Free to Play Games: Any you would recommend?

[gorfias]

I started playing Grim Dawn and I am enjoying it.

Someone compared it to "Paths of Exile" so I looked into it. Free to play.

I've had some free to play on my PC, such as Guild Wars 2. I felt like I couldn't turn my computer on without it doing a gigantic "update"... I assume actually an upload to check on what I'd been up to.

Any of you spend any time with Free to Play? Any you would recommend?

If I try Paths of Exiles am I looking at huge wait times and uploads?

EDIT: OK, re-adding Guild Wars 2 again. Huge download time.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've played my fair share of Path of Exile (340 hours) and at no point have I ever had a wait time to log in. You will, however, semi-regularly see some fairly hefty uploads (usually in the 1-5 GB range for semi-large content releases).

If you're looking for a free-to-play FPS, I've been playing PlanetSide 2 since release in 2012, and it's had quite a bit of content released recently. Generally avoids pay-to-win and gives players a lot of things to do.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Team Fortress 2 is still tons of fun despite being...15 years old now?

 

[Asita]

My go-to F2P is still Warframe, but I warn you going in that the generosity of its model is somewhat dependent on how patient you are.

See, you get a small amount of the platinum premium currency at the start, which is best spent on warframe or weapon slots, which are very limited at the start. The upside is that a patient player can very easily get more platinum because (with the exception of the aforementioned gifted platinum), that premium currency can be and often is traded between players, and getting things that are worth trading is surprisingly easy. Join a relay syndicate, level up your rank with it, boom. There's usually some takers for the rewards that are semi-syndicate locked (eg: Since I'm in Arbiters of Hexis and Cephalon Suda, I occassionally check to see if anyone in trade chat is looking for some of the popular mods like Avalanche or the Telos/Synoid weapons).

Similarly, as you unlock the map, you'll start finding that some missions drop a lot of "relics", which contain parts for "Prime" weapons, companions, and warframes. Those parts are your trading bread-and-butter, as which part you get is semi-randomized (6 possibilities per relic, 25% chance of getting any of the bottom 3 'bronze' parts, 11% for the two uncommon 'silver' ones, and 2% for the rare 'gold' part), and a lot of the relics get temporarily removed from the reward pool from time to time. Hence patience, because keeping the game F2P is very much a function of being more willing to farm up parts to trade for plat than trading plat for parts. If you aren't patient, then that'll get very frustrating very quickly.

 

[BrawlMan]

I don't do F2P, but I recommend Warframe or Dungeon Fighter Online.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Haven't played it myself but everyone and their mother is playing Among Us right now, which is free on mobile (and super cheap on Steam).

 

[Asita]

Haven't played it myself but veryone and their mother is playing Among Us right now, which is free on mobile (and super cheap on Steam).

Say what now? I did not know it was free on mobile. I might have to look in that. Been looking for some more options to play with my "online happy hour" group.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Say what now? I did not know it was free on mobile. I might have to look in that. Been looking for some more options to play with my "online happy hour" group.

It's free on Android and iOS. Don't know what kind of paywall you're facing once you're in though.

 

[gorfias]

It's free on Android and iOS. Don't know what kind of paywall you're facing once you're in though.

Thanks, going to give it a try!

 

[happyninja42]

Yeah Planetside 2 is a fun game, as others have suggested. If you ever played the old Tribes 2 game, and enjoyed that, Planetside 2 is basically that, but on crack, and on a MUCH larger scale. I enjoyed the hell out of it, however my issue was always performance. My system is very out of date, and any time I'd take part in any of the massive battles, my frame rate would just tank to shit, making it hard to be productive. Small to medium engagements I was fine, but the massive fights for primary control of a location? Forget it.

So if you have a good system that can handle massive amounts of particle effects at once, try Planetside 2. If you're using an old brick like me, fair warning, you might have issues with the larger scale stuff.

