First, and foremost, I want to start out saying how much I'm loving being back in the lands. I'm one of those old players, returning with a F2P account, and so far, it's been absolutely wonderful. I wanted to post with a couple of thoughts on the free-to-play accounts, their restrictions, and my suggestions on what could be improved with them.

1. I love that's it's free, and there's absolutely no need for any form of payment (credit card, debit card, checking account, paypal, etc.) account needed to even create the F2P account. The only time you have to enter any sort of payment info is if you are going to buy SimuCoins. +1 for awesomeness.

2. You can play any race, any profession. +1 for awesomeness.

3. You start out in a random town, and aren't told about the "depositing silver here makes this your home bank". -1 for not-awesome. (I've seen others talking about this, and are hoping that you're looking into at least giving some sort of warning about the initial deposit for F2P characters. Put it in big, bold highlighted text, so we can't miss it, please!)

4. F2P characters still gen with a travel guide token. Woot! +1 for awesomeness.

5. No access to Lumnis. Ehh.. this will probably hurt worse, once my character gains more levels. At level 3, currently, it isn't hurting at all. I'm still gaining levels at a decent rate (for my style of play), and I'm enjoying it greatly. +/-0, to be changed later, most likely.

6. Not being able to cast my useful spells on other characters... Okay, so I only have access to 101, 103, and 202 currently, but not being able to even cast 103 & 202 on others is kind of sad, and a little annoying. If I'm going to be sitting on this mana, that I'm not using to hunt yet, what good is it (except for spelling myself up, but I'm already at my 2-hour spelltime cap!). -1 for not-so-awesome.


Now, for suggestions, based on what I've already experienced, and what I know will be coming up in future levels/times:
1. Remove the experience restrictions from higher levels. Keep Lumins for paying customers, because that makes sense. Keep fixskills for paying (and Adv. Guild) customers, for all I care. But, with the grind already there without Lumnis, any sort of experience reduction at higher levels just seems horrendous.

2. Add that warning in for the initial deposit of silvers into any bank account! Big, bold, highlighted, whatever you need to get the attention of the player, that this is a BIG CHOICE AND CAN'T BE CHANGED WITHOUT SIMUCOINS LATER.

3. Removing the cast/receiving penalty for F2P characters... there's a LOT more paying customers/characters out there than there are F2P customers so far, and once in a while us F2P'ers really want to do something useful (and social) for our community!


That's about it, for now. As I said earlier, for my play style, this has been, and is going to continue to be, fun, I think. I'm really enjoying just being in the lands again. Thank you Simu, and to the GM's, GH's, and Mentors, and especially to the Landing community, for welcoming all of us F2P'ers (both old-timers and newbies) into the lands! :)

(Also: I'm not caring much about loot/silvers right now, so that's why there's nothing on my lists about it. Maybe later, when I try to get 4x equipment, it may be a small problem, but I've got plenty of time between now and then to save up the little amounts of silvers I get off of pelts.)

(Also also: Anyone who knew Cylnthia the Paladin, that's me... I'm playing Lyquitta, the cleric, now. :))

Asa new player I think most of the restrictions are mostly fair, however the bank account moving one seems really oddly restrictive compared to everything else as does the fact that you buy increases by 100,000 rather than just having a more expensive one time purchase to completely unlimit the bank account.

<<Asa new player I think most of the restrictions are mostly fair>>

This is really awesome, and I agree. As a returning player, it's excellent to hear that a new player thinks this, too.

So, with respect to the new F2P folks, is there anything like a one-time purchase that permanently grants the character certain benefits that are otherwise currently purchased on a monthly or quarterly basis?

Does it even make sense to do something like that, particularly with respect to the concerns about abuse?

If a package does exist, what sort of things are in it? If not, what would a package look like? Would it be Bank account limits, society participation? What sort of things would be helpful to supporting pure roleplay, as opposed to supporting leveling up?





Clunk

(Buy your swords at CBD weapons in Zul Logoth.)

>> There should definitely be packages, even if they're only 30 days at a time

This. I would much rather sometimes plunk my roll of quarters on the counter to pay for the package deal and then not have to worry about it for the next month vs. having to constantly keep running out and putting another quarters in the meter.

-- Robert

"Wyrom isn't interacting with me, I think he is AFK scripting."

From a player who returned recently to one who's new- trust me, it's worth the $15 a month/

Let's narrow this society thing down.

Which society? If it's not CoL you are probably taking into your late teens or 20s to mmaster. Voln tends to require hoarding favor. The +5 in gos is around rank 8 then critical weighting and damage is 16ish.

Is the society more of a growth concern into the 25-30 experience then onward?

Are their role play and character angles in one of them? If CoL I'm skeptical cause people are afraid of the evil soul angles.

Is it the mission and training part of it?

Or is it purely mechanical in that you are factoring the +35 or +27 or +15 and hcw as must haves?

F2p allows for membership so the role play aspect is covered. You are all genins for life like Naruto was or something.

I think a constructive discussion might get some consideration. Maybe they open it to rank 8 then restrict them allowing the first AS/DS equivalents but I think reasoning has to prove it.

Its optional but harder, but it wasn't always optional. Way back when the first society came out and there was limited critters, you literally could not kill the critters as some classes. The critters were setup with the group in mind. Pumas were released after a lot of outcry as a stopgap measure while further development took place. I think its ok to switch from one to another, but with the caveat of burning your bridges and not being allowed to return to a group.

By the way a bit of Trivia, the coder for COL was the guy who created the Wizardry boxed game back in the day. He did the first few iterations anyways. Back then games were often completely created by one person. Heck, I'll bet even Gemstone 2 only had a few coders at first... Now one Icon on your desktop probably takes up as much memory as an entire game did back in the day. Atari 2600 had 4k of memory and there was some type of bank select trick they used to double the game cartridges to a whopping 8k.

A week-ish later... and, I'm still enjoying my F2P cleric so very much. I finally have a spell that can be useful to other people (203, Manna Bread), woot! Punching rat's brains out is still fun as heck, and the cleric is just about level 5, so I'll be moving into 2x gear, maybe even today! I'm having so much fun, being in the Lands again, seeing old faces (some of them Legendary, in fact!), and meeting new faces (both new-to-me, and new-to-the-lands). Yay for F2P options!

Lyquitta, Cleric of Kuon
(Previously: Cylnthia, Paladin of Kuon)

<There should definitely be packages, even if they're only 30 days at a time

Even better than having premade bundles would be to allow us to create a package we like and have it saved to show up on our simucoin store page. The ability to set it up once with exactly the temporary buffs we want and no more would be a huge convenience upgrade.