Remove the referral system

There are no plans to release these items outside the recruit a friend program at this time. I apologize as I thought someone had communicated that. That does not mean it could never happen, it just means it's not currently being discussed.

And a 25 page thread on the issue is probably no cause to bring it up either, I don't think anyone cares

Good choice

Throw away all the money us paying customers would be willing to pay to get them. I guess making money isn't your number one concern.

I suggest you start discussing it because it is upsetting quite a lot of the people keeping you in business

Here is your answer:

Like talking to a wall. "Guh, some marketing guy said Hey, all that neat new stuff you've been teasing people with, let's tick 'em all off by locking it up behind a wall of dummy accounts"

As I said, what's to prevent it from happening again in six months? The problem is right now is 6 months too late to introduce this. There is no new base to recruit from

No amount of cool rewards for recruiting are going to spawn more RL friends for me to recruit.

Another option: Release even cooler stuff in the depot so that we don't feel like we're missing out on black camo's and nifty helmets. I have no doubt that there will be three or four different patterns of MAX lumifiber given enough time. Just let us know that something is coming, so we don't have this horrible carrot dangling in front of us at the end of the stick.

...Terrible.

But, you've convinced me. I can find better ways to spend money then in your depot. Well done.

Your not thinking about this in the right way. Lets say that something that we would normally pay 500 SC for they want to give as a recruit-a-friend reward for 25 friends recruited. OK. If just 1 person qualifies 25 friends and they have to spend $10 or more to qualify. That's 25x10 for 1 item. They are basically putting that item out there for $250 bucks. They would need 50 individual players to buy the same thing vs 1 person recruiting 25 people for them. Those people are also potential subscribers and could spend even more money. It's way more beneficial for SOE to put some unique items out like this. It reaps in tons of development cash for them without looking like they just want a cash grab.

Do I like the program? Not really. All my friends either play the game or don't like it. It's a cosmetic item. SOE made a smart business move. You don't need it to play the game. Get over it.

I know exactly that, I know exactly what they want.

However just how many people are going to be able to recruit 25 people? Not only get 25 people to play the game but then convince them to pay $10 each towards the game. I know I can't. The only friend I have who has a PC and also likes fps games that I could convince to play the game already tried a few months back and didn't like it for various reasons. That is a problem highlighted by many people already let alone the other problems

The likely hood for most people is small as demonstrated in the various threads about the issue here on this forum.

Also it is not the customers job to advertise for the business. SOE are slacking on doing any real push to get this game the numbers themselves and have now resorted to trying to get the players to do it for them.

They need to take some lessons from EA, they seem able to sell cow manure to people year in year out so?

Why do companies make it so hard to give them money

The central frustration expressed by all the people that I have talked to is the exact same one that Serrow expressed in his post that you quoted, but did not actually address:

Has it not come up repeatedly in your meetings that a great deal of the unrest over this issue could easily be settled by giving people credit for friends already recruited? This system awards new players much, much more strongly than it rewards the older ones who have been engaging in a ton of active, high quality advertising for the game already. Those of us who have brought a lot of extra revenue to the game on-top of that which we gave to SOE ourselves. The game wouldn't be where it is today without the contributions of the community it already has.

Negative. Camos wouldn't be nearly as common as they are if they had no effect on gameplay. Depending on your graphics settings, they can have a rather profound impact on gameplay. (I personally have to screw with my graphics settings for each day/night/continent combination just to keep them from being too effective.)

The most pronounced example of this is at night, where they work the best. The game has one, dark camo scheme right now (which is not even on live yet) and it looks like carp. (No pun intended, really.) Most players don't run around in the silly animal skin camos for a reason.

Making that one camo available on the market as well would alleviate the next largest set of complaints about the system. (Or if not the market, add it to the future subscriber loyalty program I've heard alluded to being on the drawing board.)

It might be fun, and very telling, to run some queries against the database a month from now. See how many clusters of accounts named Bob1, Bob2,-Bob25 there are with exactly 1000 SC purchased and spent on the same credit card, then never logged into again. That's the "new" playerbase they will end up with. Maybe it was all just to artificially inflate the account numbers at the cost of Depot sales.

anyone threatening to quit because of recruitment bonus in a F2P game is a self-entitled, narrow-minded _______

Are there plans to release similar items to the ones in the recruit program (i.e. alternate max lumifibers and black color based camos)? It might ease a lot of angst players have if we know that there are similar items going to be made available.

I don't think I saw anyone threaten to quit, but at 25 pages I may have missed some that did. I saw a lot of people threatening to not make any SC purchases and cancel subscriptions though. That could potentially impact SOE in a much more negative way than the positives of the recruitment program.

