PlanetSide 2 Review

[shintakie10]

The complete lack of any tutorial and the ridiculous idea to hotdrop you into a random location on the map without even lettin you pick a class at the start was really really obnoxious.

I had to resist the urge to uninstall the game right after because of how utterly stupid that idea was.

I got over it though and tried it out. Its not bad. Default loadouts for almost all classes are complete balls (an engineer without mines is kinda useless outside of bein a mobile ammo dispenser while a stock heavy cant kill a tank worth garbage) and the acquisition rate for free players is atrocious at best, but its a fun little time waster...sometimes.

The problem I've been havin is that its just...dead. The 3 servers I've been on one faction controls 90% of 1 continent. Another faction controls 90% of the second continent. The final continent is kinda sorta fought over. You can't actually make any headway on the fully controlled continents until the entire group leaves, at which point they just take over another continent and you take stuff unopposed.

Its really strange too. The first week it was crazy. I remember desperate fights at really weird places like Commanders Rest where me and my TR buddies were barely holdin on against an assault from the purple people eaters. Just when we're about to get overrun, blam! Blue man group shows up and blasts Venu from behind which gives us a moment to breath. Except now we're in a full on 3 way. In fact, my favorite battle of all time was for some random minin outpost near the middle. There had to have been 600 people total between the 3 factions fightin for this tiny plot of dirt that didn't even give a bonus. It lasted 2 hours.

There hasn't been a fight like that in the last few days now.

 

[SnowBurst]

it takes me less then a couple of mins in a mossie to get from tr base to vanu base... and its nothing at all like bf3 bf3 is 1)tiny 2)not the same objective (yes you cap a few points but thats it) bf3 n cod are similar ps2 is nothing like them

 

[Matthi205]

I like the game so far, I played the game for about an hour, and sure I died....a lot.... but after I got a hold of some of the controls I started to rack up the points. Though I am still confused on the landing for the aerial vehicles.

Same thing here, though I'm playing since beta and got to die a lot more before launch .
Aerial vehicles:
CTRL - vertical thrusters off (you go down)
SPACE - vertical thrusters on (you go up)
I can PM you with instructions how to fly with the keyboard only if you want.

It's not really Pay to win. Some of the weapons are really straight upgrades to the normal ones (rocketpods & Heavy Assault Launchers), but you can do well with the normal ones too. A patch next week will rework at least the rocket pods, if not Anti-Air as a whole, which is an indicator it's being worked on.

 

[GeeksUtopia]

I like the game so far, I played the game for about an hour, and sure I died....a lot.... but after I got a hold of some of the controls I started to rack up the points. Though I am still confused on the landing for the aerial vehicles.

Same thing here, though I'm playing since beta and got to die a lot more before launch .
Aerial vehicles:
CTRL - vertical thrusters off (you go down)
SPACE - vertical thrusters on (you go up)
I can PM you with instructions how to fly with the keyboard only if you want.

It's not really Pay to win. Some of the weapons are really straight upgrades to the normal ones (rocketpods & Heavy Assault Launchers), but you can do well with the normal ones too. A patch next week will rework at least the rocket pods, if not Anti-Air as a whole, which is an indicator it's being worked on.

Which army are you fighting for? (Terran Republic on the Jaegar server)

 

[Matthi205]

-snip-
Which army are you fighting for? (Terran Republic on the Jaegar server)

Vanu on Mallory. I've also played NC on Miller and Mattherson, and TR on LithCorp. NC is a joke and completely contrary to my playstyle, but VS and TR are factions I can get along with vehicle and gun wise.

 

[weirdee]

tanks are actually pretty easy to fight if you don't do something dumb like try to attack them on an open field

a tank driver has limited visibility and range of motion at any particular moment, so if you use your ability to get around on foot behind cover, you can get several good shots in on a tank and if you move as soon as you fire, they won't be able to respond fast enough for them to get a direct hit. remember that a tank has to face the direction that they're firing, so in the half second it takes for the main gun to turn towards you, you can already be hustling to the next spot

also, since the main gun can't fire continuously, if they don't have the secondary gunner, you can time your shots to occur between their firing cycle

speaking of which, without a main gunner, they can't see behind the vehicle, so if you take a flanking shot, it'll require them to turn around in order to find you

in addition, since tanks have limited ammo capacity, they'll have to retreat to resupply eventually, even if they are dominating the area

i also recommend investing in the antitank grenades when you can, since the normal ones don't really do jack to armor

 

[Nikolaz72]

I'm going to have to weight in on the pay2win side here. Although you CAN unlock stuff with certs rather than money, that doesn't make it not pay2win. The whole "you're just trading money instead of time" argument is a strawman and a pretty poor one at that.

What it comes down to is that, if you earn 1000 certs and buy an utterly necessary weapon (and there are several of these unless you plan to significantly limit your playstyle), somebody who spent money bought the weapon and spent the 1000 certs on upgrading it (or whatever). So their weapon, passives, health etc. are better than yours. Chances are, with the nice toys, they're probably earning certs faster than you too.

