New Weapon Cert Prices are an insult.

The cert prices doesn't benefit us non paying players and they completely removed the free camo and weapon on newly created character. How are we suppose to enjoy the game now? My friend and I are about to quit because of this new patch 5/19.

Seriously DayBreak/SOE?
You are becoming EA, and not in a good way.

A 350% increase of what was once a nice beginner weapon purchase (Originally 100 certs, now around 350)

to be honest i wouldn't mind if most of 250c weapons go up to ~500 (most of them are worth it) and 100c to ~250c if there would be drop to ~750c for 1000c weapons and siginifcant drop in DBC prices - I definitly would buy more for real money.

(can't edit...) but what we have now is too much. And this game needs all players - playing for free and paying, big scale battles are that thing, which makes it so fun and diffrent than other FPSes,

Just to note, they have changed their price structure on cosmetics as well. They are no longer going to have one price for items in a slot.
from null_tracker (on the Player Studio forums)

Yeah, with the new cert pricing that just flat out increased across the board, i'm less motivated to play my other characters now...

if you buy them with SC they unlock for all characters on all factions. If i bought say an NS11A and deleted my character to make a new one, id have my ns 11a, and if i made an nc id have it, etcetcetc.

Its useful if you like certain weapons more than default ES ones

i also think ES weapons bought with SC unlock for all players of that empire per account

All these hissy fits lol. Why don't we just lower all the cert weapons to 1cert so everybody can be happy in la-la land.

Oh wait, Free to Play games don't work that way. They make money on microtransactions. Not sunshine and happiness and free stuff for everybody. Planetside 2 will definitely sink if it doesn't generate enough revenue to satisfy the people who care about the bottom line.

If you want to play for free, you can continue to do so. It will simply take you longer to get everything you want.

Never understood the using certs for weapons. You don't need many of the pay weapons anyway. (vehicles and NC heavy) main exceptions. (Using certs on weapons really slows your progress) starter stuff is dam good outside Saw.
But then i got all i needed during triple SC, they were in fact very cheap. And back then XP was 1/3 the gain of today so they could have tripled cert prices yesterday and you would still be better than the first year of game play for using certs to buy stuff.

Now, Consider most games are at least $12.00 a month, vs F2P microtransactions you could still get everything you "need" weapon wise, cheaper in the F2P model right now in under a 6 months than paying a subscription (which most still charge for items, expansions etc.)

Too much whining from the entitled generation. Be more selective, think cost vs reward, time to get certs vs time to get cash. (beg mommy is pretty cheap).

Checks to see if the sky is falling:notes it's still firmly attached.

It is important to look at the big picture and not just focus on the cert prices for weapons. Yes, the cert prices on most weapons went up. But for brand new players the bonus certs will do more to make them competitive (admittedly on one class only, but one certed out class is all you really need) then having more weapon options. And as a kicker the cert prices on vehicle weapons mostly went down which is a very good thing for new players since it takes a lot of certs to get a vehicle set up.

I fully support non pay to win games and don't spend money on games that I feel are pay to win. No problem buying some new hats after this patch.

Do realize that by increasing prices as high as they did, the amount of time it will take for people to unlock weapons has gone up so dramatically that it almost forces people to buy weapons with cash which not everyone can do in the immediate time frame, where as before weapons were within a reasonable cert range so that it was perceived that they weren't forced to spend money which in an f2p game is a major factor in keeping people playing free or not, and we all know in a game like Planetside 2, the more people the better.

In an F2P game such as PS2, you want to keep people playing and enticed for as long as possible with in game rewards being within reach and actually achievable in a reasonable time frame while not forcing players to needing to feel they are forced to spend money. Their time and effort would then be rewarded by being able to get unlocks within a perceived feasible time frame which prior to the update was still a very considerable amount of time. As it is now its going to take any where as 2-4x as long to get to what are pretty necessary unlocks by actually playing the game and rewarded as you do; if they did something like this in any other rpg game people would be furious and thus leave, not keeping people staying in game and potentially spending money down the road.

