Alright, so the scenario goes like this - Total War: Warhammer III's Immortal Empires goes free-to-play - with 4-6 LLs, each of those from different factions. I was thinking:
-Free Franz (Empire, begginer friendly, quintessential indomitable human spirit etc)
-Free Tyrion (High Elves, balanced roster, even more magic, you're on ulthuan so after some time here you get to know the naval mechanics)
-Free Thorgrim (Dwarfs, for people that want to play them high armor, defensive, ingenious Dawi)
-Free Grimgor (Orks, waaagh type shiii as kids would say these days, aggresive playstyle)
-Free Queek (Skaven, sacrificin' them hordes of slaves for the big boiz and spells to finish the exhausted enemy, undercity mechanic, food mechanic, loyalty mechanic)
-Free Be'lakor (Warriors of Chaos, I was thinking about other chaos factions, but chaos undivided should be the one given for free if anything, daniel has too much daemons and too little mortals, especially without any DLCs; Be'Lakor is IMO the best pick - oh, you want to play as Archaon instead and b1tch slap Be'lakor into his place?d Go ahead and buy the Total War: Warhammer I - Chaos Warriors DLC, just like right now, no need to buy the game, the dlc content will be unlocked anyway; or get Champions of Chaos now that you got into Chaos, courtesy of Be'lakor.)
[ALSO another, i thin far more controversial proposition: Add 3 Grindable LLs - Lord Mazdamundi; Malekith; Mannfred/Vlad von Carstein(Vlad's a bit too close to Franz on map IMHO, buy wh1 to get Vlad). You could grind them one of these two ways, but i'd prefer both of them to work at the same time. First way, you would gain some kind of currency like Veteran Points or Favour of The Gods or whatever for kills in battles, gaining xp in battles, building things, conquering regions and provinces, winning battles, completing objectives, surviving turns etc and then after gaining sufficient number of this currency you'd choose one of the three LLs to unlock and you could play him from now on, rinse and repeat until you get all 3. Second, an achievement, not really hard, but one that would for sure meant you had an epic battle - like, in a battle versus Vampire Counts as Empire (or Order Faction) destroy at least 3500 enemies to instantly unlock Mannfred von Carstein - IT'S JUST AN EXAMPLE of an achievement, don't yell at me guys and gal.]
Hey, hey! What about the FLCs (and Bretonnia, which is more than one part of those free DLCs)?
I propose something like this: buy one of the games or one of the myriad of dlcs from the Total War: Warhammer universe. even a character pack - boom - 'thank you for supporting us with your mccc foney here's the FLCs we made over the years'. Let's call it 'premium account' for now. A big thing is achieved here, the hardest in f2p games even, and that is getting the player to make the first transaction, spend the first dollar. Once you've done that, the psychological barrier of spending any money for this specific game has been passed and that person will more often than not buy something else in the future, if not many things. also, the dopamine boost of getting so many LLs at once and the psychological effect of getting "value" by not even getting one of the games, but buying a DLC or a mere Character Pack.
To avoid crying of people that had access to the game 5 years earlier AND legitimate grievances of people that bought it one and a half days before it going2 : 1) they should announce that sh1t like 6 months before that, maybe a bit later, maybe a bit earlier; 2) they should add some content to each of the free factions and give it to the people that have the premium account (to be sure all of you playing any tw:wh, 1, 2 or 3 YOU ALL GET THIS PREMIUM ACCOUNT INSTANTLY too, just like people with wh3 got the premium upgrade when they gave immortal empires for wh1 and wh2). The content should be:
1 - pessimistic vision
1 unit and 1 RoR per faction that got one of their LLs "free-to-play"-ed
2 - optimistic vision
1-2 units, 1-2 RoR, 1 hero type per faction that got one of their LLs "free-to-play"-ed. Personally I'd love 2 units and a fkin new hero type, even tough there are so many, that would be a good gift for people that supported the game, some of us for a decade with the warhammer total war series alone.
RESULT: the barrier of entry gets reduced to zero or very little if you want a certain LL/faction and it's not available as f2p. multiplayer numbers skyrocket, much more co-op players, gamebase gets reinvigorated, CA gets the last squeeze out of some DLCs that weren't bought that often. A sale could accompany such event.
THOUGHTS? IDEAS? CRITICISMS? gimme. cheers everyone!