This week, there's been an announcement of pricing options for the various cash shop items (Cartel) and microtransactions that are going to be offered with the Free-2-Play re-release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I was reading and then came upon this gem:
"Packs of the premium "Cartel Coins" start at $5 for 450, according to a phone meeting with Senior Producer Blaine Christine earlier this week, and increase in price up to $40 for the best deal. Want an extra quickslot bar? That'll be 250 coins for one character or 540 for the whole account. Want to access the guild bank, or your own ship's cargo hold? That'll be 600 and 425 coins, respectively. Further restrictions for free-to-play characters extend to chat and the ability to hide your headgear, and you can't even wear artifact gear unless you plunk out 1,200 cartel coins.
Emphasis mine. Ok... what. the. fuck. PAYING to hide headgear ? It's an option on the interface ! It's already there ! I can understand when they ask for money to pay for devs time building content or making appearance gear, these things take time and they need to pay their employees, but this ? Seriously ? You will not have the option to hide your headgear unless you pay ? Like, it'll be grayed out ?
I can totally see how they came up with this. I mean, it's EA. Some senior exec or something, someone who never played games in their lives, went to the database dude and said "Yo, what's the most selected option on the interface ?" and the DB manager probably answered the truth while saying "Uhh.. you don't wanna do this" and the exec said "Shut up, we run things around here".
Well... this probably single-handedly killed my interest in trying it out again. I had some thoughts about coming back with the F2P option, to check things out and maybe resub because the game was good in my opinion. I quit because like most people, I had finished my character's story and didn't feel like paying a sub to do it all over again on alts, since the zones are all the same.
I know, previous subscribers have some kind of "Preferred" status or something, and we probably won't have to pay to hide our headgear. I HOPE SO. But, this kind of dirty monetization still stops me from wanting to support them. And we all know how "free" these F2P games are. If I don't pay anything, I won't be enjoying my time much.
We'll see what happens but so far, I don't have high hopes for the F2P future of SWTOR.
Thousands of man-hours and unholy amounts of programming and voice recording went into the making of this game, and now it's essentially free, and you decide you won't play it because...you can't hide headgear.
ReplyDeleteHey, they're providing a galaxy of free fun. Cut them just a tiny bit of slack would you?
Ummm...No...
ReplyDeleteHe's not saying he won't play because he can't hide his headgear..
He's saying (like MANY of us) that he won't play because of what having to pay to hide headgear shows about the mindset of the company...
This is yet another example of a company that's grown far too large to do it's job correctly. While it's rarely (Dwarf Fortress) COMPLETELY about making a game people love to play, that should be the prime focus of a good game-making company. However, as all adults are far to aware, EA is not about making a game for people to play; EA is about making a game for people to spend money on. EA wants profit and nothing more. They have proven this time and time again by ruining great games or ideas for games by trying to monetize things which should never be monetized, trying to condense 100 hour stories into 30 hour games, virtually forcing players to pay in order to be even SEMI competitive, taking the writers' ideas and mutilating them, etc., etc.
Until we as gamers stand up to companies such as EA and stop throwing our money at them for silliness (did I read you'll have to PAY to use the storage on the ship you already paid for [in play-time]???) they will continue to push the line between acceptable commercialism of creative entertainment (i.e. video games) and creative entertainment designed solely as a creative outlet for the creator which happens to fill many people with great happiness (again I point to the game Dwarf Fortress for it is a shining example of artwork in gaming) Video Games can be works of art, however, if we as gamers do not stand up to the large companies, they will turn video games into yet another type of art mass produced to the point of grotesqueness by people so full of greed that they destroy their very own product in the long run in order to eek out a few more bucks in the short run...
Sorry for the rant, but this whole, "I'll sell x to them because what good is the free product without x." mentality really gets under my skin and far too many of us are allowing it to perpetuate. If we aren't careful, in a decade or so we'll have to pay for the ability to level up past lv 10 in games like Skyrim.
"Congratulations! You have earned enough experience to attain rank 2. Please enter your PayPal account information so that your payment of $ 0.50 per level can be processed."
Thank you Zanaraxtarus, that is exactly it :) I agree so much with everything you said, it is basically why I started this blog, hence the name.
Deleteyour right Zanaraxtarus, this is totally outraguos! i spend over 5 hours a day playing video games but do they do? make you spend money to gain stuff which should be buyed using in-game money which is EASY to get. i 100% agree with you Zanaraxtarus.
ReplyDeleteNext step in IAP, pay to enable sound!
ReplyDeletei bought the game in jan and stop paying last month i logged on today to find out that i have the same rights as a person that never bought the game or subscription time. ea are greedy they could of made a slight difference from new free 2 play players and people that already spent money on the game.
ReplyDeleteSame annoyance here...
