[Rant/Suggestion] Have you learned nothing?

Alerts and the "Fourth Faction"
The only things that you've succeeded in doing by awarding alert XP based on time participated does is encourage the fourth faction scum to change over to the dominant faction as soon as the alert begins rather than one minute before the end while simultaneously ******* over faction loyalists who log in 20-30 minutes before an alert ends.

What you need to do to stop people from faction hopping is very, very simple. You even have the enforcement mechanism already built into the game in order to (attempt) to ban players. Ready?

YOU CANNOT HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHARACTER ON EACH SERVER AND CANNOT HAVE MORE THAN ONE ACCOUNT.

Tie each account to hardware ID or whatever method you use to try to permanently ban people in order to circumvent dishonorable *** wipes from having one account for each faction.

Doing this would cause the following to happen:

• The fourth faction would by in large be crushed as it would place a technical barrier that would prevent the majority of those who enjoy faction switching for easy certs from being able to do so. I understand that there are ways around this but I sincerely doubt the majority would bother with them.
• Loyal players to a faction can now receive full rewards for alerts even if they log in 1 second before the alert ends. I am Vanu through and through. It is not my fault that I can't be on 24/7 for every single alert. I still contribute to them and earning 20% of the total pot due to your piss poor attempt to discourage faction swapping is a slap in the face to those of us with integrity.

Lock-on Spam, Mandatory Certifications, and Classes
You royally ****** up on the way F2P and weapon unlocks function and interact in this game. In general the class system was a horrendous idea and you should have maintained (but streamlined) the inventory system from PlanetSide 1. What does this have to do with lock-on spam? In PlanetSide 1, you had limited weapon slots based on the armor you chose. If you were going to be the equivalent of a Heavy Assault in PlanetSide 1, you would have had to make certain sacrifices such as ammunition capacity and other utility goods in order to wield a rocket launcher of any sort. In addition, you would also have been limited in what you could access depending on how you decided to spend your certification points. You had a maximum limit of certification points, so you couldn't do and be everything whenever you wanted unlike you can in PlanetSide 2.

"Infinite" inventory space combined with a lack of certifications required to use certain weapons have lead to lock-on spam. Strikers, Hades, Nemesis, Annihilators, you name it, we spam it. This has heavily reduced vehicle effectiveness outside of bases which is where vehicles should be dominant. You have also made IR Smoke and Flares mandatory certifications as without them you are completely and totally ****** unless there is a plethora of nearby cover. There are several fixes for this problem, but I'll list the three I like most. I'll start out with the simplest and move on to the more complicated.

• Make IR Smoke and Flares be provided on all vehicles by default while retaining their improvable status and not taking up the utility certification slot.
  • Combats lock-on spam without requiring a major overhaul of lock-on weapons or other game systems.
  • Makes non-IR Smoke and Flare utility slot certifications actually useful more than once in a blue moon.
• Remove the ability for Heavy Assault to equip an over-shield, rocket launcher, light machine gun, and side-arm at the same time.
  • Choose three:
    • Over-shield
    • Rocket launcher
    • Light Machine Gun
    • Side-arm
  • Leaves Heavy Assaults vulnerable to infantry attacks to combat launcher spam.
  • Makes Heavy Assaults less of a universal soldier.
• Introduce a streamlined inventory system based on armor selection and remove classes from the game.
  • Pilot Armor (drives/guns vehicles)
    • 400 SP
    • 400 HP
    • Side-arm (1)
      • Pistol
    • Utility device (2)
      • Nano-armor kit
      • Medical applicator
      • Recon detect device
      • Terminal hacking device
      • Medical kit
      • Restoration kit
    • Armor upgrade (1)
      • Nanoweave armor
      • Flak armor
      • Advanced shield capacitor

• • Light Armor
    • 400 SP
    • 400 HP
    • Side-arm (1)
      • Pistol
    • Primary Weapon (1)
      • Sub-machine gun
      • Scout rifle
      • Battle rifle
      • Sniper rifle
    • Grenade (1)
      • Frag grenade
      • Flashbang grenade
      • Smoke grenade
      • EMP grenade
      • Concussion grenade
      • Decoy grenade
      • Revive grenade
      • Healing grenade
    • Utility device (2)
      • Cloaking device (1)
        • Hunter cloaking device
        • Nano cloaking device
      • Nano-armor kit
      • Medical applicator
      • Recon detect device
      • Terminal hacking device
      • Medical kit
      • Restoration kit
      • Anti-personnel mine
      • Ammunition pack
    • Armor upgrade (1)
      • Nanoweave armor
      • Flak armor
      • Advanced shield capacitor
      • Grenade bandoleer
      • Ammunition belt

