Hi all, I've been following DCUO since 2 years before launch, a subscriber for years and after a long break, came back to enjoy more of the best Superhero MMO in existence currently. Originally being a member meant that you had premier access to all content, perks, and bonuses. In the beginning of DCUO it really felt like you got your money's worth and many of us on the PS3 wished for that ever elusive lifetime membership. Over the years it became less about the perks and more of a way to enjoy the full game. Now with the latest updates and changes to the game to make it more enjoyable for all, it really feels like the hard core members who have been around since the inception of this beautiful game are left wanting and feeling the pull of other lesser titles to fill their days with. Together, as a community I believe we can put forth our collective voice to bring about change to what it means to be a Member/Subscriber of DC Universe Online. Using this thread, please post SUGGESTIONS ONLY to make membership better. No idea is to big or too little and every single one is valid. Ultimately if you like an idea, give it a thumbs up. These ideas can help the development team make better decisions moving forward to determine what perks a membership should truly include. Let's avoid berating ideas and arguing points. Just simply post ideas. Here is a list of the current perks Membership to DC Universe will give you: - All the perks from free through premium - Additional 3x bonus daily login rewards (at least $60 in value when you log in at least 20 days per cycle). For daily login rewards, this means an extra three times the standard daily login rewards ($60 value) PLUS the standard daily login rewards everyone gets ($20 value), for a total of $80. - +50% bonus to timed drops of Artifact XP and Ally XP. - +7 (more) Inventory slots (28 from membership, 77 total) - +8 (more) Bank slots (32 from membership, 56 total) - +7 (more) Shared Bank slots (7 from membership, 16 total) - 500 Daybreak Cash (PC) or Loyalty Points (consoles) monthly ($5 value) - 150 Replay Badges monthly ($5 value) - 10% discount on all Marketplace purchases - +10 Character slots (16 total) - +15 Broker slots (20 total) - Full access to all Powers, Shield (Weapon), and Skimming (Movement Mode) - Full access to mail, trade, and leagues - 1 free Item Restore monthly The total value in the eyes of the development team is based on marketplace value of each item. The current itemization method is, in my opinion, incorrectly valued and an outdated method in conjunction with a subscription model. Below is my suggestion/idea to make Subscription great again: - eliminate all currency variants and create just two universal curriencies: Cash and Credits. Cash works the same way it does now. Credits replace ALL Source Marks, episode specific currencies, seasonal currencies, daily currencies, PVP currencies, and Daybreak Cash. - all in game content would then award more in game cash and everything that is currently listed in the in game vendors would shift to a higher value of cash plus a few credits for the high value items. This would also help to reign in the ridiculous inflated broker prices and devalue cash in general. - provide a member only currency trader where a high value of cash can be traded for credits that can be used on the marketplace. - eliminate replay badges and make it so members no longer have any loot locks. Non-members still retain all loot locks. - retain the membership 10% discount but make it include all item costs in the game not just in the marketplace. - divide all inventory slots into 3 access levels with members recieving full slot access. - remove access to all powers and movement modes and have them cost a set amount of credits to off set the above perks. - give all players access to mail, trade, and leagues but remove the ability to trade currency all together. The only option for currency trading should be through the broker and thus capped and taxed across the board with members having the highest access to sell on the broker. - members should have the ability to restore any item at any time within 7 days. - eliminate the 500 daybreak cash/loyalty points. This is nice but with the above changes unnecessary. - award members only Stabilizer Fragments for completing in game content in addition to cash and credits. - alter daily login rewards so that the focus is on credits, stabilizers, hard to obtain items, and unique daily login items. This would bring more value to logging in each day. - eliminate Time Capsules and instead place those items in a monthly non-member/members only progression path akin to the battle pass found in many of the current game models. Members only would have the option to spend credits/stabilizers to progress and collect these unique account bound rewards each month. This would also mean less annoyance and clutter in regards to collection based items from loot boxes. Free/premium players could receive a very stripped down basic version that strictly includes currency. - make it so credits earned can be spent to purchase membership. Many people find the real world cost of maintaining a game membership too much and having the ability to EARN YOUR MEMBERSHIP would bring more players in and invite longevity in player retention. Let's hear your ideas to make membership great again!
