Can free-to-play *ever* be good?

[Klumpen]

I've gotten to the point that I just ignore any of these f2p games which is a shame because there's a lot of great games that fall under this genre. Sure, there are some that you can get buy with not paying but that almost always means large tedious amounts of time grinding to gather enough funds in the game. No, give me a set price for a game. I'd much rather pay $20 for a good game outright than make multiple payments of $2-5 dollars each. I pretty much just look at it as a money-grab!

Same here.

 

[milkshake]

LoL is play to win, HoN and Dota2 arent

Cool, two new games I've won at, and I haven't even needed to play them

DOTA 2 is NOT pay to win the only things you can buy are cosmetic items for your characters, so you would need to play to win

 

[RuneIV]

Yeah, tell me how much I must pay up front and stop begging me for money after.

I think it is also a bit generational. Over the years I've been buying less and less games (and more recently looking at replaying old games on a Pandora/Shield/GCW-Zero or whatever) so I'm not the market anymore. But the kids these days they love that stuff. It's the way they get new games in between the "begging their parents season" for cash to buy the new Call of Duty.

I'm used to pay the full amount for my game up front and then have the complete experience. And like most of you I suppose that I was used to something even rarer these days, buying games with few bugs that needn't/couldn't be patched after release. Man I miss those years.

 

[LuSimon]

Team Fortres 2 is free to play doesn't require money to earn items and can be played offline! OFFLINE! so yeah f2p can be good

 

[gunrock]

F2p games are ones I can do without. I hate this goddamned "monetising" of everything. I'm with all the above posters who would prefer to pay a lump sum up front and get a complete game. Proper DLC, I have no problem with a la Gay Tony (GTA 4) or Knife of Dunwall (Dishonored) as these are new experiences of substantial content in both narrative and gameplay terms.

 

[pmprog]

Here, you need to just try this game

http://newobj.dlctris.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

 

[fusion_power]

http://www.pathofexile.com/

free to download, free to play, no pay2win, only cosmetic items for sale, and players seem very eager to support it by purchasing cosmetic items because they enjoy the arpg so much. an arpg with good leveling, good end game, good itemization, good community, good support from developer, etc...

Yes, I play PoE since open beta (january) and I have abandoned D3 since then mostly.  PoE has much better itemization, better and tons more of skills and it has not a skilltree but an skillforest. ^^  Updates and improvements almost every day, new Unique Items regulary, user designed Items (for $1000 by the way ) and NO Auction House!  

Ok, it still has many flaws, not so smooth gameplay like D3, performance, desync and lag issues and a annoying trading system over chat. However, they provide ladders and many different "race" events, various leauges where you can win prizes at the end etc...

I've spent some Euros in this game but only for my stash expansion, fair price, alot of personal benefit but nothing that impacts gameplay.

The most popular F2P besides LoL is of course World of Tanks. http://worldoftanks.com/

I've played it some time ago, it's now much more popular and has tons of new content, real physics, less Pay2 Win than in the past but still the same weird matchmaker. I quit for a good reason, random matches are, well, random and you can be sure that the matchmaker will set you to the looser team, there are many threads about the matchmaker, it seems its manipulated and mainly for keep your win/loose ration 50/50, no matter how good you are.

There is also World of Warplanes but people say, War Thunder is much better and more fun, you even can play it Single Player. http://warthunder.com/