Is this game free to play?

[Soba]

From what I've seen in comments it looks like a game with a wrong tag "free to play" when it should have "Pay to Play" Is this right?

I havent tried it yet but I am thinking but if its Pay to Play then I would rather not unless its like £30 for life to play the game fully, what are your opinions on the game?

[FeltHλt]

in 99% f2p titles u have to pay to play fully so whats your problem?

[Reck]

^

[Ronin]

I have more of 700 games. This game is in the TOP 5 for me. I have Trailrunner membership. 10/10

[Excellion]

The game's free to play content gives the player one weapon and unlimited ammo, access to all the reserves and permission to hunt two of the animals. The other animals can be seen but cannot be shot without paying for the game. There is no truely feasible in-game way to extend your hunting abilities by playing a lot of by being good at it.

If you want to extend your abilities a membership is pretty much always required as it grants free ammo for all your weapons and a license to hunt all the animals. A 3 month bundle boils down to 9.99 euro's. If you initially buy the wayfarer pack it boils down to 14.95 euro's, yet this pack also grants a shotgun and weapon that will allow you to have a weapon and ammunition to hunt everything in the game.

New weapons and items can be bought separately and are (consumables not included) one-time purchases. If the purchased item is a weapon you will receive free ammo for it as long as you have a valid membership.

And to refer to me personally: The hunting gear i use daily probally boils down to ~5k EM in value or about 30 euro's, and on top of that i need a 9.99 membership every three months to hunt. By comparison: a paid MMO would cost me about 9.99 a month in membership alone. The only difference is that TheHunter requires a relatively steep investment in gear and subsequently has a mild membership price. And i should add that it is entirely up to the player to decide what gear they want, thus the "steep investment" may not apply to everyone.

[Alf Tupper]

Excellion, an excellient description of how to play.

The 'steep investment' - I started a thread a few weeks ago to see if 2,000 EM$ was a good start up budget, and it seems that unless you plan to specialise in bait sites or wild fowl, 2,000 EM$ will in fact get you set up quite nicely.

[Alf Tupper]

Originally posted by frostyshield:

From what I've seen in comments it looks like a game with a wrong tag "free to play" when it should have "Pay to Play" Is this right?

I havent tried it yet but I am thinking but if its Pay to Play then I would rather not unless its like £30 for life to play the game fully, what are your opinions on the game?

This is a paste from another thread - I have no shame, but it may help the OP...

How to free to play the Hunter:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/253710/discussions/0/619568793997068820/


Plus earn yourself some in game money

http://steamcommunity.com/app/253710/discussions/0/619568794009279013/


Finally, more recycling of my awful typing...

To get three months of 'full' content, I'd suggest to anyone who is genuine these four options. I know 'full' is a subjective term, but I mean that you can hunt all species and access all reserves.

1 - do it all for free by mission grinding and the single barrel shotgun bought with GM$; you will eventually use all your GM$ up and have to go back to hunting Mule deer. But that's all free

2 - spend £6.99 on three months membership, use the two free weapons to hunt all species to amass GM$ in the missions to then use once your membership expires for the buyable licences and shotgun ammo

3 - spend £11 to get a Wayfarer package which is three months membership plus two free weapons and free ammo. You will be able to shoot all species, free ammo reloads, and get a 12 bore pump action in the bundle that will shoot species you can't take on with the .243. Amass your GM$ to pay for shotgun ammo and buyable licenses once your membership expires. NB - when your membership expires you keep any wepaons and equipment you have acquired

4 - spend £20 to get three months vanilla membership and buy 2,000 EM$; that amount of EM$ can get you a combination of things but basically will set you up as a prohunter as per this thread:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/253710/discussions/0/616187203988034218/


In cases 2-4 you keep any equipment and wepaons you have acquired when your membership expires, and can continue to use them on Mule deer (and wabbits if you have shotguns) so it's not a slammed door when your membership expires. If you've played your cards right you could be sat on a large stack of GM$ acquired in missions so you can dust your guns down and buy a day license or a week license if you feel like revisiting the game in a few months time, especially if there's a new reserve to look round or a new species to hunt.