A big problem with these changes is that they affect all players, even paying ones. Anyone over level 15 and even those just out of character creation prior to the update essentially are forced to pay higher prices without proper compensation unlike the way new players will get, forcing more time and money needing to be spent. Paying members who want to unlock their weapons by actually playing the game instead of buying weapons are also in the same boat. Adding more incentive then there already was to make players spend money on weapons in game with massive cert price hikes is not the right way to go about adding revenues to your game, adding NEW MEANINGFUL CONTENT is the right way to go about it, people are already willing to spend money just to see this awesome game expand even more so without being forced to.

The supposed trade offs to these changes quite frankly are no where near enough to justify such a huge price hike that will affect people across the board, lets also not forget the implications of making lower tier weapons being priced as high as top tier weapons making purchasing decisions even more confusing for new players, IE falcons/pounders/comets being priced as high as ravens/fractures/vortexes (1000 certs).



TL;DR Higher prices are not the right way to go about adding revenues as this forces even more time then is required to be spent playing the game to get necessary unlocks for both free players and paying members alike which seems to be the main intent of these change despite other changes to new players, membership, and cosmetics. People will be forced to spend more time and money instead of wanting to. Lower tier weapons are now priced at the same level of higher tier weapons thus causing more confusion in spending certs.

Solutions could be reverting changes, properly price items based on usefulness IE TMG-50 should not be a 1000 cert gun when you could and should get the MCG instead. OR increase cert gains, one way by bringing back passive cert gain for free players, another could be reward players 25-50 certs per level after level 15 with the amount ramping down the higher level you get, IE 16-50 rewards 50 certs per level, 51-100 rewards 25 certs per level.

This "entitled generation" how you call it... is 30 years old, kiddo.

12.00$ a month... what games are you talking about???
The monthly subscription model is dead since a long long time and the ones still doing it can be counted on one hand.

If the PS2 team would do at least sometimes what they talk it would be the best game ever, they don't though they **** all over your face and you like it...

Now they want to milk the new players...what new players???
Their aren't any, they join get farmed by the BR100 Club and leave and now they get hit with the Certclub even harder over the Head!

They should have fired Smed like the other useless head figures that was the biggest mistake of the new owners...

Hey, check it out! This guy thinks devs work for free, and he also thinks servers are free, along with bandwidth, and an office.

Man, I wish I lived in your world.

What everyone forgets, or never realized, is that cert prices were initially balanced around the average cert gain of a paying player. The objective has always been to put players in the game, let them enjoy it, and then try to push them into buying either in-game currency, or a subscription.

That was always the goal.

If you are a paying subscriber then this change is meaningless to you. Sure, cert prices went up, so it takes longer for everyone to get the certs necessary to buy new stuff. But, DBC prices went down, meaning whatever you were saving for with certs that might be out of reach, is now cheaper in DBC, which you get every month as a subscriber.

The only people affected by this are the non-subscribers.

And damn right I support the "money grab."

SOE was sunk, the company went out of business. The intellectual property and the company was completely restructured and purchased by a venture capital firm.

Please, read those three words carefully: VENTURE CAPITAL FIRM. That means this game and this company better turn a profit. Or else. There is no plan B. If PlanetSide sinks the company files Chapter 13, not Chapter 11. There will be no other buyer.

Now, is the community going to HELP?

Business matters aside (no duh the company needs to make a profit), don't you think there is better ways for the devs to go about getting players to WANT to spend money other then basically make it harder for players to unlock items from actually playing the game and make spending money on weapons the more favorable option when A.) this game is F2P and has to deal with the P2W factor which after the update the game looks more like it (from a a marketing aspect this is not good, especially in a competitive FPS supposedly tied to MLG) B.) They could add more content worth spending money on like vehicles, vehicle variants (IE an unlock/purchasable that could turn the galaxy into something representing an AC-130) and vehicle weapons, infantry weapons, new KINDS of cosmetics in conjunction with more cosmetics in general, more maps, ect.?

