If you have followed the patchnotes from the PTS on 2.0, you may have noticed that with the arrival of level 55, most end-game grinding gear, such as tionese and war hero gear have been removed.

 

Will this mean the end of some of the advantages F2P has brought this game?

 

F2P will no longer have an incentive to continue playing warzones at level 50 for example.

Currently, they can buy warzone passes from the GTN and use it to play and grind for better gear.

In 2.0, they have no reason to purchase said passes, as there is nothing to work towards and thus these peope will probably stop purchasing passes and lower the warzone population.

 

This is seperate from the fact that the new 'Top tier/ranked warzones' are again behind a cash barrier, thus resulting in the very problem of low population, that F2P was supposed to solve.

 

Is this yet another bad move? Discuss

Tionese/Rakata is replaced by Blackhole and Campaign gear.

If F2P people are buying things off the GTN and not the Cartel Market, then there is no business impact i.e. they add zero revenue to the bottom line. The only thing it does impact is the availability of people for paying customers to play with.

Did you read the part about the new tiers of gear? Or just the part where your spidey-senses went all haywire?

 

The freepers will have to buy the expansion, sure, and then they'll have access to the higher level stuff. The expansion is the hook, the current game is the bait.

1: Black Hole comes from drops, which F2P can only roll a few times/week for.

 

2: The only reason passes are available on the GTN is because suppliers buy them from the cartel market. Less demand means the suppliers will purchase less from the cartel market.

 

3: You forget why there are people who are still F2P, either they do not have access to money to spend on the game (they still create revenue through the system described in 2). Or are too frugal to spend cash for the subscription. In which case the 20 USD fee, which is more than a months subscription, might be an even greater step to overcome.

If F2P people are buying things off the GTN and not the Cartel Market, then there is no business impact i.e. they add zero revenue to the bottom line. The only thing it does impact is the availability of people for paying customers to play with.

 

This is untrue. One of the more under-realized aspects of SWTOR's f2p model is that other people buy things with cartel coins and then proceed to sell them on the GTN. All of those Cartel market items were bought with cash by someone somewhere. Yes, even the "complimentary coins" a sub gets each month can be considered to have a monetary dollar value as they are paying for them with a subscription.

 

I'm not saying why they do it. I'm not them. But that is what's happening. A cartel market item is a cartel market item. It was bought with cash. End of line.

F2P players will always want more than they are entitled too. I can only recommend that if you want more, sub to the game, end of story.

F2P was always sold as "free to level 50" so when 50 isnt endgame anymore, that means no free endgame indeed.

 

Though, in all honesty, I am expecting them to add the increased level cap to F2P as well a month or 2 after RotHC launch. And that only access to Makeb causes you to need to spend money, much like Section X. But it would be bad business to give it away for free immediately.

I will always be a subscriber. F2P is so boring and very much lacking. Cartel Market is equally as lame. So if you are a F2P person, just subscribe to the game and quit complaining!

Though leveling, doing dailies, and heroics, people will gain 'classic and basic' coms, which will let you buy the dread gear set at level 50, which is better than the tionese/columi set. You can do heroics once a day as FTP, on Belsavis, Ilum, and Voss, as well as run your limit of FP and Ops, and still make quite a few coms to get you the armor quickly. Just doing the Section X dailies, will get you enough coms to get 1-2 pieces a week.

 

If the FTP people want more higher end gear, and to participate in the new ops, then simply pay for the expansion, which is 20 bucks. Better than spending money on the cartel packs.

1: Black Hole comes from drops, which F2P can only roll a few times/week for.

 

Black Hole does come from drop but can also be bought with commendations. Similarly the next step up the lv 55 basic gear can also be purchased with commendations. F2P have more ways to get usable gear other than FPs.

Black Hole does come from drop but can also be bought with commendations. Similarly the next step up the lv 55 basic gear can also be purchased with commendations. F2P have more ways to get usable gear other than FPs.

You seem to forget F2P players need a quite expensive unlock (1200cc single character, 2700cc account-wide) to wear artefact quality items.

You seem to forget F2P players need a quite expensive unlock (1200cc single character, 2700cc account-wide) to wear artefact quality items.

