Cert prices are WAY out of line for a F2P game.

Burden is on you bro. Cert Gain is XP based and entirely performance based + Boosts.

You won't find someone who has never had his XP gain boosted by some form of subscription, one off boost, or squad XP boost. There is simply no way to remove those from the equation.

Sorry.

The increased XP gain for Monthly sub will help with that. And no, too many things are not cert only.

*Go to the Depot (the SC store)
*Click "Unlock" on the item you want to trial
*You will have 3 options (1 or all 3 may be disabled if ineligible/insufficient qty of required resource)
---Unlock with SC (disabled if lacking the SC)
---Unlock with Certs (disabled if lacking certs)
---Trial (Limit 1 trial per 8 hours per character. Each individual item may not be trialed more than once in a 30 day period)

Are you for real? When i'm talking about high prices it's compared to other games and the opinion of the player,NOT the developer.Devs never consider prices too high,that's their goal,to make money.Players can find prices too high when they are confident that the product is not worth the money.

Are you really going to go as far as defending a business model on a personal level? Unless you work for SoE,there is zero logical explanation of that

Create a character without using any boosts and don't play during 2x xp. Not hard.

Only an idiot would do that, then request that prices be lowered. Sorry man, if cert gain feels to slow, how about dropping 7$? ( Week long +50% XP boost ) Also, anyone doing that would not be a "Noob".

This is like complaining that Baskin-Robbins samples are too small to create a 2 scoop sundae with.

I've played FPS's for a long time. I also remember that those cost money. This one doesn't. If you're unhappy about the rate, then spend the few bucks that you otherwise would have spent to buy the game to have the rate increased. I don't think you can complain about the rate of certs with a subscription or a 50% boost because they come in pretty quickly with those. You won't have everything immediately, but if you did then the overall player retention for the game would be lower and the game would very likely not last as long. Having something new to look forward to is what keeps people around.

You've completely given up on trying to make any point haven't you?

Have you seen the server pops? Even connery is only getting to medium during prime time now.

It's just one issue. On the rare night I have time to play with a good squad/outfit I can have an absolute blast and earn a good amount of certs in the process. On other nights on my own it becomes much, much more difficult. Heck just locating where your allies are is a challenge (I actually login as the opposing faction to more quickly locate where my allies are).

Cheap gamers never consider prices low enough- your point?

The opinion of the players is reflected in sales. The sales will decide whether or not SOE lowers their prices...not crying. If there was ANY problem in sales, im sure we'd at least see some better discount packages.

I dont work for SOE, i'd love if everything was free.

Just have to ask.... Are you serious about 80+ hours for a new gun? Really?

Lets do the math.

One Cert point is 250 XP
A single kill is ~100XP
For it to take exactly 80 hours to unlock a 1000 cert gun (and not all guns cost that much), You'd be pulling 1000/80=12.5 Certs per hour.
That's roughly 31 kills per hour to get a gun in 80 hours assuming that you're getting absolutely NO exp from anything other than kills.

Now lets add in the fact that capturing a base gives anywhere from ~300 exp for the small ones to 1000 exp for the big ones.
Lets also add in things like assist XP, Bonus XP, Spot XP, Resupply XP, Healing XP and so on which when added together tend to come fairly close to the kill XP if you aren't just outright massacring the enemies.

Are you REALLY saying that you're only on average getting about 15-20 kills per hour? Or are you saying that you never capture bases, spot, heal, give ammo, assist, shoot aircraft or do any of the other numerous things in the game and only get about 30 kills per hour?

I myself is a VERY average player, I tend to do fairly badly in FPS games in general, K/D usually hovers slightly below 1/1 etc, Only reason it doesn't in PS2 is that vehicles make it easy to keep it above 1/1. I tend to get about 30-35 certs per hour on average, without trying to maximize my gains which works out to about 30 hours for a gun, And there's certainly a lot of players that're better than me.

The only conclusions i can possibly come to is that you're either exaggerating a great deal to try and make your point (which honestly isn't a good way to argue), Or you're just outright trolling.

That said, yeah, exp gain might be slightly too slow, I can't say i have a problem with it but i can see how some people might, Then again, double exp events seem to be fairly common from what i've seen, and there's always the option to buy guns with cash.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/server_status.php
It's fair to say players aren't happy right now. Cert prices and cert rate is one of the biggest complaints.

Still does not change the fact that having something to work towards is a huge motivator for some people.

