[Suggestion] A crazy idea for adding depth to Planetside 2 (without any of that logistics nonsense)

TL;DR, Merge PS1 and PS2's progression system.

A major difference in the way PS1 and PS2 work is the way they handle force multipliers. The first Planetside limited force multipliers via the progression system. Rather than gaining a constant income which you would spend on upgrades, every level you would gain a certification point; which you could spend on becoming "certified", with a certain vehicle, tool, or weapon set. These certifications were categorized into roles, such as Anti-vehicle, Air Transport, Engineering, etc.

During the first week after character creation, you were able to freely refund and reinvest these certifications, and explore the roles that interested you the most. After that week expired, you were limited to only being able to drop your certifications every 6 hours. The benefit of this system was that each player was unique in what they could do and what role they played on a battlefield. It made individuals feel more important in the grand scheme of things. It also allowed new players fresh out of the tutorial to immediately specialize in an area they liked, and have the same gear that top players in that area had. If a player wanted to get into a vehicle and farm infantry, they might have to give up a certain infantry weapon or tool to have that ability. The cost of this system was that players might not be able to do what they want until they reach a higher level, and only allowed them to change their mind in 6 hour intervals.

^TL;DR, PS1 Certification System

Planetside 2 was made with overcoming the problems of PS1's system in mind, with a focus on upgrades rather than specializations. New players immediately have access to all vehicles and infantry classes, however, these vehicles and classes are less effective than another player's, who had invested time (and possibly money as well) into upgrading them.

However; what if we could have both systems at once? What if we could allow flexibility, while also allowing in-depth character customization to suit our preferred playstyle? I think this is more than possible, and that it would not only make the game far more interesting, but would also complement the current state of the game very well.

There's a huge number of ways you could go about doing this. I think the new resource system has opened up some possibilities. What if you could move around resource prices, based on your preferred playstyle? For example, you could put some specialization points (just an idea, no details) into the Transport Vehicles field, which would decrease the price of Sunderers, Galaxies, and Valkyries, at the expense of increasing resource prices elsewhere. For infantry gameplay, you could perhaps specialize in Engineering, which could give you something like a passive Utility Pouch, or unlock another upgrade tier to your Repair Tool, or perhaps at a higher level, allow others players to use a MANA turret that you've placed.

I think this sort of system would really complement the game, because for starters, it would probably make grinding directives a hell of a lot easier.

How would forumside set up a system like this, if at all? Would you? If not, why? Does the very thought of this make you shiver with pleasure? What sort of details would you like to see? The possibilities are endless.

The only reason to specialize is if there is a meta to specialize within.
The Logistics / Resource concepts HAVE TO HAPPEN in order to make specialization worthwhile; otherwise what are going to specialize into... more grinding?
Grinding Certs/Exp/Unlocks is why CoDs rely on DLCs and new releases ever year. Grinding gets old, VERY VERY quickly and it cares not HOW unique you are in HOW you grind.
You need to provide a "WHY" you grind.

I'm grinding my Anti-Tank Engineer because so-n-so outfit for the VS keep beating every time we progress deep into their territory with their organized and decked out armor groups.

Grind isn't supposed to be a purpose or point, it's just the means to the end. And in PS2, there is no End, no Goal, barely even a means.

Sure, I could specialize the resource system to suite my play style like... make MBTs cheaper for example. But again what's the point?
So I can spawn MBTs more often to grind what.. more specialization into making MBTs cheaper? It only effects me. I get no satisfaction in completing something with my team that effects us ALL, me, my team AND my enemy. This IS an MMO. I'm playing with others. I'm playing AGAINST others. I need challenges, consequences and progression that effects them too!

having a BASE that who ever owns it - makes MBTs cheaper for all?

Hell yes.

Imba? Maybe.

Awesome? Totally.
Keep going with ideas like that until we reach a Victory condition and we will finally have the "WHY" we grind. We grind to WIN; not "Well I'm grinding these unlocks on my Medi to reach BR100 - why? To waste time...."'

You've got some good points here. Seriously, you do.
But I've seen games with MORE PLAYERS than PS2 has without any meta system like logistics and all it ever turns into is this inglorious orgy of spam - you know... like those server smashes where 300 people fight over a single Door Way with RLs and Ress Grenades... my god what a terrible stream that was...

Lattice system is the core problem with the lack of depth.

