There are very few things that distinguish VIPs from Premiums...IOs being one of those things. This game was centered around SOs for EVERYONE up until Issue 9 , and people did some amazing things with "just" SOs. Premium players are getting CoX at absolutely no cost for basically everything up until Issue 9 whereas before Freedom there was not an option. I am very tired of Premiums asking for more more more when truth be told they contribute very little to this game compared to VIPs. You are getting a game for FREE - the same game I had to pay for; for years, to be able to play with "just" SOs. $2 is NOT a lot of money to get access to IOs - if you can't be bothered to shell out $2 a month for them that is your choice. The other option is to pay $15 a month and get IOs and everything else.
If it were me and I could not afford $15 a month I would GLADLY pay $2 a month so I could maintain my IOs if I were not high enough on the Reward ladder to have them unlocked.
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Originally Posted by Paladiamors
I love you, I Burnt the Toast!
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I'm fully aware that people will rationalize their anti-social behavior and project the cause onto others as somehow ~making them do it~ all day. |
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
That's truth mate I require no excuse to convey same. YMMV.
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Originally Posted by Tenzhi
On the contrary, it just happens that 'that person might punch me (or worse)' is an excuse to *not* act that way and the internet takes that excuse away.
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Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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I'd say that all or most motives to 'not be a jerk' stem from that basic motive. Then again, I *have* been told that I'm a bit of a cynic.
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Originally Posted by BellaStrega
In my experience, people have a much wider range of motives for not being jerks than "That person might harm me." Narrowing it down to that is a cynical and unrealistic perspective on human nature.
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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And I would pay real money for the audio logs for those discussions! |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
At the very least, what I coughed up should grant me a direct line to Positron's phone to regularly call him at home at 3:00am and nag him about Tankers.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
At the very least, what I coughed up should grant me a direct line to Positron's brain to regularly call him at home at 3:00am and nag him about Tankers.
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Make it so!
To be fair though I'd probably abuse that ability for the same purpose. I'm a very power-hungry player.
Raid Leader of Task Force Vendetta "Steel 70", who defeated the first nine Drop Ships in the Second Rikti War.
70 Heroes, 9 Drop Ships, 7 Minutes. The Aliens never knew what hit them.
Now soloing: GM-Class enemy Adamaster, with a Tanker!
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I don't think anybody's arguing for people to get full use of IOs as a premium player, just that their IOd toons should be playable out of the box on an approximately even basis to SOd toons, say:|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
There are very few things that distinguish VIPs from Premiums...IOs being one of those things. This game was centered around SOs for EVERYONE up until Issue 9 , and people did some amazing things with "just" SOs. Premium players are getting CoX at absolutely no cost for basically everything up until Issue 9 whereas before Freedom there was not an option. I am very tired of Premiums asking for more more more when truth be told they contribute very little to this game compared to VIPs. You are getting a game for FREE - the same game I had to pay for; for years, to be able to play with "just" SOs. $2 is NOT a lot of money to get access to IOs - if you can't be bothered to shell out $2 a month for them that is your choice. The other option is to pay $15 a month and get IOs and everything else.
If it were me and I could not afford $15 a month I would GLADLY pay $2 a month so I could maintain my IOs if I were not high enough on the Reward ladder to have them unlocked. |
No set bonuses
Procs and special IOs don't work
Enhancement bonuses reduced by 25%
would accomplish that. Many premiums are pretty casual even if they weren't before, and having to spend a couple of hours maybe more just sorting out their toons to make them playable (if they had 2 IOd builds) is more than they want to do.
There are other irritants with the F2P offering. I started a second account mainly but not exclusively to address the "can't invite to your own SG" problem, and am paying to get it to T2 so I get SG access and will then go premium. This problem only really exists because of the stupid base storage limits meaning people can't store enough stuff in a communal SG base, and the lack of enough ranks to be able to make the bins secure in a large SG.
My main SG uses a private global chat channel rather than SG chat for 2 reasons.
1. We were too big to fit in 1 SG, 3 vill and 3 hero groups exist, so not even coalition chat would allow us to talk to each other.
