Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Subscription Only & Public servers (incl trial accounts)

    • 3852 posts
    March 22, 2019 8:26 AM PDT

    oneADseven is entirely correct but VR needs to weigh two different considerations.

    The first is how to treat people seriously considering subscribing, and if this was the only point it would be best to give these people complete access to the game with no limitiations other than a time or level limit. In other words, what oneADseven just said.

    The second consideration is that free trials attract some of the same people that free-to-play do and this is a plague upon both current subscribers *and* people seriously considering the game. When you can play a game for free even for a limited periond you get (1) gold sellers who love the free access; (2) trolls and other people that get their kicks out of making as many chat channels as possible quite unpleasant for the rest of us; and (3) very immature people (mostly fairly young ones) that flock to free games because they cannot get access to games where they need to pay. These also make chat a lot more unpleasant for most of us.

    Industry experience shows that if you do not exile free trial players to a seperate server you *must* impose severe restrictions lest they make the experience so unpleasant that subscribers will cancel and people considering subscribing will reject the game. Maybe VR has a better idea but I see these two approaches (isolation or severe limitation) as the only choices that work. 

    A secondary benefit to limitations is they encourage people that like the game to get off of the fence and subscribe just to get rid of the limitations. But this is not a huge benefit and may be outweighed by the disadvantage of limiting and annoying free trial players.

    • 793 posts
    March 22, 2019 8:38 AM PDT

    @dorotea

     

    I think your second consideration is mitigated some by now having an open trial, but a register a credit card to obtain your free trial, since this is a subscription game, this would not be out of the norm.

    This of course will dissuade some potential players from ever trying, but I would think that number is lower than the FTP abusers.

     

    • 3237 posts
    March 22, 2019 8:40 AM PDT

    Indeed.  There is definitely a balance to be struck.  I posted my thoughts on that balance back on page 3.  I don't think "severe restrictions" are necessary if the trial experience is a bit more regimented.  In other words, it's perfectly fine to take control where it's needed in order to prevent abuse, but it should be done tactfully.  You want to offer the best possible experience to increase those conversion rates but not at the expense of your already paying customers.  I'm not going to copy/paste my post from page 3 but I think something along those lines would be a good way to tackle this topic.  There would definitely be restrictions in place but they wouldn't be severe or overbearing.  Players would have freedom in a semi-controlled and monitored environment if that makes sense.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at March 22, 2019 8:41 AM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    March 22, 2019 8:49 AM PDT

    Fulton - I agree this would help although as you say it wouldn't be sufficient to prevent abuse entirely.

    oneADseven perhaps I was a bit careless in my use of the phrase "severe restrictions". I should have said "restrictions sufficient to keep the damage done by gold sellers and people who are not actually considering subscribing to a minimum". 

    While my experience in MMOs is more than sufficient to assure me that some restictions are needed, I do not really have a basis to know the precise point where restrictions pass the point where they are properly limiting and get to the point where they are excessively discouraging to potential subscribers. So I did not mean to either agree or disagree with your page 3 opinion though my wording may have carelessly implied disagreement.

    • 3237 posts
    March 22, 2019 8:58 AM PDT

    In that context, you're absolutely right.  It's definitely important to mitigate pain points such as gold selling, spam, throw away accounts, etc.  In the end, I think it would be a good idea to offer the free trial on a schedule of sorts.  If you want to take advantage of the free trial offer then you do it on a server that is selected by VR, ideally, one that could use a population boost.  If you want to save your progress after the trial is over then you continue playing on that server.  If you're satisfied with the product and decide that it's worth starting over on a different server in order to play with your friends, you have that option, too.  By limiting the availability of when/where you can leverage the trial offer, it would be easier to monitor the trial accounts.  If you open them up on every server, for every zone, and at all times, then it would probably make sense to lean closer to the severe side of restrictions.

    I can't say with certainty that either approach is absolutely ideal but just looking at it from a consumer perspective, I would prefer more freedom during my play experience, even if the trial structure itself is a bit more regimented.  If that regimen is instead spun into a fun event where normal subscribers are incentivized to interact with trial accounts, even better.  This is a community driven game and I feel like a little bit of structure and guidance could help facilitate community building.  I'd rather see players helping players, knowing they are contributing toward the onboarding process/event ("The Collisions" sounds really cool to me) rather than seeing all of the trial accounts bogged down by so many layers of bubble wrap that the experience feels more interaction proof than it is conducive.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at March 22, 2019 9:18 AM PDT
    • 416 posts
    March 22, 2019 11:32 AM PDT

    This is an important issue. On one hand, there is a real fear that trial accounts will bring bots/exploits/farmers which I want no part of. On the other hand much of Pantheon's appeal will come from the idea that it is a community driven game. I strongly believe that Pantheon will grow most through word of mouth, current players enjoying the game so much that they will want to get others playing with them. With that in mind I would love to see the following:

    1) Restrictions on trial accounts that will prevent bots/exploits/farmers

    2) Subcriber only servers

    3) The ablitiy for players to offer a limited number of trial accounts for people to join them on their subcriber only server but if at any time these trial accounts are found to be abusing that both the trial account and the trial issuer accounts could be banned.