There is no thinking, zerg the zerg lanes.

Specialization is nice because, quite simply, it makes you special. That's always nice. The point is to create a system where players can change their character in ways that allows for a number of crazy combinations. What if Fodollah was able to control his top gun from the driver seat by trading off other stuff to make his harasser the best? What if Vonic was able to use drifters and jump jets simultaneously, at the expense of being unable to drive ground vehicles? What if Klypto got a coaxial MG on his vanguard at the expense of all Hunter Cloak levels past rank 1? That sort of thing.

What I really liked about PS1 was how you could merge roles in interesting ways. A cloaker with combat engineering could run around and drop autoturrets behind people undetected. You could see someone with a bolt driver and a repair tool, or a MAX that carried around ammunition. A system of endless possibilities. That's the sort of thing PS2 needs. Planetside 1 didn't have a logistics system, or extremely deep base benefits, but it definitely allowed for more creativity on a smaller scale. PS2 is just so bland and predictable right now. It needs that extra level of basic flexibility that the current class system heavily limits.

IMO, the core issue isn't the lattice system itself, but, the conditions under which it has been implemented. PS2's continent layouts, are, to be frank, atrocious. Hundreds of bases per map, with only about 12 of them actually being relevant to the development of the strategic situation on that continent. That's nuts. In PS1, capturing one base would open up a whole bunch of possibilities. If you were pushing territory in PS1, you were either doing it to secure or deny some helpful base benefits, or to open up more lattice links. In PS2, over half the bases on the map are totally irrelevant, and are only there to make you waste your time, at best. And to make matters worse; the bases that actually do matter, hub bases, are almost always terrible fights, because they're by and large based on the level design ideas of pre-beta PS2, like towers and main facilities. Even the newer and fresher ones are made out of pre-beta building blocks.

However, I don't even think making bases matter in PS2 is a good idea. WIthout any kind of intercontinental gameplay, everybody is promised a spot on each continent, so every faction feels entitled to base benefits just by being there. There are no choices to attack certain continents or anything like that. Everybody just gets put on the same playground to throw trash at each other. It's no fun. You want to push into VS territory to deny them certain base benefits? Too bad. They're all just going to leave and attack you on another continent and come back tomorrow, or you're going to wind up in a stalemate with no other options. It's all so one-dimensional.

It's an interesting idea, but it's one that would be pretty difficult to tack on this late into the game's life cycle. This kind of flexibility is interesting for the players but challenging to balance, and the more interesting the combinations, the bigger the challenge--after all, the fun of such a system is creating the most overpowered combo you can. There's also the issue that players would just create multiple characters in order to enjoy all of the best combinations with no sacrifice.

Depends on how it's implemented; and it can be done in so many different ways. It could be extremely simple, like, drop air vehicle prices by 25%, but in exchange adding 25-50 resources to the price of all infantry consumables. Or the system could entail the level of crazy in-depth stuff PS1 had going. The potential is truly endless.

Though, Forumside would definitely love the balance problems.

Logistics and resources have to happen for many reasons, along with a vehicle revamp. It just the most simple way to accomplish many things at once.

1. Vehicles are all glorified infantry farming machines. This has to end. Vehicles need to be more specialized and purposeful. This would mean buffs in some areas, nerfs in some areas and the removal of some weapons from some vehicles. General purpose everything was a huge mistake and needs to change.
2. In order for vehicles to be balanced, they must become a finite resource, rather than the infinite resource they currently are. This requires the completion of a system that will make them a valuable commodity rather than something you can just spawn whenever you want it, repeatedly, without worry.
3. The entire scale of the game is wasted as long as there is virtually zero need for any tactical or strategic mobility. Currently most people, myself included simply redeploy and instant action virtually everywhere. When we have to go somewhere that redeploy and instant action doesn't go you just have one guy with a spawn beacon take a ESF there and then redeploy the squad.
4. There has to be a check and balance for both consumable spam and force multiplier spam (vehicles/max units). Ideally it would be a system that encourages you to specialize into one type of force multiplier due to its cost.
5. It needs to be more rewarding to take out force multipliers (vehicles/max units). Currently its 'meh, they will just spawn another'. A lot of infantry players simply leave fights completely once more than a handful of vehicles show up due to what they see as the pure futility of destroying them at the detriment to their own progression, stats and fun (its not fun fighting hordes of vehicles as infantry in the current state of the game and many people consider vehicle vs vehicle to be extremely boring and shallow as well).
6. There needs to be more to the game than just capturing facilities for some silly empires that not many people actually care about. People need more reasons to care about their empires and more reasons to have open field fights not necessarily at facilities.

