28 replies to this topic

[Gharet]

I just started playing MWO a couple of days ago. I saw some vague references to the "Premium Account", but couldn't find any information on it. When i finished installing and launching the client, I saw the "Premium Account" label on the bottom of the client, with an "Add Time" button next to it that I COULDN'T CLICK.

So as a brand new player, a couple of things went through my mind:

1. Maybe I can find out what the premium account is and purchase it from my account page on the web. - Nope. Couldn't find what I was looking for
2. I can't click the Add Time button, so maybe the feature isn't supported
3. I see people talking about premium accounts, so they must be active. Since i can't click it and it says "Premium Account", I must have been given a free premium account for a day or two as a new user to try it out. Cool! Bonus XP!

The next day, I finally discovered the "player stats" tab of the match end screen (yea, it took me a while.. lol I noticed that it said "With a Premium Account you could have earned:"

This really confused me now. Clearly I wasn't a premium account, but why couldn't I add time?

Fortunately a bit later I decided to buy a 'Mech with MC, and get a larger package than was needed. It was then, by ACCIDENT mind you, that I discovered I could now add time, and then it added a number of days next to premium account.

As a new player, I would have purchased premium account time a full day earlier (on my first day of play), if I'd been able to figure out at all how to activate it. I have a few suggestions that would help out a lot, and I think any of these would have made it more clear for me


1. Instead of showing "Premium Account" with no days, and an unusable Add Time button with no MC, it should say "Standard Account" when you aren't premium, and the button could instead say "Go Premium"

2. Clicking the Add Time button, if I have no MC, should have sent me directly to an MC purchase page with an explanation. Then I would have bought the MC right then, picked the duration, and went on my way

3. Show "0 days" instead of nothing next to Premium Account if I don't have any days purchased. This give the "Add Time" button context and you don't misinterpret "Premium Account" as just a status


Obviously I'm still a customer, and I finally stumbled my way to it, but I was very frustrated while trying to give you my money. I think that part should be easier for new players

[EyeDie I]

you get 1 free claimable day of premium time.claim it on the download web page(might need to hit download now and stop the DL) in the game, then after its claimed you can activate it on the bottom blue bar of the game.if you check your profile on the web click where it says redeem, that will show if you claimed the prem time.

[Bandaron]

Another new player seconding the confusion felt by the OP about the what and how of premium accounts. In addition, it would be very helpful, I think, to have a mouseover or something explaining what exactly a premium account is and how many MCreds it takes to purchase different quantities of it would be very helpful. Telling me what exactly the rewards for premiumness are, and how much I will have to pay to get it, would seem like the very minimum of self-promotion you would want to be doing

And it seems that if you don't know to redeem your 1 free day of premium time when you first DL the game, you can't get it. If I'm mistaken and there's still a way for me to get it, someone please correct me!

[Recon777]

I have to also echo this, as I started playing 6 days ago and I went through the EXACT SAME experience as the original poster. I could have written that entire post myself. What's really frustrating is that I also read on a different site that if you activate your premium account and then play your first 25 games DURING your free premium day, that you get 50% more cbills for your cadet bonus which amounts to about 4 million extra cbills for free. As it is, I still can't figure out how to claim my free day of premium time.

[Pillager Ale]

yeah, wth! I bought 3 days premium on the sale, thinking I could activate it when I had some time to play, but it looks like it started now??! {Scrap}. That was a total waste. Confusing and stupid

Edited by Pillager Ale, 22 September 2013 - 06:42 PM.

[Geek Verve]

I have to agree with the others. I've been playing for days now, unable to figure out how to upgrade to a "premium" account. I'm still unsure. Does the simple act of purchasing MC give me premium account time?

[Antasius]

I made the mistake of activating my 90 days of premium time on launch day. Yeap, waited a whole year... Now I'm playing Hawken. Ironic

Maybe October will ... I'm finding it hard to be optimistic right now. I hope the new players here are bright eyed and bushy-tailed enough to keep up the MWO spirit. And I hope you get some good answers to your questions. I guess I'm just burnt out right now from all this.

[trucker1227]

i have not tried premium time yet not to sure what its all about but i accomplish this already master on all models on the spider chasis on free to play ........is that cool or what ??

[PSYB0RG]

Yeah, I have to agree - more attention to the UI and UX - although I'm not knocking it - it all looks very pretty and I understand the effort involved, but it's rather confusing for new players - especially considering there's no tutorial unless you hunt one down online.

Also, I purchased a Phoenix Overlord pack, but so far I've seen nothing reflected in my account. I received a receipt, so not sure if I'm awaiting payment processing or what... ?

Some explanation of Cbills, MCreds and generally the way the shop works would be extremely helpful to the new players. I see there are two tabs greyed out at the top of the lobby interface - does that mean they're still in progress?

[Geek Verve]

MWO just seems to do a lot of things differently than the gaming community is used to, it seems. It's like switching from a PC to a Mac or vice versa. At first you think, "This is looney tunes! Nothing makes any sense!" Then, once you get used to the way things are done, you see it actually works pretty well. It's not bad design, it's just different.

This is especially true with the mech lab. It completely baffled me at first, but once I realized you're actually working out of your own garage, and anything you try to equip that you don't already own carries a cost, I think it's actually pretty slick (though it *would* be nice if they could provide more info like ammo totals and such).

[Spidermanfan110]

If you redeem the christmas gift of 7 premium days while you already still have premium time, does this sum up or I should wait till I reach 0? Also: for how long is this goodie?

