How not to do Free-to-Play as brought to you by EA.

[Canadamus Prime]

So I decided to try out Star Wars: The Old Republic and was shocked by how little you get for the Free-to-Play experience. Then I remembered it's published by EA and my shock dissipated.
First of all as a Free-to-Play player I get a grand total of 3 species to play as out of a total of 10. I can't display my character's earned titles, I can't do custom outfits, and even experience gained towards my "Legacy" is hampered. Also I only get any benefit from Rest Areas if I subscribe.
Now I compare this to Cryptic's Star Trek Online. Granted it's been awhile since I've played it, but as of my last experience with it this is my comparison. With Star Trek Online pretty much every Federation species was available to me, as well as races allocated to the Klingon Empire. Later Romulans were added as their own player faction at no additional cost to me. A wide variety of ship classes were available including the Galaxy and Sovereign Classes. There was stuff being pushed in the C-Store that did start to give the Pay-to-Win vibe, but I still didn't get the feeling that I was being drilled for money and I was actually willing to spend some money on Star Trek Online. When it comes to Star Wars: The Old Republic however I'm more inclined to say "Fuck you EA."
Anyway had to get that off my chest.

 

[CritialGaming]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

 

[Saelune]

I played SWTOR after having played ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) for hundreds of hours. Really made me appreciate how great ESO is as an MMO.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

It has been a while since I played these games so my data might be lacking but my favorite F2P games were Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) and Spiral Knights.

Despite me loving most (if not all) things space. I couldn't get into Star Trek Online at all.
Neither did I get much involved in Drakensang Online.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

One bit of praise I will give the game is how story driven it is because I much prefer the solo experience anyway. I was just extremely annoyed to find that I had only 3 species options esp since I wanted to play as a Togruta. I also keep getting increasingly irritated when I run into something that I can't do because I either need to buy it from their store or subscribe. Stuff I'm sure I'd be able to do in, say, Star Trek Online.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

yeah this, I tried the f2p early on and jesus christ you might as well find a bot to grind for you because you will get nowhere. The new f2p is complete bareable to play by comparison.

Also, not sure what you are interested in exactly OP, but with the way companions are setup now you can solo damn near everything, and I think I completely 4 or 5 of the classes to absolute completion off of one 30 or 60 day pass (can't remember, it's been a couple years), and I just checked and could get a 60 day pass for 27 bucks, which is more than enough to pretty much clear the game, get a bunch of tokens and get access to the nice perks of subbing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

yeah this, I tried the f2p early on and jesus christ you might as well find a bot to grind for you because you will get nowhere. The new f2p is complete bareable to play by comparison.

Also, not sure what you are interested in exactly OP, but with the way companions are setup now you can solo damn near everything, and I think I completely 4 or 5 of the classes to absolute completion off of one 30 or 60 day pass (can't remember, it's been a couple years), and I just checked and could get a 60 day pass for 27 bucks, which is more than enough to pretty much clear the game, get a bunch of tokens and get access to the nice perks of subbing.

My biggest gripe is with the character creation. Having only 3 out of 10+ races available is absolutely ridiculous. I could see having only maybe 5 or 6, but 3!?! Evidently I can buy them from their stupid store, but like hell if I'm going to give EA any of my goddamn money.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

yeah this, I tried the f2p early on and jesus christ you might as well find a bot to grind for you because you will get nowhere. The new f2p is complete bareable to play by comparison.

Also, not sure what you are interested in exactly OP, but with the way companions are setup now you can solo damn near everything, and I think I completely 4 or 5 of the classes to absolute completion off of one 30 or 60 day pass (can't remember, it's been a couple years), and I just checked and could get a 60 day pass for 27 bucks, which is more than enough to pretty much clear the game, get a bunch of tokens and get access to the nice perks of subbing.

My biggest gripe is with the character creation. Having only 3 out of 10+ races available is absolutely ridiculous. I could see having only maybe 5 or 6, but 3!?! Evidently I can buy them from their stupid store, but like hell if I'm going to give EA any of my goddamn money.

I could be wrong, but I think different story origins (classes) have access to different races off the bat, and once you complete that origin you get those race choices for other origin stories for free.

Also, when you get that 60 day pass I swear you get something like 2000 free cartel coins with it when you activate it, which that's the in game currency, so you wouldn't be directly giving cash to EA?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Believe it or not, the game used to be a lot worse for F2P players. Now they at least still give you all the exp bonuses that other players get during events.

Honestly the game isn't that bad and most of the restrictions are cosmetic, it just feels bad because there is a shitload of cosmetics in the game.

