Hi all, So I've been playing for 5/6 hours now and am loving the action! However, everything feels rather pointless: You make your way to a capture point, stick around for however long is needed and succeed or fail... nothing happens or seems to really change. Then an ALERT comes up to dominate the continent. You spend 2 hours dedicating to capturing points within that continent. So far I have had one loss and one draw, after which... nothing happened or seemed to changed. Worst of all I received no recognition of the time I spent working toward the mission. No XP, no unlocks (other than those I unlocked along the way), not even a battle report to read explaining how I effected the event. So, other than enjoying playing an FPS, why should I care about the game or the capture points/missions/alerts? Does it have any effect on my toon if I drop out of an alert after ten minutes? Are there any reasons to keep playing another 10 minutes once it is time to stop? To conclude, loving the gameplay but what is my motivation to dedicate hours to the missions? Thank you for any help!
Alerts are just silly. You can go do what you want and still receive your factions points from the alert. There really should be some % or tier reward based on contribution to the fight (time spent or points gained etc.) The game really is just an FPS on large scale currently so kill and have fun.
Alerts are supposed to be fighting for control of the continent. It doesn't lock when there is a draw, but if there is only one winner then it should. The faction who controls it gets a resource boost until it's unlocked. And the winners of the alert get a lot more XP (XP = certs, certs = upgrades and new toys). No one is going to twist your arm to force you to defend or cap a base, but you obviously get more XP for winning than you do for losing. Ultimately, you should be playing for the gameplay, and the gameplay is restricted by how many certs you can earn. So there is your motivation. Also, the game has player stats, if that interests you. I know some people like to play for their stats.
Quick answer: You shouldn't care. Long answer: Resources gained per tick used to be tied to total territory owned on the continent you were playing on but that was removed. There is no incentive to have territory other then having a tech plant which allows you to pull Main battle tanks from select bases instead of only the warp gate. You can certainly have fun doing the "squad/platoon organized stuff but if you don't get enjoyment out of the act of working together then just play for the FPS side of it. Alerts are a bit different in that if you win the alert and the server pop is low enough the continent will lock and another oen will open. Each locked continent will give the winning faction some benefit. (50% vehicle cost, 50% resource gain per tick, ect). Alerts can be fun to participate in but personally I don't. Again they may be more fun for you if you squad up and do some organized stuff with like minded people. You also get xp boost during the alert if you are on that continent and you get some xp for winning the alert based off the time you participated in it (aka being on the continent) Missions..are completely useless. It is "phase 1" of a system they decided to implement that doesn't help anybody until they evolve the system more. I think the idea was that it was supposed to be smart enough to direct new players where to fight so they get more constant combat but I don't feel it really does that at all. One of the harder things for new players I think is to find good fights. Once you learn to read the map and learn when to redeploy that issue goes away though. If it bothers you what you can do is go into the useroptions.ini and actually edit that file (change 1 to 0) to remove the hud element for the mission since it takes up a large part of the screen. Its towards the bottom I think, mission_hud or something i forget.
U don't need to follow the missions their not giving you any extra exp but it is for new player so they know where to go. And Alerts is just for fun or a little extra exp. But your free to go to any base on the map just take a good fight place your waypoint and just go ! And if u cap a continent u get 50% sale on stuff like maxes and vehicles.
Welcome to planetside where there is no point to anything just keep on killing and getting killed You'll get bored of it soon enough its been 2 years and they have not made no changes to the meta game at all and I expect it to be another 2
You largely make your own game in Planetside. There are no long term goals (as in Battleground Europe or Pirates of the Burning Sea, which both have total map victory conditions, or EVE, which has long term persistent world ownership of bases). Mostly what I enjoy in PS is understanding what's really driving the battles and fighting for that. Like: Zerg tier: spawn, run, shoot, die. Better tier: realize there's only 1 Sunderer left. Go get a new sunderer to park, THEN spawn, run, shoot, die. Best tier: drop mines in areas you know enemies will drive through. Protect your team's sunderers. Kill enemy sunderers. Look at the map and decide where you're really needed (it's 96 vs 64 here but the enemy is ghost capping 3 bases....maybe you should spawn there?) Look at what the enemy is using to win and work to specifically counter that thing. I like Planetside more than other FPS games because there IS some strategy to it if you take the time to look at the map and think about what's really needed. There's no long term strategy, really -- this game is no EVE -- but there is a little more depth than just spawn-run-shoot-die if you look for it. I can't tell you how many major attacks I ended almost single handedly because while my entire team was doing Zerg Tier, I was the one Prowler out there killing Sunderers and ended up destroying literally 10 different enemy spawners, ending the attack, finally allowing us to go on the attack. That feel when you blow up the last enemy Sunderer at your team's only tech plant. Do you know that feel?
When your faction wins an alert you get a huge chunk of XP (5000 or so) and you get a benefit based on the captured continent. You can read what benefit by going to your map and selecting the continent. It should be visible right below it's name.
