Contradictory Info on Premium Access to Incarnates

Isn't that how they arbitrarily compel subscribers from unsubbing now, by arbitrarily deciding that they can't access the game if they stop paying money?

There's two aspects to this. The first is that Premium players will not have the same amount of access that VIPs do, at least not without paying for it (and even then, there will be things Premium players can't even buy, like access to the VIP server). There is no issue of fairness here: Premium players are a fancy way of saying "people who don't pay a subscription." People who do not pay for a subscription every month will have less access. That's not some strange arbitrary decision. That's deliberately baked into the design of Freedom: subs get the best value. Not only do subs get the best value, that fact is supposed to be dead bang obvious: its not supposed to take a pocket calculator to figure that out. If you sub, you get the best value. If you don't, you won't. You'll get a lot, and Freedom will try to give you enough to experience a good enough chunk of the game to be itself a complete experience also. But frankly and bluntly, the devs really don't care if a Premium customer thinks its unfair they get less than a VIP subscriber.


The other aspect to this which is at least more credible is that when the devs said "you keep what you bought" that was in itself a potentially confusing statement to make in isolation. I can understand that to a degree: the notion that we never actually bought *access* rights, only *account unlocks* is in my opinion obvious but also novel because its never been a significant distinction in the past. But Freedom takes access rights and breaks them up - in the same way it will unbundle unlocks from booster packs and let someone buy them ala carte, it will *also* unbundle access rights and allow players to access some, but not all of the game.

We've always spackled over this distinction between unlock and access. We buy a costume part with a booster pack but we can only use it if we have access to Icon. We do for new characters automatically. But we don't for existing characters unless they have empty costume slots or you are high enough level to unlock the icon contacts. We can "buy" the incarnate system but we can't use it unless we have characters that are level 50. There has always been a distinction between whether our accounts were theoretically unlocked for something and whether we could actually see the thing in actual play. Freedom expands on this greatly, because it adds a whole section of the game that eliminates the prerequisite of subscription. Or rather, the gate that currently exists that requires players to have a subscription just to log in disappears with Freedom. But in its place are new gates *within the game* that gate access to specific pieces of the game.

Players should expect that if they stop subscribing now, they stop being able to log in. I think most do. But they should also expect that when they stop subscribing in Freedom, while they will then still be able to log in, access to many parts of the game will be gated. And virtually all month to month, day to day access to the game is something no player has actually *bought* and *owns*. So it is all theoretically revokable when the player stop subscribing.

Perhaps arbitrary is not a good enough word to use to refer to something determined by individual (Parago Studios) preference.

I actually agree those limitations are "baked" into the design of freedom that's why i said further down from what you quoted about "things the devs can use to compel current subscribers from unsubbing to premium once freedom hits".

It is a disincentive to unsub to premium.

But if we're comparing content access when logging into the game pre-freedom with post-freedom, then use the scenario that fits best (reactivation weekends).

From that perspective paying and non-paying players can log into the game but the non-paying don't lose any content access. Post-freedom, non-paying accounts do.

And which of those f2p restricted content goes to the cash shop and which is permanently cut off from f2p accounts is determined by Paragon Studios because if they wanted to, they could just set every content as a cash shop purchase and that is a technical possibility since if a premium paid for every content, then that is fully equivalent to a reactivated account during reactivation promos where they don't pay a sub but still have access to everything.

And that's part of where the disconnect is. The other part is as you said, from what the devs said about not losing things you "bought" can muddle the situation.

I understand why the devs are choosing certain limitations on f2p accounts.

The freedom mtx revenue is largely an unknown and they don't want to lose current subscription revenue to it. Maybe when they know mtx revenue can solely support the game, perhaps it might change then, but that's a long way off.

Except that isn't really close to being related. A reactivation weekend is a temporary reactivation of a subscription, not free to play access. Its giving you a couple of days of a sub. A trial account is the closest match to non-VIP Freedom access, and the precedent has been strongly set that people who don't pay for access can have that access limited even past the login screen, and those limitations are subject to what impacts the rest of the game the least, not what benefits them the most.


As to whether the decision is just a matter of personal preference, that gets into the subject of how MMO studios, and Paragon Studios in particular, collectively makes decisions, which is a very long topic. But the abbreviated version is: at PS most decisions are made collectively and collaboratively, not individually. Every design decision we see generally went through many hands, many desks, many meetings, and represents a compromise between many different points of view within the studio. Deliberately changing those decisions outside that process is possible, but doesn't happen often. There are people with the *power* to simply move where the lines are drawn, what's VIP only, what's premium, what can be bought and what can't be. But in practice they generally don't, and what we see is a compromise collective decision that cannot just be altered randomly without invalidating a lot of developer's input into the process.

So when you say they could do whatever they want, that's sort of true, but not in a way that allows you to say they could just change their minds. Its not true that anything was or is possible. Change one thing over here, and you would have changed many other things over there, as people altered their positions to match, and the decisions of the studio changed as a result.

Not really. Trial accounts won't have any established characters or alts that could have a 50 with incarnate abilities or slots that were previously purchased or boxed account serials attached to it, unless that trial account was previously played/upgraded, lapsed then "reactivated", then that would be closer but that still makes it a reactivated account.

Of course we won't have an absolutely exact scenario for comparison since the freedom scenario is new.

[EDIT]
Just to add, i do know what you mean with trial accounts. They do share some similarity to reactivated accounts in the sense that they both didn't pay a sub and they have limited play time (14 days or 2).

If it helps for the purpose of comparative discussion, we can consider trial accounts as the F2P tier and the reactivated accounts (during a promo) as the premium tier.
[/EDIT]

And i didn't mean to imply that devs should change things, that was an example of a possibility to illustrate that they actually chose it this way when trying to justify my use of the word arbitrary, but that's an aside by now.

Is the Ascension armor (and other rewards from astral and empyrean merits) considered incarnate content? I would assume not, given you unlock it with merits, but would that become a greyed out costume option if someone gained access to GR and Incarnates through the freedom model (not outright buying GR) and then went premium?

(grabs dead horse to kick it one more time)

The Incarnate system is not part of GR.

Just need Going Rogue to access it, I don't know how anyone could possibly confuse that?

The GR Box I have says nothing about the Incarnate System or the Morality System of Heroes and Villains.

<snerk>
"I think this game has screwed me out of $15. CALL MY LAWYER!"

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