>>46017I reiterate my point that there is just not enough interesting stuff to do for f2p players.
Let's compare Albion f2p to Runescape f2p: in Runescape I can telegrab zammy wine for 1 hour, get some nice magic exp and sell my wines for hefty chunks of money. It provides positive feedback on two areas: got magic exp, maybe even got some levels and unlocked new stuff that'll be useful later down the road AND got a nice amount of money.
Now let's see what I can do in 1 hour in Albion: I can harvest leather in a certain map, get some exp in my fighting style of choice and get around 300~ leathers ready to be sold. But in the grand scheme of things, what little combat exp I got was irrelevant, because I didn't unlock anything, and if I did, I didn't unlock anything other-worldly, since most tier upgrades are marginal and previous tier quality 1 is same or better than next tier quality 0. Most of the time you'll want to be wearing t4.1 stuff because of how cheap and replaceable it is. Next, the leathers. I can process them into ready-to-be-used leather, but, again, what little exp I got was marginal and didn't matter at all. If I process them into finished goods, I got extra crafting exp, but lost money since finished goods sell for less than ready materials. If I were to sell at the peak of its cost, while they're ready materials, I would STILL get too little money back for how much time I invested. Compared to Runescape, Albion can't hold my attention for long enough because of how little positive feedback it provides.
Both games provide a way to gain access to p2p content by simply playing the f2p version, albeit at a very grindy cost which becomes less grindy once you manage to break the first grind barrier. In Albion p2p there is some extra stuff I can do that f2p players can't, like islands or farming, or cooking, or growing animals or making potions. This is all fine and dandy but you can't forget that this is content that is unavailable to f2p players. Farming, growing animals, cooking food or making potions is a nice distraction from the usual Albion grind (which is available to f2p players and does NOT change once you get to p2p). F2p players don't get access to this distraction thus making it very easy to burn out since all you can do as a f2p is player is to grind money to get p2p and then enjoy the p2p distractions, but then the game becomes getting enough money during p2p so you don't lose the distractions, and at which point you're no longer playing a game and are rather working a job.
Runescape blows Albion out of the water when it comes to p2p content, making the f2p grind to p2p worth it because of how much there is to do once you go p2p. Runescape's p2p distractions are not only that, distractions, but they're the grind within themselves: for example, in p2p I no longer am restricted to killing cows in Lumbridge for leather, I can go kill Zulrah, or kill cows in a farm located in p2p, or I can use some other p2p mechanic that gives me lots of leathers; I no longer am restricted to killing goblins outside of the Al Kharid gate or the rats under the Lumbridge castle for combat exp, there is a HUGE world out there full of monsters that I can train on, and if I ever get bored of killing one kind of monster, I can always, ALWAYS, go kill some other monster. Hell, there's even a skill based on this concept alone (Slayer). And do I ever have the need to grind to keep my p2p subscription? no! I can EASILY get enough money for a Runescape bond within 14 days of p2p, INCREDIBLY EASILY, so easy that it doesn't even feel like a grind, and I get positive feedback from everything, coming from all sides.
There's just no contest between the f2p and p2p experience in both games. If Albion ever wants to keep a f2p player from burning out, it must have enough content, that is both diverse enough AND interesting enough, to keep the player's attention AND have a world of p2p content ready for when the f2p player becomes p2p.