When I lose my premium account I generally go into “enjoy what you already have spaded and do not grind anything else until you have premium account again” mode.
After being used to the premium account rates for years and thinking that was bad enough to grind, I just can’t grind anything without feeling like I’m intentionally wasting my time (more than usual).
How many of you are purely f2p? For anybody else, how do you feel when your prem time runs out and you don’t buy more immediately? Do you do what I do?
Back when I was F2P, I only ever grinded what I was having fun with at the time.
As for now, I never run out of premium time as I always buy it in advance. I’m also in a more financially stable position now, so I’m more comfortable with spending money on the game now than I was a few months ago.
I wouldn’t play this game without premium, the grind is bad enough already.
But i can easily finance premium acc and premium vehicles with the coupons i get from the silver lion boxes.
I’m not really a F2P player, because I sometimes buy premium vehicles and packs I like the vehicles of. Other than that, I rarely buy anything. Guess I’m a 50/50?
If you ask such a question, you should define the term F2P.
Do you mean “never paid anything ever”?
Not paid this year?
Not own any premium products, no matter if you paid or get them by playing?
I haven’t paid a dime this year, but bought several premiums and enjoy copious premium time.
My inventory is still stuffed with market sellable stuff for many hundred GJN. I play for free.
I was free to play for 4 years till about 2022 ish, and it was fine for me, I was a bad player playing on bad laptops and just enjoyed the thrill of the game. I got my Spitfire and 109 and was happy! However, when I first got my premium Sea Vixen, I got a little hooked with its broken overpowered status, it’s incredible grinding capabilities… I was finally able to reach top tier! But then the shiny new F-4J UK was announced… I NEED IT. So I brought that and its my most used plane,
However, now I dont really bother with paying for stuff - why is my Gneisenau pre order staring at me 😬 - unless I really want it. In which case I take it, along with any premium time that comes with it. You dont need premium time to progress in the game - until you get to about rank VI then it becomes a necessity if you have any other commitments.
I get really upset at this game sometimes, I yell and scream and ragequit, and I cant afford a premium account if I only play 2 hours a day, so I am mostly F2P now, because of school, however I have gone back to playing for “fun” so it’s not important for me.
I refuse to buy premium time, I despise such sense of obligation.
When I can only play on weekends, that’s 5 days wasted and down the drain that I paid money for.
In OSRS at least, I can buy a bond with the GP I grinded, cancel my sub if I even had one and wasnt just bond-sustaining through bossing and take a break whenever without any sales and long-term subs impacting my decision making (ergo punishing me for not buying half a year at a time on 2 specific days without knowing ahead of time if I even want to play).
However,
I did decide to buy 2 premium planes - one allied, one axis. These are the Mustang MK Ia and Tada’s Ki-61-I Tei.
I bought these planes specifically because they are not more powerful than their tech tree variants while offering excellent economy should I choose to use them and distinctive gameplay compared to each other.
I fly out these planes when I feel like having some cannon-stang vibes or see that most of allies is russia and can’t feel like dealing with yak-3s in my bf109s so I bring ki-61 instead. They bring me ~150-180k SL/90 minute SB match, which more than satisfies me needs of turning my crew slots into expert crews for all the random propeller planes I like flying and to bankroll my attempts to fly expensive to spawn planes.
My only lament with my 2 premium planes is that knowing just how much SL is on the line per useful actions cycle, flying them is less fun than flying my tech tree planes as I’m less keen to take risks and be useful for my team when I’m nearing the end of a UA cycle for that sweet ~5k SL landing bonus to bump income from 25k to 30k.
I mostly play propeller tier Air SB with very rare attempts at trying to enjoy GRB but all the planes just push me back to SB.
I’ve been boycotting giving Gaijin money for quite a while now, just find things you enjoy playing and don’t watch your grind. over the last 2 or 3 months I’ve ground out the JP trees’ Alpha jet TH, F-5A/F5T SCU and im about 1/3rd tru the F-16A OCU using only the F-1, F-5E FCU and a little bit of F-15J(m). entirely done with TT/Squadron planes with no premium time or talismans and with playing other nations and other modes mixed in, you get there, but you with go mad if you keep watching the RP counter… Unlocking mods for new vehicles with out premium time SUCKS though, do the assault arcades then use the booster with what you want to spade and use a back up for it to max the RP if you are in a mode that allows multiple spawns.
Never used premium and won’t anytime soon, tbh I’d rather grind only low tiers and give up on high tiers because they take way too long to grind and don’t seem that much better than low tiers. But hey, that’s my view and I’m just a beginner so…
But yeah, grind gets really slow after rank 5 indeed and it’s not very motivating
When I started playing the game back in 2017 when rank 5 was top tier, the grind wasn’t that bad since I initially only played air and at the time I only bought the soviet p-63 and i believe a week of premium and it took me a while to get the MiG-9 as my first jet solely relying on the p-63 with research handicap.
Now, even with premium the grind itself feels slow mainly in ground, you need like 10 kills+ per game to even get 8k rp on a premium account without a premium vehicle.
Only a few months ago I bought a boat load of premium time on sale and now I have just above 400 days of premium left. But yeah you can say the premium effects have gotten progressively worse since the rewards just keep getting nerfed, especially the SL gains from bombing bases