Escrow should empty into Cash

What makes you think every person playing a free game has any spare change? And has said spare change every day? Cumulatively?

This game is subscription based, with a trial version let's you taste the game til t3 tier & events portion. Dcuo is not free , but a demo/ trial version. ( if at a point a game reach hinder in gameplay it's best to contribute monies to the game).
Yups

You can afford a pc or console, you can afford power, you can afford internet you can afford accommodation but then the bank breaks at the sub for DCUO?

I appreciate everyone has unique and different circumstances but if things are that tight why is playing DCUO even a priority in the first place.

Look I'm not trying to be mean, but I see that excuse a lot as to why people don't want to sub, it's an immediate convenient go too when more often than not, the real reason the person doesn't want to sub is they personally choose not too.

They're not prepared to reprioritise their choices and expenditures but they're quite happy to be vocal about getting more for free in game because they simply would rather not pay, they'd rather that big mac at McDonald's each week or that takeaway cappuccino each morning.

A person genuinely impoverished would probably be happy they're even able to play DCUO at all even with all the limitations.

I'm sorry this sounds harsh, but I just see it said all the time and I just don't buy it at all, I'm sorry if you think that makes me seem callous, but too often people claim it's a poverty thing when it really isn't.

It's a choice you need to simply change if you want to avoid the restrictions you'd rather not put up with.

These are very contradictory sentiments, making the first impossible to believe.

That is how money works on a budget. You choose the most basics of basics and then the money runs out. As for the pc or console, the financial situation you have one year and the financial situation you have years later aren't always the same.

Why do you play games? Not the brightest question I've ever seen.

I have a feeling your projecting your addiction to Big Macs and Cappuccinos onto others as a coping mechanism. Must be it. There's no way you actually think everyone has the same lifestyle and spending habits as you.

People who are truly poor love to be treated like they don't matter. You've caught us. The jig is up. Seriously though, I was making a small suggestion that would mostly affect those in really bad in game situations. You're acting like I'm demanding free legendary.[/quote]

I didn't know you had access to everyone's bank accounts.

Change how?

I was expressing an appreciation that I know people have unique circumstances to be nice, because i was trying to include a pleasantry in a post i knew would be a little on the nose.

The truth is I'm not buying it, it seems to me that the rest of your post to me about projecting etc is you feeling a little upset, I've just so brazingly called you out and the reality is probably sinking in.

The big mac's and cappuccinos have nothing to do with me, the sentiment I was expressing is that people often have luxuries elsewhere, they're not prepared to give up to reprioritise DCUO, you can replace Big Mac with whatever fits your own personal circumstances, I don't really care, I'm sure you can think of something, you probably thought you'd got me there with that projection quip though huh... Proxy's addicted to Mcdonalds lol...

In terms of a budget, yes that is how it works but I bet you there's something you could move, think about your food for example, could you buy cheaper brands, is there a luxury you could drop... could you move to a cheaper internet provider, could you save on power...

This is the thing, people are never prepared to actually assess their priorities instead they'll just jump on the forum here and say raise my cash cap, I want legendary perks but don't want to pay. You say im acting like you want legendary for free, I mean you're asking for at least some of what people get for subbing to be given for free, is it really that far off?

What's the bet there's plenty of things you could assess to free money up to buy a subscription, the real answer though isn't really that though, there's a good chance it's probably just "I don't want too"..

Again in an effort to be nice I'm really sorry this seems callous but sometimes the truth just has to all be put on the table.

It solves the issue of 1 full gear repair mid raid. That should be the biggest point of frustration that would not be intentional frustration made to 'encourage' you to want to unlock your escrow. Assuming that's at least in part, some of the reason they are imposing a cash cap.

If you are assuming that they want you as a premium to basically have 'full' access to your money, just in limited chunks...your suggestion is perfectly fine. However, I believe this not the case, and you are supposed to want to upgrade to avoid the frustration of capping and filling and carrying soders/whatever....to refill, so you are not likely to see it happen.

I currently have no income and also no bills. No money flowing anywhere. Hard to cut away from a zero. Food is dealt with solely with food stamps. There are no fast food trips to cut. No cheaper brands to buy. You sound like you've grown up with money your whole life and can't understand what it's like to not have it. So how about you give up trying to give financial advice to those in completely different situations from you when you refuse to even try to understand. You don't sound nice. You sound dumb.

