Customer Service Announcement: Premium Membership

As a direct result of this news, I have cancelled my Planetside 2 membership.

SOE has received a lot of money from me for Planetside 2, FAR more than a $60 flat game purchase. And for a while there it felt worth it. PS2 launched with an abundance of good ideas and a goldmine of potential. I was happy to be able to support something that I got a lot of enjoyment from and saw what seemed to be a very genuine attempt at making something awesome. But in the last six months I've seen nothing to continue my enthusiasm. It seems to me that the corporate interests have overtaken the game-makers' interests. Finances over quality. Income over passion. I feel sorry for the developers who spent years of their life on this project, and who very obviously wanted it to work. They've been overruled and marginalized. I wish you all good luck in future.

And heck, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting, but maybe there's a possibility this game gets back on track. More continents, larger strategy. At launch, you had roughly 20% of the scope and grandeur of Planetside 1, and in the last year I've seen zero movement in the right direction to build on that.

Deeds, not words.

It's simple really, weigh in with your wallets. I wont be renewing my membership when it expires partly due to this change and partly due to how they've put the PC version on pause while they optimize the game for the console release.

The only real benefit that I can see for having premium now is VIP queue times - which shouldn't be an issue much longer if SOE keeps making changes like this.

It's no coincidence that when SOE found out the PS3 system specs were garbage they went full tilt into optimization... leaving the PC fan base out to dry while they get the console game working... fun. Where's the continent locking? the 4'th continent and the rest of the top voted upgrades? Optimization is fun and all but common, give us SOMETHING to chew on.

[EDIT] Membership is CANCELED - It gives you a warning that if you cancel your membership prematurely you forfeit any additional station cash bonus deposits. Looks like SOE needs to update their cancelation notice.

Same here. Thankfully my 6 month membership is done next month

Did anyone else have a nice warm glow when they found out Piestro plays NC? Gone right up in my estimation

I think an alarming point is not just how many pages are on here and other official SOE forums but how many pages of discussions are taking place on community and clan websites, voice comms, forums, twitter and other social media. Scary ^^

Just how many of you would be prepared to pay extra for the current deal, 500 SC and all? I currently pay £45 for my 6 month membership. Now if you told me that was going up to £50. I wouldn't be bothered. I know I can't speak for everyone's financial situation and god knows money is tight in my house atm. But a price increase for a game I love? Not a problem. Just keep making it the best MMOFPS. But a membership Nerf (in real terms). I can't honestly justify paying the current subscription rate for that.

okay before i decide good or bad this is where my mind drifts to

1. what if i have a few thousand sc lying around and here on the first of the month a nice little item becomes available lets for argument purposes say it cost 250sc would i be forced to make the first purchase of that month with the 2000sc bundle from membership or can i opt to pay with my existing sc.

1.1 should i be forced to make the first purchase for that month from the 2000sc bundle what if i bought that 250sc item 200sc gone now and on the 15 a new blazing super cool item is launched for 1500sc-2000sc limited time offer bang i am screwed if i want i have to pay with my bought sc = super bad loose to us the player

1.2 should i be given the option to reserve the 2000sc bundle to a specific purchase at any time of the month regardless of other purchases that month then i could see the benefit of this scheme as i could then hold out to see if any item of interest of real value was to come if not before end of month buy the most expensive thing available with the 2000sc bundle.=much better for us the player

i only put it like this as i choose not to assume your intentions on how you will run the bundle and you were not clear on this in the initial description if you reiterated in a later post apologies but i am not reading 883 post to see.

2.i played the first bit of my characters life with out membership and things move a little slow then after hearing some people boast on their cert gain from membership i tried it and hell i level a lot faster and almost everything i can get with certs i seem to be getting i only use sc for items that i cant get with certs. that being said i really don't care much for character beautification therefore i would request if you wanted more sales introduce more character boost items or sc weapan mods that improve/convert current weapons vehicles and armor.

some ideas for vehicles allow a sc upgrade to unlock extra utility options for example have flares and fire supression together or extra armor and nanite repair and label those with 2000sc price tags and give us something to buy with this intended bundle idea and you will probably get more support.

