Originally posted by Starpower

Originally posted by Aquazen
 just move on, pls.

And I suspect most will. Enjoy your continuing low pop

This Just move on attitude is why Vanguard has languished for so long as a subpar MMO

who barely retains any players and the long time veterans who keep paying these 15 per month sub fees

but like you say "enjoy your continuing low pop" I logged on yesterday and it's still very unpopulated last

I heard on Telon the count was close to 1000 players sure didn't feel like it while I was online and I was 

teleporting all over the place.  This is truly Vanguard's last hurrah we are probably witnessing here the end

of Vanguard SOE needs to change their pricing model a bit to attract more players.   What's going to happen 

when F2P players refuse to do dungeons because the loot wont be accessible to them?  F2P players are

in the game to spend little cash and populate the servers SOE thats basic F2P protocol ....who the hell is 

making the calls overthere????????????????

Originally posted by Portland

Originally posted by tank017
Lol,companies are going to try and make a buck somehow.no mmo will ever truly be free

Wrong, 

AION is completly free, no need to buy anything........ 

And how is that going for them? They made less money than they wanted, sales are down.

How are game companies going to keep the doors open?

Or is it ok for a small amount of people to support the game habits of a larger group?

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Originally posted by Sovrath

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Originally posted by Portland

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Originally posted by tank017 Lol,companies are going to try and make a buck somehow.no mmo will ever truly be free

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Wrong,  AION is completly free, no need to buy anything........ 

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And how is that going for them? They made less money than they wanted, sales are down.

How are game companies going to keep the doors open?

Or is it ok for a small amount of people to support the game habits of a larger group?

---

This is Vanguard's last desperate attempt to stay alive. Tacking on a half-assed extended free trial isnt going to keep the doors open.

Originally posted by Portland

its easy to predict that Vanguard will raise its player base for a few weeks then loose it again.

This F2P Model isnt and wont be the solution to Vanguards playerbase problems. Its to restricted and has nothing to do with "FREE" to play.

Sooner or later you need Orange or Better Items.........

Its just another Trial in another form.... thats a fact

 The more I read about it in this topic the more I feel  this is a perfect Free to Play MMORPG. Meaning in other MMORPG you can buy stuff in item shops that are not ingame, here it actually works so nice that things you can buy you can already gain from just a sub and actually playing the game. And lets face it subfee is so incredible cheap that no one should have to worry and if people do worry about 15€/$ then it's safe to say they should seek either another hobby or simple be a gamer and choose another game that IS fun to you.

Originally posted by Reklaw.

lets face it subfee is so incredible cheap that no one should have to worry and if people do worry about 15€/$ then it's safe to say they should seek either another hobby or simple be a gamer and choose another game that IS fun to you.

 

Dumbest thing I've read all week. Obviously the value of 15 bucks varies from game to game depending on what you feel you get for your money

Or put in another way. 10 bucks isn't a lot of money. I can wipe my arse with it and not care. That doesn't mean I want to pay 10 bucks for lets say .. a soda

Originally posted by Portland

Its the word "FREE" that makes me mad, its a Fraud

They arent saying the truth, people think they start playing for free then suddenly they have to pay for a Level 7 item to unlock...

TANSTAAFL!!!

Oh look, a store. Go buy a clue!

Originally posted by Starpower

Originally posted by Reklaw.

lets face it subfee is so incredible cheap that no one should have to worry and if people do worry about 15€/$ then it's safe to say they should seek either another hobby or simple be a gamer and choose another game that IS fun to you.

 

Dumbest thing I've read all week. Obviously the value of 15 bucks varies from game to game depending on what you feel you get for your money

Or put in another way. 10 bucks isn't a lot of money. I can wipe my arse with it and not care. That doesn't mean I want to pay 10 bucks for lets say .. a soda

 Sorry? okay perhaps I am somewhat naieve to think that people will only spend money on things they like or feel worth it, if a game is not worth it simply don't play?

