Currency and the F2P (fail to payer)...yes im trying to be serious this time

[Melorcaf]

I COMPLETELY understand (most) of the reasons why the fail to payer (F2P) cannot send others coinage via Mailbox/Trade (d@mn them gold farmers) but there should be a way for the ( serious ) Free 2 Player to be able to AT LEAST be able to shift currency between his/her (2) characters. I mean if we grind hard enough for the TP we can unlock the currency cap (but STILL not able to exchange funds for services rendered from our fellow players or fund /bankroll our own alts) via the Trade 'Box' Mailbox OR pay for something sent to us by say a fellow Kinsman/woman. Im still a fairly new player and prolly beating a dead horse over the head with a rotted piece of Ashwood (not knowing if there are earlier posts on this subject) but is this something that can be negotiated in to gameplay?

[BrianDavion]

so turbine has what reason to accomadate you? I mean if you can't even make a 5 dollar 1 time purchase to go premium, you're not exactly a customer they'd be leaping up to accomadate. they are trying to make money after all

[celticwitch]

I really wish these F2P people would realize that the game is NOT ment for you... well not ment for you to play forever. It is ment for those that have made an investment, ie spent money in it or for it etc.

F2P players for some strange reason think they should get perks to play a game that they are not paying for. It's like being on welfare and driving around in a new car. You are freeloading... mooching off the system. F2P players aren't entitled to anything, they paying players are. And untill Turbine and the community realizes this this game is going to continue to be derailed.

Questing has become all but too easy for most (to accomidate the F2P player), no new contient since mirkwood.. well real content. I don't concider Endewaith new content, it's fluff disguised as something new. And now we got to wait for a year for something new and gripping? How about a new expansion with depth the likes of moria? Mirkwood was a small expansion and travisty. All this in the name of F2P and yet they, the nonpaying customers complain?

F2P players have no right to complain about anything at all. Make an investment and then you can complain about it and be worthy of the gripe. And before you say your time playing the game is investment, that is not a valid argument. You get nothing for free in this sorld. F2P wants everything under the sun, but are unwilling to support it. Changes cost money, new content cost money, running the game and dedicated servers cost money etc. Why should VIP or Premium players be the ones to carry the burdeon and get nothing in return?

Stop and think about it, and i am sure you will agree.

[Sneezer]

If you can't afford a 1 time $5 - $10 purchase, then how do you pay for the additional power to run your PC?

Seriously. If you are that broke you should't be spending time playing video games....

[Unique]

If you can't afford a 1 time $5 - $10 purchase, then how do you pay for the additional power to run your PC?

Seriously. If you are that broke you should't be spending time playing video games....

Wow, so someone can work 60 hours a week at a minimum wage job to try to pay the bills and feed their family but they aren't allowed any entertainment - especially if it's free or very cheap?

[Nairax]

Hmm.. will i be seeing this on my Benefit form sometime soon.. i hope so

Seriously though.. Unemployed with a mental illness here... I still managed to organize a debit card and made a conscience choice to not buy so many munchies and give turbine a MEASLY $10 a month.. then i even went and paid extra for some freshly baked TP..

It can be done.. its $10 a month (aprox) thats $2.50 a week.. less than a packet of.. well anything really.. im sure we can all afford that.. so it's not "unabtainable" as some may think (kiddies should ask for a $2.50 "raise" then lay that out for there parents.. you'll either cop.. "for a what?" or "you worked that out by yourself.. im proud you've learnt how to budget")

Now.. on the subject.. whilst i agree with the original ethos of no ingame money transfer between just anyone on F2P.. being able to share between your own chars wouldn't harm anything.. i was just there as a F2P.. trust me.. its a royal pain and probably causes more grief that it would ever do good.. it seriously wouldn't hurt the ingame economy for account based inter-transfers to be viable nor have any effect on sales for turbine other than less ppl rage quitting who might have otherwise stayed and spent $ down the line.. you've given the F2P players more before.. this is a minor detail, but major cause of frustration.

