Or they make the game fun for everyone and a fucking blast for people who pay. I think they’re on point here.
I’m not sure what you mean by unlocking aircraft. I’m downloading the live client while I’m at work, but in beta I had access to both the light fighters and the heavier gunship without needing to unlock them. Extra weaponry is what gets unlocked, and for most of it it’s just added versatility rather than outright power.
I also don’t see how playing the game is a grind when you’re apparently having a ton of fun playing it.
I should point out that this creates obvious balance problems. For whatever reason, they seem to have priced all times of AA very high. The mosquito A2A missiles are 500 cert/700 SC, the AA gun on the lightning is 1000 certs or 700 SC, the AA secondary on the Prowler is 1000/700 the heavy assault AA missile is 1000/700, the MAX antiaircraft weapon is 1000/700.
For context, 1000 certs is based on my current rate something like 30-60 hours of gameplay, depending on how productive you are. 700 SC is $7. So you need to play the game for 30-60 hours to unlock AA on any single platform.
The game was balanced in the beta around fairly ubiquitious AA, and yet in the real game it’s priced so that there’s almost no AA. So aircraft are tough and powerful due to the expectation of AA, but in the real game there’s very little so they run around with impunity. The only people that can fight them off effectively are the guys who spent real money to have that shit on day one. And it’s not cheap real money - you could easily spend $300 unlocking shit in this game if you wanted a wide range of equipment.
It appears that the secondary weapons on the mosquito are the real weapons. You start with extra afterburner fuel as a secondary which seems meh at the very best. If you want to be an anti-ground vehicle, you get the rocket pods. If you want to shoot down enemy aircraft, you get the AA missiles. Both of them are a huge grind before you even unlock one of the basic roles of these aircraft. Yes, you can use the aircraft anyway with guns only, but you are not seriously engaging in the roles they’re capable of. An aircraft without those secondaries is fairly crippled.
At 30-60 hours to unlock these basic things, we’re talking about people who spend entire months doing nothing but being able to unlock basic roles on basic craft in the game. It’s absurd. They could lower the costs by 80% and there’d still be incentive to spend money on the game for people who wanted to. As it is, do you want to play the role of an air to air fighter? Antiair tank? Infantry support tank with HE shells? Well, play 5 hours every day and you manage to get that in just 2 weeks! At least for one faction. For one of those things. If you neglect other basic upgrades on the way there, like infantry health, etc.
The game is fucking stupid when a reasonable person like me wants to throw some money at it but can’t find a reasonable value. It’s fucking stupid when basic balancing functions like having AA will be inacccessible to 90% of the player base for several months. It’s fucking stupid when you can pay2win. This model is garbage.
I don’t mean to sound so down on the game, because other than this, it is quite possibly one of the best games of all time. That’s why I’m mad that they had to ruin it with this pay2win garbage.
I should note that your current rate of certs is based on you being a newbie. Skill matters a lot in the game, admittedly also being able to keep up with the zerg. In beta, it hasn’t been at all uncommon for me to earn 30 certs in 2 hours of play, and with the recent increase to XP gain I’d expect that to go up to 50 certs for 2 hours of play.
Also, I’m pretty comfortable with anti-air not being instantly accessible to everyone. Aircraft is pretty fragile, to the point where normal rifle fire is a threat, and the controls are not easy. If everyone had immediate access to AA, you wouldn’t be able to survive long enough to get practiced.
The high cert cost isn’t as high as you’re claiming, and it’s good to introduce it slowly to give people time to get acclimated to the game.
I really seriously think your objections are ideological. You can’t find a reasonable value…for the money you want to throw at the game? Make up your mind! It’s $7 for a single unlock that’s permanent. Buy two of those a month in lieu of a subscription fee, save your certs for other stuff, and you’ll have a shitload of loadout options very quickly.
Anyway, I’m not going to continue down this road. You’ll either like PS2 in spite of the F2P model or not. I just have to point out the contradiction here:
My recommendation is to just play the game and enjoy it. Spend as much or as little real money as you want, and let the certs come for engaging naturally in the game.
Ooooh, permanent. You mean when I spend $7 to add basic functionality to one vehicle for one faction, it doesn’t dissapear on me? FANTASTIC DEAL TAKE MY MONEY.
