freeeee

[chrisafakos]

Make aoc free all dungeon hms and make raids only on payment pleazeeeeee!!people need to come back to the game..

[Jota180]

I disagree. If people want a better game with continued development they should be prepared to pay for and not expect to leech. More content more often would be a bigger draw than playing the same stuff over and over because Funcom can't afford to develop and release content quickly enough. I don't understand people who choose not to sub and expect almost all of it for free for ever, it's hardly going to bankrupt people with monthly rates from as low as £5.66 a month.

Tramps round my way could afford that a week.

[Rathothis]

I disagree. If people want a better game with continued development they should be prepared to pay for and not expect to leech. More content more often would be a bigger draw than playing the same stuff over and over because Funcom can't afford to develop and release content quickly enough. I don't understand people who choose not to sub and expect almost all of it for free for ever, it's hardly going to bankrupt people with monthly rates from as low as £5.66 a month.

Tramps round my way could afford that a week.

Leeching is a matter of perspective. You could also say that FC has been "leeching" customers for quite some time, using AoC sub revenues to finance other (failed) ventures. In the end, this is not a very useful way of looking at things.

What's more useful is to ask yourself whether making some further content accessible to FtP would really lead to a decrease in sub revenues. I don't think that this would necessarily be the case. If done smartly, it could actually increase the number of FtPers who go for a sub. (Not saying that making all dungeons free would be smart though.)

[Jota180]

Leeching is a matter of perspective. You could also say that FC has been "leeching" customers for quite some time, using AoC sub revenues to finance other (failed) ventures. In the end, this is not a very useful way of looking at things.

What's more useful is to ask yourself whether making some further content accessible to FtP would really lead to a decrease in sub revenues. I don't think that this would necessarily be the case. If done smartly, it could actually increase the number of FtPers who go for a sub. (Not saying that making all dungeons free would be smart though.)

FtP get enough content to get a feel for the game and there needs to be enough of the game 'held back' in order to entice people to pay a subscription. I don't know if you're aware or not but FtP players have been banging on for 'more for free' since FtP started and they will continue until they get all content for nothing. Current fee payers are paying for access to dungeons and raids and if you took dungeons out of the equation then FC would need to reduce their subscription amounts because why should we who sub pay the same for less? So even if in your opinion they attracted a few more subscribers, they'd probably lose out because they'd have to charge less for subscriptions.

There's also the flip side to your argument, people who currently pay a sub but don't raid may ditch their sub if dungeons become part of FtP. Funcom could lose subscriptions.

[Bibik]

AoC free to play model sucks. Period.

[Rathothis]

FtP get enough content to get a feel for the game and there needs to be enough of the game 'held back' in order to entice people to pay a subscription. ... Current fee payers are paying for access to dungeons and raids and if you took dungeons out of the equation then FC would need to reduce their subscription amounts because why should we who sub pay the same for less?

As I said:

(Not saying that making all dungeons free would be smart though.)

The current FtP model sucks because it does not allow FtPers to get enough of a feeling of what the game is about (PvE-wise) at level 80. What FC should have done long ago is to give FtPers access to a sample of the content which is done by subbers. For example, open up (at least some) Khitai solo playfields and Monastery, but keep the rest of the dungeons sub-only. Same for raids, opening up T3 (but keeping T3.5, T4 and T5 sub-only) would have been a smart move.

Now you may say that some people may go FtP if they can farm rares in Monastery. True, that cannot be excluded. But the flipside is that (i) new players really cannot integrate with the existing player base in the current model, and (ii) maybe more importantly, when an old player goes FtP, he is pretty much lost to community and thus less likely to return, than if he could still do a couple of dungeons with his old ingame mates.

[Iam5not8]

everyone should access all instances and raids.
But only premium should be able to loot the purples

[Kurt2013]

FtP get enough content to get a feel for the game and there needs to be enough of the game 'held back' in order to entice people to pay a subscription. I don't know if you're aware or not but FtP players have been banging on for 'more for free' since FtP started and they will continue until they get all content for nothing. Current fee payers are paying for access to dungeons and raids and if you took dungeons out of the equation then FC would need to reduce their subscription amounts because why should we who sub pay the same for less? So even if in your opinion they attracted a few more subscribers, they'd probably lose out because they'd have to charge less for subscriptions.

There's also the flip side to your argument, people who currently pay a sub but don't raid may ditch their sub if dungeons become part of FtP. Funcom could lose subscriptions.

There is another flaw here. In principle you are right and the extended demo f2p can enjoy is actually very big. But as Rathotis already said, it is a bit deceiving about what the (end)game is all about.
Also you should have not limited the payment to subscription. THis flaw has cost funcom already a LOT of revenue and the f2p model and shop prices and products reflect this attitude.
It should mean "there needs to be enough of the game held back in order to entice people to pay". This payment or "held back" does not necessarily mean access. It can be ease of access, convenience and such as well.
The danger here also is (and many subscription models or too restrictive f2p suffer from it as well) that population declines or gets too spread out. There is a positive effect every active player brings in terms of fun and motivation for others (possible paying customers), even if that one player is not paying at all. Thus restricting access too much can backfire. This can be countered with a good shop and f2p model, which sadly many greedbased f2p games have NOT.

[Fonsbol]

One thing they can do is let f2p members see global chat. It would make the game feel more vibrant to them. I also don't see the point of not letting f2p members talk back to paying members. Perhaps the idea is to make them feel like they are in some kind of enclosed, smaller world which will open up if they become subscribers, but I don't think that's a sound idea, many players will quit before realizing there is more to the game. Let them chat with subscribed players, let the more curious ones discover the complexity of the game that way, and nourish their curiosity in general by enabling global chat to them.

[Artemisia]

I have mixed feelings on opening up more of the game to free players.

On one hand, it gives them a reason to stay longer, and it gives more people a reason to try the game out and experience every aspect of the game.

On the other hand, you can't expect Funcom to hand every single player the entire game on a platter.

The way their f2p model is set up now is much better than what it used to be (yes, I remember the days where you could play only 4 characters and couldn't go into any dungeon past Tortage and had a gold cap of 2). Their current model is meant to give people a "sample" of the game and encourage them to sub.

I would personally like to see all of t1 raids, as well as t2 raids, opened up towards free players, simply because one can farm a full t2 set on a toon within 1 week of doing a world boss.

I would like to see more variety of items on their item store, as if done right, that can bring in a lot of revenue. I would also like to see the ability to play one or two areas of the Khitai expansion for those who bought the expansion and then went free to play for various reasons.

But, as it is now, the free to play model isn't the worst model out there, and given funcoms limited involvement with the forums, I highly doubt anything will change in the near future.