Current state of Gemstone/Free to play

[Gizmo]

So I left when the free to play stuff was yet in effect and I've been pondering coming back to escape my crazy life of work, surgeries and cancer treatments.

Can someone explain to me in short, easy and general details how free to play works versus staying subscription based and such?

How limited are things? Is it any beneficial to go free and just purchase monthly some benefits from the store?

I'd do some looking into things but I'm at work and on the phone currently but will be around more tomorrow.

Has the player base grown at all now (actual players) since the free to play went live as well?

[Donquix]

So I left when the free to play stuff was yet in effect and I've been pondering coming back to escape my crazy life of work, surgeries and cancer treatments.

Can someone explain to me in short, easy and general details how free to play works versus staying subscription based and such?

How limited are things? Is it any beneficial to go free and just purchase monthly some benefits from the store?

I'd do some looking into things but I'm at work and on the phone currently but will be around more tomorrow.

Has the player base grown at all now (actual players) since the free to play went live as well?

First, i hope everything is going well

ok.. so, you get a f2p account. The exp penalty kicks in at 10, gets progressively worse. By the time you're 20+ you're going to be getting 10-12 exp per tick less than normal, and it continues to get worse. I haven't seen numbers for people over 30 really. No lumnis is a big shitter as well.

Very, if you want to do things for other people. Want to cast spells on others? Need a pass. Want to receive spells from others? need a pass. heal / rez? need a pass (kinda, you just can't heal /rez the SAME people over and over, have to spread it out.), etc. Treasure is awful, bounties you can only do 1 per hour. no foraging bonuses (like if you roll a ranger, get fucked), lockpicking likewise restricted. no enchanting, ensorcelling, etc. Basically if you want to do it, you can't. It's a glorified trial account, not a real f2p tier. The passes are more or less prohibitively expensive if you're at all taking things seriously outside of some niche items (like maybe the heal /rez passes if you want to do that. treasure drops are terrible, and capped per day, you only get 1 locker and ONE bank account (i.e. your silvers are in the landing, you can't do shit in TI. i think they have a way to move it but i haven't bothered with that). You also can't go to RR or teras at all.

there was a good size bump in population after f2p first released, but it seems to have normalized down a bit. Still higher than when you were last around but, it's not like "zomg the old days guys!". Definitely more people back, as f2p or roped back in with that to real accounts, but not inundated with people. I just updated the demographics thread with current counts, and remember a lot of the raw numbers are utility bullshit accounts (locker / gem mules, etc.)

Overall things are good, and HSN is going on so like..roll a sorcerer because they get all the fun toys.

[Gizmo]

Ahh so the f2p is even shittier than I'd thought. Thanks for that round uo.

I heard HSN was goin on, and when I left I kept my sorcerer with his spell preps from that one recent newish event, before the arena which I missed :(

Maybe I'll activate him then and see what's going on.

Sounds like the f2p isn't viable at all with a ton of restrictions.

[Astray]

God, HSN is generating so much butthurt.

Anyways, yeah, F2P is shit. A step in the right direction, sure, but Simu gotta Simu.

[Latrinsorm]

I liked playing F2P. I only stopped because my schedule changed and I didn't have any time left to devote to it. The numbers don't go up as fast, but if you're dead set on numbers going up GemStone isn't really the game for you anyway, what with its years to cap and top gear by level 25 paradigm. There is room for improvement in the F2P model but I think it's overly criticized.

[Androidpk]

You can have fun with F2P.

[Fallen]

I enjoyed FTP. It's a great model for getting back into the game or trying out new professions. Once you make friends you're going to want to re-up so you can help out with spells and the like, but if you're a solo non-MAer, F2P is perfectly viable.

[Donquix]

God, HSN is generating so much butthurt.

Anyways, yeah, F2P is shit. A step in the right direction, sure, but Simu gotta Simu.

said tongue in cheek, there's still 5 weeks to go hopefully :P

But it's a fair recommendation for someone coming back, sorcs definitely have several new toys with at least one more to go. Plus, there still may be the elore update as well (maybe).

