Customer Service Announcement: Premium Membership

I wouldn't mind this if there was a 2000SC item other than a Gold commissioner. There need to be things like 2000SC for I month XP boosts or similar. This could be done by the Planetside team (that is if they can are allowed to set their own prices for products without SOE approval).

The main reasons why I subscribe to the game is that without a subscription, earning resources is a serious pain. If you’re a vehicle user, or want to keep your infantry consumables up to date (along with using MAX’s), not having a sub seriously impacts this.
And secondly, I want to support the game. I feel that I pull easily more than $15~ worth of entertainment from this monthly when I am actively playing, and I think it’s a small amount towards keeping the game prosper.

However in saying that, I know of many people who pull even more enjoyment, and don’t shell out a single cent. One of Brigg’s most active players (like within the top 5) has never paid anything – and is a notorious free-loader in certain Australian communities. While I think people like this who only ever take and never give back are borderline scum – the 500 SC was a further incentive for me to subscribe. It was a token recognition for my hard earned money.

Taking it away offends me – it actually does. It in the grand scheme of things sure, it’s only five bucks, but it’s the whole thought behind it. Clearly it’s being removed as SOE is wanting players to actually purchase SC. By giving us 500 per month that accumulates if not spent, we could effectively just save it up and buy it not nearly as often as they would like. By taking it away however, you’re slapping our faces.

Being able to choose a single up to 2000 SC value item is a joke. What if the item I want is a 250 SC skin? Where’s my value there? I’ll be buying it and thinking – see you later potential other 1750 SC.

If you’re going to go with this crazy new limitation, at least let us spend the entire 2000SC – but make it so it has to be spent within the month. You might find you get MORE sales as people might use it a few times, then buy an extra 10-20 dollars worth of SC to make-up the remainder. I know I used to do this often for League of Legends skins.

As it stands, if this single item goes in, I’ll be cancelling my account. I can put up with the inconvenience of slower resource gain, but I won’t stand for feeling insulted. If you have to put in limitations around this ‘incentive’, in a veiled method of forcing us to buy more, I’ll show my gratitude by joining freebie club.

There’s many free to play games out there these days – and the good ones not only created content that you WANT to buy, but give real, tangible rewards to the players who voluntarily do subscribe. I can tell you now, if everyone suddenly yanked their subscriptions, you would not be sitting so pretty.

A few others have suggested longer Experience Boosts and more 2000SC items, so we have it on our player feedback list already!

I have been trying my best to follow the progress of this thread, mainly in the hopes that something actually sinks in with SOE, and they realize the extent to which they are hurting their player-base. Sadly not.

The fact that this decision appears to be going ahead, regardless of feedback, is just plain arrogant. Its basically a case of, eat what we are shoveling, and like it. You are alienating people that have tried to support you and your game.

Why is there not even a compromise, whereby people with existing memberships will be honored to the terms agreed to when they signed up?
Do you expect people to have any faith in the company that seems to disregard any agreement made in good faith and go back on their word?
In everyday business practice, you have a breach of a contract. Sadly, back when the 'new' EULA agreement came up, this sort of thing was almost expected and is nothing short of scumbag level tactics.

Yes, my post is mainly a criticism with one suggestion of a fair compromise.
Yes, I enjoy this game and have supported the company, but will no longer after this.

I sympathize with any moderators/staff that have to deal with the repercussions of their company's choices, because as it stands:
"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!"

and

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

Both seem to untrue and leave more than a bad taste.
I wanted to have hope when staff started replying to this thread, but since it appears that come Feb 3rd, this is going live no matter what we say, I am very disappointed in this.


You have a great game, but not a great way of treating loyalty.

...back to lurking before I ramble more.

I don't get the need to restrict when you can claim your free item. In the new system, if you don't pick your reward this month, you lose out. That achieves nothing useful. Wouldn't it be fair to just let people keep their free item tickets until they want to use them. We'd still get one free item every month, on average.

We are gathering feedback from players and sending it up the chain. We'll have more details on the changes next week as Piestro has stated a few times within this thread.

Quite a few people have expressed this concern, we've added it to our player feedback report.

Entirely echoes my opinion on this matter. I signed up for one thing with a 6 month sub, now I'm being forced into another. I've spent a large amount of money on this game (hundreds of dollars) and it's the last SOE will ever get out of me going forward for any title if they don't honor what I signed up for.

I don't mind paying. I like supporting products I like. However screwing me in return with the ol' bait and switch fosters zero loyalty.

Soe i think you need to start considering this from our view and why were upset. I understand this is a bonus but look at this scenario below because you have seriously screwed some key blocks of your support here and betrayed our trust with this move.


