Retirement Token and other Features and Fixes many want to pay for:

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Domrain, May 19, 2020.

  1. Domrain New Member

    While servers are down and I am checking out forums; I have come across a lot of great ideas and get a general feel that people want more. And they want to pay for it too!

    I have a Retirement Token or /retire feature idea I would love to see that could help for many situations including: getting burnt out on your current class, feeling you old main is wasted and collecting dust, friends leaving, friends taking an extended break, or finding different group of players or guild to raid with.

    The basic idea would be say you have a level 110 character you barely play anymore: let us say it is a Shadow Knight with 40,000AA. You hop on this character to maybe use their trade skill you leveled up, or drop a Harm Touch in a duel. Maybe you even still swarm House of Thule for new heroics! But basically it is collecting dust and you no longer really play and regret you have so many achievements and skills on a character you do not play.

    Now imagine you could buy a Retirement Token or simply type /retire and that characters current experience level, AA, certain skills, and maybe even achievements could be saved and applied to a character of your choice on same account. Many people have alts or box they do not use and would love to retire them if they could gain something from it.

    In the above example you retire a Shadow Knight. That character's name is then available. Also enough regular experience to level to 110. Then the AA comes in: take the 40,000AA earned and subtract it from the AA auto-granted to that level character based up current expansion on that account. For easy math lets call it 20,000AA. That alone would make this feature highly craved.

    If you could work out achievements being linked to that Retirement or a stand alone check box Feature to enable achievements on character being shared with other characters on same account who also enable account achievement sharing. Make it a gold status perk. Sell them Krono and Subscriptions.

    Further Retirement Token ideas include: a highly useful and or unique graphic item with excellent stats based on level and class that is Retiring. Have fun with it! Throw in a 168 hour or 24 hour zone wide, persist through death buff; also based upon class and level that is retiring. Obviously, nothing game breaking for buffs just small differences based on class. Items created being trade able on all servers would generate more revenue then making them no drop or heirloom.

    Current heroics need to be updated in my opinion. I think this feature or Market Place token is the next step needed if they are not going to be severely overhauled soon. I think in last few years at least two or three heroics have been given to accounts that are gold status. There is even a server that you start out with being heroic. Considering Brekt had free Quarm level 51s on it that are now merging to FV and the abundance of free heroic given out in last few years. Also, more expensive expansions containing them and trade able ones. I do not feel they are the reward they use to be or as in demand as much.

    A Retirement Token is a great way to keep existing players playing without having to start out on an out-dated heroic and then feeling forced to do a bunch of old content possibly done many times already. It would also compliment the out dated heroic too though! A new players buys a heroic and I have two or three on my account I have not even used. I am more likely to go back with the new player knowing that if I like the new class I can Retire a character into it and transfer a good portion of AA and achievements and tradeskills. Or just Retire the heroic if I do not like the class but gained a bunch of older achievements and some AA. I personally would love to see a few given out based on age of account. But could still see myself buying some with DBC.

    Some other things I would like to see is account to account transfers fixed. It was a service you guys had for a long time. You have had a post up for around 3 years now stating:

    Account to Account Transfers are currently unavailable. Unfortunately we still don't have an ETA to give at this time. We're likely still a couple of months away, but that is a very rough estimate which is subject to change. We are working on the tech needed to re-enable them, but are a ways out from this solution.

    Sorry but after 3 years this is starting to really feel like a lie. If they are gone and never coming back just say so. No one likes feeling lied to. And someone who wants to give you money for a service you use to have; and who planned and leveled up characters a certain way in order to be able to use that service, that then gets broke before he or she can pay you for: definitely does not like feeling lied to! I mean I really want to give you money! From what I have read on forums I am not alone.

    Last of all, (for now) I personally would love to see 1 and 5 DBC increments for sale. Or, something that can be purchased on the Marketplace in increments of 1. Make it long lasting muffins or something! I know its small and silly but I hate that it is near impossible to balance my account DBC totals. Is it too much to ask for cheap muffins in Marketplace? I want to give you cash for them!

    Thank you for reading during downtime I welcome feedback and other ideas. Hope you all are washing your hands and staying safe out there! ;)





  2. wildone Elder

    the problem his say for instance you want play a cleric and use the retirement token you wont know the class for a while.
  3. Craized Lorekeeper

    This will never happen for the same reason an upgrade to heroic characters will never happen. Because it takes a lore more resources than you realise to put something like this in place. From what I read a few years back regards heroic characters, it’s a bit of a coding nightmare.
  4. Ninelder Augur

    Shadowknights do not "retire" and play Clerics. Maybe in Bizzaro World.

