14 DAY TRIAL // Square Enix has assured gamers that its upcoming free-to-play multiplayer arena game Nosgoth will be balanced so that paying players do not gain an unfair advantage over non-paying ones.
Nosgoth will be a player vs. player focused multiplayer game based on the Legacy of Kain mythos, a popular action adventure series developed ten years ago by Silicon Knights and Crystal Dynamics, and will mainly revolve around the conflict between humans and vampires.
"So, Nosgoth is a free-to-play game - but it's not pay-to-win. We made the decision to go to free-to-play to break down barriers and let as many players into the game as possible," George Kelion, community manager at Square Enix stated in a recent developer blog post.
"One of the key goals has been to create a fair experience that doesn't penalise players who don't spend money in the game – as such Nosgoth doesn't include items, weapons or abilities that are inherently better (aka supremacy goods)," he continued.
He went on to say that this meant that all of the purchasable weapons and other items would work more like "sidegrades," and not upgrades, each individual item being balanced by having its own share of positive and negative attributes.
The blog post also explains how currency will work, players being able to earn gold while playing or to buy Rune Stones for real money, enabling them to purchase particular items without having to earn the gold or XP required.
Nosgoth's in-game store will open once the game translates into closed beta. The game has just ended the closed alpha testing phase, and the same George Kelion shares his thoughts along with a summary of the event on the Nosgoth blog.
He reveals that so far the factions and classes are pretty balanced, with the win/loss ratio at almost 50 percent and an almost symmetrical distribution of classes and kill ratios.