Discussion of monetized combat advantages

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Pax Empyrean, Nov 28, 2012.

  1. Sikab

    I prefer SOEs system over LoLs. But thats personal taste, we can't argue over that :)

    And yes, counterpicking is everything in a high elo game.

    TF2?

    you mean that game which sells for 20bucks a weapon and your only chance to obtain a weapon is by having luck on the horrible /roll the dice system every 30 minutes? Or you have the choice to Purchase them for RL money.

    Only advantage is that it has Trading.
  2. Goomba

    It really doesn't. Champions aren't countered that hard and the people that play aren't good enough to abuse the tiny advantages. Team comp is way more important and, again, at 1800 it's not going to be an issue.

    And I prefer the model that doesn't tell new players they have to play for 40 hours or pay to get """"""""""""""""""sidegrades"""""""""""""""""". TF2's model works because, last I checked, the default weapons are better in almost every situation and if they aren't it's a slight advantage or unlockable from achievements.
  3. wolfva

    Heh, when I'm in that situation, and I have been, I know the reason I lost was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A single max shouldn't be taking on a single ESF, regardless of what weapons he has.

    3rd response, and you still completely ignore what was said. Yet you claim I'M the troll <LOL>. Lets see, YOU claimed I said something I didn't say. You then slammed the comment I didn't make with comments that actually supported what I DID say. When I call you on it, twice now, you hide behind a 'you must be trolling' comment without simply admitting you were mistaken. Which is odd, since people are mistaken all the time. I've been mistaken several times on this forum and each time when I was called on it I apologized, even did it in this thread. You, on the other hand, throw up a smoke screen. So sad when a man is so insecure he can't even admit he's wrong.


    He's at the same gear advantage as the guy who used certs; he just got that advantage earlier, and without as much practice. Since we only increase skills when fighting against those better then us, the guy who uses certs will probably be better overall. Skill often trumps gear. And if he brings a friend, numbers trump skill that trump gear unless skill is REALLY good. Or lucky. Luck is just an X factor. Nice thing to have though.

    I just had to quote that; it's not often I'm accused of being a troll AND thanked for being reasonable in the same thread <LOL>.
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  4. Goomba

    I have certs when do I get my anti-aircraft device. I would have more but aircraft come and poop rockets on me and I die a lot and I can't stop them please help I am at a loss. Do I just avoid areas where I can see the sky?
  5. Apis

    Yes people who pay for better equipment have an advantage while the game remains technically free to play.

    I suggested that SOE provides 1000 SC to new players in order to select their choice gameplay weapon as a starting point to earn exp. SOE did not listen.

    I have outfit members who need just one weapon to make their gameplay fun- but they have to save 1000 certs for it. I haven't saved 1000 certs for any one thing yet I still have weapons I need. New players who are initially reluctant to spend money on weapons should be provided a free weapon unlock or two. This is just a better business model. Hook them in with a free item and leave them wanting more.

    Example: If someone wants to play PS2 because they think liberators are the coolest thing ever- allow them to unlock the zephur when they start. The exp boost will provide positive reinforcement to them choosing PS2. They won't always be flying that liberator- and when they have a taste of how fun the game is with good equipment it will make them want more. If they get into a situation outside of flying a lib maybe they'll consider spending some SC on an item that will help.

    Otherwise new players will be owned by veterans w/ good equipment and be discouraged by the hopeless goal of reaching 1000 certs with poor gear (slow exp gain). People quit the game because of this.
  6. Pax Empyrean

    Well, no. He's got the rockets plus a thousand certs worth of upgrades for whatever he wants. The guy who unlocked the rockets with certs just has the rockets. The difference is that the guy who bought the rockets is down 700 SC and up 1000 certs, which isn't directly buying certs but amounts to the same thing in the end.

    This is why economists are rather enamored with the phrase "ceteris paribus," or "all other things being equal." It lets us talk about the influence of specific variables without worrying about what everything else is doing. In any case, players will generally attribute their failures to the factors which they believe are most outside of their own control, and probably tend to favor explanations that demonize their opponent or make themselves look better. "He won because he bought an overpowered weapon and aimbotted and I don't use cheesy noob strategies" would probably win an award if such things were officially recognized.
  7. Vorenius

    I would say your on the right track, but I would argue that more certs don't exactly equal more power, I think 'more specializations' would me more accurate. You can only spend so many certs in one class and style of play, as a non-paying player, you have to be more strategic with your choices because you will progress more slowly into other specializations than a paying member.

