New efforts!

[Ironwolf]

What I have heard being floated was a one time pay $xx dollars and get everything from the vet rewards, badges and the whole deal.
So imagine a $24.99 or some sort of price to reset everything and help pay for the initial purchase of the game and then various ways to go forward, you can sub for similar rewards as in the past and also the F2P way with basically nothing just a new start.

[brothermutant]

Just so long as they don't make it a "buy now and get forever; don't buy now and you can NEVER get it". I hated that I can't get a specific batman PvP character EVER (I can get different ones, but that ONE slot is and always will be empty. It mocks me to this day.).

[darkgob]

On the contrary, they will need any revenue they can get their hands on.  F2P isn't free.  Free apps on your smart phone aren't free either.  Its a way for the company to advertise stuff to you.  Eventually you'll pay  for something.

Only if you're a whale.  I've never spent a cent on Star Trek Online and as long as it's run the way it is by PWE I will never spend money on it.

[Pyromantic]

There's really only a few ways of having a vet reward system again. 1. Is to just start it from scratch. 2. Is to have to pay to get rewards and 3. If it's possible, to somehow atleast be able to get the old subscribers purchased time from NC. But I'm sure that would be near impossible. 2. Would be the most logical answer since just about all vet players would pay to have their status and rewards again.

There is a fourth option: Everyone gets a certain amount of vet rewards.  Alternatively, all subs get a certain amount of vet rewards.

If there was a modest cost to get a bunch of vet rewards or other convenience items, I'd be ok with paying that.

[Graydar]

Yeah. There's ways of doing F2P that are great, clever and amazing, and then there's ways of doing F2P which feel like you're being hit over the head every twelve seconds for not remortaging to pay to your gaming overlords you dirty, dirty freebie player. For instance, ToR. ToR is a terrible example of F2P, I go out of my way to make *sure* I don't spend money on it because of how offended I am by just playing it, there is just an overwhelming lack of value for your money. Also, grinding to get all of the "VIP" teir stuff is easy if you have help. CO's subscription gave me the same sort of feeling, like there wasn't really a good amount of value for my money.

On the other hand, if you want smart (and evil), look at Valve, I've easily spent maybe £100 on CS:GO keys and I *still* don't have a knife. TF2, the steam market.. etc. APB has it's problems, but, I think that the subscriptions there have a good amount of value.

[Phaerius]

Yeah. There's ways of doing F2P that are great, clever and amazing, and then there's ways of doing F2P which feel like you're being hit over the head every twelve seconds for not remortaging to pay to your gaming overlords you dirty, dirty freebie player. For instance, ToR. ToR is a terrible example of F2P, I go out of my way to make *sure* I don't spend money on it because of how offended I am by just playing it, there is just an overwhelming lack of value for your money. Also, grinding to get all of the "VIP" teir stuff is easy if you have help. CO's subscription gave me the same sort of feeling, like there wasn't really a good amount of value for my money.

On the other hand, if you want smart (and evil), look at Valve, I've easily spent maybe £100 on CS:GO keys and I *still* don't have a knife. TF2, the steam market.. etc. APB has it's problems, but, I think that the subscriptions there have a good amount of value.

That's how I feel about almost every f2p phone game, and most f2p mmo's. To this day I think I've only really loved one f2p game, and its marvel heroes. Which has the most amazing devs in the world.

[Felderburg]

First: You could buy a monthly, total-use IO license for $2/mo. You can find that on the ground in the time it takes for your current license to expire.

Just gonna throw it out there that I have yet to find $2 a month "on the ground" on any sort of consistent basis.  :P

[Graydar]

Whilst a company wants to make money they must also make sure that they understand the basic principles of an MMO and adhere to them above all else. No-one's going to consistently spend money on a game that is lacking. One of the things that a lot of F2P mmos forget about is the free playerbase, because they serve a big role - they are content, and one of the biggest things in CoH from my history with it was the people that you played with. If you divide the playerbase via paywalls, or you burn them out, or if you make them resent playing, you're hurting the overall viability and lifespan of the game.

