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Price Changes on Freeform and Character Slots!
ambassadorkael
Posts: 96 Administrator
We're slashing the prices on Freeform and Character Slots, and raising the number of characters you can have on an account!
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/champions-online/news/detail/10931783
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/champions-online/news/detail/10931783
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No you're not.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Unless you're a poor silver player like me, in which case it's true. If only we could receive new powers and archetypes then i'd have an incentive to buy some of those 94 available character slots on my account.
Nothing stays the the same forever, and I think this will go a long way to please MOST players. But no matter what the devs do, there will be some unhappy players. Something should be done for those players already at the cap. Maybe a speical title, access to a special in-game item?
Regardless, I'm quite surprised by this announcement. For me it's a good comprimise.
WoW? I mean, I'm sure they do, not in one server but definitely.
42 40s, LTSer.
I'm pretty sure WoW limits you to 50 charachters total on the entire account. Which I think is about average. I'm going to say it's safe to bet a charachter lmiit abovet that is very rare. The problem is CO has given away so much for very little for so long, we've all become used to it. I hate to see things change, but I bet the 100 charachter limit is going to satisfy most gold subscribers. Those with more than 100 are probably very rare, but it would be cool if they got a special title or something.
This doesnt change anything. It DOES however probably help new people and silvers, but overall it literally did nothing to golds/LTS except be an irritant in that now you'd have to spend 100z out of your stipend for a new char slot. And people with more than 100 char aren't really that rare, if the altoholic channel is anything to go by. CO giving away what it did actually helped to keep people coming back, I'd hate to provide the alternative but CO isn't exactly this powerhouse of content most people think it is, the free items were nice but I mean other games release more for free. Look at Battlefield V for an example, DLC's are free I believe. I'm not saying what is free is sub-par or bad, no, but just as a lot of people think the game doesn't give enough/exaggerate the truth, a lot of people think the same for the opposite side.
42 40s, LTSer.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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WoW is built for an entirely different purpose. Unlike CO, WoW is built around getting to max level to do endgame/run the gear treadmill. They use a class based trinity system with only a few options for customization. CO is all about the character customization and tailor. The endgame in CO will never be able to sustain it as it stands.
It works out to basically $1.00 USD for gold players to get a new charachter slot. That's a steal and IMHO adds a little value back to the Gold Sub. Players will be able to farm Questionite and easily trade it for 100 zen. So it could end up being basically free for some folks.
I disagree it changes a lot. CO just made a HUGE compromise with players. They doubled the character CAP and lowered prices. That's a big deal, and went a long way with me to restore faith that our dev team listens to us. They didn't have to. The fact is unlimited free slots forever and ever is going away. Even though that's dissapointing for some, you can still keep your 100 plus characters. And I stand by the statement I can't think of any game that lets any player have 100+ slots! That's extremely generous. CO is obviously being pushed into a new direction and I thank the devs for trying to make it as smooth as possible for us. It could have been so much worse and they listened to us and made changes. Things are changing and that's to be expected after a game reaching the 10-year old mark.
So now instead of getting one character for the price of a full AAA game, you can get three...for the price of a full AAA game! Or just one for the price of two high-quality indie games! Or one for the price of a dozen games on Steam sales!
Who in their right mind would consider any of this a good deal?
At least the additional slots for LTSs will please them, probably. It doesn't do anything for subs, as those slots still get locked when the sub lapses and, if they go through with force-converting golds to silvers when they phase out subs, will still get force-converted to an AT so it's completely meaningless in terms of getting older players to return or convincing newer players to give Cryptic money.
Hopefully they still do something else to fix this situation, otherwise it's a damn shame.
I was so excited to play my old Gold chars again when they announced subs getting removed. I definitely wasn't the only one that felt that way. So if they keep going in this direction they're unlikely to get any old players back.
Edit: You know what's even worse? If it was FF slots that were 100 Zen (or even 500) I'd likely have bought dozens by now and would for certain buy more in the future. No reason to buy silver slots or gold slots that'd just be locked when my sub lapsed anyway, but I'd buy FF slots for cheap. Could've had much, much more money from me if the price wasn't insane. I'd have spent far more than $60 if the slots were $1 or even $5 each, but $50 for one and now $60 for three was never going to happen and will never happen in the future.