    I think more certs = more choices rather than power.
  8. Pax Empyrean

    That's assuming that someone maxes out a class. Getting to the top tier upgrades for just one loadout (unlock one weapon, only one suit upgrade, etc) is quite expensive. I took a look at the Engineer and came up with 5181 certs to max it one loadout. Other loadouts will cost subsequently less since some of the upgrades apply to multiple loadouts, but still; that's killing in the ballpark of 13,000 people to finish one loadout for one class. If you don't want to be pigeonholed into one specific loadout every second that you play, you're going to need to finish multiple loadouts (and probably multiple classes) to keep up. I don't see this happening much, especially considering that SOE needs to keep players buying things to keep turning a profit with this game.
  9. Naberius13

    Then you need to get out of ELO hell and spectate a few games where good players get counter picked. They have to play much more cautiously, any mistakes can cost their team a lot and in some cases they can be forced out of lane. It's an extreme example, but why not, everyone else is relying on over exaggeration anyway. Get a friend, any friend assuming you've got them. One of you play Brand, Casiopeia etc. and the other play Kassadin. Assuming you're both at the same skill level, see who comes out on top and see how your playstyle shifts through necessity unless you feel like feeding.

    There are a few kits that give you advantages. Those kits can be unlocked through certs. Certs, if you're doing more than farming kills (Barring farming kills very well) you won't have to play THAT long to get the unlock. Just taking part in an Amp station attack, then repairing everything we broke on the way in, I made something like 40 certs. I wasn't even there for most of the fighting. You want something faster? Pay for it.

    The one concession I'll make is that I think there needs to be an AA choice aside from MAX early on. Or at least the ability to radio for air support on quick chat.
  10. Goomba

    Those are all very situational and/or generally bad champions though. Again, at 1800 it won't be an issue. ELO hell is a thing people made up because they think they're better than they are.

    Also yes Ps2 isn't anywhere near P2W, it's just set up so it's really frustrating for new players.
  11. Vorenius

    I still don't personally feel this is an issue, 5k certs isn't unreasonable if your paying for free, I don't plan on playing until the performance issues are addressed, and I am comfortable with my rate of progress based on the fact I am not paying a dime to play.

    PS1 Was 12.99 dollars a month when I played, at least I have an option not to pay in PS2. This is a MMOFPS, in my opinion cert system is a mesh between an MMO style of leveling and a COD style of progression, and I think it works quite well.
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  12. wolfva

    Ah, I see. I keep thinking of the whole picture, but you're talking about the specifics. Yeah, 2 equal players of equal skill, in a vacuum, with one buying items while the other is using certs will give the initial advantage to the buyer. Eventually, it will balance out between the two of them. The certs guy will become more skilled as he's engaged in a harder fight then the buyer, giving him a slight edge; eventually he'll get the same gear and the buyer will /ragequit or something. Unless one gets tired of the situation and leaves. Or, both die of asphyxiation. Vacuums aren't good places to be. Hard to breathe.
  13. Athessu

    I'm sure glad we live in this hypothetical fairness world where every fight is 1 vs 1 in the situation the other guy has the advantage in compared to us.

    If you don't have a specific tool for a job then don't try to use that tool. I don't have any upgrades for the lib, a thing which has repeatedly been mentioned as a straight upgrade, yet I paid money..do you know why I don't feel underpowered? I don't ever fly a lib...and while I'm thinking about it the default ESF will wreck an upgraded liberator and live to afterburn its way away from all those rockets and enemy jets even without flares.80% of the jets are running ground rockets and that makes them essentially as good as a standard ESF without the afterburner when it comes to dogfighting.
    It's the same with lightnings as with libs, I have the default turret and I don't ever bother driving one, I fit myself into the battle where I feel most comfortable and have the advantage. The standard MBT or rocket launcher is going to give even an AP/HE lightning a fight.

    If you want to be the one with the close range infantry firehose then focus on getting that, but don't spend your time while you don't have it running around pretending you do have it and complaining you're underpowered because the other guy spent money. A lot of the 100 or 250 cert weapons are fantastic weapons that a lot of people use and feel comfortable with.

    Going back to the LoL model, the average time to get a 6300 IP champ is like 40+ hours in game. That's not including runes for those champions or extra rune pages to put those runes in or the fact you need quite a beefy collection of champions of all costs to be competitive. The average planetside 2 cert per hour seems to be between 30-50 with no boosts. Do the maths.
  14. Pax Empyrean

    This does not seem likely. Fighting improves your skills. Looking at respawn timers does not. The guy who usually loses is more likely to get discouraged and just not play as much. Regardless, unless somebody is brand new to shooters, the conditions under which they fight in a low mobility game like this one aren't going to have much of an impact on their skills. I would think that someone who typically loses individual gunfights (and these happen all the time, even in a larger battle, when somebody comes around a rock or doorway) they'll just stop trying to fight as infantry if they can help it. They can just try to camp a spawn point in a tank and feel like a badass for getting all those kills.
  15. Pax Empyrean

    And in the meantime, the guy who spent money wrecks you easily in any close quarters fight. Well that's ok, you can always fight outdoors where people have guns that are better than yours there, or drive a vehicle without upgrades, or fly an ESF without a secondary weapon. No matter where you go or how you decide to fight, you are going to be outclassed by people who bought weapons suited to that environment, so it's not just a matter of avoiding one specific circumstance.

    I'd love to see what the actual average cert per hour rate is. There's no way in hell it's 50 unless you're counting subscriptions or boosters (or both). The average player is pretty horrible at this game.
  16. Athessu

    Yeah I revised that down to between 30 and 50, depending on how everything around you is going.

