Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Avoiding the cash shop .Which free to play games are really free ?
yayitsandy
Member Posts: 363
I'm thinking about trying a f2p game but I'm wondering in which games is it possible to avoid the dreaded cash shop (or use it very infrequantly) by doing some grinding etc . The games I'm currently looking at are Runes of Magic , Perfect World ,Allods and DDO .I would be interested in hearing what peoples experiances of these games have been .
Comments
You can get pretty far in DDO for free if you're willing to grind out rep. Rep earns you points, which can then be used to buy content. So, going the totally free route:
- create a character on every server
- grind each characteer to 100 rep
- decide which character you enjoy the most, and keep that one as your main
- decide which character grinds the fastest (Paladin probably)
- delete every 100 rep char you don't want to keep
- create a new char and grind them to 100, repeat
Theoretically, you can get literally everything for free if you're willing to grind enough. Enjoy.
Well, game developers are not the Salvation Army. I think there are no f2p games that are really free. The term “free to pay” is misleading. It should be called “cash shop model” or “pay for content”.
P2p games that have a free trail could characterise themselves as free to play. You can play some weeks and then you are free to delete everything and start a new trial account. So you can pay free forever.
So, a f2p game and a p2p game with a free trail are essentially the same. You can play a couple of weeks for free and then you need to throw money in. The only difference is that those f2p guys try to hide that fact from you.
Fantasy Earth Zero is basically free. You just pay for pretty clothes and flashy colours.
Ragnarok Online. The free server has a slower progression, but it is a grinder anyway, so if you are into those kind of games, you are already in the "long term" mindset. They sell a ton of items in the cash shop which can be pretty nice, but none are needed. I played back before they had a shop, and people did just fine.
Free to play isnt misleading at all, its a game, and you can play it for free.
you dont have to buy anything, if anyones mislead by this then its there own fault.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
I'll go with my usual suggestions: Mabinogi and Dungeon Fighter Online (both by Nexon). They do not require you to purchase anything at any moment and there are ways for non cash-shop users to acquire certain items through in-game currency by trading with other players.
In Allods, everything in the Cash Shop accept Bag and Bank upgrades can be bought off the auction house from other players. For the bag and bank upgrades, you can get those in game through quests but they are grindy quests.
I am currently 23 and haven't spent anything on the Cash Shop yet nor have I needed to buy any Cash Shop items off the auction house. I just went back and did the first bag quest. Took me about 1 hour to grind all the mobs I needed for it and this is me being much higher and basically one shotting the mobs. Make sure you are in a raid as that increases the drop rates alot. Otherwise, you'll be spending many hours grinding it. There is pretty much a bag raid going all the time though.
One Cash Shop item you'll need to use at higher levels is Incense. Incense lasts for 30 minutes, gives you a buff to your health, some cc resists, and makes you immune to Fear of Death (the game's death penalty). The only time you will probably absolutely need to use Incense is late game PvE - Raids. From what I've heard, Heroic Dungeons don't really require it as presently a ressurection from a player won't give you FoD. You might also wanna use Incense when PvPing as it will make death alot less frustrating. You can pay 3.5g to remove FoD but you have to goto the trouble of running to the NPC that removes it. 20 incense is $3 on the shop and presently goes for around 100g in the AH. You get 20 for free from a quest at 15 and also there is a daily quest that you get one from.
Just do like most players, and bounce from F2P game to F2P game.
they are all designed to be very "free" in the first two months. Then the game is designed to slow down, but now that you are hooked on the game, you want to keep playing, and you realize it's going to be difficult unless you spend some money.
When you hit that point, quit and start another one.
This is not entirely true. Some games allow you to auction the cashshop currency. Perfect World is one of those. If you take the time to harvest materials, play the AH and have patient, you can get a couple of cahsshop coins a week on low level (I did at least). Didn't get to higher levels though, but I figure you can get a lot of cashshop coins from the materials you sell on AH
IMO F2P games (or cash shop model as you refer them to) are free when they allow the cashshop currency to be traded on the AH...
Anarchy Online and Runescape have no cash shops.
Atlantica online is pretty much free, any cash shop item can usually be bought on on the market but you will need to grind a lot get the money, like all cash shops the items can help you play faster but are not needed. I think the game did a great job incorporating the MANY game mechanics in the main quest line. It does become a grind after about level 90, but up to that point I really enjoyed the different play style.