This might be a little unrelated. But in my experience, people love membership/subscription perks. When they can't afford them they look towards an in game trade. Ultima Online offers Subscription Codes for sale. Those codes are traded in game and the publisher gets a huge boost in subscriptions every month. Make memberships tradeable in the form of a gift or code. Subscriptions increase substantially which makes it possible to increase member benefits. Everybody wins.
Hot take: The current membership system is already great. You no longer need to subscribe just to play the game, so when "people find the real world cost of maintaining a game membership too much" they can, Uhm, not pay for it and still enjoy the game with others. Do I have suggestions? Yes, Popping Private Phases, as first posted here and met with lots of scepticism (because this will totally bring worse damage than ones brought on by dev invasions >v>) Much as it's exhausting to reply to every minute objection to the point I no longer bother, it's unhealthy and ultimately futile to halt criticism to any ideas, it's always important to gain perspective from other people to avoid a myopic lens, that would be a genuine conversation with the community and more grounded in reality instead of mere wishful thinking.
Love the response and value the suggestions. All view points are valid and do help make informed decisions however the methods we use to share those ideas can be positively constructive in all forms and don't really require criticism or negative connotations as that path simply creates frustration, argumentation, and ultimately the end of a discussion. Personal ideas are abundant and can be shared uninhibited within the guidelines of these forums. The purpose of this thread is simply to foster ideas to make membership feel better based on personal opinion by the community and provide the development team our views in a positive manner. If you truly believe membership is already great, that's awesome! Stick to it and thrive with it. Lets create a positive environment together in this thread.
I decided to exclude the current benefit section from your post because it really speaks for itself. I pay €25 every 3 months for membership, or €8 per month. The Dev explanation you copy-pasted there clearly points out that we're getting €90 worth of items/benefits each month. Or €270 worth for my €25. I'm honestly not even sure what "incorrectly valued" was supposed to mean but math doesn't change. Neither does it lie. As for your solutions, 12 of them would be an unmitigated disaster: 1) If you create 1 currency for all content, then future content becomes irrelevant. If theres no more Episode currency and we're stuck with credits, why dont i just spam FOS3 and get all the "credits" i need for all the new gear and styles? I'm not trying to offend by saying this but this idea was astonishingly bad. 2) Congratulations, you just made Egpal and Mmook and other "goldseller" companies rich 3) See Point 2 4) Redundant. You just made it so that all new content can be skipped over (Point 1). We wont need any discounts at all. 5) This already exists in 2 access levels. Its literally in your own post above. 6) You want to Paywall Powers in a Superhero game. I can't even.... 7) You were soooo close with this one until you revealed that members dont get capped. The broker is how it is because of players and greed. This just gives them an Elite little club to join whilst making the broker impossible for other access levels, pushing them to resort to Goldsellers. You've actually managed to make the broker worse. 8) Just a straight up No to that one. The LP/DBC is a nice extra. 9) Frags work perfectly as-is. Its also one of few Marketplace items I believe is not overpriced. You'd tank revenue for the game. 10) Credits are redundant with point 1, frags would be redundant if you got point 9. Half your rewards are already useless. 11) Pure. Unadulterated. Unapologetic. Pay-to-win. 12) Im not even sure where to begin with this one... Just... No. You cant have Membership be bought with fake, worthless-in-real-life, currency. DCUO would be shut down within 2yrs. No if's what's or but's. Gone. No money to maintain servers = no game. No money to pay employees = no game. With Point 1 you just gave everyone Infinite Credits for free, so you just made Membership free. Free wont keep the lights on. You'll have to excuse my blunt explanations above, its not personal nor meant to be, but it needs to be made absolutely abundantly clear why all 12 are bad. Bad for the game, bad for the players, bad for DI. The only ones who benefit from any of those 12 are Goldsellers and the pitiful who wreck the broker daily.
