103 replies to this topic

[Rasako]

why do you moronic asshats keep mentioning that there are 14 items competing for module slots when the ones that are in the game currently completely suck *** compared to the artillery and coolant flush? its not even an argument, this is going to be paying for an advantage, and if a paying player has any form of advantage, no matter how small it is, that is pay to win

[Heeden]

Rasako, on 05 March 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

why do you moronic asshats keep mentioning that there are 14 items competing for module slots when the ones that are in the game currently completely suck *** compared to the artillery and coolant flush? its not even an argument, this is going to be paying for an advantage, and if a paying player has any form of advantage, no matter how small it is, that is pay to win

To be fair that's an argument for the current implementation. If all the other options are rubbish the C-bill (med+small flush) option becomes much more attractive due to the added flexibility.

[Volume]

The MC version is clearly superior to the C-Bill version.

If all three tiers were available for C-Bills and MC I'd tolerate it.

[Tarman]

Rasako, on 05 March 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

why do you moronic asshats keep mentioning that there are 14 items competing for module slots when the ones that are in the game currently completely suck *** compared to the artillery and coolant flush? its not even an argument, this is going to be paying for an advantage, and if a paying player has any form of advantage, no matter how small it is, that is pay to win

Quite apart from the discussion and your relative position in it, this kind of posting is less than useful. Ranting is ranting. Nobody hears anything but RAAAA IM YELLING REALLY LOUD. Not helping.

[Josef Nader]

Heeden, on 05 March 2013 - 03:39 PM, said:

If you missed it, I edit-added a link to the previous post. Currently it's just a quick comment in a thread, more thorough write-up on the way.

Holy hell, PGI who taught you how to monetize games? That makes absolutely zero sense when it comes to generating revenue. You can't balance paid consumable items against free counterparts. Nobody's going to pay real money for an item that is equivalent to an item they can acquire for free. There is absolutely zero revenue generation potential here, unless the free version takes like 5 minutes to target.

I don't even.

Edited by Josef Nader, 05 March 2013 - 03:53 PM.

[Moromillas]

Vasces Diablo, on 05 March 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

Consumables: no detail on implementation or cost yet, so it's ripe for speculation. What we do know however, is that all will be available for cbills as well as cash. Assuming that the cbill cost isn't prohibitively expensive, this is not P2W.

This is a fallacy, we do have information on consumables.
http://mwomercs.com/...44#entry1996644
Either you haven't bothered to do your research, or you're being dishonest about this. When players talk about Coolant flush consumables being pay to win, they're talking about this on paper design.

Again, this is flat out wrong, the MC Coolant flush will NOT be available for C-Bills, there is no large Coolant flush available to buy with C-Bills.

Again, wrong. Buying what is the equivalent of the MC Coolant flush, will not just cost you C-Bills, you also have to ditch an extra module. When you can run around with an extra module with the MC version of Coolant flush, that is buying power, thus pay to win.

[Drake Syn]

Rasako, on 05 March 2013 - 03:40 PM, said:

why do you moronic asshats keep mentioning that there are 14 items competing for module slots when the ones that are in the game currently completely suck *** compared to the artillery and coolant flush? its not even an argument, this is going to be paying for an advantage, and if a paying player has any form of advantage, no matter how small it is, that is pay to win

Trollpilot is trolly. I'd like to point out, that if you use any of the, I don't know, tons of variants that focus on LRM, none of the consumables are going to outweigh target decay and sensor range. Or basically any build that isn't the PPCtalker. Seriously, unless you only minmax without thinking about your team, then yes, you're not an *****. But some of us have friends.

[Heeden]

Josef Nader, on 05 March 2013 - 03:46 PM, said:

Holy hell, PGI who taught you how to monetize games? That makes absolutely zero sense when it comes to generating revenue. You can't balance paid consumable items against free counterparts. Nobody's going to pay real money for an item that is equivalent to an item they can acquire for free. There is absolutely zero revenue generation potential here, unless the free version takes like 5 minutes to target.

I don't even.

I think PGI are still working on the hope that if people like the game they will buy MC, and the consumables give you more options as to what to spend the MC on.

I don't weigh up the real-life value of all the things I buy in-game. I try to spend about £10 a month on MC because I really enjoy playing. Then I spend that MC on whatever whim takes my fancy. I may end up buying the odd consumable to save C-bills ('though most likely it will all go on paint).

[AEgg]

There's a simple statement that answers this question:
Options are power.

Here's the reasoning, drawn out in a simple fashion:

1. Hero mech loadouts and T3 consumables are available exclusively to paying players.
2. These things are not objectively better or worse than the free versions. (This one bears a bit of explanation. Subjectively, the YLW is awful, and maybe you'd rather have two coolant flushes. But objectively, they're simply different. An objectively more powerful thing would be a larger coolant flush at the same cost or a hero Cent with 1 more missle hardpoint than an otherwise identical cbill version.)
3. Therefore they are options, not upgrades or downgrades.
4. Options are power.
5. Thus, you are paying for power, thus pay to win.