i don't think balance would be as bad as you think, balance atm must at some point assume that EVERYONE in the empire could spawn with X weapon at the same time, and theres no penalty in terms of still being able to pull an MBT or whatever.

everyone can be everything at any time. but in PS1, certing something was at the expense of something else, if that guy was HA then there was something he DIDN'T have as a result.

a natural balance occurs, even if everyone did cert HA it would leave the army deficient to some degree in another area.

I thumbs up this simply because you have a good point.

A Server Smash is a 2 hour slug fest with an end goal. That's why it works. It's basically a match. A side actually wins. It's also NOT THREE SIDED.
I like 3 sided battles but for many reasons, only 2 sides going at it in all out war fare where there's a true winner in the end has way better results.

I'm not sure if I agree with the specifics here, but it's a good concept.

The possibilities are endless. The specifics I've mentioned are just for example's sake.

i got bored with 'matches' in 1997 about a year after quake 1 came out, and almost every other fps does them........ can we not have one that doesn't?

I'm confused if this can be interpreted as "I'm so hipster that I don't even like Server Smashes because they are basically like matches".
Not trying to be insulting here, that's just what it sounded like.
When it comes to server smashes -
I don't either, as they are now. it's just massing brainlessly. It starts out all organized when it sets up but quickly devolves into the grotesque blobs of polygon sex and the stuff of one's nightmares.
And matches are pretty lame too. I love having an open world like PS1, PS2, WW2O ect ect. However, even PS1 and in WW2O, there was at least a hint of end game. In WW2O there in fact WAS an End Game. A match in WW2O would take I think 2 years. After that the game resets. Imagine that. A 2 year long match? Come on man, that's nothing close to a 15 minute quickie you'd get from ye-olde Quake back in the day.
PS2 even has a reset; when Warp Gates rotate. There you go. That's you game-set-match. You have 30 days to win the war. After that, points will be added, tallies will be pulled and home bases + warp gates will be rotated. Victor declared and 5 minutes later - Servers reset with new positions and ta-da! New War! How hard is that?

When I played PS1, I didn't see an end-game of any kind. Just a very fun game that I would be willing to play for more than 20 minute sessions. The big deal is that PS1 is a totally persistent game. Whatever changes between today and tomorrow in PS1 is 100% decided by player actions. Unfortunately, they will keep continue to push PS2 in the direction of the 'match' format. What happens between today and tomorrow in PS2 will be decided by RNG, loosely influenced by player actions, and will be reset a few hours later. I strongly doubt that alerts or continent locking will be the last features to serve that purpose.

I'm almost tempted to say that PS2 no longer has the potential to become persistent. The more they change the strategic game mechanics, the further PS2 retreats from the prospect of fitting that persistent open format PS1 had. I don't like it one bit. I just hope it's not too late; and if it is, I hope we'll one day see Planetside 3. Unfortunately, there's no reason to believe PS2 will ever be steered in the right direction.

pretty much what doombro said.
I didn't go into an 'endless war' expecting a win condition. yes you got a bonus for dominating all enemy home conts but it was just a bonus.

The flaws of the game have been pointed out in many articulate and well-reasoned posts for almost 2 years now. Players have proposed some good ideas, and even some great ideas, on how to improve the game, yet the game doesn't change. Heck, the roadmap doesn't even change, indicating nothing will be done into the foreseeable future. I am left with only 2 conclusions. Either the devs don't have to the time to implement changes or they are unwilling. In the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter which is correct. We are stuck with a bottlenecked, redeploying, anti-meta zergfest. Enjoy!

This concept limits the use of equipment and provides specialization without removing the ability for everyone to use everything. I like it! Something PS2 should have had from the beginning.

The question is, will SOE approve? I always assumed they didn't do something like this due to the Free-to-Play model and wanting it open-ended to maximize income. That being said, the system you provided does keep it open ended but more restrictive of how much/often you can use certain things which might remove incentive for someone to purchase something...

not getting anything like the game i wanted (or even just PS1 with a netcode and GFX update) DID remove that incentive for me.