I am currently playing Battle Ages for the PS4. It is a free game modeled much like Clash of Clans, except perhaps on a smaller scale of course. The game is fun and addictive in the beginning, much like most of the free games you play on the PS4. But also like all of the free games, Battle Ages is made to lead you to pay to speed the games progress. It is pretty much a pay to win game. But you don't have to of course. However the game is cleverly designed to lead you that way. Especially when someone who pays for all the upgrades comes in and destroys you, over and over again.
When I first started playing Battle Ages, there was a sale on beginning gem counts of 200 for 2 bucks. They boosted up to 400 for a few days. I bought some and used them. Helped me out greatly of course. As I leveled up higher and higher ( I am in the renaissance era now) the game got harder to play, as to be expected. The gems costs to use enhanced exponentially as you get higher in the game and the game comes to a crawl. And when you get to a certain point in the game you realize that it is almost a half a game, not really finished. This game has to be one of the most bugged games Sony has ever let on their system. I wont get into all of it but being kicked off the server every other battle, or taking 30 minutes to actually get into a battle is not acceptable by any means. People losing gems and progress isn't either. But that is for another story. This is about something else.
This is about how I think games like this are nothing more than a "grab a buck quick" scheme the gaming industry is using.
Games like Battle Ages, Guns UP, seems to be to be made and worked on as you play along, being lead to pay for things that you should not have to use to enhance games experience, all in the ruse of "Hey. It is a free game what did you expect?" attitude. Again, you dont have to use any enhancements that you pay for. But in these two games, and most of the others, in order to move at any decent type of speed ...... you will pay.
When you get higher up in any of these types of games, again, the gaming progress slows to a screeching halt, and the end game content is almost non existent. What do you do then? Especially if you have paid your way to the top? You go on to the next type of these games? You go to another free game of course which uses the same tactics over and over again. But what about the game companies? Well, they try to get NEW players in. That is all they care about. That is where they make there money. Then as you or the newbies are playing and paying for these games, they are making another half game to get that one started. Repeating the process over and over. IF an old game is still making money they can come back to it and add a little DLC to keep your addiction going. If not well it is there for you to fiddle with. Sony just hauls in all sorts of gaming companies to do this.
The thing is though is that these free games are fun to play, especially in the beginning. But it is my opinion that these games are designed only for milking cash, not for being a complete game, and if the trends continue this could end up dragging gamers down in the end and making them just want to quit gaming altogether. Game companies are already nickle and diming us with DLC, but this is getting ridiculous
End of line.
Sony has quietly lifted regional restrictions on multiple PlayStation titles on Steam, allowing more players to access their games worldwide.
Thank you for using the term "region" since that was always what happened. The amount of media that used the term country led to many misinformed people.
According to SteamDB Statistics:
"The use of the word "subdivisions" below refers to states, provinces, regions and other categories."
"Totals
As of december 2017, there are 250 countries, 4024 subdivisions and 45261 cities in Steam's location data."
Curious what gadgets are in the new Battlefield game? Check out a look at the ones available in Battlefield Labs.
The Epic Games Store wants you to help folks get healthy with this weeks free game.
I'm with you 100% on all of this. After I realized I was not having fun, I looked at the map and realized every consecutive battle I would have to fork over money cause I just can't compete with either the pvp or ai...I Uninstalled it.
The sad part of this is, at least in guns up case. You can clearly see effort was made to make a decent game but then butchered to get those pay to win dollars.
I won't be involved in these any more...and it is correct to argue that if this free game where to be played by a middling gamer, that is not aware of the schemes this industry tries they could be completely turned off by the experince.
I believe (or hope) that F2P can be done well but seldomly is it done correctly. Games that ensue players with "pay to win" incorrectly are bringing the model down, giving it a bad rap and yes, making players give up from playing the game further. Unless you are a "whale" and you unload wads of cash to reach those max levels and bases, in that case the game is lots of fun, right?
You could say that this happens when that threshold of "it´s really hard to get that amount of coins or unlockable item" so you feel the need to go buy gems or similar things to easy the pains. Then that feeling of being ripped-off sets in and to be honest when you go ahead, it feels like cheating because you are bypassing effort or time put into the game.
Guns Up has that effect at a certain point, Clash of Clans certainly does or Boom Beach for that matter. But these games were fun... to a point when they start feeling like a useless grind.
In Battle Ages (on the PS4, I can´t vouch for the mobile version since I didn't try it) matters are much worse because aside from the eventual grind there´s the poor implementation and infrastructure for the platform. Let me elaborate on that.
The game struggles on PS4, causing an intermittent freeze ever minute while in base. The game just stutters then recovers. Servers assigned to the game, seem like they are either few and far or are also hosting the mobile side of the game. Although the game doesn't sync accounts if you are playing the mobile version.
Also finding someone to attack is near nerve wreaking. It takes several tries (a good 30 attempts at times) if you don't count-in the "reconnect game" message which curiously seems to appear when you find a base loaded with coins. I wounder if it´s coincidence or by design?
The only time it seems reasonable to play is at odd hours, say late at night or early morning before the servers get crowded. Even the the experience is only slightly better.
The game itself crashes more than any other game I have played on PS4! Even considering the closed or open betas I´ve played on PS4 throughout it´s lifespan and it´s been a few. So in that respect, I thing Sony should of QA this better before allowing it on PSN, even as a free download.
* Plenty of devs are going to run themselves right out of the gaming industry by focusing on these mobile phone games.
It's a short term decision and competing against 500 new titles daily is just not a good long term business decision.
It is the cowards way out.
You can get away with a crappier product via mobile phone games so devs don't have to try as hard.