Its been a while, and i decided that i wanted to see what kind of things had changed in EQ since i last played around 2012. So i logged in to my SK and my Beastlord, and i was not pleased with what i saw. Why are the restrictions on free characters so extreme still? I had an augmentation on my beastlord from a group zone in The Serpent's Spine, and it was still considered Prestige, and thus not usable for free players. That piece of equipment is almost a decade, 9 expansions old. Whats more, i saw the 1000 AA limit was still in place, which is something that would successfully block players from getting every Planes of Power AA, and i dont need to remind you how old that is. Sure, you can buy an AA cap increase, but thats also absurdly restrictive, with 400 AAs for every 10 dollars you spend, and that is PER CHARACTER, so if you spend 50 dolars, you could have what was expected of you as a raider, 8 years ago. I understand restricting free players as an incentive to get them to subscribe, but this is an excessive level of restriction and im sure you guys know it. EQ2 lifted a majority of their restrictions and they are benefiting because of it, and people who enjoy what they play will eventually pay for it in most cases. But we're looking at a scenario where if you are playing something like a tank, you are ill-equipped and lacking in AAs to the point where you could barely do 10 year old content, much less anything that people are actually playing in. This will cause frustration and the rather quick exit for anyone who comes back to see the game as it is, or folks who are new to the title. Daybreak, you guys have a great opportunity to help the game out, by lifting some of these absurd restrictions. let people wear equipment and augs at least up to 85-90, let people get 5000 AAs at minimum. Otherwise you are sitting on the world's largest MMO world where only 20% of it is accessible to free players ,and i doubt thats what you want.
I don't find the restrictions extreme considering its FREE to play. I have quite a few members in my guild on free to play and they manage to enjoy themselves. This is just my opinion though and not any more valid then yours. The whole discussion though of what is the best way for Daybreak to profit off EQ versus us getting more returning/new players is an interesting one. Unfortunately a lot of the data we would need to figure out what is best is data only Daybreak has. If I was going to pick something to encourage people back to EQ/staying with EQ/trying it for the first time I would consider a reduced monthly fee. But again Daybeak are the ones with the data to try and figure out what is best. I do feel confident that they are going to try and figure out the best way to make profit from the game and in the long run hopefully that's good for us as players. Not saying I think it will be but I hope it will. And again all just my opinion.
you can get 5-6000 aa's for nothing now, just level to 91.. farm enough gold to buy a Krono and when your gold hit Auto AA. With your free 500 Station cash you get purchase the ability to cast rank 2 spells.... in the month your gold if you work on it you can get another few hundred AA's filling in the ones that are not on auto... after the month revert back to FtP or silver and you will have a nicely rounded character that survive nicely right to the max levels.
True F2P games have some of these types of restrictions, but EQ isn't true F2P. Daybreak definitely should consider following one of the industry leaders' foot steps. For an example, make the game buy-to-play like GW2 where there are zero restrictions once you own the game. You'll still have to buy expansions, and you will see lots of cosmetic items & gear, services, pets, and upgrades via cash shops. But the game allows you to play without restrictions. Or stick with premium subscription, like WoW, and give people all the fun they can have charging a monthly price, with very little cash shops except for character services. The two games I mentioned allow players to play the game fully without restrictions and annoyances. As a result, players are happier, and they spend more money, buy more things. The population of these games show you how successful they are. The mere fact that Numiko could list such a step-by-step way to avoid paying much of anything to play this game, shows you the model Daybreak is using doesn't work. The idea of them charging premium subscription AND having heavy cash shops was SOE's way of trying to turn great profit. But apparently it hasn't worked, and it hasn't worked partly because the restrictions are keeping players away from the game in the first place. Nobody likes annoyances. It also hasn't worked partly because it feels too nickel & dime to those that choose to stick around and play. SOE's trying to have the best of both worlds in terms of F2P & subscription model combined, by charging premium while having heavy cash shops. Lastly it hasn't worked because players could find ways around the system to pay very little to nothing to play this game due to the way things are setup. I'm going to guess with his box set above, he pays pretty much nothing to play this game with a large set of accounts. And that's really not how this company should operate, no wonder it lost money.
