Free Trail
I don’t see the harm in a free trial, although since it is a buy to play game, it is significantly more affordable than a subscription MMO which is one of the main reasons subscription MMOs often have a free trial or are partially free to play up to a point.
Otherwise, anything that helps players to decide whether or not they want to buy the game is a plus from me.
Edit: Oh silly me, I forgot about the potential for gold spammers to breed like rabbits with this.
(edited by Zalladi.4652)
There can be some harm as it increases gold sellers etc. I think trials work better in sub games, whereas i suspect anet had huge success with their 75% off method earlier in the year
This game is going for less than $23 on Amazon right now. If your friends are afraid to take a $23 chance on the game, they probably aren’t going to stick around after a trial, either.
I don’t think this game needs a free trial. I don’t think it’s asking too much of customers to pay for the game up front and then play it free forever, either.
They have offered the game for $10 twice now. Maybe we will see a sale again and they can buy it then.
They have had issues in the past with free trials, so I think they’re more likely to have sales vs trials.
I don’t know what you guys think but i want my friends in this game… And they are pretty woried about that their money will burn. I tried to convince them but they are still woried anyway maybe ArenaNet can do a 20lvl free trail and more DVD’s i still thing lots of people are not buying this game because of the same reason that my friends have.
as for gold seller comments, generally trial accounts can only talk with people in their party in other games, and someone would have to invite them to their own party, etc.
sorry if i made some grammer mistakes my main language is not english.
20 lvls is a bit much. maybe 10 levels so you get the gist of the drop system and how basic rng elements work, as well as a taste of the combat. 20 is 1/4 of the entire levels, unlike wow where 20 is 1/5.
20 lvls is a bit much. maybe 10 levels so you get the gist of the drop system and how basic rng elements work, as well as a taste of the combat. 20 is 1/4 of the entire levels, unlike wow where 20 is 1/5.
The level cap was lower when the Starter Edition appeared; I think it may have been 85. Also, level 20 characters wouldn’t get to do a whole lot.
20 lvls is a bit much. maybe 10 levels so you get the gist of the drop system and how basic rng elements work, as well as a taste of the combat. 20 is 1/4 of the entire levels, unlike wow where 20 is 1/5.
The level cap was lower when the Starter Edition appeared; I think it may have been 85. Also, level 20 characters wouldn’t get to do a whole lot.
they get to do plenty at 20…. that’s two branches of the personal story, and 2-3 entire areas, (since you can easily manage 5+ levels above you,) you’d be able to travel to all the begineer areas complete all of those, and kessex hills and the likes ontop of that, 10 is all that needs to be done to stop abuse of that.
While I love the idea of a free trial, I feel like the current new game experience and progress would do more harm than good if limiting players to anything below level 40.
Level 10 – insane, you have near nothing in form of skills or customization. Most people would get horribly turned off.
Level 20 – almost as bad as 10, just slightly better. Still lacking a lot of customization.
Level 30(31) – Finally you can get a complete set of skills down and things get interesting. Due to the lack of hero points, not all skills could get learned, but a base amount of skills would entice new players to try out more.
Level 40 – maybe a tad to far, but you do get 1 trait line to see how that works, and all of your slots. Gameplay has also reached a very authentic feel to how the game would progress futher.
What anet could do is limit the trial to level 35-40 and give it a 1 week timer or so. As with all trials all access to guilds, trading post, chat, mail, etc. would have to get limited severly (aka disabled).
A free weekend would be great. Gets some new blood into the game. Would like to see this before HoT release. Help get people interested in the game. On a free weekend you might make. level 40
They could just male the free trials on a different server
they get to do plenty at 20…. that’s two branches of the personal story, and 2-3 entire areas, (since you can easily manage 5+ levels above you,) you’d be able to travel to all the begineer areas complete all of those, and kessex hills and the likes ontop of that, 10 is all that needs to be done to stop abuse of that.
Consider the amount of content completable by level 80 characters and compare it to that.
Level 20 would be fine.
I don’t see the harm in a free trial
You know what came to mind the moment I saw “Free Trial”?
Gold sellers. Gold sellers everywhere, every hour of every day, an endless legion of them created through the wonders of automation (make free email account, sign up for free trial, spam until banned, rinse, repeat). If you think it’s bad now when the bottleneck is stolen accounts and accounts bought on discount, think of how bad it would be when the only limitation is how fast their account creation scripts work.
Even if ANet disabled mapchat for free trials the gold sellers would go through whispers, if they disable even that then it defeats the purpose of a free trial because communication is vital to keeping the interests of people trying out MMOs (the genre doesn’t lend well to single player experience due to dragging out play hours with repetitive content).
The best time to get people to try out the game is when it’s on sale, unfortunately with the new pricing model introduced by HoT we’re not going to see a sale any time soon.
20 lvls is a bit much. maybe 10 levels so you get the gist of the drop system and how basic rng elements work, as well as a taste of the combat. 20 is 1/4 of the entire levels, unlike wow where 20 is 1/5.
The level cap was lower when the Starter Edition appeared; I think it may have been 85. Also, level 20 characters wouldn’t get to do a whole lot.
they get to do plenty at 20…. that’s two branches of the personal story, and 2-3 entire areas, (since you can easily manage 5+ levels above you,) you’d be able to travel to all the begineer areas complete all of those, and kessex hills and the likes ontop of that, 10 is all that needs to be done to stop abuse of that.
But those activities are pretty mediocre at face value. The game’s strongest aspects aren’t apparent until you start doing trait combos; which you wouldn’t have enough to work with until around level 60 under the old system (T2 traits unlocked).
Thats the overall problem with Leveling and NPE with this game…. None of the important build aspects, the Core of the gameplay, is made available until 20-30+ hours into the game. This is made worse by the fact that the earliest levels have both some of the dumbest unlock progress design choices, and the slowest overall progress when any other game would use that time for faster acclamation. Think about the first 2 hours…. you unlock the first 4 skills on your bar. 2 hours just to introduce you to your basic attacks. Not even a utility skill until lvl 10 to mix up your strategy, nor weapon swapping to train yourself with skill rotations.
The interrelationship of your weapon, utilities and traits are what give you power in this game. Its better to show you these concepts early, so when options open up, you can make more thoughtful choices in your leveling progression. What is the #1 complaint of players as they are leveling their first character? Trait point refunds!!! Why is this a problem? Because the game takes too long to introduce you to certain concepts, yet has you making critical long term choices that you couldn’t fully comprehend prior to that new mechanic being unlocked.
This is where hero points failed in a big way. It gives the illusion of linear progress system when all of its power is gained laterally. You should NOT unlock major traits as individual items when they are lateral choices! I will support the idea in relation to utility skills, as all classes of utility skills follow a clearly defined mechanical structure. This makes them easy to understand with just 1 skill unlock for experimentation.
But since traits are abstract, and dependent on other mechanics, players NEED more easy exploration of them, in order to understand their function. And they need to be introduced earlier in the leveling process.
Not worth the effort or risk. In today’s age prospective players have enough resources to tell if the game is a good fit for them or not. There are plenty of youtube videos and streams of the game to give an idea of what the game is like. Free Trials are just asking for trouble.