Update Regarding In-Game Advertising

I really really like this. We've already got shiny screens EVERYWHERE. Why not simply have them displaying what you can buy every so often? We've got an in-game day-night cycle--link it to that somehow? Every in-game "hour" have display screens on a rotating pattern around the continents give empire-specific ads based on who owns the base.

Sorry, I like my 0.75 ads. I wouldn't mind a new 896rpm carbine, though. Keep the old, come out with the new. Just don't take away my Lynx it it's current iteration...

Perhaps you guys would earn more money by having a quality product, i.e. a game not bugged to hell, instead of introducing new cosmetics and bugs each week and pestering players to subscribe.

1. The notifications are only one issue. There are also nags on every death screen, every loading screen, and every menu screen that were not there before. They are placed in locations where they can accidentally be clicked, and are visually irritating. You're going to great lengths to avoid mentioning these like nobody is talking about them.
2. You already had a system in place to announce sales and important server events using the server message system; the red text appearing in the center top of the screen. People who missed the message somehow could still see it in the chat log, and it could be repeated as often as desired without interfering with gameplay.
3. People are taking notice, and this is negatively affecting the reputation of the game outside of the metacommunity.
4. The new player experience is already a major weakness of this game, and it is now compounded by new players being immediately nagged to spend money.

I've put several hundred dollars into this game. It's the only game I play, and the second game I've ever played (I am a PS1 vet). For the hours of entertainment it's provided me, the game is astonishingly cheap entertainment. People should support it if they enjoy it and have the means.

I certainly understand that the game is not free. But in recent days "UPGRADE NOW!" offers have become more noticeable.

I believe most people would acknowledge that any game costs money to develop. Particularly when the game is being made twice.

Im not fond of the fact that we are supporting the separate PS4 development team porting the game over to console for resale.

Ive paid into PS2, about the cost of a standard price game title. I consider getting more SC at times, though the 2x and 3x sales stopped, and the development of the game is going slower and in a different direction then when it started. It seems quite clear that the game being ported to PS4 is dictating a lot of the unannounced and fairly ill received changes coming to the game.

You want to make money, and that's quite simply the goal of the game industry- not many people would argue against that statement. The point of contention is how you choose to charge players for the experience, and what the players get for their money.

Continue to expand the game with more quality product, and the consumers will continue to purchase. Make odd, unwanted game changes, and people are going to be less inclined to buy into the game.

Thank you for the explanation

I understand that you need that kind of visibility and players awareness about the membership, but if I understand well, popup notifications will still be in the game as a feature, but less intrusive?

How about this: cut out on the notification system. It's viewed as an in game spam, and people don't like it, no matter how often it appears on screen (once an hour will still be a lot to some). How about a "big in game window" at launch, when you connect on a character? You get it once every session, it doesn't intrude or interfer with the gameplay.
In this box you can develop the idea of membership; advantages and stuff. People will get used to it over time, and close it even without reading, they won't be annoyed anymore, but you get the same visibility. The awareness you want.

Or some infos, link or anything on the player selection screen, there's plenty of empty space there .-.

Anyway, thanks for reading

Oh and by the way.
PLAYERS STUDIO for european players would help you a lot. Trust me. We're waiting for it for about 6 months now...

Creating a pop up machanic during gameplay is probably one of the worse idea that cross the mind of your team.

I bought the Beta package. I bought quite a good amount of smedley bucks in the first few months to buy cosmetics here and there. I did help financing your game. Hell, I did before your game was even release!

I can assure you one thing though. Creating ******* popup during gameplay is certainly not going to make me sub. I'm just not going to play it. Hell, them ******* pop-up are still there even if you sub! That's even more ******.

I've seen several threads with many angry individuals about the idea of stronger advertising towards subscription. I often get a strong sense of entitlement concerning these individuals. The vibe I get is, "This game should be free no matter what! If it isn't, I won't play!" The logical conclusion I've come to is the one noted in this thread, SOE isn't getting the money they had hoped to otherwise.
Turn on a TV show and every 7 and a half minutes or so you'll see around 2 minutes of full screen, solid advertisements. Even some shows have advertisement banners for other shows or products. Few are losing their minds about it. Open a magazine you bought, a newspaper, go to a store, walk down a road, everything is pretty packed with advertisements.

