Welcome back to Return of the Veteran.
In case you missed last week’s post, the intent of this series of articles is to explain the limitations of the Preferred Status account. Specifically, we’ll look at how Preferred Status differs from the subscription model that returning players were used to.
We looked last week at limitations to your characters, as well as credit limitations. This week, we’ll look at the first few limitations you’ll notice as you start playing again.
Experience Gain
If you’re starting from the beginning on a fresh character, you don’t actually start noticing this change until you hit level ten. Still, this was a hot-button topic in last week’s comment section, so I decided to touch on this first.
Many of the limitations on Preferred Status accounts (and Free-to-Play accounts for that matter) are active limitations. For example, one of the limitations (which I’ll discuss in more detail in a later week) limits your access to Space Missions. For some reason, this feels less disruptive to me, because I still get some of the good stuff. I just can’t necessarily do it as often as I might like.
On the other hand, we have the much-maligned Experience Point reduction that Preferred (and Free) Status players are hit with. This doesn’t tell you that you can’t do something as often; it’s just a flat, negative modifier on your XP. You earn less. That’s it.
As I mentioned before, we got a lot of comments that mentioned the XP reduction. User Kor’Viz weighed in on his experience with the experience gain reduction on the Imperial side:
While playing I found the reduced XP really hit me hard. I was behind the suggested curve for each level … By about the half way point in the Taris missions, I found myself too far behind to continue.
He wasn’t the only one in the comments who was mentioning this kind of trend. So, what can you do about it?
The main way to get around this restriction is through the use of XP boost items. You are given a couple of these on your origin world as you complete your class quest, and while it may be tempting to sell them on the GTN for some quick starter cash, I’d advise against it. These are very useful for the leveling process. In fact, you’ll probably want to get more later on.
The solution? Check your GTN.
That’s the real trick, isn’t it? And it’s going to cost you extra.
In my experience, many of those who are buying the packs are people focused on a max-level character. Also, many of them are subscribers. They have a reduced need for these items and often will attempt to sell them. If you have some excess cash to spend, this is a great way to do it. Depending on your server, this may or may not make sense for you based on your financial situation.
Without doing even the most crude and basic of napkin math, I would bet that the power increase you’d get from having an additional level or two would easily outweigh the additional power of slightly-better gear based on the price of these items on most servers. Having said that, your mileage may vary.
No Rested XP
Another “passive” restriction: you don’t gain any rested XP. This just makes the above issue worse. You can’t do anything to change this, so it probably doesn’t bear further examination.
One positive side effect is that I find the ability to log out anywhere without feeling “Cantina Guilt” strangely liberating.
Item Costs
This one came as a shock to me. I guess I missed the initial memo.
Preferred Status accounts pay higher vendor prices than Subscribers. If we were talking only about vendors that sell things like Crew Skill Items, random uncommon-quality items, etc. then I wouldn’t really care.
However, this includes some Commendation items.
He’s altering the deal. Pray he doesn’t alter it further.
You can imagine my confusion when I went to buy my rare-quality chestpiece on Korriban and found it priced at 10 commendations instead of the usual eight.
Now, you might think that this is a huge deal. Thankfully, due to another restriction that I’ll talk about later, you often end up choosing commendations as mission rewards anyways, so I haven’t had any serious problems with this.
Title Display
Basically: you can’t, without spending Cartel Coins, display a title. The restriction can be removed with Cartel Coins. This is pretty minor for most people, but if you’ve got to have it but don’t want to subscribe, you do have an option.
Next Week
We’ll go more in-depth on crew skills, economic limitations, and more cosmetic options. Thanks for reading and, as always, I’d love to have your comments below on your experiences with these restrictions.
TORWars Podcast #152: The Terrors of Nuturing the SWTOR Community
I’m a sub, but i’m diggin’ this article.
It’s a neat window into how the preferred players are playing.
being below level has never been an issue for me. I finished off my Chapter 1 of the Jedi Knight being 2 full levels below the main boss – and i’ve seen people much higher levels struggling to beat the guy.
The biggest issue regarding restrictions for me is high cost for items and medical probes which you only get 5 for the rest of the game after level 10. That 2nd one really pisses me off big time.
I never knew i had “cantina guilt” till you told me
, I logged off last night just short of the mobs that I have to kill for the next quest and No guilt 
Thanks to your advice I bought 3 hour xp boost from the auction house , its under cartel tab and consumables (second down ) for 3800 cr, not bad I think ?
Doing the bonus series on a planet also helps with the XP .
Is Commendation tokens also capped at 20 , per planet ?
For me, the first character was definitely the hardest. Once I had one 50, I could do the level 50 dailies and buy unlocks from GTN. Some of the unlocks are out of reach for our credit cap though.
Ben,
Thanks for your comments!
The commendations are capped at 20 per type, yes.
And yeah, that seems like a pretty good price. Good luck!
The one thing I never mentioned as part of that quoted post I made last week is that I did use the two XP boosts that you get as rewards early on to help me with the Balmorra and Tatooine Bonus Series quest lines.
Another thing I may not have been clear on is that I wanted to test this out as a fresh player. Perhaps someone who has just discovered SWTOR, has no friends or past characters to rely on. I wanted the experience to be fresh to see just how feasible these changes were when applied to a new player.
@Darth Something: Yes, you may only be two levels behind, but Taris quickly increases in mob difficulty once you get to the second zone. I didn’t have an issue until I got to that quest where you have to take out the snipers at the swoop track, and started wondering why I kept dying on a pack of three regular mobs. That’s when I looked at their level and realized I was in way over my head.
