Make this change to limited free play and you could call this game F2P!

change it so that skills are effectively limited to 60 instead of 30

Let players hit 60 in all skills, once they get to 60 make it so that you can't learn any new crafts either.

Limiting to 30 is just pointless and not even worth the trouble of setting up the free play imo.

However, I think the free play is headed in the right direction - there are so many people that I see talking about Xsyon at other gaming sites that say the only thing stopping them from playing is the population.

With the limitations that are being put in for this limited free play along with letting people get to 60 would bring in a much larger crowd.

You'll get 2 types of people with this f2p system:

1. People that wouldn't play at all if the game was p2p (they'll stick around just because it's free) and this will keep the population up for the 2nd type of player.

2. The other type would be the people that are looking for a larger population to make it worth it to them to subscribe. They'll get addicted to the game and not be able to play with the limitations which will cause them to subscribe.

I feel like if you limit skills to 30 it's so low that the people that would stick around because it's free won't actually be able to play the game with skills so low. And the people that would subscribe won't because the population will still be really low.

A couple more way's to bring in more money for development could be added:

1. $14.95 Name Changes (unlimited)
2. $14.95 Ability to Purchase a 2nd Character Slot (Max 1 Extra Slot)
3. $1.95 Gathering Boosters (makes you gather grass, chop trees, collect stone, etc) 25% faster and comes with 5 charges, each charge lasts for 1 hour. - this works great in Fallen Earth, could be done here too, same concept for gathering.

This could be a perfect time to setup a Cash Shop for those items.

I think 30 is low agreed.
However, I dont like your other ideas.

I was never a big fan of the guides changing peoples names, I think if you want to change names you should just reroll. You make a name for yourself and you carry that rep (normally bad rep for people changing names) you should have to suffer for it.

Gathering boosters I dont think is a good idea because you already have people paying monthly they should get the bonus of gathering boosters not the people that pay again for it.

2nd char slot could easy be bought for 40$ plus monthly costs already.

Hi MrDDT its now 30$ :D (as far as I know)

I am (quite) old and I believe in the subscription model - especially for small companies. The big ones can support a large population easily, for small companies the f2p model is really hard at the start.

You need the resources to support a large population (servers, guides, ...) and in the first few weeks it is essential that the game runs smooth, or you will piss off the players already in the game and the new "I am going to see what the game is like" will just bash it in every forum... In case of Xsyon you would probably have to triple (or more) the server capacities to handle the influx of players - something Notorious would have to finance, because it would take some time until the players start paying ...

I am a bit worried that this approach would eventually kill the company Notorious games and Xsyon - there are a number of similar events that have shown how fast a game can be swamped with ppl and even Blizzard did not manage the start of D3 (just imagine that a company that is *the* leader in MMO get swamped by ppl !!!). I think that the start of f2p would just lead to an situation where a lot of ppl get (probably again) disappointed and then bash Notorious and Xsyon into the ground...

Why do you think that something like that would work out, when really experienced and big (and rich) companies have troubles launching a game? The only approach (that I thought about) is to limit the number of players - so that if the too many people want to buy/try the game - you would have to introduce something like a list, and people would have to wait for their "slot" - or probably introduce "time slots" - like 2pm-4pm - and through that even out the peaks on the servers ?!?

I truly believe that a game like Xsyon needs commitment (from the customer) - so subscription is the right path. Xsyon is just not a casual game...

This is indeed a very interesting subject. Another sandbox mmo has just gone free to play in a similar way offering accounts that skill up to 60. I think this is a great way to get people interested in the game, addicted and then wanting more. These people will then sub. It's funny that pretty much all of these free mmo's offer a "premium account" which is effectively the old sub rate. So free to play is mostly a clever marketing ploy to get people through the door. I do agree with the server strain issue. Even with the slight increase in population we have had in game recently I have noticed some lag spikes coming back into the game (although not serious ones). With a large influx of new free players I would also worry that the server gets overloaded.

This will certainly give the Xsyon team food for thought :)

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Originally Posted by MrDDT

I think 30 is low agreed.
However, I dont like your other ideas.

I was never a big fan of the guides changing peoples names, I think if you want to change names you should just reroll. You make a name for yourself and you carry that rep (normally bad rep for people changing names) you should have to suffer for it.

Gathering boosters I dont think is a good idea because you already have people paying monthly they should get the bonus of gathering boosters not the people that pay again for it.

