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PlanetSide 2 is Not Pay to WinDespite the fact the SOE provided many public relationship responses stating that they are working hard at keeping PlanetSide 2 as a "free to play" game, rather than a "pay to win" game, there are still controversial discussions surrounding this topic. I'm not a SOE, nor a PlanetSide 2, fanboy as I have only played the game once. However, I will attempt to provide my viewpoint that PlanetSide 2 is not pay to win from the perspective of a first time PlanetSide 2 player, but seasoned team tactical shooter player. I had originally wanted to title this post with the following titles:
The truth is that none of these title will describe PlanetSide 2's free/pay model clearly. That is because seasoned players will have little advantage over a new player in term of all the equipment upgrades. Sure, in a one-on-one situation, a fully equipped enemy will have a slightly higher probability of surviving compared to a new player (SOE quotes 20% maximum better chance in this Q&A session). But let's do some critical thinking here. PlanetSide 2 is a team-based tactical FPS game on a giant map; not a Call of Duty deathmatch on a small map. What's the chance of you being in a 1v1 situation? If your answer is 90% or higher, then you are either playing the wrong game, or you don't understand what a tactical shooter meant. As a seasoned tactical squad member, I would say that number should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10%. And 10% situation with a 20% higher probability is a very small number. All the math aside, the point of this critical thinking is that the decked out advantage is negligible. A critical thinker will then respond and say, but if that 20% advantage allows you to take out an entire ten-man squad, then PlanetSide 2 IS pay to win. And I would agree with such a statement, but that's where my real-life experience, with playing PlanetSide 2 with a premade tactical shooter friend, comes into the equation. If you have read any of my other PlanetSide 2 posting in this forum (feel free to look them up), you would have seen my PlanetSide 2 teamwork success story all based on this one night of play. And you'll see that we are quite successful, as level 1 first time players, beating other seasoned PlanetSide 2 players by working together as a squad and as a team. Now, you might think I'm this awesome FPS hot shot that can do 1v10 and that I'm bragging modestly. Honestly, though, I am actually a pretty bad FPS player if all our grade is based on shooting the enemy. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I had a 0.75 kill death ratio. And I was slowly working up to a 1:1 kill death ratio by the time we stopped playing BFBC2. But our team succeeded by working together. Now if you are a stellar shooter with a 2:1 or even a 10:1 kill/death ratio while using the iron sight, you are probably already laughing your *** off about all this 20% advantage talk. The bottom line is that you are much better off practicing your shooting skills than to grind on that 20% advantage. Therefore, in this game, grind or pay for fun; practice to win. So if a mediocre FPS player can success in PlanetSide 2 the first night of playing, why do you really need to grind and upgrade? Why do you need to pay real money to be "better"? It seems to me that the default TR (we played Terran Republic that night) carbine is sufficient. After comparing the default gun to the unlockable guns in performance, I believe SOE is correct that the unlockables are mostly "side-grades", not upgrades. From another perspective, let's assume that PlanetSide 2 is a pay to win game, where you just have to have that ONE "expensive" weapon to win. SOE has now officially stated that the maximum cost of a gun unlock is 700 Station Cash (equivalent to $7) in the "Cert gain rates and weapon cert pricing" thread. And my dedicate EverQuest (a SOE MMORPG) friend mentions to me that you can pick up 2x or 3x Station Cash periodically. The $7 translates to $3.50 and $2.34, respectively. Note that all guns and "upgrades" are unlockable in game without using real money. But let's continue down this assumption that you must have that weapon advantage for $2.34. And let's cast aside the knowledge that 10% situation of a 20% advantage is negligible. Then, TECHNICALLY, PlanetSide 2 is pay to win. But my definition of pay to win is different. That is because paying $2.34 for a weapon to win in a unrealistic situation is, in my eyes, negligible. When real world competitions talk about pay to win, we are talking about sky being the limit. For example, in car racing competition, many competitions are considered as pay to win. Why? Because although the racing organization specify race car regulations, some times they only specify technical limitations that the race car must meet. For example, the intake manifold must be 2" in diameter. Some times they don't specify how much each competitor can spend on their race car. That translates to a manufacturer with a half a million budget to build a rally car trumping a manufacturer building a fifty thousand dollar rally car to the EXACT same regulation spec. In PlanetSide 2...
Having these points in mind, I find it really difficult to say that PlanetSide 2 is a "pay to win" game. The low cost to acquire guns (I'm not sure if it's possible to buy other items with money) is really tempting for me. But with the fun and success of playing as a team at level 1 and the default gun, I don't think it's necessary to pay. I would just rake up the cert points while having a lot of fun playing on a team. After writing this article, I am now a lot more concerned about seasoned enemy players with 10:1 kill death ratio than the equipment advantage. How would we balance that? ;-) Fido Here is a good example of what I'm talking about: The 0 Cert challenge. This game is not Pay 2 win. This person uses no certs, nor Station Cash and has close to a 2:1 kill/death ratio as shown in this screen shot of his profile:  Fido
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Title: Is PlanetSide 2 a Pay to Play Game? Title: PlanetSide 2: Buying Weapon Cheap with Station Cash Add Comment
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