What if the game were set up such that you could download the front end and play with no account at all, subject to limitations? What would be the limitations?
Some ideas of my own:
1. You can pick a name, but your global is "@Free############"
2. You cannot buy or sell on the market or with other players.
3. You cannot craft anything.
4. You have no ability to post on the forums.
5. You have severely limited chat abilities. Basically there's a free player trial mode channel you get to chat in, and that's it. Devs would likely be monitoring this channel to respond to new player questions.
6. Your toon is level 10 and never levels up or gains any swag. Upon creation, you have the choice of a few pre-constructed character builds you can try out, all of which have some powers typical of a character of that level, all synthetically enhanced to a level commensurate with something like what a level 10 might be able to do.
7. You're limited to where you can go in the open world, or perhaps you can only go to the "free trial shard" which is like the regular open world except that you're not interacting with paid players directly. Or if not that, then maybe give the free players no choice of which shard to go to when entering a new zone (like when exiting a mission map or when first logging in) but DO offer that choice to paid players.
8. Fewer costume and animation and particle effect options, but still options, albeit with a limited color palette.
Did I miss anything?
You wouldn't have to offer this right away either. Maybe down the road though. Just an idea, maybe a bad one. you tell me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I like the idea of a free "dip-your-toe-in-the-pond" type trial version.
Although as an alternative I might suggest, instead of a narrow slice of the game experience, give them a time limit. Say after a week, or 20 game hours or something. So they have full access to "most" of the game's features, Customization, chat, crafting etc. So that they can actually get a feel for the total game experience and can make a better informed decision. At the end of the trial period they get the option of converting the character they have built into a regular paid account/subscription, or it is summarily deleted.
I'm just not sure that giving potential players a severely gimped version to start with will be as enticing as a glimpse at the real depth of the game. It might also be wise to hold off doing this until after major bugs are worked out and there is a sufficient player base to help and encourage newbies.
I also wanted to point out that it might be more incentive to lay down money for a character you feel you have an "investment" in, that you created and love, than one of the cookie cutter "Trial Characters."
Number 4 seems both problematic and undesirable. What do we do about the people who already have forum accounts before downloading the FTV? I see quite a few posters without the K under their picture, and there are about 891 Kickstarter supporters (or at least accounts ^_^) who didn't reach the "Home Sweet Home" level who would have the K but have not yet purchased the game, so I can't see making buying the box a prerequisite for opening a forum account.
I like the last part of number 5, and would suggest that such a "new player help channel" be made available to all, new players to ask for help, and veterans to offer advice. Keep the dev monitoring that channel as much as possible. ^_^
I'm also not sure about starting at level 10 and never gaining any swag. I think starting at level 1 with the option to go through any tutorial missions would be better, and we have number 2 to prevent gold farming.
Finally, we should consider whether or not it would be desirable to allow the transfer of character(s) to the paid account once the box is purchased, and how much retconning/respeccing should be allowed at that time to enable use of the wider range of options.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Yeah I think I like the "fully functional f2p with a built-in time limit" idea better than the "heavily restricted" version.
Ideally this could be made so that if you decided to play "for real" you could keep your trial character - the only thing that would change about it would be that your "trial time limit" would disappear. By using short time limits characters that were not made official could be immediately wiped once their time runs out and this would likely cut down on non-paying gold farmers from being able to establish long lasting bots.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
8. All of the costume and animation etc.. options.
Since you're trying to sell them on becoming a subscriber (or buying the box), why not let them try creating their ideal character... reason is, if they CAN create the toon they want, the more likely it is they will come back and want to experience the game with that ideal toon.
