Upgrade Now Button

Just adding my 2 cents here.

I am an Auraxiam member, and i've blown around $300 on the game apart from that. I had about 500 more to blow around christmas, in anticipation of a 3x sale, but it never materialized. If the adverts are fixed for members, and the ginormous glowing buttons of money-nagging go away, i'll probably stick around. I enjoy the game, but that enjoyment instantly evaporates the moment I see an advertisement that interrupts, impedes (buttons too close to resupply / respawn) or otherwise distracts from gameplay. If the dev team wishes to continue being the receptacle of my disposable income, please remove the giant buttons attempting to bat my wallet further into this delightful auraxiam cash vacuum then it already is.


Thanks!

Personally I've never seen a worse decision than the current ad-system via the notification-system, devs.
If you want to put ads in your game regarding sales, I'm the last to stop you, but please...do it right. Make it thrilling for us.
A pop-up is an insult to a gamer.

Given my twenty years of experience being a gamer, I heavily suspect you got someone(maybe even a recent addition to your team) who has a degree in marketing who had this idea. Am I right?
If so: Please send this guy/lady back to the marketing-campaigns for gamestop or wherever there is regular marketing at work.
There is their home, there is the job where their diploma is useful.

SOE and devs, if you want to advertise for a game directly in the game, there is nothing worse than letting someone from the marketing-department decide.
Large companies tend to oversee that people from regular marketing often have no f-ing clue about how to place marketing inside games without being offensive.
That's exactly the reason why EA is nominated for being the worst company of america for the third time and winning the award the last two years while the indie-branche thrives.
If you want to bring ads into your game I have the most important advice you will ever get:
A-S-K T-H-E G-A-M-E-R-S H-O-W T-O D-O I-T! (Caps-lock is meant for this being important, I'm not yelling at you ).

So let me give you some advice. Don't worry, it's not just the rambling of one of your costumers. Most of this has proven itself on other platforms.


-No pop-ups like the current version in a game with this fast pace. They slow down the player, they cost their attention and they most likely get them killed. Annoyance will put up a mental wall, no matter how delightful your sale might be.
Put the pop-ups into the menu. Loadout, map, whatever. Not large in size, that would most likely impede the function of that screen. You can apply flashy effects on the banner itself to get some attention.

-No pop-ups in a established ingame-notification-system. People will think they get an invite or friend-request, while it's just a spam.
As said before: Annoyance=bad.

-Make players do something for your sales! Yes! You heard right: We want to earn stuff. Ranks? Nah. Certs? Closer! Cupons? DING DING DING DING!!!
When you make a sale for specific weapons, make them aviable for everyone for free with all attachments as long as the sale runs, so everyone can try it during that sale.
Also add an achievement which will award a small coupon for the purchase of the gun with SC.
This has two functions: People will try the guns and maybe like them and other people will see the gun in their death-screens.
The gun will be seen by everyone and since everyone can try it, they will know it's on sale.
Of course this will generate more certs and people might be able to buy the gun with said certs. So add a title to the SC-purchase or a small resource-booster. Maybe even a small discount to the cert-price of a weapon that adds well to a loadout with your sale-gun. It's all about small goodies that cost you barely anything, but people will want to earn them.
Steam and indie-developers regularly couple sales with achievments or some kind of collectebles and people buy like there is no tomorrow.

These upgrade buttons are hideous. The popups are worse though. Whoever thought this was a good idea should be sacked on the spot - they clearly have no understanding of the psychology behind free to play. Send them to Zynga, they'll fit right in.

The way this whole thing - the latest in a long line of failures, disappointments and empty promises - makes me feel has been expressed by an outfitmate in a way I couldn't hope to beat:

Was this already patched? Just played for an hour and saw zero pop-ups. There was one notification asking me to press "K" to decline subbing.

The Upgrade button on the equipment terminals should be moved away from the Reequip button.

^^^ This! I go out of my way to avoid doing business with any company that spams their products at me no matter how good they are. A product speaks for itself and if the product is worth purchasing I will find it. Making it easy for us to find is one thing but once we've decided NO...that should be the end of it. No means no.

I am definitely not happy about this. Is planetside 2 going to turn P2W Now? Having a popup in the middle of a fight..
This popup should only show once when you log in. That is it. If it's popping up in the middle of the game it doesn't make me want to buy it. It makes me want to rage quit the game. Come on SOE, Make better choices. *Sigh*

Don't modify it.
Remove it.

"Upgrade now" is cheesy and a bit annoying but acceptable. I'd be surprised if it had any positive effect though. In-play popups to advertise stuff are just obnoxious and will drive people away. They're a really terrible idea . You're already in-my-face advertising the sales in the loading screen, I don't want notifications that are adverts ever.

So what's the problem with keeping your UPGRADE NOW!!! button in the store tab isn't that the appropriate place to keep this garbage? I shouldn't have to worry about hitting that stupid button while resupplying my max at a sunderer or a terminal where I could possibly be sniped out because I'm trying to hurry so I won't and hit that stupid UPGRADE NOW!!! button. I've spent hundreds of dollars on game content so stop pushing garbage memberships on me your company does not need my credit card info on file.

