11 replies to this topic

[Xerxys]

PGI has repeated stated that they don't want MWO to be a pay to win game. To this point they have done an incredible job with one exception. Having no way to purchase mech bays other than through MC does give a real edge to players who can afford to pay money out when needed to buy additional mech bays.

The way things work now you can only buy up to 4 mechs. This is fine except that you need 3 variants of the same chassis to be able to advance your piloting skills. Again this is fine. You get done fully mastering one chassis and decide to move on to the next. This again will work out just fine. On the third chassis, however, you will have to start selling mechs and re-purchasing them to advance your way to elite. Your 4th mech is going to be a real disaster.

Pray you're smarter than me and started with an assault chassis and moved to heavy, then to medium and finally light. When you look at all the c-bills wasted buying and upgrading a mech only to have to sell it to by a different variant it gets a bit excessive. Especially when you're not being compensated for adding FF armor, DHS, or Endo.

I've found money extremely tight this past year and need my tax returns to be able to lay down $50-60. Some are in worse shape than me and resort to F2P games to provide entertainment that doesn't require spending money.

Should PGI create some sort of system to allow new mech bays without having to purchase mc? Perhaps not even c-bills but as some sort of reward they could think up?

Edited by Xerxys, 26 March 2013 - 03:40 AM.

[Jape]

While I would of course like all things in this game to be free of charge, I find mechbays to be relatively cheap and good items to be sold with actual money. Mech bays do not give any actual gameplay advantage to anyone. They are just for convenience. And to lessen the need for grinding.

[MasterErrant]

no they need ways to earn money from us and this is a legit way. you can buy four for seven dollars. I have a family and a tight budget for games nd I find that ok.
I will not on the other hand spend 20+ dollars to custom paint one mech class.

[HammerSwarm]

They're cheap enough to pay money for but I think 4 is too few maybe make it so you can earn 2 with cbills or through achievements that help new players learn to play the game.

[Corvus Antaka]

mechbays should be MC only. 4 for free is generous enough.

[Alois Hammer]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 26 March 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

mechbays should be MC only. 4 for free is generous enough.

This. There's a difference between "Free-to-Play" and "Everything is Free." The latter is a recipe for a game's rapid disappearance.

[Xerxys]

I'm not saying that some obscene number of mech bays should be given away, but since their is currently no reward for taking all 3 variants of a chassis to master level, would it be a prudent reward? If only for a limited number. I don't disagree that if you want to carry every variant of every chassis that you should have to dig deep and pay out some money to support the game.

[Solomon Ward]

Voted No.

Mechbays are most reasonably priced.

Edited by Solomon Ward, 26 March 2013 - 11:31 PM.

[speed is life]

I like the way War Thunder handles this in that game (also F2P) you can buy 2 "Bays" with their equivalent to c-bills and after that you have to use real money, but I also think mech bays are currently reasonably priced.

[Neolisk]

Xerxys, on 26 March 2013 - 03:37 AM, said:

The way things work now you can only buy up to 4 mechs. This is fine except that you need 3 variants of the same chassis to be able to advance your piloting skills. Again this is fine. You get done fully mastering one chassis and decide to move on to the next. This again will work out just fine. On the third chassis, however, you will have to start selling mechs and re-purchasing them to advance your way to elite. Your 4th mech is going to be a real disaster.

Sell bays for C-bills or improve mech variant purchase, for example give an option to exchange a variant for 90% of the price. So basically, you pay a little and exchange your current variant to another one. Alternatively, do not require variants to advance to the next level. As it is - definitely a bad design of advancement system.

[Spirit of the Wolf]

While this doesn't exactly affect me, as I was a founder and used most of my founder's MC to purchase an additional 34 mechbays, ( I have 42), I do agree that players should be able to, after a MASSIVE grind, be able to gain an additional few bays.

Personally, I don't think they should do it through CB though. The MC price for the bays is currently reasonable, and I'm fine with that.

How about this:
using GXP to get a new bay.

I don't mean 2.5k, 5k, to get a bay. To make the cost of GXP bays and MC bays equal, (in terms of MC required at a maximum amount), bays would need to be sold for 7500 GXP.
This is, if you actually look at it, paltry. 7500 GXP, during the times when MC isn't on sale, and when there isn't a GXP bonus conversion event going on, converting 7500 mech XP to GXP takes 300 MC, at 1 MC per 25 XP.
During the last conversion event, when you got 50 XP per 1 MC, this would have dropped to only 150MC equivalent for a bay.

Instead of making the equivalent MC price equal, however, I say that the equivalent MC price should be much higher. 300 MC to purchase a bay directly is fine; it's convenient, fairly low in price, and gives a good way for PGI to make money. In addition, as said before, it's solely a measure of convenience, as you don't need to get all the mechs in the game. Some players might end up being happy with only 1 or 2 chassis.

Therefore, I'd recommend a minimum of a 5:1 MC equivalent price for getting bays via GXP. That is, that if you were to use MC to convert mech XP to GXP and then buy a bay, it would cost 5 times as much MC than just buying the bay directly. This would put the price of buying the bay via GXP at 300MC * 5 = 1500MC equivalent of GXP, which is 37500 GXP. Because this is not the only way to acquire GXP, however, I feel it would be worth it. It gives players something to do with all the GXP they've saved up instead of just waiting for the next modules/consumables to be released.

In addition, it would probably be at least somewhat prudent to limit the number of bays which can be purchased via this method in a given period, though I have no idea what that limit should be.


tl;dr
CB purchases for mechbays: no
my idea: purchasing mech bays for large amounts of GXP, though only a certain number within a set length of time. One that time has expired, you may purchase more bays with GXP.

[Xerxys]

I think that using GXP would be a great idea, except I'm not looking to make it so people can get them easily. I would number the number of bays that can by bought w/o MC to 2. It would be enough so that you could buy enough mech chassis to get one mech from each mech class(such as light, medium, or heavy, etc...) to mastery level w/o having to buy, sell, re-buy, sell, and re-buy again, or whatever.

I would even make it tough such as; you open up the ability to even purchase a mech buy by getting 3 chassis from 2 separate mech classes to mastery level, then the 2nd opportunity would be once you get 3 from the third mech class to mastery. Then you have to save up say 10 million credits to buy the first mech bay and 20 to buy the 2nd. Their are ways to implement it so that no matter what happens they have to go through a hell of a lot to get it done.

Would that idea satisfy people?