I am an alpha squad supporter of this game. I am a Battle rank 91. I have purchased virtually everything i need to the point i waste certs on goofy items like snowball guns because i have so many to spare. I purchased this membership with the promise at the time of the purchase i would get 500 cash per month for the year as a continual member. I cannot opt out of this agreement on my end now because this purchase is already over. You opted in the middle of my membership to change a core promise of 500 a month sc that you promised to us when we made this purchase.

I have 0 say here on my end 0 rights from the way your making it look toward us. All you are presenting us is solutions from your end here that your gonna give us a fair treatment. What exactly is a fair treatment for my scenario? I have had my terms changed almost 0 reason to want to keep the membership i purchased at this point because now at least 1 extremely h uge reason for me to want to keep it is being taken away. It was something where i have no real say to stop it outside of not resigning up but i am stuck with a product i did not want for 11 months since i only renewed it in December. What exactly are you doing for me here. What compromise can you give me to make me as the consumer happy? Right now i see 0 appealing things being offered i see 0 reason for me to want to be a supporter of your company anymore.


PS I took into account your view of the 500 sc reoccurring being a bonus for continued spport but look at it from my view here. I do not have an opportunity now for 11 months to cancel. That means you have just esentially screwed me from my view by changing this with out giving me any chance to agree or disagree to it. How do you think that makes me feel as a customer? I will tell you like total crap. It made me feel like i was betrayed by trusting your company with my 120$. You can say i signed up for a membership and thats true but i also signed up for that sc not this change. The worst part is now im basically sitting here wondering will you do right by me and all i see is a random promise from representatives who cant even make a change and can only sit here hoping you change your mind or offer a fix. Even if a fix comes now what real reason should i trust you down the road again not to put me in the same situation in future games?

We'd love to know what would appeal to you. What offerings do you want for Premium Membership and recurring membership?

Hi Margaret/Luperza

Thank you for taking the time to respond here and the active feedback.

Not to reply on matt98's behalf or anything, but a whole lot of us simply want what we paid for.
Its not broken and doesnt need fixin (on our end at any rate).
I understand this may not be the case internally at SOE, but that is why I suggested to make it applicable for people who sign up from the 3rd onwards, and to retain the current deal for people who sign up before then.

This will also allow you to gauge peoples opinions in way of spending. My guess is that memberships will increase before the 3rd with people who want what is the better deal (IMO), and slow post new system.
This wins in two ways, you get more revenue, and you still get to have the new system.
From existing members views, we still get what we paid for.

Just a thought, not perfect.

Regards,
VX

I wanted to add edit tese ideas into my above post as a possible fix to the points i made but passed the 30 min timer while editing sorry!

1 For current members who membership overlaps this change should be given the option to get the 500 sc or offer to refund us the remaining time on our memberships. If your truly concerned bout the 500 sc not being appropriate to others don't be! if chose to keep it its our will we are happy and you are happy because future customers would no longer get that deal but we get to keep what we wanted. But even doing so you have an issue of trust with these customers but at least this resolves some of the hard feelings and would fix some of our issues!

2 The br 80+ have little reason like i stated to buy much anymore as certs are pretty much able to cover our equipment at this point because we don't really have much we need anymore. Cosmetics are great but there are 0 things worth 2000 that you can offer our battle rank. For us the the 500 sc was a better deal so you need to add packages of camos or something else ie instead of 2000 value item let them pick 2 or 3 items mall. This would make it much fairer.

3 For level 100+ people who are members you upgrade them to a custom version of the membership with additional benifits

a... 2x certs per xp gain
b... new br 100+ camos and stuff that is exclusivly available to them in the store ( since we could purchase a item or 2 this would be a huge incentive to keep them considering memberships)
c... A custom tittle for being a supporter even after reaching max title on there level 100 char.
d... Special battle grounds for them to compete against other level 100s It would set random teams not based on faction or server allowing fun random matches to test there skills.( Not sure if this should be a member only thing or a general 100 thing though since it could be a new element all together on its own to keep interest in game)

If they wanted to, they could say "hey EVERYONE who subscribes gets EVERYTHING unlocked!" All the helmets, camos, all the guns. Everything. And not be out any money. Digital items/services aren't actual products sitting on a shelve somewhere.

Virtual goods man... They are worth what they tell us. That is what bothers me about the whole system.

Ya then they would need to make it pay 2 play because they need to support there staff. Im sure luperza would like to eat tonight But back to topic at hand

They don't make any money off subscriptions?

How can we trust we wont be lied to again about "additional value", or about anything game related really ? To me this is a huge deal, did not take this attempt lightly ..

We already had it mags, our SC, to do with it what we want and when we want, its so simple and easy, why change it?

