I guess shorter version is this. I really like this game, loved the concept before it launched and liked the gameplay since. Because of this, I have tried to recruit friends (with no need of reward!), but for the most part, between their other time commitments, lack of interest in the genre, or concern over the rate of content releases, almost all of them didn’t pick this up or dropped it a long time ago.
None of these incentives look like anything that would bring any of those people back or get them interested where they weren’t before. Now I’m just one not-very-social guy, so maybe this is not a good indicator of what would draw others into the game, but that is my continuing impression since seeing the reward list yesterday.
The best reward from referring people (and having them stay): more people to play with!
The rewards are fine, if you feel you don’t get anything for your effort of bribing other people to the game, then don’t. And if you only thought of bringing friends to the game because you get something… well, I’ll keep those thought to myself.
But that gets in to my more succinct comment. I don’t need rewards to refer people, but the rewards do not look like things that would entice people to join if they hadn’t already. The game is six years old, I imagine there is a not-insignificant percent of the population that has already tried to refer friends, and any of them who were going to join have already.
*Also, it seems like that is the argument for not having the refer a friend system at all, which was mentioned earlier, and I don’t disagree with it.
I would agree with this if I didn’t think that Funcom doesn’t care what retained players want/need. I can’t really feel ‘good’ about telling people 'oh you’ll get to play with me!" When it would just involve spamming the LFG and getting ankh 4x in a row because there’s only a few dungeons to choose from. They seem to think that group content is pointless in growing/maintaining because they use that ‘only one percent’ number they throw around a lot. If we go by Funcom’s logic, they’re not wanting/expecting you to play with friends. I’ve championed this game as much as I could but recently it feels like they either aren’t too concerned with making this game progress or are very terrible at communication with their player base.
Because we couldn’t refer people before the RAF program…
Look up the word “incentive”. This is for people who weren’t bothered to refer people already. And like I said had anyone actually read what I posted, anybody with friends who they thought would like the game have already referred those friends a long time ago before any such program existed. Now, most of us will have to stretch to find people to recruit and the reason we haven’t before is there wasn’t enough incentive to do so. (There’s that word. I hope you looked it up.)
It’s not that hard to think of stuff that new players would actually want. Say, tokens to purchase any item in the clothes store (up to 25000 mof value, or w/e they feel like, just not tradeable like mof is) so people aren’t stuck with 1 outfit until they have 100k spare mof.
They could even splurge and give people tokens for free haircuts (100k value, lol)
Small amounts of the less useful currency, and less gear xp than you get for running 1 full dungeon, doesn’t really fit the bill. At that price I’m not even gonna use refer-a-friend if I /do/ refer a friend.
Sorry but the argument that you should do something purely for the good of doing it rarely works in real world settings. And the whole fact that this RAF program even exists further validates that.
On another note I don’t think this program is directed at current players (as crazy as that may sound). If they have any sense they will pair it with the anniversary event along with some steam advertisements or promotions for new players to join. This would be the only way I can see it making any sense in its current form.
This is probably part of why you dont see anyone trying to argue the other side. Just because people doesnt dislike everything with you, doesnt mean they are fanboying. Its honestly childish and the best way to kill a discussion.
While i dont find the rewards overly impressive for myself, i think Drenneth is hitting the mark.
Since the high geared that do dungeons is such a small group, why would it be aimed at us. Are we only one percent? I dont know but im not dumb enough to think our group isnt overrepresented in the vocal community. Case in point everyone in this thread all do Elite dungeons.
Like Drenneths point, its aimed at ppl where the rewards are a little more useful. As for if ppl are still joining. Working on a new char i can say i meet actual New players quite often. Are they many? How many stick around? I would be dumb to presume to know.
Thing is as a player that’s been around from the start inviting new players into the game is actually sort of a dilemma. Unlike TSW where I could help speed grind a friend up to 10.4/4 in a week or two SWL is much more intensive of a grind that cannot really be sped up without ridiculous amounts of money. So their is this underlying issue with making the RAF valuable to veteran players. However. Countless times I’ve heard comments from new players like “what is the best mob to kill to farm shards?”. I try not to laugh at questions like this but at a low level and not patron shards are a big deal.
So if Funcom plays there cards right and pushes a big advertising campaign or promotion to new accounts on steam then yes as silly as these rewards seem I think they would be effective in this scenario. Whether Funcom is smart enough to do that though is a different story alltogether.
