Remove the referral system

The system rewards casual players who don't already know about the game; hardcore players and vets like the ones on this forum have already got everyone they can to play and spent a lot of cash.

It's indirectly punishing those who have already put a lot of time and effort into the game.

Personally I am a little peeved that I can't get the black crystallised camo, but oh well.

Okay Luperza, I understand the excitement, you want to give incentive to recruit more paying customers to the game and bring up the pop.

The problem is getting 25 people to sign up and pay 10$ is not feasible for a vast, VAST amount of current *paying* and *loyal customers* (essentially your bread and butter). I can understand if we are not enough and you need more, the way to get more into the game is actually to include and not exclude people from the toys they want.

• What changes would you make to the program to make the goals more attainable? Add SC cash and boosts instead of excluding paying fans of the game from the cool stuff.
• Do you feel that the exclusive items are good enough for the program? They are too good, people want to spend there hard earned money, you are stopping them from doing so. A few will make 25 accounts but those accounts will be fake and not provide you with a sustain. You need content and availability and let the game sell it self not recruit us to ***** for the game for reasons other then genuine satisfaction with the product. Now instead you having people feeling excluded because they dont have 25 friends ready with the wallet to be as loyal as THEY are with paying for the shiny things. "Build it and they shall come, right" Also you could add incentive to the ones just starting by giving something for free if they join on a set date for example. Do a drive, market it, get people excited. We will youtube, stream and show the cool shiny things for future customers and we will say how awesome the game is, all for free no referral rewards askt for.
• If you were to make a refer-a-friend program for PlanetSide 2, how would you envision the system working? SC cash and boosts as incentives, basically anything on a timer could go. The refer-25-friends program is going to make us feel a bit cheated you know ^^.

Its a actually a good staying power for people too have new cool toys in the shop and for them to form there own idea of cool gear to take to the battlefield and I must say some of these "rewards" are the best made for the game and people will throw a hella lot of money at them even if they go up as expensive. The cool gear we can show the new players. They can have it too... if they sign up and pay for them, or we can exclude them and be a special club for the famous few..

Some questions for you, How many of us will realistically get 25 referrals or even 10 the legit way? How many will jump through hoops and create a bunch of extra accounts and mess up the real active numbers? How many will feel left out by this?

i hate that one can only get the extra items (pixelated camo, recon camo, composite helmet, new lumifibers, new tank guns) with help of the referral system. i can't even get one of my friends to play planetside2 (let alone 10+ people) because it's not their type of game.

so here's my suggestion: reward people for recruiting so many new players by giving them above cosmetic items for free BUT also make above items available in the ingame station cash shop so we can buy them without having to recruit new players. after all, we want to PLAY the game, not go through the hassle of stalking strangers and convincing them to try planetside2 for us. you need to understand that, please don't turn planetside2 into an unbearable piece of work but keep it fun. thank you!

Don't try to justify it with the "everyone else does it" argument. Especially when you have the amount of content as you do,

I was saving 8000-10000SC in anticipation of these new cosmetic items, I had nothing left to buy that I wanted, and Seeing the leaks of the new cosmetic items gave me something to look forward to, something I can use that extra SC on. You've effectivley spat in the faces of people who wanted to buy new cosmetics, and told us that our money is no good.

People want new stuff, And you don't even make use of the Premium Early Access tab for anything worthwhile anymore, Give people the ability to purchase the cosmetic items, possibly at an increased price. Problem solved. Many NC Players were upset that they didn't get a decent "scifi" helmet, and many myself included were planning on buying that Closed foreman helmet or whatever it was called.

I'm not going to hold my breath though. Trust me, I'm not going to be reccommending Planetside 2 to any of my friends as long as the community roadmap continues to be ignored by the PS2 Development team.

I can understand wanting new faces in the game, but the impression you are giving me is you are trying to get more players, because your numbers are dwindling, and people are leaving the game in droves for one reason or another. And a lot of the remaining players simply aren't giving you money anymore because they're fed up with something.

Its always so nice to see how the devs actually care for what we say (@Implants for example)

As for feedback:

• What changes would you make to the program to make the goals more attainable?
• Do you feel that the exclusive items are good enough for the program?
• If you were to make a refer-a-friend program for PlanetSide 2, how would you envision the system working?

