Some Answers to Questions I Had Regarding F2P, Old Characters, Etc.

Darkholme

So I decided that I would try out the Champions Online "Free For All" for myself. I played in the beta for several months, and I also played during the free anniversary event. I had about 8 characters made ranging from level 5 to level 25 or so.

First off the F2P downloader. It is basically a torrent, and a really buggy and poorly made one. I tried for several days to get it to work. It hogged bandwidth to the point where I could barely surf the internet, yet it still downloaded excruciatingly slowly. After a few days of trying I finally scrapped the F2P downloader and used a direct download from one of the other download sites that are listed here: http://www.champions-online.com/download ... It took less than an hour to download and patch the game at that point.

I of course was curious what happened to my old characters. According to everything on the Cryptic site and my account information there were no characters. However when I logged into my account all my old characters from beta and beyond were there. Of course they are all free form characters, so I could not use them on a F2P account unless I converted them to one of the F2P archetypes (http://www.champions-online.com/node/595113). Also you are lmited to 2 character slots so I could not obviously activate all of my old characters. I ended up deleting all but my highest level, and converted it to F2P. A quick and painless process atm, that just makes you choose which archetype you want to convert to. 

As for F2P there doesn't seem to be any content limitations aside from a couple of expansion content patches worth that you can buy. Note that at least the early content progression has changed a bit even since the anniversary. You go directly to Millenium City after the tutorial area iinstead of getting the choice between Canada and the Desert. Those areas still exist however, though I am not sure how and when you gain access to them.

The power limitations are in fact annoying, although you do get a decent variety, but of course you can only acquire powers that are in your specific archetype (It looks like they are all in the same Power Set). There are only a few points during character progression where you have any actual power choices at all.  You can however choose your talents, upgrades and travel powers as you level. You are limited to Flight, Super Speed, Super Jump, Acrobatics and Teleportation. The others you can purchase however. You also cannot change the hue of your colors, nor can you buy the ability to.

Things to note about the Cryptic Store. Things like Travel Powers and archetypes are unlocked for all current and future characters. Things like buying inventory bag slots and bank slots are on a character by character basis and will disappear if you delete your character afaik.

In my opinion the prices are too high even at the 20% off they are at now. To get all three more inventory bag slots alone costs around $6 worth of Atari Points per character. Archetypes are about $8.25, but the upside for things like that is they are account wide. Honestly I would like to see things like the ability to buy a free form character slot and power rehuing on a character slot by character slot basis

As for the game itself, it hasn't really changed fundamentally since launch. Yes, bug fixes, nerfs, tweaks, more content, etc have been done, but the core gameplay is the same. Is it worth playing? That is totally subjective, and noone can answer that for you but you. The only thing that you have to lose by trying it out for yourself at this point is a few hours of your time, so I would suggest giving it a go if you think that you might be interested.

Darkholme

Oh another thing that I was anoyed at was that some of the costume choices are part of a larger whole now that has to be purchased as a set. It would be nice if you could just buy individual pieces on the fly as you are customizing your characters costume either during creation or when editing an old costume or creating a new costume. There are a number of single pieces that i liked but would probabyl never use any of the other pieces in the set...

I'll probably have more to complain about later. 8)

Tinea

My biggest complaint with CO f2p is that I feel they missed out on keeping returning players happy (subscribed in the past but not a current subscriber).  No, I am not asking for free access to freeform power selection.  I am asking for more archtypes so that I can find something that fits the characters I've created.

For example, I have a character that is mainly force with a few other non-force powers.  I'd be willing to dump the non-force powers if they had a force archtype available.  Since I've created my characters look, name, and even story based on him having force powers, I feel like I'd be destroying him if I took something like ice or fire.

Make me choose an archtype that picks the force powers for me, but at least give me a force archtype option -- even if it is a premium archtype that I have to purchase.  Having no option that fits my characters makes me not want to play.

As for the "then subscribe" responses: I don't want to.  The game isn't deep enough for me to spend money monthy on it.  That doesn't mean I won't buy from the store once in a while.  That's what f2p is supposed to be, it entices people to play and either gets them to subscribe, or if they don't want to subscribe, may at least get them to make some store purchases.  I'd like to mess around and play my old characters, but I'm not giving them $15 a month for that.

Then there's the "just create a new account or make new characters" comment.  I don't want to start over again.  CO's starting areas might have a few changes but I've been through them many times.  I don't want to start over.  I've made characters that I like, I don't want to create more.

I fee that if CO had more archtype options, even if they were premium/gold, they'd make more money off returning players.  F2P is great for people that never played CO before, but its not as enticing for someone returning to the game.

And finally the "then don't play" comment.  Sigh.  I guess I won't, at least until an archtype that fits my favorite characters is created.

I can't post in CO's forum since I'm not subscribing; maybe someone that subscribes can pass this along if you agree with me   I know CO is probably working on more archtypes, but its better to have them out sooner than later, before the CO f2p hypes wears off.

Darkholme

Originally posted by Tinea

Then there's the "just create a new account or make new characters" comment.  I don't want to start over again.  CO's starting areas might have a few changes but I've been through them many times.  I don't want to start over.  I've made characters that I like, I don't want to create more.

I've had a bit more time to explore and stuff. The early game is pretty much exactly the same except that the mission progression brings you to Millenium City after the tutorial area instead of the Desert or Canada. As far as I could tell the missions themselves are pretty much identical to how they were in open beta other than that little linear progression change.

Also I totally agree with the thought about old players coming back for the F2P not being able to use their old characters. I understand them not wanting to allow free form for free, but at least offer the option to buy all the archetypes so that you can get one that fits your old character. Hell going into the game fresh you might have a character concept based on one of the archetypes that aren't available for F2P, which will probably make many people not want ot bother with the game at all.

It just seems counter-intuitive to me that a game that's main schtick is it's superior customizability hamstrings that customizability for F2P players, by not even making all those options purchasable a la carte... I know it's just Cryptic being short-sighted and greedy but it's a shame because I think it's not going to be as successful as they expect because of that and they are then going to assume it's because the "Freemium" model doesn't work... When in fact it's because they didn't execute it correctly.

gandales

My guessing is that they don't want to release all ATs at once, some balancing and testing is probably needed. Force will make a nice AT, especially since the framework was revamped in the f2p patch. The next AT to be release are the void which is the darkness based, and the devastator which is based on the to be released framework about heavy swords.