23 replies to this topic

[Suko]

I was stoked to hear we'd soon be able to use our banked premium time in incriments of 1 month chunks. It sounded like this was something that would be available very soon. I'm not trying to sound impatient, but it's been about two weeks since then...when can we expect this "feature" to be added?

[Andross Deverow]

Touchy subject.... Not gonna happen the way most of us want it too more than likely, sad really. I have a ton built up but hate to turn it on as I have a life and it would tick away while im working. Actually a pretty crappy model. 3 day increments would be awesome but i dont hold my breath.

Regards

Edited by Andross Deverow, 22 September 2014 - 12:12 PM.

[LauLiao]

Andross Deverow, on 22 September 2014 - 12:09 PM, said:

Touchy subject.... Not gonna happen the way most of us want it too more than likely, sad really. I have a ton built up but hate to turn it on as I have a life and it would tick away while im working. Actually a pretty crappy model. 3 day increments would be awesome but i dont hold my breath.

Regards

Actually Russ said 1 Month incriments if I remember correctly. Also, I believe Russ was implying that this would be out sometime around the time that CW launches, so couple of months more or less.

OP: General rule of thumb, whenever something is "announced" it almost ALWAYS takes AT LEAST a month to get into the game.

[Andross Deverow]

One month increments is still too harsh. At least let us use it a few days at a time, like I said work is something alot of the player base has to do. Why cant they accomodate that? My 3500 hours will remain turned off until they get a bit more reasonable, I hate watching money tic away.

Regards

[LauLiao]

Andross Deverow, on 22 September 2014 - 12:37 PM, said:

One month increments is still too harsh. At least let us use it a few days at a time, like I said work is something alot of the player base has to do. Why cant they accomodate that? My 3500 hours will remain turned off until they get a bit more reasonable, I hate watching money tic away.

Regards

Considering that it was never PGI's intention to allow people to bank their premium time and the only reason that feature is in the game at all is because of a SNAFU with the Founder's packages, I'd say them allowing us to break it up into months is very fair. They could just tell everyone they're SOL and that everyone's banked premium will start on X day. Remember, banking premium was just a short-term problem fix, not an intended feature.

[TLBFestus]

I love quoting this guy;

TLBFestus, on 07 September 2014 - 09:22 AM, said:

Yeah, no way that they would sell premium time in it's current form as an "only active when online" function. As someone pointed out that is 168 hours of game time for a week, and about 700 hours per month. Buy one month and you've got 700 hours to burn.

If they did that they would have to step up "Mechs for Sale" production to ludicrous levels (This..is ...a ....joke)!


Now.....if they wanted to offer different Premium time Options it could look like this;

• Regular Premium time as it currently exists, continual run down to zero in blocks of 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year
  
• "Online Only" Active Premium time which only runs when logged in. Naturally it would sell for the same price per block, but the hours you get would be drastically REDUCED.

Just for arguments sake, assume that the average player plays 2 hours a night, every night. That's 14 hours a week. On average there are 4.2 weeks in a month, which is 58.8 hours a month, or 705.6 hours a year.

Basing this on 25000 MC, for $100 (best deal) , meaning 250 MC per DOLLAR and then round everything to make it easy and they could sell "Online" Premium time for;

2 hours for 250 MC or $1 (equivalent to 1 day non-stop)

15 hours for 1850 MC or $7.50 (equivalent to 7 days non-stop)

60 hours for 7500 MC or $30 (equivalent to 1 month non-stop)

180 hours for 22,500 MC or $90 (equivalent to 3 months non-stop)

750 hours for 40,000 MC or $175 (equivalent to 1 year non-stop)

For the math geeks in the crowd, these are ROUGH figures based on 125 MC per Hour, based on 2 hours per day playing time, and then tweaked a little for "volume discount" effects.

I'm sure that these numbers would need some serious adjustment by someone with more math skills than I , but at least it puts things into some perspective and acts as a jumping off point for discussion.

Obviously I don't know if 2 hours per day is a good average or not, for some it will be too little and others too much, but therein lies the benefit of offering the option to buy it in the current "always active" blocks if you are a hardcore, live in your moms basement, wife divorces you and you don't even notice it kinda guy.

Assuming the numbers are tweaked correctly and they would need some good statistics, which I'm sure PGI has, to tweak them appropriately, they would not lose any money.

