F2P format

In reference to www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-20-ea-predicts-a-free-to-play-on...:

"They don't need the distributor to succeed, so a lot more money goes into the game rather than to marketing and you get to grow organically with your players. And as there's no barrier to entry for players you can start to compete on fun instead of marketing, which is really the area that we as developers should be in."

Would suit me to be honest and no distributors can only be a good thing long term.

What are a hardcore gamers reasons for opposing it?

The ironic thing about free 2 play is the games can work out to be far more expensive than traditional buy once affair.

In some ways I don't have anything against them but it's really when you look at the finer details that you get to see what's on games publishers' minds. And I don't for one second believe their thinking of the poor dear developers either.

People were bemoaning all the little tat items in BF3 Premium, like special dog tags and uniforms but really, where does it end with the free 2 play model? The imagination's the limit as to what developer's can offer, or should I say publishers, as they will very much be the ones still in control. And even more so.

It's all about locking the user in and keeping them in, a bit like MMORPGs subscription model but based on lots and lots of little 'micro' transactions instead. Things you take for granted now will be totally removed from the game experience in the coming future. Again, the sky's the limit as to what to expect in terms of (the poor) player handicaps that will be written into the game if (and when) publisher's don't get the amount of revenue they're after.

It won't likely just be lack of ammo, or health or a good game or some other competitive disadvantage but something really fundamental beyond a sprint key. Such as limited overall graphics detail/resolutions settings or something. I don't know but there must be a million things you can leave out. Perhaps FPS players will suffer from malaria or something, eh? Their vision will be impaired or they'll have the trots and run around with brown trousers until they pay for new ones or somesuch.

I seriously think that the future of gaming is going to be all about control and revenue maximisation not freeing up developers or maybe even cutting out the middle man with pure digital distribution models - you can bet we gamers won't be getting the cost benefits of the savings to be had and additional (?) revenue from combating, what admittedly is probably quite a serious issue: software piracy. If you never were going to sell something anyway then that, in my view, is not a lost sale but could actually work out favourably in increasing recognition of your product and promoting next time sales perhaps, and yeah, this is fundamentally where I do see light at the end of the tunnel for software/games developers as people could potentially pay what they can afford for (hopefully) decent features:. It's better to have some revenue, however small, than nothing at all.

So, call me cynical and perhaps say I'm looking mostly at the negatives but I seriously think the whole F2P area is going to be one giant control fest. It will tie in - of course - with cloud gaming and this again has advantages and disadvantages though I think this has got to be the way we're heading. Actually, one little quirk about me is that I don't really like renting or subscribing so that definitely taints my views. Instead I prefer to own the media or hardware so I can re-watch/re-play films or games or music as many times as I like or pass them on if I'm done with them.

I like to spec my own computer and have it there rather than use my bandwidth and pay someone to stream games down to my monitor or telly. I'm not totally against the idea of doing this in future when internet issues are much less a problem (hopefully the whole world will be fibred up by then) and I'm getting used to paying for apps on my Android phone that are digitally distributed but I would be really miffed if, in future, I can't access the apps or games or music/video because the publisher says it's expired for some reason or other. And history tells us these industries like nothing more than to sell us consumers the same thing in a million different ways all the time: DLC, expansion packs, micro transactions, special (limited) editions, director's cuts, extended scenes, special recordings blah blah blah.

About digital distribution: I like it a lot if done right. Steam is good for things like sales, fast download speeds, good tech support, community stuff and variety and availability of content. And importantly, with Steam, they have a fair usage policy regarding what devices you can play the games on (Mac or PC if supported or even someone else's PC) and there's no limit to how many times you can download the game if you have to. Plus it's an excellent way to patch games and keep them up to date not to mention a better way to deal with cheats. But I really resent the fact the content isn't at least refundable or transferable at all. That's something I've come to live with but I've tied shop bought (physical) games to Steam not realising I couldn't then pass them on after so I think that's fundamental 'wrong'. I guess games you actually buy for download from Steam isn't so bad and there obvious reasons why you can't transfer your right to play them between people (!) but it's still a bit restrictive.

