I'd like to start off with pointing out that this is obviously not so much about discussing the balance, but more the general weird design currently floating around. Essencial Unlocks Let's start off with what I like to call "Essencial Unlocks" related to mostly weaponry. There are quite a few that I consider essencial, but only one set of unlocks that really stick out of the whole thing. And that would be the AA Rocket Launcher and Flares. The general rocket launcher is fine for fighting vehicles, but nobody can hit jack-**** in the air with it. We all know that. And that is actually where the problem begins. Due to the fact that this weapon is essencial for heavy classes to fight off other Aircraft, a lot of people started buying it (because we all know how unreliable our pilots are. They probably watch a soap opera back at the Warpgate). This is good for SOE, but actually bad for the game itself. Because Flares on the other hand cost you a ****ton of Certs to unlock. And that means, that we now have a certain imbalance between the Aircraft and Infanty. Solution? Stop putting stuff that is needed to actually play the damn game on such high cert costs or one on "buy naow" and the other on "unlock later". Lock-On Rocket Launchers should be available for everyone, the same goes with Flares. Please revisit your current unlocked items and consider lowering cert point costs for things that are just simply upgrades, not sidegrades. Some things are needed to fight your war, you know. Cert Prices And here is where **** really hit the fan. Let me just list a few examples. The TL;DR Solution is to cut Cert Prices by about 50% across the board, with some adjustments to lower higher unlock costs by another 50%. Weapons cost 1000 Certs for the most part. That is a ******* huge amount of Certs. Average casuals will not gain this very quickly. I know this is made so that people pay for the weapons, but seriously, all you do is drive players off. Your gameplay isn't very imaginative to begin with, since it's a Shooter. And a Shooter only survives on weapon diversity. By locking people out of this pretty much essencial aspect of gameplay, you are boring people and losing potential customers. There is other weird stuff. Squad Leader COLORED SMOKE for 50?! each. That means for Squad Leaders that they need to sink 200 Cert points, just so that they can lead any of the 4 Squads if need be with Smoke Signals for the Galaxy, etc, pp. Same goes with the Squad Beacon unlock. Upgrade cost for the Beacon is btw ridiculous. Squad Orders should be available to Squad Leaders right away. We are talking about very important features here, that should be available without spending points at all for the most part. I am okay with the Command Channel and Reinforcement prices, we don't want everyone and their mother doing that. There is also the absurd prices for unlocks for Aircraft, as well as some weapon attachments and such. C4 is probably the one everyone thinks is bogus for the price. Also, why the hell do I have to unlock Smoke grenades for a small fortune of Cert points? Those should be available for everyone at all times, they are important tactical options >_> Inconsistent Design I can not help but notice that somebody at SOE started to think about Cert Points and Unlocks and appearently at some point he or she either STOPPED doing it or somebody else took over. So, here is my little feedback regarding it. Since you have already allowed us to upgrade/unlock weapons and their attachments across multiple classes, why the hell do we have to unlock stuff like Suit Upgrades for EVERY SINGLE CLASS. I thought the whole point of classes is to allow a diversity in play. This basically means right now that you should decide for one class you wanna play all year and unlock everything important for that one class. This is actually again harmful to the gameplay. It's a shooter, not a RPG. It's okay to SHARE stuff across all of the classes. So, make sure that if you unlock something for one class, that can be used by all, that is unlocked across the board. Obviously unique suit perks for specific classes should be excluded. Also, all things bought should be saved on the station account, not the soldier. Lock it by faction if you need to, but do not bind everything to one character. It's a MMOFPS, not a MMORPG. And even there most things are useable by multiple characters. That's all.
Agree on essential certs, things that add so much to a class should either be super cheap or unlocked from the start. Making stuff like flares take days to grind is just silly, there should really be a cheap (say, 50 cert) initial upgrade with further upgrades that decrease cooldown time, or something like that. Cert prices suck but that's how F2P works; if you don't like it, don't buy in to begin with. The 1000 cert weapons could stand to be toned down by a bit (like, to 800-900, definitely not by half), but otherwise, time to unlock stuff is roughly in line with other F2P games. Ultimately, the fact that you don't want to play for 30 hours to unlock a weapon is how SOE makes their money; if they lower their cert prices then all that money disappears. Agree on account-level purchases, the fact that they're not there is just silly.
