Hey David, i got a couple suggestions that you should really think twice about to keep people playing AND paying for this game.

1. Bring back the epic drops from breakables ASAP. Half the server already got it, this was something that maybe wasn't ment to be. But imo it is too late to change it. Not fair to the other players that didn't get their rings.

2. Get more uselful arena rewards, for an example. Rank 1-5 get XXX amount of gold and rank 6-10 get XX amount of gold, and rank 10-20 get X amount of gold. Makes arena more useful and more fun.

3. VIP - Give more improvements with VIP, for an ex. fishing, remove the 20 min time, give more exp in sp and MP. Give higher drop rate chance in MP. Also, give VIP a time plan schedule aswell, the longer u got VIP the better rewards u get.
(VIP 1 VIP 2 VIP 3 VIP 4 and up to VIP 10)

4. Give us guild events NOW, instead of in the jungle release. People are quitting as we speak. You need to do something NOW to keep people playing this game. Or you will end up having maybe 100 players till the jungle release. It also makes guilds more important.

5. ALL games do nerfing, but ALL games also give something good back. So the players/characters whatever it is getting a nerf isn't that bad and players not going nerdraging and quits the game as it does today.

6. For future planning - Get another HoT going but not for single players, but make it an MP. The further u get the harder it becomes.
Guild battles - A fight between guilds once a week, winners guild is awarded with a 2nd flag that gives an additional 10 speed and can only be used till next guild battle. (in this case, the winners can wear 2 different flags at once)

This will make your game go up to 200k people playing again and not just 200-300.

Regards

Chrismaz

Sorry Chris but i can't agree with point 3. That would make the game way too much pay to win, and it will sure cause a lot of player like me quit the game. I agree with the rest, and i would add that loot bags and chest have been nerfed together with wackables, cause since the last update they just drop junk.

I like the HOT suggestion in #6. That would be a ton of fun.

I agree with Gaidin, i think that paying players are already well and enough rewarded

As a slight side note before I go into my reply, I plan to become a "paying player" after Jungle comes out, running on the assumption that balance is done right and I feel that the game is still decently fair at that time. A lot of the balance changes we just got are in anticipation of higher level content, so once the full deal is out, I plan to make my decision as to whether or not to support the game financially in addition to with my time.

As I noted above, every MMO has pay to win elements. It's unavoidable in a game which starts out under the free to play model. As you said, they have to pay the bills, and hopefully even make a profit. Currently, however, if one isn't concerned with the rankings, free players are not completely outshone. There are few players like yourself and Farflier who will pay quite as much as you have to get more powerful. Most will drop $5 here, $10 there, or maybe even $20 once in awhile. Those are the people the game really survives off of, because they spend bits here and there, but they are continuous. The big spenders may be worth 5 of an average spender, but there are many more of the latter. These average spenders and free players can still experience content in much the same way. We just aren't running T5's. Granted, last I knew, neither are you in terms of completion, but you are most definitely stronger than most of us.

The thing is, to use a favorite phrase of yours, whether you like it or not, you're going to be a minority in wanting certain things added to VIP. I've yet to see anyone disagree with the speeding up of fishing either in general or even just for VIP. This kind of thing isn't going to break game progress or balance, but it would be a nice little perk. That's the kind of thing many people who aren't completely against VIP would be for. I don't know how many artists they have or how thin they are spread, but I wouldn't mind seeing a new clothing set, or even just single clothing item, come out each month, and if you have VIP on the release date (Same day every month, hopefully, so as not to cause issues), you get that item as part of being VIP. Maybe people subscribed to VIP could get a VIP banner, just some little starburst or something. 10 speed or not, it wouldn't bother me, since we can only equip one. Little things like that would make it slightly more worthwhile, without breaking the game.

Things like better drops and exp gain completely break the way the game works. The devs then have to debate whether to balance the game for the base level free player, or a VIP player. If they balance for the free player, VIPs level up notably faster and complete the content quicker. Likewise, they get better drops, and the power differential becomes wider. Eventually even arena becomes completely dominated by paying players because they have gems to fill those extra slots from the slotting rods that they can buy much faster than free players can earn them. If the disparity becomes too large, you lose those players. That's bad even for paying players, because eventually, high end paying players end up focusing on player versus player content, or multi-player content. If the disparity is too great, paying players lose part of their game content in the form of free players leaving.

