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Role Playing (Games) First Person Shooters (Games)

Planetside For Free 54

Posted by Zonk from the better-than-not-i-guess dept.
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.
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Planetside For Free More

Planetside For Free

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  • Cool, I might have to try this, my brother played it for a while last year, but I cant be bothered to pay..
  • Basically the game is now old and boring and we need more players ;-)

    • I've played PS for the last 2 years (on and off) and it is far from boring.

      I like to call it genre building:

      • Truely massively multiplayer (meaning persistent worlds)
      • Large scale (was ~500 players battles, now ~400))

      • Only WWII online could compete for scale, but everytime I try it the UI turns me away.

        However, the game is 2+ years old, and is Sony does a horrible job of keeping people interested in their MMOs for the long term. They turn to in-game ads or sequels to keep people playing, instead of making

    • The "old" and "need more players" aspect is certainly true. While I was playing, it was only boring if I was stuck walking a long distance.

      There are new MMOFPS games coming out this year and so Sony probably is trying to attract subscribers before they release. The most anticipated of these new games is almost certainly Huxley.

      http://www.webzengames.com/Game/Huxley/default.asp [webzengames.com]

  • Ad-supported MMOs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mendaliv ( 898932 )
    I've gotta hand it to them, it's a pretty good idea to stick ads in the game.

    I used to play Neocron [neocron.com] 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 th

    • Re:Ad-supported MMOs (Score:3, Informative)

      by pdbogen ( 596723 )
      Anarchy Online (which sounds a fair bit like your brief brief description of Neocron) handles it with in-game billboard (that were there before, mostly) that sport occasionally animated advertisements (e.g., the one that comes to mind is an Air Force recruiting ad). They're quite tasteful, and it's an MMORPG business model that I have a great deal of respect for.

  • Question for current players (Score:3, Interesting)

    by faloi ( 738831 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @02:14PM (#14541125)
    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.

    • Currently if you log ion to your old account before the 28th Feb you can play for free for 30 days with your old characters. From the planet side website:

      The 30-day Free service period begins whenever you log in, but you must take advantage of this special offer on or before 11:59 P.M. (PST) February 28, 2006. When your 30-day Free service period ends, your account will not remain active without entering payment information to re-activate billing.
    • Are the new players going to be at an inherent disadvantage?

      Well, the best thing about Planetside is that it's mostly skill and strategy based. You get quite a large number of "certification points" as soon as you start - 7 I think. That would let you specialize in either infantry, air, armor, or mix it up a little bit if you wanted. Extra cert points let you become well rounded, but as long as you stick to your specialty, you are not at a disadvantage. You can also drop a certification once every 6 hou
    • I have not played in a long time, but if memory serves... No. The limitations will not affect your overall choices of weaponry, only the items you can use on the same day.

  • As a planetside player.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by arkham6 ( 24514 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @02:15PM (#14541144)
    1: The ads are there, and are kind of annoying, but they are only in some areas such as the HART center, where you launch off to the various places to fight, and some spawn rooms. They have not been all that annoying and intrusive, just a poster on a wall. You actualy don't spend much time at all in these places, so its not that bad.

    2: The new players it seem will get only the basic rifle and other stuff. No implants, no access to vehicles so they are limited to what they can do. They won't be able to really drain resources from the paying customers so thats not going to be a factor.

    PS is really a fun game and I do play it quite a lot. So, welcome newbies, here's your rifle and armor, go fight for the TR!
    • This is what I was afraid of. I'd gladly pay with even more non-intrusive advertisements- if it didn't mean I could only get so far and then have to stop. Sorry, I don't participate in demoware anymore.

      P.s., I played Planetside before, with the one-week or whatever free trial, and really enjoyed it- it was a lot like Tribes in its heydey- but I hate the standard MMORPG business model and I hate sony, so it's kind of a no-go as far as paying for it is concerned.
      • It must be hard to buy a car with that attitude. Have you found one yet where, once you pay for it, you don't have to continue to pay for fuel of some kind in order to continue driving it?
    • 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 i
      • Let me clarify: what I've heard is "up to BR 8." When you get out of training, you should be at BR 4--that means you pick up four points along the way.

        I think a guy down there posted a better recap. The point is that you are limited in no way except the number of certs (and not being able to access expansion content--I assume on that, though). There's also command rank, which I think you can progress in from CR0 (no bonus) to CR2 (some bonuses). Paid members can get up to CR5 (which I hear takes _forever
      • Does anyone have any stats on maximum connections to PS servers at one time?

        Well, each continent on a particular server can have 400 people on it at once (it used to be 500, but that was reduced to get people on multiple continents more often). That 400 is split between the 3 factions, so each faction can have about 133 players on each continent. I imagine each continent could handle far more.

        Each server has 10 continents plus 3 sanctuaries, and in theory if each was poplocked at 500, that's 6500 per serv

      • Re:As a former planetside player.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by ptbarnett ( 159784 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @04:20PM (#14542505)
        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?

        You now get 7 cert points at Battle Rank 1. You get an additional cert point for each BR up through BR23, except for BR6, BR12, and BR18. Normally, you get an implant at those three BR's, but with the "fodder" program, I guess you don't get anything at BR6.

        Most decent FPS players should be able to get up to BR8 within a couple of weeks of playing a few hours a night. You can get all the way to BR4 just by trying out every vehicle and weapon in the simulator and visiting a few places in "sanctuary" -- and that's without going through the new training programs. I've built a new player up to BR4 in 35 minutes that way.

