Regarding the changes to our subscription plans

5 likes in 5 pages is a step forward (barely) but almost all of the previous concerns still exist and still aren't addressed.
There was a time when the folks at CCP (EvE Online developers) thought they could be dicks to their playerbase and they've been profusely apologizing for a couple of years now because people like me started to sink their boat resulting in large scale layoffs and a game's development being halted.

I pay my subscription because I get the 500SC and some other small benefits that I attach almost no value to with the exception of resources but over all the package is reasonable for $15 a month. I enjoy shopping the member sales and occasionally the member sales deplete my reserves and I add more SC.

With your proposed changes I am cancelling my subscription (Edit: Have Cancelled)....-$15 a month.....I may buy the 500SC per month....so only -$10 a month.....I'm never going to add extra SC for member sales because I can't get them......so you end up losing at least $10 per month in revenue from me. I know this change isn't specifically targeted at me but I know quite a few people who act like me and I struggle to understand why you would knowingly do something that gets you less money from us.

I can say only one good thing out of this. I'd go back to playing SWOR again while mainly on PS2. Since I stopped membership on it around lvl 40ish because I didn't feel I was getting the money worth.

Even if I get a dingy 2000sc item on PS2 I still feel the game play is more important than your items. Namely being I ran out of the good stuff to buy far as weapons and even though I lack alot of camo or such, really would like to see some of the vehicle customizations apart of this. Long as we have a *choice* or *selection* to chose what we do with the membership SC.

Looking forward to new content, I'm feeling empty with out it.

Luperza, on the topic of subscriptions, any ETA on PayPal subscriptions? It's still not too common to own a credit card in many European countries, plus PayPal is more convenient for a lot of people in general.

I had to miss out on the previous holiday offer as well because you cannot subscribe to PS2 without a credit card, while purchasing SC works just fine with PayPal.

(Note: PayPal does offer automatically recurring payments now, it is used for subscription services in many places.)

As for my personal opinion on the change, getting a free item per title per month seems like an upgrade over 500 SC per account over all games.

Understandable. I just wanted to provide you with the answer he had for that.

I literally just answered this in a post right above yours.

Quoting this from Smed on Reddit here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/...the_changes_to_our_subscription_plans/cej3dgb

"I agree with you sadly accountants around the world have decided (starting with the IRS) that the accounting for virtual items is done not even when we sell you the item (in most cases). If a person tops up $100 in their wallet.... and then promptly spend $50 of it... we can't even recognize that $50 in the month we sell the items. we have to spread it over the expected lifetime of the player (yes we still have the cash). That's actually how the accounting for these things works. And that extra $50 if it's never spent sits on our books.
For those of you that think this method of accounting seems backwards... it is. I agree with you. The irony here is more and more states are starting to charge sales tax on virtual items.
Imagine this scenario - we don't have to imagine btw.. we live it.
Same guy as above spends $100 to top up SC in Texas (one of the states that implemented this early).
He waits a year before he spends it because maybe he's overseas on duty or something. We have to remit the sales tax on that $100 but we are unable to recognize any of that revenue until it's spent.
I don't want to make this sound melodramatic. I just want people to recognize we aren't making these decisions inside of a bubble where we aren't aware that these decisions can have meaningful impact on players spending and their desire to play. I just want you all to better understand the "why" even if you disagree it.
Smed"

I'll add your concerns to our player feedback. I know Smed stated they were going to discuss bundles and what you'd be able to purchase with the 2000SC as a whole. We're going to get more details out to y'all in regards to that.

You answered the wrong question. His question was not same faction different character. They said with the 500SC they could buy the same item for all factions. Ie hellfire misles and equivalents for vs and nc.

Obviously they are not that cheap but that is what he was talking about. So you buy the lancer vs. Can your tr now buy the chain gun. Nc get Jackhammer. His question is what it does with faction specific items. It seems it would not be worth buying anything facto specific with it unless you only play one faction.

I absolutely love this woman. She can really lay down the terms in a firm, and fair manner. Not to mention she is very realistic about what is being said in the forums, and the feedback from random whiners in the game, no matter how many there are. THANK YOU MAGGIE FOR DOING A GREAT JOB!

That explains the whole issue with the dormant SC! Why couldn't you have just put that in for the explanation, that actually makes sense. But then, can't you change it so that you receive a code and that you can redeem it for the SC? Because wouldn't that negate the fact that the money is sitting there doing nothing, because the item has actually been redeemed and converted for currency? Just a thought.

...yay.

Thanks, for the response. Yeah I wasn't sure, makes sense now after reading your reply. Would that count for only existing characters or any future characters associated with your account for that faction?

Thanks,
Bruticus

Yeah, in regards to that, I'm still not certain where they are going. Most of those weapons are 500SC+, so you can only get one of those a month, not all three.

I hope he/she provides more specifics so that I can send it on up the chain.

That would be any current and future characters.

i still don't agree with it, but i appreciate the explanation..
i think you guys are just mad i bought a 6 months hero boost with my 500sc per month. most likely SoE would of preferred i bought 5 camos instead.. it all boils down to this. you want to limit what people can buy with the SC theyve saved and the only solution is canning it.

if this was really a problem you could of just limited how many times the 500 sc will roll over..

Would you have preferred that?

There needs to be more benefits for being a member some special camos or stuff for Planetside. I dont care about the soe lineup I want to play a FPS game

Wouldn't this whole issue be avoidable by just making the Premium reward be a token for a free item? Player gives you money then redeems in the virtual store for a token, you pay tax on the token redemption, player gets a non time limited in game item that can be swapped for any other item.

Call them super certs. Give one away every 50 levels then sell us more as a part of the premium microtransaction. Done. You're given us a token that we are redeeming immediately for a boost that gives us 1 extra super cert that we can then use whenever.

So if station cash causes all of these "wallet" problems, why not just sell items straight up? I mean i get the whole only selling 500 SC at a time and then charging 300 SC for something so that if i want to buy 2 of them then i have to buy 10 dollars worth of station cash to get the 6 dollars worth of items that i want. (Yet another shady aspect of this payment model btw.)

So you lose a few dollars in sales that you will probably get back anyway, and you no longer have wallet problems. If i want a gun i put my credit card number in buy the gun and im done. You have your money now, and im not holding onto any virtual commodities.

I hope that no one at SOE thinks that we are fooled and do not see all of the shady things that are done to try to milk money from us.

I have a full membership and i don't mind spending money on a game that i love to play such as PS2, but you guys certainly arent doing yourselves any favors with these shady deals. The best way to run a business is with honesty and integrity, which might sound cheesy, but when you deal honestly with people that builds loyalty and customer satisfaction.

This game is actually good, whereas most F2P games are bad. This game would do much better in the long term with a subscription model. Make it F2P to BR 20 and then you have to sub.

All of the shadiness is just making me want never to play a SOE game again.

Now since there is nothing i would rather play and i always use my SC to buy boosters, how about you make a 30 day resource booster that i can use my membership freebie on? That would make me happy! I could by 1.66 boosters per month with my 500 SC and now ill only be able to buy one, so i'm going to lose from this change.

I'm also not interested in playing any of the other SOE games, i have played EQ2 and i have no desire to play EQN as im not into WoW clones.

Please continue to discuss the PlanetSide 2 Premium Membership plan in this thread, so that we can monitor feedback.