ReplyDeleteCant craft since Im restricted to one skill... (moderately annoyed)
Cant equip purple items... (ok Im pissed and time to uninstall)
..Watches as SWTOR becomes another STO and fades away..
Hey at least STO got free to play right.
ReplyDeletehi i love swtor but i never try it because my pc can not hold the game it mke my pc so slow that i would be waiting for about to 2 months just to get it on my pc i hope ea make it all free but know them they will never do it because they want all the money from there ppl that play this and i wish that x-box 360 made this game on it x-box or PS to have made this game this it would have be the best game ever made like ff7 is still one of the most wanted game in the world and it was for the ps1 and game make should not want to try and make more money then what they get when it come out
ReplyDeleteit is gay that EA is wanting money when it should be about make the star war fan happy that it out and stuff but no they are so greed and stuff that one of my thing with EA i love star wars but do not have the money or the right PC to play this game i hope it come out a like the x-box 360 someday :(
DeleteThis post is dumb, it's all about choices... I played F2P till level 10 just to try it out, and tell you what, I got impressed on how well developed and polished it is, Everquest & WoW (the two biggest names in MMORPG) were not as good as how this game is right now (during their first year of launch). Bioware/EA gave me a chance to fully try out this fantastic MMO so rich with detail and set in the Starwars universe before I felt the need to commit. The F2P community is currently thriving, and there is just something about MMOs that you enjoy which I can't seem to get from single-player RPGs. With the lush virtual world and the obvious production value put into this game, I felt that spending $40 to get points is well worth it... being a very casual player, I don't think a subscription is appropriate for me. 5500 cartel points should be enough to get me going for a year =).
ReplyDeleteI spent $40+ on Diablo3 and that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Some of you freeloaders are naive, nothing is really for free in this world. If you want to play something nice, you gotta pay. You all will learn that as you grow up and get a job.
ReplyDeleteLook it all boils down to this, SWTOR is an example of what not to do with a FTP game(charging for things that should be a part of the game no matter what and are basically just options in the game interface, skill bars, headgear shown or hidden,inventory slots,creatable characters,using all of your trade skills, leveling up at a proper rate) I could excuse some of these horrendous blunders in a FTP market if there was an option to unlock these things over time by playing the game, like you would is say I don't know, whats a good example of a good free to play game? hmmm gee I don't know maybe GW2, or League of Legends. I bet you can't guess what games are more successful than SWTOR..... R.I.P. SWTOR as this has killed your game even further and lost many fans who respected BIOWARE, fail all around.
ReplyDelete@Anon with the comment starting with "This post is dumb", no it's not. I understand you, I know you're experiencing SWTOR for the first time and you're actually experiencing what we all felt when it was released, and we paid the full box price. But today, we feel different, you know ? The WOW factor you're having, we've had that last December. We know the game already, we've played it to level cap. So the WOW factor has nothing on us. All we have is restrictions on stuff we ALREADY paid for, like the UI. I'm all for companies selling content, but don't restrict us on UI and stuff we believe we've already paid for when we bought the game at full retail price.
ReplyDelete@Anon with the comment starting with "Some of you freeloaders", well see that's the thing. I'm 33 and I DO have a job. That is exactly why I understand the value of money, and I don't expect to have everything for free but if I already paid the retail price for your product, I kinda yes, feel entitled to at least have the full UI and mechanics. Sell me content, do it like LOTRO or something, but don't suddenly grey out options I already paid for by purchasing the box.
ReplyDelete@Anon with the comment starting with "Look it all boils down to this", YOU. You get it.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the original subscribers have a SOLID point - They already paid for the hat, purple items, and access to their storage. Very SOLID.
ReplyDeleteNew Subscribers have to pay for the service by cartel credits - understood.
The fact is that LOYALTY is undermined when you look at the new payment arrangements. My nose would be bent out of shape if I had been playing for a year. That's $300 spent with nothing to show for it.
I never paid to play a game until Diablo 3. You pretty much have to buy your gear to be competitive. Yep - almost $240 spent in 3 months lol(game and gear). But I work 50 hours a week and only play 2 hours a day.
Gaming is spendy. It is a money game now. I don't think that any gaming companies can put LOYALTY in the bank. Everyone caves in to GREED.
Its a truely small minded and infantile mind set that writes comments such as the one that started this thread. As stated by the Anonymous December 11, 2012 at 4:57pm person, the subscribers have PAID there way. Why should free to play option give the same level of content. Plus, to think like that also shows that you have never lived in the real world. Nothing is free!
ReplyDeleteBioware has created an immersive game with many different facets. If you choose not to play because you can't hide your head gear, however you dress that up its still petty. You loose out, now let the rest of us enjoy what we are paying for and you can more onto something else to complain and bitch about.