How much PS2 can you get for the price of 1 COD?

As is the case with all things that aren't free (and some that are), people complain about how expensive PS2 is. And you certainly can sink a lot of money into the game - thousands of dollars if you wanted to. But I've been thinking, how expensive is PS2 compared to its major competitors: COD and Battlefield.

Well, both of those games are ~$120/year ($70 base game + $50 season pass) assuming you're keeping up with the DLC so that you can play the new maps. Conveniently, that's exactly the price of PS2's pre-paid subscription. So the easy answer is "PS2 is exactly as expensive as COD/Battlefield". The membership is hard to quantify though, as one of its big draws is bonus certs which you can't really predict how many a given player will get.

What if you just pre-pay the $120 up front in SC though?

Well, just going and buying that straight up you can get 13,500 SC (10,000 for $85 and another 3,500SC with the remaining $35). I know, technically you could get more if you got one of the 1500SC for $10 deals, but I'm going to work with the commonly available pricing.

Let's kit out a new NC player with this windfall of SC.

First up - Fresh Meat pack. Crazy value. 199 SC
Then, Medic Starter pack to pick up the Commish, Burster and get a free DMR. - 1,499 SC
Infiltrator Starter pack gives us our Wraith Flash's Fury, the QCX for detection on all classes - and the Longshot to boot. 1,499 SC
Sunderer Pro gives our newbie a durable AI/AA platform option - 600 SC
Lightning Pro gives us the Skyguard and basically a free HEAT cannon - 600 SC
Reaver Pro gives the pods, with a free Rotary. - 600 SC
Vanguard Pro doesn't give us the popular Halberd, but for NC at least the Enforcer's a reasonable substitute. - 700 SC

And our shopping spree wouldn't be complete without dipping into cosmetics.
Nicer helmet. - 1,000 SC
Dry brush is great, but I think we need something more stylish. - 500 SC for another camo.
I know it's changing, but for right now at least Composite Armor gives a nice boost to our figure, and spreads our camo coverage even more. 1,500 SC

That's quite the haul. What have we picked up?

For all factions:
NS7 PDW
Indar Dry Brush Camo
NS44 Commissioner
M40 Fury-F
Hunter QCX
NS10 Burster
Walker (S rear)
Bulldog (S front)
Skyguard
L100 HEAT

NC specific:
Reaper DMR w/attachments
EM4 Longshot w/attachments
Vortek Rotary
Breaker Pods
Titan 150 AP
Enforcer ML85
All Composite armors

Other:
1 day boost
Choice of helmet
Choice of camo

So, we have a small problem. All this stuff only costs 8697 SC. We've still got 4,803 left.

We could stick with the bundles, and get the Liberator Pro for the Dalton/TB. - 725 SC
Naturally, the NC weapons present a good choice for future growth. NS15M - 700 SC
We've got the freebie shotgun, but lets pick up the Jackhammer. - 700 SC
AV Mana turret. - 700 SC
We picked up the Rocket Pods earlier, but let's get Coyotes too. - 700 SC

Ok, still 1,278 left. Ummm....

I dunno. Grab a horn for your Harasser, and a country flag decal? - 1,050 SC.

And most of this last batch could be discounted further if you do end up waiting for sales, giving you another possible 1,500 SC to spend.

OR

Being forced to grind out all your weapons in Call of Duty after you've already given them $120.

Decisions, decisions.

...still 1/4 of a golden MWO cry for help, or a few WoT tanks, maybe 10 planes in WT, or a waste of time in H&G, one ****** space ship you cant really do much with in starcitizen, a couple hawken packs, 6 eve plex, 12 forged tool in UO, 3 copies of simcity for your friends to not play at launch, the 2014 starwars game collection on steam, 2 stupid spacewolf storm rider 40k models, 2400 individual 5 cent candies.

This game is a great deal and is completely fun even when I didnt pay for anything. We "should" know this. Except the candy, I wanna see the 2400 candies, though thats what 20 tubs from costco.... which would be more economical, but lacks the spirit of emptying ALL the trays at a convenience store.

Planetside 2 has already become CoD XL, SOE stripped whatever little grand strategy or purpose remained in the game in favor of trying to appeal to the casual portion of the playerbase.

Legitimately curious as to what the purpose was.

Since December of 2012 I've spent $10 total.
PS2 has been and still is the only game I play. 2 years strong and still going
PS2 is a great deal and a great game.

Cut away a large part of text.
Someone from SoE marketing department deserves to be fired

1): at that point, I'd recommend buying a one-month membership, 15 box iirc, so lose 1500 SC; but get 500 back (membership..)
In that month, you get a 10%? discount on whatever you buy SC wise,
aaand... access to the daily "member sale".
Hopefully, in one month of time, a few interesting (to you) items pass by in the daily member sale, and then it is a much more clever use of that 120 $. Just a suggestion, of course.

I do want to comment: you dont have to buy the new maps etc for battlefield/whatever, and often they do go down in price or you can get a better deal. Then again, PS2 can be played free.

2 & 3): here's SoE marketing fail:
I was honestly completely unaware of the existence of these bundles. DERP. been playing since July.
I had looked at the SoE planetside 2 "shop" online, and found those bundles to be pretty big and expensive.
I'd suggest SoE to mention the existence, the price & items they contain of these bundles on their website for starters; can remain "purchase in game only", np, but still...
The bundles themselves are DERP too however.. why does the medic starter pack give a burster of all things.. to heal the sky?
(enemy aircraft bring CO2 pollution)
in the mean time, I have skyguard on all 3 chars, so no to the lightning bundle,
have burster, so the medic bundle is a waste (IMO)

Anyway, I've found the bundles in game, so thank you for that at least . Soe can send you a thank you too:
shoutout: they're apparently 50% off (or a lot of them are..)
Probably for the anniversary?
I've bought the flash pro thingy (kobalt + fury), and am contemplating the harasser one (fury & halberd... would love the walker too, not really a halberd fan, but my aim while moving may have something to do with that.. then again, it may be best to have me driving and another shooting the halberd anyway..)

