how to make this game more FTP friendly.

so after this 4 day long 2X xp weekend iv noticed that its just not as fofilling to realy be a free to play player BUT. that i cant by the over priced boosts or membership that the people that do have have.

so how can this game become more FTP player friendly and draw in more people willing to spend cash ?

simple. change the XP output in the game.

most people are turned off on how long it takes to get up the certs to buy weapons or upgrade your armour or everything else. if your a sub par casual player to make 1000Certs can take well over a week. sometimes longer. depending if you are solo or if you are rolling with a squad or platoon even then it takes a lot of time for some of the more sub par players.

now dont get me wrong someones going to say " well maybe you should get good " is there truly a " get good " in this game with the unbalance of the weapons or the lattancy that can happan at a moments notice and get you killed by a VS sniper that shots while cloaked ? or geting one shot by a weapon that we all know should not of one shot you ?

no there is no get good

if thy boosted XP output would be that simple. and here is why

by boosting the XP output even by 1.5 % this would allow the FTPs the ability to feel most of what the payed players do and also give them a better cert gain.

it would allow players that cant play good to cert out items that can help them over come there lacking of skill in the game. and also help them compeat with the players that own the memberships and have certed out or bought everything in the game. and are steamrolling them.

now there are probaly other ways that this can be done but the fastest change i can see would be a boost in xp since certs are linked to XP gain.

the other option would be to unlink the XP gain from cert gain and give a blanket ammount of certs per X ammount of kills.

What's your rush? Just play the game and have fun.

If they boosted XP output, you would just grow accustomed to that level eventually too. Better still, another player might come along shortly after you and feel that experience is too slow still, whether or not he knew about the appeasal of your plea. Do we have to accommodate him just because he opened his mouth? what about a litany who call for the rate to go up and up, knowing that getting the rate to rise is that easy?

Don't be silly. If the only experience you are searching for in this game is from killing other players, then it doesn't matter how highly you raise the gain, because you're not hitting a good rate of killing players anyway. Moreover, if you are proposing this out of envy for other players - the ones you call "gud?" - getting equipment at a faster rate then you, then they will still be acquiring equipment faster than you and nothing will have been resolved. We can also put all of this aside since, since you feel like you're having difficulty killing players, especially at a rate by which you believe it profittable, then simply raising the rate of gamification won't help you earn where it really matters.

My advice: if you can't shoot, support the people who are doing the shooting, and slowly the shooting skill will come to you as well. Support experience is something of a big deal in this game.

It's cute that you think if players steamrolling you in this game it's because they have unlock everything...

This game is extremely friendly to F2Pers, starting with the fact that the default gear, without unlocking anything, is already 100% competitive.

It's just very unfriendly to new players. But the free weapons are some of the best in the game, and experienced players would 'steamroll' you just as hard on a brand new character with nothing unlocked.

Besides, unlocking new gear really isn't that difficult, even when playing 100% F2P.
But why not throw the devs some money if you enjoy the game? They won't be able to support the servers forever. More so when players are so cheap that they refuse to spend a dime.

OP: Memberships are pricy, and I don't blame most players for not buying one. I went 6 months without one because of the price. I think Daybreak should either offer a cheaper option without Daybreak cash for just Planetside 2 or just lower the cost by 20%. But..... they're the ones with the stats. Maybe a player's first 2 hours during a week could give a cert boost to help casuals? The grind is real in this game, and I agree it could use a little adjusting.

There's no question that certed vehicles will steamrole non-certed vehicles, if we're talking average players. Now that even Flak 4 doesn't do a single thing to counter c4 spam the infantry game is punishing for new players as well. I'm a BR99 with a membership and my medic doesn't even have that last 1000 cert rank yet. Of course skill comes in to play, but certed out gear helps a ton, especially if we're talking vehicles.

Being "successful" in this game consists of succeeding in several components:

• eye-brain-hand coordination, this comes easier for some and is an insurmountable barrier for others (like me)
• knowing the map, this comes to everyone but takes time
• having a certain amount of critical hardware, this comes to everyone and also takes a variable amount of time
• general awareness, this depends on the player's instinct
• internet connection, this is beyond the control of the developers

Only one of the five points that I have mentioned has anything to do with XP/Cert gain and in the grand scheme of things, it is quite minor. Increasing the XP gain of "free" or "non-subscribed" players will have a negligible effect on your gameplay experience.

