Smedly comments on Implant changes: "sorry but we are actually trying to make money"

Remember when you could buy a video game instead of paying a quarter each time you wanted to play it?

I guess I'm kind of old. I remember the days when you bought a video game you could play it as long as you had a machine that could run it.

I still have decent PlayStation games that I play sometimes - or do they call that PlayStation 1 at this point?
I hunt down PlayStation 2 games that I haven't played before.
Heck, I have Sega, Atari, and Amiga systems and game that still work for all of them.

Gaming companies made plenty of money just creating games and selling them for people to play forever. The ones that were really good they made newer, updated, etc versions of an put them on sale and made money.

Nowadays its like they are heading back into the days of Arcades where we are expected to put some money in every time we play.

F2P isn't just bait to get people to pay in the cash shop (it certainly is not longer bait to get people to subscribe to the game). F2P is there to give the people that Pay-to-Win someone to easily kill ... I mean fill the world so that people that do pay have someone to play with and keep spending money in the cash shop.

Also the thing they seem to be putting way down the scale is how to keep people wanting to play.

EQ1 didn't get 450,000 subscription players by being easy or even fun a lot of the time, but it did keep people wanting to play [hence Evercrack ] - the implant system is, I guess, supposed to be something like gear drops, but actual isn't, it is just weak and frustrating mostly.

Things like Auxing and Directives have helped with this (arguebly Directives should have been with release though), but there's still a vast amount of scope in that direction of expanding and customising a toon through gameplay that hasn't been tapped.





Even the seaonal events/directives have now been monetised so basically you really need to buy all the cashshop items on Day 1 to really have a chance at completeing them (for an average casual player, anyway)..... which really shows how badly wrong they are going.

Seaonal events are supposed to encourage people to play, not nickle and dime them and frustrate them - which is totally counter-productive.

pepperidge farm remembers.

i see F2P/PS2 a bit like the 'gambling' machines in modern 'arcades' tbh.
almost solely dedicated to taking the money of people who have 'gambling' or 'self control' issues.

If F2P means that stuff only gets nerfed to sell other stuff or that resources get limited only to grab money and so on, I'd rather have a monthly subscription of exactly $ 5.

I've gotten a fair few T2-3 implants lately which has enabled me to make several ultra charges.

Seems most players are focusing on making new implants, forgetting they can create their own charges. This is the way to maintain your implants, or well, how I do it. I never expected to be able run T3+ implants with 100% uptime though as F2P or even with membership.

I just don't get why it is such a big deal, either you go for short bursts of high tier implants or high uptime with lower tier implants. If there are players out there who want to pay for these implants, good, let 'em. Such a small impact on the game.

It's hard to tell currently because most (including myself) will be trying for T4 implants.

But basically it is looking like 1 charger drop per 100-200 certs (given exp coming in low amounts, but high ticks), and I'm not sure that is a sustainable level of chargers for T4 implants from drop and combines.

I think it would be fine (well not fine, but at least bearable) if you could directly turn implants on and off (because then you could not pay but only use them sometime - but still use them) or pay and use them all the time, but not how it is.

Actually, toggling implants with a keypress would be a nice feature whether they were trying to put the screws to us or not. After all my Engineer doesn't need EOD HUD when he's not in a vehicle, that's what his flak armor is for.

I don't get it. Where did they say they were trying to make money? I clicked the link and only found someone complaining about what they thought was a poorly written patchnote.

So.. either the OP is trolling, or linked the wrong thing. I'll give him an hour or so to clarify before reporting it.

Let me google it for you

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/550393563528564736

Still not seeing the context. Guess twitter is bad about showing the order or something. I'm still only seeing some people rant about a patchnote's wording. Yeah so Smedley said he wants to make money. He didn't say how.

Regardless since the OP didn't come back, I'm assuming its a troll and going to let the CM's decide what to do about it. Unless someone's got a link to someone high up that says something like, "We did -this-, so we can make more money."

But I doubt such a thing exists.

http://inanage.com/2015/01/02/pay2winside-2/
http://mmofallout.com/planetside-2-we-are-actually-trying-to-make-money Source is link below
http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/0...lant-changes-arent-a-money-grab-smedley-says/

Yeah it absolutely would be, but they orginally said they were designed/wanted to basically run 24/7 or not at all (i.e. none in a loadout) - which in fairness wasn't a big problem pre-drop nerf.

It is just with the current rate of charger drops (even taking into account converting to chargers) seems like it is impossible to run like that, i.e. 24/7 - without regularly buying - which seemingly from J Smedly and RadarX seems to be the express intent.

