One F2P feature that LoL doesn't have and Planetside 2 NEEDS

[LZachariah]

A Gift System. I am baffled at how LoL doesn't seem to have this. With a F2P model with microtransactions, unlike the standard "everyone pays the same thing" model, the game's major sources of income are the big-spenders who are willing to pour much more money into the game than would ultimately have totaled the $60 price tag of a standard game. Yes, some people (like me) have paid $20 or so on LoL for a certain character or a particular skin, but there will be lots of players who pay nothing, and THEN there will be some players (like a friend of mine) who laughs and says "Yeah, I've spent about $300 on LoL."

A Gift System (ie, the ability to buy in-game things and direct them to a friend's account) would GREATLY STIMULATE in-game commerce, which is exactly what I want. I want T-Ray sporting silver rings encrusted with amethysts and emeralds (someone PLEASE get that color-reference o.O ) and I want Higby to buy a suit of real-life, canine MAX armor for his dog (to go along with the T-shirt). The Gift System would add extra dimensions to what a person bought, and I believe this would be exponentially greater for Outfits (ie, everyone buying uniforms, etc). It is highly likely that the most successful Outfits will be led by a handful of EXTREMELY DEVOTED Planetside 2 players, and they may be willing to shell out $50-$100 to provide their teammates with (for instance) a signature item that makes them recognizable on the field as part of that Outfit, such as a big gladiator-style pauldron on one shoulder, etc.


I want SOE to get TONS of money from this game. Depending on how it actually plays upon release, it is a potential contender for my favorite game of all time (standing amongst Neverwinter Nights 2, Chrono Trigger, the Mass Effect series, and a few amazing others).

Thoughts?

~Zachariah

[Higby]

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

It's really easy to buy something with stolen credit card info and then send hundreds of items to hundreds of people as "gifts" and then all we can really do is ban all of them for receiving fraudulent items that they might have never asked for or wanted. It's a very challenging problem to solve for free-to-play games. In other countries you can't play the game unless you put in the equivalent of your social security number with your account which makes it a lot less likely to commit fraud, but in the US we can't really do that.

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

[Bags]

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

It's really easy to buy something with stolen credit card info and then send hundreds of items to hundreds of people as "gifts" and then all we can really do is ban all of them for receiving fraudulent items that they might have never asked for or wanted. It's a very challenging problem to solve for free-to-play games. In other countries you can't play the game unless you put in the equivalent of your social security number with your account which makes it a lot less likely to commit fraud, but in the US we can't really do that.

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Yeah, in GunZ the Duel one of my not-so-close-E-Friends bought us all stuff, and it turned out he just used stolen credit cards. Thankfully the company running it were smart enough to not ban us because banning people for others illegal activity is assbackwards.

[Higby]

Yeah, in GunZ the Duel one of my not-so-close-E-Friends bought us all stuff, and it turned out he just used stolen credit cards. Thankfully the company running it were smart enough to not ban us because banning people for others illegal activity is assbackwards.

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

[Bags]

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

I get that you can just send them to your own accounts too, yeah. That hit me after I typed that up, eh. Still, I think the best solution is not to ban everyone and just take away the items and ban the purchaser, but GunZ didn't have any consumables.

I'm not saying you guys should do it this way, I just think if a game DOES have gifting it's kind of douchey to ban everyone who receives the items.

[Lonehunter]

I just think if a game DOES have gifting it's kind of douchey to ban everyone who receives the items.
Pending an investigation they really have no choice

[Redshift]

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Only allow one credit card to be associated with each account at a time, limit gifting to br rank 10+ (or whatever). It's not worth the time taken to level it then. You can limit gifting to only activate 10 days after the card is associated with an account to, plenty of time for the card to be blocked etc if it is nicked

[Xyntech]

I guess one partial solution would be to make consumable items non-giftable. At least then you could take them all back without having to ban everyone.

Maybe you could also put restrictions that you have to meet before you can send or receive a gift.

Sending:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (to prevent idlers)
Spent a minimum amount of money in non gifted items in the shop ($20?)
Made a payment to the cash shop a minimum amount of time ago with the card you are using to purchase the gift (3 months?)
Gifts must be purchased as gifts. You can not gift an item after purchasing it for yourself.

Receiving:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (prevent idlers)
Recipient must agree to terms and conditions of receiving a gift, including loss of item if fraud was involved
If fraud is found to have occurred, the recipient gets a warning that if they accept any future gifts that turn out to be fraudulent purchases, disciplinary action may be taken against their account.