Unless you pay, you simply cannot keep up. That's what it comes down to. It's about as pay2win as it gets and, personally, I'm already seeing falloff in player numbers as the initial spike realises how much they're going to have to spend and/or how little they're going to enjoy the game without paying.

There's a darned good reason that PS1 ran the reserves program. In PS2, unless you pay (and pay regularly - it's only out for a couple of weeks and they've already released several new weapons and upgrades), a f2p player is basically an even more gimped reserve... and the reserves were gimped enough as it was.

/crystalball - I forsee server merges...

On another note, the lack of meta-game is a killer, rendering most actions pretty much pointless. In PS1, the lattice system (which could certainly have been improved) ensured that grabbing and holding bases was meaningful and, by acting strategically you could "own" continents by the simple expedient of taking all the bases and defending the one base that the enemy could attack. It's not exactly a win, but owning all the conts and sanc-locking your enemy was what every faction aspired to.

With the new system, it's actually advantageous to let your enemy have bases, because you can cap them back for a ton of XP and certs. And with nonlockable warpgates on every continent, the entire game is basically an endlessly ongoing game of whack-a-mole with very little to strive towards.

I'll play it. But as it stands, I've got FAR less investment than I had in PS1, so I'll play it less and I certainly won't pay any significant amount into it.

*Actually played the game for more than 5 minutes*

I havent spend one dollar and I usually range between a 2-1 3-1 KD. And thats just starting out and not having played an FPS for a year. My friend whom have paid about 60dollars on various boosters and passive-bonuses gets a 1-1 on a good day. Like all FPS's this game is skill-first bonuses later. And Pay-to-win suggests you pay and then automatically win. The boosters on their own is an advantage, if they took the guns away by your logic. It'd still be Play 2 Win. Because they'd gain the certs much faster, thereby getting the upgraded before you did and gain an advantage.

If you are really dying to not die all the time, drop a hundred infantry points on a Max suit. Seriously, then replace that stupid grenade-launcher with the AA-gun and have some fun gunning down those stupid ass fighter-jets. Rack up the points and scores.

Alternatively find an engineer and set up a turret on a good vantage point or in a nice ambush-position. If you make sure behind you is a wall and infront of you is a decent clear sight over somewhere enemies would have to go through (Plenty of such places) Getting kills should also be incredibly easy.

Actually kills for me has been so easy, that I've just started giving away my initial 'secrets' and moving on to playing Heavy Assault. Because that's pretty much where the fun is.

Btw, wanna know the one thing I upgraded? Spawnpoint on the Sunderer. Yep, no passive bonuses for myself. No extra guns. The ability for teammates all over the continent to respawn on me. Because this is a teamplaying game, you dont go lone wolf. And you dont go lone wolf and then cry about others killing you first.

That just tires a (now) experienced FPS player out immensely.

Mind you, I have been dropping Planetside 2 time in favor of Dark Souls. But it is still a very good game, and for the price of 0 dollars? I'd be willing to give it 5 stars. Worth everyones time, certainly worth the no money spent.

Now excuse me while I go headshot some snipers with my sidearm. *Dances away*

-what, no im most certainly not using aimbot-

...

-dont judge me!-

Seriously though, I play with a team of 15-30 people whom all pretty much run around doing their own thing. Everyone varies in skill, but theese forums? First time I've heard anyone whine about people whom pay or subscribe gaining an unfair advantage. Frankly it just sounds like an excuse. Like...

*OH I DIED, MUST BE BECAUSE HE HAD A BETTER GUN*

instead

*OH I DIED, MUST HAVE BEEN BECAUSE HE SAW ME FIRST OR HAD A GUN BETTER DESIGNED TO KILL THE SPECIFIC VEHICLE I WAS IN*

yousee, contrary to belief. Theres a difference between factions. Terra Vehicles are much better at infantrykilling than the Neo-Conglamorate. And those guys have an almost insta-kill vehicle shot attatched to their tank. If you dont find the weapons on a certain faction to suit you, instead of whining about the people using thousands of certs to buy weapons instantly available from the getgo of another faction... Just give the other faction a try. Maybe the weapon doesnt even suit your playstyle.

 

[Matthi205]

*OH I DIED, MUST HAVE BEEN BECAUSE HE SAW ME FIRST OR HAD A GUN BETTER DESIGNED TO KILL THE SPECIFIC VEHICLE I WAS IN*

yousee, contrary to belief. Theres a difference between factions. Terra Vehicles are much better at infantrykilling than the Neo-Conglamorate. And those guys have an almost insta-kill vehicle shot attatched to their tank. If you dont find the weapons on a certain faction to suit you, instead of whining about the people using thousands of certs to buy weapons instantly available from the getgo of another faction... Just give the other faction a try. Maybe the weapon doesnt even suit your playstyle.

I found out that exactly that is true.

Here's a quick overview of the three factions and their differences:

Vanu Sovereignty (VS) have weapons with very little to no recoil, nearly no bullet drop (pewpew laser-ish bullets -> might just be supercooled projectiles below 70K) and OK armor. The VS have a hover tank that can, with upgrades, glide over a lot of barriers, and, with the Magburner ability, glide over walls in certain circumstances (Magburner speeds the Magrider up to ~120kph). The Magrider is called the "Magmower" by infantry for a reason.

