Premium Membership Devaluation

I totally agree with you and the OP.

The advantages of a membership are very meager and getting less and less worthwhile.

A further thing I find extremely unfair (and thus typical for SOE) is that you lose your 500 SC a month if you cancel your subscription preemptively. So say I subscribe now for 6 months but after 2 months I don't feel like playing any more and cancel my sub (so I don't forget and get hammered by SOE once my subscription runs out) then I lose the remaining 2000 SC because during those 4 months I wasn't a subscriber any more - even if I already paid for the 4 months and all the membership advantages in advance.

This, to me, is stealing.

It's also seemingly impossible to cancel your subscription without losing at least 500 SC. If you cancel your sub 1 day before it runs out (so it doesn't automatically refresh) then you won't receive your last months 500 SC because you were not subscribed at the time when your sub was due for a refresh. And if you don't cancel your sub before getting the 500 SC then it's already too late to cancel and you are stuck paying for an extra month (for which you, again, won't receive your 500 SC).

This all seems very clumsy and isn't properly documented anywhere. It just seems so overly greedy (not to mention petty).

SOE is just a really terrible company to do business with when it comes to... well... pretty much anything.

Let me preface this post by saying that I started out as a F2P player in beta and the first months of release, and am now an Auraxium-level subscriber.

Queue Priority - On Connery, the ACTUAL most populous server, the queues for alert continents sometimes get so long, non-subscribers simply never make it on.

XP Bonus - 50% extra is already a stupidly high amount. It means that when most people are stuck around BR70, you'll have reached or be approaching BR100. It means that if I put in the same amount of effort as a non-subber to get 1000 certs, I get another 500 certs on top of that. Getting boosted alert XP would just widen the gap between subbers and non-subbers, which is bad - unless you want this game to turn into a handful of subscribers killing each other, alienating the F2P playerbase even more than they already are.

Resource Bonus - Again, this means you get to spend 50% more time in a vehicle, throw 50% more grenades, drop 50% more C4, pull a MAX 50% more often. How you could possibly trivialize this, ESPECIALLY with the recent resource adjustments, is beyond reason.

Passive Certs - ...are fine. In this regard you get TWICE as many as a non-subber. It means you get another 96 certs every two days provided you take 15 seconds out of your day to log on. If you can't manage that then I have no idea why you feel so invested in the game, that you feel the right to make demands of people who already work their ***** off to provide us with an expansion's worth of content every month. For free.

Daily Sales / Early Access - just because YOU don't perceive this to be useful doesn't mean no one does. It doesn't detract from your experience in any way, shape, or form and yet you still find a way to vilify it. At this point you're just nit-picking.

Extra Custom Slots - ...are yet another example of convenience for subbers. Again, how you got it into your head that the inclusion of these into the game negatively impact your experience is beyond me.

500 Montly SC - It sucks that you don't get yours because you prefer prepaid cards for whatever reason.

TL; DR - Membership bonuses are fine. I say bonuses and not rewards, because this is a F2P game. Understand that you are not entitled to any of these benefits (though your sense of entitlement is staggering) - you give your money to them in support, and in return they reward you with privileges. If you don't like the way membership works, stop subbing and enjoy the game without it. You lose absolutely no features that impact actual gameplay. But as illgot said, it doesn't matter how much you moan and complain - so long as you remain subbed, you're doing nothing but blowing hot air, and nothing you say matters.

Great post OP, I cancelled my sub maybe 3 days before I would have gone auraxium level for those reasons as well as fading interest/fun and being forced to log in every friggin day for my passive certs (I HATED that). It's just not worth it and I am somewhat disappointed about the way they handled the whole system.

Almost all my purchases were from daily and member only sales simply because I refused to use certs for things I could spend real money on. So that was something I found really nice. If you only bought a few things here and there then yeah I would say it's ok but I spent like...$400 dollars total and those sales were sooo nice.

Wow I totally forgot to mention this but, if they really did get rid of your membership bonus xp and boost xp bonus during alerts then that is about the most screwed up change they have made yet. If that is true then I am SOOOO glad I cancelled.

Except Camo, and some weapons.

i am not a premium member, but here is a reason to become one:

Daily deal Jul 29, 2013: Flash M12 Kobalt, 125SC 100 certs
Prem daily deal Jul 29, 2013: Blitz GD-10, PDW-16 Hailstorm, Sirius SX12 350SC/1000 certs

i mean, srsly! who would buy a flash gun for station cash? and i've been waiting for a Sirius discount for a while now... so sad...

Paid for Alpha and purchased 1 years sub up front on the strength of PS1. I regret nothing, but as it stands I won't be re-subbing.

I 'might' think about it they REMOVED THE 24 HOUR CERT CAP.

I am a premiumship owner.

What I cannot stand anymore is having to log in just to get the passive certs. It feels like having a job and I will not renew so this job ends. (it is difficult not to log in for 48 certs/day, while for 12 I could forget)

ON top of this I don't care having more exp, but I would prefer more Sevencash/month to buy some helmet, decal etc.

Now I feel bonus XP after a while is worthless.

Seems like a good deal?... If you like the game and play it a lot (and are ok with monthly payments) then it seems like the best option. But many people don't like subscribing. They would prefer to just buyvthe same things except without the monthly requirmemt. Can't just disregaurd them.

