Ditch Heritage - provide "Recyclers" or "Smelters"

The problem is that no matter what people like or contribute with wishlist after wishlist Port does what they want no matter how good or bad choice it is. I would be surprised if people gave up on trying to help or trying to contribute.

Edit: while the change PoT water type was a player suggestion, I think if they would have taken a poll, players would have found something much more needed to implement. While it's a good idea to change the water type, I can easily travel to each water type zones I've saved with scrolls.

 

It shouldn't be exclusive to ex-players. There should be long running opinion data from players that's quantifiable. I'm not saying this is the solution, but here's an idea: if there is a steep drop off at 5 hours in, then have some way in-game to place an optional survey in game for players after 4 hours of play. Have it be part of the account information. Hell, have a mysterious NPC appear 4, 10, 30, and 100 hours (just before drop offs occur) and come up with questions that determine whether you are achieving the goals you are setting out for that point in the game. Allow users to optiinally visit this every 200 playtime hours after that and continuously give feedback. Track their feedback over time. Make an effort to gather a maximum amount of feedback. Reward players with a relatively low value for responding, maybe 50 Cotos. I dunno, that's what I thought of off the top of my head. I'm not saying 'do this and win'. This could all be a bad idea. It's also something like what if rather see happening than Chris manually entering notes into a spreadsheet from reviews, email surveys that cost money to send out, or asking a small hand selected group of players what they think will fix things. Sorry to continue the derail.

 

In a F2P game then what you want is conversion.
That is you want the decision to be as easy as possible to make a purchase. Anything that prevents conversion should be considered bad for the bottom line.

So all of these things that make people less inclined to make a spontaneous purchase is bad given a freemium business model, like F2P. Bad. Period.

The heritage thingie is one of those things that make people hesitate and/or hinders a purchase.

Where if we look on good decisions made by Portalarium before, then one of the key moments was back during the pledging era when they added the ability to "melt down" a purchase into Store Credits.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/add-on-store-credit-conversion.9143/
That really lowered the threshold for folks and you could almost instantly see the effect on the revenue curve that @smack had running.
You could buy something, test it out in one release - and then if not satisfied, convert it to credit so you could purchase something else.

So I fully agree with the OP. Even if you get less than purchase value, most players would still do it rather than the hassle of player trading.

 

I think this is already the case.

 

The heritage idea is awful and I don't see ever purchasing any of those items. My wife and I have multiple properties and multiple accounts, and keep a specific "inventory" house which any of our avatars can go in and pull stuff out of to decorate various lots. The heritage idea utterly destroys our ability and flexibility to do things like this.

 

Addressing different responses:

Heritage doesn't take away your bank slots, but it does overflow your bank or inentory with something you can never be rid of, without taking the considerable psychological hit of destroying it.

For ease of implementation I still believe no trade COTOs, rather than a new currency.

For driving new sales I believe the same thing. It is never a bad thing for players to have a small amount of currency in their pocket, as it breaks the psychological barrier of "I have none, so I'm getting none". Now they have some, probably as low as 20 if they are just recycling the 5 extra patterns they didn't need. But now they have 20, maybe they should get more in order to buy that other thing.

The fear of causing a glut of no Trade COTOs: If that happens, it is working. It means the Supply of the items that Port is tired of competing against was just reduced by a great quantity, reduced to 1/5 or 1/10 their purchase price. Shelling out a few items in return for the massive draw down in competing inventory is a price well worth paying.

Finally, who doesn't like "Freeish" stuff? Or Recycling? Or buying things from their second hand "free money" sales? This is a positive emotional experience, and that is something that a business should want its customers to experience in their store, as it leads to future sales. This idea facilitates those good feels.

Heritage, quite obviously at this point, has facilitated a lot of bad feels. A few people don't care, and a bunch of people don't like it, and some are flat out engraged. So it is probably a bad idea, and ramming it through without seeing if there is an alternative might be a worse one.

 

I'm convinced this is a troll thread.

 

It's not. Competing with their customers seems to be a worry Port has. Their best idea was something that is getting massive rage pushback. I offered an alternative that I believe has many advantages.

 

Why not simply keep heritage items but allow them to be 'upgraded' to tradeable, similar to the quest lot deeds, for some amount? As long as said amount is reasonable, then it solves the problem. People can buy heritage stuff since its "cheaper" but if they want to sell/trade it they need to convert it. That seems like it would be the easiest solution - though begs the question, why have heritage at all then?

 

Your last sentence was my next one.