The fairness in Preferred Status, or lack thereof.

[richiesilva]

Preferred Status feels like one big hit in the stomach. The distinction between PS and F2P is almost non-existant, and I don't think this is remotely fair. After having spent quite the money by subscribing to the game, one would expect less restrictions when downgraded than we currently get, but instead we become leveled almost on par with free-to-play; and though you may argue the usual same (BW's only source of income are subs, so why would others get any benefits whatsoever), I fail to see how being treated with such disdain will get people to subscribe again.

 

My subscription is nearly ending and due to personal reasons I won't be able to re-subscribe for a while. The quasi-insulting way of treating costumers who have spent actual and relevant quantities of money on a similar fashion to those who did not contribute a dime makes me sad to say the least.

 

Being capped at 350K is unreasonable: only 150K credits more than F2P? Some of the unlocks may come with the friends bundle, but that's not nearly as sufficient, especially considering how lesser they are. This is meant generically, I'm sure at least a few agree with me and can point out specific things that could be changed.

 

I don't mean all this in a leeching and give me stuff-for-free kind of way, rather someone who believes things could be tweaked so as to give costumers a better and more fair experience. I know this is controversial - you may disagree, and share your opinion all right, but please don't attack me.

 

Yours kindly.

Edited November 9, 2015 by richiesilva

[branmakmuffin]

Preferred Status feels like one big hit in the stomach.

The solution to this "problem" is obvious. Preferred is not meant to be a viable alternative to subscription play. It's meant to get you to re-subscribe.

[richiesilva]

The solution to this "problem" is obvious. Preferred is not meant to be a viable alternative to subscription play. It's meant to get you to re-subscribe.

 

I feel like you haven't read the post.

[DarthMaulUK]

Play Wildstar. Whilst its not this game, it does not content any outdated restrictive pay walls. SWTOR claims to be f2p but only is for 'story' to level 50. Everything else is locked behind a pay wall. Bioware can't see the link between low population and pay walls.

 

It's the only MMO that continues to lock content behind a pay wall.

[Stoofa]

Wow - you really love saying Pay Wall

[daionos]

WoW is behind a PAYWALL, try the free sub and see how it goes beyond lvl 20

[Beltane]

It's the only MMO that continues to lock content behind a pay wall.

 

This isn't true in the least and considering WoW remains the leader and you can't even log into that game without a subscription...

 

OP, I agree preferred is really bad, so I just simply never play preferred. It costs 50 cents a day to subscribe, and if you can't afford that, at least you can still log in and play the game when preferred. Sub only games don't even allow that much.

 

I agree about the credit cap though. That's the worst.

[branmakmuffin]

Play Wildstar. Whilst its not this game, it does not content any outdated restrictive pay walls. SWTOR claims to be f2p but only is for 'story' to level 50. Everything else is locked behind a pay wall. Bioware can't see the link between low population and pay walls.

 

It's the only MMO that continues to lock content behind a pay wall.

So you can play WoW to cap without paying a dime of real money? And, for example, DAoC has no F2P option (other than a 14-day trial) that I am aware of. LotRO and DDO, sure, you can unlock all content for free if you are willing to grind out 100s of Turbine Points (hardly a viable choice for most people).

 

TOR is not a F2P game with a subscription option, it is a subscription game with a highly limited F2P option.

[TurtlesAWD]

People are willing to spend more money when they're having fun so in that respect, if preferred status isn't fun then it's going to fail at what people tend to believe its goal is (getting people to sub). Quality of life improvements for non-subscription status would go a long way towards making more people who play free or preferred to spend more money on the game.

[TurtlesAWD]

So you can play WoW to cap without paying a dime of real money? And, for example, DAoC has no F2P option (other than a 14-day trial) that I am aware of. LotRO and DDO, sure, you can unlock all content for free if you are willing to grind out 100s of Turbine Points (hardly a viable choice for most people).

 

TOR is not a F2P game with a subscription option, it is a subscription game with a highly limited F2P option.

 

You can actually play world of warcraft without spending real money now, yes, because you can buy monthly subscriptions with in-game currency much like Eve Online.

[ikinai]

People are willing to spend more money when they're having fun so in that respect, if preferred status isn't fun then it's going to fail at what people tend to believe its goal is (getting people to sub). Quality of life improvements for non-subscription status would go a long way towards making more people who play free or preferred to spend more money on the game.

 

What exactly would you give to non-subs to entice them to pay for a subscription that they can't already access?

[richiesilva]

People are willing to spend more money when they're having fun so in that respect, if preferred status isn't fun then it's going to fail at what people tend to believe its goal is (getting people to sub). Quality of life improvements for non-subscription status would go a long way towards making more people who play free or preferred to spend more money on the game.

 

I mean things that on the big scheme would make no great difference to BW, but would mean the world to former subs, such as the ridiculous credit cap. I don't want preferred status to be put on par with subs, my beef with it is that it's virtually no different than F2P.

[Jerqa]

I have every unlock applied to my account that I possibly can so that when I am Preferred I don't feel like I have lost much at all honestly. The only real *complaint* that I have is the credit cap, but if I need to increase my credits on hand for any reason I just use the store to unlock some or I go without until I subscribe again.