Just think of it as a players Personal Investment. Much like how all of us spent hours creating our toon in the costume creator, but picked some whack Powersets, it didnt mean you would stop after 4 to 5 levels. Since you Invested time making that toon, you might stick it out with your new toon till the early Teens before you stop playing that toon. ;)
Comments in response to other people's comments, in no particular order, and without references to anyone else (sloppy, I know, and for that I apologize in advance):
I personally would not allow people to make posts on the forums post-launch until they've paid for the game. I think that requiring people to have a paid global account name to be able to post on the forums encourages people not to start flame wars, troll others, etc. If you can just make another free forum name then you can do all sorts of shenanigans (sock puppet posts in agreement with yourself to make it look like your ideas are more popular, outright rude or insulting comments that don't get your real account banned or whatever, etc). I like the idea of forcing people to be accountable for their forum activity. That could be just me though, I can see where some people would find it restrictive. Bear in mind, everyone could read the forums, the only restriction would be on posting your own thoughts. Honestly, since the forums will be maintained by and devoted to one specific game, I don't see why restricting posts to those people who paid for a global account would be all that bad. I don't read or write stuff to forums for games I don't play, like ever. And I'm not talking about continuing monies every month either, just the up-front box purchase of the game. So if and when you buy the box, you get to set up an account with a global chat handle and forum name and you can then post on the forums forever, if not then you can't.
As for being able to do things like build a toon and then port it over to your paid account, I feel that could be a problem in one area. Specifically, you don't want gold farmers to be able to spam forums and chat channels with for sale advertising messages. If anyone could just make a new account for free and then buy, sell, trade, post, chat, etc, then you end up in an endless fight against the constant onslaught of new free accounts made by people for the sole purpose of gold farming and advertising. The free play option I've described does not allow that to happen. If we could make the "port your trial toon over to your paid account when you make one" thing a reality and NOT have that problem, I'd be for it, but I think this is a simple, if somewhat restrictive, solution to that problem. Also, the first rule of free trials, to me, is"always leave them wanting more". I don't think it's necessary to allow people to craft, buy, sell, trade, etc to give them a peek into the game. Just being able to walk around in the game and fly and super speed around and see the inside of their friend's SG base, etc is pretty good. They'll get to access the open world, or some version of it, and also to one of the most enjoyable things about the game (costumes!), as well as getting to try out the game play mechanics (doing missions, teaming up with others, etc) and I think that's really all you need to get a feel for how the game is.
And the canned trial versions of the classes could be reasonably competitive for their level if you build them right and bake enough hard-wired enhancement into them. These would be basically "typical" examples of what you might actually build as a toon at level 10 (or whatever). You could also allow them to start at level 1 and gain XP as normal until they hit 10, BUT, still deny them enhancements and just make the powers always work as if all the slots had a Single Origin Enhancement in them (or whatever the equivalent of an SO is in CoT). We could argue about the actual maximum level number there, but I think it has to remain pretty low to avoid people just playing free forever.
Another idea I had was to just let people who have the front end downloaded just log in as "guest" and whatever they do or whatever point they get to on their build it all goes away when they log out. That is, all free trials are "log in, start at level 1 and play to the low-ish maximum freebie level X, you get no gear, you cannot interact with the economy, you cannot chat, you cannot post on forums, and your character progress is not saved when you log out".
I wouldn't be against giving the free trial people the full costume options though. That's one very cool feature of the game that can't really be exploited for personal gold farming gains, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I admit that I didn't think much about the Gold Farming possibilities. But, really, isn't the most annoying part of the Gold Farming industry the spamming of chat channels? So you take that away. You can't send in-game e-mails or use the global chat channels as an F2P account. Wouldn't that take care of the majority of problems?
I think its ridiculous in some games where you can't use the private message functions. How else do you get introduced to the community properly? At least for me, that's a big part of what makes a game attractive or not. And I'd venture to say that CoX (and I hope by extension CoT) had one of the friendliest, most creative communities out there.
If they are banned from the "global channels" for spamming, the bots generally resort to pming individual players or mailing them.
Look at City of Heroes when they had the normal 14 day trial... our mail boxes generally ended up getting spammed with Gold selling mail, and I remember MORE than once getting hit with PM's about it as well..... Sure, for me it was a quick /ignore and delete the mail, but if you give gold sellers an avenue to use, then they will use it.
Nope, Gold Farmers can solve most communication issues and ABUSE 'free' accounts. They can freely let free accounts get banned for free and never notice, because they've already moved on to the next free account. It's one of the techniques they used while I was playing AoC. They would send out their bannable scripted message, then immediately delete that character and fire up another free account with the Same character name, and broadcast again. Players would report, over and over, but the Devs weren't able to do much, because the bannable character didn't exist anymore. Worse, if they Did find an account to punish, it was a Free one and usually already abandoned.