I wonder how many others feel (and have felt) the same way.
When it comes to the character cap, if you're removing the free character slot for reaching 40 as well, you really should consider looking into removing that character limit entirely, and just let people buy as many character slots as they want. The players that the cap affects have spent a lot of time and money unlocking things in this game, and it's highly unlikely that any of them will create another account to start all over again once they reach the cap, assuming they're not over it already. Once they're unable to create new characters, they'll likely stop playing, and seeing as there's plenty of players that are already over the cap, and can no longer make new characters, I wouldn't be surprised if the number of players in game starts dropping off before the weekend is over.
At least they did something for "We remove the free char slots at 40.. But char slots are cheaper now."
100 character limit is fine I guess. Players with their 100+ not even remember the first character on their character page I guess. Just delete characters you did not use for a year. You won't use it again anyway. And I think you have PLENTY above that one year.
As for the FF slots, it is cool too. One slot was 5000 ZEN and now you can get 3 for 6000 ZEN, which means 2000 ZEN / FF slot.
With the GOLD sub still on, gold members still have the advantage of the monthly reward / ZEN, coloring and of course the gold member creation option on character slots.
Question is, what will be the next change about ? These we just got don't explain the future of subscription still.
FurAffinity
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My initial guess was no more 50% off, but go down to 20%, but then the FF slots weren't in the services sale
Reason: Quick Math: $30 - 20% off = $24, putting it right back where it was before but being able to claim "look we so nice"
Evil Worse case scenario is no more sale ever now, and they've raised the price $5.
Either way, I think Cryptic/PW knows no one bought them full price, and knew everyone told people not to.
The $60 3 FF pack is hitting a nice spot. Adding in some costume slots, and gold unlock to sweeten the deal would have been a good "premium pack" though, and inline with buy-to-play games.
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This is maybe the main thing that I don't understand. I have no numerical proof, only anecdotal 'evidence' from forums and in-game talk, but I agree with you that 100+ players are probably very rare. So... if the reason for the cap is to conserve memory (the only possible reason for a cap), how much is that really helping?
I have about 140 slots after 8 years of play. Let's be generous and assume there are 100 people in my situation (I would be almost certain that this is an over-estimate, but, again, I have no evidence). The total amount of new characters we would add to the game in an average year would be 1750. With a cap of 100, that number represents what could be added by 18 new players to the game. If the memory/server/whatever situation is so dire that 18 new players this year could potentially inflict major harm on the entire game, then we have very serious issues going on behind the scenes, and this probably should've been fixed when the bug first made it to live (wink wink nudge nudge) almost 10 years ago.
So, I guess my question is: why give a middle finger to a few dozen of your most loyal and longest-tenured supporters in order to give only a minimal amount of relief to your beleaguered servers? They either didn't think it through, don't care, or some combination of the two. If your warehousing expenses are getting too high, you don't start dropping your biggest/oldest clients, do you?
I get hit regardless, LTS account is over 100, Gold acct has about 50 on it and my silver acct with 1 ff and the rest AT's, is up to 22.
This will at least help silver players get AT's.
But how many people want to play all the AT's(well apart from me, only 3 not levelled so far) or repeat them(well apart from me again)
However, it still greatly limits FF.
"be the character you want to be" is now ,
a) if you can afford LTS
b) manage to stay on subs.
c) can afford to fork out $30 for a FF slot.
$30 is still way too much for one character slot. It's 30 times a normal slot.
1500 zen is a price more likely to greatly increase sales, as well as being more realistic.
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Except there won't be "Gold" subscribers anymore, except for a few people who manage to sub continuously and never encounter a billing error. One lapse, even through bad luck, and all your freeforms are unplayable until you buy the LTS.
Just a few months ago my debit card was canceled by my bank because of data breaches. I didn't receive my replacement card for about two weeks. It just so happened that my CO sub renewalhit during that waiting period and I couldn't play my FF's for a few days. Under the upcoming system I'd lose access to my dozens of FF character permanently with no option to resub.
I suppose a 100 character limit is more than enough considering the very limited selection of ATs and how little variaion they provide.
The problem is not that they gave away so much for so little it's that the devs haven't added any REAL content in years. People got tired of paying to play alerts all day and grinding the same stuff day after day to chase after increasingly overpowered gear (only to end up seeing it nerfed and new grindable gear added and currencies replaced).
