Originally Posted by
Kurt2013
Sadly this is a popular misconception. Actually to keep the game alive, it is engame, midgame and early game that counts. So f2p is involved in at least in half of "what counts". What funcom (or many remaining players) consider the best in game, might not be objectively be so and other aspects now neglected might have been things adressing a far wider player crowd than what is left of subscribers. For example, there are many reasons people are attracted to an mmo or play it. If you look at aocs reviews and why players say the play it, it comes commonly to atmosphere, combat and player customization. This not necessarily means the classic "get powerful, dominate or progress along set tiers" approach. A lot of players are content with doing a lot less in a game (and might even be willing to pay for it, if the experience and price fits).
If i look at TL forum conversations, they differ not much from what you see on the official forum, they are just very specialized (with pros and cons) and more moderated.
To be successfull, dev(s) should just not listen to a small circle of people, but have to see the opinions and suggestions from people they somehow managed to interest in the game, but on the other hand have not convinced enough to pay (yet). This is a major problem of marketing: if you only focus on your specific target group, you miss out the big picture and money you could get. And if you keep asking only the remaining people in your target group, it is bound to shrink and shrink. When it comes to player made suggestions, these can even be very easy changes or implementations with a huge yield.
Also of lot of f2p players are veterans, with a good knowledge of the game and real life skills they could add to the community.
I have seen more or at least the same amount of trolls, goldsellers, hackers and abusive people among the premium crowd as in the f2p crowd, so i rule out the "official" argument of such f2p limitations.
It depends on how you see people. It should matter more, if the suggestion is good or not and brought up civilized, than if it comes from someone paying or playing a lot. Even a new players opinion on gameplay changes from f2p to premium (or the content that matters) should be very valid to hear.
Move these free contributions to a seperate ghetto forum (you do not even see unless logged in) and mute them on TL and ingame, and you are leaving out a large part of your player base at your own risk. You also leave out a large part of the bad parts (as mentioned above), but this is similar in percentage to the bad part in premium users.
If a f2p player has suggestions or critics from where you can deduce what stopped him or her from subbing (or getting to the "best" parts of the game), why not use that info??? It is really hard to understand why companies pay a lot of money for marketing studies and use almost criminal means to get player data and profiles, when they could get it for free with a fraction of work and money invested (someone has to filter and look at the suggestions in any case).
It is like a player tells the company "i will buy your product, if you do this or that" and the company says "no, you won't, because our paid for study says otherwise". Sounds weird to me...unless i think all my playerbase is a lying and cheating miserable and easy manipulated bunch. Which would be disrespectful in the least. Or i would want my playerbase to consist only of a special type of player, which would be again, voluntarily loosing (actually not earning) money. Makes sense for certain products, but imo not really for an mmo.