 

No I didn't forget that. F2P will always have to pay that regardless of how they get the gear. I was speaking of how the gear can be obtained. It was put forth that their only access to Black Hole gear was through loot drops and that is incorrect.

No I didn't forget that. F2P will always have to pay that regardless of how they get the gear. I was speaking of how the gear can be obtained. It was put forth that their only access to Black Hole gear was through loot drops and that is incorrect.

That's never been an issue, even in FPs you could probably use a trick to bypass the roll count limit (I've yet to test this).

 

Anyway, F2P is indeed bad, looking at the population on various planets : most F2P players simply stop before even Alderaan. Allowing to wear artefact quality crafted items would allow crafting to become almost decent and pushing further in the F2P direction by adding, say, monthly missions rewarding an operations pass, for example (by completing each HM FP?), would allow F2P players to actually see some more content and perhaps even subscribe for some months if they like it.

 

Endgame is only part of the whole F2P issue, really, and from my PoV, the biggest reason for F2P players to stop way before that is simply how the game reminds them they have to actually pay to have (or have access to) this or that. It's really looking like a pretext to milk the playerbase (subs included) and nothing else.

In my experience, at least with regard to this game, F2P is not a problem for endgame because, generally, peeps focusing on endgame aren't F2P. The may be Preferred customers but not new to the game.

 

Essentially this is what happens. F2P focus on leveling. Many don't make it to 50, but the ones that do play a little end game and then go back to leveling or lose interest. It's notable that for Ops I have never pug'ed a F2P. It just doesn't happen. It seems that F2P interests lie elsewhere.

 

So... I don't see how removing F2P endgame is bad business generally speaking. But... BW isn't really removing it anyway. Like anything else in the F2P world, peeps have to pay for access to the new endgame. Those that want too will do so. Those that are only interested in the freebies, won't. It is just that simple.

In my experience, at least with regard to this game, F2P is not a problem for endgame because, generally, peeps focusing on endgame aren't F2P. The may be Preferred customers but not new to the game.

 

Essentially this is what happens. F2P focus on leveling. Many don't make it to 50, but the ones that do play a little end game and then go back to leveling or lose interest. It's notable that for Ops I have never pug'ed a F2P. It just doesn't happen. It seems that F2P interests lie elsewhere.

 

So... I don't see how removing F2P endgame is bad business generally speaking. But... BW isn't really removing it anyway. Like anything else in the F2P world, peeps have to pay for access to the new endgame. Those that want too will do so. Those that are only interested in the freebies, won't. It is just that simple.

 

+100

 

 

f2p is for the storylines and end game is for those who are willing to pay. as a former f2p player, who did grinded from 1 to 50, i can tell you that the game ends at the end of the story class.

Edited March 28, 2013 by astrobearx

i doubt it will have very much effect at all to be honest...if a F2P player manages to get past the fact they have to pay money to unlock action bars, buying an expansion should not be all that hard of a pill to swallow.

If you have followed the patchnotes from the PTS on 2.0, you may have noticed that with the arrival of level 55, most end-game grinding gear, such as tionese and war hero gear have been removed.

 

Will this mean the end of some of the advantages F2P has brought this game?

 

F2P will no longer have an incentive to continue playing warzones at level 50 for example.

Currently, they can buy warzone passes from the GTN and use it to play and grind for better gear.

In 2.0, they have no reason to purchase said passes, as there is nothing to work towards and thus these peope will probably stop purchasing passes and lower the warzone population.

 

This is seperate from the fact that the new 'Top tier/ranked warzones' are again behind a cash barrier, thus resulting in the very problem of low population, that F2P was supposed to solve.

 

Is this yet another bad move? Discuss

 

F2P is not a model intended to completely solve population issues by giving everything away for free. It never has been in any MMO, even cash-shop driven ones, and it never will be.

 

F2P intends to give prospective players a chance to see if the game's worth subbing, and get a lot out of it to help influence that decision. As F2P models go, this one's pretty extensive compared to other MMOs I've played.

 

If you want the full experience from a paid service, you need to pay for it. If it's not worth it to you, then that's on you.

The F2P player only has to pay for the expansion once. They do not have to subscribe in order to play expansion content, and they don't have to subscribe to do the endgame gear grind (new or old), assuming that they buy the needed passes and artifact gear unlock.