The solo experience is much better than it used to be, as now all companions can heal you making the "group" quests all soloable. And if you play the game to just see a given class's story, then you can have a good time. But if you want to play the game like a real mmo, then yeah you need to subcribe for that.

yeah this, I tried the f2p early on and jesus christ you might as well find a bot to grind for you because you will get nowhere. The new f2p is complete bareable to play by comparison.

Also, not sure what you are interested in exactly OP, but with the way companions are setup now you can solo damn near everything, and I think I completely 4 or 5 of the classes to absolute completion off of one 30 or 60 day pass (can't remember, it's been a couple years), and I just checked and could get a 60 day pass for 27 bucks, which is more than enough to pretty much clear the game, get a bunch of tokens and get access to the nice perks of subbing.

My biggest gripe is with the character creation. Having only 3 out of 10+ races available is absolutely ridiculous. I could see having only maybe 5 or 6, but 3!?! Evidently I can buy them from their stupid store, but like hell if I'm going to give EA any of my goddamn money.

I could be wrong, but I think different story origins (classes) have access to different races off the bat, and once you complete that origin you get those race choices for other origin stories for free.

Also, when you get that 60 day pass I swear you get something like 2000 free cartel coins with it when you activate it, which that's the in game currency, so you wouldn't be directly giving cash to EA?

Yeah I think some of them can be unlocked by getting my "Legacy" to a certain level or something. But as mentioned my "Legacy" gains experience at a reduced rate because I have the gall to be a Free-to-Play player. I just think of what content was available from the get go in other Free-to-Play MMOs I've played like Champions Online, DC Universe Online and the afor mentioned Star Trek Online. By comparison this is abysmal.

 

[Asita]

One bit of praise I will give the game is how story driven it is because I much prefer the solo experience anyway. I was just extremely annoyed to find that I had only 3 species options esp since I wanted to play as a Togruta. I also keep getting increasingly irritated when I run into something that I can't do because I either need to buy it from their store or subscribe. Stuff I'm sure I'd be able to do in, say, Star Trek Online.

Togruta you can't really blame them for. That was something they added in some years later, like Cathar. It's been a while since I unlocked my races and I don't know if they've changed the format or not, but the system at least used to be that each class has a few default races. Jedi Knight (and maybe Consular), for instance at least used to have immediate access to Miraluka, but Smuggler, Trooper and the Imperial classes did not. You unlocked the race for every class by levelling a Miraluka character to level 50 (the character, not your legacy).

That being said, yeah, SWTOR is pretty ridiculous with regards to the F2P experience. One of the sticking points for me is the credit cap. In fairness, it started off as annoying but reasonable but due to inflation it has frankly become absurd. This is due largely to the fact that between drops, crafting and bad inventories in the merchants, it's not really worth buying anything outside of the legacy perks and the GTN (player to player market)...and inflation on the GTN has made it pretty unaffordable for F2P and premium players.

It is perhaps telling that EA's still apparently including Speeder Travel 1 in real money packs, despite them long since having rendered it free perks through leveling, and even more telling that players are trying to sell that on the GTN for ONE MILLION credits. Again, you get the ability for free around level 20 or so (And I don't care how you farm, unless you mail the money to your character there is no way that you'll have a million credits before level 20), and if you're really impatient you can unlock it through a perk for 25k (which used to be the selling price on the GTN as well). And then you get better versions of the ability at later levels. And remember how I said that inflation has made the GTN unaffordable? F2P have a credit cap of 250k. Premium players have a credit cap of 350k. Yeah...of course subscribers lack the credit cap entirely, hence the huge prices.

 

[Neverhoodian]

I can attest that Star Trek Online is not only very accessible for free players, but honestly one of the best F2P systems I've come across. I recently got back into the game with a new account, and it didn't take long at all before I was level 60 tackling endgame content again. While it's true that the best ships and gear are held behind a paywall and/or insane amounts of grinding, you can still do quite well with the basics. I myself have been cleaning house with a Mirror Universe Patrol Escort I got for dirt cheap off the Exchange with in-game currency and armed with Romulan Plasma weaponry given to me as reputation project rewards. The only real obstacles I've faced are restrictive inventory slots, though that can be expanded relatively quickly by converting in-game currency to premium.

Having said all that, I will give one major concession to EA; they do a better job ensuring your profile doesn't randomly vanish into the ether. The reason why I took a hiatus from STO is because Perfect World's launcher screwed over my account. One day it decided to forget my login information for no discernable reason, and no amount of changes or tech support would fix it. That was for the PC version. Now I'm playing it on the PS4, since all you need to play there is your PS Plus account. That's admittedly not saying very much given Sony's spotty track record regarding account security, but I figure it's still a better alternative. Meanwhile my Origin account still works like a champ after all these years, though I only use it to grab the occasional free game.