Originally posted by William12
A lot of misinformation here.   They have said almost all quest rewards can be used by f2p no matter the quality and I leveled from 1-30 and almost every blue item i seen was useable by f2p.

Blue items have been lifted I have started doing the banisher's questline for crafters and so far I have received like 12 "gold" "orange" items that I can't use atleast they can give us options   this or that............this game needs a middle ground F2P matrix or it's gonna die...this is just one big experiment for SONY....right around the corner is 

GUILD WARS 2 massive mmo that offers all content with a ONE box purchase which is like

100 times better than Vanguard.   I dont' know what they were thinking or they didn't realize that ANET was going to release Guild Wars 2 in August thats like David and GOliath....okay most people probably can afford a pay and a not pay mmo but which MMO are most players going to play come August 25th....yah I thought so.

Much ado about Nothing. 

Vanguard is a game that was not designed for FTP, so any adaption is going to run up against some snags.   Personally, I think the devs have handled it very well.  You can play pretty much everything in the game.  No, you can't be cutting edge minimaxed that way, but them's the breaks.  They have to pay salaries there too.   Throwing a few dollars  every so often at a game you enjoy is not some heinous crime against nature.  If that raises your ire too much, the door is thataway.  ----->  

Your expectations have gotten in the way of clear vision, imo.

I know I am back, and putting a decent amount of time on my old alts.  My main problem is trying to remember how to do everything well and get my control chops back.   

I just started over and used my old main for crafting only.. 

I feel like they did not do enough to make old returning players say "hey, I wanna subscribe again".. 

It was more like "Hey guys, come back and see how much we have locked you out from! You'll be pleasantly surprised!"

It's still a great game, but for a returning character, unless you plan on subbing right out of the gate again it would probably be better just to start over with the new players to the game and decide if you want to sub then..

Besides, I couldn't even get back into my old character.. I just couldn't remember how he played and I didn't even know where I was in the world and what I was doing..

No vet rewards, locked up items, not many higher levels to group with yet...

Originally posted by gw1228

Originally posted by William12
A lot of misinformation here.   They have said almost all quest rewards can be used by f2p no matter the quality and I leveled from 1-30 and almost every blue item i seen was useable by f2p.

Blue items have been lifted I have started doing the banisher's questline for crafters and so far I have received like 12 "gold" "orange" items that I can't use atleast they can give us options   this or that............this game needs a middle ground F2P matrix or it's gonna die There is a middle ground. It's called paying a couple cents to unlock items you feel you REALLY WANT...this is just one big experiment for SONY....right around the corner is 

GUILD WARS 2 massive mmo that offers all content with a ONE box purchase which is like

It offers most of its content, for 60 dollars. It too has an in game store with exclusive items.

100 times better than Vanguard.  There are a few things GW2 does better than VG, but VG appeals to a totally different crowd of people. I wouldn't say GW2 is better than Vanguard as it stands, except for PvP.

 

Vanguard is not free to play because you cannot play and be competitive in any way without paying. Some games will make it so that you gain your competitive advantage faster by paying such as getting leveling boosts and such but that really only shifts the timeframe in which you gain the advantage. The advantage is still available to all if they are willing to replace money with time.

Vanguard is different because you are hard limited in item progression if you don't pay. In Vanguard you either subscribe or you pay to equip the better items on an item by item basis. This makes it the very definition of pay to win. How is it really any different to pay to equip the best items or to simply buy the best items direct from a cash shop.

In real free to play you can play and be competitive without spending money. you may have to spend much more time playing. Farming more gold or grinding levels because not paying makes it take longer but you can still get there without paying. This is not the case in Vanguard. If you choose to not pay you will NEVER be able to  equip your character properly for endgame.

Vanguard is now the definition of pay to win. And it will stay pay to win until it gets rid of this ridiculous item limit.

SOE's problem with free to play is that they believe that it has to be structured in such a way that everybody is eventually forced to pay or go away. Players must be tricked into paying.

