Removing nonmember offline cert gain is a mistake

In my case, offline cert gain had the effect of increasing my desire to pay for a membership. In contrast, removing offline cert gain for nonmembers will likely contribute to my losing interest. I'm not saying this to complain about losing something, but just from a business perspective I can see it was a bad move. I'll explain why.

First off, I was drawn to planetside 2 with a desire to check it out in august because large scale combined arms MMO combat games have always been my favorite. I am too busy to play more than a few hours a week, if even that, but figured it was worth checking out if the account is free.
I spent over 6000 station cash on this game that I had left over in my account from a prior long lasting subscription. So in that sense I've already invested a significant amount of money into PS2, as though I had bought a full priced boxed copy of a game or more.

The offline exp gain kept me logging in every day to gain what certs I could. This kept my attention focused on the game day after day. I was always aware of whether or not I had logged in for the day. Keeping the game on my mind increased my desire to actually play it. The more I played it and thought about it, the more I wished I had a membership even for the limited time I did have to play.
Getting a taste of what offline cert gain is like also helped me to imagine how great it would be to be able to log in every day with 300% certs gained with a membership. If I had the money to spare right now, I would have wanted to prepay six months just for the passive cert gain.
Even if the nonmember cert gain is not much, it helps to feel like I am still making progress towards something with offline cert gain when I don't have time to devote to grinding certs. I do what I can, which is be sure to log in daily.

But now I won't be logging in daily. I won't have a reason to keep the game in my mind. I will be more likely to forget about playing and be less motivated to do so because I won't feel like I'll have anything to look forward to in terms of cert gain during the week long stretches between my play sessions.

If I feel this way, I imagine that the lack of cert gain could have a similar impact on other nonmembers being enticed to subscribe. For that reason, I believe it was a mistake to remove it.

I think it's ok, They have really buffed the exp you can earn just by playing. You get exp for doing almost anything now.

They still have the 5 daily ribbon things to get you to log in and play

It is ever a bad Idea to draw off gifts.

The change had happen less as a Week and i do not log into each char.
Before i log in, on the non main char and take the 12 Certs nearly daily and play a round with friends, if they also online. Or it looks like interesting fights on the map.

Atm i have a look on the TS Server and log only in the Game if the Teamplayers are online.
I do not like farming, it is boring for me.

The play-intention has changed in such a short time, that i am also surprised about my own behavior
I want to take my Daily present and then i play a bit. Sometimes this "bit" becomes an evening.

The funny fact, in other Games you get a Daily login gift i log in often, even as i do not play them active.
Bwt the Daily Cert Gift is special well for casuals and new Players. They gain the benefit.
For the Veteran it does less difference if i have 12 certs more or not, even if the look well on my virtual account

To evaluation a Game you have some attributes, one are the login counter.

Yes, i supported game by spending SC.. but devs don't like this way

You mean to say someone actually values that piddly amount of free certs you use to get on login?

lol... they can keep the login certs for all i care, i'll earn as many in 5 - 10 minutes playtime anyway.

It feels like someone is intentionally trying to run PS2 into the ground from the inside.

The game has been out for two years, but every patch seems to create more problems than it solves. The removal of passive free certs is another blow to the game. No longer will new players be able to create an account and hoard passive certs for a few days or weeks until they're better prepared to go into battle against BR100 zergs who have everything maxed out.

Maybe there's someone at SOE who wants this game to fail already, so they can pull all the remaining devs to H1Z1 or Landmark?

It's working.

If 12 certs a day was an incentive for you to log in, you were just bad and have no authority to comment on the state of the game.

I'm at the level now where I can make 50 certs within half an hour (more if I've really got my cap on).. If people do not like the game or are not inclined to play for gratification, 12 certs every 24 hours will not promote them to play.

Also, I agree with making membership more meaningful in comparison. I want SOE to have enough money to patch the hell out of this game that I've spent money on, so I will do the honourable thing and support them. FTP and the freeloaders who come with the system are the worst thing to happen to online games. EVERY game should have standard subscription in my opinion. You don't go to the movies for free, why do it with games which clearly have an exponentially larger replay value?

Btw everyone in here and other threads who says the removal of free passive certs means nothing - all of you are elitists who've clearly forgotten or don't care how hard it is when you're new to the game and there's nobody to help you farm peasants.

