Help us make your membership better

Ilyos

As we're updating our membership options and benefits across IRE, we're also thinking about sprucing ours up. Achaea has already implemented some changes to theirs, where you can use membership credits to purchase certain things at a discount. For example, you can pay 40 membership credits for a customization instead of 50 normal credits.

We're looking to do similar things so we're asking you, what would you like to do with your membership credits?

And also, if you're not happy/don't need your 5 daily lessons, what else would you like instead (to make this clear, the option to replace the 5 daily lessons with something else would be YOUR choice and not something we'd force upon you).

Ilyos

Clarification: You can't have EXCLUSIVE benefits that cannot be otherwise obtained through normal means. So nothing gated specifically behind a player having membership.

Vega

The customization discount would be huge, and increase subbing for a whole year by a boatload since it adds up. Currently the bonuses of the membership for people already maxed out on everything is basically 0 and the main reason to do it is to support the game and environment that the staff have spent so much time and effort putting together. 

So anything that further encourages me to make more memories would be A+. As for what specifically, I'd need to sleep on it more, but I do have to say that I love the potential behind this idea, and it makes me feel very hopeful and eager as an avid consumer.

Rylek

-Better customization prices
-More in-depth customization options
-Instead of lessons, a XP buff that you can activate, which gains a charge every day you log in. Can store X charges. Can use X charges at once.
-Token a day that can be used to purchase prior genelock/ship cusotmization/pet/ whatever stuff from promo events in the past.
-Stuff for the new pokemon system

Zhedan

Rylek said:

-Better customization prices
-More in-depth customization options
-Instead of lessons, a XP buff that you can activate, which gains a charge every day you log in. Can store X charges. Can use X charges at once.
-Token a day that can be used to purchase prior genelock/ship cusotmization/pet/ whatever stuff from promo events in the past.
-Stuff for the new pokemon system

Some sort of experience buff would be nice. I feel like this especially makes sense in Starmourn, where there are a lot more types of experience than Achaea. 

Deltrion

Chosen membership bonus: Atomic matter articulator (one a month should cover the customization options, since they are so versatile), up to +25% experience bonus, 10-20 unbound credits that we could either sell, hoard, trade, or ransom. I like Lusternia and their wondercrystals, but we don't really have anything analogous here. Yet

Chosen daily bonus: Random Stat chip, Random XP chip, 5 lessons, 1-5k marks (covering daily costs of repairing, food, gatewarps, whathaveyou could be a convenient option for those that want it).

eel

Instead of 25% exp (which I assume to be character/ground exp): we could get the option to swap it to 25% bonus hacking or captaincy? I know that with talents in the pipeline most will opt to default to 25% character MIL exp, but in the far future (unless the grind for talents is infinite) folks may wish to swap - not to mention, some people won't be as interested in ground stuff, but prefer ship or hacking stuff.

Instead of the 5 lessons per day, which I still find useful because of things like multiclass and upcoming tradeskills, there was talk on the discord of getting sharable lessons, in the same vein of 5/day, which members could dispense to other people at a rate of 5/day per recipient. It would be a dripfeed sort of investment, where both the beneficiary newbie and benefactor member would be incentivized to log on daily to give and receive these lessons. (Rather than the case we may currently see of members logging in to get their daily 5 lessons and immediately logging out. You'd still see this behavior because people are busy, but it would encourage interaction a bit more.)

I also like the idea of being able to access items from past promotions via some kind of token shop. It could still cycle every month, but (especially as the number of different promo items increases) you could fill the token shop with older stuff that you don't want to explicitly include within the current month's promo. Or you could put all the promo-type items in the token shop, leaving shiny promo artifacts in the promo pool. You could also put decaying versions of other (previously perpetual) promo items in there.

Offering the token as a daily xenozoo bounty (as with the love tokens currently) would allow everyone to eventually partake of the token shop, addressing exclusivity.

In general I would love to be able to use membership credits to purchase customizations at a discount! I've also heard some folks ask for customizable combat messages, so that's something else to think about - if it gets implemented, could also spend membership credits at a discount there.

Ikchor

A token that allows you to temporarily rent any artifact for an RL day. Intent behind it is more "try before you buy", less "haha, i have temp-arti and you don't"

Orrin

Select the exp bonus: captaincy, hacking, exp.

The customization discount would be awesome

Lessons are still useful to me because omnipass and multiclassing, though I know some people have run out of things to do with them.

I like the token idea though, and the idea that there would be a token shop and extras available by doing xenozoo bounty or other things. 

