There is no reason why you should not do this now for the PC version. The game has been out for over 2 years. I don't have anything negative to say about a new player coming in and paying money to support the game and unlock something I unlocked 2 years ago. Do you?
What about the new player who comes in and doesn't unlock a lot of [x] with SC. What do you think he thinks?
How do you think he thinks now against someone like me who has nearly everything? When I kill him with my Cash Camo rocket launcher then knife him with my crazy NS autoblade and mow him down with the "GODSAW" with some nutty brilliant yellow camo pattern and skull helmet, what do they think?
I don't see a problem with this. There are already people like me who have a massive head start (everything I want and 5k certs in the bank). There is no reason anymore to deny people the chance to buy themselves to be equally well equipped.
I see your reasoning, but what progression for the game would be left if you allow such a thing? There's currently little to no strategic depth in the game, guns and attachments can already be bought with SC, BR is meaningless. Grinding certs for upgrade slots is pretty much the only real progression.
I don't understand at all. Why would that matter for playing this game? It could be because I already have everything, but that never stopped me from playing. If someone wants to buy everything then more power to them. Obviously they think less of the progression value otherwise they would not spend real money on the game to unlock those things.
It would probably drive more players away than it would bring in. Sure a new player can spend $50 and max out his tank instantly, but then the game has a very obvious Pay2Win concept, even if it effects very little the paying for an advantage stigma will hurt the game as it will turn away new players.
Well first let me make sure I have your idea down. You are saying people should be able to spend Station cash in order to unlock things. For example the Vanguard shield. a player could spend $10 and get the max rank shield immediately. That is a pretty big bonus for his tank, something that takes most people a while to unlock. Sure it wouldn't matter against the veteran tankers who have everything unlocked but its not just veteran players hes going up against, its also new people who joined at the same time as him. Being able to pay for an advantage is the nature of pay 2 win. Now you could argue that planetside 2 is already pay2win with the membership bonus which lets you unlock things in half the normal amount of time but it would be significantly more noticeable if you could just unlock everything by dropping $200 and I believe simply having that option would lower how many new players are joining on a regular basis. The other thing being able to unlock stuff immediately hurts is player retention. If people drop $200 on the game play for a few months then disappear, the game loses players, and the less players there are the less people will join as PS2 relies on its HUGE BATTLES in order to attract new players over competitors such as Battlefield.
Bad idea. My explanation would be too wordy and frankly I'm too tired to put it into words right now because I've just worked about 150hrs in the past two weeks. Suffice to say, I believe this because of reasons.
I miss the days when people actually understood what P2Win means... such as ammo upgrade XYZ that does 2x damage and is only obtainable with money. Oh well... P.S. Membership XP bonus is only +50%. To unlock things in half the time you need +100% XP
I always considered "Pay-to-win" as any purchasable benefit. So yes damage increases would count. But getting more experience and resources are most definitely a mechanical benefit. I will concede that it is probably one of the smallest P2W benefits there is and probably has little impact on game play. However, you make everything purchasable and that tiny P2W aspect becomes much much bigger, and much much more noticeable, which will turn new customers away. My bad on the experience boost numbers, its been a little bit since I've been a member.
