Customer Service Announcement: Premium Membership

There is an old saying:

"If it is not broken, then do not attempt to repair it."

Can't say I'm impressed. The SC you received every month though wasn't much was nice, but in my opinion was the kicker. More load out slots and queue priority was ok, but rarely used. So again in my opinion it isn't want attracts people to sent SOE money every month. Forcing subscribers to buy a item they might not want and to have it NOT carry over seems... odd, at best. I was going to get a subscription, but after this change my mind was also changed.

I had already unsubscribed from my 1 year membership early because of their serious lack of an anti cheat department, now I know I won't re-subscribe.

AbandonSide 2

Or how stupid that ham-fisted solution is because having SC in the bank is what tempts me to try their *other* F2P games in the SOE stable for times when there is nothing in PS2 that I feel like purchasing.

Bottom line:

• It takes away player choice. Don't insult our intelligence by saying this is "enhancing value" or some other nonsense.
• The monthly membership fee just went up 33% in order to get the same as what I had before. Instead of being a good value at $15/mo and getting 500SC back along with some other benefits, now it's a poor value.
• SOE keeps thinking that it is a "premium" brand. It is not. You can't continue to charge premium prices like 700-1000 SC for a virtual gun or 2000 SC for some cosmetic item in a second tier game.

Dear Customer Service,

Thank you for your upgrade in value service. Please accept my non-renewing, this very month, as a token of my appreciation for your gesture.

Sincerely,

Year-long FORMER subscriber.

I've spent more than I'd like to admit on this game and I'll be unsubscribing when this is implemented.

• At BR100 I have no use for the XP boost that comes with membership, all it's good for is position on the leaderboards.
• I have every weapon that I want, so the item per month would have to be cosmetic.
• The best cosmetics are those coming out of player studio at the moment.

I will miss the resource boost, but that alone isn't worth $15 a month.

In addition to voting with your wallet against this change also "vote" by fighting for the Terran Republic.

Sony Online Entertainment is a Cooperation... what they are doing is called Capitalism. With this change long term paying members are being punished. Why because obviously new players have more things to buy therefore it makes sense to make membership more enticing for them. Who cares about High BR they have soo many certs they dont need that much SC.... This change is basically there to increase the SC revenue from veteran members....

All experienced veterans of this game, if you oppose this change, if you oppose the tyranny of the 'suits' that are apart of the New
Conglomerate (SOE and other cooperations).... Start fighting for the Terran Republic.

Power to the player ! and Strength through unity ! These are the mottos of the Terran Republic.....

Join the Terran Republic and Help Us Warpgate the NC in ALL Continents in ALL servers.

** But seriously, if enough members opposed this change ( mostly skilled and invested players) and if they decide to fight for one faction there will be a massive population/skill imbalance. Alot of members of organised outfits are all premium members. If TR warp gated all other factions this game on all continents it would show SOE how much people were against the changes....

SOE could ignore the current complaining in this thread, but they could not ignore a situation where one faction caps all the continents... because NC/VS would soon run out of resources and won't be able to spawn anything but infantry.

I actually prefer the idea of just getting items each month but you need to rethink the "better value" part, because this just isn't.

The way I currently use my premium SC grant is to horde it and wait for the items I want to go on sale so that I can get them cheaper...this is a terrible system. What it means is that I can't have what I want when I want, I am forced to wait weeks or months not enjoying myself because I don't have the item I want. I don't get sales satisfaction I get frustration from the random value of items. So in that sense, just getting an item I want is a vast improvement.

However when I use the current method of hoarding and waiting for sales (which I'm sure is not uncommon) I can purchase almost any item for less than the 500SC I get per month meaning that currently the SC grant is worth around 1 and a half items. Allowing us to choose just one item a month is a huge reduction in value, and the cheaper the item purchase is the wider the gap in value becomes.

With that in mind I see a few of ways to implement the system your proposing without reducing the value of the monthly grant.

1 - The simplest and most obvious answer. Add a 500 SC token as one of the selectable options. This would completely remove any complaint anyone could have about the new system. The only possible reason you could have for not allowing this option is if, as I suspect, the real reason for the change is to remove the ability to save your free item selection until later. If that isn't the motivation for this change and you truly do just want to offer better value I can't for the life of me think of a reason why this wouldn't be the answer to all the complaints.

2 - Instead of offering 1 item with a 2000SC value, offer 2 items per month. The first being anything up to 2000SC and the second being anything up to 499 SC (499 to disclude anything in the 500SC price bracket in order to limit it to small cosmetic or sale items). This would ensure the customer would get a similar or higher value than the current "one expensive item with some left over" value.

3 - Offer two items of different categories. For example 1 weapon and 1 cosmetic per month.

