497 replies to this topic

[Noobzorz]

Blackfang, on 05 March 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

Well if you discipline yourself to spend 9.99 or whatever on MC a month then bang there's your subscription and furthermore it gets you the MC to pay for premium time and get consumables faster? What's the problem there?

Not an SPNE unless the cost of in game items is hilariously low. You're counting on all other players to abide by your little $10 social contract, and it isn't going to happen. P2W and the MC arms race

Azalie, on 05 March 2013 - 12:32 AM, said:

Incorrect. And I know this for a fact because I know my battlemechs quite well.

My Atlas will never use coolant flushes as it has not overheated since I upgrade to DHS. My Stalker does overheat but it does so in a very predictable fashion.

As is the conclusion that airstrikes will be about as effective as an LRM 20-40 barrage on an area. Any more and the game would turn into Artillery Online.

I doubt, very strongly, that you are making a self-aware assessment of your play at the moment. The situation you're proposing is insanely contrived (1v1 mech fight with large lapse), and even then I am not convinced the additional module doesn't offset this. In fact, it seems likely to me that you are almost certainly wrong about this, even though you may believe it. As a test, to satisfy both of us, see if you never have a scenario where you wouldn't mind having an additional two barrages of SRMs. For anyone using energy weapons or LRMs, this is also a total no brainer: the advantage of being able to split them is a big fat zero. Even if I'm wrong, in the event of an SRM nerf, you may find you no longer feel this way.

As for the artillery, we'll have to see, but I would absolutely not be prepared to rule out that it is very powerful. As it is, 40 LRMs is as good as death for some mechs.

Edited by Noobzorz, 05 March 2013 - 12:58 AM.

[Ihasa]

Tor6, on 05 March 2013 - 12:51 AM, said:

Free players provide a large player base which means that any time anyone paying or not comes into the game they can find other players to play against. They're your teammates and opponents. I payed for this game, and some of my other friends have too, but not all of them. Folks join and try the game out because they can do so for free. Maybe they don't pay in the short term, but long term they wind up shelling out for mech bays or paint or other things.

And even if they don't, one of the absolute biggest turnoffs in any game is not being able to play it when you want. So when I get on at 4am because I can't sleep and can actually find a match, it's probably because someone somewhere is grinding their free play hunchback or something. I don't really care, because being able to play whenever I want incentivises me to keep playing and spend money.

The short of it is that free players usually become paying players eventually, or bring their friends who become paying players. And even if they don't they provide content for those who pay (and those who don't.) F2P titles rely on a lot of folks playing, but only a small subset of them actually paying, and yet they're still immensely profitable (see League of Legends for prime example).

Only about 10-12% of any F2P playerbase actually spends money in a F2P game. lots of studies on this. also see my previous post 2 pages back with pay2win linky.

[armyof1]

Blackfang, on 05 March 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

Well if you discipline yourself to spend 9.99 or whatever on MC a month then bang there's your subscription and furthermore it gets you the MC to pay for premium time and get consumables faster? What's the problem there?

Come on man think a little on it. For some people 9.99 is actually money that matters, for others that might as well be one 0.01. So if one guy puts 9.99 into MWO to buy consumables to be competitive, another guy could instead put 999.99 to do the same, who do you think will have the edge in this game? If it was a subscription you'd both pay 9.99 and not heavily tip the edge over to either guy.

[Johnny Reb]

Personally, I will reserve my judgment till it is implemented.

[armyof1]

SteelWarrior, on 05 March 2013 - 12:50 AM, said:

I still dont see the issue.

You can't make people see things as long as they're hellbent on not seeing.

[Blackfang]

Sure you talk about a large player base etc, but if we all decide that we'll remain free players and just grind out cbills to play the game, what then? What happens when the money dries up to keep the servers running or the staff paid? Why should paying customers pay anything at all if there is no benefit for ponying up the cash in the first place? That would surely kill the game far faster than a case of having to take 2 modules instead of 1?

