The Importance of Player Feedback with the New Free-to-Play Option

[Shoogli]

For F2Ps :

 

One thing you have overlooked : many F2P players finish the starter planet before reaching lvl 10, most are lvl 8, some are lvl 9, very rare are those that are 10.

 

What happens is this : they go on to Coruscant, quest a bit there then come back to the station and MOST of them ask where to get the advanced class.

 

Since the guy giving the quest for it is right outside Ord-mantell/Tython departure and since those people come out from the Coruscant gate now (since they're lvl 10 later) then most of them are lost and the flow of the game experience is lessened.

 

So they ask in general chat, sometimes they get nice people to help them, sometimes they get bullied as F2Ps...

 

For subbers :

 

Ok I see cosmetic items and toys in the cartel market. FINE...

 

BUT Emotes now ? Even as a subber there are some we don't get ?

 

Now this is borderline against what you guys claimed about subs not having to pay for anything...

When I see the tons of emotes I won't have access to (they have the CM icon next to them), now it gets me a little angry.

 

Again : not having a throne, a mask of Nihilus : FINE...

Emotes : NOT fine !

 

Don't get me wrong, I still love the game, it just is *you* guys I like less and less and less...

Some of your decisions with the CM are downright disgusting.

[Lectro]

Here is an answer to all the problems... Buy a sub

 

Your playing for free, expect restrictions

 

This was my thought, although EA ruined the game before it even began. If you're going to be FTP then be FTP, a last ditch money grab only makes you look worse for your existing members who stuck with you from day 1.

 

Vets should have zero restrictions and still play for free!!!!!!

Edited December 4, 2012 by Lectro

[Telden]

One thing I've noticed from the change to F2P; there's been a *drastic* increase in the parasites who want to sell me credits. And it's not just a wall of spam in General Chat on the station anymore. Now they're smacking me with repeated /tells wherever I happen to be, even in Flashpoints.

 

I've tried reporting spam, but I've never seen any effect. The same spammer, same character name, is still spamming it's head off hours later.

 

Welcome to Free To Spam (Play).

[Lectro]

My God.....WHY would anyone want/need to create 50 chars?

 

He's 40, in his moms basement in dirty boxers and a superman t-shirt

[LUCASCASADEIS]

i would love to see lower prices on weekly pass and some unlocks (most impportant artifact unlock)

[DemonForest]

Here is some requested feedback.

 

Remove a lot of the unnecessarily arbitrary items and should be quickly overhauled.

1) Remove head slot. If you want anyone to keep playing smugglers you might want to enable this or make it a whole lot cheaper. Most of the quality character designs went to Sith characters anyway so you need to help out where ever you can to get rid of the god awful helmets.

 

2) Cargo bay access is complete restricted? The first bay should be available as normal, and make additional bays cost. Restricting it completely will make players less likely to play beyond the first.

 

3) Action bars, while i find 6 to be completely unnecessary for my characters, i find 2 to be far to few. Most of my seldom use buttons go there, like transport, and mounts, and health packs. Limiting these items to 3 or 4 or at the very least let them scroll through them with the standard Ctrl + Up.

 

4) F2P on virtually every other platform I've seen has included purchased Buffs, Unique Skins, Pets, and Treasure Boxes worth a darn. So far I've seen standard skinned items for low level character, cool looking lightsaber crystals, which kills one section of your Crafting Market, and wonderfully useless Cartel Boxes. Unless you like collecting dozens of pets, or getting crafting mats you probably already had stacks of, I see little point at all in this.

 

5) Why on earth restrict Artifact gear??? You have to have paid to go to the places where they drop. So why pay again for the privilege of wearing it?

 

I reactivated to claim my spare cartel coins that i had from the CE and months of playing. After I saw the mess that you made of the game, and the sham that is the F2P status, I cancelled my sub.

I've been let down from the promise of the CE store, which "Would be updated regularly" and "Have items that cannot be found else where" to the Security Key that was suppose to have similar items. I really feel like the directors and development team are phoning it in.

