Source
r/Planetside•
Painwalker

Excessive Certs, and Cert sinks to spend them in. What would make you happy?

The problem

Right now I think the problem with some people is that we have too many certs (yes, yes, I know, we should all be so lucky), but the fact is some people do have them, and I think the devs are trying to introduce a system to help sink certs you otherwise won't ever spend for whatever reason.

The Current Solution?

Currently, I that system is slated to be the implant system where you spend either SC or certs to unlock temporary stat boosts. Arguments for temp stat boosts in exchange for certs aside, I think we can think up something that might make us happier as a whole that doesn't in any way make us feel like we have to earn over 100-200 certs a day just to be competitively even with those who can afford to dump SC every day.

We Need A Better Solution

Without reservation, what do you think would be a good cert-sink for those with excessive certs that would be fair? Remember that cert sinks are there to make it so that there is always something to spend certs on, and permanent unlockables only require a single purchase, which means that certs can build up after their purchase.

A Suggested Solution

I'll start the ball rolling with something...ridiculous. I find starting ridiculous tends to get people more interested in something more sensible.

Outfit benefits. Something that outfits can spend for a quick maneuver.

Often times I am part of operations where we might all buy ESFs just to quickly get to a location to help hold it and toss away our ESFs. Or maybe a suicide run to take out a couple sunderers to prevent a capture from happening. Outfits are willing to toss away resources on stuff if it means being able to do something important in tight moments where time is of the essence.

Give them a tree of abilities or unlocks that cost exponential amounts of certs to unlock further up. It makes perfect sense and does not need to be permanent. It might even allow some room for some really wild stuff.

How Do We Keep It From Getting Too Crazy?

The outfit gets some kind of limited bank and max daily input to prevent infinite maneuvers, for the same reason why we have max resources and a limited stock of mines and grenades and other items. You can stack up important stuff without going too far.

I know that outfit base ownership isn't slated until August, but this isn't specifically about things that should be available only for bases you own (though it would make sense to include that in the future).

Why Are You Even Suggesting This?

This is about creating a system where certs can be spent like resources to prevent a huge build-up of certs because you don't have anything interesting or useful to spend them on. It really hurts a game when a currency starts getting out of control, and I don't want that to happen to PS2, even if it might not be happening right away. I also don't want cool systems that I read about to turn into something lame because the devs had to shoehorn in an extra cost that nobody wants because they have a problem that they need solving in order to keep the game from being screwed over. Yeah, there's a limit, so it won't get too bad, but it's still super lame to also earn a ton of them from an alert and have them be completely useless.

We Need To Work Together To Make This Work

I could keep going, and I'd love to be able to start crafting some thoughts on what we could do for benefits that outfits could or shouldn't have as part of this kind of thing, but I'd prefer to get you guys input first before going forward on this. What are your thoughts?

TL:DR; Sink excessive certs into one time outfit abilities that might last for a single maneuver as a way to give tons of certs value and make them always spendable en mass to prevent buildup.

Posted Jun 18, 2013, 4:10 PM UTC · edited

08
JusticeBurrito•

Would be interesting to see how many certs your average player is holding and just how many people have an excess. I'll bet it's an exceedingly small percentage of the population.

For now, anyway. Long term they will need to find additional places to spend certs.

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

Yeah. I'm not sure how many the average player holds, but I'm not happy with the idea of taking cool ideas of implants and making them available purely to people who are already pretty good or SC rich. I really only wanted outfit stuff because it means that more people would at least have access to any benefits as long as they are a team player, which is fairly core to doing well in this game anyways.

1
C41n[DPSO] Connery VS ~ RIP Helios•

Excess certs? lol! Level 74 and no excess certs in sight now, or anytime soon! Way too many things I still want.

3
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

Yeah I know what you mean. This was more in response to the idea that the new implants were supposed to be the new way to get people with tons of certs to spend, even though most of us are cert broke and wouldn't have the same level of access without dumping some cash down.

Even with the bonuses from a subscription, more levels and certs don't make you more powerful, just more flexible. The implants would, though, and if they plan on using those as a cert sink like some people are guessing they are, then I really disagree.

1
C41n[DPSO] Connery VS ~ RIP Helios•

Wholehearted agree!

3
Nekryyd•

Whatever form cert sinks take, it needs to impact higher battlerank players and NOT newer players.

When you have most of the stuff you want unlocked, and are experienced enough that earning 100 certs is fairly trivial, needing to cash out 100 of 'em for an implant is no big deal. In fact, it's not even much in the way of a sink.

One thing I would like to see is for Outfits to be able to create global missions that create a certain amount of certs to create (based on number of objectives, type of objects, and length of time).

  • Certs would come from a pool that members can contribute toward.

  • Outfit leaders with the appropriate permissions can create a serious of objectives, then finalize the mission.

  • One active mission per outfit at any given time.

  • Missions appear as a map filter, tiered based on reward.

  • Missions are global. Any player can see and participate in them, however only players OUTSIDE of the outfit receive the award.

  • This would provide an incentive for other outfits/players to assist with outfit operations, or provide reinforcements to certain areas/objectives.

  • Prevents certs spent in this manner from being recycled back into the outfit.

One might argue that this wouldn't be a good idea because of that last item since your own outfit members aren't receiving an XP bonus. But look at it this way:

  • It directly benefits your outfit because you can lure players outside of your outfit into assisting your operation by providing an incentive (eg - Defend Base A while your operation focuses on Base B, etc)

  • It promotes cohesion and cooperation on a large scale.

  • Puts the power in players hands (This would not exclude small outfits. Larger, richer outfits would just be able to issue missions more often.) to help shape the strategy and flow of battle.

2
PainwalkerOPAzure Twilight - Emerald (Mattherson)•

I do like this setup since it helps bring incentives to getting players who may be less disciplined to go where you want them to without having to add something that might make people more powerful than non-outfit opponents.

The only catch I can see with giving certs directly to other players through group outfits, is that players get passive certs for free, and that could be farmed somehow.

I would almost say that it would have to be a certain percent of earned certs while playing to avoid it, unless our accounts somehow track the ones we get for free and the ones we earn.

2
shaql•

make a literal cert sink. cert in a deployable sink, other players may drop their certs in it, in physical form, to sustain it.

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