As it says in the title, I love the game. Goty 2012 for me. BUT there are some things that bother me. It's just my oppinion, people might disagree, that's fine.. I respect you opinion, please respect mine. I just want someone at SOE to read it. And maybe even think about it. 1. Base and territory layout Currently there are only two types of bases. Those which are hard to get (few) and those which are easy to get (many). There have been plenty of threads about it so I don't want to go to much into detail but currently most bases end in a pure slaughter where everybody is throwing numbers at each other. Individual tactics might influence this fight, but in the end the zerg wins. Base layouts need to be able to be defended better, and by that I do not mean being able to put even more sundis inside the base forcefields. The current layouts discourage defending if it's not zerg vs zerg. 2 Cert/xp gain We compared our cert gain rates within our outfit and we found it to be very odd. Most of to around 28 certs per hour. That doesn't sound too bad, but if we check the circumstances it's quiet strange. Some of us get 30 certs boosted, others get 50 not-boosted. The problem being that there are playstyles which favor cert gain greatly, and others in which you will get significantly less certs. And that makes the game feel grindy. I would love to see to get the cert gain rate more in line over all playstyles. I play(ed) Tribes: Ascend heavily and I quiet like their system. You have a rather fixed amount of certs incoming by playtime and personal performance puts a little bit icing on top of that. In PS2 the personal performance is not the icing but the cake itself. Don't get me wrong, people should be rewarded for being good at the game, but overall I have the feeling that the game encourages zerging too much. The largest amount of F2P players will not be organized in a outfit and will care for their cert gain rate very much. When they see that they can get a lot of certs by shooting infantry they will not shoot at aircraft, cap points or do other important stuff like galaxy drops. That's what I see in every F2P game I played so far: as long as there is a progression system in place people will play the most effective way to advance within the system. And most of the times this is not beneficial to the overall gameplay. It's like rewarding bad teamplay. This is also found in smaller areas like xp for killing unmanned turrets, which is a pain in the you-know-where for infiltrators. The current way how xp is gained puts way too much emphasis on killing people as medic or engineer, running directly at each other , and too little to do the job that is needed to win. In my personal opinion PS2 should get away from the high xp gain rates by killing and supply actions and put (back) in a passive cert gain while playing as well as a stronger gain by defending and attacking territory (as well as conquering). This would of course also need some adjustments in cert pricing. Also it has the danger of people idling for certs but I doubt that this is an insurmountable obstacle. 3. Cert and SC prices The first thing I don't get, if all weapons are supposed to be sidegrades (if they really are is another thing to discuss), why do some cost 250, some 500, some 750 and some 1000? If it would be 1000 for primaries, 500 for secondaries I could actually understand it. But the current system does not seem (for the player, maybe there is some magical vooodoo behind this) to actually have a system how stuff is priced. Also I think 7 USD or 1000 certs, with my cert gain rate would be around 30 hours unboosted is a bit much within a game which already has an incredible amount of stuff to unlock and more to come in the future. Also some slight adjustment on SC might convince more people to dipp in some money. 7USD is a very frightening price for a single digital gun when they can get whole games for 20. Don't get me wrong, I don't want 69 cents weapons, But 7 USD is quiet an investment. A single gun for every class and vehicle already brings you to a retail title, which might put off a lot of people. Another thing I miss is something done in Tribes: Ascend which I think is a great way to make people pay money: VIP status. Basically once you put money into the store you get a special status which grants you a small but lifelong xp boost. It's not only great because it gives the player another reason to invest money, but also to invest it early. And once a player has put money into it the "Amazon effects" starts, if he liked what he got he will likely do it again. So getting them attached early is good for the game. 4. Weapons trials As long as there is no testing area: way too short. Increase the duration to about 2 to 3 hours, it's locked for the next 30 days, so what? The current 30 minutes are very often absolutely not sufficient to get an idea if a weapon is performing to your liking. Especially vehicle equipment, which is also bound to resource and timer limits. 5. Classes and roles on the battlefield I still remember when during beta the devs talked about why they switched to the classes system. For one they wanted people to easily understand what they are supposed to do: mission accomplished. Also they talked about how in PS1 everyone certed to be a jack of all trades and they did not want this for PS2. Well, the mission is not a failure but also not accomplished. With the current infantry loadout system every class gets the chance to be at least a small threat against almost everything. The most prominent example would be the HA, but that might at least change a bit with the update on the lock-on-only G2A rockets. For me the bigger problem is that everybody can equip too much stuff without thinking about which loadout to bring into the fight. All infantry can equip grenades which are great against infantry (if they land where you want them to do, which flubber grenades tend not to do) but also LA can equip C4, engis can equip mines etc. I think classes should be more restricted in what they can carry around. If you want to have AI grenades, sorry no C4 for you. If you want mines, sorry no AI grenades for you. The same should apply for underslung grenade launchers. I think a lot of more stuff should go into the same loadout slots. This also would have the benefit to actually see more gunfighting indoors and less grenade spamming. Infantry already dies incredibly fast, if someone wants to bring an additional AI grenade to the battle they should be missing something else instead. The same is partially true for vehicles. Since the MBTs are 1-man tanks now and their primary weapon has good punch against almost everything it makes people roll out tanks much more often. Although HE guns are very deadly against infantry, the other guns are too, which makes MBT going for infantry even if their gun would make them fit for another playstyle. I think there needs to be some adjustment done if you want single driver MBTs. Currently MBTs do not really need a gunner to be good against everything on the ground and very often our tank drivers go with two AV weapons as AV is often also deadly against infantry. There is some mismatch in the roles guns are supposed to have and how they are actually used. On a side note: the Lightning needs some love to make it a viable choice above the MBT. Currently it's hard to see why someone should pull a Lightning if they can pull a MBT. 6. Membership I currently do not see the use behind membership except for the boost. Even on Miller we do not have an queue any more and 500 sc are nice, but nothing that makes it more interesting. I think membership needs some adjustment. Something like you are free to select five items of equipment each month which you then can use without buying them (gets reset every month). Or just give players who pay 15usd a month all the shop items for free as long as they subscribe? Bringing it more in line with a traditional MMO subscription. 7. Resources and timers on vehicles Do not feel restricting enough, at least if there is not one vehicle you play exclusively. Leads to vehicle spam. Too readily available for everybody.
