180 replies to this topic

[KingCobra]

PGI/IGP is doing great they have learned how to use the (One Trick Pony) method to make cash--->

Edited by KingCobra, 06 March 2013 - 12:27 PM.

[Aaren Kai]

My thought...

Individual Mech Kickstarter
-set a price that will net a small profit, but ultimately pays for the mech creation. Fan base wins because they get a mech they want, game mech stable increases which allows for more mc purchases, development of content increases and keeps things fresh.

Mechs are made in the order they reach there goal. Mech Founders who join the kickstart get the mech added with special bonus and maybe paint, non founders get generic.

[PropagandaWar]

Zaptruder, on 04 March 2013 - 11:10 PM, said:

1. Sure, as long as there's no change to function and part is non-essential. Better yet; external mech doodads that make the mech look different, but provide no functional benefits.

2. Yes. We might as well have a straight MC to Cbill package if we can buy mechs for MC and sell for Cbills.

3. Consumables for MCs; as long as all the same are available for cbills. Pay to grind less, or pay for convenience. Don't cross the boundary.

4. Nope. Laser colours are gameplay essential. Would be confusing to have purple and orange lasers, and small laser that fire green or blue.

5. Nope; flight pattern provides differences in gameplay; a pinching X pattern (as it is now) produces different results from a spiral helix pattern (after 5th of March patch).

6. Nope; could be confused with a different weapon.

7. Yes; easy way to give players content for money. The most natural of exchanges.

Sorry disagree with some of these. A consumable for extra XP or GXP would be fine by me. When your hit with an AC/10 vs an ac/5 hell evena gauss do you know what hit you. Laser thickness kind of varies as well. and you always know when your getting zppt by a small. PPCs would be fine as color changes.

Yokaiko, on 06 March 2013 - 12:23 PM, said:

I got one.

Toss this P2W crap and I buy $50 more c-bills tonight. I'm on pace to spend $1000 this year in paint, mechbays and hero mechs.

....not with that crap int eh game though.

you and me both lol. Just threw in another 30 the last few days. While i dont buy paint asa regularly as I used to I still do buy it.

[FrDrake]

ragingmunkyz, on 06 March 2013 - 12:23 AM, said:

Given their apparently posh offices, numerous other projects, and the number of people who have spent hundred on a game they haven't finished yet, I have a hard time believing that PGI is incredibly hard up for cash. That said, this thread an numerous others like it are filled with great ideas with things we'd all pay for, they haven't come close to exhausting non P2W ideas. I have a hard time believing people who are creative for a living can't come up with ideas like ours and many more.

Would current founders rage if they reopened founders packs? or if they made some sort of new founders packs? I missed the boat on those, but would happily buy it to keep this game away from P2W.

If PGI is hard up for cash they can do whatever they need outside of making actual gameplay pay2win and I'm fine with it. If they need a "game will die if we don't get some cash" campaign and you get everything the founder's got except like a different graphic for the forum badge, a different paint (doesn't even have to be skin) on the founder's mechs. I'm sure most founder's wouldn't mind. (I know a few who would probably buy that one too......)

[Sifright]

no way in hell am i dumping money into a kick starter for half of it to go to a publishing company who will spend it on completely different games.

It's beyond hideous that the gaming industry is abusing crowd sourcing which should be used to allow developers to get away from the horror that is publisher influence and control.

[Yokaiko]

FrDrake, on 06 March 2013 - 12:31 PM, said:

If PGI is hard up for cash they can do whatever they need outside of making actual gameplay pay2win and I'm fine with it.

Except they are treading that path.

[jay35]

1 - Offer MC purchase alternatives for engines, because plenty of people are too impatient and would drop real money to buy them faster.
2 - Offer an MC to c-bill conversion mechanism, so players with MC can turn it into c-bills directly, again appealing for the impatient crowd.
3 - Offer rentable private servers, as the OP mentioned iirc, purchasable with MC if that is easier than handling real money transactions.
4 - Keep the weekly sales going. They have to be doing pretty well if they've gotten me to bite on something just about every weekend

[Le Goat]

Maybe not relevant now but:

the ability for merc groups to purchase a home world and a merc/clan chat lobby.

