Farmville comes to Planetside

SOE has made the game rewards around farming. Certs, Stats, Implants, Directives, etc. Players need to grind, so they farm.

In addition, SOE never implemented coordination and communication tools outside of Squads and Outfits. Most Standard Players are playing casual pickup battles, where coordination/communication is not available, so they just find a good brainless farming area and farm.

The playerbase had much less experience with the game then. It hadn't really figured out what the game was centered around, what were the broken methods to use, etc. And everything was new, so just playing was novelty and its own payoff. People just logged on and jumped in a big battle and tried to take territory.

Then people figured out that they needed to grind. They figured out joining Overpop won them Alerts and using OP stuff got them more Certs/Stats. Then they introduced more stuff to Cert, made different stuff OP (needing more Certs), added Directives, and Added Implants, all of which put more pressure on players to Grind. And the best way to Grind is to farm.

The concept of purpose you are applying is what you (and many players) inferred was PS2's purpose. But many people found it either wasn't rewarded, didn't really have any lasting important consequence/reward/meaning, the novelty doing it a bunch with no real meaning just got old after a while, or they realized they needed to Grind and Farming was the better way to do it.

Every day PS2 Devs have the chance to change the game to make "taking objectives" or "taking territory" more important to players. It's been 2 years now, their staff has been cut, their reduced staff has been pulled off to work on other SOE games, and the Devs have demonstrated over and over that they either don't have the ability, interest, and/or approval to make these changes.

The lasting message that all current players seem to understand is this: PS2 has no great purpose, you play it for whatever you can get personally out of it, for as much or as little time/cost as you want, and that's it. The PS2 forums are an extension of this.

You want that push you lead it not expect it.

I don't lead anymore most of my team has moved on to other different games so I can't rely on randoms to follow me unless I at least have 5 guys shouting the rest as we move.

This game needs to be more about capturing bases period. I would accept less experience from kills,repairing,healing,ect in exchange for cert gain based on base capture,defense while overpopulated and objective support. We need missions more than anything RIGHT NOW. There are other necessary systems that will make the game work but that is the big one. The game can't last like this forever,in general the bases need more objectives and a more structured method of base capture.

Nuketown was only 10 or 12 players, I forgot since its been a while.
And Operation: Metro is abhorred by the Battlefield community due to explosive spam 24/7.

Abhorred? It is a nice map.

The game is 'open world'. Some farm, some take territory, some just want to play a certain class or vehicle, some just look at the graphics. Everyone believes their way is best and the other ways suck.

Hopefully the resource revamp phase 2 (phase 1 is an utter joke!) if it ever gets done might help.

Until then - the Devs gave people directives to do instead... which involves grinding, ie. farming. Directives have contributed to more farming behavior even if they were written to sort of promote good gameplay. And there's no way to really get them done unless you play with a farming mindset. If you play to take territory and nothing else matters, you'll use your best tools, thus never getting all those other ribbons and such, so no directive rewards for you.

And a lot of people will scream FPS to you - sadly this COD crowd herd doesn't understand the meaning of MMO in the least bit. Given they do form quite a large voice, there's less and less incentive for the devs to actually add some true meta to PS2.

Me - heck, I farm too, cuz that's all the game's been reduced to.

Phase 1 is certainly more fun than the previous system. With the previous all backwards system, the more outgunned and outpopped you were, the less amount of resources you had. At least now, regardless of population or force multiplier advantages the enemy has, you can still have a fighting chance with whatever means you prefer to fight with.

Its a two way street really - it worked against outpopped factions, but at the same time, you had an incentive to gain/keep more territory because territory control had more tangible benefits.

Territory control has to account for something or else the endless farming will continue. Yet at the same time, outgunned/outpopped factions still need a fighting chance too or they will continue to be banished to their warp gates.

As much as I hated alerts + continent locking previously - this could help considerably, as when continents rotate, each faction gets reset to 33%. This gives the other factions a free get out of jail (being warp gated) card, as continents will reset to 33% each. An outpopped faction will still need to play smart and quickly flock to these continents.