I imagine a great deal more would help if they prices were reasonable. Imagine that, eh? Players supporting the game with money due to a good balance between in-game value and real currency required, ie, the very basics of have a solid business model. Instead, they went with 'whaling', a practice which seeks out players who has a large amount of disposable income.

This recent change only reinforces this idiotic practice, and since they only care about how much money these whales spend, why should I support them? They've made a clear statement they're not making this game for me anyways.

I would just like to add that I've spent a good time of my time(since beta) subscribing and added a couple of thousands of SC to my wallet as well, but enough is enough. I like this game but I won't support bad practices.

When did i say anything like that?
What i say is you have to work for getting paid, the servers run on potatoes they haven't been updated since release.

Bandwith, is that worth anything nowadays?

And the "office" is probably a jacuzzi filled with champagne, thx to fools like you...

Just a newbie here that started like 4 weeks ago on this game and at BR 37 that would like to throw in my 2 cents.

As of now ive only unlocked a handful guns due to buying 1000 cert AV/AA weapons for my Max and HA and also a Skyguard for my Lightning along with C4, mines and upgrades. I was planning on buying those 100-500 cert guns after I got the AV/AA stuff i wanted but now the update has really killed my motivation to play since the prices on those guns went up by 50-200%.

As for the subscription stuff Shiaari was talking about, idk if its just me or is he making it sound like I HAVE to buy myself some subscription? Last time I checked subscription was something I would get for something I liked and WANTED to support since I found the game enjoyable enough that I would pay to make it MORE enjoyable. From the way I see it, the game has become much LESS enjoyable and I HAVE to pay for a subscription if I wanted to enjoy it like I was before the patch cause now I need 1.5x-3x more certs to buy those previously cheap guns I was eyeing but didnt get cause I was too busy saving for some 1000 cert AA/AV weapons.

Funny enough i was actually considering buying a few months worth of subscription until this patch...

Lol. Are you being serious?

They don't fix the bugs.
They don't listen to the community
They randomly buff then over nerf things
The only substantial content they've added is
The harasser- which is absurdly overpowered when released
The Valkyrie which came pre nerfed so we wouldn't have another harasser debacle
And finally hossin. Which while adding some variety to the game, also commits the same errors as
The other continents. Eg having so many small and irrelevant bases that are more annoying than anything.


And so what are the real issues that planetside has?
First and foremost- it has no meta game. And with no concrete goals we can't balance vehicles very well or give them defined roles.We can't make certain bases have any real value.

The resource system is crap and always has been. For the first year and a half or so you used to barely have any resources. At times, even tossing a single grenade was a huge investment because it took 5 minutes to get it. Or even worse, it could take 45 minutes or longer to get your MBT. Now people explosives spam has gone up and instead of being careful with their vehicles, people can suicide them one or twice willy nilly before they need to be careful.

Most of the content that has been added has been largely irrelevant.
I don't care if you add a new variation of the carbines or an NS pistol.
And a lot of those weapons have been either crappy or redundant. Who cares if they added the gauss sniper rifle when our bolt action filled the same role? Why would anyone want to use the shotgun pistol? Or the amp? Or the spiker? Or the Valkyrie? They all suck and bring nothing to the game. How many different hard hitting slow shooting sniper rifles can you have?

And when did the game come out? A little over 2 years ago? And they're just now finally talking about the meta game? Are you serious? After months upon months of the game stagnating and people leaving you're just now as some sort of after thought going to try to fix the single biggest issue the game has? Bull ****. I don't believe it.

So the answer is no. I am sure as heck not giving them any more money. The fact is only they are to blame for the state of the game. They made spectacularly poor decisions one after another and now they're reaping the reward of their incompetence.