Anyway, I'm ranting on and on and I would be really amazed if T2D gets this far reading. He will likely have a fit when he's sees how long my post is. So, in a nutshell "I'm a little uncertain about the future" to quote one of my favourite lyricists, Jimbob from Carter USM but I do feel all better now for having had my say. Thank you mrnelster sir. Got it all out of my system (for now), just like having a good [censored], I mean, clearout!

I play World of Tanks and I'm kind of scared to look at how much I have spent on that. You find that you spend lots of small amounts and I have had to be careful to stop it from running out of control - it is all to easy to think 'oh well it is only £5' or 7... and then there is this other small amount for a shortcut over here...

You get plenty of people moaning on the WoT forum about how hard it is playing without handing over a penny but the game isn't designed to work that way - they want to make money and in order to do so they need to get people paying.

I try to give myself a sort of monthly gaming budget and if I spend it on a new release then I don't have it to spend on WoT...

It's all about money now, they used to release the developers pack so that people could make maps.
The good old days when you bought a game and everything after was free

Ive told you before Mr Spook and i will tell you again your posts are a brilliant cure for Insomnia

Joking apart i have to admit when i opened your answer to the thread i had a little laugh to myself at how long it was,but looking at it the other way its nice you take time out on here and post your thoughts and opinions because there are many out there that have trouble sleeping and I'm sure they are tired once they have read your post.

Seriously i love reading your posts as you have a great sense of humour,obviously some of the topics you may well talk about may not interest me but there is always some comment regarding me or something quite funny in them

Basically you write extremely well and your wisdom is always something that is gratefully appreciated on these gaming forums even though i take the mickey on occasions.

You really want a hard time then buy a 360 and me and you can have some serious fun.

Aw shucks, I love you guys.

Better than sleeping pills eh? I'm a medical marvel that's what I am!!

I will get an Xbox 720, how's that? That is if I"m not destitute and living on the streets (trying to survive) by then.

Yeah, with cloud gaming services like OnOne, I mean OnLive, I reckon the future will be something like: buy an expensive Apple, Google, Microsoft or Sony etc flat panel OLED TV, hook it up the internet then surf, rent films, play your games, listen to some phat beats and manage your life or have it managed for you by companies like Facebook. It'll be the end of the living room electronics boutique as we know it. Everything will be integrated into your telly (well, until someone comes up with something new to add then you'll have another box besides your TV but you get my point); it's all about convergence as Microsoft et al have been telling us for all these years.

That means giving over the power of your wallet as you'll no longer be able to keep a track on what you spend, all those little transactions will insidiously be depleting your bank balance month after month and you won't even notice it*. Before long you'll have invested so heavily in a company's online distribution platform you'll be their slave in perpetuity, forever and ever. Might as well get a barcode tattooed on your head right now or else an NFC chip implanted if you wanna be more discreet about your life being corporate property. We're just industry consumption fodder - we give them our lives and they give us entertainment.

Works for me!


* a bit like being married (and having kids) or so I've heard...

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Jun-12 17:58:25)

Informative,Imaginative as ever Spooky

Shame we wont be seeing the next generation until possibly next year as i was hoping for some new toys this 2012 and i doubt very much i will be buying into the Nintendo Wii U .

Hardly a upgraded console by the sound of it and Nintendo seem hell bent on alienating the hardcore gamer and pluming for the kiddie market once again.

There would have to be some killer game releases on that platform to get me even slightest interested,and one of those games would have to be Metroid and it needs to be developed by those guys that gave Metroid a brilliant new look in Metroid Prime on the gamecube..........Developers Retro who got dropped in favour of some Japanese game developer that basically killed the last game in the series Metroid other M or something ......Tripe that was !

You got that right. All about money when 'money' becomes the sole aim driving development of games. It used to be more about just the money, he says nostalgically. Developers would still have you believe they have a passion for their games and believe in the community that those games foster.

