SOE backlash reponse

Well it looks like the negative reactions to the SOE announcements for Premium members has spurred Smed into a new post.
To be fair it would have been nice to have alot of this information beforehand during the initial briefing, however it doesn’t do much to get me on board with the new thinking.

The goals of our plan are very simple. Let players buy anything they want up to 2000 SC. It’s fair to say that there aren’t a lot of high priced items in the Planetside 2 shop, but that’s kind of a good thing too. It’s just when you look at it from the perspective of someone who’s plan is changing they are right to ask “why is this good for me?”.
We are discussing the feedback we’ve been getting and we are making some decisions regarding this today. Particularly around Player Studio items (yeah that was a bad idea) and we’re talking about bundles as well. I promise that we are listening.

Why did we make this change? There were a few reasons really.
First and foremost we wanted to let players get some of the larger items on the marketplace. People complain the other way on this all the time – they complain that the 500SC isn’t enough for them to buy enough stuff. So we thought this would be a positive change.

Currently players save up, I fail to see how SOE could be so blind to think that players wouldn’t save Station Cash, if you price nearly everything out of their price range!
Was it to encourage them to purchase more Station Cash then, well given that globally people are looking for what they can get “best value for money” and to tighten their belts, players just saved that monthly cash to pick up the items they wanted, when they wanted or when on sale.

Second – it helps us deal with some internal issues regarding accrual of balances of SC for people who aren’t playing or spending. There are a lot of people who play and have SC in their wallets and don’t spend it ever.. this accrues over time and it’s a problem. Before the jaded among you cry out that this is really the most important reason – please don’t judge just yet. It’s actually not but I don’t want to hide the fact that it’s a part of it.

So firstly you make the monthly station cash reward too small to be able to purchase many of the items, then in the next breath you say that people are accruing balances of Station Cash. This appears to be a self inflicted problem.

Third – we have a problem with a disparity between our console titles (which can’t use Station Cash) and our PC Games. We can’t do the same kind of promotions as easily on the PS3 and PS4. We’re a lot more limited because we can’t use Station Cash on there. So when we have a 3x sale on SC we have to do something different for our console titles. It’s a pain in the neck to deal with this.

Woohoo, so is a big real reason for migrating to a nerfed system, to cater for the Console version of the games. Glad to see that we the PC players are first to be thrown under the wheels. Nevermind the hours of play or the recruiting of new blood for the game.

We are considering (and are likely going to move forward with) a plan that means if you subscribe to one of our games you are a subscriber to all our games (this applies to PC titles only btw).. all for the current $14.99 a month. That’s a benefit most companies simply can’t offer because they don’t have our portfolio of games. The goal would be to let you pick an item in each game you play. Some of you might say “well who cares..I only play Planetside 2. How is that a benefit to me?” My answer is simple – we’ve got a great lineup of games, some of which aren’t announced yet that cater to a lot of players. We have EQN and EQNL coming along with other….. games… that PS2 players might just like :)

But what if don’t want to play Everquest.
I’ll hold my breath for the other games that are coming along, but given the EQ heavy portfolio I can’t see this being an option I ever want to take.

Source : PS Forums

So it looks like I will be cancelling my subscription this month after all.