 

[votemarvel]

I stopped playing the Old Republic when I released I was paying a subscription fee to play a single player story.

As a single player game I actually quite enjoyed it but as a social experience, it really fell flat.

 

[Leg End]

I suggest jumping into EVE Online if you want at least decent/good free-to-play in space. Wait til next month though as they're expanding the stuff FTP can train(and keep trained if their sub lapses) to include pretty much anything T1 and not a capital ship.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

One bit of praise I will give the game is how story driven it is because I much prefer the solo experience anyway. I was just extremely annoyed to find that I had only 3 species options esp since I wanted to play as a Togruta. I also keep getting increasingly irritated when I run into something that I can't do because I either need to buy it from their store or subscribe. Stuff I'm sure I'd be able to do in, say, Star Trek Online.

Togruta you can't really blame them for. That was something they added in some years later, like Cathar. It's been a while since I unlocked my races and I don't know if they've changed the format or not, but the system at least used to be that each class has a few default races. Jedi Knight (and maybe Consular), for instance at least used to have immediate access to Miraluka, but Smuggler, Trooper and the Imperial classes did not. You unlocked the race for every class by levelling a Miraluka character to level 50 (the character, not your legacy).

That being said, yeah, SWTOR is pretty ridiculous with regards to the F2P experience. One of the sticking points for me is the credit cap. In fairness, it started off as annoying but reasonable but due to inflation it has frankly become absurd. This is due largely to the fact that between drops, crafting and bad inventories in the merchants, it's not really worth buying anything outside of the legacy perks and the GTN (player to player market)...and inflation on the GTN has made it pretty unaffordable for F2P and premium players.

It is perhaps telling that EA's still apparently including Speeder Travel 1 in real money packs, despite them long since having rendered it free perks through leveling, and even more telling that players are trying to sell that on the GTN for ONE MILLION credits. Again, you get the ability for free around level 20 or so (And I don't care how you farm, unless you mail the money to your character there is no way that you'll have a million credits before level 20), and if you're really impatient you can unlock it through a perk for 25k (which used to be the selling price on the GTN as well). And then you get better versions of the ability at later levels. And remember how I said that inflation has made the GTN unaffordable? F2P have a credit cap of 250k. Premium players have a credit cap of 350k. Yeah...of course subscribers lack the credit cap entirely, hence the huge prices.

Well initially I wanted to play as a Twi'lek, but then I saw the Torguta was there and wanted to play as that. However since both were unavailable I couldn't play as either.

Yeah I know some races are only available for certain classes and some can be unlocked by various means and of course bought with real money (yeah, fuck that), but I still just have to compare it with other F2P experiences I've had.
I haven't really noticed a problem with that other stuff except the credit cap itself which is very annoying. I am reminded of when Yahtzee reviewed that game and talked about how he had 20 grand in the bank gathering dust because he had nothing to spend it on. Yeah that sounds about right. You certainly don't spend it on gear.

 

[Asita]

Well initially I wanted to play as a Twi'lek, but then I saw the Torguta was there and wanted to play as that. However since both were unavailable I couldn't play as either.

Yeah I know some races are only available for certain classes and some can be unlocked by various means and of course bought with real money (yeah, fuck that), but I still just have to compare it with other F2P experiences I've had.
I haven't really noticed a problem with that other stuff except the credit cap itself which is very annoying. I am reminded of when Yahtzee reviewed that game and talked about how he had 20 grand in the bank gathering dust because he had nothing to spend it on. Yeah that sounds about right. You certainly don't spend it on gear.

Oh don't get me wrong, SWTOR's business model is terrible and I'd argue that, at the very least, what they gain through their approach to transaction marketing does not make up for the goodwill that same approach costs them. The cosmetic stuff I get, the expansion stuff (Hutt Cartel, Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire), I get. The additional races, I get. But so much of it comes off as petty penny pinching which is explicitly designed to be as in-your-face as possible. "Hey, here are your possible rewards for this quest in the original story. By the way, you can't choose 1/2-2/3 of them because you aren't a subscriber and/or don't have access to the expansions." "Oh, sorry, you typed something in general chat just 45 seconds ago. Because you're F2P you need to wait a full minute between messages." "That's a fugly piece of headgear, isn't it? You know you could pay to hide it..." "You want to equip artifact tier equipment? Gotta pay real money for that." "Oh, sorry, you aren't a subscriber so you can only roll for quest rewards from a flashpoint 4 times a week"[footnote]Which is several kinds of stupid, because if you so much as see the possible rewards it counts as a roll. There's only one instance of the reward for a given group, and if you want it then you have to hope that you roll better than the other group members who want it. Additionally, they have since redone the Flashpoint loot table to remove the desirable exclusive gear...so you're rolling for stuff that you can literally get as random drops anywhere in the game.[/footnote]. I get trying to incentivize people to pay for the game, but SWTOR would probably make a good case study about how not to do it.

