I can't .. completely process how badly this is thought out for current subscribers / Gold members who are not Lifetime.
I've been here since the start, since long before the start, and have faithfully poured in my monthly subscription month after month for.. almost these entire ten years. which means I belong to a select club of whales who have sunk in some of the highest amounts of money to help keep this game afloat. The only caveat to that is, instead of dropping all that money in at once, I and other monthly subscribers have paid it out in drops month after month for year after year. I'm sure even at just 10 / month you can do the math on 10 years x 12 months = a minimum of $1,200, and I'm damn sure I've spent more than my sub price at times for things from the C store. and I haven't always gotten the best $10 / month price either.
And right now, I strongly feel that I and the rest of the people in my specific category of long-time paid players are getting the absolute worst part of this change, since once the seventh rolls around, if my sub lapses again for any reason at all, I will more or less permanently lose access to all my Gold Freeform characters with the only option to recover them being to come up with and fork over a huge amount of money, that obviously I'd have done eight or more years ago if I had ever been able to gather it together.
I don't mind the loss of the free character slot upon hitting 40 [at least not much], but losing access to Freeform characters is more than a bit too much.
At the very least, there absolutely must be a way, and a relatively cheap way at that, to say "Thank you" to everyone who has been supporting this game for all these years, to convert an existing freeform character in a silver slot back to a gold slot permanently, so players whose subs lapse or end can get their character back.
It's not like they can just casually drop lifetime cash value on the game at a whim. I sure can't.
Just re-subbing won't be an option anymore, and that's what this model of gold and silver characters was designed on. It's not fair to move the goalposts away from us subscribers who occasionally lapse like this.
And don't get me started on the whole "Oh we've been discussing this for about a year now", where has the discussion been for us? Then you only give us a single weeks warning of everything going away?
I lead one of the oldest, longest running guilds in the game, and I am .. I am ready to walk away.
Imagine you pay me 5000 and I promise to give you a car in exchange. You drive it around for 5 years, then I show up and take the car's motor away and tell you that now the motor is sold separately and you will have to fork out more money if you want it back.
This is what the changes to the LTS service are with the removal of character slots upon hitting 40.
Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity.
Conspiratorial: relating to or suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful.
I stand by my word choice.
What Panta said still holds true. They don't need to make up any reasons. If they want to shut the game down they will just do it.
I think every team...CO's team, Cryptic's team, and PWE's team obviously expected lots of backlash. They would not make this change if the alternative was better. For everyone who says that this will kill the game...yeah maybe or whatever is causing it to be necessary will. But it's more likely that not doing this would actually kill the game - as in have it get shut down due to non-compliance with company leadership.
Think of it like a gangrenous arm that either gets cut off or you die. Getting it cut off sucks and you might die anyway, but not doing it will kill you for sure.
Assuming that drastic changes were necessary, I do wish some of the changes were more thought through in terms of their impact specifically on CO.
I think with a bit of nuance regarding subs and the character limit, which are the two biggest issues, most complaints could be addressed. I'm going to give CO's team the benefit of doubt and assume that they had short notice and no time to throw together a package that would minimize these two issues.
If this is pushed through, this will be my last week playing this game. I have been playing for several years and this will destroy several friendships and stories I have created over that time. This is a terrible idea and you will lose many players if this goes through. Keep the current model. People are happy with it and have been for a long time.
Read through this thread and the home page post but I'm still confused -
Been playing on-and-off since launch, but I'm not currently subscribed. If I want to play a freeform character now, I have to either subscribe for the rest of my life, go LTS, or drop $50 on one freeform slot AND buy this pack for the additional perks?
I can't .. completely process how badly this is thought out for current subscribers / Gold members who are not Lifetime.
I've been here since the start, since long before the start, and have faithfully poured in my monthly subscription month after month for.. almost these entire ten years. which means I belong to a select club of whales who have sunk in some of the highest amounts of money to help keep this game afloat. The only caveat to that is, instead of dropping all that money in at once, I and other monthly subscribers have paid it out in drops month after month for year after year.
I feel the exact same way as you, Rune, because, well, I am. People all think I'm a Lifetimer and, well, I'm not. I'm also a subscriber of way too long (partly because I wanted to keep this game running, like you).
I'm still debating exactly what I'm going to do if I can't convert my main over to Freeform (because that sub will fail at some point for some reason no matter what method is used). More than likely quit for good.
And if I go, I'm taking the RP hangout of the Primus Database with me. Because why continue to pay for it (short of some extremely kind and generous people who have donated over the years) if you don't play the game?
Read through this thread and the home page post but I'm still confused -
Been playing on-and-off since launch, but I'm not currently subscribed. If I want to play a freeform character now, I have to either subscribe for the rest of my life, go LTS, or drop $50 on one freeform slot AND buy this pack for the additional perks?
Currently there will be no way to unlock old Freeform characters once again unless you buy the LTS, since subscription options are going away after the 7th.
Our easy pick it back up when you want to play again option is toast, and I can't even figure out how the suits missed that one.
The Premium pack sounds great. All the other changes are insane.
If you don't already have a way to let subs turn their slots into gold so they can be freeform, you shouldn't implement this.
There is really no reason to end monthly subs at all.
You need to find some sort of way to appease the players who have literally hundreds of characters at the moment who want to continue making more characters. Saying, "You can't buy more, it was like that in the past too but you just got around it." Is silly. Literally people want to give you money and you are saying, "Sorry, I can't accept that because rules."
Sometimes players just want to play the game for a few weeks before they move on and then come back later. School, work, projects can all take up time where they know they can't play for a while. To tell them that they can't re-sub is crazy.
