196 replies to this topic

[Wintersdark]

mint frog, on 11 August 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

I've been telling people that the game needed a c-bill sink for the past ten months. That they're just figuring it out now... well it doesn't bode well...

They're not figuring it out now. They've known all along, but it's harder said than done. I imagine earnings nerfs were a last resort, because... well, look at this thread. Obviously this wasn't the first choice for actions.

We'd not be ranting like this if the game had started here, or even lower and instead increased earnings; it's just that nobody likes getting less.

I can only surmise that they have more cbill sinks lined up for community warfare and likely had intended to just cruise along until then, but cbill stockpiles were simply getting too large, so they elected to reduce income to *** it back a bit until planned systems can come into play.

That's a much more plausible theory anyways.

[Druidika]

This does nothing to diminish stockpiles. All it does is **** people over that don't have a nice selection of of fully upgraded mechs already.

Edited by Druidika, 11 August 2013 - 04:13 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Druidika, on 11 August 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

This does nothing to diminish stockpiles. All it does is **** people over that don't have a nice selection of of fully upgraded mechs already.

Obviously. But you have to consider that we've been adding players at a very rapid rate. The number of people with huge C-Bill stockpiles is relatively small right now (all the forumers together are a small portion of the playerbase, and most here still won't have huge stockpiles), but all these newer players are amassing c-bills just as fast, so that number would grow exponentially. If a lot of things in Community Warfare are gated by c-bills, then I can definitely understand them wanting to stop that.

It does screw newer players more. I'm not defending them, just outlining the most likely rationale.

Too often, people like to jump to ridiculous, exaggerated conclusions that don't help anyone.

In short, while this is sucky, what can they possibly do about huge c-bill stockpiles given that they would need to reduce earnings regardless to prevent everyone from amassing huge ones? They obviously can't just take peoples c-bills away, and introducing additional costs hurts new players even more. They're continuously adding new mechs, so that's covered... what else can they do?

[Druidika]

• Making consumables worth using. Newer players won't be able to use them (as often), but right now they have so little effect that basically no one's wasting money on them.
  
• More c-bill colors.
  
• C-bill patterns (not the premium ones).
  
• Making mech-bays available for increasingly higher amounts of c-bills (5m, 10m, 20m,...)

This whole income reduction is only going to further aggravate their player retention issues. I highly doubt they're adding new players at a rapid rate. Certainly not after this change.

[Cadodd]

Wintersdark, on 11 August 2013 - 04:29 PM, said:

Obviously. But you have to consider that we've been adding players at a very rapid rate. The number of people with huge C-Bill stockpiles is relatively small right now (all the forumers together are a small portion of the playerbase, and most here still won't have huge stockpiles), but all these newer players are amassing c-bills just as fast, so that number would grow exponentially. If a lot of things in Community Warfare are gated by c-bills, then I can definitely understand them wanting to stop that.

It does screw newer players more. I'm not defending them, just outlining the most likely rationale.

Too often, people like to jump to ridiculous, exaggerated conclusions that don't help anyone.

In short, while this is sucky, what can they possibly do about huge c-bill stockpiles given that they would need to reduce earnings regardless to prevent everyone from amassing huge ones? They obviously can't just take peoples c-bills away, and introducing additional costs hurts new players even more. They're continuously adding new mechs, so that's covered... what else can they do?

Lowering the income by 30% wont stop Accounts from gaining massive CBills, it will only increase the time only you get to that point. Even if you would only get 5k CBill per hour, there would be players who kept playing and after a dozen years they got 200m of CBills, but they will play the game for themselfes as almost nobody would be interested in playing such a game..
It might be exagerated but that's actually the only thing they did with the last patch..
And actually as long as there arent any kind of real economy in this game, players with 100+ Mio CBills will NOT matter, it doesnt have any effect to the game, besides these kind of players will be able to buy new mechs (and new mechbays) right at realease.
But it DOES have an effect on attracting new players, everyone besides PGI does know that fact... *sigh

[Dreamslave]

Without using one of my many hero mechs, going from earning 150-180k per match, to 90-110k is ridiculous. This game is well on it's way to committing suicide.

[Druidika]

Dreamslave, on 11 August 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Without using one of my many hero mechs, going from earning 150-180k per match, to 90-110k is ridiculous. This game is well on it's way to committing suicide.

You should hang out with your unitmate Thontor more. According to him, everything's fine and dandy and PGI can do no wrong!

[Wintersdark]

Druidika, on 11 August 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

This whole income reduction is only going to further aggravate their player retention issues. I highly doubt they're adding new players at a rapid rate. Certainly not after this change.

This change will have no impact on new player addition. They'll never know any different. It sucks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not crusading all white knight like here, don't get me wrong.

But the change is not so outstanding that it'll impact new players in any way that they will notice, because they've never known anything different.