• Don't require people to spend money, but require them to play for a certain amount of time / achieve something ingame, think about something like: "Achieve 3000 total certpoints" "reach level 10" etc
• No , exclusive items are definitely a no-no to a certain degree. What would be a good option is to make a slightly different verion of lets say the Foreman helmet. Release the normal one to the public via the depot. While you give it away for free in the referral bit, or give a version that looks slightly different than the depot one. Something like the Facebook pistols I suggest. Just dont make items like weapons, helmets ,armors etc exclusive. Maybe 1 camo for the 25 refferal thing. But then it should not be a black camo that gives you an actual advantage.
• The Program would be much like described above. It would allow players to refferal everybody. Also people who already play. And the referral would count once the recruit has achieved something in game, lets say a certain playtime or level. The recruit AND the referral would receive a xp boost for 1 day 1 week whatever would be balanced. And in addition to that the referral will receive a +1 on his referrals, bringing him a step closer to the next tier of rewards. Those tiers of rewards would be FREE camos/helmets that can be obtained for SC in the Depot. In addition to that he would recieve a EXCLUSIVE Title that shows he is a level X recruiter.

That how I would do it. It's extremely frustrating for players who really want a certain helmet or camo to jump throught all these hoops to obtain a item. While it's just as profitable for SOE to sell the item to players who want it.
The biggest thing is that.
Just put all those cool items in the depot.

I'm dissapointed Luperza. Here I thought SOE wasn't a follower of other companies and was out to do new and unique things?

Using the excuse that 'oh well other games have it' is a cop-out. You are only giving many of these amazing items out via the referral system, making them impossible for many people ever to obtain because they either
a) don't have enough friends or
b) already referred their friends who will play/pay for this game
c) will just game the system to gain the rewards - at extremely inflated prices might i add.

On top of that, what are you doing to reward your most loyal customers? Those who've spent upwards of $500 on this game? Is there nothing for us at all?

What a crying shame this is.

When I first looked at that I thought it was actually one of the medals awarded to the athletes and as a hockey fan I had a holy **** wtf awesome moment. Then I read the fine print and it's actually a medal that was made for the games but never branded or awarded to anyone. Thanks for posting that though it was quite cool none the less.

Should worry about keeping the players they do have , rather than piss them off with a badly thought out attempt to " try " and gain new ones ..

Player retention ftw

Just because Sony is experiencing extreme financial difficulty doesn't mean that SoE should go down the same road that lead the rest of Sony to be a bunch of broke *****.

Never go full ******.

Edit: Oh, that's a bad word. Never go full Sony....

What happens is SOE tells you that you are out of luck and to go recruit more. At least it is looking that way. I have convinced several of my friends to play already and those who aren't playing either have no interest or cant run it. I also despise using facebook or anything like that so I can't even just post the link there and hope for the best.

very good point. in fact, i guess a lot people with higher purchasing power probably contemplate doing this just to get their hands on the exclusive cosmetic items

You Realize that involves making 25 accounts, 25 Emails, and purchasing 1000SC on each account
No one in their right mind is going to do that,

And I would wager that not everyone playing this game is of sound mind.

i thought foreman helmet would be to buy



feels wrong if they show us this before, and after we wait for item - you cant have it.

-It is attainable, but i have a problem with the costs and rewards. The rewards for new players are three LMG's and a one day boost. I suggest allowing new players to choose three weapons of each class. This way they can start with three medic weapons, such as the Terran Cycler TRV and the Nc and VS equivelant. Just giving HA weapons is limiting. Giving them three weapons for a class of thier choosing does not increase cost and allows people who want to play classes other than the HA to stay longer. The one day boost needs to become a one week boost for new players, why? Because one hour isn't enough to get people into the game. Give them a week and they will feel sort of forced to play till the boost is over, they get to stay longer to get the feeling of Planetside 2 and an increase of the change they will stay.

-They're more than good enough, they're too good. The problem is people want to buy them from you for a long time, such as the lumifiber on MAXes. Most of these may stay exclusive such as the white NS weapons or the chaged barrels for MBT, but do understand, people want to buy these weapons. exclusives are fine, but don't make too much or too limiting.

-I would change small things around. You would get a reward for each player that stayed active for more than a month and a reward for them paying 10 bucks. This way people can only get half the rewards from making fake accounts and you, once again, force them in a slight way too stay so the friend gets the reward. Reward them for staying in the game.

