Planetside 2 Catch-All

Hm might just have to pickup one of the gamestop cards for the triple points day, hard to resist. That should be enough to get me the gear I want.

Also that breakdown of weapons and gear is great. Basically agrees with what I though, that most the weapons are basically the same focus more on the attachments and anything special instead.

One thought is on armor though. I'm always figured the cert that gives you more health was the best of the bunch. It gives a straight 10% boost to health which can be enough to leave a sliver of health when you should be dead. The faster regen of shield doesn't seem like half as decent. Thoughts?

There's a rumor going around (probably with some sort of research to back it up) that NanoWeave and Resist Shield is the way to go for Heavies.

Archangel wrote:
Tamren wrote:

If you are not sure which weapon you like most then don't invest heavily into your starting weapon. However you should at least buy a reflex sight since they are far superior to the default iron sights.

Reflex 1x, or 2x? I'm just about to upgrade all of my starter weapons with this, and I'm still not sure which way to go.

Personally I prefer reflex x2. But irritatingly not all weapons can mount it. Which can and which can't is a little arbitrary. I use the 2x when I can and the 1x otherwise.

Both are fantastic because they are completely holographic and don't have a frame that gets in the way.

groan wrote:

There's a rumor going around (probably with some sort of research to back it up) that NanoWeave and Resist Shield is the way to go for Heavies.

That makes sense, that combo would boost your defense quite high. A maxed out nanoweave is 25% which is an extra 150 health (base is 500).

Already browsing for items I haven't got yet. So far I thinking I'll get the vehicle pack (assuming it's still there by then), and wait for a deal on both homing rockets for the heavy. Was browsing and I saw the anti air primary weapon for the scythe. Anyone try that?

Wish I could play right now but I got a bad cold, it just give me a headache.

Also I heard that you get a 12 cert login bonus everyday.

Edit: Did some research, that 12 cert login bonus is only you collecting your stored certs that you gain passively. Which is sort of lame as you make about a point an hour. So if you want to collect all your certs you have to basically login twice a day (once in morning, one at night).

Triple edit: More research. Basically passive cert gain is daily. You get one cert per hour you don't play and these are banked for you the next day. So for instance if you dont play on day 1 and play on day 2 you'll get 12 passive certs. While if you don't play on day 1 and 2 but you do on 3 you'll get 12 passive certs from day 2 but lose the certs from day 1.

Also the pricing on gear with discounts/bundles is insane. Finally clicked that 100 sc = 1$. So most guns wind up being $7.50 to $10.00 a piece. Which is pretty insane. With the triple points and some sales though the prices come down to an acceptable level, but no one should buy anything at the normal prices. Oh and the perks for premium seem fairly useless, better to just get SC.

Double edit: Another vote for the vanu reflex, just love it. I'm curious to what the NV is like.

master0 wrote:

Also the pricing on gear with discounts/bundles is insane. Finally clicked that 100 sc = 1$. So most guns wind up being $7.50 to $10.00 a piece. Which is pretty insane. With the triple points and some sales though the prices come down to an acceptable level, but no one should buy anything at the normal prices.

Yeah, that cooled my enthusiasm right away. Being killed by rocket pods is bad, but not $10 per weapon bad. I understand the F2P decision as it increases server population, but I sure would like the option to just pay for the darned game.

But it's fun, and 300 SC for $1 makes it a harder decision.

SOE knows exactly what they're doing: regular price SC for those who will pay full price, discounts for the cheapskates and fence-sitters. This is exactly the same as the Steam sales.

Archangel wrote:
master0 wrote:

Also the pricing on gear with discounts/bundles is insane. Finally clicked that 100 sc = 1$. So most guns wind up being $7.50 to $10.00 a piece. Which is pretty insane. With the triple points and some sales though the prices come down to an acceptable level, but no one should buy anything at the normal prices.

Yeah, that cooled my enthusiasm right away. Being killed by rocket pods is bad, but not $10 per weapon bad. I understand the F2P decision as it increases server population, but I sure would like the option to just pay for the darned game.

But it's fun, and 300 SC for $1 makes it a harder decision.

SOE knows exactly what they're doing: regular price SC for those who will pay full price, discounts for the cheapskates and fence-sitters. This is exactly the same as the Steam sales.

Yeah with the deals it makes sense at least. Take the vehicle pack. That cost about 2000 sc or 20 dollars normally. That gets you 5 or so weapons and some fluff. Not a bad price, not a good one though. Now do this on triple points day and all of a sudden it's 6.66. Which is a pretty nice deal for all you get.

