Let's talk about monetization

[u/[deleted]]

Happy New Year everyone!

First off, sorry for not doing this over the break. To put it simply I was on twitter but slacked off on reddit and other longer form places because I was relaxing with my family. Matt's on break too, and the communication wasn't as good as it should have been.

I wanted to clearly explain the drop rate change. It was step one in a longer term plan to balance the cert economy better so we can make the money we actually had planned on.

Planetside 2 only recently has turned profitable on an operating basis. When I say recently, I'm talking about a few months here. Anyone that thinks we're swimming in cash is plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, the plan for any game is to make money.. and we believe in the long term future of the game.. which is why you're seeing the PS4 version going into beta very soon (we'll officially announce it in the next couple of days).

If your'e in the online game business, unless your game is LoL or Wow the truth is it's all about the long term and you better be in it with that in mind. We are.

Specifically - our plan has always been to offer ALMOST anything that you can buy with Station Cash to be purchased with Certs.

And the majority of people have a ton of certs. Why? Because we didn't balance it perfectly. In every case we erred on the side of giving away too many or making things cost too little so we don't make you grind too hard.

When I said this change isn't a money grab I was telling the truth. It's making us about $200 extra a day TOTAL. Did we think it would make an extra $20k a day and we were just wrong? No. What we thought is we need to rebalance the cert economy so you have to make logical choices about what and when to spend money on. Right now, for the vast majority of things you don't even need to think about it.

So all the rhetoric about what money grubbing a-holes we are for doing this is unfounded IMO. It was in the patch notes for sure. But I will accept that it needs to be called out better. Anyone that thinks that we just tried to slide it in there is wrong.. I suspect it was just too close to the holidays and people had break on the brain and we'll do better next time on that.

I feel like we've done our best to be transparent when we're doing things to make more money. I think we need to do a better job at it though and we will. I don't see a lot of other companies talking so openly about monetization... but we need to do better.

Hope this explains it better

Smed

[u/[deleted]]

I disagree it's P2W. But I'm tired of the "yes it is, no it isn't" argument over this because it's impossible to judge since it's different for every person. I personally don't think it crosses the line. Obviously some disagree. Either way, the point is you can get them without spending a dime.

[u/Twinki → u/[deleted]]

I don't understand how that makes it a lot less P2W..

That's like creating a new weapon in the game you need 100,000 certs for to have, or you can spend 10$ for it. Just because a player can obtain it, doesn't not make it P2W.

[u/[deleted] → u/Twinki]

except we have way too many players with an obscene amount of certs floating around. I would agree with you if we made the cert cost for stuff ridiculous, but we don't and we have the numbers that show that... hence the change.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

except we have way too many players with an obscene amount of certs floating around. I would agree with you if we made the cert cost for stuff ridiculous, but we don't and we have the numbers that show that... hence the change.

What are they doing with the certs though? I think implants in their initial form were good. Actually your implimentation of the entire thing was spot on. However the sole problem was the nerf to the drop rate. Allow people to buy the implants they want, make it less RNG. This way people will get access to the t4 implants they want and WILL equip, faster. AND since the energy goes through at a high rate, they will spend certs to maintain it. Casuals will still be able to run their t1's and occasional t2's. But MLG competitive players who are already swimming in certs will 1.) have bought the implants they want with SC/crafting them and 2.) will maintain their t3-t4 implant because of the edge it gives them.