SC Black Market - Additional PS2 revenue stream

SOE obviously is looking for ways to increase revenue. I think pretty much all of us agree the current method of adding implants and tweaking the drop rates and increasing their effectiveness with an additional level is at the very least a slippery slope towards a P2W system.

I want planetside 2 to make money, because the more money it makes the more resources SOE will put into it this game, which benefits me and everyone else.

My idea is simple; create a Black Market, that allows players to purchase weapons from the other factions. These weapons would be exact duplicates, but just have a change in their color and particle effects to match the empire of the user. I would also suggest, that since these weapons are not native to the empire of the user, that over time they wear out, since the terminals are empire specific and they can not maintain them properly. So every so often the user would need to visit the black market and pay a minor SC fee to have the weapons maintained.

TLDR: Buy other factions weapons from a Black Market for Station Cash

This would work very well, as IRL in war there is always a Black Market, And people will use weapons off the corpses of the fallen.

All in all, A gun is a gun. It doesn't matter who uses it, what it shoots, how hard it shoots, ETC. however, some weapons should be kept off the market.

The entire attraction of Planetside is the unique traits of each faction. By allowing players to buy other faction weapons, you negate the point of having factions

What immediately jumps out at me for this idea is that it could easily be construed as Pay to Win; which is the problem SOE faces with monetizing their game. Culturally they don't want to sell power, they want to sell convenience and accessories (cosmetics, voices, ect).

If you have to pay SC to "fix" the weapon, what is the free counterpart? Elsewise you are paying to gain power (the weapon) that free players can not get - thus Pay to Win.

One option would be to make the weapons inexpensive for SC, but expensive in certs, and not make them reparable.

For example, for 1,000 Certs or 100 SC you could buy 7 days of access to the Jackhammer as a TR or VS. The certs you invest into the weapon would remain once it expired, but to get it back after 7 days you would have to pay another 1000 certs or 100 SC.

This could be tied into the directive system (in a sense) for more depth. For example, in order to get the Jackhammer available in your black market you must first kill (random number) 100 NC who currently have the Jackhammer equipped.

Overall, with some fleshing out, I am not opposed to the system - so long as it doesn't ruin faction diversity by essentially making every weapon available to every person ALL the time.

This was not a problem in Planetside 1, when not only could players loot and store weapons from the other factions, you could also hack and use other empire vehicles.

This does not take anything away from faction identity. Each faction still has its unique identity and weapons based off that identity, which is native to that faction. Just because a TR or VS picks up a Phoenix off the black market, doesn't take away from the NC.

Well, let's just go all the way and 'borrow' the idea from a game called Rift.

I'll use Sony terms only to hopefully avoid confusion. Here's how it works.

Player Bert, a long-time F2P player needs / wants some SC, right. He has thousands of certs. Another player, noobie Ernie, wants certs and is willing to pay SC to get them. In an officially sanctioned transaction from within the game Ernie can buy say, 5000 SC and forward those 5000 SC to Long-time player Bert in exchange for (I have no idea) N number of certs. In other words, noobie Ernie now has N-number of certs to buy anything he wants and Bert now has 5000 SC and Sony has money. The two players get what they want and Sony gets real money. Rift calls this the REX system.

Edit: Put another way, it's a way to convert certs (game money) into real money for the players and a way for Sony to make honest real money. It also serves as a kind of Smeared Cert-Sink. (Not going there, please no. ).

People tend to initially think there is something wrong with this. If a company is going to go down this road anyway, why not do something really unlike typical SOE shady business practices. Why not be up front about it. In the end, Sony gets real money and has happy customers. Who cares where the money comes from. The people who make Rift (Trion) have been very happy with it, made a lot of money with it, and most importantly, the players have liked it.

This method also avoids the whole mixing of faction crap, er, wonderful equipment.

Of course this goes completely against SOEs culture in loathing the players and always trying to get one over on them. Straight forward, honest business practices... I know, what a concept. Too bad no one from Sony will ever see it.

if they EVER do this, they should make other empires' weapons exceptionally expensive in order to not let them be spammed too much and to not throw faction uniqueness overboard.

something like (i know people will freak out now) in the range of 3000-5000 SC per weapon maybe. if a TR Heavy wants to use the Orion, he gotta pay. if a VS Infil wants to use the Railjack, he gotta pay. and so on...

The tricky part with this system is you are assigning a monetary value directly to certs - do you let the market decide what this is, and risk inflation? You are selling a fundamentally limitless resource that is (relatively) easy to get.

... or do you let the SOE execs decide it? If SOE sets the price why bother having other players provide it? Just make it a depot item.