There's no real argument that the game isn't already pay to win to an extent. Any game that locks gameplay-affecting content behind pay-only is. Of course it's not as bad as objectively better things being pay-only. The real question everyone should be asking is: "How much is acceptable?" And that's pretty much your opinion.

In short, when you think they've gone too far, leave. Until then, there's no reason not to stick around. It's fair to be upset if the first Mechwarrior game in years becomes unplayable because of pay to win, but it can happen to anything. We passed the "true" free to play model that LoL/TF2 uses with the first hero mech. From there on out it's shades of grey.

[SpiffyJack]

People will always take the path of least resistance if it's beneficial to their goal, and yes, some people will choose that path regardless of costs, even at all costs.I believe if you pay a monthly premium to play a game, thats all you pay. Period. Admittingly, I'm not a fan of grinding at a game as much as the next guy but some grinding is beneficial to player experience. Some could argue that 'since ive started this game it took 2 months to acquire modules and now you can acquire them in two days with some cash...'. or 'im tired of getting waisted every match because my mech is a noob'... I get it. There are reasons to want to blow some cash. In my opinion if I can spend MC and buy all the hero mechs before I even know how to pilot them, I'ts Pay 2 Win. Simple. Just put a spending cap on players monthly MC of around 4K to 6K (excluding premium time) and nobody builds up overnight. On the flip side, don't offer Trial by Fire mech deals with 50% MC only purchases! That is Pay 2 Win.

Any game that excepts cash for options or items that excellerates a players gaming performance is... yup, you said it!


Mech Warrior since 1986
Recent member MWO

Edited by Mgr Paine, 05 March 2013 - 04:53 PM.

[urmamasllama]

Tarman, on 05 March 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

Oh there are deffo some Queen Llamas up in this beaaaa.

ahem

[Tarman]

urmamasllama, on 05 March 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

ahem

Looking in the mirror or just trying to be clever? Either way it needs work. 3/10.

[NaerahQc]

Peoples still beleive that "this is still a beta" bul$$&!7? WoW is a launched game and patches always come out that change the game, same thing for Starcraft 2, League of legend and a magority of game, ranging from the mmorpg style to the f2p model. This game stopped being a beta at the moment they started to sell MC.

More on the topic, to avoid ANY p2w model similarity, all tier consumable should be buyable with both CB and MC, problem solved very easily...

[urmamasllama]

Tarman, on 05 March 2013 - 05:00 PM, said:

Looking in the mirror or just trying to be clever? Either way it needs work. 3/10.

oh come on lighten up

[Pihoqahiak]

Matt Minus, on 05 March 2013 - 01:27 PM, said:

There's not going to be a "better" MechWarrior game, though. I suspect a lot of us are here because of the license. Because of that, the game will probably never achieve the economys of scale needed to sustain itself on the small percentage of players willing to buy cosmetic items, so they need to make money somehow. How else would you propose they do it.

Make a better game. Why is it so difficult to understand that? League of Legends started off small, but has been a very fun and competitive game. It gained a large player base for those reasons and never fell into the pitfall of having to resort to selling in-game, play affecting benefits purchased with real money.

[CutterWolf]

It's a "space" thing that makes this P2W. The MC player will always have an advantage over the F2P play due to module space.

The easy fix for PGI is very simple, pull the MC consumables and make all consumable levels C-bills to buy done.

[Vasces Diablo]

Moromillas, on 05 March 2013 - 03:49 PM, said:

This is a fallacy, we do have information on consumables.
http://mwomercs.com/...44#entry1996644
Either you haven't bothered to do your research, or you're being dishonest about this. When players talk about Coolant flush consumables being pay to win, they're talking about this on paper design.

Again, this is flat out wrong, the MC Coolant flush will NOT be available for C-Bills, there is no large Coolant flush available to buy with C-Bills.

Again, wrong. Buying what is the equivalent of the MC Coolant flush, will not just cost you C-Bills, you also have to ditch an extra module. When you can run around with an extra module with the MC version of Coolant flush, that is buying power, thus pay to win.

Or maybe I wrote the post several hours ago before that information had surfaced.

[Moromillas]

Vasces Diablo, on 05 March 2013 - 07:03 PM, said:

Or maybe I wrote the post several hours ago before that information had surfaced.

It was posted on the 4th of March.

[Apnu]

Josef Nader, on 05 March 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

It's a matter of playstyle, but the YLW can mount an AC20, something that no Centurion can do. If you favor brawling with ballistics in centurions, the YLW is the champion there. Again, though, it's tough to compare these things because you can do things as a free player to mitigate the YLWs advantage. I don't -like- Hero Mechs, but I don't consider them pay to win because you're still using the same weapons and hitboxes (minus odd examples like the YLW's ability to mount the AC20. Free players can still get an AC20, but not on a Centurion. Do I like it? No. Is it pay to win? Not really).

