Freedom? Hardly

::blink::

I'm sorry but that is just daft. You saw that it says limited. That means that there is some type of restriction on them. I can't imagine any universe where limited access to inventions means you get unlimited access to them.

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Limited could mean that you can't use the auction house to buy them, nor will they drop, nor can you craft - but, any enhancements you already have slotted would still work.

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

No I would rather play as a premium player but be able to pay for things like the incarnate system. I would quite happily spend money on the game (as with DDO and LOTRO and plenty of other F2P games) and be able to purchase things rather than having to subscribe.

Exactly.

This problem would also get worse if they choose to focus future issues on incarnate content. That wouldn't exactly be promoting the premium f2p route.

For some bizarre reason many people now think that with freedom they are being ripped off unless they get eternal VIP sub for free. Go figure.

I think you are missing the entire point of Premium.

It exists so that if you don't pay a subscription fee you still have access to most of the game content. Note I said most not all. You gain more access the longer you have been subscribed in the past or the more you impulse spend for points.

The whole idea is that players who drop their subscriptions will still play and be lured back into resubscribing or into spending money to buy points.

Right now if I stop paying my monthly subscription I have no access to play the game. After Freedom goes live if I drop my subscription I retain a fair amount of access to the game and can still play it.

Your thinking of it as them trying to sell you the premium level. No that is just a stop gap to lure you into continuing to spend money with them. Post Freedom the only way to rage quit will be to delete all of your characters and the like otherwise your account just reverts to premium level.

Except that the auction house has it's own entry on the chart that also says limited.

I actually think there's a valid point in there somewhere, so I'm willing to dig it out of there.

It is a potentially dangerous thing to sell certain things because doing so potentially devalues the effort to earn them, if they are otherwise acquirable through effort. However, there are a number of other issues any game designer has to balance against that issue, many of them acting contrary to that point. For example, its also dangerous to sell things you cannot acquire in-game, because it creates the possibility that players will perceive a pay to play or pay to win situation where they are being nickle and dimed for all playing opportunities - and I use that phrase much more strongly than its being casually tossed around on the forums these days. If selling things that you can otherwise earn through in-game effort is dangerous, and selling things you cannot otherwise earn through in-game effort is dangerous, the conclusion is that selling anything is potentially dangerous and you simply have to exercise good judgment, not that you can't sell anything.

Speaking directly to the veteran reward system. When it was, in fact, a veteran reward system it was rewarding subscribed time. This was a *proxy* for both money spent on the game (a form of financial commitment) and playing time (a form of activity commitment). It was a strong proxy in the former case and a weak one in the latter case, but the combination was what was being rewarded. NCSoft decided to reward its longer committed players.

Under Freedom, players can now play without paying a subscription. Theoretically speaking, players could still commit a large amount of time to the game, but account longevity isn't a good proxy for that commitment - it isn't even a good one now. And account longevity has no specific subscription associated with it for non-VIPs, so there's no specific financial commitment inherent in just being around for a long time. The devs did, however, envision that many Premium players would be playing in a manner similar to VIP players, just without subscriptions but with long term points purchases. Such a player would be theoretically offering a similar, if not identical activity and financial commitment to the game which they felt was worthy of being rewarded in a similar if not identical manner.

The compromise was to treat Premium player financial investment as being comparable to VIP monthly overall investment at a $15 = one month ratio. That way, a Premium player that buys points to spend on the game would, over time, earn a comparable number of reward points as they spent a sufficient amount of money. To preserve the VIP advantage, VIPs can earn reward tokens at a slightly better conversion rate with their subscriptions (depending on their terms of subscription) and get the same opportunity to earn even more reward tokens by also spending money on the store, *and* having a path to exclusive VIP rewards.

Its not perfect, but it recognizes that under Freedom, Premium players can, over time, make a commitment to the game that is worth rewarding under the same theory, amended by the changes due to the new Freedom paradigm.

