Freedom? Hardly

How?

As an old timer who's been on Beta, this is news to me.

Go back and read what Premium players get, which is what you'd be if you were a former player that's returned after a hiatus. You don't lose what you've already gained access to, and if your earned Tier is high enough from the time you've already paid into the game, you won't lose anything you're afraid of losing by going to non-sub status.

Also think about this: if you chose to not pay a monthly sub, why should you still get everything in the regular game that people that are still paying a sub get? Note that costume bits, auras, temp powers, etc, are not "regular game" content in my example. Inventions and the Market are, however.

Can we campaign to have "bait and switch" filtered out by the forum software?

Every time it's uttered, it's incorrectly applied.


Everything that Freedom has to offer is spelled out up front, in many different pages linked to from the CoH main site. There should be no excuse for not knowing what it will do and what it will not.

So we we just going to make love or are we going to let this Moonlighting-esque Love To Hate sexual tension continue to build?

Also: the devs are removing all VIP players' shift keys.

You can no longer talk in the first person in global channels if you have a premium account.

And Flight will only be reserved for Canadian City of Heroes players. All other countries MUST take Superspeed and Superjump only or face being Generic'd.

There, I completed this chain of absolutely wrong and misinformed statements that you started.

Arcana is a mathemagician so she has a very precise idea of what the words "conventional f2p model" mean. For those of us who who are more lax about our language and who take the whole three-tiered "free" MMO system as the de facto standard for AAA MMO companies that embrace a free-to-play model, the specifics aren't all that important. It's all "freemium".

I'm not saying that she's wrong. She's perfectly correct. (I'd like to see the day that I catch Arcanaville out on being wrong about something. I'll buy a lottery ticket.) I'm saying that the distinction is irrelevant from a marketing standpoint.

The hordes of unwashed who are about to invade our shores don't give a smeg about the fact that the devs whole-heartedly want them to subscribe and have stacked the deck in favor of subscriptions. They don't care about whether some people want to quibble about whether it's really "free to play" or if it's something different that still lets you play for free.

Those unwashed hordes only care about playing the game. They EXPECT the deck to be stacked in favor of subscriptions. In fact, if they come in with expectations born of playing games from other publishers, they're going to see the Paragon Rewards chart and figure out that Paragon Studios is a lot friendlier about their deck-stacking than most of those other game publishers.

You can call the game's business model whatever label you want to call it. Nobody who matters is going to care. If they can login and make a character and play the game, it's "free to play". If they can buy some stuff and get a better game experience, it's "freemium". That's simply the long and short of it.

And make no mistake, this game DOES have a "robust" free-to-play side. I know because I'm playing it currently in the beta. In the Live game, I've only dabbled in inventions when the urge took me (I'm a lazy bastich and inventions are work) and I've never bothered with incarnates at all. I can honestly say that the free game on Freedom is just about the same as the game I play on a regular basis on Live. As far as I'm concerned, it IS a "free to play" game. Insisting that a focus on converting freems and preems to VIP's, instead of throwing the whole kit and kaboole out for free and then filling the shop with a lot of attractive dross, somehow makes it something other than a "free to play" game is just a lot of semantic hand-waving, in my opinion.

I certainly respect the rights of others to hold differing opinions. I'll tell you this, though - when Freedom launches for real, the media isn't going to be calling it "free-to-play but with a hybrid focus on turning you into a subscriber so not REALLY free-to-play". The people asking about it on message boards and signing up for new accounts to try it out aren't going be blogging about its "hybrid" business model. They're going to be calling it either "f2p" or "freemium" or both at the same time.

That's just reality, from where I sit. Call it what you like. It's potAto/potAHto in the end.

So THAT is what I forgot to do after I gasped in horror!

No, no, no.

Arcanaville is the Archive. She's just missing the hot blond assassin dude.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

Would you like to back that wild claim up in any way?

I must be one of the lucky exceptions, then.

I find myself confused by this statement.

Are you suggesting that I'm getting 'the shaft' because other players can get what I now have faster than I managed to get it?

I haven't lost anything, and in fact since I've been here since a very short bit after release I'm getting more stuff with the new version of vet rewards. For those folks who've been here a long time but not long enough to have all the vet rewards, the new version puts all the things they didn't yet have much more immediately within reach.

I fail to see any form of 'shafting' in this setup.

Whatever the unwashed masses expect, I don't want Paragon Studios changing the game just to accomodate those expectations. So we can either try to explain the distinction to them, or we can let them get frustrated and leave. But making the game what they expect goes against everything City of Heroes Freedom stands for, which is to remain a game which prioritizes the VIP subscribers first.

