So I want to return but...

Edit 2, the TL;DR Version!: After ten pages of discussion, arguments between various individuals, accusations, assumptions, and myself going from posting an annoyed, semi-knee jerk reaction to reorganizing my thoughts, I came to a simple conclusion. I want to try the game in it's full glory, or close enough to it, to see if it's something I want to return to and I'd be perfectly happy with something like the Reactivation Weekends of old to do that. No need to make everything free or whatever other conclusions some people seem to jump to. /endedit /tl;dr


I stopped playing around the time of I19 or I20, before the whole Freedom thing was announced due to various reasons and fell totally out of the loop for awhile. Came back, found the game was F2P and also there was an I21. And since then I've tried picking this game back up. I remember the good times I had and get interested in returning, finally coax myself to log in, and then quickly get demotivated. Okay, instantly. This has happened several times.

I subbed for just shy of two years back in the day, but this seems to amount to getting my IOs, Controllers, and Masterminds all locked and rendered useless without forking over cash, which just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I log into my two mains, who both had heavily IOed builds that are now unplayable to the point they might as well have all empty slots. Sure, I made some SO builds the first time I tried coming back, but spending the first couple of hours making new builds and buying SOs just to achieve partial performance was not an encouraging experience, and trying to play those weird, funky SO builds still doesn't help. I get my ***-kicked by something I could have handled with both hands tied behind my back before while at the same time thinking "For a nominal fee, you can avert this!" The mid-level characters I unlocked are more fine since I still used SOs, but it's still feels meh knowing I can't play my mains. And I can't just go roll a new alt without deleting someone because, hey, I used up most of my slots unlocking now-unplayable characters and the last few on characters I could play, so no "brand new fresh experience" for me without forking over money.

It just kind of leaves a whole, sour taste in my mouth. I liked this game, I want to play this game again, but I feel like it's saying "Welcome back, now dump out your wallet on the table" which is totally unlike it was back in the day, despite having to pay the sub fee "Hey, welcome back! Here, have an extra 15 days for free and enjoy the full game unhindered!" The whole premium thing isn't the point of my argument, though with the other MMO I play, Aion, sitting over there and letting me play the full game without dropping a dime, it's kind of become a bigger factor in annoying me.

But yeah, don't do the whole "You used to have to sub first" argument. I'm aware of it and I can probably type about 15 pages of counter-argument and I'd rather not. So moving on...

So, I poke around and there's still other issues that annoy me that keep cropping up. Little things, but it adds up. My interface is all jacked up on my alts and has to be fixed, and seems to do that every time I log in (granted, it's usually been an Issue or so between log-ins, I don't even know which Issue we're on now), performance on the Mac is still kind of screwed up no matter what my graphics are set to (seriously, there's no reason why Aion on medium-graphics should have triple the frame rate of CoX on minimum just because I'm booted on Windows in the former and OSX on the latter... and yes I'm using a supported version of OSX), there's lots of cool sounding things that require up-front payment but no way to tell beforehand if I'd like them (Staff Melee? Sounds awesome. No way to try it? Meh, not spending), no way to just buy a permanent or at least extended IO license (if I recall correctly, getting to Tier 7 would cost me around $260 or take just under two years if I sub the whole time, which I'd be for more likely to eventually do if I could have my IOs full-time now whether buying a license or putting it in a more sane spot on the rewards table), sending feedback via a support ticket on a couple of occasions simply got me an automated "Thanks for feedback, but use the forums to talk about the game" response that made me feel like they were saying "We don't give a f#$! about what you think", especially since at the time Premiums could only use the technical support forum, no way to disable incarnate powers in the arena (there was a casual PvP night on my server, don't know if they still did it, but it was fun. Even with IOs back, I imagine I'd be useless now since I don't have incarnate powers), and some other things I'm not thinking of.

I don't know, it just seems baffling that this game and Aion is being ran by NCSoft. Sure, the latter has it's own problems, and I could go on and on about them, but at least I've been able to do things like see and chat with CMs in-game and come and go as I please without worry of all my stuff timing out while not feeling like I'm being told to dump out my wallet to see if I want to play again while being told my opinion doesn't matter.

