Flav wrote on Sep 12
th, 2013 at 4:20am:
Re: Destinies on a lowby Mark & Quote Quote
Asheras wrote Yesterday at 4:26pm:
Are you still bitching about the Enhancement Pass?
Yes I am.
10 people I know left because of it.
I'm still wondering why they didn't put the old system in a tree form instead of making something that was going to drive people away.
I'm with you, Flav. Not one person in my guild, myself included, has logged into DDO since a month before the Enhancement (no thanks I'll) Pass. Granted our whole guild probably spent less than one of "The Big Boys" here, but we did spend, and many people spending a little each can be a huge market force, that's the whole premise of the f2p model. A model, I might add, widely credited with saving DDO once before.
What baffles me is that they claim it's to help with player retention. What players were leaving that won't because of this?
The die-hards weren't threatening to leave over the old enhancement system, they knew the enhancement system and it was workable.
The current casual players might have frustration with Enhancements, but they would be better served with keeping their characters playable and putting the enhancements in a better UI, and making the character sheet more informative. Making them learn a new system and go through the work of re-speccing a character is a large effort barrier for someone with limited play time, and many didn't cross that barrier.
Or maybe they are targeting new players? Like all the ones they'll pull in from GenConn, Pax, and their advertising campaign? Oh wait, that's right, THEY WEREN'T THERE. The main message non-players hear is the lamentations of the hordes of casual players put through the pointless pain of having every single one of their characters broken.
So what market segment has better retention because of this?