[Bags]

Pending an investigation they really have no choice

Uh, no, they do have a choice. They can either do nothing like the company running GunZ did (I don't support this), or take away the items and ban the guy who bought them.

Or just not have gifting at all since they can't police it. You can't punish players because the company is incompetent.

[FIREk]

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

As long as you can't gift monthly account premium-ness, I don't think a gifting system for items and such would be a fraud magnet.

While I know what I'm talking about, I don't know exactly how it might work in f2p games. I can't imagine people buying stiff with fraudulent CC info for themselves, though. They would typically buy stuff to resell on auction sites.
Most importantly, though, such "entrepreneurs" will always target the "new cool thing" that will sell quickly if offered for cheap, which usually means the current popular AAA PC title, or stuff that is always in demand when offered for cheap, like MMO time codes.
Slow-moving merchandise, like a ReXO skin that someone may like at some point, but isn't likely to end up looking for on eBay, might not sell by the time the credit card company notices the fraud, issues a chargeback, and the gift gets invalidated.
CC thieves (or people who buy stolen CC info) will always go for the easier monies. ;)

So I think you'll be fine as long as people can only gift cosmetic stuff, weapons and other "various" items, not high-demand "consumables" like premiums.

And just think of all the revenue you can make once lonely nerds start gifting stuff to the dozen or so women playing PlanetSide 2 and not hiding their gender... And to the thousands of guys pretending to be women... :P

[Captain B]

As others said, if you can track items bought:

1) Ban the person gifting the fraudulent items.

2) Remove the fraudulent items.

3) Repeat.

When you discover the fraudulent account, you may or may not find other accounts attached to it. If not, well, that's one account, and when you send that info into the police, those other "bad accounts" from the same person may become less of an issue when jail is thrown into the mix.

Is PS2 localized for prison?

[Sco]

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)


Make it so you can only gift non-consumable items. Players dont require the whole shop to be "gift-able" - but only items that can be removed after the event. This removes the fraud aspect as it allows retrospective amendment.

[FIREk]

As others said, if you can track items bought:

1) Ban the person gifting the fraudulent items.

2) Remove the fraudulent items.

3) Repeat.

When you discover the fraudulent account, you may or may not find other accounts attached to it. If not, well, that's one account, and when you send that info into the police, those other "bad accounts" from the same person may become less of an issue when jail is thrown into the mix.

Is PS2 localized for prison?

This doesn't work. Trust me. You don't ban people, you ban accounts. It's too easy to change your IP, create new accounts and get more CC details. You can't ban IP ranges, or you'll affect innocent users (or potential users).

Also, you don't just "remove items and repeat". You have to return the money. That also means extra costs for processing the refund.

I also don't know if and how many companies contact the police about stuff like this. I think this should be the credit card company's job, but either way the Internet is international and anonymous enough for people to get away with this shit...

Most uber-importantly, most fraudulent items will only be discovered once you get information from a bank that they made a chargeback for the order. And believe you me, online companies hate chargebacks like the plague, and it doesn't take a lot of them for the company to feel it. I won't give you the exact reason, however, as I think going into more detail might count as breaching my NDA.

[FIREk]

This removes the fraud aspect as it allows retrospective amendment.

While I agree with the non-consumables part, I must stress out that you don't want to focus on retrospective amendment. You need prevention, sometimes even if it means limiting functionality for legitimate users, though you will always work hard to avoid that.

At the end of the day, if your CC details get stolen, it's your own damn fault... From a company's perspective, giving someone their money back is a courtesy, it doesn't fix the problem.

[LZachariah]

Wow, Higby, that's a really good point that I hadn't considered. This may be why LoL (which otherwise seems to be doing everything right) DOESN'T have a gifting system. And as always, thank you so much for all your amazing contributions to our forums; all of us feel how devoted the PS2 team is to its fanbase.


And i TOTALLY want you to be able to get that NC MAX armor for your dog. I'm thinking dual AV weapons; now she can just "chase cars" from the sidewalk. And by "chase," I mean "annihilate."

[Tapman]

I guess one partial solution would be to make consumable items non-giftable. At least then you could take them all back without having to ban everyone.

Maybe you could also put restrictions that you have to meet before you can send or receive a gift.