I don't think they mean for premium members to have full access to their money. That would part of the suggestion. I'm not sure, but I assume this system was set up 10 years ago and it's fully possible they haven't even given a thought to changing the system since (not just raising the cap). I'm probably too optimistic to think that the devs want the game to be fun as a free to play. They might just want the free part of that description to be never ending frustration like everyone here thinks.

If that's the case, then I amend my suggestion to simply: stop being a free to play game and go full on subscription.

Try to keep your posts more constructive in terms of the topic rather than personal insults I'm not insulting you simply discussing my viewpoint. I'm also not saying what I'm saying from a position of privileged entitlement, far from it and I've not grown up in wealth.

Sure a lot of people are in difficult circumstances right now, clearly including yourself. But, other people are going to suffer as well if the expectation is that we suddenly start giving away everything for free because it would be nice to those less fortunate or might be periodically down on their luck.

I'm sure your personal circumstances are difficult and hopefully you'll find employment in the very near future that makes it less difficult for you.

But lots of the game, in fact borderline all of it, is being given to you for free right now, but you want 'even more'? Despite your unfortunate personal circumstances you have to see it from the other perspective as well.

It's the same with the Brazilian players right now, their prices recently got corrected to more accurately reflect the prices everyone else is paying but for them due to localised economy issues the game for many has become borderline unaffordable, many have allegedly quit. That's unfortunate, but due to their unfortunate personal circumstances was the right answer to continue selling them the game at a heavily reduced rate simply because of those factors?

At the moment aspects of the membership have already been watered down to accommodate the difficult circumstances that people are experiencing through the pandemic. We have open episodes seemingly permanently on for example, DLC access was previously a membership perk.

You could carry around soders, it's the perfect time to farm stacks of Qwa-bombs to keep you going, you could buy a one off escrow token to sort yourself out where necessary, the work around's are there, but like I said despite the personal circumstances you're currently experiencing you can't just start giving stuff away because of them.

I'm sorry you're experiencing what you currently are and I hope things improve, but my position regarding cash caps and things haven't changed because of it

There's no reason to do that. Obviously the game makes money with the F2P and membership models as if anything F2P and Premium have gotten more benefits over the years and membership has lost some. As F2P or premium you have ample ability to repair your gear using a few methods...you want a change simply for your own comfort ease. I'd guess they are not making to make the 'free' tiers more comfortable as it (for some) is an incentive to sub. You are probably right though, the fact you can only fix 3 pieces of fully broken gear is probably not 100% intentional as when F2P went live Premiums got 2000, which at the time was enough to fix if not a full set of broken gear, it was 5 or 6 pieces as 'max' repairs were 200-300. I'd guess when they designed the service tiers and set cash caps, this was intentional and the repair prices have grown whereas the cap has not (not much at least...1 jump of 1000 earlier last year). This is why I'm saying a more likely outcome is getting to 10K or so (which would be easy to fill daily) which would be enough for 1 full set repair...past that...yeah, I'd guess there is some aspect where they believe the amount of hassle might make someone wish to sub or buy an escrow token.

I proposed in another thread that in theory maybe the cap should raise each DLC by 500 or 1000, to keep up with rising repair costs, but yeah, you should have to fill it up again....not a huge feat BTW. Pulling out of escrow repeatedly would basically just be a spending cap of 3K...but yeah, you'd have full access to all your money in 3K chunks which seems a bit much to expect them to give.

To be honest I'm not really personally opposed to letting a premium player have their escrow automatically refresh each time it is spent, its' particularly prohibitive still and doesn't allow them to play the broker at all either.

The reality though and hence the general sentiment of my subsequent posts after my first, is that such a change seems unrealistic because it opposes the premise of what Daybreak, Dimensional Ink are trying to financially achieve. Large parts of the game are free to play and the reason for that is because their first objective is to get you playing, their second objective once they've got you playing is to get you spending... This is really psychology 101.

If premium players were largely comfortable escrow tokens and subs would simply be less appealing, think too, if the state of being premium was suddenly more comfortable, how many people might ditch their subs, probably not all, but it would be a safe bet to assume a number of borderline subbers would.

This couldn't possibly be in Dimensional Inks financial interests. raising the cash cap makes that even worse. It isn't just the repair aspect they're frustrating though, remember they've also purposefully made crafting out of reach despite the fact the plans drop in a DLC that's been purchased by the end user.