New Conglomerate (NC) are supposed to be slow, but hit hard... I don't realy know if this holds ANY truth, seeing as the Gauss SAW (just an example) has a 100 bullet clip and really bad recoil. They have the Vanguard tank, the one most closely resembling a modern tank like the Leopard 2A6 or M1A2 Abrams.It has a very good cannon that does a ot of damage, but it's slow, especially when going uphill.

Terran Republic (TR) have fast-firing guns that do low damage per bullet and are really good at killing infantry (especially in close quarters combat - CQC), as are their tanks. They lack good tanks (the Prowler is a joke against the Vanguard or the Magrider), but make up for it with the Mosquito (their Air superiority fighter). The Prowler is nearly as fast as the Lightning, but it has two turrets, so it can shoot two shots in quick succession.

 

[Lawyer105]

*Actually played the game for more than 5 minutes*

I've got about 40 hours in PS2 now (and it's not going to get any higher 'cause I've uninstalled). And I played about, I dunno... 5 years in PS1. I know Planetside and how it works.

I havent spend one dollar and I usually range between a 2-1 3-1 KD. And thats just starting out and not having played an FPS for a year. My friend whom have paid about 60dollars on various boosters and passive-bonuses gets a 1-1 on a good day. Like all FPS's this game is skill-first bonuses later. And Pay-to-win suggests you pay and then automatically win. The boosters on their own is an advantage, if they took the guns away by your logic. It'd still be Play 2 Win. Because they'd gain the certs much faster, thereby getting the upgraded before you did and gain an advantage.

If you're getting 2-1 or 3-1 averages then either:
a) you're camping infantry in a tank or similar tactic; or
b) you massively outskill the people you're playing against.

If a), your argument is worthless. Camping stupid infantry in a tank should get you better than 3-1 K/D, and it also indicates that you're not comparing like with like. If b), at no point did I ever say that skill was not a factor. But it's also absolutely clear that, where two equally skilled people square off, the one who's paying money is going to come out on top, pretty much all the time. If spending real money gets you an ingame advantage, then the game is P2W almost by definition. I dunno what planet you live on where buying ingame advantages is NOT P2W, but it ain't this one.

If you are really dying to not die all the time, drop a hundred infantry points on a Max suit. Seriously, then replace that stupid grenade-launcher with the AA-gun and have some fun gunning down those stupid ass fighter-jets. Rack up the points and scores.

At this point, I'm gonna call BS on your claimed "experience". It's well documented (and the devs have even admitted) that ground based AA is only meant as a deterrent to air. It's not actually designed to kill them, only frighten them off. And with only one of the two MAX AA arms, if you're getting all those kills either a) you live in happy-happy land where your magical server is only populated by complete retards; or b) you're flat out lying in some sort of desperate attempt to protect your new epeen enhancer from criticism.

Alternatively find an engineer and set up a turret on a good vantage point or in a nice ambush-position. If you make sure behind you is a wall and infront of you is a decent clear sight over somewhere enemies would have to go through (Plenty of such places) Getting kills should also be incredibly easy.

Sure... for the 2 minutes it takes you to grieflock from all the morons that think running in front of a cannon is a good survival strategy.

Actually kills for me has been so easy, that I've just started giving away my initial 'secrets' and moving on to playing Heavy Assault. Because that's pretty much where the fun is.

Epeen, much? I'm not even going to dignify this with serious response.

*OH I DIED, MUST BE BECAUSE HE HAD A BETTER GUN*

instead

*OH I DIED, MUST HAVE BEEN BECAUSE HE SAW ME FIRST OR HAD A GUN BETTER DESIGNED TO KILL THE SPECIFIC VEHICLE I WAS IN*

yousee, contrary to belief. Theres a difference between factions. Terra Vehicles are much better at infantrykilling than the Neo-Conglamorate. And those guys have an almost insta-kill vehicle shot attatched to their tank. If you dont find the weapons on a certain faction to suit you, instead of whining about the people using thousands of certs to buy weapons instantly available from the getgo of another faction... Just give the other faction a try. Maybe the weapon doesnt even suit your playstyle.

I actually play all three factions. Well, played, because the lack of anything resembling real persistence (like PS1 had) makes the game no more interesting than BF3.

Also... bad strawman is bad. I'm well aware that going up against a LA shotty at close-range, with an infil pistol is usually a form of suicide. Believe it or not, I'm smart enough to have realised that different classes and weapons have different roles, and if you play out-of-role, dying is something you should expect.

I'm also well aware of the fact that, unless you spend money, you will always be outclassed in almost every role, almost all the time. I've provided plenty of examples in my previous posts, all of which you've ignored. I'm going to stick with my assumption that you're just fanboi-defending this game until you actually prove otherwise.