In truth, the change to the benefits isn't all that vexing to me. That they were considered at all to begin with is. To demonstrate such a casual disregard to what was offered in long-standing agreements with their most ardent of supporters undermines the trust those customers extended to them.
This right here
42 40s, LTSer.
The most troublesome aspect of this issue is that it was officially announced on June 1st and ready to roll out on June 7th. That's very short notice for an extremely dramatic change that would have effected a lot of long-time paying players. What's worse is that the announcement wasn't strongly positioned to reach everyone and other changes were poorly worded or used misdirection tactics to appear positive when the knock-on effect was negative (costume slots,for instance).
Had the sub change gone "as planned" then three weeks ago every subbed member would have to fork over the LTS fee or no longer be able to play any of their Gold characters (unless the devs "maybe" come up with a solution, which they admitted was a future concern once the issue was raised by players). That's an incredibly harsh penalty to impose upon the people who are helping to support the game. That would mean that many players only had access to silver/AT characters. Since they were previously subbed the "Premium Pack" would confer little benefit (as stated in the announcement).
Had the change gone into effect as planned I would simply have stopped playing because I would have lost access to my best characters that I spent a lot of time working on. I have three Silver/AT characters that I don't play much but I keep as a means to login and keep in touch with friends on occasions when I can't pay or there is a billing error. In essence, the game would have lost my potential revenue indefinitely.
The really big question is, why take away a means for people to pay for the game?? This sounds like it was an attempt to get most people to pay for the LTS in order to generate a rapid influx of guaranteed revenue. That's a desperation measure, if true, akin to businesses having a "fire sale" in order to generate rapid volume-based income in order to stave off bankruptcy or cover shutdown costs (severance pay, liquidation of assets, etc). An LTS (at normal price) costs the equivalent of just under 2 years of subbing. Did they see a drop in subscription numbers? Did they think that if they forced players' hands they could generate enough revenue to keep the game running for a bit longer?
The underlying issue is one of the game lacking significant updates to actual content. The devs continue to release cosmetic "fluff" as an incentive to keep playing (and paying). We are asked to pay for slots in order to use cosmetic items which we are also asked to pay for. This would be less egregious if it was framed as a support system for new, regularly added content.
When a game's biggest "content" announcements are auras, costumes, and emotes and they also announce they will no longer be accepting players' money there is a fundamental problem underlying everything. That should give anyone cause for concern when deciding whether to pay for a LTS and generate feedback to let the devs know how they feel.
I agree with this. Given that the goal is to shift primary sales to piecemeal instead of subscription, dropping the price of FF so that more casual players would be attracted to buying them would be ideal. Just as a point of comparison: $15 is already a month's sub on most any other MMO (old or new). On that note, dropping the 3 FF slot down to 4000 zen ($40) would align with this well.
Hell if FF slots were a dollar I'd have bought much more than 30 by now.
Didn't see this until just now. CoH allowed you to purchase up to 99 character slots per server, with 12 servers for a total of 1,188 character slots on a single account.
Oh hey yeah, I forgot about that
42 40s, LTSer.
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My characters
I took a 3 year break from CO and yet have 40 40s. It's not as many as I'm sure you think it is, but barring that, that's up to them, the account holder. Same as their frequency of playing them and reason for having them. I've never understood why people even felt okay bothering others for how they handle how many characters they have on their account.
42 40s, LTSer.
Depends on what exactly you mean. Creating 100 toons could actually be done very quickly, if you didn't care about their names or what they looked like. When it comes to playing them, I soloed an energy/energy blaster from level 1 to level 50 in about a week, playing roughly 4-5 hours a day, in the earlier days of CoH. If you want to use that as the benchmark, it would take just under 2 years to get 100 toons to level cap, if all you did was grind nonstop while playing. I also PLed friends pretty regularly, and could PL a toon from 1 to 50 in about an hour to an hour and a half. If we use that as the metric, you could get 100 toons to level cap in under a week.
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There's 168 hours in a week, so no. You could PL 100 toons to level cap without having to forgo eating and sleeping.
65+ characters and slots currently
'Free For All, Not All For Free'.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
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