Otherwise, yeah it's a great game

 

[Chimpzy]

Not so much free-to-play as just plain old free, but if you're into turn-based strategy

The Battle for Wesnoth

www.wesnoth.org

 

[gorfias]

I've played my fair share of Path of Exile (340 hours) and at no point have I ever had a wait time to log in. You will, however, semi-regularly see some fairly hefty uploads (usually in the 1-5 GB range for semi-large content releases).

If you're looking for a free-to-play FPS, I've been playing PlanetSide 2 since release in 2012, and it's had quite a bit of content released recently. Generally avoids pay-to-win and gives players a lot of things to do.

Downloading both and connecting to Steam. Looking forward to checking them out. I tried PlanetSide aroudn 2012 but gave up, I think, too quickly.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I tried PlanetSide aroudn 2012 but gave up, I think, too quickly.

A lot has changed since then. I'd advise looking up some newcomer guides.

 

[Gordon_4]

I’m pretty fond of SWTOR - even if it’s utterly shameless about flogging it’s cash shop and subscriber bonuses

 

[Hawki]

-Heroes of the Storm (favourite MOBA, good introduction to the genre)

-Paladins (if you don't want to pay for Overwatch, Paladins might be fun as a kind of 'discount version')

-StarCraft II (best RTS ever - very high skill ceiling, but the Co-op Mode should ease you in. You'll have to pay for the campaigns though bar WoL)

 

[gorfias]

-Heroes of the Storm (favourite MOBA, good introduction to the genre)

-Paladins (if you don't want to pay for Overwatch, Paladins might be fun as a kind of 'discount version')

-StarCraft II (best RTS ever - very high skill ceiling, but the Co-op Mode should ease you in. You'll have to pay for the campaigns though bar WoL)

Doh! Spent $60 on StarCraft II! Free to play now! It is installed. I've only played some single player stuff. Thanks for the tip, will check it ASAP on multiplayer on line.

 

[Hawki]

Doh! Spent $60 on StarCraft II! Free to play now!

I bought SC2 and both its expansions well before it went F2P.

TBH, it kind of bugs me. This is hardly unique to SC2, but, like, spending all that money on stuff that either became free later (the base game) or severely discounted (the expansions), and my one 'reward' for that is a Ghost skin? Yay...

There's also the issue that as long as SC2 is F2P, there's even less incentive for Blizzard to make an SC3. And while I don't need an SC3 in my life exactly, I'd love the RTS genre to return to its glory days. Plus, SC is a pretty quiet IP right now, whereas all of Blizzard's other IPs are still active (sans HotS).

Anyway, meh. Haven't played SC2 in ages. Got as high as diamond league in the game's multiplayer, but it just became too tiring. Unless you're doing Co-op, multiplayer isn't something you can sit back and relax to if you want to win.

 

[Worgen]

Lately I've been playing a ton of Planetside 2. Its quite good if you like large scale fps games and are willing to put up with the learning curve.

Warframe is also really good, but I'm on break from it.

If you like MOBAs then Smite is a really good one and unlike league, it has a bunch of different game modes so you don't have to play that fucken hour long conquest map.

Then there are smaller games like the truly excellent Deltarune, or the Doom total conversions such as Shine and Shrine 2 (both on steam, don't need to own doom)

 

[meiam]

If you want some rogue like RPG, tome 4 (tale of maj'eyal) is pretty good. You can download it for free on their website.

I'll second HoTS if you like moba. It's much more focus on team fight than most moba, no 15 min of soloing lane at teh satrt of every game.

I played a lot of warframe, but the lack of endgame, the overwhelming amount of content that doesn't feed into the core gameplay (fuck fishing) and complete garbage balance of gun/suits makes it hard to recommend. Core gameplay is really good, just wished they spend more time polishing that rather than trying to force player to do their awful space mission.

 

[Bedinsis]

Since Crusader Kings II has gone free to play for the base game I do recommend it.