The problem is everything is expensive though, and the fact that you get an extremely shitty hourly rate if you buy everything for certs.. 700 SC is like 6,5 euros or so. That's half an hours work on any somewhat decent job. 1000 certs is hours and hours of constant killing. Sure, it's fun, but even I as a student must say SC is a much better deal.Originally Posted by President Weasel
I will probably never spend certs on weapons, it's wayyyyyyy too expensive.
Medics save time running back from spawn - not a big deal on defence if you're near a spawn point, but it's incredibly useful when pushing ahead to capture an area where you don't have a spawn yet, or somewhere like the top floor of an amp station or tech plant where you're trying to hold the area to keep the defenders from the aircraft spawns/turrets/sniping perches.
Ill still get some station cash at a triple deal, though. Maybe even a huge amount. I dont mind paying for it, its a good game so far.
- Tom De Roeck.
monochrom & verse publications
"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."
Just wanted to confirm that this does, in fact, work. Thanks!
Only for US users, yes.
- Tom De Roeck.
monochrom & verse publications
"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."
And others who have a NA account with SOE. So all who played the beta should be able to get this.
I'm currently so pissed about spending money on the Nemesis (Vanu ground to air rockets).
The ground to air rocket launchers are so incredibly bad. Bad by design. You cannot hit a target that is coming straight at you(!), also it will most likely not hit if you fire at it while seeing its side. The only way to be likely to get a hit is when you are aiming at the back. But even then the pilot can outrun it, can hide, can use flares and if he is skilled enough even dodge it.
So I spent 750 SC on a weapon that is only to damage about every 10 to 20 shots (maybe getting a kill assist if I am lucky) and only kill the worst of the worst pilots.
Then I read Smeds post "Oh, AA is only ment as a detterance, not to acutally kill aircraft. Air is the counter to air"
Are you f*ing kidding me? Don't get me wrong, I don't wont to one-shot or obliterate aircraft by myself but at least I would want to do consistent damage to aircraft when I have a anti-air weapon equipped. Especially when pilots are hovering directly above me rocketspamming the shit out of people.
I'll think I'll try my luck with support and moan and bitch until I get my SC back. Seriously, so pissed about that.
Youre probably gonna hate me for this, but thats what a trial is for. Maybe previews and opinions of other people as well.
- Tom De Roeck.
monochrom & verse publications
"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."
How do trials actually work? I click on the "trial" button, and then nothing seems to happen.
Sometimes they work, sometimes they dont. Generally, you can only trial an object once every 30 days. and you can only trial things every eight hours.
- Tom De Roeck.
monochrom & verse publications
"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it."
I kinda knew how the Nemesis worked form the beta. Bought it anyway.
I'm ok with a single heavy not being able to take out a lib / fighter on their own, or straight-on.
I regularly get hits with it, maybe 1 in 5 is a miss. That's usually due to decoy flares / good pilots knowing exactly where / when to burn.
The trick is to go for those already under fire. Although just the lockon noise is enough to scare away some pilots.
If you're the target of a pilot / gunner, you're screwed on foot no matter what you're carrying...
What counts as significant for you? Perhaps because I study economics, but I find even 5-10% extremely significant.
Also as for the quote, you (again) didn't notice that he said it was one of the most hideously pay2win games he had ever played. Not ever made. Huge, yawning chasm of a difference between what you accused and what he said. And you missed it twice in your rush to belittle his argument.
You don't need it to be competitive, but it gives a competitive advantage. Alright, no obvious contradiction there.If you want the extra stuff, you're better off paying for it, sure. But you don't need it to be competitive.
@DeVadder Is the PS2 stuff realistically available to f2p players? My current cert gain is at around 25 p/h and that's mostly from playing in the RPS outfit. I do not personally believe that 40 hours for a weapon unlock = realistically available. For a small minority, sure but for everyone else nah?
Also, I was mistaken about being able to buy armour for SC, certs only!
The internet is full of discussions on forums and articles on gaming sites about whether PS2 is paytowin, so it obviously isn't just a few misguided holdouts on RPS bandying that term about.
Personally I believe a system designed to force people to spend real life cash to get upgrades(even small) = pay to win. A free2play model where the only microtransactions are for cosmetic items only = non paytowin.