[Azalie]

Noobzorz, on 05 March 2013 - 12:52 AM, said:

Not an SPNE unless the cost of in game items is hilariously low. You're counting on all other players to abide by your little $10 social contract, and it isn't going to happen. P2W and the MC arms race

I doubt, very strongly, that you are making a self-aware assessment of your play at the moment. The situation you're proposing is insanely contrived (1v1 mech fight with no lapses), and even then I am not convinced the additional module doesn't offset this.

And let us be clear: you are assuming, without information, things about the artillery strike that you cannot possibly know. This is unreasonable.

About 80% of the 'mech fights' I get in are 1v1 with no lapses. For some ungodly reason when an Awesome/Stalker/Atlas sees me they dance a slow circle around me and fire constantly into me. I return the gesture. I typically do fight 1v1 because I often take the out of the box approach, duck down in the caves when everyone is water and pick off someone who strayed a bit from the group and ect.

The other 20% are when I bump into a centurion or trenchbucket.....a single alpha almost always destroys them if they allow me a point blank shot (which surprisingly many do) and if I just glance them they are usually minus a side torso and arm....and then I typically let them go. Stopping whatever I am doing to 'finish off' someone with nothing but a small laser left is not what's best for the team.

And you are doing the same by assuming just the opposite; that airstrikes will be worth using up a module slot for.

[SteelWarrior]

I really wish more of you kids actually could summon up memmories of the old MW series. I played in NBT on a competative level for 2 years. DAILY. I can promise you this game has alot more potential for tournament play then anything from MW2-4 ever did.

[Tarman]

Blackfang, on 05 March 2013 - 12:46 AM, said:

Please explain to me how a FREE player keeps this game running when you don't fund any of the development, you talk about the market for mech games, but there is no market if your not paying anything??

Playerbase size. You kill your casual player flow, you kill a large portion of your future revenue. That makes a lot less new casuals becoming paying players of either the casual or hardcore type. Most casuals aren't going to pony up just to compete with existing cashcow lances on a regular basis. Less casual players means longer wait times and less overall gaming for everyone. That's just the effects from casuals.

Chase off esporters who want even playing fields, who are already cranked beyond reason because of the matching and the total lack of support for their player-made tourneys; more playerbase bleedout and a lot worse public rep to potential new players, since most esporters are hardcore gamers. An even worse idea than chasing off the casuals, who will at least talk trash about the game to a lot less people.

This game doesn't have so much going for it that it can afford to mess with the expectations and desires of major portions of its playerbase.

[alexivy]

The sad thing is that I and so many people are willing to financially support this venture in the mechwarrior franchise, but they will never ask for help again (as the did somewhat indirectly with the founders' package) I wish they would just slap a banner up at the top of the client like Wikipedia does. "Support this now or it's going to either disappear or turn to ****." Why can't both sides just be honest about what we are trying to achieve.

Oh right, some people (IGP) are greedy ****** while others are cheap ******.

[Noobzorz]

Ihasa, on 05 March 2013 - 12:54 AM, said:

Only about 10-12% of any F2P playerbase actually spends money in a F2P game. lots of studies on this. also see my previous post 2 pages back with pay2win linky.

Korean F2P companies have much, much better conversion rates. Riot, for instance, has a much better conversion rate than this.

P2W is bad for you. WoT is about the only enduring example I can think of. I scoff at the notion that BF:Heroes is healthy, also. Just look at the server lists. It may have been successful for the months following the change, but it is a ghost town now.

And why is this?

Because casual players who spend nothing are part of your product. You know why I bought battlecast cho? Because I play a lot of league. You know why I play a lot of league? Because it is a huge, thriving community with tons of cool stuff always going on and bazillions of players. All those guys who eat up riot bandwidth make content for people like me who spend money on games.

Edited by Noobzorz, 05 March 2013 - 01:02 AM.

[Midosa Kaze]

Noobzorz, on 05 March 2013 - 12:38 AM, said:

I thought about this too, and I'm not sure about that yet. We haven't been given any information as to whether the 35% is applied to your max or your total, and I'm inclined to suspect the former since otherwise they'd have lied to us, which would be AMAZINGLY shady.

