One F2P feature that LoL doesn't have and Planetside 2 NEEDS

LZachariah · 2011-11-02, 12:29 PM

A Gift System. I am baffled at how LoL doesn't seem to have this. With a F2P model with microtransactions, unlike the standard "everyone pays the same thing" model, the game's major sources of income are the big-spenders who are willing to pour much more money into the game than would ultimately have totaled the $60 price tag of a standard game. Yes, some people (like me) have paid $20 or so on LoL for a certain character or a particular skin, but there will be lots of players who pay nothing, and THEN there will be some players (like a friend of mine) who laughs and says "Yeah, I've spent about $300 on LoL."

A Gift System (ie, the ability to buy in-game things and direct them to a friend's account) would GREATLY STIMULATE in-game commerce, which is exactly what I want. I want T-Ray sporting silver rings encrusted with amethysts and emeralds (someone PLEASE get that color-reference o.O ) and I want Higby to buy a suit of real-life, canine MAX armor for his dog (to go along with the T-shirt). The Gift System would add extra dimensions to what a person bought, and I believe this would be exponentially greater for Outfits (ie, everyone buying uniforms, etc). It is highly likely that the most successful Outfits will be led by a handful of EXTREMELY DEVOTED Planetside 2 players, and they may be willing to shell out $50-$100 to provide their teammates with (for instance) a signature item that makes them recognizable on the field as part of that Outfit, such as a big gladiator-style pauldron on one shoulder, etc.

I want SOE to get TONS of money from this game. Depending on how it actually plays upon release, it is a potential contender for my favorite game of all time (standing amongst Neverwinter Nights 2, Chrono Trigger, the Mass Effect series, and a few amazing others).

Thoughts?

~Zachariah

**Higby** · 2011-11-02, 12:56 PM

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

It's really easy to buy something with stolen credit card info and then send hundreds of items to hundreds of people as "gifts" and then all we can really do is ban all of them for receiving fraudulent items that they might have never asked for or wanted. It's a very challenging problem to solve for free-to-play games. In other countries you can't play the game unless you put in the equivalent of your social security number with your account which makes it a lot less likely to commit fraud, but in the US we can't really do that.

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Bags · 2011-11-02, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

It's really easy to buy something with stolen credit card info and then send hundreds of items to hundreds of people as "gifts" and then all we can really do is ban all of them for receiving fraudulent items that they might have never asked for or wanted. It's a very challenging problem to solve for free-to-play games. In other countries you can't play the game unless you put in the equivalent of your social security number with your account which makes it a lot less likely to commit fraud, but in the US we can't really do that.

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Yeah, in GunZ the Duel one of my not-so-close-E-Friends bought us all stuff, and it turned out he just used stolen credit cards. Thankfully the company running it were smart enough to not ban us because banning people for others illegal activity is assbackwards.

**Higby** · 2011-11-02, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Bags

Yeah, in GunZ the Duel one of my not-so-close-E-Friends bought us all stuff, and it turned out he just used stolen credit cards. Thankfully the company running it were smart enough to not ban us because banning people for others illegal activity is assbackwards.

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

Bags · 2011-11-02, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

I get that you can just send them to your own accounts too, yeah. That hit me after I typed that up, eh. Still, I think the best solution is not to ban everyone and just take away the items and ban the purchaser, but GunZ didn't have any consumables.

I'm not saying you guys should do it this way, I just think if a game DOES have gifting it's kind of douchey to ban everyone who receives the items.

Lonehunter · 2011-11-02, 01:42 PM

Originally Posted by Bags

I just think if a game DOES have gifting it's kind of douchey to ban everyone who receives the items.

Pending an investigation they really have no choice

Redshift · 2011-11-02, 01:52 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

I agree gifting is awesome, and I really want to figure out a way to make it happen for PS2, we've just got some wrinkles to work out.

Only allow one credit card to be associated with each account at a time, limit gifting to br rank 10+ (or whatever). It's not worth the time taken to level it then. You can limit gifting to only activate 10 days after the card is associated with an account to, plenty of time for the card to be blocked etc if it is nicked

Xyntech · 2011-11-02, 01:53 PM

I guess one partial solution would be to make consumable items non-giftable. At least then you could take them all back without having to ban everyone.

Maybe you could also put restrictions that you have to meet before you can send or receive a gift.

Sending:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (to prevent idlers)
Spent a minimum amount of money in non gifted items in the shop ($20?)
Made a payment to the cash shop a minimum amount of time ago with the card you are using to purchase the gift (3 months?)
Gifts must be purchased as gifts. You can not gift an item after purchasing it for yourself.

Receiving:
Have an active account at least 3 months old
Have reached a certain battle rank (prevent idlers)
Recipient must agree to terms and conditions of receiving a gift, including loss of item if fraud was involved
If fraud is found to have occurred, the recipient gets a warning that if they accept any future gifts that turn out to be fraudulent purchases, disciplinary action may be taken against their account.