[Archigeek]

I liked playing F2P. I only stopped because my schedule changed and I didn't have any time left to devote to it. The numbers don't go up as fast, but if you're dead set on numbers going up GemStone isn't really the game for you anyway, what with its years to cap and top gear by level 25 paradigm. There is room for improvement in the F2P model but I think it's overly criticized.

I think the criticism is probably partly justified, but also partly due to unrealistic expectations. SIMU has a bit of a quandry because they get so much of their revenue from their premium subscription. They're afraid to do anything that might erode that income stream. Thus we see the Simucoin store, which was first implemented to AUGMENT the premium subscribers (basic too), and not for the FTP crowd. FTP works when you bring in a lot of people. It is a waste of time if they aren't going to try to make it easier, and to do that they run into the challenge of erosion of their own cash cow. We the players have gotten to be so good at exploitation, that if they give anything to FTP that might be considered a plus, a percentage of the player base will drill down on that and take advantage of it. So the dilema is: how do we make full use of the FTP model without screwing over our cash cow revenue stream?

One suggestion might be to re-package premium and other base subscriptions as package deals that are summaries of various parts of the Simucoin store. Instead of premium, we'd have the "premo bonus package" and instead of basic, we'd have the "prime bonus package". That might help get the monthly subscription model more in line with the FTP model. I'm not entirely sure I like it, but it might be a way to get the two systems more in line.

[Taernath]

One of the things that bugs me is you can't switch from sub to F2P, though you can upgrade a F2P account to sub. You have to start over. I'm far more likely to play an old character with 20 years of play time (fuck) on F2P/simucoin than I am to do a full sub.

[Donquix]

One of the things that bugs me is you can't switch from sub to F2P, though you can upgrade a F2P account to sub. You have to start over. I'm far more likely to play an old character with 20 years of play time (fuck) on F2P/simucoin than I am to do a full sub.

^^ that. Even if they only limited it to new accounts made after f2p was an option, the fact that you can't go back. It's not an f2p account, it's a trial account with no time limit.

[Archigeek]

One of the things that bugs me is you can't switch from sub to F2P, though you can upgrade a F2P account to sub. You have to start over. I'm far more likely to play an old character with 20 years of play time (fuck) on F2P/simucoin than I am to do a full sub.

This speaks to the fear I was talking about. They'd love to have you back, but they're deathly afraid that if they made it possible to downgrade to FTP, that their subscription accounts would take a giant nose dive. I think the only solution is to bring the two systems together, so that it's all on a continuum from FTP to Plat, with easy to pick and chose elements from an ala carte menu, along with a strong incentive to buy into package deals (basic, premium, and plat). But basic, premium, and plat might have to be repackaged to appear to be more in sync with the FTP model.

[Gizmo]

Seems like Sorcerers have seen the most benefit so far from all these changes, and HSN.

Has anything else occurred that's worthwhile in regards to say CMs, Rogues even and such?

I saw the Stamina stuff but that looked to be about it for now..

[Astray]

Seems like Sorcerers have seen the most benefit so far from all these changes, and HSN.

Has anything else occurred that's worthwhile in regards to say CMs, Rogues even and such?

I saw the Stamina stuff but that looked to be about it for now..

There's a bunch of shield cmans, stances and all that. I don't know if those were out by the time you left or not.

[Gizmo]

There's a bunch of shield cmans, stances and all that. I don't know if those were out by the time you left or not.

Yea, was around for that all when it came and when quite a few people made the switch back to shield/one handed or shield/spear as warriors.

[Astray]

Yea, was around for that all when it came and when quite a few people made the switch back to shield/one handed or shield/spear as warriors.

I, personally, haven't noted anything. But I've been on in-game hiatus for a while and just recently jumped back in myself.

[Donquix]

nope, no changes other than the stamina update for real squares (monks don't really count but, got meditative resistance in HSN so far)

i guess uh...they fixed punching elementals for UAC. So if you were a UAC rogue you no longer blow your arm off for punching them automatically.