2. People had their own SGs for the reasons described above.
I will lose access to global chat channels when I go premium. I understand why, to prevent gold spam on the large chat channels, but why not allow access (but not mod rights) to private global channels at T1 ? You're going to either not get invited or get kicked if you start doing the things NCSoft are worried about and won't be able to simply rejoin.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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People keep trying to make this argument that "they should just change how IO's act on non-VIP accounts" as if that were a simple proposition.|
Originally Posted by Minotaur
I don't think anybody's arguing for people to get full use of IOs as a premium player, just that their IOd toons should be playable out of the box on an approximately even basis to SOd toons, say:
No set bonuses Procs and special IOs don't work Enhancement bonuses reduced by 25% would accomplish that. Many premiums are pretty casual even if they weren't before, and having to spend a couple of hours maybe more just sorting out their toons to make them playable (if they had 2 IOd builds) is more than they want to do. |
I'm not sure that they have the capability to do this with the code they are working with. You are asking for the same item to behave in two extremely different ways under different circumstances. SCR definitely applies here.
Having them be "off" or "on" based on Subscription status was likely an easier way to code things than trying to figure out how to turn off the the set bonuses and reduce the value of the enhancement and disallow procs and ... well, you see where that is going. That's a rather comprehensive set of rules to try to implement.
If they did try to put something like this in the code, it would likely create a nightmare for making sure it didn't cause problems in other parts of the code. We've seen enough instances of them changing something and it affecting something seemingly unrelated or worse, things that on the internal test servers and beta server worked fine but when put on the Live environment had some really unexpected side effects due to population size or other factors.
I'll go back to what I said previously upthread. The intent of the Hyybrid model was to provide value to their subscribers but at the same time to offer incentives to non-subscribers to either subscribe or make purchases in the Paragon Market. They could have made IO use exclusive to subscribers or only available to subscribers and a specific Reward Tier with no license purchase available.
They had the same decisions to make about several parts of the game that some people consider the "important" parts. What is important for one is not important for someone else. I know of long-time subscribers that haven't gotten interested in the IO system, simply because HO's and SO's worked for them and they had fun playing their characters. I know of long-time subscribers that had no interest in the AE offerings, the incarnate system, the new costume options, new powersets, or any number of other subsystems of the game. They all have different items that are important to them, but not all things in the game do they consider important.
It's a balancing act and I think the Devs (and marketing) did a pretty good job in trying to give a good play experience for free with incentives to either subscribe or purchase items from the Paragon Market.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Also note that Premiums can get access to IOs if they were subscribed long enough (27 tokens - which equates to five years of subscribing before the game went Freemium, if my math is right), so it's not entirely true that lack of IOs separates free and VIP players.
That said, it would still be nice to have some IO access for the characters who have IOs slotted. Not necessarily the ability to craft or slot NEW IOs, but not just greying out the ones that are already there.
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They're doing it because they don't want you to play for free, they want you to give them money. So they've carefully gated off a selection of different aspects of the game, while leaving a fully functional core, in the hope that every player will find one thing locked off that will make them pay up, even if it's only for a license not a full sub. If you don't care about IOs, you might care about AE. If you don't care about AE, maybe you'll care about the Incarnate system. If you aren't interested in Incarnates, maybe you'll pay to play with the Controller that was your favourite character.|
Originally Posted by Knights
I know it's free to play, I realize there has to be some drawbacks and I understand that. I just wanted to know why they would do this. I'm fine with all the other restrictions such as me not being able to publish my missions in the AE, that is a downside for me but I could live with that. But my IO's made my character.
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The fact that there is one part of the VIP game that you feel is critical for a satisfying playing experience is exactly what Freedom is aiming for.
Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
There is also a grey area of uncertainty with products like enhancement boosters from The Paragon Market.
If you are below a certain tier for the Invention system, do they stop working if you drop to F2P? - do the enhancement boosters you have applied to your build stop working?, and if so then why?, seeing as you have paid real-world money for the points and said boosters! (and there is nothing on any of the market screens or product bio when buying to determine thus).
If it were so (and I haven't seen any definitive statement from NCSoft yet on it) , Its like costume pieces you have bought from the market for real-world money being taken away from you on dropping to F2P.
Personally, practices like that (in principle) I would be absolutely TOTALLY opposed to, and would re-appraise my supporting any Paragon Market purchases.
I think the functionality of Enhancement Boosters should definately not be tied to either the subscription plan or the IO system and any potential gating, because you have paid real-world money for them.
If its 'hiring' the enabling and functionality of any enhancement boosters for the duration of your subscription then it should definately state such on the product-description screen on The Paragon Market.
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(was a programmer/DBA for many years)|
Originally Posted by Texas Justice
People keep trying to make this argument that "they should just change how IO's act on non-VIP accounts" as if that were a simple proposition.
