Some notes on today's cert grants

Hey all -

I wanted to pop in quickly to talk about today's cert point grant. As you know, a couple weeks ago we implemented account-wide SC unlocks which made any item that was common pool available to any character on your account, and any faction specific items available to all characters of that faction on your account. At the time we promised that we would be looking into ways to compensate players who had purchased the same items on more than one character. Today's cert grant was the resolution of that promised compensation. The grant logic worked as follows:

For every SC that you spent buying an identical item, which would now be available as an account wide unlock on multiple characters, we gave 2 cert points.

For example, if you have two TR characters and bought MAX composite armor's on them both, you would have spent 1000 SC on a duplicated item on your account, and we will have granted your characters 2000 certs this morning.

Players who did not purchase the same item on multiple characters on the same account should not have been eligible for these cert grants, although some players are reporting that they did. We are investigating why, but right now it is our mistake and we won't be 'confiscating' or rolling back characters which received certs.

We are looking into reports of players who have purchased items that should have been flagged as account wide but did not receive cert grants, these seem to be for multiple purchases of common-pool vehicle weapons which were not captured as part of the database query we ran.

Additionally, if you purchased an individual item, and later a bundle that contained that individual item, we granted cert points at the same rate for the price of the items purchased from that bundle - this was an error in the logic that was used to collect the cert grants, so those of you who benefitted from this get an extra bonus.

We will be reevaluating if future changes to the account-wide unlocks will include a retroactive cert grant, at this point we are uncertain if we will continue to adhere to this policy; so fair warning to those of you who might want to create 5 characters and buy a ton of repeated stuff on them - it is not certain that this type of grant will ever occur again.

I hope this answers some of the questions as to what is happening with the grant today.

Thanks!

-
mh


Edit: Update 4/11/12 - 12pm PDT:

Quick update on this. We've seen a lot of people under the impression that somehow the cert grant was broken or given to "random players", and not players who spent Station Cash on repeat purchases. So far, after about 12 hours of investigating, and pouring through virtually every character on the list we've found zero characters who were granted certs that didn't make the appropriate StationCash purchases to warrant those cert grants based on the above grant logic. Yes, that includes all of these characters with 20-100k certs granted. A lot of confusion has come from players who purchased bundles which contained items that had previously or were subsequently purchased on other characters on their account - these were flagged as repeat purchases and treated as such. If you think you do know of someone who did receive certs without purchasing any duplicated items, we are really interested in knowing more, and you can email me directly (mhigby@soe.sony.com) with that information and we will look into it. We are still compiling a list of players who did not receive cert points for certain duplicated purchases.

We've definitely heard the frustration from players who were not part of this grant, and looking at some of the astronomical numbers of cert points that certain accounts received it's understandable why. It's worth noting that less than 5% of our player population was granted certs from this and less than 0.03% of players received anything more than 2000 certs from the grants.

As a note, we don't want "granted" certs to be part of the leaderboards, so in a future update those certs will be removed so that only "earned" certs are being displayed to ensure that the leaderboards more accurately reflect level of effort of the player.

I realize this update isn't going to make those of you who are upset about this cert grant less upset, but it's information we felt was worth sharing so people could have a better understanding of what is actually happening, amid a lot of misinformation being spread around.

I want to emphasize that our goal on this grant, as with all decisions made on this project, is to provide the best possible overall experience for our players. Moving beyond this incident, we will be reevaluating our policies for future compensations to ensure we have methods that do not cause the kind of impact to our player community that this admittedly has.

Finally, to those of you who feel betrayed or hurt by this incident, we humbly apologize.

-
mh

So much for not pay2win, since you can now buy certs.

Yes, because this mistake happens all the time.

What would have been so hard about refunding the SC instead? So if you bought 2 composite armors, you get the SC you spent on the second one back. Instead, they are paying you with certs.

Certs for Station Cash is inappropriate, as many of the 1000 Cert items are paid for in cash because the amount of playtime required to reach 1000 certs is rediculous for all but "live in my moms basement" players. There are lots of in-game equipment that are Cert-only, but now you have translated SC into 2x Certs, allowing players to upgrade all their equipment that they normally would have had to work for.

This amounts to $$$ = playtime, and is very unfair to players who have not bought many items but have still benefited PS2 by playing alot. Just refund the SC points!!!


P.S. As has been mentioned by others in other threads, it also unfairly gives bonuses to players with multiple characters. Why should X player with 3 characters get more certs than Y player with 1 character, when they both spent the same amount of SC??? The solution is not to hand out free certs but rather to activate the purchased weapon across all the characters. The algorithm to determine refunds has already examined your characters for which items they purchased and how many characters (and what factions) they have. Just unlock the items across their characters...

except that this is a one time thing.

as far as the "we should get SC" goes. the argument goes both ways. instead of turning SC into certs, i'm turning certs into SC.

and i can imagine that there would be all sorts of reluctance from the SOE bean counters to give players ANY reason to not buy more SC.

