The Weapon Sales Problem, and my opinion.

p0intman · 2013-05-04, 12:40 AM

I don't like the way SOE operates. I don't like how they've had this pattern of releasing weapons, and nerfing ones currently in use in order to drive sales of the new weapons. Its shady as fuck and smacks of paying to win. They did it with the shotguns, they did it with SMGs, they did it with several of the LMGs and rocket launchers (Crow, hawk, annihilator, phoenix) and im sure they've done it with other weapons. Likewise, I disagree with the lack of work on PS1 being made free to play. I will not fund something that I find to be dishonest, and contrary to what I think is fun.

SOE is of course, a business. In order to best use that fact in order to showcase the above issues, this is a statement of disagreement by way of showing what I've done with the money SOE is not being paid by me because of the above reasons. It is written in such a way as to compare it specifically to the value of entertainment and competing game developers, as I see them being worthwhile to support. Could they give me a reason to pay them? Sure. The above points need to be rectified before I'll consider it, however. I have spent a small amount of money on this game, but compared to the below, its peanuts, and that is what I mean to emphasize.

Things I have done with expendable income instead of paying SOE as it specifically pertains to competing game developers, since launch of PS2:
- Bought the Collectors Edition for EVE's Second Decade anniversary ($150)
- Backed Star Citizen ($65)
- pre-ordered Watch Dogs for the PC ($60~)
- pre-ordered Grid 2 ($60)
- bought farcry 3 ($50)
- bought assassin's creed 3 ($50)

In summary, I don't like how PS2 is being developed, so I've been giving money to competition instead of SOE because their competition actually makes stuff that is worthwhile. Unlike buying weapons from SOE, I don't feel that any of the above is liable to make me feel scammed in the future or like it was a waste. For the cash above, you could buy a ton of stuff in PS2 and be relatively set for quite a while, and that really is the entire point of having listed it: For whatever it could buy in ps2, it was better spent elsewhere.

If they decide to correct the above problems, great. If not their loss, literally. I can't possibly be the only one who has not been buying SC and has instead spent that money elsewhere.

Koadster · 2013-05-04, 12:59 AM

Your money which you can do with as you please. Dont need to make a rant post about it, we all know your stance on PS2.

AThreatToYou · 2013-05-04, 01:02 AM

I don't like the way SOE operates. I don't like how they've had this pattern of releasing weapons, and nerfing ones currently in use in order to drive sales of the new weapons.

....

I really don't think they do this intentionally. When all is said & done, the game is getting more and more balanced, and you say they shouldn't nerf weapons?

Have you considered that you don't have to pay money for weapons?
Have you considered that they sell weapons for convenience of access?

Have you considered that they can't... "nerf" cosmetics?
i.e. what you actually have to pay for

It's okay if you're new to F2P. Even on games that are pay-and-play-forever, this happens with patches. It happened with NS, NS2, Savage, Savage 2, HON (before fuckup), Global Agenda (before F2P), TF2 (before F2P). Shit gets nerfed. Y'know, it might keep happening. It might not. Really I think it will, because PS2 is a continually evolving game.

Now, this pattern I've seen with Tribes: Ascend. They tried to fix it. They really did. HiRez tried really balls hard to make balanced weapons at release. You know what happened? The new weapons were UP, and way more people quit over being pissed with what they bought. I also see this pattern with LoL.

It's your money, your choice, but WAH

p0intman · 2013-05-04, 01:03 AM

Originally Posted by Koadster

Your money which you can do with as you please. Dont need to make a rant post about it, we all know your stance on PS2.

For how I usually say things, this is me being nice. No no no, THIS thread here is a rant.

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

....

I really don't think they do this intentionally. When all is said & done, the game is getting more and more balanced, and you say they shouldn't nerf weapons?

Have you considered that you don't have to pay money for weapons?
Have you considered that they sell weapons for convenience of access?

Have you considered that they can't... "nerf" cosmetics?
i.e. what you actually have to pay for

It's okay if you're new to F2P. Sometimes not all the problems of a weapon hits live. Now we have test. Sometimes a weapon that gets released is genuinely OP/not working as intended. See Phoenix.

None of that is the point. The point is that while I *could* spend cash on it, there are specific reasons I'm not going to. Why? Because its complete bullshit how they've been releasing them and nerfing them to drive sales of people who DO spend money on it. Intentional or not, whats done is done, and its a problem.

AThreatToYou · 2013-05-04, 01:13 AM

Because its complete bullshit how they've been releasing them and nerfing them to drive sales of people who DO spend money on it. Intentional or not, whats done is done, and its a problem.

