Fair Deal?

[datajam]

Just for the record . . . Today I spent $50.00 USD on the game. I paid for the Elite Membership, 30 day Cry Protect, a couple 3hr Speed Boosters, and 3 different "e" purchases. The day is not over yet and all I have left for my $50.00 is 952 "e" 9 cry, 205 gold, and a membership that requires I keep spending to play, or stagnate in an "e" field hour after hour like some of the rest of you. Add to that, that because I have accounts on two servers, I guess I'm required to pay for memberships for each account, as well as my wifes account. (Man, this is starting to scare me!)

All I accomplished today was a couple story missions of my own, a couple story missions where I assisted others, a CQ on VJunk during which I fired not a single shot, a brief interaction during the CQ on Remo during which I was podded 3 times, and the rest of my time was spent grinding for cry on Teresa to outfit my Anteres Tank which although I was able to drop one "rare" blue print, my ship has no rares installed and only six of seven items installed.

All-in-all, do you really consider this game a fair deal? I know, I do not have to spend this money. I can play the game for free. But, you know what? This game is meant to be exciting and be an action game. And, that is how it was meant to be played. When I first started playing this game, it actually got your heart to beating. Not because it had been made so difficult to play that it left you frustrated, but because it was non-stop action. Now, you watch your ship fly through the planets, and you are flying so slow that you want to get out and push just to go a little faster. "e" consumption vs. cry drops/mantis kills/BP drops is worse than British Fuel prices and a non-stop reminder that you are just wasting your money faster than a drug habit. You may consider my time in game a fair deal for my dollar, but I do not. Senseless grinding to outfit ship after ship, item after item, or the elusive "rare" search that costs an equal amount (or more) of time sucking up little "e" balls is tedious and boring to say the least.



But, I have it figured out now. I'm one of the idiots that keeps paying hand over fist, day after day so all you other folks can play for free. Ya' all can "spout-off" all day long about how you are playing for free, but you are not, myself and those few other paying fools are paying for you. So, please at least give us a little entertainment for our dollar and get yourself dramatically podded for us all to see.

SplitScreen I do not deny you a need to earn a living from your work in providing this game. I dig this game, believe me I do. But, be forwarned . . . It's gotten too costly for me. You simply have to listen . . . Make memberships a "good deal" that seduces players to pay for the game rather than play for free . . . And, I won't go so broke, and neither will yee!

datajam

 

[schneider43]

Yuo have some good points here data
Well i to am one of the fools that buys gold

 

[defacto]

Instead of making the game slower, make it longer! Add more stories, higher diffrenece between mantis, and so on.

 

[retro]

iv played games where u get alot less for ur money for 50 euros on a gamigo game called level r u only get 10,000 gold so u dont get a too bad a deal here

 

[retro]

i must admit that the elite membership doesnt seem a good deal anymore thou and i see alot less ppl with memebrship these days and please ss lower the time it takes to go from 1 planet to another sometimes its as much as 6 mins on a game like this its just silly this isnt a space sim its ment to be a fast paced action game

 

[sbatten]

Shall I break out the cheese yet????

OK, Datajam and all you others out there that are non-stop whining about this game, I want you to think about this from an entirely different perspective. Datajam, you mentioned that you plopped down $50 today and presumeably you spent most of the day playing right, maybe 6, 8, 12 hours? OK, lets put your $50 into perspective! You could have gone to a theme park for a day of entertainment. That would have been $50 for a ticket plus probably another $50 for food and souvenirs? And you would have stood in line most of the time. OR perhaps you could have taken the wife to the movies for a couple of hours? Easily $50 by time you get your tickets, popcorn, sode, etc. Then again, a sensible person would have gone out to eat. We all know that $50 would just feed two people at any decent restaurant (not fast food). Theres about $25/hour. Movies about $25/hour. Theme park maybe $8-$10/hour. And you just paid about $4/hour for your day of PG fun?? What the hell are you complaining about?? You want free entertainment? Do you complain to the theater about their ticket prices? Do you refuse to pay your dining out bill because you think you are not getting enough bang for your buck? If you don't like your $4/hour value you got today, stop pulling out the old credit card! It sounds to me like you are on the borderline of an addiction here. You don't like the outcome of spending your money, yet you keep chipping in the pot. The reason you get no response from SS or the GMs is because THEY are the ones running THEIR show. They are not going to change it because one person is bent about how they do it. The simple fact is, they are making money now and they will continue to do so. Change only comes about with pressure. If you are looking for free entertainment, PG is not where its at. Sorry for the rant, but I think it needed to be done at some point before the entire forum is boogered up with how much of a rip-off this game is.

