Not so good news about F2P

[Zetor]

I didn't roll with Vik simply because he's a tank, and I'm a BETTER tank, dammit. Even if I was a healer I'd go with Mr. Roboto, because... well, yeah. 

[Lantyssa]

Skadge is airlock fodder.

[Sjofn]

I didn't roll with Vik simply because he's a tank, and I'm a BETTER tank, dammit. Even if I was a healer I'd go with Mr. Roboto, because... well, yeah. 

My healing trooper stuck with Forex until things started dying unbearably slowly, then it was me + Aric or me + Yuun, depending on if I wanted a crabby bastard or a hippie with me.  Ingmar used Vik a bit in our trooper/smuggler duo. He can be funny sometimes! But Patriotic Robot is pretty much the best. <3

[Ingmar]

Vik has some great moments, yeah. You'll never see 4X slapping the crap out of a prisoner on Belsavis.

[Rokal]

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/22092-cartel-market-items-unlocks-and-more

Pay to unlock extra action bars.   You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

More gems:

Want to display titles? 100 CC
Want to hide your head slot? 250 CC
Want to use unify colors? 350 CC

[koro]

Jesus wept, that gear is expensive. Don't subbers only get like a 250 coin stipend per month?

An exclusive sample of the finest goods from the Cartel. Each Pack contains very rare bonus items found nowhere else! Two rare bonus items with a chance of a Super Rare!

GOD.

DAMN.

IT.

I hate this gamble box shit. I hate it in TF2, I hated it in STO, I hated it in Champions, and it's just as godawfully terrible in ME3.

[Rokal]

Apparently it's 500, which means you can probably expect 100 CC to be $1.

This also means that Flashpoint and Warzone unlocks cost ~$2.40 a week each. If you decide to play the game as a free player with just those two unlocks, you will be paying more per month than a subscriber.

EA has learned that people don't want a monthly subscription, but thinks they will be perfectly fine with a weekly subscription.

[Ingmar]

"A minimum" of 500 coins/month for subscribers, not sure what that weird bit of extra language means.

[koro]

Holy Moses.

Things you have to pay to unlock:

Color matching
Title display
Hide head slot
Display legacy name
Extra quickbars (this alone incenses me, even though it doesn't affect me)
Companion customization slots
The ability to even equip event-related gear

This is ludicrous.

[Ingmar]

Almost all of that stuff is entirely cosmetic. They have to charge the F2P people for something.

Quickbars and purple gear are the only things there that matter from a gameplay perspective.

[Raguel]

Just the fact that "hide head slot" is on the list is funny enough but it looks fairly expensive as well. Just how fugly does  EA/Bioware think head gear is? 

[Fordel]

Selling quickbars is going to make them so much cash. I can't imagine playing this game with the default bar alone.

[Ingmar]

Better/more readable summary:

http://dulfy.net/2012/10/23/swtor-cartel-market-items/

Some interesting things in the associated patch notes as well:

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/22091-pts-patch-notes-1-5-10-23-12

Subscribers are getting 2 more quick bars, which means that the 'oh god have to pay for quick bars' thing may not be as bad as people think. I don't think we know how many you start with as a F2Per.

[koro]

If the current Dulfy descriptions are final, it looks like they're nerfing the Legacy Speeder perk for subscribers come F2P. Currently rank 1 requires character level 10 to buy (allowing you to use a speeder on huge-ass Coruscant and Dromund Kaas), but come F2P it's being increased to 15 so that the coin-buyable version is level 10 instead.

That's kind of grating.

[Ingmar]

Per the patch notes:

Subscribers may now access speeders at level 15.

Meaning, without a legacy unlock. The legacy unlock stays at 10 with or without coin use.

There are a bunch of things in the patch notes that are improvements for subscribers.

[koro]

Ah, I missed that part of the notes. That's not so bad then.

[Raguel]

25 is way too long to go w/o a speeder imo. This game already features THE.WORST.TRAVEL.SYSTEM.EVER. (well maybe not that bad; I just really hate the orbital stations; cool from an RP standpoint but dumb from a game mechanic view)

[Zetor]

Uhh... how do you sell a client-side feature like hotbars anyway? This may just result in client-side modifications that bypass the limitation (unless the game sends "player used ability #2 on bar #4" to the server instead of "player used ability X") And yeah, playing with a single hotbar is impossible above level 10-ish. Three is an absolute bare minimum, but four is a necessity for more complex classes and/or pvp.

Anyway, after reading through all that I found that as a non-subscriber who has previously bought the game ('preferred status'):
- I can level my alts from 1 to 50 without issues, though I WILL have to redo planet quests with the WZ/FP limitations.
- If I want to do WZs/FPs/raids, I need to sub... the licenses are too expensive (if Rokal's assumptions are correct, anyway).
- I will ignore the pay-to-win gear as I did in LOTRO, COH, etc. It is a worrying trend in F2P games (especially compared to GW2's cash shop), but I don't have a huge issue with it until they sell endgame gear that is on par or better than high-quality raid or pvp gear. Only thing I see there is the i56 artifact-quality color crystal usable at level 10...
- I need to spend $ for the one-time- unlocks necessary for gameplay: periodic event gear, artifact gear, 10 GTN slots, at least 3 quickbars, 2 crew skills for 3090 (+250/quickbar). I may skimp on gbank (600), a second bank slot (475), title display (100). Speaking of which, what will happen to stuff in my second bank slot?
- Not sure how inventory unlocks work and how they interact with existing (for-credit) upgrades? Also, are they per character or global?
- I'll ignore the legacy unlocks; I haven't played since they were introduced, so I won't miss them. I assume this means you need to sub or pay to access the legacy system (other than the name)?
- I'm surprised to see only one zone unlock (section X at 600), but I think I vastly prefer it to LOTRO's "ok, now buy all the zones you thought were a part of the base game" approach.
- I will also ignore boosters, cosmetic stuff (this includes color matching etc), emotes and weapon skins. I think these are completely fine for a F2P title's cash shop.