[Gizmo]

Yea was never a UAC rogue.

Still contemplating what to play at this rate...if I go rogue I start from square one or if I go sorcerer I do have a level like 20 to use with 3 spell preps I bought heh..

[Donquix]

Yea was never a UAC rogue.

Still contemplating what to play at this rate...if I go rogue I start from square one or if I go sorcerer I do have a level like 20 to use with 3 spell preps I bought heh..

sorc is pretty neat now, new toys for sure. Plus you get dat sweet ensorcell cash flow post 35.

but always hard to pass up rogue, just so versatile.

[AestheticDeath]

I think I recall there being a limit of 100k per account, for f2p. Is that true, and is it in pockets, or in bank, or in total etc..

Anyone tried holding over 100k on a free to play account, using notes?

[subzero]

sorc is pretty neat now, new toys for sure. Plus you get dat sweet ensorcell cash flow post 35.

but always hard to pass up rogue, just so versatile.

Too bad none of the good shit you're talking about is available for F2P accounts with the exception of sorcerer spells (minus 735).

[Taernath]

I think I recall there being a limit of 100k per account, for f2p. Is that true, and is it in pockets, or in bank, or in total etc..

Anyone tried holding over 100k on a free to play account, using notes?

There are passes for a "Bank Account Cap Increase" so I'm assuming it's tied to your IG bank account.

I think I remember reading about a silver-on-hand cap too, and anything beyond it would really weigh your character down. I don't remember if that included notes.

[Atlanteax]

To me, it is very simple for SIMU:

Take everything that is BASIC subscription ... you get 100% of it free-to-play.
Make PREMIUM subscriptions even more enticing than they are now, charge a monthly sub for $$$
EVENTS = ticket $$$ from both F2P (Basic) and Premium

Higher population from F2P = (1) more people willing to drop $$$ on events, (2) more likely F2P converting to Premium, and (3) Premium players (paying a monthly sub) sticking around longer.

[Astray]

To me, it is very simple for SIMU:

Take everything that is BASIC subscription ... you get 100% of it free-to-play.
Make PREMIUM subscriptions even more enticing than they are now, charge a monthly sub for $$$
EVENTS = ticket $$$ from both F2P (Basic) and Premium

Higher population from F2P = (1) more people willing to drop $$$ on events, (2) more likely F2P converting to Premium, and (3) Premium players (paying a monthly sub) sticking around longer.

This argument has been making the rounds ever since F2P was introduced. Apparently people believe that if you have a free to play option that isn't heavily restricted, everyone will go immediately free and everything will die.

[Fallen]

People would make their alts free to play

[Astray]

People would make their alts free to play

Yes. There is a potential for abuse.

[Geijon Khyree]

MUDs in general don't have enough player interest to support the so-called free method a lot of people are suggesting. Dragonrealms and Gemstone IV are the top played fantasy muds. When ftp went live a lot of that shift came at the expense of Aardwulf. It doesn't seem like more people entered the MUD market, but more that it moved them around.

Reddit has about 4500 users to talk MUDs. These three games, the biggest, extrapolate to equal about 30-35% of that player market, which is significant. EQ and the explosion of graphical games to WoW, ESO, lotr online, DDO, FFXIV, and of course league of legends on top of market saturation in online games just don't support huge numbers of player or market share for our genre since the inception of MMOs vs. MUDs.

A true free to play would probably destabilize both games (Simutronics products) cash flow substantially. You are talking about 100 real people that might be enticed to return or sign up with a more forgiving free model and they don't offset account upgrade and downgrades. If you assume about $9 a month on a ftp as a good average it doesn't replace the basic accounts at near $20 and for certain premium accounts at an even higher rate until you graph membership probably beyond 800 players (270-400 extrapolated into a quantified percentage of revenue loss at subscriber gain). No MUD reaches those numbers or even hits 500 players. The inability to downgrade a paid account to f2p is the right decision. If someone wants to run math and post it to better signify this math feel free, but my quasi math isn't drastically incorrect.

You can refute what I said, but it's true.

