Supporting Returning Players and ideas for Refer-a-Friend?

Freejazzlive wrote:

I would suggest providing them one character slot that can role 90/280 from the start. Or just selling items to provide the same.

Ulrichvon wrote:

^^That's exactly where they wanted you to go. Kudos!

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

Understand that the issue is, getting these levels and AA are generally easy for veteran players, that doesn't change the perception of the dificulty from perspective new players.
The last thing someone wants to do is jump into an older game with a high level cap, cause as gamers they know they have a tremendous amount of 'catch-up' to do. If you market to them with something that provides an obvious reductoin in the catch-up activity, more people will try it out.
More people that try it out, the more chances the player will latch into the community and retain the game.

Ulrichvon wrote:

I would suggest that doing this will kill the game even further -- especially at lower levels -- in order to support people at the high end, who IMO don't need that support. I would suggest a much better idea is to level with one's friend, rather than suggesting they be allowed to automatically join in the "end game." This is especially true of entirely new players, who will not have 90 levels of experience as to how to properly play their characters.

I think this is particularly true, given the ridiculous ease of leveling & gaining AAs. It doesn't need to be made easier, & certainly not with bought characters.

Freejazzlive wrote:

The question was what would intice my friends to play, and I provided the answer. Having me level up with them isn't something I think will entice them (even if I had time to do that for them). They need to percieve that the gap coming in late is significantly reduced in order to make the effort of even trying the game.
In my opinion, the pre-end tier game is already regulated to a solo only activity, I don't believe SoE has it within their power to effect a change that will both change that and keep their current customers happy. In short I, and I imagine many other vets have already 'written off' the lower level gameplay. Our primary concerns is how we keep finding new players at a rate that can keep pace with the attrition rate of our veterans. Looking around, it seems many, many guilds are unable to do so. More and more fold each day it seems.
The game is hyper focused at the end, letting people get to where the community is with a perceived faster path is exactly what it would take to bring them in.

Ulrichvon wrote:

If they would only play to be towards "endgame" how long would they stay? Balance that to the rest of the playerbase once you've made the previous 90% of the game instantly trivial. I would be worried how it would effect the game as a whole to be honest, not saying it's a bad idea. I do agree that getting higher level characters into lower areas with lower characters would go far. The problem is giving higher level characters a reason to not be doing higher level content.
Ethereal group and raid encounters in each zone
I think someone already mentioned putting overland group and raid content in lower level zones. What if there was some token or loot scaling system that allowed "agnostic" type rewards for players in these group/raid encounters? With Chains of Eternity bringing an ethereal theme maybe those encounters could be "leaking" into each zone, using an ethereal or ghost version of the local mobs but bumped up to group and raid status. They would be passive by default but only attackable if the players level was in a certain range.

Aelore@Butcherblock wrote:

I think I speak for most peopel at end game, and no thanks. I don't want to go back to lower tier zones to steam roll mobs. I've done these zones enough already.
As far as the previous 90% of the game being trivial, I sort to have to say, 'so what'.
There is a healthy population of players who've done nothing but end tier for the past year. Most of that population will do end-tier for the next year post expansion, and so on and so forth. I see no reason why new players accelerated to end-tier will not stay just as long as those already there.

Ulrichvon wrote:

SoE would certainly have the background info to know who is doing what and you may be right, a large quantity of people may be enticed by paying for entry level endgame. I do want to point out that my idea about ethereal/group raid encounters in old world zones was not a "steamroll" idea but rather a lateral plan for raiders to progress.
I imagine there are more than just endgame raiders that would be interested in EQ2 since a lot of games feature raiding. I do think your idea could work.

As a recently returning player who played the game at launch, the biggest disappointment is how 99% of the content had been made obselete by the new combat mechanics. There is so much great gameplay in the lower levels which incidentally is what likely drew many long time players to the game in the first place. If this were still viable/ challenging it would at least give players an option who wanted to utilize it. Now if I want to roll an alt it's either get PL'd or solo which is not what an mmo should be about. I love the idea of adding end game rewards to older content but that content has to be balanced with the current combat mechanics. Unfortunately I assume this would be a major undertaking but this is the corner you have painted yourself into! I hope some of these suggestions are taken to heart because as it stands the end game content is too limited and makes the rest of the content almost pointless. I say use some of the old zones but create new high level or chronomentored missions that offer end game rewards but again, they have to be fun and challenging.

