'Star Conflict' is a new Massively Multi-player Online game (commonly referred to as a 'MMO') put together by the development team at Gaijin Entertainment. It just became available on the Steam service and can be played on a PC or a Mac.
In Star Conflict the player takes command of a huge battleship vying for control of a section of space called Sector 1337. Since it's a player vs. player game (PVP), other players with their own ships will be competing with you for territory and resources.
Like most 'Free To Play' MMO's, Star Conflict is free to download and you can start playing right away without paying anything. However, there are Download Content Packs [DLC] that can be purchased that gives the player better, more powerful ships and weapons and so on. At present, there are 3 different DLC packs that can be purchased for $14.99 each.
As usual with many of these type of games, controversy has already erupted over whether players who purchase the DLC packs have an unfair advantage over those who haven't. As many game developers dip their toe into the 'free to play MMO' market, more experimentation is being done with ways to encourage gamers who start on the ground floor to make the purchase decision to go deeper into the game by spending some money on it.
In the case of Star Conflict, it seems those who invest the money get a better 'head start' on those who don't. Eventually with enough hours put into it, a free player who hasn't spent anything can get to where the DLC pack players are. Essentially, buying a DLC pack just allows you to skip the many hours of playing a free player would have to do to obtain the better ships, gear and abilities.
The game itself has stunning visuals and it's apparent the folks at Gaijin Entertainment spent a lot of time tweaking the graphical presentation. Having gone through Beta testing for well over a year, the game appears to have avoided most of the common problems that have plagued many MMO's upon launch, such as overburdened servers, long wait times, unbalanced game play or technical glitches.
The key to making a free-to-play business model profitable is convincing enough of the gamers who play for free to make a purchase decision at some point. Many former pay-to-play MMO's/RPG's that made the switch to free-to-play have found the transition to be rocky, such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Age of Conan. If you make the game too easy with purchased items, that's just as bad as making it to hard for those who don't buy anything. The idea is to keep the gamer wanting to play by presenting a fun and interesting challenge. Make it too easy or too hard and gamers quit playing due to either boredom or frustration.
My conclusion for Star Conflict review is this game has a proper balance thus far between paying & free players, and for this reason it's highly recommended that gamers everywhere give it a try.
