Free to Play Cast: Review Spectacular: SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, Devilian Online Ep. 158

Yes art style does matter. I passed on trove because of the blocky art style and did not care for the big head style of Dragomen Hunters. I also prefer games that different armor sets for male and female characters. As for sub based games, sure it may be a good value but why pay for something you can get for free. Most of us have bought a game played a few hours and never touched again. It can be argued that F2P games need to try harder because they need to convince you to open your wallet. I have played several F2P titles, some for months and a couple for years. When I spend money on a game my main motive is to thank the developers for such a great game, not because I have to buy something in the cash shop.

Already refunded 3 copies of GW2:HoT in my house, we all hate the expac. Way too much hard grind in this none-casual friendly game. Shame.

Answer of the week:
I will try all anime style games, no matter how bad. I try to steer away from photorealistic games. I know very few agree with me, but I find cartoony graphics and art style to be a lot more appealing.

A-Bomb to Blade and Soul Closed Beta. Two issues. First, the original server from Alpha was unplayable, as it had a 2000 person queue on it, which was over 90 minutes. Second, is the game in it's current state is miserly as a free player. That's because the in-game currency you get is next to nothing. As a premium player, you get a whole bunch extra. I couldn't even purchase beginner food at level 20 with all the copper I had gotten. Plus, the standard loot system in dungeons is a bidding system, which means free players will have to run things numerous times to finally earn money from other people's bids to buy anything. There needs to be more money given to free players or their business will be going elsewhere.

You should stop using scores like lots of other sites have. They're meaningless as everyone interprets them completely differently. I see 6.5 as a good score, some others think anything rated below 7.0 must mean absolutely terrible.

I normally don't judge a game solely on the art style, unless it's just way too unappealing, lazy or half-assed(R2 Games come to minds since all their games seem to share the same art work and play style), I'm more interested in the actual game. a game could look beautiful and very realistic, but if it's gonna play exactly like every other game in the same genre, why waste my time on it?, if it's change for change's sake I might as well keep playing what I'm playing.
It's nice to see how much graphics have improved, but not every game has to look realistic, there's nothing wrong with cartoony, or anime/chibi art style.

Yeah... I'm back. I have to give my two cents on SWTOR. Bravo on the storytelling, and I'm glad that this is the direction they went. Too many MMOs can't do the story. However... what they did with the flashpoints was a major deal breaker for me. Let me explain why: I love alts. I am an RPer and this combined with fun gameplay results in servers full of characters. I'm not an endgame person, I do it at times but it's not where I live in the game so to speak. What I feel is the fun of the game for me (aside from story of course) is the leveling experience. I like gaining new abilities and seeing my character grow and learning to play as I go. I play dps, tanks and healers and I like group mechanics. There was a reason I avoided tactical flashpoints (after having tried a few). Tactical should mean that because you don't have all the roles, you need to rely on what you do have and work together. In practice however, what it actually does is enable the spacebar spamming facepullers to utterly destroy the party experience. Instead of teamwork you end up with anti-teammates so to speak most of the time. Furthermore now people don't have any reason to even try to learn their role properly, so terrible tanks and healers will be all the more terrible. Tanks on another note are more or less pointless now, at least in parties without a healer. But honestly... I could deal with all of that if they didn't auto-boost you to pseudo-65. Why... just....why!? So they've negated the point of roles, and negated the point of leveling all in one fell swoop. I'm all for dungeon level sync... to the dungeon's level but this... I don't even know how long I will be subbed at this point. Flashpoints were my preferred method of leveling, so once I'm done with the story what's the point for me anymore?