If they are going to compare what we give away for free to what other games give away for free, I think they'll find what we give away for free is quite competitive with what most hybrid MMOs give away for free, and I acknowledge that you mention that as well. But its important to note City of Heroes is not trying to be the best free game around. I think its great we're competitive, but if we're found lacking as not the best free deal in town, I'm okay with that as well. If you want to play the best free game in town, City of Heroes may not be the game for you. There are lots of others to try, and I don't want City of Heroes to sacrifice anything to try to compete in that space. That space is not our space.

We are, as I've said before, stealing some of the toys that free to play games use to implement their games, to make a better subscription game with ala carte options. If some people think that in using those tools we have an obligation to deliver what they expect those tools to deliver, I'm here to say that obligation does not exist. From the very beginning, the devs have been very clear City of Heroes is not becoming "free to play" as the term is normally used. Allow me to quote Brian Clayton, executive producer:

"What is City of Heroes Freedom? For starters, Freedom is NOT Free-to-Play."

Maybe *he* should have used a bigger font.

Let's not forget a few other facts:

With the bonus of a reward token for each anniversary badge and one for buying a box, you might be able to get rewards you couldn't unlock yet in the current Veteran Reward system.

Also: badge hunters now get all the old badges plus the new badges. Which means, if badges were money, we could fill a vault with them and backstroke through them ala Scrooge McDuck.

True - I'm a 78 month Veteran (just turned 79 yesterday) and when I tested on first day of opening beta - I had enough to complete tier 8 and was ready to start tier 9.

Still not pleased at not being given a token for pre-ordering Going Rogue - I have to use a token to unlock something I already paid for (paid for meaning I couldn't pre-order from the online catalog to get early access to Dual Pistols, Demon Summoning, and the Beta).

EDIT: Referring to the Going Rogue Pre-Order Enhancements, not Going Rogue itself.

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

Well, if you mean about getting less then you are now on live then ... wait for it... WRONG!

If you mean that others will get things sooner then we all had to then that's more or less par for the course. **Points to COV inclusion with COH and GR being included with VIP subs post Freedom** Just to make a point, I am happy newer players will get to my tier of rewards faster then it took me. That means they can shut the heck up. I am sick of hearing about it.


tl:dr WRONG!
Easier rewards for others : Don't Care

What did it lock out for you? The only thing related to GR that someone who bought it might loose access to is the incarnate content, and that's only if they stop paying for being a VIP.

Are you talking about those pre-order Gamestop enhancements?

Oh really?

They don't have to pay anything to play and this is some how bait and switch?

That is some new definition of bait and switch then. And in what universe where they crazy enough to expect to pay NOTHING and have access to everything they did before?

If they are coming back it is incumbent on them to do do diligence research and if they assume how things work tough luck.

I am? I didn't notice that I had been shafted. I have been enjoying my celestial costume items that I started the Freedom beta with.

I usually avoid these types of debates because I generally consider them toxic to the game at large for a variety of reasons (including my own sense of enjoyment) but Arcanaville hit the nail on the head for how I feel about this.

A few friends that had to stop playing for financial and/or time reasons, and other friends who just won't pay to play a game, are kind of exicted about coming back, or giving it a try. My son is looking forward to returning to Paragon (he's 20; he likes playing but has other priorities for his cash, college among them). Also, because of that, a couple of my son's friends are considering picking up a copy of Going Rogue just so they can start with the extra goodies. To be honest even if they don't, and though I doubt most of them will ever subscribe, they'll probably buy things here and there if it's cool enough. The point is, they're new players checking things out.

Outside the forums, I see very little negativity about this, even with the limitations. It's drawing friends back, and even bringing in new ones that haven't had enough interest until now. There's no bait-and-switch. They know what they're getting and what they're not. They've asked me about it, and I'm fairly sure most of them are literate enough that they can find out more if they want

I know this statement will probably be considered flamebait, but what a lot of the gripes seem, to me at least, is currently paying players are upset they can't stop paying and keep all their cool stuff when Freedom launches.

There are some concerns and thoughts that should be discussed, and some current restrictions will probably loosen up a little once everything's in place and they find their equilibrium with the new model. Going in with snark in the title isn't the best way to address that.

I keep coming back to this question, as a number of people have pointed out; currently people who don't subscribe get nothing. How is Freedom taking away from that or making it worse? No. Seriously. How?

/e slaps forehead
Of course! It all makes sense now!




(so when do I get my zombie T-rex?)

read his comment, then look at his signature, sums it up quite nicely