Chas88

 

[BucaneerBill]

Datajam you know what you are buying before you buy, I suggest you buy the best value package to suit you and not whine after you bought it. Chas88 your arguement has more holes than Swiss cheese, since you so like mentioning it. Theirs all types of entertainment at varying costs, you cannot simple compare playing PG for 1 day with going to a Theme Park lol. Their totally different, you must compare the cost of PG with other games. Not as if you goto a Theme Park everyday for a month like you might play PG. The cost of PG should be much lower. Overall I would say though, do not complain after you have bought gold as you know what you were getting. If you are not pleased with what you bought, you should not have bought it in the first place.

In my opinion the only thing worth buying in the cash shop are the memberships and the energy charges. The rest are not worth it at all.

 

[retro]

plus if u buy something and it doesnt work or ur meal is cold or not how u like it u return it and complian and they sort it out for u or give u a refund, that called good custmour servce and thats how u get repeat custom, i can go out and rip loads of ppl off and get rich quick( not saying splitscreen are ripping ppl off ) but i wont be able to ever sell again cos i will have a bad name, if we are all complaining then maybe something isnt right as u said urself chas88 things are never changed unless they get pressue and pressure is what we are doin, and yes its there game but if they want to make money and keep making money then they have got to listen to there paying customers and there potencial paying customer needs. u guys at splitscreen are doin a great job with the game i know its not that easy to do and i know no matter what u do u will never please everyone. like with the forums the only member of splitscreen answering questions is delloda and we hardly ever see gms in game anymore and when we do ask a question all we ever seem to get is we dont know, what the point in havin gms that dont know and hardly see( no offence to the gms i know u got ur own lifes outside the game as well ). its simple really im a paying customer a spend alot on this game iv wasted 3 million paid for energy on looking for what i might think drops this attack charge iv bought 30 day boosters and got 30 day absorbe, 30 day fire power,30 day speed boosters and elite membership, i think im a good paying customer, but its gettin to the point where i just cant be bother to play anymore cos splitscreen seems to have no meet u halfway in them its just we do it our way u pay for it or get lost and weather this is true or not its how i feel anyway. and if i walk away thats 300 to 400 euros a month u will lose and rather than just tell me what drops this attack charge( im not asking u to give me the bp am i its not as if it is dropping in any server so help would be nice ) u would rather loose my cash, now to me not listening to ur customers and there needs and not tryin to meet them half way is bad business im not asking u to drop on ur knees everytime we ask for something but have a little give as well as take

 

[sbatten]

Bbill, with all due respect, I think I made a very reasonable comparison with regards to value, comparing dollar for dollar. I was trying to show that in general, the entertainment value of PG, on a cost per unit basis, was rather cheap when compared to several other forms of entertainment, not just games. And Retro, you are correct that you and Datajam think you are pressuring SS. The fact is, if SS is making enough money, they will not change anything just because a few ppl complain, simply not enough pressure. The point is, like BBill said, you are voluntarily giving them your money, then turning around and complaining about it, then turning around and giving them more money, and complaining about it. That is insane! I can understand the first time giving them money for this or that and being dissatisfied with it, and NOT buying it again, like I am doing with the cry booster since I think it is somehow overriding the BP drop rate. But to keep buying the same product over and over after being dissatisfied over and over is classified as an addiction. Kind of like gambling huh? The only problem I have with SS and their store is that certain "off the shelf" items have different costs based upon your rank, and that is by definition discriminatory. The e charge should be x amount of money for y amount of e, PERIOD. Not 10K e for 5100 gold if you are rank 10 and 100K e for 5100 gold if you are rank 60. That is not right. And guess what, I am not buying e with my lower ranked pilot on Solaria.

Chas88

P.S. BBill, smoked swiss is one of my favorites, along with smoked gouda and leichester. YUM!

 

[BucaneerBill]

Lol Retro I am not going to try and read that block yet...Chas88 I think the E charge allows a certain amount time playing free from collecting energy, irrespective of rank and so the higher rank you are, the more energy your weapons use and so the more energy you get. Or something like that lol.

 

[retro]

i keep paying cos i want to support splitscreen and the game cos i think it can be such an amazing game with some refining, i can asure u if we all stopped paying there wouldnt be a game within a few weeks so this is why iv turned a blind eye to it all and carried on paying and as u said chas88 all the forums seems to be full of is ppl complining so its not just a few ppl its alot of ppl feel the same, i talk to loads of ppl in game that spend alot of cash and they are all on the tip of quiting the game, i dont want this and nether does splitscreen, there is not point in sayin oh well if 5 leave 5 new memebers will join and play cos in the end there will be no new members and 5 out 5 in doesnt make the game grow does it

 

[retro]

lol bill iv used my full stops and all that kind of thing so ur ok to read away lol

 

[grampa]

i got seriously annoyed at pg a while back and decided to park my ships

it was a fun game but got to the point that i was not prepared to collect cry for 2 hours for 5 mins of shooting

it isnt worth it

i have better things to do with my time and money

datajam, although i count you as a friend, you gotta quit moaning about the game, at the end of the day you have 2 choices, play or dont, its realy very simple

you want to see a rip off in a game go play dark orbit (that game is a money machine and also worse than anything i ever seen)

 

[datajam]

So many of you people seem to have blinders on. I love this game. And, I probably want this game to succeed as much, if not more than our friends at SplitScreen. But, somebody has to tell them that they may be going in the wrong direction by their actions.