The advertisement in planetside 2 is only for planetside 2, and it is insanely mild. Imagine instead of what there is now, 'upgrade now' and this 'pop up' there was a break every 7 and a half minutes of solid advertisements where you can do nothing -but- watch this advertisement. Comparing the two ideas, the ad, upgrade now, is amazingly low key.

Planetside 1 was entirely pay to play, they eventually added in a program called the reserves where you could play for free, but you had a heavy battle rank limit (battle rank 6 I think). There are perks for subscribing already in place, the biggest one in fueling the further development of maintenance of planetside 2. To those who disagree with the idea of being advertised to, if people don't pay, as was mentioned, either they stop development, or they become more aggressive by forcing the requirement of subscription, or adding something like a battle rank cap (think battle rank 20, with everything unlocked revoked until subscribed or resubscribed).

A lot of people were against the idea of in game banners on walls in planetside 1, primarily because those who were paying didn't want to be further advertised to. But personally, if they were to ad in game advertisements on various walls, I'd be just fine with that if it meant better development of the game.

SOE is a business, they need money.

The biggest thing I am hoping from planetside 2 is more of what made planetside 1 great. If I were in charge, I'd start by cloning planetside 1, and work from there. Do the very casual players stick around?

If you want to be somewhat tacky, but at the same time make some immersion in to the game, what you could do is initially have us randomly deploy to a battle in drop pods like before, but before we drop pod in, a voice could say "The War isn't cheap, help in any way you can!" and have a subscribe button show on screen for 20-60 seconds. And every few times you drop pod in let's say 10 times, the voice would say it again.

Or if you want to have some more immersion, on the loading screens you could show faction "propaganda" that shows the "costs" of war (pics of dead players, for example) with a subscribe "Enlist Now" button.

But besides that, you should really just have the "Subscribe now!" on the loading screens. give mouse control and let us click. it shouldn't be intrusive and if you design it right, you can actually make it more "fun". Play with your game's theme to get people to subscribe.

Besides that, GIVE GOOD INCENTIVES to subscribe that only apply to all levels of players, not just low levels. XP and Resource boosts don't really seem to matter to most high BRs. Make decals and vanity items only available to subscribers and let them buy them at a great (50%-75%) discount of their normal price. Once every 3-6 months, you then release said items so that anyone can buy them and then replace those ones with new items. Give them early access to guns that must be paid for (at a discount of 25%-50%) 1-4 weeks in advance I think 2 weeks would be a sweet spot.

As it stands, though, showing us a subscribe button just feels like a money grab. You need to give incentives in to buying a membership. To some an XP/resource boost along with 500 SC each month is enough, but high level players don't care about that and know it's just cheaper to buy the SC you need.

And make sure that if a player is a subscriber, they don't see the subscribe button again until their time is near up. At the same time, allow players to buy a ONE TIME multi-month subscription without the auto re-subscribe. I think having an automatic re-subscription is just underhanded as some people may completely forget about this game and the fact that it said that, while at the same time some people may not even be aware since they don't read fine print.

May we ask what initiatives are in place or upcoming to increase said player-base ?

There does seem to be very little advertising around the various sites i visit ( MMO game / news sites etc ) and more players can also mean more money ..


Oh and PSA used correctly ... A forum first

Does this make it clear enough for you people.

No money, no game.

You'd think these first world problems would not need addressing

i have seen it advertised in a few areas, even had one of those pop up ads in a video I was watching advertise the game. All in all, I've seen very little though. I've seen maybe 4 ads in about 6 months in various places around the net.

But I'll say to wait until a PS4 release date draws closer for more advertising. I don't want a lot more people jumping in to the game until it can be seen as really polished which probably won't be until about a PS4 release. I'd rather people see a gemstone than what amounts to some as a polished golden turd thanks to current performance issues and bugs...