SOE, in some manners, has done this already with their depot pricing tiers on weapons. However, this now makes progress purchaseable - which many consider Pay to Win. Additionally, this encourages a certain group of players who come in, buy a bunch of certs, play for a bit - and then leave.

This is bad for Planetside 2 as they need players to stay as long as possible, as players are the primary content for other players. SOE also wants sustained income, not burst income.

There is also the problem that this could encourage poor executive decisions on SOEs part. If they are selling 100 certs for 1 dollar, why should a cert be 250 experience? Why not make it 1000 experience? That makes the purchasing route look four times more valuable to the consumer right? As much as the Planetside 2 devs love their game and don't want to kill it with cash grabs, the people in the finance department are paid to monetize - and at the end of the day the devs report to them, and the devs like eating (having a job).

Myself? I would be fine with it being in game. It fits the selling "convienence" aspect of it. I would favor a player driven economy, however, and not an SOE run one. If someone wants to sell 10,0000 certs for 200 SC. Let them.

It isn't pay to win in the least bit. If a VS player uses a Striker it doesn't make him any stronger then when a TR player uses the Striker.

The free, non-degradable counter part is every single weapon in your factions arsenal that you have access too. If it isn't pay to win for an NC player to own and use the Phoenix, then it isn't P2W for a TR or VS player to use one off the black market. Having access to a black market Phoenix, gives a TR or VS player a weapon with different characteristics to their own faction weapons, but that is not P2W.

I don't think we need to bring cert points into the equation at all. Pricing is pricing, Personally, I think they should cost between 1250 and 1500 SC and the repair/maintenance cost should be kept relatively low and maybe a cert cost could be added there. Like 100 SC / 1000 certs to fully repair a weapon that has degraded to 0.

Personally, I do not give a damn about the directive system, but that's not a bad idea. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, this is not a new idea to the planetside brand. We had access to weapons and even vehicles from other factions in PS1 and it didn't impact faction diversity.

Rifts solution is to let the market decide. That would be the players. And I find that rather cool. Prices fluctuate (wildly sometimes), there have been people trying to corner the market... the whole gamut man. Such fun! But in mundane 'reality' (just like RL) all items eventually move around until they find their "true market value." And what keeps inflation in check is competition, in that there is always someone willing to do a transaction cheaper. Under-cutters.

And Oh Gawd No! Don't let a SOE exec anywhere near this system. The millisecond they touch it, it would be broken. They clearly know nothing of economics.

Alright, good point. You have my vote.

R.I.P to the poor soul on the receiving end of Lockdown Ravens.

Agree we need to keep players as long as possible and keep them paying to a certain degree as well...As a BR100 I really do not have any need to purchase anything in this game, cert points are so easy to acquire, that any new weapons or vehicle that gets added to the game I would just save up and spend cert points on.

This Black market idea would force my hand. I already have all the weapons I could possibly want from my faction, but if I could purchase a few weapons from the other factions to fill certain roles or even because I prefer that type of weapon over what I have available, I would certainly pay for that weapon and I do not think a modest maintenance fee in either SC or cert points is too much to ask either, if I do not want to pay it, then I go right back to using my factions weapons, no harm no foul, unlike the current implementation of implants.

ROFL...no no we could not allow that to ever happen...But if someone wanted to buy a raven max from the black market with the shield, that might be ok...

You could not mix different faction weapons with faction abilities, that would be way OP. I would stick to infantry weapons only at first and depending how it is received we could add Maxes or even vehicles, but they should cost a TON of SC and also a ton of CERT points to pull them, like 750 and be very expensive to maintain...

It doesn't make him stronger, but he is paying money to gain access to power - power that is not accessible for free to other VS.

Pay to Win doesn't apply exclusively to your enemy; we see this in games like World of Tanks. You and a friendly rush a room. You get two kills and die, and he kills everyone else. If this happened normally, you would just say "Whatever, we got the room". But now this guy is holding a jackhammer and you are both VS. Well you could have killed the entire room too if you only had a jackhammer; but you don't because you don't have $15 to spend on a gun. "What a wallet warrior. He just paid cash to get those kills easy."

It is a poisonous kind of culture.

The problem here is that a Lancer is not a Pheonix; and if we are only selling items that have identical stats across the board (for example, shotguns)- whats the point? An argument against this system could be that if you really want to play with a Pheonix you can just switch to an NC Alt instantly.

Since you aren't changing characters to be on the faction with the weapon, you are paying money to gain a power other players (read; free) on your faction don't have access to.

I don't pay any attention to the directive system either. It was just an idea to add depth to the "Black Market" so it isn't just a "Depot of things that Break".

I am aware; I played the original Planetside from launch.

