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

This won't work. I do not want to be responsible for financial transactions for somebody else's children. Neither do I think it is healthy for a child of 11 to have an online account which involves real money payments.

F2P is ideal for the kids to play until such time as they are old enough to decide if they wish to commit to paying for something. At that point (15 years or so) , your point may work.

I like to help them out in-game (the same way I like to help them to learn to play football). I simply said i wish the incoming trade option was available (ie: F2P'ers can only RECIEVE goods and credits.).

Apart from that, it works. It's FREE and a great game.

What I read when I see threads like this: "I'm a subscriber at the moment but I want to stop paying for the game and don't want to give up the subscriber perks that I like."

What I read when I see threads like this: "I'm a subscriber at the moment but I want to stop paying for the game and don't want to give up the subscriber perks that I like."

I was in beta, bought the game new, and subscribed for six months (plus the free one that came with the game) at the start. Then a couple more months at the advent of F2P to see how things had turned out. Just now I've bought another month's subscription because I was curious about Rise of the Hutt Cartel and subscribing for a month was cheaper.

I'm going to say something crazy and say, as a person who has endured F2P restrictions for more than a year now, F2P restrictions are way more annoying and petty than they are actually restrictive. As a freeper, you cannot go five minutes without being reminded that you are not a subscriber. But as a freeper, you don't give a damn. After a while, you just start to point and laugh at the desperation of it. "Oh god, please subscribe, we'll... we'll lower your vendor prices! We'll give you credit boxes! We'll stop bothering you about having too many credits! We'll do the dishes! We'll take you out to that fancy place you like! We can change, baby, don't be like this!"

The vendor prices were always too low (for those things one actually bought from vendors anyway). The XP was always too high, and rest XP just made it worse. I remember, I leveled my first few characters under Sub XP rates. We were overleveled for everything, even without bonuses or flashpoints. We got off Korriban at level 13 for goodness' sake!

Credit cap? Credits are pretty close to worthless when playing, useful only at endgame and in buying unlocks. Purple items? Blues are perfectly sufficient for 95% of the play experience.

The really stupid restrictions don't exist to get freepers to subscribe. They exist so that a subscriber who has let their sub lapse is suddenly thrust into a world where dignity does not exist and bad things happen for no reason. They exist so that a lapsed sub suddenly has to think about all the little things that they're missing which don't particularly matter but are made to felt as though they are the most important things. They exist to make transitioning between the two feel like driving on bricks instead of asphalt (but both are totally roads). They exist for threads like this, where the subscribers can get together and talk about all the things in which they are better than the common rabble, none of which really make a difference in 90% of the game (and in the remaining 10%, they can totally pay credits for everything if they're smart about it). They exist to be complained about.

They exist so current subscribers will continue to spend hundreds of dollars on a game they have already beaten.

Still false, the Appearance Kiosk is not a "perk". It provides neither advantage nor benefit.

1) Everything a Sub gets, Freeps and Preferred can get as well via payment of either hard-currency or soft-currency, be it temporary or permanent, with the exception of pre-order and CE-exclusive bonuses. Stating otherwise is both ridiculous and irresponsible.

2) You have not given me a single example yet. Everything that could be considered a "perk" (that is, it conveys an advantage or benefit) is either inherently unlocked to Subs, in which case they need not pay, or is available via credits, in which case they need not pay - though they still could in the style of "Pay2GoFaster". They are required to pay $0 past their subscription fee.

3) To further clarify, the only reason Subs would buy perks from the CM is to in turn sell them on the GTN to Freeps and Preferred for a sum of soft-currency.

Do those folks find it more or less sleazy than playing a game for free and yet complaining about the limitations?