As far as I'm concerned, PS2 fails to be Planetside. It's not a bad large-scale BF-wannabe, nor is it a bad game. But it's not Planetside. And it's most definitely P2W. Sure, the devs need to get their money back, but they're going about it wrong. I'd far rather they had a decent subscription model like PS1, or that micro-transactions were actually micro, or that they'd implemented a proper F2P model which wasn't P2W. But they haven't so, as far as I'm concerned, PS2 is a failure.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

People in this thread are mischaracterising how PS2's store system affects game balance.

Unlocks in PS2 are divided into those that can be purchased only with certs and those that can be purchased with certs or with real-world currency. Certs are obtained by gaining experience through playing the game. This division is intentional.

Unlocks that are straight, statistical upgrades - for example, a suit upgrade that gives 5% extra health or 2% faster reload speed - can only be purchased with certs. You can only get these upgrades by playing the game, gaining certs, and unlocking them. The better you are at the game, the faster you will gain certs, and the faster you can gain these direct upgrades.

The unlocks that can be purchased with real-world currency are not direct upgrades. They are sidegrades from the default equipment that you start with. These sidegrades support alternate playstyles that are more specialised than the default loadout. In that respect, they're more comparable to the weapon unlocks in TF2 than anything else.

For example, the default rocket launcher that the Heavy Assault class starts with shoots a dumb-fire, high-damage rocket with a large blast radius. It's equally good at killing infantry and vehicles, but you have to aim it. There are two alternate rocket launchers, unlockable with cash, that have a lock-on function. One locks on to vehicles, and the other locks onto aircraft. People in this thread seem to perceive the lock-on ability as a direct upgrade, but they're not clarifying that a) the lock-on rocket launchers deal much less damage than the dumb-fire rocket launcher, and b) the dumb-fire has a larger blast radius. It's actually a sidegrade; you give up power for precision, and the ability to better tackle vehicles and aircraft respectively.

What the cash unlocks in PS2 add is, essentially, variety in playstyle. For example, you have to unlock shotguns with certs or cash; no class starts with a shotgun by default. This is because a shotgun is a specialist weapon, and the default weapons are designed to be as generalist as possible. To the guy who's being wiped out by a shotgun-wielding heavy assault during a siege, this seems like pay-to-win, but the fact is that the shotgun guy paid money to specialise. His shotgun is useless outside of close quarters; it's not a direct upgrade in the same way that a hit point increase would be. And if he's a terrible player, you can still kill him fairly easily. He still has to aim the shotgun, after all.

There are a few exceptions that I should note.
- Aircraft secondary weapons - A2G and A2A missile launchers - are a cash unlock; this would be a sidegrade if the default aircraft secondary wasn't an almost-useless fuel tank that increases afterburner speed. The two missile launchers are simply vastly more useful than they were perhaps intended to be, which was a mistake by the dev team.
- Similarly, I sympathise with anyone who is trying to kill a fighter with a dumb-fire rocket launcher - it's very difficult, and I'd prefer to see a pseudo-lock-on system for the default rocket launcher, unlockable with certs. That said, a lot of bad pilots think they can hover stationary and shoot at the helpless infantry, which makes it terrible easy to instagib them.
- The game does sell experience boosters, which lead to faster cert gain, which leads to faster upgrades. This is sorta pay-to-win, but in a roundabout way - the guy still won't get the upgrade he wants very quickly, and if he plays badly he still won't get certs very quickly. He still has to kill people, after all.
- The grind in this game is harsh. Cert gain is pretty slow, and when you're new you'll dump certs on stuff that in retrospect wasn't very useful. Weapon prices vary from 100 to 1000 certs and new players will usually get about 15-30 certs per hour if they're playing competently. With time you can maximise your cert gain, but for a new player it's very daunting, and I'd like to see the PS2 devs up the cert gain in future.

Some specific rebuttals:

-Someone said that the default rocket launcher takes 6 shots to kill a light tank. This is only partly true; vehicles have different armour at different facings, so it may take 6 shots to the front, but only 2 or 3 to the back. This rewards skilled use of the rocket launcher to aim at specific parts of the tank.
-Someone mentioned Liberators with infrared bombing them from high altitudes. Infrared is a cert-only unlock with a limited range. You can't see anything with it from more than about 300 metres up, so you were either being bombed from a lower altitude than you thought or they weren't using IR. It's also not relevant for any pay-to-win discussion, because anyone can spawn a Liberator with the default ground-attack weapon, which is a very effective quadruple chain-gun, and upgrade it with infrared using cert points, and do the exact same thing that those players were doing without spending any money.
- If you can't kill someone with the default fighter primary you are not very good at dogfighting. Admittedly, plane controls are difficult to get a handle on, so you should spend at least a few hours at the warpgate practicing take-off and landing.

But in general, saying Planetside 2 is pay-to-win is a gross misrepresentation. You can pay money to unlock variant weapons that are more effective in certain situations, but you can't pay to gain an overall advantage over any free player. People are confusing "paying money to specialise" with "paying money to win the game." There's no supergun that kills players in one hit and is reloaded by buying Doritos or something.

 

[Lawyer105]

stuff

Part of the problem comes from the lack of consistency in defining "pay to win". For me, any game where you can purchase ingame advantages with RL cash is P2W, especially where the more cash you spend, the greater your advantage is.

