During this week's podcast, we mentioned how most of us had issues with a few of the restrictions going too far. Well, BioWare appears to have listened to the community at large who also professed concerns regarding a few of the restrictions. Principal Lead Systems Designer Damion Schubert jumped on the forum to let players know how they plan to change Free-to-Play in response.
We've been observing PTS closely over the last few days. In that time, we have generally been very pleased with how well the build has been performing, as well as overall reaction to the build both on the boards and in-game. That being said, based on community and internal feedback here and further deliberation, we will in short order make the following changes to the Free to Play restrictions:
- Free-to-Play players will now get a second quickslot bar.
- Free-to-Play players will now be able to do 5 Warzones per week instead of 3.
- The Cartel Coin item lock (i.e. temporary bind) will be reduced to 3 days for Free-to-Play players, and 2 days for subscribers.
We've found some crucial bugs that needed stomping, which is good. These changes will make their way to you probably early next week.
There are a couple of key concepts that should be kept in mind as you review free to play changes. The first is that, to be honest, all of you are looking at a gameplay mode that you will likely never see. Subscribers who choose to cancel their account will typically revert to something that we refer to as preferred status. My fellow designer Nathan Emmott will in short order have a post up describing the ins and outs of preferred status. Originally, the second quickslot bar was part of preferred status, but this morning based on feedback here and what they were seeing in the community we decided to give it to everyone.
The second is Warzones. Perhaps the most interesting point regarding the Warzones limitation is that some players have concerns that putting limitations on Warzone runs might make Warzone queues less likely to fire. While it is possible that this may happen, we don't think it will -- our subscriber base likely will not shrink much, and for some of our competitors, converting to Free-to-Play has resulted in a subscriber increase! Which means that Warzone queues should likely see improvement from what you experience in game, and at minimum be relatively unchanged in experience.
That being said, one of our golden rules is that the Free-to-Play experience should not cheapen the experience for paying subscribers. If it turns out that the Free-to-Play conversion results in a degraded Warzone experience once we go live for subscribers, you can rest assured that we will quickly make adjustments to the system to ensure that subscribers have an optimal experience.
That being said, it is important conversely that the subscription offers subscribers strong, tangible benefits over the Free-to-Play experience. We value our subscribers greatly, and they are crucial to the success of Star Wars: the Old Republic.
Thank you for helping being our guinea pigs through this experience, and please continue to keep posting your feedback on issues here. We're listening!
To see the thread, hit the official forum.
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Posted 10/29/2012 11:39:24 PMIt honestly feels as if these guys are doing their damnedest to run this thing straight into the ground.
How can anyone with a brain, who has actually played a video game in their life ever think it was a good idea to limit the UI for ANY player? In all of the F2p games out there not ONE i can think of limits the players UI in anyway shape or form, you just don't do it.
But per usual over there at Candyland, these guys just keep coming up with winner after winner concerning this poor game. If i were Swtor i would pray to Baby Jesus a real company with a shred of common(game design)sense would come along, purchase me, and take me away from these yahoo's.
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Posted 10/29/2012 3:27:23 AMThe lack of 4 bars for your skills is the dumbest thing I have seen a game company do, to try to force us to pay a monthly fee. If you're gonna go free to play, make it a real free to play, cancel all the subscription fees, and make the gear in the cartel shop worth buying. Like Dredd Guard lvl gear that is non-mod-able to make doing TFB worthwhile. At this rate the Aussie servers will be lucky to have 100 people left after they see the crap items for sale in the cartel coins shop, and what they need to buy, that they use to have, like the skill bars. I was on the Test Server looking at the shop for over an hour and couldn't believe how crap the stuff for sale was. They still haven't told us how much Cartel coins will be for 10,000 coins. If the lousy 200 extra for a $33, 60day time card is anything to go by, it's gonna be bloody expensive. It's a good thing there are so many other good games out at the moment, I should be able to find another game to keep me occupied, but I will still miss the Star Wars Universe and the MMO it could have been.
R.I.P SWTOR. You could have been the best, but were let down by stupid people.
Pathos.
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Posted 10/25/2012 4:06:37 PMIt's good to see Bioware listening to fans about changes. I still think F2P players should have at least 3-4 action bars.
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Posted 10/25/2012 3:23:41 PMIt seems so silly that a F2P restriction is limited access to action bars. It's like BW doesn't quite know how to do F2P despite their admitting ("and for some of our competitors, converting to Free-to-Play has resulted in a subscriber increase!)" that they are just copying what's come before. Did LotRO limit access to action bars? Did DCUO and the others?
The bar limit seems like it'd be especially hurtful in PvP, where the guy who has access to 4 bars has more room for abilities than the guy who has access to 2 bars. They do still want freebies to play pvp right? That sort of disadvantage could put them off.
And talking with a friend just now, I was thinking if they're going to have weekly warzone limits, they should let players choose the warzone they play. If I only have 5 a week and want to play Huttball, it's going to piss me off if I get 5 Voidstars in a row, meaning I can't try again for Huttball for another week. If this gives the game a ton of subscribers like they hope, they could start letting players queue for individual warzones without substantial queue problems. I know with a limited amount of warzones per week, I'd hate if luck of the draw gave me all games of a map I dislike and no games of a map I love.
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Posted 10/25/2012 1:48:55 PMIf i'm going to continue to play the game i'll just pay monthly, but for them to think it's appropriate to limit f2p customers control by limiting quickbars is absolutely ludicrous.
Just another bad decision by bad designers.
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Posted 10/25/2012 2:24:49 PMactually you don't know very well, they put 1 in the begining and now they changed for 2, i am very proud for Bioware
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Posted 10/29/2012 6:23:26 PMyeah, they were dumb as fuck initially and adjusted their stupidity to slightly less. I'll continue to subscribe, but the F2P limitations are still ridiculous.
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Posted 10/25/2012 1:36:51 PMWell it looks like they are at least listening to feedback (a good thing).
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Posted 10/25/2012 12:29:22 PM"our guinea pigs through this experience" perfect choice of words.....