If you understand anything about games, you’ve heard of free-to-play or the acronym F2P. But what does this mean? Is it free, or does it come with some catch? Let’s take a look.
What is F2P?
At different times and for different people, “free-to-play” has meant different things. F2P could be used to describe the shareware of the 1990s. You got free the first part of a game, but you had to pay to get the remainder of it. It was a fantastic method for developers who wanted to get their names out there.
Even your author, who doesn’t have much money, got anything to play for free. F2P, on the other hand, means something very different in its current form. Some of the free games that are out there are pretty good. Most of the time, when we say free-to-play, we mean games that use the freemium model.
Pros
No Need to Extend:
Yes, in the free-to-play model, developers have no reason to add more content or expand the universe because they aren’t getting paid. But in most modern free-to-play massively multiplayer online games, players have access to a lot of content right from the start, so there’s usually no need to wish for more. It would be nice, but since the free game, you can’t complain about the cost.
F2P is growing:
There have been a lot of new free-to-play games coming out recently, giving people more games to select from without having to be concerned about annoying subscription fees getting in the way of their fun. Most free-to-play games have enough content to keep players busy for at least 20 hours, while $60 triple-A games only have six hours of content.
Get What You Want:
Most free-to-play games have cash shops where players can buy anything from hair, clothes, fancy skins for protagonists or weapons, etc., to a piece of armor that would take 10 hours to unlock. There’s always that one weapon that players have to spend hours grinding in a boring dungeon to get. If it doesn’t work, you’d have to start the instance over to try again.
Game Over, Now What?
At the game’s finale, players can either make a new character or use their leveled-up character to explore the world. It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing new to do because that happens when you arrive at the end of a game.
If that sounds boring, you might want to find something else to do. The remembrances made while playing a free-to-play game are worth keeping, and playing a different type of game doesn’t change that. It’s nicer just to let go sometimes.
Cons
Incentives to Grow:
Most of the time, developers of emergent gameplay online games are guaranteed a certain amount of money as long as players are happy enough to pay monthly subscription fees. When MMOs become F2P (Free to Play), on the other hand, this incentive is no longer there. It can bring months or even years to fix bugs in content. Also, building out will be a lengthy process (if made at all). Most F2P games don’t get better over time.
Stagnation:
As was said above, there is a chance that free-to-play games will get boring, and what a player buys is usually what they get, but there are some exceptions. Developers sometimes change a game to a new model and leave it that way until it shuts down or loses so many players that it becomes a graveyard.
The Risks of Pay-to-Win:
Most free-to-play games can avoid this trap because the developers know that it would annoy their players. But the threat of feared cash shops with armor, weapons, and other items will give rich people a lot of power and change the whole point of the endgame of an MMO game. But, like boogeymen hiding underneath the bed, this nightmare doesn’t usually come true.
The best games that are free to play
Apex Legends
A shooter with the best history in video games. Do you remember how amazing the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games were? From there, the people who made Apex Legends came. After leaving Activision and Call of Duty, they started their studio and made the amazing Titanfall.
Then, when Apex Legends came out of nowhere, everyone was shocked. Apex Legends is a first-person shooter set in the Titanfall universe. It has the unusual movement you’d expect from the studio, but it looks like a Battle Royale game.
Dota 2
Aside from shooters, the best free-to-play game is also the best way to waste time. People who play Dota 2 often have thousands of hours under their belts. Dota 2 is a multiplayer online fight arena (MOBA for short). It started as a mod, which spawned two more games in the same universe: Artifact and Dota Underlords. Get ready for a steep study curve, but one that will lead to a satisfying addiction.
Hearthstone
Fans of Blizzard’s free-to-play card game Hearthstone might remember how exciting it was to wait for the iOS version to come out. When it arrived on iPad and iPhones, we could all keep playing the game wherever we were. We could make decks and talk trash to our opponents when our Aggro Hunter deck evened out the board, making us laugh because we knew we were about to win.
Clash Royale
Clash Royale keeps getting better, keeping fans on their toes. We had a new season, and some of our favorite cards got buffs and debuffs. However, Clash Royale’s real genius comes from the fact that it’s easy to learn but hard to master. Nowadays, everyone has a smartphone, and Clash Royale is so colorful and pretty that it’s hard not to try it out.
Warframe
Developers Warframe is a great game made by Digital Extremes. Because there were more and more people playing this game, the team was able to fix what was broken or make people angry and make it a huge success.
A great game that was hard for blind people to play is now much easier to pick up and play, responsive, and fast-paced, with many ways to customize and play it. A great free-to-play game needs to be updated, and Digital Extremes does this regularly with their action game.
Pokemon Go
There was a time when it appeared like everyone and their dog was playing Pokemon Go, just like Fortnite. It wasn’t easy to turn the time-honored tradition of catching them all into a mobile game where you go on an adventure to find your favorite pocket monsters, but the game’s success says a lot. The Niantic team has added gym battles, Team Rocket, and, most recently, changes that make it easier for people with disabilities to play the game.
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