And people really don't know what Grinding is. "Grinding" in this game is actually playing the game (and hopefully having fun doing so, otherwise, wtf even bother?). Real grinding? Imagine repairing the same turrent over and over and over and over and over for hours on end. Yeah, that's what real grinding is, based on the origins of the term from old school MMOs where you might have to kill the same monster over and over and over and over and over.... Not exactly the same thing.

edit: my posts come in too later, this one should have gone 2 posts up

Stop right there. This is wrong.

Even the above is now out of date. As fresh spawns are now worth less that someone with a good amount of time alive and kills, that can top out around 1000xp. You also earn a small amount of XP from earning medals.

No.

300xp for a high priority kill(they need 2000 xp to be high priority so this almost never happens) + Max kill bonus of 20 + headshot bonus of 10 + vengeance kill of 20. So the most you cant get from an infantry kill is 350xp.

edit: forgot streak stop so its 375xp.

80 hours sounds a bit off I have been doing a few hour session between 3 - 5 and I usually average around 100 to 150 certs a session

assuming best case scenario 3 hours netting 150 certs it still takes me around a week to get a single weapon, this is the F%^& it I will just buy the SC feeling I was talking about.

tbh it feels a little too much without artificially inflating the xp gain.

edit: again restate my position, Im not against spending I just think they should have made certs fun and made money from cosmetic stuff.

Every business including SOE is going to be concerned about pricing their product too high or too low, every business spends a significant amount of time & energy examining the pricing of its products. They are going to do pricing analysis between their product and similar products in the market place and then they are going to be doing constant re-examination of their sales figures and make pricing adjustments and offer discounts as needed. (SOE does this all the time by offering offering discounted bundles and daily sales)

You mentioned as compared to other games. Well, Rusky pointed out earlier it takes about 30 hours to unlock a hero in LoL and in comparison the most expensive weapons @ 1000 cert points in the same time frame equates to about 34 cert points per hour. 34 cert points or 3400 xp/hour is not difficult, nor excessive in my opinion. Even though these pricing models seem somewhat comparable, I personally wouldn't consider these games even close to being comparable. LoL has the look and feel to me of a F2P game, while PS2 has the look and feel of a AAA quality game, that would generally command an initial $60 purchase price & then have either a $15/month subscription fee or kick out a purchasable expansion every few months like Battlefield.

Personally I am of the opinion that the cert prices are just high enough, that as a PAYING customer I do not feel cheated when I purchase an item using SC nor do I feel they are too low, making them unattainable by those that do not want to spend money on a AAA quality FREE Game, which provides me additional heads to shoot. As an additional bonus, I gain the satisfaction of knowing I am shooting whining, I-am-entitled, its not fair cheap-scape.

The gaming industry has really gone downhill if PS2 is considered a AAA quality game.

Go figure, it's always your type that feel like because they are sh*t players that the game should be dumbed down to meet their useless level of adaptivity rather than, *gasp*, actually trying to improve their level of play to meet the minimal baseline for a halfway competent FPS player.

This isn't about my opinion - this is about needy gimme - gimme "I'm priviledged" players like YOU who expect everything handed to them because, "Whah, I'm just not as good as everyone else so make it easier for ME!".

It's YOUR type of attitude that ruins good games.

Why don't you spend some of that energy you have for your cry baby debate and go play the game and, *gasp*, get better at the game. Even better: stop ghost capping and you might spike your score above 4,000 an hour and earn more than 20 certs an hour.

Hell, I will personally help you learn how to play the game better because I care enough about the game to promote training runs with more inexperienced players so they don't feel overwhelmed or disenfranchised.

/thread

Actually, the only time I get about 100 xp is when I kill someone right out of their spawn. Most the time I'm getting anywhere between 200 and 500 EXP per kill (due in part to the new xp system).

Believe it or not, yes some people are earning certs at about that rate. Keep in mind that 1:1 means you're doing really well. I personally am at 1:2 Kill/deaths, which I expect on my server since our population is always outnumbered by about that amount. But yes, last night while running with a platoon and only ghost capping I was getting about 12 certs per hour for most of my 3 hour play session. It picked up a bit toward the end, but it does happen.

If you consider yourself to be 'average' then keep in mind that HALF the player base is under performing you by either a slight or very large margin. These 'below average' players are important to the game life, more important than the pros, l33ts or whatever. Since they're the margin most likely to not be having a positive play experience but are vital to the games life.

It's the reason I don't play starcraft any more. It isn't fun, you either sit down to win or you're going to lose. That style of play isn't fun for me anymore, so I don't play it. The same could happen here, where all the below average players decide that losing all the time isn't fun anymore and go find something that is actually fun to play.