I imagine this comes off as a bit whiney and ranty. It's kind of how I feel since I'm rather annoyed and nobody I knew was on in-game for me to complain to. CoX is a game I'd really love to play again, but it seems to just want to throughly demotivate me on doing that the moment I log on. I want to know if the good times I had in the past are still there to be had, but with most of my friends gone, my old super group looking like it's barely hanging on, everyone in the channels seeming to only be interested in doing incarnate content, and no way to at least try the game in it's former glory for a little bit, how am I supposed to find out?

So meh, maybe someone will give me some good reasons that'll let me be able to get past the wall of demotivation and give things a legitimate shot. Or maybe I'll just get a bunch of TL:DRs, "You used to have to pay up front to play anyway, so I don't see the problem" posts I heard a million times back when I tried to return earlier, or whatever "You're wrong and you're an idiot" trolling that could crop up.


Edit: Again, not trying to say "give me all this stuff free" or anything of that nature. I'm just trying to decide if this game is worth investing time and money in again, as a Premium or a VIP, but feel it's doing everything in it's power to dissuade me by ruining the experience because I haven't paid anything yet.

Also, I know the game is supposed to be balanced around SOs. Saying my characters screwed up in terms of IOs as being unplayable may have been a bit strong (though the IOed builds themselves really are unplayable). I was highly annoyed when I typed that. However, it's still undeniable that having to spend a hour or so per character making a downgraded build for SOs and then take the time to reslot them only to be at a fraction of their effectiveness is very, very much unfun and not a good "Welcome back!" experience.

If you're a longtime former player, then you should check out the Paragon Rewards program -- it replaced the old Vet Rewards program. You very likely have a number of 'reward tokens' available to you, based on how many months you used to be a subscriber.

You probably have enough credits from your old subscription to be able to unlock a lot of stuff you used to have:

- Tier 4 (8 reward tokens slotted)
Auction House access

- Tier 5 (13 reward tokens slotted)
Mastermind and Controller ATs

- Tier 6 (20 reward tokens slotted)
Mission Architect

- Tier 7 (27 reward tokens slotted)
Invention System access

Hope that helps you feel better about coming back!

--
Pauper

Go read Nethergoat's "Returning Player Diary" in the All-Access General Discussion forums. That's the best advice I can give you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

I'm a newish player and won't try to answer everything here. Just a couple of little things.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwilightPhoenix I don't even know which Issue we're on now

Issue 23

Quote:

no way to just buy a permanent or at least extended IO license (if I recall correctly, getting to Tier 7 would cost me around $260 or take just under two years if I sub the whole time, which I'd be for more likely to eventually do if I could have my IOs full-time now whether buying a license or putting it in a more sane spot on the rewards table)

160 points a month, which would be $2 assuming that you never buy more than $5 at a time to get bonus points. And you can get more than one at a time to extend the license multiple months. Or at least you could before I went VIP.

Quote:

I imagine this comes off as a bit whiney and ranty. It's kind of how I feel since I'm rather annoyed and nobody I knew was on in-game for me to complain to.

Hi! I'm a new person you can whine to!

@B.Viking if you need an ear to gripe at ingame. I play on Pinnacle, but global handles are, well, global.

(Here's hoping at least the last part cheered you up a little.)

Twilight Phoenix, I don't think you're wrong. I'm surprised to see myself typing that. I'm a totally loyal VIP player, after all. No plans to unsubscribe. It should be my knee-jerk reaction to disagree with you, right? Well...no. Because I've seen enough posts like yours to know that Paragon Studios needs to come up with a workable compromise. Because I may not want you to have everything I have for free, but I also don't want you (and countless nameless others like you) to continue coming back and having your experience.

I love you guys at Paragon Studios and I love this game. I think I have VERY few complaints compared to, oh, 99.9 percent of your forum population. But I can't help but sympathize with this guy's position a little bit. I hope you'll do something. Because you and I both know it's "not just this guy." Maybe let him have one or two of his characters fully IO'd out. Or at least a couple of the ones that were IO'd out pre-Freedom. I don't know. Just...I'm very politely requesting, think of something, because this is bad for you, and it's bad for me by extension.

