Why hasn't AO gone F2P yet?

[aramsunat]

if you want people to stop buying nodrops stop making raids that require 4-5 key professions (out of a possible 14) lol. i shouldn't have to log a poorly-geared alt to do a raid in order to loot an item on my finished main.

That requires complete PVM balance between professions, which is impossible without further upsetting pvp balance, and well, just plain and simply impossible.
I have suffered because of this phenomenon in the past, and always blamed the players, not the designers of the game. Professions that are completely shunned in pvm, such as traders, mps and fixers are perfectly fine and useful for a raid, people just dont let them in because they want to minimize the time the raid takes and the amount people to divide the loot with.

S42 and Tara are the only remaining raids that cannot be done by a small group of people so every profession is welcome to participate . Strength is in numbers and as the risk of failing a raid outweighs the greediness of the raidgroup's members. And people are constantly bitching about these "waaah waaah it takes too long to get phats waaaah"

As for cred selling... it cant be eliminated. Live with it.

[Lazy]

. Professions that are completely shunned in pvm, such as traders, mps and fixers are perfectly fine and useful for a raid, people just dont let them in because they want to minimize the time the raid takes and the amount people to divide the loot with.S42 and Tara are the only remaining raids that cannot be done by a small group of people so every profession is welcome to participate . Strength is in numbers and as the risk of failing a raid outweighs the greediness of the raidgroup's members. And people are constantly bitching about these "waaah waaah it takes too long to get phats waaaah"

if your raid requires an enf, sold, doc, crat, and engie as mandatory picks the chances of getting a team on a trader or fixer or an agent or any other quasi-support low dd garbo-tier profession is pretty low, don't you think? this isn't a player issue this is strictly a balance issue. having 6 slots in a team and 14 professions means the best 6 get teams and suboptimal picks don't. that's how the game was designed. eitehr go back to 36-man raids like s42 and tara and beast (sclaed for difficulty so that it can't be done by a mb ****stain hexalogged) or bring the 8 worthless professions up in such a way that tehy are useful again.

[Aeliniyah]

...or bring the 8 worthless professions up in such a way that tehy are useful again.

My vote goes for this option.

[Dollcet]

If FC had more Manpower and the willingness to invest into AO ...

You could solve a lot of Problems by creating Bosses that adapt to the Raidforce that enters the Instance.

NOT : This Boss has a 15k AoE Areanuke Special
But : This Boss will use AoE Areanukes if Trader or MP are present , any -125 MC Debuff will shut down his nuking Ability , make sure your Debuffers are not afk ...

[aramsunat]

Balancing professions for this many, is - in my opinion - simply not possible. All 14 are really unique and you cannot balance apples with oranges no matter how you tweak them.
Let's say currently LFT says: "LF engi for NewBadassRaid"
Give a sufficient boost to traders, then you will see: "LF trad for NBR"
This is a system which cannot be balanced and people will always lean toward the best** possible team composition. The best composition can vary from raid to raid, because if the raids are well designed, then different non-core (healer+tank) professions will be the best picks.

**Best = fastest, easiest with the least amount of people possible

The best healer (and always will be) is doc, the best tank for most raids is enf, so these two are given, the rest are all convenience professions.
OK let's say you want to create balance by balancing DD. You buff up traders to be able to be on par with crats. This will have two effects: 1, trader will be stupidly OP in PVP, 2, the situation will push crat players to go all-out dmg setup, restoring traders uselessness in the raid.

If you think the above is bollocks, go ahead, draw up a balance recommendation (you have all the numbers, you know all the mechanics) and submit it to the forums for review. I guarantee you that it will be torn to shreds either by the community or even yourself

[Lazy]

Balancing professions for this many, is - in my opinion - simply not possible. All 14 are really unique and you cannot balance apples with oranges no matter how you tweak them.Let's say currently LFT says: "LF engi for NewBadassRaid"Give a sufficient boost to traders, then you will see: "LF trad for NBR"This is a system which cannot be balanced and people will always lean toward the best** possible team composition. The best composition can vary from raid to raid, because if the raids are well designed, then different non-core (healer+tank) professions will be the best picks.**Best = fastest, easiest with the least amount of people possibleThe best healer (and always will be) is doc, the best tank for most raids is enf, so these two are given, the rest are all convenience professions.OK let's say you want to create balance by balancing DD. You buff up traders to be able to be on par with crats. This will have two effects: 1, trader will be stupidly OP in PVP, 2, the situation will push crat players to go all-out dmg setup, restoring traders uselessness in the raid.If you think the above is bollocks, go ahead, draw up a balance recommendation (you have all the numbers, you know all the mechanics) and submit it to the forums for review. I guarantee you that it will be torn to shreds either by the community or even yourself

or we can go back to doing raids that require 100+people to complete like pre-instance beast and apfs

But : This Boss will use AoE Areanukes if Trader or MP are present , any -125 MC Debuff will shut down his nuking Ability , make sure your Debuffers are not afk ...

they tried that with 12man. just resulted in doc/enf/sold/crat with someone duallogging a keeper for antifear totem lol

[Awikun]

Adv was my first character and my main for many years but during last few years I only logged him for tanking collector...
Ever since funcom changed how collector works I do not log him at all

It is impossible to ballance pvm in such a way that every profession will be needed. There is always required 3-5 key professions and the rest is just DD.

One more important thing is to compare pvp and pvm and for example Agent and Adv which are very strong in pvp are almost useless in pvm so there is some ballance

[Lazy]

and then you have fixers which are the nerfest both in pvm and pvp

[Awikun]

I dont pvp at 220 so I have no idea about 220 fixers, however my 200 fixer is a lot of fun to play on BS and he is doing more than OK.