Sign of the times for ActiBlizz - A COD game 50% off less than 6 months after release.

Will this be coming with a fix for the soapy mouse handling? Or are playable controls also an xbox exclusive?

JeffD wrote on Jan 4, 2014, 20:53:
Warmblue, I wouldn't consider the 2x/3x SC sales a success. It was probably a quick attempt to get interest generated in the game but when I hear about how many people now have more sc then they know what do do with from those sales, that does not sound like a successful move that they would want to repeat again. Hence the % off sales.

Don't forget too, SC is not just planetside 2. more 2x/3x sales cheapens the value of SC over all SOE games.

It was a quick attempt at something, that's for sure.

The PS2 team can decide on item prices and other things specific to the PS2 marketplace - they really showed that off with the 1SC / 99SC sales over the holidays. But actual money transactions are strictly the call of SOE's marketing and accounting. That's where this is coming from.

I don't think they expected PS2 to have nearly as much player retention as it did. The entire thing was sloppy from the start and SOE admitted that PS2 was far more successful than they expected. If you're planning on a short product lifespan then selling hordes of virtual currency on sale makes sense - you want people to spend a lot before they uninstall and leave for good.

While a lot of people have indeed left the game, as you say now they're stuck with PS2 lifers with huge piles of fake money that is usable in their next big title at the start - and that no doubt means lost profit to the bean counters who were counting on virgin accounts buying buckets of StationCash. Now they're telling everyone that the big SC sales and monthly allowances have to stop and the devs need to do whatever they have to for damage control.

Hopefully the PS2 team comes up with something better than this stock default memo. They're fishing for feedback and ideas all over the place, and it's clear the dev teams can tailor the new plan to their game. DCUO for example is going to give 500 loyalty points or whatever, which will function identically to SC except it will be limited to the DCUO item shop. In other words, nothing will change except the SC can no longer transfer to SOE's other titles - thus cleaning up that nasty potential lost profit.

DG wrote on Jan 4, 2014, 20:21:
The best part of all this is it is most likely just an example of how incompetent they are. They probably actually think it is a better deal. If you don't actually think it through, if you are bit short on smarts, it is easy to see it as a better deal. If you only take a short subs and play casually it may well turn out better.

Their intentions for the change is likely that someone realised that they are giving player studio (fan made) content creators 40% of the sales price but everyone gets the SC in the sub or when SC is on sale. Oops! There is probably also some internal shit regarding subscribers for one game using the SC on a different one.

This incompetence runs right through the game at every level. Man, fuck me this game can be awesome. EPIC. But SOE do not seem to know what they are doing. Every update there's some incredible disaster proving there is no QA. Balance changes are probably done on a spreadsheet by some intern using bad data; I'll still say they fuck it up from incompetence and not bait-and-switch shit to get you to buy different gear, or pay to beta test for PlayStation4, but I've given a ton of goodwill towards that and it is wearing thin to say the least. The game is supposed to be on some 3 year development but 14 months in we've got one new vehicle, a bunch of weapons and cosmetics (to buy), and the rest has been a lot of fixing. Well, we got the "alert" sub-game but this is a band-aid for the lack of meta and continent-locking which is coming eventually.

I think there's plenty of competence on the money making end. It seems like shit because they're doing the absolute minimum they can to keep people paying. With an 18 month concept-to-launch development cycle I think PS2 was meant to be a quick cash grab, and then it became popular and SOE is stuck trying to keep a half-ass job afloat that they planned to abandon fairly quickly after launch.

There haven't been any 2x/3x SC sales anywhere in the SOE network since spring 2013. They started screwing with the daily deal discount % in December. Now they want to pull out on the 500SC monthly allowance and replace it with a one-item voucher that is going to exclude most of the items everyone wants right now - player studio cosmetics. It's the same bullshit all the other big companies are pulling. Deliver as little as possible with the highest pricetag consumers will take.

