The Elephant In the Room

WIsh they had kept the cash shop to cosmetics and boosts only but soe got greedy and is probably gonna make this crash and burn.

People WILL stop playing.

People WANT to like this game and stick with it. But they WILL grow bored of the tedium of the grind, turn it off, and fire up another of the MANY FPS offerings out there that prioritize skill and measured progression over the mindless coal-mine point farming that this game encourages.

"The problem is the over-the-top money grab approach. It's borderline disgusting. It's obvious to ANYONE playing the game for more than 15 minutes that there are two separate entities involved in the thought processes for this game. The people at Sony Online Entertainment that make the decisions regarding billing and item costs obviously have very little communication with the actual game developers."

This one makes me cringe every. single. time. i check my cert list.
Hellfire - 1000 certs - 700SC
Tomcat - 500certs - 700SC

Since when was 1000 = 500?? Having witnessed the OPness of hellfire i can understand the 1000cert cost, but giving it the same cash price as another weapon on same category which has half the cert requirement is...
And people wonder why so many fighters got hellfire.

There is also another issue where SC costs dont reflect the Cert costs

Here are a few example of what im talking about using HA weapons as an example.

Chain Gun
1000 Certs
700 SC
Looking at this it seems simple in that 700 station cash = 1000 certs but it gets more confusing later one. So 1 cert = .7 station cash.

TX2 Emperor Pistol
500 Certs
700 SC
Now when looking at this pistol you will see that it actually costs more SC to unlock then certs meaning that station cash is worth less when comparing the two in this item. In this situation 1 cert = 1.4 station cash which makes no sense as SC actually uses........cash

T16 LMG
250 Certs
500 SC
This is even worse where 1 cert = 2 station cash making its value even less.

If the goal is to make it so the more you spend the more value SC holds vs certs then thats fine but i dont believe SC should even be going past a 1-1 ratio where 1cent = 1 cert. The ratio in terms of value should either remain a constant where whatever the cert cost is, its 7/10ths of that value in SC or slightly looses value the less you spend in 1 purchase but never cross over a 1-1 ratio.

Couldn't have said this better myself. I made a large post on why the F2P model this game uses is scummy and "evil" compared to models like LoL and Valve.

There is NO REASON to be this greedy, if you give your players goodwill they will like you, if you try to scum them out of their money they will resent you and your company.

But i doubt any of this is worth saying, because even if the devs read it and agree, the executives do not and couldn't care less about you as a human or a gamer. Those are the creatures that control not only video games, but pretty much the whole civilised world.

tl;dr of this thread - entitlement syndrome with F2P games is still alive and kicking, and no matter what system you put in people will still complain.


Get over it. The default weapons are entirely competitive except in A2A dogfighting. It's not like they haven't been running constant sales on popular weapons and gear since day 1 or anything anyway.


Only part of my hatred for the F2P model comes from the fact that it screws the long term viability of games. The rest of my hatred for the model comes from the selfish, unrealistic playerbase it has grown.

This. There's no need to buy weapons at all. The unlocks are not better, just different.

Except for the Vehicle and MAX weapons. I'm amazed how many people seem to think this is about the infantry weapons when this is repeated at-least once a page in these threads.

Let's not forget that ALL anti air weapons are 1000 certs because that totally makes sense when you consider the game is based around "sidegrades"

Lol, for me it is the presales, then the rushed released, but yeah unfortunatly in this current game industry it is the marketing that drives the industry and the market is all hype and spend. Sell garbage before it is even made and see how much money you get, then give them the garbage that they bought and paid for.

SOE is no exception.

Lol well with all the bugs and server issues I wonder if we even left the beta stage?

Just a note that i havnt seen mentioned is that SC is not equivilent to your money. If u r smart, you buy SC on sale for 2x or 3x and never at regular price. This means that high level unlocks arent 7$but rather 3.50$ or less. If u bought SC at regular price that is your own fault for not understanding the money conversion. You can compound the saving on daily SC items which are usually 50% off so that 3.5$ turns into 1.75$ for a high level item. It behooves buyers to be semi patient and log once a day to watch prices!

No, he is talking about the long-range/high-damage bolt-action ones. You know, the things they usually call a sniper rifle because they are the ones with the highest power and longest range and thus perfect for sniping over long distances.

I genuinely didn't want to believe my eyes when I saw that the low-power semi-autos had a 12x scope and the actual sniper rifles had a max of 4x. That's beyond stupid and pretty much the opposite of what'd make sense in combat.
You want the weapon with the best scope to have the highest damage as you might only be able to land one shot while the (relatively) close range ones usually benefit from higher rate of fire and are thus semi-auto.

The MAX is effective without unlocks. Not as effective as with them, but I've not gotten around to unlocking extra weapons for it yet and I've still racked up quite a few kills.


The only vehicle that's actually ineffective with its default weapons is the ESF. Even the Liberator can do a fair amount of damage stock. The ESF on the other hand was basically a glorified taxi until everyone and their brother bought A2A or A2G pods.


You're confusing effectiveness with firepower. Yes, in a straight up, 1v1 vehicle/MAX fight against someone with unlocked weapons and equal skill, you will lose. This game isn't built around 1v1, and plenty of people haven't unlocked weapons and still do quite well.


So again, this comes down to entitlement syndrome. The cash shop is not unreasonable - especially given that they've been running sales on popular unlocks since day 1. Grinding 1000 certs takes a couple of days at most unless you're completely terrible, and then you have that weapon unlocked in perpetuity for that character.


