2017 Planetside 2 Monetization Discussion

As a depressed BR 80 NC f2p player with about $200 in cosmetics and other goodies invested, I would never consider paying more then $10 dollars a month for a subscription. Even that is a tough sell unless the devs were desperate enough and added something fantastic like a once a month nuke, giant slow moving Mech, floating fortress with spawn point, or something else crazy-like, ort would allow me to camp and solo the hoards of VS or TR as I try to hold the flank all by my self "sigh" as all the NC abandoned the game a long time ago. I think what is killing the game is that new players and snow-flakes pick NC because of its neutral friendly colour. Vets and skilled players then get frustrated and change sides. It has become VS vs TR, with the useless NC running around like schizophrenic chickens with their heads cut off, scared to take any real initiative as they save up for their next sundy that's just waiting to get blowup by a solo light assault and his new overpowered rocket rifle. I think that the only thing that will save the game and improve the player base, is better base defence, or maybe bases that are actually designed to be defended in the first place. What is more frustrating then being sieged outside the spawn room, outside of the main base? Better defence might make some players feel like they are achieving less, but it might keep new players more interested in the game and balance out the battle field.

Except it's not necessarily P2W, it's just being portrayed via strawman argument. Which should not even be addressed at this point.

Anything that gives any kind of gameplay advantage for money is P2W, PS2 is P2W but is in a degree that is tolerable because the game mechanics and weapon upgrades but not many games are like this and people despise any kind of P2W elements in the game olny fanboys are the ones that end up staying and the game starts dying this happens to any P2W game outthere.

You're missing the point that even if something is not P2W, it's still going to be portrayed as that, which is supposedly 'bad'... for who? The players playing for free? Why exactly are you holding on to a strawman?

You want to put even more restrictions on the playerbase of a game with a population that has declined so much they have had to merge and get rid of servers?

That's a step in the wrong direction.

Furthermore, all of those free-loading F2Pers...have actually spent a lot of money supporting the game. I'm pretty sure there are non-members who have spent more cash on PS2 than members.

It's an adaptive business model. If they really want to make more money, they don't need to look at ways to screw over more players, they need to look at ways to reward more players and not just members.

When SOE decided to make purchased weapons, unlocked account-wide that was a step in the right direction. When you purchase a NS weapon, it is unlocked on all characters of any faction on your account. Now, look at these base construction bundles. They want to charge you roughly $90 (for two bundles) which doesn't even unlock all the construction items for JUST ONE FACTION!

That's $270 to unlock some of the construction items on all three characters and you would still have to make additional purchases through the cash shop to unlock additional construction items.

This is what I think is a huge part of the problem with PS2's business model. While there are certainly many things about the business model that are great, this is one of the incredibly bad things about it. Instead of making it appealing to everyone, they appear to rely on whale purchases, which simply means relying on certain people to spend a lot of money on the game.

In fairness to me, the comment you quoted was a very brief summary of a pretty detailed model I proposed elsewhere. Included in that model was a number of ways to reward people who'd spent cash in the past, including those who had subs, but weren't subbed now, who'd bought bunches of DBC etc. Effectively, the only people who'd really be restricted are those who'd hit BR120, played hundreds of hours, unlocked piles of things, enjoyed the hell out of the game and STILL been too cheap to cough up a bit of cash for the devs.

Now, I get that there are some people who are living on the poverty-line, who literally have to choose between food and heat etc. I can even understand that there are some in that position who, because of past circumstances, have decent gaming rigs etc. but are still on the poverty-line.

But if we take a wildass guesstimate and say that there are 20,000 players of PS2, then throw in a statistic that I read in some article where the devs claim that only like 1-in-10 has ever contributed any cash to the game, that gives us like 18,000 "free-loading F2Pers" to steal your phrase. I simply can't believe that ALL 18,000 are on the poverty line with barely enough to eat.... which means that the majority of them are just cheapskate, selfish, entitled parasites. /hyperbole

And frankly, I've got no problem putting restrictions on those people...... By all means, limit them to one class and vehicle. Force them to stare at a 5sec still-advert every death. As long as they're still competitive with that class and vehicle it's not going to be P2W. All you're paying for is versatility. I'm fine with that.

Actually, according to SteamSpy, Planetside 2 had roughly 125k active players in the last two weeks. I don't know where you're citing that from since you didn't provide any sources but if it's true that 1 in 10 players spend some cash in PS2, that's not bad.

Planetside 2 alone cannot be expected to keep DBG in the black. SOE/DBG have pretty much firebombed their best-known franchise Everquest. You can't talk about bad business decisions in PS2 without talking about SOE/DBG as a whole and you can't pin DBG's success or failure on the shoulders of the Planetside 2 playerbase. And that's kind of what it feels like.

I'm not hating against DBG. I'm just being real. I love Planetside 2. I would love to see a resurgence in the game but crapping on non-subscribers isn't the way to do that. It would pretty much result in the exact opposite.