You either have this completely backwards in and out itself, or I am misunderstanding something. How can they not intend it if they are doing it to drive the sales of people who do spend money on it? Please, try to explain this so we can try to fix it.

p0intman · 2013-05-04, 01:15 AM

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

You either have this completely backwards in and out itself, or I am misunderstanding something. How can they not intend it if they are doing it to drive the sales of people who do spend money on it? Please, try to explain this so we can try to fix it.

You claimed it wasn't intentional. I disagree, clearly. Either way, it doesn't matter, because that's still how it went down.

AThreatToYou · 2013-05-04, 01:25 AM

I don't see how it is intentional.

Now, I don't have any direct evidence that states it isn't intentional, either. However, I don't think that we could find any direct evidence that it is intentional.

I suggest that it is not intentional because I see this pattern even in non-F2P games. It doesn't matter how much pre-production they give new content, once it hits Live, unpredictable things happen and then it can be clear if something is or isn't working as intended. Even mere psychological differences between the testing players and the live players can make something appear stronger or weaker in certain situations. Blizzard likes to emphasize this in how they attempt to balance StarCraft 2.

Evidence toward it being intentional can possibly be found in the poster-child of F2P: League of Legends. That game is fairly infamous for releasing OP champions, and then nerfing them a week later. However, I'll say that I personally haven't seen this happen in awhile. This makes me believe that it isn't intentional because Riot is a very novice company inexperienced at game development thus far, especially when it comes to releasing new content into a live environment. They've gotten more experienced so new Live content is more polished and balanced now.

Can the practice of nerfing newly released weapons be fixed? Yes. Test throws in a lot of changes at once; there could be a post-test where live patches are placed so that new content can be trialed before put on live in the "new live environment". They could also offer new content completely free access for 7 days, and after the 7 day period (next patch window), the content would be placed into the normal cert-requirement or pay-requirement setting. That way SOE would be able to rapidly know if content is working as intended since all players would have access to it, and nobody could complain about spending money on it and then having it nerfed a week later.

F2P relies on willingness to pay. Perfect information to the buyers is generally considered have no effect on WTP from an economics standpoint, so I do not think that the 7-day free practice would reduce long-term sales.

/e: SOE could offer this 7-day access period exclusively to subscribers, or in any case a player who has previously paid for station cash.

DeltaGun · 2013-05-04, 01:36 AM

It's called "Balancing". More old weapons will be further balanced as the game changes with new additions. If you can't deal with that then why would you ever play any constantly updated game.

At the end of the post it just feels like you are having some serious Buyer's Remorse. Nothing SoE can do about that, or PSU for that matter.

p0intman · 2013-05-04, 01:42 AM

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

I don't see how it is intentional.

Now, I don't have any direct evidence that states it isn't intentional, either. However, I don't think that we could find any direct evidence that it is intentional.

I suggest that it is not intentional because I see this pattern even in non-F2P games. It doesn't matter how much pre-production they give new content, once it hits Live, unpredictable things happen and then it can be clear if something is or isn't working as intended. Even mere psychological differences between the testing players and the live players can make something appear stronger or weaker in certain situations. Blizzard likes to emphasize this in how they attempt to balance StarCraft 2.

Evidence toward it being intentional can possibly be found in the poster-child of F2P: League of Legends. That game is fairly infamous for releasing OP champions, and then nerfing them a week later. However, I'll say that I personally haven't seen this happen in awhile. This makes me believe that it isn't intentional because Riot is a very novice company inexperienced at game development thus far, especially when it comes to releasing new content into a live environment. They've gotten more experienced so new Live content is more polished and balanced now.

Can the practice of nerfing newly released weapons be fixed? Yes. Test throws in a lot of changes at once; there could be a post-test where live patches are placed so that new content can be trialed before put on live in the "new live environment". They could also offer new content completely free access for 7 days, and after the 7 day period (next patch window), the content would be placed into the normal cert-requirement or pay-requirement setting. That way SOE would be able to rapidly know if content is working as intended since all players would have access to it, and nobody could complain about spending money on it and then having it nerfed a week later.

F2P relies on willingness to pay. Perfect information to the buyers is generally considered have no effect on WTP from an economics standpoint, so I do not think that the 7-day free practice would reduce long-term sales.

/e: SOE could offer this 7-day access period exclusively to subscribers, or in any case a player who has previously paid for station cash.