They have further stated (in command chair) it is based on your total heat which is still somewhat fuzzy, but I assume they mean your total heat containment capacity. However this confusion is brought on by themselves as the previous post mentioned "current mech heat" which would in reality make the mc version much better. They have also stated that the c-bill versions get two uses each. So depending on the recycle time, the 20% cbill version might be more effective. Still, they didn't need these and I'm a bit disappointed they are coming.

Edited by Midosa Kaze, 05 March 2013 - 01:03 AM.

[armyof1]

Blackfang, on 05 March 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

Sure you talk about a large player base etc, but if we all decide that we'll remain free players and just grind out cbills to play the game, what then? What happens when the money dries up to keep the servers running or the staff paid? Why should paying customers pay anything at all if there is no benefit for ponying up the cash in the first place? That would surely kill the game far faster than a case of having to take 2 modules instead of 1?

P2W is not the only way to make money. If there were more mechs, more maps, just generally more content people would be more interested in investing in it. Just the sale of mechbays alone would increase a lot if there were more mechs in this game. But instead they put the time and effort into making modules that will put the whole balance of the game out of whack.

[Noobzorz]

SteelWarrior, on 05 March 2013 - 12:59 AM, said:

I really wish more of you kids actually could summon up memmories of the old MW series. I played in NBT on a competative level for 2 years. DAILY. I can promise you this game has alot more potential for tournament play then anything from MW2-4 ever did.

You're right. It does. And it would be great if they kept it that way. Paid tier consumables are one way to make sure that it isn't.

[Sol Fin]

Just remove coolant flush altogether. Even a CBill variants will negatively affect gameplay.

armyof1, on 05 March 2013 - 01:03 AM, said:

P2W is not the only way to make money. If there were more mechs, more maps, just generally more content people would be more interested in investing in it. Just the sale of mechbays alone would increase a lot if there were more mechs in this game. But instead they put the time and effort into making modules that will put the whole balance of the game out of whack.

What you're suggesting requires a lot of work. People who count money and make money decisions like to get stuff for doing almost nothing if possible. That's why coolant flush is much easier.

Edited by Sol Fin, 05 March 2013 - 01:06 AM.

[Tor6]

Blackfang, on 05 March 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

Sure you talk about a large player base etc, but if we all decide that we'll remain free players and just grind out cbills to play the game, what then? What happens when the money dries up to keep the servers running or the staff paid? Why should paying customers pay anything at all if there is no benefit for ponying up the cash in the first place? That would surely kill the game far faster than a case of having to take 2 modules instead of 1?

And what if the moon crashes into the earth?

You're saying that 'even though people are currently spending money on the game, what if they stop?' right?

Well if the devs manage to **** everyone off or stop delivering content to the point where people stop wanting to play the game and buy stuff then yes people will stop spending money. That's usually what happens when a game dies. But the thing is as long as there's content for folks to work towards and have fun with friends with, people will keep spending money. And no, stupid consumables that you need to rebuy to be competitive is not 'content'.

Realistically if the game is fun and fun things can be had for reasonable mc prices people will keep buying them, even if it's just more mech bays. A game with thousands of rabid fans (and they HAVE to be rabid to throw this much of a fit on the forums about their beloved game) is not gonna just go entirely free to play unless something has gone VEEEEERY wrong. Which it seems on the verge of doing!

[zenlike]

Ihasa, on 05 March 2013 - 12:54 AM, said:

Only about 10-12% of any F2P playerbase actually spends money in a F2P game. lots of studies on this. also see my previous post 2 pages back with pay2win linky.

This is a bit of a straw man. If you have 100 free players and 12 convert that's a lot better than having 10 free players and 1.2 convert. Beyond that, I question how many of those players are just guys who show up for two days and then never play again.

[Johnny Reb]

Coolant flush is not as disconcerting than air/arty strikes.

[Cebi]

Agreed with OP. And it is really, really worrying that PGI even considered this.

[SteelWarrior]

Noobzorz, on 05 March 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

You're right. It does. And it would be great if they kept it that way. Paid tier consumables are one way to make sure that it isn't.

lol. who says there wont be a disable option for tournament play........but wait. lets all ******* cry before it even launches.