But it's sad that some people on this forum are actually proud of the fact that they've not dropped a dime in to this game... Especially when they start griping about thing in the game be it bugs or balance issues.

I think placement is off...

Advertising membership is crucial, of course. And the new ad on the loading screens about the Members 2x XP weekend is sure a good ad to show players a piece of value of membership. Use this more and show different benefits of being a member. We see loading screens a fair bit, so it would have lots of visibility.

Someone else suggested starting logged in players on the Depot screen. This is another great idea. People will see sales first thing upon logging in. The depot page is one of the pages that can have a big UPGRADE NOW button without being obnoxious (Profile/stat page being another. Loadout/vehicle/spawn screens are NOT good spots)

Add a blurb on the "Tab" session stats screen about how much more XP would have been earned if they had full membership benefits. (basically show the +50% they aren't getting)

Also, remove ALL these notifications for paying subscribers. One of your "features" could be removal of all nag ads

I am planning on subscribing personally (6mo package for instant full benefit w00t) just waiting on the membership plan overhaul really, and I've already dumped... I dunno... a LOT of SC into this game (damn my multi faction lifestyle) and like many others who have supported this game we really REALLY want to see it continue to do well and will do our part to help as we can and see fit.

Over obnoxious ever-present reminders (loadout/vehicle/deploy screens) however, aren't likely to convert many people and could even drive away free players who will always be free no matter what, but still act as content to those of us who pay to play

Cheers

I'm not sure where the so called QA team was for the Liberator update which went live way too fast considering the test sever to try out the weapons was broken for most of the time time and little to any feedback could even be given by actual players. I think if proper feedback on what players had tested on the Test Server, that wasn't possible at the time, had been collected then there likely would've been far more Liberator weapon sales. Because after all if you give the players weapons which they find useful and interesting you'll probably get way more sales. The Duster being a prime example of a weapon which could've been so much more on release. On a side note it would also make sense for long term sales if you released weapons/vehicles which on release were somewhat powerful, not OP, and if you choose to balance them you did so with a light touch and not a sledge hammer. An example of doing this the wrong way was the Harasser which I think was nerfed in like 3-4 ways at once or the Vulcan on the Prowler which was nerfed into a basically useless state.

Higby as a Marketing major who is graduating this year I hope you'll hear me out. You do not want to make you advertising annoying and in your face to the consumer. You don't want to make it intrusive or something which takes away from the gameplay experience at all. If you go down that route people will get sick of seeing it and you stand a chance of people knowing about your offer but having a negative feeling towards it. On the other hand having it in places like the death screen, loading screen, or redeployment screen is the right place to have these ads. Players have nothing else to do during these times and have to look at something. So if you make the advertisement in these areas attractive and eye catching people are definitely going to notice it and be more aware of your membership offerings. What better place to advertise since loading into the game, dying, and redeploying is a constant inevitable/natural part of the game so they are definitely going to see it without the advertisement coming off as intrusive or detracting from the game experience?

'Upgrade now' is fair if it works, though I doubt it will. Popups are just annoying and make the game look cheap.

Isn't it a feature of all F2P games that the vast majority of income comes from a small proportion of players? I think actually a higher proportion of people here buy SC or subscribe than in most games. But when PS2 sells itself on the scale of battles, you need the freeloaders to keep enjoying it, and this kind of nag really helps.

The idea in this thread to start people on Depot, not Map, on first login, is excellent. That would nudge people towards buying stuff in a much more subtle way and won't annoy anyone.

Thanks for the update and the fix, Matt. You gotta do what you gotta do.

It could be worse. We could have billboards playing videos for movies like The Fast and The Furious in the warpgates. Oh wait...

Hey Matt,

Preaching to the choir here, already have the All Access Pass. Make good games, I'm on board.
Like going to any site that's supported through advertising, if we subscribe, we pay to remove the ads and support their work.
Hope to not see these popups in game as a subscriber. Perhaps when we first log on that's the start screen and were done with it.