The ASP 10k Certs

So, how much grinding should a free player not running boosts expect to do just so he can become a fancy ASP when really all he wants is to be able to use Assault Rifles on his other classes for once.

its hard to say, personally i never consider spending time playing the game i like to be any kind of 'grind' sure a grind refers to something that is bad?

as for how long it takes, depends on what your doing and how good you are at doing it..

At most ive ever had around 2 or 3k certs at any time before something comes along to eat them. And since i dont have the luxury of a 200% or 400% boost, they come in very slowly.

as somebody who never used any boosts, played mostly solo and had already bought most of the stuff i actually wanted.

i can make about 400-500 certs a day on my days off, playing vehicle anti-vehicle.. which isnt a terribly high amount for the time i play but, its not a bad amount for sure, so... a few weeks?

0-100 with no boosts is going to take a long time. Even with a good score/min. You will have plenty of certs for that buy in if you don't spend like crazy. Would highly recommend spending the 15$ though if possible and spending the certs elsewhere. Unless you have what you want unlocked and no desire to use anything else...

As a free player with ~3500 hours into the game... I just keep grinding directives while not really spending my certs. I have pretty much every weapon, suit slot and vehicle maxed, as well as all the implants I want. I can casually keep the certs coming in, using the boosts I get from alert rewards. I can get around ~100 certs/hour if I farm for it, but usually I get ~200 certs/evening. Calculating that average leads to around 3 months worth of play.

Do I mind? Not at all. None of the ASP perks seem necessary to me. Shotty/Archer seems nice for vehicle play, as well as shotty/SMG light assault. The rest of the ASP I wouldn't spend yet, simply because I don't care for the perks.

Is 10k certs a lot? Yes.
Is it too much? Probably. 3-5k certs would have been fine.
Is it a stretch to give ASP for free to members? Yes. A discount would've been more fair IMO.

Also, make prepaid membership a thing. I want to buy membership but I don't have a credit card. I dumped ~300 euro in cosmetics, and have all my slots filled. Let me buy membership FFS!

As a free player i'm saving for the ASP, i'm BR 95 with 7000 certs saved.
SOON.
in the last 5 BRs i've been saving up the certs while on a quest to aurax LMGs, and each time i finished one i had more certs to buy another and still gain more than i've spent due to random XP bonuses.
Right now i'm auraxing my last LMG before the butcher, the T-32 bull, a very fine weapon and a breath of fresh air after the horrible TMG-50 experience and its disgustingly low accuracy, and the watchman, the bull's accuracy makes it a really fun to chain headshots as it's extremely precise, the low fire rate with the standard TR damage model is still something i have to get accustomed to as i still turn around and leave on 1v1 situations thinking i've killed my enemy due to muscle memory on the other weapons.

I'm not going to blow hard earned certs on unlocking 5 perks of dubious value.
I'm going to continue playing until I'm at 120 and then I'll consider subscribing for the shortest time possible.
That shouldn't be much more expensive than what I spend on weapons or cosmetics here and there.

If you have an active outfit or simply join organized platoons you can make 600-1000 certs a day. Play a support class. At BR99 you should have a clue how to get certs.

Hey look another chunk of content I won't get to experience! Awesome!

Ya if you have no life and all you can do is planetside and you are jacked up on coffee and your outfit is as well... sure you can break 600 certs in a day as a member. The planets also aligned last year, did you hear about it?

Where are these organized "platoons" you speak of? Only on double xp weekends? once a month we can make good progress with our characters? Most outfits are dead, seldom do you see true organized play anymore. What you just described doesn't really happen in this game anymore, it used to once upon a time. That time is long gone.

Average player might get 100-200 certs per night. Note the word: average (not elitist / top scoring / no one cares how good you think you are) someone gets off work and is probably going to off / on play 2-4 hours sessions in a casual manner. Retired / disabled understandably will play all day, you are in the minority!

In reality nothing should cost more than 500 certs. 1000 certs for a marginal improvement does not feel good or fun or rewarding in anyway, it just leaves you with this doubtful regret that you should have spent those points elsewhere first because it took so damn long to get them in the first place.

The grind in this game is NOT fun. It is too brutal, too greedy, and keeps most content out of the overwhelming majority of players hands. (most of those players being gone at this point)

You'll probably experience it
on the receiving end.

I also thought the grind was brutal, but then i got gud.
Also TR miller have platoons every day.

some YouTuber named moukass is grinding out the certs for the ASP, look him up
i have to warn you, he is a good player and it's still a grind to him
buy a one month membership, who knows maybe you like it and stay a member

here is some game play from him

Took me about 4 weeks of 2 to 3 hours of play a day to go from 4000 to 10K. It was a bit easier to have 3 weapons nearly auraxed but it's not impossible.

you just have to ask is the weeks that you'll be grinding for worth more than the £9 to instantly get ASP through membership.

if you do decide to grind it don't fear! there is a double XP WEEK coming up! the 21st to the 27th, double xp for all,
and if you do decide to be a member you will be getting stupidly high xp for the weekend (members double xp weekend)
because it is double XP ontop of double XP ontop of the 50% xp bonus from membership!, certs come pouring in.

They said it was May 18-25 in the dev twitch podcast thing?

eek have i got the wrong week?! :O
but they talked about the crazy xp stacking for members ,
so surely it would have to overlap with the last fri/sat/sun of the month? which is the week after next.
just rewatched it, you're correct, 18th to the 25th, so members will indeed get crazy xp, but only on the friday

Wait till you start working, you'll value your time much more

I do work... then pay some bucks and get your XP multiplied at infinitum with ASP on top.
Personally i don't like spending money on free to play videogames, and probably never will as they are a rather huge money sinks anyways, if i had to spend 12€ instead of the membership i'd rather buy a new full fledged game or two with discounts.