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

See my previous two posts.

Why would African-Americans care more about names than Hispanic-Eurpoeans? I don't get it. I mean, their own name, sure. But the name of an abstract concept is pretty irrelevant. The concept is what is important.

Right. So then we could have the discussion over "this game as X number of preferred (or VIP) accounts". That's... better?

Definitions are important.

F2P players represent ZERO revenue, period. Because as soon as they buy their first dollar worth of Cartel coins or sub for a single month they become...

Preferred players represent some amount of revenue. However, it seems extremely likely that this revenue is something under $15/month, because if they were spending that much on a regular basis, they'd probably become...

Subscribers represent I think $13-$15/month of revenue, depending on how long they've subscribed for, plus some additional amount of cartel coins between zero and hundreds of dollars per month, each.

So with those definitions, why not scrap F2P and Preferred?

First don't scrap Preferred because they do represent revenue.

Second don't scrap F2P because they represent potential revenue (try before you buy) and, absolute worst case, they provide a form of (horrifyingly bad) content by being players others can game with / server population.

What I wrote:
Your response...
They absolutely do represent revenue either direct or indirect via GTN subsidy. F2P players can also represent revenue via GTN subsidy. That's the point of that part of my argument.

Preferred/F2P players as a whole represent a non-trivial amount of revenue and due to the erosion of subscription numbers quite possibly the larger revenue base. I'm pointing that out as a counter to the "freeloader"/"cheapskate" arguments.

Funny how they never publish any F2P -> Sub conversion rates. To use your "horrifyingly bad" phrase the F2P experience is exactly that awful. It damages the brand. The far greater sin is that it damages the experience of subs.

I don't disagree that F2P should be restricted, but some of the irritants need to be toned down a notch. Preferred needs a serious rethink and more needs to be done for Subs.

This is a little late, but I've been super busy with my job and other fun life things.

And Economy class flyers aren't fed the scraps of 1st Class flyers. It doesn't work like that, sorry.

You're still looking at this wrong. Subscribers SHOULD be given Quality of Life upgrades, such as more/faster exp/credit gain, reduced travel times/costs and/or faster accessing of faster methods of travel, lower respec/modification costs. Stuff like that. They SHOULD NOT be given free access to any form of content that free players can't access by default. That is both insulting and degrading to free players, and instills a sense of elitism in the paying players, which is plainly visible in such topics as these. For example, I pointed out that there is literally no way for free players to attain Artifact Authorization (equipment progression, which is content of the most basic level), and your response was "so pay for it", despite the fact that locking of such content is borderline P2W, since it makes you physically (digitally?) stronger.

Bottom line: Free players ARE the baseline that you need to look at and go "what can we offer to make it worth subscribing/paying IF the player feels like it?" and not "What can we do to penalize free players as much as possible so they feel forced to subscribe/pay?". If it isn't DLC or cosmetics, don't lock it behind a pay wall, because that's how you get your players to resent you and your game to catch a minor case of majorly dead (probably the biggest reason this hasn't happened to SWToR - at least the game being killed part - is that there's a huge fanbase of the franchise).

See below.

Still a visible statistical increase for combat purposes. Still have to pay to unlock the exclusive rights to use it. Given all other things being equal (and ignoring sub for the moment), a player WITH artifacts will always* win against one without. You're doing literally nothing to convince me that Artifact Authorization isn't tainted by the whisperings of P2W - which, by the way, isn't always as blatant as a super-OP item directly in the cash shop.

*Unless the player with artifacts is just really, REALLY bad. Questionable mental facilities bad. You get where I'm going.

Subscribing is a commitment. Lots of casual players don't like to make commitments because they A) don't have the time to make the most of it or B) know they probably won't play it enough if they DO have the time to make the most of it because there are other games they like to play.

As for the other one, the "cheap unlock"... I will admit it's nowhere near as bad as WoT (oh god. $80 for a single tank), but that's still a pretty big price-tag for something that players run into on a regular basis. If you can loot it, drop it, buy it, and sell it... why is it locked? It's really frustrating to loot an epic piece of gear only to learn you can't use it unless you pay for it, even if you do meet all the other requirements.

Except common sense, it seems. As it turns out, you can't fix stupid, so maybe you want to get a refund.

If you make enough of the game free enough, you eliminate revenue and kill the game. It's fine as is.

Seriously, if a player can afford to pay the $15/month and chooses not to, he gets what he deserves / chooses and shouldn't complain. Because it was his choice.

If a player simply cannot for the life of himself find a way to scrounge 50 tiny pieces of copper per day, he should be eminently thankful he has a computer and internet connection capable of playing the game and the free time to play it, as opposed to spending that time to obtain an education or job to support himself.

Purples are completely unnecessary until you hit end-game which is very clearly where the TOR devs drew the line between subs and non-subs. A good chunk of that is doable in the craftable level 53 blue 148 mods (Adept Enhancement 28, etc.). You want to participate fully in end-game, you have to pay.

FWIW, I'd support a change to drop the pass requirements for regular WZs and change SM Ops to work like FPs: three loot rolls a week without a pass.

TOR is now metered? Awesome. Tell me how do I only pay for the days I play?

Silly response for a silly argument.

Your lack of understanding of basic multiplication, or twisting of words, as the case may be doesn't make my position silly.

It does, however, speak volumes to the veracity of your position.

SO, am I to believe that a player that does not want to spend 15 bucks per month for this game, for whatever reason, is spending 20 bucks in the same month? Sorry, but that won`t fly.

They MIGHT buy one, but it`s my 30 bucks in 2 months vs a one time 20 bucks sale. It could be his ONLY one for all I know and I care.

Also, money is money. Period. There is no other way of looking at it. You either spend real money or you don`t. A freeloader spending 1 bil ingame money is still a freeloader against real money spent to buy coins that bought whatever from the CM. Whether it sold or not, real money was spent, not lulz money. Lulz money don`t count towards revenue, sorry.