These changes make Freeform to unattainable for anyone who wants to try it out. $15 bucks, you get a load of stuff as a gold member and you get Freeform access for 1 month. Since the Premium pack does not give you FF the game looses basically any chance to retain new players who consider subbing or sticking around for more than a few weeks.
If you do not put a FF slot or two into the premium pack, this game is going to suffer immensely from losing population. FF needs to be easy enough to access for newer players who are enjoying the game.
My biggest concern is this:
I'm a monthly subscriber, and in the past I've experienced an error where my sub ended for some reason or another and had to contact customer service about it. If a monthly subscriber sees their sub end and is unable to resub due to no fault of their own (or even if it is their fault and they just couldn't afford that month!) then their characters are suddenly locked behind a silver wall asking them to pay for each character to be upgraded to gold/FF.
That player is no longer going to play this game. As a monthly subscriber, if my sub ends and my 15 or so characters each need to be unlocked so I can access them again, I will just quit the game because it will feel so shady that I need to unlock my own characters that I'm just not going to do it..
And if I go, I'm taking the RP hangout of the Primus Database with me. Because why continue to pay for it (short of some extremely kind and generous people who have donated over the years) if you don't play the game?
It's sad that Cryptic won't even support the people who supported them.
Cryptic... i fell in love with you guys since um like 2012 or so... buuuuuuut
you lot often make decisions that make me wanna run over to your offices with a foambat >.<
and recently you guys have been making some... really bizarre decisions.... on Neverwinter... Star Trek Online... and now my fav Champions...
is... is this a cry for help?
do you need to escape another abusive publisher... again?
Note: I _AM_ seriously worried here >.< hence why am posting for like the first time ever >.>
Also also: i do get you might have your hands tied... i do >.> but having said that i really... dunno... just... COME ON... please don't screw over your regular sub players that badly, please
i'll lose a lot of friends here... AGAIN... and you will lose a lot of players that love/d you... AGAIN
talk with us, yeah yeah some of us are vitrolic as hell but there are just as many who aren't... and you guys have a history of bad communication (on all games)... and this is something very very major and blaaaaah am rambly
I can't .. completely process how badly this is thought out for current subscribers / Gold members who are not Lifetime.
I've been here since the start, since long before the start, and have faithfully poured in my monthly subscription month after month for.. almost these entire ten years. which means I belong to a select club of whales who have sunk in some of the highest amounts of money to help keep this game afloat. The only caveat to that is, instead of dropping all that money in at once, I and other monthly subscribers have paid it out in drops month after month for year after year.
I feel the exact same way as you, Rune, because, well, I am. People all think I'm a Lifetimer and, well, I'm not. I'm also a subscriber of way too long (partly because I wanted to keep this game running, like you).
I'm still debating exactly what I'm going to do if I can't convert my main over to Freeform (because that sub will fail at some point for some reason no matter what method is used). More than likely quit for good.
Thank you, Bob. I don't really know what I'm going to do.
Last month I had to go to the hospital for a simple but costly proceedure, and after I went home had a complication from it that had me heading back to the emergency room and a half a week admitted to the hospital in the I.C.U. from Pulmonary Edema and frankly, I nearly died on the forth of May.
I'm fine now, but that all set me back at least another ten thousand dollars in the hole for medical bills and I haven't had a job at all since last Summer. just coming up with $200-300 at a whim for a game is literally off any table for a long long time.
And worse. I'm currently playing by using the old Atari code game time cards.. so I don't know what the hell to do. I can't really afford to sub this week.
Im 4 months from my thousand day vet reward. Ifr they don't grandfather long tme subs in then this game can piss off. I'll just move on to a different game. Maybe begrudgingly DCUO...
I have a question that is not doom and fear about a change to a thing.
Is this new method of revenue necessary to generate more funds for future development for Champions or just its sustainability? I am not hear to make assumptions and stoke baseless fears of "there taking my stuff away." So I will ask a few questions I have not seen clearly labeled.
1) Is this a phase one of a multi phase rollout that will make a z-store option to buy a characters slot pack and other subscription only things, as of right now?
2) Will phase two of this rollout, if there is a phase two, include a z store purchases for single character slot and pack version of the same to change a sliver character slot into a gold one?
3) As I asked above as an opening question: Is this new method of revenue necessary to generate more funds for future development for Champions or just its sustainability to keep the servers running?
4) Can I get that cosmic cape or a cosmic texture pack in the z-store?
Baseless speculation says that the Subscription system is old and running on a platform which is not as secure as Cryptic or PWI would like. They don't sell subscriptions to Neverwinter. They probably don't have many STO subscriptions. They probably have quite a few CO subscribers but not enough to bear the cost of renewing the subscriptions system. Cheapest solution? Kill subscriptions.
The Arc platform supports one-off sales like Premium Packs and LTS, so why not make a 30 day Gold Pack which enables former subscribers to keep their older content and pay with Zen? It can't be that difficult, surely?
Costumes are great and all but the money issue is the freeform slots. you lose your sub for any reason and all the costume slots you've amassed over time are now all silver until you pay $50 per character to turn them back to ff. Not worth it and so not worth playing as a result.
> @kamokami said: > guyhumual wrote: » > > Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity. > > Conspiratorial: relating to or suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful. > > I stand by my word choice. > > > > > What Panta said still holds true. They don't need to make up any reasons. If they want to shut the game down they will just do it. > > I think every team...CO's team, Cryptic's team, and PWE's team obviously expected lots of backlash. They would not make this change if the alternative was better. For everyone who says that this will kill the game...yeah maybe or whatever is causing it to be necessary will. But it's more likely that not doing this would actually kill the game - as in have it get shut down due to non-compliance with company leadership. > > Think of it like a gangrenous arm that either gets cut off or you die. Getting it cut off sucks and you might die anyway, but not doing it will kill you for sure. > > Assuming that drastic changes were necessary, I do wish some of the changes were more thought through in terms of their impact specifically on CO. > > I think with a bit of nuance regarding subs and the character limit, which are the two biggest issues, most complaints could be addressed. I'm going to give CO's team the benefit of doubt and assume that they had short notice and no time to throw together a package that would minimize these two issues.
