Why are you charging me for the privilege of a less clunky UI?

heh, you shoulda used your freemium cpl months back to reserve extra character slots.... I did.

I now have 6 characters and I never paid for Subsctiption. (I have dropped serious SC of course to be eligible for that freemium month... but so did you so I know you had freemium as well)

no they didn't.

As for cost of cosmetics.... THEY'RE EFFIN COSMETICS!

110% unnecessary. Don't like the price? Never buy it.

Yes, if you buy full price SC (lolwut) and also buy an item at full SC cost (meh, far more understandable...) then that's entirely on the purchaser.

I've NEVER bought full price SC.... why would anyone? If I don't have the SC for something I want, I'll wait for the next SC sale. I'm not that impatient to spend 2x as much on something.

I automatically consider everything at half it's listed price because I'll NEVER pay "full price"

I just hope that game players remember the greed of game developers from Microsoft to EA to SOE, and either resist any further purchases - or perhaps quit gaming altogether.

You folks are paying 10 times the amount of money to play less of a game than I grew up with, their quality is only about graphics, but the gameplay sucks.

Minecraft made one of my LIFETIME TOP 10, PS2 won't.

And you should be. Other players loadout swap times don't have any effect if you are soloing, but trying to move a coordinated group (especially if the outfit has 1 or 2 required loadouts as it is) where half the team doesn't have loadouts ready for the task at hand will be slowed down because they aren't provided extra loadout slots. Your ability to coordinate and play the game is held back by everyone who needs to manually swap gear, which reduces your ability to mobilize and respond when needed.

Every Lightning owner who has bought all 4 guns should at least have 4 loadouts so they don't have to swap. It is a punishing and non-productive market-based decision to roll additional loadouts into the membership instead of letting players unlock it.

At some point I'd wager more coordinated outfits will have all their members set up macro programs that auto-configure their loadout for them, thus requiring players to use a 3rd party program to circumvent a UI feature that wasn't granted equally to all. I doubt the segment of the team working on UI and loadout access wasn't saying "boy I sure hope this feature rakes in the big bucks" but instead was saying "man I'm glad we're putting this feature in for users to enjoy."

Besides, if I have 12 guns to choose but only 3 loadouts, that's basically like saying "pick your 3 most favored guns per class and only use the rest under special circumstances."

Come on, you are Sony company, don't Microsoft up your good features.

Sure... they could ADD a relational table in order to LINK the 2 different items to each other.....

but you're asking them to do MORE WORK in order to give away more than they intended in the first place.

Remember that this system was originally built with the intent that EVERY purchase would be on a PER CHARACTER basis... they ADDED account wide after the fact, similar but different due to EVEN A SINGLE VARIABLE PROPERTY simply didn't plug into the account wide system.

I'd need to rotate the flash cosmetic you showed, but for example I know that the sundy grill that is faction specific has an extremely minor difference of a some color splashing.

Different properties = different item. If the item is exactly the same with no varying properties whatsoever then it's account wide.



finally... you're complaining about cosmetics FFS. Don't think the price is worth it? THEN DON'T EFFIN BUY IT!

You absolutely, POSITIVELY, do not need it WHATSOEVER so why make a big deal about it?

I know fully well that I don't need to buy them. I wasn't speaking to my personal preference of buying them or not. I'm speaking from the standpoint that if they want more money, they might want to even out the delta between sale price point and normal price point. $7 is not quite the right sweet spot for impulse purchases. I know the thought process that goes on when pricing these things, as I have worked on freemium games before, and I've seen the metrics on purchases and price points, so I'm not talking out of my bum here.

I'll buy what I want if it is attractive. I don't buy things usually because they aren't worth the price.

I truly dislike it when people feel that they need to lay down a lesson in purchasing power when someone isn't necessarily complaining about the cost of something, but is instead suggesting that the price point is not advantageous to the company setting the cost. I know why they do it. They're going for the JC Penny sales approach.

I don't really buy cosmetic things for full price either, as I've also never really bought SC for full price.

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I should be clear, I've got premium as well, I've got 6 loadouts which is enough for my purposes. Doesn't change the fact that charging for a UI fix that people have been asking for since beta is a low blow.

You do realize that you aren't considering both sides of the equation, don't you?

YOU don't like having this stuff sold to you.. but what if another person WANTS to buy such a thing. Shouldn't it be easy as pie to find?

Stop whinging about things that make it easy to get stuff. And stop whinging about things that should be free and aren't. What you've paid for anything in the past is no defense for a forum post like this that doesn't even attempt to see the other side of the issue. No one forces you to buy anything, and those that want to buy stuff should have a very easy time finding out how to buy it.

So you are saying that they shouldn't fix anything in this game after Beta? The developers aren't mind-readers you know. They, like everyone else, must make educated guesses about what folks want, and must prioritize their scarce time to develop stuff to meet a perceived need. When they guess wrong, they must fix.

This isn't 'taking advantage of the paying customers', its 'providing them what they need'.

And honestly, I don't care how much you've spent on this game, that is not germane to your points at all.

