That question has probably been asked by every new player picking up a rifle on the war torn planet of Auraxis.
Some might say that the benefits of subscribing don’t justify the monthly price tag. Let’s see if we can find out, shall we?
The first benefit and probably the most important one to the majority of players would probably be the bonuses to the passive certification points, experience and resource gain.
Once you become a member, you will start with a 25% boost to all three and gain another 5% every month until you reach the maximum of 50% bonus to passive certs, resources and experience.
Another frequently asked question is: “If I buy a six month subscription, do I get the 50% bonus right away?” The answer is “Yes, you do”.
Quick explanation of the monetary trilogy of PlanetSide2:
Resources, your credits so to speak
You have a maximum of 750 resources for each of the three categories, infantry, vehicles and aircraft. I will not go into price details as it’s not the topic here. You will gain more and more resources as you spend time in a zone and/or kill enemies. Keep in mind, you won’t be able to go above 750, so it might be a good idea to spend your infantry resources as soon as you log on and before you log off. If you are a member, you will gain resources 50% faster then non members, but honestly, as a non member I’ve almost never had to wait to pick up a new vehicle or an aircraft.
Certification points, your Auraxis Bucks
You’ll spend them on upgrading the classes you play, the vehicles you drive and the aircraft you fly, or in my case, crash into a mountain five minutes after you buy the damn thing… and buying new weapons if you (like me) don’t want to spend real money on a collection of ones and zeroes. Passive certification points are a steady cert gain every two hours weather or not you are online. However, there is a cap, you will only be able to gain the passive certs for 24 hours. If you are a free player, you will get one certification point every two hours, so if you log in after a full day has gone by, you will have 12 cert points to greet you as you log in. Even if the official sites say that membership gives you a 50% bonus to the passive cert gain, I believe it’s more then that. A quote from a PlanetSide2 forums says it is anyway:“
- Membership enhancements
- We’ve increased the number of passive certifications for members and scaled the increase in cert points based on length of membership. The new cert point rates are as follows:
1-mo. member – 24 passive cert points/day
2-mo. member – 28.8 passive cert points/day
3-mo. member – 33.6 passive cert points/day
4-mo. member – 38.4 passive cert points/day
5-mo. member – 43.2 passive cert points/day
6-mo. + member – 48 passive cert points/day”
So basically, if you were to buy a six month subscription, you would gain 48 passive certs per day. While being better then 12 per day, one must take into account that a new weapon can set you back up to 1000 (no, it wasn’t a typo, “a thousand”) certification points. The term “Fart in a hurricane comes to mind”.
250 experience grants you one certification point and progresses you towards your next level and rank. The level and rank in and of itself don’t really mean much. A level 100 can be gunned down by a level 1 and vice versa, the only thing the level will indicate is, how much time you spent playing, because as it is with most leveling games, even the worst player will level up. The basic way of gaining experience is, of course, killing your enemies. Your default kill experience is 100, if an enemy was on a killing streak you will get a bonus, if you shoot him in the head, you will get another bonus and so on. I will not go into too much detail here, the (nearly) full list of those bonuses can be found here.
You just need to know that every bit of that experience you gain will be increased by 50% if you are a six month subscriber. So if you were to kill a high threat enemy by ventilating his head, you would get:
100(kill)+150(high threat)+10(headshot)=260(total).
Now if you were a six month subscriber, the math is:
150(kill)+225(high threat)+15(headshot)=390(total).
Here, the bonus starts to shine, on an average day I can get up to 200 certification points as a non member, if I were a member that number would go up to 300.
There are more bonuses you get as a member
500 free SevenCash aka Station Cash per month. If you don’t want to farm certs for ages in order to unlock a new weapon, this is what you use. You can buy Station Cash (SC) online for about 1 Euro for 100 SC if you buy the lowest (5 Euro) package. Or if your pockets are a bit deeper, you can get 13500 SC for 100 Euros and get a quantity discount. Where’s the bonus? If you are a member, you will gain 500 free Station Cash per month, or the equivalent of 5 Euros. Nothing special in my opinion, but there you go.
The most important membership bonus in my opinion is the one we will cover last. Priority login/continent access. If you are playing on a highly populated server, and are not a member, get ready to do some waiting. Especially with the recent addition of continent alert events. If you are a member however, you get moved automatically to the front of the queue (sort of like a posh nightclub). So as a non member, don’t be surprised if you see yourself being for example, 25th in the queue one second and 30th the next. What this means is that five members have entered the queue and even though you joined it before they did, they are getting in front of you.
So those are the bonuses, read them over and decide if they are worth 13 Euros a month subscription (or 96 Euros if you get six months right away). My personal opinion is that it depends on what you value more, your time, or your money. What am I talking about? Well, sadly I am a part of the 21,9% of the unemployed people in my country, so I have all the time in the world. However money is a different story. When I get employed, it will be the opposite, I will have less time to wait in queue and less time to shoot people in the head, but I will be able to spend the 13 Euros per month.
So what’s the conclusion then?
To sub or not to sub? Well the answer is that only you can answer that. What do you value more, your time, or your money?