And im VIP now.. so spare me your F2P hate.. but spending a month as pure F2P i can surely sympathize for anyone who "wants to pay" but still can't.. i was in that boat from the 1st day

[PiperPilot]

I really wish these F2P people would realize that the game is NOT ment for you... well not ment for you to play forever. It is ment for those that have made an investment, ie spent money in it or for it etc.

F2P players for some strange reason think they should get perks to play a game that they are not paying for. It's like being on welfare and driving around in a new car. You are freeloading... mooching off the system. F2P players aren't entitled to anything, they paying players are. And untill Turbine and the community realizes this this game is going to continue to be derailed.

Questing has become all but too easy for most (to accomidate the F2P player), no new contient since mirkwood.. well real content. I don't concider Endewaith new content, it's fluff disguised as something new. And now we got to wait for a year for something new and gripping? How about a new expansion with depth the likes of moria? Mirkwood was a small expansion and travisty. All this in the name of F2P and yet they, the nonpaying customers complain?

F2P players have no right to complain about anything at all. Make an investment and then you can complain about it and be worthy of the gripe. And before you say your time playing the game is investment, that is not a valid argument. You get nothing for free in this sorld. F2P wants everything under the sun, but are unwilling to support it. Changes cost money, new content cost money, running the game and dedicated servers cost money etc. Why should VIP or Premium players be the ones to carry the burdeon and get nothing in return?

Stop and think about it, and i am sure you will agree.

I like your name. Happy pre-Meàn Geimhridh.


EDIT: PS, Celtic: I agree with your post 100% and have been saying that very same thing for a while now.

[Sneezer]

Wow, so someone can work 60 hours a week at a minimum wage job to try to pay the bills and feed their family but they aren't allowed any entertainment - especially if it's free or very cheap?

If you work 60 hours a week, and choose to spend the small amount of time that you aren't working playing video games instead of with your family then you have your priorities wrong.

Also, if you are already working 20 hours of overtime, you are telling me that over a period of 2 weeks you couldn't squeeze in an extra 15 minutes each week (3 minutes a day) and make an extra 5 bucks to buy some points?

Seriously. i can understand being tight on cash when you have a family to feed and can only find a minimum wage job. However, MY POINT was, that if you can afford to buy a computer and pay for the power to run it, it is a pretty lame argument that you can't afford 5 bucks to buy a few points and go premium.

[PiperPilot]

Wow, so someone can work 60 hours a week at a minimum wage job to try to pay the bills and feed their family but they aren't allowed any entertainment - especially if it's free or very cheap?

I work 25 hours a week at a $10/hr job at the moment, and can still afford the game as VIP while paying all the bills and supporting 2 people, a dog, a cat, and a rabbit. *shrug* So... if you work 60 hours a week at $7.35/hr (min wage)... then you're doing better than I am. Just pay the money and be done with it.

[Melorcaf]

My second post edited due to a request to do so

you trolling forum bashers really missed the point this time but ok i guess thats what the greater population wants then then i guess ill keep begging and begging and begging some more in trade chat to have something crafted for free then and not support the 'realms' economy but jack it up even more....I'll see y'all in Bree


------------------------
l Spare Mats, l
l Food, Coins? l
l l
l Anything helps l
l l
l Thank You!!! l
l l
l l
l l
l_________________l
T
ll
ll
ll
ll heres your sign



Funny now that Nov update is live every friggen tab/panel has a Unlock symbol it honestly makes me HATE the turbine store even more now if Turbine would adjust the buy points packs to be resonable or quit tryint to charge a friggen arm and a leg for EVERY little damn thing in the game i might scrounge enuff change to buy $25 turbine card but all i see is GREED


www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ2vZPuU25E

[Melorcaf]

lol sign didnt turn out quite right but oh well guess im gonna get bashed for that also BRING IT ON!!!!!

