came for the custom server features, and so are not really interested in items (be them cosmetic or whatever) given in official servers.
This has been an ongoing issue for me (and probably quite a few of you players) for quite some time, most games after WOW now that I think about?
This argument constantly reappears in many games (this is one of the more recent ones, in the FFXIV reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/747fqf/changes_to_veteran_rewards/).
Some players want to be rewarded just for being around since Kickstart/pre-alpha/alpha/beta/headstart.
Some players want to be rewarded for the time they've been an active subscriber (AKA paying player).
Some players want the same stuff as the previous players but haven't been around as long.
A lot of MMO's have embraced the 'everybody gets everything' approach because, who doesn't want cool stuff?
And I get that new players need to be able to 'catch up' and get/earn most of the cool/awesome things that everyone else has. I mean, a lot of competitive players wouldn't play if it wasn't possible for new players to be 'the best' someday and have the coolest things.
Everquest, though a completely different game from LOA, had some of the best veteran rewards any MMO has ever had. They even called them "Veteran Rewards."
I think the problem is that the 'rewards' are often poorly chosen, and/or how those rewards are acquired can be the source of the problem(s).
Titles and achievements can be put in game for any of these things - rewarding and recognizing players for all sorts of things. And as I mentioned in my article, they could put an account and character birth date in your characters bio as a toggle, so players can show it off if they want. Those are cool rewards! Everquest veteran rewards were cool rewards! Cosmetic rewards that everyone can have and that makes everyone look the same? Not so cool.
You can have cash shop purchased character titles. You can have achievements for buying stuff on the cash shop. We can do all sorts of silly things but let us not confuse the differences between veteran rewards, promises of unique and limited things, with cash shop items (and when I say us, I mean both us players and the CS team).
And this is where we run into problems because new players need to be able to be competitive with and catch up to veterans and have cool stuff too! We're not self-entitled veterans that need to horde all the booty - we just want to be recognized for some of the cool things we've done, right? I mean, I don't see any harm in asking for a few unique things that no one but founders/veterans can own but most stuff should be obtainable by new accounts/players. (I touched on some alternative veteran 'rewards' in my previous post). We can't ask for many in-game items that are unique just for us, so I think we need to be very careful about what we ask for (e.g., stick to insisting on what was originally promised or agree on something new).
The custom server features are an issue that illuminates a point we ALL need to keep in mind - anything that changes in Alpha/Beta/before launch? That's what alpha's/beta's are for right? Sure, that may be a callous point to make, but that doesn't make it any less true.
What has happened in the past has already turned some people away. There may be no undoing the past, but hopefully we agree that working together is better for everyone's future than just bitterly holding out for potential inevitable's?
(It's been a long time coming for better tools but at least we are still being promised them. I'm confident that the CS team wants to make good on this).
And this is where we run into problems - keep in mind that new players need to be able to be competitive with and catch up to veterans and have cool stuff too! We're not self-entitled veterans that need to horde all the booty. There's nothing wrong with asking for a few things but we can't ask for all the things!
Also new players at the time repeatedly asked about the wipe on these forums and Discord, and the answer we all gave was.. no more wipes, no one claimed otherwise. It's disingenuous to pretend that never happened.
We're specifically addressing older pledgers that actually played the main game, not talking about custom server admins, or the miniscule handful that played exclusively on custom servers at the time. I don't see what relevance they have to this discussion? since none of it affects them, or can affect them, in any way.
I see what CS are trying to achieve though pledge rewards and loyalty points, I don't disagree with their goals, I disagree with the insensitive manner they go about achieving it.
Honestly it's not even about loyalty points or rewards, it's about listening and respecting your player base or they turn toxic and you lose them. Wave after wave of newcomers eventually uncover the same issues we've all been talking about for years.
Communication and community handling is awful.
I remember that video. I jsut would not call that 'absolute assurances'.
>Also new players at the time repeatedly asked about the wipe on these forums and Discord, and the answer we all gave was.. no more wipes, no one claimed otherwise. It's disingenuous to pretend that never happened.