They have degraded an absolutely amazing game by slowing the action down (And, I'm not talking about the battle action. I'm talking about the actual speed movement of the ships.), modification of "e" vs. drops, and similar actions that I feel are causing a negative impact on the game. Go to Vega System. Notice how quick your ship flies? Try the other systems, it feels like its going backwards.

Let me tell you something . . . If you are a free player, this game is a great deal. But, if you are a paying player, the deal sucks. You are playing for free while some paying players shell out maybe $250.00 USD per month. What are the paying players getting for their dollar? Except, the continuing degradation of what we have already paid for?

As I said before, I would like to see this game succeed. And, I would like them to step out from behind their desks and listen to those of us that are on their side in hopes of their success and listen. They are not going to succeed on the income generated by the few of us that pay for memberships and are offended by what little we receive in return. They are going to succeed by generation of a lot of continuing happy paying players that continue to pay and play.

The whole point of my original post is just that. I want them to quit making their buck off of the current paying players by degradation of the game and make being a paying player so damn good that people want to be a paying player. And, if you are a current paying player and do not see the wisdom in my message . . . Then you need to drop some of that extra cash in my bank account. As a free player, you should probably take issue with my side of this topic. Because, as far as I am concerned, you can spend your whole day PICKING UP E-BALLS AND CALL THAT ENTERTAINMENT. I however, feel that as a paying member should not have to, that membership should come with a realistic e-count, and that I should not have to pay for their boosters to improve upon their degradation of the game.

AND, I DO NOT CARE IF YOU LIKE MY TAKING ISSUE WITH THEM ABOUT THESE ISSUES! Everything I take issue with, I do so as a consumer. Some of you people act as though these folks are your friends. They are not your friends! They are a business. They are a business taking your money. (At least my money) And, as much as I like dealings with Delloda and some of the others, they are still representing the company. Not you or I, but the company. Thus, I speak out.

And my opinion is: Make money off of increased paying memberships by making paying membership a great deal. Stop trying to support the game off of those of us paying to play by continuation of game degradation and put some of the game back in the game, because I like the game and want it to succeed without sucking my wallet dry.

datajam

 

[retro]

as u can see by the amount of replys from splitscreen we have had i dont think they really care what we think so the best way to get them to listen is for everyone to stop buying gold then they will soon listen

 

[sbatten]

Let me tell you something . . . If you are a free player, this game is a great deal. But, if you are a paying player, the deal sucks. You are playing for free while some paying players shell out maybe $250.00 USD per month. What are the paying players getting for their dollar? Except, the continuing degradation of what we have already paid for?
datajam

The paying ppl are getting exactly what the are paying for. We know beforehand what we are buying and how much it costs. If we buy something and are dissatisfied with it ... we don't buy it again. Your issue is that you, my friend, have some kind of compulsive problem in that you buy stuff from SS and are not happy with it, then turn around and buy THE SAME STUFF AGAIN! It is really that simple. If you buy stuff and don't like it, don't buy it again. If you buy it for the first time, and find out it sucks, then by all means, complain, but not after buying the same thing 5 times over. If you are that dissatisfied with the game, then I suggest you join Grampa, though I would like for the both of you to stay and play.

Chas88

 

[retro]

lol when we buy something and ss change it after we buy it like they do then no we dont know what we are buying cos ss change things all the time without telling us and as we have said we keep spending money cos someone has to or this game wouldnt be here we spend to keep the game alive

 

[sbatten]

lol when we buy something and ss change it after we buy it like they do then no we dont know what we are buying cos ss change things all the time without telling us and as we have said we keep spending money cos someone has to or this game wouldnt be here we spend to keep the game alive

I totally agree with you about buying something and then SS changing it, but that is not exactly what is being complained about in this thread. Datajam is complaining about the whole energy system that has not changed (that I am aware of). He is still buying e that is not worth it. He is still buying memberships that aren't worth it. All I am saying is if you don't like it, don't keep buying it. Sometimes I wonder if he is one of those ppl that are just not happy unless they are complaining about something.

Chas88

 

[schneider43]

What us of this all no GM here so ?

 

[lance]

to be honest, if they drastically lowered the price of stuff in the item shop, then more people would think it was a fair deal, and so more people would buy it. In the long term, this evens out and may even start to increase profit...

I do not think they have yet found the compromise between being too expensive so no one buys anything and being so cheap that they make no money off of their boosters. They really sg=hould try to find this to make maximum profit off the game, and benefit us.....