In Star Wars, they spam in Local chat.
What might work is a sort of 'side-kick' account'? Where a player could offer a limited access account linked to his own? Not sure if that's not still exploitable.
Be Well!
Fireheart
One of the worst experiences for a player just trying things out would be to hit a form of limitation that only exists for their trial. Champions had a period of around a year where new accounts had a HEAVILY restricted choice of costume parts until they'd reached level 10 on a character. This was never announced, nor was it made clear when you made a new account. If you did unlock this, it wasn't told to you.
DCUO has a horrible cash cap which is made worse by AH prices being so high that you could never dream of affording anything even as a premium (non subbed but still bought something) member.
I personally like the idea of a 2 week, loose limitations trial. The problem comes with people who spend time using an unlimited number of these to do something unfair or that could be considered harassment. An idea is that these trials' messages can only be seen by other trials, but such a limitation might be a little extreme.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
perhaps I am in the minority, but I am against any form of "free" trial.
[img]http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/whiteperegrine/84183/69278/69278_original.gif[/img]
For me, I view free trials as a "time limited" F2P game account. You don't need to spend money on the game, but you are allowed to at least get a *taste* of the game. Then you can make more of an educated guess to purchase the game or not.
In fact, back in the day (a long time back) you used to be able to pick up demos for most games out there. They were not the full game, but they were enough for the player to tell if their computer would run the game, or if they would *enjoy* playing the game.
And yet nowadays... trials/demos of games are *few* and far between. MMO's are practically the only *genre* of game where "Refer a friend" or a time limited trial is used [1].
The one advantage of a free trial as well is that it can also help cut down on the "Your game is crap, it won't even run on my computer... RAR! REFUND ME NAO" / "Your game is crap. It was a total bait and switch from what I saw in the trailer" complaints.
At least this way, there is a way to help counter those complaints. The game doesn't run? Why didn't you try the free trial before you spent your money on it?
But as people have said: With free trials in MMO's come gold spam.
[1] Not quite true. Some games on steam have "free to play for the weekend" offers... and these are normally *full versions* of the game, just only active on the account for the duration of the weekend. Still, I have played and bought games that I might not have previously played if I didn't have this free trial of the game.
There could be a contact that the freebies talk to who sends them on missions to get XP by clearing mobs out, but also by going to places in the game and clicking on info kiosks to learn about the game, which kiosks would be located in places where players gather for varus reasons, like the auction house, the level-up contact, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
hehe.. for a sec there I was sure you were going to suggest a Theme Park type of Tour. Ala Jurassic World. ;D
I believe free trials are a good thing. Get the person hooked and they stay for life *cough cough*. However I also believe in making the free trial good enough to get them to stay which means that it should have most of the features. If you want to leave off a few things like high-end costumes or things like that it's fine but the trial should have a very good representation of that the player gets.
I agree with the trial being turned into regular play with a sub so the player can keep their trial characters. However, I firmly believe that the trial should be limited to two character slots. That way they can try two different ATs (if they find one is not quite right) and have twice the chances to enjoy themselves.
Restrict the free trial to the first 10-12 levels (however the Enhancements are broken down) and the opening zones.
As an alternative, let them play their free trial characters and their last mission is a time warp thing where they get a chance to run a short mission as a future version of themselves at level 30. Give them a taste of how the higher end feels.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I think a slightly improved version of this would be to give out a code(or at least offer it) or something of that nature to the person if they decline to sub(but they plan to in the future) so that they can easily get the character they made at a later date
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
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In order to prevent abuses by goldfarmers, I think the free trial version has to have some fairly serious restrictions:
1. No typing messages in publicly viewable chat channels, and no private texts to anyone other than on-duty mods whose job it is to respond to noob questions. This way goldfarmers can't annoy people with spammed ads in public channels or private tells. You could maybe have a freebie channel that only freebie people and mods can see. you could probably let the freebie people have emotes or something that say stuff like "Level X freebie person, looking for team", or something.
2. No commerce. That is, no buying, selling, trading or crafting. If this is allowed, a lot of black market commerce can happen at no risk tot he offenders, because nobody cares if their free account get's cancelled anyway. This also prevents people from making a bunch of freebie accounts just to get more buying and selling slots on the auction house.