    I personally think the default carbines are all pretty powerful, especially the TR base carbine and base LMG. Two of the best infantry weapons in the whole game for CQC that perform passing well at range.Can't comment on the VS balance very much, but I haven't heard any complaints of their starter weapons being bad at what they do. The NC base assault rifle and carbine are only a little behind the firehose options, I personally use the default carbine out of preference, every sniper rifle is viable and powerful, the default rocket launcher is arguably the best one considering how easy it is for air to avoid them or just run off and repair, the default MBT with the HEAT and basilisk has fantastic potential vs all things, the galaxy isn't even worth upgrading, you never have to use a lib or a lightning or a MAX or half of these things and you can still be more than viable.

    Yes btw the default ESF will do you fine, I recently had a long balance debate with somebody who suggested not even using air to air missiles because their damage output and reliability are actually far less than simply gunning people down with the cannon, to which I agree from experience using those A2A missiles, only bad pilots seem to take multiple rockets easily, more often than not alone all you do is cause pilots to panic and leave by locking on. You are better off with the afterburner than with those ground rockets if you want to fight other planes. A few default burster MAXs are going to counter almost all air regardless of what they bought (or will when the rockets are nerfed a little). The vast majority of situations you do not fight as something vs the exact same something.

    My main point is that this is not a 1 vs 1 game where you always fight the guy who bought the 'best' gear on even terms, balance is far more spread out than that and reaction time and twitch skill ontop of tactics and positioning make up for far more than any gun gives you. You don't simply 'lose' in a fight because people around you might have slightly more focused weapons.

    You know what things really push fights in your favour? Grenade bandoliers, scopes/foregrips/compensators/laser sights maximizing the potential of your weapons, mines and C4, nano regen on your MAX allowing you some freedom from engineers when you're not swarmed by enemies, better repair/revive tools, flares, regen rates and effectiveness of your abilities, etc. All the default weapons are good options with only a few like the base NC LMG being actually underwhelming. Balance isn't perfect but they sure do a hell of a job giving you almost all the tools to survive and thrive.
  17. Pax Empyrean

    This is not true. The NC carbine and AR both do 1670 DPS. The bullet hoses (Lynx and VX6-7) do 1906 DPS before softpoint ammo (which the default doesn't get) and have significantly smaller rets when both weapons are upgraded, resulting in significantly more hits at close range along with greater mobility while exchanging fire. With the Lynx and the advanced laser attachment (which the default doesn't get) your standing rets are about the size of a man's head at 10 meters. For the default weapons, you have to be within about 5 meters to get that precise. The distribution of bullets over a given area increases with the square of the distance multiplied by the angle of your cone of fire, so a gun with rets half the size as another gun will put four times as many hits into the area those rets cover as a gun with rets twice the size. The firehose options can easily drop a man with hipfire at 15 meters without missing a single bullet and not burst firing. The default NC carbine can do this at about half that distance, forcing you to ADS at much closer ranges than those unlockable carbines can. This lets you get away with putting longer range scopes on the unlockable carbines because your hipfire is effective out to a distance where zooming in with a 3.4x or 4x scope isn't going to screw you up the way it would if you had to ADS to quickly drop enemies within 10-20 meters.

    You're right that upgrades for weapons make a huge difference, and the default weapons don't get any special upgrades while all of the high end unlockable guns do. If you want soft point ammo, high velocity ammo, underslung anything, recoil compensators, or the advanced versions of lasers or foregrips, you're going to need to use an unlockable weapon. The Lynx with an advanced laser on it actually has a smaller hipfire reticle than the auto pistol with a regular laser on it. The VX6-7 has smaller hipfire rets than the auto pistol (and better than the Lynx) to start with, and you can put an upgraded laser on top of that. And did I mention that it has a 450ms time to kill? The bullet hoses are faster than any of the other automatics, and the only gun that kills faster is a shotgun that gets lucky on pellet spread (which is reliable out to about three feet, stupid shotguns). You can also put soft point ammo on top for more damage, although the exact mechanics of that are unknown at the moment. I don't have soft point ammo yet, so my ridiculous gun is only going to get better from here. I upgraded from the TRAC-5 to the Lynx, and I can tell you that I regularly get away with ridiculous stunts that I never would have been able to survive using my old TRAC-5.
  18. Etcher

    Who the heck said that the person was trying to sound smart. You are apparently smarter then him. Does your ego feel satisfied. Or should you mock a person more when they are just sharing their thoughts on the manner.
  19. Etcher

    Making all of the weapons the same isn't a bad idea just because people will complain about other things. It would also make the game very very dull.
  20. Etcher

    What is this. This ain't some dictatorship. People do have the right to complain. Are you saying that they are wrong for doing so. It doesn't matter if game companies don't listen. If the customers understand that something maybe fundamentally wrong with the game and don't play it, then the game company lost potential money. But it also means that people won't waste there money. It isn't just about making a game better. Its also about preventing people from wasting their time or money on something that they may not enjoy.

    You began to sound like a Terrain there for a sec lol.