Freedom? Hardly

Regarding IO's and bait and switch,

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Originally Posted by joshdex It seems pretty up front about telling them "No Incarnate enhancements, and you're limited in how many characters you can unlock up front." "Much weaker?" How many former players are that hopped up on Incarnate content so far? Have they really been around long enough to treat them as being as critical as you imply? It seems pretty universally agreed most of the game is based around fully slotted SO's. The checklist is on the issue overview. It's pretty easy to find and they seem pretty forthcoming with the limitations. J/ Wilde

I think incarnate content will not affect most returning players, it's just too new. IO's on the other hand are old, and while the game is fully playable with SO's, IO's are simply disabled, equaling no enhancement at all, so you'll come back to a character that might do a third of the damage or less (due to lower damage, accuracy, etc.) if it was heavily slotted with IO's. That's serious gimping.

(If IO's were replaced with SO's as some people suggested, the drop would probably be to just 70% instead of 20-30% for a high level heavily IO'ed character. It would be hard to do that right, considering the many IO's that enhance more than one attribute, but it would be something. My suggestion always was to just leave IO's as is and simply not allow slotting them. It'd IMO be just as effective or more so in getting money and less bug prone.)

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville What are we baiting them with, and what are we switching it for? This accusation is getting old: we are "baiting" previous subscribers with an offer to return to the game without paying anything at all, and get limited access to the game.

The post you responded to explained that, and you're ignoring the details to make what you say sound true. As I said earlier, if Paragon let players come back with no access to their old characters, there would have been no problem. SOE did this with EQ2X, and me and others came back because we wanted to play again in that world. What Paragon is dangling in front of players is the ability to go back to play their old characters for free. Sure it's with limitations, but people only expect the limitations they're told about.

Unless Paragon puts "IO's = nothing", "IO'ed character = gimped" etc. in big bold letters on multiple places on the website (it's not mentioned now at all) then people will fully expect to be able to play their old characters. Those with IO's but no tier 7 rewards, which should be a significant percentage of returning players, will come back and find that if they want to continue to play their characters as they were they'd have to pay a subscription; not a one time purchase, not unlocks, but a monthly sum, for as long as they want to play these characters in the form they left them in (or until they spend a large enough sum of money to get to tier 7).

I never claimed it's the end of the universe. I'm not saying it'd drive out all returning players or even most of them. But it is a form of bait and switch, or something very close to it. Players would implicitly expect that after they cross any known barriers (buying AT's and character slots if necessary) they'd have access to playable characters. That's the bait. Then they discover they have to pay more. That's the switch.

considering I'm letting my account lapse after Freedom hits and use both of my accounts, that's not the issue.

the side-by-side table provides what I need to know when I drop to Premium.

Limited access to market/IOs was my understanding, and expecting not all my IOs to be functional, but I'd still be far from gimped. Unless I missed something about IOs as a whole being disabled (attributes and bonuses) when they're already slotted.

Wow, the discussion keeps right on going even though Zwill affirmed "Hybrid Business Model" not Free-to-Play. This is why the devs gave out the Facepalm emote.

It is my understanding that IOs will be completely disabled for non-subscribers who have not taken steps to enable them. Frankly, I do find that somewhat problematic - not because the IOs themselves will be unusable, but because it is possible that a player will have to destroy IOs in order to slot functioning SOs. Asking a player to destroy prior investment in the game in order to continue playing it under the terms they are currently capable of affording does seem slightly harsh, to the degree that the previously available option - not playing at all - actually may seem more attractive under certain circumstances. That might be a problem.

You've managed to come up with a solution worse than the actual implementation.

I think that was the point, trying to point out the absurd.

At least I hope it was the intent.

Sun Runner, I don't understand why you're not going for the obvious solution. It would be a whole lot easier if all the old characters get deleted when Freedom arrives. Come to think of it, just delete all of them whenever a player drops out of VIP status. It would not only free a lot of names but will solve all the problem involved with disabling things, as well as provide a strong incentive to remain subscribed.

By the way, if you amend your suggestion such that it's possible to pay a small one time fee to unlock each character with usable enhancements, that would actually be a palatable solution. (Though there would still be need to clearly detail what's going to happen, which is what's missing now.)

Now I certainly don't have any math degrees and I don't work in the gaming industry, but it seems to me that if I can play a game without paying money then it is free to play.

I appreciate that CoH will not merely be a free to play game and that it will have tiers. But to claim that it will not be free to play when it clearly will be is just baffling to me.

And you know, LOTRO is doing quite fine with their own version of this kind of free to play model.

I'm not seeing the problem that the OP mentions. Just getting access to the incarnate stuff would make me want to plunk down $15/month for a subscription. And the added benefits of Premium come at a small cost.

You can't give away everything and still expect to make money, and as a business the devs do need to make money doing this, or soon there will be no game to complain about.

If you go into any free-to-play game and expect to have access to everything for free then you are being extremely naive. Want full access? Well then, subscribe to the game for $15/month.