I don't know what disingenuous is, I'm sorry, but I'm not pretending it never happened. It did happen, and many people were pissed, of course.
>We're specifically addressing older pledgers that actually played the main game, not talking about custom server admins, or the miniscule handful that played exclusively on custom servers at the time. I don't see what relevance they have to this discussion? since none of it affects them, or can affect them, in any way.
If the thread is about opinions and suggestion for veteran rewards, why are we of no relevance? why can't we also ask for rewards suited to our profile? Not playing the official servers disqualifies us as old time pledgers that can receive some kind of reward from CS?
We may like to have the digital art book, the Celador cloth map, the Collector's coin, the Featured Server or the live event things, or whatever they may come up with...
Edit: I was inaccurate on this, I meant the champion and lord stuff is exclusive to new signups.
"We are very excited to launch Legends of Aria on Steam in the upcoming months. A topic of discussion that has come up frequently amongst the team is how do we wipe the slate clean for Steam while still making sure the people who supported the project, the people who made this entire thing possible, get just a little bit of special treatment."
"-All supporters who pledge before the crowdfunding campaign comes to a close will get a 1 week head start on official servers prior to the Steam Release.
-New and improved Loyalty Store.
-Unique in-game titles based on lifetime loyalty earned.
-Reminder: All loyalty points spent during Alpha will be refunded."
(Has any of these been fulfilled since February 2017? One. Unique in-game titles based on the pledge level of the crowdfunding campaign.)
There's a saying "screw me once shame on you, screw me twice shame on me". I'm a longtime supporter, so I'm here to be brutally honest with facts and promised words given to us. Don't promise something and expect over time that players forget these promises. I sure didn't. With 1000+ hours of testing in Shards Online, helping the devs every moment possible, taking off weeks of vacation days(which of course days were pushed so those days were lost), backing the devs when they requested help because others were trashing forums and reddit(*cough* Roser), getting more pledges, helping with votes....scroll down and see who won the poll(http://massivelyop.com/2017/03/17/massively-ops-pax-east-2017-awards-and-best-in-show-reader-vote/), so on and so forth. I'll help the game and community every chance I get but all I ask is please don't take efforts of the community for granted.
Communication would be nice, reassurance would be nice.
Especially when advertising another 'this is the final wipe'.
@Sigmund Ringeck @beater07 @Dominus and @Sacha +1 to all their posts
Some suggestions that can be done for peace of mind:
-Separate cosmetic shops
-2 day headstart before the 7 day headstart for crowdfunding pledges.
-In-game starting pouch w/examples: maybe a unique mount, couple gold, Shards Online cloak, etc.
-Communication (CS should have a 30 minute meeting and take 5 minutes of their time to come have a discussion with us.)
In the FAQ it says "All previous pledges have been granted the Noble pack. This grants previous pledges additional rewards, loyalty and a discount on other packs should they wish to upgrade those rewards." But by reading the forums I've become confused.
@Nocturn 2 days is kinda weak considering many might not be available to take full advantage of it. Last update I tried to play in months ago.. I wrangle a weekend free from my girlfriend, bought a super mouse with a flippin mini keyboard strapped to the side, brewed a fresh pot of fine ceylon black tea. Settled in to test out the update.. and boom. delayed.
And while I absolutely do not hold that against them, I'm very forgiving of development delays and always will be. I'm not likely to book another 2 days to myself without some iron clad guarantee handed to me on stone tablets by Moses himself.
But you know what? as a gesture of goodwill, to the starved and neglected outcasts left wandering the black desert, it's practically water from a rock, manna from heaven. I won't complain.
I want to be clear to everyone that I'm not trying to sweep this under the rug or dig at old wounds when they might still sting a little, I'm just trying to both understand and get involved in the only way that I can to help contribute toward positive outcomes for these issues.
I appreciate any non-hostile approach here and I'm just hoping that your suggestions are heard (that's why I'm hoping this thread stays relatively positive!).
@Sacha you are more than welcome to participate in the thread, too! The more ideas we have the better, and I have no doubt that some of the ideas that could come from this conversation could even be used by community servers to reward their loyal players.