Completely agree on all points in the OP. Add : More SC, 500 is pathetic at Auraxium. Also, we got Referral System, now give us Veteran Rewards. If this and other Threads like this do not get addressed officially soon, I too will cancel. Nothing to do with the quality of PS2, just that it's absolutely pointless to pay ATM(Well it will be soon, I'm about to complete my favourite Load-Outs and then I'm done Certing/SCing).

Agree with the OP with the exception of daily sales. I actually find these pretty useful, 500SC doesnt by anything of worth when it's full price but wait long enough and a bargain will crop up in the daily sale.

Agreed. Unless there is something unexpected, my subscription is going the way of the dodo bird.

Btw I would see more SC only to buy cosmetics, not weapons

I don't want this game to be P2W

So basically your pay to win package does not seem as good now so you want it upgraded ? Xp and cert bonus' should be removed as this is advertised as non pay to win and at the moment that is a lie. You should be receiving free Decals and stuff like that that does not affect game play/progression if this is truly not pay to win.

This entire argument highlights the subconscious catch 22 nature of a optional subscriptions. There is NO way to a designer can do it in a way where someone won't feel being cheated. Make Subscriptions too valuable, and the freebie players feel like its necessary to play the game. Not valuable enough, and there is no incentive to get it.

The way PS2 did it is mostly fair, but unintuitive, simply because both sides somehow believe they are getting the short end of the stick. Dress it up however you want, its a value:time conversion. And while its mechanically fair if you consider all the activity required to see the benefits of said subscription, players without it unanimously feel the time cost is too high to get new weapons.



I had this discussion with the my outfit the other night, and what came up is the majorly differing perceptions of the game based on time played, Station cash purchased, when/if they got subscriptions, impulsive tenancies, and a compulsive nature.

- The majority of beta players who got alpha squad and a subscription, plus a pool of station cash, are over BR 70 this far into the game, and whose primary complaint is weapon balance (which for the NC is the driving factor for all SC weapon purchases) and the rate of new content being released. This implies that rate of cert gain without having to get weapons is just above optimal for loadout upgrades. The side effect of this optimal state is a sense of burnout for compulsive players that need a continuous string of short term goals to drive interest. Its from this perspective that the progression system is lacking, due to a single player being able to eventually fill all roles, and creating no incentive to reroll a new character. It also strikes a bad chord as most players establish their primary play style by BR50, and do so very quickly.

- The second group is those that use SC to buy weapons, but won't get a subscription. These individuals don't see a long term value in a subscprtion, but still find the basic cert gain to be slow to fill their load outs. This leads them to be very focused on a few play style roles, which in turn makes them frustrated with the lack of combat diversity enjoyed by other players. They also get intensely irritated with vehicle changes, since certing any new vehicle weapon can take up to 2 weeks to a month without any exp boosts.

- The third group, and one that rightfully feels shafted, are the new players who haven't gotten SC or a Subscription yet. The way the overall system is laid out is extremely hostile to this group, as combat effectiveness REQUIRES a decent amount of certs into class upgrades, early cert strategies are not clear (even among vets), the starter weapons have a relatively high skill floor (twice as bad on the NC), and the cert cost of everything is unforgiving unless your already good at the game. This leads to play style exploration, the core activity of any new player, being painfully slow and heavily punishing until around BR30.



TL;DR: Paying players burn through content too quickly, so they believe the subscription is not worth it past a certain point. Non-paying players can't reach a competitive level fast enough, so they feel a high level of frustration as a result.

And while I agree the that the removing the cap on passive certs would help with long term subscriptions, the entire pricing scale of cert related items is leading to several problems on both ends of the scale. Sad thing is, I can't see an easy to address it without redoing the entire unlock/loadout system.

I cancelled my sub about two weeks ago being generally really annoyed with the cack handed way that SOE utterly screwed over tank and Max users with GU12. I invested a lot of certs into those units, especially timers, and then being basically told that I couldn't play them has utterly killed my desire to heavily unlock anything else.

But as it stands, I've basically got a bit of everything unlocked and no massive gaps in my personal arsenal. I don't "need" certs and xp quite so much anymore, and I'm not even BR50 yet. And even if I did have them? SOE'll just nerf whatever I spent them on. . Lime my tanks, my Maxes. my Mercies, my Armistice SMG, my lockdowns e.t.c. So there's really no point accelerating the cert gain.

The SC thing is ridiculous. 500SC should come as standard with every purchase of a months sub. It's part of the package and desperately needed in order to alleviate what is otherwise an anemic and pretty rubbish selection of perks.

That said, being subless, I really don't miss feeling the pressure to log in every day on all six of my characters to collect my cert points. I'm not a great player by any means and 48 certs was a big deal for me, but logging in every day was just a pain.

Agreee. And, SOE, please remove passive cert 24 hours cap! Or make it at least 3 days! Better - week.

God damnit I wondered where my 500sc a month went, I prepaid aurax membership. Curse you soe you penalize me for being a loyal customer.

It's not even debatable. All my classes have the skills and guns that I want, also with several thousand cert points "in the bank". Like I mentioned above, if there isn't anything unexpected, the payment will cease, will happily become F2P - that's just the way it is.

Love the game and game play.. and most of the GU's, but the OP is right. I'm not renewing. Simply isn't worth it by far.