I have many FTP characters. It's easy and fun to roll some class and learn how to play it. But DBG should absolutely NOT waste any time changing the paradigm. They need to work for their paying customers, not the freeloaders.
Not when it means that more players quit paying each month because they no longer need to pay in order to wear the gear they have.
For every quitter you prevent you give up a returning player looking at paywalls who will now go spend their money elsewhere.
And that system would still encourage more players to stop paying for most of the year and just subscribe as needed for new gear and AA. Seems like an easy way to lower the revenue.
Evidence says you're wrong. If that were the case F2P would have been killed off years ago. F2P generates enough revenue to be continued in perpetuity. I'd like to increase the conversion rate and have presented ideas I feel would encourage returning players to stay. What are your suggestions to improve the returning player experience?
What evidence are you referring to? I am talking about the proposed suggestion that would give players fewer reasons to subscribe to the game by taking away one of the reasons to need to stay subscribed. I am not sure what needs to be improved with the F2P system as it was never intended to allow players to use all items and spells.
I do believe prestige needs to be constantly revisited or automated, it should not be a set and forget thing. "Quested" Gear (Cloak, Rallos Ear) should never be prestige, augmentations from expansions older than X should automagically be unprestiged, maybe Expansion SKU that is F2P minus 2 (I think that would be EoK today?) Raid gear stays prestige in perpetuity, and i think the current itemization for group gear is just about right.
I wish there was still a difference between Bronze (never paid) and Silver (paid x months then lapsed) beyond the grandfathering for early accounts.In my opinion, Silver should be after at least 3 months or maybe 6 months paid but then be able to use equiped Prestige gear (but maybe block equipping new) and have 4 character slots. Those two things are far more helpful for a returning player to be able to log in again and play without having to re-order everything. Mercs should automatically downgrade/upgrade from journeyman/apprentice based on the subscription. AND, it would be great to have permanent 1-time unlocks that can be purchased separately per character to be able to equip Prestige, Merc Journeyman, increased AA that can be spent/saved (max for what is available for All Access), and AA Auto-grant, But, the cost on each should be higher than the DB price for a single Krono and the cumulatively cost should be as much as 3-6 months paid account but per character.
Don't worry these Pay Andy boomers don't play modern games so they fail to see how EQ's F2P experience is bad.
Or we realize that there are supposed to be restrictions on F2P, WoW limits you to level 20 and FFXIV limits who can do a free trial and returning players are not eligible. Everquest has one of the less restrictive F2P systems.
No, my thought it is a result of heavy player effort, if they want to sink that type of time/effort into a F2P account, shouldn't be double penalized. If they somehow get conqueror/vanquisher on said F2P account by all means, prestige it at that time.
The purpose of F2P is to allow you to get an idea of if you want to play the game not to get the best items in the game.
Then F2P shouldn't be allowed out of the CR/tutorial area, certainly not all the way to max level. (might be 115, i don't know, i get too annoyed with various dumb restrictions to not pay)
That is a different argument but as of now they have decided that F2P can play up the the max level that the enabled expansions allow. This can either be max level if they have purchased the most recent expansion or the last expansion that was unlocked for F2P.
Why? The FTP experience and the paid experience is basically the same until about L55. There is plenty of content from L55 to 120 that can be enjoyed without a sub. This is all a problem with bad marketing. If FTP was the game industry's most generous gameplay trial, fewer people would feel like they have a right to complain. WoW isn't FTP. It is a free unlimited trial to L20. It still has restrictions, like you can't do pet battles, just like EQ.