3. Free game access should not be permanent. Some people will play for free forever due to not having money. Progressing through the game long-term ought to require a person to AT LEAST buy the game for the up-front purchase price if nothing else. I'm willing to draw the line at "when you log out of the freebie access, all character progress is lost and you start over again anew the next time". I know a lot of people want to be able to continue their characters when they do decide to buy the game, but assuming the freebie level cap is like 10-12, it should not take very long to rebuild your toon and replay them up to that level. People almost always want to undo their mistakes in how they built their first toon anyway, so this isn't so bad really.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
These are my main concerns with the concept of a free trial as well - there would have to be some hefty limits to what is offered. To actually get somewhere with the game - beyond a taste - they should have to "buy the box".
How about after 7-10 days, feebies can join a team?
One of the most reminisced anecdotes from the old CoH/V games is how someone joined a PUG and the other players almost mentored them and they decided to stay with the game because of it. Have to allow for that somehow! ;)
Teaming should be fine - that should be part of the "taste" of gameplay (it IS an MMO after all). The ability to post in that team channel would be probably be a requirement as well to communicate with your teammates. But it probably shouldn't go further than this.
I understand the need to remove trading and restrict communication abilities in a trial version to prevent gold sellers/spammers, but I see no reason to have a level cap or, hell, any other restrictions for a trial account if you're going to have a very limited time to play it anyway.
I think it would more easily attract more players, an important thing for a MMO to have, if they got the full game, but on a time limit. So they can see and and experience all of what the game has to offer, instead of looking at some of the unnecessarily restricted features and wondering whether or not it's worth their money when they haven't really seen everything yet to properly decide.
Another thing that could potentially attract more players is if they got full access to the costume/character creator for free, without access to the actual game of course. That way they can play around in it and they'll make a character and love it [i]so much[/i] that they [i]have[/i] to buy the game to play said character.
But I think I remember reading somewhere that CoT was going to give people access to the costume creator alone at some point already anyway?
Ex-CoH player of 4 years, DarkLoveAngel, Liberty server.
The 100% free version of the game would have to be anonymous, and therefore anyone, including people who have paid accounts, could make an unlimited number of free accounts, at will, whenever they want to. If there's any benefit in doing that, people will do it just to get the benefit. They did this in CoX. Making new free trial accounts was, for a time, the best way to generate enough Prestige to sustain an SG like forever, so people did that. So the 100% free version must not include anything which would be considered "free stuff" to the paid players in any way. That means no buy/sell slots on the market for market speculators to abuse, no trading with other players for goldfarmers to abuse, and no ability to advertise wares for powerleveling services or goldfarmers to take advantage of. If you make the freebie account a thing which can hold items in inventory, people will use that as a way around the need for added inventory space, so that;s out too, etc.
I mean, I'm in favor of letting freebie people team up with regular paid players if they get an invite, but even something as simple as being able to type in team chat channels could theoretically be abused by entrepreneurs. For example, you make a paid account and gold farm. You then make a free account. Then you log into your free account and put up a sign that says "looking for team" and when you get on a team, you hit them with "hey, any of you guys want to buy stuff?" Then they kick you and report you, but all that is lost by then is the free account. If and when anyone does say "yeah, I like stuff, what do you got?" you then cut a deal. Worst case scenario for the goldfarmer is that they get their free account shut down, that's it. No risk, SOME chance of reward. I don't know if that makes it hard enough to make a buck that those people wouldn't bother, but I'd rather err on the side of caution. So let the freebie people team up, but only let them have specific pre-written things they can say in team chat, like "yes", "no", "I'll follw you." "Please follow me", "Gratz", "Please wait for me",etc
I'm ok with letting free account people have the full costume creator, even full options for character classes and power sets. People on paid accounts might like that, just as a way to test drive a new character build concept even, so great. If the devs feel like limiting the class or power set options, I have no problem with that either.
I think letting people play a 100% free character up to the level cap is giving away the store for free, so I'd personally set the level limit to like level 10 and even then I would make all progress on all characters "not saved when you log out" since a free trial is supposed to be a "brief test-drive" not a "prolonged test-own-the-car-for-a-month".
