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Etherdrifter

Non-Preme Skill Progression

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Pretty simple; as a lure to encourage more people to preme up, allow skills to advance (at a slower rate) while non-premium.

 

For example, my forestry (80) could go up slowly, but still remain at effective 20 while non-premium.

 

A bit of simple math could overcome the "but difficulty" argument.

 

Stats would need to be a special case (simply set the effective cap to what it was when they were last premium, a few extra database entries per player).

 

It's easy to walk away from a toon with 20 in a few skills; it's a bit harder to walk away from one that could have 30 if only you'd pay that "low low" premium price.

 

I do want to re-iterate; your skill goes up, but NOTHING changes about the free game (you are still capped at effective 20 for all actions).

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Maybe if it's like 1/10th or 1/20th the rate.

Anything faster would get a no from me.

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only allow some skills like forage, btanize, stone cutting etc. newbie get out of debt stuff 

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Or even if it "went up" at 1/10th rate (or whatever) and you got the [x3] when you went premium until you reached that level.

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1 hour ago, zethreal said:

Or even if it "went up" at 1/10th rate (or whatever) and you got the [x3] when you went premium until you reached that level.

 

This is also a good possible option.

 

The crux here is that all player types are interested in skillgain/character progress.  Free play stops this and demands a payout for it; but it doesn't offer additional incentives for those who choose to remain as free players to make that payout.  If getting stopped at 20 skill isn't going to make someone premium (and, since it is such a low threshold, player investment is low at this point, so the method is ineffective), odds are they are going to move on.

 

Nor does it offer them any form of "advancement" activity for their character (the focal point in western RPG design), thus you feel you have reached the end of the free game, and will have to pay the subscription from then on.  Great for games with a healthy population, not so great for games in the "candle-light clusters" phase of MMO life.

This notion here is to offer players some form of advancement that is slower than going premium, that has no impact on their character without paying that fee (someone who has ground their potential farming up to 30 is much more likely to preme up to enjoy it than someone who has been stuck at 20 farming for a week with no gains).

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42 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

 

This is also a good possible option.

 

The crux here is that all player types are interested in skillgain/character progress.  Free play stops this and demands a payout for it; but it doesn't offer additional incentives for those who choose to remain as free players to make that payout.  If getting stopped at 20 skill isn't going to make someone premium (and, since it is such a low threshold, player investment is low at this point, so the method is ineffective), odds are they are going to move on.

 

Nor does it offer them any form of "advancement" activity for their character (the focal point in western RPG design), thus you feel you have reached the end of the free game, and will have to pay the subscription from then on.  Great for games with a healthy population, not so great for games in the "candle-light clusters" phase of MMO life.

This notion here is to offer players some form of advancement that is slower than going premium, that has no impact on their character without paying that fee (someone who has ground their potential farming up to 30 is much more likely to preme up to enjoy it than someone who has been stuck at 20 farming for a week with no gains).

 

Why will they prem at 30 farming instead of preming at 20 farming?  I think if it is raised a while will pass then we will be in this again with the same but why not move it to 40 farming.

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Not having the skill level effect active but being able to grind it makes me think it will possibly lead to many bugs that can be exploited at least in the beginning. Imagine getting skill gains at 80 lvl as if your skill was 20 lvl. 

 

Another possible exploit could be that you would get max skillgain from imping a 30ishql item having 20 active skill while actually having 80. so you dont need a 90ql lump to grind your skill on that chain armor piece cuz it is about 30ql. 

 

Slower rate makes it balanced provided there are no exploits available. How much slower tho? Not slow enough and you will have people running many free chars on their strong computers to grind them up and sell them. Too slow and it has very little purpose. 

 

Does it make sense for a genuine newbie to grind up to 90 at weaponsmithing while freemium all the time? Not really. So wouldn't it be better if it was limited at 40 or 50. You have 20 effective but you can at max get 50 inactive skill unless you prem up. It will be on a slower rate, but not too  slow. 

 

Another good option in my opinion is letting freemiums have full rights (can grind them and use them at current lvl) to few certain skills to a certain level like 40-50. Botanizing, Forage, Digging, Stone Cutting, Farming, Carpentry seem like good candidates to me.