People would have MORE options, and PGI would likely have more income.

[Khobai]

You should not be able to bank premium time at all. Thats silly.

Your premium time should also not tick down when youre not logged in. Thats also silly.

At the very least, if premium time is going to tick down when youre not playing, you should get additional premium subscription benefits; like being able to use any trial mech, being able to use any color/camo, getting a discount on consumables, premium-only reward mechs, etc... as long as your subscription is active.

Edited by Khobai, 22 September 2014 - 02:06 PM.

[Chemie]

Soon

[LauLiao]

Khobai, on 22 September 2014 - 01:58 PM, said:

You should not be able to bank premium time at all. Thats silly.

Your premium time should also not tick down when youre not logged in. Thats also silly.

At the very least, if premium time is going to tick down when youre not playing, you should get additional premium subscription benefits; like being able to use any trial mech, being able to use any color/camo, getting a discount on consumables, premium-only reward mechs, etc... as long as your subscription is active.

The pricing is based on the idea that it's constantly ticking. Let's take the month. It's priced to be a calendar month, NOT 720 hours (roughly the number of hours in a month. Let's say the average player plays for 4 hours a day every single day (this is being VERY liberal, as most players probably play less than that even) Your "Month" of premium time if it didn't tick down constantly will now last you approximately SIX MONTHS. So if they're not going to have it tick down when you're not playing, the other options is charging 6 times more for it.

[stjobe]

Khobai, on 22 September 2014 - 01:58 PM, said:

You should not be able to bank premium time at all. Thats silly.

Your premium time should also not tick down when youre not logged in. Thats also silly.

At the very least, if premium time is going to tick down when youre not playing, you should get additional premium subscription benefits; like being able to use any trial mech, being able to use any color/camo, getting a discount on consumables, premium-only reward mechs, etc... as long as your subscription is active.

Here's the rub: I have 5,256 hours of premium time banked. At 2 hours per day, every day, that's over seven years. Ticking 24/7, it's still 219 days (seven months).

I understand that PGI doesn't want me to have premium bonuses for seven years, but letting me activate it in chunks (1-day, 2-day, 7-day, 30-day) I could probably still string it out for a few years before they can get any new premium time purchases from me.

On the other hand, with the current system I'm unlikely to activate it, and I sure as hell am not going to buy any more when I have seven months already... so it's a lose-lose situation for PGI.

Edited by stjobe, 22 September 2014 - 02:18 PM.

[Mawai]

stjobe, on 22 September 2014 - 02:16 PM, said:

Here's the rub: I have 5,256 hours of premium time banked. At 2 hours per day, every day, that's over seven years. Ticking 24/7, it's still 219 days (seven months).

I understand that PGI doesn't want me to have premium bonuses for seven years, but letting me activate it in chunks (1-day, 2-day, 7-day, 30-day) I could probably still string it out for a few years before they can get any new premium time purchases from me.

On the other hand, with the current system I'm unlikely to activate it, and I sure as hell am not going to buy any more when I have seven months already... so it's a lose-lose situation for PGI.

Actually, in your case it won't matter to PGI no matter what they do. They don't have any upside for you since you won't be buying any more anyway.

If they break spending of premium time into chunks then you will not likely need to buy anymore over the lifetime of the game and if they don't break it up you won't spend it and won't buy any more anyway. So, no matter what, within any reasonable time scale - you won't be buying any more.

If they want to let folks run premium time in month intervals ... I think that is really generous of them and I will use it at some point for the 2 months I think I have banked ... but anything smaller and premium time is likely to last much much longer than the time frame listed and it will hurt revenues.

[LauLiao]

Mawai, on 22 September 2014 - 02:27 PM, said:

Actually, in your case it won't matter to PGI no matter what they do. They don't have any upside for you since you won't be buying any more anyway.

If they break spending of premium time into chunks then you will not likely need to buy anymore over the lifetime of the game and if they don't break it up you won't spend it and won't buy any more anyway. So, no matter what, within any reasonable time scale - you won't be buying any more.

If they want to let folks run premium time in month intervals ... I think that is really generous of them and I will use it at some point for the 2 months I think I have banked ... but anything smaller and premium time is likely to last much much longer than the time frame listed and it will hurt revenues.