I am doing same as you, since my membership was set to auto-renew later this month (which I had planned to let happen).

In RL conversations, several of us share a concern...

We expect to see a very slow, slow, drawn-out response to these changes in Membership terms. We absolutely will see some significant latency before the full impact is felt from this change of terms (i.e. measurable metrics, such as cancellations). Why? Because many of those who have subscribed for any length of time understand the early termination -> forfeit monthly SC. Therefore they will likely be frugal or reasonable and wait to cancel until just before the auto-renew. So the community will only see the full effects of this policy change slowly, spread out over the next eleven months.
Heads-up to SOE, though: if you don't take care to communicate that "early-termination equals forfeit" clause extremely well OUTSIDE of these Forums you WILL get a lot of newer members upset when they realize that they have unintentionally forfeited their monthly stipend/bonus/coupon (whatever it turns out to be) for the remainder of their subscription period. This WILL happen, because some people will be canceling their auto-renew status, believing they are making a statement, but also believing that they'll be able to use their remaining three, seven, ten (etc.) months of already-paid-for monthly benefits. Whoops.

Piestro and/or Luperza: Can you assure us that this latency will be pointed out to the Powers That Be?
Otherwise many of us are worried that a significant portion of subscribers will decide to not renew their subs (or have already decided that, by many indications), but the impact won't be apparent for months to come. At which point cause and effect will be very much disconnected. Somewhat like a relationship where one of the individuals has decided to leave, but it takes them some months to make the leap (crappy situation, that). One way around this would be to offer a refund of the un-used Membership months, or to cancel all existing Memberships and let people re-up. Either way would let people vote in a unequivocal fashion, without waiting months to see results.

EDIT: Glad to see that there is a warning when you're in the Cancel process, but some will not read it and only notice the forfeiture once they don't get their expected benefits.

I agree that some month-long Boost purchase options would help alleviate the pain a bit, but don't think of it as a panacea solution. Having the ability to let the 'coupons' accumulate would help some, too.

Thanks Piestro and Luperza, for engaging in this discussion.

Regards,

JMK (let the Invisible Hand work, but in a timely way)

PS: I know this is borderline-verboten to ask, but again, several of us are wondering. Are your reports/summaries of this thread going to include the sentiments of the "Moderated" posts, or do the deleted posts not get tallied?

@ Piestro & Luperza:

Would either/both of you please ask your higher-ups what the tentative game plan is for the membership changes that will be required when the new resource revamp comes out.

The system as outlined on the roadmap will do away with individual resource pools and stacks of consumables in favor of a per base resource pool that has to be periodically refilled by the players. Personally I can't wait for this change as I feel the revamp will be a step in the right direction for the game & give a bit more depth to the current "King of the Hill/TDM" game we currently have.

However this change will mean that the current membership feature of +x% resources will no longer apply since we no longer have individual resources. This will be a change that applies to the basic membership package and not to some "promotional" addition for having your membership set to auto-renew. Please, please, please start talking with us sooner than 1 month out from when you're going to change the default membership on people so hopefully we can avoid the debacle this "promotional" change has created.

So... does this mean, we even get rewards when you get a membership with game cards or does this still only count for credit cards? And when do you implement membership with Paypal? I've been waiting so long for that...

i am a premiummember br100, and old-premium is the closest i coud get to "pay2play".

the asumption that everyone in the clan-platoon has basicly everything "reasonable" unlocked or fitting similars is our general agreement, also that our enemys are at the same level of equipment(example squadbeacons/shielddefusser).
checking in our clanforum the box "all requested items available" is a requirement , which gets regularly updated as the ingameitems/gameexpasions evolve.
constant and (more or less important for a competetiv play) regular income in terms of StationCash and rescources(mainly only important to dedicated vehicleplayers) is fundamental to enjoy the competetiv aspect of planetside2. 500SC monthly + dailysales + certificationincrease, combined with an membership since beta, does provide this ability.

cosmetics are nice and the cherry on the cake for the more casual moments, but at least for us not so important that we woud care for the new-membership exclusion of playerstudios.