[Wolf Ender]

PGI should make people who cry about P2W on the forums have to start paying R&R costs between matches at 200% their previous levels. Then sell C-bills for MC $$$

[Yokaiko]

PropagandaWar, on 06 March 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

you and me both lol. Just threw in another 30 the last few days. While i dont buy paint asa regularly as I used to I still do buy it.

I said when they fixed pain pricing I was going to spend some money....I blew $120 bucks that week. (PGI go look it up)

[Hawks]

Telethon, fun run, or charity concert. I'm pretty sure we could get Bono and Bob Geldof on board for the latter (fun fact: "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and "I Don't Like Mondays" are both actually about the frustration of having to wait for a new patch every week).

[Targetloc]

MustrumRidcully, on 06 March 2013 - 12:10 PM, said:

I think what PGI really is looking for (or maybe it's IGP) is something they can sell over and over again to the same player.

They tried it with the camo system, non-reusable colors and patterns. That didn't work so well. Now they try it with consumables. It might work this time, it might also fail greatly.

What they really need to sell to every player is premium time. That's something people will keep buying out of habit and it gives PGI a steady income that's far more predictable than micro transactions.

The problem right now is that premium time isn't at all appealing to the people who are mostly likely to WANT to spend money on the game. All of us who play constantly already have way more CBills and XP than we know what to do with.

They need to add more non-performance related 'perks' to being Premium.

I went into detail on it in this post: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2010815

[MustrumRidcully]

Targetloc, on 06 March 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

What they really need to sell to every player is premium time. That's something people will keep buying out of habit and it gives PGI a steady income that's far more predictable than micro transactions.

The problem right now is that premium time isn't at all appealing to the people who are mostly likely to WANT to spend money on the game. All of us who play constantly already have way more CBills and XP than we know what to do with.

They need to add more non-performance related 'perks' to being Premium.

I went into detail on it in this post: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2010815

This is also a good idea. Premium Time must be rebought all the time.

An aspect I really like in Startrek Online is the veteran reward program. The longer you stay subscribed, the more things you unlock. You get to keep them even if you ever unsubscribe. There are of course also subscription-time only perks, but the veteran rewards is something that will always draw you back to the game and motivate you to add some subscription time for a new reward level.

[DocBach]

Targetloc, on 06 March 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

They need to add more non-performance related 'perks' to being Premium.

I went into detail on it in this post: http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2010815

Thinking something like without premium time you can't participate in community warfare for a House. You want to make an effect on the universe? Got to be a premium member, otherwise you're stuck playing pick up games like we have now with no result other than XP/stats.

[Murku]

Instead of R&R as implemented, have a support crew you can expand to create a similar effect expanded with MC.

Begin with a single tech, basic repair but takes time, modifying a mech takes time also. Trial mech used while none of your mech are ready is 'slumming it'.

Add techs (at least 1 tech needed per mech worked on), astechs (assistants who speed up work, limited to so many per tech).
Add fences, brokers,ext to negotiate better gear prices and mission rewards, diff ones affecting salvage, kills/assists, spotting ect.

Also like the idea of MC only Frankenmechs, especially if we can retro-engineer some semi-unseen out of existing mech parts.

I'd pay for that kinda stuff, along with a cool crib, a harem, and some alien pets.

[EvilCow]

I would make all new mechs MC-only and discounted for one week after the introduction with a gift not affecting gameplay (a color for example or a special cockpit item). Afterward the mech would be available for CB too and the MC price would go to the normal level.

This would also "motivate" PGI to introduce more content and more often.

Edited by EvilCow, 06 March 2013 - 01:17 PM.