[Astray]

You can offset potential loss of revenue by offering services unavailable to Free accounts. Something already offered via Premium. Let's be completely real here. The existence of Duskruin alone proves that people are willing to throw money at Simu for various in-game objects with scripts. And that's purely focusing on Duskruin. Let's exclude seasonal events like EG, that has tickets that sell like hot cakes at a fat camp.

I'm also a huge advocate for selling exp and various other boosters. But meh. This conversation has been beaten into the damn ground. So I'll let it go.

[Archigeek]

Geijon, I think your analysis is compelling, but one thing to also keep in mind is that maintenance of the status quo is not realistic either. The question in my mind is, when will we reach a point where there just aren't enough people around who are still willing to shell out $45/month anymore? When we reach that point, will there be enough people who would stick around in an FTP model to make a difference?

[Geijon Khyree]

Geijon, I think your analysis is compelling, but one thing to also keep in mind is that maintenance of the status quo is not realistic either. The question in my mind is, when will we reach a point where there just aren't enough people around who are still willing to shell out $45/month anymore? When we reach that point, will there be enough people who would stick around in an FTP model to make a difference?

I want to say no, but I think we can run a stable server off tech our phones come with nowdays. We could clone a lot of it eventually or an overlord could buy the game when its at the end of it's life and maintain it for the last 100 of us who care to play. That would extend it into perpetuity as some strange internet relic. I think the curve for MUDs becomes generational in respect to players like you and I. We'll age out of the game at some point both figuratively and literally.

I keep telling this joke about VR because I have a 15 month old son. He's going to be in the back yard when he's 10 with a headset on that he's playing a Ninja, but he's actually going to be doing parkour, flips, van damme roundhouses and all sorts of complex defensive moves against a VR opponent for real. He's then going to ask me to try and I'll be like, "Nah, I played video games when I was young, but your stuff is way beyond me son."

[Maerit]

Ok, I think there's actually a lot of misconceptions about F2P.

Firstly - the spells. This is the most highly debated topic about F2P because spells and buffs are so essential to playing the game. You can get outside spells like everyone else. You just cannot give your own spells to anyone else without a pass. There's extremely logical reasons for this. If you could just buff anyone as much as you wanted, buffbots get created.

I've leveled - (2x)Paladin, (3x)Cleric, (2x)Monk, Warrior, Bard, Wizard, and an Empath to 20+ in F2P. All of them reaching 20+ in the first 30 days. I've even manage to get to 20 on my dedicated F2P character with 17 days left on my 30 days!! The EXP penalties are grossly over-hyped. Of course, I play way too much, but that doesn't mean you can't level effectively with F2P accounts. It just means you can take your sweet sweet time and level as slowly or as quickly as you want.

I prefer to punish myself and level insanely during the first 30 days because I want to take advantage of testing out as much of my character's potential build options as I can during that time. Otherwise, I will never know what it feels like to be a pure Bane / Smite cleric or pure empath vs. swinging, or a war wizard vs bolting wizard, or Polearms vs THW vs S/B and so much more. I like to tweak and test my characters, and test the F2P system.

There's a major spell write-up that I posted about F2P after testing numerous characters here: http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?96614-F2P-Spell-Research

This details what spells work for F2P, and defines (briefly) how they interact with other players. For example, F2P paladins are very lightly restricted. They can still use their group spells and they will work on the party. Bards, however, are screwed for F2P. Not only are their group spellsongs blocked on the party, but 50% of their spells past 1011 are blocked completely without a spell pass. And due to how bards work (refresh and such), a spell pass is basically useless unless you want to spend $.40 / hour to provide access to your major higher level spells (like Song of Power or Song of Noise) since they influence a room and not just your character.

However, with this in mind you can make an informed decision on what F2P character would work best.

Warriors and Rogues have no access to Guilds, so I don't recommend them. That greatly hinders their progression options. Plus, you can only lockpick boxes that you find, so Rogues are not even useful or smithing.
Empaths are hindered as Healers in TSC or wherever because F2P healing mechanics make them undesirable.
Bards are the absolute worst F2P character. They bring no group utility, they cannot loresing, they cannot purify gems.

