Goblin Squad Member
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Please consider never limiting actions by account in such a way that players are encouraged to simply create multiple accounts to circumvent the limitation.
Instead, reward players for using a single account, by allowing account-based points to accrue that can benefit all the players on that account.
Specifically, this means never limiting the number of characters on an account that can be gaining experience at the same time. It may seem like there's a fairness problem that needs to be solved, but if the solution is totally ineffective because it is easily circumvented, it would be better not to impose that solution at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Disagree. Don't be lazy. Make multiboxing against the TOC and enforce it. It significantly harms the social aspect of MMORPG's. It's not that difficult to find people who do it and hand out bans. Just let players report suspect multiboxers.
It is not that easy to spot multiboxers....
How do you differentiate between,
1. A wife husband couple, regularly plays together, regularly trades goods with eachother.
2. Brother and sister that play seperately, at different times on a shared family PC.
3. College dorm room, heck usually the entire campus will share a single public IP address.
____
all of those are legitimate ideas that are from a technical aspect impossible to distinguish 1 person from 2 from 50. Unless they want to spend the money and resources having someone physically check forms of Identification that even that can be gamed with some basic photoshop work.
Now as far as the actual topic at hand, I'm in the air on it. On one hand I do like the idea, on the other hand, everyone simultaniously having all 11 archetypes plus a crafter at capstones exactly 2.5 years after the game launches., can get real cheesy real fast, but I can't really think of a solid way to combat it in either form, doubly so if they are planning on the game going F2P eventually.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Please consider never limiting actions by account in such a way that players are encouraged to simply create multiple accounts to circumvent the limitation.
Instead, reward players for using a single account, by allowing account-based points to accrue that can benefit all the players on that account.
Specifically, this means never limiting the number of characters on an account that can be gaining experience at the same time. It may seem like there's a fairness problem that needs to be solved, but if the solution is totally ineffective because it is easily circumvented, it would be better not to impose that solution at all.
But allowing all characters to train skills simultaneously doesn't solve the problem. People will still need to multibox if they want to log 2 characters in at the same time. Plus rewarding someone for having one account is rewarding a multiboxer twice for having 2 accounts, which makes no real difference.
Disagree. Don't be lazy. Make multiboxing against the TOC and enforce it. It significantly harms the social aspect of MMORPG's. It's not that difficult to find people who do it and hand out bans. Just let players report suspect multiboxers.
Do you have any idea how implausible it is to enforce a "No Multiboxing" policy? How do you prove that I was multiboxing vs playing with my sibling or roommate?
My two cents:
The more friendly way is to allow all characters to train skills at all times and to not worry about multiboxers. The multiboxers are paying for two accounts so why shouldn't they be allowed to log in with both at the same time.
The key is to minimize actions that work against immersion in the game world. If a multiboxer is out questing with a healer and a tank on different accounts is he hurting the immersion of the world? No, so let him be. But if he just has one account for gold farming being run by a bot then the problem is that he is botting and gold farming not that he is multiboxing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you have any idea how implausible it is to enforce a "No Multiboxing" policy? How do you prove that I was multiboxing vs playing with my sibling or roommate?
Allow players to report suspect multiboxers. A player gets up to so many reports, there is probably a good reason why. Monitor the player for a few minutes, make the judgement call. Are there going to be people who still get away with it? Sure. But it won't be the blatantly obvious train of 5 characters in matching outfits, which is what really kills immersion. I definitely do not want the open multiboxing that all other MMORPG's allow which is essentially throwing up your hands and saying we can't do anything about it, we'll take the extra $$. The damage done will be worse in a sandbox game than in a theme park.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Allow players to report suspect multiboxers. A player gets up to so many reports, there is probably a good reason why. Monitor the player for a few minutes, make the judgement call. Are there going to be people who still get away with it? Sure. But it won't be the blatantly obvious train of 5 characters in matching outfits, which is what really kills immersion. I definitely do not want the open multiboxing that all other MMORPG's allow which is essentially throwing up your hands and saying we can't do anything about it, we'll take the extra $$. The damage done will be worse in a sandbox game than in a theme park.
Do you have any idea how implausible it is to enforce a "No Multiboxing" policy? How do you prove that I was multiboxing vs playing with my sibling or roommate?
