Free to play (F2P) is a relatively new concept. I’ve come from the day and age, when you were expected to “buy” a game. (yes, this was a pre-download era). – These games came pre-packaged, and depending on the developer, it wasn’t actually a playable game. But none the less, the model often was, buy once, enjoy as long as you want.
Naturally, as technology advanced, new playing style emerged. Streaming, on the go, hosted service, mobile are all things that came relatively recently.
As such, we also got introduced to this concept of “freemium” – in the old days, we may have called it “demo” – when you pay, you get certain functions “unlocked”. But freemium differened, that people who paied, and people who didn’t, co-existed in the same world. – In this model, you bets “boosts”. I first saw this in candy crush, where you can buy extra life, so you can keep playing. From what I can see, in more modern games, they changes this model into in-game currency, and gave the freedom for the players where to spend it on.
This, unfortunately created an uneven playing field, where people who were willing or able to pay to play, got ahead (often referred to P2W or P2P, pay to win or pay to play) getting ahead- either as a scenario, better gear, character etc.
Now that the history lesson is over, lets talk about the ideas.
First, about money. I see people talking in the forums about how either F2P is unfair, or that the devs are greedy. From my side, these are perception and misunderstanding – for P2W players, this is where they want to spend their (hopefully) hard earned money. There are some bloggers, that are sustaining their own games by creating more contents. – who knows, it might have been one of those contents that you followed that got you to start playing this very game. For these people, it’s work.
As for devs, while they will have to balance F2p content vs P2w content, this too is their job. Very few people or company will be creating games or content for free. Having played several games, I can see it’s very hars to make something that is either – too p2w focused (the game is absolutely unplayable without spending anything) or the game is so playable as F2p that no one spends any money one it – and forces the devs to either scrap the game (not a viable business) or start using ads.
Because of this reason, I’m very supportive of each of us spending a little bit on the game. – While they are trying to suck you in, the reality is that, the discounted starter pack is a very good value item (often at a heavy discount). I’ve seen it at a few bucks, which is less than a coffee if you think about it.
Then there is the challenge. As with in real life, there are some things that just isn’t possible – Company with more resouce will be able to do much bigger campaign, bigger events and so on. So as a player you have to play according to your limit. In many cases that I have seen, it’s nearly impossible to get rank 1 in pvp in almost any game. So you will most likely delegated to the PvE aspect. One player I have seen in the Vlogger area have perfected one aspect of the PvE and became a top scorer and became a YouTube sensation in the game. Like this, you kind of have to find your enjoyment if you choose to go PvE. – I personally enjoy the challenge of trying to use the under-utilised character/monster and find a good use of them.
Personally, this is where the joy of F2P lies. It’s not easy, so you have to really use what’s given to you. Someone in the Undead Nations forum said it nicely, it’s easy to use all the epic characters, but it’s more fun to fully use the uncommon characters.
What do you think?