bundles in form of 2-6 weapons for a discount of 50% is also undesired, because of all the bundles we had in the past year, only 1 remains in memory for a generous discount, being the 4000SC colorpacks. if you own 1 weapon of a 3 weaponspack, you CANT buy it, because its no longer worth it, to pick up. in PS2 we dont get refunds because somehow the items we desired, we already own, because of that we have to handpick every dayliesale.

an increase in premiummembershipcosts IS viable for clanplayer, an developer/publisher forced push toward buying additional SC monthly on top of membership is NOT. unlimited opening of F2P-moneysink to stay in a fair/compfortable/enjoyable/competiv is not an option, and SOE just pushed into that direction till feburary 6th. forcedropping PS2 because of it, to keep the clancommunity combined is among the most unliked decissions, but there has jet members to come online that didnt come to that conclusion themself. less then 1 month is a very short timewindow for the publisher to get an acceptable working alternativ, that replaces a compfortable old working system.

the monthly limit of itemselection is not acceptible for any deployed or travelworker player, increase the monthly nonstacking limit to at least 3 (better 4)months possible delay till picking a major-item.
the gamedevelopment/distribution of content is too slow and/or irregular to justify a monthly limit.
cutting the f2p-moneysink for nonrich competiv players, to "save up till next major relaese" woud no longer be possible.
buying cherry cosmetics for rich competiv players is still possbile(buying new monthly SC), but the deployrate of updates and the time-till-being-told-by-developer-not-to-be-OP-weapons balances(thx we just got a nice but still olddated balancepatch) counters it, to be a non-reasonable investment.

1 majoritem is worse then 2 saleitems per month,
1 majoritem can not be used for many lowcostitems(might it be cheep cosmetic or new players buying in to the competiv game.
1 majoritem can not be carried over till the next major-multiitem-release

I'm more interested in what happens if/when they release an item for more than 2000SC. If a new ubergun comes out that is priced at 2100SC, can we use the 'voucher' towards this and just pay the additional 100SC?

Meh, Was subscribed since beta and decided I would stay subscribed (billed every 3rd month) even though I stopped playing PS2 months ago. I figured, I can save up SC for Everquest Next or maybe the PS2 launch on PS4.

I canceled the day I saw the email. That little message about not getting my benefits for canceling the auto renew was especially nice. Whatever, im done with this game and any MMO SOE sticks their dick into.

Message received SOE. Loud and clear. You dont want my patronage anymore. Not a problem.

Well, you should have had 5000 SC if you have been signed up and not logged on. Would not call that nothing.
I would do all I can to try and cancel your future one. Complaining in the forum is not going to help. Contact their customer help desk.


For future reference, any game that you subscribe to, will likely automatically have you set up to resubscribe. If you don't want that, it is a manual process to change that. Not usually hard, but you have to do it yourself. That is standard practice for all subscription based everything I have ever seen.

Canceled my membership until I see how this works out.

"Nearly all items within the games’ Marketplace will be available for this selection. Players Studio, bundles and additional exclusions may apply."

If they wanted to just say "All items will be available for this promotion EXCEPT players studio and bundles" maybe I could have seen. But what this sounds liek to me is

"Here's the new gun! 1750SC! Will be available for free NEXT MONTH to Premium Members!"

I agree with you for the most part, however. If they started getting a better deal for being a member, all of us who subscribed before Feb 3rd will rage on the forums. There is not really a win win on that problem here.

That did occur to me. Its why I am generally against any change right now, especially since they don't even seem to sure of how it will roll out.
The manner and timing of the whole announcement seems rather ill conceived and premature; decided by a seat-warmer who has no knowledge of the players, game or fair business practice in my opinion.

I do feel that rolling out on the 3rd may be too soon, as they have yet to put any value or improvement on the table.
Right now I'm holding thumbs for some logical feedback in regards to changes to the offer.

If no changes happen, I will no longer purchase any SC nor will i renew my Sub.

Q1. You should be able to use it for the purchase you want. We'll work to clarify with the game team more the mechanics this week.

Q2. We'll add that to the list of feedback, thanks!

