The devil in the details: What can go wrong with Freedom {and how to prevent it}

One of the side effects of Issue 20 - the help channel is already overwhelmed with noise. Trust me, the goldspam will go unnoticed between the 'LFT' and 'where is Porigrene (sic) Island' messages.

The same arguments were made when they added the trial account restrictions and it didn't drive people away from the game. Don't see it happening in the future.

Except for how Help will be used.

Post counts are meaningless.

Hell no. We put a stop to people using free trials to rob SG's blind. I for one don't want to return to those days.

Hanging out in any forum community shows that people care about their post count as part of their e-peen, and are willing to post stupid stuff to get it up. I'd rather avoid seeing stupid stuff instead of trying to teach others that post counts are meaningless.

I thought the inability to get promoted fixed that problem, but I don't know much about running SG's. Anyway, putting that as a restriction for free players should solve the problem, no?

The only time I see post count mentioned is when some snowflake can't stand that people aren't blowing sunshine up his/her backside and telling him/her that their post is the most intelligent thing since sliced bread.



No the inability to join SG's stopped people from using free trials to join SG's and raid them.

The ability to restrict storage access by rank limited the ability of paying players to join SG's and rip them off.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=646

Note that free players won't have access to that forum.



So my suggestion of not letting free players get promoted fixed the "rip them off" part of it.

Care to elaborate on the raid part? I'm not familiar with all the details of SG running.

1. Create a free account.
2. Join an SG, check to see if you have the ability to take things from storage. If you can't quit the SG and join another. If you can access the bins . . .
3. Wait until most if not all the SG members are offline then remove everything from storage and transfer it to another account, sell it at a vendor/market.
4. Quit the SG and abandon the free account, create a new free account and raid another SG.

You're not happy that you're only being given a certain amount of access for free? If your sub lapses, and you don't like the level of service you're still granted for free, then re-sub. Access to those channels is important, yes. That's why it helps make the monthly subscription price worth-while, over and above the premium member support.

Doesn't change the fact about when the only time post count gets mentioned.

So, new people teaming and enjoying themselves will drive away existing players? Those are some pretty lousy existing players.

There are at least 3 layers of protection for the SG there.

1. Don't invite strangers
2. Don't put valuables in the bins
3. Don't give new members access to the bins

Just how common was this, exactly?

And, given the fact that this change is happening, the trial accounts didn't have their desired effect. I certainly can't prove that the change in communication is what caused the trial accts to be ineffective at bringing in new people, but I certainly would not point to them as a success, given the fact that they didn't work.

Fixed. That limitation already exists for trial accounts, and the fix for the problem you're worried about is already in place.

Sorry, I'm going to take issue with this. Despite being a 7-year vet, when I take a new toon for a spin, I almost always do it using only the available powerset of that toon's archetype. I want to have a feel for how a powerset works and so I avoid the vet powers unless it's something like a team wipe otherwise. I have never had any trouble at all playing the low-level game either solo or teamed, and 90% of my game is solo. If anything, it's way easier than the old days and it whips by far too quickly.

TO's are not at all difficult to acquire as either drops or from the trainers. Honestly, I don't understand your complaint at all. You make it sound like a newbie hero/villain is completely helpless without vet powers and lots of enhancements, when that period of time is when you are really at your strongest relative to even-level cons. Sure, a newbie will have some trouble going up against a bunch of yellows or oranges, but so what? That's how it's supposed to be and that's how you learn the ropes, as well as learn the advantage of slotting enhancements. You level up so fast that those yellows aren't yellow for very long, anyway.

Honestly, I don't get this characterization of the low level game at all.

Regardless, though, it's a moot point. CoH:Freedom is introducing a NEW low level game that will replace the current low level game. That's what the whole business of the destruction in Galaxy City is all about. That's also, apparently, where you'll fight alongside the Back Alley Brawler and be introduced to signature hero battles and probably more besides.

Basically, you can't judge the low level Freedom game by the current low level game.

Please don't twist my words. I'm not happy that global channels are not included in the Premium account. That doesn't mean I'm unhappy about Freedom. It means that I want to express my feedback.

I really like that I will be able to play this game for free but I also dislike the fact that I will not be able to use Global Channels. Global Channels are NOT worth $15/month to me.

I agree with you but I don't agree Global Channels need to be tied to VIPs. It's ok if we disagree ya know.

Yes they did.

RMT chat spam dropped to next to nothing.

Base raiding by trial accounts stopped completely.

RMT Email Spam vanished.

RMTers stopped using Trial accounts to transfer billions of Inf between accounts

RMTers dtopped using trial accounts to farm high level PVP zones, trials, and TF's

RMTers were unable to use trial accounts to abuse AE exploits.

