xdanx
This game, unlike other F2P games, does not depend on your skill and time spent playing, it just depends on your patience or how much real money did you spend, which may be quite boring for most players.

I disagree, plenty of other F2P RPGs have this type of grinds. In fact, I don't know any F2P-RPG that this wasn't the case for.

The only exception was, ironically, Spiral Knights before its mid-May update.

So play for an hour and go get your sunshine. If you want access to things right away pay cash. Stop your whining. Maybe this game will teach you patience. Any thing that is worth having does not come easy my friends. Another thing, Please stop your whining!

"You don't have to pay, but someone else does."

Let me ask you something: If the current system bothers you that much, Why don't you just stop playing Spiral Knights?

rubexbox,

The system doesn't bother me when it comes to me. I love the system and love the game. I want more players to join (even if they don't bring down energy prices), and I want OOO to keep maintaining and developing the game.
However, I am a trifle concerned about what new players will think about it. It might be just a bit disheartening for a new player to learn that they can play for a limited amount of time for free each day.
But, OOO has to make money (or at least break even for the server, development, and bandwidth costs). Without CE purchases, the game would eventually become unprofitable for them to maintain.

Disclaimer (whatever that is): I am a paid player; not a lot, but I think that you should know that I am not advancing for free.

If I am trolling, please let me know.

If everybody stopped buying CE (For the sake of theorycrafting) then nobody would be able to craft/play anything past Tier 2. You couldn't get 3*4*5* gear because it cost more than 100 energy.
So you could not play Tier 3 because you don't have the gear for that. If you wanted to reach the end of the game and enjoy stratum 4+, you WOULD have to pay for CE, as it is the only way to get there.

Now people will start to argue that will never happen and blahblahblah. Not the point. Totally agree with OP.

OP = Original Poster/Post

I don't remember the concept of "free to play" meaning that you must be able to access all content for free. I can't think of a single F2P game that allows you to access everything without ever paying.

Private_riem
If everybody stopped buying CE (For the sake of theorycrafting) then nobody would be able to craft/play anything past Tier 2. You couldn't get 3*4*5* gear because it cost more than 100 energy.
So you could not play Tier 3 because you don't have the gear for that. If you wanted to reach the end of the game and enjoy stratum 4+, you WOULD have to pay for CE, as it is the only way to get there.

Now people will start to argue that will never happen and blahblahblah. Not the point. Totally agree with OP.

Stop to think about this for a minute: What if what you said DID happen?

You can still play, since mist energy exists. Like I said before, this is the exact reason why OP's point breaks down, due to the fact CE is not mandatory until the "second half" of this game.

I'm done with this. The OP continues to make up quotes in order to summarize what he interpreted from 20 paragraphs of text. OP, if you can't see any issue with doing this, there's no getting beyond that to any "discussion" (which I still don't believe you want, as you constantly define words on your own, then when someone challenges it you say it's merely semantics). You cannot fake quote someone; that puts words into their mouth. And yet you tell OTHER people they are creating hyperbole? How hypocritical.

Sometimes people don't know they are trolls. I believe the OP had an honest and legitimate cause to start this thread, but didn't realize till a page later that he was indeed just trolling.

I made it to 3/4 star gear without paying anything. It's slower, but I am always making progress. At no point did I ever run out of energy since I was able to make more money thru playing and from the items I auctioned than the energy cost me to keep playing. There isn't anything in the game that can't be accessed thru a little hard work.

It's a very interesting business model. As people buy CE with real money they lower the demand and increase the supply for CE on the CE market. This lets the people who pay nothing keep going which in turn helps keep the in game economy moving. The only way the system would fail for the non payers is if not enough people bought CE, which unless the game dies, doesn't seem too likely. It's a self correcting system. As fewer people buy CE with real money, the market price increases, which nudges people to drop a few dollars here and there which then drops the CE market prices back down. With CE currently trading at 4K~ the non payers are in a good position. You can turn 100 energy into 10K+ in a solo T2 run. It might be a little problematic for people just starting out or who aren't good at surviving and managing their finances but you can overcome that easily enough.