The more I think about the design of the game and it's future the more I worry really it's going to collapse. It seems like based on how the weapons work and the price of gear they are not going to make a lot of repeat sales. This is evident as the longer a player plays the less they need stuff in general. This means they need an influx of new players fairly regularly to keep going. The problem with that is the game is very non-newbie friendly. Planetside 2 as it is now takes at least a day or so of play to get into and understand at least. Most people give a game 15 minutes to an hour max before they shelve it. That's going to be a serious problem in the long run.

This makes me think that they may in fact go reverse, and one day become a subscription model. Best to be playing the game now, as this is most likely going to be the high point in the game's life span. Of course I could just be wrong about everything.

Tutorial is coming in January.

I think what they need to do more than anything else is make the battles more self-contained with CLEAR objectives.You can go anywhere anytime, and that freedom to do things is what makes Planetside unique. But it also makes it very hard to FIND a good fight.

It would be a lot better if it worked something like this. You look at the minimap and see this big arrow drawn between Crossroads tower and Tawrich tech plant. One of the platoons on the server decided to make an attack from A to B and marked those zones. The map would tell you that there are currently 60 people supporting this attack, would you like to join them? It wouldn't tell you how many enemies there are exactly, but you can see from the heat map where enemies are located. "PLATOON DETECTED" would indicate roughly 40 enemies in a zone. When you are a part of THIS particular battle the game would shrink down a little bit. Your map would only show the zone you are currently fighting over and will mark where the objectives are. You spawn HERE, the objective is HERE, you need to arm generators HERE and HERE. The commander called for tanks HERE, you can spawn a vehicle HERE, and so on.

Basically this would turn the game into a series of Battlefield Rush maps, only the fight can flow both ways, tickets are unlimited and the map doesn't have set boundaries. If you could use the continent map as a "server browser" the game would make total sense and anyone could jump in.

master0 wrote:
Archangel wrote:
master0 wrote:

Also the pricing on gear with discounts/bundles is insane. Finally clicked that 100 sc = 1$. So most guns wind up being $7.50 to $10.00 a piece. Which is pretty insane. With the triple points and some sales though the prices come down to an acceptable level, but no one should buy anything at the normal prices.

Yeah, that cooled my enthusiasm right away. Being killed by rocket pods is bad, but not $10 per weapon bad. I understand the F2P decision as it increases server population, but I sure would like the option to just pay for the darned game.

But it's fun, and 300 SC for $1 makes it a harder decision.

SOE knows exactly what they're doing: regular price SC for those who will pay full price, discounts for the cheapskates and fence-sitters. This is exactly the same as the Steam sales.

Yeah with the deals it makes sense at least. Take the vehicle pack. That cost about 2000 sc or 20 dollars normally. That gets you 5 or so weapons and some fluff. Not a bad price, not a good one though. Now do this on triple points day and all of a sudden it's [size=20]6.66[/size]. Which is a pretty nice deal for all you get.

Hail Certis!!! [size=7]Sorry couldn't resist. :D[/size]

But more to the point. I feel that it says a lot about the quality of planetside 2 that almost all of us feel to some degree that the pricing for the guns is kind of a rip off, and yet we all seem to be willing to look past it. Personally I think anything over five dollars is borderline obscene for a single gun, and I'm still willing to look past it because ironically enough given the scale of the game, its the only online shooter that doesn't lag terribly for me. Now that's by no means the only thing the game has going for it, the shooting feels good and the sheer scale of the whole thing lends it this chaotic feeling that you just can't get any where else. But they desperately need to figure something out in regards to the gun pricing, be it reducing how many SC fun-bucks you have to spend on a single weapon or just increasing how many certs you earn in through game play. Though I suspect that won't happen until after they've had time to work out what kind of cosmetic items they want to sell.

master0 wrote:

One thought is on armor though. I'm always figured the cert that gives you more health was the best of the bunch. It gives a straight 10% boost to health which can be enough to leave a sliver of health when you should be dead. The faster regen of shield doesn't seem like half as decent. Thoughts?

It depends on your class and playstyle.

You start with base 500shield/500health. Nanoweave 1 gives you 50 health(+10%), up to 125 with Nano5(+25%). Base shield regen time is ~10-12s. You're taking up to 2.5s off that time.

Personally I go Nanoweave, because often I can't regen health, and I'm willing to hide in a corner until my shield comes back up. My playstyle is to always be as close to 100% before I move to another encounter. This puts me on equal footing with someone who has freshly spawned.

Most classes will benefit from Nanoweave, except for those times that Flak armor would be more beneficial (base defense, tank combat, etc)

IHateDRM wrote:

But more to the point. I feel that it says a lot about the quality of planetside 2 that almost all of us feel to some degree that the pricing for the guns is kind of a rip off, and yet we all seem to be willing to look past it.