All glowing successes.

Unless you know the person in real life everyone in MMO's are strangers. So you are advocating not inviting anyone into SG's

Defeats the whole purpose of having storage bins in the first place. No one wants to store garbage.

Doesn't stop people who are established SG leaders with rank from creating a free account and stealing from the SG then pretending shock that the "new guy" robbed them.

SG's are about trusting the people you invite. Run an SG like a dictatorship that doesn't trust it's members and it will soon be a solo SG.

Common enough that the devs felt it was neccessary to put strict restrictions on trial accounts to put a stop to it.

Oh I'm sorry. A person you trust, not a stranger.


I thought that was what personal storage was for. Public bins are for things you don't find useful but someone else might.


If free players cannot be promoted to the level of stealing stuff, does it matter?

Where was I advocating running an SG like a dictatorship? I'm simply being realistic.
If you share your valuables with people you don't trust fully, don't cry foul when the valuables some day disappear.


At what cost?

Which goes right back to what I said. How do you knopw you can trust someone you've never met in real life?

If you are going to invite people to an SG you are going to have to trust them. If you don't you'll soon find yourself in a solo SG.

You thought wrong. The game has never had public bins. We always had the ability to restrict storage access. The problem was that we originally couldn't customize storage permissions per container. That made using the security a PITA to use.

If free members can't join SG's does it matter?

O.o

Sounds like a dictatorship to me.
1. Don't invite strangers - Edit: Accidentally pasted #2 twice.
2. Don't put valuables in the bins

Once again we are back to how you can't know if you can trust someone you have never met until you take a chance and trust them.

As far as I've seen none whatsoever. I have yet to see anyone on a trial account complain. If you have please provide the links to their threads.

The only complaints I've seen were made by people with active accounts proclaiming doom that never happened.

Not sure how that's being a dictator. In most SGs, only officers/leaders are given rights to the bins. That's called common sense.

There are different levels of trust, which depend on what you're willing to trust that person with. If you're willing to trust that person with your common IO's and salvage, you trust him a bit and you've probably found him a reasonable person in-game. If you're willing to trust that person with your rare salvage, you trust him a lot and he might be your close friend in-game. If you're willing to trust that person with your account or your rare/purple IO's, you REALLY trust him and he's likely someone you know IRL.



Did you intentionally avoid the point of what I said or is nitpicking semantics your pet peeve? You have storage which can be accessed by other people than you. Not exactly public. Fine.

But you also have storage which can only be accessed by you, through the personal vault and Wentworth's across multiple alts. Why don't you store your valuables there?


Of course it does. Embracing someone into your community, letting him chat with everyone else in your community, easily making him accesible to teams and giving him access to a base. Almost all of those are vital things to the new player experience of CoH.


How is that dictatorship? You keep the valuable things close to you, and you don't lose them. That's common sense.


I've seen multiple people state that they wanted their friends to subscribe to the game, but their friends found the chat limitations off-putting, couldn't get integrated into the community, and they didn't subscribe. No SG access is definitely a bad thing if you want to integrate new players into the community.

Even with the in-game LFG system, many established people on CoH find blind invites offensive as a matter of course.

Too bad that blind invites are the only thing trial (free) players can do. I don't see them having a lot of luck getting teams as the system is currently presented, and CoHF is unique among games that use the proposed model in locking out /tell to free players. They can use /hc, of course, but on most servers, people will at best tell you it's not the proper use of the channel and point you to a server global (which trials and free players can't use) and at worst flame you.

It also didn't seem to bring anyone to the game on those trials.

Agreed. (Only quoted you to emphasize the below response.)

You have correctly described all the ways in which the restrictions on trial accounts prevented trial account users from disrupting the game experience of paid users. However, you're missing the point that the restrictions on trial accounts also very likely minimized the success of the trial accounts' intended purpose, namely, bringing in new players to CoH. Point of fact: the introduction of the trial accounts made no visible change in the trend of CoH's subscription numbers (slowly but steadily downward since the launch of CoV).

I love CoH, have been playing it for 5 years, but I have to say that I wouldn't join it based on what trial accounts offer.

Perhaps this is because they can't talk.

Hey Thanks for pointing I pasted #2 twice instead of 1 & 2. Fixing that now.

Wrong.

Until the game goes F2P there has been nothing preventing trial users from posting on the forums. Many have posted asking various questions and gotten answers from our friendly community.

So please post links to the threads where they have complaind on the forums about the trial account restrictions. I can't remember seeing any and would appreciate seeing them if I missed them.