Is the F2P/Preffered system too prohibitive, and if so, what should change?

I really appreciate all the views, pro and con, and I hope the conversation continues. I do feel adjustments still need to be made to give the system better appeal in the overall market without hurting the bonus of subscription.

Well, I`ll give you my honest point of view. Right now, my sub covers what I expected to when I bought the game. Having been a F2P or an option to F2P in 2012, I would`ve not touched it - Star Wars or not Star Wars.

Now, I trusted Bioware with my money to improve the game. They did, but I now have to pay more, or "grind - work" more for the same amount of money, only because they were imbeciles and didn`t make a game that can keep subs. So, from "I can get everything ingame as long as I grind long enough", it turned into "Oh, look! I need to pay more than 15 bucks if I want new looks on gambling, no less, or I need to work MORE to make the money to afford the expensive things".

So, if I have it harder for paid money, why anyone that isn`t paying anything should have less than nightmare? Yes, some MIGHT turn into subs, but, if they didn`t already, I am safe to assume they don`t want to go above "Freeloader Status". For ONLY 15 bucks a month, you too can have no restrictions. Because, in all honesty, you get what you pay for. Not you, OP, as a singular player, but in general, of course.

This is why I don`t like freeloaders - they don`t pay anything and are only good at inflating numbers, but they demand rights. Want rights? Pay 15 - nothing personal nor aggressive in this sentence, or settle with whatever "trial" you`re on. In this game you are getting the whole story. The single player all given for free should be more than enough. Want MMO? Pay for it or stay and play RPG for free - looks like a more than fair deal to me.

I can certainly understand the mentality that states if you want something pay for it. Unfortunately in this case that view is completely off the mark IMO.

What is important here is not whether or not players deserve more.....it is whether or not giving them more will draw them in to play and spend cash. For the sake of this suggestion I posted I was questioning as to whether or not the things I mentioned are barriers to folks being interested in the title if they come to play.

Folks may in fact come and try it out...personally I walked away from the game completely after the personally disappointing release of GS, as I find the F2P system here too draconian despite purchasing all the unlocks.

During that time I spent 0 dollars. Before that time I spent hundreds aside from my sub. I thought to myself....why didn't I continue playing for free? Why not continue to play and spend a bit of cash here and there?

The game simply was not worth it. Not for me.

So after surfing the net a bit I discovered that the reasons I reasons I had to walk away seemed to be more common for other folks that did the same than I had first expected.

But I didn't know if folks here felt the same way...it seems that there are many different views on what is draconian and what is not.

I am happy to hear all of the views, pro and con.

I am of the opinion that if a player wishes to have all restrictions removed, the player in question should simply subscribe. It's ridiculously cheap to subscribe. So just subscribe.

If you say it is too expensive to subscribe, then how the heck did you afford a computer capable of playing this game?

The players in question are paying NOTHING to play the game, a game which does actually cost BioWare real money to be able to provide for the paying NOTHING player. Yet you wish to give them more of what a person that actually pays to play the game gets. No. No. No. How about being happy you can play for free at all.

Just to remind you - if the game didn't have 'freeloaders', it would be dead. It's that simple. The only reason why these free players are allowed to run free is to give subscribers a sense that the game is busy when the truth is, its not.

You may have found value in the game - great, but others probably don't and if 'story' was enough to keep people paying $15 a month, then the subs base wouldnt have dropped like a stone now.

You're clueless, subs have been dropping like flies, cartel market makes up most of the income for this game. Check out the EA investor call before last.

The F2P system really needs overhauled, it sucks. It's literally the punchline to jokes about how not to do F2P all over the internet. Silly restrictions like hotbars make players not want to play this game at all, let alone subscribe to it.

If these elitist holier than though subscribers who hate "freeloaders" had their way this game would have been shut down long ago. F2P is what gave it one gasp of air, but it was met with all kinds of bad media pushing potential players away because of how draconian and obnoxious the f2p system here is,

They made around twice as much money on microtransactions last year compared to what they made in sub fees.

I'd say microtransactions are more important.
They started the game as a sub game because... well... because they were dumb enough to think that a subscription based game could still make massive amounts of money in this modern MMO enviroment.
They were wrong.

Darsik is actually pretty correct. The vast majority of those CM sales came from subscribers. Subscribers are important. They have shown they are willing to spend money on the game... as opposed to F2P players who show a stunning commitment to spend zero on the game and Preferred who show a willingness to pay, but within strict limits.

Right, because a game in which the vast majority of players are F2P generates enough revenue to survive... Oh, wait, by definition F2P have never paid a penny... so how exactly does the game survive again? Are the dozens of men and women who produce it supposed to be doing it as charity work?

Unless they go complete free like Rift there is no point talking about going easy on restrictions. As far as "EAWare employees have lives too, they need to eat too" argument goes : Rift released more content; re skinned old content or completely new ones since complete f2p conversion, more than even WOW; the 7 million subscriber base game. How did they do that with a complete free game? CASH SHOP sales; same way EAWare is making money now. But when they actually decided to put those money into developing new content EAWare is..well that is another topic; our topic was f2p restriction.(But if you ask me " then why are you here? go play Rift", i will gladly answer your question; just pm me here; i don't want to offend a certain group of people with my answer.) So yeah unless EAWare goes the way Rift is going there is no point talking about it.
BUT there is one thing they can do actually, sell a 30 day subscription pass in cartel market or 7-15-30 day. why do i suggest it? well just my observation that tells me this will work without removing f2p restrictions. i don't wanna go into details here.