Maybe gaming won't all be hijacked by the big publishing houses out there though. Perhaps digital distribution and micro transaction payments can be used as a source for funding developers themselves without the need for expensive corporations with sophisticated marketing departments. Maybe some of them will get rich enough from charging reasonable prices for game items/enhancements that aren't crippling to consumers of their games who don't have them. A kind of honesty box so stop speak: pay if you want to help support the developer. That can actually work very well in reality.

It always amazes me to see what mods gaming communities can come up with. Back in the days of BF1942, there was an amazing array of mods with plenty of support from people giving their time and expertise for no remunerative reward. Still happens now but just not BF3 I guess? I'm pretty much out of the loop since the days of Desert Combat for BF1942 though. Now that was a mod! Whatever happend to those guys anyway? Oh, they were sucked in and spat out by the DICE/EA machine I guess. Mind you, they did have capital and you always do need a bit of wonga behind you if you're gonna get anywhere. Plenty of new models for capitalising projects exist these days though - much more ethical alternatives than releasing countless bland add ons or poorly re-drawn old maps (eh MW3ers?)

The good old days. You can't beat them. Sigh.

Went back to MW3 tonight and it bored me to death really quickly,the only thing i like about it our the guns and the fact its a lot easier to kill and be killed by someone than Battlefield.

Battlefield my shooting and aiming is pretty dire if i am honest even though i still manage to finish on top or in the top 3 in the mode i play on most occasions..........Forgot the mode again but its basically capture the flag but called something else.

In all honesty im quite bored with gaming at present because not much grabs my attention,still like Battlefield but i may play max payne through again and Prototype 2.

Suit me fine - as long as they don't expect me to buy anything in game...

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

Suit me fine - as long as they don't expect me to buy anything in game...

Hmmmm.......that's what I thought until I read SPOOK's reply.

I can imagine only having one machine gun, one pistol, one rifle etc. unless you pay for extras. If the main F2P protestations are based around the issue of trust, I think sadly SPOOKish is right to be worried.

That's why I only read the first 500 words.

What sort of things were you getting for each £5-7 transaction?

Only joking SPOOK.

You highlighted the fundamental problem with F2P. I had thought about whether or not I would need the extra content and how easily I could resist paying for it (as ilh has mentioned) and not about how far they could trim back the starting content. I wasn't thinking laterally enough!

In which case you either play something else or you make do with what you've got...

Im sure Spook wrote the bible

In reply to a post by time2die:

Im sure Spook wrote the bible

I did! But only for a laugh. Surprised by how seriously some people have taken it.

Yeah, well. You just gotta remember the bottom line is always about finding new ways for cashing in.

Ilh's experience with WoT should be interesting as the only time I played a F2P game was with Battlefield Heroes and I wasn't at all tempted to pay for the XP points to buy stuff.

EA gave loads of assurances players wouldn't be put at a disadvantage should they choose not to pay for anything but it quickly became apparent that there were some serious advantages in doing so.

I really feel if the game's good enough then it will easily hook players in with dangling all that paid content. And, as I said before, the sky really is the limit as far as to how far it all goes. In many ways, the F2P model is really ingenious, it's said to work really well in the far east where it is said cultural norms of copyright protection don't really exist so as far as beating piracy, F2P has got to be a good thing.

I think it's good in the way all those kids will still be able to play games they might otherwise have gotten for free from some torrent or other. And good that they at least have the option of being enticed to shell out some of their limited pocket money on buying items in game. I suppose, in some ways, it could be said, the F2P model allows more of a fairer, less restrictive entry model: a pay what you can afford system but the cynic in me is deeply sceptical about the real intent in all this. It's about money at the end of the day and they just can't get enough.

I'll just do a (hopefully) quick explanation of how WoT works and then explain what spending money does for you.

In WoT you have currently 4 nations (going to be 7 in total) and for each nation you have a series of tanks. These tanks are split by type (light, medium, heavy, tank destroyers and artillery(SPGs)) and then further split into 10 tiers. Here is a screen shot of 2 nation's tech trees so you can get some idea of tanks available.