Your argument that "most good stuff comes from certs, not cash" is essentially flawed, because anybody that's spending cash on boosters is going to have significantly more certs that somebody that doesn't... even if that person HAS spent money on the game. You derive direct, ingame power from spending RL cash. When you add in the fact that you can purchase weapons as well (a significant cert-drain for F2Pers), P2P people are even further ahead.

As for the suggestion that money unlocks versatility, you're basically correct, and you've completely ignored the fact that Planetside is ALL ABOUT versatility. No matter your playstyle, you need the ability to vary it to succeed in PS. If you're primarily a skirmisher, you'll need to be playing Air, Infil, LA, and a bit of Engy. If you're primarily a brawler, you'll need to be playing Armor, Heavy Assault, Medics and MAXes. If you primarily play support, you'll need Sundies, Galaxies, Medics and Engies.

They've designed the game so that no one playstyle / class / vehicle / weapon etc. is appropriate for all situations. But since you can be in any situation at the drop of a hat, and especially considering the history of Planetside, you're expected to switch out to appropriate playstyles (or to not whine when you get killed by those who did). Again, it comes down to, if you don't pay, at least half your game-time is going to be spent as cannon fodder for those who did.

Maybe your definition of P2W isn't met by PS2... but the most common definitions I've seen (and my own) are. Sorry, but you're wrong on this one.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

I think I mentioned this already but the closest comparison to PS2's system is actually Team Fortress 2. In TF2, the alternative class weapons are mostly sidegrades, and you can gain them either by a time investment or by purchasing them from Mann Co.

That's why I think it's so weird that this thread is full of people complaining about PS2 being pay-to-win, because PS2's system shares a lot of important characteristics with TF2, and I've never heard anyone complaining about TF2 being pay-to-win. In TF2, you either directly purchase a weapon that is basically a sidegrade, or you put in a time investment and get it eventually through achievements or random drops. In PS2, you either directly purchase a weapon that is basically a sidegrade, or you put in a time investment and buy it with certs.

I think the biggest difference between the two systems is that the grind in PS2 is much steeper, which is a valid criticism, but not the criticism that's being made here.

Maybe your definition of P2W isn't met by PS2... but the most common definitions I've seen (and my own) are. Sorry, but you're wrong on this one.

I'm sorry; I wasn't aware I was responding to representative of the International Gaming Slang Dictionary Committee.

Poor attempts at sarcasm aside, you have defined pay-to-win as system where you purchase in-game advantages with real-life cash. Because you played the semantics card almost immediately, I can point out that you haven't defined what 'advantage" means without feeling like a pedant. You later say "direct, ingame power," so I'll assume that's what you mean by "advantage." So what advantage, or direct in-game power, do we get by spending cash in PS2?

Cash purchases in PS2 buy you three things:

- specialised weapon unlocks that, with a few exceptions, are basically sidegrades of the default equipment;
- cosmetic items, and;
- boosters.

Only the boosters really grant "direct, ingame power." They confer a static percentage increase in experience gain. I mentioned boosters as being problematic in my first post, and they kinda are, but really only at a conceptual level. The fact is that a 50% experience increase, which sounds like a lot, will still not help you if you're bad at the game. You still have to shoot people, heal people, repair things - all the kind of stuff you're expected to do as you play the game. You have an advantage, but it's such a small advantage I honestly don't think it's a big deal. It's definitely not a big enough deal to pop your monocle over.

Even then, I can get a +50% experience bonus on a kill pretty easily - the experience modifiers applied to kills, such as headshots and killstreak bonuses, add up to 50% pretty quickly. So if you're bad at the game, the boost doesn't benefit you, and if you're good at the game, you don't really need the boost. And if you're good at the game and you bought the boost, you're not really paying to win because you're good at the game and were winning anyway.

Aside from boosts, there is really nothing you can purchase in the store that fits your definition of an advantage. I think you then argue that the versatility afforded by weapon unlocks itself is an advantage, but I thought about this, and that's actually a pretty silly statement. The weapon unlocks are specialisations. The default loadout is a generalist, and it's more versatile than a loadout full of specialised unlocks geared towards a certain scenario. If you want to be versatile, keep the default weapons - they're designed to be good against everything.

Unless you were arguing that the ability to change loadouts into something different gives the needed versatility. I grant that if someone hypothetically unlocked every weapon by spending an incredibly generous amount of cash, they could theoretically be prepared for every situation, if they were psychic and stood next to a Sunderer the entire time so that they could constantly switch loadouts at will. No-one actually plays the game that way. They pick a loadout they like and then they run with it 90% of the time. Not to mention that they've probably invested their certs in one class or weapon, buying upgrades you can't get with money. This hypothetical pay-to-win everyman specialist you're talking about won't have enough certs to upgrade the guns he's bought. He won't even have enough certs to upgrade one class.