I don't personally believe in the theory that a person on a free account has to see how the crafting and auctioning works to be able to make a decision on purchasing the game, and I feel that stuff has to be excluded to prevent abuses, so sorry, you need to buy the full game to buy or sell anything or to see that stuff in detail. I would be willing to give the freebie people a set of cheap generic Augments and Refinements that they can slot in their powers, just to see what such things look like, but they can't sell them or buy any more or craft anything. You could just let them play the game and get IGC and item drops, then ONLY let them spend that IGC or sell those items by interacting with the "freebie vendor contact" and when they log off, all earned IGC and items disappear forever anyway. This way they have no effect on the economy at large, which is necessary I think.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I started playing right after Heroes & Villains was released. I never felt inundated by goldspammers. Sure, I saw an occasional chat post, but by no means did it impair my experience. I think it's more important by far to attract new players than to do everything possible to choke out the occasional entrepreneur. There has to be a balance between giving a potential new community member a fair view of the game, and restricting everything but the most basic functions just because you're annoyed by the occasional "5M gold/ $4.95" post showing in global chat.
New players need to be able to interact with the community as individuals. By cutting their virtual tongues you immediately marginalize them and reduce their experience. Restricting global chat I can see. Denying local or team chat would be intrusive in the extreme. Gold farmers are looking for highest return in shortest possible time. They are not going to spend that time teaming up repeatedly on the chance that one of a handful of teammates will make a purchase. Doesn't make sense in investment vs. return.
Likewise with crafting. While I don't understand it personally, the crafting and selling aspects of MMO games are apparently a big draw for many people.
Should there be some kinds of limits? Of course, the idea is to incentivize folks to pony up for the full version. However, I think its a mistake to make the trial window on the game so narrow that it blocks out a significant portion of its attraction. I'll put up with umpteen farm messages in my chat window if it means that the same number of legit new players signs up every day.
I think many entrepreneurs (like many people in general) considered CoX to be "dead" in terms of overall population and demand for high end gear by the time Heroes vs Villains came out anyway. Also, leveling was so fast by then that there was really no need for anyone to PL you. I think that was really the main heyday of WoW too, not coincidentally .
As for the free players and chat access, I can concede that team chat is probably fine, for the reasons WarBird states, as it is a really inefficient way to advertise stuff for sale. The question of private texts and other channels is up for debate. I still think no private texts to individuals would be best, but maybe allow the free person to reply to a text they get from a paid player. Local chat? Could be a problem, you could go to areas where a lot of people congregate and spam ads probably.
I think it should be kept in mind that the more stuff you allow the 100% free players to do, the less incentive they actually have to start paying money at all. I also think it's very possible to get a very good idea of what the game is like without giving the freebie person the ability to craft, buy, and sell items. People who want to find out how manipulable the markets are will either have to find that out by word of mouth or check on the internet for information about it, and frankly that's fine by me. I'm not personally in favor of bending over backwards to try to recruit any new players whose sole purpose is manipulation of the market for personal gain, and I certainly don't want to make a more abusable free version out of courtesy to them only to have that backfire and get abused by goldfarmers and so forth. If we lose some of those "market driven" people as possible customers solely because the free trial didn't answer their questions about what the market was like, that's a perfectly acceptable outcome for me.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
First impressions carry a large effect when player are considering an MMO. Those with free trials or free to play with incredibly heavy restrictions are often chided for being "too restrictive". Instead of being viewed as an incentive to get into the "game proper", the heavy restrictions are often paired with the reference of "being forced to pay" to play. The psychology involved here is paramount when considering how a company goes about enticing prospective players.
Even though many of those restrictions are intended to weed out those who really want to play and limit the possiblity of gold farmers and bot accounts doesn't seem to end up mattering when it comes to the common perception. And once it becomes common perception then those who haven't ever tried the game may not bother due to this negative "forced to pay to play" perception.
The tightrope must be walked between having restrictions to protect the game from possible abuse, and offering enough of a peek into the game and all of its basic fundamental game play systems for the prospective player to enjoy what they've seen enough so they decide to continue with the game.