Don't put words in my mouth i never said PS2 was not p2w in fact i said that it IS P2W but it is tolerable compared to other games were it is truly ridiculous. Free to play players feel more compeled to expend money on a game when they feel that the game is not trying to force them or scam them to do it, some games outright **** you for you to buy their **** (not PS2), so they get anggry.

In the particular case of PS2 i think people don't expend money because it is too expensive, not all countries wages are in dolars euros and if they made this purchases available through steam and adjusted the prices for all the countries/currencies i think more people would buy stuff, Dota 2 survives like this and their prices are really good.

Maybe they should also do something like "the compendium" that Dota 2 does, that thing is cheap and it gives a lot of extra stuff to do while already playing, grants unlockeables, i mean they can also go with the random only cosmetic boxes, there is a lot of good things to implement that will not be p2w and will help the game and keep people interested in the game, but those prices need to be adjusted and they need to bring their stuff to steam.

Your ideas would kill the game, i know as a f2p player i would leave with not regrets to another game.

I come back to Palnetside 2 after a break of like 5 months, if i'm not mistaken.
First thing i did was i went to purchase membership.
The bugs on the website did not allowed me to purchase membership, spoked with my bank by phone, everything was ok, problem was not on my or my bank's end.

Then i said ok...i will just buy some camos or whatever, so i went to buy Daybreak cash
Same story....errors all over, please try again, please make sure to bla bla.

If they want our money they need to fix their purchase website!
I was member before, it is a game that is worth membership. But they have bugs on their pay website they need to adress

Urm what part of this game is p2w please enlighten us as far as I know a 1 BR player can kill a 120 BR player with relative ease so I'm just curious where you get this p2w attitude from?

I just said you were missing the point of the conversation, which was 'F2Pers are going to moan anyway regardless of whether something is P2W or not, which could allegedly be bad for the game'. I disagreed with this being bad for the game; the worst thing that could happen is.. whining on the forums. Why should anyone cater to non-paying customers’ inevitable whining just because they can't differentiate between P2W and more incentive to pay for stuff?

Wouldn't these people be considered non-F2Pers..? Since they have paid for things in the game? Unless you mean F2Pers who 'support' the game by buying ten liters of Dew and a 5 pound bag of cheesy poofs to keep themselves sustained during a 24 hour play session

Nope. Unless you have an active PS2 membership, you're basically lumped into the category of F2P scum. It doesn't matter if you've spent hundreds of dollars on the game or not.

If i couldnt afford food.........id sell my expensive gaming rig and eat for 6 months, and id cancel my broadband subscription. Seriously food is more important than facebook.....

Theres 0 excuse to not have paid for entertainment that you've enjoyed for countless hours(not you personaly). Like you said, if theyre BR120 they must have enjoyed it, being a cheapskate is the only reason not to have paid.
I dont buy the 'im witholding my £$s until 'X' argument either, if the hacking, bugs, glitching, exploting, balance, base design or whatver excuse you have is really that much of a distress to you, then dont play.

I hope i insulted some1 saying that, you deserve it.

Stop pretending please, it is really pathetic.

Because they are potential customers and you want to attract them not the opposite?, look at what happened to Wildstar... went F2P too late and... it died.

Ouch. I guess that's the consequence of not being their target whale-to-pay customers.

And what about their current or past customers? If PS2 gives actual incentive to current members that would be terrific, but as of right now it's just a watered down version of what could be a normal membership. My incentive for buying 3 months is the BC and exp boost so it doesn't feel like I'm working for minimum wage on a videogame.. and it's still not worth it.

After my 3 months is over I'll discontinue the membership or stop playing entirely, because the sheer amount of bugs, glitches, and bull**** that still exist in this game have not been addressed, fixed, and maintained. I still can't spawn at bases that need to be defended, I still get bluescreens practically every hour I play, and loads of other things I can't think of right now that clearly shows there is something inherently wrong with the netcode in this game, and still has not been dealt with since I came back after a year. If dbg is attracting anyone to buy anything, it's definitely not someone like me, or someone that has my tolerance level for bull****. I thought bf4 was broken, but this game puts the definition of broken on a whole new level.

/end rant

I would totally pay cash money to fight on a continent that wasn't Hossin, Amerish, Indar or Esamir. Basically I'm in here because I'm locked out of 3 continents one of which is over populated and that just isn't worth the money.

I'm not pretending I'm asking a perfectly valid question you stated this game was p2w and I'm asking why you think this game is p2w , As far as I know when you start a character your given 100 certs per rank up to BR15 and you also start with some of the best guns in the game that are free , At what point is this p2w?

You cant buy Certs most of the guns that are unlockable are not as good as there starter guns all armour is cosmetic everyone starts on the same hp apart from 1 class , Even char skills don't make a huge difference .

If anything I would say f2p are spoilt to death and are very lucky that a game like ps2 exists.

On a side note I work and I work hard 10 Euro or £8.99 for all access and helping this game to survive in my view is money well spent , Anyone who cant afford that should not have a computer rig in the first place and should prioritise improving themselves instead of playing games....Bit of DAD advice there sorry.

Any stock Vehicle , Infantry , Aircraft can kill a fully upgraded counterpart so again ill ask what's p2w about this game?.