In a game like PFO I don't think the fear of multiboxing is going to come in the form of "the bot train" that games like RO came to know. Since skills are time based, the fear is litterally 10 characters training in offline mode to level up the skills, and than going on each one individually to quickly slam out the merit badges for their respective classes. This will not be visible by players to report.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you have any idea how implausible it is to enforce a "No Multiboxing" policy? How do you prove that I was multiboxing vs playing with my sibling or roommate?
For the record, no I didn't.
However, I agree with the sentiment. Moreover, I wholeheartedly endorse allowing players to multi-box, if that's what they want to do because that's what's fun for them. In fact, I wholeheartedly endorse Necromancer-style characters being able to raise a literal army of 10,000 undead minions and marching them into a city and destroying it, or at least trying to.
The only objection to multi-boxing that I've ever understood is that people don't want someone able to go out and Tank/Heal/Dps all on their own. I guess somehow if you deny them that, they'll magically decide to be social and group up with you. I don't think that's the way it's going to play out.
Let people play the way they want to play, unless in so doing they *directly* negatively impact another player. All the rules put in place to attempt to encourage socializing and grouping are easily circumvented and only end up frustrating the people who then can't do what they find fun.
Much better to simply remove as many of the unnecessary penalties to grouping and hope for the best.
There's a huge difference between two-boxing and multi-boxing.
Two-boxing: someone has a healer, buffer or whatever on autofollow helping out their main character. Not really a significant advantage--it basically just means you don't have to run from a bad PvE situation. People who do this tend not to be intent on gaining an unfair advantage, just a little PvE death insurance.
Multi-boxing: someone has 5+ accounts, makes 5 wizards that are linked to a single keyboard, and uses them to hand out instant death to anyone in sight. Multi-boxers in PvP are more like raid bosses than players, being able to respond instantly with multiple toons where real players would have to coordinate. This should (if at all possible) be a bannable offense.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure I agree. I understand the concern, but I'm not sure about the proposed solution.
Is the only possible use of 5+ char/accounts aggressive? Or might someone want to use that strategy to protect themselves from a group of 5 separate players who are trying to lock down an area?
Ultimately, if we can't identify the Player behind a character, I'm very skeptical of any rules that seek to limit what can be done per Player, since those rules are easily circumvented, and it's very difficult to prove they've been violated. And on top of all that, I'm really not convinced that there aren't any positive uses of it.
I keep coming back to this, but if someone finds it fun to run a small group of their own, why shouldn't they be allowed to?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I keep coming back to this, but if someone finds it fun to run a small group of their own, why shouldn't they be allowed to?
A) They gain an unfair advantage over people who play a single character and have to find other players to group with.
B) They kill immersion for other players, unless they are just a really good role player and can actually RP multiple characters at a time with distinct personalities. I have never seen this to be the case.C) It is damaging to the social aspect of the game, which will be very important especially in a Sandbox.
Isn't that enough?
So forbidding multiboxing will force others to interact?
B) They kill immersion for other players, unless they are just a really good role player and can actually RP multiple characters at a time with distinct personalities. I have never seen this to be the case.
Bad roleplayer can kill immersion for other players with single account.
C) It is damaging to the social aspect of the game, which will be very important especially in a Sandbox.
To damage something it has to exist first. Nothing will *force* anyone to be involved in social aspect of the game regardless of the amount of accounts they will be running at once.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Except those initial spots will almost assuredly be invites or lottery and a person is incredibly likely to only get one invite or winning ticket with the large number of people who will be trying to get in. That will only prevent the initial players from multiboxing at launch and for a few months.
Another facet I don't think we've touched yet, is that Pathfinder has LIMITED spots open for new players. A Multi-Boxing player blocks other, potentially paying, customers from playing Pathfinder Online.
The multi-boxer needs to pay the same ammount for each account.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tyveil, I am trying to understand your viewpoint, but I'm having a hard time.
A) They gain an unfair advantage over people who play a single character and have to find other players to group with.
Socially adept players who have friends to group with have an unfair advantage over socially awkward introverts who don't have the skills to develop new friendships easily.
High level characters have an unfair advantage over low level characters.
High skill players have an unfair advantage over low skill players.
Should we ban all systems that might differentiate results?
B) They kill immersion for other players, unless they are just a really good role player and can actually RP multiple characters at a time with distinct personalities. I have never seen this to be the case.
The vast majority of three-character groups you encounter in the wild will have absolutely zero interaction with you. Are you really saying you'll be able to tell that a trio that runs past you is multi-boxed, and that will break your immersion?
