Anyone a fan of the cert prices?

The unlocks are rarely flat out 'better' than the default weapons. Take the TX1 repeater for instance. It's got more DPS than the 1000c unlockable pistol, which is pretty dang good; some of the carbines and LMGs don't have much of a difference to speak of.
That aside, if there's going to be any drastic increase in unlockable effectiveness, cert prices should certainly drop a good deal.

Most people don't want to unlock EVERYTHING anyways, they only want to unlock a few things with a few attachments for a few classes with a few accessories and a few vehicle attachments. And, most importantly, no one has put in hundreds of hours yet. The person with the highest battlerank has only played 2 days, 6 hours.

The point is that the time required to unlock stuff is insanely high and that there is no system to regain and re spend the certs you already have. Ultimately, people are going to get frustrated when they have played the game for a few weeks and still not even made a dent in the amount of unlocks available. Not only that, but the constant feeling of restriction that whatever choices you make will lead to you becoming even more specialized. Vehicle upgrades are the worst for this where so many of them are just essential and cost a lot as well.

The unlock system sucks and the high prices promote cert farming, discourage variation and promote narrow specialization and lead to a feeling of no progress. Ultimately, I want to play Planetside 2 and choose my loadouts as required by the scenario, I don't want to have to grind for hundreds of hours to finally get the loadouts that I want. The gameplay mechanics of Planetside 2 are strong enough to keep people on their own, the insanely priced unlock system isn't needed.

MAX weapon prices could stand to be cut in half seeing as you actually need two of them.

The only time the cert prices are an issue are with the dedicated AA weapons like left burster, G2A and skyfart.
1000 CRT to be doubly better at taking down aircraft? WTF.

Those are straight upgrades and -necessary- (at least atm) so I consider this predatory at the price they are at.

If we had incremental increases in certing in AA it wouldn't be so bad, but now its either single burster MAX or pay 1000 CRT (i.e. the cumulative amount of like 10 upgrades for your character/rifle)

Oh don't get me wrong, I agree with what you're saying. I find it to be quite boring being so limited to the mundane defaults for up to 1000certs where the guns are sidegrides (instead of the 250certs which are basically downgrades).

I was just commenting on a few of the things you said to try and take a more neutral stance in this thread.

"804.56 Hours" for one class, and classes take much less time to get what you desire than say... any vehicle. and... MAXes. The cert system for MAXes just needs to be redone, it's ridiculous.

Im just going to leave this here
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/so-i-did-some-math.51947/

I'm all for the current cert prices. Just about as high as they could reasonably go for those not interested in supporting the game financially. Certs are coming in more rapidly than ever before (earned just shy of 200 in my 5.5 hour session yesterday (admittedly some really good runs in there)) and is honestly more generous than it needed to be (countered by all the higher prices I suppose).

Besides, SC is so ridiculously cheap these days that even the most costly of weapons has a real world value of no more than $3.50 (or as low as ~$2.33 if you buy during a 3X points sale), which is more than reasonable for a free 2 play game of any type, let alone one of this scale. It is really hard to justify not spending any cash on this game at those rates if you're getting 10s or 100s of hours of enjoyment out of the game.

Prices are alright by me.

Think of the people who will see this game and try to pick it up even.. next week? They will be completely overpowered and won't bother trying to pick up in a fight where it takes forever to get something decent and most people buy what they want, buy boosts, or have been playing long enough to have their classes set.

-Yes, the game was made to be impossible to get everything. But what fun is that, to grind for years. Assuming you only get partial items for each class, a few attachments and utilities, and a few vehicle upgrades, that'll still be a large amount of certs needed which will take you multiple days straight.

"It's meant to be played for years." Yeah, but SOE also said they want people to be able to pick up the game and not be at a disadvantage. They wanted people who haven't played in 6 months to be able to jump back in and have a chance. It doesn't look like this is the case yet.

TOO HIGH.

I WONT BE PLAYING MUCH LONGER

Only certain things should cost 1000 -- shotguns(multi-class), HA special veapons
NOT AA, rocket pods, MAX weapons(cause 1 hand is 1/2 of it), ...

Especially if they're "side-grades". It would be understandable if they were actually worth it.

I like the food.

I like the prices.

Here's my take.

I mainly do two things. Sometimes I snipe with the incredibly usable V10, and now that I've gotten used to it, I can aim well enough that over 50% of shots I fire are headshot kills. In those ******** extended base siege battles, which are basically kill farming for decent snipers, that goes up to like 75%, minimum. The other thing I do is pilot a tank, and I aim with a mag turret as well I do with a sniper rifle. Most times HA's poke their head at medium or long range to rocket snipe me, I kill them on the first shot. On a bad run where I make a serious mistake, I get around 15-20 kills before dying. On a day when I have a competent gunner, I basically farm infantry and enemy vehicles endlessly until I get bored and suicide. The last few days, I've literally had my runs ended more often by me getting bored or crashing (so annoying) than by getting blown up.