Everything else works pretty damn well. Paladins are probably the best F2P class due to having their group spells intact, but Cleric has been my favorite to level as F2P. They just bring a lot of community value. You can still raise people. You can still make mana bread, bless weapons, and do all sorts of cleric-like activities, along with having powerful hunting options and many defensive tools at your disposal.

And once again, you can still receive all outside spells from other subscribed players. Not sure why people think you're isolated completely because that isn't true. I buff my own characters with my subscribed wizard and sorcerer all the time.

F2P accounts can also cast 101, 401, and 1204 on other players up to 2 hours stacked, but that doesn't really add much value. Still, it's not nothing!

Give it a shot!

[Maerit]

The biggest gripe I have after testing numerous F2P accounts:

#1 Single bank location. You have to pay $1.00 everytime you want to hunt in a different city because of the bank account issues.
#2 Bank account limit. No more than 100,000 silvers in your single bank account (though you can increase this with simucoin purchases)

Not having a locker doesn't bother me because - just make a F2P character and locker your stuff on that "mule". He can even move from city to city for free! You can also create a bank character, but the number of major scripts in the game that interact with normal bank accounts hinders the utility this brings, and it's often hard to keep a bank account character logged in at all times to have access to you silvers (this can get tedious when I've tried it). At least you can use the bank account character to store your excess silvers when your bank account finally reaches 100,000+ silvers (which takes a while or you have to get lucky with a few enhancive finds)

Society access is $2.00 per month. Small price to pay for the benefits of having a society, and you can chose if you want to renew or not because you never lose ranks - you just lose access to the abilities.

The bank account issue is the most limiting issue for F2P since it encourages players to localize to a single town, and discourages them from exploring all Elanthia has to offer.

[AestheticDeath]

So .. have you tried coming up with a way to circumvent the silver/bank limitation? Bank notes, 125 boxs to make silver slabs or finding items you can buy, store and then resell/pawn for close to the same amount?

IE vultite dagger from weapon store, how much does it cost, how much does it pawn for? Stores actually hold custom items till you pick them up right? So you could essentially store 30-50k in a store, then pick it up and pawn it later.

Obviously some methods incur loss of silver, but losing silver to retain most of it is better than spending cash on a F2p account.

... Don't tell me f2p cannot access town stores...

[AestheticDeath]

I tried looking it up on the gswiki, but couldn't find it. Anyone have a list of which races have discount benefits in each town? All I know of atm, is giantmen get huge discount in landing pawnshop - and i assume elves get discounts in vaalor and illistim.

You get a 10% discount per store once you earn backroom access.
I think you might also get a discount on top of that if you are a citizen of the town, can f2p become citizens?
Then the racial mod
charisma mod
trading skill mod


Maerit, if you have any of the lvl 20+ with free skill swaps still available, you might try fiddling with trading through the merchants in a town.

[AestheticDeath]

Found it, but these two posts do not agree. And my giantman is getting a major discount at the pawnshop, I can't see the whole bonus coming from charisma modifier.. but I will look.

Saved post from Nilandia (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Town_racial_bias_%28saved_post%29)
Trading wiki (https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Trading)

So, level two giantman empath. Wehnimer's Landing pawnshop. I get a 25% discount on purchases. Changed my influence around so I had a different bonuses, and still got the same thing.
Tried with 80/20, and 42/1. Level one elf wizard, 70/20, same 25% discount.

Did they give free to play accounts a 25% discount for the shops? Surely not.


[Tykel's Arms, Showroom]
giantman, int 61/5, 30 inf bonus, no trade ranks - vultite dagger was 11,704
changed int to 100/25, no change in price
100/25 int, 100/30 inf with 8 ranks of trade, it went down to 11,653 - which isn't even a 1% decrease


Pawnshop is definitely still different than the order shops. I need someone with a paid account to check prices on vultite dagger from tykels shop. Find out what the actual base value is without trading/influence/intuition. And didn't intuition used to be intelligence? Is int still the stat used for order shops?