Cheers from the friendly neighborhood fan

[Coralld]

Spidermanfan110, on 23 December 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

If you redeem the christmas gift of 7 premium days while you already still have premium time, does this sum up or I should wait till I reach 0? Also: for how long is this goodie?

Cheers from the friendly neighborhood fan

It adds an extra 7 days of premium time that you can activate at any time. So say you have 10 days of Premium time and then redeem the christmas premium, you can either active that extra 7 days or wait after your first 10 runs out. As for how long you have that premium time, you have it indefinitely until you activate it.

[MountainCopper]

I am not new to the game, but I'm quite certain there is no premium account. There is premium time.

How much you get with a fresh account, I don't know... but normally you have to purchase premium time with Mechwarrior credits (MC).
Or you might get some premium time days with a bigger purchase, like the founders, phoenix or clan packages.

You get to choose when to activate the premium time. You don't have to activate premium time, you can store it for as long you want. You don't have to use up all your premium time before purchasing more or fear it gets activated when purchasing more.
If you have two or more premium times, I don't know if you are asked to activate the 2nd time, or if the whole (added up) premium time is activated when you click the button.

But I think, you can't see how much time you have until you activate it. That's the knowledge I have about that topic...

If something I said is wrong, please correct me.

Edited by GoldenFleece, 07 February 2014 - 02:14 AM.

[Pinko Zinko]

GoldenFleece, on 24 December 2013 - 08:30 AM, said:

I am not new to the game, but I'm quite certain there is no premium account. There is premium time.

How much you get with a fresh account, I don't know... but normally you have to purchase premium time with Mechwarrior credits (MC).
Or you might get some premium time days with a bigger purchase, like the founders, phoenix or clan packages.

You get to choose when to activate the premium time. You don't have to activate premium time, you can store it for as long you want. You don't have to use up all your premium time before purchasing more or fear it gets activated when purchasing more.
If you have two or more premium times, I don't know if you are asked to activate the 2nd time, or if the whole (added up) premium time is activated when you click the button.

But, I think you can't see how much time you have until you activate it. That's the knowledge I have about that topic...

If something I said is wrong, please correct me.

I think part of the confusion is regarding how you exchange the MC's for premium time. For that, there's an "Add Time" button at the bottom of the main game screen.

[PSYB0RG]

Geek Verve, on 30 November 2013 - 09:33 AM, said:

MWO just seems to do a lot of things differently than the gaming community is used to, it seems. It's like switching from a PC to a Mac or vice versa. At first you think, "This is looney tunes! Nothing makes any sense!" Then, once you get used to the way things are done, you see it actually works pretty well. It's not bad design, it's just different.

This is especially true with the mech lab. It completely baffled me at first, but once I realized you're actually working out of your own garage, and anything you try to equip that you don't already own carries a cost, I think it's actually pretty slick (though it *would* be nice if they could provide more info like ammo totals and such).

Well like I said, it's pretty, and it does the job - but part of the modern understanding of UI design is that you make things as easily discoverable for the user as is possible. If it's not obvious, you should offer clues and cues to promt them what to do next. Personally I'm a game UI designer, and I'm working on some horrendously complex games, so to me it's pretty apparent... and even though I'm used to working on thousands of different interfaces, MWO does not do well when it comes to ease of for new players. Also, the warning messages are a right pain and not usually necessary. I can't launch my mech without an engine anyways, so why warn me about it, when I'm not warned that I'm carrying my quad AC5 Jaager into battle without a single round of ammo. Things like this you see... It's a difficult job to map out and account for all these user interactions and confusions, but it's still a requirement of modern day software in almost every case.

Granted I've had the game a while now, played the hell out of it and learned a lot from other players, so I pretty much understand how it all works, but that shouldn't have to be the case in order to use the game from the get-go.

I guess the efforts have gone towards the version 2 UI, so this thread should hopefully become void once it's released.

Edited by PSYB0RG, 09 January 2014 - 06:14 AM.

[j3rf]

I also strongly agree. You guys are LOSING MONEY on this. Every hurdle between the user and payment is revenue lost, just ask Amazon. Honestly, i want to buy premium ime, but i can't quite figure it out. I'd like to know ahead of time, how much MC for how much time, but i can't find it. These things need to be easily discoverable, with 1-2 click payment options if you guys want to really rake in the dough.

[Tracy Mac]

Not to whip the horse, but i still havent figured out how to add time. so if you would repeat it slowly for us old folks id thank you...

[Fatal25]

I totally agree. When I started playing a few months ago I had to turn to the forums to ask what premium time was and how much it cost for various times. You would think in a free to play game they would very clearly tell you how to spend money on upgrades.

[Colonel Fubar]

It is no surprise New Mech Warrior, But what really is hard to understand is why the MWO Think Tank keeps the premium time meter running even when a pilot is not in game. Their goal is to make money and yet they can't figure out that they would triple the premium time sales if they just turned the Clock off when we are not in game. But Hey it insults common sense to understand the how and why of the PGI Universe.

[Dread Render]

Okay... this thred started in 2013. I have been playing over a month now. I have Premium Time I am using now from a Clan Mech Purchas. And I feel like a dumbass because i have to ask this... "What Is Premium Time ?
Do I get 2x credits? 3x, 4x, 5x ? Do I get any extra MC? Any Extra GXP? or just the in game money?
What this game needs is a manual. We should not have to go to a Forum and beg for Information.
I mean... Please.