Finished NC, started playing VS and oh man it is frustrating... So much grind... 1400 certs for new players is really helpful, but man, I need 2x c4s, ground to air RPG, thermal visions, afterburner on lib and so on and so on, I will need years to get everything I need NOW.. And everything is so expensive.. It just takes away much fun. If prices would be half as big there would be more players staying in the game as they would have less grind for new toys. I mean 1000 certs is quite a lot if you play 1~2 hours a day and you are not member with no boosts. And new players are not, some of them will be if they will stay. But why stay if you have to grind so much that it actually becomes boring before you get a new toy or upgrade. I often come up to the situation where - oh man I wish I had 2x c4s, I wish I had thermal vision, I wish I had ground to air RPG, I wish .... aaaand I quit, because not today, not tomorrow not day after tomorrow I will have enough certs. I just go meh, not going to grind, not going to spend that much money either. And I go play CS:GO, poker, quake etc.. Even if prices were 2x cheaper there would still be what to buy in one faction for about a year in a future, because there is SO MUCH of everything. I see no point of keeping those new toys so unreachable. Too much grind for toys. When you are new it might not be a big deal, because everything seems exciting, but when you change faction and start from zero again it is just plain frustration.
I hate to burst your bubble, but, what? You consciously made the choice to re-roll. Of your own free will, knowing that you would have nothing. And now you get mad because you have nothing? If you really care that much you can get a membership, it equates to a month long boost for 15 bucks, and results in things seemingly costing "half" as much due to the increased cert gain. That's the price of one movie, or a couple drinks at the bar. Not that much money if you really care. Also, in very few games can you do everything from the get go. Not even in CoD do you have everything at the start. Planetside attempts to make you pick a play style and develop it. Especially at the beginning when you have limited Certs. It is your own fault if you can't develop a class or vehicle and then use it effectively to gain more Certs, because you've watered everything down by spreading your Certs to thin.
I am wondering. How you do "finish" NC? Did you win the war and the TR and VS just surrendered? Or did you unlock absolutely everything that can be unlocked with certs? In which case I have to ask, why change factions? Each faction has weapons that roughly emulate the weapons of the other two factions so its not like you are really missing all that much. And hey, if you did it once you can do it again right? This is why we have NS weapons and account wide unlocks. Buy the Annihilator, there is your G2A launcher for all your characters. That is really the only thing that you "need" when starting out as new players are sorely lacking anti air options. I suppose you could make an argument about the NC6 Gauss SAW being a bad starter gun and the EM6 being a much better choice for a new player but that is only one class and it only takes 305 certs (2x reflex sight for 5, compensator for 100, and adv forward grip for 200) to change the NC6 Gauss SAW from an annoying gun that is hard to use into a medium/longish range murder machine.
Wat? Thermal optics? Lib afterburner? Playing for 3 years, feeling perfect without them. Clearly hard necessities =\
You see, this is a problem with players in this game in general. You don't need everything, especially not right now. You fill a role and do that role well and you expand as you can afford. You don't need 2 x C4. You don't need Liberator afterburners (something thtey shouldn't have anyway in my opinion). You don't immediately need an G2A launcher or even Bursters. As long as you have at least one gun, there's something you can do. And you have allies. Let someone else do stuff and trust that they have a clue what they're doing. Or help them figure out what they need to do. If you end up in a situation that you can't capitalize on because you pressed 1 instead of 3 back at the Terminal, coach someoen else who can do what 3 did to get to your location. You're supposed to be playing a game because you find it fun playing alongside other people. I know the idea is bizarre but give the notion half a chance.
The game is too expensive for a different reason: There is no anti-cheat code. Why should you pay anything to play a game where you log on and get insta-gibbed by all sorts of flying MAXes, aimbotters, AHK-scripts, lagswitches and what else they come up with?
^this even if you just log in once a day and don't play its still 1440 certs a month for every character. but if you do play you'll find youself getting certs quickly, even quicker if you use that 500 station cash to buy some boosters!
Yep. Nothing improves my game like increasing costs across the board, and releasing new weapons at 1000 certs right out of the box.
I agree with xSalt and Liewec123, that if you want to start (1) Certing Up multiple characters and (2) not have to repeat the painful grind, then Membership is your best route. Get a Membership, Make the full 6 characters (or whatever your maximum # is)(I also suggest making 1 of each Faction across different local server), and then log into them daily and slowly Cert them all up. The only other option is to farm/grind Certs. Which is fine if you enjoy farming (with low Certed Loadouts) or the low level Cert Grind. Planetside F2P is built to give players free access and not-too-painful-grinding to Cert-up one Character in a couple of Classes and/or a Vehicles. But if you want to start Certing up multiple Characters and/or multiple Vehicles, then the grind becomes massive and Membership is the way to get around that. The New Player experience is terrible for many reasons, but Cert Grinding to Cert-up one Character in a couple of Classes and/or a Vehicles is not one of them. New players can get a narrow taste of the game by focusing on 1 Class or 1 Vehicle, they just don't have easy access to depth in variety and won't be able to open up multiple Classes/Vehicles without lots of grinding... or Membership and a lot time building up passive Cert Gain.
1000 certs is like 4-5 days of casual play for me. 1 or 2 days on a double XP weekend. And I am terrible at this game and never use boosts or implants. A non member would get the same number of certs in maybe 6 days tops, 2 or 3 on a double XP weekend. I don't see an issue here. If you really want the shiny new gun right now you can always drop $10 to get it as well as a few attachments for it. Its not like new weapons come out all that often anyway. And even then, they are all side grades or situationaly specialized. No gun is a true replacement for any other in every possible situation.
I think you may be exaggerating here. 1000 certs in 4-5 days as a "terrible," "casual" player? Maybe plausible as you are I assume a member, and are getting more exp. and henceforth more certs, but otherwise unless you are playing as a medic in a bio lab reviving players for 30 minutes everyday, I don't think that's possible under such parameters. As for spending money on PS2... That's just going to fill up this thread with arguments.
While three hours ago isn't exactly "now", it's close enough that most people wouldn't have a problem with it.
Maybe I am better at this game than I think I am. For me "casual" is 2 hours a day tops. (10pm to midnight after my son is in bed) Usually less. But almost always during an alert and always in a reasonably coordinated squad. I get plenty of kills, I just also die an awful lot. Usually repeatedly. And my KDR is a whopping 0.67 as a result. And yes, I am a member. However I strongly suspect that most of my XP comes from ribbons for support activity. I don't think anyone could earn 1000 certs in 4-5 days just getting kills unless they were ridiculously good at the game.
