F2P Accounts unable to log into custom channels

Our first F2P member joined Lords of Stonewall today. I discovered through him that F2P accounts are unable to log into custom chat channels such as our KOS and LOS chat channels, nor are they able to use the "/who" feature to find someone online in either guild. This is EXTREMELY unfortunate because those chat channels are how potential new members are currently able to contact guild members and ask for invites to the guilds. Our new member was already registered on the website so contacted me by PM to let me know of the issue. For now, we will have to continue with having potential members contact me via PM for invites and I will add this to the instructions in the Start Here! forum instructions but if anyone can think of a better method to accomplish this so it is easier for potential members to access that would be WONDERFUL! :)

Sadly no I can't think of anything easier other then having someone park themselves somewhere in an RP role as our recruitment officer.

I can't believe Bioware did this. What is it supposed to accomplish? It certainly does nothing to enhance any social aspects of the game just makes it harder to do anything in the F2P model. I personally think they went way to far with the level of their restrictions and I think it's seriously going to come around to bite them severely. :( They keep shooting themselves in the foot to the point it has to be amputated and have moved on to other body parts.

Hopefully as they get feedback they will adjust the restrictions. I haven't gotten a chance to check out the update :(.

I would hope they relax at least one restriction, I saw that you must be a subscriber to be able to access any credits over 350,000. Unless I missed something, I didn't see any single option to unlock that separately. So I have toons sitting with 750K+ credits I can't use unless I pay a sub. Seems to go against the f2p and please buy cartel coins to support the game model. Even LoTRO doesn't do that lol!

That's a different cap than I saw on the SWTOR website. There they said the cap was 200,000 but if you had more than that it was sort of held in reserve and as you spent down below that cap, they'd add some back.

My account is now free to play and Halish could join the kos channel but when I created a new character he couldn't.

It's a pretty pointless restriction, dont see what they gain from not allowing custom channels.

Halish also has just over 200k credits and I was still earning so I guess the cap higher.

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Yes, they seem to have quite a few pointless restrictions that are just causing major problems all around. Another example is you can't trade with a F2P player. You can only mail items to them and then they have to wait an hour for the items to appear in their mailbox. They must have changed the credit cap if your toon was still earning Halish and didn't make any changes to the information on the website. Although maybe it's different for preferred status players than it is for a new F2P account. They are of course being very uninformative because no where do they actually list what F2P accounts aren't allowed to do. I've just been finding these things out from our first F2P member. He's been letting me know what he can't do so that I can help others that may be running into similar problems. I've been tempted to try to start a F2P account for myself using a different email address but I really don't want to have to download the game again and I'm not sure I could have both running at the same time even though one account would be on my laptop while the other is on my desktop.

Subscription, Preferred, Free-to-Play Features

Credit Cap:
Preferred - 350K
"F2P" - 200K

Chat:
Preferred - Full General Chat functions and /who list is unlocked.
"F2P" - Restricted tells and General Chat use only on Origin Worlds.

Mail:
Preferred - Access to sending and receiving in-game mail with one attachment, but unable to send Credits.
"F2P" - Can only receive in-game mail, not send it.

Secure Trading:
Preferred - Can use Secure Trading with other players from Level ten (10) onwards.
"F2P" - Cannot participate in Secure Trading.

Galactic Trade Network:
Preferred - Five (5) simultaneous item listings on the Galactic Trade Network (GTN).
"F2P" - Two (2) simultaneous item listings on the Galactic Trade Network (GTN).

Thanks for the info, pnuttbuttah! I didn't "mouse" over the points in the list when I first saw it. It seemed rather "uninformative" to me. [notice to self: always mouse over any information given by game developers as they seem to want to hide stuff everywhere!] Unfortunately, this also just further indicates how pointless many of the restrictions are. They sound truly desperate in the descriptions in the Cartel Store for the listed unlocks as they point out what subs get for everything. The problem is they are pissing people off royally with all the stupid restrictions which doesn't make anyone want to subscribe, it just makes people say FU Bioware..... :blink:

Quote by ltervlet

The problem is they are pissing people off royally with all the stupid restrictions which doesn't make anyone want to subscribe

Completely agree! I really like the game and I wouldn't hesitate to re-subscribe, so long as I'm having fun. As far as I'm concerned, $15/month is a bargain and I strongly disagree with the notion that "free-to-play" means everyone has some kind of entitlement to play for completely free.

However, the "F2P" restrictions here are so ridiculous that I've lost interest for now. The only reason I ever unsubscribed was to give the company time to make some decisions on these issues which were hot topics as the time:

• ability to multi-spec - still unknown?
• availability of additional character slots (I like to play lots of alts) - some progress
• server consolidation - done
• business model - done

Edit: My advice to Bioware on their business model: "Keep it simple, stupid."

I guess this explains why the channels are like ghost towns lately... Been trying to get a couple more characters into the guild for almost a week but it is like nobody is online... But that I know isn't the whole reason and some of those restrictions are pretty stupid.