Is cert gain driving away new players?

If you want to "max out" an ability, that will cost you a lot of certs. But the first levels of things are generally very cheap for almost the same gain. I think SOE are going for the "Easy to learn; hard to master" approach.
And to be honest, if you enjoy the game, you'd probably play it even if there was no advancement. If you don't enjoy playing it, you probably wouldn't have fun no matter how many certs you got.

This part is correct and what we have now. The issue is not the game, its the players. For some reason people cant have fun unless they are unlocking stuff. This game is not for everyone, if they cant have fun playing the game they should go play COD or BF. For me the certs just pile up, too busy playing the game to spend certs anyway.

To also be honest, this also works the other way round: If you enjoy the game, but not the advancement, you will start to enjoy the game less and maybe even dislike it to the point where you quit.

I think the simple reason here is that many unlocks (certifications as well as weapons) are flat out upgrades. If they weren't people wouldn't feel such a requirement to rank up the certs for those. It's not like people only ENJOY the advancement, they feel it to be a necessity to remain competetive. If this is the case or not is debatable, but the game balance does give you the impression now and then and the cert upgrade choices (with no downsides) make it worse.
If you had to give up on something, like say C4 taking up your grenade slot, or flak armor slightly reducing your armor vs bullets or the standard lib gun being on-par with the shop ones, people would be less inclined to call them upgrades and don't see the necessity to "grind" for them.

Explore and cap every base, kill 1,000 people and get bored of raiding with your Outfit before you quit the game due to slow point gain. That's not the point of the game.

Nonsense. People have been playing multiplayer FPS since the mid 1990's without any "character progression". Character progression is for WOW-clones.

The fun of a FPS is suppose to be that surge of endorphins you get in your brain when you outwit someone and shoot them dead. Character progression completely conflcts with this. Instead of outwitting your opponent, you outgrinded your opponent and won. Another reason to remove Orbital Strike from the game, it alters player behavior into something more akin to World Of Warcraft, players GRIND instead of PLAY.

Oh oops, hehe, I'm getting PS1 forum flashbacks.

SOE's recent patches to everything have nerfed this game more than certs which you don't need that many. Pick one class and cert it up to a good level - that doesn't take long and it shouldn't be the reason for playing either. You should be playing for the fun of it which, after nearly 200 hours for me coupled with the recent patches and what they have done is starting to wain. Ghost capping is BS, all the nerfs and buffs just confuse players (that's IF we even know about them) and two thirds of the continents aren't worth playing on leaving the one continent remaining having only 3 places fights ever happen and when they do, you can't see the enemy!

Sorry but I want more out of a game - something that shows at least some intelligent thought has gone into the process rather than the cluster-**** we're seeing now which is just going to drive players away.

Managed to get 653 certs in 6 hours.
Where's the problem?

No boosters were activated.

And honestly, I wasn't focused on farming. Just on destroying my enemy.

Btw. totally agree with you on that.

That's what I originally thought. Then the more I played I realized it's fine. I'm playing with 0% XP boost since I started playing (bought Lynx, Barrage and 2nd Burster with station cash though). I have my medic class pretty much where I want it (lvl 6 tool and aura, T1S with about 500 certs invested in it, TRV with about 550 certs invested in it and other minor things) and saving up 1000 certs to get a 1000 cert item (still haven't decided on it, might be the annihilator).

Yes. But I think the game does not incentivise poeple (enough) to focus on a single class/role. With the current system it encourages people to switch between classes and vehicles and therefore people see the need to stretch their certs over too many areas and then get the feeling that the game requires too much of a grind. For them it requires too much self-restraint which runs contrary to the game design (being able to switch between classes freely, having all vehicles to your disposal).

We are talking about people who do not have the time to play six hours straight and also, most likely, are less experienced and "hardcore" players then we are. The common cert gain is surely way below 100 certs/hour. Hell even mine is and I am certain that this also applies for most people in my outfit.
And it surely is for the "casuals" the thread is mostly focused on.

I agree with you "the more I played I realized it's fine". But I think that is the problem right there. Once you start playing for a bit, get used to the weapon, unlock a scope and a compensator or - if you are blessed with being able to handle the flight controls - some aircraft upgrades, you're golden.

As a brand new player however, you get murdered - for many reasons: you're still learning, you are undercerted in your current class/vehicle/aircraft compared to your opponent, hackers (sorry, had to . So, the feeling is that in order to even compete you have to grind certs and to me that is extremely off-putting when I just start playing a game. I can get into it later, when I know what I'm doing and why, but off the bat, no.

As was suggested, how about giving new accounts a one time boost, either in the form of 50% xp gain, a few hundred certs to spend on upgrades, etc. Maybe with the new player experience this will become less of an issue as people can try and practice with all guns and vehicles in VR, but that might be a while down the road still.