Keep up that mentality and pretty soon there won't be any peasants left to farm. Then the farmers get bored and leave. Then the game shuts down.

Elitist because we don't agree? Pfftt...

I'll go grab my violin to play you a tune.

Keep playing like that band on the Titanic.

The fact that new players simply do not know how to play or take advantage of some of the tools given to them, how are any free certs going to be used efficiently?

As a member, I enjoy 48 certs the second I log onto any of my characters. This is only one of the many benefits of membership. I also get more exp and a monthly stipend of sc. The best part is that if I want to go play another SOE game I get benefits from my membership there too.

Also I gotta address it, calling somebody bad because they are upset isn't helping them or changing their opinion on the situation. If this were a matter of skills maybe you could call them bad but it isn't about skills.

You get XP for allmost everything in PS2 nowadays. Even sitting around at controlpoints. I remember the first 6 months or so after the release. You were lucky to get 50 Certs per hour (if you played the game actually, a bit more if you were just farming) as free player. Today I average at 100 Certs per hour because of all the s**t that gives me XP. So 12 Certs every 24 isn't realy a big loss.

They (SOE) said that those 12 Certs didn't achieve the intended goal to make players log in (ok that one maybe), grab the certs and play the game for some time then. Instead ppl are logging in, grab the certs and log out.

As for giving new players an incentive. Maybe they should give players below BR20 a 50% boost for the first 1/2 hour after the logged in every 24h. That way they have to play the game to get their extra XP/Certs. And when you reach BR 20 you should know the game enough to decide if you like to keep it playing even without the bonus.

I called the person bad because of his lack of vision and the annoying self-entitlement. Its proven that new players do not benefit from 12 certs a day, simply because they cannot spend it efficiently nor can they compliment it by taking advantage of both the certs and the variety of tools they have in the game.

So what else could it be? Oh right, its FREE. I'm entitled to FREE stuff no matter what and if FREE stuff that I never earned gets taken away from me, I'm going to b**** about it . I'm also a member and I want membership to be lucrative enough such that more people buy it and the devs have an incentive to regularly make improvements to this game. I think my side of the argument holds more water than the other folk.

12certs isnt really a big deal but meh, from the fact that SoE just makes me want to subscribe to a game that just releases game-breaking bugged patches is ridiculous.

what? there was offline cert pay?

/interesting

BFH has the Daily Claw:



BFP4F has the Daily Draw:





would something like that work here in lieu of the offline cert pay?

Most of the complaint posts I see on this amount to, "logging in every day to get those 12 certs". As if it were the sole motivation for doing so. Not logging in to play the game? Just stopping by to collect the free goodies and you go to play something else?

Then there is the "but I bought Station Cash so I deserve them". In the case of the OP, he had SC left over from a different game. Okay, how did that SC purchase benefit Planetside 2? In the case of others, yes, you spent some money on the game, but that money is spent and gone and non-recurring and through that period where your purchase was of benefit, you still got free certs.

I'm a former subscriber from last year and have spent upwards of $200 on Station Cash during my tenure. Now that I don't get my free certs, I could hardly care less. I never really noticed them anyhow. Granted my main is pretty developed, but I do play vanilla alts and those 12 certs never really amounted to much at all.

How many other MMO's reward you for not playing? When you log into other games are you welcomed with, "Hey...saw you were offline so we went ahead and finished that quest for you...here's your free XP!" or "Hey, we know you are farming to get that Helm of Perpetual Awesomeness, here's a dozen Enchanted Turkey Gizzards to speed you on your way!"

As I said in the other thread, people are really upset that a game they don't pay to play no longer rewards them for not playing the game?

I don't like that I no longer get free certs, but I understand the reason for it. Lucky for me, there's not much left I can spend certs on, but for newer players those passive certs make a huge difference.

To be fair offline cert gain for non-members is a non-issue. You'll make 12 certs in literally no time with the new experience events they've added in. They don't even help out new players as much as you think. They used to, yes, but that's not the case any more.

I roll with several non-members and they make 100 or so certs per play session which isn't bad at all. Another 12 aren't going to change anything.

If only I knew then what I know now,
back then was only death, those 12 certs were like gold.