True, however, EQ was made f2p retroactively and wasn't designed from the ground up as f2p. I'm sure if it did, we would be paying SC to remove our lockouts, in a similar fashion of all other mobile games (out of ENERGY? for $10 or less every 20 minutes, you can play as MUCH AS YOU WANT !!!!!1one) On the other side of the coin, yes, a 10 year old aug should not be prestige. They seriously should change that. On second thought, no, they shouldn't. Precious dev time when in fact, in the time spent reading and posting, it is possible to get out of that level range and set your eyes on something better. They paid more attention about 2 years ago upon its inception (the f2p model) but now that there has been a "resurgence" to EQ (over those past 2 years) and due to the dwindling dev base and budget, they kind of just let it sit there.
Complaining that a ten year old augment is prestige when one can acquire many more current augments that are NOT prestige, albeit one does need to go out and PLAY the game to do so, makes little sense to me. IF someone wants the FULL benefits and advantages which an All Access account grants to a player, it's quite simple really. Purchase an All Access account.
I was a bit curious about this. What would happen if you had a gold account, full raid geared and you decided to casual it out and go FTP. Would you have to completely regear?
from what i can see, yes. All of my characters are essentially naked at this point, cause i cant use anything im currently equipped with. House of Thule group gear, as a note. So I do find it interesting the concept of "just level to 91 and grind platinum until you can buy a krono" or "just find the gear that isnt prestige" when i would be sitting in a scenario where i couldnt fight anything that would grant drops necessary to not be an immense liability on the party. Im also still not quite sure why people are so hostile toward the idea regarding the easing of restrictions. The game is being advertised as a free to play game, not as a trial. Everquest 2 restricts you far less than this game does, but some folks seem to be okay with these restrictions. You'd think new blood would be appreciated, regardless of how much they pay for the game.
If you are that worried about it, get some non-prestige raid gear and work on getting a set of augs that are not prestige. Would you be as overpowered? No, but you'd probably still have better than group gear (and weapons way better). EQ FTP is really really good, the aug thing is about the only thing holding people back from going FTP more often. And they do want you to pay you know.
And to be fair those of us who pay want more people paying because it ends up being better for all of us. I would never make someone pay as if I could do that but I would love it if they tried FTP then went All Access.
I just don't understand these threads. Buy a krono in game, work an hour or two once a month for the subscription, cut out some extra like premium channels on cable, any number of ways to come up with the money. In game or out of game, there are many ways to fund it. You just have to work at it.
The problem is if your 10 year old gear is prestige how do you play to get new gear which is not? Players are returning to try the game again and finding they cannot do anything as they are effectively naked.
It's less bad now that augs only shut themselves off, not the gear they're slotted into. I don't think any of the really old gear is prestige, augs just turn the name a different color to show that you have a prestige aug in a non-prestige item. It was a huge mess when f2p launched and people came back in gear that was giving 0 stats because they had some LDoN or other crappy augs slotted into it.
If you are a returning player under 80 all gear is non prestige so there should not be a problem. Also, I am pretty sure you can already /claim some 4 pieces of defiant gear on each character. If you want the really good augs, buy a subscription or krono. If you are a caster you can play just fine without prestige augs. If you are a tank, you can do okay on F2P as a heroic character with heroic AC augs. This applies up to level 100. I suppose there could be a problem for someone level 95 coming back who is not wearing fear touched or gelid. But that can be fixed with a month's subscription. It would be nice if accounts dormant longer than 2 years could get a full defiant set and maybe a medium speed horse.
I dont really like thats its ftp at all because its contaminated up gen chat with people that talk about other games bad mouth eq and say nasty stuff. If you ask me FTP should last 1 month with the restrictions firmly in place, as a try it befoire you buy it. The attitude should be. Not going to buy it? Dont like eq enough to support our world? Then your obviously a looker, money talks bs walks my freind, move along now.
I don't think FTP players are allowed to talk in General chat. General chat just sucks a lot of the time
Very much this. Obviously not everyone's financial situation is the same, but as entertainment goes EQ is still a pretty darn good value. If enjoying the game and playing enough to get the basics done, krono or all access for 1 account isn't onerous.
It's not like Daybreak has the resources right now to go back over the 10's of thousands of items that were set to prestige over the years and switch them back just because 3 people in all of EQ are still using then and want the benefit of the items when their subscriptions expire. I have 4 silver accounts i that i use once and a while, they have characters in the low 80's and have a mix of defiant armour, some still have simple in a few slots, I would say 75% of their aug slots are empty and they do just fine in the content they are playing in.