May be true for some, but it makes me less likely to play, and this game should be right up my alley. I've paid F2P money to other games, but so far, this one doesn't feel like my money will be worth it for my enjoyment, so I play other games instead more often than not.

IHateDRM wrote:

But more to the point. I feel that it says a lot about the quality of planetside 2 that almost all of us feel to some degree that the pricing for the guns is kind of a rip off, and yet we all seem to be willing to look past it. Personally I think anything over five dollars is borderline obscene for a single gun, and I'm still willing to look past it

Well not entirely. I had 4000 SC to start with since I bought the Alpha Squad pack. I now have 450 left. The only item I straight up bought for 7$ was the photon rockets. Everything else was on sale for at least 50% off, sometimes cheaper. I wasn't planning to put any more money into the game, but with the double and triple SC events being blanket 50% and 66% sales? I'll take it.

If SOE truly wants to succeed with this they need to reduce the price of cosmetic stuff. $2.5 for camo, armour skins or new helmets? Seems decent to me, much cheaper than LoL skins at any rate. But $6+ for silly things like terrible looking skull helmets and Sunderer hubcaps? HAHAHA, no. Those crappy looking Apex helmets are supposed to be the big new thing for christmas but even at 25% off they cost more than $5 each!

I'm pretty sure F2P is the most profitable part of Sony. I see why.

With that deal back and the triple points the cost is about a 1.50 per weapon, which is pretty damn good. Still this is one of the reason's I really don't like free to play games. A game you play for once is designed to be good and fun to play so you encourage others to play it. A game you subscribe to is designed to be fun to play but take as long as possible and stick you in the community so you play longer. Free to play is designed to make the game as slow as possible without getting you to quit, and use many techniques to take advantage of the weak willed.

I've read about the design process for free to play games, particularly the phone versions. It is not pretty, your basically viewed as cattle to be manipulated.

Planetside is a pretty far cry from stuff like Farmville though.

Anyhow I went and spent all of the certs I saved up over the double XP weekend. Learned a couple things in the process.

1. I bought the Flare LMG. It's fantastic! I compared it to the Ursa using the spreadsheet. The Ursa has a slightly slower firing rate at 500 rpm, and the vertical recoil is 15% less. But the Flare strikes a better balance between damage and speed. Plus the Ursa can't use soft point rounds. The recoil is very controllable and balanced horizontally so you don't need a foregrip. I'm not very fond of the other Vanu LMGs, the Orion would be decent if it had a bigger magazine, the other ones are simply too... generic.

2. I spent a whopping total of 700 certs buying the Dogfighter 3 airframe for my Scythe. It makes the scythe turn on a dime! In fact the controls are so responsive it has become a lot harder to fly and not crash into things. Being able to make screeching 180 degree turns has saved my ass a couple of times including one instance where I had 3 mosquitos on me. By the time they all turned around to follow I was well out of gun range. The only downside to using it is that your rudder becomes very strong and it's hard to line up shots on stationary ground targets.

3. I certed the resistance shield for the HA. It only lasts for a couple of seconds but my testing indicates that it absorbs roughly 40% of all incoming damage during that time. I calculated how many Gauss shots you could survive using the Resist shield vs Nanite mesh. With the maximum nano weave both of them will allow you to survive 9 shots at 200 damage, but the resist is more reliable because its strength doesn't drain over time. If the damage done is 167 instead the resist shield will help you soak up an extra shot compared to nanite mesh at 10-11. This pattern repeats against 143 damage weapons 12-13. Overall resist seems to be better if you know you are about to take a big chunk of damage.

4. I also certed medkits. Up until now I have been using the regeneration kits. You pop one and it will refill about 80% of your health over around 5 seconds. Medikits on the other hand refill ALL of your health almost instantly. What possible reason is there to use regeneration kits? They even cost the same!

Sometimes everything just rolls you way. I was an engineer manning a heavy anti-vehicle turret in a sub base at tawrich. They literally sent waves and waves of vehicles for me to blow up, it was fantastic. Between that and a little more play I was able to get the grenade launcher for my gun and the 2x scope. The 1x reflex holo scope blocks less of your view but the zoom is nice. Loving the grenade launcher all over again.

For those just playing infantry are you seeing decent cert rewards? It seems crazy that people that re using air vehicles can get 1000 certs an hour and it is pretty tough to get 1/10 of that in infantry. Or so it seems.

Tamren wrote:

What possible reason is there to use regeneration kits? They even cost the same!