SOE needs to understand that "Players ARE Content." In an MMO you don't need to make everybody pay. You just need enough people to pay. But you will loose even your paying customers if they don't have enough people to play that MMO with. An MMO without a community is dead and makes no money at all.

SOE needs to realize that Players are not a problem that needs to be paid for. Players are a resource that need to be invested in.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Portland

Originally posted by tank017
Lol,companies are going to try and make a buck somehow.no mmo will ever truly be free

Wrong, 

AION is completly free, no need to buy anything........ 

And how is that going for them? They made less money than they wanted, sales are down.

How are game companies going to keep the doors open?

Or is it ok for a small amount of people to support the game habits of a larger group?

Yes, it is. Because players are content in an mmo. Players are also a limted resource.  I am not saying that I would rather spend $150 a month so that 9 other players can play for free but then we need to recognize that a game doesn't necessarily have to make $15 for every player that connects to it. That is still viewing every player as a liability.

The other way to approach it would be to say how many people do I need to be payers to break even. 50k? Well does that mean I should force everyone to pay $15 and hope I get 50k to pay. What if I could get 500k to play for free so long as 10% of them monitized? It will cost a little bit more to serve 500k players but not by much. The economics of scale in this industry are unbelievable. Especially for SOE which already has several games running and so the infrastructure is already in place and probably paid for. and in the case of Vanguard, the game already existed.

Remember, non-paying players provide several things. First. They provide themselves to paying players to be interacted with. They are the people that make your guild grow from 10 to 100. They are the other people in your instance group. They are your opponents in PvP. and they are the buyers and sellers that make your economy run smoothly. Non-paying players are also very often the young kids that have all that extra time to work on Wikis and dungeon guides and things like that. They are the kids who have extra time to farm resources so that something can be sold on the exchange. Non-paying players are also free word of mouth advertising to their friends. And in the end, they are potential paying customers. Not all of them will turn into paying customers but some will. If they are playing your game and not someone elses that is.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

 

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Originally posted by Sovrath

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Originally posted by Portland

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Originally posted by tank017 Lol,companies are going to try and make a buck somehow.no mmo will ever truly be free

---

Wrong,  AION is completly free, no need to buy anything........ 

---

And how is that going for them? They made less money than they wanted, sales are down.

How are game companies going to keep the doors open?

Or is it ok for a small amount of people to support the game habits of a larger group?

---

And they still probably made 1,000 times more money during the quarter than Vanguard.

This is Vanguard's last desperate attempt to stay alive. Tacking on a half-assed extended free trial isnt going to keep the doors open.

And yet if a person is not willing to spend, what? 10 dollars? A bit more? to unlock a few things then I highly suspect that there is something else going on.

It's either standing on ceremony "well it says 'free' and if i have to pay anything at all, even a penny then I'm walking away" or they really were only interested in playing for a short period and then move on to the next free game and just continue the cycle.

Recently I did an informal poll and of the people who responded, a good many indicated that in any free to play game they would spend a few dollars but not too often. In the interest of full disclosure I also voted that way.

If one were to come to Vangaurd and spend a few dollars then one can pretty much just enjoy themselves without any real fees at all.

people tend to value things that they spend money on and spend money on things they value.

If spending a fraction of what you would spend on a sub game is an issue then that makes me wonder what mmo's you do spend money on?

And I"m curious, in the f2p games that you've played, have you ever spent any money and if so what were the items as well as the amounts?

People will also value that which they spend time on. Opportunity costs after all. In this sense time really is money and visa versa. People will often spend much more in time on a hobby than they do in money but they value the products of that hobby no less and often much more.

Don't discount the value a non-paying player can add to a game world simply by spending time in it, if it is structured correctly anyway.

So the main (pretty much ONLY) issue presented here is that only subscribers and people who pay to unlock the items can use top gear. Most of the posters who have issue with that have written off the entire free game as a result. It is simply that important to you.

I think devs make top gear and epics such a core feature in today's games because they know you guys a lot better than you know yourselves.

Only having the original backpack and one bag is a big issue too. At least to me. You can't even unlock additional bag slots as far as I know.