Update Regarding In-Game Advertising

wait, so we are now funding PS4 development team? how about you recruit PS4 players and have them fund it rather than using PC players to fund your project? honestly, i paid $120+ for a year membership last Nov which expired a couple months ago, not to mention probably $80 in SC. after seeing how SOE continue to abuse the PC players i will not be putting another cent into this game. all you are doing is alienating the veteran players who have supported you since day one..good luck getting new subscribers with the "UPGRADE NOW" and the rest of the spam system.

you need to give us the ability to turn off in game advertisement sent to us and the ability to hide the mission on the hud.

at least move that advert box to a smarter location soe and don't keep it open...sure you can have a yes or no proposition but if the player is in battles its annoying and distracting where it is now and to get rid of it you have to press "n"

suggest you move it to a better location on screen and also have it on a timer, so if no key is pressed say in 5 seconds, it goes away and appears in "notifications"

This is the reason I haven't got a new sub. I had one for around 5 months last year and then didn't play enough for a while to justify it. On returning, I just don't see it as worth the effort to build up the benefits again.

Okey Higby dont come to forum. Higby don't use forum. Higby dispise people on forum. Higby is playing celebrity on Twitter.... So who you are, and how long you will pretend to be a higby? Because I start to like you.

Does anyone else simply not care about these ads? I don't, SOE needs to make money, fine, just ignore them if you don't like them.

What??? This is completely false. I paid for the membership up til Auraxium, have let it lapse TWICE, one time even for 3+ months, and both times when resubscribing (paying for a single month) I have been IMMEDIATELY put back to the max tier of subscriber benefits.

Though, to make subscriptions more attractive it could really use a slight discount on SC purchases. :d

Before this mess I was considering buying a couple things, maybe some helmets, camo, possibly a membership.

Then the adverts happened and all my money went here instead;



GG PS2 Marketing Team!

Okay, good. Now how about making the Upgrade Now! button smaller than the actual respawn button?

I think SOE needs to revamp the membership system. There are a decent amount of players who help support this game without paying for a membership. You all know what I am talking about and this is called "Station Cash".

This is what I propose:

Tier 1 Membership:

-Currently Subscribed
-Keep current benefits as is

Tier 2 Membership:

-Needs to spend at least 500 Station Cash a month to keep benefits
-Priority Login (after subscribed members)
-10% XP and Resource Increase

With this, I think those who are not currently subscribed would be more willing to buy station cash and help support this game without the need to fully dedicate to a premium membership.

Your thoughts everyone?

This like a bajillion times.

I like this. It's a mini-membership option. As for the details, would you get the benefits when you spend 500 SC or when you purchase 500 or more SC and apply it to your account? I'm thinking the former would be better because SOE can only write off those funds as revenue when we actually spend that SC. This also gives SOE's accounting guys an easier time predicting how much money we'll spend per month. Say I have 1500 SC in my account. I'll spend 500 of it right now. SOE knows that I could potentially spend the rest next month or just 500 of it and wait yet another month for the last 500. They can build "spending profiles" over time and say "40% of our paying players spread out their SC purchases in 500 SC chunks every month so we can expect this much money coming in every month." I'm sure they already do this but a mini-subscription model entices us to develop spending trends which could allow them to plan better sales or double XP events (since those are members-only now, evidently).

The Mini-subbing idea.

That would be awesome.

Hey, I'd love to throw 15 bucks a month at PS2. It's not expensive to do so.

I paid for four such accounts for EQ. I started with one account in 1999 and spiked to four, now I'm back to one EQ paid account. I haven't played EQ for a year. I've played PS2. But I never switched my paid account. Why?

1. EQ drew me in. It's immersive. The devs created a world
2. Players stayed with EQ, familiar faces abounded, we had fun together
3. PS2...well, in game adverts (and glaring balance issues) first drove me out in February 2012. The double load screen full page advert. It pissed me off. I already dropped a lot of SC on PS2 by that time and was happy to have done so
4. PS2 introduced HUGE imbalances and you guys just sat there doing nothing (ZOE, Harrassers, Scat Maxes). Months went by.
5. During that time. constant patch updates came that caused more bugs than they solved. Performance patch was a lone success
6. And now...here we are...

UPGRADE NOW

Guys, I'd love to help fund this game. I work in a development world too. It ain't easy. No one sees what works, they see what doesn't. I get it.