Sending:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (to prevent idlers)
Spent a minimum amount of money in non gifted items in the shop ($20?)
Made a payment to the cash shop a minimum amount of time ago with the card you are using to purchase the gift (3 months?)
Gifts must be purchased as gifts. You can not gift an item after purchasing it for yourself.

Receiving:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (prevent idlers)
Recipient must agree to terms and conditions of receiving a gift, including loss of item if fraud was involved
If fraud is found to have occurred, the recipient gets a warning that if they accept any future gifts that turn out to be fraudulent purchases, disciplinary action may be taken against their account.

I would love this. Most parents don't give their kids credit card info to buy stuff like this until they see a legitimate interest that has stood the test of an average child's attention span, three months is fine. Outfits would go crazy over it too, especially if you eventually had a deep customization system where you could basically design your armor but you had to pay to be able to use it in-game. Side note, you should be allowed to keep it private by setting it up as a favorite and sharing it with your outfit, or submitting it to the shop as another template for people to choose from.

I would recommend adding a forced waiting period on the first few items purchased using a new credit card no matter how old the account is. If it fits in the financial model, add the fraud prevention services that credit card companies already offer to other vendors to verify it on the spot. If that is too expensive for the majority of transactions you could at least use it for power-buyers, which I would define by transaction frequency. This will also keep the rich folks who may or may not think it is a status symbol buying the new stuff you release all the time.

As far as potentially receiving fraudulent items, I would be fine with having the item removed from my account. If it happened to me twice, I would be fine with extra scrutiny on my account, but please don't let some asshole troll ban people when they get their hands on a working set of numbers. You could avoid this by only allowing items to be gifted to your account by someone on your friends list, make all other gifts reviewable prior to accepting. One last note, please don't forget to have a one-time, if-you-save-my-credit-card-information-I-will-freak, payment option, and show the option for the SOE Authenticator in with a font size that scales up based on the amount of items you have purchased.

[SKYeXile]

never gets old:

http://www.playfin.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/PA_LOL.jpg

[FIREk]

I would love this. (...)

*sigh* You're missing the point. ;)

[Crator]

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

[FIREk]

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

Hi, I'm Firek and I'm a vanityholic... ;)

[Xyntech]

Firek, as someone who knows a little more about the situation, would not requiring a waiting period on an active character as well as a waiting period on an active billing card (card used for non gifted items) remove most of the dangers?

If you can't bust someone who is actively using a stolen card number after 3 months, what's the point?

[FIREk]

Firek, as someone who knows a little more about the situation, would not requiring a waiting period on an active character as well as a waiting period on an active billing card (card used for non gifted items) remove most of the dangers?

If you can't bust someone who is actively using a stolen card number after 3 months, what's the point?

A waiting period on an active character may be exploitable, however this obstacle alone would mean most CC thieves will just look for easier merchandise, like gift codes for new AAA titles. At first I thought that some might exploit this by finding a niche in PS2, by exploit-farming new characters, but I think AAA titles would sell just as well, and would be easier to get.

The waiting period for an active card would work in general, but would be a major inconvenience, especially for new users. If you don't mind, let me write this down for tomorrow's meeting, as we'll be discussing a similar subject at work and are looking for fresh ideas. ;) It would probably be too hardcore and inconvenient for a non-MMO business... Still, it might stir a brainstorm. :)

And of course the bank, or the CC's owner, may only realize that the card is being used fraudulently after a long while, giving you dozens of chargebacks... But I don't recall such a case. It's always a possibility, though. :)

[Baron]

You also need to think of this in terms of SOE employee resources. With a gifting system, sure you can automate a significant amount of work but do you want PS2 support spending 90% of their time on "gift investigation?" or force them to have a dedicated individual to bird-dog those things?

Personally I'd rather use that resource to quash bugs or work on future content.

[FIREk]

You also need to think of this in terms of SOE employee resources. With a gifting system, sure you can automate a significant amount of work but do you want PS2 support spending 90% of their time on "gift investigation?" or force them to have a dedicated individual to bird-dog those things?

Personally I'd rather use that resource to quash bugs or work on future content.

It all boils down to fine-tuning whatever system detects "suspected" orders. In the long run, having someone investigate this crap should pay off, plus it shouldn't take that much time. Not to mention SOE most likely already has a person whose task is doing just that.

[CutterJohn]

Why does SOE have to be responsible for policing stolen stuff? Is it honestly that big of a worry? Is there some rampant crime spree of people buying ingame items for friends?

