City of Heroes going F2P with Issue 21

[Kageru]

I think there is no difference from the games point of view between a tell and a reply tell. But I agree those changes would be good.

Was playing this with some friends as part of a game day. Story arcs still have a wonderful potential to get people "out of sync" in completion which is annoying, but the game is still quite fun in groups and the server was nice and busy. If they do a "slow burn" version of f2p, where it's more a sideline than a main goal, it should work okay.

[SurfD]

So, I just discovered that you can purchase a 30 day Invention Licence directly from the Merit Vendors in game for 150 merits.   Run a few task forces, you are good to go for the month.  Now to decide if it is worth it to craft low / mid level IO's for achieves or just wait till i hit 50 and grind away.

[Lantyssa]

Huh.  I've been banking merits like mad.  That's very nice to know.

[koro]

Wow, that's... probably enough to get me to play again, yeah.

[Numtini]

Just got an email, to show their dedication to the F2P model, the next issue has been announced and will only be for subscribers.

[Kageru]

They'd made it pretty clear from the start it was a hybrid model, with subscribers getting new and end-game content either first or only. It launched f2p with subscriber exclusive content.

And that was probably the right call. They're not flashy and fast to get into enough that they would have done better on pure f2p. They need to protect the existing subscriber base.

[UnSub]

The existing subscriber base has been dropping steadily for years though.

[Kageru]

Sure, it's an ancient game, and for much of its life was starved of resources. But that's the same reason that going f2p isn't going to set the world on fire and they couldn't rely on it. So they tried for a system where people who have bought into the game subscribe but there can still be casual play or people exploring the game. Pretty similar to what EQ2 did I think, and for the same reasons.