My 2 cp.
I hate spammers and bots and troll accounts as much as anyone.
New players are the lifeblood of the game.
I have myself used free trials to evaluate if I liked a game before subscribing. In general, the trials that restricted me or limited me from actively participating in the community did not impress me - and I did not end up subscribing to those games. The trials that let me be a normal player, up until a certain level or something, those were the games I was more likely to stick with.
I think it's possible to implement protections against abuse without severely limiting what players on social accounts can and can't do. Bottom line though is that it's more important to me that Pantheon gives those real people using trial accounts a good experience, and that means allowing them to be part of the community too.
Many who have a long memory will know where I stand on the issue since I have been against free trials ever since it was brought up. The reason probably comes down to my age.
I played and subscribed to EQ the day it came out - but yes, I was in beta to begin with so perhaps not an appropriate comparison. Likewise with jumping into DAoC since I had already had EQ under my belt.
But...
Back in the day I was the same age as people will be here and in the now. Back in the day I had to burn a hole in my pocket for purchase and subscription the same as people will be burning a hole in their pocket today. Back in the day when I wanted to get a friend into the game they came over to my place and they tried out the game while I was looking over their shoulder to help them out as a short cut because, very obviously, they could read the instruction manual like I did the first time.
I am against it because I have experienced the most problems due to free trial accounts. I did not experience problems to nearly the same extent when you had to pay up front and you actually had up close and personal time with friends. I don't believe our society has changed so much that paying for something before using it is an affront to be mitigated, avoided, and downright prohibited.
I don't believe the amount of subscribers that will result because of a free trial will be significantly more than the amount of subscribers that would result in absence of a free trial. I believe it speaks volumes of a subscriber base who wants to minimize the negative experience that free trials have brought in the past. Perhaps it is possible to minimize those negative effects while still having free trials - and perhaps it isn't. If an option exists to pay to minimize the negative experience that free trials brings I will pay for my subscription as soon as possible and leave that behind.
That people can learn a lot about a game without playing it is certain - but often the small things are important.
I have rejected games because I couldn't increase the font size for important things or because the camera angle for certain races hurt my neck. One doesn't learn these things watching streams of other people playing.
I will not say anything for or against free trials - this comment is solely intended to disagree with those who say that the availability of information on-line makes them unnecessary.
Keno Monster said:Yet again we are coming up with a lot of solutions that throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's tremendous upside in having trial players in_the_world with everyone else. People will be demoing the game, period, not some separate trial server. If they make friends during their trial, that's it, they're together in that world.
I think the upside isn't worth all of the downside, but that is just me. As I said though this problem is solved by simply designating some servers as having trial access on them. That way, people can decide to play on those or not and everyone gets what they want.
Nephele said:I think it's possible to implement protections against abuse without severely limiting what players on social accounts can and can't do.
I don't think they can. I say this because I have yet to see a company offer such and not have many negatives of various forums to the customers who played with those FTP accounts. I trust that VR is capable of making a good game, I do not trust them to be able to all of a sudden solve the FTP problems in their game. I have been around this "game" too long to be fooled by such promises.
I think the only solution would be to require a linked credit card. But even then you can purchase prepaid cards with minute amounts of money on them to bypass this restriction.
If your billing system does not accept prepaid cards, well then you run the risk if potentially hurting actual paying players, since fir some reason there are still people out there with no debit/credit card.
Porygon said:I think the only solution would be to require a linked credit card. But even then you can purchase prepaid cards with minute amounts of money on them to bypass this restriction.
If your billing system does not accept prepaid cards, well then you run the risk if potentially hurting actual paying players, since fir some reason there are still people out there with no debit/credit card.
In my opinion, I think the loss of people who do not have such versus what you would lose by allowing anon (or sources that essentially allow such) pay sources is worth it. This is 2019, if someone does not have at the least an ATM card, then that is a choice and not something VR is responsible for. When WoW started allowing game cards, it only accelerated the demise of the game by the abuses it provided.
You can't have your cake and eat it, VR is going to have pick and choose, if they try to appeal to "everyone", we end up with another EA style company "Games for everyone".
