Tribes F2P Business Model - PS2 Impact

[Notser]

This week the guys at Hi Rez Studios released a themed pack for the infiltrator class called "Cloak and Dagger". New Weapon, Grenade, and Equipment for the infiltrator class. They also added new skins/models for the class, but that isn't a big deal. Long story short, this created a huge influx of infiltrators and also changed the balance between all the classes.

In regards to Planetside and their F2P model, do you believe that themed content releases for particular classes is the best way or do you feel that adding so much new content to one single class would cause too much balance issues and also cause players to all play one class for a couple weeks until the next content patch?

I personally would rather have a couple items be released that give multiple classes something new so not every player feels like trying one class. Also, balancing a single class with a entire new loadout is a little crazy rather than introducing a single weapon/grenade/equipment/etc. How do you all want your PS2 content patches? From a business perspective, the full makeover of a class would probably create more revenue and interest but isn't ideal in a class based FPS.

Very interested in everyone's opinion, Tribes Ascend's F2P is probably going to be the most like PS2's F2P when they release it.

Additional Discussion - Pricing

Totalbiscuit brought up a interesting point about Tribes Ascend's pricing and how it would influence buying habits of players. Primary weapons cost around 10 US dollars, Secondary 5, Equipment 3, and skins starting at 10 and some costing up to 15 dollars. Do you feel that 10 bucks is too much, just right, or too little to charge for a weapon/skin? Remember, Tribes is going for sidegrades versus straight up better items which is exactly what PS2 will be going for with their weapons.

I personally feel 10 bucks is a little too much for a primary weapon, also think skins shouldn't cost 10 bucks unless they are really cool and have new animations. But there is the school of thought that since PS2 will allow weapons to be used across multiple classes when it makes sense that you would be getting more for your money then Tribes, where weapons are locked to each class.

What would be a fair price for SOE to charge for weapons/skins/animation effects/etc?