Champions Online Free-to-Play Begins January 25

Dastardly

Imaginary Friend
Apr 19, 2010
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Andy Chalk said:
Cryptic's MMOs should have been F2P from the beginning, really. The gameplay is quite grindy and shallow on all accounts, while at the same time holding your hand quite tightly so as to remove any of the challenge. I played both Champions and Star Trek Online, and both use a similar formula. It's well-suited to the free-to-play model, but not worth a subscription.

Companies have gotten away with charging subscriptions for these shallow games purely because of the other MMOs that have come before. It was up to the earliest, like Ultima, to get people over the initial, "Pay monthly for a game? No way!" reaction. Now that ground has been sufficiently broken, there's not as much pressure on developers to ensure a game is actually worth being perpetually purchased by its players. People are used to paying, so they'll keep paying.

Since F2P has gained popularity, thanks to our overseas neighbors, that sort of laziness is no longer rewarded. It will also mean that niche MMOs will be marginalized, since the idea of F2P is mass appeal--you want people choosing to buy each little bit of pay content, so each bit has to be carefully crafted to maximize the cost-benefit ratio. We'll see how this works out for Cryptic, as their games ride the border between mainstream (with the IPs) and niche (with the way they are implemented).
 

Antari

Music Slave
Nov 4, 2009
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Rationalization said:
Antari said:
Rationalization said:
I hope it's fixed now, it was released buggy, unfinished, unpolished, and imbalanced. Crafting was terrible and didn't make much sense, there was lag, no sense of direction for where the characters were going, boring quests, some abilities were ridiculously strong others with no use, same with some classes.
The last time I was in there, it wasn't. And it didn't look like they were very concerned with doing anything to fix it because they were too busy working on Star Trek Online.
You mean the other unpolished, imbalanced, unfinished game with the non-existant crafting system? Sounds familiar.
That would be the one.
 

JourneyThroughHell

New member
Sep 21, 2009
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Onyx Oblivion said:
Andy Chalk said:
Hey, Andy?

Do you mind making a News Post the day F2P goes live?
I'll PM you.

OT: Well, cool. I'm really excited to finally play this one, because, so far, I only had the chance to play the trial and, while it was awesome, I didn't feel like paying on a monthly basis.

Thanks, Cryptic.
 

Callate

New member
Dec 5, 2008
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It kind of raises the question whether it's worth buying any new MMO straight out of the gate when so many of them seem to end up going this way...
 

person427

New member
May 28, 2009
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Well, I was going to celebrate my birthday by buying a game that I can finally buy without a parent just because I can, but this might distract me too much.