Flat content, flat story lines, and broken promises. Its not really any wonder that review articles are telling everyone to stick to other titles.

 

If you want to make F2P work, make the game worth playing, and make content worth Buying. As is, anyone i know who wants to play, i tell them to ace the character story line and never pay a cent. Its do-able, and keeps them from being completely let down. Seriously, Most Anticipated Game of 08-11, and now as big a flop as FFXIV. Let me know when you want to get your act together, and we'll have a serious talk.

[Eszi]

Seeing as you ignored all feedback in the past, I'm not sure if this is a sarcasm or provocation

[DarthTreize]

Even as a Preferred Player, the restrictions were relatively annoying. I understand the need to have them so that there is a clear-cut definition of f2p people and subscribers. If anything for me that I had issues with was the limited access to the acquired wealth I had massed up over 6 months. Having a credit cap at 350k is like asking people to live on 5 thousand bucks a year and hope they don't starve. I'm sure they're ways around not spending that kind of money but I find it absolutely stupid.

[facesofderek]

I'm glad that the restrictions on Preferred players are being lessened somewhat, and that they're getting more character slots. However I'm most interested in when subscribers will be getting the ability to purchase additional slots on a server, hopefully this is what is meant by the "substantial increase." I don't mind having to buy more slots to get the last few class/race combos I want to try.

[Snarly]

That's incredible news, additional character slots for preferred players is a huge step forward in promoting the legacy system and alts!! Looking forward to seeing even more improvements to the F2P option

[Darthvokur]

Please add a toggle off option for wrist and hand slots. Then feel free to charge the freebies whatever you like, just let me get rid of my gloves!

[drakonsit]

Free to play members should not be limited on character customization like they are. It takes away from the role-playing aspect to be limited to the being just a plain human/cyborg with the only alien species available is Zabraks (available without spending Cartel Coins). They should have the same character customization that is available to a brand new subscriber making his/her first character as well. Also, they should be able to hide their helmet slot to their desire, show their legacy name, unify armor colors, quickbar amount, etc. All these restrictions to FTP customization are unnecessary to have.

 

i disagree with you in order for people to want to buy the game there has to be restrictions like that

and i hope there is more restrictions like level 30 cap or something like that

but thats just my personal opinion

[CKNORTH]

This might be a long shot but, offer subscription time in the cartel store @ 30 days and 60 days and tradable on GTN. Before I get slammed, It still needs to be bought with real money so......

[fowltief]

Just want character transfers to come back. paid or not so i can get my level 50 and start playing again... i'm leveling others but i miss my consular so much.. spent alot of time and effort on her..

[LukeSaberRattler]

Seeing as you ignored all feedback in the past, I'm not sure if this is a sarcasm or provocation

 

They haven't ignored all prior feedback heck they even gave you 3 examples of when they used it to make feedback don't let facts break your "reality" though.

 

Of course they haven't listened to all feedback which would be impossible as you will never make 100% of the players happy.

Edited December 5, 2012 by LukeSaberRattler

[mortar_kombat]

They need to lift the xp decrease and item equip restrictions along with quest reward restrictions and other silly things by that nature for preferred status and find a better solution for flashpoints. I'm saying this as a current subber but i don't know if i'll renew or just let it lapse. But i'm sure as hell won't play with those restrictions even if i can login.

 

I hope bioware won't listen to people that think f2p are leeches and should always be inferior to them because they bought the game like 6-10 months ago or something. This is the same mentality that says "dey tuk our jeeebbbss".

Edited December 5, 2012 by mortar_kombat

[SentinelDranoel]

Free to play should remove customization like different outfits. No access to Warzone gear and no comms so they can't buy pvp gear. Your 50 restrictions are tough, I was force to resub my fiance's account. I will still cancel when she abandons it. See, it does not help with longterm incentives. A quick sub is not what I think you really want, even I do not profess to know what it takes to keep a sub in SWTOR.

