Customer Service Announcement: Premium Membership

Dude. Only a TINY TINY fraction of PS2 players even KNOW that SOE makes other games. What you think I was using my PS2 SC on FreeRealms?

My main gripes:

1. Daily deals become irrelevant overnight.
2. You cannot save up credits.
3. You can only get 1 item a month.
4. Lot's of fancy stuff (bundles/Player Studio gear) is excluded from members.
5. Members getting pushed to buy additional Station Cash feels like an insult if you're already paying 120 dollars a year for this game.
6. There's not much expensive stuff to buy out there that justifies this new deal as an improvement.

SOE is trying to sell this as adding greater value to their customers, but unfortunately for many customers this will turn out the other way around.

No, the player studio exists in PS2 only, and across all of SOE products this is a very small number of folks. What they have done here is stopped folks from accruing money that can be used ACROSS games. I doubt seriously SOE is worried too much about the impacts of player studio $2 can't buy you a coffee and even if every person on each of the dwindling servers was to buy the same camo pack (~6000 or so players) we are talking 12k... which would never happen.

PS2 is a fraction of the SOE gaming community....TINY fraction i am guessing. And I can't speak for anyone but the biggest Outfits on Connery, but they are all waiting on EQN to release.

You're blowing it out of proportion.

1. Deals only become irrelevant if you have no SC.
2. Save up credits? For what? You can buy the most expensive item with your 2,000 SC.
3. Before you could at most get 2 cheap items on sale. If you wanted a 700SC item, you had to either wait for a sale or wait another month. Not seeing a loss here.
4. Yes. But that's kinda the point. SOE doesn't want to use the 500SC grants to pay for PS stuff.
5. What? How are you being pushed? You can buy 2,000SC worth of SOE made stuff a month.
6. True - and hopefully they'll add some month long boosts or the like.

Seriously?

Look. If you are going to argue with me. You will need to do some research about the number involved before you dismiss the PS as a big deal:
https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news...dio-users-have-earned-thousands-in-sales.aspx

PS is a big deal.

Last thing I want Mordgier is fight with you. You are much too knowledgeable.

Sorry if I'm being an *** - I can't help it as I am an ***.

I've raged against SOE since the days of Everquest - it feels very odd to be defending them. Yet the amount of whining from the PS2 community, first regarding the lack of X2/X3 SC sales and now the membership changes has been ridiculous - at least from my perspective.

Yes the change isn't great - but it's not a total FU. They obviously tried to make it a positive change by giving a 2,000SC token rather than say 500SC or 1000SC. The SOE I knew would have given you 0SC and raised your subscription price.

Despite what others may think, it is good to get an even view on this. It affects everyone. I'm sure SOE will appreciate some positive feedback in amongst all of this negativity (along with suggestions of course!).

No you got it wrong; from an accounting perspective the 500SC becomes an outstanding liability and remains on the balance sheet until end of time basically. As people leave with SC on the account they need to maintain it as an outstanding liability which causes accounting problems as it also needs to be re-evaluated every month to account for current value.

No, they offer you to pick one item worth up to 2.000SC (currently there are only three items at that value and all come in cheaper 700SC versions already on deal twice). The problem is they don't allow player created items in that list which limits the amount of stuff greatly as over 50% of the new content coming out is player made currently (and the quality stuff is basically all player made).

As what to do which was raised earlier; as a veteran I already got every weapon I want at this stage (there's one or two third/fourth type of guns I've not unlocked yet) so to get to pick 1 camo (worth 250SC or maybe 500 if lucky) a month is not really giving me great interest in maintaining subscription. As I already run heroic boosts (and got two more saved up) offering me a monthly boost is wasted as well even though some may like the option. Instead lets look at what we got today:

1) Priority on continent changing
2) 500SC to be spent as seen fit (has to go away from being SC due to accounting)
3) 50% resource & exp boost
4) Passive cert gain

Now touching 3 further risk creating to much of a benefit; 1 can't really be changed and 2 is going away. With out getting to fancy what I'd go after instead would be 4, the passive certs. Increase the passive certs to double existing rate (96 per day maximum) as certs can always be put to use OR the option to pick up to 2 items (ideally inc. player created but if not I can understand why) of weapon/camo of combined value up to 2.000 SC inc. bundles. Default it to one or the other and players can change in their user settings if they wish to change it to the other option going forward. By forcing the decision to only be applicable from next month people can't switch half way through to get both benefits. Add in a 2000SC 50% exp & resource boost for those interested and people now have at least have a better option from their premium membership and the benefit will work both for new players (weapons & bundles unlock more then by certs) and for those with most toys already (cert bonus).

