Yeah or the “basic economics coin”. 
Customer support staff cost money and free players by definition don’t provide money. If there’s an unmanageable backlog of tickets coming from free players, they can’t really justify paying for more staff to deal with it.
I’m not sure why you are surprised at this , i certainly am not .
Funcoms decision to make SWL F2P was to attract as many as possible to the game.
The reality for Funcom is that enough of the original playerbase from TSW felt alienated enough by the treatment they feel they received, to vow not to give them another penny ever again, personally i don’t blame anyone that chose to take that stance.
But if you don’t pay it would be safe to assume that F2P players would be the first to feel the hit, but in actuality that isn’t the case.
As i already pointed out , players with an active subscription are also not receiving any customer support after receiving an eventual reply stating:
“we cannot help you” or " we cannot find your item".
So we have those who pay & those who do not yet ALL are affected & neither appear to be receiving ANY support.
My concern however is for the players who ARE currently in receipt of patron who are not getting ANY support.
Personally i have GM status carried over from TSW therefore i do not actively give them any money & tbh i expect next to nothing from them , once bitten twice shy as they say…
This game just isn’t making the profit they hoped for, but as with TSW they will take every last penny they can get.
Is this standard practise for Funcom & the gaming industry in general for non profitable games? the answer is pretty obvious.
This is true but ask yourself do they even care?
Epic games can really use your analytical skills for their failing f2p Fortnite game. 
Funcom has clearly failed to monetize the playerbase (no easy shop, no regular new stuff, uninteresting subscription model). That’s on them. Removing customer support isn’t going to be productive but is only going to be more harmful.
Are you claiming that players who don’t spend any money on the game (“free players”) actually in fact spend money on the game?
I’m admittedly not an economics expert, but I have to disagree with you here. Basic economics is “I have a product/service. Give me x amount of money and you can have access to it.” That would be relevant to the current situation if SWL launched with this policy already in place. Funcom is currently doing cost/benefit analysis of a active service. Basically, “Let’s see what corners we can cut before it affects the bottom-line enough for us to care.” That level of profit min/maxing is almost end-game level economics.
I don’t think you understand how a free-to-play model works. There’s basically two paths to monetization. There’s the rather cynical path of making the gameplay grindy enough that people fork over cash to avoid the extra annoyance, and there’s the more optimistic path of providing a positive enough experience that people are willing to purchase micro-transactions or an optional subscription in order to show their support of the game. Funcom has chosen the former route, and I don’t know why you’d try to defend them for it. Also, for a multiplayer game, it’s vital to have an active player base. Driving away all the unpaying customers just because they aren’t supplying direct monetization, can affect the willingness of others to actively support the game. People will eventually stop subscribing and even playing the game when there’s no one to play with/against.
I don’t agree with you here but also it’s amusing that you try to paint me pointing out a really basic fact as “defending” anyone. Customer support staff don’t work for free and really, I have serious doubts that support being limited (not removed) for free accounts has had quite the severe effect everyone is claiming it has. Like, do you just log in and accidentally delete all your gear on the regular or what?
Sorry to hear about that. I know it’s just one piece of anecdotal evidence, but I’ve been hearing similar stories from many people as well. It would be helpful if we can get more people to share their experiences, to show the apathetic portion of the player base that it’s not just a few isolated incidents. Fortunately, I haven’t personally lost any items recently, but I do know that if I lose any of my legendary gear and can’t get it replaced, I’m straight done with the game.
And what makes this so worrying is that you are a subscriber. Though maybe your mistake was buying the year bundle. Since they’ve already got your subscription locked in for the next year, they don’t care if you stop playing. Essentially, you’re a “payed” customer, not a “paying” one. Hmm, what does it say about me, that my brain went there? Maybe I’m just becoming too cynical. I better go find some ice cream or a puppy before it’s too late.
Even if people want to defend Funcom’s right to reserve certain customer service actions for paying customers only, the changes show that customer support in general is not a priority for Funcom moving forward. Does anyone honestly think this is going to make the gaming experience better for anybody? Anyone optimistic/naive enough to believe that streamlining customer support means more money is being put into fixing issues with the game and creating good new content? If so, may I mention that I’m a realtor in Arizona and we have some lovely new oceanfront properties you might be interested in.
It’s too bad most of the players don’t read the forums, and wouldn’t care even if they saw this thread. Most of the time when someone complains in-game about the lack of customer support, it’s laughed off as just another “feature” of the game. It reminds me of the people laughing at Bethesda games being buggy, hollow shells. Look where apathy got them. Though honestly, what can be done? Even if we got every single player in the game to sign a petition, nothing would come of it. Funcom clearly doesn’t care about player feedback. It’s gone the way of the rest of the gaming industry.
When done right, free players provide “content” to paying players and in turn, make them spend more. It’s in any f2p game’s best interest to keep their free players happy, too.
Didn’t Extra Creditz do a video on that years ago?
The changes show no such thing lol. Here’s a fun fact you might not know: the sky is almost never falling.
I’m not suggesting free players aren’t supporting the game (I have in fact pointed out that they are on this very forum before) but that’s not the issue. Customer support agents can’t eat “content provided to playing players encouraging them to spend more” so if something has to give (and it apparently did), it is obviously going to be free players that bear the brunt.
Free players still get support with account and progress-blocking issues, which are the most serious kind. There’s no mention of where technical support falls under the new scheme but honestly at this point I’m pretty sure 99% of technical issues fall into two categories:
Obviously in an ideal world everyone would get full customer support with no wait times but eh, you see where I’m going with this.
