2014 Membership Benefit Update

heres the kicker, I do the opposite in spending on SC, i have never spent more then 500 sc a month, which was from a sub, the only time I ever purchased SC was a gift from my gf to get my free blood race and free blood housing. The 2000 voucher is very apealing to me as there are plenty o0f item in the shop i would use it on to last me the next three years, and then i am more likely to buy small amounts of sc every month to buy little stuff or buy a huge purchase.

As far as making SOE money, I can verify three people have purchased the all access pass because of the change instead of remaining free players that never spend money on station cash.

That's because there are both types of players.

Those who are enticed to add more SC over the 500 due to it "costing less" because they Sub.
Those who never buy SC but would go Gold because of the 1 time 2000 SC.

That's why I feel having a /Claim where you can claim any one of the following.
- 1 Voucher for one item valued up to 2000 SC.
- 1 Voucher for up to five items valued up to 1000 SC Total
Meaning you can't buy five items each worth 1000 SC but you can buy five items worth 200 SC or a two item's worth 500 SC or any mixture as long as it adds up to 1000
- 1 Voucher for 500 SC Credited to the Account as "Gold SC" which cannot accrue beyond 1000 SC and is spent before normal SC.

For Players

The 1st option will appeal to those who do not buy SC and would be attracted to Big Ticket Items and thus more willing to go Gold for the option to buy any "shiny" they want every month.

The 2nd option will appeal to those who would rather buy a small selection of items than buy one "big" item. These players would be tempted to go Gold because doing so saves them the time of Adding SC to make their small purchases and they get the other Gold Benefits as perks.

The 3rd option will appeal to those who want to spend SC when they want to but also prevent's it from "stacking" so if a player wants to buy and item using this option they will have to add additional funds for most items on the Market that are "big ticket" such as Appearance Armors and Mounts.

For Sony
The 1st option is what they are proposing currently so they won't have an issue with it.

The 2nd option may seem like they are giving the players a big leg up over the current system by doubling the amount but it's actually 50% of the "new proposal" however it gives more control to the player, something players like. It does prevent SC from building up over time and thus still requires additional SC to buy the bigger items.

The 3rd option is basically the "old system" except that it's limited and is Game-Specific ideally. This allows players the most control but also means that an All-Access would be more worthwhile as they get the Game Specific SC for all games they subscribe to.

Least, that's how I would look at it :/

possibly because of my family's socio-economic bracket, but when has a purchasing decision ever been that simple? sure, it may be worth SC, but is it worth it at this moment, or is it worth to save up for, or where on the list of things i'd like is it placed?

i don't mean to belittle RadarX's observation, but there's more that goes on for a lot of folks then a simple yes or no. sometimes it is clear. the xmas trains were cool, but i have absolutely no interest in them. yet even then that is in part a budgetary decision. if i were someone of more ample means i might very well go all out to decorate a house with PS Frostfell items.

I don't like it. I save SC to reduce research time; will it be possible to buy the research time reduction tokens and save them?

this happens to me all the time.

Yes, you can buy character slots with SC on a silver account, I have two of them along with my gold acct.

And I can verify two subscriptions (mine and my wife's) that will go from All Access and Gold to both Silver, and not a dime will be spent on Station Cash ever again. that's not the entire point I'm making. It's not all about the amount of SC being given, either in straight SC or 'voucher' form. It's about the feeling the customer gets when using it, as well. Let me see if I can add some more clarification, using Darsch's spending habits, and mine. (hope you don't mind Darsch, I'm not speaking for you, just using your stated spending habit as an example)

Let's say we're talking about a mount, with a cost of 1950 SC. I have my 500SC stipend, Darsch has a 2000SC voucher.

Darsch uses their voucher, gets the mount, voucher expended. Darsch is happy, and only 'lost' 50SC of voucher value.
I have 500SC, buy another 1500 (money for SOE), and get my mount. I'm happy, and have 50 SC left in my wallet for next time.

But wait...Darsch says that they've never spent more than 500SC in a month under the current system. Let's see how that would change things, using a 350SC armor crate as an example.

Darsch uses their voucher, gets the armor, voucher expended. Darsch has their armor, but 'lost' 1650SC of voucher value.
I use my 500SC stipend, get the armor. I have my armor, and still have 150SC left for next time.

Now, using that example, who is getting the better (perceived) customer experience? I am, in both cases.

In the first case, even though I had to spend money to add more SC, I still come out with the item I wanted, and a little left over. There's no perception of 'losing' or 'wasting' anything. Plus, I've contributed extra money beyond my subscription to further game operation and development. Darsch has sacrificed 50SC of 'value', but that's probably easily shrugged off.

In the second case, Darsch has 'lost' or 'wasted' 1650SC of that voucher's 'value', and has nothing that would carry over to the next month. Now that might not bother Darsch at first, but what happens when Darsch has run out of high-SC items to buy, and that perceived 'loss' or 'waste' happens month after month after month? I, on the other hand, still have the perception of coming out ahead, because I still have SC left over that I can use for another purchase, or save up and add SC to later.

Perception is a major part of the customer experience. Even if the customer is being handed something, they instinctively want to feel like they're getting the most out of what they're being handed. Force a perception of loss or waste on them, they will, inevitably, sour on the experience and move elsewhere.

The thing is, you have Already paid them their 1000SC for all those extra character slots to unlock/open them in the first place, if they take those things you have already paid for away they might leave themselves open for a lawsuit.

This, too, is brilliant! +1!

