Freemium Armada

I’ve had my last attempt at a Free to Play game. I’m done, no more. I used to play Tribes back in the day when the first one got released and so I thought I’d take one last look at the series (considering the last Tribes game was utterly dismal). Tribes: Ascend has been released in the last few days and is a free to play multiplayer FPS made by the same guys who did the MMO Global Agenda. My love for the series has now completely left me all thanks to that little word that is currently irritating the shit out of myself and a lot of other gamers: Microtransactions.

Sure, you do get free to play games without paying a cent and can play them as much as you want all the while gaining xp/currency to gain unlocks and progression but what’s the point when it takes an age to gain that extra level or get enough currency to unlock that extra weapon. If you enjoy the base game enough that you don’t care about rewards or progression, then I suppose you’re finding free to play games to be the best thing since dual thumbsticks. But if you give a shit about getting timely unlocks and progression or at least keeping up with the competition then your choice in free to play games is immediately obvious. Spend money or gtfo.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with spending money on games and some people may say “well why don’t you pay the same amount you would for a regular game and it’ll all work out even” or some such bullshit. The problem lies in the fact that these games are purposely designed to be a grind-fest if you don’t spend your hard earned RL currency. I remember when games that felt like a grind to play were condemned as having horrible player experience. The point is, if you go ahead and spend $50 to $100 dollars on a free to play game then fine, you may be able to gain all unlocks and it may even out. But what happens when the next content patch arrives? Suddenly there’s a ton of new gear/upgrades/unlocks and you have to fork out more again to keep up. You see where I’m going here right?

To experience the game as a whole the amount of money needing to be poured into most free to play games would far exceed the price of a regular game in the long run especially when compared to the quality of the title.

At this point it makes me wonder how far we are away from adopting more eastern design concepts into the microtransactions we’ve already borrowed. When will we begin to see western MMOs that add blatant peer pressure mechanics like paying a fee to revive your character on the spot? Imagine having a full raid group of 20ish people screaming at you to pay to revive immediately after you die mid-boss battle. Yay microtransactions!

Now some of you may be saying “but dude, you used to have a WoW subscription”. You do have a point there, but the catch is if you can find another game that releases large content patches regularly, constant fix patches, is as well balanced and has as amazing customer service as Blizzard provides then fuck, I can justify a subscription cost. Nothing else even comes close.

What I can’t stand is a huge buy now button covering a shiny piece of gear which dramatically affects my gameplay and will take me a stupid amount of hours to eventually attain the free way.