So Margie and I play CoH off and on fairly regularly, rotating through a variety of duos. This week we shook things up a bit, though, and had our daughter, Katherine, play as well.
I’ve been eyeballing the F2P option coming up in City of Heroes for a bit, thinking that would let Kay play at will, rather than waiting until one or the other of us is off. But as we looked at the options, we realized that a purely F2P setup was going to place just too many limitations — including not being able to join a supergroup. We realize there will be some limits, but we didn’t want Katherine to feel too gimped.
So we went ahead over the weekend and opened up an account for her and got her set up in it, and then spent most of Sunday running a new trio through Praetoria (or least through ten levels of it) — Margie with a broadsword scrapper, me with a grav/rad controller, and Kay with a ninja/bubbles mastermind.
Fun times, though Katherine was having some performance problems with her machine that I need to check out, as well as just her having to deal with the learning curve (and the kibbitzing from the parents). It was kind of cool having a third member of the party, too.
One thing that stood out, though, was her lack of veteran award status, and how much that shapes our early game — e.g., getting full travel powers at 6 (vs prerequisited powers at 14), Nemmy staff / Blackwand / Sands of Mu options, etc. Plus we have some costume packs we’ve purchased — Mystic, Mutant, Beast, and now Steampunk — that provide some added bonuses (travel powers, in particular).
Fortunately for the travel power glitch, we can also do Assemble the Team. 🙂
The plan is to maintain her account for a few months, then switch over to F2P when Freedom comes out. That will give her some extra benefits. Or, if playing with her becomes a new norm, we might maintain her as a VIP account. We’ll see.
Is there some benefit to being VIP before the F2P release comes out? I mean, if Kate and I reactivated our VIPs and then let it lapse back to F2P after it came out, what would that do? Obviously, we (well, I) have a ton of toons, and the F2P limits would be no fun with that many character suddenly unavailable.
Well, Kay’s never had an account before, so in theory we could go ahead and cancel and she (like you) would be considered Premium players. You have that status from being a previous player at all; no need to re-up temporarily.
As a Premium, in addition to the F2P baseline, you’d have anything else “already purchased or unlocked, including Super Boosters, expansions, and directly purchased character slots.” You’d also have your previously earned Vet rewards. You could also join SGs (one of our main reasons for doing this for Kay), have access to direct tells (beyond just local or team) and in-game mail (which we can use to send influence or enhancements to Kay).
The biggest limit remains the number of character slots — 2 in either F2P mode. Controllers and MMs have limits on their free availability; one thing unclear is whether having had one previously allows that to be a choice automatically. I do know those ATs (and character slots) are purchasable either directly or with time played paragon points in some fashion.
So bottom line for you and Kate, I don’t think there’s anything that reactivating your account at this point would do for you.
I haven’t been reading the dev blogs on this, so I guess I’m not sure what “either F2P mode” means. Wouldn’t Kate and I be an F2P account with a two-character limit? What about Kate, who primarily plays a controller?
Okay, there’s three tiers (see here):
1. Play for Free
2. Premium Players (returning players who do Play for Free)
3. VIP Players (monthly subscription)
So you and Kate would fall into category 2 — F2P, but with a few “we want to recognize the folks who’ve supported us and been a part of the community in the past” benefits.
You would be limited to 2 characters (I don’t know the mechanism for choosing from among your existing stable) plus however many additional character slots you either purchased or earned as a veteran (+1 for every 12 months you were a paying member).
As to the ATs, digging a bit further …
“Free and Premium players are not allowed to make or play Masterminds, Controllers, Soldiers of Arachnos, or Kheldians” (largely because they are the most CPU-intensive). HOWEVER, “the Paragon Rewards program has an ‘unlock’ for Masterminds and Controllers at Tier 5 (which is about a three-year CoH veteran status). So if you have enough veteran status at the launch of City of Heroes Freedom, you will be able to play these restricted archetypes on a Premium account on day one.”
So … how long were you paying members?
Also, you can (for 1200 Paragon Points or $15) unlock an AT, e.g., Controller.
Clear as mud?
Also, 1600 PP = $20 = 5 Character Slot Tokens
And one more consideration in favor of reupping:
There’s no announced launch date at the moment — my guess is October, but it could be September.
On the other hand, a sub is $15/mo (= 400 PP). But purchased under F2P, $5 = 400 PP. So doing it solely for that reason is probably unwise.
And, in fact, on that basis, we probably erred in getting the game for Kitten this weekend, except (a) we had family fun for hours for cheaper than we could have gone to a movie, and (b) “Going Rogue” won’t be available F2P or Premium players. Which I guess means we need to play with Kay thru another 10 levels to get her to Paragon City.
This page has examples of what PPs can buy.