Command & Conquer: Generals 2 Part of Free to Play Series
Command & Conquer is going free-to-play.
EA's seen the s
uccesses of the AAA free-to-play market and has slowly waded into the microtransactions pool to take a slice of the profit.
Just a few weeks ago, BioWare and EA announced that The Old Republic massively multiplayer online game, originally running on the monthly subscription model, would be going free-to-play up to level 50.
Now, EA is taking the beloved alternate universe, real-time strategy series Command & Conquer into the free-to-play realm as well. This isn't the first Command & Conquer to go free-to-play—Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances gets that credit. However, Tiberium Alliances is a browser-based game. Command & Conquer: Generals 2, the first in the series to be developed by BioWare, will be an AAA title with all the bells and whistles: Frostbite 2 engine, destructive terrain, etc.
Generals 2 won't be the only free-to-play AAA Command & Conquer to come. EA's actually got a whole series of them planned for the future.
There's no release date for Generals 2, just yet. The good news is that EA's opened up signups for the beta on the new Command & Conquer free-to-play site.
All of them, like me, are no longer going to play this game. EA doesn't do F2P, they do pay 2 win and call it F2P.
His concept is completely different F2P.
His concept was pretty much you demo a good portion of the game, and if you find it good you buy the complete game.
It's no wonder the rest of your comment is clueless. Especially the last sentence.
All of them, like me, are no longer going to play this game. EA doesn't do F2P, they do pay 2 win and call it F2P.
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At least with F2P if the gameplay sucks ass you know for a fact you won't pay to carry on, you will just drop it and go to the next game
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Here's an idea, how about the first couple of levels are free and if you like it you like it you can then decide to buy the full game, you know, like the shareware concept that has been floating around for over 20 FRICKEN YEARS
Dude.. you just pretty much described the f2p model, contradicting yourself much?
On that note, the mentality that f2p means a game is crappy is also "20 fricken years old," and it would do a lot of people good to consider that we're probably just entering the next step in the evolution of gaming as a whole.
On that note, there's a crapton of free stuff that is of the highest quality, and their not limited to games; Filezilla, 7-zip, VLC player, to name a few. And with GW2 releasing next week, subscription based games might start losing some of their playerbase to a more attractive and affordable one.
His concept is completely different F2P.
His concept was pretty much you demo a good portion of the game, and if you find it good you buy the complete game.
It's no wonder the rest of your comment is clueless. Especially the last sentence.
Keeping older games and gone black and blue in the face getting most of them working for lan parties has kept my sanity.
Learned my lesson after buying into the hype of Diablo 3, /facepalm. Never buying another game until ive atleast tried a demo or "starter edition".
Well spotted, glad someone is paying attention, in F2P a lot of items/weapons/etc are premium and unless you buy them cannot complete a level or progress in any way, that's how they stiff you on microtransactions
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They let you hit the level, get annoyed you can't complete it and keep retrying getting more annoyed and frustrated until your ADHD kicks in and you reach for the credit card, that's when they have you and the game never ends as each new mission/level/etc has a different unique item/weapon/etc that again has you reaching for the credit card
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It would be nice if they made 2 versions of the game, a F2P and premium pay-for, the F2P has all the low-calorie, fat-free, pay-as-you-go stuff and the premium pay-for has all the content up front at install
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Not saying any one version is better as each has it's own fans, just I would like the choice and also sales on like-for-like would show what the actual consumer prefers - although it is never likely to happen as the F2P model has the potential to hose much more money than a fixed fee over time
Those premium perks and such that you buy in a F2P tend to total way more than just $60 - that's why it's a viable business model.
It's not a viable gaming model, though, because it completely destroys the balance of a game, and for some people it ruins the inherent reward of accomplishing something. Not to mention, F2P games (from what I've seen) are almost exclusively multiplayer (elsewise, how are you going to incentivize your premium BS?), so you've basically completely removed that part of the game, too. I don't find that acceptable, nor worth anywhere near $60. I would honestly rather take a $60 gamble on a game then have it be F2P - but that's my opinion.
Started going downhill after Westwood
And not a single tralala was given in the entire world, that day.
I agree that not all games work in the f2p model scheme. Age of Empires Online is the only f2p game I own and have only spent $20 out for 2 premium civilizations that get everything the whole game has to offer and im still saving $40-50 on the other civilizations i dont really care to buy and play, so ive saved myself some money.
But i agree that if the game is strictly or majorly multiplayer, f2p is a real buzzkiller
a more modern game, fable does this, i forget which one though, where you buy the game in chapter form, and it added up to full price, first chapter was free.
was it age of empires... one of those civ like strat games went free to play, and if you wanted all the content like you would get in a normal full 60$ release, it cost you 120-180$ i forget what it was as it was a long time ago, but know it was at least double the cost and no more than 3 times.
i never played a free to play where you cant earn all the weapons, but i have played f2p where you cant earn cosmetic things. really, i have yet to play a pay to win... well... i probably have but the gameplay was so bad i gave up.
Command & Conquer has now officially turned into Pay & Conquer. Thanks for ruining the series that I enjoyed since 1995.