[Maerit]

Maerit, if you have any of the lvl 20+ with free skill swaps still available, you might try fiddling with trading through the merchants in a town.

I did actually test out trading skill, and it was useful. The main issue isn't that there's a bank account limit - it's that you can only bank in a single city. If, as F2P, you start in Ta'Vaalor and deposit your coin there, then decide you need to move to the Landing, you must pay simucoin to have your bank moved with you. Even if you're just going there for the day to enjoy a merchant event, or participate in player RP events - you either carry your coin on you, or pay $1.00 to have your bank moved. This discourages relocating for F2P individuals.

The bank limitation I have many ways to bypass. I just make a F2P character, and he can hold an infinite amount of silvers on his person. It is just very annoying to need to constantly log in and out of different characters to access your resources. For lockers, not a big deal. For silvers, when you're buying herbs, paying the locksmith, looking for coin to tip a healer - it's a lot more time consuming when everything is so limited.

[Latrinsorm]

You can refute what I said, but it's true.Somewhere Aristotle just punched himself in the face. So... way to go. Aristotle was a jerk.
he can hold an infinite amount of silvers on his person.No wait... NOW Aristotle punched himself in the face.

[Fallen]

Is there any viable reason someone can offer to restrict the F2P Clerics from being able to crack a Chrism gem over a corpse?



Yes, it prevents players from being able to level up a F2P cleric, then just log it in to use a Chrism gem while another character performs the resurrection (318 scroll, 1640, etc). This restriction was implanted as a direct result of such abuse.


GameMaster Estild



They're consumable, F2P can't craft them (since they have no access to the guild system), and it'd at least give people who've worked their way through Alchemy one more thing to show for it.

The F2P character can't create them, but anyone else could and a multi-accounter could easily stockpile them to circumvent this very intended restriction. We're not going to allow F2P characters to be free mana batteres.




Obviously, anything can be abused, but I think this is a reasonable compromise between "F2P can never send without spending real money" and "F2P can be mana batteries"




There's not intended to be any middle ground. In online gaming, anything that can be abused, will be and to the extreme.


GameMaster Estild



So the resurrection pass does not allow f2p to use chrisms anymore?



There's been no change to how resurrection passes work.


GameMaster Estild

A back and forth regarding F2P accounts, Chrisms, and resurrection.

[Kaerika]

I didn't realize that GS had implemented a F2P model.

For a game ostensibly focused on roleplaying, all of these restrictions seem really silly. "I can't share mana with you because... I don't pay enough in taxes...?"

I guess the reality is that it's a game focused on using multi-account bots to make the numbers get bigger, so it must be designed as such.

[Silvean]

I guess the reality is that it's a game focused on using multi-account bots to make the numbers get bigger, so it must be designed as much.

They put a lot of thought into keeping people from making F2P bots. The overall support for Gemstone as a roleplaying venue has always been ambiguous. They went for years without any kind of official history for the game world after ICE. In a way, this is in keeping with MUD design. They were typically more like a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon crawl than a more story-focused game.

There's probably more GM support for roleplaying now than ever. Kenstrom is especially dedicated to running epic storylines with heavy player involvement. There are other GMs, however, with responsibilities for large parts of the game's world development, that don't seem to fully understand what roleplaying is. I think it's an extension of Gemstone being the only game they've ever played.

[Androidpk]

Some of the limitations just make people make more f2p characters to bypass, 100k silver limit and no lockers for example. Not being able to move your bank is really annoying too.

[Taernath]

Anyone crunched some numbers about how much less you earn as F2P? Is it an across the board nerf where even selling stuff gets you less, or does it just affect the amount of silvers/items found? I don't remember ever consistently getting 2 silvers for rat pelts before.

[Androidpk]

Anyone crunched some numbers about how much less you earn as F2P? Is it an across the board nerf where even selling stuff gets you less, or does it just affect the amount of silvers/items found? I don't remember ever consistently getting 2 silvers for rat pelts before.

I've only noticed a lower amount of silvers and loot.