OP, You're not gonna like what I have to say, but here it is:

City of Heroes is not a F2P game. Yes, there is free access and limited functionality. The game is Subscription Focused. In other words, it is a Subscription-Hybrid. That has been the Dev's intention from the first announcements of CoH:Freedom.

You Sub, you get access to all Story Content and a good number of Costumes and Powersets. You don't Sub, you can pay, a la carte, for what you want to use and get more functionality unlocked as you progress through the Rewards System. This awards those who had subbed for extensive periods and those now who wish to throw gobbs of cash to Paragon/NCSoft.

That doesn't mean VIPs get everything either. There's still Costumes and Powers/Powersets VIPs also have to pay for. But that was true (at least Costume-wise...) in the pre-Freedom days.

Does it suck that premiums have to use the web site for assistance? Yes. Then again that is all apart of the design, gate enough services/content to get someone to pony up the $15/Month.

Right now, I'm a T9 VIP. If I had to drop to Premium, I'd lose the following (and then have to pay for):
First Ward & Night Ward Story Content
Leather & Chainmail Armors at least (I think there a couple more, not sure...)
Dark Control/Assault & Time Manipulation Powersets
EATs
Incarnate Content (not that I have any 50s anyway...)
550 Paragon Points/Month
SSA 1.1-1.7 & 2.1 (and that would get longer with each added installment)
SG Rent payment (Considering I have Red Star and/or Payment privileges on a half-dozen or more SGs, that's a big hindrance...)
New T9 VIP items when they become available
Access to about 2/3 of the overall characters I have (I'd have the 2 + 20-25 Global Tokens, I think)

That's a lot, to me, and I feel enough of an incentive to keep Subbed.

As I said above, This may not of been what you wanted to hear, but the Dev's approach, I think, is respectful enough to long-term players and incentive enough to new players to keep subbing.

Thank you for the time...

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

How many reward tokens do you have? If you subbed for "just shy of two years" then you ought to have something like 20+ reward tokens, which would not get you all the way to permanent inventions license but would get you fairly close.

I don't wish to sound unsympathetic when I say that your post sounds like you're saying "I want the gameplay I used to have without paying anything for it." As you point out with AION, this is not an entirely unreasonable thing to desire.

Most MMO's don't go as full out as that, and CoH is pretty liberal about the limits it imposes. See, the "basic game" is not geared towards a returning player. That's what the Paragon Rewards program is geared towards.

The basic game is geared towards the newbie, never played the game before player. That sort of player gets complete access to what amounts to the game we had at launch 8 years ago, content-wise, and he gets to play it all from levels 1-50. The rest of it, inventions included, is gravy. You don't NEED inventions to play, just like you don't NEED incarnates to play. They each give you options but they are, in fact, optional.

The rub comes in the case of someone like yourself who is borderline towards getting the gameplay they remember, but they are not quite there. The only way to get that is to subscribe or buy enough content (powersets, costume sets, whatever) to rack up a few more reward tokens to get them to that permanent inventions license. You're accustomed to having those things so they don't feel optional to you, so you feel nickel-and-dimed.

In the end, you have to decide what it is that you want. In the old days, if you unsubscribed, you got zilch. ALL of your characters were locked and ALL of your game systems were locked. You couldn't play at all. You simply didn't have an option to play the basic game with a handful of character slots and no inventions or incarnates.

Ask yourself this: Am I likely to buy something from the market?

If the answer is "yes", then ask yourself what you would buy? 1200 points spent on the market earns you another reward token. (That's not coincidentally the price of a one-month sub.) You also get a 400 point stipend with a one-month subscription, and that one month sub also gets you a reward token. Ask yourself what it is that you want aside from just "everything for nothing". Are you curious about how Statesman died? Maybe a one-month sub would be worth having in order to play Signature Story Arc #1, as well as get those points and reward token.

That one month sub would also allow you to pick a few chars to be your "premium" characters, and give them a second build that is kitted out completely with SO's so that they are not "unplayable" due to their IO's being unavailable. Something that isn't obvious about the current system is that if you subscribe and then return to premium status, your slot unlocks are all reset. That means that you can reassign them to different characters than the ones they are currently assigned to, if you feel like you made some mistakes in choosing which characters to unlock.

