Hello,
this is most likely my last post here. Gaming is a major hobby and i really looked forward to this game. Normally i don't post such threads and it will not matter much i guess...but i need a valve for my frustration.
Two of the major turn ons for me were the subscription model and the three faction based system.
I always defended the subscription model because you still get a lot of value for your money if the game is good and the big advantage is you just pay once per month and don't have too worry about ingame commercials or any missing content.
In my opinion the best aspect about a faction system with different races (optimally different classes) is the immersion you get when you finally face the other faction and they look different maybe even have different abilties from yours. That strengthens both the identification with your faction and makes you sometimes really wanting to try out the other factions. It's one big pillar to keep the game interesting.
First they made each armor style avaiable for every race. I can live with that but they even made each armor style available to each faction. That already really made me grind my teeth. That beeing said what actually destroyed the two most important aspects of the game for me with one single blow was the announcment of the Preorder/Imperial Bonuses.
You have to buy the game, you have to pay a subscription fee AND NOW you have to actually pay additional money (Preorder, Cash Shop) to get access to all content (Imperial race, Every race in every faction). That singlehandily destroys every argument one could make for a subscription model. Blatant money grabbing that alone was enough for me to cancel my preorder.
But that wasn't enough they even had to make every race playable for every faction. After already watering down the system by making all armor avaiable to everyone, removing racial active skills ;( and being able to play every faction after you finished your inital choice they removed the last thing that made the factions somewhat unique/interesting. That was what made me write this post because it goes against their initial design philosophy (why even create factions in the first place) in such a radical way that i can only believe the developers got pressured to do this sh*t by the publisher.
I really liked a lot of stuff about this game and didn't care about the mixed previews/reviews one could read but now i only feel anger and frustration since i don't feel the game's soul anymore just the how can we get as much fast money from this stuff meta by disregarding core design philosphies. If they do this before the game is released it will only get worse.
My only hope would be a MASSIVE [censored] storm but i guesss now it's too late to take back what they already announced....
Edit: That's my personal opinion and i'm aware there are people that don't care about these topics. Well i feel really glad for you since you can still enjoy the game.