Dear Bioware a better F2P model will make you money !

Yeah seriously... You can basically buy all the unlocks from the GTN for 1 million credits instead of Cartel Coins. It's really not that hard to do. Or you can buy the unlocks with your 600 coin monthly allowance.

<< I still say they should have gone with full access to a certain level. Then the game stops.>>

Um.....is this not what they did for the last 6 months. That's why I ended up subbing was free to level 15.

I didn't read all of the posts so if this has been said, sorry.

I imagine Bioware/EA chose this F2P model to allow people to play the entire story for free. Think about it. You can play eight different stories free. Yes, yes, the side quests are all the same but the end result is eight stories free.

War zones, flash points, epic gear is all fluff. One does not need all that to play the class stories. Hundreds of hour of play or level 20 like other games.

As a current, fairly new subber I think BW/EA F2P model is currently somewhat faulty. Too much stick and too little carrot present. I`m pretty sure I will drop my sub as soon as my story related interests are fulfilled (exp bonus as a sub is great when you do 8 characters at same time) as I will not pay montly sub for pvp access (there are many games I can play for that. Even some really nice F2P games like Blacklight Retribution). I actually think PVP restrictions are asinine and foolish as other players are THE content when it comes to PVP. Subbers will be much happier too when they have more opponents available faster.

Well i have 6months game time left on my account but i feel the same way as the op.

The restrictions on ftp are just silly and turn more potential customers away than it attracts,and it doesn't enrich the community,the market and the population of the game world as a whole.

There are some ftp games that get it right,and many that get it wrong,this is in the many category.Course that's just my opinion.

(although removing subbing altogether is not something i'd like,you just need to tweak the subbing bonuses,give subbers benefits over ftp players other than restricing ftp from so much of the game,by saying game i'm including all the chat stuff,passes,custimizations etc etc)

Restricting chat fully can work even less counterproductive than the current method. Proof; F2P till level 15. There you couldn't talk as 'free' player, and boy, it sucked. So proposing that's a 'solution' is making things... well... even worse.
Why did you sub? Heck, you claim yourself you wouldn't have subbed if there were no XP-restrictions. +1 BW, -1 Complainer.
And a clear indication it DOES work as intended. Curious, no?
The funny thing is, they aren't. REALLY. Check out some PvP chat, and what do you hear? Complaining about F2P players in PvP. In thruth, sub-PvP players want to get RID of F2P players.
So lifting this up means even more unhappy subbers.

More great suggestions for improving F2P?

Bioware has done a very poor job of advertising that everything can be bought of the GTN as long as its available. If they had done that better, blogs and news articles wouldn't have been nearly is critical. Everyone missed that point except us, being the players.

No other game practically gives the game away like this (the best part, the experience). I don't agree with any of the complaints in this FTP model except the quick bars. The quick bars were an obvious cash grab and they are fixing that.

I do agree with the whole lack if quickbars thing and that the only feasible way to play is to probably have to buy $5 worth of CC in order to get just 4 as a preferred status. Still $5 is paltry compared to paying $15 a month all the time for that much content.

My only request is that they make the other Account and Character Legacy Perks unlock available on the GTN or tradable, because I wanna gift those perks to my friends.

""news flash honey, tor will still be here in 1-2 years. nice try. why? because of people like me who love this game and aren't afraid to shell out a little cash to help the developers out.""

Tbh yeah the game has its faults and I don't really like the warzones etc but tbh I've enjoyed the decent chats on general chat, the immersive world and some of the cartel items. The fact it costs £8.99 a month (which is like 3 drinks nowadays) a month is pennies so I'll continue subscribing. As long as every so often they add some new DECENT content (Rise Of The Hutt Cartel looks promising and for £5.99, yeah I'll preorder it). I think there always be a base level of subscribers (may only be 50,000 or so) but as long as there is a good number of subs at any one time swtor will last. I'd actually love to see their expenses to know what a 'viable business model' is though. I mean do servers cost £10k a month to maintain or £100k a month?, how many programmers do they have?

Suppose not the thing a sub should know but I'm interested as a businessman and someone who wants to look forward to many more years of swtor

And if all they do is add cosmetic stuff to the cartel shop (which I'm not saying is all they will do - but this is EA we are talking about, and I have little faith they will continue to invest much into expanding the game beyond what was already in development at launch), then there won't be anyone playing SWTOR as a game, just a bunch of Star Wars fans playing dress up in space.