You then go for fights (15v15) which are usually split into tier brackets - so for example a mix of tiers 5-7 on each team. In these fights you earn credits and XP. How much you earn is basically dependant on how much damage you do and whether your team wins. XP is used to unlock modules (bigger guns, better engines, new turrets etc.) and unlock new tanks. Credits are used to buy modules and unlock new tanks but also you have to repair your tank after a fight and buy ammunition. You can also fit 3 bits of equipment that improve your tank and these cost lots of credits.

You also end up spending quite a lot on training/re-training crew members. Your crew earns experience like tanks do and when they hit 100% training they can start specialising in areas that give you an advantage. So when you unlock your new tank you can move your crew and re-train them for the new tank so that these skills move to your shiny new tank. Depending on how you chose to do this it can cost credits or real money.

Someone who plays WoT might cringe at how I have described that as there is plenty of other things that I could talk about or explain better but as a basic intro I think it is not too bad.

Now, beyond the credits and XP there is gold and gold costs real world money - they do the odd competition where you can win it and have clan wars where again you can win it but it doesn't count for 99.999% of players. Here is a list (not exhaustive) of things you can do with your gold:

1) buy premium for X days. 1 month costs about £8.45 if you just buy the 2,500 gold to do it. If you were to spend the £82 then it works out at £7/month. Premium accounts mean that you earn an extra 50% XP and an extra 50% credits for every fight.
2) buy premium tanks - premium tanks exist for tiers 2-8 and cannot be researched through the tech tree. These tanks tend to have really low repair costs and earn a bucket full of credits even if you lose. Obviously the tier VIII premiums cost more gold but they also give you the most credits per battle.
3) Retrain your crew - a new tank with a brand new crew comes with them 50% trained. For 20k credits per crew member you can get them to 75% and for 200 gold per crew member you can get them to 100% and ready to work on their skills. When moving crew from 1 tank to another retraining them for free (from 100%) drops them to 75%, for 20k/crew to 90% and then your gold keeps them at 100%.
4) gold ammo. Rather controversial, gold ammo improves penetration/damage of shells meaning you can hurt people easier. It is rarely used in random games though but it does suck when someone does use it against you. Mainly used in clan wars to ensure they win gold... which they then spend on more gold ammo. It gives small increases though - as much as it makes things easier it does not make you unstoppable...
5) Camouflage - adds no in game value but makes your tank look cooler...
6) extra garage slots. You start with 4-5 but if you want more tanks then it is 300 gold per slotw (premium tanks come with their own garage slot).
7) converting experience. I haven't explained the XP mechanic very well as there is a lot to it but generally speaking XP earned in a fight whilst driving tank X can only really be used on tank X. It is possible once you have finished researching everything for tank X to use tank X to create XP that can be converted - using gold - to 'free XP 'and used on any tank you want. I really wouldn't recommend this though - it would get very expensive very quickly...

A final point is that it entirely possible at tiers 8 (possibly 7) to lose credits on a fight where your team loses (or even a bad win where you don't do much to help!). Shells for tanks can cost 1,650 credits each and you can spend perhaps 30,000 repairing your tank - you only earn 16,000 for the round and fired 12 shells it can be... expensive. To deal with this you can either keep lower tier tanks to finance the big boys, you can have premium for the extra 50% credits or you can buy a premium tank that you keep forever.

So as you see there are plenty of ways to spend real money - I haven't even included all of them there - just the main ones!

If any of you are thinking of playing then I can give you more in depth advice but basically I would say invest in a tier 8 premium tank (some are better than others!) as soon as you decide you like the game and perhaps run premium for a month or 2 to get out of the low tier tanks into something more respectable as soon as possible.

