Ascension Spell Upgrade System Suggestion

Please try not to be overly toxic with your replies. The cries for "REMOVE THE P2W" are never going to go anywhere. This is not the fault of the developers who work on our amazing game, but rather the corporation that they work for. With that in mind, I offer a solution to hopefully make the P2W aspects of this game more attainable. This suggestion only really tackles the current issue of spell upgrades being very P2W.


Problem: A good part of your customer base is angry about the P2W aspect introduced through the addition of Ascension spell upgrades via DBC.

Solution: Elite Membership and a re-tweaking of the ascension spell system. This solution would generate more cash for DBG in the long run, as well as providing that cash flow in a steady stream rather than the sporadic system we have now.



Elite Membership would come at the cost of an additional $5/month and would include the following benefits:

• Access to a calendar of rotating buffs, these 5 buffs would cycle each day, keeping them moving to different days of the week to cover all possible schedules.

• • Day 1: Double Currency
  • Day 2: Double XP
  • Day 3: Double Ascension Scrolls
  • Day 4: 25% Increase in rare drops
  • Day 5: 25% off Marketplace
  • Patch Day: All 5 buffs

• Access to additional daily quest which would reward the spell pages mentioned below.

• An additional >1% chance to get an ascension spell outright when killing a boss in Expert and higher zones.

The spell upgrade system for ascension spells needs to be re-worked.

Each spell upgrade would require a certain number of pages in order to be upgraded. These upgrades cost more for higher level ascension abilities.

Level 1: 100 pages
Level 2: 120 pages
Level 3: 140 pages
Level 4: 160 pages
Level 5: 180 pages
Level 6: 200 pages
Level 7: 220 pages
Level 8: 240 pages
Level 9: 260 pages
Level 10: 500 pages
This would be the cumulative cost for the GM of the spell.

These pages would be generic, no more RNG on what spell page you get.
Each zone type has a different drop rate for pages.

Solo/Adv-Solo
10% chance to get 1 page.
Heroic
10% chance to get 1 page, 10% chance to get 2 pages.
Expert
100% chance to get 2 pages, 50% chance to get 3 pages, 10% chance to get 4 pages.
Ethereal
100% chance to get 2 pages, 50% chance to get 4 pages, 10% chance to get 5 pages.
Raid/Expert-Raid
100% chance to get 2 pages, 50% chance to get 4 pages, 10% chance to get 5 pages.
Maximum of 10 pages allowed per day, 20 for Elite Members.



Let the criticism begin... try to keep the toxicity to a minimum.

I like it.

I like it. But DBG won't

Would like to add Elite membership must be paid for via credit card. No kronoing into it. (helps remove bot accounts)

For $5 a month more, be simpler to ask for.

All four ascend abilities to have their full 92 or 100 million xp bars unlocked, ergo scrap the 2 month waiting period on being allowed to grind away sooner, via the guided ascension mechanic.

Have bonus XP for having toons with capped out ascends apply to other toons XP rate, like the 20% bonus max level chars on char give to alts for adventure and ts currently, to the same max of 200% so grinding is reduced a bit on alts.

For the actual upgrading of ascend spell tiers, skip the pages stuff and have the completed book drop in the mission loot box, no matter raid or solo quest, just have the % rate at something that makes people happy. Journeyman should be common, Ancient should be super rare, everything else on a sliding scale as you go up the ranks, and make sure they are trade able if people have RNG curse situation on their toons.

Not sure the 5 day cycle thing you propose would be worth it, it'd have a minor impact on expert group formation, but other than that, don't see it having much of an overall impact for paying well an extra $2-3 via sub fees if you looking at the Krono to Sub equation from their end.

I like the idea of Elite Membership but to me the "rewards" listed are kind of lame. Double currency for most people means nothing, very little of the currency you get is from that. I would rather see it as 50% off cost of items from merchants. Unless you also mean reward coins - then sure. Double XP only has utility for specific times, once you are max then it becomes a worthless perk. Double Ascension scrolls is another great thing back when it first came out but now with the bauble they are meaningless for most people. I have stacks of them because I can't use them. If those scrolls were currency for a vendor for pages or recipe books for Ascension spells then yes, I would like it. What happens if you are grouping with non elite members, how does the 25% rare drop work? Are you throwing Day 5 in there to appease them saying people will spend more Add a nice infuser that is 100% and no cap and put it in the mission crate and if you are an Elite member you get a 25% chance to drop each mission.

Make it so Elite members can keep doing Ethereal quest and make the coins heirloom, that alone would probably make me do it. Heck, I might even think of re-subbing once my year runs out 27 Oct; currently I am not.

• Doesn't like P2W.
• Want's to pay more per month to play the game.

