Help: F2P games worth playing?

[II2]

Ok, as the subject suggests, I'm curious to get some input regarding a couple different F2P titles that interested me and I wanted to get a sense from people who've tried them if they're worth it, both as good games and also as games with a fair monetization systems.

My list of games I'd interested by:

- Hawken
- Mechwarrior Online
- Planetside 2
- World of Tanks
- Tribes Ascend

As you can tell, I'm big on shooters with vehicles and big maps, and armored combat games, both action and simulation-y.

Tribes Ascend is the only one I had any real experience with and really enjoyed my time, though I've fallen behind the curve after the last few updates.

A big part of what I'm looking for input on, as I said, is how fair and how expensive the systems are, and also generally what's just good fun. I'm welcome to suggestions on other titles, too. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[hazabaza1]

They're not shooters but there's always Dota2 or LoL. Both MOBAs so they're fairly similar, but in terms of F2P LoL is probably... not less fair but it encourages it more. You have to buy heroes and some very minor buffs, while Dota is purely cosmetic.

You might also want to browse the Free to Play sections on Steam. There's some fairly good stuff there.

 

[GloatingSwine]

World of Tanks is probably the best free to play implementation of all of those. You can play the game quite a lot before the temptation to spend any real money sets in and spending real money won't give you any advantages now. It's also good for having goals, the progression mechanic is such that you will generally always have a short, medium, and long term progression goal, upgrade your tank with a new gun/engine/turret, get the next tank, get some tank several tiers up, and all of those have noticable in-game impacts.

It's also pretty soft sell on trying to get you to pay money, the options to pay gold are only ever presented in contexts where you're already buying something.

You don't need major twitch reflexes to play the game either, because no matter how fast you can react you're still limited by the properties of your vehicle, so in nine encounters out of ten knowledge of what you can do and your opponent can and can't do and positioning yourself appropriately to maximise your strengths and minimise your opponents will beat straight up skill at pointing and clicking.

It's a stark contrast to Mechwarrior Online which is utterly terrible for attempting to get you to spend. As soon as you load the game up you're presented with a screen full of things to pay real money for with the actual gameplay options shuffled off to the side, meaning it's actually quite hard to see the game for all the sales pitch.

I wouldn't reccommend MWO at all, primarily for that reason, and also because it's just not that interesting to play. Hawken is better if you want robits, whilst it has less customisation it doesn't fall into the trap that all robit games with high levels of customisation do that there are certain cookie cutter builds that are Just Better. It's quite a balanced and fun mech game and you can be competitive almost right out of the gate.

 

[FireAza]

Team Fortress 2 is the obvious pick for me. It was awesome even before it went free-to-play.

 

[scorptatious]

Team Fortress 2 is the obvious pick for me. It was awesome even before it went free-to-play.

Beat me to it.

Even though you have the option to buy weapons and such, you can actually get all of them through playing the game long enough and they're all pretty balanced for the most part.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Out of the list of things you're interested in I've played Hawken and Tribes.

Tribes is pretty awesome, and is incredibly unique and fun to play. It's also difficult as fuck, and takes a play style completely different than any shooter you're probably used to. It'll take you a pretty long while to even learn how to control your movement effectively, much less being able to hit other people while you're moving. If you don't have a lot of patience for learning a game's mechanics I would skip it, otherwise download it, download it right now.

Hawken is also pretty good. It's a fun shooter, very good controls, and fair monetization, and the starting Mech that you get is very good, and incredibly balanced (you'll see people using the default mech at the top of the score board fairly often). I've gotten more than a couple of friends into playing it. Personally I think it's more fun than Mech Warrior. Pretty easy to get into, not particularly difficult to master, but you'll stick around even after you've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer, because you'll want to grind it out to get some different mechs.

 

[Windcaler]

Of your choices Ive only played Tribes and Planetside 2. Tribes is, well tribes. If you liked tribes before or like fast paced an extrememly skill focused FPS tribes is for you. With PS2...well I havnt played it in several months but when I quit it it had a lot of problems. Severe lag, hitbox recognition problems, pay to win for now nonsense were just a few things that were wrong. Ive heard its much better now so you might give it a try

As to other free to play games, have you looked at Warframe? Its a very fun third person co-op game thats mostly a shooter but you can go around and kill things with just your sword too. You could also try Blacklight retribution which has a revolutionary business model allowing you to rent things instead of permanently own them. Imagine that? You get to try something out before you dump a few days/weeks worth of grinding into an item! It also has built in wall hacks which make sure you will never have many dull moments with no one to fight

 

[shintakie10]

MWO is okay. Not amazin by any stretch, but it has its moments. It'll probably be horrifically frustratin for a new player in a trial mech due to low armor though. Seen more than a fair share of trial mechs get absolutely wrecked in a single volley due to things like AC/20 Jagers and 6 PPC Stalkers.