Yes, the costs are ridiculous. Okay, so I spend $7 on getting the AA missiles for the mosquito. Oh hey, turns out I like the mosquito, I should probably get some antiground rockets too. Okay, $14 on the mosquito. Well, shit, if I’m going to be using the mosquito, I might as well unlock the other primaries too - okay, $20 on the mosquito. Except I want abilities like increased speed and ammo capacity and all that other stuff that costs thousands of cert points, right? Well, gonna take forever to get that without premium, so I may as well get the $15 premium membership too for the boosts on that. Awesome. Well, with $35 and a few dozen hours of play, I’ve finally unlocked the abilities of one vehicle. Well, huh, I haven’t really tried vanu - I wonder what their medium aircraft is like. Oh, right, all that time and money doesn’t carry over. Another $35 and a month of play if I want to gear up the vanu medium aircraft.
But ok, let’s just say I stick with TR permanently. Fine. Well, I rather like the heavy assault class. Well, I guess I can spend $7 on a machine gun that fits my playstyle better. And really, I should get some AA missiles too for the versatility, so that’s another $7. A few dozen more hours to unlock armor, regen, etc. And that lock-on rocket for ground vehicles seems pretty damn powerful. ANother $7. Awesome, now I have one viable build of dozens for the heavy class for a mere $21 and a few dozen hours of grinding!
So yes, the costs are fucking ridiculous. You’d only pay $50 for an AAA title, and as a PC gamer the average money you should be spending on a game should probably be about $8, so the fact that you can spend $60 without even unlocking any significant fraction of the things in the game, and if you seriously wanted a well rounded, powerful character you could easily spend $200+ and hundreds of hours, this shit is absurd. It affects game balance. It keeps you from fulfilling basic roles. It makes you lose to people who are willing to spend more money than you. It’s a shitty model for what could be the greatest game of all time if it were made right.
The idea that the fact that no one will have any antiaircraft weaponry now, but it will be fairly common in a few months doesn’t change game balance is silly.
Some basic roles like “ground based anti-air” or “fighter/interceptor aircraft” are unavailable without significant grinding or paying.
And while a lot of stuff is indeed sidegrades, a lot of it isn’t. For example, people with premium who earn more certs can get more stuff that’s a straight up upgrade, like better armor for infantry, more ammo for vehicles, self repair for vehicles, pretty much every straight upgrade. Or people who buy weapons can spend all their certs unlocking straight upgrades. Or you can buy experience boosts, which get you unlocks at a much faster rate.
Your posts have basically said “this is the way it is, it’s fine, live with it” - you have not actually demonstrated that I’m wrong in any capacity. This latest post is particularly wrong, as what I’m saying now is clearly factually correct.
That said, I don’t want to make most of my posts in this thread negative. Yes, the F2P model is ill considered, greedy, and a black mark on the game. But that doesn’t take away the fact that the game is amazing. So don’t pass up the game without giving it a try due to my complaints about the f2p model.
You’re being deliberately obtuse and you must know it.
Can a game be fun and great without allowing you to play an anti-air tank? Yes. Would it be better if it were easier to access that role? Yes.
But you’re saying that if I have any complaint about it, that if I think the game is flawed because it’s hard to gain access to that, then I must be saying it’s not a great game. This is just a blatant bullshit false dichotomy.
You summed it up correctly - “It’s an amazing game despite the F2P model” - the positives are there. But that doesn’t mean that the F2P model isn’t a huge flaw. Great things can have flaws. Doesn’t mean they’re not great anymore. It’s a game that could be the best game of all time that’s instead hampered by these flaws. It’s a game where greed has made the grind deliberately punishing. It’s a bad choice because they would be more effective monetizing other aspects of the game without hurting the balance, without making it extremely grindy, and without restricting players from having access to certain basic roles.
You’d be better off “not going down this road” as per post #45, because you’re just loading the thread with falsehoods and fallacies at this point.
No, I’m trying to get you to see past the ideological hatred of F2P.
If the model prevented you from fulfilling basic roles, then it shouldn’t even be fun. You shouldn’t even be able to do anything before paying. That’s what basic means, the base level of ability. That is horseshit, because the basic free level of play is pretty fucking viable.
Yes, it’s not all sidegrades. But all substantial upgrades are earnable through the game, and all you’re bitching about is the time to get them which would not be changed if it were a sub model. In a sub model, they want you to keep playing their game as long as possible, they’re not just going to hand you everything at the start. That leads to stagnation. Like it or not, MMOs are all about advancement and looking ahead to that next milestone.
That is an entirely different problem from the issue of F2P, and the fact that you can still buy all unlocks from certs earned in-game completely shoots down your complaints about pay2win.