And the whole exercise would be pretty unnecessary, because in PS2 a medic can fulfill his basic function - healing people - totally independent of cash purchases, which do not affect his healing ability. I mean, the versatility granted by the weapon unlocks is intended to fit a personal playstyle - it doesn't influence the basic function of your class, which is what people are interested in when they plan ops. They don't say to Jimmy the Medic "Make sure you equip that assault rifle with half as many bullets but less bullet drop for this next skirmish." They say to Jimmy, "Make sure you heal people."

So, yeah. I appreciate you informing me that I'm wrong on this one, but I still think that calling PS2 pay-to-win drastically misrepresents how the game works. It essentially copies TF2's system, with the addition of booster purchases that have a very minimal effect on cert gain in comparison to a person's individual skill level (and which are actually useless if you don't gain experience in the first place.) The weapons are sidegrades; they confer advantages and disadvantages in a way intended to cater to personal whims, and not to statistical superiority.

If you think this kind of system is pay-to-win, there is really no kind of cash shop system that wouldn't be pay-to-win. They'd just have to do something crazy, like make every weapon available to everyone, no cash required, based on time investment and skill level.

Wait, wait. They did that already.

 

[Lawyer105]

I think I mentioned this already but the closest comparison to PS2's system is actually Team Fortress 2. In TF2, the alternative class weapons are mostly sidegrades, and you can gain them either by a time investment or by purchasing them from Mann Co.

That's why I think it's so weird that this thread is full of people complaining about PS2 being pay-to-win, because PS2's system shares a lot of important characteristics with TF2, and I've never heard anyone complaining about TF2 being pay-to-win. In TF2, you either directly purchase a weapon that is basically a sidegrade, or you put in a time investment and get it eventually through achievements or random drops. In PS2, you either directly purchase a weapon that is basically a sidegrade, or you put in a time investment and buy it with certs.

The difference is that a weapon is fixed. The difference is that, UNLIKE Team Fortress 2, a person that earns 1000 certs and buys a sidegrade now has two unbonused weapons, whereas a person who buys the item with cash spends his 1000 certs on upgrading one or both of those weapons and is now measurably ahead of the first dude.

I think the biggest difference between the two systems is that the grind in PS2 is much steeper, which is a valid criticism, but not the criticism that's being made here.

But it IS part of the criticism. Any game that lets you earn stuff ingame (like PS2) becomes more and more P2W as the grind threshold increases and, as you yourself have admitted, the grind threshold in PS2 is as steep as it gets (Asian MMO's aside).

SOE made a bad call on how to incentivise people to purchase stuff. First they said only cosmetics. Then they decided that wouldn't be enough, so they added convenience items. Then they decided that still wasn't enough and started locking away ingame items behind cert/money walls. Then they decided that STILL wasn't enough, so they nerfed the cert gain to incentivise RL transactions even further.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, the vast majority of purchases apply to ONE character, on ONE empire, on ONE server. Your stuff isn't even account wide! And when you're talking about a single weapon / gear unlock potentially running 7-10 USD, that's just straight up BS, without even chocolate sprinkles to hide it.

This is nickel 'n diming at it's absolute worst, and there's no excusing it. I don't mind paying for my fun, but I'm totally averse to bare-faced attempts to screw me over.

Poor attempts at sarcasm aside, you have defined pay-to-win as system where you purchase in-game advantages with real-life cash. Because you played the semantics card almost immediately, I can point out that you haven't defined what 'advantage" means without feeling like a pedant. You later say "direct, ingame power," so I'll assume that's what you mean by "advantage." So what advantage, or direct in-game power, do we get by spending cash in PS2?

While most cash weapons are sidegrades (and there absolutely are some that are pure UPgrades), there's still opportunity cost as noted above. Anybody that spends 1000 certs on a weapon (particularly the semi-to-totally necessary upgrade ones) is now 1000 UPGRADE certs behind somebody who just purchased it with cash. The cash dude has purchased a direct advantage over the other dude.

By and large, I've got no problems with the cosmetic items. This is one of the things F2P games have always thrived on (obligatory TF2 hats reference) and, with a few very limited exceptions, none of them offer direct ingame benefits. However, in a game with TTK's as short as this one (and they're a LOT shorter than PS1) target identification is a critical part of success, and some of the camo's in some situations do offer some concealment benefit. If this was the only issue with the cash shop, I wouldn't even bother raising it, but since it isn't.....

I wouldn't worry too much about boosters either... except in combination with the weapons sales. 50% isn't much, until you also consider that the people buying boosters have probably already bought whatever weapons/gear they needed. Not only are they several thousand (maybe more) certs ahead, but they're earning them faster too. Cash wins, and if you don't pay you're screwed. Again.

Aside from boosts, there is really nothing you can purchase in the store that fits your definition of an advantage. I think you then argue that the versatility afforded by weapon unlocks itself is an advantage, but I thought about this, and that's actually a pretty silly statement. The weapon unlocks are specialisations. The default loadout is a generalist, and it's more versatile than a loadout full of specialised unlocks geared towards a certain scenario. If you want to be versatile, keep the default weapons - they're designed to be good against everything.