Maybe a three month sub would get you the extra reward tokens for the permanent IO license, and net you enough Paragon Points to buy whatever new costume pack or power set interests you before you go back to premium.

If you are adamant that you don't want to spend any money at all, ever, but still have your old game experience, then I can only say that it's not gong to happen and you should save yourself the annoyance of wishing for it by going to play AION or another game that is similarly structured to give you everything but encourage you to buy in a cash shop. This game is designed for a different sort of "free play" experience than that, for better or worse.

I spent far more money on CoH post-freedom than I did when it was a monthly sub. FAR more. Which is why I'm playing that other game you mentioned, because it's actually free, and I don't feel pressured into spending my money in their (also insanely overpriced) store.

*double posting error!*

The OP makes a good point insofar as his return wasn't a welcoming experience, and he shared that with us. That kind of feedback is piling up. And so I think a more attractive compromise may be a good suggestion for the dev team, otherwise we'll start getting lousy reviews in magazines, basically, as reviewers begin making more comparisons to other F2P games.

Huh. *Pang of self-realization ensuing*. I guess I'm more concerned about the image this is creating for the game than I am about freebies and fair treatment. Oh well. Sue me. I'm a VIP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadShinobi I spent far more money on CoH post-freedom than I did when it was a monthly sub. FAR more. Which is why I'm playing that other game you mentioned, because it's actually free, and I don't feel pressured into spending my money in their (also insanely overpriced) store.

As much as I sympathize with the OP in my post above, I just can't wrap my head around this. And I'm not trying to say your perspective is wrong and you should be flogged for it--there are all kinds of friends and family and co-workers who hold viewpoints that make me go wha? But what is wrong with spending money on something that is fun and entertaining? Especially when it helps improve the quality and life of the product? I hear people say things like, "well THIS game is MORE FREE," almost like they're tisk-tisking at City of Heroes. Why? Especially when many of those "free" games are still relatively new and likely don't have 8 years of content and features going for them?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting everything to be free. Not even close, they have to make money somehow after all. What I do miss is the awesome generosity they had back in the day. Been away from the game for awhile? Have a friend invite you and get some free time as a welcome back gift. Not sure about the game? Here, have a trial for a few days that lets you experience the whole game for it's short duration (said trial got nerfed like crazy, which was annoying, but I was a subscriber by then so it didn't directly affect me, just made introducing the game to friends a PITA). AFAIK, that kind of thing is gone. There's no VIP trials, no extra welcome back time, none of that. It feels like if they're already getting your money, they love you. If they're not, they don't care about you even if you've been a paying customer in the past. Or if you prefer, gone from "Hey, we made your game more awesome, please come back and join us!" to "Hey, we made your game more awesome, but if you don't give us money we're going to make it suck for you." Or if you prefer, they've switched from the carrot to the stick. It doesn't really encourage me to sink $15 or even $5 just to see if I still like the game when there's so many sticks smacking me when I log in.

Lots of ways they could easily alleviate that. The invite-back thing they used to have, letting existing characters from previous subscribers keep what they have if no longer eligible, just can't get more (maybe disabling Incarnate powers, no real opinion since I'm only losing a couple of alpha slots so I really don't know what I'm missing), allow accounts that have existed/been unsubbed for so long be allowed to activate a (maybe one-time) "free VIP trial" that lets them check out VIP benefits for a few days, stuff like that. I work retail, that kind of stuff works. You'd be surprised how much extra someone will spend for a single carrot and how much more likely they are to just dump their cart and walk out of the store when there's too many sticks. For example, a brand of flavored water wasn't selling at all. We gave free samples and now we have trouble keeping stocked, months later.

But yeah, I'm not expecting to get everything free, despite how awesome it is with Aion (though the only thing I haven't spent anything in their cash shop is because they haven't put anything for sale that interests me).

Anyway, I did read some of that diary topic and his experience is... a lot different than mine. But that's probably because he's Tier 9 and has almost no restrictions. I'm Tier 4 with 9 tokens, so I'm a long way off from having permanent access to Controllers, Masterminds, and IOs, along with other things. But I do have AH access. What I'm supposed to do with it when I'm not eligible for salvage or recipe drops, I don't know. At least my influence isn't capped so my wealthier toons aren't stuck having more inf than they can carry. And also, I have EAT access too. No clue why since I didn't buy it and I haven't VIP subbed, but my Peacebringer is perfectly log-inable.