Correct me if I got anything wrong!


e: according to the account page, I start with 150 coins as a past subscriber (I played from dec until feb, which is 1mo of sub and the free month), which means I'll have to buy 2940 coins to get the essential stuff.

[Ingmar]

The only thing I'd add is that there's not really any pay2win gear ... mostly. The crystals you can get out of the random pack things seem to be max value at level 10 so they probably qualify if you get your hands on one, and maybe the level 50 relics would be considered decent. The gear sets ARE cosmetic gear, they just come with mods in them to not be totally lame. You should be up to your ears in usable gear without needing level 31 adaptive gear.

[koro]

So the test server was flipped to "Free" mode, and everyone there was considered a freebie.

You get a single action bar for free.

One.

To my knowledge there is not a single class in the game that can fit even their basic core abilities onto 12 buttons.

[Ingmar]

This strikes me as the sort of thing that will have to get changed via feedback yeah.

[koro]

Oh, also, all vendor prices are increased (for both credit-accepting vendors and commendation-accepting vendors) by 25% for F2P players.

And Bioware's nixed the one crew skill that F2P players could actually make use of with their single free slot:

Crew skill that returns lockboxes do not return lockboxes. Instead, players are asked to subscribe to get full rewards.

[proudft]

Man, this is like a parody at this point.

[koro]

Also, and take this with a grain of salt, but apparently some datamining of 1.5 on the PTR's been done, and some stuff about Chapter 4 of the storyline's been uncovered. Heavy focus on the Hutt Cartel (oh boy...) with only two overarching storylines, one for each faction (maybe with minor variations based on your class), instead of eight individual class storylines.

[Ingmar]

That part at least comes as no surprise, after the layoffs.

[apocrypha]

[Nebu]

I can't wait to PvP against keyboard turners with 1 hotbar.  Good times. 

[Zetor]

They'll only be able to play 3 WZs a week though, so it's okay.

[Nebu]

They'll only be able to play 3 WZs a week though, so it's okay.

 

[koro]

We've been observing PTS closely over the last few days. In that time, we have generally been very pleased with how well the build has been performing, as well as overall reaction to the build both on the boards and in-game. That being said, based on community and internal feedback here and further deliberation, we will in short order make the following changes to the Free to Play restrictions:
   

• Free-to-Play players will now get a second quickslot bar.
• Free-to-Play players will now be able to do 5 Warzones per week instead of 3.
• The Cartel Coin item lock (i.e. temporary bind) will be reduced to 3 days for Free-to-Play players, and 2 days for subscribers.

We've found some crucial bugs that needed stomping, which is good. These changes will make their way to you probably early next week.

There are a couple of key concepts that should be kept in mind as you review free to play changes. The first is that, to be honest, all of you are looking at a gameplay mode that you will likely never see. Subscribers who choose to cancel their account will typically revert to something that we refer to as preferred status. My fellow designer Nathan Emmott will in short order have a post up describing the ins and outs of preferred status. Originally, the second quickslot bar was part of preferred status, but this morning based on feedback here and what they were seeing in the community we decided to give it to everyone.

The second is Warzones. Perhaps the most interesting point regarding the Warzones limitation is that some players have concerns that putting limitations on Warzone runs might make Warzone queues less likely to fire. While it is possible that this may happen, we don't think it will -- our subscriber base likely will not shrink much, and for some of our competitors, converting to Free-to-Play has resulted in a subscriber increase! Which means that Warzone queues should likely see improvement from what you experience in game, and at minimum be relatively unchanged in experience.

That being said, one of our golden rules is that the Free-to-Play experience should not cheapen the experience for paying subscribers. If it turns out that the Free-to-Play conversion results in a degraded Warzone experience once we go live for subscribers, you can rest assured that we will quickly make adjustments to the system to ensure that subscribers have an optimal experience.

A second quickslot bar for everyone instead of just "Preferred" accounts and two more Warzones per week? My, aren't we generous.

[Lantyssa]

Everyone should conspire to not play warzones so they 'fix' it.

[Sjofn]

If it doesn't actually impact how fast warzones pop, there's not a need to fix it. :P I think it WILL, no conspiracy involved, but if it doesn't? Charge away!

[Ingmar]

The game is actually playable with 2 bars instead of 1, at least. You'll have to use stuff like buffs and fast travel off of the abilities menu instead of a quickbar, but I can fit just about anything I really need to hit on my 50s on 2 bars.

[Fordel]

Can you still cycle bars, or is it just 2 bars the end?

[Ingmar]

The latter I think. Pretty sure smugglers/agents still get their separate cover bar regardless.