I myself have something like 6 months saved up. When they didn't let me break it up into chunks I would think of a reason to use it, (i.e. Phoenix mechs came out, this will really help level them faster!) but then I'd second guess myself (Well, it won't take THAT long to level these mechs, maybe I should wait for...) But I will definitely do Month chunks. Probably one when CW comes out, one if they release another IS package, maybe if I decide to go for Wave II, etc.

[Moonlander]

Khobai, on 22 September 2014 - 01:58 PM, said:

You should not be able to bank premium time at all. Thats silly.

Your premium time should also not tick down when youre not logged in. Thats also silly.

At the very least, if premium time is going to tick down when youre not playing, you should get additional premium subscription benefits; like being able to use any trial mech, being able to use any color/camo, getting a discount on consumables, premium-only reward mechs, etc... as long as your subscription is active.

This so much. I was amazed when I first learned my premium time kept ticking down when I wasn't logged in. Made no sense to me personally. Thankfully, I'm almost always playing so I use the majority of it. Also, I think premium time should include more perks like mentioned above.

+1

[Russ Bullock]

Moonlander, on 22 September 2014 - 04:07 PM, said:

This so much. I was amazed when I first learned my premium time kept ticking down when I wasn't logged in. Made no sense to me personally. Thankfully, I'm almost always playing so I use the majority of it. Also, I think premium time should include more perks like mentioned above.

+1

Well keep in mind this is the same way WoT does it.

As to the one month chunks I will walk over to Jon's desk and ask right now. He has been busy getting the A la Carte system up and running for Wave 2. Once that is done I imagine it is less than one day for him to get it flipped. When it is I will make sure an announcement post goes up.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Id like for someone to be able to give their time away XD

Like a friend who has 8 months and wont ever come back to the game

This topic was talked TO DEATH during beta and the people most wanting this feature were active military. They get shipped out and their time ticks down when theyre gone. Nice to see this is in consideration now.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 22 September 2014 - 04:24 PM.

[Toothless]

Russ Bullock, on 22 September 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

Well keep in mind this is the same way WoT does it.

As to the one month chunks I will walk over to Jon's desk and ask right now. He has been busy getting the A la Carte system up and running for Wave 2. Once that is done I imagine it is less than one day for him to get it flipped. When it is I will make sure an announcement post goes up.

Dude you've been on fire with the replies lately, keep it up.

[Innocent]

Russ Bullock, on 22 September 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

Well keep in mind this is the same way WoT does it.

As to the one month chunks I will walk over to Jon's desk and ask right now. He has been busy getting the A la Carte system up and running for Wave 2. Once that is done I imagine it is less than one day for him to get it flipped. When it is I will make sure an announcement post goes up.

I hope that wave 2 a la cart includes a wave 1 upgrade option.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Russ Bullock, on 22 September 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

Well keep in mind this is the same way WoT does it.

As to the one month chunks I will walk over to Jon's desk and ask right now. He has been busy getting the A la Carte system up and running for Wave 2. Once that is done I imagine it is less than one day for him to get it flipped. When it is I will make sure an announcement post goes up.

I was going to say this. Virtually every game that is similar to MWO does this. 30 days premium time is 30 24-hour days, not 720 game hours. If it was game hours, it would be sold in hours not days.

Honestly I will be the first one in line to claim PGI is greedy because your prices on cosmetic items are ridiculous and the C-bill cost for module which are items that should be treated as being just as common as mounting a PPC are even more ridiculous. However, your premium time is spot on what others are charging and you pretty much get the same benefit too.

Now honestly, I would love to see the shorter duration 3 day and 7 day packs be a bit closer in per day cost to the 30 day pack but other than that there isn't much to complain about as far as premium goes.

[A Man In A Can]

Russ Bullock, on 22 September 2014 - 04:13 PM, said:

Viktor Drake, on 22 September 2014 - 05:23 PM, said:

30 days premium time is 30 24-hour days, not 720 game hours.

I definitely vouch for this idea. Breaking the time into bundles of days able to be activated individually adds much-needed value to purchasing time without changing a thing about the price or the total time offered, or the way premium time is promoted through current or future packages.

If this were put in place, I would have no issues buying premium time outside of promotional packs, and keeping my pile of "days" well stocked.

[Tastian]

I've never played any subscription game that allows increments in less then 1 month increments. Can anyone tell me differently?