Does BW realize how poorly they run their sub model/in game store?

[N_Olson]

BW brought back contraband packs to the in game store the other day. I saw no notice of their arrival just as I got no notice for their disappearance from the market maybe 24 hours later tops.

 

Random packs are one thing.

Randomly (and briefly, without advertisement) giving and taking away access to random packs with no notice is a highly obnoxious abuse of the practice.

If I am paying a sub fee, I expect not to have access to items that I am playing this game in order to acquire and adorn my characters with given and taken away at a moments notice for no reason other then the greedy whims of BioWare. Especially when those items need to be acquired at random from larger mystery box purchases like the packs, thus removing any guarantee that I will get anything i want for a $40 hypercrate purchase in addition to my sub fee in the first place. Does access to these items really need to be any more limited than that?

What is my subscription fee doing for me exactly? It's not buying me access to new items as BioWare adds them to the game anymore. Those almost all come and go with the hutt cartel and their own fees. So I am effectively paying my subscription now just to avoid being punished by BioWare who will take away access to several of the core features of this game that I paid $150 for the collector's edition of if I do not continue to pay them for it. And that $15 fee no longer even includes access to new visual content like it would in any other MMORPG as all visual content of value in SWTOR is stuffed into cartel market packs that come with their own fee!

 

It is bad enough that BW already takes SO MANY of the best/most iconic items and outfits from their game/franchise and makes them exclusive to the real money driven hutt cartel instead of a part of the actual game itself where they can be earned through playing the game instead of with a credit card. But at the end of the day, I don't pay a sub fee to have access to content taken away from me, I pay to have content added to the game and left there for me to experience and enjoy.

 

I realize that I do not have to pay a sub for access to cartel market items. I also realize that this game's play experience is a crippled mess without full feature access provided by subscriptions. No other game with a F2P alternative to the subscription model goes as far out of its way to hinder the gameplay experience for non-subscribing players as BioWare does with SWTOR.

I also didn't buy this game just so I could be extorted with hutt coin purchases every step of the way as long as I wanted to play it. A subscription is mandatory to me because, by my standards, this game is unilaterally unplayable without a sub or without buying regular passes to access the content you are perpetually denied without a sub/pass, which quickly adds up to a sub fee over the course of a 4 week period.

 

So by all means BW, continue to "reserve the right" to take away content that you are paid by subscribers to add to the game, but only add at an additional premium fee through the hutt cartel market anyway. No one can stop you. But I, at least, can and will respond in kind by cancelling my sub and walking away from the game until BW ceases their efforts to punish subscribers/players by routinely removing content from the game--more so than they actually bother to add to the game. Or until this model of theirs is done burying itself and their game 6 feet deep and servers shut down for good. Whichever comes first.

 

Subscribers don't pay you to remove game content. They pay you to add it in, and leave it in. Or they don't pay you at all

 

Fix your game:

-Allow Subscribers (or preferably all players) to have full access to ALL current and previous Cartel Pack shipments and rep factions*permanently*.

-Cartel Market packs do not cycle and do not "come and go". You add content to the game. And you leave it there.

-Give Subscribers only a *permanent* 20%-25% discount on *ALL* Hypercrate 24 packs of cartel packs.

-Every week rotate 1 specific pack or 1 specific shipment of packs (not hypercrate just single purchase) on to a 50% off sale for subscribers only.

-You give subscribers a small but significant (maybe 5%/10%) increased chance at getting the super rare items from cartel packs as a thank you to them for not only paying for the subscription fee that helps maintain the game and its servers but for going above and beyond that to fund this game through the cartel market.

-Take a hint from games like RIFT that give a daily reward and a weekly reward box to their subscribers. Nothing big, maybe an insignificant number of end game tokens for pve or pvp and a single minor xp boost for the daily reward and a slightly larger version of the same thing with a major xp boost or 2 for the weekly. It's the thought that counts and this is much more thoughtful than extorting players in every conceivable way.

 

BioWare has become such an ungrateful and greedy company that it is disgusting. Their F2P model is a joke for the amount of the game it shuts off access to for non-subs and compared to other games with F2P alternatives, dealing with BioWare and their model for SWTOR can leave one with a pretty bad taste in their mouth so to speak. I make this post in the hopes that it reaches the eyes of someone out there with some pull at BW who cares enough about this game not to let this company keep spiraling it downwards into the abyss with their insatiable greed and perhaps redeem the game's revenue system with a model that positively reinforces the concept of subscribing to this game and rewards its players for having a sub rather than punishing its players who don't with a laundry list of blocked access to the game's features and fun.

