Strategy Informer  

Quite happy with the HD collection of the originals, so I won't try it out. As for the others, well "PlanetSide 2" is riddled with far too many cheaters and 'pay-to-win'-ers and "TF2" is the domain of the diehard nobhead.

"Star Conflict" looked promising until I saw the prices for the Starter Packs:

Star Conflict: Mercenary Pack $19.99

Star Conflict: Galaxy Explorer Pack $49.99

Star Conflict: Elite Pilot Pack $79.99

Spank me hard and call me Susan, but that's over the top!

I played quite a bit of Stronghold Kingdoms last year after I smashed my hand. I couldn't handle playing any of my regular games, so the stupidly long waits before you're able to do more stuff were less of an issue.

When my hand got better enough to play turn based games for a couple of hours at a time I just walked away and never went back. That'd still have me as a "registered user".

It's fairly rife with pay to win, but my main umbrage with the game is that castles just aren't very defensible. It's easy enough to fight off NPC attackers, but PvP attacks by a player who is serious about messing you up. One of the main problems is that walls get destroyed all too easily, even by guys with sticks, and take a lot longer to rebuild than it takes for a follow up attack.

In the end, I can't see any good reason to play this game long term.

re: Star Conflict

I guess it depends on how crucial those starter packs are. If you can jump in and play with what you get for free and enjoy yourself without feeling overwhelmed and pushed out by more experienced players and pay to win players, then it doesn't matter what they charge for their sucker packs.

It does seem like a dumb design tho. If people are getting into it because it's free then $20 is a lot to ask as a minimum investment, let alone $80. Maybe they hope that people will enjoy it so much that $20 is a sensible investment?

If it was me I'd have a series of boosts, starting around the dollar mark. No biggie. You're enjoying a game that we gave you for free, and a mere dollar will give you a noticable if not overwhelming bump upwards. A player who likes the game might do this a couple of times in the first month, say. $2 for a whole month of play - what a savvy player. Eventually they'll be invested deeply enough that perhaps that $5 pack would be a good idea because it'd really help them out with their situation.

Once ppl have taken the step of paying for something once, it's easy to do it twice, three times. Once they've gotten used to it, it's not a big deal to pay a tiny bit more for a better value return. Not many ppl will end up buying $80 packs, but having a good following of people spending $5-20 a month would be an awesome position to be in.

I agree that spending real cash, whether they're called micro-transactions, store purchases, or boosts is up to the individual and how much they enjoy the game and time invested.
I had no qualms at all in spending cash in the C-Store (now Zen Store) for "Star Trek Online" to buy a couple of extra slots etc to begin with. Now however if you do some daily 'chores' that take about 40 mins you can sell the Dilithium you gain from completing them for store credit (Zen). There is absolutely no reason to spend cash, unless you can't be bothered playing the Dilithium missions or you've got too much disposable income.

Now I see the new Cartel Coins purchases on "SW: TOR" and I'm amazed that anyone would bother. Getting everything you can in-game without effort or completing tasks is pointless. Might as well not play at all.

Where I do draw the line is with micro-transactions that give other players a huge headstart over those who can't afford or who don't wish to buy the extras. This is unbalanced and to be frank (or Bob) unfair.