PS2 is too grindy, too slow progress, to much farm

Ok, I will get it straight SOE- game is too grindy right now. Back in months many players who are now BR100 had man options to farm/grind certs (overloading reactors at night etc) and they could unlock everything they want. You nerfed it all, nerf it, nerf it. Now you need 250 xp for one cert. And some upgrades costs 1000 cert, others to sum all ranks- 2250 certs. And that is one skill, one character, one class.

You didnt even make same upgrades to stay on all classes. For example why I have to cert Nanowave armor each time for every class if I certed it already for one and it took 2 weeks almost.

I bought 6 month membership and finally certs are better but still it is dam slow. I would like to play all classes, try diffrent playstyles, diffrent fun. Even play with diffrent faction. But cert progression in PS2 is so slow you basicly have to stick with one/two classes if you want to max them. And grinding 1000 certs for whole week for buying one rank of skill is dam boring.... Dam boring. And add weapons that costs 1000 certs, attachments for each weapon.

It is boring, sicne you play also to feel progress and you are saving certs each day to spend them all in one, one rank or item.

Today I was playing on Miller and we were fighting in biolab, which was in the middle of enemy territory and there was really no reason to defend it. In same time we were losing our own territory since majority of our playerbase was sitting in biolab. I wrote in /region "We should give it up and defend our territory. Enemy zergs are eating it for free". There was NO TACTICAL reason to defend biolab.

You know what answers I got? Plenty of them, from BR10 to BR80-90

"Who cares? Best cert farm is biolab, no tank zerg! Farm enemy"

"Why do you care? Whis game is about grinding certs. Now even WDS lol"

"Man, I know what you mean, but you can get more certs here"

And so on, on /region, /yell and many on /tell. You know what I fought?

THEY ARE RIGHT.

Why do we see so many players ignoring Orders while they are fighting pointless fight on Watchtowers, Crown, Biolab, Pass? Because there is best cert farm there and people want to get uprages, new weapon, have some fun with C4, start on some point certin ESF or tank, try this diffrent things which you have to unlock on every class (WHY????) from stupid reasons only SOE knows. Why they should care about tactical fight while more certs are flowing. Thats rubbish.

Why there is tank zerg and lolpods farming? Why in the middle of important battle, you lack HA, MAX and engis and see army of medics around? Why tanks are farming Infantry instead of other tanks. Why biolab is surrounded by army of ESF with lolpods. Because everyone want to get those dam certs and get this upgrade they are waiting for week or more.

Game is too grindy right now and even with 6 month membership is now only not so frustrating as it was. But for someone who can afford to play only 4-5 hours per day it is pain to get those upgrades.

Back in time there was plenty ways to grind certs. Now those players have fun with all upgrades and classes. But all of us who started play game after all those cert nerfs are getting sometimes really bored since you have to grind those 500-1000 certs and you know that from next day you will start another grind week for another 1000 certs.

SOE- do something. Grind is what is destroying your game in big part. Make it more fun, less farm.

Thank you.

As a player who doesn't use any boosts/memberships, i earn 50 certs/hour while having fun and not paying a dime, i couldn't wish for more.

While I agree, ps2 is alot, like _alot_ of grinding. But if you play smart you can make good amount of certs pr hour. Last night during WDS on indar alert with 1 hour boost i made 40-50k XP pr hour just by flying around with LA and shotgunning people in the face and triggering generators.

I am a F2P player (I have only used 3000SC from birthday gifts), which those SC I spent on cosmetics because I like earning other weapons by myself and having fun. I earn 50-75 certs an hour, and couldn't wish for more. Keep up the good work SOE.
SideNote: (I play on a laptop that runs the game best at Very Low settings at 10-30FPS, and I still enjoy this game)

At launch you didn't get xp for

• Assisting in destroying vehicle
• Ribbons
• Daily Ribbons
• Damaging Aircraft
• Sensor/Recon dart spots
• Killing high threat/menacing targets
• Gunner killing a target

And you got far less xp/certs than today for

• Destroying vehicles.
• Being a member. (18 instead of 48 per day)

i never used an XP boost and i payed the first time after 13months of playing because i wanted my Galaxy to look cool. and then i got Mag AV weapons, snatched some Christmas deals etc.
from the weapons i bought i use: The NS7PDW cause i like the sound and the cerberus cause i like to huniliate us also on there
every other weapon, Shotguns, snipers, carbines, Assault Rifles, LMG, Lightning weapons, Galaxy weapons, ESF weapons, Harrasser weapons, Liberator weapons, MAX weapons etc all that i got with certs.
and you have any idea how many certs you get compared to launch? ribbons, alerts, Increased vehicle kill values, high threat and similiar boni, Detect boni, AA boni etc. all that didn't exist back then and the Zephyr and A2A pods (2x750c) i got were a waste of certs as i never really used them. but i still got up to BR80 (50%of BR100/9kk xp) and have everything i need.

Actually it's quite the opposite. Certs are flowing today compared to one year ago. Lets see how thing were back then:

• Only kills gave exp, not assists. All kills counted the same, no menacing etc bonuses
• No ribbons
• No daily certs
• Vehicles gave a quarter the exp to whoever killed them. Again, no assist exp
• Most modules did not give exp. No infiltrator dart exp, no repair sunderer exp etc.
• A lot of weapons were rebalanced and their prices lowered compared to launch
• etc ... (I can sit here thinking of changes that helped ease the cert gain, but they are too numerous by now)

It's a lot easier to gain exp/certs today that has even been in the history of Planetside 2.

If your playing this game like a Skinner box your playing it wrong.

I feel bad for you.

