Questions for Pro7

[sunzen]

Lets assume we know all about your companys and your departments past, what measures have been taken to improve your service ?

[basti]

Originally Posted by FatherJack

What I was specifically after was, will there be a server based in the UK, one in Germany etc.

Dunno. Werner was located in Amsterdam. No idea where those EQ and DCUO servers are.

[maskedskull]

Good to see that someone from Pro7 is around now :-)

[bjorntju1]

Originally Posted by Brollywood

I'm making a note of these questions here directly too, I'll get you answers asap!

All right, looking forward to it!

[GuyFawkes]

1. Are we, the EU, able to use our accounts to log into the soe forums and discuss issues directly with soe?

[I refer to this based upon previous experience with lotro, and codemasters having separate 'forums' ( just to demonstrate the official turbine forum was like psu site here , the codemasters one was like looking at a pdf file in comparison). We had no direct contact with turbine at all, couldnt discuss it since the logins were entirely different from one company to the other.
Consequently bugs/issues/account discrepancies was like talking to a brick wall, and no way to talk to turbine so it was a case of suck it up or walk.]

2. Will EU customers have the same direct access to the official planetside2 website after this comes into effect. Will all the stat tracking/i-pad app be viable in EU, supported and maintained , in real time as envisaged by the dev team. If the deal with pro7 is terminated at any point,can you assure us that all these details are not wiped from the system and EU players effectively have to start again at zero.

[referring back to codemasters again, pvp there was never incorporated into the stat tracking of turbine so after the merge into turbine the pvp of EU players effectively never existed]

3. Probably the most important. Can pro7, and soe in particular, ensure us that the same efforts that soe have put into security for accounts and anti-hacking/cheating are rigorously enforced by soe upon pro7 at all times. That personal details are not passed onto 3rd party organisations or customers emails are not influxed with masses of spam as a result of being involved with pro7.

4. Station Cash ( or equivalent). Since I'm not 100% confident with pro7 having credit card details etc yet, what are their plans to distrubute station cash cards within the EU. Have they already got distrubutors lined up within the EU already, and particularly within the UK. I've never seen a shop yet that sells Station Cash here in UK. Will I have to travel to Berlin to purchase them?

[RSphil]

ok im gona try and keep it simple.

what will pro7 be in charge of for planetside 2.
what will they have a say in?
how will the cash shop work? pricing? are we gona get ripped off?
how is their security for our accounts and servers? is it up to SOE standards?

that will do as alot of the ones i will post are id say already here. if pro7 make a clusterf*~k of this. can we say to SOE we told you so? if this does go tits up i hope they a plan ready to bail them selfs out otherwise SOE will be getting invaded by Europeans lol

[exoteror]

These questions have been asked in this post, but here are the ones I am interested in, least it shows more than 1 person is interested.

1: Will pro 7 be adding their own items to the cash shop? if they are will they stictly follow the none pay to win method?
2: will the game be updated the same time as the american version ( of cource taking into account time zones)

[GuyFawkes]

If I'm a pro7 registered player, and I decide to play on 'Emerald', will it be the same 'Emerald' as someone logging in as a soe registered player?

I'm trying to understand how details and log-ins are separated depending upon if you are EU or US based, yet would still allow both to share the same server space in game. Or will the US login players be offered Konried and EU be offered Emerald, for example, but never the twain shall meet?

[SealedSun]

I haven't seen these so far:

• Will there be any differences in the provided content between PS2 by ProSieben and PS2 by SOE, that is, could ProSieben decide to not introduce, say, a new vehicle that SOE has developed for the US version?
• Can ProSieben influence weapon/vehicle balancing for the EU version of the game/servers?
• Will the business model be the same, or could ProSieben decide to charge for more powerful weapons (and go down the pay2win route, like all their other games)?

I'm asking because the official ProSiebenSat.1 FAQ stated

Looking ahead, SOE and ProSiebenSat.1 Games will closely monitor the needs and wishes of local communities to bring special content as appropriate to European players.

and

Players in Europe can expect special content, offers and promotions, including in-game items for the above mentioned SOE games that are included as part of the agreement with ProSiebenSat.1 Games.