Resource availability should also be per continent, and based on population. If you have 66% continent pop, you should be gaining resources at 1/2 normal rate, while if you're at 17% of continent pop, your resources gain at 2x normal rate. And that rate itself will be variable based on territory control, but this ensures the overpopulated faction doesn't automatically have an upper hand either.

If you have 66% continent pop and 33% territory control, you may have the pop advantage, but you'll have resource issues.

I'll give you that, you can chain pull anything now. lol
3 guys in a lib on rotation, if the lib lasts 3mins you can just keep pulling over and over endlessly.

Indeed, resource gain should have been all backwards. The more territory you had, the more spread you were over the map, the less resources you should be gaining. With the old system the stronger was made even stronger and people just run off to have fun on a different continent, effectively having the majority of each faction on a different continent each.

According to this thread, killing people means you're farming. I'm sorry there's so much shooting in your first person shooter

Also add 2fort to that list.

God awful map but people still play it for whatever reason.

Ideas you say? The first one that occurs to me is to separate Certs from XP entirely, and make taking objectives the only way you get certs. Disclaimer, I hate all XP systems and wish all games used an old-skool skill training system (where you only get skill with something when you use it).

That would not work at all. It would invalidate both entire classes, like the sniping infiltrator and even useful gameplay, like guarding against enemy air with a skyguard.

Well, PS1 had both XP and certs but they weren't tied to each other directly. XP increased Battle Rank. Battle Rank, typically, gave a certification point to spend towards a weapon, vehicle, or utility... Battle Rank in PS2 means nothing other then to tell others, roughly, how long you've been playing the toon for.

XP gained from killing another player was minimal compared to the amount you got after successfully taking a base in PS1 as well. And as you went up in Battle Rank, the more XP it took to get to the next Battle Rank. *It took a very long time to get to max BR! Additionally, the amount of XP you gained from successfully taking a base was variable. Meaning, less fighting at a base when trying to take it equaled less XP when you did take it. And there was a max XP cap on the other end of the spectrum.

The three bad things that poison the community into farmers:

1. Gaining XP (How stupid is it that you have to reward people for playing the game?)
2. Unlocking new stuff (How stupid is it that some people play only to unlock new stuff, so they can grind to unlock more stuff?)
3. Directives/achievements (How stupid is it that you have to build some pointless "to do" -list for people in order to keep them playing the actual game?)

BF1942 for example didn't have any of this nonsense and no one would need any "reason" to keep on playing. Playing the game used to be the reward and not this twisted reality of todays games where you have to constantly reward people to keep playing.

I wish I could vote you down.

There is no point in farming in Planetside. If you were to pick one class, and one role only, you could max cert out that role around BR20-30 (around 1-2 weeks of playing, shorter if you buy boosts). Everything after that is variety. As in being able to play in other roles, switching roles on demand, having more toys to use in different situations. The mentality where you play for highest score needs to go. FPS is about the joy of fighting each other, seeing who has better reflexes, who is better coordinated, who outsmarted who.

It's like saying chess is pointless, once you checkmate king it's over, you might as well never play chess ever again after that first game. You beat chess! Congrats! The fact that you feel this game is farmville by itself suggests that you need a carrot on stick in front of you to keep playing. The act of trying to consistently outsmart and outplay another living person/people out of thousands of players is worth nothing to you and others like you.

What is it that you are suggesting anyway? You want some tangible conclusion to the game? Some final goal? It's a never ending war, it's meant to keep going. It would make no sense for multiplayer fps to just end for the sake of your satisfaction.

It's like Counterstrike anti-terrorists thinking to themselves... "I keep disarming these bombs, keep freeing hostages, day after day and yet there's always more terrorists to shoot... more hostages to free, more bombs to disarm... what is my final goal?". The goal, is to keep playing and having fun. If it stops being fun, move on to something else that is.

Hope that helps.

You're completely out of touch on how modern shooters work. There is a reason CoD has millions and BF1942 is a ghost town of irrelevance.

Of course BF1942 is ghost town of irrelevance because it's been dead for a long long time . BF2 came out and people moved to the next game, nothing out of ordinary in there.

And I'm well aware how modern shooters work. Gameplay hasn't changed that much, or if it has, its been for the worse in most cases (quick grenade, quick knife, less unique classes, etc.).