Is it justified?

Just out of curiosity, how do you, as an individual, feel about buying new powersets even though you're a VIP member? I'm not taking sides here, nor will I support either one. I'm simply curious as to how the general community feels about this. Is it justified?

They're releasing power sets far more often than before - that extra time and effort needs to be paid for.

I don't have any problem with it. Games have been selling expansion content for decades, this is no different. It's just instead of buying a whole expansion like Going Rogue, you're buying stuff piecemeal.

If charging for powersets is how they can fund the development of more niche powersets, then I am a million times for it.

If we weren't paying for power sets then you'd be looking at Street Justice and Beam Rifle coming in the new box set expansion maybe due out this Summer, and staff and titan weapons and beast mastery and darkness control would be cool ideas that maybe they could do someday.

How I see it at least.

It was clear to everybody they'd be nickel-and-diming us with Freedom. That was the whole point. Far as I'm concerned, though, as long as we're getting quality products that are worth the money, I don't mind being nickel-and-dimed. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

If I wasn't okay with it, I wouldn't buy it. An additional benefit to being a VIP subscriber is that I can always hop onto the BETA server and test things to see if I like the powerset or not, so it's not even like I'm making blind purchases either.

I subscribe for a year I end up with enough free points to buy 6 powersets. Did we even average one new powerset a year before Freedom?

I haven't spent any money after Freedom launched beyond my monthly fee, and I have several new power sets to play with. I think it's certainly justified.

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Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

We're getting new powersets a lot more often than we used to. I don't mind paying for them as long as they are high quality. Many of them have been, but a few have been disappointing.

Let's see, from the game's launch in 2004 until the change to the hybrid model, we got 6 free power sets (well two for me, since four were before my time):

Archery, Trick Arrow, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Dual Blades, and Willpower. If you wanted to play with Electric Melee and Electric Shields, you had to buy City of Villains and play a brute (or stalker when it was proliferated to them). It was eventually made free when everyone got CoV for free. Was I upset? Not really. You had to buy Going Rogue to get Dual Pistols, Demon Summoning, Kinetic Melee, or Electric Control. So in total, in 7 years, we got 12 new power sets, of which half were free and the other half required a purchase.

Now let's look from October, 2011 when Freedom launched until now (a mere 7 months:

We've had four free powersets for VIPs (Time Manipulation, Darkness Control, Darkness Assault, Darkness Affinity) and four paid for power sets (Titan Weapons, Beam Rifle, Street Justice, Beast Mastery). Look at that, the very same ratio as before, but look at the amount of powersets. In less than a year, we've had three-fourths the amount of new powersets than we've (some of you that is) had in 7 years.

Some of my characters

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I think we're getting a decent balance of "Free for VIP" and "Everyone pays." (even if it's with "free" points.)

Only issue is that VIPs can't "buy" free sets to have them available if they go premium (such as when they're on sale.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

Is it justified? Yes, it is justified for a for profit company to charge for the products they produce.

I feel good about them providing more powersets for free to VIP players. In reference to the for pay powersets the only one I am going to pay for is Staff Fighting, with two months worth of VIP points.

I enjoyed STJ a bit on BETA, but not enough to buy it. If I get an STJ itch I can scratch it on BETA.

It's all good.

Now if they would just RELEASE THE KRAKEN all would be better.

I am delighted that they let us choose what we want to pay for rather than paying for whatever they dream up.

I just wish I could get a few thousand paragon points and never touch incarnate content

Since at least my perception so far is that I've also recieved about the same number of "free" ViP powers that I would have expected during the same time span prior to Freedom, and the price point of the purchase only sets is not unreasonably high, I have no issue. It feels sort of like buying a vaguely overpriced expansion "City of Other Wierd Stuff" in stages.