4 - Give a rebate of SC to purchases under 500 SC. So if for example the customer selected an item worth 100SC they would get the item plus 400SC. This would ensure the free item would have equal or greater value than the current 500SC

For all these ideas (with the possible exception of the first) I think one fundamental thing needs to change. The time restriction on use. As already mentioned in this thread, a lot of veteran players already have all the items they really want and the only real value the 500 SC grant has is so that it can be saved up in order to buy new items the moment they come out. Removing this ability for the grant to be saved for later drastically decreases their value to older customers. I would propose that instead of the item having to be selected each calendar month change it so that the item has to be selected before the customer cancels their subscription. Allowing long term subscribers to hold on to free tokens without giving the ability for people to subscribe for a month for an unlimited duration free pass to any item.

Your "buying" it with "SC"...if it says "up to 2k SC" it is going to be counted as an SC purchase.

Anything less would be even more of a joke.

So your proposal to stop SOE ruining the game is to ruin it ourselves? I shouldn't even need to explain what's wrong with your plan. It's like those....people who thought the best way to deal with the slightly inconvenient Youtube comment changes was to make the comments unusable by spamming it full of "protests". It's like chopping off your feet because you don't like Nike...who do you honestly think it inconveniences more?

yea I see the irony.... I dont think it would RUIN the game for ever... It would be just for one day or something.
BUT i think it would be pretty epic though

This isn't why I bought a membership, In the case before getting a membership I would have never done so. SUCKS SUCKS SUCKs

You are correct. I'll see what I can do next week about being able to provide more specifics. Now that we have announced this change it's our job to further demonstrate our intentions.

Our fiscal year ends in March. This was scheduled to be done before then. We want to give at least 30 days notification. Hence the timing. Make sense?

Excellent post. This level of detail is very helpful in explaining exactly what you are feeling. I really appreciate the time you took to write all this and I also appreciate the suggestions.

It should function similar to a SC unlock, I'd like to confirm with the team to make sure though.

I am glad you like his post Piestro, and please know this isn't at you, (frankly I feel for you for having to come to work today and be the guy to catch the wrath), but... I hope SOE seriously considers the vast majority of the these now 28 pages of response to this announcement as overwhelmingly against SOE's actions.

The 500 SC per month was the best feature of paying for a subscription and now they are removing that. I refuse their paltry replacement of only being allowed to select one item from a limited selection per month. So I will be cancelling my membership and most likely never play any Sony games until they reverse this colossal mistake.

Since this is SOE wide, I'm sure they have just as many pages on their other membership games too.

Should be a huge hint that people are not pleased, I definitely feel sorry for the Community Reps who have to deal with this.

Summary rant on change/effect and alternatives. For people other than staff please skip/skim down to views on changes and message me if you have anything to add. Thanks.
Warning: 1300word deconstruction of why this is a bad idea. Still shorter than PU notes.

There is no additional value. You know this. The key is the word ‘value’. The only benefits of the change are being able to get the gold version of weapons and being able to buy items without waiting for the sale. The detriments are you need to get something EVERY month or you lose the benefit, even though you still have paid for it and you only get 1 item. You could buy 5 100SC decals in a month that would take you 5 months to get under the new system. If you played multiple SOE games you used to be able to decide where you wanted to spend your SC, that is now lost.
The change to 2000SC eliminates some of the issues in reduced flexibility but even changing it to 1 10k SC item is still only 1 item. No bundles, no Player Studio, other exceptions may apply.



Background:
Played since Feb 2013 (currently BR 72)
Tossed up between membership and SC for a long time
Bought 6month membership December
Bought membership at this time due to Christmas sales + Christmas break.


Summary of membership benefits:
My experience, tried to keep it unbiased
· 25-50% increased resource gain
o Nice perk, although if you ran out of any resource without the boost you needed to switch your gameplay from ground/infantry/air anyway.
· 25-50% increased XP gain
o Main benefit along with SC. 50% XP makes every kill a cert-filled explosion of wonder.
· Increased passive cert point gain
o Assuming you logged in every day at the same time you would get a maximum increase of 36 certs a day. While a nice benefit, passive certs are largely a levelling factor for social gamers. I pulled in ~8500 certs in the double XP at Christmas over the 3 days. Max extra passive certs from my membership = 6,480 certs over 6 months.
· Priority login
o May be more important on American/European servers but peak time on Briggs hardly ever had login cues (once a month). I was happy waiting to move between continents as you could just go find a fight until you were ready to move across.
· Early access
o Everything extremely overpriced for having the item before other people. If that is your thing sure but it’s not for me.
· Additional Character Slots
o I only play Briggs. I have 2 alts for when I BR 100 my VS. I play with friends and have no desire to play other servers.
· Daily Members-Only Sale
o Worked well with the monthly station cash. Look through the sales each day and get 2-3 items I liked. (2 half price camos etc)
· 500 Station Cash each month à Change to 1 item per month with exclusions
o Loss in flexibility swapped for increase purchasing power, although only for 1 item. Better for new players, worse for vets who have a much smaller pool of items to choose from.
TLDR: This is a nerf to membership. StationCash was 1 of the 2 selling points for membership. 500SC could get you on average ~1.5 sale items (700sc item goes to 350sc) while new membership gets you 1 item.