That being said, it did seem like you had taken the wrong idea about unlocking the races, so I felt the need to clarify that it was based on levelling a character of that race rather than leveling your legacy.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well initially I wanted to play as a Twi'lek, but then I saw the Torguta was there and wanted to play as that. However since both were unavailable I couldn't play as either.

Yeah I know some races are only available for certain classes and some can be unlocked by various means and of course bought with real money (yeah, fuck that), but I still just have to compare it with other F2P experiences I've had.
I haven't really noticed a problem with that other stuff except the credit cap itself which is very annoying. I am reminded of when Yahtzee reviewed that game and talked about how he had 20 grand in the bank gathering dust because he had nothing to spend it on. Yeah that sounds about right. You certainly don't spend it on gear.

Oh don't get me wrong, SWTOR's business model is terrible and I'd argue that, at the very least, what they gain through their approach to transaction marketing does not make up for the goodwill that same approach costs them. The cosmetic stuff I get, the expansion stuff (Hutt Cartel, Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire), I get. The additional races, I get. But so much of it comes off as petty penny pinching which is explicitly designed to be as in-your-face as possible. "Hey, here are your possible rewards for this quest in the original story. By the way, you can't choose 1/2-2/3 of them because you aren't a subscriber and/or don't have access to the expansions." "Oh, sorry, you typed something in general chat just 45 seconds ago. Because you're F2P you need to wait a full minute between messages." "That's a fugly piece of headgear, isn't it? You know you could pay to hide it..." "You want to equip artifact tier equipment? Gotta pay real money for that." "Oh, sorry, you aren't a subscriber so you can only roll for quest rewards from a flashpoint 4 times a week"[footnote]Which is several kinds of stupid, because if you so much as see the possible rewards it counts as a roll. There's only one instance of the reward for a given group, and if you want it then you have to hope that you roll better than the other group members who want it. Additionally, they have since redone the Flashpoint loot table to remove the desirable exclusive gear...so you're rolling for stuff that you can literally get as random drops anywhere in the game.[/footnote]. I get trying to incentivize people to pay for the game, but SWTOR would probably make a good case study about how not to do it.

That being said, it did seem like you had taken the wrong idea about unlocking the races, so I felt the need to clarify that it was based on levelling a character of that race rather than leveling your legacy.

Well I got confused when I moused over some of the races and it gave the requirements for unlocking them and it said something about reaching level 10, but my character is level 42 now and I've unlocked no new races.
From what you describe it's worse than than I thought. I don't use the chat so that didn't bother me at all. I did run into a situation where I got rewarded with gear I couldn't use because I didn't have a certain expansion. That was fucking annoying. And yes, shoving their subscription down my throat is getting increasingly more and more annoying. They're lucky I'm enjoying the story otherwise I'd pack it in altogether.

 

[FalloutJack]

I played both games you mentioned, actually.

SWTOR itself was enjoyable to me, though I did not pay for shit. The truth is that I don't really have much interest in most alien races of the Star Wars series to play. The game does have alot against it because of the restrictions, of course. I just consider myself a really good player because I didn't let it bog me down. For instance, any advantage you had by paying, you didn't earn. So, every victory I achieved, I effectively did at a higher difficulty setting. This means that I played more skillfully than others who paid. Actually, that's a given, considering I also beat a number of those group missions alone by the clever use of alot of stealth and trickery. Anyone who can do that has alot going on in their head, for sure. SWTOR has alot of issues, but I like its stories. It is why whenever there's a bit of freeform RPing of Star Wars among my friends, I like to bring out my Darth Nox...nigh-immortal snarky woman who enslaves force spirits. Ultimate power, indeed.

But I digress, STO is superior. It's just alot more fun to play, you can do more in it, and I frankly love the awe of exploration and flying a starship. Among my characters, I had a tall and imposing man with wild hair and the biggest beard in the universe. Seriously, all the beard. Beard for days. And the other really special one had to be my GINORMOUS Gorn, who was shirtless and wearing the Klingon spine armor and pants only. Badass. The USS Beardface focused on quick maneuvering, spreading damage out along the shields so as not to ever collapse any (mostly), and alot of fly-by attacks. The Karajor was a combat cloaker who focused on cannon-blasting the hell out of everything in front of it with the HEAVIEST of disruptors and simply avoiding back-attacks, for the most part. I also had a Tholian Carrier. I wanted to marry the advantage of its unstoppable firepower and fighters with the plasma web fields those guys have, but that console part is either ultra-rare or expensive on the black market.