So that somehow makes it ok to just screw slightly less than expected with your customers? They are both scenarios with big red FU:s painted all over them.

This IS true now - but only because of the studio items. It was NOT true before as SC had zero value outside of the game. Now suddenly they need to potentially pay it out to 3rd party artists.

It was NOT an outstanding liability before as prior to the studio, once your $ turned into SC - that was it. That $ would stay in SOE. Now? Now 40% of that $ may end up going to a 3rd party - so yeah NOW it has to be recorded and tracked etc.

Yeah a single 2,000 transaction rather than a single 2,000 item would undoubtedly be a better deal - quite frankly I am unsure why they didn't just implement that.

No worries, I understand your points and appreciate your arguments for. I would have done the same as you (defended SOE relative to PS2) a year or two ago as they were developing the next generation of my once-favorite franchise, Planetside1. But I have perhaps also been around to see them re-neg on nearly all promises that mattered in the making of PS2. But that is for other forums and has been endlessly spoken about in these forums.

My perspective is a die-hard PS1 supporter who invested several hundreds of dollars in this game at release. Bought the 1 year subscription and a ton of Alpha/Beta options. Watched as the game didn't develop into the game promised and waited for my hopes to be fulfilled... Somehow my unchecking the "auto-renewal" back in January didn't take and I never thought to double check and so I was unknowingly re-subbed for another year in November to a game I don't play. (Interesting Side-Note, no less a half dozen of us leaders in TRG swear we un-subbed, but got auto-renewed anyway). So the only value that was gained from this 120 was knowing I was accruing 500SC a month towards EQN.

I just wish SOE and the player base could settle this argument on the planetside rather than the fourmside... it would be much more fun.

Everyone who is against this change fight for the Terran Republic

SOE and all their staff and people who support this change fight for the New Conglomerate ( The Suits ect)

If you don't care at all about these changes then Fight for the Vanu Sovereignty (?)

It would be interesting to see what happens....

In many ways that would have been better than what has been laid on the line. It would have been transparent and honest and allowed the public to make a genuinely informed decision on whether to continue their membership subscription.

The spin on "it is better for you" with the announcement leaves a sour taste. Many, if not all, educated people do not like being taken for fools. Just looking at your responses to this thread, I can gauge you are clearly one of these educated people. I would therefore assume that - were you to find yourself so inclined - you too would feel a little bit miffed that the company who you have supported with cold hard cash, who generously offered a flexible scheme to purchase items in game, is trying to market a single use voucher for an amount of SC where items don't even exist beyond repaints (in PS2), and contains exclusions on content, as better value.

People are justifiably angry and upset with the change. What happens next will determine just how many more people vote with their wallets.

What can I say - at least they aren't adding BFRs....


...wait wait I got it!

Membership Bonus: You get 1 BFR a month.

Only if we can restrictively place them in certain hexes

I would rather have a BFR. I would prolly reinstall the game just to wreak havoc for a day before uninstalling again. Currently not worth the bandwidth to download to buy a piece of camo for a gun that I wouldn't shoot.

And since # of Members >>>> # of hexes, queues will arise.
Then you can sale DeepMembership among Members - with BFR queue priorities!

Yay!

I'm OK with SOE doing whatever they need to do to ensure the long term viability of all their titles. I could see that if I had most or all weapons unlocked that this change would actually be considerably worse than the present deal, then all I would have to buy is camos or costemic items, and being limited to a single free camo or cosmetic item a month would ridiculous.

How about also increasing the XP and passive cert gain boosts?