Other players have stated that they have been discussing this for a year. Given that this also happened to sto, I doubt this was just suddenly dropped on them.
Other players have stated that they have been discussing this for a year. Given that this also happened to sto, I doubt this was just suddenly dropped on them.
No, they haven't.. you have been reading quoted posts. the only people who have been discussing this for a year are people at Arc and or Cryptic, behind closed doors from us players.
What Panta said still holds true. They don't need to make up any reasons. If they want to shut the game down they will just do it.
Assuming there were no stipulations or agreements that went with the sale of the CO IP and assuming that the game was made entirely with their own money and there's no investors getting residuals as long as the game is profitable. There's probably a number of behind the scenes reasons for a company to shut the game down this way really. All these changes seem almost intentionally bad. However maybe me, and the dozen or so folks complaining, are in fact in the minority of players and the game will flourish once the "dead wood" is timed from the fan base?
My concern about this as a LTS, I'm losing the chance to get new character slots by leveling but I'm not even near the cap of 59, this change mean I'm gonna have the 59 slots unlocked in my account by default or I have to buy all the remaining with cash?
nope, we are not the minority..the Zone chat is burning and would their be a protest emote then most would use that..a lot.
PWE/Cryptic failed the players/community - its a simple fact.
Who knows what the consequences will be, but I doubt that a game that doesnt get real new content (except for another alert and costumes/characterbound emotes in a dropbox) will flourish in any way.
I'm a member/DJ of Dawn Radio - and we will also discuss these "changes" in tomorrows podcast
Baseless speculation says that the Subscription system is old and running on a platform which is not as secure as Cryptic or PWI would like. They don't sell subscriptions to Neverwinter. They probably don't have many STO subscriptions. They probably have quite a few CO subscribers but not enough to bear the cost of renewing the subscriptions system. Cheapest solution? Kill subscriptions.
STO got the same 'features' that we're getting on Thursday a month or three ago. So yes, they have zero subs now. LOL
But unlike CO, STO's subscription benefit was utterly pointless once you hit max level. Cryptic gave the farm for free, especially if you subbed while you leveled a character. So many people (and many others told people to go this way) only subbed while leveling, and dropped it immediately at hitting 60.
In CO...people NEED that sub to keep Freeform. It's a major issue removing the sub without being able to CONVERT characters to Freeform.
Why in the world are character slot unlocks being removed upon hitting level 40 for subs and LTS? If not for that I would have far less characters. It's also the reason I even bothered leveling many of my characters to level 40 in the first place. Is this an attempt to get people to buy more character slots? I get the feeling this will come at a net lost of more people not buying anymore Zen or quitting the game altogether than people buying Zen for more character slots. I'm also at 51 characters already so the idea of being able to only ever make 8 more is highly unappealing without deleting or retconning characters I already have.
Buying a sub was how I had a chance to experience FFs. If not for paying $15 per month, I never would have known what FFs were like. I sure wasn't going to spend $50 on a single FF slot. The sub led me to getting LTS on sale at some point. But now it sounds like there is no cheap way to access FFs anymore. Had I joined this game after the changes, I would have ultimately spent less money on this game. So yeah, I see this as a very bad change, especially for us LTS.
Why would any company ever remove a way for people to give them money? Add the premium pack as an upgrade for silvers, but don't take away subscriptions.
My SG just celebrated our 7th anniversary in CO, then just 4 days later, this nonsense. As much as we love the game, we're looking at alternatives now.
People act like LTS don’t ever put money into this game...most who can spend $300 can easily spend more, and have. In fact, I bet LTS spend more than anyone...even subbers.
i see , i did state about zen store purchaces at the start , subbers also invest too
personally i know i have spent way more on subs than a LTS in the years i have been supporting the game , but a small amount a month is affordable to me ,where as a lump sum isnt due to my finantial circumstances
I suspect what they've found is people subscribing for 1-3 months and rinsing a full game's worth of content for £30, never buying any Zen, and then leaving. So they're looking for ways of getting additional income from those players, which I quite understand. But there is a category of players who have subbed for a long time, paid over the odds, and who are going to get a raw deal from these changes.
In yet another case of Eastern company not understanding the Western market, PWE really needed to look at the whole picture before deciding this for Champions. New players won't be able to enjoy the main draw of the game unless they fork over a premium (on top of the premium pack, might I add!) and the long term supporters who might be screwed over have to pray that the bandaid fixes to the system will come eventually.
I have no intention of dropping my sub, but I understand how the shortsightedness of how this is most likely going to be implemented is making a lot of people upset-- and it honestly worries me about this game for the first time. We just came off of a huge "longest lived superhero MMO" celebration, so this announcement feels like a shot in the foot.
In yet another case of Eastern company not understanding the Western market
Actually, I suspect this is a case of their marketing people not really bothering to understand the difference between CO and the other Cryptic games, where a very similar package makes perfect sense. This is understandable (CO is what, a tenth the size? Less?), but blindly copying features sometimes produces stupid results.
I started playing COH/COV a few months before his final stop (which I was not aware of when I came back), same thing with Marvel Heroes, I'm back on CO only since 5 days and it seems that CO follows the same path slowly, I'm cursed with superheroe's games ...