I agree with the opening poster about the enraging effects of P2W on ascension and applaud their willingness to think of and write up a potential solution. I may disagree with said solution, but that's my prerogative

P2W on combat effectiveness is simply a way to enrage peeps and lose players paying subs. It's a very, very, very bad short term way to make money and is doubleplus ungood.

Here's a pro tip - making your players angry over long periods of time with you by throttling upgrades far too much; and then having blatant cash grabs for said upgrades (the stuff they need to be able to play the game at certain levels), shrinks your player base more and more; and in a MMO less players = less fun, less groups and less reason to play for even those peeps with hundreds of dollars to spare

I feel that a more respectable solution is to rethink the drop mechanics for ascension spells at all grades - the old drop and crafting system that's been used for over 10 years now was fine.

Ultimately I want the developers to give us positive reasons to give the game money! Positive reasons - not negative ones like P2W on combat effectiveness.

As a guild leader, how am I currently supposed to sell the game as it is to a potential new player joining a server? Should I ask to weigh their wallet to determine whether they can afford to have fun at the level of game they wish or hope to play at?

"Ach, sorry mate, yer pay packet disnae match yer ambition! Inna six months time, ye might be up to casual grade raider if ye work hard and get lucky on thae drops. Ye can still raid with us, like, but yer dps is gonna suck harder than a singularity using a straw"

It was hard to get past the 'pay more money every month' as a compromise to 'pay more money.'

Ascension would have been fine if two things were different about it.

1. Spell BOOKS actually dropped somewhat frequently.
2. You could upgrade to whatever spell book that dropped without the prior levels, as all spells worked in the past.

That's it. Wouldn't have been much of an issue if any issue at all.

Anybody who thinks DBG is going to get off the P2W wagon is dillusional. I was simply suggesting a way that would lessen the blow and make it something the general player population could afford.

@Alphonsus - Don't be such a troll..... P2W is not going away, I am simply suggesting a way to give the general population access to something that is currently out of reach.

@Coniful - I was only using the buffs they periodically throw at us. The double currency is usually for all currency, not just plat.

They need to pick either a subscription model OR a macro-transaction Pay2Win model. If they keep this setup with both being required for anyone who wants to do more than decorate houses, they are going to drive away the player base with their price gouging greed.

That is a head scratcher.

So the people supporting this seem to think paying a higher subscription for extra benefits that would put them ahead of anyone paying for a regular subscription NOT pay to win? I fail to see the logic. It's exactly the same thing, just you will most likely end up paying more out than the current (awful imo) system.

I think they keep the current spell drop rates and let you buy adept and master pages with ascension scrolls after you get your tome. 3 per adept page, 6 per master page. Seens fine to me... it would still take time but there would be a guranteed achieveable process.

Just a promise that they will change it for the better would work for me. I'm not feeling generous money wise until I have a better sense of what's going to happen going forward. Since my sights are not set on raiding, I have a luxury that many don't. Ascension skills make up about half of my dps. I have to go swap back to a maxed ascension class before running Experts. Boy that Chosooth is grumpy about it! lol

@Finora - do the math... If a system like this costs you $5/month and you are able to upgrade 40 ascension spells in a years time, you paid 60$ for 40 spells... Enough of us would subscribe to this system to make up for the small amount of people that pay for spell upgrades in the current system. This would make DBG the money they want and give people with normal budgets an opportunity to upgrade their spells. I am not sure of the individual cost to upgrade an ascension spell but I have heard between $50-$70... On the low side you would be paying $2k to get the all the spell upgrades that would cost you $60 in this proposed system... I fail to see why people cant understand how this would be better.

DBG is not going to get rid of this system, our game has the P2W disease and its incurable. Wishing it away wont work.

No MMORPG recovers from it, once they have the money faucet turned on, there is no way they will turn it off.

We need to find a way to make it work for both parties rather than it just working for them.

I may have added to the confusion of the sticker price of Asc spell upgrades. Sorry about that. The price is around $10/level, the $50-60 price is quoted because of the "upgrade to Grandmaster" button on the right side of the spell. That will give you a one-price upgrade to GM. If you simply want to upgrade to Journeyman/Adept/etc... each tier is around $10-20. Once your current upgrade is complete, test it out by making an Asc spell your next research target. Notice the ^ button to the right? That shows the price for upgrading it ONE level.

But if you go below and press one of the >>>> (vertically) buttons, it shows you the price for upgrading to GM in one step.

That's why the prices are sometimes misquoted. I was confused like that myself But at least the confusion is cleared up.

As for money faucet, idk, I don't find this game to be usurious. I honestly have paid more for other games. I do spend about $25 each weekend on top of the sub. So maybe my comfort level is higher with spending a bit. I just consider that a dinner out would cost me $50-80, a movie about $50 for two people.