Last I looked Regnum Online free with no cash shop. Its a DAoC type game. Its been awhile since I played so it may be different now.
All of them are free, but you usually hit a grind wall at about level 30. The trick to getting over that hump without paying is to form a truely massive group of players and power grind every couple of days. And when I say massive, I mean like 40 to 50 people in your group. Grouping with players who are way higher level than you when they are farming will skyrocket you over the wall as well. Some F2P games, like Neo Steam, put caps on party size so you can't use this technique in them.
Just remember that many of these games, especially the Korean games, were made for a PC Bang where players would often be playing with people in the same room. This made it easy for whole guilds to go power leveling together and the whole game was designed around that sort of thing.
Dude just pick up the Guild Wars Trilogy it's the only free 2 play game out there that you can go from start to finish and NEVER have to use there cash shop EVER. Im a 5 year GW vet and still havent used their cash shop.
Evil will always triumph because good is dumb....
Yup, calling if F2P is a wrong term for those games. Some people are just wanting to play on the cheap. Devs should be able to make a profit from their good work and the cheap people don't want to see it that way. It's an exchange, the devs game vs the players money. Somewhere someone has to earn money to live their lives and the devs are no exception to this.
^This.
Sure, it's not quite an F2P, but you'll end up having access to the whole content for less than you'd spend in other F2Ps.
$40 and you can get the trilogy. If not, maybe DDO. Haven't played it since it went F2P, but I've heard you can grind for the paid content.
Grand Fantasia might be worth a look for you, unless you're allergic to anime-look MMO's, or have a grudge against Aeria Game for some of their more poorly-managed offerings. The game is stable (It's had a couple years in Korea to get a lot of bugs out), grind is moderate compared to the archetypal Korean grinder, the graphics are clean and fairly easy on hardware. The cash shop items are mostly gear-tweaking, mount, and costume related.
It does suffer from a lack of dungeon variety at any given level, plus the horrible crafting odds. The biggest red flag is the "epic" gear, which requires you to manage to craft the second-to-best gear, then run raid instances to get necessary mats, then hope like hell that the crafting actually succeeds. Up beyond lvl50, there were plenty of people with 10, 20, even 30 repeat failures on that front (I myself had over 10 failures, and that was only because I couldn't manage to craft some mats so I could fail even more times). And not too coincidentally, there's items available via cash shop that guarantee one crafting success. But in all fairness, the quest/dungeon gear is nearly as good, and is readily available just from going through the normal quests.
PvP battlefield is more cash shop dependant, especially with the quick cooldown pots and the weapon-slotting and stoning having a larger influence, but it's still heavily teamwork-dependant, with lone epeeners generally getting stomped hard, no matter how tweaked they are. All cash shop items can be traded, and there's a pretty consistant market for most of the stuff, so once your money-earning ability goes up, you can work to get occasional cash shop items that you want.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
I find Atlantica a lot less fun when you don't have teleport/healthcheck/patrol licenses active. To me, the optimum way to play is to pay for those (which costs, surprise surprise, $15/month, same as a subscription game), and avoid the gambling boxes and other stuff they try to sell you in the cash shop.
i play plenty of f2p games and have never spent a dime on any one of them, usually the only thing that matters is how fast you want to lvl, with some its a pay for power deal that is only if you are into pvp
95. 90-95 is probably the easiest leveling in the game, if you start doing indy dungeons (I gained 2 levels in an hour doing one of those).
But after 95 it's pretty much use the item mall or quit.
Not just leveling, though a blessing license ($15 a month) is a must. Mounts and decorations really help, but they cost billions, and you get a 10% or so chance of getting them in a $10 gamble box. Teleportation licenses are really useful, because many 100+ quests take place in NA, where there are two cities, New York and Vancouver. So you have to walk 10 minutes to get to quest sites/NPCs.
But mostly gear. It's almost impossible to get high level, so you need to use atlas ore to + your stuff. Of course, it's not guaranteed, so you can spend $100s and walk off worse than you started...
And every new additon to the game brings more and more usage of this atlas ore stuff. I don't think I've ever seen a worse item mall, to be honest.
But for 1-95 it's fun. ANd you aren't missing too much content, there isn't much post 100
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there