IMO most classes can handle themselves pretty well out of the box. The game is built around the idea of sidegrades and while that isn't always the case (example: fuel vs pods for ESFs) with infantry it respects that idea more. The situation you describe is jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none and it isn't an issue. Yes, certs don't come by that easily so early on you'll have to make a choice. But I think even after making that choice people are still able to handle themselves with the other classes.

In my case what I did was unlock the bolt action, get some basic low cert cost things for most classes and then picked medic to focus on. When I got my med tool and heal aura to level 6 I started putting points in other classes but mainly focusing on medic still. Now that I'm happy with it (I can heal and rez efficiently, I can kill buttloads of people with my TRV) I started putting more points in engineer and heavy.

As someone who plays a lot and have a subscription + booster, I'd say they should boost exp gains by at least 25% permanently. We need to face reality, MMO's and large scale FPS games like these need casual gamers. The less casual gamers there are, the less full this game feels. It's how it is with MMO's and large online games that need players to be fun. You really can't fill a game like this with only hardcore FPS players. Unless SOE is shooting for a niche game with a niche playerbase, which I highly doubt they are, they'll need to do something to cater to casual gamers more.

Just my opinion anyway. I don't need the extra exp bonus, but I know there are a lot of people out there that could benefit from it. It'd make people play more, be happier, and when people are happy they spend more money. Win/win all around.

I got 9000 certs so far. According to my stats I've played 2 hours per day average. Even without the occasional 50% boost I allow myself I'd be at 6000 - 7000 certs. And I don't even play with the focus of getting as much XP as possible. Meaning I also fly galaxies, use my AA Max or hunt ghost cappers.

With 6000 Certs you can fully upgrade 2 Inf classes or 1 Inf class and a vehicle or get several upgrades for different classes. And that in under 3 months.

This "I want it ALL, I want it NOW and I want it for FREE" attitude is annoying me. I've tested several F2P games and can smell P2WIN 5 miles against the wind. And PS2 is the first one I tried were I think the pay model is fair enough, not only to not drive me away after 2 weeks but to actualy reward it by spending some money.

I also don't understand when ppl are talking about "grinding". What is grinding in PS2 ? Camping at The Crown? I can get twice as much XP in the same time by moving out with my outfit and doing more usefull stuff for my empire.

People get the game, play for a few days then go "what the hell, I've been playing this for ages (~12h) I should have almost everything unlocked by now, this game sucks, I'm going back to CS:GO".

That would be 3 times your usual xp/minute according to your signature.

I kind of agree with you, but it maybe not as black and white as it seems.
In planetside 1, you were instantly viable (after doing the VR missions). If you pick one thing only, you can do it as well as anyone else. What you didn't have were choices, like switching to AV or into a vehicle, etc. In PS2, there is a period of pain to get the most basic unlocks - that I gladly accepted because I knew I was in it for the long haul. This may not be the case for new players.

It doesn't seem like there are too many BR1 ex-CS/COD/BF players complaining in this thread. It's more already invested players that are dong fine, but want to make it easy for PS-Virgins to get hooked on the game.

XP booster helps, 50% to XP does increase getting certs. I mean 5 bucks (500sc) a week for it is not bad, 20 bucks a month. I just started doing it, 6 to 7 certs depending on global xp bonus is better then the 4 per tech/amp/bio areas. Plus kills/destruction of vehicle/crafts great boost with that especially killing higher rank players get good amount of xp/certs.

If you were really clued up you bought a huge pile of xp boosts not long ago when they were the daily sale item (half price) using triple station cash. Worked out at 83 cents each.

As for new players xp gain, i agree. You have to get to BR3 (I think, might even be 4) before you can even get a scope on your rifle! I suggest they triple cert (not XP!) gain for BR 1 - 5, as a new "learner bonus". Reduce that to double for BR 5 - 10. Then normal from then on.

Under BR 20, 25 or 30 they should probably offer some sort of newbie cert gain bonus. The cert gain can be a little slow, but honestly I don't think it's horrible. It's at a point where you want to spend money to unlock weapons but it isn't so bad that you can't farm for them.

The prices on some of the MAX arms should really come down though, and the buy in cost for decoy flares should be reduced slightly. It's mostly tweaks to prices I'd rather see, but overall I think it's not too bad. It's slow but not impossibly.

Its better this way - the game doesn't need a bunch of impatient ADD types joining up... as it is, some people can't even stand still to cap a single base. The game doesn't need quantity unless you're concerned about finding more bodies/lemmings to farm. It takes time to learn the mechanics and overall flow, this isn't a game you play for an hour and expect actual results from. If it isn't for them it just isn't for them.

As for optimization and high system requirements, lag issues, hacking, TK, etc... now you're talking about the real issues. These ones are far more important than the cert grind... who enjoys being shot up constantly by an aimbotter, or dying due to game lag, etc?