I dunno.. Maybe ask the guys over at steam how they deal with the issue. They seem to handle it just fine.

[FIREk]

Why does SOE have to be responsible for policing stolen stuff? Is it honestly that big of a worry? Is there some rampant crime spree of people buying ingame items for friends?

I dunno.. Maybe ask the guys over at steam how they deal with the issue. They seem to handle it just fine.

It's not about people buying stuff for friends. It's about people using stolen credit card information to buy gift codes, and then reselling them on eBay and such. It's the perfect way of laundering money off stolen CC info.

Also, I'm pretty sure that Steam will either not share such info, or they aren't doing a great job at prevention, but are prepared to deal with the consequences instead. Having all but monopolized digital distribution, I think they've got monies to spare. ;)

[NewSith]

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

I'm sure vanity can be sent as a gift and drawn back in case of fraud. No need to allow consumables (speaking of which, you promised not to sell power, never forget that).

Why does Steam allow you to buy and send games as gifts? GAMES! I mean Valve has as much to lose as SOE, but they're still doing it. So why not just have some helmet camo that I would like to buy and give away to my friend in game and trace it via e-mail notifications (thus if there's all of a sudden 10 outbound e-mails in a row saying that MrX gifted 10 different people with the camo, you will find out and investigate)? There's no need to be able to send weaps and temporary/consumable stuff as gifts.

You can even have some vanity that's gift exclusive, like - you cannot buy it, you can only recieve it as a gift...

EDIT: LOL, brainwreck

[Xyntech]

A waiting period on an active character may be exploitable, however this obstacle alone would mean most CC thieves will just look for easier merchandise, like gift codes for new AAA titles. At first I thought that some might exploit this by finding a niche in PS2, by exploit-farming new characters, but I think AAA titles would sell just as well, and would be easier to get.

The waiting period for an active card would work in general, but would be a major inconvenience, especially for new users. If you don't mind, let me write this down for tomorrow's meeting, as we'll be discussing a similar subject at work and are looking for fresh ideas. ;) It would probably be too hardcore and inconvenient for a non-MMO business... Still, it might stir a brainstorm. :)

And of course the bank, or the CC's owner, may only realize that the card is being used fraudulently after a long while, giving you dozens of chargebacks... But I don't recall such a case. It's always a possibility, though. :)

Well I figure that as long as you limit the fraud potential to mostly the people purchasing things for themselves, you instantly have removed most of the dangers caused by gifting. Someone could already sell their tricked out character under their current giftless cash shop system. Obviously that is a risk they are ready and willing to take on.

As for owners not realizing until much later that something is amiss, that sounds to be a more rare problem and as such would be unlikely to be large enough to warrant disallowing gifting.

Obviously it's a nuanced thing. Hopefully Higby and crew figures out a way to work it out. If not, the game probably won't be hurt too much by it's exclusion.

I look forward to hearing your further thoughts on the matter after the meeting.

[FIREk]

Steam either has great fraud prevention (automated or carbon-based;)) or can afford taking the risk and dealing with consequences. I think it's as simple as that. SOE may not want to take that risk but, as I wrote before, vanity items won't cause fraud. Premiums would.

[Sentrosi]

I could see gifting a cosmetic item, such as gifting a fellow soldier in your outfit a Buddy Christ :thumbsup: decal for his armor or something along those lines.
I just don't want to see gifts start going out for items like +15XP, +20dmg/round, etc. Like real game changers.

[Xyntech]

Yeah, cosmetics would be the better type of item to gift anyways, for gameplay reasons. If they are also less of a problem for fraud, bring em on (with whatever additional layers of protection in addition).

I don't see anything wrong with the developers saying "Yes you can gift this, no you can't gift that."

I still think that forcing players to decide if a purchase is for themselves or is a gift to someone at the time they buy the item would also be a good idea. Make purchased items be non tradeable, unlike "found" items which should be able to be freely traded.

[Graywolves]

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

It's really easy to buy something with stolen credit card info and then send hundreds of items to hundreds of people as "gifts" and then all we can really do is ban all of them for receiving fraudulent items that they might have never asked for or wanted. It's a very challenging problem to solve for free-to-play games. In other countries you can't play the game unless you put in the equivalent of your social security number with your account which makes it a lot less likely to commit fraud, but in the US we can't really do that.

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Provide a premium, subscription or single payment option that allows your account to send and recieve gifts.

