Making CoX F2P: How would you do it?

Don't ever try to tell me what to do or say. Especially on an Internet bulletin board.

And good work on responding to the point of the post.
That there's no way to guarantee that F2P'ers will actually spend money on anything. Or more specifically, on anything BUT "essentials".

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Darn I was hoping for some more jargon that you don't actually understand how to use

Oh well, maybe your next post will be better?
You didn't answer any of the questions I asked you either, i'm honestly curious if you are perceiving this in an entirely different way than reality dictates.

Really? Because I'm seeing repeat posters from the opposite side of that stance in here just countering suggestions and not offering anything on the "how would you do it" topic.
As with all threads, it all depends on who you focus on and/or respond to.

So, again, again... You've said the suggestions have been too restrictive. How would you get those non-customers to become F2P participators and continue to pull in equal or greater money?

EDIT: Sneaky Voodoo!!

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I'd actually go further.

Have to pay a one-time fee for access to a large number of powersets. Most powersets would be gated behind "Pay for" access. Each AT would only have 2-4ish powersets available for Free2Players. They have to pay for others
Have to pay for > 40 content .
Have to pay for a large number of the cossie options. Cossies are nowadays conveniently grouped together as outfits so you could decide how many are initially available and how many are pay for.
Have to pay individually for access to the RWZ, Ouro, Midnighters & Cim.
Have to pay for access to the IO system and Wentworths.
Have to pay for access to the MA.

Edit : I forgot one : Have to pay for access to the forums, with maybe an exception for a specific Free 2 play Questions board ("You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious").

However having said all of this I'm not sure NCSoft / Paragon Studios could do the legwork needed to set-up and adminstrate to this fine a level in this game.

Hypothetically speaking:

Q1. Why buy more slots if you can just create more free accounts?
A1. City of Heroes currently, and probably moreso in a hypothetical F2P model, would have account unlockables. Having multiple accounts means more effort to unlock in-game unlockables and having to spend more money to unlock purchasable unlocks.

Q2. What about booster packs?
A2. Booster packs in their current form would almost certainly not escape unscathed in any hypothetical F2P conversion. F2P requires the convenience of an in-game store, and generally requires much more ala carte granularity. Ergo, Booster Packs would become at best a legacy item, replaced with whatever the new ala carte in-game store had to offer.

Q3. What about PvP?
A3. As a general principle, F2P players should not be barred from participating in content you have an explicit interest in encouraging. If the devs wanted to encourage more participation in PvP to revitalize PvP, they would not likely require F2P players to purchase an unlock for it.

Q4. What about Pocket D
A4. Pocket D lies in the general realm of nice to have but not critical to have, with a few noteworthy exceptions. Its probably the sort of service likely to be awarded either through some form of activity unlock or purchasable unlock or both.

Q5. What about Architect/Fort Trident/Crucible/Market?
A5. As a general principle, F2P players should not gain immediate access to problematic services including the markets and the architect. They should be unlockable through purchase though, in nearly all cases.

Q6. What about Incarnates/end game?
A6. Good question. I'm of the opinion that the end game should be at least time gated if not purchase gated. Meaning: no matter how fast a PLer you are, you can't simply jump into the end game in the first week of play. I would think you would either need to purchase an unlock for this, or unlock it through some form of in-game activity which cannot be trivially performed in a short period of time.

That's probably problematic for a number of reasons. It hampers a primary selling point of the game which is customization of characters. Crippling that to just a small fraction of the powersets would be harsh: many powersets serve simultaneously as mechanical differentiators and conceptual touchstones. Blasters for example have weapon sets (AR, Dual Pistols, Archery) and projectile variations (Ice, Fire, Energy, Electrical). It would be very hard to pick two to four to represent the set.

Also, this would funnel all the F2P players into a much tighter set of "flavors." Suppose you're one of the Fire/Fire blaster subscribers out there and you discover 30% of all F2P blasters are Fire/Fire because the devs forced them all to be. Not so good.