Should we ban all the behavior that single characters engage in that will break immersion?
C) It is damaging to the social aspect of the game, which will be very important especially in a Sandbox.
This sounds like a very abstract restatement of A, included primarily to make the list contain 3 elements.
How many game masters have ever sat at a table with only 2 or 3 friends, wanting to run a campaign, and have decided to allow 1 or more players to run multiple characters? I know I have, and I know I'm not the only one. It didn't ruin the immersion on the table top, and I don't really see how it will ruin anyone else's immersion here.
Again, I'm trying to understand this viewpoint, and I am open to any argument anyone can put forward.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Another facet I don't think we've touched yet, is that Pathfinder has LIMITED spots open for new players. A Multi-Boxing player blocks other, potentially paying, customers from playing Pathfinder Online.
In line with my other post about never punishing a player for using a single account, I really believe players should be able to have multiple characters on the same account in game at the same time. Personally, I would really like to see the UI support running multiple characters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In line with my other post about never punishing a player for using a single account...
Reading the Thread Title fail... So, it's not my other post, it's this post :)
I would like to make it clear that I absolutely 100% support limiting behavior by Player, if that ever becomes possible. I also think it's likely that there will be a service someday that uniquely identifies individuals so that online services can remove anonymity when necessary. I think it's a shame that there isn't already a service like that.
Even with such a service, it would be possible for a unique individual to register with the service and then allow another person to actually log in their account and play, and I suppose it's possible that there are enough individuals that will never play the game that they wouldn't mind letting someone do despicable things in their name, but I imagine once this service is mature, everyone will realize that stuff that is done in their name will forever be associated with their name, or at least will be as difficult to remove as current identity theft issues are, and so we will all eventually guard our registered identities appropriately.
At the moment, though, I'd imagine it's pretty much a pipe dream.
Finally, even if it were possible to limit behavior by Player, I would still strongly encourage PFO to allow Players to have multiple characters in game at once. I don't believe it harms the game at all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unfortunately, the resources required to attempt to try to enforce a ban on multiboxing are usually wasted. Those who want to do it have more ways to work around the systems designed to stop it than we have time or money to add new detection methods. Its an arms race the development team can never win.
The better solution is to use non-technical means to stop players from abusing the game via multiboxing. This falls under the category of "community management".
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The best way to discourage multiboxing is to make attention an important resource. That's the only way to distinguish two virtual machines on the same computer logged in to different accounts, and two people on the same proxy playing together.
I assume "Abusing the game" is code for "making other players have less fun", since 'the game' includes the server, the client software, and all of the people playing it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... make attention an important resource.
That certainly applies to multi-boxing where you're running concurrent characters, but what implications does it have to the question of how we will earn Skill Points? It seems very unlikely that PFO will be able to limit the number of Skill Points a Player can earn in a 24-hour period, but I have a feeling they are going to be under immense pressure to limit the number of Skill Points that can be earned on a single Account in the same period. To my mind, this will simply encourage people to create multiple accounts. I am probably in a significant minority here, but I think the only rational way to limit Skill Points is by Character.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... make attention an important resource.That certainly applies to multi-boxing where you're running concurrent characters, but what implications does it have to the question of how we will earn Skill Points? It seems very unlikely that PFO will be able to limit the number of Skill Points a Player can earn in a 24-hour period, but I have a feeling they are going to be under immense pressure to limit the number of Skill Points that can be earned on a single Account in the same period. To my mind, this will simply encourage people to create multiple accounts. I am probably in a significant minority here, but I think the only rational way to limit Skill Points is by Character.
I also agree with this statement, as much as I hate how cheesy it is to simultaneously skill up 5 characters, I also see huge flaws in any attempts to prevent it. Just like your statement on darkness being an easily trickable system... so does 1 character skilling at a time.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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... make attention an important resource.That certainly applies to multi-boxing where you're running concurrent characters, but what implications does it have to the question of how we will earn Skill Points? It seems very unlikely that PFO will be able to limit the number of Skill Points a Player can earn in a 24-hour period, but I have a feeling they are going to be under immense pressure to limit the number of Skill Points that can be earned on a single Account in the same period. To my mind, this will simply encourage people to create multiple accounts. I am probably in a significant minority here, but I think the only rational way to limit Skill Points is by Character.