Another thing to keep in mind for free trials, they are a common source for people to use if they are purpossefully attempting something underhanded. That is anything from testing out hacks (for whatever purpose), to abuse bugs for gain. Free trials can offer a less-of-a-risk of the loss of a main account.
This is why I am keen on at least part of the idea of free trials offered only through an active account (not necessarily subbing account, but someone who at least purchased the game). Having the free-trial account activated and linked to the actual account means that yes, the person who gave out the trial version better be sure about who their inviting, because anything done on this free trial can reflect on the regular account, both good or bad. The bad part should be obvious, the good part can be stuff like getting an account badge for inviting someone to try out the game and they purchased it, or a discount / stipend of stars if they purchase the game.
These account-linked free-trials need not have many less restrictions than anyone who purchased the box of the game but not any of the (micro)subs. The only restrictions other than these I could see for a free trial is time based (as in limited number of days to play) and probably limited character slots.
If something negative occurs with an invited-free-trial then the free-trial of course would suffer the commensurate consequence, but, depending on the issue, the inviter's account can end up anywhere from flagged for probation, prohibited from offering other invites, or heavier consequences all the way up to being banned.
I half-joked to a friend that a good consequence for infraction was to have a character from the account (or the entire account) literally sent to jail zone, where the logged in character is stuck in a cell. No combat abilities and limited local chat. The length of time spent depending on the infraction (of course really bad stuff would still get banned).
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I agree with Tannim222 that trial accounts by paid-player invitation are a different animal than the 100% free trial experience that I was originally proposing. Obviously you have the reciprocity to punish offenders there, so yeah, those could be a lot better. At that point your only real concenr is that you don't want to allow the paid player to offer infinite free trials to the same person over and over, and you certainly have to make the free trials time limited in some way to avoid permanent free rides for anyone.
Maybe offering the 100% free trial I was talking about opens up too much room for people to try to hack the game too, I didn't think of that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Perhaps a few 'Free Trial Weekend' events? Otherwise, I agree, the 'Sidekick Account' is a good plan.
Be Well!
Fireheart
The player invitation trial account is an interesting idea, but what about people who don't know anyone that purchased the game? The only way I can see them getting a free trial then is if they got forum access, and there could be threads where people are offering invites. But that's if they knew it was an available feature. Advertised on the CoT sites front page maybe?
Ex-CoH player of 4 years, DarkLoveAngel, Liberty server.
And don't forget that the games that utilise the "Refer a friend" typically also have perks if the friend later subs/purchases the game at a later date for the person who did the referring.
City of Heroes did had 15 days free bonus game time (for both the original account, and the referred account) if the newbie subbed/bought the game.
Other games might just give the referrer a free month if their friend later subbed to the game.
Some other games might give out bonus items (ie a different coloured mount or a title, although to be honest, I am not sure on the title part) for spreading the word.
The thing is, these are not *new* idea's. They have been utilised by other games. But they do provide a *reason* to get friends to play the game with you...
I personally referred several players to City of Heroes from other games, so I got the free bonus time. Infact, I even got referred MYSELF into the game when I was unsubbed at a period (bet you didn't know that if you had never used a trial code on your account, you could get a free 14 days by using a trial code if you could get your hands on one ;) )
Hell, I generally look at what other MMO's do, and I try to use the mechanisms that they give me when I want to get friends into the same game as me[1]
[1] Side note: For some reason, my friends tend to sub at one point or another even if they soon drop the game because it is a method for them to say "thanks for showing me new stuff".
Heh. [b]Weekend Warriors[/b].
If the game limits freebies to playing only 2 days a week, and requiring a subscription the rest of the week ...
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
What I find frustratingly ironic is the fact that people will get offended at being offered a stripped down version of the game even if it's completely free, but they're NOT going to balk at you if you just don't offer any free version at all, apparently. Apparently games like this are an all or nothing type of animal I guess.
I wonder if the people who go into Baskin and Robbins complain about the modest size of the tiny free sample scoop they use. "I deserve the full icecream experience. How can I be expected to decide whether or not to buy icecream here if the free trial icecream isn't a fully functioning banana split with all of the icecream flavors and toppings on it? $%^& YOU, Baskin and Robbins, I'm going to the convenient store where they always charge full price for icecream by the gallon, never have free samples, and don't jerk me around like that. At least they're not PRETENDING to be my friends, like YOU are, jerks."