Honestly, the biggest sticking point that will make long time players actually leave the game is subbed members loosing access to all their freeform characters if their sub ever lapses. Having to pay anything to unlock them is going to make people give up on the game for good.
If subs aren't wanted anymore, fine, but give them an out where they don't lose access to all their stuff.
Honestly, the biggest sticking point that will make long time players actually leave the game is subbed members loosing access to all their freeform characters if their sub ever lapses. Having to pay anything to unlock them is going to make people give up on the game for good.
Eh, I'm not so sure about this claim. They were fine with paying to have access to them for the entire duration of their sub with the caveat that if they didn't keep paying they would lose access temporarily, why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access? So long as the price is right I'm sure they would be fine with it. After all they would have paid $180 over the next year to stay subbed, so why do they suddenly expect that to drop to $0?
My only issue in this regard is that this one-time payment wasn't in place the day of the announcement and might potentially not be in place for a while.
One suggestion I would make is, if you want to have more of a guarantee your subscription won't lapse past the 7th (due to credit card) and it's a feasible option?
Switch your payment method to Paypal, and link your bank account to your Paypal account.
Well , i don't know what to say, about 1 month ago I stopped playing the game, today a friend told me about this big update, some people call it necessary some people call it BS, if you guys say that the servers cannot hold someone with more than 70+ characters I would understand you know, why changing it now then?? I've been playing this game for 7 years, the only thing that motivated me to keep playing it was making more characters to play with, making fun builds, themed builds, before quitting 1 month ago I had so many ideas of new characters, ideas that will never happen now because I have 72 characters. I always loved how people used to tell me, nice costume Hugo, that build looks fun Hugo, those things made me happy all the time, you removed the thing I loved most about the game, I would pay for more characters slots you know, taking away the free slots when you hit 40 is ok for me, as long as we can still make new characters for fun, because we play the game to have fun, don't we? Hopefully this is not the last time I play the game, I would like to log into the game one day and keep playing it the same way I used to...
Otherwise I hope people who know me read this, and I would like to thank all players for this wonderful 7 years. Los quiero chicos :')
why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access?
Well, as that's me, there's two things:
1) Cost. £160-220 is more than I'll pay for any game in one hit, end of. There is a reason why Starbucks doesn't offer coffee subscriptions to regular purchasers - no-one would buy the sub. Why? People have trouble rationalising large payments for non-essential goods in a way that they don't with smaller increments.
2) Confidence. If they had made the changes to STO and CO Subs at the same time I would have thought, "well, it's just a policy change, best dive in and get an LTS". Unfortunately they made the CO changes on the same day they closed two games down, so now I think "Hmm, this is a cash grab - cough up £££ now or we'll close it down".
For me is....with such a small population and a game can’t seem to run properly with a 1 player with 59+ characters....how is it running properly with 100+ players with just 2 costumes each!
You get what I mean?
Why not start turning needless crap off like they horrribke Nightmare Invasion Sky that NO ONE likes....or the lockbox notifications that flood your screen?
I very much doubt that the loss of the free character slot at level 40 was a problem with memory or data space, I suspect it was a perceived loss of a sale. If we get a character slot for free at level 40 then there's no need to buy a character slot. It's a way to make money without actually having to make anything. Sell us something that we used to get for free.
This change means I can't get more character slots even if I wanted as I've long since surpassed the cap, but there's probably a number of people that are well below it, and for those folks adding new characters means paying up now rather than playing the game. From a corporate economical standpoint it might make sense, but as a lifer who plays the game and occasionally even still puts more money into it these changes takes away all incentive for me to play and removes any reason to buy anything. If I can't make new characters what's the point?
Honestly, the biggest sticking point that will make long time players actually leave the game is subbed members loosing access to all their freeform characters if their sub ever lapses. Having to pay anything to unlock them is going to make people give up on the game for good.
Eh, I'm not so sure about this claim. They were fine with paying to have access to them for the entire duration of their sub with the caveat that if they didn't keep paying they would lose access temporarily, why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access? So long as the price is right I'm sure they would be fine with it. After all they would have paid $180 over the next year to stay subbed, so why do they suddenly expect that to drop to $0?
My only issue in this regard is that this one-time payment wasn't in place the day of the announcement and might potentially not be in place for a while.
You know, I have been on the fence about this for a long time, but when I see posts like this I can only think you really are just about the most dedicated subtle troll I have ever seen. I am now almost completely convinced that you really are just that good.
If the possibility of losing permanent access to their freeform alts without a big LTS purchase didn't bother people, then where do you think all this uproar is coming from, exactly?
This change is guaranteed to lose ya'll money... it will in no way increase revenue...
Premium packacge: great idea... implementing this is something that should have been done a long time ago, and will absolutely generate money and is a nice gift to subscribers who's subscription lapses...
Removal of Subscription service: completely unnessisary change that is guaranteed to reduce revenue. You are removing a source of income to the game. The subscription model we've had here ever since CO went F2P has been an optional service with great benefits. And now you're saying you are going to remove it and leave only the limited F2P service and the expensive LTS service... you're going to lose a giant chunk of your playerbase from that, guaranteed.
Removal of free character slot with each level 40 for subscribers: disappointing move... This has been a major selling point to a lot of players. It was one of the main reasons why I originally bought my subscription in the first place.
Enforcing the 59 character limit: Ok... so this one I can understand, but at the same time I'm a bit baffled on, and am strongly opposed to as well... we were told be the old dev team a couple times that the 59 character limit was ONLY to purchased character slots... meaning that a silver account with their 2 base slots, could PURCHASE 59 additional slots, bringing them up to 61. That was what we had been told was intended design multiple times in the past. A subscriber could purchase 59 slots and still get more slots from gaining level 40s... but now you're saying that the intended design is a hard limit of 59 slots... Even though you may not be removing slots from anyone who's over that limit, you are still making a change and trying to pass it off as having always been intended despite the fact that we have been told in the past that the intention was different.