The thing here is that getting another factions weapons and vehicles (barring events where it was freely available) had a Risk/Reward associated with it. The backpacks of fallen enemies were on a short timer and disappeared quickly - if I had a Jackhammer as a VS it was because I killed, or was nearby when he was killed, an NC with the Jackhammer and it was either calm enough to get into his backpack or I was able to get into his backpack and grab it under fire. The same for hacking vehicles - I had to get close enough to use my REK to hack it, and hack it for several seconds without getting found out and slaughtered.

Additionally in the original Planetside there were ammo types and an inventory - there is no point in me having a Lancer if I can't also reliably loot Lancer ammo, because as an NC I can't get this ammo from my terminals. Alternatively, once my hacked Vanguard was out of bullets I couldn't just load the trunk up with more - because as a TR none of our vehicles and no NS vehicles used the same shells.

In this system, there is no Risk or other limiting factor - so cost has to be the limiting factor.

Welp, I wasn't going to say anything, but there it is above. I see plenty of threads about The Factions losing their identity. I guess you could power the world of Monsters Inc. for Eternity with all the screams produced. And that would be the Pre-Nerfed Monsters Inc. before all that "Laughing makes moar power crap."

I'd rather they shut the game down due to bankruptcy than have faction diversity even further watered down .. It's bad enough as it is and SOE should be making the factions more diverse not less ..

I think you should be able to do it one of two ways. Way one is where you buy the weapon for the normal 700 SC but have to pay a small SC amount (lets say, 50) per fortnight or whatever to keep the gun operational. You can stop this at any time if you wish to stop using the weapon (after it "expires" you just need to pay the normal amount of SC to use it again). You could also use a large amount of certs to repair your weapon or tax your normal score income so you don't need to constantly maintain it every once in awhile (more streamlined if you have multiple other faction weapons).

Way number two is similar to what we have now, except you pay for an upfront cost (somewhere between 1000SC-1400SC) and pay no maintenance costs.

Both ways will require you to "unlock" the ability to buy the gun by killing "n" number of people using it (eg. kill 100 people with beamers out to unlock the beamer to buy, may be less for some things like pistols as opposed to primaries). Option one allows you to use and pay for the weapon non-permanently, so if you buy a lancer (as TR/NC) for some fun outfit ops you won't have to deal with maintenance costs if you don't want to. This also presents a cert sink, but SOE doesn't lose money as you still have to pay the initial SC cost. Option two allows you to totally skip maintenance and stuff and just straight up buy the weapon for good. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You own that weapon, you keep it forever.

I also think that these weapons should not unlock the same weapon on other characters. This would likely drive down normal weapon sales and I feel that you should only be using this system to buy a "TR GD-7F" or a 'VS GD-7F" instead of a "NS GD-7F." It could be potential revenue for SOE and I doubt that this would really threaten faction traits, seeing as you would still be able to always get a T7 MCG for cheaper if you just make a TR character. What you are doing is paying for the convenience of having a Repeater on your VS main without having to give up your friends/outfit/spandex and make a new TR character.

I'm going to disagree with you...He is paying money to gain access to a different weapon, not a more powerful one and if it is more powerful, then that is a straight up balance issue. This is the same arguement I would use for your second analogy about clearing a room. If the NC have access to a weapon that allows them to clear a room and the VS do not then there is a serious balance issue, between the factions. The weapons between the factions are different, but they are also relatively equal in power, that is a-symmetrical balance, so it doesn't matter if you are using a NC faction weapon or a VS one all factions have a-symmetric balance.

If they are balanced then it doesn't matter. The lancer and Phoenix IMO are equal but different. They have different uses but they do not give one player greater power over another, that would mean the weapons are not balanced.

If a (free) player doesn't want to spend money for a Phoenix, yet they want to use one then they can switch factions, just because I decide to purchase one doesn't mean I have more power then they do on the same faction, because remember the factions are a-symetrically balanced. I am not more powerful, I can just do some things differently, but they have access to weapons that are just as powerful.

Agree, it is different from PS1 and yes cost would be the limiting factor instead of risk. The point is to generate revenue for PS2. You want to launch Phoenix rockets as a VS, then you need to spend SC for the weapon and pay a fee to keep that weapon maintained, but you are not more powerful then the (free) VS player next to you, you can just do things differently and if they want to do that as a free player they need to switch factions.

What makes money in F2P games are thousands of small transactions as opposed to a few large ones, so instead of making them ridiculously expensive they should make them 99 SC to unlock them for 2-3 hour, sort of like a long trial period but on in which every attachment is unlocked.

Limit this to only infantry weapons and you're set.