[edit]You of course can play this game entirely free but for me it would take the fun out of it - you would spend too long playing tanks you didn't want to just for the occasional run out in a tank you wanted to play. It would also be painfully slow to even unlock the tanks you wanted to get to. I have 15 days left on my premium and I may possibly put 1 more month on but by then I will have unlocked most of what I want and I have a premium tank so will be able to easily supplement my credit earnings there...[/edit]

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Jun-12 11:38:35)

Okay, so the million dollar question has to be 'how much have you spent roughly so far?' And how long have you been playing? This 'free to play' model looks quite expensive to me!

There's a lot to this WoT player investment mechanic, it's obviously been given a lot of thought to quite a devious level. Your advice for new players not languishing at the lower (free) ranks too long is pertinent as are quite a few others. Converting experience (7) sounds a bit iffy to me but not nearly as much as the ability to lose credits in a fight, which presumably makes you poorer financially in the real world too?

To me, it sounds as if the game developers have created a formula that obviously rewards investment: of time and money. With the premium subscription component I guess there must be quite a drive to get the most out of it and play WoT as much as possible before your time runs out, to achieve your objectives before it does. And then when it does run out, no doubt you will likely have new aims that need funding and subscribing again becomes the most economically advantageous option, but at the cost of your social life I guess!

It must be a really good (and addictive) game then if you're putting so much effort into it. I don't think it's my cup of tea really but would you say you are enjoying it? I mean, that's a daft question to ask a person playing a game for fun but we all know some games go beyond the fun element and can become obsessions as you grind it out in order to better your player stats. How much, given in a ratio would you say the fun factor was for you? Say 80:20 (fun:grinding) or is it, as I suspect, rather more complicated than that?

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Jun-12 20:29:59)

Noticed Dust 514 on the PS store last night. Free to play charging for Beta access and some very basic stuff. What are we fighting over, Stalingrad?!?!

Beta access for £13.99 and "...the essential items a new recruit would want." Three or four items including a hand grenade, a medi kit of some sort and some in game credit to get you going.

All hail SPOOKish the wise one! I am already starting to fear the F2P reaper.

But now that we know exactly where we stand, has anybody seen where I left my wallet?

Not exactly free to play then mate is it at £13.99,i also heard that if you get into the game it will end up costing a lot more than that.

Yes, I like the sound of that. "All hail Spook." Could get used to that.

Personally, I wouldn't go near Dust 514. Not even for free. For real free too. It's linked with Eve and they really know how to get the most out of players with all that experience of theirs. There will be loads of players with far more experience than those new recruits just joining, and you'll be pwnd for ever more. It'll likely take hundreds of pounds of investment to stop the rape. But then I don't know what I'm talking about as I never played Eve or Dust and I'm being extremely negative about it. Just they know one or two things about MMOs and in-game transactions is all.

Save the pennies and get a Google Nexus 7 instead. Lots of games for that. Got future* written all over it.

_{* Well, immediate future that is.}

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Jul-12 15:53:21)

Tempting mate. Couldn't see a released date?

Google say orders should be shipped within 2-3 weeks, so I guess that makes it sometime in the third week of July. Ebuyer also report they're getting 500 units in 18-20 days time it seems.

You can also get the Nexus 7 from the likes of PC World, as well as Ebuyer etc but only the 16GB model as far as I know. Slightly cheaper than getting the 16GB model direct from Google with the advantage of free postage. But it seems unlikely you get the £15 Google Play voucher to spend on apps and the free Transfomers film if you go with third party retailers. Google charge you a tenner for delivery so it's only a £5 difference either way.

Looks like a good bit of kit though but only if you can live with Android. Jelly Bean (4.1) is looking pretty good though I must say and that quad core processor and gpu look well powered so it should be able to handle anything currently on the Google Play store. Good battery life too - Engadget tested it to just shy of 10 hours with wifi on and running a continuously looping video test. Only thing is there is no memory card expansion slot and no built in video out ports like HDMI. Also, no 3G but you can tether it to a mobile phone via WiFi.