Skills: As in EVE Online, your character can train in a wide variety of skills. However, unlike EVE, skills in Pathfinder Online have no direct effects. Each is simply a prerequisite for another area of character development.
If skills accrue per character, then there is an advantage to creating a lot of characters and not using them right away. I know I'm going to want to play a mage eventually, so I'll roll one up and start letting skills build until I want to start playing. If skills accrue per account (or to one character at a time per account), there is the same advantage to paying for two accounts, with a real-world downside.
Any solution that eliminates both of those factors boils down to a 'You must have had a subscription for X time before you have this skill.' I am strongly opposed to that model enough to seriously reconsider my second month's subscription(s).
How about account-level skills, shared among all characters, earned through playing activites? Unlock the basic magic skill by completing the basic magic tutorial, and unlock the next magic skill by completing the initiate magic test with a character qualified to take it? The only reasons to gate basic abilities are: to gradually introduce the _player_ to those abilities, or to create a rarity of _characters_ with those abilities. The player training gate will be met in differing real-world time for different players. The character rarity goal is poorly conceived, since it either gives direct and permanent advantage to people who have had their accounts longer, or gives new accounts the same abilities at their start that older accounts had to spend time getting.
Skill points developing, per character, during play, at a rate LIMITED by real world time (say, a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 skill points per week) might be a good compromise. Older characters wouldn't get a permanent relative benefit, nor is it quite as useful to just make a character and let it sit without playing it; to develop my alt, I need to play it for some time each week.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm very interested in seeing the game have some kind of reward that accrues to an account over time, that benefits all the characters on that account. In fact, since it's so unlikely to be able to uniquely identify a Player, I've often tried to think of ways to create sufficient incentives that a Player will voluntarily choose to limit themselves to one Account, even if that Account has restrictions like how many Skill Points can be earned per week, etc.
If there are real, significant rewards that are earned on an Account over time, then banning an Account becomes a very significant issue.
You will almost certainly be able to train skills on more than one character per account. Doing so almost certainly will not be free.
How do you reconcile that with the F2P accounts?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Maybe this will fall under the same rules as Final Fantasy Online, in a variation in which the first toon can be free, but the others require a small payment to 'unlock'?
I concur with this assessment. If this is not a monthly fee then people will just create new accounts to level characters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm hoping for something along these lines:
A significant up-front cost to open a new Account, say the $40 or $60 we usually pay for a new major release game. This gives you access to the standard 8-10 (or whatever) Characters you can create on that Account, but only one Character can gain Skill Points at a time. You can pay another reasonable, but not insignificant cost to unlock concurrent Skill Point advancement for subsequent Characters on that Account. This cost should be significant, but less than the cost to start up a new Account, say $20 - $30.
So far, that's regardless of whether the Player chooses the Subscription model or the Free-to-Play model, at least in my mind. PFO may very well decide that they want to eliminate the up-front cost of opening a new Account to try to encourage more players to try the game. I can certainly understand why they might want to do that, but I'm kind of hoping they don't, because the one-time payment to open an Account has a lot of upsides to it, foremost among them being that the Player is now invested in the Account, and it will hurt at least a little bit if that Account gets banned. In my opinion, the primary lure of F2P is the lack of a recurring payment, not the lack of an initial payment.
After a Player has unlocked their Account, and possibly enabled concurrent Skill Point advancement, they can choose to either subscribe for a reasonable fee, hopefully along the lines of $10/month. The Free-to-Play players could pay a set fee to unlock a set amount of Skill Points that they could earn over any amount of time they chose, while subscribers would be allowed unlimited Skill Points as long as their subscription is active.
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Goblin Squad Member
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as a Business, why the heck would Pazio want to limit income? If i want to pay for 5 monthly subscriptions... and buy 5 copies of the game... why ban me as a customer for spending 5x what you would get by banning the action... that basically saying "we don't want your money.... take it an play an mmo that lets you multi-box"
I was thinking that their account system could be built up like this.
You can create and play on 1 account for free and it has 1 character slot available.
If you want to open another slot, you have to pay 1$/month, open 5 slots and you pay 5$/month or something like that. If you wish to only pay 2$ in December, you get to choose wich characters slots to still be open for play, the rest will be locked until you pay for them again.