I could see designating certain powersets as being special and unlockable - Stone Armor, for example, or Demon Summoning. But they would be the exception not the rule. And I'd be more inclined to introduce new powersets for this purpose rather than restrict most of the pre-existing ones.

The last problematic issue is that by taking powersets away, you are intrinsically reducing impulse shopping opportunities. If AR is locked, you lose a significant amount of the potential to sell unlockable rifles. If War Mace is locked, you lose a significant amount of the potential to sell unlockable maces. You don't want to lock the impulse shopping stands in a part of the store the shoppers don't get to see. You need to give the players X, and hope they accessorize with Y.

Aye, I was thinking about this aspect of it last night myself and the swarms of Claws/Regen scrappers all called l0g4NN which would overwhelm the servers.

Certainly I'd make it so that, for example, only F2P Defenders and Corrupters could be Kinetics, for Controllers you have to pay to gain access to the set. Like you said make it so certain sets are special and need to be purchased separately.

EATs would obviously also fall into that bracket, or might be soley a Subscriber only feature.

Demon Summoning would be part of the GR pack, I'm not sure I'd allow it to be purchasable by any other method, I'm assuming GR would be kept as a distinct package as it is now (although splitting it up and selling components of it for 10-15 dollars apiece might earn you more cash).

I don't believe that it is an impossibility to design a worthwhile F2P system at all.

However, I DO believe it is an impossibility for THIS game.

The only time I've ever seen a F2P business model adopted after starting as a subscription based model it was a last ditch effort to save the game. Making SOME money is better than shutting down.

The perception that going F2P means the game is going under is a very real problem, especially if the game was successful as a subscription based game for a long time. Just like server merges, it creates the impression that the game could not survive any other way. CoH going F2P after 7 years of being successful with subscriptions would very much create the impression that the game is on life-support.

I don't know about you, but I would be very unlikely to spend money on a game I see as being on the way out. I can't imagine too many other people out there would feel differently about it.

It's not blind rejection, at least not on my part. I'm very well aware of what I'm saying.

If CoH goes F2P at this point in it's history, it WILL be seen by the online community as being an indication that the game is going under. Especially with the recent events occurring with our competition being fresh in people's minds. They see one game that went F2P after trying subscriptions fail miserably, the are going to assume that the same thing is happening here. You're not going to convince an internet community that what they saw in one case isn't the same thing they are seeing in another, especially when they have no reason to believe otherwise.

A lot of people who currently play rarely would go free to play because it would be cheaper. Especially if you let former subscription players keep all the stuff they unlocked already, because it wouldn't be fair to say "Okay, thanks for subscribing for so long, now if you want to play for free....you need to pay us to unlock all the stuff you've been playing with for years already."

That would be a good number of F2P players who would not be spending money unlocking stuff because they already had it.

From my viewpoint, the potential negatives of going F2P outweigh the potential positives by a wide margin. It is MUCH safer to continue the current business model and continue making a modest profit than it is to switch to a F2P model and suddenly find yourself in a succeed or fail situation. Because once you switch to a F2P model there is no going back to a subscription model. If F2P fails miserably and the game dies, there won't be anything they can do to save it.

So, from my perspective, it looks like this:

Subscription based: steady modest profits.
F2P based: potential greater profits, but also potential complete failure and game shutdown.

If I were the devs, I would not risk the very existence of the game on the potential to make more money. If there's no guarantee that it would be more profitable (and there isn't), they shouldn't risk losing everything.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

And it is this pov that I think could be avoided by calling it an unlimited trial and setting up F2P servers. It sends a different message to the public. A game in trouble doesn't expand and add more servers.

It will only be seen that way by the portions of the community that would see it as such. The same ones that see 'DOOM' written in the clouds passing by over head, or in the laughter of a newborn, or every time a new patch comes out.

I dont think he's talking about the current CoH community, but the more general community of MMO interested people out there. And I'm inclined to agree with him, based on my wanderings in other generic MMO sites. Consolidating servers and subscription games going F2P are generally regarded as the proverbial canary in the coal mine developing a serious cough.