Uwk

That's a concern I have. Originally, I could get up to 21 characters: 7 on my original US server, 7 on Test, and 7 on "one-a them thar furriner servers," like Splitpaw. The problem I had was that there are NINE crafting specialties...and there wasn't another SOE game I liked well enough to go All-Access to get a whole 12! Max! character slots, total. When they came out with the ability to buy character slots, back during the days of 2x/3x weekends and services sales, I cranked up to the max and spent WAY MORE MONEY than I would have without those sales, to get my three server populations up to the full complement of nine where they belonged, IMHO. I might've shelled out cash at a time when it worked out to less than $10/slot, but I still have 19 more characters on my Gold account now than I would have (9 more on AB and 4 kids on Everfrost, with those last simply because I shelled out more $$$ and SC and unlocked the Beastlord and wanted to try it), and not all of those were on sale at all, in any way. Will I have to pay again to get access to characters I'd already "bought" once? >:-(

Uwk

i think 2000SC should be the upper limit of carryover SC if using this plan.

i think this also highlights again the enticement that 500SC gives to a lot of us to purchase more SC.

This is my thinking, but gods knows if there was a pesky asterix attached to that too, eh? I tried to get a simple answer about whether my Freeport characters had been unlocked by me or grandfathered in (my home server is AB, but I spent time on Freeport) when they brought F2P to all servers. I was tossing around the idea of deleting and remaking a character there. If I recall (and hey, I am almost 43 now, so I may NOT) they were granted there there but NOT deletable unless I was willing to loose that slot. The answer I got via an online help ticket last week was hazy at best, just telling me how many slots I bought in general and that the number applied via gold was one number and my number applied to any server. Wait. Wha? I didn;t risk deleting and getting mad when I couldn't reroll one on FP. I had already decided to call on Monday about that, since it didn't really answer my question at all or well. I might wait until after the next announcement about this stuff too, since that may create more questions. :/

Now that I think of it, this related to this potential change and people going silver in the same boat, can we please have some way to tell (in a glance) how many slots we've unlocked. Or is someone more awake than me that might know I way I missed? That question will likely apply to many other players, since I know several that beta'd the FP server and stuck around for ahwile after it went live, but who also eventually made their way back to their old servers over time.

the character thing is kinda of topic, however.....if as a gold member you get 7 character slots without buying any additional CS and as silver you get 4, shouldn't that mean the only thing you have to deduct is 3 slots if you drop from gold to silver, no matter how many additional CS you bought?

Total, yeah... ;->

Uwk

Yeah, me too. ;->

Uwk

I don't know about anyone else but I feel like a fish on a line. SoE baited the hook with this 2000SC, realised that no fish were biteing (In fact the fish were swimming away from the foul, smelling bait), and have now started to dribble breadcrumbs onto the river in the hopes of luring the fish back onto the hook. The problem is that the original bait (The 2000SC) Smelt so bad that it might take a very long time to get the fish to return.

Given that what's offered may or may not entice gold subs and auto-renew people to stay, it's not off topic at all. It could very much factor into how people see value in their sub too and/or could fry anyone on the idea of playing at all if they changed the way it should work. I had a Station Pass back in the olden days and cancelled with SWG's demise. I paid to unlock above the 7 limit (was it 12 or 14 for the old Station Pass? I forget) the additional characters I'd lost access to when I dropped to EQ2 only. I've added character slots over time because I am an altaholic and I like poking around at each class off and on. Over time, I've managed to accumulate 26 (one of each class) on AB alone and about 6 on Freeport.

At one time (and maybe still, based on other replies) we could unlock and access new slots over the four limit with silver, so that should apply. Where it gets hazy is that they grandfathered in old subs to silver when F2P came to all servers, so some people, depending on what their account status was (or when it was created only? I forget) were granted access to all of their characters that had been on Freeport...or hell, something like that. So...do those people get those grandfathered toons unlocked above the 4? I'd doubt it, since it was a freebie to make people less angry about server-wide F2P. My issue is that I also may have unlocked characters on Freeport by paying for an unlock for them during a brief period when I had no sub and was only silver (and hell, I had paid to be silver before the grandfathering.

In summary, this is why I asked for a way to look somewhere and say, "Oh. I paid to unlock 24 over the silver sub and/or Oh, I'd better be careful about which ones I log in if I don't sub again after this incoming change." I am very certain I'm not the only one in this boat that will want a refresher or easy answer. They will have enough phone calls from people who are not aware of the incoming changes and discussion here and phone lines will be very, very busy. Good gods. Someone buy the CSR phone people lunch the week of Feb 3rd.

Hmm... that ^ was still (perhaps) not clear. Let's just say I'll bet that many people unlocked slots with SC from stipends and or/their own SC purchases. I'd wager many forgot how many they've unlocked and many may have or will stop subbing. I'd like to see them add an easy way to check that info -before- I end up silver if I do and they'd be wise to put that in place before Feb 3rd or there will be many confused, angry people calling and or thinking it's a conspiracy on SOEs part. Better to avoid further drama for all and make the decision less likely to flood phone lines.

I agree with Carribea.

I just went silver, and I remember having 7 slots, then purchasing two a long time ago to have all 9 tradeskillers. Then I unlocked one recently for a HC alt. When I logged on as a silver, I had to unlock three more toons (which were the last three that I had used the day before on the daily obol TS quest)

so for 10 characters, I've unlocked 6 toons - which agrees with Carribea saying that silver gets 4 slots.

I spend my SC getting the HC alt their masters, and since this isn't a marketplace item, the new rules would be useless to me if I were to go back to gold.