For the higher level characters with IO builds, I know, making SO builds was one of the first things I grudgingly did a year or so ago when I first tried Freedom. And spending a hour+ per toon making a new build and buying SOs isn't the best "Welcome back!" experience. And then having them perform as only a pale shadow of their former glory is not fun. At all. If you want to see what I mean and you have a spare build on an IOed alt, just log em in, make a second build, unslot your incarnate powers, and just feel how horribly weak it'll seem in comparison. It's not fun. That and I think I screwed something up on my Scrapper and Defender when doing the SO build because they perform like crap with them. And I'm out of respecs to fix it and my Scrapper already used up the trial respecs tweaking his too often since he was my first alt for me to experiment with IOs on. And I can't craft the respec recipe. Yay?

But anyway, I took a more serious shot in-game. Maybe it's just Tuesday, but my server, Protector, was weirdly silent. Either nobody was on or they all went to new global channels. Sure, it's not the biggest server, but the global channels were usually chatty during evenings. So, having no idea which contacts in the contact finder gave old, sucky missions and which ones gave the new content, I went and ran a Mayhem mission since those always amused me. Yeah, paper missions were blah, but I fully expected that going in and I'm not really judging the game on those. And they at least amused me by putting four of the missions back and forth across the street rather than opposite corners of the map. Blowing up everything was still amusing, though PPD Ghosts are still broken (-45% stackable tohit debuff on a minion-level mob at level 30... seriously?).

And I also realized I need to just suck it up and ditch the crappy Mac client and just install CoX on my Windows partition if I'm going to play again. The jittering frame-rate is a serious PITA (40 FPS! Now 7! Now 40! Now 7!) and, as always, adjusting my settings didn't help. Also, the memory leak is still there. Anyone know which files contain all the settings, or at least the ones I've set to default, such as key binds, window settings, and all that? I know where my costumes are stored, but not the other stuff.

Oh, and Tymer, Freemium is still F2P. It's just one of several variants of it.

Edit: Are options.txt and wdw.txt the settings files I'm looking for? Poking around trying to see if I can find it in the mean time. Not sure if there are others.

They do still have the Refer a Friend program. This is the link to the Knowledge Base article.

There is also a link to it on the Account page on the NCSoft site but it would be useless for me to post the link since it requires me to be logged in to access it.

They also have a link to it on the Paragon Market screen that will take you to that Account page. This is available on the Paragon Market screen for VIP accounts, Free accounts and Premium accounts. Since I have all three types, I checked each one to make sure it is there.

Here's part of the screenshot from my Premium account. Note that you can see the Become a VIP icon in the upper right corner.



As for the VIP Trial, well, they don't really have a free trial for the VIP experience, but they do have the VIP Starter Kit that has been on sale for either $0.99 or $1.99 previously that gave 30 days of VIP time for almost nothing (normal price of the VIP Starter Kit is $14.99).

As for what you can do with the AH license without an IO license? You can buy ATO's that players have put up for sale in the AH. Those aren't IO's and aren't under the same restrictions of needing an Invention license. Also, there are other items that can be bought and sold on the AH other than Inventions.

The EAT Access is because you had unlocked it when you were subscribing prior to CoH: Freedom's launch either by getting a Hero to level 50 or after they lowered the requirement to getting a Hero to level 20. The plan was that it would require an unlock, but since they were already unlocked on those accounts they remained unlocked after the change. They decided to leave it as it was on those accounts rather than go in and apply new code to lock those AT's again, especially since it may have introduced other problems. It's an added bonus for those that had unlocked the EATs (and VEATs) when they were subscribed prior to the changes. I haven't seen a Reward Tier unlock for EATs or VEATs as there is for MMs and Controllers, so that wouldn't have any affect on it.

MMs and Controllers didn't work that way since there wasn't an unlock method for those ATs before Freedom, so there was no way to have them already unlocked except by Reward Tiers.