Even then, upgrades do not make you any better at the game; all they do is supplement your skill. I can take my basic rifle and kill any number of assholes who dropped $7 on Jackhammers and shotguns. They aren’t I Win buttons.
Is my Lightning more effective when I can purchase the AA, AV, and AP turrets? Sure, but the basic turret is still pretty effective and will still harm all of them equally. All the other turrets do is allow me to specialize.
Your arguments are specious and founded on a hatred of the F2P model itself without regard for how much it actually affects you. At best, they’re founded more on a hatred of the MMO model in general.
My ideological hatred of F2P is a tangent. Even if I loved other F2P models (say, TF2) I could still have complaints against this particular game’s implementation of F2P. I’m saying that EVEN AMONGST F2P GAMES, this game is greedy and poorly implemented.
We may be miscommunicating over “basic roles” - you seem to be using the definition that if you can fullfill any basic role, say, regular light infantry, then you can obviously play a basic role. I’m saying that there are a wide variety of basic roles which include things like ground-based AA for example, that are unavailable. Basic in this sense meaning fulfilling one of the core combined arms requirements.
I’m saying that not all the basic roles (light infantry, heavy/antitank infantry, medic, engineer, ground attack aircraft, interceptor aircraft, transport aircraft, transport vehicles, infantry support vehicles, anti-vehicle vehicles, ground-based AA) are accessible to new players, and it’s not a quick or easy unlock to get there. You seem to be saying that since some roles are available, then my complaint is baseless. Maybe you misunderstood me.
If it were a sub model, it wouldn’t be nearly as punishing. They have an incentive to make the grind so long that you just say fuck it, I’m going to pay money instead to avoid it. MMOs balance the grind around how much the sense of progression is worth how much hassle without becoming unfun. Pay 2 win games have a different incentive - how much of a grind can they make it to get you to pay just to avoid it, and how much can they get you to pay to be better than other people? Both of those are incentives that subscription based MMOs do not have, and they are all the better for it.
The idea that because eventually, after years and thousands of hours of play, you can unlock all the same stuff that someone can pay for on day one means the game isn’t pay to win is pretty absurd to me.
They don’t have to be i-win to be better, and that upsets balance. Sure, if someone’s weapon does 5x more damage than someone else’s, the person with the shitty weapon will occasionally win. Doesn’t somehow mean it isn’t a shit sandwich of a gameplay model. 5x is exaggerated in this case to demonstrate a point.
I hate pay to win, surely. Again, it creates two incentives that other games don’t have. How much work can the developer make earning in game rewards that will make you fed up with it and just buy them instead? And how much can advantage can you give to a paying player before all the free players give up and leave. Both of those are game design decisions that do not exist in other types of games, and only adversely affect them.
You can keep harping on this shit about me hating F2P all you want (and to be honest, I wouldn’t care one bit if this game was supported by cosmetic purchases only, as some other successful games have done), but I’m pointing actual design flaws in the game that affect everyone. They are game-specific criticisms.
I misunderstood you because that’s a pretty bad definition. The game gives you, from the outset, the tools to effectively fight against your opponents. Those are the basic roles. What you’re talking about, like ground-based AA? That’s a specialized, advanced role.
My issue, and why I’m pushing on this so hard, is that your anger over not being able to immediately hop into the specialized role you want to play is causing you to say that the F2P model prevents players from being able to fulfill basic roles, which gives the impression that you have to pay to do anything substantial in the game, which isn’t true. And since you keep disclaiming that you think it’s a great game, I don’t think you want to give that impression either.
What the bloody fuck is so punishing about it? You’re playing the same fucking game no matter what! You aren’t being forced to jump up and down 1000 times in the same place, you’re being asked to get out there and play the game. The unlocks and advancements are extras and add-ons, not things that are necessary to allow you to be competitive at all. It’s not like World of Warcraft where you have to level to 90 before being able to do anything, you’re lethal right out of the gate.
If someone’s willing to drop $500 on day one, I dunno, I can’t really argue against that. They’re who make the game free for the rest of us.
It’s the exaggeration that undermines your point. Something that gives you an edge and lets a skilled player kill more efficiently is different from something that’s so overpowering that it just slaughters everyone without effort, and that IS a matter of degree.
These “design flaws” are imagined based on less than a day of gameplay and stemming from your dislike of the model. You think this shit didn’t get hashed out in beta? I can’t even begin to tell you how many changes they made to the gameplay in beta based on credible player complaints, because they were making them every other day. The devs are taking this game seriously. Smedley, the president of SOE, fucking loves Planetside and wants it to succeed.