[SKYeXile]

Provide a premium, subscription or single payment option that allows your account to send and recieve gifts.

that does not solve the problem matt highlighted, infact it makes it worse.

[Graywolves]

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

Massive Multiplayer Anonymous (MMA)

-edit-

that does not solve the problem matt highlighted, infact it makes it worse.

wouldn't the required purchase prevent fraud?

[TRex]

Wow, do people actually spend that much? Going to have to start a MMO anonymous support group! :P

I tried Atlantica online once , and there were idiots spending $2-300 at a time on the newest rng box opening theme crap every month. I remember one guy getting an inheritance share of 2 grand and blowing it all in hopes of getting some stupid rare mount, and never got it . Never underestimate peoples stupidity with ftp, nor the shrewdness to which rmt hackers will go to to exploit these nubs either.

[Hamma]

Yea it seems like this could be easily solved with gifting only cosmetic items and not consumables (boosted training rate etc) because they could easily take consumables back.

[SKYeXile]

Massive Multiplayer Anonymous (MMA)

-edit-



wouldn't the required purchase prevent fraud?

no, because they're using a stolen credit card, what's an extra $15cost you if you're using a stolen card?... about 30 seconds to punch in another purchase.

[Tikuto]

Only those players who have been playing PlanetSide2 long enough able to Gift. That way they'd be in fear of losing everything they've earned and all money spent on doing that.

I've not thought this through. It just came to me about 30 seconds ago. Any problems with this?

[SKYeXile]

Only those players who have been playing PlanetSide2 long enough able to Gift. That way they'd be in fear of losing everything they've earned and all money spent on doing that.

I've not thought this through. It just came to me about 30 seconds ago. Any problems with this?

playing devils advocate again, it faces the same problem, account hacking and then using a stolen credit card.

lets hope SOE don't have anything that's tradeable, keep the farmers and all that shit away from this game.

[TRex]

playing devils advocate again, it faces the same problem, account hacking and then using a stolen credit card.

lets hope SOE don't have anything that's tradeable, keep the farmers and all that shit away from this game.

exactly , to quote If you build it, they will come ~ Field of dreams

[CutterJohn]

Umm.. You want farmers. This is a 100% pvp game. If there are farmers... You get to kill them. Bring them on. Should be fun.

[Graywolves]

no, because they're using a stolen credit card, what's an extra $15cost you if you're using a stolen card?... about 30 seconds to punch in another purchase.

Isn't that the possibility in subscription games and hacking?

I'm just getting confused because Higby made it sound like the problem was f2p specific.

i'm looking at it from the consumer's perspective. If I pay for the account then my credit card is there. If someone hacks my account or steals my account and gifts it all away then I put in for account recovery and get everything back.

A stolen credit card isn't my concern until my own is stolen or my account is hacked and someone uses a stolen credit card on it.


Maybe Planetside could sell an Authenticator.

[LZachariah]

Ah, an authenticator is an interesting idea. I haven't used one myself, but what maybe could happen would be that any player had the option to "purchase the ability to send." This would have a fee associated with it (for the authenticator). Therefore, people who didn't want to bother with buying gifts wouldn't need to get it. I assume that we would only need to confirm that the gift was purchased by legitimate means (rather than the purchaser AND the receiver verifying that everything is legit), so the receiver wouldn't necessarily need an authenticator too.

Not a bad idea, Graywolves.

[FIREk]

A stolen credit card isn't my concern until my own is stolen or my account is hacked and someone uses a stolen credit card on it.
Whoever the card's owner is, doesn't matter from SOE's perspective. What matters is avoiding having to deal with chargebacks, which are the natural consequence of credit card fraud.

Maybe Planetside could sell an Authenticator.
How would that help with credit card fraud?

[SKYeXile]

Umm.. You want farmers. This is a 100% pvp game. If there are farmers... You get to kill them. Bring them on. Should be fun.

Its not so much the farming, sorry i was more refering to the gold trade. what happens is chumps buy gold, they're idiots and use the same email their game account is on, they then use that email to hack the account, or send them scam emails, hack their account and take the gold or virutal currency back.

Ofcourse if there is no trable currency or items, this isnot a problem and we would see little gold farmers in PS2.

Using a stolen credit card is a problem in all games, its worse in freeto play though, because the person could potentially spend thousands.

and higby, i thought "trading cards" were tradable in free realms if i remember correctly?

an authenticator is always a good thing, blizzard has one thats linked with your iphone at no cost. I use one and have never been hacked...clearly it works...

