This is not rocket science SOE is changing this for their next iteration of games coming out.
SOE no longer offers 2x 3x SC and now they are no longer giving away SC for subbing. If you are an active participant in any or all of the titles this is not necessarily a bad thing... You are getting $20 a month worth of SC for a game per month as opposed to $5 worth.
Remember all games prior to PS2 have been designed as Sub games first and THEN changing to a cash shop model.
Their new games EQ N and EQ NL are designed from the ground up as a F2P model so giving away SC that can likely be applied to future titles is a bad financial move for them.
I have 50k SC banked as I have been an active All-Access subscriber for years and took advantage of the 2x/3x offers when they were available... I only hope at this point they don't change currency models for the future titles as I am a supporter of SOE and look forward to playing them.
Face it kids... this is smart business on their part to protect their future revenue stream and also offers ACTIVE players a fair compensation of $20 value to spend (use it or lose it) as opposed to a $5 accumulation.
On that note I may likely cancel my All Access due to low activity in their current offering.
I think most people saw this coming. It's why I will never invest in a game that's "free" to play. Give me a sub, so I know what to expect, both in what I pay and what I get. With F2P, it's all smoke and mirrors.
why does no one ever do the math, for one toon, f2p and unlocking what you need will always be cheaper then buying game at launch price plus 3 months of subs, every time!
and you never feel the need to rush or play all the time to get your moneys worth
As a Planet Side 2 player all its done in guarantee that when I take a break from playing I'll just cancel my sub. Then reactivate it when Im ready to jump into the game again. Which is usually 3 months on, 2 months off.
So they kinda fucked themselves out of a $30 sub in my case. Which adds up to like $90 a year, stupid if you ask me. I liked the fact that when I'd log in after a hiatus I'd have 1k to 1.5K of Station Cash waiting for me.
No reason to give them $15 when Im on a break if I dont get something back for it.
Ohh and for those of you too ignorant to understand whats coming down the road, I'll let you in on a little secret.
Expect to see items on sale for 2200 or 2500 Station Cash. You know, so you are forced into spending some of your own money to take advantage of that great deal.
There is no way they are going to go from giving $5 to $20 worth of Station Cash unless they get something out of it by doing so.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
that's part of the problem as well, this SC voucher can NOT be added to SC you already have or purchase. it's a voucher for ONE item that costs 2000SC or less.
no bundled items so the Heritage Armor sets are out as well as any bundle sets of decorating items. (whether you like it or not EQ2 consists of two audiences: decorators and raiders.)
so let's review here:
Subscribers get to
1. move their AA slider
2. use the Broker
3. use the mail
4. slight xp bump
5. slight mounted speed bump (which at 10 years in you can imagine how meaningless that is.)
6. 7 character slots free
and that's pretty much it. as long as an F2P'r buys the xpacs they get everything that a subscriber does.
which is why i agree with an earlier post here and it's something ive said before: they don't want your sub anymore. they believe they have found the goose that lays the golden egg, ie., Cash Shop run games.
this is why EQN/L is not going to have a sub, as pointed out earlier in the thread, it's also why PS2 did not have a sub. they really are looking to nickel and dime their playerbase as the best means to monetize their game portfolio.
(do you remember that nice little harvesting tool that you get with your Alpha EQL package? you bought that. do you really think they won't be selling something even better down the line? and if the Cash Shop is the only means of dealing with the game then you can bet they are going to push the envelope of P2Win as close as they think they can get away with.)
i will be surprised if subs survive past 2015 and the launch of EQN.
i read a quote on here once a number of years ago i believe in which Smedley stated that he wanted SOE to move in the direction of F2P for all of their games. well here it is.
here's the problem: i have never had any opposition to F2P games, until now. i have played F2P games, ones which let you grind out points ingame or purchase them (Turbine), and ones that simply have a cash shop and you pay up front, as well as the Rift style where even the free gamers get little rewards for logging in every day and where some items are still solely accessible through gameplay (mounts and such).
SOE believes they are opening their games up to a wider audience, and they may very well succeed in that, but i think i am beginning to see the edge of an upcoming pushback by consumers against their model of F2P payment.
"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play." Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
I don't think this is an attack against the subscription.
This may have something to do with upcoming EQN/EQL, but I doubt that even, as those aren't even in full Beta yet, and we won't see EQL out and about as a released product for months yet.
