Is Pay to Win Bad?

Games being p2w is nothing new. With the rise of mobile popularity and the expansion of the mobile loot box, gatcha game, able-to-buy-everything business model into traditional the console/pc gaming market, pay to win is definitely not going away. The topic for today, though, is how in most circles calling a game pay to win is one of the worst insults you can give. Bad graphics can be “retro” and buggy gameplay can be “early access”, but pay to win has no excuse… Or does it?

(more…)

How to Complete Fragment Summon Events

Last fragment event was the first one I really noticed existing. I went for it. I failed miserably. However, I learned from it. Well, mostly I learned that I had no idea how to successfully complete one of those events, so I started doing some research. From there, I made a plan. And from that implementing that plan through this even, I discovered my limitations. This isn’t a guide for a whale or a years-in-the-game veteran. This is a guide for how to do this the first time or maybe first couple of times with 100% success. I’ll break down what stages you need to farm, how much to save up and how to prepare. TL:DR at the bottom.

(more…)

New Player Mastery Guide

So, I’ve been dabbling in Raid: Shadow Legends for a couple of months now. I’m free to play with the exception of a few dollars of google balance that was available to me because of the Google Rewards survey app. As a result, gems, energy, and silver are very limited. Early on, I made quite a few mistakes with how I chose to spend those resources. In this post, I’ll give a very simple overview of how to approach champion masteries. Should you use gems to unlock? Should you use energy on the minotaur boss? Read on to find out.

(more…)

Is It Pay to Win?: Legendary Game of Heroes

Welcome to ‘Is it Pay to Win’ – a column where we examine a game and decide if that game is has aspects of pay to win and to what extent. Check out Is it Pay to Win?: Defined to see how we break down the components of pay to win, such as pay for advantage, pay for convenience, and cosmetics.

Legendary: Game of Heroes marketed as a free to play, match-3, card collecting, RPG for Android and iOS. Right away, you’ll probably notice some of those details indicate purchases. Mobile games are notoriously heavy-handed with their cash shops and card collection games are essentially pay to win by default in that, since their physical ancestors such as Magic: The Gathering, you spend cash to buy packs of cards. LGOH is no exception.

Scoring:

  • Pay for Power: 5/5
  • Pay for Advantage: 5/5
  • Pay for Convenience: 4/5
  • Pay for Cosmetics: 3/5
  • Pay to Win: 4.6/5*

Keep reading to see a rough game description and our basis for these scores.

(more…)

What’s Incoming for this Blog

Future road pic

I guess it’s time I talk a little about where this blog is going. This is both for you and for me – for you to know what I intend and for me to, perhaps, get some feedback on that direction.

This one shouldn’t be incredibly long, but I’ll talk a little about what this blog has been doing, what I’m going to do with it, and how you can influence that if you have such a mind.

(more…)

Tap Titans 2: A Review

First – yes, we also cover mobile games here. All things gaming and all. You do have phones, right? I wouldn’t expect a huge swath of mobile content, though, as mobile games (at least in my limited experience) tend to be much simpler endeavors and maybe don’t have as much to cover. However, like many of you, I’m also fairly attached to my little screen and usually have a game or 4 than I’m idling, tapping, matching or otherwise. For this post, we’ll be breaking down Tap Titans 2, an free to play idle clicker game, with it’s game play, it’s ups, it’s downs, and it’s monetization. Gallery of in game images at the end.

(more…)