This is why I’m saying your hate is ideological and unfounded. You’re starting from a conclusion and interpreting things in the game in the worst possible light to support your conclusion. Just play the damn game. Or don’t.
We disagree that being able to shoot back at the enemy aircraft that are attacking you is a specialist role. If the aircraft were balanced around the fact that there would be relatively ubiquitous AA (as there was in the beta), and yet in the actual game they’re only seeing maybe 1-3% of players who actually have access to AA weapons, how can that not seriously be a balance issue?
I didn’t say, or didn’t intend to say, that players could not fulfill any basic roles. I intended to say that there are basic roles (like being able to shoot back at the aircraft that are shooting at you) that are not able to be fulfilled by most players until months into the game’s release.
The cost levels are the punishing part. Many weapons and vehicle unlocks cost 1000 certs, which is a significant time investment. And then from there, you have to unlock the attachments for those weapons again. Getting the infantry upgrades like more health, better armor, more ammo capacity, etc. - not sidegrades, not specializaton, but basic upgrades - can take thousands of cert points. And they have to be done for every class. And they have to be done again for every faction.
Then it’s a matter of degree. Someone that’s willing to spend $30 on day one still has an advantage, just not as wide and deep an advantage. It’s not fair to say “you can unlock everything just like the paying players!” if it’s going to take you months to do that. Eventually there may be equilibrium, but the first few months/years of a new character cannot catch up to someone who’s willing to pay.
How in the world does that undermine my point that the game is pay to win? You’re freely admitting that you can buy advantages over other players, but say that because those advantages scale up or down with the willingness to pay, somehow my point is invalidated? Yes, you can’t pay your way to a 500:1 kill ratio. So does that somehow make it better if you can pay your way to a 2:1 kill ratio against equally skilled players?
In the beta, everyone cost a lot less. They wanted people to be able to earn stuff to test out the balance. So the beta was balanced around the idea that people would have shit unlocked. And then they jacked up the prices by 4-7x at the end of the beta.
So if they balanced the game around beta costs - if they assumed that 70% of the players or whatever would have access to AA weapons - then the real game comes around and only 3% of players have access to AA weapons, then the balance established by the beta doesn’t carry over into the real game, and won’t until people have had 4-7 times as long to play it to get to the same progression point they were before.
My hatred is ideological? In other words, I think the game is worse because it works on a principle that I think is bad for game design? Sure.
Let’s give another example of that. I would hate it if a game ran a random number check in the background once a minute, and if you rolled a 1 out of 100, your character immediately just dies and gets deleted and you have to start over. So then a game comes out which features this mechanic. I would say that this is a flaw in this game. You could say “you’re blinded by your ideological hate of random character deletion!” as if that somehow invalidates my criticism of the game that has that.
If F2P didn’t exist, and this game invented it, and this was the only game ever to have it, I could still criticise it. I don’t need an ideological hatred to criticize this game. The experience is made shittier by their design decisions, and rather than defend those decisions, you’re trying to attack me by painting my criticisms as some sort of blind ideological hatred. It’s fallacious.
As someone who first heard of this game a few hours ago, can I say: more talk about how the game is, and less about how it should be?
For example, what are the avatar customization options? Any at all; does everyone look the same?
How do names work–spaces, accents, etc?
Are there ranks or titles?
How does chat work? Area, regional, global? Is there cross-faction communication?
By the way, I checked the PlanetSide 2 website and there’s very little information about the game. Are there some reviews somewhere that give more? (On the plus side, I still have the 700SC bonus I got for early-beta testing Free Realms, that I’ve never used.)
I’m going to walk away from the argument with SenorBeef and let him have the last post, because I think it’s just down to whether or not you dislike F2P. The game works just fine with it, that much I know.
You can choose male or female, but for the most part faction and class determine outward appearance. There are customization options in the store as well as what Beef and I have been arguing about, but they’re mostly camo patterns or vehicle decorations.
I don’t believe spaces are allowed, but I can’t recall on special characters.
Not to my knowledge, although there may be ranks associated with the Command certification tier, which opens up abilities to allow you to direct the overall battles.
There’s area-specific for a faction, global faction chat, and proximity Yell which enemy players can hear. Yell and person-to-person Tells are the only cross-faction communication.
Should be some reviews floating around, though they’ll mostly be about the beta. RPS has a few articles here.