Here's a bit of insight from someone who has been and still is subscribed to CoX:
AE Farming: It's annoying, yes, but it doesn't stop you from getting other content done. There are still tons of Task Forces started, especially due to Weekly TFs. And I found something interesting as I sat around tired of waiting for a sewer team to start....I shouted that I was making one and seconds later the team was full and I had to turn people away. Imagine that? Stop waiting on people and stop being afraid to start a group and you'll be surprised how many people will jump at the chance to experience the content with you. Furthermore, in order to get in on an AE farm it will usually run people 5-30mill per run and most people can't afford that or don't want to spend the money. Yes, people charge for you to participate in their farm. Thus why it doesn't happen nearly as much as people like to think.
Spammers: Spammers and gold sellers already existed in the game and still do. I still log into the game after taking a month off and end up having to throw out hundreds of ingame mail from gold sellers. They're in all games, get over it. You're not going to get anymore spammers than you already had and only people who pay can use global chat to begin with. They're annoying, but this has never been the reason I stopped enjoying a game. /ignore them and move on.
Trials: Absolutely right, it gets boring after a while, but this isn't 'end-game' and I don't know why that's what it's considered. End-game has existed as content in CoX long before the Incarnate Trials existed, that's a very recent addition to a game that's existed for like 7+ years at this point. New trials are already being worked on, and more will continue to be added to the game. It's a new feature, takes time to develop, and we only have half of the available incarnate powers unlockable at this point, so there's plenty more planned in the future. It only really gets boring when you try to get it on multiple characters, which is why I recommend you don't. You don't need it. The game's content existed long before Incarnate powers, and so it's made without those powers in mind. In fact, Incarnate Powers make an already easy game almost ridiculously so. My Fortunata with full Tier 4 incarnate powers can solo Archvillains/Heroes thanks to -regen passive that applies to all his powers (Interface), Seers spamming Fortitude on him (Lore), -recharge on all powers (Alpha), and a barrier (Destiny) that raises his already ridiculously high defenses to around 180% across the board. That's without help from other classes that come with their own party buffs. Get the powers on a character you love, your main, let him/her be the 'uber' character, and just focus on having fun with the rest of them. Min/maxing on tons of toons would get boring no matter what variety of content is available.
Population: Population is low on all but the main servers (Triumph and Freedom) because well...those are the main servers and thus where everyone chooses to hang out. I'm guessing the only reason they haven't condensed is because they knew this move to F2P was happening loooooong before we did and wanted to give the population a chance to spread out. Because only paying people will get priority, that means Freedom and Triumph (which are almost always in the Red, meaning Full, in the evenings and on weekends) probably wont support many if any free players. Those players will end up on the other servers, which will be like breathing life into them. For now, its difficult unless you're on the main two servers and if you are, there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't find people to play with. Unless you're a Villain...there don't seem to be many people that play villains, don't ask me why. Plenty of heroes and praetorians, villains not so much. Fortunately you can easily solo content by lowering the difficulty, level to 20 and then do the morality mission to become a Rogue, which gives you access to both heroes and villains areas.
It's a good game, and still the best hero MMO available. I always go back to it eventually, and I'm not sure why. I feel like Champions ~should~ be better, but while not a bad game, it's just not as good (though it is much prettier). And DCUO...lol...
42 months-vet here. I'm currently not sub'd (stopped Nov 2010) but would give "CoH Freedom" a try ofc.
I'm curious about the Invention enhancements being *purchasable* for *Play For Free* players.
To me it looks like a vanilla F2P player without Inventions only has standard enhancements at their disposal.
Meaning, I'd be at a post-ED, pre-Inventions stage. I'd call that the dark age of CoH when it comes to character/power performance. IIRC the time of issue 5-8
However my 11 Lv 50 heroes all have invention IOs slotted (and most non 50's too).
Anyone knows the details what will happen to them if I decide to unfreeze 2 of my (purple IO) 50's as a F2P player?
42 months-vet here. I'm currently not sub'd (stopped Nov 2010) but would give "CoH Freedom" a try ofc.