It would just seem that an on/off switch would be a reasonable (or at least not totally offensive) middle-ground if their stance is you now have to buy chargers to run them 24/7, as it would give F2P players a choice and still retain a revenue stream for those that will buy for 24/7 useage.

They've basically said they've nerfed the drop rate of chargers (and I guess implants) at the same time they added T4 (when they also nerfed down the effects to make old T3 (or even T2 or even T1 the same as new T4) - although naughtily the patch notes don't really say this.

Which means they've massively rebalanced Implants towards having to buy chargers to use them.




I've been running out of charge maybe 80-90% of the time since the patch (since my stocks erroded anyway) and last night I was watching and got 1 charger drop in 200 certs (which is totally unsustainable).

Their justification for this is they want a bigger implant revenue stream (apparently it did already make money, just not "enough" - whatever that actually means for a $0 item), but it does seem basically the same idea a lot of people initially hated about Implants (which they backed away from orginally); i.e. rentable P2Whatever.

Honestly, I don't believe the implant system is capable of making money in any manner which could be considered ethical. I know they say they they want to try to "find the balance" where the system can generate revenue while also not being P2W, but they won't find it because that balance does not exist.

1: If they're not powerful enough to be worth using, then people will just not use them and they won't make money.

2: If they're too common to be worth buying, people will just never buy them and they won't make money.

3: If implants are both powerful enough to be worth using and rare enough to be worth buying, it's straight up pay2win and that is unethical.

By increasing the power and reducing the drop rate they're moving towards option 3, but the truth is there is no good option here. Monetizing in-game power never ends well. They might be trying to tell themselves "well they're only buying a little bit of power, so it's OK", but it's not.

Any amount of power that is large enough to be worth paying for is too much. Therefore you cannot monetize power without diving right into P2W territory.

So they should just drop the idea of generating any revenue from it and look somewhere else.

This probably sums up the situation pretty well:


PS2 has gone back and forth between A and B quite a few times. Early on, when everything was 1000 certs minimum and 100 EXP/min was considered incredibly good (support EXP was harder to get, we didn't have ribbons, vehicle kills weren't worth squat, etc), PS2 was basically B because unless you were running boosts and membership the grind was soul-crushing.

Over time, PS2 has moved over to A in an effort to stem the tide of players who were leaving the game. A lot of cert costs have gone down, vehicles are worth hundreds of EXP now, support EXP has been buffed and has more sources (recon darts, motion sensors, scout radar, shield bubbles, anti-air damage, etc). Free players can now progress at a reasonable rate, at least once they've gotten important farming tools under their belt, like ammo/rep sundies.

This pulled the population out of free-fall, and probably would have gone a lot better if the performance updates had been more successful at getting the game to run on closer-to-average computers. Less neck-breakingly wild balance swings would have helped too (ZOE, the Vulcan/Striker/Harasser triad, Airside 2, MANA AV, etc.).

But this also means people aren't feeling the pressure to sub or buy SC. In fact to some people it's gotten to where earning EXP and certing up is more fun than just buying stuff with SC. The implant system when it was first introduced was type A too: it was more fun to earn implants in-game than to buy them.

Now, it seems they want to push implants over to B: making them a chore that pressures you to pay to maintain your character's performance.

But type B is bad for players and bad for the community. And trying to just go "a little type B" is not going to help. Nobody likes feeling like they're being extorted.

Will it make money if they move over to type B? Yes. For a little while. But it will chafe the players, it will grind their soul into dust until they quit and the game collapses. Using "just a little" will grind them down slowly, but just as inevitably. And honestly at this point in the game's life it won't make much, because they have already lost most of the suckers who would have bought into it during the first round of server mergers (though note that the mergers were a result of the population collapse, not the cause).

They need to find a third option.

I can't wait for the "Towels Upgrade." You know, where we all have to buy one. Because as we all should know. "A Towel is the most important item a Hitchhiker can carry." Coming soon for only 999 SC.

This entire game is a P2W scheme...

It seems that SOE believes the implants are P2W and that the chance to win is what will entice players to buy them. I just don't think implants are really strong enough to overcome bad play in this game. So to me this "nerf" is not really a big enough deal to get excited about.