Once you get your own mech its decently fun though.

Hawken is quite a lot of fun. I've only sunk about 30 hours into it total, but its still a blast no matter what. The siege mode is quite a lot of fun too. Watchin as both teams get their battleship in the air at the same time and the frantic fight for control of the SAM site is always good fun.

Plus its all fairly well balanced. I've had more than enough credits to upgrade out of my TV mech, but I love the thing so much I just can't part with it.

As for World of Tanks? I think I'm one of the few people who just give it a resoundin meh. Its just so god damn slow. It takes you forever and a day just to get your ass anywhere, then you have to sit there and wait for your crosshairs to line up on someone which takes a full 4-5 seconds, if you fire as soon as you line up your shot somehow goes flyin off in seemingly random directions, and if you happen to get caught in even slightly bad spot, you're completely and utterly screwed because of the glacial pace the tanks move at.

Realistic? Yes. Fun? Not at all to me.

Dont play Planetside 2. Seriously. Its good fun maybe 10 minutes out of every 4 hours when all 3 factions somehow end up at the same place at once, all 3 bringin tanks and aircraft and infantry to the fight, explosions and projectiles everywhere, frantic calls for help from all directions. Then the other times its 40+ of your guys rollin into a place with maybe 2-3 defenders that just refuse to leave. You steam roll it, then move somewhere else or you're one of the 2-3 guys tryin to defend against an onslaught of opponents. Its somewhat fun at first to wipe out a couple here or there, but they respawn so fast and as a new player your anti anythin abilities are so damn weak that you might as well have brought a pea shooter for all the good you're doin.

Aside from that, Planetside 2 reeks of P2W. Can you unlock everythin you need to play a specific role correctly without spendin a dime? Yes. Can you do so for multiple classes in anythin remotely resemblin a reasonable time period? Fuck no. Basic important things are blocked off at the start and you either have to fork over cash or grind the hell out of it to get it.

Definitely give Hawken a try though. Its fairly well balanced, there's fuck all pay to win in it, and its surprisingly pretty.

 

[SirCannonFodder]

Hawken I enjoyed quite a bit, but I thought it got old after a few months, and I found very little appealing to actually spend my money on (especially since they keep adding new cosmetics, some of which are kind of similar to old ones but better, eg one of the original repair drones you could buy was a boxy one that fired lasers. Then a few months later they bring out another laser repair drone, but this one's an onion-shaped one that splits off into 4 mini-drones, which then orbit around you firing lasers, which is obviously much cooler. Another example is one of the original thrusters had this neat red flame jet, then they bring out another thruster that has twice as many flame jets, coming out of a much cooler looking thruster end). End result is that I've got about 8k of the premium currency (someone gave me a $50 code) and nothing to spend it on.

Another one you might consider is War Thunder [http://warthunder.com/], a WWII-era dog-fighting game with immensely satisfying combat. It's hard to get the higher-end planes without a lot of grinding or spending money, but I tend to prefer the lower-rank matches anyway, much less chance of getting one-shotted by some monster with a 37mm cannon.

 

[Snotnarok]

Team Fortress 2, it's the only game that doesn't feel like a cashgrab F2P. Most of the default weapons are balanced with the weapons you can find/buy and you find weapons and keep them without having to pay.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Except for MWO these are all excellent games, with Planetside 2 do remember that to participate in large battles you need a beastly machine.

As for the money, well in most cases buying straight up items is the worst option but using some money to speed up the unlocking is advisable, just make sure you keep an eye on those expenses because a lot of people just keep spending wildly, and for the love of god don't start spending until you play and like the game.

Some other suggestions, Blacklight Retribution (CoD clone in sci-fi form, and you aren't paying $110 yearly), Warframe (space ninja adventures), Star Conflict (space sim, or rather dogfighter) and Super Monday Night Combat (third person shooter crossed with MOBA).

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Add my voice to the Team Fortress 2 pile!

Even if you missed on the purchase point, the vanilla items for all the classes are constantly and continuously balanced. No matter how much of a complete newcomer you might be; unlocks come fast and everything has at least *some* use.

In fact, unlocks and pickups happen so fast and so frequently that you'll probably be stuck breaking down most of your cruft. At which point you've already got one foot into the *real* game, which is the hat-wearing simulator.

I kid, but the community and Valve alike are both pretty damn awesome at keeping this now fairly venerable title relevant to a degree.