I think 25% of my total kills have been Reavers, Mosquitos & Liberators downed with Nemesis, so for me worth the purchase. I liked it in beta though where 2 hits was enough to kill a fighter, as that usually meant it had to retire for repairs, which is a damn good deterrent.
My best tactic has been to only fire the damn thing if they are close and not speeding away. If they are further away, the lockon thing alone generally seems to act as a deterrent. And also, hardly a point using it in hilly terrain as the missile tries to go in a straight line at enemy often ending up firing into a cliff.
But as Cooper said, good pilots know how to evade a missile or use flares/chaffs.
And while Planetside 2 is a game set in future and after all a game, I spent my initial months of conscription in the Norwegian Air Force Anti-Aircraft Artillery. So reading AA is not meant to kill aircraft ticks me off a bit :P and makes me regret getting the Skyguard for Lightning upgrade. Ah well, double Burster MAX does the job though!
Last edited by Sceptrum; 03-12-2012 at 05:46 PM.
Steam: krusader83 | Origin: Sceptrum
Planetside 2: SceptrumVS (Miller) : SceptrumNC (Mallory) : SceptrumTR (Lithcorp)
I was really enjoying Planetside 2 at the start, but 20 hours in I have some serious misgivings about the game design and Sony's management. There were some amazing moments, but it quickly starts feeling like a fruitless grind.
Inherent imbalances and unlocks are anti-competitive, and the cert prices are ludicrous. Air/AA needs more work and accessibility.
The interface sucks. They really need to combine the deployment & navigation map screens. Managing squads and platoons and coordination is a chore. Without good situational awareness tools you're basically fighting blind.
Continent populations are often imbalanced and subject to manipulation. Zerging is not fun and can't reasonably be defended against. Big groups won't quit supporting a lost cause.
Planetside 2 lets you fight, but you can never win the war. The mechanics are fun, though I find it structurally lacking. It also needs to perform better, not crash, and not break jetpacks routinely. The new character hot-drop is extremely unfriendly to new players.
I want to love it, but the game just isn't quite there.
I used it during beta, and it was better then. Not great, but it was okay. With release they changed the damage and speed of the projectile, making it worse. I assumed they would put such stuff in the launch patch notes. Which they did not because "almost all changes were bugfixing or cosmetic". Yeah, right.
I bought the thing out of blind faith, which was a stupid move concerning this is a SOE game. I'll take that responsibility.
That's the thing. They do everything the Nemesis (and Skyguard) does, and that even better. And you get one of them for free.
The Nemesis is as good as an deterrent as bursters are, maybe even inferior. I would argue that the incoming tracers and damage deters an aircraft way better then a beep pilots can get rid off with a single key (or by other means). With the bursters you get way more reliable and consistent damage while the Nemsis relies more on other AA doing the muscle work.
Oh please, don't be such a pedant. Someone said it was one of the most pay to win games ever, whether that's "I've ever played" or "ever made" is just splitting hairs for the sake of scoring cheap points.
It gives a barely significant advantage, such that other players are still competitive. 10% more health is less than one bullet's worth. Stronger armour means another couple of rockets, which you'll need in abundance to take down any vehicle anyway. You don't need to pay anything to do well in this game, and there are many, many more games where without paying you might as well not bother playing at all. If you have a different definition of pay to win than "you have to pay to win", fine, have that definition, whatever, but beyond that you're really just arguing for the sake of it now.
Last edited by sinister agent; 03-12-2012 at 09:07 PM.
The idea that Planetside 2, a game which entirely rests on the shoulders of team work and massive amounts of players, being pay to win is just absurd.
There's nothing you can get that's p2w. You can't buy better armour or shields with Station Cash, it's just not an option. You can't buy mega good ammo with Station Cash, again it's just not an option. You can buy weapons which at best are side grades to what you have. For example, the gun I bought lets me select a firing mode and it lets me put an undersling grenade launcher on it. It reloads slower. Equiping the launcher which I can't buy with Station Cash and have to earn, makes my gun heavier, which means it takes longer for me to equip it. In a game where it can very often be first to pull the trigger wins, that doesn't make my gun seem very pay 2 win. It wont kill anyone any faster than the standard model.
This isn't a 5v5 or 8v8 team deathmatch where you can buy all the best gear and solo your team to victory and get a brilliant KD ratio. You can't do any of that because the game just doesn't work that way.
