Torchlight Frontiers Will Be Free-To-Play, Announces Its "Philosophy"

Torchlight Frontiers is going to be free-to-play, and Echtra Games wants you to know all about "our free-to-play philosophy." That's the title of a blog post written up today on the Frontiers site, and it reveals the broad points of the upcoming game's monetization.

Echtra and publisher Perfect World Entertainment get off on the right foot by understanding that talk of monetization is a "sensitive topic," so they've at least got the most important part of communication covered. They're "painfully aware of the abusive payment schemes some have tried" and are "willing and able to change if whatever we are doing isn't working." That covers all the necessary kowtowing to the community, but what are the team's actual plans?

There are seven bullet points laid out in the post, and rather than summarize them and misinterpret something that could come back to haunt the game later, we'll reproduce them in full below:

They certainly say all the right things, though the exact implementation will still need to be analyzed. The third and fourth points, in particular, stand out. The third has a whiff of "pay to save time" that's been used to push less-than-stellar monetization in the past, and the fourth -- selling Relic Weapons, which are described as "superpowered" -- could also rub some people the wrong way. That especially seems to contradict the sixth point, which expressly states that it's better to get an item through gameplay than it is to buy it in a shop.

It all depends on the cost -- money or time -- required to get Relic Weapons and whatever else is in the cash shop. If the balance is wrong, then Echtra Games and Perfect World Entertainment will hear it from fans. Then we'll see how committed they are to the mantra that they're "willing and able to change."