So The Trail is officially out.
Nov 3, 2016 22:08:05 GMT
Lord Ba'al, Crumpy Six, and 2 more like this
Post by Gmr Leon on Nov 3, 2016 22:08:05 GMT
I decided to give it a try as I had some downtime during a break for about an hour or so. It's nothing awful, but as with pretty much any free to play game, it gets a bit annoying with the ads. However, it's worth saying that they're not exactly immediately apparent until the end of an hour of play and nothing feels so terribly balanced as to pressure you to pay for microtransactions, at least that I noticed, but this is also fairly common practice for these types of games to obscure the microtransactions until they think they've got you intrigued enough to cough up the cash. (To add to that though, they present them from the start, but don't really explain them except kind of abruptly, so it's something you have to dig through the menus to be more aware of. At first I was actually thinking if you crafted certain items, you'd get a small amount of them for free to try and hook you into buying more, but that was a misunderstanding on my part, I quickly realized.)
Basically it's an on-rails series of fetch quests, where you go from campsite to campsite gathering up some resources initially by picking stuff up, then cutting down trees, then hunting rabbits, and I'm sure it probably builds up from there. You can craft equipment to walk faster and longer (via more stamina), and through some quests you can eventually learn how to craft better resources from lesser ones so you're then better able to maintain your equipment.
As you might be able to guess, this is where the microtransaction hooks tend to come into play. Don't have enough resources? Use favors (the microtransaction currency) to craft items. Want to keep your equipment because you managed to craft a pretty high quality piece? Use favors to repair it.
Then there's a little shop that appears at certain campsites where you can buy a few things that can really help you out, like larger bags to carry more resources or some equipment or whatever, but it's all behind the favor paywall.
Now, atop that, there's an occasional NPC that will run by you prompting you to watch an ad to receive a free gift. Not too bad, except if memory serves you couldn't dismiss the prompt, so you just had to keep walking past.
Anyway, cutting more to the point, I think it's worth noting that apparently this has been in development for 2 years according to Jamie Stowe, so...Yeah. I guess it's nice to have that out there in the open?
Basically it's an on-rails series of fetch quests, where you go from campsite to campsite gathering up some resources initially by picking stuff up, then cutting down trees, then hunting rabbits, and I'm sure it probably builds up from there. You can craft equipment to walk faster and longer (via more stamina), and through some quests you can eventually learn how to craft better resources from lesser ones so you're then better able to maintain your equipment.
As you might be able to guess, this is where the microtransaction hooks tend to come into play. Don't have enough resources? Use favors (the microtransaction currency) to craft items. Want to keep your equipment because you managed to craft a pretty high quality piece? Use favors to repair it.
Then there's a little shop that appears at certain campsites where you can buy a few things that can really help you out, like larger bags to carry more resources or some equipment or whatever, but it's all behind the favor paywall.
Now, atop that, there's an occasional NPC that will run by you prompting you to watch an ad to receive a free gift. Not too bad, except if memory serves you couldn't dismiss the prompt, so you just had to keep walking past.
Anyway, cutting more to the point, I think it's worth noting that apparently this has been in development for 2 years according to Jamie Stowe, so...Yeah. I guess it's nice to have that out there in the open?
