Unlocks are extremely overpriced....or am I just new to f2p

I've read the membership details before but I've not found a hint at needing it, YET.

The bonuses are good, I'll give you that, but experience seems kind of pointless. I understand it attributes to these super amazing and totally high resolution decals, and some extra cert points per 250XP, but I don't see that as truly worth it either. I always find myself, when in a good squad, with plenty of resources and usually if played right, find myself not having issues with spawning vehicles. In fact, the cert points are the best out of it since it can be used to lower the acquisition time of the vehicles, which to me is the most limiting factor.

I understand there are reasons behind their decisions and these are used for balance, but this is paying pretty much for queue priority on a game with rather shallow player numbers.

As mentioned before, I have spent money on this game... granted, it was a small sum, but was only worth it due to double points. The membership isn't actually that bad, if I'm honest. The main thing is the Station Cash and the scaling between lower and higher Station Cash prices. Like many others, I want a balanced game between F2P, Members and those who are non-members but buy the occasional item because who enjoys P2W? It also helps retain the player base and encourage more to join.

The only thing stopping me from spending more often is Station Cash. 500 SC should be lowered to £2.75 not £4

Here is a quick idea. Minor changes but something reasonable, to encourage greater spending:

500 SC - £3.00

1000 SC - £6.00

2000 SC - £11.00

2500 SC - £14.00

5000 SC - £27.00

10000 SC - £52.00 (as opposed to the AWFUL £74 currently set for 10,000 Station Cash)

20000 SC (Quantity not available for purchase) - £102.75

Take note I've been awake endlessly, so my banding is probably wrong... but you get the idea. The difference in banding. SOE's banding starts off well, but rapidly spirals. It's like e-purchases run the opposite from real world bulk... where the more you buy the cheaper it gets. Obviously, for mine it's not much difference, but lower prices general increase more purchases anyhow. I don't see how this would hurt SOE, if anything I think it'd benefit.

FX

You're not counting bonus certs from getting a certain amount of kills with a weapon. There's other things which earn you certs.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/player_stats.php?character=FearTheAmish

According to that, you have a total of 697 certs for a time played of 1d, 6h, and 25m. That would make your time played 30 hours and 25 minutes, or 30.42 hours. This gives you an average cert gain of roughly 22.91 certs per hour. This is a far cry from the 100+ you stated earlier.

I fully realize I may be reading this number wrong... please correct me or point me to the correct details if I'm mistaken.

Its a bit overprized but well. Atm its ok because they are busy sorting the technical problems. It will be more a problem when they finally start to implement new stuff (as its either better or at least a good sidegrade option).
Because then its not even possible to unlock one particular class as casual... I hoped its more like TF2 or LoL, but tbh, i didnt expect it for a game of that scale...

Gasp, hyper-bole... on the internet, who would've guessed?!?!?!?!

So far the only true upgrades I've seen are on vehicles, which kind of sucks. But yeah, it's typical of F2P games to make you play 100 hours for something that would otherwise cost you 10 bucks. It's how they stay afloat.

My KDR is 2.0 and I don't even get that many certs per hour.

You're new to F2P, this is how they work. You make the non-pay method as hard to get as possible, people start on the hard road but eventually cave and just shell out cash, the smart ones quit before they spend their money.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "F2P"

There's lots of ways to optimize earning XP (therefore certs) and your purchases of SC and with SC. I started writing a list of tips but it turned into a rather gigantic post, so here it is as a blog post instead: http://virtualxroads.blogspot.ca/2012/11/best-bang-for-your-buck-planetside-2.html

Hm, got one so far- any more estimates??

Note: I don't see myself really purposely "farming" - ESPECIALLY if it gets boring. So ...I might focus on performance, but not farming at all expense. That'd make the game dull fast.

Farming might be the a good way to get a ton of certs extremely quickly, but the best way to get certs is to just play the game how it's supposed to be played. Get with an outfit who regularly teams up and goes on base fights. Capture bases, kill people, whatever.

Playing engineer during a a base attack/defense will probably get you the most points. Throw down some ammo where a lot of people are gathered and you can get EXP very quickly. During a biolab attack I had gotten 30 certs in 10-15 minutes because I threw some ammo down in one of those little warp rooms where my team was holed up. Throw up a turret that covers a good choke point and just unload on anyone who tries to come in.

Playing with a squad of friends I usually get 50-100 certs for every hour to hour and a half, depending on how well we do. I'm no stellar player, so I'd say this is about average for any player who regularly works with a team who has some sort of cohesion and consistently all focus on the same objectives. But really I only ever think of cert points right before I log off. Because I just have fun playing the game, and the default weapons for infantry, which I mostly use, are not, in any sense of the word, bad.

Average casual play time is 20 minutes a day.