I'm fine with a 'credit card' requirement as long as payment details using regular ATM cards and services from countries other than the US are supported as well.
Here in Europe a lot of people do not own a true credit card because regional payment services that only require a regular ATM card and a reader of some kind (or paypal with a bank account attached to it) are supported for almost everything and credit cards just require pointless additional expenses.
Many people see a request for a credit card or other financial information and run not walk in the other direction. All of us know that identity thefts and scams have become more and more ubiquitous and this scares people away from even very reasonable requests for information. A smaller company that they may never have heard of is more likely to produce the reaction "You promised not to actually charge me unless I subscribe. Sure I believe you!"
Of course people can get a card or other means of payment that limites their exposure to almost nothing - but how many people *will* do this just to try one of many available games. Better to move on to the next one.
So while it is a reasonable suggestion I see more woe than weal here (old dungeons and dragons reference). Even if Pantheon accepts Mordorcard (old Wizardry I reference).
New players are the lifeblood to a game like this.
A major concern of the community is that trial accounts will be used by goldspammers. At least one MMO essentially prevented goldspam by having excellent filters that just kept this out of chat. Might have been EQ2. If doable this may be a better approach. The filters were so good that as adaptable as the poop-sucking swine were they couldn't break them and chat was clean at least for years.
Kaeldorn said:I'm fine with a 'credit card' requirement as long as payment details using regular ATM cards and services from countries other than the US are supported as well.
Here in Europe a lot of people do not own a true credit card because regional payment services that only require a regular ATM card and a reader of some kind (or paypal with a bank account attached to it) are supported for almost everything and credit cards just require pointless additional expenses.
Not to sound "uncaring", but I think regional servers would go a long way to solving some of these issues (for people like me in the US). Also, it would be extra means, but VR could require a registration process of detail which would kill the entire industry of plat farmers and abusers. Question is if they want to approach that level of payment security.
Tanix said:Kaeldorn said:I'm fine with a 'credit card' requirement as long as payment details using regular ATM cards and services from countries other than the US are supported as well.
Here in Europe a lot of people do not own a true credit card because regional payment services that only require a regular ATM card and a reader of some kind (or paypal with a bank account attached to it) are supported for almost everything and credit cards just require pointless additional expenses.
Not to sound "uncaring", but I think regional servers would go a long way to solving some of these issues (for people like me in the US). Also, it would be extra means, but VR could require a registration process of detail which would kill the entire industry of plat farmers and abusers. Question is if they want to approach that level of payment security.
This is a big ol can o worms, but I agree. It would suck to not be able to play with international players. I still talk today with my EQ friends from 1999 in Austria and the Netherlands, and my wow friends from the UK and Croatia and Russia. However, if a regional requirement was enforced I think it would do wonders for the health of the game.
dorotea said:Many people see a request for a credit card or other financial information and run not walk in the other direction. All of us know that identity thefts and scams have become more and more ubiquitous and this scares people away from even very reasonable requests for information. A smaller company that they may never have heard of is more likely to produce the reaction "You promised not to actually charge me unless I subscribe. Sure I believe you!"
Of course people can get a card or other means of payment that limites their exposure to almost nothing - but how many people *will* do this just to try one of many available games. Better to move on to the next one.
So while it is a reasonable suggestion I see more woe than weal here (old dungeons and dragons reference). Even if Pantheon accepts Mordorcard (old Wizardry I reference).
New players are the lifeblood to a game like this.
A major concern of the community is that trial accounts will be used by goldspammers. At least one MMO essentially prevented goldspam by having excellent filters that just kept this out of chat. Might have been EQ2. If doable this may be a better approach. The filters were so good that as adaptable as the poop-sucking swine were they couldn't break them and chat was clean at least for years.