What this is about is the people who horde SC then blow it when the big sales are on. I know a lot of people in EQ1 that just wait for big bag bundles to go on sale (like they were recently for the holidays), then unload their SC wad getting a bunch of them at once at a discount. With the new method, this won't work - you can't get a bundle in the first place, and the biggest bags are usuallyjust over 2000 SC even when on sale.
I do tend to agree, in a few months time, we'll see the really desirable stuff going for just over 2000 SC (or, in the case of bags, it already is), to make sure you have to dig into your wallet.
All in all, I don't really mind anyway - the change probably will have me buying more junk from the SC Store - just because I have to use or lose the credit, and a couple of free XP pots or so a month I won't just throw away. But it won't have me spending cash any more cash on SC.
This is why I'll be in Wildstar instead of EqN. SoE has proven time and time again that they are all about making money and care little for what makes the players happy. Until Swtor, I considered they're FTP model the worst one available. They just seem really greedy and they ruined Swg. :P
Originally posted by Maelzrael This is why I'll be in Wildstar instead of EqN. SoE has proven time and time again that they are all about making money and care little for what makes the players happy. Until Swtor, I considered they're FTP model the worst one available. They just seem really greedy and they ruined Swg. :P
SOE time and time again has proven themselves to be a good AAA game provider. Get over the r@#$@# swg thing already. All of the companies ONLY care about making money. You think they want to be your friend?
Measure the game on its quality and whether their sub options work for you or not but to suggest SOE is a bad company because they are seeking profits is an antiquated statement. You want to see crap games? Look at half the Asian grinders advertised on this site.
Originally posted by DamonVile Why don't people ever just read the official post about it instead of going all chicken little about a change ?
Originally posted by cheyane
What is with this jumping all over the bandwagon and not even reading or checking things properly so tired of these drama queens.
Lol.
While I only posted once in it, about how the change will affect DCUO (so a bit offtopic), and with it I'm not the most suited person to step up in the other's defenses, this jumping all over the bandwagon comment was hilarious
This thread ran after the first letter. There were two Smed statements after the posts in this thread, where SOE changed the initial plan, in some parts exactly due to threads like this all over the web. (he even said "Thanks for the feedback. We listened.")
So, obviously this thread couldn't reflected to those changes, since it was stopped by that time. You maybe missed the necroing, and just jumped onto the bandwagon of commenting
There is an edit function OP should have used it to edit his original post then to reflect the changes instead of letting the misleading information stand esp since he has been posting steadily on other threads so it behooves him to make the correction.
Comments
This is not rocket science SOE is changing this for their next iteration of games coming out.
SOE no longer offers 2x 3x SC and now they are no longer giving away SC for subbing. If you are an active participant in any or all of the titles this is not necessarily a bad thing... You are getting $20 a month worth of SC for a game per month as opposed to $5 worth.
Remember all games prior to PS2 have been designed as Sub games first and THEN changing to a cash shop model.
Their new games EQ N and EQ NL are designed from the ground up as a F2P model so giving away SC that can likely be applied to future titles is a bad financial move for them.
I have 50k SC banked as I have been an active All-Access subscriber for years and took advantage of the 2x/3x offers when they were available... I only hope at this point they don't change currency models for the future titles as I am a supporter of SOE and look forward to playing them.
Face it kids... this is smart business on their part to protect their future revenue stream and also offers ACTIVE players a fair compensation of $20 value to spend (use it or lose it) as opposed to a $5 accumulation.
On that note I may likely cancel my All Access due to low activity in their current offering.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
You make me like charity
Most EQ2 players have way more than one toon.
As a Planet Side 2 player all its done in guarantee that when I take a break from playing I'll just cancel my sub. Then reactivate it when Im ready to jump into the game again. Which is usually 3 months on, 2 months off.
So they kinda fucked themselves out of a $30 sub in my case. Which adds up to like $90 a year, stupid if you ask me. I liked the fact that when I'd log in after a hiatus I'd have 1k to 1.5K of Station Cash waiting for me.
No reason to give them $15 when Im on a break if I dont get something back for it.
Ohh and for those of you too ignorant to understand whats coming down the road, I'll let you in on a little secret.
Expect to see items on sale for 2200 or 2500 Station Cash. You know, so you are forced into spending some of your own money to take advantage of that great deal.