I'm curious about the Invention enhancements being *purchasable* for *Play For Free* players.
To me it looks like a vanilla F2P player without Inventions only has standard enhancements at their disposal.
Meaning, I'd be at a post-ED, pre-Inventions stage. I'd call that the dark age of CoH when it comes to character/power performance. IIRC the time of issue 5-8
However my 11 Lv 50 heroes all have invention IOs slotted (and most non 50's too).
Anyone knows the details what will happen to them if I decide to unfreeze 2 of my (purple IO) 50's as a F2P player?
With that many months vet rewards under your belt i'm sure you remember the game re IO's. Those were the most fun times i had in the game (nothing to do with enh, just the people and the game) and we were powerful enough, i'm sure the F2P players will enjoy it just as much.
However my 11 Lv 50 heroes all have invention IOs slotted (and most non 50's too).
Anyone knows the details what will happen to them if I decide to unfreeze 2 of my (purple IO) 50's as a F2P player?
From what the devs have stated so far: nothing. They simply sit there inaccessible and unplayable until you resubscribe or gain additional character tokens to unlock them with.
How (or if) you get additional tokens and such details of the Paragon Rewards Points are still under wraps and likely won't be finalized until August.
edit: You might be interested in picking up Going Rogue during the Steam holiday sale to get an additional 2 character slots for when Freedom hits. (and/or respec/gut characters you don't plan to play with the account changes and character limitations with Premium).
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
However I'm not sure about Invention enhancements.
I've pretty much min/max'd them with all the shiny IOs (but not too many PvP IOs) hence my interest in the Incarnate stuff.
Will they work without any further payment?
ALL incarnate content and powers are locked without a subscription. If you already have access to them and revert to Premium from VIP, your powers will be grayed out and nonfunctional.
IO's are as of yet unclear what's going on.
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
I'll be watching this closely, I have lots of characters on the Freedom server and since F2P will let you play 2 characters I'll have to pick and choose wisely. I have a scrapper (MA/invuln) that's worth over 3 billion inf in IOs and is a sick beast, and there's a stalker I really like playing but I also have a dominator that gets the job done. Since I'm a long time player since 2005, I think I shouldn't have a problem getting the premium.
I'll be watching this closely, I have lots of characters on the Freedom server and since F2P will let you play 2 characters I'll have to pick and choose wisely. I have a scrapper (MA/invuln) that's worth over 3 billion inf in IOs and is a sick beast, and there's a stalker I really like playing but I also have a dominator that gets the job done. Since I'm a long time player since 2005, I think I shouldn't have a problem getting the premium.
Just to correct you slightly, you would be classified as a "Premium" player because at some point you were a subscriber. That means you get your base 2 character plus any slots you acquired from veteran rewards (you get +1 for each year as a vet) plus any you purchased outright plus 2 slots if you bought GR before COH goes to the Freedom model.
Originally posted by therain93 Originally posted by sookster54 I'll be watching this closely, I have lots of characters on the Freedom server and since F2P will let you play 2 characters I'll have to pick and choose wisely. I have a scrapper (MA/invuln) that's worth over 3 billion inf in IOs and is a sick beast, and there's a stalker I really like playing but I also have a dominator that gets the job done. Since I'm a long time player since 2005, I think I shouldn't have a problem getting the premium.
Just to correct you slightly, you would be classified as a "Premium" player because at some point you were a subscriber. That means you get your base 2 character plus any slots you acquired from veteran rewards (you get +1 for each year as a vet) plus any you purchased outright plus 2 slots if you bought GR before COH goes to the Freedom model. So how many will I have that I'm a 6+ year vet and I also have GR? I don't think I have ever bought additional slots.
I'll be watching this closely, I have lots of characters on the Freedom server and since F2P will let you play 2 characters I'll have to pick and choose wisely. I have a scrapper (MA/invuln) that's worth over 3 billion inf in IOs and is a sick beast, and there's a stalker I really like playing but I also have a dominator that gets the job done. Since I'm a long time player since 2005, I think I shouldn't have a problem getting the premium.
