Some more details about the upcoming Planetside freebie deal:

OGRank: Planetside Free for 12 Months - Part 2

So there – it’s not ‘Fodderside’ it’s the ‘Planetside Reserves’. The deal still looks pretty good to be honest, although the BR seems to have come down since my last post about how high it was.

BR6 should provide about 11 cert points, if they’ve not changed it any since I was there last. Some example 11 point cert builds:

Medium Assault – 2 (required for HA below)
Heavy Assault – 4
Reinfocred Exosuit – 3
Anti-Air Max - 2

A good solid base assault grunt, carrying the heaviest infantry weapons in game, and with a decent amount of armour. AA Max power armour for a bit of variety.

Air Cavalry Scout – 3 (req for AC Assault below)
Air Cavalry Assault – 2
Engineering – 3
Air Support - 3

Everything you’ll need to rule the skies, along with the ability to repair your planes. This allows access to all the planes, including the troop and vehicle transports, and bomber for squad work.

Armoured Assault I – 2
Armoured Assault II – 1
Flail - 1
ATV - 1
Uni-MAX – 6

Classic driver. You will need a friend to gun for you, but can drive the big tanks. The Flail is a long range artillery piece that takes coordination to use well, but is murder on BFRs and bases. Uni-MAX is a very powerful cert, and a play-style of it’s own, allowing access to AA, AV and AI suits of powered battle armour, which are generally very potent. ATV are a lot of fun to drive and good for getting about quickly.

Ground Support – 2
Engineering – 3
Medical – 3
Advanced Medical – 2
Harrasser - 1

A ‘one-stop’ total support guy, able to deploy spawn points, repair vehicles and turrets, heal team-mates and repair their armour, and even raise them from the dead if that don’t respawn to quickly. The AMS truck also acts as transport, or the Harressar lets you transport friends.

Theres a full list here, but the point is that 11 points is more than enough to do well with.

The only downside is that you can’t be ALL of the above at once. In a way, I think this will be a good thing, encouraging more specialisation and teamwork. I always tried to have a cert to deal with everything, and then ended up trying to deal with every threat that showed up. With less points, and a more specialised role, say, Sniper, instead of my usual Sniper/Anti-Tank/Combat Engineering Repair Guy, I’ll learn to let go of more and focus on getting really good at the one area.

And anyway, you have eight character slots per server, and can swap as needed, provided you stay on the same team, so having a Stealth Guy, a Tank Driving Guy, and a Base Assault Guy is a good way to go. And also, you can ‘unlearn’ one certification every six hours anyway, and then respend the points elsewhere, so nothing is locked in stone.

Some limitations to the Reservist deal have been announced:

  • BR6, CR2 limit – as noted above, this hardly matters.

  • Forced to Registration Website on log out – Bleh…as if we’re not used to coping with pop-up ads anyway, but I suppose they need to make money out of it all somehow.

  • No BFRs – Everyone hates these anyway, and they’ve been successively nerfed over and over for nearly a year now – what remains isn’t that much more potent than the bigger tanks. You can still visit the caves though, if you want. Again... few people actually do this, the caves being widely regarded as the Unreal Tournament bit of an otherwise serviceable Battlefield 1942 knockoff.

  • Poplock Priorities – Tucked away at the bottom, this is significant. Paying customers will effectively get to choose fights where their Empire is likely to win. Still, depending on how many new people this offer brings in, going to fight on the ‘Secondary’ may no longer be the harsh and inevitably doomed defensive action it used to be. I’d love to see more than one continent filled a night again.

All in all, having been a paid subscriber, I look at this offer and wonder why I needed to pay at all. Certainly more cert points and implant slots help a lot, but not more than reflexes, which I’ve always sucked at, and tactical perception, which I’ve usually been fairy good at. Without one or the other, 26 Cert points nad 3 implants aren't going to help much.

So, registration details willing, I’m going to, in effect, downgrade my account from paid to free trial, and most likely get just as much out of the game, and I can’t help but wonder if any other long-term players are thinking of doing the same? Have they given out too much of the game for free? Is this offer genius, or folly? We'll see...