[Wintersdark]

Cadodd, on 11 August 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

Lowering the income by 30% wont stop Accounts from gaining massive CBills, it will only increase the time only you get to that point. Even if you would only get 5k CBill per hour, there would be players who kept playing and after a dozen years they got 200m of CBills, but they will play the game for themselfes as almost nobody would be interested in playing such a game..
It might be exagerated but that's actually the only thing they did with the last patch..
And actually as long as there arent any kind of real economy in this game, players with 100+ Mio CBills will NOT matter, it doesnt have any effect to the game, besides these kind of players will be able to buy new mechs (and new mechbays) right at realease.
But it DOES have an effect on attracting new players, everyone besides PGI does know that fact... *sigh

Exactly. If it takes 30% longer for players to reach Massive C-Bill Stockpile levels, and PGI's plan is to introduce new C-Bill sinks with Community Warfare.... Maybe that 30% longer is long enough to stave off Massive C-Bill Stockpiles for the majority of players and as such prevent initial trivialization of Community Warfare content.

[Druidika]

Wintersdark, on 11 August 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

[/size]
This change will have no impact on new player addition. They'll never know any different. It sucks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not crusading all white knight like here, don't get me wrong.

But the change is not so outstanding that it'll impact new players in any way that they will notice, because they've never known anything different.

The longer a grind is, the less casual players keep playing before they spend their first cent. That's really just free2play 101.

[Wintersdark]

Druidika, on 11 August 2013 - 05:26 PM, said:

The longer a grind is, the less casual players keep playing before they spend their first cent. That's really just free2play 101.

Cadet bonus is the evil fish here. It gets new players a good lump to start with, heavily decreasing their initial grind.

[Cadodd]

It will have an effect, as every new player should be able to make simple calculations on how long do they have to play to get a new mech, besides the first one (newbie bonus).
The only motivation for new players is progression, but if the next step in progression (here: a new mech) is too far away for you taste, they wont continue playing..

[Royalewithcheese]

Incidentally, that twitch stream is very informative re: suspicions that PGI, NGNG, etc. are playing a different game from the rest of us.

[Wintersdark]

The grind duration is longer, but I'd argue that most players won't really calculate it because most players don't bother calculating that sort of thing, just like most players don't visit the forums. Most players are blissfully ignorant of all of this.

I'm sure there'll be the odd player who draws the "Grind Line" between the current (likely to be further adjusted as per Paul's comments) cbill rate and the old cbill rate, but I really can't see that as being a big amount of them. It's just not really that big a change, and they'll know as they improve, their cbill earnings will improve too.

Of all the reasons to give up on the game, I'm just not seeing that as a major one; particularly when you're only counting people who would have stayed with the previous amount but won't with the new amount.

MMO (in all their incarnations) players have shown themselves to be, on the whole, amazingly tolerant of grinds, unfortunately.




Finally, please, please understand. As I've said all along, I don't agree with this change. I don't like it. Don't confuse my arguments here with support of the idea. It screws me personally quite severely, as I'm a pretty damn casual player. But my experience with these games for as long as massively multiplayer online games have existed has shown that players are ridiculously tolerant of grinds.

I wish they weren't. I wish I were wrong. I don't think I am - maybe I am, we'll see I guess - but I really don't think so. Unfortunately.

[Panboy]

If they just made Artillery and Airstrikes worth using and had a button to auto rebuy them at the end of the round Boom, you have people spending Cbills. More Modules like this set up in a way that you spend the money automatically (With a check box) and this problem solves its self.

As it is noone uses strikes as the don't do anything,

[Royalewithcheese]

Wintersdark, on 11 August 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

I'm sure there'll be the odd player who draws the "Grind Line" between the current (likely to be further adjusted as per Paul's comments) cbill rate and the old cbill rate, but I really can't see that as being a big amount of them. It's just not really that big a change, and they'll know as they improve, their cbill earnings will improve too.

I dunno if this needs to be conscious - I can't tell you how many hours it takes to grind a new gun in Tribes, but I can tell you that after a point I said to myself "this is boring, I haven't unlocked anything for a while" and left for other things. I don't know how many peoples' "this is boring, I haven't unlocked anything for a while" line this will cross, but cutting earnings in half seems really risky.

[-Natural Selection-]

Been adv between 110-120000 a match. We went into a match where 11 of the 12 were "all" killed by legs. The salvage bonus increase from all the engines brought it up almost 150k lol. (no premium) This happened a second time, 11/12 leg only with same results. It appears that if they nerfed this to make up for the increased amount for mechs, you can just about only offset it by legging lol.

(stop puttin ammo in your legs, messing up my salvage bonus! )

[Deathlike]

I have some crap pics of some good winnings I have in a HBK-4G... it kinda confirms what PGI has been saying about the c-bills reward changes.

On the other hand, being precise is actually detrimental to your winnings... which is what I'm taking from the entire issue. If you're using lasers (not always accurate), MGs, LBX, missiles... anything that tends to scatter damage.. this c-bill change is for you.

Edited by Deathlike, 11 August 2013 - 06:24 PM.

[Royalewithcheese]

Deathlike, on 11 August 2013 - 06:24 PM, said:

On the other hand, being precise is actually detrimental to your winnings...

Stealth nerf to precision builds?

[Sug]

soapyfrog, on 11 August 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

How much were earnings nerfed by? I haven't noticed a huge difference... I

You haven't really been playing much then.