Does this "devalue" subscriptions? Technically, I suppose it does in one sense, in that without this path to reward tokens subscribers would have access to something Premium players had no access to at all. But I don't think its an unreasonable compromise when taken in context. A current or former subscriber could choose, if they wished, to switch their subscription for a premium-based account where they continued to spend money, just less, on playing the game. Their "veteran" reward status would continue to increment, but just at a slower rate. New players who wish to start as free players are rewarded for their transition to more (financially) committed players through the same system that also rewards VIP subscribers for veteran status.

In this case, I do not believe the reward system devalues subscriptions by a materially noticeable amount, but has advantages in presenting a better earning curve across the three tiers of players. And given it does no appreciable harm, it fits with Freedom's overall strategy to try to give players the best possible experience that doesn't otherwise compromise the basic principles of the game.

Now, does the person who drops a thousand dollars on the game to unlock everything instantly have the same overall commitment to the game as someone who has played for years? Probably not: assuming they can afford to drop a grand on the game instantly, the grand probably isn't a significant hardship to that person in the first place. But that just means this is an imperfect system: in rewarding those dedicated Premium players that play for years and continuously spend money over time, not as much per month as a subscriber, but a substantial amount in its own right, and moreover on a long-term basis, the system ultimately also rewards people who just want to buy their way to the top instantly. I'm ok with that particular imperfection at the moment, until I see some evidence that this "buy their way to the top immediately" notion is a remotely likely scenario and has any significant impact on the overall game. I don't see it as particularly likely. I think its more likely some tier 7 VIP player might decide to make the jump to tier 9 by buying a bunch of points to do it. And I'm fine with that.

You can buy access to incarnations. It just costs $15.00 a month to access it.

I actually don't feel that way. Really I don't.

When COH:Freedom goes live the old Vet system stops. The devs could have stated that for the record everyone got locked at that level and that was it. Then probably would have had to sell the vet rewards in the store for the people who would never be able unlock them in the new system.

Fortunately the devs didn't decide to do that. They rolled the vet system into the Paragon Rewards system and anyone who has earned rewards under the vet system keeps them and can even pick up interesting extras depending on the level of rewards. This is I think a good thing given how they could do it.

You under a misapprenhension about the new system. It is not actually directly equivalent to the old Veteren System even though the beneficieries of the old system have been rolled into it. The new system is specifically based on earning you 1 token for every $15.00 you spend.

A VIP even if they are getting a discount for multiple months is counting as $15 spent each month and thus earning a token. That is why they don't count the free 400 - 550 Paragon Points towards a free token because your month subscription which included 400 - 550 points gave you a token. If a VIP spends additional money to buy points that money counts towards additional tokens.

A free or premium player who spends $15 in the store earns a token.

Yes the new system allows a player to earn rewards faster than players earned them in the old Veteran Reward system. I'm not seeing this as a bad thing since I retain my level of rewards and move forward from here. Sure rich person over there can buy more tokens than I have instantly and upfront but so? Really I'm supposed to be jeleous that they spent more money upfront than I have spent?

The point is to promote subscriptions through premium not to promote premium. Get the returning player to say 'hey' to some old friends and see all the cool stuff they are getting for the sub fee and enticing them to re-sub. If premium could get access to everything, what's the point of having a subscription service in the first place? Endgame is the perfect system to gate through VIP because people coming from other games will be more pro-endgame and want access. Seems like a pretty smart method to me. Something's you'll just have to pay for.

If it was me, I would probably make some limited subset of the Incarnate system available for purchase to unlock, but that doesn't change the principle that there will always be some things you can't buy as a premium, and they will be things you want (or it would be meaningless to make them exclusive perks of being a VIP subscriber).

DDO is in fact different than CoH Freedom in that its closer to the F2P model than to the subscription model in its hybrid implementation. In fact, some people wonder if the advantages of subscribing are even worth it. And there are favor points to consider, which are mechanically a staple of the typical F2P system but absent in CoH Freedom entirely.

Because we're not an F2P game.