Obviously it is not available for everyone but a minority. I already said, it is indeed designed to make people pay. But neither are these weapons essential upgrades nor are they unavailable as in impossible to obtain.
The internet is also full of discussions wether the nazis have a base in antartica and wether some mysterious brown dwarf star destroys the earth in 17 days.
More importantly though: I am not saying that calling the game pay2win was stupid or anything. I argued why many (most?) people do not think so and tried to explain what i and maybe others may understand by pay2win. Because it appeared to me as if you and some other guys were using the term for different things and maybe therefore be unable to understand each others arguments.
What i do believe to be stupid however is becoming so angry about percieving a game to be pay2win. Afterall, by definition, it is free. So everybody hating the concept so much is free to not play it or not pay for it. Apparently many people do enjoy the game though.
I am not opposing voicing ones opinion. But the intial post was quite harsh. Calling a game we others really like plainly bad, feeling sorry for us, stuff like that. That is probably why some people were unhappy with it.
Okay. Good luck finding such a game. I was not trying to convince you into loving the Planetside 2 model.
That is your point of view and i merely tried to explain mine.
I suppose that'd depend on your definition of pay to win. Wether the term should be used to talk about games offering insurmountable advantages in a cash-only shop and/or about those that let you shortcut the grind for smaller advantages seems to be a topic of contention. I'm not sure that's important, though. The real question, in my mind, is: Are people OK with shortcuts to concrete, competitive advantages being sold for RL money, and if yes, where do we draw the line?
Personally, the way Planetside 2's progression is setup makes me extremely uncomfortable and unwilling to plonk down money or even play it. Tribes : Ascend used to be significantly grindier in regards to the amount of time it took to unlock stuff, but it gripped me for quite some time and got a fair amount of money out of me.
I particular, I strongly dislike how crucial roles, mostly vehicle-related, are either locked out or simply underpowered unless one pays up or grinds for 30-40 hours for the weapon bringing it up to speed. AA is the best example, what with base turrets being rubbish and 1-burster MAXes being far inferior to the two-armed variant, but not the only one. OTOH, there's also the Liberator gun, the Lightning main cannon, the Magrider's Saron turret and of course the fighter's respective secondary weapons (to be honest, I don't know why you brought up the infantry weapons. Those are all fine sidegrades and I've yet to see anyone complain about them).
This is further compounded by the fact that the certs paying players save up by buying the weapons outright (and odds are they'll earn more to begin with) can be fed back into those guns to make them even better than the free player's. The arms race only evens out once the free player's fully certed one loadout, and how long will that take?
I can see the logic in your first and third paragraphs (in that individual contributions don't matter much if at all), but it doesn't make me feel any better about the experience. I'm fairly competitive when I play. That doesn't mean that I expect to win a battle by myself, but I do expect to have as much to contribute to it as someone who's paying. Right now it doesn't feel like I can, and it's dragging the experience down. I hope they can find a way to solve this, because despite all the things I just said I really really want to like this game and see it succeed.
I'm sorry, but this is just.... well I don't want to use swear words here.
I absolutely can understand why people think guns are too expensive (hell... 7$ for a weapon which doesn't even look different). I can understand the complaints that certs take very long to get. But please keep in mind what you are talking about: This is one of the so called AAA releases. An MMOFPS from a big company. Some million dollars went into the whole development and believe me that it will cost a 6-digit number of dollars to maintain and further develop the game. In addition to that, the company of course wants to make some profit out of it. With only cosmetic stuff for small money, there is no way that they would even get back the development costs.
Again... I can absolutely understand certain criticism of the whole cert-system but it is just mind-boggling what people are expecting when they don't have to pay a single cent to actually start playing the game. Yesterday I saw the Angry Joe review and he compared it with Guild Wars 2, claiming GW2 would have a better F2P-Model. Well, yes, that's because GW2 costs 50$ up front!
I'm sorry, I didn't want to sound this like a rant, but it just seems people are expecting this game to be completely free.
That said... I myself have not yet spent anything on it and in my few hours of playing I earned at least enough certs to get some of the basic 1-cert-stuff and the S-AMS for the Sunderer. I'm considering getting a month or so of subscription, but the subscription benefits feel a bit wanting. Well... let's see.
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