I'm not sure that they have the capability to do this with the code they are working with. You are asking for the same item to behave in two extremely different ways under different circumstances. SCR definitely applies here. Having them be "off" or "on" based on Subscription status was likely an easier way to code things than trying to figure out how to turn off the the set bonuses and reduce the value of the enhancement and disallow procs and ... well, you see where that is going. That's a rather comprehensive set of rules to try to implement. If they did try to put something like this in the code, it would likely create a nightmare for making sure it didn't cause problems in other parts of the code. We've seen enough instances of them changing something and it affecting something seemingly unrelated or worse, things that on the internal test servers and beta server worked fine but when put on the Live environment had some really unexpected side effects due to population size or other factors. I'll go back to what I said previously upthread. The intent of the Hyybrid model was to provide value to their subscribers but at the same time to offer incentives to non-subscribers to either subscribe or make purchases in the Paragon Market. They could have made IO use exclusive to subscribers or only available to subscribers and a specific Reward Tier with no license purchase available. They had the same decisions to make about several parts of the game that some people consider the "important" parts. What is important for one is not important for someone else. I know of long-time subscribers that haven't gotten interested in the IO system, simply because HO's and SO's worked for them and they had fun playing their characters. I know of long-time subscribers that had no interest in the AE offerings, the incarnate system, the new costume options, new powersets, or any number of other subsystems of the game. They all have different items that are important to them, but not all things in the game do they consider important. It's a balancing act and I think the Devs (and marketing) did a pretty good job in trying to give a good play experience for free with incentives to either subscribe or purchase items from the Paragon Market. |
I would think it's not that simple to make IOs not function, but once you've produced the code to do that, it's a pretty simple few lines of code to change the function to do something else.
I would agree the devs did a pretty good job with the F2P offering, this is the one major error I see. I know people it has stopped coming back to the game, and people who have only come back because of the error a while back where some spurious vet months were awarded and not removed, they would not have come back without IOs or paid for licenses. At least one has since realised how much he likes this game and resubbed.
My worry is that as somebody who plays outside of US peak on Victory, the server population is fairly critical. We can't afford to lose any potential players as it's already really difficult at times to form TFs at lower than 50 and i-trials that need more than 10 people. Premiums won't help the i-trial situation unless they resub, but will help the TFs, meaning I won't log off as I do some evenings when nothing's happening and I might be around when somebody tries to organise an i-trial.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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You are playing for free? Why should you get any more than you do for free? You used to not be able to access your characters at all until you gave them $15.|
Originally Posted by Knights
Even that is going to take a long time just to use IO's that I've earned throughout my game time.
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Suck it up and deal.
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<--- Has a programming degree.|
Originally Posted by Minotaur
(was a programmer/DBA for many years)
I would think it's not that simple to make IOs not function, but once you've produced the code to do that, it's a pretty simple few lines of code to change the function to do something else. I would agree the devs did a pretty good job with the F2P offering, this is the one major error I see. I know people it has stopped coming back to the game, and people who have only come back because of the error a while back where some spurious vet months were awarded and not removed, they would not have come back without IOs or paid for licenses. At least one has since realised how much he likes this game and resubbed. My worry is that as somebody who plays outside of US peak on Victory, the server population is fairly critical. We can't afford to lose any potential players as it's already really difficult at times to form TFs at lower than 50 and i-trials that need more than 10 people. Premiums won't help the i-trial situation unless they resub, but will help the TFs, meaning I won't log off as I do some evenings when nothing's happening and I might be around when somebody tries to organise an i-trial. |
Anytime I make comments about the code they are based on what we've been told about the code in the past, some things we've been told in the past, and things I've observed in the past.
From some things we've been told, the code is not as simple as people often think. What seems to be something that should be simple to implement from our perspective (our perspective meaning people that understand programming fairly well, not the Average Joe without any programming knowledge) is often not a simple thing or even possible in this code without huge amounts of work.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
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There is nothing anti-social about telling a person that paying $2.00 vs $15.00 is a good deal. You must be talking about someone else or something other than what I said.
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Originally Posted by BellaStrega
I'm fully aware that people will rationalize their anti-social behavior and project the cause onto others as somehow ~making them do it~ all day.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Access cost $2.00 vs the $15.00 it use too. I guess people want IO's to be void of the $2.00 license fee and I say that is looking for too much entitlement. A company has to make money.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
That said, it would still be nice to have some IO access for the characters who have IOs slotted. Not necessarily the ability to craft or slot NEW IOs, but not just greying out the ones that are already there.
