So. Another Anniversary arrives. Another year behind us, and another year that the PS2 community has managed to support both Planetside 2 AND whatever DBG's latest brainfart game/corporate roadmap is. And the celebration of this event? GIVE US ALL DA MONIES!! Yup. No "Thanks for being awesome, PS2 community!" No "Thanks for keeping us afloat another year!" No "Here's a nice toy or something for your support." Just another blatant cash grab. And not even one on the "micro-transaction" level.... this is macro-transactions on the biggest and most bald-faced greed level. I'm not even surprised any more. Just disappointed. I love this game. I truly *want* to support it. But this is just yet another reason to give up on DBG as a company, enjoy PS2 while it's around, and wait for the inevitable closure announcement.
Hmm well - considering all recent happenings, i'd say that DBG could probably do with the cash. I had plenty of DBC left over from being a paying member so went for the middle bundle. Not a member now of course (the level of cheating just got stupid).
In all fairness, the bundles are optional. We don't have to buy them. However, we did get free double XP for 3 days. Sure the bundles feel somewhat extortionate, but we must keep in mind that this games company is still a for profit business. They have to make money somehow. If I was marketing this game, I would look how I can make more money for the business. Thus, I would try and cash in on its anniversary too.
Agreed. But I'd argue that DBG's money problems arise more from their mismanagement than any lack of support on our part. And as I note below, I'd further argue that the continuing abuse of a loyal playerbase's trust and goodwill (as SOE, then DBG are wont to do) is the fastest way to erode and destroy that trust... and nothing will destroy the company faster than pissing off your customers. It would seem like basic common sense to me... happy customers = more money. Customers who feel constantly nickel 'n dimed (or perhaps more accurately dollar 'n fiver'd) are far less likely to maintain a continued willingness to open their wallets. And if customers stop opening their wallets, the company stops making money, and Columbus Nova's investment in DBG becomes worthless. It would seem like common sense... but given the kinds of decisions we've seen from "corporate management", in pretty much all industries over the past decade, "common sense" apparently isn't something they teach in business school. Nor is basic mathematics, obviously. I don't have a problem with the bundles, really. And free double XP is something that happens every month, so it's hardly a big deal. My problem really is that they didn't do anything extra. They procced an extra double-XP weekend. Woohoo. Except it's not the weekend, it's the middle of the week. Yay, I guess? Would it *really* have hurt them to do something more? I get that resources are tight. I get that they can't throw a big bash, or set up a special event to run for a couple of weeks. I do, really. But how hard would it have been to, in addition to the bundles, do something like say : "You know what... you people have kept us in business for 7 years. Here's a Store Token for any one weapon of your choice. Thanks guys, hope to see you in another year!" It would literally cost them nothing. Well, maybe some admin time to run a release script or something. But that's it. Like a day's work, tops. And the *vast* majority of those giveaway tokens wouldn't cost them any sales, because the majority of the people using 'em wouldn't / couldn't have spent money on that weapon anyway. What it *would* have done, however, is generate goodwill... something that DBG is running perilously short of. People might have been inspired to come back for more than a couple of days to see what DBG's trying to screw them out of this time. Perhaps they'd even have talked it up to their mates and broadened the market. Who knows... all I can say for sure is that what they *have* done, doesn't fill me with feelings of celebration. It just leaves me feeling confused and vaguely uncomfortable... like the victim of a Nerf-assault who isn't quite sure what just happened.
Just to expand on what I've been saying above : For the past two years, instead of playing Planetside 2 and supporting this game I've been playing Warframe and supporting *that* game. Even now that I'm not really playing it much any more, I still drop back in regularly to check on the new stuff, maybe drop some cash on something that looks interesting etc. And why? Because Digital Extremes, and Warframe, have done what DBG and PS2 failed to.... they did F2P right, and they don't abuse their customer base. Just to put things into perspective : F2P / P2W DE/WF - F2P *really means* F2P. Free players can even earn premium currency by grinding loot that other players want and selling it to them. In fact, there are *several* active, busy market hubs ingame where this is happening. DBG/PS2 - While F2P is still *technically* F2P, the insane paywall grind that many items are locked behind really does mean that there is a significant difference between those who pay (or have spent 7 years playing daily) and those who are more casual, or worse... newbies that are just dipping their toes into the pond now. Customer involvement DE/WF - DE cares about their playerbase. Or, at the very least, cares about their income stream and does a damned good *impression* of caring for their playerbase. Every two weeks, they run an hour long live-stream (well... they *say* hour long, but it often runs over as they get all enthusiastic about stuff or take community questions etc.) where the major design figures come and talk about what's coming up in the game, where their thinking is at, answer community concerns etc. They also run weekly dev-steams where the devs actually play the game (on their personal accounts, no less) and talk about whatever's on their minds, interact with the community, run missions with random players, visit guild-halls to see what decorations the guilds have managed to craft with the design tools they've been given, show off awesome community art etc. I literally cannot say enough good things about DE - they *listen* to their community. That doesn't mean that they just do whatever the players are screaming about, 'cause that's a mug's game. But they *listen* to what's being said, try to work out what's causing it, and do their best to resolve the issue in the best way possible for everybody. Hell... they even own it when they screw up, admit it to the community, and promise to fix things *and mean it*. Oh, I should also mention that in pretty much EVERY livestream, they give away 3-5 prizes to random viewers with a general value of around $25... and this stuff IS what people are paying for... That's like $75-$125... 