I don't think this happens because I'm super special awesome. A huge reason I can do all that **** is because I'm a Founder, having unlocked many of the best infantry weapons by default and having a huge weapon headstart for vehicles because of SC. Lets be real. VS Sniper with V10 vs starting rifle. Enormous advantage. VS Magrider with Saron gunner vs default secondary. Enormous advantage.

Let me boil that down to the tl;dr version, down to the details that matters:

Early cash shop purchases gave me a big edge to start the kill farming.
I have a killwhore playstyle.
I get a lot of certs.

The prices are awesome for a guy like me. For most players, though? For people who didn't start with a big cash shop infusion, don't drive a tank, don't fly a fighter, and aren't in the top 20% of infantry marksmen? The guys who play the game with average skill level who just do plain ole ground-pounding and actually go after objectives? Yeah, they're ******* horrible for those guys. They really are, sorry, fullstop. And oops, that latter group is 70% of the playerbase.

And that's going to be the duality of this argument until the next round of cert rebalances, if that ever happens.

People whose playstyle gives them a lot of certs who falsely believe it's their magical skill: Oh yeah, it's soooooooooooo easy, and you must be sooooooooooo bad for not getting ten-thousand certs per hour, l2p! btw, I'm amazingly awesome.
Everyone else: I just want to play the game and get a good gun.

Edit: If I sound pissed off, I literally just had the game freeze on a frame where I saw the muzzle flash of my turret with correct aim on the rear armor of an enemy vanguard which was already pouring out black smoke. That exact moment, no exaggeration.

I'm ok with the cert prices for the certifications. The prices for the weapons are ridiculous and bear no relation to the actual effectiveness of the weapon in some cases. I'd say that 50 certs/hour is a pretty reasonable expectation for a good non-subbed player (20 hours for 1K certs). Tthat would be fine except for the fact that saving for a 1K weapon means you make zero progress on certs.

Almost every single vehicle weapon is substantially more powerful than the stock equipment and buying them not only makes your vehicles more powerful, it also free's up cert points for class/vehicle upgrades. Long story short you give them money, they make you more powerful. Yeah you can grind up to the same point, but they have said they want this game to take years to grind through. On that kind of time scale the advantage that the paid weapons and XP bonuses confer is going to be pretty damn substantial.

On what planet does it make sense to put some players at a massive disadvantage and then justify it by saying "Its just paying for convenience, they can just grind to match" when it literally takes years to get the same upgrades and equipment. Who in the hell would play any game for that long under those conditions? I get that they gotta make money, but damn. There are better ways.

You hit the nail on the head for vehicles. Starting with a few SC purchases on vehicles is a _huge_ advantage. It's less about the main guns, though. The secondaries are just such enormous upgrades.

For fighters, the cash money is in your secondary. Both the AA and AV primary turrets for fighters are kinda mediocre at their chosen task, not particularly better than the already weak default. But AA missiles are killer at what they do, and rocket pods are still enormously effective. You can't even compare a stock fighter with one sporting one of those two.

It's kinda the same way for tanks. For tanks, the stock cannon arguably is the best all-around. The AV versions typically deal between 10-20% more damage, but they have next to no splash for most of them, and needing to deal with HA's as a tank is a reality. The HE versions typically increase splash by about 66%, but deal way lower vehicle damage, so it puts you at a big disadvantage when the enemy tank rolls up. These are some of the few genuine "sidegrades".

But the secondaries? For a Magrider, having a competent Saron gunner puts you at a huge advantage vs any other tank using the stock gun at any range. The other powerful secondaries are way less usable, but still very powerful if used right. The NC rocket is dumbfire, but it hits like a truck, so if you're willing to rush down an enemy tank (very doable with a Van) and have a good gunner, it can wreck.

And you highlighted the even bigger issue. 1000 certs worth of upgrades on a vehicle gives you a pretty huge edge, especially when you're talking about something like chassis upgrades on a magrider. The guy who is trying to farm it is crippled and static in progression as you continuously get stronger.

asdf

I think the issue is that people don't want to use default weapons.

If it takes you one week at the least to change your default weapon to something else, then that is going to feel like it's going to take forever.

If instead of having the DEFAULT and the END GAME weapons as your only options, I think it would be much better to have gradually more expensive weapons.
( example: 250,500,750 and 1000 with small improvements )

This would challenge the more patient to go directly for the 1000 version and people that don't have as much time will still be able to get a new gun.

THEY DO HAVE GUNS FOR 200, 500, and 700 ALREADY