There's not really any MMO out there that I've seen doing "everything" right, for a variety of reasons, the main one of them being suits making decisions about the game in place of the developer. So, with that said, curiously, what is going to be NCSoft's role if/when CoH is roaring and ready to be launched? Seeing as it's not got any players previously subscribing, it lacks the original characters that people developed, their accounts, etc, it's particularly vulnerable and a suit taking charge could spell death.  :gonk:

[Arcana]

Second: Incarnates was sub-only because *something* has to be sub-only in a hybrid game, otherwise the only people who would sub are the hardcore people who would be there no matter what happened (see: those of us still active on Titan an in the "survivor" groups). Compared to everything in the game that non-subs had access to (free or ala carte purchase), there was *very* little that was restricted to subscribers:
- the top tier rewards costume pieces (super packs were available to purchase ala carte)
- the VIP server (which was a ghost town weekdays and fluctuated a lot on the weekends)
- creating/moderating global chat (but anyone with 5 reward tokens could join & talk)
- the SG registrar (including paying rent - easy enough to find a subscriber to join, pay rent, and leave)
- incarnates.

Not putting your end game behind a subscription means a huge amount of the reason many, many people subscribed suddenly disappeared. I can endgame for free? Heck, what's left to subscribers? An e-peen server? Paying rent? *eyes roll so hard they fall out of her head*

I think it wasn't just the case that something had to cost, but that more importantly the end game in CoH was a very logical thing to paywall.  Because the end game was relatively segmented from the rest of the core game, it was an area where you could put up a paywall without significantly impacting the vast majority of free players, particularly new ones.  New players could play the free game for a very long time before deciding whether it was worth it to pay for the end game content.  They were not confronted with the decision on whether to sub until they had spent considerable amount of time getting familiar with and deciding if they liked the game.  And if a player terminated their subscription losing incarnate abilities was one of the least disruptive to high level players, since they also lost access to the content that enabled most of those abilities anyway (they would lose some power by losing alpha).

Paywalling inventions was more disruptive, but I think allowing that to be unlocked by the veteran reward system was considered by most players on the forums to be an entirely reasonable compromise.  Again, it didn't hurt new players very much in terms of playing the standard content, and long term veterans could unlock it without having to pay given sufficient veteran status.  The only players who didn't have access to inventions were short-term non-subscribers and even they could rent it or unlock it by getting enough tokens from buying other things.

[Arcana]

The theoretical Disney version would probably be "City of Princesses", and... I wouldn't want to go there.... :o

Actually, the Disney version could have Jedi Avengers helping the Incredibles save San Fransokyo from Darth Thanos.

Ok, when all the heroes trying to take the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos started singing "Let it go" I'd probably have to turn off the sound, but it would be awesome-sauce until then.

[Noyjitat]

First off, please calm your tone and stop referring to me like I'm leeching off your game. The game is dead (for now) and as I've stated in a later post, I stayed subscribed during the game's last several months hoping it would keep it afloat.

Now as for "entitled to a complete game for free"? I paid several years worth of subscription fees in which I built my characters meticulously, that already takes "for free" out of the window. For a brief period of time, I wasn't playing as much and all I did was log on once or twice a week to revisit my favorite characters. That's not worth $15 a month in my book. If I could've paid to get access to just my incarnate powers and IO set bonuses I would've done so. Regardless, there are lots of other features to the game that remained! purchasable only which made sense (costume pieces, character slots) so Incarnate Powers + IO set bonuses isn't exactly a complete game either.

As for having no idea what "pay2win" means I think Arcanaville did a good job of describing it. P2W isn't really a well defined term, but in my eyes I was paying $15 a month just to gain access to something that makes my characters way more powerful as they were already incarnate and IO'd out. To me that's Pay2Win as while you're not obligated to be super powerful to win, the power increase is definitely impactful and meaningful if you're a character builder.

Sorry but you're wrong. And only proving my point about entitlement. I paid several years too and had multiple accounts. But that shouldnt mean i automatically get incarnates and ios for free. Imagine how quickly the game would die if all the veterans simply unsubscribed.

[Auroxis]

Game had plenty of other reasons to subscribe. Stop pretending like incarnate powers is somehow the only thing that kept players in VIP.

[Graydar]

Sorry but you're wrong. And only proving my point about entitlement. I paid several years too and had multiple accounts. But that shouldnt mean i automatically get incarnates and ios for free. Imagine how quickly the game would die if all the veterans simply unsubscribed.

Free players are content for the people that pay into the game, depriving them of power under the reasoning that "well, we have to charge for something" is a little lazy and creates a bit of a divide in the player base as well if you just straight up charge cash for any player wanting to unlock that. A better alternative would be having permission to access content be interchangeable as long as it wasn't redeemed to any singular character/account. That way, free players can still play that content and there's still money being moved, but, this alternative only works if the in-game economy was given a revamp to ensure that the in-game currency is a lot more valuable than previous. Numbers! Yay!