Smed and co did not have to do this at all. be glad that they did, and stop ******** about every little thing that they do, because if you didn't someone else would.

Some people seem to have gained a total of about 100,000 certs over all characters. That's astronomical. I can't believe there hasn't been some serious algorithm failure here.

This is a competitive game. Accidentally crediting black with an extra queen and two rooks does indeed impact white. You can't just wave your hands and say the white didn't have anything confiscated or whatever.

What the heck?!

Some people believe that this company should be perfect, not grant any sort of compensation when it feels fair, even if it wasn't mentioned that compensations would happen.

And because they weren't awarded, they find ways to antagonize those who had no idea this was going to happen and rage at them.

Thankfully SOE is adamant about their decision and it's great they can admit to mistakes, however major they may appear.

-

In the end, it's about how you play as a character ingame, not what you have.

If I buy a gun for 700 SC and you buy the same gun for 1000 certs we both have the same gun, but I have 1000 certs left to spend. So really, you're "buying" certs any time you purchase a non-cosmetic item with SC, if you want to look at it that way.

True, but if you have 3 characters you are buying 3000 certs with 700 SC with this refund. Do you know how long you would have to play to earn that many certs with no XP boost? How is it fair to those who don't have 3 characters running and didn't buy alot of items? As noted elsewhere some people are getting the equivalent of BattleRank 100 in their refunds. It's terribly imbalancing.

there is so much truth in this that it hurts.


i am so F*****G tired of the attitude that everyone else must please 'me' first.

companies are run by people and people are not perfect. this will continue until we have AI's running companies.
and we ALL know how aperture labs ended up

No one that I have seen is blaming the customer, just the manner in which SOE decided to make those who dropped SC on multiple characters be rewarded over those who have dropped SC on single characters.

Roll back? not necessary.. provide an opportunity to everyone? would be nice and a 'fair' way to reward everyone who has PLW.

Because SC is not an exclusive Planetside 2 currency. Refunding it would allow users to then spend it on other games, this would skew their business model data.

Seriously, people who paid for these items did so without any promise of a future return other than the direct use of that item (which lasted at most 4 months, a lot less for the average player). When they implemented account-wide unlocks, the need for duplicate items was erased overnight. Hindsight is always 20/20, complaining about a decision now which has very little affect on you, other than perhaps the regret you feel for not having spent cash on common pool items, is pointless.

There are plenty of players who can earn a thousand certs by playing ten hours or less and participating in a few alerts, and they can do so without xp boosts or premium (see youtube). Those that spent station cash on duplicate items are generally older players, since account-wide unlocks were announced in January. Besides, many players have already maxed their classes/weapons/vehicles of choice and a few hundred or even a few thousand certs isn't going to dramatically enhance their ability to kill you. That skilled ESF pilot will still be there, no more deadly than he was yesterday, ready to blow up your <insert x vehicle/class here> and make you rage on the forums.

tl;dr Not a single person who bought these items knew they were going to get certs later on. A few thousand certs is not that hard to earn, and for many older players it's a drop in the bucket.

That's logical, but Dollars, Euros, etc. are also universal, and they were spent to get SC, and in turn spent on PS2 items. The user could have just as easily used that SC on another SOE game, so I don't see an issue with a SC refund.

What would be even more logical for PS2, would be to just unlock the items the SC was spent on across all the player's characters. No extra certs, no extra SC, just unlock them account wide. SOE already knows what the player bought and on what characters and on what factions, so it's no leap of processing power to unlock the items account wide.

Well refunding the SC would have been the more fair option, but I guess that just wasn't possible for whatever reason. I'm not really upset about it personally.

And before anyone asks no, I didn't get any certs out of this deal.

So you are giving out 2000 certs for a 1000 sc expenditure on an item that would have cost 250-700 certs? Makes sense?

Whatever I pretty much reached a conclusion that I won't be playing this game anymore anyway. You continue to release crap like the second round of Pump shotties which can only mean that you are hurting for money because how stupid would you have to be to release another round of op weapons when you just got done nerfing the first round.

You can't seem to take the time to go over Battle rifles that you personally said would be looked at 2 months ago.
I am not someone who whines about things in this game but your cash shop practices have become apparent.

This is coming from a guy who just spent 40$ on Illuminated apex helmets cause they look cool even though they might get me shot moire at night.

Its not just a "few" certs.. its tens of thousands, or this way, its more certs than I have earned in 57 levels and 400+ hours played.

Matt this entire thing aside i think that SOE giving away some "free" points from time to time could be a nice thing. Perhaps every Christmas or something.
God knows i was very happy when i saw 900xp extra today (although obviously not as happy as the ones who got over 10k)

Not true, by the time you reach battle rank 57 you should have amassed at least 15k certs. The majority of players did not receive tens of thousands of certs, most people got a few hundred to a few thousand other than the few crazy exceptions on the forums (half of which are just trolling if you check their planetside player profiles). And by battle rank 57, you should either be close or have already maxed something you play a lot. If you didn't, re-certification (whenever it comes) should cover that issue.