        Does anyone have any stats on maximum connections to PS servers at one time?

        There are three servers: European, US West Coast, US East Coast. At primetime in the evening, I would estimate about 600 players on-line on the East Coast server. A continent can have a maximum of 133 players from an empire, and there are three empires. Lately, I've observed my empire to population-lock a continent and have 20-30 people left over to stir up trouble elsewhere. The other empires have about the same population. The past month or so, overall population has risen quite a bit, as they have invited people with expired subscriptions to come back and play for 30 days for free.

        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.

        Balance is a bit better, but that's a source of endless discussion and argument among the empire. The key is teamwork: even two people working together can't do much against the more powerful weapons. I play with an organized outfit that usually has a platoon of 10-30 people in the evenings, and we have a reputation for getting things done in situations where twice the number of less-organized people will fail.

        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.

        Personal weapons are underpowered against vehicles in this game, but I think that's necessary to get people into the vehicles. If only one or two shots could destroy a vehicle, people wouldn't bother with them. As it is now, it's hard enough to get people to use the armored vehicles instead of zerging from the nearest spawn point.

        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.

        This has been a continuing problem. I can't play with less than 1G RAM. 512M is not adequate unless you want to be struggling with lag all the time. One of my teammates is always falling behind us because it takes him several minutes to change zones (i.e. move to a new continent). If he is in a vehicle with the rest of us, we can easily reach and disembark at a target in a new zone before he even gets it loaded.

        '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.

        Some of the outfits are full of annoying people like that. Others are so disorganized that you would do better playing solo. I switched outfits several times before I found one that fit my style.

        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).

        The invincible vehicle is effectively gone: I've only seen it once in over a year of play. But, the shotgun bug is still there, wh

        • About the VS bug: I never heard about that one. Of course, I didn't really know about the shotgun bug, either, until the other day. What'd the big VS bug entail?
          • What'd the big VS bug entail?

            The Aurora (which is the VS Deliverer variant) developed a bug in a new release in which the gunner could fire the entire 12-shot clip of ammo in one concentrated blast. It was apparently triggered by clicking the left mouse button in a certain manner or sequence.

            The VS quickly learned how to use it on the Emerald server. Suddenly, Aurora's were everywhere and they were devastating to all kinds of enemy armor. One blast could nearly destroy a medium battle tank (the Vangu

            • As an early swg player I have something to say in regards to the parent

              I don't remember all the details, but the problem was reportedly identified during the beta test of that release, but that didn't stop it from being deployed. And it took it a long time to be fixed.

              So business as usual with SOE?
    • Yeah, PS has been a great game, but it has its down sides as well.

      Not sure who would actually play on such a limited account though. Maybe with the basic shotgun you could do some damage, but without a vehicle you will pretty much be "fodder."

      Most of us left when the strategy was sucked out of the game and it ended up becoming one single zerg meets zerg world.
      • So true. I left because leveling up CR was such a nightmare. Assemble a team, get team to location, try vainly to get teams weapons pointed in the right direction, fail to inject any strategy, give up and try to kill as many as possible in the hopes for CR points.

        I think that maybe they need to add a much larger death penalty. I play WoW now, and one of the battlegrounds, (AV) has the exact same problem. People die, spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, and eventually wear down the other side through superior INDI
        • So true. I left because leveling up CR was such a nightmare. Assemble a team, get team to location, try vainly to get teams weapons pointed in the right direction, fail to inject any strategy, give up and try to kill as many as possible in the hopes for CR points.

          Getting CEP (to level up CR) is a lot easier with a organized outfit. CEP calculations are no longer based on kills, so it requires some amount of discipline and strategy. Working with a group of people who already know what to do (and can hel

          • Yea, one of my favorite things was hacking the poorly defended mobile spawn base. Good times. My absolute favorite thing was hacking the Galaxy transport and crashing it into something...Preferably some of that damn artillery.
      • Not sure who would actually play on such a limited account though. Maybe with the basic shotgun you could do some damage, but without a vehicle you will pretty much be "fodder."

        I've been looking around and I'm haven't found anything that says "no vehicles" for the "fodder". They currently restrict availability of a few vehicles to people with the "core combat" expansion, but that was a one-time $10 fee (or $30, depending on when you paid it) for early players of the game. I think it's bundled with new

    • Actually, it's a lie, to use certain items you must have the "certs" to use them. You get 7 cert points to start out as when your BR1 and you gain 1 point per BR level with the exception of BR6 where you get an implant slot. At BR8 you will have 14 cert points, not alot but nothing to sneeze at either.

      So far, there will be no cert restrictions on "fodder" side players. So while you will have less options as paying players, you will still get access to MOSTLY everything they have including the heavy weapons
  • Is this just the guy's name on the dev forums, or is it a horrible coincidence?

    http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0103782/ [imdb.com]
  • I want a mod that turns all the graphics greyscale, makes some (but not all) characters look like alien zombies, and replaces all in-game ads with generic billboards saying things like, "OBEY" and "STAY ASLEEP".
  • "Enrico Pallazo" was the name of the guy in Naked Gun that Frank Drebin impersonated...

    Coincidence?
  • Bha.. I reported the news earlier http://www.ogrank.com/content/view/152/37/ [ogrank.com] and all the internet is linking to my article, but Eurogamer got the creditofor reporting on slashdot :/

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