• • Medium Armor
    • 500 SP
    • 400 HP
    • Side-arm (1)
      • Pistol
    • Primary Weapon (1)
      • Sub-machine gun
      • Battle rifle
      • Assault rifle
      • Shotgun
    • Grenade (1)
      • Frag grenade
      • Flashbang grenade
      • Smoke grenade
      • EMP grenade
      • Concussion grenade
      • Decoy grenade
    • Utility ability (1)
      • MANA adaptive construction engine
      • Jet pack
    • Utility device (2)
      • Nano-armor kit
      • Terminal hacking device
      • Medical kit
      • Restoration kit
      • Anti-personnel mine
      • Anti-vehicle mine
      • C4
      • Ammunition pack
    • Armor upgrade (1)
      • Nanoweave armor
      • Flak armor
      • Advanced shield capacitor
      • Grenade bandoleer
      • Ammunition belt
      • Utility pouch
        • +1 utility device per rank; max rank 2

• • Heavy Armor
    • 500 SP
    • 500 HP
    • Side-arm (1)
      • Pistol
    • Primary Weapon (1)
      • Sub-machine gun
      • Battle rifle
      • Light machine gun
      • Heavy weapon (Lasher, Jackhammer, Mercy)
      • Shotgun
      • Rocket launcher
    • Grenade (1)
      • Frag grenade
      • Flashbang grenade
      • Smoke grenade
      • EMP grenade
      • Concussion grenade
      • Decoy grenade
      • Anti-vehicle grenade
    • Utility ability (1)
      • Adrenaline shield
      • Nanite mesh generator
      • Resist shield
    • Utility device (1)
      • Medical kit
      • Restoration kit
    • Armor upgrade (1)
      • Nanoweave armor
      • Flak armor
      • Advanced shield capacitor
      • Grenade bandoleer
      • Ammunition belt

• • MAX Armor (remains the same)
    • Left Arm (1)
      • Anti-infantry weapon
      • Anti-air weapon
      • Anti-vehicle weapon
    • Right Arm (1)
      • Anti-infantry weapon
      • Anti-air weapon
      • Anti-vehicle weapon
    • Armor upgrade (1)
      • Flak armor
      • Small arms armor
      • Self-repair armor
    • Utility ability (1)
      • Ammo storage
      • Charge
      • Travel mode
      • Faction-specific abilities

This restructuring would curb lock-on spam and add a much-needed level of flexibility and choice to the game while ensuring the pilots of strong vehicles are vulnerable when they're not in their metallic shells.

Thanks for your time.

Back when the game first released you couldn't have more then one character on a server. Obviously that wouldn't work with server merges, so they removed the restriction.

Have you remembered nothing?

Shouldnt this be in the suggestions forum?

And wheres the MAX in your "streamlined" inventory system?

Basically you want an upgraded PS1 over a whole new experience(PS2) ?
I can't lie , PS2 is nothing like PS1 the only thing that they have in common is having 3 colored factions.

No, Dualstar is my second character on Ceres, long before the merges were announced.

They removed the restriction long before they merged servers BECAUSE they foresaw the need to merge them. Learn your history.

Stays the same. They work pretty well as-is.

They removed that restriction a while before they merged servers. For any potential conflicts you could move characters to other servers of your choice as long as that didn't create another conflict.

That's one way of putting it. There were several balance issues not present in PlanetSide 1 due to the very elegant inventory and certification system that PlanetSide 2 lacks. I feel that what I've suggested keeps the certification system of PlanetSide 2 (key to it's F2P cash-flow) in tact while bringing back some of the sanity and balance of PlanetSide 1's inventory system.

So, was this thread really just a nerf lockon thread thinly-disguised as a "copy what PS1 did" thread?

So a jet pack, assault rifle, ammo pack, medical kit, anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines and C4 is balanced?

Also you cant just ignore that in PS1 infantry wearing a RExo suit didnt have access to 2 main weapons, usually a chaingun and a shotgun, and had enough space in the packpack for a third, usually a rocket launcher.

2 issues I have with this, and SOE will share one of them.

I have 6 characters, so allowing me 1 character per server means 4 of my characters are on west coast servers where the ping is much higher for me. The other 2 characters are somewhere overseas, which is pretty much unplayable for me.

As for only being allowed one account, well then SOE is losing money. Since SC purchases can't be shared between accounts, people have to spend more money to unlock items on two accounts, rather than one. Meaning SOE makes more money. They're not going to change that. Having more than one account is allowed in almost every game, and if I choose to pay for two accounts, it's only fair. (not that I would pay for two accounts, just sayin)

Indeed, but since we don't have a true inventory in this game (just a load of options with my third suggestion rather than a true backpack) the heavies will need to make a choice in order to curb lock-on spam. There are other factors such as having to unlock those weapons at the expense of being able to do other things that aren't present in PlanetSide 2.