[Logod]

Not going to read all that but there was a notice here in the forums. They would be available until May 1st at the sale price of 5500cc. So people could buy them in 1 transaction. You can you the forums to rant but not look for news on the game I guess. Lol

[ninjonxb]

I agree. Why can't they give us notices of things. If only there was a magical place that allows posts.

 

Hey folks,

 

I wanted to let you know about a sale coming to the Cartel Market this weekend!

 

When?

Friday, May 30th at 8AM Central - Sunday, June 1st at 8AM Central

 

What?

The following Hypercrates:

• Hypercrate: Crime Lord’s Cartel Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Galactic Ace’s Starfighter Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Opportunist’s Bounty Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Hotshot’s Starfighter Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Blockade Runner’s Cartel Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Vice Commandant’s Contraband Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Space Jockey’s Starfighter Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Enforcer’s Contraband Pack
  
• Hypercrate: Dogfighter’s Starfighter Pack
  

How Much?

Each of these Hypercrates will be 28% off. I know what you're thinking, 28%?! That's a strange number. The reason that they are 28% is that at that discount they end up being exactly 5500 Cartel Coins, meaning they can be bought in a single purchase.

 

You may also notice that some of these are embargoed packs so make sure to log in and get them while they're around.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

 

 

The rest I don't care enough to respond to except by saying that as a subscriber since launch I don't think they need to offer any of those things.

[Desolaytore]

I'm not paying 5500 cc for a hypercrate that doesn't give me the exact damn set I want. With my luck I would get a bunch of useless boosts and dresses. ._.

 

Good post though Olson and good suggestions, if only some people would actually implement that stuff into the game. Sadly it wont happen, they cant even update the damn CE vendor... we've been asking them for 2 years!

Edited June 4, 2014 by Desolaytore

[N_Olson]

I agree. Why can't they give us notices of things. If only there was a magical place that allows posts.

 

Thank you for backing up my point, even if you did it in what appears to be utter ignorance.

 

That post, as the time stamp points out in the dev tracker where it is found, was posted at 11:30 PM the night before the sale went live. 8.5 hours is barely notice at all, and not even in the realm of advanced notice with regards to alerting an entire MMO population. It is also a *single* dev post in an area that covers a very broad range of topics, not anything devoted specifically to Cartel Market updates like these. By no stretch of the imagination is that "advertising".

It is also only notice of 48 *hours* worth of *temporary* changes to the market, not a calender that lists what packs are coming and going over the course of the next several weeks/months.

 

Thanks again though for reinforcing my point by pointing out that someone somewhere did announce that there would be a sale. And that it was only one person, just minutes before midnight the day before the sale, in one spot not at all dedicated to cartel market news and updates.

 

What a coordinated effort to run that market of theirs.

 

And BW probably lost a decent amount of money for that well coordinated effort. I know they lost three digits from me alone and I am just 1 player. Which is why I asked the question in my thread title. It's perfectly valid considering the poor manner in which they are running things right now.

 

 

The rest I don't care enough to respond to except by saying that as a subscriber since launch I don't think they need to offer any of those things.

 

Wow. Responding by insinuating that a response is beneath you, then offering your 2 cents as a subscriber anyway. That is an interesting way to avoid offering reasoning to an opinion that you clearly didn't want to keep to yourself. Though, based on the context of your 2 cents, I am guessing that you simply have no valid reasoning to offer.

After all, one needn't respond if they have nothing to respond with. You just confessed that you have been a subscriber since launch which means you definitely have absolutely no experience with the terrible F2P model in this game and such dedication to this singular title means you probably (not definitely, though) have very little experience with successful F2P models in other MMO games, giving you very little insight to offer one way or the other.

 

Look, it's not rocket surgery. When running a F2P model, you can reward players for subscribing without taking significant features of the game away from non-subscribers. Or, you can do it the BioWare way and take away all but 2 character slots, put their credits in escrow, take away operations, warzones and flashpoints and the 50 other things they do to punish and indirectly attack players who won't pay them a sub fee instead of bribing everyone with actual benefits, rewards and bonuses and positive things like that. No one who has experienced a good F2P would turn their cheek to it in favor of BioWare's model. Your self delusion to that simple fact only further reinforces my suspicions that you have never played any sub model for a game that offers F2P except for SWTOR.