So what if you can't put a AC20 on any other CN9, the hardpoints really limit YLW. Here's a CN9-D that far exceeds the damage output of the YLW and is a brawler w/out AC20. I see no advantage the YLW can get that the CN9-D can't. (Besides the c-bill bonus of course).

Josef Nader, on 05 March 2013 - 02:26 PM, said:

Here's the difference between Hero Mechs and module slots, and why this is a gross breach of P2W in my eyes. Let's take two players with identical mechs (say, two Atlas D-DCs) with identical loadouts and identical skills (I realize this is nigh impossible, but you have to isolate variables to get relevant data). The only difference between the Free player and the Paid player is their module loadout.

Free Player:
T2 Airstrike
T2 Artillery
T2 Cooling
Module

Paid Player:
T3 Airstrike
T3 Artillery
T3 Cooling
Module

Now, we don't have any solid numbers on Airstrikes or Arty yet, but it IS established that T1 + T2 = T3. Roughly, this equates to something around 33% + 66% = 100%, with the T3 module being 100% effectiveness. This means that a free player's modules are functioning 33% less effectively than a paid player's consumables, and this is a significant statistical difference.

Let's use the hard numbers to illustrate this:

35% cooling = maximum cooling effectiveness of the consumable = 100%
25% cooling = T2 cooling effectiveness = 25 / 35 = 0.71% of total effectiveness possible. Close to my estimated 66%.
10% cooling = T1 cooling effectiveness = 10 / 35 = 0.29% of total effectiveness possible. Close to my estimated 33%

Assuming this extrapolates onto artillery and air strikes, like they've said they will, this equates to a significant difference in effectiveness between the consumables. Assuming both players have equal skill in using their consumables, the paid player has a significant advantage in consumable effectiveness compared to a free player, and this is a serious problem in my eyes.

You presume that one coolant flush is better than two. Take a PPC boat for example. You can probably alpha twice (maybe three) w/out over heating w/out any coolant pods. With one pod you can probably get two more alpha strikes before shutdown. With two flushes and some skilled use of override, you can get three alphas before shutdown. IMO, that balances T1+T2 and T3 coolant. Do all the math you want, but you're just practcing what, Warhammer fans call "mathhammer" Which never bears out in that game and it stands to reason the same is true in MWO.

I actually think the airstrike T1+T2 is going to be better than T3 air striking. According to the devs, the c-bill air strikes will do a bit more damage, but have longer recharge than the T3. Plus you have the bonus, like above, of using it twice, which you cannot do with T3. So if you miss, you get to try again. Or fire one strike to soften the other team up and then a strike held off until that point when the other team is torn to shreds and a slight breeze will drop them.

I don't see consumables as being P2W. Look, IGP/PGI has to make money some how or they'll close shop and we all lose. But they are holding, for now, to their claim that they will keep this game balanced between free and paid products. Of course paid products will give you an advantage, but a slight advantage. Most of their stuff is bling (fuzzy dice) and fan service (YLW). P2W is something that gives you a huge advantage over the free players. But simply giving people who pay the salaries of the devs a tiny extra (that can be negated through free play) is not P2W.

I dropped last night in my Founders Hunch and ground out a million c-bills, then I got into my AS7-RS and ground out a few thousand in XP. I saw X5s and, what I presume were coollant pod using mechs all over the place. I presume that because I saw mostly laser and PPC builds. I played 10 matches, was 6-4 W/L over all, had 7 kills and 6 deaths. I didn't use any consumables. I saw no perceptible advantage over my "P2W" Hunch and the "free" AS7-RS, nor was my game affected by other players spamming the hell out of MC only mechs (I saw a ton of YLW mechs) and coolant flushes.

Now if they decided that clan tech could only be had with MC, that would be P2W. I don't see PGI doing that, unless they were desperate and near financial collapse. At which point, I will blame us, the community.

[Franchi]

Matt Minus, on 05 March 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

C'mon, space poors, surely you can scrounge up one thin dime. ROTFLMACOPTERSAURUS Of course you can't, because you feel entitled to play a full featured game for free.

So you want MWO to be a juke box? put your 10 cents in for a game? It will really be .40 because once they get us on P2W they will make it better and better until the 4 module mechs are the only viable ones

Look as I pointed out in a thread I made about the Xmas lights, I have the money, its not about the money.

I was going to buy some more MC yesterday and buy the X5, just to use 2xSRM6's on it for the lulz this would have been my first hero mech, when I read about coolant flush and MC only consumables I decided not to buy it.

Edited by Franchi, 06 March 2013 - 07:30 AM.