Not a pure fan of F2P

I'm looking at this as if I keep paying my monthly sub, NOTHING really changes for me and, in fact, I'll start getting more perks than I do under the current Veteran Rewards system. And if something happens where I run into a rough spot that forces me to stop paying a sub... I can still play the game... whereas under the current setup I could not.

I know some have been talking on the boards. The post of "what do you think it will take to make CoX F2P was probably started by someone who got beta access.

I think you can add me to the list of people who see this as a good thing and are honestly puzzled by 'moral stand' opposition to it. Best I can tell, what was meant by this was some players (perhaps? this is rather unclear) upset at the somewhat grindy nature of Incarnate rewards and/or the perceived upswing of activity on the smaller population servers that going f2p is likely to bring.

Well, to the former, I say "it is endgame content in an MMO, of course it is grindy". Unlike some other MMOs I could name, you do not need to have the latest and greatest Incarnate content in order to play the game. This seems a fair compromise to give those clamoring for endgame something to do while not shutting out those without the time or the inclination to engage in it. I am actually impressed with how well they implemented it so far and how quickly they expanded the selections for Lore. As someone with very limited playtime myself I can empathize with those that complain about the grind, but it is what it is and it isn't that bad.

Secondly, the issue of liking the community and character of the smaller population servers and the concern about them 'becoming Freedom Server' or similar seems unreasonable to me. Yes, we will likely see an upswing of population across the board with the f2p crowd but it will likely follow the current distribution just as the players now do - so relatively speaking, little will change. Freedom will still be the big pop server, but across the board we'll have more new blood - hard to see that as a negative. For those who want them kids to stay off their lawn, there's always the newly created VIP server where you won't have to deal with any f2p people. If it's that big a 'moral issue', then one could always stage an exodus there or quit entirely, though I can't help but see that as an overreaction.

This has all been a response to my best guess as to what Madadh was referencing - as with others upthread, it is not entirely clear to me what the complaint here really is, but those are my thoughts. YMMV.

I'm not thrilled about it either. But since there is nothing I can do about it, and it would be a waste of time to sit around complaining, I'll see how it plays out before I decide whether they will continue getting my money.

What I'm more annoyed about is that Going Rogue is now going to be included in the cost of a regular subscription. It's not that it's going to be free, that part doesn't bother me.

If you look at the FAQ about CoH:Freedom, it explicitly states that they have been planning this move for "well over a year", which means that the devs knew very well that GR would be free, and knew roughly when it would be free, at the same time they were charging us $30 for it. Makes me feel a little taken advantage of. I'd almost go so far as to say it makes me feel like I've been ripped off. They KNEW it would be free, and knew WHEN it would be free, and charged me for it anyway. Things like that annoy me a little bit, seems like a bit of a bait and switch. The whole "Hey, this thing will be free eventually, let's try and squeeze some money out of people and not TELL them they will get it for free if they wait long enough."

And no, CoV isn't quite the same thing. I had no problem paying for that because it was designed and marketed as a separate game. Going Rogue was an expansion that required the existing game. If they knew it was going to be given away with CoH:Freedom, why bother charging us for it in the first place?

It's the apparent shift in the company's stance that concerns me more than anything else. We no longer seem to be valued players, we're just an income source now. I understand that's all we ever really were, but there doesn't seem to be much pretense of us being anything else anymore.

No one who can look back at the history of CoH/CoV should be surprised that Going Rogue would eventually drop in price and at some point become free. The same thing happened with City of Villains. I paid for it when it came out. Now red side and blue side are one entity, no extra purchase required. Was I ripped off? Or did I pay for the privilege to play villains for over a year before those who ignored CoV until it was rolled into a package with CoH?

I know that eventually "Captain America" will air on free TV, but that doesn't mean I won't hand over ten bucks to see it at a theater without feeling the least bit "cheated." Ther's always a cost associated with "now" vs "later."

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect I'm not thrilled about it either. But since there is nothing I can do about it, and it would be a waste of time to sit around complaining, I'll see how it plays out before I decide whether they will continue getting my money. What I'm more annoyed about is that Going Rogue is now going to be included in the cost of a regular subscription. It's not that it's going to be free, that part doesn't bother me. If you look at the FAQ about CoH:Freedom, it explicitly states that they have been planning this move for "well over a year", which means that the devs knew very well that GR would be free, and knew roughly when it would be free, at the same time they were charging us $30 for it. Makes me feel a little taken advantage of. I'd almost go so far as to say it makes me feel like I've been ripped off. They KNEW it would be free, and knew WHEN it would be free, and charged me for it anyway. Things like that annoy me a little bit, seems like a bit of a bait and switch. The whole "Hey, this thing will be free eventually, let's try and squeeze some money out of people and not TELL them they will get it for free if they wait long enough." And no, CoV isn't quite the same thing. I had no problem paying for that because it was designed and marketed as a separate game. Going Rogue was an expansion that required the existing game. If they knew it was going to be given away with CoH:Freedom, why bother charging us for it in the first place? It's the apparent shift in the company's stance that concerns me more than anything else. We no longer seem to be valued players, we're just an income source now. I understand that's all we ever really were, but there doesn't seem to be much pretense of us being anything else anymore.

And it's actually even less than that if you pay annually, as I think most veteran players do at this point, though I can see how a newcomer might not want to commit to that great a span of time before they know how well they like the game.

I think for many people reluctant to pay it's not so much the money itself, since this game compared to other forms of entertainment is extremely cost-effective, but rather an ongoing paradigm shift in the minds of gamers themselves - there are still significant pockets of resistance to the basic concepts behind MMOs and DLC-type content.

In other words, we still have gamers who expect to pay a single sum once and have a complete game which they can enjoy without spending any further money. While this model does still work for many games, MMOs and to an extent other games designed around having ongoing expansions/DLC use a different model with evolving content over time and this evolving content requires development time which in turn requires continued investment on the part of the player in some form. However, players (some of them, at any rate) see this as a 'ripoff' or an incomplete game, as something that should have been included in their original purchase price because "I already bought the game, why should I have to buy it again?"

The fact that the initial purchase for most MMOs is trivial as well, particularly if you aren't coming in right after any major expansions (you could pick up GvE for $10 or less and I'm sure the same will be true of GR somewhere in the not too distant future), is often ignored because the argument isn't framed in terms of how much the player is paying/has paid but rather on the idea that the player shouldn't have to pay any more, period, unreasonable as that is in this context.

While this perspective does essentially miss the point of the MMO model since it is unavoidable that some kind of revenue stream (be that advertisements on free games, micro-transactions, subscriptions or some hybrid of the above) continues to the development team in order to produce timely new content, it becomes another example of customers wanting to have their cake and eat it too - to have all the benefits of evolving content without having to subsidize that content beyond their initial purchase.

A hybrid model, hopefully, allows players to sample the benefits they can get and encourages them to pay for what they want when in a strict subscription model they would probably pass altogether. So again, I see it as a good thing and potentially something that may help some people change their perspective.