Originally Posted by Manoa
![]() http://manoasmusings.blogspot.com/20...of-heroes.html
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Originally Posted by Manoa
![]() http://manoasmusings.blogspot.com/20...of-heroes.html
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Well this says only VIP get one token a month. Everyone can get one for every 1200PP they buy.
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Yay! This thread, again. (More than one up now.)
The Free version of CoH is meant to be an introductory, and that's it. It will be replacing the original 14 day Trial. They gave those players a few perks, but it's still meant only as a way to showcase the basics of the game.
No, Freebies should not have access to those chat channels, especially tells. I do not want to go back to the days of Farmers sending me tell after tell and I don't want to see it in broadcast where I look for teams and gather members. Ditto with Request.
Someone spends $5 they become Premium and have access to a little more, but it is a dollar amount and most farmers are not going to risk have an account banned they spent actual money on. That being said Premium is a way to pick around and look at the various features of the game without fully commiting.
VIP is what it all comes to in the end. You pay the subscription, you reap the benefits. This Hybird system (not free-to-play) was never designed for existing subscribers to step down, but if they have to they still have the ability to play, albeit in a limited fashion.
That beings said: Option #4 is nice, buuuut I would say this Elite status is temporary. The returning player receives X amount of time at Elite status based on prior play history with a mandatory Paid period of 1 year + (Maybe one month of Elite per year or six month period.) After which the player drops to Premium status with access to whatever Tier perks they currently have. It's like an olive branch luring them back to VIP.
The amount of returning and new players that i've seen in the game last week or two has been more than i've seen returning in the entire year so far, so just the hype of Freedom is working already.
Developers have been trying since before MMOs existed to squelch farmer spam. Every single effort has failed miserably. NCSoft is living in a dream world if they think any system they come up with (including this hamfisted joke) won't be circumvented within a month or two.
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Am I think only one who somehow reads FPARN as "pon farr" for no good reason at all?
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My main concern is that the first experience of a returning premium character with an IOed character (who isn't of a level to get use of the Invention Experience) is having to replace all those IOs. If IOs degraded to SO levels, the first experience can be "diving back into the fight".
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Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Ummm... No.
While no system is perfect, the amount of RMT spam in CoH has been cut back dramatically over the past few years. I don't want anything done to undo what has been put in place, especially not simply to please players who haven't spent a dime to support the game. |
Folks keep arguing that because COH-Freedom is a hybrid model, that it's not really a free-to-play game. I respectfully disagree with this notion. Any time a game adds a free game download and free-to-play account element to their game, it becomes branded by the industry as a free-to-play game. A hybrid model is only a variant of the free-to-play model that just has more account stratifications than 100% F2P and the 50% F2P/50% Sub models that are out there.
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Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I know a number of former long-term subscribers who were seriously considering returning as Premium Players when they first learned about COH Freedom, but have since decided against it. The number one dealkiller I've heard is that they fall below the 5 year, 3 month veteran badge threshold needed to return to their characters as they remember them (i.e. access to their existing IOs). The $2 invention license thing isn't going over very well with them and they don't want to go through the onerous process of respecing or creating a new build. They recognize that the game is completely playable without IOs, but being blocked from using the existing loot that they worked so hard to acquire is leaving a pretty sour taste in their mouths. So they're taking the path of least resistance...they're just not returning at all.
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I don't see a problem with the system exactly how it is. They are playing for FREE, as far as I am concerned, they shouldn't even be able to get to 50 á la Trial Accounts.
As soon as I hear things like 'all my hard work' about an MMO, I pretty much know that the type of gamer behind the words is not someone I want to play with, personally, because that attitude is not fun. |
Freedom - totally.
We are free to pick and choose what we want to pay for. It can be everything via subscribing or just the parts we want.
Before pay nothing and you could play for a couple weeks up to level 13 on a trial. Now you can do most of the core game for free on a limited number of characters.
Pay a little more, get to do a little more.
This. Is. Freedom!
While not intrinsically hard per se. If you logged in tomorrow and every single character you'd ever made was gone, all those years of alts and TF's and SG events and badges and et al just vanished, wouldn't you feel like 'all your hard work' was gone?
It might be hyperbole in this context, but the effort put into playing, either viewed as easy or hard, is still an investment. Some are more invested than others. We hope the majority of returning prem's aren't so invested they can't adjust/get so upset they don't even care to purchase anything. |
All of their stuff isn't gone, they just have limited access unless they unlock things. Some of that will require more money but still less than the full sub. If they don't want to pay anything and don't like that they cannot access everything the problem is theirs.
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The $2 invention license thing isn't going over very well with them and they don't want to go through the onerous process of respecing or creating a new build...
...the game is far more likely to capture revenue (whether through microtrans or reupping subs) from [returning premium] players than from free-to-play players. |
You do not understand what a bait and switch scam is.
A bait and switch scam is when something is advertised at a low price and when you get to the store the item in question is not available but a higher priced substitute is. The goal being for you to feel like you have put enough opportunity cost into the trip to the store that you feel compelled to buy something. City of Heroes is advertising exactly what they have to offer and you can make an informed decision to play or not to play. There is no attempt to hide details, obscure facts or make it seem that Free players will have abilities that in fact will be locked out when they decide to play. The Freedom overview let's a free player or premium player know where they stand in regard to what content and abilities will be open to them. The game website for all intents and purposes at this points funnels you to that part of the website. A person trying to make a choice of whether to get into City of Heroes would need to make a conscious effort to avoid the info list here http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/f...player_cho.php among other places. |
But if you skim an advertisement and form a complete idea of what the thing is they're selling based on whatever words are in the biggest font, and then you go and see it is *not* the thing you were expecting, isn't that totally the fault of the company?
There's the word FREEDOM and my account is called Free. Clearly that means everything in the game is available for free except some XP potions. So it's Paragon Studios' responsibility to make FREEDOM match my expectations, otherwise it's totally a bait and switch scam. |
The purpose is to draw new customers in with the hopes of them becoming VIPs or buying ala cart, give them all of that for free and NCSoft will shut the game down within a year because it is no longer making enough money to justify keeping active
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
This is almost (note: almost) directly contradictory. You're saying that someone is unwilling to the point of having a "sour taste" to pony up a measly one-time fee of $2 to get access to what they consider an essential part of the game they used to pay $15 per month to access, yet if that one impediment were removed, they would come back and spend even more than that.
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Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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What this means, however, is the development team is not obligated to follow the traditional "free" to play model. What the industry has branded the game is immaterial. They could have branded it a cucumber and it won't have made the Free player options and greener. None of the game's official correspondence or promotional materials have claimed it is a F2P title, and all of the options that Free accounts have access to are clearly laid out on the site. What the industry does is not a mandate on what any developer in the industry is obligated to do.
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Ever think to consider that the new system is not aimed at such people?
If they are that bitter over it, chances are, IMO, they would just find something else that was 'unacceptable' within a short time. If using a second build to fill it with IOs is too much trouble and $2 is too much to spend, then those people are simply not the target audience. As soon as I hear things like 'all my hard work' about an MMO, I pretty much know that the type of gamer behind the words is not someone I want to play with, personally, because that attitude is not fun. |
Agreed.
The point of this is to get folks to feel the undying, STRONG urge to re-sub or sub for the first time. Not to give them the same experience they had while subbed for free. I don't get why some folks have completely missed the point of COH Freedom. |