Spook have a look at the Dust 514 FAQ

http://www.dust514.com/game/faq/

EVE is very different from most MMO's and in game transactions are limited to 2 things only in the EVE universe

1) A two way trade of isk and plex (game time) on the eve markets run by the players, this is unique to eve as it allows for the legal trade of in game currency, some people will say this is wrong but it does work and has little effect on EVE.

2) Plex for Aurum this allows for clothing options to be bought- ccp wanted to expand greatley on this like other mmo's but the player base said no and CCP have cut back from this.

At current both games will be seperate for a while so no trade of isk/aurum between the two for now.

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Jul-12 23:06:00)

You play EVE ccxo?

Is it awfully complex? I know very little about it but I heard you have to be really dedicated to play it and that means learning an awful lot about it and its gaming universe (which isn't exactly small).

I had a quick look at the Dust FAQ (thanks for linking). Under the section appropriately titled 'What about money?' it says players who choose to pay real currency won't gain an unfair advantage over players who do not: no 'pay to win' structure as they say but how true is this I ask myself as surely the developers are not going to all the trouble of creating a free to play game that isn't in someway profitable or at least meet costs of development?

Just to show how little I know about EVE, is that free to play also? Does that use real currency in game too? And if so, what's the average spend I wonder? Don't mind me as I'm not anti F2P or against developers making money from their games in what ever format they choose but I definitely don't feel games publishers have altruistic purposes when choosing the F2P model. In fact, I am sure it's due to its profitability that they seem to be adopting it more and more, whether you need to pay for the first instalment (BF3, MW3 etc or not). To me, DLC, micro transactions, they can all become a little hazy if they are effectively requirements for gamers to play unimpeded (no map, you face the boot and don't have a choice in map rotation).

Well as I said all ranks are 'free'. The game mechanics just mean that with less XP and less credits earned in each fight it takes much longer to get to where you want to be. XP can only go up but as I said due to repairing and re-arming tanks you can lose credits. Without premium on your account it is more likely that you will lose money. To offset that you can either play a large number of games in lower tier tanks (tiers 5-6) to refill your coffers - it is (effectively) impossible to lose credits at those levels but then you don't earn as many as you can on good high tier games either. Or, your second option is to buy one of the premium tanks as these print credits so you don't need to play as many credit earning rounds in order to finance your bigger tanks. But, real world money is represented in game by gold and it is impossible to lose gold in game by having a bad round - you can spend gold in a round but that is different to losing it if that makes sense (feel free to tell me it doesn't and I will try and explain!)

So, onto the million dollar question! I have had 2 months premium (considering a 3rd) so 17-£25 and I have a premium tank that cost about £22. So yea, quite a bit - £40 is about the same as a new release and if you look at things like the graphics then you could question whether it is worth it - I already know what t2d would say But on the flip-side of that is the fact that you get a patch about every 1.5-2 months and these patches do things like:

- fix bugs/balancing issues (obviously)
- give new tanks - as I said there are currently 4 nations but British tanks are on the horizon and last patch expanded the french line from just mediums/heavies to also include SPGs and tank destroyers. The patch before added a second Russian heavy tank line. The next release adds tier 10 mediums/tank destroyers to all nations and so on.
- 2-3 new maps every patch
- new game modes - 2 new game modes came out with the last patch.
- the graphics got updated fairly recently (before I started) and very soon there will be a new physics engine and then eventually multi-core support probably tied in with further graphics improvements,

And everyone gets this - there is no DLC to pay for. They get their money through the channels that already exist. So there is real and consistent development in the game. You could argue that the new tank releases are an attempt to lock people into keeping premium to get them faster but for people like me I can see that is the case and I'm in no rush!

They are also developing 2 further games, World of Warplanes (don't really care about this because I suck at flying!) and World of Battleships (this I most definitely am looking forwards to!) and the credits and parts of the XP system will work across the titles.

I do admit to liking a bit of a grind in my games and this definitely relies on grinding but with 8 tanks to pick from I can mix things up how I want to (I started playing with just enough time to earn myself 2 free tank slots due to tech tree changes in 1 of the patches).

