Quake Champions to be Free-to-Play

As time goes on, more and more information is becoming available regarding Quake Champions. This time around it's about the nature of it's monetization plan. The game will be free to play at it's core, but will offer a premium version as well. The difference between paid and free version is in the amount of champions you will be able to play. Players who buy the game will have unlimited access to all the champions all the time, while the ones opting for a free variant will get to play solely with Ranger.

“At its core, it’s a free-to-play game,” Willits said, “with the option to buy the Champion Pack and just get in and play with all the Champions. There are a number of Quake players that just want to play their Quake, right? And they are familiar with the business model of our previous games, and they are totally fine. ‘I want to buy the game. I want to start playing. I want to have access to all the Champions.’

“But then we also understand that we want to get as many people into the game as possible, especially outside of North America and Western Europe, where we have a massive fan base. So we want to have the flexibility to have a free-to-play option for those people.”

The non-paying players will have the ability to purchase any premium champion for a limited time with the in-game currency called "favor". How will "favor" be obtained is still unknown, but will most likely be obtainable by just grinding out the game, as it is the practice in many other free-to-play titles. Willits also stated that you will not spend real money to get the extra champions if you are a f2p player.

“I don’t want to use the word rent,” Willits said. “You do spend favor to have access to them for a limited amount of time, yes. But you don't spend any real money on it.”

Furthermore, Willits stated that regarding competitive play there will be absolutely no difference between paying and free-to-play players, they will have access to same arenas, compete in the same brackets and only thing to differentiate them will be the champion pool.

Source: Polygon

Qvist

Interesting, that sounds like a good idea to me. They will definitely get a lot of people trying the game with this model.

edit: I guess the downside is that you can cheat with free to play and not care if you're banned but hopefully they can keep cheating to a minimum anyway.

posted 7 years ago

vidje

that's true, but when it comes to competitive play, what willits hasn't said yet is how will it affect number of same champions per team? with ranger being only f2p champion i can't imagine id putting a 1-per-team restriction which I really hoped for. But still, wait & see I suppose.

Anonymous (109.149.198.210)

Guess it all depends on the "finding match" system huh. I can see pub games being more than 1 champ easily but maybe the comp mode will be set to 1-per-team.

"Each Champion’s skills will be different and complementary in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way" I don't like the sound of that. With abilities and different health pools, movement speeds etc you will of course get certain characters who have a slight advantage against certain other characters. I would prefer not having classes that hard counter other classes, Overwatch is a good example of a game with hard counters.

da_coder

Classes do not counter other classes, that quote is about their skills. AKA Nyx can phase to dodge Scale's rush.

neeple

and we feel that with our team game modes, and then especially our dual mode, that we can fill a hole that's missing in esports today.

Glad to see them properly mention duel and esports in the same sentence.

I think this payment model is pretty cool to be honest. AFPS needs players and this will bring in plenty and for someone like me who was prepared to buy the game anyway, paying the full price and getting all the content is exactly what I planned to do

Provided we dont have to buy champions that come out after release of course

Anonymous (109.204.130.168)

> dual mode

hYperion

Isn't that a typo? I think he clearly means "duel mode" in that context!

pretty sure is

"Our duel mode" can refer to Quake history. "Our team game modes, and then especially our dual mode" this does imply something of a hybrid mode in the making (tho Blizzard is making something like this with OW, so its not missing from esports today).

I do hope its typo and implying 'og' duel mode, given that there is already huge variety in team-heavy games.

Also, maybe is should register.

Miles

Not too excited about a rent system, but hopefully the f2p will work well with more vanilla modes

lemming

Free 2 play only works for me if the only stuff you have to pay for is purely cosmetic. This rent system is not a good idea in my book. Not at all. Hell, you can even put micro transactions in a non free to play game like Overwatch. And it works. They should rethink their business model.

Also, if you buy the game do you get future champions too or only the champions that ship with release?

nothing has been said afaik, but it'd make sense that if you buy the game you get all available champions + the future ones.

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SyncError - Today at 7:34 PM
If you buy the game, you have everyone.
If you don't buy the game, you can buy them individually for hard currency or temporarily unlock them with soft currency.
You can also earn/unlock them for free over time.

RadoN - Today at 7:37 PM
can you earn hard currency through gameplay @SyncError ?

SyncError - Today at 7:40 PM
There is a hard currency you earn that can be used to permanently purchase things.

This clears a few things up

Hm, ok that clears it up a bit. Still wonder if there will be an option to buy the game and all future content on release. One might think this would be te "buy the game" option, but this could also just mean that you can buy all champions that are shipped on release for a discount (compared to buying them individually) and that you have to buy future champions still.