This is a great idea here. Take notes, SOE... using humankind's innate love of competition and achievements to drive people to use guns, earn coupons, then buy guns with SC could be just what the medic ordered.

Actually, I could deal with all the in game advertising if:

1.) The subscription fees/income from sales were supporting the release of exciting NEW Content in PS2 (read Hossin-Coming Soon*)

2.) The subscription fees/income from sales were supporting proper in game moderation (toss out a patch full of bugs, then turn off the lights and go home for the weekend...deal with the invulnerability glitch next week...)

3.) The subscription fees/income from sales were supporting proper coding (see: Hit Detection inconsistencies

• Description: We have tracked many of the recent issues with hit detection to anti-cheat validation on the server. This can be made worse by having a slower or unstable connection to the game server.
• Status: We're making some adjustments to the thresholds for the validations which will be going live over the next few days and continuing to monitor. Additionally, in the next few weeks we are going to put in some more information about the quality of your connection state so that you can be better informed when connection related errors are occurring.)

(I mean, randomly not being able to damage a opponent MIGHT be a big deal in a 1st Class First Person Shooter...you think???)

In other words, its a two way street here...SoE wants us, the players, to support them by purchasing subscriptions and/or buying virtual goods. In exchange, is it not reasonable that SoE provides us the proper support and a properly working game in return?

If you want our money, give us what you want us to pay for...where's Hossin? Where's continent caps? Why do I get the feeling that EQN and PS2 for the PS4 are all higher priorities then fixing PS2 for the PC?

Are we really just the beta for the PS4...and you want us to PAY for that dubious honor by shoving this ad spam-fest down our throats?

There's one glaring difference between this and all the PvE MMO types, those "whales" you wish to hang on to need something to shoot at. Since the F2P people are the only targets they have, shooing them away (as EQ2 did to me with it's "You could have had.." marketing telling me I was an idiot to do anything as a non-member) does you no favors.
Less bandwidth and maintenance cost, but even your most generous benefactors won't be spending much to play on a barren server.

They were very unobtrusive two weeks ago.

I've put more money into this game than any AAA title, several times over I would think.

Yet you're saying I'm going to get pop-up ads in-game because I do not want to be a member forever?

Thanks guys, really appreciate all the appreciation we get for supplying your paychecks.

Bye.

1. Make the Upgrade Now button smaller. Why the frick is it bigger than the actual respawn button just above it? It's a horrible design choice that makes it look gaudy, unappealing, and draws negative attention towards it.

2. Pop-ups are the worst. Do you like getting pop-up ads? Does ANYONE like getting pop-up ads? Ever? In the history of the internet? For pete's sake, they invented whole new programs just to -stop- pop-up ads. Ever heard of Ad Blocker? There's a reason why people use the thing, you know. No, Pop-up ads should not exist and are one of the most blatant, awful forms of marketing that exist on the internet, period. Scrap it and do something else instead.

So many good points made by players in this thread, so few from the devs/mods.

I've been a paying SOE member since 1999. Up to four paid accounts for Everquest + SC purchases when they introduced SC (aka Smedbucks, which Smedley said wouldn't be a slippery slope, hahahahahaha)

As of today, I am down to one paid account at SOE. I only play PS2 from SOE, I haven't played EQ for a year. But guess what...my paid account is STILL FOR EVERQUEST. I have no interest in switching it to PS2. This latest ham-fisted, adolescent-grade marketing campaign is a great example why.

I look forward less and less to Everquest Next, which is, I assume, SOE's largest project at the moment. My fear grows that the ham-fisted approach by the SOE PS2 team is a beta for what I can expect from EQN.

I play video games to escape, not to be hammered with ads.

PS2 only works with lots of players. SOE, stop pissing off the players. Start QA'ing your patches, start learning how to roll back code instead of leaving in huge bugs or OP aspects of the game. Start handling each faction development with equal attention, start using imagination on game development, STOP slapping huge UPGRADE NOW buttons where they don't belong and where they most annoy.

You're SONY for God's sake, what I am seeing is amateur hour. Why?

Or, you could perhaps turn off notifications telling people to subscribe, make the Upgrade Now button only appear in say, the Depot as well as a few other things I'm not entirely permitted to state on the SOE Forums.

Maybe this is where they got the idea? Looks like Cornered Rat is doing the same thing.

A solid formula for a strong economy, as well.

the button doesn't bother me at all, really. i understand it's place and it's not like clicking it by accident does anything other than show you the benefits in detail.

what does bug me is the popups. they look like seat swap requests and squad invite requests, and actively distract from live play. even once or twice a session is too much, i don't think you should be popping up during play. put your ads in the menus like the upgrade button, make the upgrade button flash the sales message, any other option than the sneaky y/n popup that appears to be a valid in game request.

I made a thread here regarding the more technical side of the button that I'd like an official answer to, if possible.