Anything to back this up?

completely agree -_-
its really out of wack that it doesnt access them on all chars on all servers on all factions.

that is ********.
unless your using an aimbut you will not max anything in 1 month 6 hours a day.

played ALOT these last week and now i am not the best fps player by any means but seeing how i have been playing games for the past 17years 10h+ a day i would say that i got a lot more experience then your average gamer out there
and at this point i would say making 200 cert in 6 hours isnt too bad.

that means with 50% xp booster you would need to do an average of: 1,8kill per minute CONSISTENTLY!!!.
thats around a kill every 30seconds: now keep in mind the time it takes to move from point to point, dying/respawning etc.

so if you make 200cert in 6 hours which is your dayli playtime thats only 6000 in a month, thats 6 weapons -_-
each weapon got around 500-2000 cert of upgrades, each class got 4000+ cert of upgrades...

at the current price, even playing 12 hours a day and being SUPER sickly good (not using aimbot which i would guess around 20% of the server+- does and 5% doesnt know how to set it up and is stupidly obvious that they do it.) it will take you properly around 6months just to max out the classes with only ONE maxed weapon set for each of them...

aimbot.

checked out vids and asked a friend. you will make around 1k cert a day as a gamer using this....
sigh how i hate cheaters... fcks up the game royally and should all be perma banned, soe account banned, credit card banned and ip banned..
no punishment is too hard when taking care of cheaters.

best regards
tjalfe

Despite all of the complaining... this is typical of all F2P games. The difference here is that you don't HAVE to spend money to upkeep your items or buy packages to recert your character when you figure out that endgame and leveling up are 2 different playstyles, which in my opinion, makes this one of the better F2P games released.

This games business model is more about maintaining a volume of players rather than milking every player for all their worth like most F2P.

BS. I have a 1.8 and don't get anywhere near that.

I agree, the prices are mad inflated right now. I got alpha squad and it was just a waste of money, got notin to show for cept some SC and flamboyant camo that makes you stick out like a rodeo clown when in battle.

Easy, just release more content down the road. Look at TF2 and all the hats.

If you actually read the entire thread you'd see I later corrected myself and posted a link to the original posts calculations.

There are far better ways to get XP than straight-up killing (unless you're very very good at it). I haven't paid too much attention to the numbers, but some approximate values off the top of my head (with ~105% XP from boost 50%, subscription 50% and population or whatever):

A kill: ~125xp
Respawn at your AMS (per spawn): 5xp
Repair (per tick): 10xp
Repair (a base turret to full): ~330xp
Healing (per tick): 15xp
Ammo reload (infantry or vehicle, per clip): 20xp
Tank kill: ~200xp
Sunderer kill: ~425xp
Galaxy kill: ~600xp
Base capture completion: 500-2000xp

Without any certs, the engineer and medic are excellent xp classes. Supply ammo / repairs to 3-5 AA MAXs on top of the crown and you will be rolling in XP. Each clip they fire (probably about 10 seconds of firing) nets you 20xp resupply xp. With 5 of them, each time an aircraft flies by you esentially get 100xp which is almost as much as a kill. Each AA/AV rocket a HA fires is a clip. Find a cluster of them on a hill firing on tanks below and supply them and once again the XP will tick insanely fast. Play medic in a biolab battle and AoE heal (15xp * X players per tick!) and rez people.

Also without certs, gun someone's liberator. A Dalton liberator can devastate armored columns, AMSs or even infantry.

Base turrets are worth 200xp (empty) each, so use a tank / ESF to blow them up on everything you're attacking.

AMS costs only 50 certs and if you pop your sunderer in the right spot you could have people spawning every few seconds (while you're free to pursue other XP earning activities like being an engineer). One time I had an AMS parked under the crown and it spammed me with +5XP messages continously for about 20 min.

I'm not sure how much ammo resupply for sunderer is (<200 certs I'm sure) can get you 20xp per vehicle clip reloaded. Pull up behind a line of 3-5 Magriders firing on some tower/base and you'll be getting 20xp for each shot they fire (clip size = 1).

A2G rocket pods for the ESF will set you back about 1000 certs but let you go hunting for AMSs, sunderers, galaxies, clumps of infantry or armor columns. An AMS with players respawning at it is an east 2000+xp (8 certs!) off a full load of rockets. Also, firing into a packed tower air-deck room (you know, the one above the spawn room with the two teleporters and 4 doors) can get you dozens of kills in a minute.

Speaking of ESFs, they give you huge mobility. You can fly from base to base just as they are about to be capped and collect your free 500-2000xp.

YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE CERT POINTS

ARE YOU READY TO DIG DEEP? DEEPER THAN YOU'VE EVER DUG BEFORE?




- EnergeticStupid....CONNERY SERVER VANU BYAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH