I downloaded, installed and patched Champions Online: Free for All when it re-launched the other day, like thousands of others. Fearing the inevitable crush of the servers, I decided to sit back and enjoy War and Peace the patch notes. The reading was to hype myself up for how much the game has grown since I last logged in to Violet Preston, the gunkata assassin inspired by Equilibrium (amazing action movie) and Ultraviolet (not so much), well over a year ago. Wednesday I attempted to begin her career anew.
Attempted, because I was meet with this little diddy.
That’s exactly the kind of restriction gamers should be afraid of when a title changes its business model. I paid for six months of Champions Online, an early adopter no less, and now my character, albeit far from level cap, is behind bars. Since Violet was created before the re-launch, she’s a completely custom design. For better or worse, she’s an amalgamation of a few different archetypes – marksman, endurance, blade – but it’s the character I wanted to play.
I have two options, either pay to let her out of jail, which means subscribing as long as I want to use her. Or downgrade her from a Gold character – former or current subscriber – to a Silver character to match my Silver account status. The only hurdle to downgrading is being content with placing her in a specific archetype, which means ruining my movie-inspired design. I’m not about to do either, so she’s going to continue to gather dust. As is the installation of Champions Online.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to pay a one-time fee to unlock her for FFA play as she was designed. There’s just no option to do this. Or at least, not one I can find. And I’m completely willing to pay for it. I don’t think it’s asking too much of Cryptic Studios. I would see it as an olive branch from the company to former players. A way of saying thanks and tempting us to return, while still having us play by the new rules (and leeching a quick $5-$10 from us).
I bet there’s numerous former subscribers in this same boat.
You can check out the full offerings from the Champions Online Store, aka C-Store, here.
Hmm. Well, I patched Champions Online yesterday, but I guess I’m glad I didn’t waste the time trying it out again… if I can’t play my old characters, I don’t really have any reason to go back. Oh well, more time for STO. I guess Cryptic can’t complain, I’m playing their game either way ;)
I’m not saying a word…
hey Koopa, im in the same boat as you. my Green Corps toon is unplayable due to the new FTP thingy. not too happy about it.
And welcome to the ‘dark side’ of the F2P model. If you WANT these features, you WILL either sub up or pay a highly marked up fee for it. I would expect other ‘freemium’ games to follow suit if (and that’s a MASSIVE ‘if’) it works out for Champions Online. It’s taking advantage of our attachments to the characters that we’ve spent so much time developing. I don’t like it and no one should, but watch.
If enough people pay, other companies will more than likely follow suit. I can guarentee Turbine (with all it’s success in the F2P model) is watching closely as are other companies as well.
@Highwayman
I see your point but, to be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily call it such a big tactic. If Turbine wanted to restrict your characters in a similar way, they would have done so by now. Those guys are not afraid of experimenting, as has been proven several times :)
Ronix, it’s not that it hasn’t already been done. It’s a simple philosophy: If people will pay for it, let’s implement ‘x’ feature/restriction. I’d bet MONEY that if this doesn’t drive people away from Champions Online till it dies an ignoble death, and they implement something like Koopa suggested (as a paid service no less), AND it pays off, look for other companies INCLUDING Turbine to implement similar measures.
Turbine, since it’s the most popular and I’ve had experience with that company, has already roped in a bunch of new players. They branded themselves well, marketed well, and the time WILL come when they have to figure out how to increase revenue from the F2P crowd. Technically speaking, the entire Lotro game IS free to play if you’re willing to grind. However, I’d be surprised if they didn’t ‘retro’ some changes like C.O. to rake in more money.
Thanks for the clarification, Highwayman. Now that you put it this way, I tend agree with you.
I’m also afraid that if this succeeds, free-to-play games will lose that sense of equality between different player types; something that made the F2P model more acceptable in the West in the first place.
No worries Ronix. I’ve long held that the F2P business model is rife with opportunities to wring more money out of it’s players than say a company like Blizzard. LotRO, DDO, Champions Online, etc are obviously not cheap to develop and already players are shelling money by the boatload to purchase upgrades. Which in turn, pays the bills so to speak.
But once a playerbase stops drawing money for whatever reason, what does a company do then? They figure out new methods to entice players to open their wallets again and again. Ultimately, this supersedes the overall cost of a game such as WoW or SC2.
In fact, some games (DotA) springs to mind, encourages players to shill their product for upgrades. A very popular British shoutcaster plays DotA and was in fact encouraging people to sign up and use him as a ‘reference’. This would allow the shoutcaster to be awarded a new character or some such. There’s lots of sneaky little ways these F2P models/companies are, can, and will take advantage of their playerbase with little to no cost to them.
Look at the way Facebook’s handled things. Sure, THEY don’t sell your info, but companies that Facebook sponsers (Zynga comes to mind) DO. Again, just the darkside of the F2P model. Not is it a drain on your wallet, but at some point, you have to begin to question at what point do you become either a ‘paid spokesperson’ for said product (without ever seeing a paycheck) or you become a potential target for identity theft? Farfetched to be sure but absolutely possible.
Meh, just tried out Champions Online Free today…
More or less sucks. Though what did I expect from Cryptic?
“The used car salesmen of game developers.”
Yeah same issue, this is weak… I played CO back when it came out but after a bit decided it wasn’t worth the monthly payment. Friend told me today that it was F2P now and I got really excited thinking … “surely they wouldn’t lock out characters of people who played when it was subcribed…” terrible assumption on my part. I understand needing the money just as much as the next guy, but limit future characters.. not pre-existing ones. It shot the excitement that had built up over the last few hours.
well i got a question why does champions online say you are unable to sing in at this time why
well I’m glad I read this because I didn’t know you could downgrade your gold char to silver. I assumed you were locked from the character if you upgraded which scared me, thinking if I make a char gold I’ll never be able to use it again if I go silver. I don’t see a problem with that they are doing here if they allow you use of your old characters. If you want to play as silver, suck if up and accept the free-respec to silver options of the game. If you want something that is a premium gold status part of the game, then pay and play the way you wanted. Since they let you respec to a archetype for free when going either gold OR silver, I don’t have a problem with them making character follow the rules of their account type.
I’ve been playing CO since the Alpha. It has never gotten better. Sure they changed a few things which should have been fixed at launch, but it took them three years to do it. It’s a horrible game and the only reason why I login every six months is because I’m a moron who pre-paid for life. Ugh. I wish I would have taken my $250 back when I had a chance. It could have been used for much better things.
My recommendation to you is to play it for free and see how much it sucks. They focus on stupid shit like costume modifications and colors (seing how I’m totally color blind do you think I care?). The powers are horribly done and the amount of grinding you need to do for the special items is unhealthy for you. You will suffer a heart attack before you are 20 if you grind in this game.
One of the other horrible things is the special events which the all time worst, classic event was during the 2010 Halloween event when the great and almighty TACO arose from the dead only to appear at specific times on various zones. It was awful. People would saturate zones just to get a few licks in on the douchbag in order to get some special items. Oh and those special items often were “vanity pets” which did absolutely nothing to assist you in any shape or form in the game. If you got one it was literally “for vanity purposes only”. Like having a dead two hundred year old hooker in your frig. Why you say? Well because you don’t have one and I do!
Other things which totally, and I mean completely suck, is the Auction House which is a complete waste of code. It’s so horrible done that I never bother to sell any thing to others because it will only be sent back to you via email, which sits month after month, being used as a holding area for items. Players quickly learned that the limited space in the bank could be circumvented by mailing yourself items because they never get deleted.
My final complaint for this post is that the Nemesis’s in this game turned out to be the worst idea that ever came in to the game. The Nemesis’s were supposed to be a highlight of this game but they turned out to be these weak and debilitated pussys who never really cause you any real problems. I made mine the hardest it could be, but in return I got a complete wimp of a nemesis.
1 star. It sucks, but not as bad as Dead Island or Duke Nukem Forever.
You want to pay “$5-$10” to unlock a FF toon that can play forever to avoid paying $15 a month ($10 if you buy 6 months at a time) to play your FF toon? Seriously?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! What a stupid concept.
Bio-products and Biomaterials Virgin media
OMG
I went back to Champions because of the anniversary, and first my bags are gone. Just gone, than the items in my bag were in my mail, but you can no longer receive items in the mail so there just sitting there mocking me.
And the crafting, are you kidding me? All you can do now it make upgrades to your gear? Really??
Auction house, no items, cause why sell things now? You cant take worthless items and break them anymore. See crafting above.
And don’t get me started on these stupid boxes you cant unlock and no one seems to know how you buy keys to open them. My guess is you have to buy keys, and open 100 boxes before you get one good item.
New Adventures, well those are jokes. Spent 3 hours on a mod and got wiped after wipe after wipe. Using up all my healing because you die, START ALL OVER AGAIN. get tired after running around trying to do these insane missions. START ALL OVER AGAIN. I finally get to the boss which was INSANE, have her re-spawn 3 times at full health, only to die and yup go back and have to fight her all over again. Die, the make your character less powerful, so the more you lose the weaker you become. So I just logged off, have to buy more healing, luckily a player told me since they never explain were anything is anymore. So I am sure that after my month I am saying goodbye to GOLD.
Oh, and when I tried to bring in my characters? It did not explain to me that I had to specially ask for the free form, so I thought I was stuck on the set form only to find out how to change it and of course they want me to pay for another reset. Ya, so fun.
That’s my Rant, *drops the mike*