F2P Players need chat love

1. If it really was a friend you were referring you'd buy him a cheap copy of the game off of Amazon so he'd start with a VIP account, and then he could decide if he wanted to drop to Premium.

2. If they were really friends you wouldn't lie to them and say they could never talk. Instead you'd say for just $5 bucks free accounts cam permanently unlock the chat channels.


Actually the shining beacon of the game has been the costume creator and it's soloability.

And yet you aren't willing to tell your friends how easy and cheap it is to unlock the chat channels. Some great community spirit there.

VIP's can easily include free players in their teams by simply announcing when they are recruiting to come to a specific location if they want to join a team.

The problem you are having is one you made for yourself.

Thank you, I knew I was forgetting something in my response to Nyx about telling friends they can't talk ever.

When they fix the LFG tab to wait a reasonable amount of time before launching with the minimal amount of players and allow players to join an event in progress, it might see some use. Until then people will roll with full leagues due to higher rates of success.

I don't shower my friends with gifts, especially ones I'm not certain they'll enjoy. I could drop $10-15 dollars on a game they've shown a passing interest in or treat them to lunch. While I'd love for some of them to join me in game, I'm afraid they may enjoy the latter more.

Other forums I frequent have already commented on the obtrusive nature of the market buttons (though it's not as bad as some games and I did share with them that you could hide the large gold button). My friends don't want or need me pandering to them to buy more features.

And the team dynamics that break from traditional tank/dps/healer. Maybe it's not number 1 on your list, but it does set CoH apart from other games.

So far my experience has been in answering friends' questions and the response I give has generally been "Yes, you can do that, but you have to pay". Quite frankly, getting someone to even try the game is doing a good bit of the foot work for company. They need to harbor a more friendly environment towards free players. Punitive things like being unable to respond to tells, participate in zone chatter, or pass inspirations (or even get medium/large inspiration drops) do far more to hinder community spirit than my or anyone else's reluctance to be a salesperson for CoH's features.

Given that the problem isn't solely Nyx's alone, I'd wager at least part of it stems from somewhere else.

Who said you have to spend $10-$15 on this game? I've been getting copies of CoH to use as gifts for years for $1-$5 in store bargain bins and off of Amazon.

What exactly is immoral or evil about explaining how a game works and the options they have to unlock features to your friends?

pan·der

noun /ˈpandər/ 
panders, plural

A person who assists the baser urges or evil designs of others
- the lowest panders of a venal press

verb /ˈpandər/ 
pandered, past participle; pandered, past tense; pandering, present participle; panders, 3rd person singular present

Gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire, etc.)



Over the past 7 1/2 years I've seen more people praising the costume creator and soloability even begging for the ability to solo team content than commenting on the ability to team. So I think it's fair to say that teaming isn't the #1 feature in this game.


No it isn't solely Nyx's problem. All vet players that leave out important information when answering questions share the same problem.

As someone who has spent the last several nights hanging out in Atlas Park (on Justice) attempting to help new players, let me say that the vast majority of them seem to plainly ignore any and all attempts to communicate with them.

And I'm =trying= to help.

I can't assign blame to the lack of a chat tutorial, lack of channel access, or lack of basic reading comprehension. I can only report what I've seen. Specifically, that many of the characters I've seen have even skipped the tutorial and are OJTing everything about the game.

<shrug>

--NT

Wait, what?

I seriously hope that's not meant to be serious. Because I've already had to fly in extra crates of Crashing Facepalm this month.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I stand corrected on this point. The last time I searched Amazon for copies of CoH was near the beginning of the year, hoping to find some cheap ones I could use for additionally time. At that time the average price was $10-15 dollars. Occasionally, I've known others to find it cheaper. I'm sure the recent news of introducing a F2P tier has altered those prices.

Very well done, going straight to semantics instead of addressing the actual issue. Forgive a person for confusing two words like pander and peddle. Perhaps you'll care to address it when I ask it directly. Whose responsibility is it to hook a potential customer after they've downloaded and sampled the game? Who is responsible for selling the features of this game?

It grows tiring, both to me and the questioner, when the answer to their feature questions is repeatedly "You need to buy access to that", especially to many very basic features. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea that I couldn't pass an awaken to a fallen teammate because they're a free player?

I'm afraid we'll just have to let this issue go because our anecdotal evidence is equivalently worthless. I think we can at least agree that the costume creator is undoubtedly a very attractive feature this game has to offer, especially to someone who comes from an MMO where character customization is significantly limited.

And we are to fault because there is a wealth of information that we don't recall off the bat? For instance, a friend asks "How to do I use IOs?" There are multiple answers to that: buy a 30-day license, become a VIP, drop enough cash to unlock the unlimited IO license. Of course, that leads to more questions of "Which should I choose?" or "How much will that cost?" Of course, answers to those questions are varying as well.

Heck, I can't even recall what unlocks at each tier with the Paragon Rewards so I just link them to the wiki entry, which does a better job of documenting it than the official site. It's definitely a problem when the best answers to relevant questions comes from a third-party, out of game source.

1. Add them to your friends list. Problem solved.

2. "Requires teaming?" What game are you playing?

I'm honest enough to admit sometimes you can't find dirt cheap copies and the supply will eventually dry up.


When someone takes it upon themselves to recruit their friends then it is their responsibility not to give them misleading information.

On some of those I agree with you, the chat restrictions aren't one of them.

Agreed. Our personal experiences on that could easily be vastly different.

We're only human and our memories are fallible, but when we volunteer to act as a source of knowledge about the game we have a responsibility to be as accurate as possible. No one is required to be 100% accurate all the time, but it doesn't hurt to try.

Kosh: The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

This is very much not the case. Whether or not the existing population hand-holds the incoming free players is not going to affect things that much in the end. As much as our egos may like the idea, this game is not rocket surgery. You don't need to get the down-low from a seven year vet to try the game out and decide whether or not you enjoy it.

Yes, there are complicated systems in the game. It's not an accident that most of them are behind the pay wall. The game is perfectly playable without the additional systems.

This is why I picked a couple up when they were $1.99 at the NCSoft store...

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...4&postcount=97