This just popped into my mind while reading the thread though, dont really know about the cons and pros yet, enlighten me xD
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Goblin Squad Member
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as a Business, why the heck would Pazio want to limit income? If i want to pay for 5 monthly subscriptions... and buy 5 copies of the game... why ban me as a customer for spending 5x what you would get by banning the action... that basically saying "we don't want your money.... take it an play an mmo that lets you multi-box"
Well, I'm taking for granted that it will be good for business if Players have a single Account. However, I'd be perfectly happy if you slightly modified my example above so that the price to open a 2nd Character for concurrent progression on a single Account was only $5 or so less than the price to open a second Account.
As for why I think PFO will think it's good for business to have Players use a single Account, ultimately it boils down to reducing anonymity and the tendency to behave as if there are no consequences to one's actions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was thinking that their account system could be built up like this.
You can create and play on 1 account for free and it has 1 character slot available.
If you want to open another slot, you have to pay 1$/month, open 5 slots and you pay 5$/month or something like that. If you wish to only pay 2$ in December, you get to choose wich characters slots to still be open for play, the rest will be locked until you pay for them again.
This just popped into my mind while reading the thread though, dont really know about the cons and pros yet, enlighten me xD
The con with this is that it's cheaper and more effective to just open 20 free, single-character accounts, than it is to pay anything.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was up late last night thinking about this as I tried to fall asleep.
Ultimately, I think it's necessary to allow unlimited Skill Progression without additional fees.
The primary lure of Free-to-Play games, in my opinion, is not the up-front cost, but rather the recurring costs. To make PFO attractive to F2P players, I think those players will need to be guaranteed that they'll be able to advance their characters without having to pay anything.
There's still a lot of room for perks for subscribers, and perks that can be purchased directly, that you won't need to sell Skill Progression.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was up late last night thinking about this as I tried to fall asleep.
Ultimately, I think it's necessary to allow unlimited Skill Progression without additional fees.
The primary lure of Free-to-Play games, in my opinion, is not the up-front cost, but rather the recurring costs. To make PFO attractive to F2P players, I think those players will need to be guaranteed that they'll be able to advance their characters without having to pay anything.
There's still a lot of room for perks for subscribers, and perks that can be purchased directly, that you won't need to sell Skill Progression.
Well I would say unlimitted skill progression for a single character, is a reasonable thing to attract F2P players, and simultaniously leveling 2 characters is a nice perk that I could see as a hook that when someone gets into the game they would want, but it would not be a deal breaker for someone before they get into the game. I do agree with you on the issue of, well how the heck do you prevent someone from making 50 accounts to get full progression on 50 characters and completely mitigate said process, and really the only answer I can come up with for that is convenience. Many people will cheat the system, however this one isn't a way that ruins the game for others. Unlike a darkness hack, botting etc... You do not have any awareness of these different characters unless they tell you, the user has more passwords, time between switching etc... to focus on. In the end this does not wind up with 2 characters that are stronger than one individual, and the user can't really play them both at the same time via any sane methods.
When it comes to cash shop items, it is a tricky balancing act, when it shifts to "Money spent = Power" the entire nature of the game falls apart, your time, planning etc... become irrelevant and you lose any immersion or care for the game. It is no longer about you, it is no longer about your character, it is about your credit card.
On the other hand if the items are useless... well than nobody buys them, game goes bankrupt etc... So the best medium is convenience items, and most f2p games convenience items can be worked around. Storage space is a popular one. Yes someone can make 2 accounts with 10 level 1 "Mule" characters each, and just unload their crap onto the mules granting themselves near infinite storage, but many find it easier to just fork over the $5 to give themselves more storage and save themselves the trouble.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still think it would be very beneficial to have a significant up-front cost to open a new Account, and that the cost of allowing a 2nd Character on that Account to gain Skill Progression concurrently should be somewhat less than the cost of opening a 2nd Account.
In addition, there should be benefits that all Characters on an Account can benefit from, that increase as the Account ages. Account-bound items, Account-based storage, easy access to information about other Characters on your Account. All of those things will serve to make it attractive for Players to stick with a single Account.
In addition, when a situation arises that requires moderation, they'll be able to look at the Accounts and see if the alleged griefer has an Account that looks like it's optimized for griefing, as opposed to an Account that clearly has a long history and a lot of investment in it, that should make a difference.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I still think it would be very beneficial to have a significant up-front cost to open a new Account, and that the cost of allowing a 2nd Character on that Account to gain Skill Progression concurrently should be somewhat less than the cost of opening a 2nd Account.
