Couple questions for those who've downgraded from VIP to Free
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2012-07-23 24:05 in Player Questions
My account had a hiccup during billing once and I was preemie for about a day and a half, the thing I missed most was my character slots. I couldn't play any character I wanted, I had to carefully choose which character I wanted to play because the choice was semi-permanent.
I did also miss the free-to-VIP things like SSAs and power sets/costumes.
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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.
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When Freedom Launched I went Premium for about 6 months, and have a few times since. Before I did, I bought a pile of points and cherry picked the features that I needed or wanted most, so I didn't miss much. The points purchase bumped me up high enough that I had a permanent IO license. If it hadn't, I'd have been buying licenses. Losing IOs is very close to a deal-breaker for me.
The one thing that caught me by surprise was the loss of the Apex and Tin Mage task forces. I knew that I'd lose access to my incarnate abilities, Trials, and DA (when that was added), but for some reason, it didn't click that those were locked Incarnate Content. I expected to be -4 because of the lack of Alpha Slot, but I didn't expect to be locked out. In retrospect, I should have known better.
@Roderick
I've been premium for a while now (i have perma AH but i have to buy the IO license). Only thing i feel like i'm missing out on are converters. Not having incarnate is kind of annoying for my farmer but i'd quit doing trials long before i went premium and in general don't care about incarnate stuff (though DA arcs were fun the first few runs). I kind of miss a couple of the SSAs but not enough to really worry me and you can buy those anyway.
Couple of annoying things to watch out for are not being able to talk to the sg contact - if you have a solo storage sg this can suck if you don't have a vip friend with a spare slot to pay your rent. Also if you're a global channel admin you can't use those privileges - i had a couple of problems with small channels until a vip returned from a break.
as a max tier vet I only had two real complaints with freemium:
limited character slots
&
can't pay base rent.
Otherwise my in-game experience was pretty much the same.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Let's see... for me I dropped my sub for a month but I have such a long history of playing the game I have everything unlocked that the paragon rewards system allows.|
Originally Posted by Goddamage
After you downgraded from VIP, when you started playing with the free account, was there anything about the differences between the two that you hadn't thought of that was disappointing/surprising? Was there that "Awww... I hadn't thought of that!" moment?
What do you miss the most about VIP? |
That said... I did notice not having the following:
SSA's
All the characters I made with the "free for VIP" powersets
Not being able to do missions in the "free for VIP" zones of First Ward and Night Ward
Not being able to use "free for VIP" costume sets in new costumes
Not being able to pay base upkeep.
Incarnate powers
The game is certainly playable... and even enjoyable without that stuff. But it's markedly more enjoyable with them. And thus I am still subscribing. The points and tokens for consumable rewards each month are icing on the cake.
Jem - Ill/Rad Controller Lv 50+3 Nic - Mind/Psi Dominator Lv 50+3 Lady Liberation - Invuln/SS Tanker Lv 50+1 Invicitx - Demon/Pain Mastermind Lv 50+1 Celeste - Emp/Arch Defender Lv 50+1 Nightsilver - DB/WP Scrapper Lv 34 Dusk Howl - StJ/Regen Brute Lv 32 Kyriani - Time/Energy Defender Lv 41Psifire - FF/Psi Defender Lv 50
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Having both a VIP an Prem accounts I agree with the Goat, and because I've never been concerned with hoarding/storage the base rent issue isn't that big an irritation for me.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
as a max tier vet I only had two real complaints with freemium:
limited character slots & can't pay base rent. Otherwise my in-game experience was pretty much the same. |
Cool. Thanks people. This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to know.
I wasn't aware of the IO license deal. How does that work? Seems like that would make a hell of a difference.
Is there a place (forums, CoH-wiki, or whatever) that explains the whole ins and outs of the account types and what all the differences are?
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If you feel you need IO's to enjoy the game you can buy a monthly license for $2 bucks (160 Paragon Points), or if you have acquired 27 Paragon Rewards the license is unlocked permanently.|
Originally Posted by Goddamage
Cool. Thanks people. This is exactly the kind of stuff I need to know.
I wasn't aware of the IO license deal. How does that work? Seems like that would make a hell of a difference. Is there a place (forums, CoH-wiki, or whatever) that explains the whole ins and outs of the account types and what all the differences are? |
Edit: If you choose to get the license, remember buying Paragon Points in bulk not only gets you the Paragon Rewards needed to unlock the license faster, but you get bonus points with each bulk purchase and the bonus points count towards more Paragon Rewards. Every 1200 points gets you another reward token. Buying points $5 bucks at a time doesn't get any bonus points and is one of the slowest ways to advance up the reward ladder.
here's the lowdown on what you get when from Paragon Wiki.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I don't have a link, but the wiki explains the paragon rewards the best in my opinion.
For me figuring out the slots I would have was the biggest question. I had assumed that the 2 free slots that free players get upon making an account would be added to the earned slots that I had accrued over time. They are NOT. That was easy to miss even for me who lurks on these forums daily.
By extension, after I went back to VIP I discovered that the slots I added to unlock toons on my secondary server were now permanently allocated to that server. So that may be something to be aware of as well.
It's not how many times you get knocked down that count. It's how many times you get up.
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Originally Posted by ImpulseKing
after I went back to VIP I discovered that the slots I added to unlock toons on my secondary server were now permanently allocated to that server.
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Yeah this is important. I assumed that going VIP and then back to Prem would allow you to re-choose all of your server unlocks. Not so. Once you unlock a slot as Prem, I believe that's it. That slot is set, and short of a character transfer you can't alter it.
You've basically got two sets of unlocks, one for VIP and one for Prem, and once you pick 'em they stay like that, no matter how much you switch.
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Prem or VIP when you do it, assigning a global character slot makes it into a server slot. When you change sub status, all your server slots should un-allocate.
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Originally Posted by gameboy1234
Yeah this is important. I assumed that going VIP and then back to Prem would allow you to re-choose all of your server unlocks. Not so. Once you unlock a slot as Prem, I believe that's it. That slot is set, and short of a character transfer you can't alter it.
You've basically got two sets of unlocks, one for VIP and one for Prem, and once you pick 'em they stay like that, no matter how much you switch. |
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Yeah, it sounds like there's some confusion as to how slots work here.
Global Slots are slots that are completely unallocated, and as such they cannot be used (yet).
Both Premium and VIP players have to allocate their Global Slots to specific servers to use them. Once a Global Slot is assigned to a Server, it is there permanently.
All server slots are unlocked for VIP players by default. When you drop to Premium, all your slots are locked, and you have a number of Server Slots with which to unlock some (or maybe all) of those characters. When you return to VIP status, the characters do NOT automatically re-unlock - they remain in the locked/unlocked state they were in when you resubscribed, but enough additional Server Slots are unlocked to put you back at the base 12+any you purchased and applied to the server. If you unsubscribe, ALL the slots relock and can be reselected.
However, the Server Slots never go back to Global Slots. Once assigned to a Server, that assignation is permanent.
@Roderick
After you downgraded from VIP, when you started playing with the free account, was there anything about the differences between the two that you hadn't thought of that was disappointing/surprising? Was there that "Awww... I hadn't thought of that!" moment?
What do you miss the most about VIP?