Sorry, I have a lot of education in security and the argument you are making doesn't pan out to anyone who knows the industry. Identity theft of an individual is easier when that individual has a limited online presence. That is, if you do not use various means of online identity and I steal your identity, I can then more easily grow your identity to benefit myself. Though if you already have a strong identity online (ie in terms of banking systems, not social media), someone can easily shut you down. For instance, you have no credit, so.. I steal your identity, then I apply for credit, I through various means increase it and create a large credit range. I then charge it up to the max, and move on. I win, you now have to explain why you have CC dept to a debtor you had no clue you had and this is possible because you are absent in the entire industry of the system. If you had been present and monitoring the system (which is what anyone who really has credit does), you would have noticed this issue long before it became a problem.
Now I am not saying that someone who is tech savy is unable to avoid such issues and protect against the system, but now we are talking about a very limited scope and this makes the Pantheon subscriber support issue not useful.
Keno Monster said:Tanix said:Kaeldorn said:I'm fine with a 'credit card' requirement as long as payment details using regular ATM cards and services from countries other than the US are supported as well.
Here in Europe a lot of people do not own a true credit card because regional payment services that only require a regular ATM card and a reader of some kind (or paypal with a bank account attached to it) are supported for almost everything and credit cards just require pointless additional expenses.
Not to sound "uncaring", but I think regional servers would go a long way to solving some of these issues (for people like me in the US). Also, it would be extra means, but VR could require a registration process of detail which would kill the entire industry of plat farmers and abusers. Question is if they want to approach that level of payment security.
This is a big ol can o worms, but I agree. It would suck to not be able to play with international players. I still talk today with my EQ friends from 1999 in Austria and the Netherlands, and my wow friends from the UK and Croatia and Russia. However, if a regional requirement was enforced I think it would do wonders for the health of the game.
Yep, I agree, I have the same issue with others in various countries I have become friends with. It would however solve these various issues, not to mention it may even solve the contested content issues many servers had in EQ where players from different time zones would coordinate guilds to be able to take down raid mobs in the hours that the time zone would not be ideal. I remember my own server throwing tantrums about the players in Europe taking down all the raid bosses while the US players were sleeping.
I honestly have no issues with trial accounts and I never have. But they do need to be limmited in some way for those that actually do have issues with them, in the end the paying customers are what's keeping the game going. I think the biggest issue is the chat function which is why I often just disable many of the chat functions in the game until I need to use them.
Chat funtions like General I feel have been the biggest concern and I usually disable channels like these, it would be nice to not have too in an MMO for once.
I'm not sure newbie areas would be much of a concern for the more serious players either, because most of the serious players would be long through early level content assuming they follow the more common path of starting trial accounts several months after the initial games release.
Just my opinion.
The bottom line here for me is that if we are concerned about stopping gold farmers and RMT, and that is the real topic here that we're skating around when talking about trial accounts, then VR needs to ban accounts via a composite of gpuID and cpuID. If you are a gold farmer playing in a cafe somewhere and you get caught, that computer is done. Not just your account, not just your IP addres, that video card and that processor will no longer be allowed to access the game.
dorotea said:Many people see a request for a credit card or other financial information and run not walk in the other direction. All of us know that identity thefts and scams have become more and more ubiquitous and this scares people away from even very reasonable requests for information. A smaller company that they may never have heard of is more likely to produce the reaction "You promised not to actually charge me unless I subscribe. Sure I believe you!"
Of course people can get a card or other means of payment that limites their exposure to almost nothing - but how many people *will* do this just to try one of many available games. Better to move on to the next one.
So while it is a reasonable suggestion I see more woe than weal here (old dungeons and dragons reference). Even if Pantheon accepts Mordorcard (old Wizardry I reference).
New players are the lifeblood to a game like this.
A major concern of the community is that trial accounts will be used by goldspammers. At least one MMO essentially prevented goldspam by having excellent filters that just kept this out of chat. Might have been EQ2. If doable this may be a better approach. The filters were so good that as adaptable as the poop-sucking swine were they couldn't break them and chat was clean at least for years.
But if this is going to be a subscription based game, they will need a payment form to subscribe should they choose.
It's not like they would be requiring a CC registartion for a FTP game.
((But if this is going to be a subscription based game, they will need a payment form to subscribe should they choose.))