From a personal standpoint, I find myself with a mixed opinion on the proposed change to the membership benefits, but I'll get to that later.

The way I see it, there's quite a few factors to consider (some of which I'd imagine have been touched on previously in this thread - sorry, but I didn't read through all of it). It isn't just simply a case of them changing a "perk" of their subscription, I feel it's a need to re-evaluate the benefits of said membership, and what it actually offers to people (which in turn, crosses over onto other issues like longevity and the different kinds of players and what they want).

For a starter, my understanding was that the 500SC a month was an incentive, it was there to make you want to keep renewing each month, or better yet, buy in bulk. To put it into perspective, you're effectively gaining an amount of your subscription back as if you'd bought SC, kind of like store-credit, or a gift card. It's not quite that simple, seeing as it's a digital good, but you get the idea. Now, for many people that 500SC was a selling point - simply put, the other benefits start to lose appeal at some stage (some, not all).

Typically a free-to-play model won't offer any direct advantages to premium players, and really, that's how it should be. However what they do offer is a reduced time investment. You normally earn things at a faster rate, or you can buy something that would've otherwise taken you an amount of time to earn. Part of the subscription was aimed at that, basically giving you an EXP booster, and a few passive certs on the side. Cosmetic items are also included in that, as they're a luxury item without real functionality (which I imagine is why camo still displays big patches of faction-specific colours).

Now, why did I bother bringing all of that up? Because it's kind of relevant. I've not touched on people liking the ability to stockpile monthly SC, or how they do or don't prefer the option of bigger or smaller purchases, this has been aimed more at what the current subscription model offers, and what incentive their is for people to keep renewing - not only that, but what will it offer to people who've already got most of the things they want.

I think you need to offer something to subscribers similar to the recruitment benefits. Have some kind of a system whereby you accrue 'points' towards some kind of customization, be it cosmetic or otherwise. Keep in mind, this doesn't appeal to everyone, but it gives them another reason to keep subscribing. Having a members-only camo or decal, even something like a forum signature or icon. I'd suggest have it build up for each month (in the same was the 500SC does), rather than up-front like the subscription level. Basically put, give a loyalty reward system. By continually subscribing, they earn points towards tiered rewards, allow the accrued points to be retained (and spent) even if subscription is cancelled, have multiple tiers, thereby giving some kind of a distant-goal for some people to work towards, and give a few possible options for each tier.

After all that, I asked for something more? Well, kind of. I feel that the current subscription loses appeal at later stages, and I proposed a possible option to give incentive to that audience.

As for my 'mixed opinions' either way it doesn't phase me a whole lot, I have most of the things I want, and those SC just build up towards some new vanity item or new toy that comes out. It gives the option to buy flashy things like gold/black guns (which I still probably won't do), but it's nice to have the option. I feel it's like my previous gift-card analogy, except that you get more than your 'value' worth, but if you don't spend the full value you lose the margin (and if you don't spend it at all, you lose all of it). Simply put, there aren't enough expensive SC items to justify it, it seems to me like it's to encourage spending because (like gift vouchers) it can expire, and people aren't likely to get their full 2K worth, they simply can't after a point. Also, as I'm sure you can tell there is a bit of bias in my previous opinions - I'm at that stage where the 'members benefits' might be something as simple as an early release item, or something equally flashy but useless. Well done if you read this far through my wall-of-text.

I think some polls would be a good idea, too.

TL;DR: Quite a few people seem to be unhappy about the proposed changed, some like it. The current subscription seems to lose appeal at later stages. Meta-game aside, it seems a bit lacking and I feel a(nother) loyalty reward system of some kind would help.

Also, I'm tired.. I had to re-type that several times and I'm still not sure it came out entirely how I wanted it.

I think I got most of my points across but I imagine there's stuff I've missed.

Hahaha, I know that feeling all too well.
You do bring up a lot of valid points, and as much as I have an opinion and have expressed it, at this point I'm playing the 'wait and see' game.
What we have all contributed to here, is making our thoughts and suggestions known, as well as possible (and probable) results of them being not taken into account.

>Edit > thats in no way suggesting that we don't keep at it and that people should not keep contributing