Alright, how much is it going to cost me?
So you’ve run through the world, completed a ton of missions with your buddies, and now you want to upgrade your battleframe. This is a F2P game though, so what are you going to have to buy to do that? Luckily, nothing. In fact while other F2P games allow you to purchase resources with real world cash, Firefall doesn’t. The game’s main resource, crystite, isn’t actually purchasable in that manner.
Instead red beans (which is perhaps the best virtual currency name I’ve ever seen) are used for cosmetic purchases, of which, there are a lot. Hats, glasses, colors, paint jobs, icons, and more are all available to customize your battleframes and if you join an army, your army. You can also purchase exclusive versions of vehicles, pets, and other gimmicky items.
All that being said, you can actually purchase battleframes. I know, I know, I said you have access to all five classes - which is true. But what you don’t have access to are specialize versions of each class. For instance the Assault class has a variation called Omnidyne-M Tigerclaw which is lighter, but more defensively oriented battleframe. You don’t HAVE to spend cash to get these, and in fact, you unlock these using pilot tokens which are earned from advancing your battleframe, but these tokens come with the real world transactions.
In terms of costs, Firefall seems pretty fair. For $20 you can get 20 Pilot Tokens (to purchase two custom battleframes), 40 Red Beans (varies depending on items, but enough to customize your frames), a permanent 5% XP boost and 3 usable 1 hour XP boosts. There are other tiers but that’s the basic entry level cost and seems more than fair. If you’re adventurous you can spend $100 to unlock all frames, get 250 red beans, 10% XP boost and some other goodies.