SC Goods Account-Wide

They do for anything end-game related, yes.

Cash shop purchases are, by design, intended to sustain profitability. That's why account-wide purchases are exceedingly rare in cash shop models. All the threads popping up are basically a rehash of what every F2P game gets spammed with on its forums, which is some variant of "I think you should cripple your financial model because I personally dislike it."

Other than appearance unlocks, there is nothing in this game that cannot be purchased with certs. I agree that 1000 for some of the weapons is a little silly, given how you can unlock vastly superior weapons of the same class in most cases for far less, but then again you're also very competitive on day 1 of your character's life with the default gear. Unless you're trying to dogfight, then you're totally boned until you have flares and A2A missiles given the current hilariously low damage of the default guns, but eh.

I do agree they should be account wide, but SOE is not known to make these sc purchases account wide in MMO's. But who knows, maybe someone can ask nicely and get Smed to comment on it. Of all suggestions, making gun purchases be account wide is probably the most balanced approach than some others that do want things for free.

My feeling is that what they do with regards to this, will depend on their revenue with the game. If the revenue is good, they may allow this if their calculations show they'll still do well after making purchases account wide. But if revenue isn't good, or that it's not as good as it should be, then they won't make them account wide.

I only want my cosmetics to account wide. I don't want stuff like weapons to be account wide.

Even if its just cosmetic items i would be happy. They could even give a discount for items you have purchased on other characters like 70% or something.

Just wanted to throw my opinion in, for what it's worth. I like that we can have actual discussions in this community (more often than not), rather than troll-filled rants.

I don't mind the costs of the items and the fact that I need to buy things separately for separate characters... but largely through luck, I have a decent job and can afford a few hundred dollars in SC. Other people are not nearly so lucky, and I do feel for them. If I were a teenager or a poor college student right now, I would have practically nothing!!

Here's the thing - I want us to strike the right balance. If people cannot afford gear, they may quit... and when people quit, the game dies. On the other hand, the good people at Sony have to eat, too. The more profitable this game is, the more love and attention they will pour into it. If we cut too deeply into the profit margin, we risk the game suffering.

Obviously I do not have the numbers in front of me to do a cost analysis and figure out where the line should be drawn for Sony... but I do have plenty of friends who are really suffering in this economy. I am hopeful that we can come to some sort of solution that will be acceptable for the majority of both sides.

Another player with station cash who is reluctant to spend it here.

I think the ability to migrate a character from one server to another would be a decent enough compromise for me. Even if it was for a token cost and time cooldown, say a week maybe?

At least then if I find a new outfit or friends who are on a different server I won't have to re-buy all my stuff

tl;dr summary: I don't understand why this is such a big issue for people?

So, am I really in the minority with thinking that weapon unlocks and the like are just fine as they are (being limited to a single character?).

I could get behind cosmetic items being faction-wide, since they could help identify a player.

But my cert points don't carry over universally. If I have a character that's focused on Engineering, and another that's focused on being a Heavy - why should they share SC-purchased weapons?

I'll confess this question comes from the point of view of not fully understanding why people want/need multiple characters of a given faction, however. I could see having one of each faction. But really, one character can do anything/everything you want - so it really is simply beyond me as to why this is such a major issue for people.

The main thing that makes me not spend atm for at least me is i may switch servers. Im not one to change servers late in the game but this early where things are fluctuating and the way my guild functions we may not keep the home we have now a month down the road and make said new place our new permanent home. So until i know for sure im staying where im staying i wont be spending anything until its for sure. Im plenty sure others are in a similar situation for those who never played before that are not sure where they wish to make their home and until they do they most likely wont pay for anything.

Okay, that's actually a really good point. If, down the road, there were a server-move option, would that suffice? (Speaking hypothetically).

Because of multiple reasons wolfstar:
1. People will have multiple friends/outfits over multiple servers. I can't be the only one in this boat.
2. People want to try multiple factions without being penalised and "losing out" on the money they spend.
3. It's not a unified server, like other free to play games. There are multiple servers, and you wont just have one character on one big server.
4. People sometimes want to start over. Don't ask me why. Why should they be prevented?
5. It improves incentive for folks to buy stuff.
6. The game is designed as a multi-class game. The idea is I can switch classes on the fly as I need. This is even mentioned in the tutorial videos - locking purchases? especially when they are already class specific? it's low. If I play engineer on my EU NC character, I want to be able to play Heavy Assault on my TR US-E character, but still be able to switch back and use all my engineer purchased gear. Sometimes you'll need that AA rocket launcher - but OH CRAP, I'm on a different server.
7. Specialising in a Liberator, using it, enjoying it, then switching characters - only to find that you can't use those awesome guns anymore? That sucks.
8. Alpha squad is all characters. Why aren't normal station purchases? All the guns unlock when I first log into that character. Why can purchases not work on the same system?