The people who got recruited also need a reward for staying longer than a month, i suggest an exclusive camo from the already excisting rewards. This way, peope have a reason to play for month, for a little rewards. Possibly give them a next reward after three months of playing. Some special decal and title + camo for staying for three months works fine and give the people who brought them into the game also a reward for getting someone to be active for 3 months, you need to make something here, but give that item to them for bringing 3 recruits in, both spending 10 dollars and 3 months being active.

Thanks for listening Maggie and excuse my grammar and spelling, english isn't my best language.

This is what the current system feels like.......


(Known as Weepuls for those who grew up in the 80s/90s)
http://blog.identity-links.com/weepuls-the-polyester-fluff-promotion-from-another-planet.html

The the most sought after prize is unattainable by those who aren't already well connected, and the remaining participants will usually end up fighting over the remaining targets (a very common scenario since most circles that would show interest are already well connected to each other). 25 is a lot, and the people being brought have no incentive to pay into the game, and WILL realize this is a scheme to convert players into high pressure sales men, and will likely leave shortly after. That alone makes this entire program both a sham, prone to fraud, and will inevitably see its "goal" of bringing in new players fail.


What the promotion needs is to give "everyone" involved some kind of incentive (not just the prime referrer), and make the goals reasonable.

- First and foremost, setting a back date for referrals. This allows people who were referred (ie new accounts) prior to the promotion to name the player that brought them in, and allows them to be part of the promotion. The cut off date is subject to discussion, but reasoning behind it should be understood. This will be important later for a secondary incentive that WILL generate income.

- Second, lower the reward thresholds to be reasonable for non-famous/non-sketchy/non-obsessed to take part in. You could also alternatively modify the scoring system to include other activities, but give new accounts better weighted scores or converting people to membership status.

- Third, provide incentives to new players (or first time Station cash purchases) to actually buy Station cash. This is the critical point since its not only the goal of the promotion, but also the primary barrier to getting consumers comfortable with the system.

-3b: Example incentives for first time SC buyers
- Free 7 day Exp boost with first purchase of SC (which also address the initial stigma with the cert gain rate)
- Discount on new Membership Subscription
- Bonus SC on first purchase (% would be best as it further incentives the larger SC packages)
- Shared promotional bonuses. If a primary referrer meets a goal, the referral accounts share in some or all of the rewards. This leads to more group efforts to bring people in, and not immediately result in fierce competition from referrals wanting to become referees.
- Reservist and Recruiter titles
- Create 2 bundle packs containing some empire specific favorites, coinciding with the promotion time line. This will give new players a big incentive to hop on the sale while its still hot. Existing players would likely not be interested in this part since they'd own most of these weapons by now.

Reservist Bundle (starter pack) (At least 50% off)
- ES Bolt Action (LA-80, V10, SR-7)
- ES S-series Carbines (Compact-S, Trac5-S,Solstice-SF)
- ES Battle ARs (Reaper, CME, SABR-13)
- ES Alpha LMG (EM6, SVA-88, TMG50)
- ES Gen1 SMGs (Cyclone, Armistice , Eridani)
- Digital camo pack (armor/weapon/vehicle)
* It gives a decent level of operational diversity to compliment the Default guns

Empire Favorites Bundle
- ES Heavy Weapon (MCG, Jackhammer, Lasher)
- ES Anti-Vehicle (Striker, Phoenix, Lancer)
- ES 2nd Gen AR (Carnage, Corvus, TAR)
- ES Auto-Shotty (Piston, Pandora, Nighthawk)
- MAX Composite Armor and Helmet
- MAX 2nd Gen AV weapon (Raven, Fracture, Vortex)
- ESF Rocket pods (Breaker, Photon, Hellfire)
- MBT AP Cannon
- MBT AP Secondary
- Harasser AP Secondary
*I left the AI MAX weapons out because they aren't straight forward picks for each empire.

Same here

Higbys driving it

ima recruit my grandma.

I posted in another thread -


It sounds like a way of making a quick buck, but that will only alienate the player base more.

I would of gone a differnt route and made them subscription only fluff items etc.

So if you sub for a month you qualify for - X fluff
Sub for 3 months, you qualify for - Y fluff
Sub for 12 months and you qualify for - Z fluff

Put the 'cool' looking stuff (black camo etc) at 12 months, i bet you would have more people subbing 12 months than getting 25 odd friends to spend £10 each

My thoughts anyway.