I wish there were a way to get in contact with the devs...

RagnarokWar

Hear me out. I'm not a gold user, and I never intend to sub. However, I do believe I have a great amount of ideas that could really open the game up and make it enjoyable for both P2P and F2P. For instance, something very basic: Reward the users for buying cash shop points. Give them an extra character slot for free, give them a free inventory belt slot, an extra costume slot, maybe let them have a Freeform character token that permanently gives you one Freeform. I don't know, just throwing it out there.

A few other ideas I had were tocreate incentive to use the cash shop, but still keep subs relevant. For instance, making Freeform characters a $20 purchase, or $4 for a token to let you have 1 permanently. Maybe even make it so if you delete that character, you lose the token you used. Maybe stop treating the unpaying users like third class citizens, and open up the forums to them. Nothing gets someone hooked into the game more than being a part of the community.

I know they have to make money somehow, and I have no problems with them making extra costume parts. What does peev me is they actually removed some of the basic pieces and made it a costume pack. My one character from beta ended up half-dressed when I converted him.  Also, as it stands, I have no desire to purchase their tokens, and once I hit max level, I'm probably going to quit. I have no friends (You can't use zone chat unless you log 20 hours total...), I can't talk on the forums to voice my mind, and unless I sub, I'll be forever gimp when it comes endboss raid time.

I appreciate their work, the game is fun, but they're doing so much wrong it feels like I'm playing a fairly better version of Everquest 2's Free To Play model, and soon I'll likely just go back to Lord of the Rings Online, which treats the Free Player as more of a 2nd class citizen, more middle-upper class. It's sad too, seeing as I'm really enjoying this game more than that for the time being. As you can tell, yes, I borrowed from Turbine's model where you're upgraded to a "premium" account when you purchase, or fall out of sub. An incentive to sub, or just buy some cash points and buy something.

http://www.lotro.com/betasignup/vipchart.html

I wish that the devs could see this, as I'm sure even more people would play their game if they were a bit more friendly towards their free users. I realize we're free loaders, but if they give me the incentive to purchase, I'll gladly do it. I pretty much bought the entirety of LOTRO, Turbine made out like Bandits with my cash. I'm sure that accounts for something. Also, yes, I would love if you got tokens for completing perks. That would make my day. But it'll never happen.

Quizzical

The problem is that whatever they charge for a freeform character is the de facto price of a lifetime subscription for many people.  The ability to make freeform characters is the main draw for a subscription.  If they give that away cheaply, they get very little revenue.

RagnarokWar

Aha, but if they make mistakes, they'd have to get another token, or get a complete retcon for the character, especially to use other power sets. the $4 was just a beginning price. If they make it too pricey, like $20, no one would buy it for just one character, unless they made it a package deal with the costume parts they took out, maybe an inventory/bank space, costume slot, etc.

They need to come up with some way that a F2P can get access to a free form permanently, and make them feel welcome and pull them into the community. Those are the big draws for success, not looking like an overglorified trial or Pay To Win.

Think over to Perfect World and it's games. Korean games are the staple of Pay To Win, and they boast mediocre sizes of community. Also, do remember that Turbine got MASSIVE amounts of revenue increase with their decisions as well. It can be profitable without hurting the users.

Quizzical

Suppose that someone is only interested in playing one character.  So they buy freeform access, bag slots, bank slots, the travel power they prefer, whichever costume options they want, both adventure packs, and a couple of costume slots.  And then they end up with a de facto lifetime subscription, after having only paid $40 or so.  Surely you can see how this would kill the revenue for the game.

LotRO has a very different model.  They make you pay to unlock content, so it's only free up to level 20 or so.  Champions Online gives away nearly all of the content for free.  Being able to make freeform characters is the main thing that they try to get revenue from.

Castillle

Last I checked, it only takes a bit of grinding to get enough money for a retcon o.o yes 400g is kind of hard but srsly   its not as hard as people make it out to be at max lvl

RagnarokWar

So what you're saying is, Quizzical, because I just want to play 1 character, either I should be forced to sub or lifetime, when all I want is a single freeform character? Pardon, but where do you get off telling me that? The idea is, they have to be able to bring in people and get them to feel some sort of devotion to the game. I know that LOTRO has the packs, but get this: You earn cash shop money by doing DEEDS. Yes, that's right! You can get cash shop stuff by playing the game! OMG! Yet they're still tooting 500% increase in revenue. People are happy. Their community is expanding. There are people to play with.

Y'know what? If you wanna be Mr. Xenophobe elitist lifer, by all means. Your game can go back to rotting and dying on the edge of the street, turning up sour numbers due to lack of end-game and people to play with.  Personally, I'm sick of people like you demanding we beat them over the head with bags of cash to have any rights whatsoever. A lot of people I knew in LOTRO told me to sub for a month, as I'd get all the content I'd need. I chose to wait for sales, grind deeds, and I spent $30 in their cash shop. They made me feel wanted and appreciated, and they made off with my money in a FREE GAME.