I just want to say that "diversity" isn't what shooter games are about. It's actually part of the problem... Well, weapon diversity that is. What I mean is that there are so many farkin weapons to unlock and upgrade that in the end the game turns into a second job (not to mention game play balance is very very hard to achieve when there are as many unique gun options as pixels on a screen). I don't play games for the labour, I play them for the entertainment. They're a hobby, not a career and having to spend hours of my life beefing up eighty different weapons just to begin having fun is just stupid. I do agree though that the cert prices are ridiculous. 100 for a grip to reduce recoil? I'm not even a fan of the weapon upgrade concept but if it's going to be a part of the game at least make the bare necessities easy to obtain. Being forced to do it all once per character, not account, is just as bad. As for the AA thing; MAX flak cannon. Holy crap, I love that thing. So far I can't fully tell if it's sub-par to other AA weapons, but it chases them away or forces them to land and repair every time. Either way, I just prevented a bombing run against our invasion/defence operation. The only thing I dislike is that it doesn't bring in certs... Like, at all. I do want to dual mount them soon and see if that allows me to actually shoot stuff down. Hopefully it will work. Maybe having teams of two or three dedicated AA MAX with flak cannons will be a great investment for squads.
It might be better to just spend points on the Air-To-Air Rockets and shoot people down with that easily. Just sayin' Diversity is key in gameplay. That goes for any game, but for shooters especially. Since they are very, very stale at heart. And I agree with you, it's more important to have less and more interesting weaponry than just a ****ton of them. For example, MAX could really profit from being able to use their fists to knock out Infantry. Not to mention diversity for the classes would be good too. Giving Heavy Assault a Lockdown like the strange bubble in Halo, would make them quite interesting. Also would allow you to make a short protective wall with multiple heavy assault that people can run past for example
Heavy classes aren't supposed to fight aircraft. Maxes are supposed to fight aircraft. Any aircraft that actually manages to get hit by the AA launcher is so horrendously bad, the pilot doesn't deserve to be flying. Those things are slow as hell and they can't turn at all. It's so easy to outrun them. Flares are for suckers. Colored smoke? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA why would you ever want or need that. If you can't win with a 0 cert rank 0 nothing unlocked character, then no amount of money or grinding is going to help you. People are destroying you because they are more skilled and you need to step your game up. You have zero reason to ever play a different character, so the unlocks being character specific isn't a problem. Yes, you are supposed to "main" a class if you want to get anywhere with upgrading it. Doesn't mean you can't still be effective in another role if you need to, because there is nothing you cannot do with the default stuff you're given. I have 15670 SC, and I haven't spent any of it, because I don't see any real need to. I'm rank 14 and all I've upgraded so far is my medical applicator, now going to unlock the "flare"-LMG for my heavy assault, since it's obviously the best gun for HA and it's only 250 certs.
Essential (learn to spell OP) Unlocks is entirely in your mind. You make no mention of the AA Max default loadout. You also don't reflect on how effective the default guns on the sunderer and the secondaries for the MBT are actually very good vs aircraft. Furthermore, you don't account that there are turrets to fight aircraft with (though I think they should be buffed at the moment). Non-homing AA is usually cheaper than homing AA. Check out the skyguard for the lightning. Cert prices... this one is a touchy one around here but you're dead wrong again. 1000 is a lot for a casual player, and that's okay because the casual player should not get their hands on many of the 1000 cert unlocks until they understand the game well enough to use them. That's why they have the option of buying it if they feel so inclined. You get cert points offline as well, so if you were really were casual you would still keep up somewhat (~1000 cert points offline in 4-6 months - THAT IS HUGE!). When they said you could quit for 6 months and come back they meant it. You could quit, come back, and buy one of those adored 1000 cert unlocks everyone seems to be dying for. There's a TON of LESS THAN 1000 guns that everyone seems to ignore. These are what you should put certs into if you feel the default guns aren't strong enough but aren't willing to save 'till 1000. The 1000 guns are mostly sidegrades from the mid-range cert guns. All the squad leader stuff... you're talking about 200 certs or less... If you can't get that in a week then maybe this game isn't for you after all. You're given 6 classes with different guns, the MAX has two different loadouts by default too. Did I mention you can spawn any vehicle you want with zero certification? Sounds like a TON of diversity from the DEFAULT of a FREE TO PLAY game.
Except it works fine. With a single burster you can bring an aircraft down to 50% health before it's even in range to start shooting. You think he's going to take the chance that he won't die? Hell no, he's going to run away. You just saved some lives. You performed your role admirably.
OP, i agree with you completely. Some of their design choices are just straight up weird. They are in-consistent and make me want to quit playing until these inconsistencies are fixed. When the game was launched i fully expected to dump like $20 on launch however i refuse to ripped off for IN GAME ITEMS! this is a game, im not paying like $10 for a single in game weapon. I am getting the feeling that their are alot of elitest players here on the forums because your points are so absurdly obvious that i find it very very weird that everyone disagrees so strongly.