For me persionally... the last 2 points above are the only things that will impact me...
I bought an LTS years ago since at the time it was a better financial decision for me than to keep up a $15mo subscription with my tiny paycheck... Plus the last time my sub lapsed I was unable to retrain ANY of my characters into Silver ATs to play on until I could afford to get my sub back, leaving me completely unable to play until I got my subscription back... that was really the main reason I decided to go for an LTS... I continued to buy zen every few months to help support the game while I was more active... so I'm not personally going to be affected by the removal of the subscription option, though I do beg Cryptic and PWE to reconsider that decision and leave the option there alongside the addition of the premium package...
I enjoyed leveling up characters to 40 and making a new alt... heck, I actually bought just as many additional character slots as I earned for free... and currently I'm sitting at 58 character slots... so this change is basically telling me that, not only will I not get anymore free slots with my level 40s, but I will only ever be able to buy 1 more character slot as well... The largest part of my enjoyment from this game has always been creating new alts and creating different builds with the freeforms system... and now you're going to be taking that away from me by telling me that once I use up the 4 empty slots I currently have, I will only ever be able to add 1 more character and then that's it... full account....
why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access?
Well, as that's me, there's two things:
1) Cost. £160-220 is more than I'll pay for any game in one hit, end of. There is a reason why Starbucks doesn't offer coffee subscriptions to regular purchasers - no-one would buy the sub. Why? People have trouble rationalising large payments for non-essential goods in a way that they don't with smaller increments.
Well you're talking about LTS. Since you're responding to me I'll assume that you mistakenly thought I was talking about LTS, so I'll clarify by pointing out that I said "My only issue in this regard is that this one-time payment wasn't in place the day of the announcement and might potentially not be in place for a while.". LTS is currently in place, so clearly that's not what I was talking about.
I also said "if the price is right". Obviously $200 isn't the right price for everyone.
Honestly, the biggest sticking point that will make long time players actually leave the game is subbed members loosing access to all their freeform characters if their sub ever lapses. Having to pay anything to unlock them is going to make people give up on the game for good.
Eh, I'm not so sure about this claim. They were fine with paying to have access to them for the entire duration of their sub with the caveat that if they didn't keep paying they would lose access temporarily, why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access? So long as the price is right I'm sure they would be fine with it. After all they would have paid $180 over the next year to stay subbed, so why do they suddenly expect that to drop to $0?
The difference is up until now they have always had the option of renewing their subscription at a later date to regain access... now they will be forced to pay a significantly larger lump sum cost to regain access. People do not like feeling forced to do anything. Especially when they had a perfectly viable option for the same task available to them before that they prefered and was more accessible to them.
$15/mo is affordable to most people... $300 one time fee is not affordable to most people... $50/character is not affordable to most people... the cost that the Silver to FF token will undoubtedly have is unlikely to be affordable to most people...
Unless the FF slot has it's priced reduced, I guarantee you the Silver to FF token will cost around 4,250zen... Why? Simple... 1 character slot = 750zen, 1 FF slot = 5,000zen... 5,000-750=4,250... if they price the Silver to FF token any lower, then it's cheaper to buy silver slots and conversion tokens than to just buy the FF slot.
So that means that anyone who's subscription lapses would have to spend $42.50 per character to regain access to their FFs. For anyone with more than 7 FFs the LTS is the better financial option...
You can also look at it this way... Even if they dropped the FF slot cost and were able to sell the conversion tokens at 1500zen... subscribers go from having previously had the option to pay $15/mo for ALL of their freeforms, to paying $15/mo to reclaim 1 FF each month if they lapse their subscription, with the option of paying an additional $15 for each additional FF they want to reclaim that month.
so much for altaholics. Boredom will set in, not being able to try anything new without wiping an old character, look for something else I can do multiple weirdos on.
Sorry but I seriously ZERO interest in grinding gear for all my alts. I like trying different things.
If you have a silver account, all you can do is buy slots up to the amount of AT's there are.
NO way , would I fork out $50 for one slot.
Someone on the forums mentioned Kai was really excited for things in the works/pipeline. I wonder if this was one of those things. If this was being discussed internally for a year surely she knew about it, and I guess it's certainly exciting, not the good kind of exciting mind you, but still exciting.
Just wanted to see if a dev could answer this, it has nothing to do with the controversy going on, was hoping for some clarification:
"2 Gold Costume Tokens for One Character on Your Account:
These can be used to exchange for old Monthly Reward costumes."
So basically, you can unlock two monthly reward items. Are these account-unlocked as per usual, or do they only unlock for the character using the tokens?
Comments
I've been here since the start, since long before the start, and have faithfully poured in my monthly subscription month after month for.. almost these entire ten years. which means I belong to a select club of whales who have sunk in some of the highest amounts of money to help keep this game afloat. The only caveat to that is, instead of dropping all that money in at once, I and other monthly subscribers have paid it out in drops month after month for year after year. I'm sure even at just 10 / month you can do the math on 10 years x 12 months = a minimum of $1,200, and I'm damn sure I've spent more than my sub price at times for things from the C store. and I haven't always gotten the best $10 / month price either.
And right now, I strongly feel that I and the rest of the people in my specific category of long-time paid players are getting the absolute worst part of this change, since once the seventh rolls around, if my sub lapses again for any reason at all, I will more or less permanently lose access to all my Gold Freeform characters with the only option to recover them being to come up with and fork over a huge amount of money, that obviously I'd have done eight or more years ago if I had ever been able to gather it together.
