Combat Arms, and why you shouldn't play it.

I am a big supporter of the "Free to Play" games model that has appeared in the last couple of years, despite a lot of consumers recoiling at the idea of free to play games. I like how they allow people to spend as much or as little money as they like on a game depending on many factors. That being said, the Free to Play model is being abused by companies who read "Free to Play"  as "Let's milk our consumers". With that in mind, here is what I've been playing for the last couple of days:

On paper, this game looked like a fun little game. It's a military style FPS reminiscent of Call of Duty, but with more of  Quake/Unreal Tournament feel with how the controls react and now the players move around (matches can get very mental very quickly). It is also a Free to Play game. Surely all this sounds like awesome? It did, until I started playing it.

It has a leveling system pretty much identical to the Call of Duty games. You get experience for kills, winning matches etc. The standard leveling fare. It has a currency system within the game that you also earn for getting kills etc, pretty much the same as COD Points in Call of Duty: Black ops. However, I noticed a few things that instantly turned me off the game.

In order to get access to new weapons you have to meet two criteria: you have to match a weapons unlock level to be able to get access, and you also need currency to pay for the weapon. Simple enough right? Yeah I thought so too, 'till I saw there's a second currency in the game. Nexus Points. These are currency that can only be acquired via the means of paying for it with real money. But okay, it's a free to play game, they need to make revenue, this wasn't exactly a big surprise. What WAS a big surprise was that at least 50% of the weapons cannot be bought with GP (in game currency), however you need Nexus points to buy. This is selling power, and this is a big, BIG no no when it comes to in game microtransactions.

Second thing is that you don't own your weapons when you buy them, you "rent" them for either 1, 7,30 or 90 days. Again, most of the weapons can only be bought using Nexus Points. So that means you need to constantly rent your weapons if you want to even stand a chance in the game. You *can* buy your weapon outright, but that costs an outrageous amount of Nexus Points to do so.



So this is why you should not play Combat Arms, and why you shouldn't support this type of Free to Play abuse.