[Excellion]

Originally posted by <UGA> Alf Tupper:

Excellion, an excellient description of how to play.

The 'steep investment' - I started a thread a few weeks ago to see if 2,000 EM$ was a good start up budget, and it seems that unless you plan to specialise in bait sites or wild fowl, 2,000 EM$ will in fact get you set up quite nicely.

Definately true - i should have added that the gear i wander around with is pretty much everything i ever expect to need in the game unless i want to try other weapons or move reserves. For reference sake this is what i am carrying around - Total cost is 4972 EM. (I am playing in the Val-de-bois reserve exclusively as of late).

• .243 Bolt Action Rifle (Free)
  
• .300 Bolt Action Rifle (650 EM)
  
• 3-9x40mm Rifle Scope (350 EM)
  
• Compound Bow "Parker Python" (700 EM)
  
• 5-Pin Range Finder Bow (350 EM)
  
• Backpack (500 EM)
  
• 7x42mm Rangefinder Binoculars (700EM)
  
• Crazy Caller Bundle (1152 EM) (I carry just 3 of them around though)
  
• Sneaky 3D Summer Forest Bundle (570 EM)

Of course gear is up to everyone's personal preferences but i am fond of this set. A lot of the cost can be sliced off though. I love the compound bow, but the .300 rifle can pretty much accomplish the same thing with more range and more noise. If the bow is removed you can save about 1550 EM (Bow and scope. You probally don't need a backpack either in that case). Aside from that the rangefinder is entirely optional (- 700 EM) and the crazy caller bundle can be reduced to individual callers (Can be - a few 100 EM if you intend to use them on a subset of animals). The camouflage is great in close combat, but if you prefer a sniper-style hunting game you can remove that as well for most part.

I do advice the "3-9x40mm Rifle Scope" though along with the .300 rifle. The .300 can take down all types of large prey from a large range effectively and it is relatively cheap. The scope has the added bonus that it can be used on both the .300 and on the free .243 Bolt Action Rifle - Thus you can keep using that scope on the free gun if you ever decide to quit paying membership.

Bottom line - 2.000 EM is indeed enough to create a working custom preference setup, so for about 20 euro's you can get a custom set of gear and three months of playtime.

[Pontape ®[Svk]]

You can hunt only mule deer for free with one rifle (.243) For all other spieces all items you HAVE TO PAY! So no its not free to play!

[FeltHλt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play

it is f2p

[Excellion]

Originally posted by Pontape Svk:

You can hunt only mule deer for free with one rifle (.243) For all other spieces all items you HAVE TO PAY! So no its not free to play!

Originally posted by FeltHλt:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play

it is f2p

This is a topic that can be debated endlessly. If we take Wikipedia as gospel, then the game would need to offer "a significant portion of their content" to qualify. But that is a vague term to say the least. Yes, you can access all reserves which is a significant portion of the game. No, you can only hunt 2 animals which is a very small amount of the core gameplay. Yes, you have unlimited access without time restrictions. No, you cannot unlock any further content which nigh certainly requires payments.

If anything a comparison with the good ol' shareware titles that were so prevalent years ago seems relevant. You could play the shareware / demo content as much as you wanted but in order to unlock the full game (More levels et cetera) you would have to pay for it. If we would - again - take Wikipedia as gospel shareware would be a subset of "Free to play". But i hasten to add that this line on wikipedia has no references included so anyone could have added that statement without basis.

[Alf Tupper]

I posted the Wkipedia definition and the next highest Google hit on free to play definitions on another thread about this old chesnut; to my legal mind, the game fits the definitions very closely, or if you call it a freemium game, it's a perfect fit.

