Customer Service Announcement: Premium Membership

Dear Planetside 2 Premium Members,

We regularly evaluate our offerings at SOE to ensure we are consistently delivering great games and products, while also offering exceptional value to our players. Given that we just started a new year it seemed like the perfect time to add more value!

The week of February 3rd, 2014 we will be making a very important change to the Premium Membership level in PlanetSide 2. The current benefit of receiving 500 Station Cash (SC) monthly will be replaced with a new program that allows you to select one single item valued up to 2000 SC each month. Nearly all items within the games’ Marketplace will be available for this selection. Players Studio, bundles and additional exclusions may apply. This new benefit must be claimed each month that you are a member as it will not carry over to subsequent months.

We appreciate our customers, especially our valued members, and therefore are excited to bring you this additional value.

Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you in game soon.

Best,

Sony Online Entertainment

------
* Please keep all discussion regarding this change to this thread, so we can easily monitor all feedback. Thank you in advance!

Ohhhh ouch.. Sounds like that might hurt players studio artists.

Well, I just bought my first membership, partially because of the 500 SC. I don't know what to think.

I'd be more in favor of increasing monthly SC allowance. When I was a member, I often saved my SC so I could get that cool new thing coming out, and the one-per-month deal wouldn't allow that.

This sounds very good, but I must agree to Deathflail's post.
This "buy one a month" offer should not be applied to player studio items. For all other items it sounds very nice.

I'd like to see how this might affect the All access pass. Guessing any changes to individual memberships would also change with that subscription plan.

So wait a min as a year member who already purchased there gonna change the product i bought now? I dunno if i like this considering part of the selling point was having sc for things i wanted when they come out. I would not have bought the membership if it was this way so im a bit annoyed by this change.

Awesome!

Thank you!

Out of curiosity, will this purchase-1-item-per-month thing still work if you cancel, say, a 1 year subscription and then cancel it one month in? (The last model did not work like this - you would only get the 500 SC so long as you hadn't cancelled the subscription yet.)

This sucks! There is a list of reasons this is really bad.
1. I personally use my 500 sc to buy the daily members items for sale and, without that 500 sc i would have to spend a minimum of 5$ to get the sc that I need to have access to those items.
2. People who have purchased plans that extended past feb 3. are having thier purchased item changed without thier consent.
3. It is clearly a money grab to force members to have to buy sc but, this is sc that they already should have got on a monthly base
4. you didnt do any triple or double sc sales like last year and now players have extreamly limited ways of getting sc.

Sony Online Entertainment please stop cheating player on this game.

Sounds like you are giving with one hand and taking with another to me. I will be canceling my subscription due to the anniversary bundle farce and the terrible customer service soe provided around this issue, i feel this only strengthens my resolve. My 500 sc was often used to buy little things here and there as i have pretty much everything else when it comes to equipment. With the current direction, lack of new content and frequent failures i do ponder just how you will retain membership and marketplace income.

In the current decline in revenues i think hossin and the battle islands are like to be the only new maps we ever see before this cash cow is put out to pasture. The only glimmer of hope is the PS4 but even here you need to take that chunk of income and get the momentum back otherwise you end up back in the same position once those players reach a certain point (likely 6-9months with console kiddies) Avid players want to support the game but they don't want to waste their money.

I really like the kinda over all buff of membership. I'll have to see this new system, but I don't like the sound of it. Why not just by the SC...

I support this change. think also, this includes all the special premium access stuff, or even boosters as well. If you consistently spend your 500SC per month, then this just gives me the opportunity to get my bigger purchase stuff for free instead. I would hope it works out of that we can include the player studio stuff in, because some of that is really great content.

Same here . Especially since most new things are players studio offerings.

This also makes the daily deal as well as the members only deal invalid unless I purchase more SC. I've got all the guns I want unless they start releasing more content and I'm not gonna continue my membership so I can purchase some small cosmetic item of which eventually half are gonna be player generated.

This might be being advertised as an upgrade when in reality it's eliminating half of your future buying options. In which case it'll be a serious middle finger to those who continually supported their game.

Time will tell I guess but I'll be watching how this progresses without a doubt...

I did just buy my subscription and am disappointing to hear this new method of purchase, i liked the idea of getting 500 station cash per month so that i could save up for some custom items not available with certs, this seems to me more of a way to limit the free items given to the amount of months you joined. Now I know that some things change but the previous form of giving station cash was to me a great part in why I bought the membership in the first place. I hope that this change to the system will not last, i will accept it (and of course ill keep my membership cuz i spent $120 on the thing I just hope that this will be changed back or revised to make the deal a bit more similar to the old method of 500 SC per month. Thanks SOE for caring about your members and consumers! Hope this will end in the best of ways for all of us.

The only major concern is the Player Studio restriction. As a player with significant money invested already and the ability to generate certs quickly there is really little I want or need that isn't "new" content and 90% of that is coming from Player Studio right now.

can we have 4000 SC a month? As you can tell by now I am being ironic and have only good things to say about your product.
Thank you for the increase.

<dictated but not read>

P.s. Hackers go to hell!

My thinking is that this could have something to do with Everquest Landmark. I have a feeling they don't want any "free" station cash going from other subs into their f2p game. Just a thought.

Well they already guaranteed a very short life span of this game given how they dumped all the strategy and depth of PS1 (pre BFR) in favor of an identical drop into an instant battle, get a massive KDR while needing no teamwork at all, and logging out an hour later. on the PS4, it will be worse, as yes, consoles FPS players have zero loyalty, and will jump to the next newest FPS.

This change does even more damage to what little loyalty SOE can get out of it's players. SOE is no longer catering to the smaller, but long term fanbase of PS1 (the only reason PS2 hit off so well) and instead are favoring the players that don't care about a 1 year subscription because they never play a FPS for more than 6 months. This system might work for BF4 and CoD which releases a new game every single year, but it will not work for PS2. By not giving players a REASON to become invested and WANT to spend money, they have to do sleight of hand tricks to trick people into giving them money.

Wait, "up to 2000sc"?????????????????????????????????

Great. Here comes to 2000sc items