I could go on. This isn't a "why" scenario. Its a "why not". I know the why - SOE want to make money. PS2 cost them a lot and they need to recuperate that cost. But for me, as a player, this is a major turn off in what is already a game full of major turn offs for paying customers.

And, make no mistake, WE ARE PAYING CUSTOMERS. We have the station cash. We are the buyers. The consumers. Our opinion matters. If SOE want to ignore that opinion, that's at their own peril.

Character move systems are no doubt complex and it will take time. I'm no technician, but I daresay purchases being account wide is not so complex. They are already tied to Station Accounts. I suspect it would be easier to implement this and keep people happy and spending, than to wait 3-4 months for the game to die then implement it.

People want to move now, and they want to spend their cash now. Why deny them the opportunity?

Don't have faction unlocks or points carry across faction, if you wanna play TR after playing VS, then go and buy the TR guns. After all this is an MMO and when you roll a new character you don't get to transfer all your shiny epixxxx. However, cosmetics and common pool unlocks should transfer definitely, I don't want to be spending 500 SC ($5) for the same skins on each new character as it makes 0 sense.

If I may be so bold and quote myself on this subject.

Its not completly focused on the issue at hand on the topic but it brings up my general consensus on account wide items.

It would help and i know its planned but consider the following. We are allowed one character per server which is limited to one faction. If my new home i decide upon is occupied by say an NC alt i made and toyed around with for a bit but dont want to give him up i now got to pay for two server transfers(duno if they will adopt the gw2 model of the ability to swap for free in the first few weeks). What would be nice is a server swap options. Move Character A to Server B and Character B to Server A. Because as of now if i want to free up a home i would have to delete the character (loosing everything).

This is exactly the same problem I'm having. I've got friends in US West and EU, while I live in US East, not to mention I'm still deciding on an outfit, which are usually on different servers. So I'm either vastly penalized for wanting to play with my friends (since I'd have to re-earn/re-buy everything for each character) or I just have to accept any time I spend playing a different character is "wasted" and be good with the starter guns

A character transfer option alone would be a nice step in the right direction, because no one would win if a big outfit of people who had invested SC decided they wanted to change servers for whatever reasons (majority of players are from somewhere else, server population issues, etc).

I really hope you are not a Ph.D. candidate. Push your logic to the extreme case. What if one person unlocks all the items and then allows the rest of the world to play on his account? Or, what is to stop that one person from allowing all his friends to play on his account anyway with his one character? Ordinarily, I would not argue with someone ********. But if you are really in pharmacy school, perhaps you will understand what I am saying.

what i realy fear is that my server is going to become a low populated one and im stuck there with all the bought stuff and no players.
i can handle the lost certs and rank, but all the extra i bought (armor, camos and some weapons) stuff would be realy anoying.

so an option to "return" those items or even betetr an server transfer would suffice me

Say whatever you want but most MMO's function this way. You play on one character and everything you unlock stays on that character.

And to the above poster, Smedly confirmed there will a server transfer option on his twitter. They are working on it.

I hate to say this, but PS2 isn't an MMO. It's a free to play shooter with RPG elements, and massive battles. There's been a few games that have attempted this, but not on such a large scale. BF3 for example. MMO's have subscriptions. PS2 has a store and a cash system. Draw TF2 as another comparison, if you want. PS2 has more in common with these than an MMO.

Arguing for a character lock is redundant and useless. There is no reason for it to continue. I cannot think of a single benefit of it being character locked.

personally I like the option of character transfers since I can bring my same character with certs and BR over to a new server (with 24 hour wait period and $5 fee). But having SC purchases account wide would be a decent second choice. Either way, and I dont expect it to be implemented tomorrow, but just having piece of mind that something is coming would allow me to buy some SC on my character. Also, GW has "guesting" which would be awesome for outfits to have actual try outs rather than just accepting anyone who wants to come.

Reasons for server transfers:
1) outfit is on another server
2) current server population is too high/low
3) moved to a new area (east coast to west coast)
4) current server is too "puggy" (meaning all the good outfits are zerged on one server leaving the others just to lone wolves - and yes this is the case currently on some servers)

Its important that if they do transfers to not make it too crippling because players want to try various outfits before they commit. If you force only one transfer a week or two weeks, then it will be months before someone can try out a few outfits - making recruiting and joining demotivating. 24 (or once a day) is reasonable. Also, $5 is the sweet spot, this makes it so that people are not going to transfer multiple times as its $5 each transfer and 24 hours in between each transfer so server spying/destabilization shouldn't be a problem. At $5 no-one is going to be destabilizing servers often or they will be poor really quick.

remember to tweet @j_smedley and @planetside2 .

I'm glad everyone's getting a good discussion out of this, the more we talk and bash our heads together on this topic the better chance we have at helping the game grow.