MrDead

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

But if you budget wisely, you can get the whole pack and not pay a dime outside of your usual $15/mo subscription. How is this bad?

Originally Posted by Psyte

Chad showed the math, actually. $15 for what we'd get for a booster pack. It can work out to be $10 for a VIP if they haven't spent their 400 point stipend, or can be "free" if bought piecemeal over three months using the stipend. I believe the objection is the full bundle (costumes bits, temp power and emotes) should be $10 without the stipend, or as low as $5 with the stipend.

Thus sort of reminds me of a longstanding argument against boosters; we should be getting all that in our subscription, not bought extra, so we're arguably getting less for the same amount of money or paying more ($10 a pop) more than before to get the same amount of stuff.

My view is different as are my expectations, so that's all I'm willing to venture o guessing. But, regardless of you agreeing or disagreeing, its important that the devs see these comments and feedback! I've always prided myself as a COH player because the development team and community reps at least listened to player concerns, so we should reflect that by not discouraging other views we dislike.

I'm being idealistic here, but that, I feel, is only fitting. Sorry for the times I don't measure up to that.

Originally Posted by White Hot Flash

Because you're not paying more for the same thing. You're paying to get more things for the same price you've been paying every month. You're also not wasting real money on parts of Booster packs that you either don't need or don't like. Everyone that's ever bought a booster just for one costume, or one power, or a couple of emotes, and could take or leave the rest of it, should be ecstatic about this model.

Pessimism and looking for conspiracies won't serve you well in the long run. Everyone who thinks the boogeyman is out there will eventually find one, usually after making one up just to be right, or making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Originally Posted by Thany144

Can someone explain to me how it became evil to make money? Did I wake up in fhe soviet union this morning?

Originally Posted by Psyte

Or less, or about the same.

I think we've now discussed, or at least touched on the two possible extremes of this model.

Originally Posted by Psyte

As its been if you wanted one or two things from a booster you would be paying $10 for very little. How is that any better?

On top of that? Those prices aren't finalized yet, are they?

Originally Posted by Psyte

To be honest? No, its pretty obvious they're trying to make more money. They are giving themselves more ways to make money off of subscribers, they're attempting to recapture former players and make money off of the, and bring in new players to profit from. I've been an armchair game industry analyst fir years now and its obvious not only to me but pretty much everyone else.

Now, that being said, they don't have to screw us to make more money with this approach. Making money and screwing the customer are not the same.

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

Bah, beaten to the punch by Arcanaville. Curse my being at work.

Originally Posted by ShadowsBetween

Standard Coding Rant, or something similar. IE, saying "it would be easy to code this" is usually about as true as saying "to make a fusion generator, you just need to get some hydrogen and make it really hot."

Originally Posted by Psyte

¿SCR?

MrDead - I would suggest actually writing out a draft and maybe PMing it. Keep in mind the devs and management likely have poured over details of other F2P titles you have available, plus likely have studies, projections and more data plus goals (break even , successful, wildly successful) that you don't. They likely have other considerations, maybe even consultations, in various matters including this.

Keep in mind this is not final, and can, if not will, change by i21s launch and will evolve past then too. It might be a consideration, might have some dev support, but regardless its not yet announced as being an absolute yes or no... So don't rule it out, but do t count on it either. Just because other (but not all!) hybrids do it doesn't mean Paragon would or should.

Originally Posted by Void_Huntress

In order to be able to usefully offer us points for in-game accomplishments, there would need to be a notably different set of structures in place.

In both of Turbine's MMOs, there are some fairly notable distinctions that have to be noted. One of them is a more standard model MMO, which has significantly different gating rules than CoX does. The other, which is closer to CoX in playstyle (and the way you can roll over content in groups), already had a mechanism in place to which point progress could be tied.

The closest analog we have to that MMO's particular standing mechanism is badges, and attaching money to badges is a level of insanity I don't think I'm comfortable attributing to any of the current CoX devs.

