PS2 officially going P2W?

If a competent development team is running a F2P title it can be done correctly. The key is to push meaningful updates and add depth as the game ages, unfortunately for the last few years SOE has been focused on pushing out content that only makes them immediate money (cosmetics/weapons).

SOE did F2P the wrong way, as most companies do.

Pay-wall plus a sub model is the most consistent and successful method because it drives developers to keep people playing and to bring new players in while F2P focuses on giving existing players more things to buy.

Here is the thing about listening to the community.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to please everyone, the best you can hope for is a majority.
The minority will ALWAYS be WHINING about something or other, and because a minority will always be crying, the forums will always make it look like its a major issue because, although they're the minority, they're still ~50 people.
The thing is, if you listen to them, and change things for them, ~50 others will be annoyed enough by the change to cry about either that or something related to that. And the cycle continues.

Also, you CANNOT compare TF2 to Planetside.
Why?
Because Valve DO NOT CARE if TF2 doesn't pull a profit.
Why do you think it went free to play? To make more money from it?
No
To play it, you NEED Steam.
Congratulations, that is 57,000 more potential customers. Buying games from YOUR store, because they already have steam, so its more convenient.

SOE don't sell games, PS2 has to pull a profit by itself.

I wasn't putting any of that on you personally, I apologize if you took it that way. What I was pointing out is that people often come here and post that "SOE never listens to the community" and has this idea that things would be great "if they just listened to the community....." It's not always a good idea, and the community often gives tons of mixed messages and bad advice. That was my point and I won't take it any further than that.

You should add gifting feature.


As suggested by Zoran:

This is coming off as a desperate company that isn't making enough money off of Planetside 2. That's why there has been this huge push for subs, adding all sorts of stupid ads to subscribe all over the game, and doing these small changes like buying weapon slots for SOEbux.

It's sad really.

Well they do actually have to make money. There's just a right way and a wrong way to do it. SOE has generally done a pretty good job with the subscriptions. There are bits of the benefits that nudge the line (gear restrictions in EQ2 and Cert gain in PS2). Most of the guns and attachments don't mean a thing. There are a few exceptions (like secondary weapons for MAX, extended magazines, and such). I certainly wouldn't mind them stepping away from that line, even as a subscriber. Pulling force multipliers more often for straight up cash is over the line. Personally, I'd rather not have subscriptions increase this ability either. I don't pay the subscription to get the benefits. Some benefits are nice, but I do it to support the game sticking around and continuing development. And so free players can play free.

My post was succinct and to the point in my opinion.
You are letting players take short cuts through the game play just for extra money in your pocket, nevermind the impact it has on the game's soul as a whole.

And some of the cosmetic item prices are just ludicrous. $10 for a helmet? Seriously? $10 for one digital helmet?
That's wallet gouging. No other definition applies.

Even though one point is game mechanic related, and one is cosmetic, the overall point is you guys are just scrambling for money anywhere you can, despite how much it potentially hurts your image.

I agree on the helmets. I really wanted to change my helmet as the default one is pretty lacking, but with the price, I just couldn't find one worth it. If they were cheaper, I would have bought one. If there were more, I might have found one that I'd drop that money on.

I think it is less that the current revenue methods are failing and more that the content behind those methods is lacking.

Can i be your best friend? My salary is above thhe normal for ny country and i get 350 euro per month. After bills money for food and my loan,from the bank i left with 10-20 euro to spend on whatever i want to. Beer or station cash? Hard to decide

Tell bioware that the subscription model is better...

Pretty much everyone who has gone from subscription to f2p has seen a dramatic increase in profits.

A dramatic increase in profits, and a sharp nosedive in quality.
Can't have it both ways in F2P unfortunately.

Team Fortress 2?

One of the best FPS games ever made, only continues to get better.

Really, guys?

The fact that this is even being considered speaks volumes. I will keep my feedback constructive but know this SOE. The amount of have played PS2 in recent months has declined about 95%. Why? Stuff like this. Your loyal community shouldn't have to raise pitchforks every other update just to prevent highly controversial content from making its way into the game.