Bags · 2011-11-02, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by Lonehunter187

Pending an investigation they really have no choice

Uh, no, they do have a choice. They can either do nothing like the company running GunZ did (I don't support this), or take away the items and ban the guy who bought them.

Or just not have gifting at all since they can't police it. You can't punish players because the company is incompetent.

FIREk · 2011-11-02, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

Gifting is challenging for a F2P game for one big reason: Fraud.

As long as you can't gift monthly account premium-ness, I don't think a gifting system for items and such would be a fraud magnet.

While I know what I'm talking about, I don't know exactly how it might work in f2p games. I can't imagine people buying stiff with fraudulent CC info for themselves, though. They would typically buy stuff to resell on auction sites.
Most importantly, though, such "entrepreneurs" will always target the "new cool thing" that will sell quickly if offered for cheap, which usually means the current popular AAA PC title, or stuff that is always in demand when offered for cheap, like MMO time codes.
Slow-moving merchandise, like a ReXO skin that someone may like at some point, but isn't likely to end up looking for on eBay, might not sell by the time the credit card company notices the fraud, issues a chargeback, and the gift gets invalidated.
CC thieves (or people who buy stolen CC info) will always go for the easier monies.

So I think you'll be fine as long as people can only gift cosmetic stuff, weapons and other "various" items, not high-demand "consumables" like premiums.

And just think of all the revenue you can make once lonely nerds start gifting stuff to the dozen or so women playing PlanetSide 2 and not hiding their gender... And to the thousands of guys pretending to be women... :P

Captain B · 2011-11-02, 02:32 PM

As others said, if you can track items bought:

1) Ban the person gifting the fraudulent items.

2) Remove the fraudulent items.

3) Repeat.

When you discover the fraudulent account, you may or may not find other accounts attached to it. If not, well, that's one account, and when you send that info into the police, those other "bad accounts" from the same person may become less of an issue when jail is thrown into the mix.

Is PS2 localized for prison?

Sco · 2011-11-02, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

Yeah, but then how do we know if those people are just fences for the stuff, i send out stuff to 10 people and 2 of them are actually my other accounts that I really want these fraudulent items on. Again, there are a lot of legal challenges here. Of course the easy solution is to say "well, we can just take the items away no harm done" but if they're consumables or something, then there is harm done, and having no deterrence isn't a good policy. We don't want to ban people for this, that's why we don't have gifting for RMT items in our games (that I've worked on, at least - i.e. Free Realms and Clone Wars Adventures)

Make it so you can only gift non-consumable items. Players dont require the whole shop to be "gift-able" - but only items that can be removed after the event. This removes the fraud aspect as it allows retrospective amendment.

FIREk · 2011-11-02, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by Captain B

As others said, if you can track items bought:

1) Ban the person gifting the fraudulent items.

2) Remove the fraudulent items.

3) Repeat.

When you discover the fraudulent account, you may or may not find other accounts attached to it. If not, well, that's one account, and when you send that info into the police, those other "bad accounts" from the same person may become less of an issue when jail is thrown into the mix.

Is PS2 localized for prison?

This doesn't work. Trust me. You don't ban people, you ban accounts. It's too easy to change your IP, create new accounts and get more CC details. You can't ban IP ranges, or you'll affect innocent users (or potential users).

Also, you don't just "remove items and repeat". You have to return the money. That also means extra costs for processing the refund.

I also don't know if and how many companies contact the police about stuff like this. I think this should be the credit card company's job, but either way the Internet is international and anonymous enough for people to get away with this shit...

Most uber-importantly, most fraudulent items will only be discovered once you get information from a bank that they made a chargeback for the order. And believe you me, online companies hate chargebacks like the plague, and it doesn't take a lot of them for the company to feel it. I won't give you the exact reason, however, as I think going into more detail might count as breaching my NDA.

FIREk · 2011-11-02, 03:04 PM

Originally Posted by Sco

This removes the fraud aspect as it allows retrospective amendment.

While I agree with the non-consumables part, I must stress out that you don't want to focus on retrospective amendment. You need prevention, sometimes even if it means limiting functionality for legitimate users, though you will always work hard to avoid that.

At the end of the day, if your CC details get stolen, it's your own damn fault... From a company's perspective, giving someone their money back is a courtesy, it doesn't fix the problem.

LZachariah · 2011-11-02, 03:38 PM

Wow, Higby, that's a really good point that I hadn't considered. This may be why LoL (which otherwise seems to be doing everything right) DOESN'T have a gifting system. And as always, thank you so much for all your amazing contributions to our forums; all of us feel how devoted the PS2 team is to its fanbase.

And i TOTALLY want you to be able to get that NC MAX armor for your dog. I'm thinking dual AV weapons; now she can just "chase cars" from the sidewalk. And by "chase," I mean "annihilate."