Ceridith

The patron bonuses seem a bit lacking in benefit in the long run aside from the token bonuses. Has any thought been given to giving patron players a stipend of points to spend in the cash shop as per what other MMOs with a hybrid F2P/subscriber model have adopted?

edited out the first question since it was already answered.

Thank you for the response.

Just to elaborate on my feedback on this, my wife and I recently came back to playing Rift and have been subscribing again. To us the patron bonuses as described seem rather lacking and don't seem to justify the $15 a month price tag associated to it. As such, unless the loyalty bonuses are noteworthy enough, we will likely just stop paying a subscription but otherwise keep playing.

Personally I think a point stipend of about $5 a month worth of points, which is inline with what most other MMOs with a hybrid model seem to go with, would be a reasonable incentive for continuing to subscribe to the game.

There are a lot of subscribers that have no problem continuing to subscribe, but if the incentive for doing so isn't worth the price tag, Rift might lose a lot of subscriptions.

To offer an alternative view on this, end game is more than the top end raids or raiding in general. Part of end game is having to go through the regular dungeons and then through experts to gear up. Personally I feel that allowing players to buy their way past the 'previous tiers' of endgame undermines the integrity of the Rift's endgame as a whole.

It's my hope that this is the case. However, this is largely depended on just how costly gear purchases are. If purchasing a full set of the top available gear in the shop costs in excess of $200, then I doubt many people will take advantage of it. On the other hand if it's only $10, then it will likely have a negative impact and potentially undermine the drive of the community to complete previous tiers of content.

With this in mind, I actually hope that purchasable gear is being significantly overpriced in the item shop in order to sufficiently discourage content bypassing.