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Planetside For Free
Eurogamer reports that Sony Online is moving Planetside to a free play for a year deal, somewhat similar to the Anarchy Online pricing scheme. From the article: "Access to the massively multiplayer FPS will be limited in terms of BattleRank and CommandRank. 'Essentially, new players will be able to have access to any part of the game but they will be limited on the diversity of their arsenal,' said developer Enrico Pallazzo in a recent forum post outlining various new additions to the game." Limited free play in an environment with ads. I guess I'm glad they're trying new options.
I've gotta hand it to them, it's a pretty good idea to stick ads in the game.
I used to play Neocron back in 2003; cyberpunk atmosphere, and as a result, all sorts of fake ads for companies, etc inside the game, just for atmosphere. Why not advertise real things?
Of course, if their implementation is more along the lines of, every 30 seconds, an audio message pops up saying "Buy xxx product!", that's a little far. Same for if they spam your account or sign your CC up for free subscriptions to garbage.
If they got sponsored by Smith & Wesson though, it'd be cool to have S&W brand weapons in the game.
Let's assume that the limited arsenal new players get is going to restricted to weapons that were in the game originally (so nothing from the expansion pack). Are the new players going to be at an inherent disadvantage?
I might have to dust this off when it goes to free play. I had fun, but the lag was a bit much to make a FPS tollerable.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
I thought new players were going to be able to level up to BR 8, which should get you at least 4 cert points, right?
Or have they changed _everything_ since the beta in the name of balance?
Besides, it's called the "fodder" program. These people will be around to give the remaining vets more moving things to shoot at. Does anyone have any stats on maximum connections to PS servers at one time?
Pointless stuff follows:
I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this game. An FPS environment seems like it would solve a lot of the repetition and grinding issues that the MMORPGs always face. Even with my OK computer and a good Internet connection, though, I had lag and FPS problems--sure, it's a beta, but things didn't improve much when I came back later. Weapon balance seemed, well... spotty. I played back in the Beta days with a room mate of mine, and even with us both in the same room yelling things at each other, we didn't have all that much success--and we're both at least decent FPS players. Vehicles were fun, but the weapons felt very underpowered--we'd both shoot that Lancer anti-vehicle gun at even a Lightning, and it felt like forever before the thing blew up. Maybe it was lag. I remember trying to get back into the game for a while, but even after doubling my RAM (to 512) I still had problems. I'm also not keen on Clans--small tactical teams I can do, but Clans seem to always end up full of annoying elitists. It seems like it'd be pretty hard to find a good squad without joining a clan.
Lastly, I've heard that there're still pretty serious bugs. Like vehicles randomly becoming invincible, and major weapons randomly doing no damage (like, all the shotguns--and one whole faction's infantry weapons more or less revolve around shotguns).