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Radiac, I'd argue that the difference is ... tangible vs intangible.
If there's something that you can SEE and TOUCH ... like a DVD or Blue Ray disc ... if you're dealing with something physical, then there is an understanding that you can only get the full experience by paying for it.
But if there's nothing to see and touch ... if it's all just data stored on a drive somewhere ... then there is a sense of entitlement in favor of the full experience because there's nothing to "move" around in the physical sense (bandwidth and storage limits be damned). Plus there's the whole "give an inch, steal a mile" mentality going on with how gamers routinely "game" their approach to the games they want to play. It's all about getting something for nothing (or as little effort as possible).
Indeed, we're already seeing this impulse at work here in these very forums already ... not only here in this thread, but also in another where people want to get a discount on buying the game because they contributed to the kickstarter. Trust me, any and ALL strategies to get something for nothing (or next to it) can and will be tried. That's just the nature of the (gaming) beast.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
There is offering a stripped down version, and then there is offering a version that is *crippled* so that it becomes so hard to do ANYTHING that you have to pay for the full version of the game to even get an idea about how it works.
But what is deemed as "essential" and "non essential" varies from person to person.
And if a "selling point feature" is missing from the trial, and I *want* to experience that feature? Sure, I will complain about it. So if a selling point of the game is "Create any character that you want" and yet I am limited to just 3 out of 1000 costume pieces, then yes... I could Possibly say "WTF, this is so limited to experience".
It is also be a balancing act to get the trial "just right".
So just enough freedom for the players to spread their wings and at least get a taster of what the game offers, whilst being restrictive enough to *not* give away everything for free.
So for me (as an example) I would be *fine* with having a more limited version of the character creator (in terms of costume parts availables). I wouldn't expect ALL of the parts to be available, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a *few* of them at least not accessible (because these are the "really cool parts thats that you can get if you subscribe/buy the game") in a trial. Limiting me to just 1% of the costume pieces though would seem very stingy. Especially on a time limited trial.... ((A level based trial (ie F2P up to level 10 forever style of thing) would be different, I could expect to see some slighty different restrictions compared to a time limited trial))
Others might feel that removing all the things that would make teaming easy (ie only people who have bought the game can send out team invites for example) would be a bad move. There is no perfect answer. But there would be some things that I think that most people could agree on (ie giving a reasonable expectation of what the combat is like, ability to interact with other players, ability to make *some form* of my own character etc etc).
One thing I would NEVER do is make it easy to tell the difference between a trial or a subbed account via chat mechanisms. I would rather limit the number of global channels that a player could be in rather than go "Nope, you cannot join ANY global channels EVER!"
Well here is the thing: It all depends as to WHAT they are giving away. If they are saying "Free trial banana split" and all you get is the icecream, then yes... I would feel entitled to complain. But if it is just "free ice cream" then they wouldn't be entitled to complain in my eyes.
But the thing to remember is that a free trial is a form of advertising. If you make the trial stink so bad that NO ONE in their right mind would go for it, then you are just generating the wrong public perception from what you actually want to get.
But that is all that a free trial is: A form of advertising. Personally for me, the trials/demo games of yesteryear are far better at advertising than a video in most cases. That is not to say that flashy videos don't work, just that they are to achieve a different goal/market
So if what you are showing is "Yeah, you can't do that unless you pay money, you cannot do that unless you pay money, you cannot do that unless you pay money, you cannot do that unless you pay money", and basically restrict the trial down to 4 pre made characters (powerset and enhancements already chosen), no method of forming teams (unless you spam the local channel looking for teams) or sending out blind invites (because you cannot PM people) and only a limited selection of missions (out of a wide range you get access to 1% of them).
That gives a VERY different experience to a game where character creation takes you 2 hours because you spend all the time looking through the available pieces going "I can do this, or I can do THAT or I can pick THIS power set or I can pick THAT power set" and so on and so forth.
They are *wildly* different experiences. The trick is getting the balance correct of NOT giving everything away from free and not distorting the trial experience too much from what the game is meant to be like.
Side note: For CoX when F2P landed the free trial was just those who never spent a penny in the cash store, the chat limitations were a bit strange [1], but understandable.