In my opinion, SOE seems to be moving to a stronger P2W scale (introduction of OHK knives for example) toning down of non-OHK items or items that are already in game (nerfing tank weapons or grenades for example) so that SOE can introduce a higher damage tier later on for a price. The idea being to introduce these things so that many of the playerbase remember (fondly of course) what the tank used to do, so they will be more likely to buy the product this is a simple bait and switch, except the switch takes place a few months down the line. You (SOE) then RESPOND to the community OUTRAGE by buffing a defense not toning down the damage of the new thing until you are ready to release a new "SUPER" weapon for the one time fee of ____ amount.

In short most people don't see the cycle because they don't take a longview of trends, you can't introduce OHK weapons as "NEW" if there are already 5 of them in game. There will always be enough players feed the nerf cycle because OHK is "unfair" so SOE gets free-reign to nerf things and re-introduce new OHK weapons for a premium price. Additionally the directive system makes even older weapons have value to get w/e weapon, gadget or title that is at the end of that particular rainbow.

The implant system isn't really an offensive (no super shields or faster reload/cyclic etc) item it's defensive/opportunistic this is just a notch up the tree for optional defense against w/e new weapon will be coming down the line.

I'd be surprised if some OHK doesn't get the nerf bat in the next 6 months whether it be shotguns or sniper rifles or grenades or C-4. SOE needs constant growth and OHK/high damage weapons then the slow release of new defensive items or nerfs fulfills this role. My point is the outrage this generates feeds the cycle the FACT people say this is P2W feeds the likelihood that people WILL buy implants especially if the player is new to the game. Which I support if it keeps the game from dying out.

I suppose I don't see the "terror of P2W" in this particular case because implants currently are a convenience not a necessity if they can make a few bucks more power to them. I can snipe effectively with or without them it's just the question of finding the best area to snipe in. To me, I see P2W is something that is really a huge boost for example OHK'ers, or items that modify OFFENSIVE capabilities than just implants. The fact that Smedley said "we need to make money" or w/e is just a statement of what I hope the playerbase already understands.

I'm not a member and never was but I have spent about 50$ on cosmetics and anaversary bundles. Soe needs to expand and brainstorm on cosmetics as much as possible. If it is cost effective along with player studio then they need to expand this even more and create new tools.
New armors, customisable vehicle flag banners, customisable vehicle outfit decals. Ability to install outfit statue element at the wining base that displays member experience like a scoreboard and if you want your name to appear on it like a digital flyer you pay some sc. You could even make it capturable, message hackable, disfigurable and maybe even transportable so you can dump it anywhere.

I am a Premium Member (Year Long Subscription) and I also spend $ on SC.

Current Implants are the one game feature that has the greatest potential for me quitting the game and not coming back. The only reason it has not driven me away yet, is that the only one I *NEED* to use currently (Enhanced Targeting for flying ESFs) is cheap and easy to afford running 100% of the time without paying extra $ for it. (though I did have a hard time keeping it running 100% when I was not a Member) If SOE closes that loophole on meand make "Enchanced Targeting II" that requires buying charges to play, I'm out.

If the game changes such that I can't get a key Implant I *NEED* without paying, I will bail this game. I don't care so much about Implants that add tiny effects that are circumstantially useful, though they do irritate me, I can live with them. It's just the Implant that is a "must have" that is a deal breaker for me if it's pay access only.

I don't play Inafntry in PS2 anymore very often (though I used to play it exclusively), except in HUGE battles and a few small bases where Squad Beacons aren't very abusable. Reason being that I don't like playing in Squads (turns game experience into a small scale Team rather than a giant army; and it's too powerful an advantage relative to casual opponents: I prefer a challenge and evenly matched teams), and I can't stand the way Squad Beacon affects gameplay (makes a mess of the basic system of defeating an opponent with straightforward gameplay objective [knock out their easy to find and get to Sunderer] and a clean resolution).

I was a hardcore dedicated EQ player for years until they made a game change (Planes of Power expansion walled off access to Basic New Spells to Raid players only, and after joining the uber Guild on the server I discovered I hated Raiding) that had me quit and never return. SOE has a history of making games that continually morph over time from a game that appeals to a wide demographic and attracts lots of player types (sandbox game), to a game that fits a narrow "intended" demographic (or narrow playstyle), and pushes lots of players away. Why do they do that? Because they have designers that design for their own preferences and force players to adopt it or quit, rather than trying to maintain a game that everyone across a broad number of playstyles is already enjoying.

I have one eye watching and waiting for when/if this corrupts the game to a level it's not longer playable and I should bail PS2.

Well, you can blame US law for this one, not SOE.

ever heard of pay 4 convenience? this is not a p2w system.. I've yet to see an implant that made someone untouchable...