 

The path is not all that different from games that have gone this way before. Anarchy Online has been F2P up to level 200 for a long time, but in that game you have to pay for xpacs AND subscribe in order to level up to 220 and access any of the "endgame" instances and gear. So the push is clearly to tease you enough to get you to sub, because if you don't then you can't experience "everything" in the game.

 

TOR lets you continue to evade the monthly charge, if you prefer to just pay once and buy passes and unlocks when you feel the need. Lots of people prefer the flat monthly fee for everything approach, but some like the pay as you go model, especially if they don't play every day or week.

 

If anything the model here is a lot more accomodating to F2P players who want to play the whole game, but just really, really don't want to ever have to sign on for a monthly fee. So it can only help to keep those people around.

 

The underlying reason that the F2P model is growing is that there are a lot more games than there used to be, and the "gamer" population is no longer 95% composed of people who play one game for 10 hours a day, for years on end like they used to.

 

These days a lot more people game hop regularly or play several games in turn all the time. Taking long breaks from a game has its upsides; usually you only come back when big new things happen, so you avoid all the burnout and nerd rage that the "hardcore" play-every-day players sink into while waiting for long delayed new stuff. When the game always feels new and better in significant ways, you're more likely to keep coming back.

 

You can play two or three or five games that way if you're F2P on all of them and just tend to dump a bit of cash on new things or consumables when you sign in. But if they're all subscription only, then two or more subs a month starts to add up real quick, leaving you nothing to spend on shinies and extras (or forcing you to just cancel).

Edited March 28, 2013 by Heezdedjim

You will apparently be able to earn cartel market coins through the legacy achievement system. This seems like it solves the problem.

You will apparently be able to earn cartel market coins through the legacy achievement system. This seems like it solves the problem.

Pretty sure those missions are not repeatable.

You will apparently be able to earn cartel market coins through the legacy achievement system. This seems like it solves the problem.

Seen on the PTS, right...

 

... but at the same time, it was really, i mean REALLY, broken.

 

20cc for some minor achievements and nothing for better achievements? Really? Not to mention 20cc is a joke... not even enough to buy one medical probe or fleet pass.

A cartel market item is a cartel market item. It was bought with cash. End of line.

 

Not true. Many millions of cartel coins float in the market each month without anyone paying actual real life cash for them.

 

There is the base allowance that comes FREE of charge with your standard montly subscription for unrestricted access to game play

 

There is the incentive bonus that comes each month FREE of charge for people who subcribe in 2, 3, or 6 month subs. They get more free coins

 

There is the base allowance for FREE for anyone who applys a security key (phone app, or CE key) to their account

 

There is a FREE reward allowance for each person you refer to the game that in turn subscribes to the game.

 

These are all essentially marketing promotions and retention rewards programs. They cost Bioware nothing incrementally and they cost players nothing incrementally.

 

Many millions of coins are also purchased by non-subscribers and subscribers as well. But my point is that there is a very large float of FREE coin awards in the game player base as well.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Andryah

Not to mention 20cc is a joke... not even enough to buy one medical probe or fleet pass.

 

Pretty much on par with other MMOs that provide free in game market currency awards. LOTRO is a great reference example of this.... you can in theory get most of what you need in game unlocks via earning small bits of market currency here and there in game... but it's long and tedious to do so. It's not meant to feed you market consumption needs beyond getting an unlock here and there and to do so at a pace that most players cannot tolerate.

Not true. Many millions of cartel coins float in the market each month without anyone paying actual real life cash for them.

 

There is the base allowance that comes FREE of charge with your standard montly subscription for unrestricted access to game play

 

There is the incentive bonus that comes each month FREE of charge for people who subcribe in 2, 3, or 6 month subs. They get more free coins

 

There is the base allowance for FREE for anyone who applys a security key (phone app, or CE key) to their account

 

There is a FREE reward allowance for each person you refer to the game that in turn subscribes to the game.

 

These are all essentially marketing promotions and retention rewards programs. They cost Bioware nothing incrementally and they cost players nothing incrementally.

 

Many millions of coins are also purchased by non-subscribers and subscribers as well. But my point is that there is a very large float of FREE coin awards in the game player base as well.

And every time someone gets a few of these FREE coins Bioware also gets some FREE money.