Ok, first thoughts on this haven't really changed. Basically, subscribers have full access to everything in this game, while there is an option for those who pay extra to effectively double your "bank" inventory slots, and double your potential selling power on a single character. I don't know much about what the new retainer leveling/farming content is, but it may or may not give you greater options for this new content as well. While it is certainly not required to play the game, many may find that they'd really like to have the benefits of hiring extra retainers and decide to pay for them. The part that I'm not a fan of is that this type of restriction being placed behind a pay wall is similar to what you see in free to play games, without the added benefit of actually being free to play. Players generally don't play free games because they just love paying to remove restrictions. They play free games because they're free, and put up with the restrictions because they are how those games make their money. Expecting unrestricted access in a free to play game would be completely unrealistic, as the game would have no way of raking in any cash. So basically, by adding the same type of restrictions to a pay to play game, what we have is the negative side effects that come with free to play games, but without the benefits. Not something I find initially appealing.
But since the pricing was just announced recently, let's look at that for a bit. Rather than a flat rate cash shop style purchase, they've announced that retainers will be tied to a subscription and paid for incrementally. This can be seen as good or bad depending on how you look at it. One major difference that this causes is that, unlike with flat rate prices where everyone pays the same price, how much these retainers end up costing you depends primarily on how long you keep them and how long you play. Retainers each cost $2 extra, with a max of two extra retainers if I've read this right. So if we were to do a price break down between someone on the "entry" level subscription of $13 a month (it may be more or less depending on your plan and whether you have legacy status, I chose this plan because it's in the middle) for someone who wants unrestricted retainer access vs. someone on the same subscription plan who simply doesn't mind the restrictions in place, here's what we get for a few different scenarios.
Entry subscription with nothing extra. Entry subscription with 2 retainers. Total cost of just the two retainers. 6 month subscription:
$78 $102 $24 1 year subscription:
$156 $204 $48 2 year subscription:
$312 $408 $96 5 year subscription:
$780 $1020 $240 So after a quick look at that, it seems that the 6 month subscriber who wants unrestricted access is paying $24 more than the guy who doesn't mind going without. For someone who is in it for the long haul, though, like the 5 year subscriber? They're paying $240 more than the first guy for unrestricted retainer access, or
$120 per retainer. Honestly, after breaking this down and seeing what this comes out to be, I don't even know what to say about their pricing. I guess I'll just say that I'm not a fan for now and leave it at that.
Edited, Mar 22nd 2014 3:37am by Susanoh