Preemptive healing. Stack at the door, pop the regen then go in. If you take damage, the regen is already running. Sure, it doesn't last long, but neither do most firefights in small rooms.

karmajay wrote:

For those just playing infantry are you seeing decent cert rewards? It seems crazy that people that re using air vehicles can get 1000 certs an hour and it is pretty tough to get 1/10 of that in infantry. Or so it seems.

Really nothing makes a 1000 certs an hour, but a good run in a liberator or anything heavy can be way more. Thing is with vehicles it tends to be starve or feast. You either have more targets then you know what to do with or none at all. Infantry can make a lot of certs as well.

I think that upper maximum per hours is about 200-250, as I remember a reading a thread that discussed farming. Oh and farming can get you banned naturally.

I realize what this game reminds me of. World War 2, European theater. Long periods of quiet and emptiness among large areas, punctuated by moments of sheer terror and chaos ending in quick and confusion death that comes out of nowhere.

I knew the fight was going to an amp station and both sides had a high pop so it would be long and drawn out. So I grabbed a Lightning with Python HE and proceeding to camp the tower behind the NC's spawn room (not the spawn room itself, just the tower that most people run into). I would get most of my 28 kills (ammo cap for my lighting) and then run to nearby ammo Sundy (which should be on everyones upgrade list). Proceeded to do this for about a half hour until my team shut down the enemy SCU to the tune off around 85 certs. Felt like farming, but they just loved that tower. I loved getting 2nd in the battle!

LtWarhound wrote:

Preemptive healing. Stack at the door, pop the regen then go in. If you take damage, the regen is already running. Sure, it doesn't last long, but neither do most firefights in small rooms.

If that's how it's designed to work it's far too slow to be effective. At least in face to face fights. In the time it takes the enemy to fire 7 shots and kill you dead the regeneration will not have made up enough health to soak up even one more bullet. That MIGHT be different with resist shields though. I can definitely see the benefit when you are running around and only taking sporadic damage.

Since the patch I have been experiencing this odd bug while in vehicles. While crossing the boundary between one zone of control to another, I will often get the out of bounds warning. Sometimes moving back over the boundary will make it go away, but usually the counter runs down and I die. Jumping out of the vehicle seems to make it go away, but my vehicle instantly disappears.

Anyone else seeing this? Kinda kills my desire to play since I enjoy cruising around in tanks.

I haven't run into that. But sometimes while flying I will go off the map momentarily and get stuck with the out of bounds warning. Only the warning counter is stuck at 0:00 and never goes away until I die.

Okay, after downloading this game finally this morning from Steam and being curious, I think I'm going to jump in and just test the waters. Just looking for a distraction and downtime kind of game in between more meaty things.

Is it still good to just go the Vanu route and I guess Waterson server? I'm thinking of just going to Vent and maybe skimming for people to play with. Total noob and haven't done more than install the game. Anything I should do before diving in besides hitting up Vent?

Thanks in advance guys

It is real tough to play solo. If you want a group you can still join up with Quantum Dawn where a lot of GWJers play. If you want, you can just jump on their Teamspeak and play with them to test the waters.

So, just as a fun distraction and massive FPS, maybe Tribes is the way to go? Just was thinking of testing this out because of all the good little bits I've heard. Just as a first little bit of creating the account and jumping onto the server, they do just throw you in there and say "Figure it out!". I kind of got the jist of things pretty quick and how to "spot" after reading through this thread. Other than that and changing classes, just spawning where fights are and trying to tactically move to where you can get some kills is a little tough, even staying with groups of dudes/dudettes.

Le0hart85 wrote:

So, just as a fun distraction and massive FPS, maybe Tribes is the way to go? Just was thinking of testing this out because of all the good little bits I've heard. Just as a first little bit of creating the account and jumping onto the server, they do just throw you in there and say "Figure it out!". I kind of got the jist of things pretty quick and how to "spot" after reading through this thread. Other than that and changing classes, just spawning where fights are and trying to tactically move to where you can get some kills is a little tough, even staying with groups of dudes/dudettes.

Tribes really isnt that 'massive'

karmajay wrote:

It is real tough to play solo. If you want a group you can still join up with Quantum Dawn where a lot of GWJers play. If you want, you can just jump on their Teamspeak and play with them to test the waters.

You can also go on Vent, often you'll find a small group of us on there. And I still say this is a game you can play solo, it's just going to be a little rough at first because of the lack of tutorial.

I picked up a compensator and foregrip for my Flare LMG. Shoots straight as an arrow now! I can actually attempt to go for headshots rather than having them happen accidentally.

I picked up my walmart SOE card, can't wait to use it on Friday and go on a spending spree