However, the great thing about being behind a little is that you learn how to REALLY play your class. At the end of Chapter 1 for the Sith Inquisitor you fight a boss that I will not name due to spoilers. Daily I see shouts for people needing help to defeat this character when they are at level or a level beyond. I was three levels behind and still managed it because I learned how to successfully utilize all my DPS boots and interrupts. In my opinion, a greater challenge in questing leads us to learn how to play our characters better.
This is a pro in my books because I can’t even begin to list all the Flashpoints and Heroics I’ve participated in where players were not using all available interrupts during boss fights. There’s nothing worse then being low on force power as a healer and watching the boss heal himself as no one does anything to stop it…
But I digress, I really enjoy this column and really look forward to more of this nature. Great job and keep up the good work.
I agree with you there. It has forced me to really play beyond myself, and use my bag of tricks to win. Before the boss fight on Coruscant, i wasn’t utilizing interrupts or anything like that.
Once i did figure it out, beating them became alot easier, including the boss character on Alderaan ( for Jedi Knight ) who you get before the class boss – and given all i had heard about him with people struggling with him big time, i completely wiped the floor with him on my first try, which surprised me since i had never done that with any boss before that.
I do wish they would reconsider this medical probe restriction. Having to rely on others to revive or revive at medical station during a Heroic is so not cool.
My wife is preferred status currently and I’m a subscriber. While it has some serious limitations, you can get over them almost entirely with credits, particularly if there are parts of the game you don’t play already. Like me, she prefers PVP to anything else. That’s about 150,000 credits a week. She’s still leveling. Major XP boosts sell for around 28,000 credits on my server. And after about 500,000 or so credits in unlocks, she has access to titles, customization options, and 80 inventory slots. None of that is too bad if you’ve been playing for a while and have a couple million credits laying around that you can’t use for anything but shifting around mods on your main character. And at 50, credits are absurdly simple to obtain.
I think, however, that free to play presents way too many barriers to new players. I’ve easily spent a million credits on her (which isn’t much more than the crap I buy my alts anyway). Without that, however, she’d be too far behind the leveling curve to move forward. Having the game outlevel you when you’re genuinely in a spot you should be at in your storyline is a design flaw. Without support, that’s a migraine waiting to happen.
I’m doing an off-and-on subscription plan myself. I’m playing as a subscriber on a game care for a couple of months where I’ll get my main to 50. Then I’ll only buy game cards to level during expansions or to do some PvP until I have the improved gear I want. Other that I’ll stat at preferred. So far I’m still subscribed via the game card so I won’t experience preferred status for another month or so. I’ll find out then if my plan is truely viable or not.
Ive just decided to stop my sub for a while and therefore am atm on the mission to make the transition as smooth as possible.
When you are still a subscriber and have a reasent amount of credits you will find that it is quite easy to loose all restrictions with some ingame cash.
I’ve begun to ask for specific unlocks in the general chat and after around 2-3 hours i’ve got everything i need.
-I’ve got: Artifact unlock, Headslot unlock, Unify color unlock and Section X (All 4 account wide) for a total amount of only 5 million credits + 10 pvp weekly passes for 250k each
I was quite surprised as to how many people are spending loads of €€ for some credits (the items i’ve got are worth around 80bucks)And i’ve found someone who will sell me weekly passes for 250k as long as i want them
Also i’ll be able to keep my remaining credits as i can send it to a rl friend ho will stay subbed.
So thats just an example how you can play with nearly all benefits (vendor costs are still higher) without spending a dime. Youll just need around 5-6 million credits and a weekly income of 250-300k credits
Hi All,
Great site and great job to everyone at Torwars! SWTOR falls into my favorite games of all time category and its the first MMO where I have leveled and maxed a character to 50. I am a preferred player and have never subscribed but would if I could afford to do it. I agree that leveling is obviously slower but it didn’t really effect me until 40-50. Since I’m new to this, I did utilize a lot of the SWTOR.com and Torwars.com communities for tips. I pretty much kept any orange gear that I needed and used commendations for mods and bought them from GTN. Anything else I had would be sold for credits to buy the mods. With preferred I got a speeder and with my first run I waited until I was able to train it, not thinking I could’ve have just saved up to buy the skill off GTN and have it much soon to save time. The most important things for me to learn were to make sure to gear up to match my level and also gear up my companion that I was using only to save on credits. My most important things for a free to play or preferred player would be to save your credits and sell and buy through the GTN, buy the speeder skill asap and spend the $5 for preferred for the cartel coins and speeder, spend credits on mods and orange gear to level with you for your companion as well and lastly for elder game, save your max $350K to buy the Artifact Equipment Unlock to have access to purple end game gear. Thanks to all the subscribers that sell the XP boost, unlocks and everything else to us that truly need it and will keep us playing with you and SWTOR alive. Some subs may sit on their cartel coins but without you, I and other players like me, would be shit out of luck after hitting 50 and we’d never be able to run those hard mode flashpoints with you guys!! Thanks again to all you players for making this one of the best games I’ve ever played!!!
Weird, I was leveling together with a F2P-er, and aslong as we did all the sidequests and the planet main arc, he’d be right on the leveling curve.
[...] feedback from readers last week about how their leveling experience went, since the XP decrease was a major part of last week’s column. While a lot of contributors last week and the week before said that they were lagging behind the [...]