Stupid F2P Restrictions

First, you have absolutely no grounds, support, or data to back up YOUR bold assumption that players will quit rather than pay to make their experience "better." In fact, many games have done BETTER after going F2P with limitations that F2P players must PAY to reduce or eliminate.

Second - give them MORE of your money? You're playing for FREE, you aren't giving them ANY of your money! This game isn't going F2P to give people a fun game to play for free! Bioware EXPECTS THEM TO PAY.

As a subscriber, *I* expect them to pay. If they want what I got, it costs $15/month or should cost MORE if they want to buy it piecemeal.

^This. I hope it's a WHOLE LOT more too. Let's not forget that $15 gets you the ability to post on the forums. The tone of the "conversations" should change quite a bit come the Freemium switch over. Schadenfreudelicious!

A flat $20 for Warzones for Life???

Yeah, that speaks of Entitlement right there. I'm paying $15/month for all the warzones I can eat, and you think paying less than 2 months subscription should let you have MORE THAN ME?

If THAT ever happens, there won't BE any more subscriptions because everyone will go F2P and in 2 months there'll be no more money supporting the game. Then your timeframe for new content goes from "extended" to "NEVER."

Entitled. Here, let me pay that for you.

Exactly the games that had to do an upfront cash grab (like Star Trek Online) with an extremely expensive (relatively speaking if they are upset about $15 per month) lifetime subscription to the game when the company knew that long term they were not going to be able to hold their audience.

I believe STO charged $300.00 for their lifetime model. At time it's on sale but that's the cost if you want to pick it up now. That game is also free to play now with a premium sub model.

You'd have to play a game for 20 months to get your investment back before the studio lost money on the deal. I doubt many of the people complaining in here have ever subscribed to the same game for 20 consecutive months.

Gaming companies aren't here to provide you games for free. They have costs involved with continuing development and have to make a profit on top of that overhead. If you are enjoying the game and want it to continue you need to understand that. I'm going to give them much more than $15 per month if they give me an incentive to do so. I'm sorry to say however that I will not be paying so you don't have to.

Here were my suggestions from another thread.

It is like I said before...it really depends on how many cartel coins it costs. If the cost is low, it's not a problem to unlock it every week, but there should be an option to pay a larger coin amount to unlock it completely.

If I was designing F2P I would not necessarily change what they have, but I would add the ability to unlock parts of the game as follows (in real money equivalents)

Warzones, Operations and FPs: 30 dollars to unlock each permanently.
Purple gear, all high end gear vendors: 30 dollars to unlock all permanently.
Forums and general chat (F2P only) unlocked for 15 dollars. No option to chat with or have general forum access with paying players for F2P players.
Revive, sprint and fleet/QT: 30 dollars to unlock each permanently.

5.00 to unlock each legacy item, 15 dollars to unlock legacy use when it comes available.
10.00 to purchase speeders for your players (base level), adding 5.00 for each level of speeder.

5.00 for each orange armor set, no mods installed. I would add almost every armor set seen in the game that is not currently available.
5.00 for crafting schems for those armor sets.

Crew skill restrictions: 30 dollars to unlock permanently.
GTN and Who/GF: 30 dollars to unlock permanently.


And I would add the following....

500k restriction for F2P on each toon, unlocked with 15 bucks to 2 million, 30 bucks to unlimited.
No inventory expansion or extra cargo bays, 5.00 every inventory row (you get in game consumable item to use to unlock), 20.00 for every cargo bay. Level restrictions apply.


5 dollars for 24 hour speeder rental (in game time, total time of use)
5 dollars for free mod extraction (one use, one piece of armor)
5 dollars for color change to chest
5 dollars for QT/Fleet cooldown reset (stackable, consumed on use)
5 dollars for field repair consumable
5 dollars for instant full health revive, one use
5 dollars each for one use damage resistance buff, xp buff, coin and loot buff (24 hours)
1 dollar for random green box, 5 dollars for random blue box, 10 dollars for random purple box.

15 dollars to unlock races for character creation permanently for one toon, 30 dollars for all toons.
10 dollars to redesign any character once.
10 dollars to convert any piece of armor to empty orange armor piece.

15 dollars for name change, 30 dollars for server transfer.

Just some examples. Maybe more to follow.

I would add there is a great article on the do's and don'ts for F2P

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...s_.php?print=1

No. Never. THAT will be the total death of the subscription system. I will not pay $15/month for you can get for what amounts to a 2 month payment.

You should also be paying that weekly fee per character.

Wow. Then don't pay per month.

Let me see if I understand this correctly....your dead set against F2P? Or are you against purchasing to unlock game features and believe F2P should be a restricted trial? Just wanted to be clear.

I'm against flat rate permanent game unlocks. That is unfair to me as a paying subscriber.

And your whole flippant "then don't pay per month" is exactly my point - your flat rate permanent unlock would destroy the subscription system entirely. Bioware would instantly lose a substantial amount of revenue - enough that they would likely have to shutter the game. That's not the purpose of F2P - the purpose is to make ADDITIONAL revenue, not destroy one revenue system and replace some of the money with a different one.

FTP is not about giving away portions of your game forever with a tiny upfront unlock. It is designed to get you to pay monthly but not think you are spending more than you need. This game is still about monthly revenue (and people's jobs and your future content are tied to that).

You need to really leave your ideas behind because they don't want them, don't need them, and they are not helpful to their goal. Trust me if there's anything that EA/Bioware can do correctly it's going to be a FTP system that generates more revenue than the current one.

You're right Tim. FTP is about accessing a file system!