Mission Update - Ace Combat Infnity
I hope everyone enjoyed the 4th of July weekend, and did/are enjoy/enjoying Tanabata. There is a big week ahead, but I thought I'd get started with a follow up to one of the last full posts I've done, which was my initial take on Ace Combat Infinity.
Let's get to one basic fact. Economics 101 - TINSTAAFL. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It's a basic concept of economics, regardless of the system, that dictates that everything costs something. Even if the end consumer technically gets something without paying any money for it, somewhere along the line between when someone came up with the idea to when it was produced and sold, or given away as it were, someone has to assume the cost even if not the end user. You get lunch for free, the store that you got the lunch from absorbed the cost of giving you that lunch in their own operation costs, or the supplier for that store assumed that cost as apart of their own promotion. Someone else put up the cost for that meal.
This applies to all things, not just food. Games, for instance, incur costs. The cost for creating and producing a game, let alone a quality, complex, game, is fairly large. It costs a lot just in terms of hiring the people who do the coding, let alone the level design, figure design, character designs, quality checks, script, score, etc. If you really get into it, there are a lot of costs that can stockpile for creating a game, more so if you're going for something in the leagues of the A and AAA tittles. The people who create games work just like anyone else. Like anyone else doing a job, they want to get paid for doing that job. Even if the people involved may make one game on a pro-bono effort, it is in the hope that it gains them fame and acclaim enough to get them a job that actually does pay for their talents.
That is what makes Free-To-Play models for games unique, and subsequently gave rise to the "pay-to-win" quip often directed to these kinds of games. There must be a way to earn money off a game even if you don't charge for the game upfront. How do you do that? The answer is to design the game so that certain parts are more or less difficult to complete, and charge for things to make it easier to complete the hard parts. The balance of most F2P games tends to be so heavy on the difficult side that it becomes nearly impossible - if not completely impossible - to complete the game, let alone excel at it, without paying for stuff. Some are better at striking a balance, enticing you to pay for stuff while allowing the possibility to play through the game without having to.
That's what it is in Ace Combat Infinity. After the couple weeks I've spent with the game now, it is still apparent that with enough determination and skill you can play through this game and successfully complete it without spending any real money. There are a few challenges that reward you for doing relatively simple things by giving you supplied or stocked fuel. For example, one challenge, which you can complete once every 24 hours, gives you a unit of supplied fuel for using the F-16C and downing 4 enemies with its special weapon the 4AAM in the online Co-Op mode. Another does the same thing but for the Mir-2000-5 and its 4AGM. With mere modest skill you should be able to complete these challenges in one sortie a piece. Add to that the fact that supplied fuel regularly regenerates at a rate of one unit every 4 hours, it is conceivable that with proper pacing you can sortie 8 times every day on just supplied fuel, not counting the couple other challenges that get you stocked fuel, or the chance of receiving stocked fuel from completing the those co-op missions. Judicious use of the credits you receive would permit you to save up for the cost of the campaign missions.
Of course there are a lot of caveats to that plan. One is the upgrades and purchases of the aircraft, parts, and weapons. If you want to make more money in the game, you'll need to have as good a plane as you can manage. A better plane means better scores. Better scores means more money. Part of what you'll need to do is figure out the balance between the cost of upgrading, and the money you need for the campaign. You arrive at two options - chug along with whatever earning level you're at until you've finished campaign mode or leave campaign mode until you get your favorite plane and upgrade it to where you'd like. Chances are most people want one of the last planes (F-22, T-50, Su-35, F-35), meaning there a number of planes and parts you have to wade through the research and purchase of.
Then there are the special events. They call them ranking events, and essentially it tkaes your scores from the co-op missions, compares it to other's scores, and ranks you. For your rank you get certain items at the end of the event. Last month they had one where the top 1000 scorers got the special Wardog Squadron F-14A and emblem. prizes diminish on down the line to the top 100,000. This week, specifically 7/7 through 7/11, in celebration of Tanabata, the event gives away the Rot and Wizard squad emblems from Ace Combat Zero, and the Blue Magician, Red Swallow, and Ruler of the Stars nicknames to the top 1000 scores, again, prizes diminishing as you go down the rankings past 1001 down to 100,000. You can't obtain these nicknames any other way, not even buying them separately.
All of this simply requires you to keep playing as much as possible. If this were a traditional game that wouldn't be a huge problem. You spend a day or two binging on gaming, spending four hours or more, especially in a game like Ace Combat, you can probably accumulate a ton of money if you're talking about one of the older iterations of the series. You could possibly play all the way through a campaign in that amount of time and be working on achieving max score or all around completeness in terms of collecting the rest of the weapons, medal, and paint schemes. Even a more traditional, modern, game would place things like the other paint schemes as DLC anyone who wants it can buy. Instead, you're put in the position that if something comes up that you want, you'll have to spend money on the fuel needed to sortie on mission and hope you sortie enough, with high enough scores, to get the rank you need.
That's what they're counting on. I am not opposed to paying for something in this game. I love the Ace Combat franchise and would love to support it. But it has to be the right time and the right purchase. Simply throwing money at them isn't going to be beneficial in the long term if the game is bad and I'm shoveling my money at it. A bit more selfishly I also want to see how far I can really get with this game without spending anything. Is this really free-to-play, or is it simply a cleverly disguised cost engine?