If you think its a low blow, unsub and stop playing. Whinging on about it here is just not gonna get traction.

I'm asking them to do MORE WORK in order to make their in game to seem less like a scam. Like for example, in the small print of premium membership, mentioned no where on the purchase page as far as I can see, is the little known fact that if you cancel your subscription you don't get the 500SC every month that's supposed to come with premium, even if you already paid for those months in advance.

It's like SOEisms like that that really get me. I mean seriously, your selling an entertainment product, and your customer has already paid you...why stiff them with small print just so you don't need to give them 500SC? Be generous, and when theirs doubt give the customer more rather than less and they'll be more inclined to continue buying things. Be a dick and try and claw back as much as you can and only give what you absolutely have to and people wont come back next time.

I just wish they would charge $1.75 for stuff and never have a Double SC event or sales.

You do realise that I am? Check my other thread. What I asked for is the ability to be able to hide things we've decided we don't want. For example, I've bought half of the camos I like, I don't want anymore. I don't need to see all the other camos all the time whenever I go to change mine.

As I already said, Planetside 2's UI bloat is currently minor, but it's slowly creeping towards the makes-you-crash-into-a-bus "BUY ALL OUR STUFF" pop ups that APB ended up with. The UI needs to be a UI first and a shop second.

No I'm saying that they shouldn't arbitrarily charge for a UI fix. I mean why this? Why not £5 for when they added PhysX or £7 for when they sorted out the render range? Just because other MMOs have set precedent with selling UI convenience doesn't make it a good idea.

And how much I've spent on the game is relevant when people accuse me of just wanting everything for free. What I want is for the game to do well so the devs make money and more stuff gets made that I can buy and I fear things like this cost them more revenue than they care to realize. The backlash when people, sick of server inbalance are hit with they upcoming "Why don't you switch server! Only 10 bucks." news isn't going to be lots of angry threads on the forums, it's going to be lots of people silently not logging on anymore.

Your points boil down to 'I don't like the UI because its selling things to me'.. which, when stated about a free to play game, is the height of utterly silly. My question is, why do you expect folks to take you seriously?

The Devs make UIs to suit the needs of the entire community, not just one or two guys. And complaining about F2P trying to sell you stuff is, well, silly!

The only thing I agree with you on is when a cosmetic is the same across all factions... why is it listed as different factions?

Couldn't be bothered to put a little work in it? I find that just a money grab by a lazy company.

Hell, I would rather purchase a new model for the same weapon I already own than purchase the same lazy model for a cosmetic across multiple factions.

Oh yah, I totally get what you mean...

It is rather silly that they discourage year round purchases for a few days a year of concentrated sales at the "actual" price while making very few sales at the inflated price over the rest of the year.

They probably WOULD make more if they a) reduced SC costs for items and b) reduced significance of SC sales (ie; last 40% sale)

but it is what it is.... I agree with you though on that part... but at least as knowledgeable patrons we can avoid overpaying.

well...

except for the fact that account wide unlocks were an after thought addition in the first place.... so they actually already did change policy to suit the customer.

As for the auto-renew.... they need some incentive to try and prevent people from canceling right after paying for 6 months.

Sure, they might not be the friendliest practices... but as far as businesses go it's all pretty standard rate stuff

I remember a very interesting comment from a developer who'd released their game on Steam and instead of going down the £20-35 price tag of most other games of its genre, instead slapped a price of £5 on it. It was partly to deter piracy, but also because they wanted to try something different.

The developer stated in an interview after the two week sale price, that the game had sold more copies and made more money than it would have had it spent its entire shelf life at the full RRP price.

Point?

SOE would make a ****ton more money if they'd price things a lot lower, as everyone would jump in on that action.

its really disturbing they actually want you to keep renewing membership just to keep the extra loadout slots.. kind of pathetic considering i spend a little over $200 on this game so far.

all soe is doing is losing respect from people who supported them and contributed their hard earned money. i don't plan on renewing my subscription comes in a few months. paid a full year during beta and spent about another $60 on SC..

after $OE realizes their mistakes it will be too late.

I understand the OP's view (at least to some degree), and I agree.

As he states, and I'm sure he's sincere (no sarcasm), he's purchased many Camo's and weapons and the like; he's funded the games development and he's happy to spend more money for as long as he's treated.. well, respectfully at the end of the day. Why should he put up with advertising clutter mid-gameplay, when it can be done other ways without aggravating players?
Even if it wasn't there, it's pretty damn likely he would've purchased all that gear anyway. We are not hit with Station Depot adverts as soon as we login the game at the Warp Gate - instead it's word of mouth and seeing other players wearing/using this gear, that entices us to buy it. Or it's posted on the Forums, whatever, that's fine.

I'd like to see it uncluttered too, and instead every week, hell, every day would be fine; updates on Daily Sales and new Gear that's dropped into the Depot... or whatever the shop is actually called Also like OP suggested, Email us new offers, having it a tog-gable subscription would be good for those that are fine with in-game store browsing.