[Bobs_YourUncle]

I tend to agree with you, OP, except that the preferred bar is so low. Personally, if I were running the show, the only difference between subs and preferred players would be monthly rewards, sub CC stipend, and maybe some of the cosmetics. Just enough of a carrot on the sub stick to make it worth while to sub. Of course, how much you have to spend and/or how often to be considered preferred will have to be adjusted from the 5 bucks it currently is. I don't consider someone who paid 5 bucks to really be considered contributing enough to the game to pretty well get the whole game.

 

That being said, there's probably a reason I'm not running the show. Personally, what keeps me subbed most is the loss of referrel CC I get each month. 350k is plenty of credits for anything below the most hotly sought out cosmetic item on the GTN. Treek is more cosmetic now than ever. I'm drawing a blank on anything else that can cost over 350k. Sure, there's a hassle if I want to make one trip to Oricon to get a rep armor set, rather than farming 1-200k credits each trip. Access to Ops and other group stuff would probably rank higher on my list of things to change. The number of slots as well.

 

I think that's the point of preferred though, its got to be restrictive enough to a wide range of players to overall be less appealing than subbing. Johnny Solo isn't going to be swayed so much by the group restrictions, trading, etc. And so on.

[TurtlesAWD]

What exactly would you give to non-subs to entice them to pay for a subscription that they can't already access?

 

The credit cap is something that in my opinion is worth revisiting as it hasn't been touched since free to play/preferred options were introduced, so with economy inflation each expansion those numbers are way smaller in comparison than they used to be. There are escrow unlocks to be sure, but those go up on the GTN meaning prices can vary wildly and I've even seen them be listed for greater than 350k credits. Who is it being sold to, at that point? Considering thatin addition to the disdain people often have for people who aren't subscribers, I think you can run into situations where they're at a pretty major economic disadvantage.

 

I would have mentioned levelling prior to 4.0 but I'm pretty sure the quest redesign hits players at every payment level so that's actually a way fun is being introduced into non-sub status.

[branmakmuffin]

People are willing to spend more money when they're having fun so in that respect, if preferred status isn't fun then it's going to fail at what people tend to believe its goal is (getting people to sub). Quality of life improvements for non-subscription status would go a long way towards making more people who play free or preferred to spend more money on the game.

Easing Preferred restrictions would make more people stay Preferred, not get more people to subscribe. Preferred is not intended to be a viable alternative to subscribing.

Edited November 9, 2015 by branmakmuffin

[ALaggyGrunt]

There's only one game where I put up with that.

 

This is it.

 

You haven't seen anything yet. Just wait until it dies properly-this year, five, 10 years from now, and then it's bricked.

[Damask_Rose]

I could see them adding tiers of preferred. Right now you get quite a bit for $5. Wouldn't be bad if they gave a little more for $50, and then a little more for $500.

[xxNurkxx]

You can actually play world of warcraft without spending real money now, yes, because you can buy monthly subscriptions with in-game currency much like Eve Online.

 

This point is pretty moot considering someone, somewhere is still paying your subscription to enable you access to content. Swtor allows access to content for free in the form of one can continue playing even if this sub drops, WoW does not allow this.

 

To the OP, I agree the credit cap is silly but on the flip-side of the coin I think it was put in place to help more then harm. Granted it's not done the job very well but the intent of it was to slow down the credit farmers/sellers. This is all my opinion though but I would 100% back up the idea of removing credit caps and for goodness sake let people hide their helmets

[DomiSotto]

What bothers me is not that credit limit, it is the restriction on the unranked warzones. I understand that premium content, the Operations and Ranked PvP is reserved for the subs, but why bar the regs? It's not like they give any fancy rewards. You can even bypass it by grouping up with someone. Why not outright just remove the restriction?

[TurtlesAWD]

Easing Preferred restrictions would make more people stay Preferred, not get more people to subscribe. Preferred is not intended to be a viable alternative to subscribing.

 

Unless at preferred status they still feel like spending 10-15 dollars a month on the game, in which case...

[Quraswren]

I mean things that on the big scheme would make no great difference to BW, but would mean the world to former subs, such as the ridiculous credit cap. I don't want preferred status to be put on par with subs, my beef with it is that it's virtually no different than F2P.

 

Sorry but your unwillingness or inability to pay for a sub doesn't mean you should get more "free" so that it's more acceptable to you as you continue to pay nothing and still want more.

 

If you need to see the differences you can look here. There are a few more than you seem to think there are even if just slightly changed there pretty nice VS straight F2P.

 

http://www.swtor.com/free/features

[JouerTue]

among all the f2p/ps restrictions, the credit cap is the most annoying but also the most important. limited gameplay for no price is fair though.

you can earn 350k in one day, buy weekly passes for what you like to do ingame, be it fp, wz or ops, but it's right it feels crippled because we pay for the whole experience.

[Brodoin]

I think the credit cap needs an unlock or at least an increase.

 

Gold spammers will always be there, and while caps help weed out some the more "hardcore" sellers will simply subscribe to a main account and use a bunch of throwaway accounts. It really wouldn't change much if they offered a credit cap increase token or something.

[Brodoin]

among all the f2p/ps restrictions, the credit cap is the most annoying but also the most important. limited gameplay for no price is fair though.

you can earn 350k in one day, buy weekly passes for what you like to do ingame, be it fp, wz or ops, but it's right it feels crippled because we pay for the whole experience.

 

The way I see it they should offer an unlock or cap increase tokens on the CM. Then BW would be getting money on CM tokens while players who choose to can continue to play free while having more credits in-game.