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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Darth, haven't you noticed that that is the standard fallback defense that always gets used in these types of threads? |
Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
There is nothing anti-social about telling a person that paying $2.00 vs $15.00 is a good deal. You must be talking about someone else or something other than what I said.
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It's formulaic.
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THIS is why you're the Community guy and none of us are.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Hello Knights and welcome back to the Community.
I certainly understand your feedback. It's something I've passed along to the development and business teams prior to this. If anything, know your feedback is being heard. That being said, as has been mentioned, the licenses are a mere 180 Paragon Points/Month. Also, I'm not sure when you left the game, but did you know that you can use an alternate build to play with as well? Visit any trainer and you can switch your active build to another one. Many of our returning players keep a SO/HO based build in that slot, in case they decide to revert to premium status from VIP. Rest assured, all content available for Free/Premium players is balanced around Single Origin enhancements being used. Thanks to the adjusted difficulty option, our VIP/Premium players who have access to IO's can enjoy the same content at a higher difficulty, if they so choose. Again, welcome back, and I will be sure to convey your sentiment along. |
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
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Yes. |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Darth, haven't you noticed that that is the standard fallback defense that always gets used in these types of threads?
It's formulaic. |
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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I was subbed for quite some time, from the headstart on. I spent $45 just last month as a Premium player. I am literally $5 away from lifetime IO access.|
Originally Posted by I Burnt The Toast
I am very tired of Premiums asking for more more more when truth be told they contribute very little to this game compared to VIPs. You are getting a game for FREE - the same game I had to pay for; for years, to be able to play with "just" SOs.
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But you're right, I contribute so much less than you.
- Ashley
[Rocker Girl (Earth/Earth Dom); Sweet Venom (Plant/Time Ctrl)]
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Uhm just for clarification.|
Originally Posted by AshleyHudson
I was subbed for quite some time, from the headstart on. I spent $45 just last month as a Premium player. I am literally $5 away from lifetime IO access.
But you're right, I contribute so much less than you. |
1. You were subbed from the headstart on until when? Cuz if you were 4 reward tokens shy of unlocking lifetime IO access that means the longest you could have been subscribed is 57 months. That means you were unsubscribed for 3 years and 9 months or half the lifespan of the game. So either you were a sporadic player that subbed periodically for a few months at a time, or you quit playing several years ago and didn't come back until you heard you could play for free. In either case it doesn't make you more or less of a contributer than the person you quoted.
2. You must have spent more than $45 dollars on the game since Freedom launched because your math doesn't add up. $45 dollars only gets you three reward tokens.
We get 1 reward token for every 1200 points purchased.
Even with the 10% point bonus $45 dollars only gets you 3,960 points. That's 840 points short of what you'd need to unlock an additional reward token.
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You're making a lot of assumptions. I didn't give a lot of detail as I didn't think it would matter. I didn't mean to imply any sort of constant subscription, only that I played the game from as early as I could because I was excited and wanted to support a superhero game. From there, I was with the game for over a year, then came and went periodically as I felt the desire.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Uhm just for clarification.
1. You were subbed from the headstart on until when? Cuz if you were 4 reward tokens shy of unlocking lifetime IO access that means the longest you could have been subscribed is 57 months. That means you were unsubscribed for 3 years and 9 months or half the lifespan of the game. So either you were a sporadic player that subbed periodically for a few months at a time, or you quit playing several years ago and didn't come back until you heard you could play for free. In either case it doesn't make you more or less of a contributer than the person you quoted. 2. You must have spent more than $45 dollars on the game since Freedom launched because your math doesn't add up. $45 dollars only gets you three reward tokens. We get 1 reward token for every 1200 points purchased. Even with the 10% point bonus $45 dollars only gets you 3,960 points. That's 840 points short of what you'd need to unlock an additional reward token. |
When Freedom went live, I had a nearly full T6 (game time, paid xpacs...). I started spending on points (some $15 lumps, some $5, buying costumes, character slots, powersets...), but haven't subbed and now T7 is one slot from full. I've spent a lot more than $45 since the game launched Freedom. That $45 is just the last 30-day cycle. It's more than normal and I've spent - on average - a bit more per month than I did when I was subbed, but I'm happy playing this way.
