You know, my wife asked me today if she could color her robot pink with hearts on it.

When I said no she was like..."Important feature!"

Pity she would have liked the game too.

F2P would be good to get more people interested I think. Theres not much a player can do to get hooked in 30 days on a trial, especially when the trial limits market use and this game revolves around market use.

I think SWTOR is doing a fairly good job of their F2P system, it allows people to still continue subscription and get full access to the game while Free play still has access to stuff, but it limits it. Should the player want to do more, they pay. Bait and Hook.

Though I do think .5x or 1.5x is a bit extreme. Something like .8 and 1.2 is more fitting for EP time multiplier, if such were to be included in F2P.

I think the main goal should focus on getting more players since it's boring to have only a few people playing. My main drive in playing the game is revolved around the market, and the condition it is in is very sad and dead. Hence why it's been at least 2 months since I did something more then upgrade some skills.

F2P - in the beginning I was one of those against it like many others.
With the "current" situation not improving since too long now, I do think about whether F2P maybe could be seen as last resort.

Other than this, even if the content changes I doubt there will be a nice playerinflux happening based on past big changes.
The same counts for Steam release - Greenlight did give us a chance but once the first months were over most did disappear.
___________________________________
For those that like to read a little story:

A little sad tale about the Pepetuum Project...
The market is just one indicator that tells us: this game lies in coma since months - most vets are more or less awaiting the shutdown of the medical support.
We still do see what Perp is and could be so don't want to throw that hope away. But how to revive this game?

Playerbase is already low and decreases further with each month passing like a slowing down heartbeat of the comatose - the market as one of its indicators.
Vast Public appearances of DEVs are like the doctors showing up some times only saying "We're doing the best we can" sometimes encouraging us with new prospects.
There were that many Miracle treatments beforehand (like Gamma expansion) which certainly were necessary to prolong life and evade a sudden death but still - it was a fight against the symptoms of the illness not its cause:
The hospital has run out of money long ago so the necessary medicaments (patches, content, activity) can't be delivered on time.

How about Free 2 Play
Those analogies seem harsh and are my subjective opinion that led me to think about F2P.
F2P has many faces - we already have some kind of it here in form of some snowflakes. But this again seems like an analogy - the deepest winter of Perp.
But that aside, the free to play models have proven over the years to be more of moneymakers than subs or one time pay. And this capitalism is my reason F2P might give Perp another small chance for a miracle.

It shines in variety of solutions – from pay-to-win models along to pay-for-fun/assecoires.
Ideas like increase EP income per pay/sub is one of the first, paintjob/pets/... one of the latter. Another point would be awards for subbing like betatester/EA = shiny bots, or after lets say 6 payed  months a little carrier pet (similar to the demon in sacred 2).

For me a mixture of P2W and P4F would be okay.
Though I don't really like the subbased P2W like it's in Aion with its monthly Premium packages, if its more something like a collectors edition or other one time pay packages in different levels (bronce, silver, gold) with some ingame and some artists goodies (posters, models,..) I wouldn't mind – Even less if players get a discount depending on the time they had already subbed (like: you've subbed without fail since more than 18 months, you get +30-50% discount).
Combined with P4F elements like Paintshop, timed Speedimprovements of your spark on alpha (terminal activation only, only applied if no module active) or partythings like fireworks – it might bring in enough money to get a little miracle to happen.

That means if people still want to try Perp then and if the DEVs can still afford the time and costs for those.
One other good point beside money would be there too – for the steam release discussions can be cut down from payment amount/methods to talks about achievement and thus may be finished faster.

Conclusion:
F2P may be a possibilty to get some money in if it isn't already too late now.
There are enough models out there to keep the original intend of the game. To warn you beforehand - there's no surefire way to get it back up. But lean back for a moment and seriously think about F2P if you haven't already done so. Just saying a biased „no“ without any serious reasoning because of your pride will mean the end of Perp.
As I see it, PP does NOT have problems because of missing content rather than missing resources so the DEV team can grow (instead of demount), concentrate on PP and have fun tempering with it again.

To the DEVs: If there's no chance for a comeback left, I beg you don't hide - we will cry with you.

good summary syndic. Thats a kind of translation of my metaphorical ragepost from like 1 year ago.

TL;dr:

Free2play alone would not raise the number of active player, just the number of active agents.