In other words: what you are asking for will not help you.

I was amazed to be able to play such a good game for free and still get certs! Although I did eventually get a membership once I knew I would be able to cope with the brutal environment.

Lack of situational awareness and weapon handling skill are the biggest killers, not poor weapons. Even then, waiting a week for new stuff doesn't seem such a massive burden but maybe I'm just too old as I remember remember having to save up for things. OP could always join an outfit or run with pubby squads for some support and training by example.

There are quite a few free handouts to new players now, reflex sights, laser sights, armour etc. that you used to have to pay for, as well as directive rewards like implant packs, ES camo and extra certs, as well as the occasional free weapon (I got the platinum NS11A as a Summer Reward as well as the NS helmet and platinum Tanto).

My advice to OP is learn the things that earn big certs if that is what OP wants: ammo resupply, repair, healing, rezzing, hacking, recon and destroyinh vehicles. Put certs into the things that help with that, like maxing ammo packs, support tools, hacking ability buying C4 and tank mines...............someone has already said that new weapons don't make better players and I'll add that killing planetmans is not the fastest way to earn certs but you can still do that as a Medic, Infil or Engie if that is your main interest in the game.

I agree membership is pretty pricey, but compared to other PS4 games in their deluxe package they are not any longer so expensive.
Farming cert as non membership user has several common ways. Let's say ants and being the main zerg Sundi second grand to me 1300cert as member and double XP within an hour.
There comes PS main issue: the first 3000 cert are so easy to get, every new player gets used to it and starts shopping crap. Like guns once bought most realize that they still suck, but won't get it is lacking their gear. But they won't get easy cert any longer.
So I see no problem in certs I have only some guns but my scythe, Valk, magrider and harassar are fully upgraded, not with everything but enough to support.
I subscribed due I got pissed off the queue, the dbc and extra XP are just nice to haves.
So from my point of view DBG did everything correct to get my money. But a cheaper subscription would lead me to purchase one more

This basically already happened. When the game started you got 100xp flat for a kill, 100xp flat for any vehicle kill. And many other XP types gave less or much more sporadically. You were weeks to months for 1000xp.

Right now, the certs are basically rolling in. It doesnt take long to earn 1000certs, and it takes little time to get any infantry class up to fighting condition especially since the default weapons are usually some of the best weapons you'll have access too. Vehicles take a bit longer, but without requirements forcing you to earn xp in these vehicles before upgrading the system allows you to easily get the minimum requirements for a fighting ready vehicle.

Theres no need to up it again, even with only 1.5% increase (I know you mean a 1.5x increase but I cant let this one slide).

I'd instabuy PS2 only membership (don't care for other games) if it were around 7-8$ per month, or ~50$ for a year. Don't get me wrong, but 15$ is a price of an AAA-game on steam sale.

Membership has its privileges. What is your character's name that you used for the Double XP event? Just trying to see XP/Cert earnings.

With membership you get 500 DBG cash and approx. 1500 certs per month on top of the extra XP gain. That amount of in-game cash and certs already is worth the month member fee: you can get 2 new weapons x month.

From that perspective the membership is for free with a 12 months subscription.

However, as others said, you do not NEED to get new weapons and with the 1500 free certs you get from level 1 to 15 you can equip the default ones with everything you want, plus invest in engie/medic tools.

Only with vehicles does certing make a difference.When it comes to infantry, starting weapons are very competitive if not top of the line(Orion,T1 Cycler etc).

You just need to max out the Ability slots and tools of your preferred classes and then,IF you want to,focus on either a MBT,lightning or (if you re up for it) an ESF.But focus on a single vehicle in the beggining.

We re talking about 10-15k certs here which isnt much for a perfectly competitive setup.

ALSO in my opinion,cert grinding should never be a conscious effort in such a fun game.Almost everything i ve unlocked has come naturally while playing and i ve always been FTP.(Though ive supported the devs and my swagness by purchasing cosmetics of course...a lot of em! )

Better tutorial would be my vote. Handing certs out just creates a "yeah, that was nice, but what have you done for me lately?" mentality.

