Premium needs a cash cap increase

Your analogies are untrue in a free to play game that also has micro-transactions. If you lose a free to play customer, you lose a customer who potentially could contribute to the bottom line through micro-transactions. Players in the free bracket who do not feel treated fairly will take their business elsewhere and never spend a dime. Players in the free bracket who feel treated fairly are more willing to put some money into the game.

Also, your analogy is flawed in that an MMO is predicated on having a higher population to keep those who do pay happier. The more players play, the less players have to wait to get into instances, and the more friends are available to play with. MMOs benefit greatly from a higher population, so losing players who have not paid a cent into the game does hurt economics by in turn giving those who do pay less people to play with, leading to less satisfied customers who may eventually take their business elsewhere.

Seth reasonably 2 things I see wrong.

If they're truly F2P then their business has nothing to do with money, and there are players out there that never spent a dime.
Its been stated more than once that the unlimited cash cap is a perk of being legendary. There are escrow tokens.

What we're looking at here again is asking something for nothing. I cant imagine the amount of customer service spent on F2P players. Who's paying for that?

I'm actually not a proponent of increasing the cash cap. I'm a proponent of allowing premium players to have an option to buy r&d items from the equipment vendors through the spending of marks instead of cash (similar to synthetics, but instead of synthetics, they should have made equipment interface Vs, soder cola enhancer Vs, etc. available in DLC 10 and 11 vendors). Cash in this game is far too easy to acquire. Marks require time spent in the game, so players could choose to stay Premium and spend more time in the game or subscribe and buy the interfaces in the Watchtower/Hall of Doom for cash.

In addition, by providing equipment interfaces and soder cola enhancers one tier below the current tier, that also offers further incentive to get the best mods and consumables through subscribing.

Repair costs to me are a non-issue. The only real issue is the limitations on r&d equipment. Players buy the DLC, and through the DLC they get access to the plans to create equipment mods and consumables they can't afford via cash to create. That makes little sense.

same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was....




go legendary, quit complaining
buy an escrow token, quit complaining
same as it ever was
same as it ever was....

LOL Maybe one day soon all the F2P and Premium players will just leave and you guys can have the game all to yourselves again. Since that worked out so well the last time.

Wait...

Just so you guys know, The R&D argument doesn't work anymore in my opinion. Ever since they tied R&D to DLC progression. If R&D wasn't needed to advance through the tiers, then I'd agree that the argument "Need better cash Cap, because R&D..." would be a faulty one. But nowadays as the game has evolved, you need the top mods to get to the next tier, unlike back in the day, when you could smartly use beta's and alpha's to get to that next tier. Meaning premium players must use outside factors such as trading to progress. Thus progression is in a way hindered by Access Level. Which imo, is not the way this game should be headed.

So in conclusion: R&D prices are now a valid argument in favor of increased Cap requests. Sure they were added to the game as a separate entity but the Devs have now tied them to DLC progression.

Two words deflate your entire post....

Synthetic Mods.

Below list problems with the mods, possible improvements, and threads against the mods as a whole:

Synthetic Mods - Combined Attributes

Top Tier Synthetic mods need removed from the game

Synthetic Mixed Stat Mods

so pretty much with the Synthetic mods being released, broker and economy pretty much dead now.

Synthetic Mods are being overused

synthetic mods and how no one is using them

He was saying that R&D needed to be included to allow you to progress to the next tier and Synthetic Mods allow you to do that do they not?

There's a reason they were added to the game, and it's so non-members can add them to their gear and keep progressing.

Synthetic mods allow premium members to progress, yes. They also have a lot of negative side effects. I have seen more negative threads about them than positive threads. I still think it would be better to have the r&d parts (equipment interfaces, cola enhancers, etc.) available for marks instead of the actual mods. Synthetics are the previous versions, so having the level V parts available instead of VI parts would essentially provide the same options with less drawbacks.

Micro transactions are an option. That said, legendary subscribers also use micro transactions. Also, if you're spending the equivalent or more in micro transactions and are not legendary then who's the fool here? That said, losing a legendary subscriber is the potential loss of $188 + any micro transactions they may make per year. Losing a premium may involve losing a potential $60 on average but as I said, micro transactions are optional and you don't need to buy them to play this game. Why do you think they try to entice you to go legendary by basically giving you a pay for 2 months but get 3 months deal? Because they make more money off of legendary subscribers. No matter how you slice it, this is an indisputable fact. And you're last sentence doesn't change the math. 0-0=0. You can argue it all you want but the math is, again, indisputable.

As a premium player, I don't think a cashcap increase is needed. "Curly shuffle""Runs away"

Your math is too biased from a marketing view instead of a customer view. You're making the same mistake most MMO marketing teams make: the more money we can draw from one person, the better our bottom line will be.

That is an erroneous assumption for an MMO. What you and they fail to realize is that MMOs are not video games marketed for some player to run solo. The population of the game itself is what makes an MMO desirable. Restrict members of that population too much, and part of that population leaves. As a result, the marketing team just lost an element of the game they need to sell the product. It's the equivalent of taking Super Mario Brothers and turning it into the Super Mario Brothers Frustration by removing much of the world that Mario has to move on. The game is still playable, but players will be frustrated with it more often than enjoying it.

I love controversy

Before Destiny came out did you see any real decrease in population? You know that Destiny or any other new game gets attraction from other games. I'm sure it drew from WoW, Rift, D3, DCUO and Landmark...among others. Alot will come back to. Legendary as well as Premium.

The idea of the cap is to encourage Premium players to become Legendary players. If the model doesnt work they'll change it. Obviously it does. There are Premium players and F2P players that with this attitude

"I'm not giving you another dime until you GIVE us something more". Thats their right, to choose what to do with their money. It doesn't mean it'll change their minds though, and they'll always want more.

I can find negative threads or posts about basically anything in the game. Doesn't change the fact that they are there to allow non-members to progress through the tiers, just not allowing them to use multiple stat mods. I'm not even arguing about them possibly selling interfaces and other things for marks, just that people claiming they cannot progress through a tier because the cost of R&D materials is a false statement.

If they allowed people to buy R&D items with marks would it cost them subscriptions though is the question. To me, I would likely keep my subscription, but would everyone? They want there to be friction (like it or not) to either try to get people to subscribe or buy escrow tokens.

Being a marketing major in college I believe i have the basic premise of marketing. But I'm done chasing my tail here. All I'm doing is banging my head against the wall because someone doesn't understand that giving free players the same perks as paid players is inherently stupid.

What is station cash then? Isn't that guaranteed(already in pocket) money? That's how I pay for my marketplace purchases.(except for DLC, I get DLC through steam now since they won't let me pay for it with station cash anymore... Which is odd because one would think that they could have treated DLC like a months worth of subscription where you choose between SC, a DLC of your choice, or a month of subscription when you redeem the card.)

Alright, let me outline it another way for you: Let's say you have 3 friends you always run alerts with. One of those friends decides to leave the game because he doesn't like feeling forced to subscribe to have the same access you and your other two friends have. Do you now have the same 3 friends to run alerts with?

I'm not asking for free players to have the same perks. I'm asking for premium players to have the same access to content they pay for. Access is not the same as perks.

Although I see your point Seth. I thought they intentionally made the RnD part of the Game Updates not the DLC's? Therefore they didnt pay for it. Having access to the latest RnD is definitely a motivator for me to stay Legendary.