Trevellian wrote on Dec 31, 2013, 14:52:
You cannot attach C4 to moving vehicles or max's in Planetside 2.

They did that specifically to avoid this tactic that people use in Battlefield.

You can sticky bricks of C4 to anything in Planetside 2. MAX suits, flashes, tanks, bombers... friendly or enemy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1fT3-WL9hM

Pretty sure you can still do this, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bYMEFTjx94

- Fixed an issue where players could pick up the bomb on Obliteration.

Yup, that's right. Obliteration is now TDM Large.

Task wrote on Dec 14, 2013, 22:40:
Haha I'm staying clear of that. I used to post a lot on there, thinking up everything and anything to get the Devs to fix aspects of the game. But 'alas, it was all for nought. I just watch from the sidelines (and yes, I was a founder) while laughing - and then also crying since the only Mech Warrior/BattleTech game is just so POO that I funded in hopes of something amazing. The artwork/modeling is certainly top notch for MWO, but F2P is dragging this game along in the dirt. I know a Dev needs to make money for their livelihood, but man the design leads for this game made some weird choices.

Yeah, I was a founder, too. PGI didn't even last 6 months before shitting all over every single person who paid into that. It was what... two months later they released the first premium mech and it had double the credit boost of the Founder's mech?

Roberts already screwed over his pledgers once that I know of. Everyone asked if the credits included in the pledges would be worth it, and he assured everyone they'd have enough to fit some things to their ship. So far 1,000 credits only buys a poster of Chris Roberts for your hangar. Ha.

But I don't care about any of that. I want the dedicated, modifiable, private servers. Watch that get neutered or dropped from the feature list just before retail launch.

Gold plated clan mech preorders and the "limited edition" StarCitizen capital ships are very concerning. I thought EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc were supposed to be the wallet raiders, not the "independent" studios.

As for MWO, I guess it's true there's a sucker born every minute or that scam would have died by now.

Only one playable ship? X was good but it's not good enough to give up the fleet collecting, carrier captaining aspect.

necrosis wrote on Feb 8, 2011, 08:39:
Who needs buttons! Everyone get Kinect!

But what if I want to use my legs to move forward instead of my eyebrows?

space captain wrote on Feb 7, 2011, 22:06:
all caps means he is TOTALLY SERIOUS YOU GUYS

or he is CRUISING IN COOL

Aww, grass wasn't so green off the Blizzard ranch?

Maybe if you beg and grovel enough they'll take you back as a junior staff member writing quest text.

I'll only +like your Diablo page if Bobby Kotick +friends me. Those are my terms. Non-negotiable.

WyldKat wrote on Feb 7, 2011, 21:36:
Button remaps benefit everyone, not just the disabled.

Yup.

sir wrote on Feb 7, 2011, 17:55:
Essentially, it will be a legalized version of those "free" private WoW servers, where you splash out real money to buy imbalanced virtual weapons to pwn the nubs. It'll be great.

Hey, people pay upwards for $30 for hacks. Why not just cut out the middle man? Who needs gear for skills when you can do money for skills.

Jobless noobs won't know what hit 'em.

PropheT wrote on Feb 7, 2011, 13:06:
Wing Commander did it years ago, and I don't think I can name more than a handful of games to have done it since...it allowed you to fail and continue with the consequences of the failure. It was a lot more interesting than just a simple you win/you lose to everything you did.

Wing Commander's spider web of a branching campaign was indeed ingenious. However, Origin found that very few gamers actually bothered to experience it all, tending instead to load the last save game and redo a mission until they got it done right, never bothering to realize they could lose a lot of the campaign and still come to a final victory (and the losing ending wasn't shabby either). That's why the sequels were increasingly linear.

Welcome to Free To Play. Enjoy your stay.

Congratulations on your $420 door prize!

Someone call the fire department because that man is smoking hot.

Prez wrote on Feb 5, 2011, 04:24:
I hate every MMO and wish they would all die a quick death. No coin-flipping for me!

You don't like paying $15/mo for a second job?