I don't mind the loss of the free character slot upon hitting 40 [at least not much], but losing access to Freeform characters is more than a bit too much.
At the very least, there absolutely must be a way, and a relatively cheap way at that, to say "Thank you" to everyone who has been supporting this game for all these years, to convert an existing freeform character in a silver slot back to a gold slot permanently, so players whose subs lapse or end can get their character back.
It's not like they can just casually drop lifetime cash value on the game at a whim. I sure can't.
Just re-subbing won't be an option anymore, and that's what this model of gold and silver characters was designed on. It's not fair to move the goalposts away from us subscribers who occasionally lapse like this.
And don't get me started on the whole "Oh we've been discussing this for about a year now", where has the discussion been for us? Then you only give us a single weeks warning of everything going away?
I lead one of the oldest, longest running guilds in the game, and I am .. I am ready to walk away.
I can't even process all this right now.
This is what the changes to the LTS service are with the removal of character slots upon hitting 40.
What Panta said still holds true. They don't need to make up any reasons. If they want to shut the game down they will just do it.
I think every team...CO's team, Cryptic's team, and PWE's team obviously expected lots of backlash. They would not make this change if the alternative was better. For everyone who says that this will kill the game...yeah maybe or whatever is causing it to be necessary will. But it's more likely that not doing this would actually kill the game - as in have it get shut down due to non-compliance with company leadership.
Think of it like a gangrenous arm that either gets cut off or you die. Getting it cut off sucks and you might die anyway, but not doing it will kill you for sure.
Assuming that drastic changes were necessary, I do wish some of the changes were more thought through in terms of their impact specifically on CO.
I think with a bit of nuance regarding subs and the character limit, which are the two biggest issues, most complaints could be addressed. I'm going to give CO's team the benefit of doubt and assume that they had short notice and no time to throw together a package that would minimize these two issues.
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Been playing on-and-off since launch, but I'm not currently subscribed. If I want to play a freeform character now, I have to either subscribe for the rest of my life, go LTS, or drop $50 on one freeform slot AND buy this pack for the additional perks?
I'm still debating exactly what I'm going to do if I can't convert my main over to Freeform (because that sub will fail at some point for some reason no matter what method is used). More than likely quit for good.
And if I go, I'm taking the RP hangout of the Primus Database with me. Because why continue to pay for it (short of some extremely kind and generous people who have donated over the years) if you don't play the game?
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Currently there will be no way to unlock old Freeform characters once again unless you buy the LTS, since subscription options are going away after the 7th.
Our easy pick it back up when you want to play again option is toast, and I can't even figure out how the suits missed that one.
My biggest concern is this:
I'm a monthly subscriber, and in the past I've experienced an error where my sub ended for some reason or another and had to contact customer service about it. If a monthly subscriber sees their sub end and is unable to resub due to no fault of their own (or even if it is their fault and they just couldn't afford that month!) then their characters are suddenly locked behind a silver wall asking them to pay for each character to be upgraded to gold/FF.
That player is no longer going to play this game. As a monthly subscriber, if my sub ends and my 15 or so characters each need to be unlocked so I can access them again, I will just quit the game because it will feel so shady that I need to unlock my own characters that I'm just not going to do it..
It's sad that Cryptic won't even support the people who supported them.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
you lot often make decisions that make me wanna run over to your offices with a foambat >.<
and recently you guys have been making some... really bizarre decisions.... on Neverwinter... Star Trek Online... and now my fav Champions...
is... is this a cry for help?
do you need to escape another abusive publisher... again?
Note: I _AM_ seriously worried here >.< hence why am posting for like the first time ever >.>
Also also: i do get you might have your hands tied... i do >.> but having said that i really... dunno... just... COME ON... please don't screw over your regular sub players that badly, please
i'll lose a lot of friends here... AGAIN... and you will lose a lot of players that love/d you... AGAIN
talk with us, yeah yeah some of us are vitrolic as hell but there are just as many who aren't... and you guys have a history of bad communication (on all games)... and this is something very very major and blaaaaah am rambly
JUST... talk to us, grrr
-rawr
-edit coz i got my years mixered up >.>
Thank you, Bob. I don't really know what I'm going to do.
Last month I had to go to the hospital for a simple but costly proceedure, and after I went home had a complication from it that had me heading back to the emergency room and a half a week admitted to the hospital in the I.C.U. from Pulmonary Edema and frankly, I nearly died on the forth of May.
I'm fine now, but that all set me back at least another ten thousand dollars in the hole for medical bills and I haven't had a job at all since last Summer. just coming up with $200-300 at a whim for a game is literally off any table for a long long time.
And worse. I'm currently playing by using the old Atari code game time cards.. so I don't know what the hell to do. I can't really afford to sub this week.
I'm screwed.
Is this new method of revenue necessary to generate more funds for future development for Champions or just its sustainability? I am not hear to make assumptions and stoke baseless fears of "there taking my stuff away." So I will ask a few questions I have not seen clearly labeled.
1) Is this a phase one of a multi phase rollout that will make a z-store option to buy a characters slot pack and other subscription only things, as of right now?
2) Will phase two of this rollout, if there is a phase two, include a z store purchases for single character slot and pack version of the same to change a sliver character slot into a gold one?
3) As I asked above as an opening question: Is this new method of revenue necessary to generate more funds for future development for Champions or just its sustainability to keep the servers running?
4) Can I get that cosmic cape or a cosmic texture pack in the z-store?
The Arc platform supports one-off sales like Premium Packs and LTS, so why not make a 30 day Gold Pack which enables former subscribers to keep their older content and pay with Zen? It can't be that difficult, surely?
