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Topic: Help me understand F2P please

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Gryffin

I don't play F2P games. I've tried quite a few, but none of them have captured me. But something I don't understand is player opinions on character unlocks.

I need to preface this that I am may misunderstand the structure. For example, Agent Smith in Multiversus. Or characters in Speedstorm. Can they be unlocked for free completely? Or do you need to pay for a battle pass/season pass for the opportunity to unlock them? Further, can you just pay for the characters directly, with or without a pass?

I have some thoughts depending on the answers to these, so I'll withhold my comments until I understand better.

I'd appreciate your time understand this. Thank you.

Gryffin

CJD87

Each F2P game will have a slightly different model, and you would need to research each game individually to understand what is included 'for free' and what characters/skins are locked behind battle passes and/or individual payments.

I think you would do well to decide what game/s interests you, and then just google "GAME X - what is included for free, and what is locked behind payments" etc

CJD87

WoomyNNYes

@Gryffin With Disney Speedstorm, I think you can earn a chunk of points/currency initially, then the earnings/winnings while playing free REALLY drop off, making it ridiculously hard to grind for anything in a timely manner. So, it favors buying the characters with money(from rotating items in the in-game store) or purchasing a season pass to boost your winnings/in-game-currency. (It's been a while since I played it back in March - anyone correct me if I'm wrong)

If you like the game, I would say it may be worth buying a season pass? I really like Rocket League, and you really earn a lot if you buy a season pass - which lasts like 4 months. Without a season pass in rocket league the earnings rate is quite limited. However, buying a season pass does not making winning any easier or harder, everything is cosmetic in the game. It is a skill based game, and everyone's cars work equally. (When Rocket League was paid, they had major loot box issues. When they went free to play, they really cut out most of that(which was a major improvement), so now, you know most everything you're getting as you progress through a season.) I've been playing Rocket League since it launched on switch, back when it was paid. I'm rather shocked its one of my favorites games, most played games, and it's F2P.

[Edited by WoomyNNYes]

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FishyS

I've never played those two games, but it 100% depends on the game. Plenty of games let you buy a character either directly or via gacha. Plenty of other games give you unlocks via some type of battle pass. There are also games where you can save up for free and get an unlock or spend money to obtain it 100 times faster. And there are plenty of f2p games which simply don't have unlocks but instead have ads or let you pay money to get more stamina or perhaps buy a cheat.

Hopefully someone else will be able to respond about those two specific games, but if you're looking for a general rule for all f2p games, you're not going to find one; there are probably at least a dozen standard ways f2p games make money plus plenty of other niche ways.

[Edited by FishyS]

FishyS

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gcunit

Fortnite let's some cosmetics unlock just through playing, completing objectives etc, but you can also earn v-bucks (low, gradual rate, limited) without paying anything too. You can then spend v-bucks on battle passes or specific cosmetics. Or you can bypass that and buy v-bucks whenever you want. Seems pretty reasonable to me. I've spent quite a lot of time playing Fortnite, mostly co-op with my kids, and only ever spent about £7, on an occasion when I wanted to unlock a specific set of rewards that I wasn't going to earn enough v-bucks for before the rewards expired.

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Pastellioli

Like what others have said, it can vary depending on the game. Unfortunately I have never played any of the games you mentioned, so I cannot answer a few of those questions you asked, but I did research your question for MultiVersus, and I am going to mention some aspects of F2P.

For MultiVersus, from what I read online, Agent Smith doesn’t seem to be unlocked via a battle pass, and apparently he could be unlocked early for free by completing level 20 of a PvE mode called Rifts weeks before his release, but he can be purchased from the store, since I read he was officially released in the game few days ago. He doesn’t seem to be tied to a battle pass, so he was available to unlock for free but now costs money to get, so he can only be unlocked by spending. However, I am still going to research that part a bit to make sure I’m not giving you the wrong answer. I can’t answer the Speedstorm question sadly.

For stuff relating to character unlocks in F2P games, most games have characters available for free when you play for the first time, while unlocking access to some characters might require spending money or through some other way to play as them. Although I heard the game no longer does this, Overwatch 2 used to do something similar like that. Some characters from the first game were already unlocked, and the rest of the first game’s cast of characters could be unlocked by finishing several matches. Newer characters were tied to a battle pass, and the game has a free battle pass and a premium one; with the free, the character is unlocked when the player gets to a specific level on the battle pass, while the premium battle pass costs money and the player instantly unlocks access to new characters after purchasing it. However, another way they had available to unlock the newer characters without the battle passes was by winning 35 matches with a specific character class (damage, tank, or support) and testing the new character’s abilities in training. However, Overwatch no longer ties characters to battle passes and has all characters free for everyone, but there are other games that do something similar to that.

The microtransactions and models used in F2P can also vary too, and characters might be unlocked in different ways that don’t involve battle passes. One example is the gacha model. In the gacha system, cosmetics and characters are unlocked by spending in-game currency (which is usually earned by playing or spending real money) and the player receives a cosmetic or character at random, and usually there is no way for the player to get a specific cosmetic character they might want, but there are some exceptions. The gacha system is more common in Japanese F2P games rather than American F2P games. Examples include Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! and Fire Emblem Heroes. In some games, watching ads can also be used to unlock characters and items for free. There are also loot boxes, which do bear some similarity to the gacha model with how some contents included in loot boxes are also randomized.

Most F2P games give you the option to either pay to unlock stuff, or play normally to unlock stuff. Usually the latter route involves grinding and playing the game almost nonstop, but by paying you don’t have to do that and you instantly unlock access to stuff and features.