In addition, there should be benefits that all Characters on an Account can benefit from, that increase as the Account ages. Account-bound items, Account-based storage, easy access to information about other Characters on your Account. All of those things will serve to make it attractive for Players to stick with a single Account.
In addition, when a situation arises that requires moderation, they'll be able to look at the Accounts and see if the alleged griefer has an Account that looks like it's optimized for griefing, as opposed to an Account that clearly has a long history and a lot of investment in it, that should make a difference.
Well from a business sense that may or may not work. When I was low on money, I started DDO, I got along just fine without paying a dime for 4 months, finally started having disposable income, over the course of the next 6 months I probably spent about $75 on the game.
I never played guild wars, mainly because I didn't have the money up font and wasn't sure I would like the game, and I probably wouldn't have been convinced or decided within a few weeks either, because I am stingy in most cases.
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Goblin Squad Member
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as a Business, why the heck would Pazio want to limit income? If i want to pay for 5 monthly subscriptions... and buy 5 copies of the game... why ban me as a customer for spending 5x what you would get by banning the action... that basically saying "we don't want your money.... take it an play an mmo that lets you multi-box"
Because it is damaging to the online society. The small amount they may lose on those multi-boxers is not worth it. That's the same as asking why would Paizo want to ban paying accounts? Just because that person is PvP griefing, using language, and harrassing players? Why would they want to limit their income by keeping that player out of the game?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Free To Play does not mean "you have the same experience as someone who pays to play". It means there is a way to play the game for free.
That way will be limited, less powerful, and harder than paying. But people will still do it, primarily as a way of "trying before they buy", or using a free account for easy, simple things like moving limited quantities of stuff between locations via a safe route.
People who pay via MTX and people who pay via subscriptions will find their experiences roughly equal when they pay the same amount, the MTX experience will be more limited, less powerful and harder when they pay less. If they pay more, mostly they'll get bling, or access to content that subscribers can pay for if they want it as well (like an adventure module, for example).
Equality of experience between paying players and non-paying players will not be a feature of Pathfinder Online.
Multiple characters training on a single account will not reduce griefing, multiboxing, or any other behavior that you don't like beyond one player, one character. Sorry, but there's no way to stop it mechanically, and trust me, every idea you have has been tried. An idea that would actually work would revolutionize the internet, and would make you a stone cold billionaire. MMOs wouldn't be your customers. Amazon, Google, and eBay would. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
We're selling you training time and access to skill trees. So you won't get a lot of it for free, regardless of how many characters you have on an account.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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We're selling you training time and access to skill trees. So you won't get a lot of it for free, regardless of how many characters you have on an account.RyanD
Interesting, while I think that is fair, do you think you will consider a similar hybrid model to DDO, where you can chose between Al-A Carte, buy it when you need it, and a subscription, $15 a month and as long as you are paying it you can get and keep access to everything and can train X number of characters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Most of my F2P experience is with LOTRO, and I can tell you I've gone back and forth a couple of times between pure F2P and subscribing. One thing I've learned is that, while I'm subscribing, I'm very unlikely to actually spend my free Turbine Points on buying permanent access to the content I'm getting for free, but once I cancel my sub, I feel like I've wasted all that money paying for a subscription because now I'm in the same boat as someone who's never spent a dime on the game.
Whatever system PFO eventually settles on, I hope it has these characteristics:
1. If there are permanent-access things that F2P'ers are going to "almost certainly" buy, then those things should gradually accrue to subscriber accounts. And giving subscribers free Goblin Points (or whatever) that they *could* use to buy that permanent-access won't cut it.
2. Even after I've acquired *all* of the permanent-access stuff available, there should still be a real benefit to me subscribing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope that someone who has subscribed for two years and then drops down to F2P doesn't end up in a more restricted state than someone who's been F2P all along and only given you 1/10th the money.
A subscriber would have substantial advantages over a F2P player who spent 10% of the subscription price over the same period of time. And those advantages would be persistent even if that subscriber ceased paying the subscription fees and decided to just use MTX.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A subscriber would have substantial advantages over a F2P player who spent 10% of the subscription price over the same period of time. And those advantages would be persistent even if that subscriber ceased paying the subscription fees and decided to just use MTX.I hope that someone who has subscribed for two years and then drops down to F2P doesn't end up in a more restricted state than someone who's been F2P all along and only given you 1/10th the money.
Great!
... Is it ready yet? *grins mischievously*