Nice post Syndic
Mostly the things that led me to think about f2p, but it may lead the discussion to far from the topic

About the lack of imagination:
In beta and short after launch AC had enough ideas; reducing grind, improving features and more variety and possibilities were the basics of discussions. The ideas shared by the blog were just the tip of the iceberg - we're still waiting for the energy credits or the alliance feature, talks about a forth race seem forgotten now...
With the financial situation getting harsher,  the small team of AC couldn't afford to grow - the resources and the time were missing to improve PPs quality and to implement ideas, which were delayed again and again while the workload was growing. Finances and manpower are the basic for not-open-sourced games - and you can't get in enough money with medium quality and cheap prized subs alone.

About multiaccounting in F2P
As mentioned above there are F2P models for that too - just look at the accounts as character slots. The idea of limiting the accounts is old, F2P models take advantage of it and sell additional slots. Perp could do with a similiar model:
1 acc free
further 2-4 accs 15€ per month/acc
further 5-x accs 30€ per month/acc
= over 200€ per month with 10 accs but less than the current sub for two accs
Those that just want more accounts for their convience in playing capsuled solo games will need to pay and think it over twice.

TL:DR of my posts:
F2P is an option mostly because of its financial aspects, players coming because of free to play is the least side effect maybe even an illusion. Players come because of quality. But no money means low-to-no quality of the product to sell.

wow, all this cuz i quote a post Dan made on here with a quote of funjord

YEEEEEAAAAHHHH, more LORE!!!! Everybody loves reading about games!

<Edit> Complete sarcasm btw, I loved lord of the rings but I do not wanna play fing gimli or whatever his name is I just dont care.

I firmly believe everybody loves to feel emotionally involved with a game/movie/book etc. Good stories do that to people, just look at Star Wars, Star Trek, Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, and many others that affected millions over the decades. Look how many people are familiar and actively read EVE's history, but wouldn't touch the game itself with a ten feet pole.

buy Ice.

Hi, My name is Syndic. I am no longer relevant to this game. I pioneered every exploit I am now trying to cause drama about by posting the same garbage in every possible thread. I don't even really know if the exploits I used are being used but I figure if I repeat it enough times on every forum post people will believe they are. I can throw stones now because I am not currently doing the things I am complaining about. Also I want to wreck the game I'm not playing but you all are, because none of you care that I'm not around any more.

^^ sorry guys but obvious translation is obvious.

Reading back over the posts, everyone is acutally in agreement here on the basic problem. Not enough active players (This is My reason for going inactive, and the potential for new players with steam coming the reason I'm looking at this game again).

The discussion of F2P is an honest attempt to solve that problem, but Syndic points out that the game simply isn't that fun to play, which is another valid issue.

We've seen the "Boom and Bust" cycle enough times to know that just drawing players into the experience isn't enough.

What Perptuum needs is better player retention; and by retention I don't mean just paying the sub to keep EP accumulating. Retention is about getting players to login and actively participate and make Perp a living world.

This begs the questions "Is the monthly subscription the reason players become inactive?"

There's little arguement that the fee is a barrier to entry, but there were also many players that did pay (and do pay) the fee, but also became inactive (like me).

Sure, with a non-subscription based game, players can come and go without that payment barrier but Perp is not an 'Instant Action' type of PVP game like LoL. It's not even like SWOTR, where you could in theory login and hop into an instance and play. Perp is much more like Eve. Eve is not F2P in the traditional sense, a non-subscription based game, but it is F2P for many players through the use of PLEX.

The dev blog seems to indicate that they are aware of the issue of retention, and focusing on the new player experience and the PVE aspect of the game is going to have a greater and longer lasting impact than just removing the subscription fee.

In order to make F2P work monetarily, there needs to be microtransactions of some sort, to pay the bills. The other solution that was mentioned was the Freemium model.

In the freemium model, the idea is that part of the game is free and part of the game requires a fee to access. This model only works if there is a compelling reason to access the paid portions of the game. And we run up against the same problem of retention. If the 'good' content still requires a fee to access, then it is no different then the current situation, where the good content is already available for paying agents, but they don't use it.

Which simply brings us back around to making the game better.

I'm optimistically hopeful from the dev posts, that they have recoqnized (and in some cases listened more closely to their player base) the short-comings of an otherwise great game.

tl;dr- Did someone mention bacon?

Edit: accidentally a few words