2-4 times a week... 48 weeks a year. I mean, sure it's digital goods that cost them nothing to give away and probably represent almost nothing in lost sales. But the community loves it. 15k+ people tune into your average stream, and their playerbase is now in the millions. DBG/PS2 - DBG doesn't seem to care about their playerbase at all. They seldom interact with them, ignore their own forums, and just generally treat them like mushrooms (i.e. kept in the dark and fed on ****e). When DBG screws up, they are almost Trumpian in their denial of reality, insist it's something completely different, and then promise to do something to fix it (where by "fix it" they really mean "come up with another way for you to give us money for doing nothing"). Just look at the whole implants thing... they released the implants. People grinded them up, paid for them, upgraded them... and then DBG was like "oops... we ****** up the implants thing... our bad" and then took everybody's stuff away (incl. stuff people had paid actual cash for) and said "Now buy it back, *****!" The less said, the better honestly. It won't change DBG, but at least my ulcer won't act up. And since this is what started this whole thread... Anniversaries! DE/WF - DE's WF Anniversary celebrations tend to be somewhat understated. It's usually a fairly short series of missions resulting in this year's Anniversary giveaways (generally weapons and cosmetics). They also allow players to go back and earn prior year's Anniversary rewards, because they're just nice that way. That said... they usually release a major content pack (as in whole new zones, mission lines, adversaries, game-mechanics etc.) around the same time, and all of that is always and forever, free to every player. DBG/PS2 - In comparison, DBG's Anniversary offerings are both cringe-worthy and outright stingy. They give *nothing* away for free, and the only change is that they "allow" you to give them EVEN MORE MONEY for obscenely overpriced stuff. **** you, DBG. **** you. Just to sum everything up, here's a short video. It's about 2 mins long (although I encourage you to watch the full 7 minutes) where the DE developer in charge of monetization talks about the time they created a loot box by accident (before loot boxes were really a thing) and how they *took it out of the game* when they realised what they'd done! Err... since the embed tool doesn't seem to do times, please skip to 1:40 if you aren't going to watch the whole video.
I do not know how many paying subscribers there are, but I suspect not many at the end at that's the main reason for turning the anniversaries in sad and disappointing cash grabbing events with an 80 USD pack of ... reskinned weapons, without even speaking about the market where a single weapon or camo costs around 10 USD. But even with those ****** propositions, I bet people would be willing to fork money to buy that crap and support the game if only DBG would give just a tiny bit more of interest toward its customer base with periodic news, streams and roadmap presentations.
On topic fo F2P/P2W: How is getting your first 1000ish certs an "insane paywall grind"? You chose a class and within the first 10-15 levels you have it on 95% of its potential for one playstyle. Example Light Assault. Put some certs in Jetpack 160 total for rank 3, 310 for rank 4. Get Nanoweave armor 1/11/61/211 for ranks 1/2/3/4 to your liking. Get C4 200/700. So depending on how far you want to cert your jetpack and armor you'll need 861-1221 certs. Including level up rewards (but not alerts or directives), that's somewhere around rank 9-11. That's one session, maybe two. Other classes aren't much different. Considering the game is meant to be played long term and you never lose any progress (unlike in other games with their seasons or yearly releases) and you can play mostly efficiently during the whole "gearing up" phase, those first few hours are negligible. You could argue you need more to get maxes, vehicles and aircraft ready. Then again you can grind those out while playing infantry, and if you're playing with friends or in a team you can even use other peoples fully certed stuff. Or, if you play in a team, you can use your own stuff and focus on assisting your team. The "significant difference" you experience is not because someone paid. It's because they played for up to 7 years and know exactly what to do and how to do it most efficiently. Compared to other games I played, PS2 is maybe on the p2w level of WoW - nonexistent in a way that actually matters. On topic of customer involvement and anniversaries: I agree, more can be done. However, if DBG does a developer stream, they usually make raffles for free DBC. They gave away free stuff for the last 2 birthdays, for the NSO launch and for some events (5YearsPS2, 6YearsPS2 and NSOPS2019 codes still work I think). Nowadays the free stuff usually is built into event directives. Coincidentially, today is a stream at 2pm PT (I think thats 23:00 for most of the EU) - speaking of customer involvement, it was announced on Wrels twitter instead of the launcher everyone has or the official daybreak or planetside twitter. For whatever reason, daybreak hates announcing things on time in their own launcher, forums, news feeds or own twitter.
Yeah as said above the bundles are optional, if i was working i would buy the 70$ bundle. 70$ isnt much. It would be nice though to have an anniversary camo that can be purchased alone. As long as i have played this game as well as others i would expect something more than a free decal. The XP event only means players will continue to farm instead of the Meta, which is broken.
