Would you sub/unsub if resource boosts were removed from membership?

I am a subbed member, but do not care for the resource benefit. If it were removed I'd still keep membership because membership supports the game, gives me tons of certs to try out multiple builds with, and essentially works out to me just promising to buy $10 worth of SC every month.

I largely don't notice the resource buff, but in principle I'd prefer it removed. If you want to sub then get a sub. You can always just pull vehicles for other people in your squad if you don't want to use the resources yourself. Help level the playing field

P2W is when people who DO PAY have a competitive advantage over people who DO NOT PAY. Being able to field more tanks is a competitive advantage. The resource buff is not enough to ruin the competitive play of the game, but is a P2W design. On principle I'd prefer it removed, though if it makes SOE a lot of money I'm not going to quit over them keeping it in.

Just wanted to throw this in here;
I got an answer from a dev on a stream.. or tweet.. or something, but it was direct from a dev.
The intention with the resource system, in terms of the 60/min, or 300/5min, is that it will be as if everyone has FULLY CERTED their acquisition timers.

eg; a mbt will cost 300, the same resources you would get over 5 minutes

NOW

They may have changed their minds..but this was what I last heard.

Think about what you said for a second.

This would be true if this was me, a paying member, against you (perhaps someone else?) a non paying member.

However, nothing is preventing the other team from having paying members.

Therefor, there is no competitive advantage I am gaining that is not possible for your team to also have.

... still not pay to win.. /sigh.

So the opponent has to pay in order to compete.... I mean that is the whole essence of pay to win right there and it has to stop. I'm sorry but it is you who isn't getting this.

But you can still only drive one tank at a time though.

The fact that someone can pull tanks more often, does not alter the nature of a given encounter in terms of the power level between two players during that specific encounter.

Of course, you could argue, that over time, the player, who can pull more tanks, is more powerful insofar that every single encounter between two people comes down to either having a tank or not having a tank - however we all know, that this is not the case.

Most encounters are determined of by the number of players, regardless of the their individual power level, as any single player cannot in anything but the rarest circumstances make up for more than a single player in terms of raw power (there are exceptions with exceptional players, but those are rare).

Thus, faster vehicle resource acquisition in Planetside 2 is not "pay 2 win" on an individual encounter basis - it is only relevant in a strategic sense, where resource expenditure over time becomes the determining factor, which, to be sure, is rare in this game.

Anyway, I wouldn't unsub for losing the resource benefit - I don't really care about it that much. I pretty much pay for All Access to support the game and reap the benefits of increased cert gain, though I'm already running out of things I'd "like" to have on my main characte. Guess I'll keep paying as long as I find the game entertaining or my financial priorities change.

I have to admit the resource boost is one of the main boons of the system.
I take no pleasure in idling in the warpgate to fill up resource pools.
It is to be noted, admittedly, that in the new system idling to fill up your Inventory won't be possible as much anymore; Still, it's an ongoing possibility, and one I'd take if I didn't have the subsription option.
Then again, I barely played the past twothree months due to RSI, and I'm still paying, so I guess my opinion isn't overly substantiated anymore.

The current membership benefits are roughly:

More passive cert gain - horray, 10 minutes worth of ressing people at a random mid-scale fight, and more certs for characters I don't play as often, fairly nice, not worth the sub on it's own, and even the max membership benefits (6 months of time payed for) are barely noticable.

500 SC a month, whereas (even with membership) all weapons cost 630+ SC, and cosmetics are typically more? 2 months minimum for 1 item... A nice bonus, I admit, but also not worth it on it's own.

Continent que priority - this one I like, being able to move around rapidly is a huge benefit, this one might be worth it when combined with the two benefits above.

Exp bonus - Yep, I like this one - definitely worth it when combined with everything above.


Resource gain... currently on test (last I read) non members will gain 60 resources a minute, with a maximum of 600. That's 10 minutes to pull absolutely any vehicle, at most. Membership benefits... even if this cuts the time to regain all 600 resources in half, if you can't make a tank last 5 minutes, I would like to suggest that you pull your vehicle from a base or so farther back in the lattice, or perhaps you could get up for a drink, or a restroom break? 10 minutes is half the time it takes for the server to AFK-kick you.

All the membership resource boost will do is provide another small bonus to what is already a rapid resource gain, is the ability to pull tanks ~90-180 seconds faster really a deal-breaker? Subs are guaranteed income for the game, removing any benefit from paying customers to appease the non paying customers isn't something I expected to see requested.

But if a paying player loses to a free player in a tank, they are more likely to be able to immediately pull another tank than if the free player lost. The rest of your post is an argument of how the advantage isn't extremely impactful (I agree). A game can have an element of P2W without the entirely of the game being P2W. Increased resource gain is P2W. PS2 is not P2W, however. Get what I'm saying?

This is a tangent, but imagine if members had a 2% increase to all the damage they dealt. Is that P2W? Yes, but 2% would almost never be the difference of a win or loss. In principle P2W, but in practice not something that significantly devalues the competitive nature of the game. That is resource boosts as they are now. It is a P2W benefit that is so diluted that it's not much of an issue to the greater scheme of the game.

Just as Implants and being able to relocate quicker to reinforce that critical junction on another continent.
It's a thin line, but so far they haven't overstepped it.

Yes - but if the two players meet again, the freemium player would have the exact same chance as he did before to destroy the paying customer provided the parameters of the fight were the same.