 

Don't get me wrong. SWTOR is a great game. But that does not mean that its subscription and F2P model not being managed very, very poorly right now.

[swuhtor]

Wow. Responding by insinuating that a response is beneath you, then offering your 2 cents as a subscriber anyway. That is an interesting way to avoid offering reasoning to an opinion that you clearly didn't want to keep to yourself. Though, based on the context of your 2 cents, I am guessing that you simply have no valid reasoning to offer.

After all, one needn't respond if they have nothing to respond with. You just confessed that you have been a subscriber since launch which means you definitely have absolutely no experience with the terrible F2P model in this game and such dedication to this singular title means you probably (not definitely, though) have very little experience with successful F2P models in other MMO games, giving you very little insight to offer one way or the other.

 

Look, it's not rocket surgery. When running a F2P model, you can reward players for subscribing without taking significant features of the game away from non-subscribers. Or, you can do it the BioWare way and take away all but 2 character slots, put their credits in escrow, take away operations, warzones and flashpoints and the 50 other things they do to punish and indirectly attack players who won't pay them a sub fee instead of bribing everyone with actual benefits, rewards and bonuses and positive things like that. No one who has experienced a good F2P would turn their cheek to it in favor of BioWare's model. Your self delusion to that simple fact only further reinforces my suspicions that you have never played any sub model for a game that offers F2P except for SWTOR.

 

Actually I think he just didn't read it, because he assumed it would be about the same point. And I'm willing to be corrected on this, but I'm pretty sure it was a day+8.5 hours before the promo, i.e. 32.5 hours before it actually went live. I remember my friend telling me at about 8 PM on the night before it went live, which would have been 18 hours later. So there was more warning, but it also means without my friend I wouldn't have heard about the promotion either. But to be honest, other than directly doing it in-game, they don't have an efficient way to tell everyone about it. And for people that don't care/don't want to buy the packs (vast majority), it would piss them off if they kept getting spammed, say on log-in, about an upcoming sale, so overall an in-game alert wouldn't be beneficial. But I guess they could have a toggle; that should easily be doable.

Edited June 5, 2014 by swuhtor

[ninjonxb]

Actually I think he just didn't read it, because he assumed it would be about the same point. And I'm willing to be corrected on this, but I'm pretty sure it was a day+8.5 hours before the promo, i.e. 32.5 hours before it actually went live. I remember my friend telling me at about 8 PM on the night before it went live, which would have been 18 hours later. So there was more warning, but it also means without my friend I wouldn't have heard about the promotion either. But to be honest, other than directly doing it in-game, they don't have an efficient way to tell everyone about it. And for people that don't care/don't want to buy the packs (vast majority), it would piss them off if they kept getting spammed, say on log-in, about an upcoming sale, so overall an in-game alert wouldn't be beneficial. But I guess they could have a toggle; that should easily be doable.

 

Actually I did. The post can be summerized as:

 

Complaining about Bioware somehow removing content (which they havnt removed anything if you actually pay) and then that subscribers should get a discount on the cartel market.

 

 

F2P in this game is meant to be a way to experience the basics of a game but they want you to subscribe.

Only online will people go on and on claiming that people who don't pay anything or pay almost nothing ($5) actually deserve anything. They should be thankful they can actually play the game.

[XiamaraSimi]

Only online will people go on and on claiming that people who don't pay anything or pay almost nothing ($5) actually deserve anything. They should be thankful they can actually play the game.

 

This. It reminds of a scene from a movie, darn I can't remember what it was. Chris Rock was on it, was it "I'm gonna get you sucka" ? I digress, anyhow, Chris Rock s character is in a rib shop, he weasles hems and haws, "How much for just one rib" , "just pour some soda into my hands!", typical cheap bastage mode. Anyhow his total ends up being I think under a dollar, he pulls out a hundred dollir bill then tries to pay with that (and gets tossed out on his face I think?)

 

These people are like the people I see at the mall who eat a free sample the food places are handing out, then get mad when they won't give them more for free, they want the full meal, but arent willing to pay for it.

Edited June 7, 2014 by XiamaraSimi

[branmakmuffin]

Look, it's not rocket surgery. When running a F2P model, you can reward players for subscribing without taking significant features of the game away from non-subscribers.

Complaining about the value of something one gets for free is petulant and childish.