Just to correct you slightly, you would be classified as a "Premium" player because at some point you were a subscriber. That means you get your base 2 character plus any slots you acquired from veteran rewards (you get +1 for each year as a vet) plus any you purchased outright plus 2 slots if you bought GR before COH goes to the Freedom model.
So how many will I have that I'm a 6+ year vet and I also have GR? I don't think I have ever bought additional slots.
2 slots for premium +
2 slots for GR +
6 slots for annual vet rewards (12 month, 24, 36, 48, 60, and 72) =
Comments
Nice overview
Going to try this out when it goes F2P, i actually liked this game a lot. I just got tired of it after a while.
It's been a while though and i'm going to most certainly try it again. Will give me something to do for the next couple of months.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
42 months-vet here. I'm currently not sub'd (stopped Nov 2010) but would give "CoH Freedom" a try ofc.
I'm curious about the Invention enhancements being *purchasable* for *Play For Free* players.
To me it looks like a vanilla F2P player without Inventions only has standard enhancements at their disposal.
Meaning, I'd be at a post-ED, pre-Inventions stage. I'd call that the dark age of CoH when it comes to character/power performance. IIRC the time of issue 5-8
However my 11 Lv 50 heroes all have invention IOs slotted (and most non 50's too).
Anyone knows the details what will happen to them if I decide to unfreeze 2 of my (purple IO) 50's as a F2P player?
With that many months vet rewards under your belt i'm sure you remember the game re IO's. Those were the most fun times i had in the game (nothing to do with enh, just the people and the game) and we were powerful enough, i'm sure the F2P players will enjoy it just as much.
From what the devs have stated so far: nothing. They simply sit there inaccessible and unplayable until you resubscribe or gain additional character tokens to unlock them with.
How (or if) you get additional tokens and such details of the Paragon Rewards Points are still under wraps and likely won't be finalized until August.
edit: You might be interested in picking up Going Rogue during the Steam holiday sale to get an additional 2 character slots for when Freedom hits. (and/or respec/gut characters you don't plan to play with the account changes and character limitations with Premium).
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
I bought GR when it came out last year and then played it to death like all the other content back then.
GR and free character slots from vet rewards and another 5 slots I purchased should be enough to get the toons unlocked I'd like to incarnate.
However I'm not sure about Invention enhancements.
I've pretty much min/max'd them with all the shiny IOs (but not too many PvP IOs) hence my interest in the Incarnate stuff.
Will they work without any further payment?
Oh well, going to try it out no matter what
Any no, I didn't enjoy ED at all! lol
It was the first time that I've stopped subbing for a year or such.
ALL incarnate content and powers are locked without a subscription. If you already have access to them and revert to Premium from VIP, your powers will be grayed out and nonfunctional.
IO's are as of yet unclear what's going on.
Remember, it has to be fun to be a game. Grinding is a bedroom activity, and the point is definitely not to do my wife as fast as possible.
I'll be watching this closely, I have lots of characters on the Freedom server and since F2P will let you play 2 characters I'll have to pick and choose wisely. I have a scrapper (MA/invuln) that's worth over 3 billion inf in IOs and is a sick beast, and there's a stalker I really like playing but I also have a dominator that gets the job done. Since I'm a long time player since 2005, I think I shouldn't have a problem getting the premium.
Just to correct you slightly, you would be classified as a "Premium" player because at some point you were a subscriber. That means you get your base 2 character plus any slots you acquired from veteran rewards (you get +1 for each year as a vet) plus any you purchased outright plus 2 slots if you bought GR before COH goes to the Freedom model.
So how many will I have that I'm a 6+ year vet and I also have GR? I don't think I have ever bought additional slots.
2 slots for premium +
2 slots for GR +
6 slots for annual vet rewards (12 month, 24, 36, 48, 60, and 72) =
-------------------------------
10 global slots available
This post here also explains it: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3706712#post3706712