Ghost Recon Phantoms - FREE DLC - Substance with Style pack

I played this game back when it was simply called Ghost Recon Online. I stopped playing it when gear prices in RP went up enormously. Did they actually change up the system with the ranks for the better?

The free packs don't help though... what ends up happening in the end is that you're matched up with higher leveled paying players. They don't just have better weapons but better armor and other gear. The end result is still the same.

This Free2Play model is one of the worst in my opinion, since no one gets a good time. The free players don't get the better gear and the paying players don't get the benefit of playing with the non-paying players. So they basically have a smaller player-base to fight against.

I get the feeling that these free packs is really an attempt to fix that and effectively "level up" a few players so their paying players don't get bored.

Don't get me wrong... I really like the core of the game and I've played quite a lot but the F2P model is just awful. It would have been a far better experience if they had gone with visual customization, weapon skins and reasonable XP boosters.