Originally Posted by Hansha

This may have already been covered or this may be the wrong place to ask, but how will rewards earned as a VIP player transfer if you change to a free account? For example: I have a subscription now which will become a VIP account. if 3 months after CoH Freedom comes out I change to a free account, will I lose access to ATs, Powersets, or other content I had access to as a VIP and as a subscribing player? If I switch from a VIP account to a free account, but two patches have been released since CoH Freedom was released, do I loose content from those patches and have to buy it again? If someone starts with a free account, then becomes a VIP, then goes back to a free account, do they get to keep access to features released in patches from when they were a VIP, but not released before they were a VIP? Do people becoming VIPs after starting with free accounts get access to content that pre-dates CoH Freedom, and then loose it again when if they switch to free accounts?

*takes a deep breath*

Also, is it possible to upgrade a VIP account in preparation for it becoming a free account? Let's say I have a fantastic job which is paying me boat loads of money, but I'm afraid that at some point I won't have that fantastic job and won't be able to pay for a VIP account. Can I start buying access to ATs, powersets, mission content, and costume items that I currently have access to as a VIP player and then have them already unlocked for me once I switch to a free account for the first time without paying for them again? How many slots can we unlock for our free accounts? Do slots we unlocked during previous systems exceed that number? Do slots we got as veteran rewards exceed the maximum number of slots we can have on free accounts through slot purchase?

What is the secret to life, the universe, and everything?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I don't really have to convince you. You have to convince the devs. Good luck with that. If it happens, it will have to be essentially insignificant. And insignificant is basically pointless.

Also, I rather doubt its likely you've played this MMO significantly longer than I have. You might have played more F2P ones than I have, although I have played all the major western ones that have converted to F2P including the Turbine ones since their early betas.

Originally Posted by MajorPrankster

Starting with such a closed minded view of the situation is not really going to help your case, IMO.

While your idea has merits, it does have flaws even if you choose not to see them.

Since you have arbitrarily decided there is no counter argument, then by all means, continue to put forth your brilliant idea and I am sure the developers will thank you later.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

If your point is that there has to be a level of Paragon Point award that is so low it cannot possibly be balance-significant, if you like I can ask the devs if they would be willing to give you 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001 Paragon Points for every successful completion of Dr. Quarterfield.

Originally Posted by MajorPrankster

Obviously, you are determined to somehow make this seem logical and implementable.

Good luck with that.

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

Small nitpick -- it's actually "whet" your appetite, which means "to sharpen."

It doesn't help the above phrasing that when you drink, you "wet your whistle."

Damn you, inventors of popular English sayings!!!

Originally Posted by MajorPrankster

Written a lot of MMO code have ya?

While I see where you are coming form with this and I can even see a few places where some 'earned' points now and then might make some sense, it is simply too exploitable.

For example, let's take an RMT spammer. The account gets played 24/7 by slave labor. It earns enough free points in the first few hours to be able to use those points to gain access to global/broadcast channels and POOF! we have a new RMT spambot.

While I can see Paragon, possibly, someday, maybe adding a way to earn points, I doubt it will be anytime soon.

Originally Posted by CodeJunkie

This. Basically the entire game would have to rebalanced to take much longer to progress so as to not allow such an allowance for free players to be exploited.

Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man

The ITF can be done in under 20 minutes by people who really want to, and the "AE Baby" fiasco didn't supplant anything you could buy with real money*--powerlevelling to 50 didn't get you access to the Magic Booster.

I see where you're coming from, but I'm siding with Arcanaville on this one... it really doesn't make sense given the pace of this game.

*Well, nothing you could pay Paragon Studios for, anyway. It did put a dent in unlicensed RMTers' wallets, so I guess it's got that going for it...

Originally Posted by Texas Justice

No thanks. I don't like mixing Snickers and popcorn.

Originally Posted by CodeJunkie

*Does the same.*

I started debating this, but Arcanaville has much more stamina when it comes to debating things like this.

Originally Posted by Texas Justice

*pops a bag of popcorn*

*props feet up on the couch*

*sits back to enjoy the show*

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I can't imagine why this would be remotely a good idea. And I know other games do it. But I'll be 100% frank here: our idea of "balance" in City of Heroes would be laughable bordering on embarrassing everywhere else in the industry. We allow performance ranges that would get people fired and games terminated, because we feel its the price to pay to have the levels of power we want to be able to represent in a superhero game.

Allowing people to earn the functional equivalent of money in this game for doing content would mean, no question, no option, and no discussion, levels of game rebalancing that would be draconian to players familiar with this game. As far as I'm concerned, debating this point is like debating the color of the sky.