21 replies to this topic

[Serapth]

... they need to offer the ability to pause premium time.


It's come up again and again and again... given that PGI dont seem to playtest well... anything, we end up with epic fail gaming. For me its an epic ****-off as it always seems to correspond with times where I have premium active.


LRM death rain...
Introduction of ECM
PPCwarrior online
Jump Jet motion sickness
Scatter your team all over the earth premade **** fests


Over and over PGI implement epically stupid changes that they eventually realize are, well, epically stupid... but in the time that takes, premium time ticks down.

Please for the love of all that is... well, putting up with this all! Please, for the love of dog, allow us to pause our premium time! That, or learn to test.

I can totally weather the storm of stupid that is the most recent patch changes... I'll just stop playing until it's fixed like I have with so many prior mistakes. But when premium time is ticking down, I cant do that, or at least, I cant do that without developing a serious hate on.

Edited by Niko Snow, 06 December 2013 - 08:24 AM.

[Sable Dove]

What they need to do is make it only apply to gameplay time.

[Swiftsteel]

Sable Dove, on 05 December 2013 - 09:59 PM, said:

What they need to do is make it only apply to gameplay time.

That would be incredibly convenient, but PGI needs a constant cash flow to plan their budget, acquistions, hiring/firing etc. Also, it encourages people to play more since they want to efficiently use the premium time they bought. So while I prefer a model in which you only pay for the time you play, I can see why it doesn't exist.

If they would offer it as an alternative for "weekend warriors", maybe at a slightly higher price/hour, I'd buy it though.

[Ensaine]

Or... stop buying Premium Time and/or MC ...???

[warner2]

I agree with the OP but really PGI need to be more careful with their patches. This is no longer BETA, launch date has long since passed. Features that are released now should be complete and tested and should better the game. Spreading out the lances is not a bad idea, putting them too close to each other (Caustic) is bad, having the lances as configured on the pre-game screen not carry through to the in-game starting positions (aka "Scatter your team all over the earth") is terrible. Terrible, broken, and should not have been released into a live, paid for, product, post launch.

[Apoc1138]

Swiftsteel, on 05 December 2013 - 10:51 PM, said:

That would be incredibly convenient, but PGI needs a constant cash flow to plan their budget, acquistions, hiring/firing etc. Also, it encourages people to play more since they want to efficiently use the premium time they bought. So while I prefer a model in which you only pay for the time you play, I can see why it doesn't exist.

If they would offer it as an alternative for "weekend warriors", maybe at a slightly higher price/hour, I'd buy it though.

because it leads to this;

Ensaine, on 06 December 2013 - 02:13 AM, said:

Or... stop buying Premium Time and/or MC ...???

where is the cash flow if people (like me) stop buying premium time?

[Sen]

With all due respect, this post sounds less like constructive criticism and more like someone crying in their cheerios because they're being forced to face having to rethink their gameplay.

Tuesday night, my unit and I had a pretty bad time of it. We were a little bit frustrated with the randomness, groupings, etc.

Wed was a mixed bag. Wed morning wasn't horrible, but Wed night we kept getting into bad stretches of ***** pugs marching off to the slaughter.

Last night, after two days of reassessing, stepping back and LOOKING at maps and drop points [which really aren't all that "random"] we were mostly back to our old way of lots of respectable wins and a few fun losses.

Moral of story: Give people time to adapt to change. If you're not playing with a group, there are plenty of places like the Comstar servers where you can find people to play with.

If you refuse to play with a group, then understand that this is a team based game and not Call of Battlefield: Rambo. If you're playing with a group and still really frustrated, I'd go moonlight for a week with some other groups and see if you can't find a group that suits your playstyle a bit better.

Edited by Sen, 06 December 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[rageagainstthedyingofthelight]

Yeah, I was having fun on Thanksgiving vacation until I came back and realized I lost 7 days of premium time.

[M4NTiC0R3X]

PGI's idea is that premium time is a premium account (God I hope that doesn't screw us over someday but I bet it will) and is representative of a subscription, however people shy away from those because micro transactions seem more convenient.

Personally, I'd offer both options. 1 - 30 days micro or 1 - 6 months subscription (the subscription could be discounted, I do not remember but I think the figure is something around $20 per month if you buy the $100 MC package.

(oh and yeah, forgot to mention that I haven't touched that premium button in many, many months.. It would significantly increase C-Bill generation especially in a Founders D but... I don't want to start some 90 day ticker when I'll maybe play 30 of them because the content I want is not here.)

Edited by M4NTiC0R3X, 06 December 2013 - 08:06 AM.

[AC]

I wrote a thread a LONG time ago asking that we get to use our banked premium time in chunks. I have 95 days saved up and have no plans to flip the switch since you can't unflip it. I would use it 24hr chunks though and would probably end up ACTUALLY buying more if I was allowed to use what I have in a reasonable manner. Just throwing it all away in one flip of a switch is dumb though.