    • 801 posts
    March 24, 2019 6:32 PM PDT

    Free accounts should be setup on a totally different server then the paid accounts.

    Would make life so much easier if some of these Devs, publishers would just fire up a different server so we can have less exploits, and spam. They can have that ruleset on their own server without distrubting the paying customers.

    Also... it avoids any special programming needed.

     

    We dont need to see 500 msg from fake accounts, spamming gold, or just spaming chat in general.

    Someone has to take a serious step on this and be the first to actually enforce it on the servers. We have seen this in EQ as soon as they offered up free accounts.

    There is nothing wrong with using silver accounts for paying customers as long as it follows the guidelines. Spamming about these gold selling sites is horrible. Also the exploits used in EQ where bad by free accounts, the asians used them to farm each instance, and i know we do not have them in this game but trust me where there is a will there is a way.


    This post was edited by Crazzie at March 24, 2019 6:35 PM PDT
    • 4 posts
    March 27, 2019 11:12 AM PDT

    A few have said new subsribers are the lifeblood of the game. I disagree. While new players are always important, I feel with this type of game, (like everquest was), the lifeblood of the game is those long term subscibers. Look at all the people that played everquest for 10 years and longer. Now look at many of these new games. They have cycles of players that play 3-6 months then quit. Which type had the better communities? It is very important to stay true to your base, and not potentials. We want to welcome new potential players, but not change the game to accomodate them and risk the long term player base.

    I look at some of these posts, and remember someone earlier pointing out how gold farmers are 3 steps ahead before a game releases, I'd agree. It really makes me wonder how many are in here lobbying for trials to improve the chances of gold farming success. I understand the few that truely do think they can count on trials for friends, to determine if a game is going to be fun, but again I don't think it is needed for potentials that are really interested and would stick around. If they are a friend, they are going to put alot of weight into your review of the game. The style and the way it plays, along with additional reviews are easy to get from you-tubers and twitch. Trials seem to make more sense for those games with cash shops and short term players. Let them in free, coax them into buying stuff from the shop, maybe they buy the game because its free to play, then they get bored and move on to somehting else in a couple months, but by then the company got thier targeted money and doesn't really care, becuase they already paid the equivalant to a years worth of service from the cash shop. Maybe they come back later, maybe not, but some other sucker will. If the game is good, it WILL speak for itself, and word will get around.

     

     

     

    • 2752 posts
    March 27, 2019 4:52 PM PDT

    Arcion said:

    I look at some of these posts, and remember someone earlier pointing out how gold farmers are 3 steps ahead before a game releases, I'd agree. It really makes me wonder how many are in here lobbying for trials to improve the chances of gold farming success. I understand the few that truely do think they can count on trials for friends, to determine if a game is going to be fun, but again I don't think it is needed for potentials that are really interested and would stick around. If they are a friend, they are going to put alot of weight into your review of the game. The style and the way it plays, along with additional reviews are easy to get from you-tubers and twitch. Trials seem to make more sense for those games with cash shops and short term players. Let them in free, coax them into buying stuff from the shop, maybe they buy the game because its free to play, then they get bored and move on to somehting else in a couple months, but by then the company got thier targeted money and doesn't really care, becuase they already paid the equivalant to a years worth of service from the cash shop. Maybe they come back later, maybe not, but some other sucker will. If the game is good, it WILL speak for itself, and word will get around.

    It's not hard to imagine placing limitations on trial accounts, these days I think most people recognize a trial isn't the total experience but a "test drive" of sorts. As such having a pretty low cap on currency a trial can have, restricting trade/mail entirely, and restricting certain chat/message channels doesn't seem out of the question.

     

    Someone can watch videos and hear some reviews but actually playing a game and getting a feel for the combat/controls/etc for oneself is an entirely different thing. A person can read all about a car and watch videos showing it off but unless they test drive the vehicle for themselves they won't really know how it feels, they won't be able to tangibly experience the handling/traction/acceleration/etc to know if the car feels right for them. So let trial accounts exist with limits.