SOE Killing PlanetSide 2's Free Player Grind

By and large, I'm very glad that free-to-play exists. It's brought many fine, exceedingly hi-fidelity games back into the PC gaming fold, and I can't argue with the option to jump in without spending a cent, coin, point, spacebuck, gorgle, or smarnx. Well, except when I can - and usually, that's when the subject of unlocking comes up. The reason? It's almost always excruciatingly slooooooooooow. Because naturally, those darn developers - who apparently need to eat occasionally and sleep under roofs (the nerve!) - want you to drop a few extra dimes to speed up the process. It is, then, somewhat shocking - but no less appreciated - that SOE's taking steps to buck that trend with PlanetSide 2. Or at least make it a bit less of a bitter pill to swallow.

SOE took to its forums to explain the decision, which mainly involves some fairly drastic changes to cert gain rate and cert costs for weapons. "Our goal here is to reduce the overall time investment for weapons by about 30% on the top end weapon unlocks," said lead designer Matt Higby.

In order to accomplish that, SOE's opening the floodgates on cert points, doubling the speed at which you'll earn them going forward. That said, the cert cost on everything aside from weapons - abilities, attachments, etc - will also double, thus canceling out the change. The Grind Reduct-O-Ray, then, is mainly being aimed at weapons - some of which will take 50 percent less time to unlock thanks to cert gain increases and reduced costs.

These changes will go live when PlanetSide 2 launches on November 20th. That's, like, two minutes from now. And also some days. Will you be enlisting? Do you have what it takes to join The RPS Army(s)? Because if you do, you should, you know, do that and stuff.