Ikchor

New idea: One free item from the monthly promos, like one star stamped token for the wheel or in the case of something like the tesseracts you get the base tier. Nothing earth shattering, but still a little 'hey, thanks for your continued financial support.'

Ikchor

Would like to point out that the credit bonuses from Elite Membership as it is right now as well as the credits earned every 5 levels outside of the Elite Membership (normal leveling) are capable of being character bound then converted into lessons at a 1:6 ratio (bound credits:lessons), giving you regular boosts through out your normal play.

The membership just shortens this by a large amount. Artifacts aren't as important here (for now, thankfully) so you can and should be comfortable in dumping any and all freely earned credits into lessons if that's a problem.

Hell, you don't even NEED the membership if you're diligent in doing the free daily credit tasks every day, right there is a 120 lessons every day.

Raccoon

Edited my comment, then clicked 'Save Comment' and the whole thing disappeared. Not going to re-write this. I'll just tell you in a few words, that calling an ELITE membership that is more like LIGHT version, is very unappealing.

Where this membership stands now, it's not an Elite tier, not at all, even though you charge quite an elite price, considering all the possible standards on the gaming market. Considering this is a MUD and you basically selling people scrolling text, those bonuses are very inappropriate. I don't complain about price, I can afford it, but I wouldn't pay real money for scrolling text on my screen, considering I get so little for my money. You can get access to AAA online games for $15 a month even today, you want to charge me almost twice of that price, for a text on my screen. Hoping that you will actually make sense of your subscription and make it worth while of my 25$. At this point, it's a no deal for me.

I bought your 2 lesson packs, but I don't want to spend money on something that is just there. I'd maybe consider subscription, IF I got at least 15 lessons a day, 300 credits a month and the bonus exp would affect all game mechanics, not only regular level 1-75, but also hacking progress speed as well as Captaincy. You are selling players something that they can't even see in a MUD, just read about it. Your artifacts cost thousands of credits, I need several thousand lessons to get my skills to max and your membership gives me 1% of the amount of lessons I need, and maybe 10% of the amount of credits I need to buy artifacts for. The ONLY thing that makes sense in this membership so far, is the discount for in-game credit purchases, but it doesn't justify the price of the membership in whole. If you want to keep calling the membership ELITE, you probably want to adjust it quite a bit and beef it up by a lot. Don't forget, it's a MUD you are trying to sell, not a sub to a full AAA game that gets expansions and new content every month.

Not saying that you have to make it into a game with graphics and sounds. I like the MUD, but your membership bonuses are very inadequate to what you want to charge for it. I am really surprised that I am first to post something like this. Posters above seem to be all in game for a while and they are asking for incentives to high level gameplay, as a new player, I find these bonuses way too small to consider paying for them.

ThePlaintiffReturns

@Raccoon - Respectfully, the fact that it's a MUD shouldn't necessarily make membership cheaper than a AAA from Ubisoft... That's not how economics works.  That's like going into your local corner shop and telling the owner he's crazy for selling his beer for $5 because it's only tree-fiddy in Wallmart. If you have 10 million players, then of course you can sell membership cheaper. Equally, and again, respectfully, I'm confused as to why you're fixating on the fact that all you're getting in a text game... is text.

You're comparing apples and pears, neighbour.

Raccoon

ThePlaintiffReturns said:

@Raccoon - Respectfully, the fact that it's a MUD shouldn't necessarily make membership cheaper than a AAA from Ubisoft... That's not how economics works.  That's like going into your local corner shop and telling the owner he's crazy for selling his beer for $5 because it's only tree-fiddy in Wallmart. If you have 10 million players, then of course you can sell membership cheaper. Equally, and again, respectfully, I'm confused as to why you're fixating on the fact that all you're getting in a text game... is text.

You're comparing apples and pears, neighbour.

@ThePlaintiffReturns
 ... and you are comparing the same beer, just from different stores? I thought this was a thread to post impartial feedback, and not to analyze what other people posted? My main concern are the incentives that Elite membership provides the players with, not the cost of it. Comparison to AAA games and scrolling text is just a reinforcement, to show that there is lacking in the incentives that the ELITE membership provides.

ThePlaintiffReturns

You're missing my point. Even if the beer was different the stores would have completely different financial structures. Again, respectfully, analyzing your analysis is impartial feedback. You're saying you reckon the value of the product at X and I'm saying I disagree and reckon it at Y. I'm saying your anchors are all wrong, although I completely concede that if you're saying the product isn't worth it for you, you're entirely right.

Ikchor

Nothing to see here, move along.