With that in mind, one can only reasonably conclude these frustrations are in place on purpose, they're not a mistake and the devs are likely abundantly aware of them and abundantly aware of the complaints received by premium players that would like more.

Despite these complaints, nothing changes because it defeats the purpose of their second goal, to get the player spending money.

Oh, I'm perfectly fine where it is. I was just making a point that when it launched a premium COULD fix a set of gear and honestly was able to play the broker some too. 2000 would get you many of the low level collections and selling an item for 40K actually meant something then. I was just giving evidence that likely the original intent wasn't there to make it really hard to do daily things or repair gear...something that has gotten progressively harder as prices have risen for repairs and the broker is completely off the rails.

But I'm good managing under 3K. If they WANTED to let me have access to my 40 or 50 million bucks in escrow in 3K plops...sure, it would make things a bit easer...so I'd have no issues with that...I just don't see it happening either. A minimal cash cap raise to 10 or 20k however, I could as it would be more keeping in the spirit of the original design when implemented.

out of curiosity I tested a few things and broke my gear completely to 0%, the cost to repair it all at this level is

Helm - $1095
Face - $1133
Chest - $1076
Back - $1076
Waist - $1076
Shoulders - $1076
Hands - $1076
Legs - $1076
Boots - $1076
Weapon - $1076

Total - $10,836

If you're running elite content you'd only ever have 2 lives before you wipe and could repair each time, so I've also tested breaking gear through two knock downs. If you're dying more than that in regular I'd hesitantly by fairly I think suggest you die less.

Helm - $219
Face - $227
Chest - $215
Back - $215
Waist - $215
Shoulders - $215
Hands - $215
Legs- $215
Boots- $215
Weapon - $215

Total - $2,166.00

If we increase that to an extra down which would probably account for general damage, probably a little more realistically then the cost becomes a total of $3,253

So having actually looked at this I have to ask the obvious question as well, is there a real issue here with the cash cap or is there also perhaps a self inflicted issue with premium players "not repairing frequently enough" and therefore creating more frustration and work themselves.

If you let your gear break to a greater extent you're going to be sitting there for longer clicking repair and sitting there selling soders because your items are too broken, whereas if you're repairing every 3 downs or so you might only have to sell a few soders each time to refresh your $3,000 and virtually repair it all at once.

This is also the problem I have I guess when this topic comes up is no ones prepared to actually look at it properly there's just always this emotional out pouring as to why they think (premium players that is) they're entitled to have more access to cash and for what reasons.

If the problem really is repairs then I'd suggest the cash cap is probably already adequate and that their problems are exacerbated only through their own inaction to undertake repairs in a more frequent fashion. If anything any raise to the cash cap could easily be limited to $4000 or $5000 to alleviate the frustration surrounding repairs and that would be being generous, I see little excuse for a premium player to let their gear get completely damaged, even as a subscriber I don't allow that to happen.

On the other hand if you raise the premium cap to $10,000. Premium players would suddenly be able to buy Catalysts for $9,950, something they currently cannot buy. In addition to this they would also be able tp purchase Soder Enhancers for $9,000, something they currently cannot buy.

There's a reason premium players keep saying raise it to $10,000, if we're being intellectually honest here, it's because they know having access to $10,000 might prohibit their use of the broker, but they don't really need that access because they can use other means to get things they want from the broker through trading.

The least thing they want to deal with though is finding someone to muck around with getting catalysts and enhancers or repairing their gear. Having access to $10,000 would virtually eliminate any frustration a premium player has and virtually eliminate any desire they might have to subscribe.

So from Dimensional Ink's perspective think about how many fringe subbers they'd lose should they remove those frustrations, As crap as it might be, we have to acknowledge there are going to be a tonne of players out there subbing solely because of the cash cap, we might not like that, but its a reality. Dimensional Ink could face losing a bunch of those subs if it was suddenly easier for them to cope with being premium.

I just thought I'd break it down this way because it helps see the realistic argument behind what's being asked and why, cutting straight through all the emotional "I pay, I deserve more" stuff and getting to the heart of "why" and then likely" why it doesn't happen

Sounds like a good idea, and yes, i'm freemium. (and i wont sub untill devs make proper regional subscription prices, but thats another sad story)

You and I both know it was never actually about cost of repairs.