In all seriousness Daybreak, your explanation of a vast and daunting game is terrible. Its plainly obvious that your tutorial explains nothing, such as what waypoints are, faction identity ( like seriously, if it worked as intended, then new players wouldn't spawn in and shoot the nearest thing to them, almost always allies), hell add some backstory to create some sense of immersion instead of frustration.

I don't think this game can be practically more F2P friendly.

Honestly the best thing a new player can do is shell out 14$ for a 1 month membership and use a 500DBC claim on a 7-day XP boost for a week you know you'll have a lot of play time (preferably covering the double xp weekend at the end of the month).

This will help you get all your tools upgraded and weapon attachments unlocked quickly so you have an effective loadout on each class. From there you can start branching into buying a few new guns and making vehicle loadouts. (That 50 cert lvl 1 deployment shield is one of the best 50 certs you will ever spend in this game)

You also get those 3 character slots that never go away after your subscription ends so you can make characters for a second server or something.

Also, just to add..

It takes less certs now to actually do something. When the game released, you had timers on how often you could pull say a Max or Lightning. Want to pull one more frequently than every 10 minutes? You had to invest certs. Want AMS for your sundy? Certs.

There was also no cert gain for "damage". If you used a burster max to get that lib down to 10% health and he flew off to heal? No certs. None.

No certs for ribbons.

It took me years to reach BR 100.


I think things are fine right now. You can rip a new character up to BR20 in one night. If you want more: Get a membership. Use the 500dbc each month to buy a boost for use during double XP weekend.

Maybe I'm too old, I remember back in the early 2000's I could buy complete games for $20 and they had online multiplayer free servers for 5 years or more.... those were the days .

This!
Secondly: this is not an option anymore, greed rules the world now...
And lastly : This was the idea of first battle.net server, and for example Unreal Tournament, which apart from official servers had loads of fan made servers.

Those days are gone for good, along with good music...

Um, no.

The only reason those games had servers is because guys like me ran them. With money from our own pockets.

This game is FREE. Nothing out of pocket to play it. No membership required ongoing. The servers that run it are not just some leftover PC that some dev had sitting around in a corner. The servers are not merely running a copy of client code running headless either. They are running separate dedicated code.

This thread is starting to reek of entitlement. If you want to play with the fun toys someone has to pay.

You are also welcome to shell out $60 plus double that for expansions for the latest AAA title. That's an alternative option for you. You can also play those $20 for 5 years games. They are still out there.

^ This. I'd love if the tutorial would take more inspiration form the lore or would even be, a as far as possible, a copy of the old 2012 Blur cinematic trailer for Planetside 2. Just swap the NC guy in the tutorial for the players chosen faction. Added to that should be a more in depth VR training with stuff like:

- Something like a shooting range with moving puppets/targets, to get beginners learning how

to lead shots *cough, BF4 test zone, cough*, what bullet-drop is or in which situation hip-fire or ADS

is appropriate

- Puppets that return fire (or shoot all the time on torso height), when shot, to simulate a

reacting enemy

- Puppets that are equipped with Nanoweave to simulate the added damage resistance

- Heavy assault targets with turned on overshield

- A place where you can test class abilities with added explanation

- A short overview about implants and how they work

- Bright and big letters that tell you how to better your aim (g. ex. low DPI settings), what

situational awareness is, your 'regular' role as infantry type X with ability type Y etc

- A How To join platoons, squads

- With some of your regular interactable objects like generators, terminals to hack, bridge terminals

and building parts of your regular maps (for learning their use and layout)

- Links to helpful videos and such

AND WHEN YOU'RE DONE WITH THE TUTORIAL, REWARD THE PLAYER WITH SOMETHING. LIKE 500-1000 CERTS, A UNIQUE GUN OR A HAT.

Should work for vehicles too. Just make a god-dang comprehensive and easily accessible tutorial and VR training IN GAME. Not that you have to look up dozens of videos to actually get a grasp of the game OUTSIDE of the darn game.