The little purpose that was there was the resource system. The ******* Phase 1 crap that they have now takes away any reason whatsoever to cap territory. There was at least something back then, however small it was, there was some thought about deciding where would be best location to attack. You knew that there would be a substantial effect on the enemies' resource gain when you cut them off from their warpgate and a substantial effect on yours if they cut you off.

It added a basic dynamic meta game that has since been replaced with "Redeploy 3 platoons on a 24-48 fight and camp the spawn room for XP."

The old system was unfun to play and I'm glad it got removed. For starters, it was all backwards, instead of having less resources the more you expanded, you had more. Basically it wasn't uncommon to see the vast majority of each empire play on one continent each, steamrolling and ghostcapping everything, due to the combined power of numbers and resources. While the people who insisted on playing on the less populated continents were handicapped both by numbers and by resources.

The current system, while incomplete, at least it gives a fighting chance to the people that like to fight while outnumbered.

Since most of the items in this list are already at a 50% discount, most of the savings you'd see are just the 10%, not access to the member sale. It's still better as you're spending $10 (minus the $5 that you get back with the monthly 500 SC) and you'd see $12 back in discounts, but I didn't feel like spending another paragraph quibbling over $2.

Yeah, the "$70 box and you get cordoned off into the starter maps" vs "Play for free, get everything anyway" makes it look even worse.

I think you just missed the introduction of the Starter Packs. They were brought in just after weapon attachments became purchasable with SC. There was probably an announcement splash on the launcher for maybe a couple of weeks. No idea what you'd see if you were launching through Steam though. You're right though, especially with how lackluster the online specials are (generally 10% off instead of the in-store bundle's 50%) it can be hard for a player that isn't actively looking to spend money to know that a large portion of PS2's most popular items are pretty much permanently 50% off.

If you look, you'll notice that the Starter Packs are expanded variants of the infantry "Pro" bundles. The Medic Pro gives Commish/DMR (and if you're still looking for one of those, check that one out), so the Medic Starter Pack throws in the DMR attachments and the Burster. Most of them give a vehicle weapon, except for the Heavy pack which gives the ESRL.

And these are just the pack prices since they were introduced - 50% off, now and forever.

No need to thank me, just send 6 month Resource Boosts.

For that kind of money, i would get 12months worth of membership if i was just starting out.
Not only do you "buy" certs (,certs that once you gained 1000 extra of, is basically a free 700sc weapon) , but you get 6000sc and everything you buy with it is 10% cheaper.

The year membership is a great value, but a lot of it depends on how often you play.
The passive certs 17,500 a year - but only if you log in every day.
The cert bonus is +50%, but a bonus to what? How many certs are you making?
Are you able to log in for the Member's double XP weekends?

The only dependable part of the year sub is the 6,000 SC, so I decided to go with a more quantifiable approach. It also has the bonus of cutting out a lot of the grind. Hell, considering the huge list of loot you basically cut out the entire grind. What's left after you've picked up all the stuff I listed above?

/facepalm..
the.. bundles .. are always 50% of?
How is SoE not marketing this???

I also love how the packs are set up..
the combat medic starter pack, buys you a gun+ attachments, the commisioner, the burster,..
the combat medic pro pack buys you a gun and.. the commisioner..
Which one of these should you market towards a new buyer, hmmm?
When I see "starter" pack and "pro" pack, which one do I think is larger?
Oh, and you can't really buy both, as you waste the commisioner.

euh, yes, sure. You'll buy me the 2-year anniversary pack, right?

you do realize they havent even added in the 2nd part of the resource update? let alone the 3rd

Yeah, the Pro packs are much older than the Starter ones so they took the best names.

And you wouldn't want to buy both of them for any class - the Starter always contains the weapons from Pro, so you'd waste both the Commish & th DMR.

Convince SOE to give me those boosts and you've got a deal.

Theres your ******* problem, they replaced a functioning element of the game with an unfinished one. Who thought that was a good idea? The resource system we have now was supposed to be fully finished by SEPTEMBER, the game has been broken since they added this unfinished piece of garbage.

I hope whoever came up with the idea of pushing "Phases" onto live server never gets into airliner development.

Just think of all the extra money you save on Doritos and Mountain Dew by completely switching from CoD to PS2.

their plan is to get PS4 live and then focus on the mechanics....they are probably working on stuff right now....but it sounds like they need more coders



and please....the aerospace industry is even worse....just look at the F35

Im going to have to contest that. If one could call the old resource system functional, it definitely deserved the Great Stamp of Not Fit For Purpose.

That said, i am dissapointed that Phase 2 got bumped off so Smed could start making money off the console peons.

Keep in mind most people that buy this stuff have already paid 110$/year for membership. So add on extra and you're paying 220$ for a few camos and member benefits.

They might, but don't have to. For instance, the sub isn't a great deal for me because I don't play enough for the income boosts to be worth it. And I'm certainly not going to hook myself into a 'log in every day for passive certs' system.

And what if they did get both? Well, that's two shooters plus their season passes: COD, Battlefield, Destiny, Borderlands, Halo... take your pick. So we're not exactly beyond most player's wallets yet. And with so much NS stuff in the first $120 spent, you would be able to pick up the juiciest ES goodies for the other factions too and have the year of income boosts on top of it all.


I mean really, beyond the stuff in the bundles above what more do you actually need?