2nd char slot could easy be bought for 40$ plus monthly costs already.

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Name Changes: Could careless how many times you change your name (it's more development funds for the company) Assholes are going to be assholes anyway whether they can change their name or not.

Boosters: Anyone can buy boosters (free or paid) the idea is to get revenue out of free to play players that wouldn't spend money otherwise.

Extra Character slot: More people would be willing to pay for that 2nd character if they can do it for a reduced cost over buying another game account and you would be able to do it through 1 account instead of having multiple accounts.

Also, you say it's easy to just buy another account and pay for the 2nd sub as being easy - a lot less people will do this than if they could just pay for 1 extra character and keep 1 sub on 1 account.

All of these "cash shop items" is meant to get money from the f2p crowed that wouldn't spend money on a sub, giving the dev team more way's to monetize income for game development.

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Originally Posted by KeithStone

Name Changes: Could careless how many times you change your name (it's more development funds for the company) Assholes are going to be assholes anyway whether they can change their name or not.

Boosters: Anyone can buy boosters (free or paid) the idea is to get revenue out of free to play players that wouldn't spend money otherwise.

Extra Character slot: More people would be willing to pay for that 2nd character if they can do it for a reduced cost over buying another game account and you would be able to do it through 1 account instead of having multiple accounts.

Also, you say it's easy to just buy another account and pay for the 2nd sub as being easy - a lot less people will do this than if they could just pay for 1 extra character and keep 1 sub on 1 account.

All of these "cash shop items" is meant to get money from the f2p crowed that wouldn't spend money on a sub, giving the dev team more way's to monetize income for game development.

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Why not have boosters for everything.
Totems cost x$
Stats cost x$
Skills cost x$
Where do you stop it? I mean people are already paying 40$(30$ now) and 15$ (10$ a month now) for the game why should they have to fork out more money? You could say they could do this with anything and everything. More money for the devs right?

Buy extra account? Why not make it 1$? Or what about making it so you can have 2 totems?
These cash shop items are not going to be bought by people on a free account they will be pushed onto people already paying, and guess what? Those paying people will quit if they have to keep paying 2 or 3 or 4 times for the game they already paying monthly for.

You might care less about assholes because you reroll and change your name weekly, but many people live by a rep, and they earn it for better or worse. Mostly better. The people that do change their name are the jerks and guess what? They scam people in many different ways.

I agree. It does need to be raised a bit. Maybe not 60, but 45-50.

Also, to add to previous ideas of a "cash shop" perhaps it would be worth it to take a look at Wurm Online's system, a game very similar to Xsyon.

In the store you can just buy money, thats it, just money. You don't redeem this money for items in a cash shop, its an actual game item.

The money in game has many uses. For one, all player owned "stores" use it. Secondly, to found a town, you need this money. This standardizes currency and gives an incentive to buy from the in game store. Player can just buy tons of money to pimp out a character or start a totem.

Its not a perfect system, but it works.

with it being 30 leaves any1 free to play short of the good stuff in xsyon. considering you need 40 in skills to learn cart schemes, its a good start. Sure we can improve this as time goes one, However remember, point of free to play is to allow anyone to try the game and have fun with it and then showing them the perks of subing and intice them to sub. Glad to see this thread is positive, Hope to see more ideas from all of ya! :-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrDDT

Why not have boosters for everything.
Totems cost x$
Stats cost x$
Skills cost x$
Where do you stop it? I mean people are already paying 40$(30$ now) and 15$ (10$ a month now) for the game why should they have to fork out more money? You could say they could do this with anything and everything. More money for the devs right?

Buy extra account? Why not make it 1$? Or what about making it so you can have 2 totems?
These cash shop items are not going to be bought by people on a free account they will be pushed onto people already paying, and guess what? Those paying people will quit if they have to keep paying 2 or 3 or 4 times for the game they already paying monthly for.

You might care less about assholes because you reroll and change your name weekly, but many people live by a rep, and they earn it for better or worse. Mostly better. The people that do change their name are the jerks and guess what? They scam people in many different ways.

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you are taking it to the extreme, the boosters are optional and not required - I don't see how my suggestions are setup in a way where you would have to pay for any of it.

I mean, the whole point of my suggestion is to set it up in a way where it's not game breaking or even required to be competitive. You could play as a f2p or paid player and never have to spend a dime in the cash shop and still have a good time. (although with limited skills at 30 you wouldn't be able to do much)