Another thing to point out is that you start a round and these have a time limit of either 10 or 15 minutes but if your tank gets destroyed you can leave that round, go to your garage and jump into 1 of the others so there is not very much sitting around going on

I do play EVE, its a very complex mmo compared to most and the learning curve, check out the picture in the link below.

This is a old image but summs up the difference between EVE and other MMO's

http://mmoreporter.com/2011/06/07/eve-online-the-soc...

The game is designed around isk the currency which you gain from winning battles and is used to buy guns/armour/tanks etc.
Aurum is bought through the PSN store and will be used to customise your soldier- like lol hero skins.
That way you have a free to play title with a store that allows for customisation.

EVE is a subscription based MMO, however if you make enough isk in game you can buy plex which you can use for game time, this makes the game effectively free.
It also works the other way in that you can use real life currency to buy plex to trade for isk, to give you more in game currency.

The average spend can be anything from say 90 pounds for a years sub or however much people want to spend on plex, but unlike other MMO's with eve you can use the in game currency to pay for the game if you work hard.

EVE is a sandbox MMO so anything goes bar a few rules imposed by CCP, with everyone in the world bar China on the single shard (one server) its a 23.40/ 7 game 365 days a year, that is driven by the players.

As for why Dust 514 is free to play, its a interesting move by CCP but to bring console players to the EVE univerise it makes sense as its a expirement to see how far you can combine two games.
If Dust 514 was a stand alone game set in the EVE universe then it would still be a Triple AAA title but with the price to go with it.

With the success of LOL and its store, alot of companies are taking note, they need to turn a profit and f2p at current looks to provide a long term revenue stream that will cover the cost of development and further development while still generating a good profit.

So a £40 or there abouts spend? Does this include ammo?

I like the sound of warplanes but like you, I'm not much good in the air. I do like flying around though. Find it quite relaxing but I wouldn't want to go flight sim as that'd be too technical and too boring I reckon.

I still remember the battleships in BF1942 (oh god, here he goes again!) Nah, I will spare you. There was always some nob running the thing into the ground or else taking off the map or something. That was crazy. You couldn't even walk properly for the thing lurching all over the place as someone went full throttle on you.

So, your experience of WoT rates as favourably then you reckon? I do feel I got the gist of what you were saying about the credits/gold points and understand where you're coming from btw. A bit of a fine line still though in some ways. Always a temptation to spend a little more and ease your way through the game though more so for some players than others.

Sorry to sound ignorant, but what is LOL and it's store?

LOL is league of Legends a DOTA copy that is free to play on PC and is proably one of the largest games on the planet right now.

http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/

The lol store is where people buy new hero skins, some people have up to 100 pounds/dollars worth of skins etc, the company has grown quite quikcly from its begining to what it is today.

Alot of game pusblishers and investors are looking at the F2P model beacuse of the sucess of riot, not all games will do as well but it looks like a good invesment option at current.

I haven't bought any of the gold ammo - I just use the cheaper armor piercing/high explosive rounds that cost the in game credits you earn each round. There is not any real need for the gold rounds in the random public games and I am not quite at the stage where I could start thinking about the clan wars - I doubt I will bother with them based on the costs I would likely incur...

But yes, there is always the temptation there when you just want to finally get your new gun or something but I just have to call myself an idiot and remind myself that I am trying to save money currently!

Yeah, who needs gold ammo anyway? Right?

Good luck saving up! The trick is to try and stop spending but you already know that. Saving money is an easy game to play but really hard to succeed. Too many temptations out there.

Edited by deleted (Tue 03-Jul-12 16:26:03)

Well did anyone see this yesterday? http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/when-riccitiello-said...

The CEO is obviously a fan of the F2P format. Like with all F2P games I tend to find they are usually quick to level up or advance through the game for the first 5 hours, then it just becomes a grind unless you want to spend real cash on it. The only F2P game I did play and then put cash on it ruined it for me anyway as then I had a lot of the best things in the game. I am not a fan of them.