Myself along with everyone I know has spent more money on this game than any other game we have played, ever. How is it that monetization is an issue here?

If you're out of nanites and losing and sudden your platoon dumps $xx each to suddenly pull a load of stuff and you then win...... how is that "not" P2W?


It is exactly, precisely, absolutely PAY TO WIN.


If that "isn't" P2W then P2W simply cannot exist.

"This thread is being heavily moderated" RadarX, I hope You'll see a wider picture of what this thread contains. Maybe one in 20 people posting here says, that this is not a bad idea. The rest of us are frustrated, that this is even considered. Frustrated! The game itself causes frustration because of lags, and poor netcode and You're giving us another thing to be frustrated about? With every recent update my fps drop by a few %. Sometimes i can't hit a guy before me, because it seems like he's teleporting - You want money for this? People will stop playing a game that causes frustration. The more people will quit, the more will complain they can't find a decent fight and eventually quit as well.

People here give You ideas what can You do to make money - what they'd pay for, but You say Name change tokens? - No, no this things are not in top 10 purchases, so we won't implement them.

I don't know how much more patience i have left...

Yeah I think eventually the subscription model will reapear after enough F2P games fail to make the money they wanted.

In MMORPGs they kinda get away with the "F2P/microtransaction" model because they can release adventure packs/zones or full blown expansions that basically reset the game with new levels (and every one needs new gear and such).

But even there they do dance on the edge of P2W quite often.

MMOFPS it is much more difficult.

PS2 is clearly in trouble financially (or they wouldn't be doing all this), but they'd be much better off making everything buyable with SC rather than trying to allow people to dodge the resource system with cash.

Being able to buy Nanoweave 5 for SC is P2W, but it's a much better version (because there is a finite cap on the possible advantage once you buy NW5) than an endless advantage from funnelling nanites.

No only is this pretty much the worst form of P2W, but more than that it encourages SOE to balance nanite gain levels so people are tempted to buy them (otherwise what is the point).

So this can lead very quickly into not only a huge P2W problem, but also a double-dipping gouging issue that only the most sanguine of consumers is going to be ok with.



Designing a resouce sytem to constrict the game......... and then letting people spend $$$s to completely avoid that system is....... well, I probably cannot say what I geuninely think it is.

Where as making everything buyable for SC as well as more cosmetics, gifting etc. etc. is a much lesser Evil and more likely to retain rather than drive away player.

I don't think so. I think it's probably doing fine but the port to PS4, H1Z1, Landmark, EQ Next and the other as yet unannounced projects SOE is working on are all sucking up profits without generating any return. They're trying to cover that with the few games they have released that are actually doing well.

There was another F2P shooter title which did something similar.
Aka charging money for stuff they really shouldn't be charging for.

Battlefield Heroes. Which was actually a quite fun little game (in beta)
Then they wanted money for cosmetics and people moaned. But they continued playing.
Then they charged money to use medkits.
People left in droves and a few months later the game was gone.

Just a friendly warning.

Yeah maybe, but you don't fund your future developments by destroying your current ones, which is perhaps the most worrying thing, quite clearly people at SOE must know that this idea is textbook P2W of the worst possible sort, and at best can only be a short-term cash injection followed by a player exodus, yet they are still mooting it.

It reminds me a bit of the old issue with PS1 where I (and many others) argued that the game would do better with a cheaper subscription rate (than the standard MMORPG subscription rate of the time ~$15) and as such it would generate less per customer, but more have customers and therefore have the big battles to be a more successful and sustainable game, but they went with a (IMO) simplistic bottom line approach and PS1 whithered away (it may have happened with a cheaper price I suppose, but a main player complaint was that you quite simply didn't get as much for $15 a month in PS1 as you did with say EQ1).

If they need more cash now, then making everything (Nanoweave, Flak, vehicle attachments/upgrades) SC buyable is a much better (or less worse) option by far..... given they've gone so far with selling attachments I doubt many still playing would leave over such a change, and it might even encourage new players to come in and drop some cash.

But buying resources for SC (in a specifically and deliberately resource limited system) isn't on the P2W slippery slop, it is way off the end of that slope in P2W Hell, and they must have some idea of that reality.