Playing Planetside 2 as a low level BR is a frustrating 'anti-fun' experience. Providing suggestions

Giving a better initial hook to make the game fun when you first start will probably lead to more subscriptions/memberships later. In my first month I desperately needed 1500 certs, now I desperately need 5000 because now I know all the different situations that more weapon choices would give me. If I quit after a week because getting certs was too hard, Sony get nothing from me; after a few weeks people are more invested in the game, less likely to quit and more likely to be prepared to dip into their wallets.

I found it really hard until I started doing team play and being support classes. If you want anyone who isn't coming from another FPS to enjoy their first days in PS2, it needs to be a little easier to get going.[/quote][/quote]

I think this game need single player campaign =Tutorial. That if completed unlock basic things for free.
For example
first x2 tank mines on enginner
First C4 on light assault.
Concusion Grenades on HA.

You geth it when complete mission specific design to use that thing.

The tutorial as far as I can recall doesn't even teach people how to use the repair tool or medic tool... both of these are good "starter" options to earn more certs. I'd add some objectives and elements for these.

Repair a broken turret
Heal 10 soldiers to full health
Revive 3 soldiers

Something along those lines.

Also I'd suggest making some objectives that follow some of the earlier ones, so they end up with more "basics"...

Eg. cert an AMS sunderer, and get 10 spawns from it.
Eg. add zoom and ammo to said sunderer's guns.
Etc.

If you blindly give them certs without enough coaching them into what to put some of those starter certs into, they won't be that much better off. They should end up spending a bunch of those certs on some cheap, sensible basic items.

Great idea though - just need to be fleshed out a bit more.

I have to agree with the OP.

Do people really think certing classes really makes that much of a difference? It really doesnt. Only for vehicles do I think certing makes a big impact.

I remember when I first played the game, I thought the suit slots were all straight upgrades. I didnt realize you had to choose 1 and equip it. Even then, I didnt feel too disadvantaged.

And honestly, think about it. If the game worked that way, and someone was fully certed....they still wouldnt be some killing machine. Most upgrades arent noticable in a 1v1 fight. They are just situational conveniences.

Welcome to Planetside!

Great idea, think new players really need to be thrown a bone or 2
Even 1000 certs after all the training bits would be great but really emphasis how hard 1000 certs would be to get as to not waste it needlessly

M8. [PSA] is not the same as [Suggestion].
There's also a suggestion forum.

Now about your idea...there should be objectives for beginners, not only for certs but to make sure the player understands the possibilities. But yeah, don't make them so banal...a little harder to achieve than just pressing 1 key.

Just tie a xp multiplier to the br, and make it exponential, the first br's should provide a higher xp gain, then the bonus will decrease as br increase, solved it....

The problem is, new players are now facing high level fully certed players a lot more often. A year ago everyone was a noob and at the same level in the cert grind. What was OK for us, doesn't mean it is still OK.

I see you and me are of the same opinion about the devs failure/refusal to learn from past experiences. "Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes."

Just sub you scrubs and stop begging for handouts in a free to play game

The newbie could reroll their character. It probably would take less time then covering for said mistakes.

Were your friends a higher battlerank then you? We rerolled entirely as BR 1s. Nobody was leveled in our squad. I've gone on different servers and had a merry time getting past the early levels because I have friends who throw me in their maxed out liberator and I dalton the crap out of things, or let me have a maxed out mosquito. At worst I just engineered a MAX suit for awhile, or gunned a 1/2 MBT. I didn't have that this time. We all started from BR 1. It sucked.

Furthermore, it was on Briggs, so 300 ping all day. What that ping value really showed me was to see things from the perspective of a newer player again, as my KDR and score is effectively 30-40% lower with that kind of ping. Most players, unlike probably you or me, lack the ability to consistently win 1v1 infantry fights. Playing on Briggs showed me how frustrating playing like that can be as 50% of my deaths were from clientside kills.

This isn't meant to be a rant on Briggs however, just pointing out how that environment helped me come to this realization that Planetside 2 has a crappy early level experience.

**** outfits.

Also, one thing to note... Given the method this game is setup, they do want to encourage people to purchase station cash. Most weapons are set at high value - IE: 1000 Certs. There are some set at 250 and some maybe around 500 certs. But when you look at one thing to note... The SC purchased items, especially the NS common pool ones, are account across. So should new user decide to F-with whatever original faction they started out with, they will still have access to the SC purchased NS Common Pool weapons they purchased. If they decided they wanted to re-roll their Faction character, any SC purchased faction weapon is there. minus the attachments they would have had cert wise.

The point of it is, the game is driven to encourage people to 'pay' for things. You want a short cut on xp, which in turn, is also directly related to Cert Gain - Pay for the boost.

I know this sounds like a "fanboy" post, but think about what this game's revenue drive is... The hook is to encourage people to use XP boosts or use membership to fuel the cost of the game even though it is F2P. Note also, some things are also relatively cheap to buy, IE: The last couple of week's daily sales... 1 SC for something or 99 SC for other things, most of which would have been 700 or 500 SC each...

Well, OP. Yeah, you had it rough.

I remember when I first created my character. Just after I typed in my character name and got the intro for the NC, I was drop podded into a 48+v48+ at The Crossroads without ever stepping into a WG or Spawn room.

Yep, you NFGs sure have it tough.

I agree with the OP and I think he brings forward many valid points and good suggestions. Something like what he's suggested should be implemented; it'll be good for business SOE!

New people should put on a white or yellow backpack or get into another new guy's tank.

Btw you don't need grip on all guns. I use laser on carv.

As a slight side-note.
I am not sure when it happened, but I rolled an alt the other day, and the 2X Reflex on the default NC Medic and Engineer gun is now 5 certs instead of the usual 30 for everything else. It certainly makes those first 2-3 hours easier for a new player who hates iron sights and doesn't have to used them right up to 30 certs.

There was a youtube video from Wrel:

Talking about new player experience I think its worth a watch. He mentioned things like starter loadouts so players could get an idea of what a class can do or have some chance against air/armor and so on. He also mentioned a mentor system that might be nice.

The tutorial in this game is kind of a joke, there are many videos way better at teaching you the game, maybe they should just link them in game to get people up to par. Many game mechanics are just not said anywhere, like you can look around/reload/shoot while hacking.

I understand they do not want to do to much because they want to entice people to spend, but if they aren't hooked on the game in the first place they will never spend to begin with.