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[LordBucket]

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Anyone interested in having a free to play guild together?


Started playing a few days ago. Unfortunately I'm discovering that the game is kind of bad. Interesting characters, good voice acting, the crafting system is inventive. But the game is terribly laggy and just not very much fun. I'm only really playing because Vette is awesome, but it's like an hour of mindless hack and slash for every 60 seconds of entertaining cutscene dialogue.

As for free play limitations, they are itemized here. Mouse over for details, but the relevant limitations seem to be:

 * Only two characters (Not a big deal. As slow as leveling is, I doubt I'd want more than that.)
 * Only one crew skill rather than three (Kind of a nuisance since it means you can either collect crafting materials and not be able to use them, or you can be able to craft, but unable to collect resources to craft with. Though I suppose it reduces the effect of free players on the overall economy.)
 * No bank/cargo access (Seems like it would be crippling, but it really hasn't been a big deal. Especially because of the crafting limitations. There's not much stuff to collect.)
 * No outgoing mail (but you can still receive mail)
 * Some convenience things like sprinting and mounts become available 5-10 levels later than usual, and the recall-to-town option has a 2 hour rather than 30 minute cooldown (Not a big deal. There's some definite running around and it's slow...but it seems manageable.)
 * Cosmetic quest rewards are heavily nerfed (Not listed at the above link, but I've noticed that when I get quest rewards that do fun, cute things like dress up my companions...they either show and tell me I can't choose them, or they let me choose them and take up inventory space, but I can't use them. This is kind of annoying.) * Can't equip epic gear (This could obviously be a huge problem if later on you're constantly picking up upgrades you can't use.)
 * No secure trading with other players (Combined with no outgoing mail, and this could be inconvenient. The goal appears to be to remove free players from the economy. That not necessarily a bad thing overall.)
 * Max of 5 pvp warzones per week (Annoying, but as laggy as the game is I don't see how pvp would be much fun anyway.)
 * Max of 3 flashpoints (instance/dungeons) per week (This could be an issue for some people, but after days of playing I've only even found one to do and didn't have anyone to do it with. Not sure if this is more of an end game kind of thing.)
 * Slower gain of xp and credit (This is noticeable, but not completely crippling. Doing every available quest in the starter zone I found myself perpetually a level or two behind where I was supposed to be, making some boss fights undoable. So I grinded mobs for an hour or two to catch up, and it hasn't been a problem since. Though I expect that I'll probably have to do it again every now and then if I keep playing. The quest chains seems extremely linear and there haven't been a lot of options, or choosing which quests to do. It seems necessary to do ALL quests to realistically proceed.)
 * 200k credit cap (Hasn't been an issue, but it's notable that there is an auction house that allows players who pay money for account upgrades to sell them for ingame currency. In theory it should be possible to overcome some of the above play limitation. But from a casual perusal of the auction house it appears that most of the accounts upgrades that you'd probably actually care about cost more than 200k.)



So...overall, it looks like a lot of the multiplayer features are reduced, and it would be difficult to keep playing after reaching level cap because there just wouldn't be anything to do. But, the game plays like a single player game anyway, so if you're just looking to casually play and enjoy the stories, from what I can tell it is practical to do that.

Sadly, overall...the game just isn't very much fun and the lag is terrible. But if anyone wants to give it a try and band together, it's an option.

Discuss.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

So if every MMORPG will end up as F2P, why not design it that way to begin with?

Look at how World of Tanks shitting money. Despite its flaws, they offer great F2P model.

[LordBucket]

So if every MMORPG will end up as F2P, why not design it that way to begin with?

Are they all going free to play, or is it just the mediocre ones? WoW has a freeplay option, but with a cap at level 20 it's basically a demo mode. Apart from flash games, pretty much all the "F2P MMORPGS" I've played are in that grey zone of "kind of ok, but not that great" where I'm not certain I'd play them even free, let alone actually pay for them.

Not trying to be a downer here, but swtor is really kind of meh. It's not awful...but if it weren't for the fact that I find one particular npc to be lovable and entertaining, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be playing the game at all.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, it's awful. This is a desperate attempt to make it not a failure that isn't going to succeed. Three-hundred million dollars...

[Catastrophic lolcats]

So if every MMORPG will end up as F2P, why not design it that way to begin with?

Look at how World of Tanks shitting money. Despite its flaws, they offer great F2P model.

Because WoW.
So many MMORPGs try to be the next "wowkiller" since they see it as the biggest market share and therefore the only market share. It's a fool's errand however since the MMORPG community has been notoriously slow to move on to other games and most stick to the popular titles that their friends play. Hell there are still people playing Ultima Online for this reason (plus it was actually good).