The reason I say it IS intentional is because SOE does not have the excuse of being new. By this point, they should very well already be able to at least consider how weapons will be used. They've been developing MMOs for 14 years. Am I honestly supposed to believe that even with the last decade or so of the entire planetside history, NOTHING has been learned and that EVERYTHING was forgotten? At best that paints them as incompetent, at worst dishonest. Further, they did the same thing with multiple classes of weapons over multiple months of live development.

Some of these weapons actually existed and were extensively tested during Beta. It is not as if they came right out of the gate with no knowledge, they had plenty of it. I cannot seem to want to think any member of the development team is outright incompetent (except Smed), but they've had data the entire time. To suggest that they can't or haven't consulted it prior to releasing new weapons is silly. Edit: In addition, SOE has a history of questionable development ethic.

With all of that said, I cannot see any excuse other than it being intentional.

Ruffdog · 2013-05-04, 01:55 AM

It was always going to be rough with the new weapon types - the SMGs and Pump shotguns, with no test server and no VR. But there did seem to be a deliberate burn of the first release to overstate the second. Hailstorm and Blackjack > Armastice and Uppercut. Not even sidegrade, but straight upgrade.

The next test will be the NS revolvers. SOE will be tempted to burn these immediately prior to the release of empire specific heavy pistols. Glad I've stayed out of that one.

I call it a revolving burn policy. Like my first job, everyone got treated like utter nothing because there was a good supply of new people to replace the leavers. The new guys found out in time and left after being treated badly and then more new guys came in after them.

I feel sorry for the guys who know nothing about x3 sales.

Falcon_br · 2013-05-04, 02:14 AM

The truth is, since they announced that planetside 2 was going to be free to play I already expected that.
It is the most expensive game I am playing now, BF-3 got like 8-9 DLCs and it is still cheaper to play them planetside 2 for me.
But because I am having fun, I can live with that.

Fenrys · 2013-05-04, 02:15 AM

Buy equipment for the role it is supposed to fill once it gets balanced, not for the flavor of the week OP stats.

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

They could also offer new content completely free access for 7 days, and after the 7 day period (next patch window), the content would be placed into the normal cert-requirement or pay-requirement setting. That way SOE would be able to rapidly know if content is working as intended since all players would have access to it, and nobody could complain about spending money on it and then having it nerfed a week later.

F2P relies on willingness to pay. Perfect information to the buyers is generally considered have no effect on WTP from an economics standpoint, so I do not think that the 7-day free practice would reduce long-term sales.

/e: SOE could offer this 7-day access period exclusively to subscribers, or in any case a player who has previously paid for station cash.

As much as I like this idea, I think it would end up costing SOE money to implement.

Some portion of their sales, IDK what portion, comes from players purchasing novelty. They'll use the gun for a while, then get bored of it and want a novel thing to play with for a while before they get bored of that too. It's not the gun they are paying for, but the fresh experience.

Fenrys · 2013-05-04, 02:22 AM

double post, this can be deleted

moosepoop · 2013-05-04, 03:11 AM

Originally Posted by p0intman

You claimed it wasn't intentional. I disagree, clearly. Either way, it doesn't matter, because that's still how it went down.

the weapons go on sale right before they get nerfed from op to balanced.

if you were lusting after their power, you would feel cheated. if you expected to get an op weapon and gain an unfair advantage for a cheap price, you would feel its a dirty tactic.

you wanted an op weapon and got suckered. you deserve it.

Originally Posted by Falcon_br

The truth is, since they announced that planetside 2 was going to be free to play I already expected that.
It is the most expensive game I am playing now, BF-3 got like 8-9 DLCs and it is still cheaper to play them planetside 2 for me.
But because I am having fun, I can live with that.

planetside 2 is hybrid pay 2 win. the power of new op weapons is only temporary. this way you get to milk the power stat chasers and still keep the game balanced.

GraniteRok · 2013-05-04, 04:33 AM

Quite interesting that you seem to have spent SC on weapons including those that sell for SC only (no certs) being the new revolvers including the black and gold ones! How can this be when you're so adamant about not buying SC? How did you put it...

Originally Posted by p0intman

I can't possibly be the only one who has not been buying SC and has instead spent that money elsewhere.

and

Originally Posted by p0intman

The point is that while I *could* spend cash on it, there are specific reasons I'm not going to.

plus interestingly, four days after you buy the gold revolver, you post this in this thread; http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...346#post914346 ...

Originally Posted by p0intman

er.. why would i give a damn about a blinged out weapon?

This along with the other weapons in your arsenal that you probably bought as well; Crow, Phoenix, Annihilator, etc. Appears to be you're nothing but bitching for the sake of bitching, again.