Welcome back everyone, to Certfarm 2. I've recently returned to the game after a 1 year hiatus to check out the new things. Unfortunately I don't think anything of great value has been added besides just more cheese for grinding. Firstly, bases are still indefensible. Full of open doorways so that attacking enemies can still easily move about your base and capture points with ease. No new abilities for engineers have been added to be able to lock down doorways with doors, or a myriad of other ways to improve the defense of a base. It all comes down to who has more Population, then just camp the defenders spawn room until the cap ticks over. We've got a new big toy called the Bastion, but I'm not easily impressed by what's essentially a big dick ego stroke for outfits, and just another way to easily farm other players, which isn't very fun for those on the receiving end. I've seen the new Bastion Fleet carrier do nothing but hover above a base and lay waste to anyone coming out of the spawn room. Is that really what the game needed? More ways to grind the opposing team to a pulp the minute they try to fight back? The Fleet carrier just exacerbates the already terrible battle flow of the game. We've still got invisible enemies running around, or driving around in flashes running you over and essentially trolling everyone for their own amusement. Harassers still do far too much damage to main battle tanks to the point I think they only exist so that they can "farm" battle tanks for certs. And that's the direction PS2 keeps heading towards. More cheesy ways to grind certs but no actual improvements to make the game FUN to play for any length of time. Everyone still just plays a Medic because CERTS, once again. There's not enough gameplay in engineers to justify playing one, and infiltrators are either used as a sniper or a way to troll everyone. Light assault should never have been given ROCKET RIFLES, you took something from heavy assaults that shouldn't have been. But once again it's a change that's been made to make for easier grinding and certs. Everything needs to be easily killable for that sweet XP, is the direction PS2 keeps heading towards. Forget spending the 450 nanites on a ******* TANK, because you will be grinded to a pulp just as easily as a squishy infantryman. Since there's far too many counters, Tanks have been reduced to playing a camping sniper role since they are so vulnerable to damage now.. Camp behind a rock or on a hill and retreat as soon as the enemy spots your position. Engaging Tanking gameplay right here folks. What would have been better? Instead of rewarding outfits with a bastion, give them the ability to fortify and build onto existing bases. More turret positions, walls, close up doorways and entryways with reinforced doors and force-fields (hackable by infiltrators, like in PS1). The list goes on.. Then, the opposing faction can have a good time trying to break or infiltrate their defenses. That's how Planetside should be, not this tiring grind or be grinded attitude of players currently. Players are always talking about how Planetside 2 has a steep learning curve and you will die a lot but that's part of the charm. I can agree that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. What is bad, however, is what this learning curve comes from being grinded hours on end until you finally learn how not to be grinded, and instead be the one doing the grinding. It's not a good motivation to learn in's and out's of the game, what that is what the gameplay is all centered around - grinding for virtual POINTS. The high end of this game is motivated by greed and greed alone, not engaging, fun, and memorable gameplay for all. Anyway that's my rant over. For those who enjoy this kind of gameplay long term then more power to you.
I understand the cert grind, it's fair and the players can pay to spend up the grind, which is far from impossible to do. I would like a better trial system and bundles targeting new players to get them to buy some cool gear/boosts to help their grind, but they are not at a disadvantage since the starting weapons are usually the best ones. I do hate the escalation update for the most part.
PS2 has always been about the certs. You're playing on a persistent battlefield where you create your own meta. If you want to lone wolf, go ahead, but expect to end up in difficult/impossible situations when facing those who's decided to team up. Size matters! But honestly, it just sounds like you don't like PS2 or have grown away from it. I've taken numerous breaks playing games playing arena shooters to RPGs. Nothing wrong with wanting a game experience which lends more impact/agency on a smaller scale/individual level. Variety is the spice of life, after all!
Please understand, much like NASA has lost the technology required to visit the moon, doors are simply a legend from the long forgotten past and nobody remains today with the knowledge of how they worked. Some say they even had working locks on them, but frankly I find that ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of Planetside 2, and I was once a player of Planetside 1. It's why I keep returning to the game every so often. But I'm always driven away by the fact that it's a big grind and the feeling that it's just a rat race to the next good farm (and who gets to farm who) Taking a base should require more time and effort. And when finally taken, players should remain there to bolster up it's defences and prepare for counter attack. Instead it's just repair 1 or 2 generators if applicable, then move on to the next fight by hitting "U" to redeploy. I actually think calling these battles persistent is kind of stretching the term, since most battles do not last much longer after the fact it's taken or lost. I want meaningful battles over an objective. Certs shouldn't be the focus on why anyone should do anything, so we find ourselves in a situation where if it doesn't make good certs then why bother? I would rather have more varied gameplay than that.
\ Kind of like how we would do Gen holds, to keep the opposing NME from being able to field Heavy armor or have Radar like in PS1. I won't even get into the Radar is everywhere crap these PS2 developers gave us... Radar probably was the most important parts of Planetside 1. Trying get it or even take it away from the NME changed the battle in a lot of cases...Huge fights would just come out of the blue over a Interlink facility even though it was not the focus base at that time... Now with ONE person Radar is EVERWHERE! You replaced a entire facility (base) with ONE FREAKING PLAYER....WTH!? Every time I ask someone to try Planetside 2 they talk about how cartoonish it looks, so it already has that working against it... Well only if they knew not only was it "cartoonish" but very simple and required hardly any strategy...This is a dumbed down version of Planetside, I think they made it that way because they thought more kiddies would play it... But they forgot that other developers have a more stable engine, more ideas to make things FUN, more common since when it comes to what their player base wants! This as the OP said is just a freaking cert grind and a cash grab. I wonder what dungeon I have to run to get that implant that I really want to drop?!!! I would have rather they have kept the Planetside 1 dev team and just developed a better engine, then this cluster F we have... This new patch is horribly underwhelming IMO... The future looks very dark once people go play these other FPS game's and realize that PS2 just doesn't measure up. Sure some will play it, but it will never be a real hit.