    Clerics retire and play Shadowknights. There is good reason that 30pct of every server consists of Shadowknight mains, while cleric, druid, and chanter mains are nearing extinction.
    Metanis, Nadisia and Celephane like this.
  5. Domrain New Member

    Well me personally if I could would retire my SK I would for a Druid. Right now SK is max aa and decently geared but zero chance of getting in a real raid guild. At least a Druid could give better dps, heal, and have teleports. Right now just use SK to pull with out 'main' group cause do not need exp on SK.
  6. Domrain New Member

    Well obviously you choose what YOU want to retire for what reasons. If you do not want to retire a class and want to keep multiple classes you do NOT use or buy a retirement token. Just like if you do not want to use or buy a heroic character to make a Mage alt you don't...

    Your accountable for your actions use /retire and delete characters according to what you want aware of what it entails. I am sure there are plenty of people who have high level and high AA characters who are bazaar mules or worse bank alts! A job that can easily be help by a level one with a silly name.

    While if you had the ability to reap and apply that exp, AA, and achievements the bright future of 6+ bards or 3+ enchanters or 3+ druids in a raid might be possible. Simple cause many would say well I'll just retire them one or two 110s I do not use and make what is needed for my guild or group right now.
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Retirement token:

    Interesting concept but I think is beaten by the Heroic Upgrade functionality which exists & offer much the same thing at a lower threshold meaning you still end up behind the max level & have to learn the class some while you catch up to max level, also a retirement essentially loses you a class you might conceivably want to return to later on and I think that's probably a bad one-way ticket idea right there so the only real benefit is perhaps not having to pay for a Heroic Upgrade & that's not really a good business choice for DPG to make.

    Heroic Upgrades at a higher level than 85 will happen eventually, they just haven't been planned in yet, but they are definitely on the radar for the future.

    What I would like to see would be multiple tiers of Heroic upgrades being made available on live & TLP servers to help make returning to a server after a prolonged hiatus much simpler & easier with a future roadmap for upgrades of the Heroic Upgrade feature:

    On TLP

    Heroic 50 available once SoL unlocks
    Heroic 70 available once SoD unlocks
    Heroic 85 available once VoA unlocks
    Heroic 100 available once RoS unlocks
    ..........................................................
    Heroic 115 available once Level 125 expansion unlocks
    Heroic 130 available once Level 140 expansion unlocks
    .................
    On Live:

    Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 120 then a new Heroic 100 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a price reduction.

    Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 135 then a new Heroic 115 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a price reduction.

    Once the live server reaches an expansion with level 150 then a new Heroic 130 becomes the premium cost Heroic Upgrade & the prior ones get a price reduction.

    And so on.
  8. Domrain New Member

    Yea definitely agree Heroics going to need a rework very soon. I am all for options I am not saying get rid of Heroic for my idea. Just think my idea could help more then current heroic situation. I have characters on several servers and know people on all of them that want to play something else cause they have had this or that as main for over a decade. But, the only reason they do not is too much put in. They want all of them achievements and benefits that come with them but do not want to start out with just a fresh 85 heroic and then go through so much just to get back were they already were. I believe heroic and retirement could compliment each other. I do not think one would eliminate the other. I have several heroic I have not used and many are probably in similar boat. If I knew I could transfer achievements, skills, and be right back up there with EXP and AA I would use one of them heroic to start trying out some of the classes that are more needed and then make a decision on whether to Retire character into new heroic. If anything it would probably increase both sales cause people are fickle and I could easily see several people switching from Heals, to DPS, then wanting to give Tanking a try a year or two later, only to go back to a different Healer.

    Without Retire some people do that currently! Perpetually chasing the next best thing. At least Retire would eventually get them to being max EXP and AA with lots of achievements and skills right away. Right now there is no real way to eliminate Heroic since once they are made even if deleted they come back. Which I have no problem with; in my line of thinking I saw it as eating heroic; and not competing with their sales. I also hate to put a price on certain things but my thinking was if a heroic is 3500 (7 months) then a Retire being 6000 (12 months) does not seem to extreme to me. Maybe even 5000. There is just so much to do in EQ that I think many leave cause they feel trapped. They have been one class for 5 or 10 years and no point in switching cause it would be too much work to get all the stuff they already have. Retire is a great way to quickly get what is needed for personal, group or raid goals and provide a service for veteran players to try a new role and not lose years of achievements and trades skills.

    I mean I am all for a free /retire feature, or a free account wide achievement check box on on option screen. But, I am also a realist and a service that generated revenue for DB simply transferring one character to another account has not been fixed in 3 years. So I do not think any new feature that will require a lot of work to be free or not require gold status. There are several features I would pay for, and I do not want pay to win by no means. But services that were once available, or simple things like 1 DBC muffins so there is a way to even out or 'get to' any wallet total would be nice. I do not think it should take over an hour to make 1 DBC muffins. While I am aware a Retire feature would be a massive under taking fret with bugs and downtime. Personally would still like to see it though.