[Talek Krell]

I haven't used one myself, but what maybe could happen would be that any player had the option to "purchase the ability to send."If they're using stolen credit cards to buy things they can then resell for cash, then no number of paywalls will stop them. The only people who will balk at having to spend money to spend money are your legitimate customers.

[Tapman]

Maybe Planetside could sell an Authenticator.

Ah, an authenticator is an interesting idea. I haven't used one myself, but what maybe could happen would be that any player had the option to "purchase the ability to send." This would have a fee associated with it (for the authenticator). Therefore, people who didn't want to bother with buying gifts wouldn't need to get it. I assume that we would only need to confirm that the gift was purchased by legitimate means (rather than the purchaser AND the receiver verifying that everything is legit), so the receiver wouldn't necessarily need an authenticator too.

Not a bad idea, Graywolves.

an authenticator is always a good thing, blizzard has one thats linked with your iphone at no cost. I use one and have never been hacked...clearly it works...

None of you guys read the end of my last post?

and show the option for the SOE Authenticator in with a font size that scales up based on the amount of items you have purchased.

SOE already started offering the Authenticator (http://www.soe.com/soeauthenticator/) after the big security breach debacle, obviously they have not advertised it well enough. Now that I think of of it, it should be set up so that if you spend a significant amount of money in the cash shop, you should be able to opt in your account and get one of these in the mail for free as a token of good faith from Sony regarding account security.

[Graywolves]

I want a Planetside specific authenticator that has a small picture of a TR soldier or an IFF Door Lock.

[Hamma]

I got one when I was at fan faire, sadly it has EQ on it :(

[Raymac]

Speaking of F2P, Smed had an interesting tweet this morning about another SOE game that recently made the move to F2P...

wow. Over 330k new players. Concurrent usage is up 600% in DCUO! F2P FTW!

Just sayin.

[Xyntech]

Yeah, even without proper advertising, I think PS2 could get close to the numbers PS1 had at launch. With some decent marketing, this thing is gonna be huge.

[Crator]

Speaking of F2P, Smed had an interesting tweet this morning about another SOE game that recently made the move to F2P...

wow. Over 330k new players. Concurrent usage is up 600% in DCUO! F2P FTW!

Just sayin.

That's awesome! I know they have F2P features and a cash shop in EQ2 as well. Not sure what kind of new player numbers they got for that. Very promising for PS2 with those numbers! I'm excited!

[SKYeXile]

Speaking of F2P, Smed had an interesting tweet this morning about another SOE game that recently made the move to F2P...



Just sayin.

there is no stopping him now.

[TRex]

there is no stopping him now.

on twitter he said its up to 900% now, so I think thats almost 500k playing dcuo ,from I guess pre-ftp of <50k. Sound about right.

I just hope they anticipate same sort of thing for ps2, looks like a lot of angry folks who cant get into the game , and subscribers included . expect some raging. though they are trying to sort it out.

[Hamma]

there is no stopping him now.

Indeed.

If anything this is good for us, it means they are learning things from DCUO.

[Raymac]

Indeed.

If anything this is good for us, it means they are learning things from DCUO.

Yeah, like get a crapload more servers, and put the paying customers at the front of the line. haha

[TRex]

Yeah, like get a crapload more servers, and put the paying customers at the front of the line. haha

They do that in lotro , if theres a server queue subscribers and premium players get first through door. If you bought a sub, then cancelled it, or bought something from the store, you become premium .

[SKYeXile]

Guide to winning:

Put F2P game on steam splash loading screen.
???
Profit.

even dungeon defenders a $13.00 game thats rather avg must have made a killing through steam, like everybody on my friendls lsit brought in and played it.

if PS2 launches for free or even just launches with a box/purchase fee with decent advertising on steam, then word of mouth + some other highly paid advertising..maybe even some commercials, there should be heaps of fodder...i mean players.

[FIREk]

Guide to winning:

Put F2P game on steam splash loading screen.
???
Profit.

This only works for the one week or so when the game is in the loading screen rotation, though, so it would only work at launch.

[Talek Krell]

This only works for the one week or so when the game is in the loading screen rotation, though, so it would only work at launch.As long as the game doesn't hemorrhage players that's still a nice boost to the launch playerbase.

[Xyntech]

Actually you can make it work a lot more often if you add a box price.

If the game costs $20 or whatever, you can then put it on the steam sale every chance you get for a reduced price. Extra advertising.