Anyway, I've babbled on plenty at this point. I'm all for giving VIP people more perks. The thing is, I want them to be perks, not game breaking advantages. From what various representatives of CNE have said, they feel largely the same way. So along that vein, I'd challenge you to think of things that you might like as a VIP player that wouldn't change game balance notably.

I totally agree with you Gaidin. I know what it is you are trying to say.
But as my experience with a newly started game like this i do know it will get worse for free players.
Did you ever play wartune from the beginning? I certanly did when it came to EU years ago. This is a total ripoff of wartune. It started exactly the same way as this game. Look now how it is. To even get to top 100 in rankings you'll have to pay not only hundreds but thousands of dollars to get there.

BUT! I do hope devs read this and really understand that they can not do what wartune did. Because they simply don't even have enough players buying VIP and will loose even more players if they did.

I also don't see why there are so much negativity around that VIP, as you said urself Gaidin, there are hardcore paying players like me and farflier, but there are also some paying players that does cash in 5-15$ now and then. But is there really those kind of players in this game? IF they were, it would be so many more with VIP. Which isn't.. If you got cash enough to put in 5-15$ now and then, you can easily buy VIP and get all the extras. So i do not think there are that many of those in this game as you might think.

It simply has to be changes asap to get more people in this game and also to keep people that's already in it. That's all i'm saying.

I also gave myself a deadline. If there isn't any kind of changes within 1st June,
I will delete my character.

I am personally one of the players that just spends a small amount every now and then, and i know there are a few others in my guild at least. The only reason I haven't been buying the VIP is because as a ranger it doesn't have enough of an attraction to me. This is because of the skill respeccing. as a ranger there are two main useful builds that both deal damage, it is merely a matter of preference which you use. hence there isn't a large point in me having respecs. However other classes have both damage and utility builds making it very useful.
A bit of a tangent there, but for me at least the VIP is pretty good with extra paragon tasks (without i get from 13-19 a day complete), with those i could get 20 tasks done a day, and the respeccing. these are two large benefits that do allow VIP's to earn more BH tokens and complete higher tiers than non VIP. So i would agree with the faster fishing and cosmetic bonuses, but the VIP doesn't need extra impactful bonuses to be attractive.

Although the VIP ad board does say more bonuses coming soon and has done for a while. Is this an indication that they have been planning to add something since i started playing the game?

hi David, thanks for the reply and sorry for raging.

1. "We aren't going to flip flop on this, they were never intended to be in the breakables with such high odds. There will be opportunity to get better gear in the near future."

You mean there will be better rings? Or are we replacing our HoT gear in the near future aswell?

5. "Something specific you are referring to here? or just the drop fix?"

Nothing specific, but as an example, Wizards dmg get nerfed but their pdef and mdef raised with aprox 5%. Give us something good back so the character simply won't be useless.

6. "Guild rankings are coming, part of guilds 2.0. Not sure what a guild battle would entail from your description."

More PvP is needed in this game. People that get fed up grinding in all other games also got some kind of PvP to do and you simply don't get fed up with a game with PvP in it.
Each guild has 1 big crystal at their starting point, in the middle of the map there are 4 smaller crystals. There is a 2 way to win, either destroy the oppsite guilds crystal which has about 10-15 mil hp or win by points. each smaller crystal gives 10 points/sec and you'll need 5000 points to win. Max 50 can enter the battle. And yes you can attack eachother to fight for small crystals or defend your own crystal.
This is exactly what i referred as a Guild Battle.

Other than that. I got the answers i needed.
One more time, sorry for the raging. I simply don't wanna pay cash without earning.

Hi David!

Thank you for the info, but i do speak for the whole server now as i say this.
It would be a blast if you could buy epic speed ring from HoT, or just put epic ring recipe as drop or shop.

What i am talking about is a live guild battle were 50 participants enter the battle (those 50 are chosen only by the guild leader himself)
But hey, that's just me. You made me smile when you even told me you had ideas for GvsG! So I'm good enough with live or no live. I just think acting and leadership play a big part in here and many ppl would love to participate in a live guild battle.