Read the words being typed on my keyboard: If they make freeform permanently accessible to someone, even just ONE freeform, NO ONE WILL DIE. MMO players that enjoy a game suffer from "Alt-itis". It'll give people a chance to try out freeform, and who knows, they may buy MORE. That's more bank slots, bag slots, maybe even flight powers and costume pieces, just because they enjoy freeform. Someone not careful could end up paying MORE than a lifer.

My major concern is the fact without Freeform, you will not be desirable for raid combat, and that the PvP community is split in half. That's not good. They also get advantage points sooner, more powers to play around with, and it feels more like anyone on an archetype is just playing a quaint demo. A lot of people aren't going to life or sub just to get a taste of freeform, and if they do sub, they'll drop it soon after. Success comes from being able to balance the good and the bad while opening it up to all, and right now, free players are, for lack of a better term, 3rd class citizens.

Also Castille, the free to play resource limit is capped at 250 gold. They can't get the required 400.

Quizzical

Grinding for the resources to retcon doesn't work.  As you gain resources, you also gain level, and thus need more resources to retcon.  It works a lot better to pass resources back and forth between characters, or just wait for the next free respec to be granted.

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But back to the main topic:  you're arguing that the game should be made a lot cheaper.  Now, there are sometimes pros and cons to that.  Someone can similarly argue that the subscription fee should be changed to $10/month or $5/month or whatever.  It's obvious why a player might want the cost of the game to be cheaper.

From a company's perspective, it's different.  If you reduce prices, you get more players to pay the lower prices.  But depending on the new and old prices, it may or may not be enough to make up for the loss in revenue from people who would have also paid the higher prices.  If you cut prices in half and 50% more players pay, you just lost a lot of revenue.  If you cut prices in half and three times as many people pay, then you got a lot more revenue than before and it's well worth it.

Would markedly lower prices convince a lot more people to pay?  I'm skeptical.  If you don't like a game enough to pay $15/month, then most likely either you don't like the game at all and wouldn't pay $5/month for it either, or else you can't pay to play and wouldn't pay $5/month either.  The goal of the free trial is to convince people that they like the game enough to subscribe, which is how Cryptic surely plans on bringing in most of their revenue.  Giving away the main draw for a subscription without actually requiring the subscription would probably bring in more revenue in the short run, but hurt them badly in the long run.  It's kind of like how a $50 lifetime subscription would do that, too.

One could argue that there should be a free trial of freeform characters, which would give players better incentives to understand what they're missing and pick up a subscription.  Maybe Cryptic could offer the option to make one character freeform for a month for $5, or include a week of free freeform whenever you buy $10 in Cryptic points, or whatever.  But forever freeform on the cheap is strikes me as a big revenue loser for the company.

gurugeorge

Originally posted by RagnarokWar

Read the words being typed on my keyboard: If they make freeform permanently accessible to someone, even just ONE freeform, NO ONE WILL DIE. MMO players that enjoy a game suffer from "Alt-itis". It'll give people a chance to try out freeform, and who knows, they may buy MORE. That's more bank slots, bag slots, maybe even flight powers and costume pieces, just because they enjoy freeform. Someone not careful could end up paying MORE than a lifer.

Not all f2p business plans are the same, Cryptic's idea is NOT a "pay as you go" f2p, or even "totally free everything if you've got the time on your hands" like Turbine's, mostly because they don't have tons of content like Turbine has, to lock out. 

ie. it's not an f2p model that takes advantage of market segmentation, it's just an extended free trial.

It might change to that in the future if Cryptic make more Adventure Packs - then I guess they'd be able to offer buyable Freeform slots on a Silver account, and/or the possibility to retain Freeform status on ex-Gold toons, but at the moment they're making it like an extended free trial type of f2p, which it's pretty much fine for.  For your no-money you get well enough gameplay to decide whether or not you'd want to subscribe.  And as an ex-subscriber who's still not subscribing, well you get more than you had before - you can still potter about in the game with an AT.

Seriously, this was thrashed out on the forums with players and also in the f2p Beta.  Cryptic understands the Turbine model perfectly well, they just don't feel that at the moment, it's a viable one for them.  It could change, but at the moment, no.  And after initially thinking along your lines and after much reflection, I think they're right.  Content is really CO's problem, and the only card they've got to play is the Freeform toon building, they'd be foolish to give it away free at this stage.  Maybe later, but not now.

The most I'd say is that they should put some facility in the Powerhouse for Silvers to try speccing their toon Freeform for like half an hour or something, just to see what it's like to make a Freeform build (just in the Powerhouse, using the danger room facility, etc.).