Remove the referral system

http://cdn.reachcastshow.com/files/podcast/ReachCast_Episode_43.mp3

T-Rays response to Concerns about referral system. Starts at around 11 minutes.

I was not pleased.

knox: My problem is all my friends made accounts
t-ray: "Make more friends"
knox: "I already got ten of em going"
t-ray: "You don't have enough friends apparently"
knox: "no i dont...."

Then he brought up a potential item trading system... /groan

To be fair, he asked people not to take his response out of context and that he understand what people's complaints... but he didn't really convince me that he was understanding.

I have a better idea T-Ray, make a stable game that makes me want to refer friends, because right now the game crashes insanely and most of my friends are not as computer literate as I am and would never put up with such B.S.

You know how many crashes my friends and I put up with Dota 2? ZERO.

You know how many game breaking bugs we've put up with from Dota 2? ZERO

you can't really compare dota 2 and planetside though from a graphics and bug aspect...

So, you're comparing a game that's not graphically demanding on an old proven engine doing something that's been done before to one that had to make a new engine that's doing something entirely unique on a game with higher graphical fidelity? Right.

^^ this...

Dota 2 will probably run on my toaster...

Wow. All respect lost.

"Make more friends."

Yeah, sure. Let me just go become a famous youtuber overnight and print out little stickers and fliers and put them on people's cars at the shopping center.

The amount of arrogance seething from the Dev team over something like this is totally unreal.

Alright honestly, I wish I had put a stronger emphasis on the fact that i understand T-Ray can't just go against company policy. Hes an Art guy and hes not going to go against the referral system. That said... what i quoted did irk me when i heard it.

What the hell T-Ray!? Like I said, I have NOBODY that I can recruit into this game. This is really insulting. I have friends, but because I live in the redneck smalltown part of Canada, absolutely NONE of them have gaming PCs that can run Planetside 2. Does this make me worth less to SOE as a customer, even though I've spent hundreds of dollars on their game?

Before the referral system i would recommend this game to anyone who played shooters on pc. One reason why i think this is stupid, is they are taking what WAS genuine enthusiasm in the game that spread through word of mouth and turned it into a sales pitch.

Think about this, you never heard of the game, and your friend starts talking about this awesome large scale shooter with a persistent world, and its FREE. You might just check it out. Now copy and paste said scenario again, except this time he tries to get you to join in a special way to benefit him. Sure you get a small bonus too, but suddenly you dont trust this guy. He isnt referring an awesome game, suddenly he is trying to get a favor out of you...as if something is wrong with the game that they have to resort to a sales pitch.

I dont know, if it were me on the receiving end I would be skeptical, and probably would just shrug it off. not to mention i would feel uncomfortable, feeling as if i was being pressured to do this favor for him. So there is the two sides of the coin: have my friend tell me about this cool game and I want to go check it out, or be annoyed that he was trying to get me to reward him with in game items. It's your choice SOE how YOU want the game to be viewed by these potential players.

Well personally im not getting membership anymore , i was holding it for this update to see if they really go whit this referral nonsense.
also no more SC for me either .

Hmm so the 'recruit package' is basically the 'founders/Alpha Squad' package, minus the camo and title (same weapons given out), and a 1-day bonus instead of a 6 month one.

Umm T-ray... have you even READ the posts in this thread?

WE DONT WANT IT FOR FRICKEN FREE!!! we WANT to buy them. We just dont want to have to spend 250$ in dummy accounts, or become a 1-million viewers Youtuber channel host

Umm.. Anything below the 250$ mark for the INDIVIDUAL items would be a start dont you think? Perhaps in the 1500-2000 sc range?

Umm.. Planteside has never been about what you 'have', its always been about what you DO.

Its not: "Hey look what i have?.. im a badass with a shiny gold hat."

Its: "Hey look what my squad of 5 guys did that your group of 30 couldnt stop!"

Umm.. what sense of achievement are we going to feel if we sink 250$ into something in order to get the SINGLE items we want out of the 'bundles' in this atrocious money-grab scheme as most of us don't have 25 'friends' we can just pull out of our ***** and get them to pay 10$ while they're at it?

*sighs*

Account being cancelled as of now. guess im going to be playing PS2 'truly free' from now on.

Take my comments in the context of the thread please (The recommendation system) and think. They're both F2P games with micro-transactions. Both Sony (PS2) and Valve (Dota 2) would make money if I recommend their games to my friends. I am not comfortable recommending PS2 with all it's glaring flaws, crashes, and issues to my friends. Dota 2 on the other hand, I would easily recommend.

You cannot have excuses if you want me to tell my friends to play your game.

It's been a week. I've advertised on nearly a dozen different sites/groups. Nobody from big Steam groups I joined cared and nobody from other gaming forums even bothered to check.

Still on 0 recruits. This is how impossible it is, SOE.

I'm not gonna go around the streets handing out fliers or sticking posters on people's doors begging them to sign up. I hope you know, SOE, that you're asking us to make ourselves look like complete selfish douchebags to people we ask to sign up while at the same time, you get sent money from the few people we recruit out of the hundreds or more we embarrassed ourselves in front of.

THE MAIN PROBLEM WITH THE REFERAL IS THATS ' the (( friends )) you have to invite need to give you , their personal Email wich most likely wont happen unless they are true good friends and all my good friends are already in my outfits or playing the game even those who have bad computer and dont play the game yet because they havent buy a new pc even these friend have already try out the game a bit but wasent able to play ...

I agree with this completely. This whole thing makes recommending the game harder, and more embarrassing. People hear i have something to gain if they sign up as i asked them too and it will sound like a chore. This move is very stupid, and once again can only be pulled off by people who are popular in youtube.

Do the right thing guys. Don't tell people to come here, pay 10$ and join. Tell them how Planetside 2 is the biggest ripoff you have ever encountered. Tell them how SOE repeatedly misstreats their customers and tell them NEVER to play this game, or any other SOE game for that matter.

Honestly, it's not like it's the first time SOE pulled this kind of a stunt.

There should be a way for that guy with no friends to get that camo he really wants. I got 6 of my friends to play the game, but none of them spent money (or continued to play sadly)

I don't know why this thread is still going...SoE doesn't care and they aren't going to change anything. If they did, then they would have pulled the recruitment program from going live and given everyone the camo as an option to either purchase or bundle. They do what they think is best for business. They want the money and that's all it is to them.

No, what you're doing is called framing the discussion, and it's very manipulative.

We are your customers, and a number of us are telling you flat out: we hate this program and we want you to stop it. We don't like it in any form. We ESPECIALLY don't like it almost a year after the game came out of beta, since we're talking about recruiting rewards.

How about instead of some lame camo or weapon, we get to pick a bug that the devs will actually fix. I'd recruit the hell outta some players for that as a bonus.