However, I reiterate my original assertion. You still sound like someone that wants subscriber benefits without having to pay for them:

In other words, you're ceasing your subscription and you won't play as premium if premium is too restrictive. Either you were going to cancel your subscription anyway, in which case we would have lost you as a revenue source with or without Freedom, or you're cancelling your subscription *because* of Freedom, in which case you're cancelling your subscription because the other options are not to your liking. That is illogical on a grand scale, but it supports my contention that whether you say so or not, you want subscriber benefits without having to pay for a subscription.

This says unambiguously that the *reason* you don't want to subscribe is because you want to spend that money otherwise on ala carte items. That's tantamount once again to saying you want subscriber perks without having to pay for them, so you can *also* get what you're perceiving as a benefit of being Premium, which is to optionally buy what you want.

However, you're overlooking the fact that buying things ala carte is not a benefit of being Premium. VIP subscribers get the same opportunity. So in saying you want to spend money on ala carte things *and* lose nothing by terminating your subscription, you want subscription rights without having to subscribe.

In other words, you believe there should be *no* rewards exclusive to VIP subscribers. In other words, you want all the rights of VIP subscribers without having to subscribe.


You can say "no I would rather play as a premium player" but that is a meaningless statement. You want to play as a premium player on the assumption that a premium player can buy anything a VIP player can, has the rights VIP players have, and has no specific disadvantage to a VIP player, except possibly for a token expense to unlock things, which would undoubtably be cheaper than actually subscribing:

Also:

You need to equally get it into your head that this game is not a F2P game, it is not DDO, and it is not LOTRO. It is City of Heroes, and City of Heroes is inventing its own model for City of Heroes Freedom. It is their right to make their own model, and they have no obligation to copy anyone else's model, or meet the expectations of people who think they have an obligation to copy anyone else's model. A good reason for not doing something is "it won't work here" if you can prove it. A completely irrelevant statement is "why not do it this way instead: it works over there."

We look at other systems, we learn from their successes and mistakes, b but then we apply those lessons here, filtered through the devs' goals for the game. Not Turbine's goals, not Cryptic's goals, not anyone else's goals.

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Limited could mean you can't buy them from ingame means, only through the store.

Limited could mean you don't get acess to purple recipes, or a limited selection of recipes.

Limitied could also mean you don't get set bonouses.

I'd honestly say, greying them out and having them not function, isn't limiting your access at all, it's giving no access.

I actually play over there some and I'm going to flat out state that Turbine made a mistake with DDO and possibly LOTRO in offering everything alacarte and not holding anything back as subscriber only. Basically since they went to that model I've played over there but never seen any reason to actually resubscribe. I check every so often but aside from some free points back there is no real incentive to subscribe. If there was only material you could access as subscriber only that would be an actual encouragement to subscribe.

I think that Paragon Studos looked at the lesson of these games and noted that they had low conversion back into subscribers and so have very smartly held back somethings as subscriber only. It is smart and clever. You can play most of the game without being a subscriber now but you can't access all of it's features. For that you must subscribe. That is just smart.

I'm one.

This bit brought me back because of a friend who told me about it. We've also gotten another mutual friend in the game & a third who's just waiting for Freedom to drop.

One of those two may or may not suscribe (or be a premium) once his current trial runs out...but he's having fun so far. The second will almost definately subscribe once his work schedule *chills the flip out*.


My point? Freedom is certainly bringing in both new & old blood while presenting a viable business model. It's likely that a number will leave however:

1) Most of those will likely be folks who were going to cancel/not renew a sub anyway.
2) That number will likely be replaced manyfold by the new free players
3) a portion of those free players will transition into premium and VIP players.

This is still a win-win scenario for all but the jaded IMHO just for the following reason:

Instead of an all-or-nothing you have sizes from Free to Premium if you can't/don't subscribe.

I think you are jumping to conclusions. I renewed my subscription simply to sort out my characters prior to the change to Freedom. Emptying mailboxes collecting Auction sales etc.