IO's aren't required to play the game. There are several VIP's using SO builds or SO/HO builds. Up until a week or so ago I was running a SO/HO build on my main with no trouble and he's existed since the 3 day headstart. He had a few (3 or 4) common IO's slotted when I started the Incarnate arcs in DA and had picked up a few set pieces (Kismet +Acc, Celerity Stealth, BotZ KB protection, Numina Unique) in the meantime but only got fully specced into a cheap IO build in the past week. The rest of my characters use either SO/HO builds or simple SO builds for those under 50. Not much is likely to change there. All of my characters are effective and can run Hami Raids, zone events and RWZ Ship Raids with no problems. Since the game is still designed around SO's, it isn't necessary to have an IO build. That's merely a convenience.

I also play my Premium account some and I haven't noticed the limitations on that account even though I'm only at Tier 3. I have just as much fun on that account as I do on my VIP account. The only thing I notice is that I'm not constantly having to get rid of Salvage or Recipes like I did before Freedom.

Note the VIP starter kit only works on 100% free (aka 1 token) accounts, not on premium or VIP accounts

What can I tell you, it is a shock going from a full page of kitted out toons to a few characters without full gear.

Your choice boils down to paying $15 for everything or $5 for a few invention licences and some alts. In the end, you will need to decide if the gameplay of the game is fun enough for you or if you need the gear and epic missions (Incarnates et al.) to get your blood racing again.

Good luck.

My definition of F2P is that I can log in and play for free without having to make any purchases and that the game indicates in some fashion that it is F2P (being named Freedom and having accounts that are called Free Accounts are pretty good indicators to me). Again, Freemium is just a variant of that. How much I like any given restrictions or variant of the F2P model is irrelevant.

Is that refer a friend button for inviting new players to make new accounts or to get returning vets back? I can't find anything on inviting former players back, but maybe I'm not looking in the right places.

And I do know IOs aren't necessary to play the game (don't know about Incarnate Trials, but I imagine Apex and Tin Mage would be extremely rough on SOs, though granted we only had Alpha slot when I played those), it's just, again, not fun getting kicked down in power so much on my higher level alts. I honestly had forgotten how horribly squishy Super Reflexes is when you're stuck with only 33% defense. And how endurance heavy it is too, even without all the power pool toggles to add more defense.

Wasn't aware of ATOs' existence. HOs, yes, but I never looked at those since the ones I wanted cost as much as a quarter of my IO builds. Or more.

Oh, the Protector channels, I'm on Protector Vigilance, Protector Watch, Protector TFs, STF Masters, Jello Shooters, and one other one I can't remember. During my five paper missions and Mayhem, I saw two stray helloes and one person spamming for a trial. Maybe it's just Tuesday? Though my global friends list being dark the whole time is a bit disheartening (but that's not the game's fault).

Also... why do I keep popping out walls of text?

Generally, if you're unsure what you get for free, the free option offers the launch game from 2004, with a lot of the QoL upgrades from the past 8 years.

The OP has a point, because I've heard similar experiences from my friends who've come back to play CoH, briefly, because they heard it went F2P.

The problem is that the game they remember is the game they expect to get F2P, and unless you've played long enough to be a high-tier Premium player, it's really not. IO access is just the most obvious example.

My recommendation for returning players these days is to avoid going into your old CoH account unless you know you're going VIP -- if all you want is to try the F2P game, create a new account (you can link it to your existing account if you want), create a new level 1 character, and appreciate how much the game has changed for the better over the past few years (holy crap, I can fly at level 4? holy crap, I get the Fitness pool for free?) rather than be continually reminded how much stuff you can't do that you used to be able to. If you're impressed enough to go VIP again, then you can unlock the old account with the VIP access and play with the old toys, leaving the new account as F2P for when you decide to let the subscription lapse.

As a bonus: you're now set to dual-box anything that's not VIP-restricted content.

--
Pauper

Well I have just read thru this and not once have I seen anyone point out that the game is still * according to the Devs* based around the SO enhancements,all the other stuff is just cream.Yes I know the IO,s make us stronger but this is why we can change the lvl of difficulty at which we fight.You can still play the game with just an SO build.Go back to Issue 6 which is when I started playing we had none of this great stuff then but everyone wanted it,now we have it and people want it without paying why should you get what I have when I pay my sub each month and others want it for nothing.Either sub up or adapt you game play to suit your freedom status.