While it's a good practice for business to expand their customer base it's an extremely bad practice to alienate it's existing base. This game gets it's players mostly by word of mouth. What do you think would happen if word of mouth is 'SOE doesn't care about it's existing customers'? It's human nature to remember the bad things more than they remember the good things.

i guess the easiest way to make this fair, would be to set the recruitment awards, to SC and release the items in the depot.

Although i have to admit im pretty indifferent about the whole thing. Some of the items would be nice to have but they're not game breaking.

I imagine this is a case of something that has been done with the best intentions, backfiring.

I do however think its a bit unfair that they've pretty much excluded veteran players from this offer. I my self have recruited 4 friends to the game all of which have spent money. Will i get anything to show for it?.... No. Do i know any one else who can run / would want to run the game?... No.

But i have had a lot of fun times with said friends on the game, which i wouldn't take back.

25 pages of angry customers telling you that you've made a mistake doesn't suggest that maybe you might want to maybe start discussing it?!

You know, before people decide to not bother to give you any money?

Or before people actually start telling their friends not to play PS2 as revenge for this little fiasco. I do actually know a couple of people who've done this.

But do you know how they did it?

Did they mention the awful framerates? Did they mention the lack of metagame? No, their friends understood that games improve and there are teething problems with a long-term game like this. So what did put them off?

They told them about the recruitment system exclusives.

Their friends decided they didn't want to deal with a developer who pulled that kind of crap, and played other games instead.

So SOE, not only are you angering your paying customers, but you're actually actively hurting the image of your game to people who have never even played it.

Bravo SOE. You've turned what could have been a nice feature with a smooth implementation into a public relations fiasco that is actually costing you money. You could have offered Boosts, SC, stuff from the depot, no-one had a problem with the recruitment decals either, they were a good idea.

But no, you have to make it a money-grabbing disaster that seems to be deliberately designed to breed bad blood within the community and actively discourage people from giving you money.

******* stunning.

For the love of god SOE just give the dam PAYING public what they want. It has no effect on game balance so why is it such an issue for you peeps to sell this gear to the public. The people who PAY for this game mite i add.

Well, at least we've proven one thing - we cannot take anything SOE officials say in this thread seriously, in any way, to any extent, at all.

So, you say this now, on page 25, even though you posted this on page 10;

Sorry, but I cannot believe that you're sorry. If you deem that the veteran players of this game don't deserve these items, then so be it - but we absolutely expect and deserve to receive answers that are actually true. The reason we are upset is because these items were promised to us a long time ago, then added into this exclusive program, and then after all of that, your answers remained cryptic or nonexistent. If the items are definitely exclusive, fine; if you're going to let us give you our money for them, great; but we need an actual answer that is actually true, which is - quite clearly - not what you're currently giving us.

I'm not going to act like I'm quitting the game over this, because I'd be lying; that being said, I'm extremely wary of spending any more money on it, and I'm certainly not recommending it to anyone without ensuring that they are wholly aware of all of the choices SOE has made in regards to it - especially this one.

I've been sitting on a few SC cards since the double-SC-weekend that wasn't. Kept checking the PTS to see when the new stuff was being released but they disappeared. Then this ****-flavored carrot gets wiped on us.

Look, this whole rewards thing, from someone who has payed +100$ for this game-- makes no sense. Hear me out. I love Planetside. Whenever you release a new helmet, I promptly whip out my card, give you money, and enjoy my fancy new hat. This created a lovely little system between me, the paying customer, and you, the oh so loving company that likes to listen to the feedback of myself and others. When I first saw the open Foreman helmet, I immediately knew you were going to release a closed version. So, being an obedient little drone, set aside 10$ worth of SC for the day you lovely gentleman would release it. Because I love my hats.

So what was I rewarded with? A system where I could not spend the 10$ I had set aside for you. Now, I live in smalltown Canada. I have ONE friend who has a PC. And he can't run Planetside on it. All my other friends are either too busy working a farm or some other activity that prevents them from playing video games. What does this mean?

I know NOBODY (In real life) who can play this game. N-O-B-O-D-Y. This basically leaves me, the paying customer, in a situation where I cannot give you my money in return for pixels. And after reading 25 pages of people like me complaining, I was surprised to see RadarX slapping what is essentially "no were rite u r wrong keep ur moneys" all over the place, without even RESPONDING to the feedback in replies to Luperza's post. I don't understand the motive behind this "rewards program".

Please, explain to me, why this was supposed to be a good idea. I will never have 25 friends ready to pay 10$ for your game. Hell, if the flu hit my town again, we'd probably be down to about 20 people still alive, myself not included. The morons here need to get vaccinated. Anyway, I want to give you my money, but I feel like I'd get more value out of another game, or even some real life items right now.

That is horrible news radarx. There are also no plans for my bank account to release any more funds to SOE, until equally cool vanity is available for my tank (honestly, good luck with that...). Also, you guys might want to consider making sub worth it for high BR players, because if you guys deliver the resource revamp you are promising, there will be no reason at all to re-sub.