This comes down to something very simple: you are not crippled by a refusal to buy things on the cash shop, with the exception of the ESF. You are fully capable of playing this game and competing from day 1. Complaining about the prices in the cash shop in Planetside 2 is the equivalent of complaining that paying for rush processing on an order from Newegg is exorbitant. In both cases, you're paying a small amount, relatively speaking, to have something available to you before you would under normal circumstances. In both cases, you are entirely able to simply do what you were going to do anyway (play the game) and get your item - the only difference is that earning it ingame uses cert points you could spend for upgrades, whereas paying for it spends money you could be using to buy your next bag of Cheetohs to continue your rage posting about a company daring to expect decent financial return on a large investment.


Like it or not, F2P games still cost a lot of money to make. And most games that are F2P from launch fail in a relatively short period of time - in many cases specifically because their cash shop didn't provide significant revenue. Just recouping the development costs takes a lot of purchasing volume, and cash shops inherently generate sharply declining revenue streams.

I'd have to agree completely.......I purchased $20 of station cash on black Friday and i feel at even at half price for the SC it's still a total rip off for most stuff in the market, the price points in the market make absolutely no sense, i think they are just testing the waters to see how far they can push people before they quit playing and i doubt thats the devs idea but guess what.........they will catch the flak for it and their game will loose in the review scores category.....and that's just how it is........I will never purchase station cash ever again, their outrageous prices had the opposite effect than SOE desired on me, they lost any future revenue from me regardless of how much i might like or play the game, i wont be fleeced so out of principle I will never give them another dime.

This isn't some isolated observation, gametrailers mentions this in their preview as well, pretty much all the preview is is people raging about the station cash price and in turn people are down voting the game based solely on the station cash model and not the gameplay.

If the devs dont speak up sony will decimate the player base for this game within a year, they have done it before.......

I'm honestly confused as to what you're trying to say Flarestar.

You agree that the MAX and Vehicle wapons make you vastly more effective yes?
You agree that more effective = Better yes?
You agree then that better != Sidegrade yes?

Vehicle and MAX weapons are not sidegrades no matter how you look at it. You can be fine with paying money for upgrades, but arguing that they're not upgrades is just crazy talk.

I agree with the OP.

1) if these weapons are side-grades as suggested so many times by SOE then where is the need for different pricing between different side-graded weapons within the same class, seems a bit fishy to me.

2) Just put a VR shooting range in SOE simular to the one in Planetside, for the guys who didnt play it the VR training area was an area where you could test all equipment in the game in a weapon safe environment that had virtual enemies to test your selected equipment on, having this ingame would solve all issues that many people have with the SC purchases and the inability to test stuff before buying.

The current system doesn't work very well as u can only test 1 weapon every what 8 hrs or so (can't remember exactly) but this isn't good enough when you consider people might want to make multiple purchases and test each item, also having the ability to test all weapons help you choose the right class for them and really give people something to look forward to after seeing how awesome that weapon they want in that class is.

3) Should be solved by the VR but even so you might find in a real combat situation it just isn't for you a should have some small ability to spend you r/l money somewhere else.

4 Sorted by the VR too

Personally i don't agree with the business model i feel it is a hindrance to the overall style and quality of the game but the VR would help in the current situation.

I did play Planetside 1. One of the three main issues identified with the game, stopping it being the biggest FPS game at the time, was the cost barrier to entry.
Planetside 1 & 2 require huge battles to function. That is was pulls players into the game and keeps them playing. In Planetside 1 the game died off fairly dramatically once that initial round of subscriptions ended and a vicious circle of; fewer players playing = fewer big battles = fewer players playing etc etc took hold.
Planetside 1 introduced Planetside Reserves (level limited free account) in an attempt to stabilize the population. This worked for awhile but was ultimately too late to save the game.
Planetside 1 was something like £30 + the expansion £20 + monthly £10 subscription. That meant in the first month people had to pay £60 to even find out if they liked the game. Wasn't hard to see why new players were so few.

You have spent £0 on Planetside 2. Why grind? Any other game you'd of spent £30 just to try it out. I fail to see the problem. You like the game. Spend money on it to increase your enjoyment and help support future development.

Lets look at this another way. Free-to-Play players are providing a service to all other Planetside 2 players. They are the content in the game. Without those players there are no massive battles.
As a Community we want as many of this type of player as possible to fuel the war and keep the battles raging. They can earn the same sidegrades/upgrades as everyone else it just takes a longer period of time.

Now without the option of boosts, weapon purchases and memberships, SOE would go bankrupt. And honestly I just feel if the game was completely free and all unlocks were purely progression based we'd be back here in a similar discussion about how unfair it is that people who play more have more unlocks.

If they have a life outside the game that means they have money. You can't visit friends, got out to eat, go on holiday or do many things without money. So if you have money to buy a few beers for your friends, why can't you spend some money to buy some Station Cash so the devs can buy their friends some beers??

What other FPS are you talking about? That is free, that supports skill & dedication, that has 2000 player battles, 24/7 support, active development and dedicated servers.


You need to spend a small about of money on Station Cash and try the system yourself. Its really not the evil money grabbing system some seem to think it is.

Until it's account wide, a large swathe of people aren't going to buy into that system.

Also I can only speak for myself but 7$ a weapon is not a small amount of cash. As I said before, for the price of 2 guns I can get any *FULL* AAA game that's 3+ months old, for the price of 3-4 guns I can get any game I wanted on the current post-black friday / soon christmas discount.


That really isn't good value to me and I really don't plan on buying anything as long as it continues to be this stupidly expensive. The sad thing is that the cosmetics are fairly priced yet completely unoriginal so there's nothing to actually buy from there.