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2 hours ago, Pashka said:

Why will they prem at 30 farming instead of preming at 20 farming?  I think if it is raised a while will pass then we will be in this again with the same but why not move it to 40 farming.


I think an incredibly slow gain has benefits. People won't feel like they're getting cheated for playing--it's one of the great things about Wurm. No matter what you do, building crates, cutting bricks, whatever, you're getting some stats and skills.

Going at 1/20th the rate isn't really exploitable but will keep people playing even if they're a bit hesitant about throwing down the cash for prem.

 

 

2 hours ago, Maiev said:

Too slow and it has very little purpose. 


I think there's a purpose. We humans are wired to get enjoyment from "accomplishing" things. If you're digging and getting .000008 skill from an action that's something. That little green flash on your bar will keep you going.

It's a big reason why slotmachines quite often give out piddly prizes for most spins. It feeds us that little happiness juice to get us to pull one more time.

I'm all for a change that basically changes almost nothing but makes them want to keep playing.

Everyone wins. Status quo is basically unchanged and maybe more people prem up.
 

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20 hours ago, Wargasm said:

No.

mhm...

 

ws is already 5x harder than "anything else".. and that doesn't stop people, there are 99ws chars..

x10 diff for free? nolifers will marry you even if you don't want them after this change, up to you if you want that.

 

--edit

this could work if there were thousandof players around and such incentive for 'hobos' was a + to keep population for various reasons.

atm this is only going to be used to prolong the grind time.. but eventually you'll end up having a good account and prem & use vs regular customers or just sell your account and repeat or leave the game for good, neither is good imo.

Edited by Finnn

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11 hours ago, Finnn said:

ws is already 5x harder than "anything else".. and that doesn't stop people, there are 99ws chars..

 

Yeah, but the actual skill until you prem up is still capped at 20.

Do you expect someone to "cheat" the system and spend literally 10 or 20 times the amount of time to get to a useful skill of, say, 90--which would probably take at least 6 months at an optimistic rate-- instead of paying 10 bucks a month to literally get 10 times the skilling done?

For a "no lifer" you're getting 100s of times your  bang for the buck than a sleep powder.

And as someone who has ground to 99 WS, if the game was 1/20th or 1/10th the speed it is now, there's no way I'd be willing to play.

The only thing you'd have to be afraid of is free bots grinding skills, but even if a  bot ground to the limits of fatigue, you wouldn't have a useful account for years.

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Level 20 cap is the 'demo' level, some purely subscription-based games offer f2p playability, which puts you super low in the food chain of the game, where you're hardly able to affect the market in any way and the materials you can gather or produce usually never get close to what you could get for your time playing and farming.. no matter what.. is pointless..

Here the idea have a bit loose leash allowing some freedom...

Edited by Finnn
typo

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I must admit, this idea does have somewhat selfish motivations.  A lot of potential players are put off by WO's subscription, and if a system like this were implemented, more would stick around.

 

More people around who are adverse to paying subscription, the more possible customers for us all, since such players are more likely to buy silver, do jobs for silver, and buy items.

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As someone who has had to take breaks from this game on occasion for financial reasons (such as right now) I would honestly really love something like this, but only if I wasn't capped at 20. If I kept the skills I had but continued to progress incredibly slowly I would have incentive to, at the very least, keep paying the upkeep on a deed. That said, I can see where this would become an issue once a character is maxed out, or even just at a level where life isn't as miserable (actions don't fail as often, etc). If skills are high enough to get by, what incentive would there be to keep premium?

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I would rather see a 1month subscription option for 8€ . I think there is a reason we have never seen something like this in any other sub based games. The f2p part is to try the game, not to grind endless alts even if at a slow rate. This would absolutely produce alt farming to later sell off chars.

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4 hours ago, Karidwen said:

I would rather see a 1month subscription option for 8€ . I think there is a reason we have never seen something like this in any other sub based games. The f2p part is to try the game, not to grind endless alts even if at a slow rate. This would absolutely produce alt farming to later sell off chars.

+1 for this addition; won't stop me buying 2x month packs but.. if ever needed will be there/if that happens/

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