But all you guys are doing in PS2 is making me nervous about what will be done in Everquest Next. And now that you slap ads in my face, I don't even buy SC. I would have jumped at the latest sales (vehicle weapons and NS infantry weapons). But nope. Not now.

PS2 has HUGE battles, some very cool things going on that don't exist elsewhere. I purchased BF4 and to date still haven't been able to even make it run!!!

But for God's sake. You guys introduced major bugs in the last few patches and when I log on and see a new patch downloading, I think, great fixes!!

But....



Just a patch to annoy me with:

UPGRADE NOW

When I rush to a vehicle terminal to spend resources (on yet another Sundy to be destroyed by mass libs) in an effort to help my faction, I DON'T WANT TO SEE A FORKING ADVERTISEMENT.

Your marketing team is treading upon very dangerous waters.

There's really not much I can say that hasn't already been said within this thread other than the fact that Everquest: Next is going to be using the same business model. These types of tactics and invasive spam techniques are going to alienate and burn the computer version of this game...which will directly reflect Everquest: Next. When you leave an entire community of gamers jaded, that reputation remains tarnished and spreads...and if your marketing team isn't careful, Everquest: Next might crash and burn before it ever truly starts.

You'll prove the community of The Elder Scrolls Online right, that free to play games are a waste of time and money.

Ads on the death screen can work against SOE's goals. In general, you want to advertise to players after a *good* thing, not a bad thing like death.

Loading screens are a great place to advertise.
The world map terminal, a good place to advertise that if they subscribe they get priority queuing.
The redeployment screen is a neutral place to advertise.

Thought I could live with the ads and bs to get back to that sweet PS2 gameplay and squad tactics, but I cant. Considering that the community animosity towards this 'direction' by SOE seems to be falling on oblivious ears, I dont really have any recourse other than to uninstall. Like a bad relationship thats getting worse, its hard to cut it off because you get so wrapped up and invested in it, so much of your tine/effort has been poured in that throwing it away seems like a huge waste. Great job on moving the game in a direction that's universally despised by gamers of all stripes (new, intermediate, BR 100 vets, paid, freeload), great job again on sticking to your guns when we were all quite clear from the outset: DO NOT WANT/THIS WILL COST YOU PLAYERS BY THE BOATLOAD.

Checking in every day to see if you guys made good is infuriating and a constant reminder that when a game is this volatile the experience is ALWAYS open to arbitrary adjustments. Hossin, new ESF's and graphics optimizations arent even close to balancing all the poor decisions that are being made concurrent. Big *** UPGRADE NOW buttons and constant annooying upgrade reminders are a bad move, you guys have access to the data and Im guessing that for the 1 in 100 that upgrades because of the mkting you will get 5 or 6 that either refuse to give you one damn cent on principal or does what I just did and uninstalls completely.

On a whim I'll check back in a couple months to see if the fallout from the nagware has righted the ship, but the way that your team has handled this in the last week or so is NOT exactly encouraging. Its been a good run that ended prematurely, good luck counting the $ that you gain at the cost of a good chunk of your base. Keep the 800 unspent certs, they are worthless IRL

That makes sense, but, perhaps some more appropriate advertising on the death screen, such as, instead of a membership ad, advertise some discount camoflauge or some other aesthetic item.

I think they need to take the bottom left or right corner of the menu screens and put a large flashy text ad stating, "Check out all of the benefits that Membership gets you." Right now they have nothing. When you click on it, it opens up a well done multi page ad that you can click through and get a "World Tour" of everything they have to offer".

Speaking of underhanded...

How do you feel about the fact that canceling the recurring sub early also means you lose out on any remaining monthly SC?

example:
Pay for a year of sub. SOE gets the money. The sub is set as recurring.
At 9 months, you figure you won't want to pay another year, so you go and cancel the sub so you won't forget about it.
You lose the SC for months 10, 11 and 12.


"Why do you do this SOE? To better exploit peoples' bad memory, my dear"
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edit:

The system is probably bugged for you. I mean, most things related to PS2 are bugged, wouldn't surprise me if the membership bonus building is too

The only ad I don't like is the one on the loadout screens, it's a blantant clickjacker and should be scaled way down and/or moved off to the side somewhere.