[Poopy Joe]

$60 dollars and you get all mechs and future mechs?

[Michael Costanza]

Something making the rounds is the ability to buy engines and weapons with MC, either individually or bundled. You can already buy them with CBills by grinding away 4 million for an XL engine or 600k for a weapon but I'd rather just drop $2 on the XL engine I want and spend the time I would've spent grinding trying out the engine in a new build.

[Targetloc]

DocBach, on 06 March 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

Thinking something like without premium time you can't participate in community warfare for a House. You want to make an effect on the universe? Got to be a premium member, otherwise you're stuck playing pick up games like we have now with no result other than XP/stats.

I think everyone should still participate. To paraphrase Ben Cousins, the free players make the world seem fuller and act as content for the premium players in a way.

I'd be all for restricting your house House privileges without being premium. Maybe they're a rank or voting system for which sector to attack, and premium players get preference.


On related topic, Valve had a very interesting idea for premium content with their PvE update... Anyone can play, but at the end of the game only the Paid players got rewarded with 'salvage.'
http://www.teamfortress.com/mvm/faq/

I'd love to see Repair and Rearm come back as part of a Campaign mode, where you drop one or 2 of your mechs on a planet, and those mechs are locked on that planet for your next 5 to 10 games, and you have to repair and re-arm in-between. And repairs and re-arms are actually limited to the mission resources, so your 400,000,000 cbills in the bank don't give you an advantage. You may end up going into battle 7 with a missing arm.

At the end of the mission you have the option to pick up salvaged mechs as a greatly reduced MC cost from what they normally go for. Or maybe you have the option to pay a small amount of MC at the start of the campaign, and they get all the random salvage for free. (kind of like a random loot chest that improves based on how you do in the mission)

Edited by Targetloc, 06 March 2013 - 01:30 PM.

[Kodiak Jorgensson]

ObsidianSpectre, on 04 March 2013 - 10:45 PM, said:

Niko's recent post seems to suggest that PGI might back away from pay to win. I certainly hope so, and I want to love this game so bad I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

One of the people I was talking to about this in chat made the point that it's possible PGI is desperate for money. From the numbers I've seen and everything I've heard, I really doubt this is the case, but still companies do love money. So I figure, let's see if we can come up with some more ways for PGI to get our cash that aren't pay to win. We give them enough ways to make money, and we can remove the temptation for them to ever try this again.

Feel free to come up with your own ideas, or comment on other people's.

1) Rentable private servers. Full control over a private server hosted on PGI's boxes. No c-bills or xp rewards. Rent by the match, by the day, or by the month. I bet all serious groups are going to want at least one on standby.

2) Very expensive, very visible aesthetic things. Give the people who want to throw money at the game a way to let everyone know they're rich enough to afford it.

3) Pay-To-Play tournaments. You can have rewards like custom skins, banners, MC, hero mech vouchers. Maybe even an ad-hoc tournament system where tournaments can be created on the fly by the players, where PGI takes 20% of the entry fees and pays out the remainder to the winners.

Anyone else have anything?

I haven't checked through the other posts so not sure if this is mentioned.

Starter pack for $14.95 (3,000 MC)

• 3,000 MC
  
• 2 additional mech bays (for a total of 6)
  
• 1 free starter mech of any weight class (heroes not included)
  
• equipment packs, contains 4 energy weapons 2 ballistics 2 missile systems and 5 extra heat sinks (double if the mechs has the upgrade)

Starter pack for $29.95 (6,500) MC

• 6,500 MC
  
• 2 additional mech bays (for a total of 6)
  
• 1 free starter mech of any weight class (heroes not included)
  
• 2 week hero trial mech of the players choosing, 15% MC discounts if the same trial mech is purchased within the 2 weeks
  
• 2 equipment packs, (1 pack contains 4 energy 2 ballistics 2 missile systems and 5 extra heat sinks)