Indeed, but this doesn't really undercut the argument that people are far less likely to do this for one of many games they are considering than they are to do this for a game they have decided to pay for. Requiring a credit card or other means of payment on file may or may not be a good move for for trials - I suspect VR doesn't really need our advice too much here. But I couldn't resist mentioning what I thought would be a negative.
((Sorry, I have a lot of education in security and the argument you are making doesn't pan out to anyone who knows the industry))
I have no education in security but that doesn't keep it from being obvious that your response is entirely irrelevant. The question isn't how much risk it is to give information the question is how reluctant people will be to give the information. Come to think of it you are just flat-out wrong. If I look at a game and decide not to give credit card information and simply not play the game and you think that giving credit card information is safe and give it ....well it is self-evidently true that I who have done nothing am safer than you who have given something. If security "experts" think otherwise it becomes clearer why we have so many problems in that area.
((Sorry, I have a lot of education in security and the argument you are making doesn't pan out to anyone who knows the industry))
I have no education in security but that doesn't keep it from being obvious that your response is entirely irrelevant. The question isn't how much risk it is to give information the question is how reluctant people will be to give the information. Come to think of it you are just flat-out wrong. If I look at a game and decide not to give credit card information and simply not play the game and you think that giving credit card information is safe and give it ....well it is self-evidently true that I who have done nothing am safer than you who have given something. If security "experts" think otherwise it becomes clearer why we have so many problems in that area.
So your argument is that some people will be scared to use their CC in a world where a CC is used and almost required in every form of transaction in modern society, so by requiring it, somehow Pantheon will lose out on precious subscribers? You do realize that CC's are actually much safer to use than a debit right? They are insured. I have had my CC stolen many times over the years and I never had to pay a single penny on the fraudulent transactions because they are insured.
The fear factor is not a valid argument, it is grasping at straws.
Gold spammers are the least of my worries. With trial accounts, you get plat farmers without any financial loss through an account ban. You get unlimited attempts without cost or effort to find bugs, and exploits in the game. You get to make account after account to harrass people, train them, kill steal, etc... without any real consequence.
It isn't just about spamming, heck... that is solved simply by turning off global chats and the like. There are numerous other problems that stem from these accounts and the argument that using a CC might scare away someone who is ignorant on how CC's work is not a sound argument.
Speaking of security, I'd be loathe to see forced regional servers and account management outsourced to dubious third parties who sign some sort of agreement with VR, just like Ashes of Creation recently announced they'd be handing the keys to the city to some Russian company that's known for dealing in account information.
Pretty sure that'd be a good way to lose a lot of overseas customers as well. And I really don't see a small company like VR opening up offices abroad to handle this in-house.
Really can't say I'm in support of such business decisions.
Gold spammers are the least of my worries. With trial accounts, you get plat farmers without any financial loss through an account ban. You get unlimited attempts without cost or effort to find bugs, and exploits in the game. You get to make account after account to harrass people, train them, kill steal, etc... without any real consequence.
It isn't just about spamming, heck... that is solved simply by turning off global chats and the like. There are numerous other problems that stem from these accounts and the argument that using a CC might scare away someone who is ignorant on how CC's work is not a sound argument.
Yeah, I'm not sure why this sort of abuse is being downplayed by some as being blown out of proportion or rare. If the tools for it are readily available, there are plenty of degenerates who take pleasure in ruining games for others if given the opportunity.
Kaeldorn said:
Yeah, I'm not sure why this sort of abuse is being downplayed by some as being blown out of proportion or rare. If the tools for it are readily available, there are plenty of degenerates who take pleasure in ruining games for others if given the opportunity.
Because it is, badly.