There is no way they are going to go from giving $5 to $20 worth of Station Cash unless they get something out of it by doing so.
"I understand that if I hear any more words come pouring out of your **** mouth, Ill have to eat every fucking chicken in this room."
that's part of the problem as well, this SC voucher can NOT be added to SC you already have or purchase. it's a voucher for ONE item that costs 2000SC or less.
no bundled items so the Heritage Armor sets are out as well as any bundle sets of decorating items. (whether you like it or not EQ2 consists of two audiences: decorators and raiders.)
so let's review here:
Subscribers get to
1. move their AA slider
2. use the Broker
3. use the mail
4. slight xp bump
5. slight mounted speed bump (which at 10 years in you can imagine how meaningless that is.)
6. 7 character slots free
and that's pretty much it. as long as an F2P'r buys the xpacs they get everything that a subscriber does.
which is why i agree with an earlier post here and it's something ive said before: they don't want your sub anymore. they believe they have found the goose that lays the golden egg, ie., Cash Shop run games.
this is why EQN/L is not going to have a sub, as pointed out earlier in the thread, it's also why PS2 did not have a sub. they really are looking to nickel and dime their playerbase as the best means to monetize their game portfolio.
(do you remember that nice little harvesting tool that you get with your Alpha EQL package? you bought that. do you really think they won't be selling something even better down the line? and if the Cash Shop is the only means of dealing with the game then you can bet they are going to push the envelope of P2Win as close as they think they can get away with.)
i will be surprised if subs survive past 2015 and the launch of EQN.
i read a quote on here once a number of years ago i believe in which Smedley stated that he wanted SOE to move in the direction of F2P for all of their games. well here it is.
here's the problem: i have never had any opposition to F2P games, until now. i have played F2P games, ones which let you grind out points ingame or purchase them (Turbine), and ones that simply have a cash shop and you pay up front, as well as the Rift style where even the free gamers get little rewards for logging in every day and where some items are still solely accessible through gameplay (mounts and such).
SOE believes they are opening their games up to a wider audience, and they may very well succeed in that, but i think i am beginning to see the edge of an upcoming pushback by consumers against their model of F2P payment.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
I don't think this is an attack against the subscription.
This may have something to do with upcoming EQN/EQL, but I doubt that even, as those aren't even in full Beta yet, and we won't see EQL out and about as a released product for months yet.
What this is about is the people who horde SC then blow it when the big sales are on. I know a lot of people in EQ1 that just wait for big bag bundles to go on sale (like they were recently for the holidays), then unload their SC wad getting a bunch of them at once at a discount. With the new method, this won't work - you can't get a bundle in the first place, and the biggest bags are usuallyjust over 2000 SC even when on sale.
I do tend to agree, in a few months time, we'll see the really desirable stuff going for just over 2000 SC (or, in the case of bags, it already is), to make sure you have to dig into your wallet.
All in all, I don't really mind anyway - the change probably will have me buying more junk from the SC Store - just because I have to use or lose the credit, and a couple of free XP pots or so a month I won't just throw away. But it won't have me spending cash any more cash on SC.
SOE time and time again has proven themselves to be a good AAA game provider. Get over the r@#$@# swg thing already. All of the companies ONLY care about making money. You think they want to be your friend?
Measure the game on its quality and whether their sub options work for you or not but to suggest SOE is a bad company because they are seeking profits is an antiquated statement. You want to see crap games? Look at half the Asian grinders advertised on this site.
regarding what Op posted,
Smed revised what will happen with subs (for the better)
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/2014-membership-update-from-smed.166604/
EQ2 fan sites
What is with this jumping all over the bandwagon and not even reading or checking things properly so tired of these drama queens.
Lol.
While I only posted once in it, about how the change will affect DCUO (so a bit offtopic), and with it I'm not the most suited person to step up in the other's defenses, this jumping all over the bandwagon comment was hilarious
This thread ran after the first letter. There were two Smed statements after the posts in this thread, where SOE changed the initial plan, in some parts exactly due to threads like this all over the web. (he even said "Thanks for the feedback. We listened.")
So, obviously this thread couldn't reflected to those changes, since it was stopped by that time. You maybe missed the necroing, and just jumped onto the bandwagon of commenting
There is an edit function OP should have used it to edit his original post then to reflect the changes instead of letting the misleading information stand esp since he has been posting steadily on other threads so it behooves him to make the correction.