Of course there are people that don't see it that way, but that's been the majority view ( accurate or not, it's the perception that exists) in pretty much every case.

There's a also a majority perception that F2P MMO's are the way of the future and can engender and create thriving robust communities. It's just a matter of how it's done.

Which is why I was specific in mentioning "subscription games going F2P". Games that start life as F2P are a completely different animal.

Cryptic's demise(dismissal by Atari) reaffirms that F2P is a different class than paid subscriptions.

It's not that subscription MMO's can't transition to F2P (and it has been done successfully,) it's just has to be done delicately.

But again, this thread isn't about that. This thread is about what sort of F2P model you would build for CoH if it went F2P, not should it, or will the game fail if it does or, DOOOOOOM.

If that's how you see it, doesn't make it true. They could have been dismissed for a variety of reasons. I think the one game they were running was quite poor and unappealing out of the gate. Just to remind you of a fact: they were losing millions of dollars before going F2P Just to remind you. Do you need that in triplicate?

If set up that way from the start? Sure.
Retrofitting a years-old sub-based MMO to now be F2P? Uh. No.
While there are one or two retrofits that did it and had modest success, there are several spectacular failures.

And on the internet, everyone remembers the stripper. The failures far overshadow the successes.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

And I also didn't say it couldn't be done, or that it hasn't succeded in other situations. I said it's *perceived* as a sign of a game ending among the general MMO populace.

Personally, I think the fact that Turbines first attempt (the non-hobbity one) at it is working out is due to it being setup, from it's original launch, in a very F2P-friendly manner; I think they may have been considering F2P all along. Which is kind of meta, in a way.
The PnP version of the game had all kinds of supplements and adventure packs that you'd buy separately too, so it's just them being true to their source on multiple levels

[citation needed]

Oh? I need to citate (since I'm "pro-F2P" in this discussion) but those who are "anti-F2P' don't? Really?

Let me throw some "citations needed" out here for you:

[CITATION NEEDED]

[CITATION NEEDED]

[CITATION NEEDED]

[CITATION NEEDED]

[CITATION NEEDED]



If that's the game you want to play, where, since you don't agree with me I need to provide citations for my statements - you can play that game alone.

What hasn't been happening is any constructive dialogue going on (here and there) - and yes, I've been a bit stubborn.

We can pretend to state opinions as fact and hold them as truth, or, when we offer them up we can choose to present them as opinions or general understandings

*Honestly, spend an hour in Atlas Park on a Saturday and you'll see that we (the playerbase, in general) are quite the opposite.

That game was losing money hand over fist using a subscription model... does that mean subscription models don't work?

A more interesting examination (and I don't have the information on hand) would be looking at games that have done things like:
-Been successful subscription and then gone F2P only to fail
-Been successful subscription and then gone F2P and continued being successful
-Subscription failure to F2P failure
-Subscription failure to F2P success

Or
Visa versa where they started as F2P and switched to a sub based model.

Pointing at the example you just did doesn't help your case at all because my understanding is they were "less" of a failure using F2P than they were using subscription. At the end of the day failing is failing, but...

This is due in no small part to how it is presented from the top down. I think it was Arcana who made mention of the importance of the company essentially celebrating the change rather than just trying to slip it in.

It essentially requires a heap of fanfare and a relaunch of the product from a consumer point of view. Add a bunch of new content and make it an exciting thing. Just switching to f2p and only having that to talk about is asking to fail and have the internet deem you as being on life support.

As an example it was often cited as evidence that GR would not have been made if PS was bleeding as many subs and barely making money like a lot/some people kept saying (basically every quarterly statement). That is probably true. The same can be said if you (re)launch big when you go f2p. The game can't possibly be on its last legs if you just added a whole new world/faction/ or whatever.

Its not like Atari actually released numbers capable of determining whether Cryptic's shipping titles were incrementally profitable, and whether the net losses were due to internal development of new titles.

Oh, wait.

Random postings in MMO bulletin boards are the *last* place I would go to take the pulse of the MMO gaming community at large. I mean literally the last place, after cemeteries and stadium rest rooms.