1. You will (if mastering several variants) be required to buy more mech bays if you wish to accommodate all your variants without unnecessary selling / re-buying of mechs. This costs MC.
2. You are given incentive to purchase premium time to cut down on the time of mandatory grinding. This costs MC.
3. You have the option to convert the EXP from one variant into GXP which can then be spent on another variant. This costs MC.
4. You are given incentive to purchase the hero mech of that variant (either as a free variant / cbill suppliment or as a superior version to have mastered) This costs MC. (I did this with the Ilya for both reasons, so I know its true for atleast some people)
My point: Yes it is a tedious process for those that do not want to buy MC, but it represents a rather large potential for revenue from those that do. This system also gives players something to play for, which in the long run keeps people interested during a tedious beta development process. The game would be very boring without some sort of "goal" to achieve would it not?
Keep in mind the developers only require us to get the ELITE tier for all 3 chassis prior to unlocking master, for the first chassis you master for that weight class. So if you unlock master for another chassis in that weight class you only have to grind out ELITE for the one you want to keep. There is a detailed thread in the player help guides section but a synopsis is as follows:
For example, assume I have just bought my first mech ever, a Cataphract.
I have to unlock all the basic skills for 3 variants in order to unlock the Elite tree for those variants.
I then have to unlock the elite skills for all 3 of those variants in order to unlock the master tree.
I then decide to unlock master for one of my three variants. (I only need to get master on one.)
Now that I have a mastered a Cataphract I decide to buy a Catapult, which is also a heavy chassis.
I have to unlock all the basic skills for 3 variants in order to unlock the Elite tree for those variants.
This time however, I only have unlock the elite skills for 1 variant in order to unlock the master tree.
This means I save 43,000 EXP worth of grinding over when I had to unlock the Cataphract skills.
This applies to any subsequent Heavy Chassis I decide to buy, but If I chose to buy a chassis in another weight class I would have to start the same process that I underwent with the Cataphracts.
Edited by Huron FaI, 06 March 2013 - 01:36 PM.