Taking that into consideration I feel that choosing between a firearm or a rocket launcher is a fair trade-off.

That door has already been opened, and cannot be closed.

Not only that, but they have also merged servers so many times now, there are barely enough to servers to have a separate character on each one. I used to have a NC character on Genudine, a VS character on Helios, and a TR character on Connery. Now they are all on Connery.

I'm not someone who switches factions for alerts though. I don't care about XP/certs at all at this point, and prefer to fight outnumbered (more kills)

Way too much nonsense in this thread.

Multiple characters already exist; there is no way to change this now. Multiple accounts also already exist. No way to change this now either. Both things could be changed non-retroactively, but that really wouldn't solve half as many problems as just improving the game...

Moving your characters to other servers doesn't suit anyone from the US, or anyone on Briggs, as there aren't enough servers in each region even for one character per faction. And that's to avoid the issue of people who already have a character on the other server(s), but also have more than one on their 'main' server. Myself, I have 11 characters split across 4 accounts. I enjoy it more that way (and it makes me less sick to see my total in game time). Moreso than that, I also pay -far- more than the vast majority of players, so why would SOE want to punish me and my ilk?

I also would like to note that gaming communities have a lot of members who play different factions because it's fun to play against their friends. Rock Paper Shotgun and Rock Traitor Shotgun I've seen frequently clashing heads, and from discussions with their leadership, this is often intended. It's good fun, and shouldn't be forcibly blocked.

So anyway, off the ridiculous wishful thinking that you wasted as much time as I did on.

Onto the ridiculous GIVE ME BACK PS1/QQ QQ QQ ROCKET LAUNCHERS QQ QQ QQ bit.

Know how many people are playing PS1? About 8. Why? Because PS2 is more up to date, more inviting, more fun, more relevant, and more compelling. We already know the gaming populace will overlook graphics in favour of good gameplay (Terraria, Minecraft, Amnesia, CS, BF1942/V etc), and yet no one is. That's because PS1 is outdated and boring to modern gamers. They simply don't want the things that you're crying for. SOE knows this, and are making a fortune on having released a much improved version of a classic title. Sure, it doesn't have some of the things we all miss, but neither did PS1 when it launched, and now we've got a whole new basis with which to build a far better game.

As to inventories and the like, it would be -far- easier to force HA to choose between rocket launchers and shields, or even rocket launchers and LMGs. This would have exactly the same effect, be met with much wider approval, and not involve wiping out 2 years of work to start on an old, inferior model.

Peace out.

I like how cry babies still whine about overshields when they have no clue how it screws heavies when used. We trade evasion ( speed) for mitigation ( armor ) in many many cases this will lead to your death. You pop you shields to kill one guy and end up eating a tank round because you could not move fast enough.

I do think flares/smoke should be standard equipment that doesn't occupy a slot, just like they are in every other game.

Inventories are an overly complicated solution looking for a problem. The class system just needs to be tweaked, either with additional classes or by shuffling around which weapons go in which slots.

For example, if we make the rocket launchers a primary weapon rather than a tool, we would effectively split the HA class into dedicated AI and AV roles because the LMG and RL would occupy the same slot. Only having a pistol for AI would kind of suck though... but if we buff rocket launchers enough people might be OK with it.

Clearly you're not the typical forum goer, you've clearly exercised some level of thought over what you've said here, and for that I'm thankful.

What you are describing is a direction outside of the game's intended direction. The game they have created, while still unfinished and subject to change, does have clear design philosophies and directions being followed. Your given arguments do not indicate a lack of learning or observation skill on their part, but more a stubbornness and longing for a different game on yours, and many players like yourself.

The heavy assault is capable of doing what he does by design, it's not a silly oversight that they made back in alpha and never learned from. There may be problems associated with the classes and certifications, however suggesting courses of actions which are not consistent with the design of the game is not realistically going to solve any of the problems you perceive.

If there is anything to these problems you need to determine their scope within the design of this game, and not relative to how you think it should be in the game you want.

Does that mean Pistols become the new Shotgun or the old Battle Rifle?

The bold section is more or less what I am suggesting. I didn't make it clear in my original post, but instead of having an actual grid inventory system we'd just have different slots for different armor sets similar to how the classes currently have a set amount of slots for different items. Instead of restricting items by pre-made class, we're able to make our own "classes" based off what armor and equipment load-outs we choose. If I had any passable photoshop skills I'd demonstrate what I envision graphically, but you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.