Sony Listens

Communities Blog
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For those of you who don't know, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) created a mmofps called "Planetside 2."

Personally, I've been playing it a lot as of late. Because of this, I've been looking into the ongoing development of the game. In update 13, the most recent feature set planed, SOE were going to add a small perk players could buy with the coin shop money, station cash, which is purchased via real money, and certifications, earned alongside experience.

Because of the option to pay with real money, players, including myself felt Sony was selling benefits to players. This already goes against SOE's philosophy to only sell cosmetic items for real money. The benefits include many in fight bonus' like not showing up on a mini-map or being immune to flash and emp grenades. Also, these benefits were only temporary. Two high end players, who, when encountering each other, would most likely split encounters 50/50, would have no longer been split via their skill, rather, who payed to get the perks – implants.

On the 18th, after outcry on the forums and reddit, Sony backtracks on real-money Planetside 2 buffs.

Looks like Microsoft isn't the only company that “listened” to their gamers. You'd think these companies would already know what people want. Most definitely not implementing a clearly pay to have an advantage, there by winning, system.

Thanks for reading, leave some comments about your thoughts.

Missxu

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It seems major companies are doing this constantly and even repeating their offenses game after game, series after series, and system after system. I'm glad that they listen after they get 'caught in the act' but I wish they didn't do it in the first place. Hopefully one day we'll be able to applaud companies not doing this instead of fixing their wrongs.

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Yeah, honestly, I don't think so.

You know, it seems like those companies act like little kids - testing how far they can go.

There are litterally dozens of things to complain about but they're like "Hmm, they don't cry that loud, let's see if they get tired complaining about it if we just pretend we didn't hear them..." They're just doing enough to make it look like they listen.

In case of XboxOne or that game feature (stopped playing months ago, just hearing from you about it know) they just notice that the outcry is a lot bigger and like one guy over there has enough common sense to realize that if they do this they don't just shoot themselves in the foot but in the head.

In detail:

PS2: There are more than enough examples of games which died because the devs got too greedy or it just wasn't that great and they wanted to chance anything or they just wanted to squish the most money possible out of it so it became pay2win and horrible. What keeps people playing is fun and diversity (and a lot I forgot) but when a company is stupid enough to make it boil down to "do you have this one expensive thing or not" all the fun goes away and it deserves to die (burn it with fire!). Obviously SOE realized the outcry was so loud, if they implemented this they went bankrupt in 2 weeks... [all just deduced from you're description, I do not know about this myself]

XboxOne - all those stupid things (always on, no sharing etc) really would've been the death to the console. Some diehart Xbox fans and maybe some ppl who really want to play the exclusive games (and of course some who just don't care) would buy it but eventually - to stick to my metaphor - they shot themselves in the aorta and died. So they backed off and were like "noo, we never intended to do this, April Fools!"... and just made it a little less bad...

 

I am sorry, maybe got a little emotional over there...

What I mean is, most companies (there are exceptions!) just throw you a little crumb and everyone goes nuts like "yaay they noticed we exist!" but in the end, they don't care when you complain about bad things, they only care if they are horrifyingly bad things that could break their business and downgrade them to 'acceptably' bad.

This is totally my opinion and I outraged maybe because I was part of a few communities where it went exactely like this. That does not mean I am not open to discussion :) 

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They really are acting like children...

*puts tin foil hat on*

Their (both sony and microsoft) advertising department must have some data that points to stronger loyalty from fans that outcry against outrageous add-ons. I mean there is no way things like what they propose could possibly get past team after team of developers and reaserchers. They are manipulating the crowds!

*takes tin foil hat off*