I should also add that some games do have restrictions to how long they can be played. Usually, mobile F2P games have this sort of energy system in place that, when it runs out, the player cannot play for some time until it is replenished after a few hours, so most mobile games allow you to buy replenishes with real money to continue playing instead of waiting, but some replenishes are gifted in-game for free. Like one of the examples above, Fire Emblem Heroes does this as well, and I think Pokemon Cafe ReMix does it too. Console F2P tend to not have an energy system in place.

There probably is more, but that’s all I can think of right now.

[Edited by Pastellioli]

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RupeeClock

Free to play games can broadly fall into two categories: Unlocking the enticing content or being allowed to continue playing the game.

Multiversus is a key example of that; either spend money or invest an unreasonable amount of time in order to permanently unlock a character, or cosmetics for a character.

A number of Nintendo F2P games take the approach that your access to a game is heavily restricted or time gated, unless you spend some amount of money.
They're designed so that you can enjoy playing the game for a good few hours before you hit a progression wall and exhaust the free content, before you have to wait for an amount of micro-transaction currency to be doled out daily.
Pokémon Rumble World, Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, Super Kirby Clash are examples of this where you can earn the currency necessary to unlock further content through play too, but you ultimately have to rely on daily regenerating currency. However, they sweeten the deal so that if you purchase a certain amount of the goods that your daily regenerating currency increases and it relaxes the restrictions more.

The Nintendo approach to this is pretty consumer friendly because it allows you to spend a sensible amount and you can enjoy the game at a sensible pace. The huge problem though is that the purchased goods are only for a single use against your current save file; if you lose your save file there's no "reattempt past transactions" option.

RupeeClock

RubyCarbuncle

Free to Play is pretty much what it sounds like but generally speaking if you want the best experience with these games you have to be willing to cough up real money. How each game approaches this is different so you can decide for yourself if you think the game is worth it or not.

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Gryffin

Thank you everyone. Lots of clarification. Here's my general opinion on the attitude of F2P players, generally. If the game is F2P, then why should not the developer be entitled to make whatever hoops they want? They're incentived to keep free players for only two reasons: potential future earnings, and keeping the player base stocked so there's someone for paying players to actually play against. In instances where a character can be purchased straight up, or unlocked over time, for example, I don't see why the free unlock path shouldn't be difficult or time consuming. Or like Smite, and probably other MOBAs. They have a free rotation, or you can just buy the characters. I'm sure this opinion comes off as harsh. What I can emphasize with better is if you pay for a season pass, then the unlock path should be reasonable, moreso to reward playing a bit then tax players for their time, because they've already paid their dues so to speak. As you've all pointed out, I think this varies from game to game, but I've noticed a general attitude of enforcement across F2P games that, to me, seems unreasonable, and especially does not warrant the vitriol often directed towards developers. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Gryffin

FishyS

@Gryffin I've never particularly played f2p games which involve season passes so I can't comment on that, but your point about how incentivized a company is to keep free players is an interesting one. Some F2P games don't seem incentivized to even keep paying members - one completely valid method to earn money for a F2P game is to quickly earn money from a player once and then discard them and move on to the next player. This may be more common for single player F2P games where they don't need to keep a server super busy, but it seems like a common tactic with certain types of mobile games. That can be good if the game is still good after that transaction and very bad if they have effectively tricked you and the game is terrible after that.

In the conversation in general I also think there are a lot of games which would simply be better games if they were either payed games from the start or pay-once-after-you-decide-its-worth -it. The new Denpa Game on Switch is a good example of this. After playing a couple hours I would have loved to pay once and then get to ignore all the F2P garbage tactics.

FishyS

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Anti-Matter

F2P is a scam business practice for whatever reason.
Micro transactions behind the F2P games are beyond cancer in video gaming.
If you still want to see the gaming future with physical media and all contents inside, don't support F2P games.
Tell to developers that we hate the future like that.

[Edited by Anti-Matter]

Anti-Matter

Samalik

@Pastellioli Going off of your talk about gacha games, some do have 100% guarantees if you save up enough currency to hit the spark limit, otherwise known as pity. More modern gacha games do implement this system so you know what you're paying for, either in-game or IRL, and it's generally advisable to save your currency instead of spending recklessly. But because of this system, it becomes more about how frequent can you spark using free currency, based on how much free gems are handed out.

Games such as Blue Archive have this system exactly as I described, and free currency takes 2 months upon clearing all end game content to hit spark but there's only one limited banner a month, meaning when they're gone you need to wait for next year to get them for yourself (but you can still barrow for raids). Because of this, it's generally advisable to skip unlimited characters as they may pop up during your limited rolls instead. Although Blue Archive does do something different than the past gacha games I played and let you spark for the other on banner character if you get lucky on the one of your choice, so you get two characters instead of one for the intended price.

Zenless Zone Zero, however, has what's called a soft pity, in which guarantees an S-rank item, but whether it's a weapon or a character is still random between the two. Because of this, it actually gets more frustrating to work with this system, since you're never truly guaranteed the desired item when promised you would, even though the game does also have hard pity, but it's extremely expensive and only on the basic banner.

But of course, having a spark system at all strongly lessens the concerns of gambling imo, since that is a bottomless financial pit with a vague promise of getting rich, or on the case of an FGO player before they added sparking themselves, spending $5000 just to get one character. as if the character didn't exist in the gacha pool at all.

[Edited by Samalik]

Samalik

Snatcher

Depends on the game, some kinda urge you to spend so you can have a better experience or more fun, this could be in ways like spending to get characters faster perks what have you, and then there’s your customizable based ftp’s the most common in shooters, these are just as they sound they are only to look cool and whatnot in the games and you don’t need to spend whatsoever to enjoy any of its content, Fortnite being a big example.

Personally I spend money on games I enjoy playing and have fun with like Fortnite and apex just because I don’t mind supporting a developer if it’s something I have poured hundreds of hours into.

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