About: Free Players

I know that you all will be hostile about this, but just please hear me out! I speak for those who play for free and such!

Now, we all know that free players are the most restricted of all, and that's fine and dandy [since I lack the experience of playing this game until I was lvl 50]. However, what I don't like about it is the fact that they do not have the ability to join a super group or even whisper to anyone, especially their friends.

If its alright for the developers, is it fine if you could at least change the restrictions to where the free players have their tells restricted to friends only and allow them to join a guild [not make them], but not hold up an officer or leader rank? As for premium players, they should have the ability to take up a leader rank in an SG, but only after three months of being in the group?

In order for a 'free' player to survive in this game a little longer, they should at least have the ability to whisper to their friends/associates whenever they want to and join in with a big, happy, family; rather than be stuck in the cold, alone in the deep dark corners of loneliness. Even most MMOs do this kind of stuff as well so that the free player doesn't feel like a prisoner to the system!!

Its not that bad of a change in terms of social restrictions, right?

IIRC, just spending $5 in the Market will earn a Free Player a Reward Token. When they use that one reward token, the become Premium and the problems you describe disappear. They can use /tell and join SGs.

Edit: all free players get one Reward Token by defaults. Making a first purchase of at least 400 pts ($5) gives a player his / her 2nd Token, which unlocks Tier 2 and does what is described above (reference).

Subsequent Tokens require buying $15 worth of points each, or every month for VIP subs.

Yeah, but what if they can't make a purchase of paragon points because of age? I'm pretty sure that there are some kids that (will) play this game for free and can not make one purchase or subscription because of limited resources (can not ask parents, will make them look snobby for a game; or will not want to steal their credit card to make a purchase or subscription because its a horrible thing to do to a parent). Trust me, I know how it feels to do that kind of thing or not able to make a purchase to just play a game with more free social choices.

I'm sorry but free accounts were restricted thusly for good reason. Before these restrictions we had problems with SG thefts and RMT spam.

Oh and ever heard of PayPal, or prepaid visa cards? Anyone can get a prepaid visa, put money on it and use it to pay for stuff in the game.

I have to agree with F_P. Not putting restrictions on free accounts would basically mean anyone could roll a free character and spam paying players to death with RMT garbage. And although SGs can set permissions for storage devices, restricting joining SGs will eliminate SG invite request spam from free players ("can i join ur sg plz?" x 1 billion).

The bar for entry is only $5. If someone is too young to use a CC, they'll just have to get permission from a parent/ guardian or get a pre-purchased CC.

I've no objection to Free players being able to send Tells to people on their Friends list, but I suspect that there may be more substantial coding changes involved compared to simply blocking Tells entirely.

They are limited on channels they can use for a valid reason.

1) RMT spammers. If free accounts can use broadcast and send tells, they can and will put so many people in the game spamming their wares that it will be impossible to use any channels they are in to actually communicate. They won't care if a free account gets banned, they'll jjst make another one and be right back at it within 10 minutes.

Do you WANT RMT spammers to be the majority of people using broadcast? I certainly don't. They know very well that if they spam long enough, sooner or later a sucker will be dumb enough to buy from them and get their credit card information stolen.

2) Jacktards. In any free game, you will find people who joined it for the SOLE reason of being a jerk and harrassing people. It's a lot less fun for them if they are limited in how many people they can annoy. And again, these are people who will react to a ban by starting a new account and being right back at it within minutes. And if they get their IP address banned, they won't care because they didn'tspend a dime on the game.

Both of those things are valid reasons why free accounts need to be limited in communication. If they were not, we'd be right back to everyone filling up their global ignore list with spammers and jerks (yes, that list has a limit, I hit it a long time ago when spamers could use email to spam people)

The LAST thing this game needs is to have it's new players inundated with RMT spam and abused by malicious "players". Players who have to deal with that crap the entire time they play will not stick around long. I know I wouldn't, and if you think about it you probably wouldn't either.

This is why we need a card like Game or Time Cards that let you buy Paragon Points!

I've still yet to see a valid reason why giving free players the ability to respond to our tells, not send them, only respond, can be a bad thing and an opening for RMT.

I also can't understand why we aren't allowed to drop a wakie on them, holding the rest of the team up in the process.

All the other restrictions I'm fine with. Even the no tells doesn't bother me all that much (just trying to prevent the blind invite becoming the norm)
but not being able to help out a fallen comrade until he ponies up some cash is rather annoying for ViP's trying to finish missions with new players that die, every. single. spawn...

I'm not looking for justicfication from the Dev's. They could require us to wear hats made of peanut butter in order to play and asking for justification would be silly, their house, their rules.

What I'm wondering is, how posters can shoot down the replying to tells part of the suggestions, claiming it has something to do with RMT. I just can't see how only being able to reply to tells sent to them is an opening for the goldsellers is all.

I'm open to being illuminated on what I'm missing there. If the suggestion is being shot down simply because they want to entice the $5 thats one thing, just don't pretend it has anything to do with RMT if it doesn't.

Maestro:
Besides the potential profit motive, we don't know how hard it would be to change the tell code to allow replies from free players. We can only guess.
(This is a form of the Standard Code Rant.)