The F2P Bandwagon

Yet another game joins in.

City of Heroes: Freedom

I’m not sure if it is ironically named, or whether there will truly be more options after that.

On the bright side, this reduces the cover charge of any of my future game subscriptions to pretty much nil. I’m going to be hard put to maintain monthly subs to two games, let alone three, any more. I’m subbed to Rift. That’s about it.

On the more interesting side of things, this move has moved CoH away from competing in the same space as WoW and Rift, whose battle they have lost in my eyes. As one can tell, my preferences lean more toward Rift for WoW version 2.0 or 3.0, polished, faster-responding, better graphics, more options.

It does however, put CoH squarely in competition with other F2P games, such as LOTRO, DDO, Global Agenda, Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights. And I’ve only named the ones I have interest in playing at the moment. Fallen Earth, Champions Online and Everquest Extended are also in the F2P category, but I’ve struck them off my list for lack of interest in their F2P model and game as designed.

(One must also not forget Guild Wars, on the rare Buy-to-Play model with microtransactions, very similar to F2P but with an initial game investment, gently nagging to say, hey, you haven’t even touched a good part of my ‘endgame’ content yet, but take your time, we’re not going anywhere, and you don’t have to be obliged to group to do it. Just come back when you want to and play with your 7 heroes.)

One is even more spoiled for choice in a F2P game arena. Granted, CoH is generally a good game, so this may attract a larger newbie hose and keep them afloat. They -need- a newbie hose. The current game population has become too insular. And WoW-trained newbies need to be exposed to a new MMO model that says nyah to the holy trinity.

But for me specifically, I don’t think I can stomach going back to CoH just yet. The actual gameplay is just too boring when the mobs are laid out in such predictable patterns. I do like most of the other changes they are stressing in I21 and so on. But I think their free-to-play model needs time to shake out and establish that it isn't becoming noobishly cutthroat.

I crave tactical combat gameplay, especially on a solo level. That’s the one MMO hole that Rift hasn’t completely filled just yet. I just found it in Spiral Knights (even though the dungeons themselves repeat).