Lionhead ventures into the free-to-play space with Fable Legends
Fable Legends will be free-to-play when it launches on PC and Xbox One.
According to Lionhead, the one versus four cross-platform title borrows from MOBA games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends as it will contain free, rotating heroes which will be added to a roster for a two week period.
Once the free hero is off the roster, the only way to continue playing the character is to buy it using earned, in-game coins or real money.
You can always wait for the hero to reappear on the roster, and saved experience and earned items - just as if you purchased it - will carry back over.
Players who wish to play a villain instead can obtain free creature which are native to the particular questline in its story arc. Should the player return to those particular story arcs, any non-native creatures they wish to use will need to be purchased. Again, through in-game currency or real money.
Chests will be found during gameplay and come in three tiers. Each will contain random items such as armor, silver weapons and other items. These can also be purchased in town using in-game currency or real money.
Additional creatures, heroes, creatures, quests and villains will be added to Fable Legends in seasons, and all players will have access to Season One.
Lionhead told Eurogamer players will be able to play the entire game free of charge, and no areas in the game will be behind a pay wall nor contain a time limit.
"There are free-to-play games like World of Tanks out there that are very much a pay-to-win kind of experience," Fable Legends director David Eckelberry told Eurogamer.
"For me the better ones for the customers are the ones where you get to enjoy all of the content without paying money. And then you pay if you want to. I want them to have such a fun experience that some percentage of them go, okay I'm going to buy a hero that just came out, or I'll get a new hairstyle and a cool-looking hood.
"That's the kind of feeling we want to generate in our players where, we've offered them such a good time that they're spending time in it that they feel valuable."
Eckelberry said it will take players around 14 days to earn enough in-game silver to buy a hero, so patience will pay off.
"Microsoft isn't about extracting the last nickel of players, or something silly like that," he continued. "We want to create a great community of players that is playing for a long period of time. That doesn't work if you buy something and regret it a day later. That just doesn't make any sense.
"Even though most of our players will never pay anything, that's still immensely valuable to us to have players playing on Windows 10 and Xbox One."
Lionhead has updated its webpage which contains more information on the free-to-play title.
Fable Legends is slated for release sometime this year on both Windows and Xbox One.