Not really interested in any pay to win arguments considering that there is no exclusive unlocks in this game that offer an advantage. If you want to go talk pay to win go, play World of Tanks with gold tank shells that do extra damage, premium tank hulls, premium consumables, etc. Oddly enough, WOT is successful because they have the money to offer a great service. We lost one of the greatest TR outfits on Emerald (NUC) to WOT. I believe that Planetside 2 does not give the players enough options to pay money to support the game. Membership is cool and all, but I feel that's not where free to play games make most of their money. As for the other stuff I believe that the progression limitations is too bottlenecked in the beginning right now which is why you would see it as an issue. New player acquisition has never been a problem for Planetside 2, retention though has. The biggest problems new players face are twofold: The have no idea what they are doing or where to go. The open sandbox gameplay doesn't offer much guidance which can be frustrating. A Background in the Battlefield series games can improve the experience, but there is still too much left to the unknown. This is still a WIP with the new continent and First Time Events. The have very limited equipment to compete with. Even a BR 20 will dramatically outclass a BR 8 in terms of equipment and versatility. This game may a steep learning curve, of course not nearly as bad as other games like EVE, but it does come with a horrendous cliff of an equipment wall that challenges even the learning curve experience of EVE. Once you get over that cliff limiting your options for diversity, every upgrade has less and less impact on the player gameplay. Besides, how would you tell if the player that you fought bought all of their upgrades or unlocked them on their own? It's no different than the current system pitting high tier players against people who are just starting. Granting people the option to buy equipment to level the playing field a bit more would be available for a new player's benefit if they choose to. The problem in the current system is that it would put too much pressure on someone to buy equipment to remain competitive, and that's the real problem. The equipment cliff would have to be dealt with to help new players before the pay for unlocks could be an option. That way the pay advantage would not be so noticeably steep when comparing two starting players and would be well within acceptable. I don't have a solution for the equipment wall but I believe Malorn put it something like "Just give them lots of free ****". Hopefully that will encourage more of them to stay in the game and if a some people have disposable income, they can also use it to fast track some of their upgrades. As for people dropping money on the game and just leaving, that doesn't make any sense. I doubt they would have stayed longer if they could not pay for those things anyways. When people leave a game they put money into, it rarely has anything to do with the fact that they put money into the game. If anything, it should increase their chances of staying longer than if they had not.
While there's certainly a logic of getting money out of people early in their experience, I imagine the more likely outcome of such an approach would be to increase new player turnover as they perceive game progression as being unfairly stacked in favor of a few whales, which in turn means fewer free players sticking around, which means less content for the whales (players are content in MMOs, after all), which means a dead game. Instead of attempting to monetize a current aspect of the game, why not come up with a new revenue stream entirely? One idea I had along these lines was being able to buy a care package token with station cash, which you can spend at equipment and vehicle terminals to give a certain number of people a temporary copy of any weapon you currently own in the configuration of your choice, which they get to keep for the duration of their session. Want to set up an Annihilator squad but don't have any idea of your allies have them? A care package token later and you can guarantee a squad of people with Annihilators, who I imagine will be much more willing to work with you when they see your name attached with the present. Feeling generous and want to let some new snipers get a taste of what an EM4 Longshot can do when not hampered by the lack of straight pull bolt the trial version has? A care package token can handle that for you. Presumably there'd be some rules regarding which terminals are valid to use them on, and what happens if the terminal flips control thereof later (wouldn't want you to lose the value thereof on a terminal that's about to become the enemy's, after all), but I imagine that could be worked out. There's a few advantages to this kind of revenue stream. While the purchaser of such a token benefits from it, the more immediate benefit is felt by the other, primarily free to play, players who get new toys to play with courtesy of their whales. It fosters a sense of community to have a surprise beneficiary hand you something cool to use with their name on it, letting even totally clueless players know who on their faction and server is invested in their success, who in turn benefits more from recognition as a cool guy or gal. And best of all, the benefits granted by such a care package are temporary, meaning that the revenue stream can be utilized repeatedly without saturation.
Consider the topic dropped then. (Also never knew WoT had purchasable straight damage increases) Membership, Weapons, Cosmetics, Limited edition cosmetic weapons, camos, helmets etc. etc. They could do more yes, but I think allowing the basic progression of the game to be bought is the wrong path to take. Aren't these some of the reasons for Koltyr? Ah but it does make sense, just not from an economical standpoint. They pay for the upgrades, they still lose because they don't have the experience of players who "earned" it, and they get upset and leave feeling they have wasted their money. You get a burst payment out of it but you don't get a long term player/supporter. On the other side of the coin you have the players who DON'T pay when they first join (I was one such individual). People who want to try the game before they invest in it, these people join. They lose because again, they don't have experience OR the upgrades. and their thought process can go two ways: A) Oh hey he has more experience than me because he earned those upgrades. If I work hard I can earn those as well. ~or~ B) I'm better than that scrub, he only won because he purchased that shield upgrade. Planetside 2 Pay-to-win!1!!11! Now maybe I lack faith in humanity but I believe the latter is more likely from the majority of people. Even if a game isn't pay 2 win, if it has something that makes it appear as such people will assume it is. But again, maybe I'm just being negative.