Thank you for all your opinions folks. Loving the discussions however the concept of this thread was intended to be a resource of ideas not a source to dismantle ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each point. I love this community and hope the thread can get back on track. Remember, post ideas to enhance/alter membership in the way you want. If you like the way it is, awesome! Let it be known. If you want to change something, awesome! Let it be known. We don't need to dismantle ideas, instead add to the discussion constructively. If the above trend continues I can see this thread being locked and pushed into oblivion like so many threads before and no ideas shared will matter.
It's fine to disagree with ideas, we can't agree on everything, otherwise the world would be very boring. lol I think the membership is fine as it is, so I commented on what I agree or do not agree with.
Also, just for clarification, most of my personal ideas are based on more successful business models that bring in millions in revenue and allow for a much broader expansion of the current business model. While they may not be perfect, I am not game developer or business major and as such just see options from the perspective of a player that would bring more value to me personally. To agree with or disagree with any or all ideas is ok, that's personal opinion. Use your opinion to add to the discussion in a positive way
I think membership should be something special again but I have no ideas how to make it special again. My current membership expires in December and I'm leaning towards letting it lapse. It isn't anything special anymore or perhaps its that it doesn't make me feel special anymore. I'm sorry i wasn't able to contribute to the discussion.
No, they're not. What a ridiculous idea. "My viewpoint is that the game should shut down tomorrow!" Valid? "Only people whose names begin with vowels should be allowed to play!" Valid? "Hard Light players should always be able to beat players with any other powers!" Valid? I mean, the set of all possible ideas is literally infinite. The overwhelming majority of possible viewpoints are going to be wrong, whatever a subject of discussion is. On the contrary, it's impossible to debate an idea without criticism of what the negatives of an idea are and it's impossible to reach towards truth without argument. You might want to google "dialectic." And "reasoning." And "debate."
If I was to replace a feature in membership with another I would replace replay badge perk for 6 Fate Tokens. Other than that I think the membership as it is, is subjectively positive and rewarding.
Can you elaborate on this a bit? What your ideas are "based on"? Because in your first paragraph you basically say you know what will work (despite 12 of the 14 ideas being horrendously bad), and then you follow up in paragraph 2 explaining that you have no real world experience to make the claim you just made. Its like when people say that services like Netflix are the future of home entertainment, when in reality Netflix is being crushed by a mountain of debt that they keep saying they'll pay off. Think they started that delay tactic at around 9 billion in debt and now they're up to around 15-16 billion. DCUO has been around for 10yrs, so has this company/item/game you're basing your Business Model on been around as long?
Membership is fine as it is. Why would you want to go and change everything up that would completely destroy the game, the lives of the company workers? Honestly after reading this, all I can say is if a toilet paper factory needed a new design print, they have it here in this post. I'm sorry man, very sorry.
in my opinion there are 2 things that could make the subscription much more interesting: A drastic increase in Daybreak Cash (PC) or Loyalty Points (consoles) around 1,000 or 1,500, most other MMORPGs offering this type of currency are around this figure, at this level, DCUO looks a bit like "rats" to their subscribers. -Other factors that could be motivating for the subscription is the immunity from failure to fortify artifacts or other elements that include a failure to fortify.
Those ideas put out there need to be able to stand up to scrutiny and dismantling, though. The discussion is kind of necessary to figure out what ideas will or won't work.
Your intentions don't matter. This is a public discussion forum. You don't get to control it or dictate what people say. That's not how it works. Discussion threads are owned by Daybreak, not users. Nor do threads get locked because people debate ideas. Debate and being insulting/problematic are two different things.
I'm meh on the ideas but can we please put this dumb "Make _____ great again" phrasing to bed. It's kindda cringe at this point.