[JesterBear]

HA! This is hilarious. Really? If player feedback is so important, then why haven't you done the one thing people want more than anything else? Global chat system? The ability to talk cross server and cross faction? The ability to be able to know when a friend is on, not just when a friend is on one particular toon.

[BadOrb]

That's great really it is. Can you guide the increase in subscribers 50 character limit by 16 free character slots per server please ? So atm we have 4(servers) x 12(slots) = 48 and 2 characters on anther server. Would be great to have 5 x 16 = 80 character slots pretty please ?

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

[Darthvokur]

HA! This is hilarious. Really? If player feedback is so important, then why haven't you done the one thing people want more than anything else? Global chat system?

 

While I agree that EAware don't listen, where did you get this as the biggest issue from? :S

[Kalli]

While I'm all for having more character slots in order to make these things better a few things need to happen:

 

1. Larger Guild Roster--Some of us like to have all out alts in one guild

2. Legacy wide storage

[TheSeer]

That's great really it is. Can you guide the increase in subscribers 50 character limit by 16 free character slots per server please ? So atm we have 4(servers) x 12(slots) = 48 and 2 characters on anther server. Would be great to have 5 x 16 = 80 character slots pretty please ?

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

 

^ I love this idea! It help with those who are over their character limit, while rewarding those who don't have them, plus until add more legeacy account wide unlocks people don't want roll on new server and lose all their work. I love account wide legacy share so I could role on other RP server.

Edited December 5, 2012 by TheSeer

[SithKillsRebels]

Here is an answer to all the problems... Buy a sub

 

Your playing for free, expect restrictions

 

 

Perfect answer,I loged in to free to play ,within 5 minuts ,I re sub'd, as to quote customer service " Working as intended" after I got HK I went to Tat and killed lots of low level pubs lol rofl .how fun was that ,!!!!!!!!!!!

[heveytrooper]

I believe that prefer status (not new ppl) players should be aloud to do operations as many as they want to but to not get any loot roles. Plus their is some story to operations and you bioware said that the story content is free. And it benifits the subscribers by winning a lot for the loot roles more often and will have more people to do op`s.

 

Also add is some sort of credit cap unlock in the cartel market that allows people to have unlimited credits and do the same with the commendations to unlock what the subs can hold on to in the cartel market.

 

Lastly I think that as prefered status people had put money into the game they should get 7 to 10 warzones instead of 5 a week. This will decrease the amount of complants you will get if you implament some of my sugestions

[Deewe]

Hello,

 

as introduction, let's pick up a few posts that explain the general feeling about the game:

The MMO part of the game is lost under restrictions. I'm enjoying the game, and I am a subscriber, now... but I subscribed out of frustration, rather than a sense of "I need to get more."

 

It seems that the only thing that is being listened to is free to play, which is strange cause I don't think they can post on the forums.

 

Hows about addressing things that have been on the forums since before free to play came out but seem to have taken a back seat because of re-structing then staff working on free to play and cartel items. A few things that it would be nice ot see.

 

Seeing as you ignored all feedback in the past, I'm not sure if this is a sarcasm or provocation

 

Also, player feedback important? Is that before or after they've ripped the patches apart on the PTS and you roll them out as is?

 

 

 

Then :

 

If you want to make F2P work, make the game worth playing, and make content worth Buying. As is, anyone i know who wants to play, i tell them to ace the character story line and never pay a cent. Its do-able, and keeps them from being completely let down. Seriously, Most Anticipated Game of 08-11, and now as big a flop as FFXIV. Let me know when you want to get your act together, and we'll have a serious talk.

 

Where does that leaves us?

 

• Game feels too restricted for F2P players.
  
• You seems to be listening to non paying F2P players, more than the subscribers.
  
• Content wise the F2P move brought quite nothing.
  
• The game is pretty much the same that made hundreds of thousands players quit, apart the story is mostly free, if you accept to have an hindered experience.