The Ascension system does need a tune up I think. The lead time to catch up to fellow players is just too much. And to put casting speed into a proc on an item, that's just screaming temporary to me. You can't have that Tome be relevant for more than a couple of expansions and they've said that we're going to 105 in the next few months. So where will the speed go? Probably they already have plans to change things. But at the moment I'm still playing catch-up, so I'm not as invested in it yet.

I came back around March, and while it took me a while to just remember how to play, the bulk of my time has been catching up ONE character so that I can start doing Experts. I guess technically I have two, but the other is a tank. It's tough doing experts with a tank who's barely making the grade yet. So he'll have his day in the next expac hopefully.

I think there's a lot of "the game has changed" bummer feeling. But it has also expanded. We have new options we didn't have before.

Some of these changes have been clicky items like Activated procs on gear. I'd like to see some of the essential ones available with Experimentation. let's make them permanently available. Why not have more than just Aug Smite/Aug Blessing? Why not limit some of them to level 100+ items? We can build on what we already have in game instead of letting things like Experiments become dated. I don't think Exp is dated, but it has the danger of becoming so.

I was looking at a ToT item from a heroic the other day, it had a proc that allows the Master Strike to be used on any target. That would be a nice option to give experimenters because those items are not worth wearing anymore. Rising tide comes to mind also. And what of the "immunity to stifle" purple adorns? Couldn't we have that as an Experiment option?

Replace the "decoration" section with these new procs, and limit it to one per item. There are so many ways to integrate the new into the old.

The PG system might be grindy, but the rewards for effort are really good.

The biggest gripe I had with Warlocks was fixed (the aggravate attack used to be unusable against a different target so if your target died and you had a new target or if the tank switched, you couldn't cast it even if it was ready - that was fixed). I've noticed several other improvements. Things are not the way they were and not every gripe has been fixed, but there is progress.

Maybe because I took a long break, I tend to look on the bright side. The annoyances haven't made me really angry yet, this time. Or maybe I grew up. But I can live with what there is. Give me a couple of years of the Asc system not changing though, and then I may be upset for real. But the signs I see point to impending changes. I mean the Tome is the big giveaway. We won't be using it when we're level 120.

Maybe there will be an "Enervated Ascension" quest. Who knows?

The main point I am trying to get across that people do not seem to understand is that once a P2W aspect is introduced, it does not simply go away. Making several threads crying about it and begging for it to go away will not help. I am just spit-balling an idea to get it back under reign. Threatening to quit if it does not get fixed... will get us nowhere. I enjoy the game, I play as much as I can which is a whole lot less than it was when the game was first released... I have 4 kids now so I get to play one night per week.... I would not benefit fully from the system I propose because I just don't play enough, I had in mind the semi-hardcore to hardcore players who do not have the funds to upgrade in our current system. With what I propose even the casual player would be able to get one or two spells upgraded...

@Markab - Your $10-20 per tier still adds up 30-50 to master a spell so the original numbers were not too far off. Thanks for clearing up the numbers though. I came back around the same time (April), I am having a good time and the ascension system is not enough to make me want to quit. The alt-hate is more likely to push me away if it does not get under control. The ascension upgrade system is just annoying at this point.

I am 100% against this idea. I'd rather quit playing and have them not get ANY of my money than to pay an extra $5 a month to compromise. And the idea that someone said to remove Krono from getting the benefit of your "Elite" membership is ludicrous.

Stop asking for compromise, stop trying to come up with ways to give more money to DBG for Pay to Win. Put your foot down as a consumer and tell them that you will stop buying their product until they make a better product. Like many people have, and many people will.

[quote="jsbake2, post: 6462976, member: 724134"@Alphonsus - Don't be such a troll..... P2W is not going away, I am simply suggesting a way to give the general population access to something that is currently out of reach.[/quote]

That wasn't a troll, I was quite serious. Sorry but making Everquest II the most expensive monthly subscription game on the market would be the worst possible decision and drive more people away. The system needs to be fixed, and quite easily: Increase the drop rate. We shouldn't have to pay extra to gear/upgrade our toons when we're already paying a fair monthly subscription.

What Alphonsus said.

The best way to combat this awful P2W trend it not to buy into it. Of course that makes things really hard for people in high end raiding. For me the choice is easy. They will never see a dime from me for any spell upgrades, ascension or otherwise but I don't have a raid telling me I have to to participate either.

I know that even though I've paid at least 2 subs for either EQ or EQ2 (sometimes both) since 1999, I'd drop my sub like a rock if they decided at this point to raise the base subscription rate just to be able to get gear/upgrades that we should have available in the game world.

That will only work if someone at DBG finally reads the dictionary and finds out what micro really means.

90 dollars for lottery boxes of familiars? Umm No.

40 dollars for the same lottery boxes? OK maybe.