Oh, I’m sure many players have come up with good ideas for the game over the years. The thing is most of those are small-scale solutions. Discounting drinks on the Titanic isn’t going to stop it from sinking. SWL doesn’t need more revenue streams, it needs to give the player-base a reason to support it.
SWL will not become a real success without major overhauls to the system, and, more importantly, to the mindset of the decision makers at Funcom. Short-sighted moves to increase revenue, such as cutting back on customer support, don’t help in the long run. The things that would actually save SWL require money and effort.
But here’s the thing, Funcom doesn’t actually care if SWL fails. They have other, newer projects that will make more money. I think they’ve come to realize that they’ve already made the majority of the money they’re likely to make on this game. They’ll keep it around in semi-maintenance mode in the hopes that the TV show actually happens and is successful enough to bring new customers to the game. Then they’ll milk what they can out of them. Though, who knows, maybe if it gets popular enough there will be a re-re-launch that’s actually an upgrade to the game. Maybe all the executives at these gaming companies will realize that making games for gamers instead of shareholders creates a better experience. Maybe pigs will develop wings or someone will invent some sort of pig jet-pack. Anything’s possible, I guess.
Looks like my reply got even more off-topic. Sorry.
They tried that and called it SWL.
Also, I believe the answer about “how is support going to work in the future” was given yesterday in form of nine posts in the support section. Cliff’s notes : “repair, reinstall and go bother AMD & nVidia”.
Ah yes, I guess I should have clarified - major overhauls in the right direction.
Hmm, I didn’t see a topic in the support section labeled “How to retrieve an item that randomly disappeared from your inventory.” At least they didn’t lock all that helpful support behind a paywall. It’s downright magnanimous of them to provide such expertise to non paying customers. My concerns have been alleviated.
Yeah, just look at how they shut down Anarchy Online and Age of Conan once they stopped earning big money. Hell, just look at the way the refused to keep The Secret World running once SWL launched. A proven track record of not caring about their games, if ever there was one.
What exactly do you want from the game at this point? It doesn’t sound like you actually like it or enjoy playing it and you seem completely averse to any kind of realistic approach to improvements so why are you here posting about it, other than to take part in the grand meta-game of “being perpetually dissatisfied on the forums”? All your posts in this thread are “the end is totally nigh for real this time guys, I know the last thousand or so times we ran around screaming were false alarms but it’s really happening for real now” but even if you believe that why do you care given that you seem to think the game is largely worthless?
The only reason TSW classic is still running (probably on an old Dell in the janitor’s closet) is for Funcom to be able to point at it when people complain about all of the stuff that they bought in TSW that didn’t transfer to SWL and had to be bought again. That not altruistic, that’s just covering their arses.
And even you can’t deny that they dropped the ball. Again. SWL started out strong, but once the content backlog dried up, the resources weren’t there to keep up the momentum.
Surely the point of the relaunch can’t have been to end up with two comatose Secret Worlds instead of one. We’re not there yet, and I haven’t given up hope. But that’s the direction we’re headed.
I didn’t say it was altruistic but sure, let’s go with “any evidence counter to your position is actually a clever deception and therefore supports your position”, I’m sure that’ll lead to a productive discussion.
As for the rest of your post, SWL seems to be in a much better state than TSW was - there’s never really a shortage of players around and we get semi-regular patches so yes, I can deny that they’ve dropped the ball. Could things be better? Of course they could but that isn’t the same thing as “the game is dead and/or doomed”.
Well yeah, all things tend towards entropy. Serious question, which do you enjoy more: playing the game or worrying on the forums that the game is slowly dying?
I can enjoy the game, be supportive of its dev team and critical of the decisions made at the top all at the same time.
Report for immediate re-indoctrination, citizen.
Go sit in the Comfy Chair.
Yeah but there’s a difference between “being critical of decisions” and constantly harping about how doomed the game is just because the realities of business don’t align with what you’d like to see. Especially since the “decisions made at the top” are all just unfounded speculation that you made up.
“Constantly harping”? I think you may have me confused with someone else. Either way, I’m not interested in arguing with you. If you’re happy with the way SWL is being run, good for you.
Pointing to TSW’s current state is actually proving my point. I never said they were going to shut SWL down completely. I said it’s headed towards maintenance mode similar to TSW. Funcom’s actual proven record is putting games on life-support and abandoning updates once they aren’t making enough money.
The game is indeed dying. There’s even empirical data: https://steamcharts.com/app/215280. Even if you want to argue that there’s still plenty of people playing the game, the overall trend is not looking good. There’s less people playing the game now than back when the decision to switch to SWL was made. And before you start the tired argument that that’s just players on steam, the trend is compared to players on just steam before.
If I just hated SWL and were completely resigned to the fact that it was going to fail, I wouldn’t bother posting on the forums. There’s still some small hope that enough people will be so fed up with with the current direction SWL is headed that they’ll speak up and Funcom will actually listen.
I don’t hate the game. I still find it enjoyable when I get to do group content with a good group of people, either friends or complete strangers. What I want out of the game is more of that. It would be nice to see the other dungeons and raids missing from TSW. But the forum post on that got silenced, not a good sign.
I’ll admit to being on the pessimistic side when confronted with the evidence at hand, if you’ll admit to being overly optimistic that the game is in a healthy state and headed in the right direction. Insert “Everything Is Fine” meme here.