Ulrichvon wrote:

I'd put it a step down, and give refer-a-friend accounts a free level 80 toon with 200-220AA. Then, I'd adjust the quest exp in sundered frontier and stonebrunt highlands so that completing all the 'main' quest lines ends the toon at roughly level 90 with 250-265AA.
The idea being, the new toon could be directed to sundered/stonebrunt and through doing those quests learn the basics of combat, exploration, mechanics etc. Which would prepare them for entering Withered Lands and doing those quests. You could up the AA to 280 I guess, but I think leaving them just short of that number would encourage them to explore other areas as well.
As far as starting gear, that's debatable. A set of MC armor would likely be too powerful.

Ulrichvon wrote:

If that's the case, then I see no reason for it to be limited to returning players. Just drop the whole facade of this being a game where people "earn" their levels & AAs, give everyone a level 90/280 character of their choice, & have done with it.
I still think it's a non-optimal solution which would hurt the game that much more. I think that hyper-focus on the "end game" is precisely one of the biggest things wrong with all MMOs these days, & I even think that the suggestion primarily appeals to the lazy who want their gratification right now. But since that's the way MMOs are devolving, I guess we might as well just do it.

Who cares.... Just give a bone to us players that pay your sub right now... make the game better for us... Giving free stuff to ppl that have quit is a spit in the face for us that still play. If you make us happy we will talk about it and ppl will get back just saying.... Stop side tracking and make the game what it once was pls....

Freejazzlive wrote:

Please don't even joke about such a horribly bad idea. That is akin to putting the toons, levels, and gear on marketplace and that is something I never ever wanna see.
Make all instances scaling with appropriate loot boxes for whoever is in the group. Then people of any level could group together and get something. Give marketplace bucks for grouping with those lower level than yourself. Give rewards from past events.
Their are tons of ways we could do it without pushing the easy button and giving lazy people an instant toon that they would have no clue how to play and make us just put them on ignore because you have set them up to fail.
Look for ways to encourage people not destroy them.

Hirofortis wrote:

All I'm saying is that if SOE were to implement Ulrichvon's idea -- which, I stress, I strongly dislike -- then they might as well jump the rest of the shark, because they will have made their game into a fiasco.

Freejazzlive wrote:

I think the number of players that believe this game is a level progression game still is very, very low.
The game isn't about level progressoin, its about gear prgression, its been that way for quite some time now.
The number one retention mechanism for the game is the community, and if your going to bring in players you've got to find a way to get them engaged in community. There are 2 options to that. One is to bring the new players up to the current ones rapidly, the other is to find some reason for veteran players to go back and do really old stuff with total noobs.
Of those 2 options, I think I know which one is viable. Others will of course disagree, but if you actually went live with something that forced vets to back-play with noobs in lower tier content, level agnostic content, or anything other than the new content, you're just going to lose more vets.
Lets face it, they jumped the shark a long time ago.

I just wanted to add, and I'm not sure I saw this elsewhere in this thread...

You could change the mentor system to go the other way, like side-kicks worked in CoH. So that low level players can play effectively with high level ones. I think this would be extremely challenging to pull off in eq2 though.

Ulrichvon wrote:

I think that if SOE could pull this off, it would be a MUCH better idea than simply providing new or returning players a level 90/280 character. Effectively, it would be the same thing, but the new/returning player would only be at that exalted level when "sidekicked" to higher level characters, & when not, would revert to being a lower level.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

+1

Freejazzlive wrote:

^^ This.

I find that the polls and any other questions put out to the community to be completely disingenuous. History has told us loud and clear time and time again just how valued our opinions are. Its actually insulting, knowing that its all just a placebo. This in itself, their contempt for their customers, is the prime reason why I would never refer anyone to play a SOE game. Their reputation on the street exists for a reason. As Drupal wrote, feedback has been given for years and if they haven't listened by now what is the point in making another mock effort to gather feedback.

Mentoring is too powerful when you're max lvl helping out a friend.
My friends that I try to get into the game hate having to solo overland zone to get from 1-90 (Dungeon Finder fails if they want to group).
So they want to do some dungeon crawling, ok, cool. So I mentor down and am just 1 shotting mobs with auto attack. Not very fun for them either.
I'd like the option to mentor down to my friends and content still be challenging... Not everyone's friends want to be PLed...
I find newer people I try to introduce into the game, they dislike how empty the grouping is from 1-90 (and how easy/fast the solo questing is). And almost everyone I've got into the game, when they get PLed to 92/320, it doesn't take very long before they are fairly decently geared, but sick and tired of running the same 2-3 instances. Then they quit the game.
Too bad they missed so much of the pre 92 game. They could've had fun if it wasn't so easy, or boring when a higher level mentors down.


Ooops sorry! Did my idea make PLers cringe? Sorry all you SK's that pull 50-100 mobs at once and blow them away with 1 AOE. Thats not overpowered at all... what was I thinking?!?! /smacks forehead