To answer the question of "content" -and also to correct Pontape - all areas are accessible for free, all species are huntable for free via the GM$ missions, there are no limits on how long you can play for, so the only things that are not available for free are the items that can only be bought with EM$. I'd call that a significant level of content- it's not a gun and equipment collection game, it's a hunting emulator/game/sim

Pontape - look at Maverick's article here on how to play for free - it is very informative. It's linked above but here it is again:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/253710/discussions/0/619568793997068820/

[Weulf]

the free 2 play is too limited.. you get 1 gun and can hunt mule deer and rabbits. I love the game. but I don't really play it because of that. it's not something I personally would pay real money for.

[Pontape ®[Svk]]

Originally posted by <UGA> Alf Tupper:

I posted the Wkipedia definition and the next highest Google hit on free to play definitions on another thread about this old chesnut; to my legal mind, the game fits the definitions very closely, or if you call it a freemium game, it's a perfect fit.

To answer the question of "content" -and also to correct Pontape - all areas are accessible for free, all species are huntable for free via the GM$ missions, there are no limits on how long you can play for, so the only things that are not available for free are the items that can only be bought with EM$. I'd call that a significant level of content- it's not a gun and equipment collection game, it's a hunting emulator/game/sim

Pontape - look at Maverick's article here on how to play for free - it is very informative. It's linked above but here it is again:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/253710/discussions/0/619568793997068820/

I dont need to. I played this game since it beginnig. Own almost all weapons and items. I know how much it cost and again will repeat it. You cant play it for free!!! Missions are limited and for most of them you need guns. Only way how to play it for free is thru earning em$ and that is limited as well. Game is designed to force people to spent money. I cant understand why some people trying to present it as f2p.

[neofit]

Definitely not free to play by any even slightly objective standard. For free you have access to a very limited and very boring part of the game. Normal people have a word for it: "demo". It comes as no surprise how much fanboys will go out of their way to try and convince people that hunting Mule Deer is fun. If people hang around and keep banging their heads against a wall, they might cave in and help fund this game said fanboys invested so much into (Project Entropia anyone?). It also comes as no surprise that Mule Deer are only present in one reservation, and more rare there than any other animal. The real scandal here, if you will, is that they are selling monthly access to a single-player game. But since I don't remember any game other than the Armas that I played for more than 3 months, let's see what else this one has to offer.

Let's say you roamed the demo reservation for two hours and only saw one Mule Deer (that of course you inadvertently spooked when topping a ridge). You just can't finish that darn last mission, and nothing else unlocks. But you saw plenty of other animals, whitetail deer, rabbits, pheasants, hogs, but couldn't do anything about them, got frustrated just like you were supposed to be, caved in and bought the Wayfarer Starter Pack to test the waters. With an extra shotgun and a license to shoot all these other animals you're thinking you're set.

Not so. You see, you have bought a shotgun which has weight, and so does its ammo. So, you can go out with your anti-deer .243 rifle and the shotgun, but will only be able to take one type of shotgun ammo with you: either a box of 30 birdshot vs the pheasants you saw plenty of, or 30 slugs against the hogs, but not both. You can't like take 10 of each, nor more than one calling device if you buy any. And of course you are *allowed* to shoot hogs with almost everything *but* your starting .243. Putting an extra ammo box into one's pocket, or replacing 15 birdshots by 15 slugs in the same box is apparently above a hunter's intellect. Everything is so carefully tuned in this game that after shelling out money for the Wayfarer pack you still have to buy their 4€ backpack, or else you'll be wasting a sh*tload of time and keep being very frustrated. Sorry, this is where I draw the line, you cannot make milking *that* obvious. And with my backlog and wishlist, do I want to be frustrated and so ostentatiously milked? (short answer: no :) )

But I suppose I could have gotten past all of the above if not for this: you cannot embark on long journeys since the game won't allow you to save your progress in the current hunt to resume the next morning; it makes you restart everything every time. I may have gotten the backpack if I could start a hunt for 30 minutes, then go do some chores, then continue for 30 minutes, then go buy groceries, then let someone else use the computer, then continue for an hour, etc., you know, all the things that we can do in a normal single-player game. Definitely not the game for me.

[Weulf]

just consider it more of a demo if you don't pay.