Again, I have no issues on my premiums with repairs and the 3K cap...I know how to wok within the confines of it(did fine with 2K as well). But to the OP's request of basically repeatedly stacking 3Ks out of your escrow, you said you don't have a problem? Not sure why the 10K(or whatever) increase would seem so much more different to you. Personally I think that is way MORE of an access to money than a cap raise. I appreciate you did the research on repair pricing, but please repeat your test with a toon in CR 50-54 gear to simulate when F2P/Premium came into existence and check how many rounds of either 'full' or 'partial' repairs you can get out of 2K. That was just my point...when incepted the cap allowed an 'end game' player a full broken set...or multiple partial repairs. This is not true today. Your suggestion that it's purely a punitive measure to make people want to sub was not originally the intent...even if it is one today.

BTW. I've been in groups where I've seen people vote to kick a premium or lock them out of boss fight because he had to stop too long to repair splitting stacks. It doesn't happen much, but it does happen. Now normally it's accompanied by the 'Can anyone give me soders' request....but yeah, not many sub players want to deal with it.

I don't care either way. 3K is fine for me. Just not sure why you would be opposed to one and not the other. Because 10k would give them more access to the broker? Really? Not sure there is a big threat with 10k purchases and 200K sales, seeing as anything in there is 1 mil+ at this point, but I guess that's a thing too.

You're SO rational in so many other threads--- but here you're actually suggesting that making the game suck is a good way to get people to subscribe?

"This game really sucks. I think I'll pay for it." Yeah. That'll work.

This is a classic straw-man argument in that it ignores that there are, of course, lots of reasons to remain premium. There used to be tons of Brazillian players-- but the Brazillian Real has tanked in the last couple of years. Much as I love this game, I can't see myself shelling out $30 a month to subscribe. Other people just don't like the idea of renting the game: "as soon as I stop paying I get nothing?"

I see the "it's your own fault for not subscribing" idea thrown around in these threads all the time, and it always sounds the same to me as "it's your own fault for wearing that short skirt". Premium is sold to players as a viable way to play the game. There is an "Ultimate Edition" of DCUO that's available for purchase. "Ultimate" doesn't sound like "second-rate", but by "Ultimate" what is actually meant is apparently "buy this and people will tell you it's your own fault for not subscribing instead".

There are lots of things that compulsion doesn't work well for. Aesop wrote a fable about this 2,600ish years ago. You can blow the wind as hard as you want, but players are more likely to bundle up and run home than they are to take off their coats and sit down.
Completely excluding a large portion of your player base from otherwise entertaining aspects of the game has always seemed like a really bad idea to me. Give players an engaging experience and if they can't or don't want to subscribe, they'll spend money on all the replays, styles, time capsules, and other things that folks here love so much. And if they can, they'll see that membership actually winds up being a great value when you play the game a lot. Even excluding the silly cash cap.

10000 is not just a simpler repair, it is the ability to buy any item from the R&D seller (with each new DLC, new recipes are dropped, but the R&D system itself is separate from DLC, just DLC is used to enter new recipes), this is the ability to have any "consumables" without the help of others. Repair, R&D, more free space ... separately each of these things is not much, but all together is already tangible ...

By the way, at current prices ... most subscribers only have the appearance of access to a broker ...

Those items could always be locked down to ownership or membership (like cats/gear are in the LLL or any 'current' dlc) at least for the current. Not sure that anyone really cares if people could build 'old' recepies.

Or simply raise the prices of those RnD items to >10,000. Honestly I'd expect to see a raise in prices across the board on vendor items if Premiums/F2P got a cap raise. The only reason that gear still costs 2K is because it's made to be available to F2P and Premiums. I'm fine with that BTW...it's a badly needed cash sink we don't have today because most things are made to stay under the cap prices. Any dent to get rid of cash in game, I'm for...we've got too much.

If you simultaneously increase the ceiling to 10,000 and the prices for R&D components above 10,000, then this is not so "scary", just when people want a ceiling higher than the prices for R&D components, this raises doubts about the motivation ...
Why am I focusing on R&D? i give an example.
A week ago I used the CR Skip on one of my seasonal alts. It was Rage and "adequate" rotation is very demanding on the level of power. With that amount of SP (90? Or how much is there after the CR skip?), Playing for this character was a torment .... but !!! it was enough to send him a couple of stacks of cola to increase max power and the play became very comfortable. An ordinary cola to increase max power, and without it the same level of comfort became available only for 170+ SP ...