Agreed but if they are all scheduled when I work I will create a garbage truck so large that no one in Wisconsin will be able to withstand its might.

What about the possibility of having real world advertisement signs floating around that are invisible to anyone that subscribes instead of what was previously mentioned. The revenue they would generate would help support the server. There is also the possibility of making worm hole and sector jumps take longer for those that are on it for free and during this time, an advertisement would show up on the screen since you don't really need your screen during the load period anyway. With the second idea, you could actually get a count of how often it was displayed on someones screen for purposes of ads that pay every time you show them. Extending the time during these screens might not be need if there shown for long enough already.

In-game advertising, in that sort of situation, is certainly a possibility. Other companies are trying that. But, it's a lot of engineering to actually make it work (and add metrics to make it demonstrable to advertisers). Plus, then we'd need salespeople to out and find advertisers, or get involved with ad networks and.. ehh.

I agree that more scheduled events, of greater frequency, would help involve people. I'm working on some ideas towards that end.

You could make it so that Trial accounts lapse into Demo accounts after the trial expires, but once you subscribe you can't go back to Demo status.

@DeathFluffy
Oh yeah, they'd definitely get nothing more than the first or second power cell. No way they'd get near heavy or fast charge. At that point, they might as well not even pay.

I wholly agree with this idea. I suggest that:
Licenses be limited at 4/4/4/3/3, or not able to gain any more exp if their licenses are higher, post-trial.

Cash should be limited from 10k<x<30k. Transactions, as previously stated, should be limited to 1k per transaction.

Chat + Guilds: 1 msg per 30 seconds for main chat sounds reasonable, but no limit on msging. Also, If invited to guilds, should have a temporary "Recruit" status that does not show the tag, not allow guild chat (but they can read it), and does not show them on the guilds page. Also, they cannot form guilds, or be promoted above "Recruit."

Sub'd accounts should not be allowed to go back to Demo-mode, UNLESS: they've been unsubbed for a year or more, just so we don't lose valuable dev money to influxes of subbers-gone-demo.

Or summat like that. :p

A year is way too much, Chaos, if the idea is to keep vets subbed.

FFS is $9 a month REALLY too much to ask?

Seriously?

Missing the point, lad. The point is to get more people into the game, not to keep existing vets. The year thing is just to keep everyone from going "lolfree vendetta" once they get 10/10/10/10/10 or summat.

Right, which is why a year is too much. Once someone pays for a subscription, they should not be allowed to go back into demo status, period. The only reason for a free demo after the trial is to allow newbs who haven't yet decided whether they want to subscribe to continue playing for a longer period, which will increase the population.

Hmm. Not allowing paid accounts to lapse back to Demo is a possibility. But some percentage of people will just create new accounts and characters. Basically playing alts. Historically we've had people doing that already, with the existing limited trial accounts. Unlimiting the trial (as Demo) would definitely make it more widespread.

It's still too tall a risk for me to take at present.

A) When trying something like this you have to walk a very fine line. If you limit it to the point they can't even enjoy the game, then there will be no motivation to subscribe. It must be blatantly obvious the game is fun on a free accounts perspective. If you give to much, there will be no motivation to subscribe. If you go about it this way, some options included

1) Limiting the number of hours a month a free account can play.

2) Limiting free accounts to only certain days a week.

3) Limiting Max License Level

4) Limiting Max Zeny ( not recommended since if you trying to get someone pumped about this game, it would best be done in larger scale battles were your ship is constantly getting destroyed. If they don't have the credits capacity to experience that, you lose a potinetially good selling tactic. However, if there was system in place in which you could allow them to experience that for special events only like CtC while being under the zeny cap, that would work )

5) A wait period to log in (like 5-10 min) with a 1-2 min buffer for disconnects from server.

If you try to do it this way I would still have advertisments to try to somewhat fund there use.

B) Instead of making annoyances to get people to subscribe, there is the possibility of utilizing advertisement. After the trial is over they have to either become a free account or subscriber to continue playing. A free account will have all there loading screen pages with advertisements which should be a matter of simply changing the image that gets placed on the screen when loading though it will need metrics for counting how often it is viewed. Another source for potiential revenue is to log the IP of those that sign up for free accounts and whenever they view the website ads will be visible around it as well. It will be mention when signing up for the free account that if you want the ads removed then subscribe. With the revenue this is bring in, it may be possible to finance a free account. Even if the ads bring in $5 a month per free person, a server with 1000 of these people plus subscribers could be better off fincially then just a low population of subscribers alone. The increased subscribers this would cause will also further help finance the server. To experiment with how much money this will bring in find an advertisements you would use for website "like google ads" and log everyone IP that has a paid subscriber account right now. Then calculate how much money would be coming in if they were free accounts. Then create metrics for how often a loading screen is seen and calculate how much money would be coming in if there were ads there instead. You should be able to calculate an average dollars a month per person after awhile of testing this. The only cost for trying something like this is development time and you wouldn't have to expand servers for the influx of new players to run this test.

As much as I enjoy trying to read the galatic trade signage I could live with coke or pepsi signs in their place.

Placing a lot of extra adverts on free accounts could be very lucrative if Guild can find the advertisers.....

The first idea was having additional signs that were not there and only viewable to free accounts; not replacing the existing ones.