No, they're designed not to be terrible against anything. They're... average. They don't do anything well, nor do they fail terribly at anything. But as any FPSer worth his killspam knows, you play to your advantage. Going LA with a shotty and running around in the open just means you're an idiot. Any non-idiot going LA with a shotty is going to be flanking at close range - where he will always have an advantage. Sure, he might catch a tank to the face every third or fourth flanking run if he gets unlucky, but that's what C4 is for. Oh wait... C4 is horrifically expensive, so most folks won't have it any time soon. And they certainly won't have two blocks of it yet, so all they're going to do is annoy the tank! And let's not get started on why the hell a sci-fi shooter set on another planet, umpteen years in the future still has C4! Oh yeah... 'cause they're trying to be Battlefield.

Unless you were arguing that the ability to change loadouts into something different gives the needed versatility. I grant that if someone hypothetically unlocked every weapon by spending an incredibly generous amount of cash, they could theoretically be prepared for every situation, if they were psychic and stood next to a Sunderer the entire time so that they could constantly switch loadouts at will. No-one actually plays the game that way. They pick a loadout they like and then they run with it 90% of the time. Not to mention that they've probably invested their certs in one class or weapon, buying upgrades you can't get with money. This hypothetical pay-to-win everyman specialist you're talking about won't have enough certs to upgrade the guns he's bought. He won't even have enough certs to upgrade one class.

Seriously? One class? Are you SURE you're playing Planetside? I have NEVER (not solo, in a squad or with any of several outfits) played only one class or role. The role you play is dictated by the battlefield situation. If there's a lot of Air out, you pull anti-air or MAXes. If tanks are camping, then you pull tanks, AV or MAXes. If the fight is largely outdoors on flat-ish terrain, the Infils and Medics (and HA if they've got the right unlocks) are the order of the day. If it's in close quarters or rough terrain, then LA, HA and Engineers generally rule the day. Planetside has ALWAYS been about adapting to the battlefield conditions and selecting the loadout that was best for the situation. It's a real shame that they're placing such restrictive limits on it that most people (like yourself) clearly don't even realise the limitations that are being placed.

And the whole exercise would be pretty unnecessary, because in PS2 a medic can fulfill his basic function - healing people - totally independent of cash purchases, which do not affect his healing ability. I mean, the versatility granted by the weapon unlocks is intended to fit a personal playstyle - it doesn't influence the basic function of your class, which is what people are interested in when they plan ops. They don't say to Jimmy the Medic "Make sure you equip that assault rifle with half as many bullets but less bullet drop for this next skirmish." They say to Jimmy, "Make sure you heal people."

And unless they want Jimmy to just camp at the back like a lame-ass, wannabe WoW priest, he's going to be right up in the action too. And needs the certs, upgrades and weapons to pull his weight. "Everyone fights, noone quits..." etc. etc.

If you think this kind of system is pay-to-win, there is really no kind of cash shop system that wouldn't be pay-to-win. They'd just have to do something crazy, like make every weapon available to everyone, no cash required, based on time investment and skill level.

Or, you know... do it like they did in PS1 which, while it wasn't perfect, was a damned sight better (and more consistent) system than what they have now, with the Frankensteinian agglomeration of traits from PS1, CoD and BF3.

 

[catalyst8]

[...]There's absolutely no point, no point what so ever, to progress in the game when you can just pay money to win [...] Cash shop should not give you an actual gameplay advantage.[...]

[...] You are not paying money to win, you are paying money to get other stuff (which is a lot of money). That doesn't make you instantly lose the game, does it? [...]

[...] the simple idea of giving people a noticeable advantage for money (with the alternative being needlessly long grinding) is bad.

[...] 7$ to unlock a single weapon for a single class or 1000 cert points (and you gain cert points at a rate of about 15-20 an hour... if you're very lucky. My rate is more along the lines of 10-12)[...]

[...] It takes weeks to get only 1 weapon. Or just 7 dollars.

[...] It's like paying that much to unlock a single champion ability in League of Legends.

[...] lets say it takes 1.5 weeks to get those 1000 points.
Now lets take WoW[etc.]

[...] What does PvE item gain have to do with a 100% PvP game?? In WoW you are NOT competing with players who have 2-3 times better gear than you to finish the SAME raid.

My problem with Planetside2 is that it's dangerously close to Pay-To-Win. I'd say it has already crossed the line since the best weapons are NOT sidegrades for the most part, and they are very expensive.

And that's the problem with the massive majority of so-called 'Free to Play' - they aren't, they're Pay to Win. The whole model is incongruous with any competitive game, but especially so with PvP:
For actual cash any player can equip themselves with all of the best gear which no non-paying player could ever realistically hope to acquire; naturally this gives all paying players a mammoth advantage over others to the point where a player's skill becomes irrelevant.

The model should more accurately be named 'Free to Lose, Pay to Win'. From a business perspective I can understand why this system has been used - they naturally want to bolster player numbers, thus making the servers fuller & encouraging players to spend money on better gear to give them an advantage. Unfortunately this automatically creates an uneven playing field where those dominating the game aren't necessarily the best players but are, by necessity, the ones spending the most money on the game.