> guyhumual wrote: »
>
> Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity.
>
> Conspiratorial: relating to or suggestive of a secret plan made by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful.
>
> I stand by my word choice.
>
>
>
>
> What Panta said still holds true. They don't need to make up any reasons. If they want to shut the game down they will just do it.
>
> I think every team...CO's team, Cryptic's team, and PWE's team obviously expected lots of backlash. They would not make this change if the alternative was better. For everyone who says that this will kill the game...yeah maybe or whatever is causing it to be necessary will. But it's more likely that not doing this would actually kill the game - as in have it get shut down due to non-compliance with company leadership.
>
> Think of it like a gangrenous arm that either gets cut off or you die. Getting it cut off sucks and you might die anyway, but not doing it will kill you for sure.
>
> Assuming that drastic changes were necessary, I do wish some of the changes were more thought through in terms of their impact specifically on CO.
>
> I think with a bit of nuance regarding subs and the character limit, which are the two biggest issues, most complaints could be addressed. I'm going to give CO's team the benefit of doubt and assume that they had short notice and no time to throw together a package that would minimize these two issues.
Other players have stated that they have been discussing this for a year. Given that this also happened to sto, I doubt this was just suddenly dropped on them.
No, they haven't.. you have been reading quoted posts. the only people who have been discussing this for a year are people at Arc and or Cryptic, behind closed doors from us players.
It was only just dropped on all of us.
Assuming there were no stipulations or agreements that went with the sale of the CO IP and assuming that the game was made entirely with their own money and there's no investors getting residuals as long as the game is profitable. There's probably a number of behind the scenes reasons for a company to shut the game down this way really. All these changes seem almost intentionally bad. However maybe me, and the dozen or so folks complaining, are in fact in the minority of players and the game will flourish once the "dead wood" is timed from the fan base?
PWE/Cryptic failed the players/community - its a simple fact.
Who knows what the consequences will be, but I doubt that a game that doesnt get real new content (except for another alert and costumes/characterbound emotes in a dropbox) will flourish in any way.
I'm a member/DJ of Dawn Radio - and we will also discuss these "changes" in tomorrows podcast
But unlike CO, STO's subscription benefit was utterly pointless once you hit max level. Cryptic gave the farm for free, especially if you subbed while you leveled a character. So many people (and many others told people to go this way) only subbed while leveling, and dropped it immediately at hitting 60.
In CO...people NEED that sub to keep Freeform. It's a major issue removing the sub without being able to CONVERT characters to Freeform.
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Buying a sub was how I had a chance to experience FFs. If not for paying $15 per month, I never would have known what FFs were like. I sure wasn't going to spend $50 on a single FF slot. The sub led me to getting LTS on sale at some point. But now it sounds like there is no cheap way to access FFs anymore. Had I joined this game after the changes, I would have ultimately spent less money on this game. So yeah, I see this as a very bad change, especially for us LTS.
My SG just celebrated our 7th anniversary in CO, then just 4 days later, this nonsense. As much as we love the game, we're looking at alternatives now.
SUBS = constant income , new players trying out all the game features , casual investment or sporadic players
LTS = one time payment for those that can afford it ,and no more income
Come on guys ,its not that hard to work this out
People act like LTS don’t ever put money into this game...most who can spend $300 can easily spend more, and have. In fact, I bet LTS spend more than anyone...even subbers.
personally i know i have spent way more on subs than a LTS in the years i have been supporting the game , but a small amount a month is affordable to me ,where as a lump sum isnt due to my finantial circumstances
I have no intention of dropping my sub, but I understand how the shortsightedness of how this is most likely going to be implemented is making a lot of people upset-- and it honestly worries me about this game for the first time. We just came off of a huge "longest lived superhero MMO" celebration, so this announcement feels like a shot in the foot.
Heroic Roleplayer @epelesker | PRIMUS Database Moderator | Brigade Advocate
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[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
If subs aren't wanted anymore, fine, but give them an out where they don't lose access to all their stuff.
Eh, I'm not so sure about this claim. They were fine with paying to have access to them for the entire duration of their sub with the caveat that if they didn't keep paying they would lose access temporarily, why would they suddenly balk at a one-time payment for permanent access? So long as the price is right I'm sure they would be fine with it. After all they would have paid $180 over the next year to stay subbed, so why do they suddenly expect that to drop to $0?
My only issue in this regard is that this one-time payment wasn't in place the day of the announcement and might potentially not be in place for a while.
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Switch your payment method to Paypal, and link your bank account to your Paypal account.
Heroic Roleplayer @epelesker | PRIMUS Database Moderator | Brigade Advocate
I've been playing this game for 7 years, the only thing that motivated me to keep playing it was making more characters to play with, making fun builds, themed builds, before quitting 1 month ago I had so many ideas of new characters, ideas that will never happen now because I have 72 characters.
I always loved how people used to tell me, nice costume Hugo, that build looks fun Hugo, those things made me happy all the time, you removed the thing I loved most about the game, I would pay for more characters slots you know, taking away the free slots when you hit 40 is ok for me, as long as we can still make new characters for fun, because we play the game to have fun, don't we? Hopefully this is not the last time I play the game, I would like to log into the game one day and keep playing it the same way I used to...
Otherwise I hope people who know me read this, and I would like to thank all players for this wonderful 7 years. Los quiero chicos :')
Well, as that's me, there's two things:
1) Cost. £160-220 is more than I'll pay for any game in one hit, end of. There is a reason why Starbucks doesn't offer coffee subscriptions to regular purchasers - no-one would buy the sub. Why? People have trouble rationalising large payments for non-essential goods in a way that they don't with smaller increments.