If would however be perfect timing with anniversary a week away.
This is definitely true. When you have something with no real value, you take it at face value. “Thank you,” for instance. It has no monetary value, but it is socially accepted as a reward for volunteered labor of some kind, regardless of the effort, such as helping someone with a flat tire, or picking up a small item they dropped.
If you were to then attach a monetary value to that thank you by offering a reward, the person then has something by which to measure your level of thanks.
“Thanks for helping my family out of our burning home! Here have a dollar.” The value of labor, and in that example, risk, far exceeds the offered reward and is thus insulting, and implies sarcasm. I could easily imagine that specific example being used as evidence in an arson trial.
If instead it were something small, like reaching out to catch a loose paper flying in the wind for someone, an act that could take mere seconds, an offer of a dollar is well within the worth of the action, and wouldn’t be seen as insult or sarcasm, it reflects genuine appreciation of the value of the effort.
So applying this to these friend rewards, the effort of making multiple accounts to cheese friend rewards is certainly not worth the effort, but its so low that going through the effort of trying to get friends to play the game and stick with it for a few weeks is definitely not appreciated.
And as mentioned what is really missing is a reward if your friend makes a purchase of some kind. It would also have been better to have rewards by IP level, maybe even story progression. If you refer a friend (or even yourself) and they/you get to IP 1000, that should be very well rewarded, considerably more than the person who recruits 10 friends who only get to IP 100, even if that IP 1000 person didn’t make any purchase, as that is a serious time investment that likely added value to many people’s play along the march to E10.
[removed necessary quote by Mashmellow, now there is no context. You’re welcome.] ~ Funcom Nanny Patrol
Do I really need to start putting /s on things? I thought the ellipsis was sufficient.
Also, what Candycane said is pretty on the nose. Notice that in my post I said that the results were “insultingly low”? That’s pretty much the case in point for this:
What would have made this less insulting would have been to include those additional purchase incentives. If my referred friend pays FC then giving me a kickback from that would make those tiered shard rewards more palatable. Without that they just feel like a hollow token gesture.
I love MMO’s, those are my games of choice and I routinely take hostages with games I love. TSW when it came out I campaigned my not-defunct guild for months to take this game on and played since beta.
I’ve recruited literally a dozen or more people to play TSW and encouraged those to come back and try SWL without a reward, but as Candycane pointed out, if you’re going to give us stuff for doing what we do anyway - make it worthwhile!
Funcom can give literally any of the pixel fun in this game away and make it character bound (sale price 1 shard). That stops bots cold.
As I mentioned earlier, when I re-up a sub on a rarely played game, I always check with friends to see if they can benefit from a RAF program. Why not, if they can get something?
The rewards FC is offering are pretty cheap, 1000 shards, really? That’s vendoring four green pieces of gear. Hard to make that in Kingsmouth - ha ha ha.
FFXIV gives both of you the fistbump emote. The friend also gets a unique xp boost item, some starter gear, and you get a special mount that seats two people. It’s nice.
Matching shirts is a good idea, too. Just something fun. Tiny amounts of shards, xp, sp, are meh. The cache keys and outfit are ok but your friend doesn’t even get those
Give the friend something fun too! A dance, emote, clothing, weapon skin, anything.
Depressing to see this actually went official on the game’s site today.
I mean, does Funcom really think “you’ll get some fairly mediocre stuff if you actually stick with the game long enough” is going to feel enticing for the potential new players?
A “Faction Recruit” t-shirt, no questions asked, would be actual fun…
I think they are right to move cautiously here. SWTOR referral rewards are at the other end – so out of control good that people will farm chat channels to get referral link clicks. Completely useless to SWTOR since those so-called referrals are already playing the game and possibly just temporarily lapsed on their subscription. Meanwhile the referral-farmers are making huge amounts of cartel coins – Coins that if paid for with real money would better benefit the upkeep of the game; and purchases with said coins have long since wrecked the economy with crazy inflation.
Maybe the rewards here could be improved a bit but I hope it doesn’t become so good that people start farming them and completely subvert the point of an actual referral program.
Well you don’t want anything to be that ridiculous but atm it’s not even worth the effort of submitting it. Shards aren’t tradeable etc, so no harm in giving a bunch but the amount they give is SO bad. So bad. It’s not even a tradeable currency or super valuable. They could easily at least boost that amount to a significant amount without breaking any kind of economy since it’s not even tied to the economy.
