Module 8: Freestyle

Module 8- Freestyle

Free-To-Play Games

Free-to-play games are great.  You don't have to pay anything to play them, and they can be quite entertaining.  The trouble is, many games that are free-to-play have a downside.  Some games are riddled with annoying advertisements.  These can be annoying banners that pop up during gameplay or video ads before each level.  Both of these make the developers money, but at the cost of a less desirable user experience.  

Another approach to this is an offer wall that rewards players for voluntarily watching video ads, but does not force them to.  This is much more desirable, but the developers will not make as much money.  The offer wall reward system, if used correctly, can actually create the perfect balance between developer profits and user experience.  This is best used for small game series or indie titles.

The best approach in my experience so far only works if a game studio has produced a bunch of games.  If a game studio makes a series with a large amount of titles in the series, they will be more likely to make a spin-off game.  These spin-off games often bring together many of the characters from the studios various games in a franchise in a cross-over game.  One of the best ways for a game studio to make money is to make the fans happy.  The way to keep fans happy is to make a game that is so good that they will say, "I can't believe this game is free, it's awesome!".  This can be done by simply removing advertisements from the game and making the game itself an advertisement, without the user knowing.  This is done in Tales of Link.

Tales of Link is one of my favorite free-to-play games on mobile devices.  It is a puzzle RPG featuring the various characters of Bandai Namco's "Tales of" series.  You build a team of these characters and they fight monsters together and defeat bosses by creating a "link" between the characters by connecting the characters with the same symbol together by sliding your finger across them.  This game has a very long set of main story quests, which get quite difficult towards the end.  Updates to the game have added even more of these story quests.

There are also limited time only event quests.  These are cycled frequently and give access to new side stories, weapons, armor, and characters.  The two main characters, Sara and Lippy which you meet at the beginning of the game, had special event quests to recruit them on your team.  There were even different cross over events, such as the God Eater crossover event that allowed you to get special God Eater costumed characters or the Brave Frontier collaboration event that gave very strong weapons and special Brave Frontier styled characters.  This event also gave rewards in Brave Frontier if you played it, such as special Tales of characters as units for the game.  Currently, Tales of Link is celebrating its first year anniversary with a special line of event quests and special hero summons.  Quests cost a certain amount of stamina, proportional to the rarity of the rewards.  This can be restored by waiting or using a stamina gel item.

 Boss battle from the Anniversary Event, level 45/50

 Special event weapon obtained from the Sara's Birthday Party event quest, upgraded to its maximum form. (Balloon Sword -> Balloon Sword+ -> Golden Balloon Sword -> Golden Balloon Sword+)

 A weapon obtained from The Anniversary Event quest

Special scuba gear armor obtained from the Anniversary Event quest.

The best part about this game is that it has no annoying ads.  This is because by design, the entire game is an advertisement for the Tales of series games.  There actually was an advertisement, but they made it a special event quest advertisement level.  This level was an advertisement for the "Tales of Zestiria the X" anime series.  It locked all of your heroes damage values to 1 and the enemy attacks did no damage and would just say different things about the anime.  Even better, completing the quest awarded Hero Stones, the premium currency of the game.  After the anime was released, it was available to watch for free from within the app.  It also awards you hero stones for watching it every week as a contract quest.

The premium currency of the game, Hero Stones are used as continues in quests and can also be used to summon new heroes.  It is generally not worth it to use Hero Stones as continues because you can just redo the level after strengthening your heroes, or use a stronger ally.  The hero summons cycle based on the events.  There are special versions of heroes obtainable from these quests, such as the Anniversary Dress Sara or the Swimsuit versions of characters released during the summer.  It is best to save up your Hero Stones and spend a bunch when there is a summon you want.  Thankfully, although you can buy Hero Stones as well as items with real life money, this is unnecessary.  Hero Stones are easy to obtain for free.  You can get them as log in bonuses, you get one for each new story quest you complete, event quests will also drop them (especially Soul Arena events), and you can also get them from completing contract quests.  Stamina gels can also be obtained by logging in.

My strongest unit, swimsuit Milla.

This game is fun because it is not highly competitive.  Your friends are used as allies that help you in battle.  Their strength is added to yours, helping tremendously with boss battles.  The only competitive part of the game is in the Soul Arena events.  The goal of a Soul Arena event is to defeat monsters and gain as much mana as possible.  Mana is dropped from "mana eater" monsters and bosses.  Rewards are given based on how many mana points you have accumulated, and these are give when certain thresholds are reached.  The competitive reward is given based on which player has the most mana points and ranks all players.  For instance, the top 250 people will get four 5* heroes when the event ends.  There will be other rewards as well for other ranking tiers.  Mana points are reset to 0 after the event is over.

One of the best parts of this game is that when things get too difficult, grinding is actually not painful.  Like other Tales of games, this game features an Auto mode that you can turn on for farming rewards.  However, it will often get you killed in more difficult levels.  Log in bonuses, event quests, and missions also make this easy.  Missions are automatic hunts for your choice of heroes, weapons, or gear/materials.  You click on these and after the time specified for the mission, Lippy and the hero you sent out (picked at random from heroes not assigned to a team) will return with rewards.  There are sometimes special event missions that are only up during an event and give different rewards, such as special event upgrade materials.  If you get lucky, there is also a chance that you can get a Hero Stone in addition to your rewards.

Lippy taking Lippy on a mission.  This is only possible if you have Lippy as a unit.

Overall, this game does a good job of keeping the player happy with rewards, events, and special character summons.  The game doesn't feel like an advertisement, and offers no unfair advantage to players that pay money vs those that do not.  It's not overly competitive, making the community more uplifting.  Its a good time waster, or a good game to leave on auto mode and get idle rewards while you do other work.