What I was objecting to was the idea that Preemies are all whining freeloaders. Maybe some of us are, but I'm seeing the attitude on the forums often enough that I just finally snapped. It's frequent enough that it makes me want to just walk some days. To be fair, he probably didn't mean to paint so broadly and I likely overreacted. Luckily, I like the game and people in it enough that I can get past the negativity of the forums most days, and I rarely do anything too rash (like my previous post).
Also, if anyone inferred from my post that I think I contribute more than a VIP, that was not my intent. I only meant to point out that some of us contribute on a comparable scale, or at least a not-inconsequential one, and would like to be considered relevant members of the community.
- Ashley
[Rocker Girl (Earth/Earth Dom); Sweet Venom (Plant/Time Ctrl)]
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Thanks for responding and clearing up the confusion I was having about your post. To be honest I thought there might be a remote possibility you were making a judgement based on the difference between both your and toasts forum reg dates. It doesn't happen often but it does pop up occasionally. Very glad to hear that wasn't the case.|
Originally Posted by AshleyHudson
You're making a lot of assumptions. I didn't give a lot of detail as I didn't think it would matter. I didn't mean to imply any sort of constant subscription, only that I played the game from as early as I could because I was excited and wanted to support a superhero game. From there, I was with the game for over a year, then came and went periodically as I felt the desire.
When Freedom went live, I had a nearly full T6 (game time, paid xpacs...). I started spending on points (some $15 lumps, some $5, buying costumes, character slots, powersets...), but haven't subbed and now T7 is one slot from full. I've spent a lot more than $45 since the game launched Freedom. That $45 is just the last 30-day cycle. It's more than normal and I've spent - on average - a bit more per month than I did when I was subbed, but I'm happy playing this way. What I was objecting to was the idea that Preemies are all whining freeloaders. Maybe some of us are, but I'm seeing the attitude on the forums often enough that I just finally snapped. It's frequent enough that it makes me want to just walk some days. To be fair, he probably didn't mean to paint so broadly and I likely overreacted. Luckily, I like the game and people in it enough that I can get past the negativity of the forums most days, and I rarely do anything too rash (like my previous post). Also, if anyone inferred from my post that I think I contribute more than a VIP, that was not my intent. I only meant to point out that some of us contribute on a comparable scale, or at least a not-inconsequential one, and would like to be considered relevant members of the community. |
I can understand why you can get frustrated by the generalizations, but please keep in mind that part of the reason they get made is because being more specific can bring down the wrath of the Mods. So someone will say Prems or Freems instead of Player A, B and C. I honestly think people only mean to include the group of players making the complaints rather than sweeping all Freems/Prems under the same umbrella.
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Oh, no! I do my best to take everyone's comments in the context they're presented and I would never compare registration dates or total time playing or number of 50s or anything (because I'd for sure lose that last one =P) |
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Thanks for responding and clearing up the confusion I was having about your post. To be honest I thought there might be a remote possibility you were making a judgement based on the difference between both your and toasts forum reg dates. It doesn't happen often but it does pop up occasionally. Very glad to hear that wasn't the case.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I can understand why you can get frustrated by the generalizations, but please keep in mind that part of the reason they get made is because being more specific can bring down the wrath of the Mods. So someone will say Prems or Freems instead of Player A, B and C. I honestly think people only mean to include the group of players making the complaints rather than sweeping all Freems/Prems under the same umbrella.
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- Ashley
[Rocker Girl (Earth/Earth Dom); Sweet Venom (Plant/Time Ctrl)]
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Given how many people frankenslot, I think this is a bad idea. I believe providing warnings about the lack of IO functionality when a preem logs in would be worthwhile, and pointing out second build options as well. However the gating which IOs are behind is a really short gate to be honest. Anyone unwilling to shell out $2/month is unlikely to have much interest in shelling out anything at all.
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Originally Posted by Minotaur
Zwillinger, I'm VIP so this doesn't affect me, but I know several people who have logged in as premiums, realised their toons are completely unusable and given up.
Is it possible to find out why the decision was taken as it was to render IOs useless, rather than allowing them to give their enhancement bonuses (scaled down a bit if you want) but no set bonuses, thus leaving the toons playable. |
Too many alts to list.
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Finally someone who understands me. ( Not including Z, I know he understands me |
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
However the gating which IOs are behind is a really short gate to be honest. Anyone unwilling to shell out $2/month is unlikely to have much interest in shelling out anything at all.
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)
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound