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New Player/customer Feedback (Frustration W/cbills)


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#1 Bitey

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 12:31 AM

So I'm brand new to the MWO community and I have to say I love it except for one major flaw. To start with the positive I have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of playing my first week. I can say I have nothing but praise for the experience with the game and community. My first hours were spent learning, creating, and customizing 2 wonderful (elited)Jennar builds.They're a blast to utilize around the battlefield, but as man who loves his diversity I knew I couldn't stop with just one or two primary mechs. So I decided to fork over some money turn it into mechbays and start the process of branching out. I set my eyes on a few new classes, mechs, and builds only to suddenly feel pressuring weight bare on me. The amount of time, effort, and energy it takes to earn Cbills is outrageously frustrating.

The thanks and reward I get for investing as a first time customer chipping in 15$ seems rather small for a f2p title. While I could purchase premium time it feels wasted when there are so many choices of simply additional mechbays, interesting hero mechs, and even the aesthetic trinkets. A major gripe I have with the premium time setup is if I'm not there to use all the full 24/72/168 hours of premium I'd be wasting those MC on a reward that expires with or without me. It's a terrible feeling when I could be missing out on millions(of cbills) for just sleeping, eating, playing a different game, or just plain working.

I'm mostly pleading because of the frustration of how many cbills it costs to make simple adjustments. One major example is the inability to convert from standard armor and to endosteel after purchasing the upgrade. The fact that I need to continuously spend money on always upgrading double heatsinks between mechs even of the same type is insanity since it's just an extra 1.5 million that must be spent.The game makes it feel like I'm always climbing a neverending mountain of work to just for trying true customization and creativity.

If I could just ask for two simple changes is to overhaul the pricing system as quickly as possible and give something towards people who pay into the game.[Redacted] I love this game, I truly love the community, and I'd just like to have alittle bit more freedom when it comes to creativity.

Tldr: I love the community, I love the game, I love mechwarrior. I hate cbill costs/grind, I wish I could get something extra for being a first time customer besides just MC.

Edited by John Wolf, 04 February 2015 - 08:43 AM.
Don't encourage CoC abuse


#2 jaxjace

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 12:36 AM

Google, smurfy mechlab, it saved me a lot of cbills.

#3 aniviron

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 12:47 AM

Seems like PGI would be better off dropping prices to get more people to spend. Better to have 100 people spend $10 than 10 spend $100, people who spend money are more likely to stick around.

#4 HlynkaCG

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 01:04 AM

I sympathise, and for what it is worth, improving the new player experience has been stated to be the Dev's top priority once the voip and faction chat systems go online.

till then, stay strong Mechwarrior, and welcome to the game. ;)

#5 TheCaptainJZ

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 02:15 AM

The beginning is the hardest because you have to spend so much to aquire equipment and weapons. After awhile though, you'll have a lot that you can move from one to another. Some tips on generating income: Find a mech and build that you really enjoy playing and you'll probably make more money in. Focus on upgrading just one mech at a time. Feel free to experiment with different weapons. Don't worry about whether your build is "optimal" or "competitive." Find what works well for you and what you have the most fun in. The grind won't feel like a grind if you are having fun. There are ways to get some expensive tech like XL engines cheaper by buying a mech that comes with it. Depending on your goals, something like that might work for you. http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/ is an invaluable resource for showing all mech variants in the game as well as cost. Seriously, everything is listed on there.

#6 mailin

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 06:55 AM

As tempting as it may be, don't sell anything. You'll only get 1/2 price for any item you sell back and if you change your mind later, you'll have to buy it for full price.

The C-bill grind is how PGI gets players to keep playing. Once you've been playing a while though, you will have so many c-bills you won't know what to do with them all. Stick with it, and use that Smurfy link. It's an invaluable website.

Buying a hero mech for MC will help with the C-bill grind. And heroes don't expire.

See you on the battlefield.

#7 Koniving

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 07:34 AM

I feel it is only because it seems like all the upgrades are required. In the source material, the difference between standard heatsinks and doubles is relatively minor. Yes, doubles allow for hotter builds, but they aren't required because in comparison we fire 3 to 29 times faster than the source material with all the heat and damage front loaded (as opposed to the fluff, where an AC/20 can be from 4 to 100 shots to do 1 rating of 20 damage and 7 heat).

XL engines? Supposed to be a god awful idea, but in many cases are just fine here as the lack of speed with standard engines is awful. (This is due to the excessive freedom in engine sizes we get; an Atlas has the sizes 200, 300, and 400 available and that's it. A Shadowhawk would have 110, 165, 220, 275, 330 and 385. A Jenner would have 70, 105, 140, 175, 210, 245, 280, 315, 350, and 385 available).

Were none of that the case, the grind is very simple and dirt cheap. The super powerful over the top builds would be obscured behind a huge repair and rearm wall that would make them extremely rare. Then again the full costs of mechs would also be around. The full price of the Atlas K is 22 million. The Orion 3M is over 16 million. The Cataphract 3D is an ungodly price (and pales into worthless obscurity against the Cataphract 3L). And while the Raven 3L is an ungodly price, the Raven 4X is simply superior in every feasible way (why get a 50 ton Centurion CN9-A, when a Raven 4X can brawl that much better in every aspect except punching?)

But alas, this game was designed without preserving the origins. The first change was how heat works, then how weapons work, then... well it just went downhill.

Now if you ever think the grind is bad, just remember that if the game did keep the origins intact, defeat by engine destruction with an XL-totting assault would cost an excess of 12 million cbills just for the XL 300 engine on that King Crab and nothing else. Your Jenner? About 3,500,000 cbills (think it's less than that though) for a similar but incompatible XL 300 engine (your XL 300 will not work in the Atlas, and vice versa). The queues would be filled with lights and mediums with the somewhat frequent heavies and the ultra rare assault mech at 5% or less for the financial elite.

I suppose in the end, there'd be a grind regardless of how it is done. Regardless of if it was free to play or not. Of course if it was not F2P and done to the origins, you'd spend most of your time collecting parts from dead mechs rather than buying them from the stores and after half-baked fixing them they would suffer from degraded performance. All the while you will be earning paltry sums of money ranging from 75,000 to 150,000... and dealing with that while enduring full price repair and rearm.

Yeah... Short of just giving you the stuff, there'd be a grind regardless.
*Opens the console.*
player.additem 00000f 5000000000000000

There. Grind skipped.
(Any Besthesda game, gives the player that number of 'gold' or bottlecaps. In case if no one recognizes it.)

Edited by Koniving, 25 January 2015 - 09:42 AM.


#8 Vlad Striker

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 08:53 AM

I do not notice huge amount of grinding at this game. Just do your job right and money will come.

#9 Rogue Jedi

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 09:37 AM

View Postmailin, on 25 January 2015 - 06:55 AM, said:

As tempting as it may be, don't sell anything. You'll only get 1/2 price for any item you sell back and if you change your mind later, you'll have to buy it for full price.

there are a few exceptions:

if you have a Mech are are sure you will never again want to use it (e.g. the JR7-K, vs the JR7-D, the D has 2 missile hard points to 1 on the K, no reason to keep the K unless you want its quirks) you may as well sell it, if you do sell a Mech do not sell components with the Mech.
after the quirk pass there are a few Mechs I am considering rebuying (FS9-H, FS9-S, TDR-5SS)

never sell XL engines (at 4-6 million to buy they are always worth keeping), and only sell weapons and standard engines it you are sure you will never need it (I got to about 100 spare medium lasers at one point, so kept about 40 sold the rest)

#10 Sylonce

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 09:44 AM

As a bit of a fresh newbie myself, I can see where the OP is coming from. Myself, I tended to manage really just one mech. I spent a little money on my favorite, tuned it up, and then just stockpiled the rest of my c-bills. In the end, c-bills didn't really matter too much for me.

Now that the cadet bonuses are out of the way, the C-Bills do seem to come up rather slow. I played three or so games yesterday, won them all, and I barely saw my money pool change. I even have premium time (which I don't know where exactly I got it from... maybe from my 'mech, or some weekend freebee).

I read on the MWO wiki that if you run 1 hour of gameplay, that's about 700,000 c-bills (assuming you are not running a hero mech or premium). But that's also 12 games or so. Maybe I'm just getting old, but 12 games is a lot of grind ;)

Edited by Sylonce, 25 January 2015 - 09:45 AM.


#11 Bitey

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 05:57 PM

The main thing that I find most frustratining is that I did infact maximize pretty well from the start with the jenners I use. It's starting the jounrey towards playing mutliple mechs that is pretty daunting. I loved the freedom of mechwarrior when you could mix and match parts with varitey. It's been pretty demoralizing when every mech always needs double heat sinks even when purchase the same chassis. Another big gripe was I found out an intresting build with Standard armor, only to have to pay more money to try it out after too quickly hopping onto endosteel.

It just feels like there should be just a tad bit more given to the players per game and a revamp of the upgrading hurdels. That and I would have liked having alittle something extra for being a first time purchaser into the title. Cheaper/more premium time costs would be a blessing. I just want alittle something extra to help get going besides burning the rest of my MC on a preimum time benefit that I feel wouldn't be used very cost effectively.

Also to all the vets telling me about Smurfy, I was lucky enough to have established friends who gave me tons of builds and information to help get started. So I was lucky enough to have plans when I started! Thanks for alot of the community information and I hope the developers take a look at my small complaints!

Also about Smurfy, I was super lucky to have friends who've been playing the last two years help me plot out the routes for my current and future mechs.

#12 mailin

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 06:28 PM

One thing that you can pretty much sell with reckless abandon is single heat sinks. And TBH, the economy is A LOT better than what it was like when you had to pay to repair and rearm your mech. There were times I would have to do 6 drops in trials just to be able to afford fielding a viable mech. Oh, and then we used to have to walk to school barefoot in the snow . . . uphill . . . both ways.

#13 JC Daxion

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Posted 25 January 2015 - 07:24 PM

Paying for Premium helps a ton.. and as a new player, after playing around with mechs, getting those starter packs is a good idea.. They typically have a champion, and a hero, and another nice mech.. Typically only one of them doesn't have upgrades, as champions, and heroes tend to have upgrades, and nice engines.. Basically ya end up paying 15-30 bucks as a starter kit, (like buying most games these days)

That will give you a big jump.. they also have sales on premium time, I wish i grabbed the 50% of a year, but i missed it :( But for the best back for your buck, i find the day passes to be worth it for casual players.. it is 250 MC, and 24 hours.. So grab a hero, pick up a day pass, and then inject yourself with caffeine and play till your eyes fall out of your head.. Do that a few times a month and you can really boost your income.

That said, I really wish they sold some 3 hour and 6 hour passes. maybe like 100 and 175 respectively, though not sure how that would effect the 250 day pass.. But hey, they could always try it for a bit see what happens :)

But hey, i feel ya, i have been playing for almost 2 years now.. I play a few days a week, and have about 40 mechs now.. (now i need to add modules, and engines to all of um so i can stop swapping parts..) Maybe 3-4 years i will be good..

Edited by JC Daxion, 25 January 2015 - 07:33 PM.


#14 5LeafClover

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Posted 26 January 2015 - 11:28 AM

I fully empathise, though am now used to it (I've been broken ;) ).

In other F2P games (e.g. WoT), there are small cost steps to progress through the first few tiers/chassis, keeping you motivated. In MWO, if anything it's the other way round. You are able to earn slightly more after mastering your first couple of chassis, however the cost of investing in a given triplet of new mechs is the same, whether you new or a veteren.

#15 HARDKOR

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Posted 26 January 2015 - 12:21 PM

Get the raven master pack(there is one, right?) and use it to make mad cash. If there isn't one yet, get Cicada, Hunchie, Centurion, or Firestarter mastery pack.

#16 Mogney

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Posted 26 January 2015 - 12:43 PM

For your next chassis, choose one that has a good hero variant. (sorry the Jenner Oxide is pretty bad)

The $30 cost of a hero mech may seem high, but with a 30% cbill bonus it is invaluable over the long haul, provided of course you get one you really enjoy playing. I bought a Stalker Misery pretty early after starting this game, and its still my favorite mech, and when I need cbills I just run it for a few days and they really grind up.