[Sylpher]

Ok... how about this... you don't pay... so why should you get the benefits of a paying customer? Can you legitimize that? If so, let me know.

hmmm legitimize what? that i believe that giving F2P players the ability to trade gold between your own characters won't affect the economy of LOTRO? i couldn't care less if i don't get the same benefits of a "paying" costumer not being able to trade gold with characters that are in your same account and server is just ridiculous, do i care if i can/cannot trade gold with other players? for the moment no maybe in the future i would care but right now i couldn't care less.

It's true that all companies need to focus on their paying costumers but that doesn't mean that they should just ignore the rest of the community.

[celticwitch]

i disagree. They should ignore the non-paying customers.. well to a point. I digress. As to the topic, it does cost money to enable money trading between toons. Now you have to write a separate script and or allocate resources to the F2P player to add this one little thing... that does cost money, time and manpower to do. Thus taking away the resources from where they should be. You are F2P... deal with it. If you do not like your few restrictions then move on to a different game. i would hope that you didn't and spent a little money supporting a game that you enjoy playing.

That being said. I have been in the army for 18 yrs and have had work weeks well into the 90 hours a week. I get salary not per hour... no over time not holliday bonus etc. I have a family, 2 kids a wife a dog and 3 ferrets, and just bought a house. I live paycheck to paycheck but i do it comfortably ...bills come first. It's called priorities. If I can afford to pay 15 bucks a month, most anyone can. Even the teenager... instead of haning with ur friends at the mall, go get a part time job. I did it at 15, you can too.

[PiperPilot]

My second post edited due to a request to do so

you trolling forum bashers really missed the point this time but ok i guess thats what the greater population wants then then i guess ill keep begging and begging and begging some more in trade chat to have something crafted for free then and not support the 'realms' economy but jack it up even more....I'll see y'all in Bree


------------------------
l Spare Mats, l
l Food, Coins? l
l l
l Anything helps l
l l
l Thank You!!! l
l l
l l
l l
l_________________l
T
ll
ll
ll
ll heres your sign



Funny now that Nov update is live every friggen tab/panel has a Unlock symbol it honestly makes me HATE the turbine store even more now if Turbine would adjust the buy points packs to be resonable or quit tryint to charge a friggen arm and a leg for EVERY little damn thing in the game i might scrounge enuff change to buy $25 turbine card but all i see is GREED


www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ2vZPuU25E

Soooo... what you're saying, then... is that it would be cheaper to subscribe.

Sounds like a 'working as intended' to me. Play the free parts for free... or... I dunno... SUBSCRIBE!

[PiperPilot]

I have been in the army for 18 yrs and have had work weeks well into the 90 hours a week. I get salary not per hour... no over time not holliday bonus etc.

I don't miss those days. I wasn't army. But I was salary. And... wow... never again. I would rather have a minimum wage hourly job than a 50K salary (which I had).

[dtjw]

It's true that all companies need to focus on their paying costumers but that doesn't mean that they should just ignore the rest of the community.

Turbine should cater to their non-paying customers to the extent that (1) it helps to convert non-payers to payers, (2) it attracts new non-payers that could become potential payers, and (3) it cost-effectively enhances the experience of their paying customers.

Honestly, at this point I think Turbine is giving away way to much for free. I must admit I'm a little worried here because I acknowledge that Turbine needs to monetize the game somehow, and I'd rather they not do it by gouging their loyal customers. Turbine can monetize the game by enticing new players to "buy" the game and game content (quest packs) - ie, the Guild Wars model - and they can monetize the game by enticing existing players to buy pay to win items (tomes, potions, buffs). Right now the store is a reasonably acceptable compromise between the two, but I'm seeing it drift further away from the former and more towards the latter.

With the LL unlock the game is basically completely free now up to level 30, and there are tasks/epics/instances to keep you busy past that. IMO Turbine is offering you about 15-30 hours of high-quality MMORPG gameplay (depending on how quickly you quest) and two well-designed instance clusters (GB + GA) for free. Heck, that's more gameplay time than most single-player games offer these days, and it's server time that paying customers are subsidizing, all for free. Double that if you enjoy questing enough to do it again with a different class. Add even more time if you are willing to add a little TP grinding on top of that to buy Evendim or ND or something, for even more quests. Presumably Turbine does have a strategy here and they do believe that it's cost-effective to offer this much of the game with no strings attached as an inducement. But I think it's reasonable for Turbine to have a few "sticks" to prod F2Pers to drop at least $5 into the game in addition to the carrots of new quest zones and character unlocks.

If you see people "bashing" F2Pers and insisting that F2P not be too generous, it's probably born from the commonly held intuition that the game must be paid for somehow. If Turbine can't get enough F2Pers to at least go premium and drop a few bucks on the game that means they'll try to double-dip their loyal, paid-in customers. So yes, while I welcome people who have come to check out this great game for free and will help them enjoy their time here as they decide whether or not the game is something they would like to spend money on (I handed out lots of lowbie crafed armor sets to new F2Pers I saw running around, for example) I WILL try to discourage people who are not paying AND express no intent to ever pay from continuing to leech off my subscription. Sorry.

[Sylpher]

well i'll be one of those who "leech off your subscription" i don't care that they put obstacles to F2P they can do it if they want but about those "pay to win" items for my personal experience in MMO gaming those type of items a lot of players don't like them (vips and f2pers alike).

bah i won't even reply anymore the more i come to the forums the less i want to even consider being vip for even 1 month and now with the stupid adds and stuff about the store the less i'm willing to even buy TP i'll just keep farming my TP with my alts.

cya and welcome the leech of all your subscriptions... me >

[dtjw]

well i'll be one of those who "leech off your subscription" i don't care that they put obstacles to F2P they can do it if they want but about those "pay to win" items for my personal experience in MMO gaming those type of items a lot of players don't like them (vips and f2pers alike).

bah i won't even reply anymore the more i come to the forums the less i want to even consider being vip for even 1 month and now with the stupid adds and stuff about the store the less i'm willing to even buy TP i'll just keep farming my TP with my alts.

cya and welcome the leech of all your subscriptions... me >

You specifically were looking for a "legitimate" reason that OP's idea would be a bad thing for the game, because you correctly point out that it would have negligible impact on the wider game economy. I've articulated a reason (and it's actually the same reason everyone else brought up in this thread, just expressed in a different way): implementing the OP's suggestion would negatively affect Turbine's ability to convert F2Pers into Premium customers, so they shouldn't do it.

[Vombatiform]

As of right now I can see how much restriction the no money trade pose to free to players(been there myself) I don't think it should be changed. There are quite a few ways one can pass through it, such as crafting items that have around the same worth as the item you wish to trade for, or simply farming for monster drops(their sell price apparently increased).

Concerning the money trade within account, I find it odd that its not implemented, though I think a lot would suddenly have problems with their money cap in case it'd get implemented. There are alternatives to solve that problem too, such as buying gear from the AH for your main, crafting materials and recipes, hell, if you got enough money from grinding all the TP you could from the free areas(I've capped my gold almost all the time when I was grinding out the free area TPs) you can even buy a house your main can use. Its not as good as having the money on hand, but if you have no way to trade money to other players, that much money does not really mean all that much since you miss out from a lot of deals traders offer. Its also a better way to use it instead of it going to waste when you delete/remake the new TP farm alt.

And just for the record, I'm one of those people who don't consider paying for this game(and yet I got a gift month sub from a certain someone, before I get called a hypocrite.) We get a lot of freedom from turbine, way more than what other free games offer for us. For that, I am thankful, and I will continue to live with them despite that it might irk some folk around here.

Enjoy the game everyone, less hating, more gaming.
cheers,
Harsgrum Ironbreaker, Elendilmir midget tank.

[Celestrata]

While the original subject of this thread was sincere, it seems to have derailed due to some heated opinions. I'm afraid I'm going to have to lock this thread, just to make sure it doesn't derail again.

Thank you for the suggestion, and thank you to those of you who participated kindly in the discussion.