I'll keep going for now as I have been. If some item that really is really interesting to me comes up then maybe they'll get me to spend some real money, but for now the wallet is closed. I'll be flying my F-15C for now until I can get my F-22. I'll update how things are going in the game along the way.
Let's get to one basic fact. Economics 101 - TINSTAAFL. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It's a basic concept of economics, regardless of the system, that dictates that everything costs something. Even if the end consumer technically gets something without paying any money for it, somewhere along the line between when someone came up with the idea to when it was produced and sold, or given away as it were, someone has to assume the cost even if not the end user. You get lunch for free, the store that you got the lunch from absorbed the cost of giving you that lunch in their own operation costs, or the supplier for that store assumed that cost as apart of their own promotion. Someone else put up the cost for that meal.
This applies to all things, not just food. Games, for instance, incur costs. The cost for creating and producing a game, let alone a quality, complex, game, is fairly large. It costs a lot just in terms of hiring the people who do the coding, let alone the level design, figure design, character designs, quality checks, script, score, etc. If you really get into it, there are a lot of costs that can stockpile for creating a game, more so if you're going for something in the leagues of the A and AAA tittles. The people who create games work just like anyone else. Like anyone else doing a job, they want to get paid for doing that job. Even if the people involved may make one game on a pro-bono effort, it is in the hope that it gains them fame and acclaim enough to get them a job that actually does pay for their talents.
That is what makes Free-To-Play models for games unique, and subsequently gave rise to the "pay-to-win" quip often directed to these kinds of games. There must be a way to earn money off a game even if you don't charge for the game upfront. How do you do that? The answer is to design the game so that certain parts are more or less difficult to complete, and charge for things to make it easier to complete the hard parts. The balance of most F2P games tends to be so heavy on the difficult side that it becomes nearly impossible - if not completely impossible - to complete the game, let alone excel at it, without paying for stuff. Some are better at striking a balance, enticing you to pay for stuff while allowing the possibility to play through the game without having to.
That's what it is in Ace Combat Infinity. After the couple weeks I've spent with the game now, it is still apparent that with enough determination and skill you can play through this game and successfully complete it without spending any real money. There are a few challenges that reward you for doing relatively simple things by giving you supplied or stocked fuel. For example, one challenge, which you can complete once every 24 hours, gives you a unit of supplied fuel for using the F-16C and downing 4 enemies with its special weapon the 4AAM in the online Co-Op mode. Another does the same thing but for the Mir-2000-5 and its 4AGM. With mere modest skill you should be able to complete these challenges in one sortie a piece. Add to that the fact that supplied fuel regularly regenerates at a rate of one unit every 4 hours, it is conceivable that with proper pacing you can sortie 8 times every day on just supplied fuel, not counting the couple other challenges that get you stocked fuel, or the chance of receiving stocked fuel from completing the those co-op missions. Judicious use of the credits you receive would permit you to save up for the cost of the campaign missions.
Of course there are a lot of caveats to that plan. One is the upgrades and purchases of the aircraft, parts, and weapons. If you want to make more money in the game, you'll need to have as good a plane as you can manage. A better plane means better scores. Better scores means more money. Part of what you'll need to do is figure out the balance between the cost of upgrading, and the money you need for the campaign. You arrive at two options - chug along with whatever earning level you're at until you've finished campaign mode or leave campaign mode until you get your favorite plane and upgrade it to where you'd like. Chances are most people want one of the last planes (F-22, T-50, Su-35, F-35), meaning there a number of planes and parts you have to wade through the research and purchase of.
Then there are the special events. They call them ranking events, and essentially it tkaes your scores from the co-op missions, compares it to other's scores, and ranks you. For your rank you get certain items at the end of the event. Last month they had one where the top 1000 scorers got the special Wardog Squadron F-14A and emblem. prizes diminish on down the line to the top 100,000. This week, specifically 7/7 through 7/11, in celebration of Tanabata, the event gives away the Rot and Wizard squad emblems from Ace Combat Zero, and the Blue Magician, Red Swallow, and Ruler of the Stars nicknames to the top 1000 scores, again, prizes diminishing as you go down the rankings past 1001 down to 100,000. You can't obtain these nicknames any other way, not even buying them separately.
All of this simply requires you to keep playing as much as possible. If this were a traditional game that wouldn't be a huge problem. You spend a day or two binging on gaming, spending four hours or more, especially in a game like Ace Combat, you can probably accumulate a ton of money if you're talking about one of the older iterations of the series. You could possibly play all the way through a campaign in that amount of time and be working on achieving max score or all around completeness in terms of collecting the rest of the weapons, medal, and paint schemes. Even a more traditional, modern, game would place things like the other paint schemes as DLC anyone who wants it can buy. Instead, you're put in the position that if something comes up that you want, you'll have to spend money on the fuel needed to sortie on mission and hope you sortie enough, with high enough scores, to get the rank you need.
That's what they're counting on. I am not opposed to paying for something in this game. I love the Ace Combat franchise and would love to support it. But it has to be the right time and the right purchase. Simply throwing money at them isn't going to be beneficial in the long term if the game is bad and I'm shoveling my money at it. A bit more selfishly I also want to see how far I can really get with this game without spending anything. Is this really free-to-play, or is it simply a cleverly disguised cost engine?
I'll keep going for now as I have been. If some item that really is really interesting to me comes up then maybe they'll get me to spend some real money, but for now the wallet is closed. I'll be flying my F-15C for now until I can get my F-22. I'll update how things are going in the game along the way.
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