 

Regarding the known schedule for TOR:

1. Patch 1.6 is about to land.
   
2. 9 week later we should get 1.7
   
3. Along 1.7, or bit later on, Illum is planned to be released (February-March)
   
4. Cathars in months timeframe.
   
5. Then way longer after Makeb
   
6. And in maybe year(s) later the SSP (super secret project)
   
7. In between cartel pack scam and small updates.
   

 

=> Long term you are hindering the potential of TOR for bringing the looked after 3 millions players.

 

 

What you should do:

 

a) Implement a two way communication between the devs and the players.

As long as you won't have the designers step in the forums and actually interact with players, accepting to be challenged. Yeah it sucks but you are this low now. You won't improve the game.

Hint: in all patches since launch you implemented lots of unwelcome major changes and still pushed them live, thus making obvious for the players their feedback was not listened, nor you were making the game for them.

Also add an in game poll for subscribers, so you'll get real feedback about your planned changes from paying customers that don't lurk the forums.

 

b) Rethink your F2P model: have players pay for content, fluffy features and consumables vs tools to fully enjoy the content and lottery scam. Build content so players will happily sub or pay for it, instead of focusing on how to please non subbed players and milk everyone.

Also change the pricing model to very low costs for market items so players feel spoiled.

For example: players that don't spend any $$$ on the cartel packs especially the $10 gear sets would pay way more monthly provided they would be able to buy $1 items/sets.

You'd rather earn $100.000 with 100k happy players spending $1 and spreading the word, than say $10k players spending $10 and 90k saying or thinking it's too expansive.

 

c) Hit the quick wins ASAP.

Among others:

• Paid legacy names changes
  
• Allow players to have separate last names from legacy ones
  
• Dual specs
  
• Queue to specific WZ
  
• Companions skill kits
  
• Sale/load key bindings
  
• 7d GTN posting
  
• Appearance tabs
  
• Hide specific gear slots
  
• Gear dyes
  
• Free mods removal
  
• Instant teleporting to space ship & drop the orbital stations
  
• In game character customization
  
• Full companion customization
  
• Pazaak (You own the single player soure code from KOTOR)
  
• Chat bubbles (ok not so easy as it kills the FPS)
  
• Mouse look toggle for people with wrist issues.
  

 

For cartel shop, fluffy features and conveniences dig through these:

• Cartel Market suggestions
  
• [Legacy in 1.3] & beyond: compendium
  
• And all others great threads in the suggestion forums.
  

 

d) Spend time on:

• PvP balance separated from PvE (vs nerfing one or the other)
  
• Removal of stuns fest in PvP (vs adding more and removing the keyboard from the players)
  
• World PvP (vs WZ that gets old as repetitive)
  
• V.O. story with real choices. (vs boring side story and lack of impact of any story choices)
  
• Dark choice not being greedy or a jerk (cf: having the feeling to play Vader, or Palpatine)
  
• Free roaming space sim (for an Xpak) (vs a wheelchair on rails without even a brakes nor a gas pedal)
  

 

d) Make it feels like it's SW:

• No more colored 1.2 gear with changed hues.
  
• No more crossing frontiers in a iconic game: (BH with force choke, or Jedi with Flame throwers)
  
• Less, much less huge bosses being outnumbered and beaten by now not feeling that heroic anymore players.
  
• Iconic places: why Makeb vs all that was possible and asked?
  

 

e) Then dig deeper

• New species like Wookiees, Ithorians
  
• Player housing
  
• Day night cycles (on new planets for start)
  
• 3d movement (climbing, force jump, grappling hooks, jet packs....)
  
• Pod/Swoop racing
  
• UI mods & addons
  
• Swimming and under water exploration
  
• Seamless maps
  

 

e) Dig even more deeper:

• Adding incentives for socialization and player made events/contents.
  
• Implementing non combat based classes.
  
• Giving back the galaxy to the players (vs setting everything on rails)
  

 

 

In the end when you make players happy you are increasing your income.

All the above goes a long way in your pay check.

Think about it

Edited December 5, 2012 by Deewe