2) Confidence. If they had made the changes to STO and CO Subs at the same time I would have thought, "well, it's just a policy change, best dive in and get an LTS". Unfortunately they made the CO changes on the same day they closed two games down, so now I think "Hmm, this is a cash grab - cough up £££ now or we'll close it down".
You get what I mean?
Why not start turning needless crap off like they horrribke Nightmare Invasion Sky that NO ONE likes....or the lockbox notifications that flood your screen?
This change means I can't get more character slots even if I wanted as I've long since surpassed the cap, but there's probably a number of people that are well below it, and for those folks adding new characters means paying up now rather than playing the game. From a corporate economical standpoint it might make sense, but as a lifer who plays the game and occasionally even still puts more money into it these changes takes away all incentive for me to play and removes any reason to buy anything. If I can't make new characters what's the point?
You know, I have been on the fence about this for a long time, but when I see posts like this I can only think you really are just about the most dedicated subtle troll I have ever seen. I am now almost completely convinced that you really are just that good.
If the possibility of losing permanent access to their freeform alts without a big LTS purchase didn't bother people, then where do you think all this uproar is coming from, exactly?
Premium packacge: great idea... implementing this is something that should have been done a long time ago, and will absolutely generate money and is a nice gift to subscribers who's subscription lapses...
Removal of Subscription service: completely unnessisary change that is guaranteed to reduce revenue. You are removing a source of income to the game. The subscription model we've had here ever since CO went F2P has been an optional service with great benefits. And now you're saying you are going to remove it and leave only the limited F2P service and the expensive LTS service... you're going to lose a giant chunk of your playerbase from that, guaranteed.
Removal of free character slot with each level 40 for subscribers: disappointing move... This has been a major selling point to a lot of players. It was one of the main reasons why I originally bought my subscription in the first place.
Enforcing the 59 character limit: Ok... so this one I can understand, but at the same time I'm a bit baffled on, and am strongly opposed to as well... we were told be the old dev team a couple times that the 59 character limit was ONLY to purchased character slots... meaning that a silver account with their 2 base slots, could PURCHASE 59 additional slots, bringing them up to 61. That was what we had been told was intended design multiple times in the past. A subscriber could purchase 59 slots and still get more slots from gaining level 40s... but now you're saying that the intended design is a hard limit of 59 slots... Even though you may not be removing slots from anyone who's over that limit, you are still making a change and trying to pass it off as having always been intended despite the fact that we have been told in the past that the intention was different.
For me persionally... the last 2 points above are the only things that will impact me...
I bought an LTS years ago since at the time it was a better financial decision for me than to keep up a $15mo subscription with my tiny paycheck... Plus the last time my sub lapsed I was unable to retrain ANY of my characters into Silver ATs to play on until I could afford to get my sub back, leaving me completely unable to play until I got my subscription back... that was really the main reason I decided to go for an LTS... I continued to buy zen every few months to help support the game while I was more active... so I'm not personally going to be affected by the removal of the subscription option, though I do beg Cryptic and PWE to reconsider that decision and leave the option there alongside the addition of the premium package...
I enjoyed leveling up characters to 40 and making a new alt... heck, I actually bought just as many additional character slots as I earned for free... and currently I'm sitting at 58 character slots... so this change is basically telling me that, not only will I not get anymore free slots with my level 40s, but I will only ever be able to buy 1 more character slot as well... The largest part of my enjoyment from this game has always been creating new alts and creating different builds with the freeforms system... and now you're going to be taking that away from me by telling me that once I use up the 4 empty slots I currently have, I will only ever be able to add 1 more character and then that's it... full account....
Well you're talking about LTS. Since you're responding to me I'll assume that you mistakenly thought I was talking about LTS, so I'll clarify by pointing out that I said "My only issue in this regard is that this one-time payment wasn't in place the day of the announcement and might potentially not be in place for a while.". LTS is currently in place, so clearly that's not what I was talking about.
I also said "if the price is right". Obviously $200 isn't the right price for everyone.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
The difference is up until now they have always had the option of renewing their subscription at a later date to regain access... now they will be forced to pay a significantly larger lump sum cost to regain access. People do not like feeling forced to do anything. Especially when they had a perfectly viable option for the same task available to them before that they prefered and was more accessible to them.
$15/mo is affordable to most people... $300 one time fee is not affordable to most people... $50/character is not affordable to most people... the cost that the Silver to FF token will undoubtedly have is unlikely to be affordable to most people...
Unless the FF slot has it's priced reduced, I guarantee you the Silver to FF token will cost around 4,250zen... Why? Simple... 1 character slot = 750zen, 1 FF slot = 5,000zen... 5,000-750=4,250... if they price the Silver to FF token any lower, then it's cheaper to buy silver slots and conversion tokens than to just buy the FF slot.
So that means that anyone who's subscription lapses would have to spend $42.50 per character to regain access to their FFs. For anyone with more than 7 FFs the LTS is the better financial option...
You can also look at it this way... Even if they dropped the FF slot cost and were able to sell the conversion tokens at 1500zen... subscribers go from having previously had the option to pay $15/mo for ALL of their freeforms, to paying $15/mo to reclaim 1 FF each month if they lapse their subscription, with the option of paying an additional $15 for each additional FF they want to reclaim that month.
It is simply NOT a good decision.
Sorry but I seriously ZERO interest in grinding gear for all my alts. I like trying different things.
If you have a silver account, all you can do is buy slots up to the amount of AT's there are.
NO way , would I fork out $50 for one slot.
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"2 Gold Costume Tokens for One Character on Your Account:
These can be used to exchange for old Monthly Reward costumes."
So basically, you can unlock two monthly reward items. Are these account-unlocked as per usual, or do they only unlock for the character using the tokens?