I only tend to dip in and out of MMOs nowadays so having a subscription when I may only play a week or two at a time seems ridiculous, especially with all of the other games out there to play. However I would quite happily pay for certain things so that when I did play I could play a full rather than a watered down game.

I don't want anything for free I simply want to choose how I pay for it. I prefer to drop a lump sum on a game and be able to simply play how and when I want. It has nothing to do with wanting to freeload. For the amount of time I play other games I pay well over the odds, but am happy with that as I don't have to manage a load of subscriptions and can happily drop into games with friends to do content. As the overview on the COH website says: Pay for the content and features that you want.

People tend to only ever pay out for one subscription to an MMO. I don't think that this model will draw people away from MMOs with endgames as they are getting no taste of it. (even if it were a cut down version of the incarnate system with only time restricted access to a trial and only one slot available)

I think I was too. Thanks for explaining it to me.

I'm still failing to see any sign that this isn't true.

You want access to Incarnates you pay the $15 per month access fee for it. If you don't want access to that feature then you don't have to pay for it. If you want access to inventions and don't have tier 5 unlocked you pay $2 per month to access it.

And as an added bonus any month you pay the $15 to unlock Incarnates you also get 1 signature story arc, 400 - 550 paragon points, A Paragon Reward Token, and other benefits.

At the end of the month you'll have your 400 points and can then use them over the next few months to unlock inventions again when you drop in.

Basically play the way you want buy paying to unlock the features you want. You just don't gain permenant access to all features. Some you have to pay a monthly fee for and that is smart. I fully believe that Turbine made a mistake by not holding back something to their subscribers.

So since (as stated earlier in this thread) the incarnate ability is unlocked for the $15.00 amount, do you feel that is too expensive? What price point would you feel is fair?

You wish to choose how you pay for content. Speaking as someone who plays a chunk of console games I can completely see the "Pay once & let me play forever" approach. I've taken that approach for most of my games - CoH being the lone exception. That said I find the expansions here to be more robust than the updates on other games (mostly sports games) where you pay once & then play forever.

Where do you see a trade-off that is acceptable? I feel that the idea of Freedom is the best balance so far, but then again that's only my opinion.

And there's nothing wrong with that. You have that option.

It's just that you have that option and also the option to buy some of the occaisional shinies that may catch your eye.

What people miss is that they are not making a desperate attempt to have higher player numbers. If that was the case giving more and better things to the free players would be the goal.

One important thing to remember is that this entire project is over 2 years old. They have been working at it for a long time and that means that it's goal is something besides simply having higher player numbers.

The problem is that COX is in the position of being a cash cow. This means that it's growth has generally stopped but it still remains providing a solid reliable stream of money. The problem is cash cows eventually dry up and NCSoft has a distinct record of not keeping them past some point of return.

Because of this it was and is imcombant on the devs to figure out a way to increase the games money stream. They observed that moving to a hybrid model worked for several games that tried it in the period around the time they were starting this project. Those companies saw an increase in revenue by moving to a hybrid model. So Paragon began exploring it.

One of the clear mistakes made by other hybrid games was giving to much of the game content to nonsubscribers. This means that there was no real incentive to resubscribe to the game just spend money from time to time in the store for this or that. So when the Premium level was designed things where clearly held back to entice players to pay for them. The idea being you don't have to be subscribed to drop back by but dropping back by should entice you to resubsribe for a month here or there as your attention turns back to COH. Premium permits a player to drop by and see if they are interested in playing again for a month or two. And that really is its intended goal. Not to have the majority of the players as premium but instead to have it as a viable solid transitional phase to lure you back into subscribing.

Agreed.

I was going to link to an "Extra Crediz" feature from The Escapist but it's not there anymore...and the Youtube channel doesn't have the old episodes so far.

There was an episode about *just* what is going on - allowing free content for everyone but both keeping a really great part of the 'playground' for paying customers while giving new customers a simple path toward becoming a paying customer.