I got pointed at this thread recently and asked for my thoughts, which is why I'm bringing it back from January :)
First, I generally support the idea of restrictions on trial accounts, but I do not want to cripple them in terms of their ability to interact with the community. We need to remember that while lots of us get into games because we already know people playing, there are still many people who pick up new MMOs and don't know anybody in them at all. I get that we're all worried about spambots and such, but let's be honest - the community, as much as the gameplay and the world, is part of what gets people hooked on an MMO. So ideally, I think it's important that we allow people who are in the game on trial accounts to interact with others, to see how awesome the community is, to make friends, and that gets them to sub up once their trial has ended. This may mean that we have to allow trial accounts do some things that could be abused - but in my opinion, that's better than cutting them off from being able to communicate with other players in any meaningful way.
oneADseven said:VR could create a "trial area" (We'll call it the "Onboarding Zone") in the world that could serve as a meaningful point of interest for subscribed players. I would propose the following:
The onboarding zone would exist on every server, but at any given point in time, the "free trial offer" is only available for specific servers determined by VR based on the population trends they observe. The free trial offer would be an "event" of sorts, and managed by in-game guides. The guides would be encouraged to help with the onboarding process and that would include answering questions, offering to group, and otherwise being representative of the type of helpful community member that we would want handling this very important role. Since the onboarding zone is considered a meaningful PoI in the world, there should also be a healthy amount of subscribed players that frequent the zone. VR has mentioned in the past that they want to create an incentive for players to mentor. Whatever that incentive is, it could be amplified during this event, and for this zone only. Beyond that, guides could also be given X amount of "tokens" that they could reward to outstanding community members per day. Ideally these tokens wouldn't have any sort of impact on player power or progress but they could still end up being fun or meaningful.
By doing all of the above I think we would be improving the onboarding experience. Guides would be present which means they could handle gold-seller spam or other types of abuse. Subscribed players would be present for a variety of reasons. The zone could have a semi-meaningful faction that encourages players to spend some time there. Knowing that the mentor bonus would be amplified during the event, players would have even more of a reason to participate in the onboarding process. Those who go above and beyond in this regard might earn the attention of one of the guides and that could end up yielding a fun trinket or consumable. Since these events only take place for a limited time, and are rotated between servers as needed, I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume that a range of players would come pay a visit. Even as a hardcore player I could see myself spending some time in the zone whenever my server is eligible for the event. The guides could call this event "The Collision" -- as players we would know that our server is looking to add some folks to the community and it's up to us to recruit them. I think this could be a lot of fun.
-snip-
The idea of having trial accounts as a special server event, rather than all the time, has some merit I think. It also might be a good way to help encourage population growth on selected servers. I'm willing to bet that statistics from other games will show that if someone makes a trial account on one server and then converts to a full account, they're likely to stay on the same server that they trialed on. So I could see the "trials-as-a-special-event" concept working in that regard.
I'm less confident about setting them up in a specific area of the game, however. Part of the appeal of Pantheon is the big world, with all the different races and starting areas. Walling people off in a "trial island" situation doesn't feel right to me. If we're going to let folks in, we should let them see Terminus. Not just some little disconnected piece of it, but the same Terminus that they would see if they were to start off on a subbed account. This, I think, would give them a better chance to convert from a trial to a sub.
I think it's an idea worth exploring further.
Subscription game. Any “free” activity needs to be level, zone, chat, and time limited. I prefer the idea of being able to bring a friend onto your server, so you can help them in a starter zone, twink the, etc. These players could not chat outside the starter zone unless invited to a chat by a paid player.
Play a tutorial, hunt a starter zone, with access to starting gear. Anything else is given by a friend, they won’t have the ability to spam beg for gold etc. Require a real sub to access any sort of zone chat, or vendor, or world chat. No getting to level in FTP, and start spamming. Also, no guild without the sub.
I like limited free trial, for say a week. If you like game, you have to sub to play on. I would encourage new players to get a taste of the game play. And a place for friends to have a look.
This game is a subscription, based cooperative game.
Trial accounts should get only one character slot. Let them play through level 5 and once they ding level 6, lock them out from the game and need to subscribe to continue.
I don't think a level 5 would be very effective in plat farming. They could train some low level camps or ninja loot groups in noob zones but that wouldn't really do much damage. Enlighten me as to what else abusers of trial accounts could do that would really piss on my Pantheon Wheaties.