[Codewalker]

Paywalling inventions was more disruptive, but I think allowing that to be unlocked by the veteran reward system was considered by most players on the forums to be an entirely reasonable compromise.  Again, it didn't hurt new players very much in terms of playing the standard content, and long term veterans could unlock it without having to pay given sufficient veteran status.  The only players who didn't have access to inventions were short-term non-subscribers and even they could rent it or unlock it by getting enough tokens from buying other things.

I've said it several times before, but I still believe the biggest mistake made by the F2P transition was disabling IOs entirely for free players. If you want to hook someone who stopped playing their IO'd character a while back, but heard about F2P and is curious enough about it to fire up the game again, a respec and the long process of slotting a build are not the kind of barriers you want to put in front of them.

A much better implementation would have been to disallow slotting of new IOs for free players, shut off set bonuses, and either keep the enhancement values or degrade them slightly (but not much!) to make them on par with SOs. A returning player would not be quite as uber as they used to be, but at least their character would be playable from the minute they log in.

[Auroxis]

And if a player terminated their subscription losing incarnate abilities was one of the least disruptive to high level players, since they also lost access to the content that enabled most of those abilities anyway (they would lose some power by losing alpha).

Alpha wasn't the only detrimental one. Interface, Hybrid and Destiny made a lot of difference. Lore did as well, but its overwhelming power and cooldown gave it the "ez button, doesn't count" reputation (and Judgement as well to a lesser extent).

[MM3squints]

Sorry but you're wrong. And only proving my point about entitlement. I paid several years too and had multiple accounts. But that shouldnt mean i automatically get incarnates and ios for free. Imagine how quickly the game would die if all the veterans simply unsubscribed.

For some reason this made me laugh because it sounds like Auroxis is saying he was accustomed to certain features of the game so he should have access to them in free play and that reminded me about the Chris Rock bit where he was talking about divorces and alimony checks where the defendant make their basis on being accustomed. I'm paraphrasing, you can probably can find it on youtube, it was from his "Bring the Pain" HBO special, but basically he was saying, what dose being accustomed have to do with anything, you go to a restaurant, your accustomed to eating, you leave after you eat, they don't owe you a free steak.

[Auroxis]

For some reason this made me laugh because it sounds like Auroxis is saying he was accustomed to certain features of the game so he should have access to them in free play and that reminded me about the Chris Rock bit where he was talking about divorces and alimony checks where the defendant make their basis on being accustomed. I'm paraphrasing, you can probably can find it on youtube, it was from his "Bring the Pain" HBO special, but basically he was saying, what dose being accustomed have to do with anything, you go to a restaurant, your accustomed to eating, you leave after you eat, they don't owe you a free steak.

Third person while I'm here! Rude  ;)

Anyway, I'm not saying I felt entitled to anything. I didn't kick and scream when it happened, I was just disappointed that the F2P model didn't cater to my needs. I loved the way my character was built and just wanted to revisit it once or twice a week as I left it, nothing more. If there was a premium option for that I would've taken it in a heartbeat.

[MM3squints]

Third person while I'm here! Rude  ;)

Anyway, I'm not saying I felt entitled to anything. I didn't kick and scream when it happened, I was just disappointed that the F2P model didn't cater to my needs. I loved the way my character was built and just wanted to revisit it once or twice a week as I left it, nothing more. If there was a premium option for that I would've taken it in a heartbeat.

Ha, I was quoting that because that was the comment that triggered that bit in my head. I know its been said multiple times here and in the CoX Fourms when the game was around, but they really could have done the IO disabling better for F2P. When you no longer had access to the IOs they took out all the bonuses including the actual stat boost. They could have just left on the the stat boost, but disabled the IO bonuses instead of gimping someone's toon to be unplayable unless they swap out all of their IOs.

On a side note, there a premium option where you could retain all of your IO bonus while being F2P. I think it was pretty high up in the In Game Store Tier though

[Auroxis]

I may or may have not gone for that high tier in order to unlock IO's. It sounds like something I would've done, but I honestly can't remember. Incarnate powers though, there was nothing I could do to keep them in my possession outside of subscribing.

[MM3squints]

I may or may have not gone for that high tier in order to unlock IO's. It sounds like something I would've done, but I honestly can't remember. Incarnate powers though, there was nothing I could do to keep them in my possession outside of subscribing.

For Incarnate and SSA those were sub exclusive. They could have went with the Valve route (which is very successful) where the entire game is free (TF2 and DoTA 2) but cosmetics cost money, but I would figure the player base was not large enough for that business model to work efficiently. They need to keep the lights on some how and honestly I think they striked a right balance in having SSA and Incarnate sub exclusive