The fact that subsequent fights occurr sooner does not inherently change the possible outcomes of said fights at the end of the day.

At least to me, that is not pay to win where it counts. Once you move beyond single player vs. single player/vehicle engagements, there are so many variables to take into account, that one cannot specifically say "they paid more money than the other team so they won" - and history shows that numbers, if anything, is typically the deciding factor in Planetside 2 compared to anything else.

I think we are in agreement though - the tangible combat benefits for paying for anything in Planetside 2 are virtually non-existent at the end of the day. It's more about convenience than anything, which I think is a good thing.

I never pay for subscription in F2P games, prefer to get cosmetic items, may pay for special units - like if they added 1950's Cadillac.

Pretty much sums up my feelings.

Next they meet, the freemium player is on foot while the paying player is in a tank, assuming we are in the case where the bonus resources was a factor in being able to pull again. Does the freemium player have the same chance as before to destroy the paying customer?

There is an advantage, but again it's very diluted so it rarely matters. As hyperbole, imagine if every member of VS and TR had membership, but absolutely no one on NC did. How would that affect the performance of the faction?

In practice, there's so many things that keep the P2W of resource boosts diluted. Both sides have a mixture of paying and free customers, so faction balance is not greatly affected. Also, if you run out of one resource you can just switch to another and then a third while you wait for the first to replenish, though that won't be true with the new system.

Discussing F2P is difficult, because people are often just outright unfamiliar with what the term means, or are unable to distinguish between saying an element, rather than the entire game, is P2W. I'll talk about individual game elements having P2W, but where it counts, PS2 is still not P2W. The reason I'm typically against even those diluted P2W elements is that, when you stack enough of them into a game, the game on a whole tips over into P2W. Both the devs, and us the players, need to be on guard against passing that tipping point.

Not sure. I do need my revive grenades though.

Ah, one of the few who is vocal with the truth.

I would unsubscribe if I stopped playing for several weeks or SOE removed the benefits to the point that the only difference between paying and not paying would be something like a forum badge or ingame title.

How IS it pay 2 win? It's buying convenience, not victory.

Sub tanks aren't 50% more powerful than free tanks. They just have more frequency. My tank can't kill a f2p player just because I'm subbed.

There's a huge difference, and you're mixing them up.

Good thing this game isnt pay to win.... Its pay for convenience... being able to not wait for resource gain as a member is quite a large price to pay for 15-10 bucks a month... When will you F2P's realize we "pay-to-wins" mostly opt for subscriptions to support the game rather then just for the cert and resource gain and continent que and potentially 500 SC a month if you recur pay, these few things are extremely basic for membership perks.... just take a look at games like Combat Arms or Runescape and see how they treat F2P compared to this game and see the amount of advantages or more content paying would give you compared to this one...

And holy geez dude, your willing to pay for cosmetics but not the membership, which is clearly the more valuable thing you could buy from a gameplay aspect if your not willing to buy weapons that could give you a blatant advantage on par with the unfair factor you listed, so you qq about it on the forum? wheres the logic in that? if money is an issue save up 15-35 bucks over buying camos and helmets for a couple o weeks or months, dont paint us "MONEY SPENDERS" as pay to win cheaters, if it wasn't for us you wouldn't have a game to make pointless already disproven pay-to-win arguments on the forum in the first place...

The question is not whether people would unsub (that's a slight given) but what benefits a max level subbed player gets from this over the freeloader?

500sc, not enough to buy anything much other than weapon attachments and the odd decal.
Passive cert gain, useful but as others have said 10 minutes of bio lab combat as a medic negates this.
Passive XP gain, see above.
Queue priority, not really seen a pop locked continent recently on Miller, useful but not enough to get a sub.

So I ask this why the hell not have a resource gain for those players who are putting their wallet where others merely put their mouth? As I doubt the amount of SC will go up anytime soon.

But this example assumes that the freemium player loses his vehicle between the two encounters, which is not necessarily the case - and then the whole premise of the example is pretty much negated, as suddenly you aren't comparing two players going against each other on equal terms, but a situation where one player is suffering under a distinct disadvantage.

As such for the comparison between the two player types to work, it must be assumed that "beating" the other paying player involves keeping the vehicle/resources used and the parameters for subsequent encounters are the same - otherwise all other variables have to taken into account such as disparity in player numbers in the area between the two encounters, the current strategic situation etc. etc. at which point a direct comparison between two individual players' available resources becomes largely irrelevant.

Case 1: Premium player loses their tank to freemium player. They immediately pull another tank and get a second chance at killing the freemium player in a MBT. If they succeed, freemium player is unable to pull again.
Case 2: Freemium player loses their tank to premium player. They are unable to pull again, and must try to destroy the enemy MBT while on foot. If they succeed, premium player is able to pull again.

In which of these cases would the player who lost their tank have a harder time killing the other player?

Given the above, imagine a battle where the entirety of one side has resource boosts, while the other side does not. Which side is able to pull more vehicles and MAXes? Would this help them win the base? If so, what does this say about the advantage conferred by resource boosts?

Keep in mind that any arguments about the likelihood of the above situations does NOT disprove P2W behavior, but is a discussion of dilution. A diluted P2W mechanic is still P2W, but has less impact on the competitive nature of a game. The proper amount of dilution is highly subjective, so I am not arguing that.