"Why not play a REAL game?"
This is mostly for Blue Leafeon, but I'm sure the other people who actually come here probably have similar sentiments.
First, watch this:
This is the final stage of Book 2 (the "second arc" of the storyline) in Chain Chronicle, a JRPG designed for iOS and Android devices. (There is also a version for the PSVita, though I'm not really sure why it's a separate game since mechanically there is no difference.) In other words, tablets and smartphones. Now by no means am I suggesting most of the game is this exciting or difficult, or implying that most smartphone games approach anywhere near such high quality, but the point is there.
Watching this, can you really say this game doesn't look like it was made for people that normally play games on dedicated consoles? (By the way, if you are screaming "HOLY SHIT!" at the realization of the wall of text below, you can just skip everything but the video itself. The video is the tl;dr, pictures being a thousand words and several in succession therefore counting for far more and all.)
"But, it doesn't have buttons!"
So I feel the need to point out that frankly, touchscreens pissed me off. They still do outside of this game actually and if it wasn't for how it would kind of defeat the point of convenience by purchasing a stylus to use on my phone I would do so to make the controls more precise.
However, this game is designed in a way that grants very little benefit to actually using buttons (without a touchscreen to assist anyway) because it was made for real-time gameplay and generally demands that you pay attention to all five (or seven in the case of a specific game mode) units in your team simultaneously. You need to be able to select and move different characters as quickly as you can, and buttons do not have as direct input as touchscreens do as a result of needing more translation of action and hence, further delay. (Like how I can think it's bullshit for me to have timed a block in a fighting game wrong, but know that in a duel done for sport I totally missed the mark.) The characters may attack automatically, but not including that as a function would make this game far more difficult for the wrong reason: the controls.
In other words, this game excels at making extremely good use of what it was designed for. There may not be that many inputs to choose from, but that does not mean the ones that are available to you hold the game back, because games do not need to have high complexity to provide a strategic experience. I believe most of you here have played Smash Bros. and at least one other fighting game to understand that SSB has significantly limited movesets but also know that it is taken seriously as a fighting game. Just like how the relevance of falling off the stage and having a unique damage system in Smash Bros. both gives it a new dimension that many fighting games lack, a game like Chain Chronicle (which is technically a tower defense game) can provide an interesting experience through fresh game design even if it may seem "dumbed down" to hardcore gamers at first glance.
"But, energy systems! This is all just an elaborate skinnerbox meant to ruin your life!"
I will be the first to say that there is nothing more detrimental to fun in this game than the existence of the energy system. You have no idea how much it pisses me off to lose in a quest that costs 30 AP to attempt, which equals four hours of waiting just to try again for gameplay that lasts a few minutes. It makes it much more difficult to build up skill and always makes you feel bitter over losing.
The energy system is also put in place to prevent players from being capable of infinitely farming currency to fight against chance with time and effort, and of course was meant to keep your attention on the game for longer than you should.
However, I will not say that this makes the game any less of a game rather than a chore, at least, relatively speaking in comparison to games on dedicated consoles. There are 1 AP (7 minutes of waiting time) quests in the game, and three of them are the hardest quests the game has to offer, so building up skill through challenges is still an option for hardcore players who want to show off. The one benefit this game gives me with its energy system is the opportunity to play something else without forgetting about this one, a serious problem many games on my backlog face. There is no other game I have played that keeps my attention on it even when I'm busy focusing on another one.
I mean sure, it ruins lives, but smartphone games are hardly the first of the games to be charged for the crime of attempted murder on time and/or relationship stability. Skyrim or any MMORPG ever, anyone? Any fighting game you are really into? Trading card game locals? Professional chess? Ace Attorney shakes its head in shame.
"So-called F2P games are really all just P2W cashgrabs!"
In Chain Chronicle, I currently possess over 50 characters (keep in mind only 6 characters can actually be put into one team) that can only be obtained using premium currency, that is, the currency you are supposed to convert from cash. Additionally, every month we can expect to receive a mediocre but serviceable unit that does not cost premium currency with stats that are on-par with maxed premium characters. With these characters I can clear the vast majority of the content in the game, and the hardest content that I can't rarely has anything that is relevant enough to clear it for besides bragging rights.
I have not paid for even the smallest possible microtransaction in this game and the community of Chain Chronicle (and presumably other smartphone games of its type) have a tendency to be massively entitled assholes about how much premium currency they can amass without ever having to pay a cent or even much effort. Which is to say, they have a reason to keep expecting more. It's a trend for these.
As someone who has played F2P games for half of my life, I think it's rather ridiculous what gamers expect out of a business. (That applies to games that aren't F2P and game consoles too. They are very inexpensive for their production and development costs.)
Yes, this game is clearly designed to exploit people who aren't stingy with their money. All characters you recruit with premium currency are done so through the virtual gachapon, in other words, it's gambling. So you can't even specifically pay for who you want. The game revolves around having events that give out limited time characters that they expect you to throw your virtual currency at until you are lucky enough to get the ones you want. The ones who use more money do in fact have a much greater advantage over everyone else. Some content is extremely difficult to clear without updating your power level by throwing more of your premium currency at the newest, hottest, strongest thing.
I don't mind.
I mean yes, I am not exactly pleased with the state of affairs and I would very much prefer that I did not have to leave it to chance, but even so, I don't mind. I've been lucky enough to get most of who I really wanted anyway and have an extremely large amount of stored premium currency because SEGA sucks at making new characters I actually care enough about.
The ones who will pay the most for the game are the power hungry. The ones who need to be stronger just because they can. The ones who want to show off how hard their team hits or how long it can survive rather than demonstrate how skilled they are at the game. The ones who feel the need to make the hardest content in the game as easy as they possibly can. The ones who keep saying meta this and meta that even in a game that doesn't even involve direct competition between players.
While it is certainly disappointing to see several F2P games become matters where you cannot clear content without paying for the game (the most prominent reason being time limits seeing as DPS is the classic factor in how OP something is), this is the most prominent reason it will occur. Companies would not resort to power creep if it wasn't for how they know just how power hungry most gamers are. If there is anyone I am pissed off at when it comes to microtransations, it's not the ones that exploit these kinds of customers, it's these kinds of customers themselves.
Fortunately, Chain Chronicle happens to be a fairly easy game most of the time that aims to be accessible to most people, one thing smartphone games have a trend in aiming to do to be successful. However, none of what it does makes it any less of a game outside of it not letting you play it as much as you want. All it takes is a company that wants to sell you a high quality product that just so happens to be a game.
Indie games tho, pfft why does anybody even care about those.