You need to stop thinking this game as a work (grind, farming) and just enjoy the main part of it, the actual game. Unlocking new stuff is just a minor part of it and if you are only playing this game to grind or farm certs, you really need to seek professional help in real life.

So many people these days get addicted to these progression systems in multiplayer games and forget what the game is all about. Join a squad/platoon/outfit, follow orders and be a part of massive organized war. By working in a actual team (not in zerg) you get your certs while enjoying the best team based FPS there is.

Edit:
And this is for everyone...
If you play this game multiple hours a day just to grind certs, farm people. Get help in real life.

Not necessarily. Everyone plays with different goals in mind.
For every person that answered in chat there might have been someone who redeployed to fight to preserve territory control.

Since I joined an outfit I stopped caring about BR, KDR, cert gain, etc. I just log on to have fun with my outfit and the certs come by themselves.

So my suggestion to you is join a friendly outfit and you will find gameplay more rewarding than just accumulating meaningless digital numbers.

You don't need nanoweave level 5 in order to be competitive. Most 1000 cert upgrades are not worth it.

I don't think people choose cert farming as opposed to territorial conquest because they need to unlock better equipment so they can be more effective for territorial conquest in the future. Actually, if unlocking equipment was easier many players would already stop playing because there would be nothing left for them to strive for.

Territorial conquest game feels pointless and I think reason is not because it lacks metagame but because it isn't competitive/balanced.

With one time purchase equipment, if this game were less grindy it would be dead.
There are 3 reasons people play this game:
1)Trying new things out
2)Deathmatch
3)Other (delusions of victory, territory "control", fun, hype, trying the game)
3rd reason is not long term. This changes depending on a lot of things and rarely a reliable way to make people play the game.
Deathmatch is fun but it gets old, and this game is not really competitive. The shooting mechanics might seem solid to most of you, but quite frankly, they only work, but are not good. It's too much about who sees who first what with all the stupid flinch and random spread and jumpy recoil. So eventually at best you still want to shoot stuff, but in a different way. At worst you just get sick of it and drop it all together.

Trying things out is really the only thing that keeps people playing. Cert grind is the meta. Grind. It's needed. Or else there is not much to do.

Inb4 you ask what's stopping people from playing after they grind months for stuff - time investment. After you've spent time earning something you feel obligated to make it worth your effort. So you play on.

Coincidentally it is also the bane of the game. Grind isn't fun. From development perspective it requires frequent new content. Eventually your content begins to cross over to previous additions. Players catch onto this very quickly. Even now you notice people comment on PS2s team lack of originality. Ideas are not infinite. More so with you are constrained by common sense.

TL;DR - Grind exists to prolong player time investment in a poorly designed game ecosystem. If it's too short, its not a grind. You either have grind or you don't have it all. In the latter case you need another mechanic. Reducing grind without introducing a new mechanic is like poison versus a gun. Same destination, different time periods.

You've summed it up pretty well.

Reason why deathmatch is not fun as in Battlefield/CoD is not because of mediocre shooting mechanics IMHO but because it is hard to fight a balanced fight that doesn't turn into a spawncamp quickly.

In Battlefield you have bunch of servers, you pick one and you immediately join a fight in which both teams are balanced at least numerically. If one team has a clan which is owning the other team then you simply change servers and find something more balanced and fun.

Finding fun deathmatch in Planetside on the other hand is very time consuming and often impossible.

Call me delusional if you like, but I play this game cause it actually feels like huge war with platoon scale teamwork. Something that no other game delivers at the moment. It never gets old to be part of a assault where multiple platoons are working together to achieve victory.

If you don't get you fix from being part of a big military wheel where multiple outfits work together, then I feel sorry for you. You are missing out a lot.

Feeling as being part of big military wheel doesn't hook players for long term if the game itself is not competitive. As Wrel said it: strongest motivation to play any game is personal drive we have to become better at it.

If you think that PS2 is too grindy then you have no idea how grindy f2p games can be. PS2 is actually very generous in that regard. In most f2p games it takes months of intense free play to get competitive gear. Only after that you can actually play the game for real. In PS2 some of the starting gear you get is top tier in its respective class. The only thing that takes a lot of time is unlocking lots of option across many classes and vehicles (and that's fair, SOE is business after all), but gearing up one specific class up to competitive level is pretty fast even for a complete beginner.

PS2 has one of the best balanced free to play character progression speeds on the market. Would you prefer to just have no progression and have everything unlocked day one? You can get some pretty sick setups right out of the gate on just a few certs. But if everything in the game took 10 minutes to unlock there wouldn't be much in the way of long term goals or any reason to have boosts for them to make money.

I wish the game was twice the grind it is. I'm Br100 with no progression left. No levels to get and everything I want. I wish it were tougher to get certs so it still felt like I was earning something I needed.

Also I like Bio Labs because they are just plain fun and I have a blast playing without the influence of vehicles/air. Nothing to do with certs at all.

The cert grind is how they get people to pay for memberships and boosts. If you are going to play for free, you are going to pay with your time instead. That's kind of how F2P games work. At least the standard weapons are all pretty good.

THEY ARE WRONG.

No, seriously, as a ~666 score/min player (so ~333 score/min before boost/sub) they're wrong.

Biolabs are terrible farm, because infantry are terrible farm. The tank spam they whine about is really good farm (surpassed only by ESF spam, which are the fastest SPM possible.) One vehicle kill is worth 10 infantry kills.

All the best farm happens outdoors. The only reason to stay at a Bio Lab is if you are farming kills specifically (which don't really matter apart from ribbons/auraxiums...which also don't matter.)