Overall I like it. It's a fun game and they seem to be intent on supporting and expanding it. I'll prolly drop 10-20$ on it soon more as a tip than for the advancement. That's the thing I really like about it, YOU don't HAVE to pay anything, but so long as enough people do the system works. It's a weird fusion of using capitalism and socialism together to make the game fun, free, and profitable. You could write a paper on the implications of this business model.

The game is sure free to me, can log on and play till I have run out of mist and log back on the next day and play some more. That says free right there.

I don't particularly lean either way in the argument, but I'm just curious about this:

As mentioned before, SK gives you a limited amount of energy, and then you can purchase more energy with in-game currency gained from playing.
It's "free to play".
Eve Online uses a smilar model, but is classified as pay-to-play. Is the initial purchase the only thing that separates them? If Eve Online was a free download, had the same subscription model as it does now, but let you buy gametime in-game after 2 weeks free playing, wouldn't it still be called pay-to-play?

Guild wars lets you play forever at no cost, as long as you purchase the game. What category does this fall under?

Lastly, something like Ragnarok Online is free to play and lets you access almost everything in the world. Paying players gain increased exp, some hats/equips (that can be matched or exceeded), teleports and safer upgrading, but there is no need for anyone on the free servers to pay at all. Wouldn't this be more free-to-play compared to SK?

In the end, I believe new players have the intelligence to decide for themselves if the game is truly free-to-play and whether to continue playing it after they learn the mechanics of the energy system. Advertising it as free-to-play makes more sense to me at this point.

I just wanted to throw this out there,

back in high school there was an economics teacher who argued that nothing is ever free. If something was given to you for "free", the cost of it was taken from someone else. Free samples at Costco? The company paid for them. Free sandwiches at some event? Someone had to pay for them. Free TV you won in a raffle? Someone paid for it. Free education, free wifi, free etc etc etc, any sort of commodity is given and taken from party to party can never be free.

OP's argument falls under the same idea, considering that someone else DID have to buy the CE real which is in turn it to another player who didn't buy it with real world currency.

However, I would like to point out that with this set of reasoning, even a game which costs absolutely no monetary value to the player still isn't free, because the developers, publishers, and all other branches of game's company shell out time and money to produce said game for the players. In conclusion, there will never be a game that will be absolutely FREE, by an sort of strict definition of the word free.

In my honest opinion, the phrase "free to play" is the correct description of SK since the players are not obligated to purchase any CE through real world currency. As a player you do not have to pay to enjoy this game, you pay to get ahead of everyone else, to spend less time grinding, less time saving CR, and less time selling stuff at the AH. It's marketed that you alone can play for free without any monetary payment by you.

Plus it's a heck of a lot easier to say "free to play" than to say "free to play unless you want play some more or if you buy some CE from some other dude or just pay it with real cash yourself."

So really, why are we arguing over whether or not the word free is followed by a strict definition, all game markets use similar phrases in their products, why should we have an entire discussion since we very well know the connotation of "free to play."

Ok ima end this intruiging argument with all respects to all of you guys....
No mother!@#$ing F2P can run without some f!@# source of money you stupid reta!@#$

The game is called free to play, not free to upgrade all of your weapons fully.

I've upgraded all of my equips to tier 4 without spending a real dime on CE.

I'm working on tier 5.

"The game is called free to play, not free to upgrade all of your weapons fully."
-Archury

Wat?

Uh I made plenty of 5 star weapons without spending anything. You can play this game completely free if you choose.

The OP is correct, but inane. The point is that the game is not really free to play because someone has to pay in order for anyone to craft gear that requires more than 100ce. This is certainly true, but so what?

Every micro-currency-model free-to-play game is counting on someone paying: the point is to make money. Any such game for which no-one ever paid anything would disappear.

So, yes--someone has to be paying OOO for anyone to get to 4* gear. So what? Someone has to be paying OOO for them to continue to provide the game at all.

The game is free to play in any sense of the word that matters. The OP's objection is basically just nonsense.