As soon as any player can buy an advantage over another it immediately destroys the whole concept of an equally matched competition where skill determines who wins & who loses. To exaggerate for effect:
SOE may as well hire out aimbots for cash & be done with it.

 

[Frostbite3789]

And that's the problem with the massive majority of so-called 'Free to Play' - they aren't, they're Pay to Win. The whole model is incongruous with any competitive game, but especially so with PvP:
For actual cash any player can equip themselves with all of the best gear which no non-paying player could ever realistically hope to acquire; naturally this gives all paying players a mammoth advantage over others to the point where a player's skill becomes irrelevant.

The model should more accurately be named 'Free to Lose, Pay to Win'. From a business perspective I can understand why this system has been used - they naturally want to bolster player numbers, thus making the servers fuller & encouraging players to spend money on better gear to give them an advantage. Unfortunately this automatically creates an uneven playing field where those dominating the game aren't necessarily the best players but are, by necessity, the ones spending the most money on the game.

As soon as any player can buy an advantage over another it immediately destroys the whole concept of an equally matched competition where skill determines who wins & who loses. To exaggerate for effect:
SOE may as well hire out aimbots for cash & be done with it.

So in LoL because you buy champions, that's pay to win. It immediately increases your skill level with a champion by owning it. Owning more champions makes you better at the game immediately.

 

[VladG]

And that's the problem with the massive majority of so-called 'Free to Play' - they aren't, they're Pay to Win. The whole model is incongruous with any competitive game, but especially so with PvP:
For actual cash any player can equip themselves with all of the best gear which no non-paying player could ever realistically hope to acquire; naturally this gives all paying players a mammoth advantage over others to the point where a player's skill becomes irrelevant.

The model should more accurately be named 'Free to Lose, Pay to Win'. From a business perspective I can understand why this system has been used - they naturally want to bolster player numbers, thus making the servers fuller & encouraging players to spend money on better gear to give them an advantage. Unfortunately this automatically creates an uneven playing field where those dominating the game aren't necessarily the best players but are, by necessity, the ones spending the most money on the game.

As soon as any player can buy an advantage over another it immediately destroys the whole concept of an equally matched competition where skill determines who wins & who loses. To exaggerate for effect:
SOE may as well hire out aimbots for cash & be done with it.

So in LoL because you buy champions, that's pay to win. It immediately increases your skill level with a champion by owning it. Owning more champions makes you better at the game immediately.

I don't think he was talking about League Of Legends. Certainly shouldn't be, since LoL is one of the very few examples of F2P done right: There is no real "power" difference between the cheapest and most expensive champions (with some allowance for balance issues for new champions that swing both ways)

 

[VladG]

snip

And that's the problem with the massive majority of so-called 'Free to Play' - they aren't, they're Pay to Win. The whole model is incongruous with any competitive game, but especially so with PvP:
For actual cash any player can equip themselves with all of the best gear which no non-paying player could ever realistically hope to acquire; naturally this gives all paying players a mammoth advantage over others to the point where a player's skill becomes irrelevant.

The model should more accurately be named 'Free to Lose, Pay to Win'. From a business perspective I can understand why this system has been used - they naturally want to bolster player numbers, thus making the servers fuller & encouraging players to spend money on better gear to give them an advantage. Unfortunately this automatically creates an uneven playing field where those dominating the game aren't necessarily the best players but are, by necessity, the ones spending the most money on the game.

As soon as any player can buy an advantage over another it immediately destroys the whole concept of an equally matched competition where skill determines who wins & who loses. To exaggerate for effect:
SOE may as well hire out aimbots for cash & be done with it.

Well, it's not really as black and white as that. You can still obtain every upgrade and weapon for free. The problem is that more expensive items are also more powerful, and that the top tier items are insanely expensive. Now I don't mind them charging for convenience, but the price is just too damn high both for in-game currency and real currency. 7$ for a single weapon for a single class is very high in my opinion. And the in-game currency cost is just insane. 60+ hours of grinding for that single weapon. Not to mention that you need in-game currency for other upgrades as well.

Comparing it to Leage of Legends (f2p done right), there is no power difference between the various tiers of champions: the cheapest champions are just as competitive as the most expensive ones. And it takes far less time to gather the in-game currency for the most expensive champions, let alone the lower tier price ones.

All of this can be easily fixed by revising their pricing and finding a good balance. Yes, you should encourage players to pay in some manner, but the way they are doing it now is not the right way.

 

[Razorback0z]

I was such a massive fan of PS1, played hundreds of hours of it. Pre-ordered PS2 and played it through Beta, but havnt touched it since. I dont know how to explain it but the games feels completely souless. Its like your going through the motions, its like sex with a girl you used to love but dont love anyomre. Sure you can go through the motions and hell if you keep at it you may have a few seconds of base pleasure, but its not the same.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

It's clear that many of the upgrades are so expensive that most people are not expected to be able to unlock them with regular play. And the price that they charge for them makes the game much more expensive than a regular boxed game. Free to play is what it is. If some trader says that they don't want your money that should immediately make you cautious because what they really mean is that they want more money than you are prepared to offer, a lot more. It's a code.