Little things like this is what is losing PGI money. They think they are being smart by making you use all your premium time up so that you will buy more, but it just isn't true. You get ppl like me that hoard it because we are too scared to use it, and then you get ppl like the OP who use it and then get PO'ed when PGi released a bad patch and now won't purchase more in the future.

If PGI treated the community with the slightest amount of respect and intelligence, they would be raking in more money than they are now.

[Trickster Fox]

I agree I have quite a bit saved up but I'm not going to flip that switch until the game shapes up. Honestly it's getting worse and worse and I see it getting to the point that people stop paying for premium time and they lose their whole budget over stupid patches.

I would support a 24 hour chunk though. That way you can play a couple days a week and not burn 7 when you have a life and only use 2 or 3.

Buuuutttt, if you did that then you could have a direct hand in the stuff PGI does by yanking their purse strings... so it wouldn't happen.

[Durant Carlyle]

You want to have smaller chunks of Premium Time? Easy -- buy it with MC. It starts immediately, and ticks down until it expires. You can buy it for a day at a time, or larger amounts if you wish.

If you're talking about banked Premium Time from package deals (Founder and/or Phoenix), then why are you saving it? You will never get anywhere close to even 50% return on it unless you sit at the computer for 12 hours every day, so why bother trying? You get absolutely no benefit from sitting on it.

I might support a one-time pause on banked time, but that's it. People being able to pause it however often they wish isn't conducive to the game making any money.

Sable Dove, on 05 December 2013 - 09:59 PM, said:

What they need to do is make it only apply to gameplay time.

They would have to re-work it totally, to be sold on a per-match basis or something. That would be the ultimate pause button, but I wonder if they could make it work...

[Thorqemada]

I remember that some games i played in the past had a "Holiday-Option" to pause Premium-Time for a certain amount of time if not unrestricted.

Edited by Thorqemada, 07 December 2013 - 07:34 PM.

[mark v92]

how about we bieing able to pauze it but it costs 1 day of premium to do it, so its a bit balanced

[AC]

Durant Carlyle, on 07 December 2013 - 01:48 AM, said:

You want to have smaller chunks of Premium Time? Easy -- buy it with MC. It starts immediately, and ticks down until it expires. You can buy it for a day at a time, or larger amounts if you wish.

If you're talking about banked Premium Time from package deals (Founder and/or Phoenix), then why are you saving it? You will never get anywhere close to even 50% return on it unless you sit at the computer for 12 hours every day, so why bother trying? You get absolutely no benefit from sitting on it.

I might support a one-time pause on banked time, but that's it. People being able to pause it however often they wish isn't conducive to the game making any money.


They would have to re-work it totally, to be sold on a per-match basis or something. That would be the ultimate pause button, but I wonder if they could make it work...

You can't buy premium time and use it if you have banked premium time. (is my understanding) I would actually buy a day here and there if that was the case. But there is no way in h*ll that I am going to burn my 95 days of banked time in a single burst. Definitely not with the game in the state it is in....

[Ensaine]

Guys, it's essentially 2014, and we still have DirectX 9 .........don't hold your breath, though I support this request 100% ....

[Durant Carlyle]

AC, on 10 December 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

You can't buy premium time and use it if you have banked premium time. (is my understanding) I would actually buy a day here and there if that was the case. But there is no way in h*ll that I am going to burn my 95 days of banked time in a single burst. Definitely not with the game in the state it is in....

Any Premium Time you purchase with MC is activated immediately. Your banked time stays banked when you do this.

FOR ANYONE ELSE WHO DOES NOT KNOW THIS, I REPEAT:

Any Premium Time you purchase with MC is activated immediately. Your banked time stays banked when you do this.

Yes, I know this for a fact.

[Wildstreak]

While I do support the Pause thing, I have yet to hear of a MMO that does that. There might be one but I have no knowledge of it. All the ones I know of, when you pay for better access with certain benefits, the time counts down even when you are not playing.

Now maybe if they offered something other than just CB & XP rewards. The other MMOs I know of grant faster logins & sometimes access to content no available to F2P. Maybe a separate matchmaker....

[John MatriX82]

Sable Dove, on 05 December 2013 - 09:59 PM, said:

What they need to do is make it only apply to gameplay time.

Too convenient imho. I'd be happy if I could turn it on on a daily basis, even if I play for two hours a day I'd not mind losing that PT day.

I still have my founder premium time and it bothers me greatly because of the OP thoughts: PGI can screw off balance in the nick of time (they did it for me with the new respawns) and It already happened once that I bought some PT and then experienced poor gameplay due to poor patches or gameplay changes so I couldn't even profit of that paid PT.

Pausing it on a "activate it, 24hrs are off whatever else" is imho fair for them and for us.

[Bront]

Make it cost a small MC cost to bank it. PGI gets more MC, players get to pause their time if they're going away for a while. 10 MC a day, or 100 MC for the pause (banks all remaining time).