View on Change and reasons:
I strongly oppose the new change for the following reasons.

1. I bought a membership factoring in the station cash value. AU$76 included 3000 sc. I factored $15-30 of the membership cost would cover this station cash. It was a decision between for $76 membership or waiting for a SC double topup and getting 20000SC for $85.
The decision was 3k SC would get me the cosmetics I wanted and membership would help me get 50% more certs for weapons.

2. I played 10 months without station cash. I do not want to get weapons with station cash (unless they are on absurd sales) I want to earn certs and earn them. I unlock them as I Auraxium my previous weapons.

3. Following above, I only want to purchase cosmetics, namely camo, as I cannot get these with certs. I do not want to be limited away in my ability to purchase player studio items. I do not mind saving up 2 months or waiting for a sale, the key is getting the one I like. How many helmets do you expect me to need?

4. This change eliminates any benefit I receive from the ‘Daily Members Sales’ feature which was a selling point for my membership purchase. I will not be purchasing more station cash as the money I allocated towards this game.

5. Movement from 500SC to 2000SC item is a reduction in purchasing power as sale values average 250SC for a camo or 350SC for a weapon. For me this means 1 camo a month instead of 2. At the time of writing sales are 250SC vehicle camo and 125SC heavy helm.

6. This will reduce the number of player studio items purchased which will decrease incentive for artists to make new items.


Suggested alternatives/changes:
I understand the decision to change the business model is that of SOE and not of the PS2 team. Logic dictates that this is an attempt to streamline the revenue streams between games to more easily locate where players are spending funds. This seems to be implemented now due to the new Everquest although could just as easily be a direct response to who has to pay artist for player studio.

1. Continue 500SC/ month for current memberships. All new/renewed memberships will shift over to the new system. Option to convert to the new membership scheme at any time.

2. Allocate SC so it is received at the start of your membership as part of the membership bundle. Offer ability to pay out remaining SC or convert to new system. All new memberships follow new system

3. Remove SC or items from membership completely. An example would be to make new memberships 6month memberships cost AU$46 rather than AU$76

4. Reintroduce Auraxium as a changed game specific currency. SC can be converted 1-> 1 to Auraxium but not backwards by the purchase of Auraxium through the depot. This would ensure people did not end up with money split between currencies.

5. Add 24 to 50 1999SC bundles available for members to be claimed as their ‘1 item’. Theme them so they similar (ie camos that will work well on indar) so that they will take the same item slot, can only be used 1 at a time while still feeling like good value


Notable details:
· While I respect your

I also highlight fair trading regulations (at least in Australia) which do not allow deceptive advertising practices. While 1 month notice may seem ample time to you the Planetside 2 website subscription section still advertises the 500SC with no notice of this change. This should be changed asap to avoid further confusion. See: https://www.planetside2.com/membership

I believe this change would have been discussed somewhere in SOE long before this announcement probably back as far as the membership sales drive at Christmas. I personally feel deceived.
· Lastly, this is a F2P game. We all know that means there are going to be trade offs to make it profitable but it is an MMO F2P. Non-paying members are content for paying members. SC from memberships is not a freebee. It has been a long standing part of memberships and by removing it you are alienating members. Most people won't quit the game, I know I won't, but you will lose a lot of members purely because there is no value their anymore.

The presentation of 'up to 2000 SC' per month is a joke as well. There is only three entire items (gold guns) that are 2000 SC. After that, the same three guns in a silver camo is 1400 SC. Then things drop down to 1000 SC for the high end weapons and such. For everything that is purely cosmetic there is only a few 1000 SC camos and then things drop down to 250 SC.

So basically, provided you do not have these gold guns already, you get the most out of this so called additional value only three times and then your options take a drastic nose dive. Very quickly you will be only unlocking items for 250 SC when you used to have 500 SC to spend.

And yes, we realize SC can be used for other Sony games, but guess what. For those of us who don't play those games, why should our subscription to PS2 be affected because some other game has 2000 SC items for sale? Please explain to me that?

This move is also a titanic bullet to the head of the player studio. No longer will subscribers bother looking to see what other players have crafted. This also will kill the incentive to browse at all through any cosmetic only things like camo, because there is no point. The subscriber will only be allowed to buy one item per month, so there is no need to look more than once per month. Thus, less viewing traffic and less actual purchasing.

I can not believe you guys do not realize you are shooting yourself in the foot with this change.