I'm getting more and more annoyed with the F2P model. I think it is probably going to ruin the game for me. It takes WAY too long to "earn" the loadouts. I've probably put around 5-8 hours into the game and I've earned 500 tokens. That comes out to about 60-100 tokens an hour. I'm not the greatest player, but I'm not absolutely atrocious either.
It costs ~15k tokens to purchase a loadout. There are 10 loadouts to purchase. So you need to earn ~150k in tokens to have full access to the classes in the game. According to how quickly I'm unlocking things, that's 1500-2400 hours just to play all of the classes and figure out which one I like the most. And the classes are substantially different, too. One is an engineer type, one is a heavy with a chain gun type, some are scouts, some are snipers, etc. HUGE variance in gameplay. But they start with you the two basic loadouts: Soldier and something else that I forget.
I have some respect for the F2P model, but that's 1500-2400 gameplay hours just to unlock all the classes is an insurmountable number for 99.99% of gamers. And some of the loadouts offer clear advantages over others, particularly in a team settings. A team of 16 soldiers is going to have a very hard time against a team of 2 mechanics, 2 brutes, 2 sentinels, etc - they just have a lot more offensive and defensive capabilities.
This puts it pretty well into the "pay2win" category, I think. Or at least, "pay2becompetitive"
Only offering 2 classes makes the free version feel like a demo. But a frustrating demo where you are cannon fodder for the paying people.
From a business standpoint, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to release a demo with a map or two and like half the classes. This will get people hooked on the gameplay, different loadouts, etc. Then make the full game cost like $30, which includes all of the loadouts. You can do microtransactions for nongameplay items (vanity) if you really think there won't be enough money to make it sustainable.
This halfsies F2P thing is a huge turn off. I like the game, but there's not nearly enough depth to it with only two loadouts to get me to keep on playing for long enough to unlock additional loadouts. So what I am going to do? I could buy more loadouts, I guess. But then I have to chose which ones to buy and how much to spend (the "packages" you purchase are either $20, $30, or $50). And I have no idea what the loadouts even play like (except for how they kill me). In short, it's hard to decide how much money you want to spend on a game you haven't really experienced.
What's way more likely is that I just give up and play something else. It's fun, but it's not that fun, and I haven't gotten "enough" of a taste to justify paying.
This is precisely what happened to me with Global Agenda. It was fun... but the extreme handicapping toward free players was so unbearable that it destroyed my desire to play the game. It forced me to choose between paying and quitting, so I quit.
I don't know why I have such an anathema to paying for elements of F2P games through microtransactions, but I don't think I'm the only one. It just feels like you are being cheated.
