So tomorrow, roughly 13-14 hours from now as I write this, the Fallen Earth servers will come back up and the game will be officially and forevermore free-to-play. This, I believe, I fervently hope, will be a very good thing.
I’m really not the best person to make this assessment as someone who already loves this game and is therefore totally biased in favor of it and rooting for it to succeed and flourish. Sure, I’ve spent the last few posts bitching about the new crafting limit and I don’t take back anything I’ve said, but that doesn’t mean I think this game going free-to-play is a bad thing. I just have certain concerns about a few aspects of the way it’s being done. New information, however, tells me that my concerns may not prove to be as serious as I I’d feared.
It seems that sometime shortly after the free-to-play launch they’ll be offering the benefits of premium accounts ala carte for G1 credits and Rewards Points, including (I presume and hope) some kind of short-term 24-hour crafting buff. As a player who does a lot of crafting but will be dealing with a free account probably at least until the holidays, this is exactly what I’m hoping for to get me through until I can upgrade. As long as the buff is affordable and I can continue crafting at the rate I did in the past, I will be a very happy camper. So too, I expect, will be a lot of other players for whom crafting is an important part of this game.
While I know that not everyone spends as much time as I do crafting, I also know that unless you’re prepared to grind for chips a hell of a lot more more than most players are, crafting is a key part of keeping oneself properly supplied and equipped. Crafting is tough, if not impossible, to avoid entirely, especially when you’re using weapons which use medium and heavy ammo. Heavy ammo in particular is damned expensive to buy from merchants and so it’s not only just generally cost-effective but pretty much essential to be able to make your own.
Now, I know there are a lot of crafting recipes that have been adjusted or even eliminated over the last month so I’ll have to check all my recipes when I get back in tomorrow and see what I can still do and what I’ll need to do it, but I haven’t read anything as yet indicating that there have been any changes in ammo or related recipes. I hope not. The last thing I need is for it become even harder to craft medium and heavy ammo. I’ve been basically following a Pistoleer path in my AP allocations, but I do use both pistols and rifles and try to keep a decent amount of ammo on hand for both.
When you get right down to it, this is what I’d expect most returning players care about most: That the game we love won’t be too gimped for us as free players to enjoy as much as we used to, that we can experience once again the reasons why we started playing this game in the first place and why we are inspired to return to it now.
I believe this is the yardstick by which Fallen Earth’s free-to-play conversion will eventually be judged: Can returning free players still have just as much fun in this game as they used to, whether they choose to pay or not? If so, this game will be a success. If not, it’s a very open question. From all I’ve heard thus far, I think there’s plenty of reason to hope and so, I am.
See ya out there!
Filed under: Notes From The Wasteland