Now depending on the server, some might have had more emphasis on the global channels compared to the normal chat channels, but that can always be a hard thing to work out before hand. Who knows though how it will go with CoT and the mega server experience.
That is the other thing: There is ALWAYS the complaints for MMO's not having a free trial out *Fast enough* after the games launch... Wildstar had it (even though it had the refer a friend trial option from day 1).
[1] You still had a *wide range* of channels that you could use (some of which no one seemed to EVER use because no one used them in the first place): Access to Local, Team, Help, Friends, Supergroup, League, Arena, Leveling Pact, Looking for Group, Emote, and Architect Communication Channels, ". The architect communication was strange, because a truely free player you COULDN'T use the AE for mission running; the levelling pact was removed as well at the same time as Freedom was released, so it became a redundant channel as well.
I just want to say that the way I see it is if it's a limited time access, like you have an active account for say... a day? of in-game time, maybe less, a complete access to all of the games features (aside from all player-to-player trading/selling to avoid market manipulators, plus it wouldn't serve much of a purpose for a trial anyway) wouldn't be a 'getting the game for free' type of thing, not too much anyway, because there's only so much one can do in less than a day's time. That way the only thing limiting them from playing more is the fact that they need to buy the game to play as much as they want to.
Because after that free trial time is up, they can't even so much as log into the game. And they couldn't activate a trial again, because the system could recognize the e-mail, thus stopping them. And even if someone did want to make new e-mails to make new trial accounts, they'd be stuck replaying the beginning bits of the game over and over.
It wouldn't be a full experience, because you wouldn't be able to play [i]everything[/i] in that time, but they'd have the ability to try out most of the areas of the game that interests them most. And end game would be a mystery, personal first-hand experience wise, until they bought the game and leveled a character to max. And even if they were power-leveled to max in a few hours somehow, they wouldn't be able to [i]do[/i] much before the trial expired. But I suppose finding the right amount of time the trial accounts have to give them enough time to really play, but not enough to get the full game, would be a bit difficult.
Ex-CoH player of 4 years, DarkLoveAngel, Liberty server.
Indeed. You have to also remember that a trial is not just the hardcore "12 hours a day player" but also for the "3 hours a week" style of player. So the limitations need to be enough for the "casual" player, whilst not giving *everything* for the "hardcore" player.
Side note: Guild Wars 1 had a trial system where the limit was for 7 days OR 10 hours of being logged into the game, which ever expired first.
I find it interesting that the message was deleted (as spam, presumably), but the quotes still contain the link...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
That is because the quote system is not as clever as you think it is. All clicking "quote" does is just grab the text and wrap it in [ quote] [/ quote] boxes (with potentially some logic behind it if that post already contains quotes it uses a different quote blocking section).
So deleting the post that is quoted won't actually remove that text.
It is just a minor downside to how this forum software works in terms of quoting. There are potential workaround for this, but they have their own downsides (or there are ways to get around the workarounds)
One downside of the quote system (as it stands really) is that I can *edit* the quote to be anything that I wanted it to be:
ie
So unless the person doing the modding manually deletes/edits the posts that have that post quoted, it won't actually remove them.
See, I thought that the quote button automatically made the post a reply to the post quoted, which when deleted, would automatically delete replies...
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Sure, I can see why it wouldn't be ideal. But if you click on the Delete Button, you get a warning:
Which is why I thought that deleting a post would automatically delete replies to that post.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Sorry if my previous post disappeared (and yours), but I was just trying out the "delete" functionality button.
So if you notice, your post is still here, even though my post is no longer there. So it all depends as to *how* the person replied.
Side note: Yes it works[1]
I would assume that clicking the "reply" button would put it into the thread of the post that they are replying to, whilst just typing into the text box at the bottom of this page would put it in as a separate reply, not linked to any of the previous posts in the thread.
Clicking the quote button would be the same as clicking the reply button here. So the box that you type your reply into would dictate if it was a new "reply thread" or a continuation of an existing one. Which makes sense
[1] And seriously, users should NOT be able to delete their posts. Especially if it can lead to whole sections of a thread disappearing. I would *HIGHLY* suggest that the admins fix this....