When they were available, I had the money to buy one but they were only being given to players with less than 30 days left on their membership.
Now that I have less than 30 days left on my membership, they are not available.
The Staff opened up the pads before because I assume they had an excess of unused large pads. Now they don't, and the alternative is having builders create more.
Would you rather builders constantly be making more large pads for anyone who wants one, or be making cool new locations IC?
Sure, it sucks that you can't have a fancy big pad as some people do just because of a time limit. But most of your RP should be outside the pad anyway.
At the moment the builder team are working on a number of large projects - for us to create more large pads would require diverting significant resources that could be better used to give better roleplay to underserved and undeveloped areas of the game.
We will definitely make an announcement should this situation change.
--Glitch
Obviously I would want a large pad if I could get one but I kind of like the idea of them being tied to factions or positions or other IC stuff rather than solely a pay2win thing.
I think it would be interesting if you made say, six to eight pads throughout the game and had them tied to specific NPCs or factions who could let a player live there if they'd earned it. They wouldn't be permanent. Something like, maybe the toughest ganger as determined by tournament gets one, the MVP of each syndicate and corp. Or have them tied to neighborhoods. Are you a hero to the Park? Maybe you get the Park pad, and then someone comes along and tries to out-RP you for it.
Just as long as the people who are grandfathered don't get screwed, I'm into having a merit-based or faction-based layer to it.