I have cancelled my membership now is disgust that's how i felt about this insulting offer. Its a terrible offer and you can see by this thread, WE do not want this to happen and if SOE do go down this route after all the comments on this thread then quite frankly it would be very clear to what SOE thinks of its members. The sad thing is, i really enjoy this game but i will leave it because without membership, for me its to much of a grind ( which you make it so people like me pay for membership )

To offer more 2000sc items ( as you have mentioned ) is still insulting. All you will do is invent something else to 2000sc and say, oh you can have this now. I don't want boosts, i don't want invented items value and i don't want free stickers for my bedroom wall, i see no reason to change it, well not for the benefit of the players.

What you could do for recurring memberships is offer certs as an option of either certs or a boost etc ( give the player a choise of what they would like ). Certs are free for SOE, now im happy to be given certs i can use those, but i don't want 20 camos,or fins on my mossy, i want to have something i can use to my advantage in the game, and that's CERTS. We all need them and we all use them an it costs SOE nothing, which is what SOE are try do here, given us something for nothing, but lets still make it clear, i still would not want anything like this to replace my SC.

Another thought if I may.

I have seen quite a few people suggest that if perhaps items were added to the Depot that were actually worth having then this change may lose some of it's sting. In principle I'm not actually against this idea though the immediate issue I see with this is that there would have to be at least one new item in the Depot for each faction every single month.

Now this is going to sound nasty and for that I apologize yet I'm going to call it as I see it. Whoever the folks responsible for Depot items are, they are pretty damned lazy. The repaints of all weapons point to this as opposed to actual unique models/designs for each. If you are going to charge a buck for them, sure copy pasta all the way. Five bucks and up each though? I'd expect some effort.

So tying in with that. These new items would need to be unique, fresh, different. Three things I just can't see happening. Oh sure they'll be promised until CR's are blue in the face. The trust however, where will that come from? Everything except Amerish on the roadmap has gone from half dated, to unscheduled. This is a major concern.

All this feedback, all the passing up the chain. That's great, hell the suits may even be decent enough human beings to want to meet us half way and allow something like new, fresh, worthwhile Depot items to happen. Again though, everything is unscheduled. I may or may not be in the minority here but I sure as hell won't resubscribe again on a 'promise' from SOE, or even PS2 Devs. You can only be kicked so many times before you learn to beware the boot.

In short: My concerns are that even if things will happen in the favour of SOE players across the board, what real guarantees will we have, especially here in PS2 that anything promised won't also get thrown into the Soon™ graveyard of the roadmap?

The problem, Luperza, is that we don't believe you guys. No offense but, SOE has basically non-existent credibility because so many updates, patches, and new content are promised then shelved. SOE is like a cheating spouse, they keep claiming they'll change but, it never happens.

When promises start being fulfilled maybe you'll gain some ground with players.

Hmm, well, I'm not entirely sure how I want to respond to this change. I had stopped subscribing after the games first 9 months(August was my last Premium month) after release simply because I burned out on the current game play model. I started playing more casually. I was going to re-subscribe when Hossin, Battle Islands, and the Resource re-do were in.
Now, I'm not so sure a Premium subscription would be all that beneficial with the proposed changes for a Veteran player. Not with the amount of Restrictions on what you can get that I'm seeing. I free item a month to me doesn't seem so bad, it's the limitations on what you can get for your subscription that kinda put a damper on the whole thing. I'm just not seeing the value.

Yearly Premium that I would buy,
+ 800 or 1000 SC
+ Something visual ingame (pls no gold -.-)
+ Rethink the once your in you cant get out premium gangster deal (premium members have a free choice to cancel membership with no downside and no banning shenanigans)
- You payed for 8640 hours of bonus but you play for only 2 hours on weekends, you take use of only 288 hours, even if you play 3-4 hours every day you would still take use of only 1440 hours, In total.

I agree with whoever said before that you are better off buying SC, especially when there are discounts or bonuses (Here is the money and there is my stuff, simple, done). In my opinion Premium members are being put on a leash which is overall worse than being non premium and having a free choice and an ability to get what ever you want, when ever you want.

Fact,
Ive spent 70€ this xmas on EU and got a total of 11,795SC (42% bonus and 500 bonus first time)
2013-12-21 PaysafeCard - SevenCash 6 250
2013-12-19 PaysafeCard - SevenCash 500
2013-12-19 PaysafeCard - SevenCash 500
2013-11-29 PaysafeCard - SevenCash 500
2013-11-29 PaysafeCard - SevenCash 500
2013-12-21 PromoUpload - Dynamic Topup 2 625
2013-12-19 PromoUpload - Dynamic Topup 210
2013-12-19 PromoUpload - Dynamic Topup 210
2013-11-29 PromoUpload - SevenCash Promo 500
2013-12-19 Supersonicads - Dynamic Topup 14

Combined with those discounts where you had a 1000SC behemoth sock head helmet off 50% and some other things,..