Technically, this could all be sold as "catering to the wishes of the European community" (i.e., "Yes, they totally want to spend money to gain an unfair advantage. Past experiences with our own games have clearly shown that")

[GuyFawkes]

Originally Posted by SealedSun

I haven't seen these so far:

[*] Will the business model be the same, or could ProSieben decide to charge for more powerful weapons (and go down the pay2win route, like all their other games)?[/LIST]
I'm asking because the official ProSiebenSat.1 FAQ stated

Technically, this could all be sold as "catering to the wishes of the European community" (i.e., "Yes, they totally want to spend money to gain an unfair advantage. Past experiences with our own games have clearly shown that")

This ties in with my previous question actually, could a player from the EU buy 'pay-to-win' items from Pro7, and then play on a US server against 'normal' soe players who can't.
Could they add bfr's ( extreme example) to satisfy a US demand renewed, and the EU pro7 player is denied them on same server yet could still be killed by them.
It's a veritable nest of worms.

[Joe]

Will Pro7 do x2 and x3 cash deals like SOE do at the same time?

Also a statement $1 = 0.80 Euros or £0.60 not 1 to 1!!!

Nice set of questions we have here nice work everyone.

[GuyFawkes]

Gold farmers

Purely going off how station cash works with eq2 etc, and assuming the same model in used by pro7 regarding ProCash or whatever they will be using, how will they be able to deter gold farmers from indirectly affecting the game.

By this, for those who aren't familiar with it, you can basically multibox in eq2 running end game content, acquiring end game gear to sell via in game auction for in game gold. The gold is then used to buy station cash cards from other players. Station cash then is put onto your station account, which in turn can then be used for any soe game you want to spend it on, and therefore ps2.

Just to clarify, soe so far have done a great job to keep gold farmers away from eq2, and transactions in game are generally done by players etc openly. But with pro7 essentially controlling all soe games, I want assurances that they are not being let in by the back door, which leads to account hacking/game hacking for all concerned, not just the ps2 community.

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by Brollywood

I'm making a note of these questions here directly too, I'll get you answers asap!

the fact that pro7 is forcing eu people to use their services to play a game made by an american company that does shit decently is insulting. any intent on allowing people to not need to use pro7 to log in to any of these games?

if not, why not? why should ANYONE - americans included - trust you? What happens if an american wants to play on an EU server? I don't want ANY of my details in your hands because i want to play with people ive known for a while in their timezone.

[XenocX]

Thanks for doing this Basti. And I think it's worth highlighting to the devs that a lot of the reason for the concern is that they have done a fantastic job of involving us along the way; to then discover we are going to be dealing with an intermediary who is an unknown quantitiy in terms of support and feedback is a little unnerving.

My questions:
1. If I post a question on the SOE forums regarding PS2, which subject areas am I going to be referred back to ask Pro7 instead? Is this move essentially going to devolve the entire PS2 project in Europe away from SOE?

2. If - on the highly unlikely offchance - the EU rollout goes to crap (lets just say I'm considering the extremes; hardware faults, uptime issues etc), is there contingency for SOE to step in, or are we stuck with Pro7 regardless?

In other words, I trust the PS2 team to have expectation of what the game should be like. If it's not like that for EU players, is there any recourse, or are we (and indeed the PS2 devs) stuck at the shitty end of the contract stick?

I guess, ultimately, it comes down to the question - do they actually care about the game as a game, or is it just a cash cow to them? But that's a question that we're not going to get an honest answer to before we see how they deal with hosting, community support and feedback.

[Satexios]

Originally Posted by p0intman

the fact that pro7 is forcing eu people to use their services to play a game made by an american company that does shit decently is insulting. any intent on allowing people to not need to use pro7 to log in to any of these games?

if not, why not? why should ANYONE - americans included - trust you? What happens if an american wants to play on an EU server? I don't want ANY of my details in your hands because i want to play with people ive known for a while in their timezone.

I think you under-estimating who they exactly are. First of all in the European Union there is a strict policy on personal data so I am not worried about that.

Secondly they are a multi-million/billion company doing a multi-million deal with a multi-billion company for a multi-million game. If they fuck up they lose quite some money and their shareholders won't be pleased.

Other than that most questions are true concerns, money wise I think you have to hold on 1=1 as it looks better on SoE's books.