I've never liked subscription based payment mechanics. Even more so when you have to pay for the base game AND expansions AND having an item store. Subscription seems to be dying out and it's only the monolith that is WoW that seems to be supporting the concept. All subscription based games released in the West recently have all failed or turned Free2Play as far as I know.
Not to say there's no bad Free2Play. We've all heard of the infamous Pay2Win models that some companies use. Luckily this seems to be something that's slowly being phased otu in the Western games market. It's much more common in the Eastern game market but who the hell cares about that? That schism has been going for way too long. 

This also shows Bioware/EA doesn't understand the concept of Free2Play. You're not meant to punish a non-paying player in a Free2Play model. You're meant to offer perks and advantages that they'd want to buy and "commission" people who don't. A good Free2Play model can help to maintain large player bases and promote consumer loyalty.

I haven't really gotten hooked on any Free2Play games since I slowly shifted from multiplayer to mainly singleplayer. I think the best Free2Play model I can think of for the consumer would be a game that's free with some content locked off, say skins and the like. Having an item store if you only want to buy select items. Finally having the ability to outright buy the full game + the vast majority/all content for a standard retail price. I think the only example of this currently is "Dwarfs!?".

[penguinofhonor]

This is one of those "you feel like shit if you're not paying" FTP games that I don't care for. Any of the restrictions that matter are going to make you have less fun and any of the restrictions that don't matter are going to loom there threateningly, making you worry about them.

They even made the hilariously obvious mistake of labeling players with different account types, reminding you that you're a second-class citizen. Hopefully other players can't see this.

As far as I'm concerned it looks exactly like a DC universe clone, which was horrible.

[Thexor]

Yeah... that restrictions list is pretty damn ridiculous.

I'm a big believer that F2P should translate as "game with a really awesome demo". Let me play most of the game unhindered, then once I'm 10 hours in, offer late-game stuff that I couldn't otherwise acquire in exchange for real money. If I've enjoyed the first 10 hours, I'll happily drop $20 for the rest of the content.

Slowing EXP gain is probably the stupidest limitation I can imagine. "Hey, so, you're not sure whether you want to pay real money for this game? Why don't you spend a few hours grinding, then tell me what you think!" **** off, there's no way I'm spending money on a game that's going to spit in my face.

[MorleyDev]

Is there any way i can just like...play the storyline without any of the MMO? I'd even pay for that. You know, some sort of Non-MMO RPG...

And there lies the fundamental problem with TOR that has been there since the beginning: Nobody really wanted Knights of the Old Republic Online. What people wanted was Knights of the Old Republic 3. And EA and Bioware went chasing that "sweet sweet wow money". By my incredible powers of hindsight, I declare that I totally knew it was a doomed venture from the start

And then it tries to rapidly change it's design to F2P, especially when the parent company is ran by people whose strategy for the market is "We release the same game every year and it prints money!"...yeah, slow motion train crash much?

[dei]

I wouldn't play this if you paid me because of the afformentioned free-to-play module. Then again I don't even like Star Wars to begin with - though I don't dislike it. I was more interested in Star Trek Online going free-to-play but personally I can't see myself playing that either. Ah well, the only relatively-new EA title I would want to get is The Sims 3, and in my opinion Bioware hasn't released anything good since Neverwinter Nights - and I don't mean the sequel.

It sounds kind of terrible if you ask me, this Star Wars: The Old Republic. They should have just remained a subscription-based game and gone under.

[Baijiu]

I kinda liked TOR, but didn't really think it was worth retail plus a monthly subscription. I was looking forward to it going F2P but man, they totally fucked up with this F2P release. F2P is supposed to gently encourage you to pay, not rub the fact you're not paying in your face by slowing down how fast you level, and limiting your access to parts of the game. That just pissed me off and made me not want to pay at all.

[Cthulhu]

TOR wasn't bad, it just wasn't worth retail + sub, as has been said.

This model is barely even free to play.  I had more privileges on my trial account.

[Sonlirain]

Those limitations remind me of LotRO but 10 times more annoying.

Slower exp gain? Ok no problem since some people like the "korean" model.
Cosmetic items for crew? Ok we can live without cosmetic items on a F2P account.
Mounts availble several levels later? Fair.

But damn the remaining limitations are just horrible and unless the you can somehow get around it i don't see any non masochist playing F2P.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, I'd rather play STO than TOR, especially with the F2P restrictions in TOR being much worse than STO's (assuming STO's haven't been made more restrictive since I last played it).

The only real downside to STO would be:
1. Lockboxes which drop and can only be opened with keys from the store, which are/were just traps to trick you into wasting your money on the hope that you'll get a ship out of it (the odds are incredibly low).
2. Premium ships which can't be acquired except with whatever they turned cryptic points into. In theory, you can get those with dilithium. In practice, that would take a long time.

I've never really done any of the endgame content, however (or reached it).

[Alkhemia]

1. Lockboxes which drop and can only be opened with keys from the store, which are/were just traps to trick you into wasting your money on the hope that you'll get a ship out of it

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

or

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Shadowlord]

I'm not familiar with that first picture.