IMO the best hero mechs are the Stalker Misery and the Griffin Sparky.

If you are absolutely set on sticking with lights I would recommned the Firestarter Ember. THe Ember is pretty good, but sadly it is currently the 4th best Firestarter. (not saying Ember is bad, just saying that Firestarters are really good)

Do your homework before buying mechs, they are expensive and a mistake can be reallly heartbreaking.

Having multiple accounts as you suggested is rough, because of the weekend events. Those are generally pretty hard to do in the timespan provided, and you will end up wanting to do them on all your accounts. Those events are often a greatway to get a few free mechbays and alot of extra cbills.

#17 jaxjace

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Posted 26 January 2015 - 07:53 PM

View PostKoniving, on 25 January 2015 - 07:34 AM, said:

I feel it is only because it seems like all the upgrades are required. In the source material, the difference between standard heatsinks and doubles is relatively minor. Yes, doubles allow for hotter builds, but they aren't required because in comparison we fire 3 to 29 times faster than the source material with all the heat and damage front loaded (as opposed to the fluff, where an AC/20 can be from 4 to 100 shots to do 1 rating of 20 damage and 7 heat).

XL engines? Supposed to be a god awful idea, but in many cases are just fine here as the lack of speed with standard engines is awful. (This is due to the excessive freedom in engine sizes we get; an Atlas has the sizes 200, 300, and 400 available and that's it. A Shadowhawk would have 110, 165, 220, 275, 330 and 385. A Jenner would have 70, 105, 140, 175, 210, 245, 280, 315, 350, and 385 available).

Were none of that the case, the grind is very simple and dirt cheap. The super powerful over the top builds would be obscured behind a huge repair and rearm wall that would make them extremely rare. Then again the full costs of mechs would also be around. The full price of the Atlas K is 22 million. The Orion 3M is over 16 million. The Cataphract 3D is an ungodly price (and pales into worthless obscurity against the Cataphract 3L). And while the Raven 3L is an ungodly price, the Raven 4X is simply superior in every feasible way (why get a 50 ton Centurion CN9-A, when a Raven 4X can brawl that much better in every aspect except punching?)

But alas, this game was designed without preserving the origins. The first change was how heat works, then how weapons work, then... well it just went downhill.

Now if you ever think the grind is bad, just remember that if the game did keep the origins intact, defeat by engine destruction with an XL-totting assault would cost an excess of 12 million cbills just for the XL 300 engine on that King Crab and nothing else. Your Jenner? About 3,500,000 cbills (think it's less than that though) for a similar but incompatible XL 300 engine (your XL 300 will not work in the Atlas, and vice versa). The queues would be filled with lights and mediums with the somewhat frequent heavies and the ultra rare assault mech at 5% or less for the financial elite.

I suppose in the end, there'd be a grind regardless of how it is done. Regardless of if it was free to play or not. Of course if it was not F2P and done to the origins, you'd spend most of your time collecting parts from dead mechs rather than buying them from the stores and after half-baked fixing them they would suffer from degraded performance. All the while you will be earning paltry sums of money ranging from 75,000 to 150,000... and dealing with that while enduring full price repair and rearm.

Yeah... Short of just giving you the stuff, there'd be a grind regardless.
*Opens the console.*
player.additem 00000f 5000000000000000

There. Grind skipped.
(Any Besthesda game, gives the player that number of 'gold' or bottlecaps. In case if no one recognizes it.)

View PostKoniving, on 25 January 2015 - 07:34 AM, said:

I feel it is only because it seems like all the upgrades are required. In the source material, the difference between standard heatsinks and doubles is relatively minor. Yes, doubles allow for hotter builds, but they aren't required because in comparison we fire 3 to 29 times faster than the source material with all the heat and damage front loaded (as opposed to the fluff, where an AC/20 can be from 4 to 100 shots to do 1 rating of 20 damage and 7 heat).

XL engines? Supposed to be a god awful idea, but in many cases are just fine here as the lack of speed with standard engines is awful. (This is due to the excessive freedom in engine sizes we get; an Atlas has the sizes 200, 300, and 400 available and that's it. A Shadowhawk would have 110, 165, 220, 275, 330 and 385. A Jenner would have 70, 105, 140, 175, 210, 245, 280, 315, 350, and 385 available).

Were none of that the case, the grind is very simple and dirt cheap. The super powerful over the top builds would be obscured behind a huge repair and rearm wall that would make them extremely rare. Then again the full costs of mechs would also be around. The full price of the Atlas K is 22 million. The Orion 3M is over 16 million. The Cataphract 3D is an ungodly price (and pales into worthless obscurity against the Cataphract 3L). And while the Raven 3L is an ungodly price, the Raven 4X is simply superior in every feasible way (why get a 50 ton Centurion CN9-A, when a Raven 4X can brawl that much better in every aspect except punching?)

But alas, this game was designed without preserving the origins. The first change was how heat works, then how weapons work, then... well it just went downhill.

Now if you ever think the grind is bad, just remember that if the game did keep the origins intact, defeat by engine destruction with an XL-totting assault would cost an excess of 12 million cbills just for the XL 300 engine on that King Crab and nothing else. Your Jenner? About 3,500,000 cbills (think it's less than that though) for a similar but incompatible XL 300 engine (your XL 300 will not work in the Atlas, and vice versa). The queues would be filled with lights and mediums with the somewhat frequent heavies and the ultra rare assault mech at 5% or less for the financial elite.

I suppose in the end, there'd be a grind regardless of how it is done. Regardless of if it was free to play or not. Of course if it was not F2P and done to the origins, you'd spend most of your time collecting parts from dead mechs rather than buying them from the stores and after half-baked fixing them they would suffer from degraded performance. All the while you will be earning paltry sums of money ranging from 75,000 to 150,000... and dealing with that while enduring full price repair and rearm.

Yeah... Short of just giving you the stuff, there'd be a grind regardless.
*Opens the console.*
player.additem 00000f 5000000000000000

There. Grind skipped.
(Any Besthesda game, gives the player that number of 'gold' or bottlecaps. In case if no one recognizes it.)



Anyone who thinks the grind is steep look at this,

If we were going by lore, Only Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Oppenheimers could EVER afford a King Crab or an Atlas, the engine of some builds alone doubling the cost, endo and ferro again double the cost, **** if you have advanced ER and Ultra, lbx or artimis shoot double it again.

Theres a reason Mechwarriors were considered the ELITE OF THE ELITE, modern day KNIGHTS, noblemen who OWNED their mechs, and fought for houses and were paid for their services.

Eventually the great houses financed their own mechs/warriors more and there was a decline of mechwarriors who werent mercs who actually OWNED their mechs. rediscover of lostech and production of mechs resuming normal also decreased their cost.

Enter the clan invasion.

#18 Tim East

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Posted 26 January 2015 - 08:22 PM

Well, if I can average 150K games, and 7 games an hour, that gives me a bit more than a mil an hour. Of course, the way I deal with the grind is to just enjoy playing the game. <_<

#19 SethAbercromby

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Posted 27 January 2015 - 01:37 AM

The best was to ease the grind is unfortunately to pay a little money into the pot. Hero Mechs are an excellent long-term investment as they get a permanent C-Bill bonus (25% if I remember correctly) on any cash they win. Premium time is a great short-term investment by increasing all C-Bill gains by 50% while it's active. Both also stack by the way, a Hero Mech with premium time rakes in almost double the cash, cutting a significant portion out of the grind.

#20 Rogue Jedi

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Posted 27 January 2015 - 05:26 AM

View PostSethAbercromby, on 27 January 2015 - 01:37 AM, said:

Hero Mechs are an excellent long-term investment as they get a permanent C-Bill bonus (25% if I remember correctly) on any cash they win. Premium time is a great short-term investment by increasing all C-Bill gains by 50% while it's active. Both also stack by the way, a Hero Mech with premium time rakes in almost double the cash, cutting a significant portion out of the grind.

30% but otherwise dead on,

Using a hero/special variant (e.g. (F), (I), (P) from a preorder package) in conjunction with premium time gets you an 80% bonus to cbills earned (30% for the "Hero" + 50% for premium time, unfortunately it is not cumulative)

The Champion Mechs (C) give a 30% bonus to XP earned





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