269 replies to this topic

[Kushko]

Vorgier, on 10 October 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

Grind? What grind? Sure it takes a bit to get more expensive stuff but there is cheaper stuff. Getting a million is roughly 10-12 games, which seeing as how the average game lasts maybe 7-10 minutes, that's easy money.

If you want to know what grinding is go play League. Take's roughly 60-100 games in League to save up 6300 IP for a champion (since they cash ***** ever since the Chinese bought them), or more even, depending on if you win or lose. And the average game length with that is 30+ minutes. That game literally forces you to spend money if you want to play new champions. Especially if you're a casual, which then it's literally unfeasible to save. The only way it'd be easy to save up that much is if you neckbeard out on the game.

Now cry and tell me about grinding in MWO some more please. There's always Hawken. The game that's already practically DOA since nobody barely plays it. You might fit in there where it's actually grindy to unlock anything.

Ok, i'll bite.
You compare MWO to LoL and state that the grind there is much worse.

Lets do a quick comparison shall we?
You say it takes 60-100 games to get a champion in LoL and games taking 30mins. Lets go with an average and say 80*30 which comes to 2400 minutes or 40 hours for a champion.
Now lets take a mech in MWO. An average player will make about 80k per match and his match will take 8-9minutes. For arguments sake lets take 8 (and ignore the silly 1 extra minute of waiting for the utterly pointless prematch lobby). Lets take a hypothetical mech that costs 12mil to buy and fit. Lets see...add, subtract, carry the eight...comes down to 1200minutes or 20hours. So half of what a grindly game like LoL has. Still pretty horrible, but better than nothing right? Well no...lets not forget we need 3 of pretty much the same mech to elite/master one. So we just went from 20 hours which a casual player could just barely stomach to grind, and got to a whooping 60 hours.

So the real question comes down to this; How can you possibly think LoL is too grindy but feel MWO is fine?

Edited by Kushko, 11 October 2013 - 09:45 AM.

[Sephlock]

tvaughanx, on 11 October 2013 - 06:34 AM, said:

If you must compare this game compare it to games that are not done.

Please define the word "release" for me, please. I think there is a misunderstanding here.

[Harmatia]

The aquisition rate of CB relative to the mech one wants to purchase is not much slower (if at all) than the IP aquisition rate relative to purchasing a hero in League of Legends. That said, what PGI really needs to do is:

• Increase the number of trial mechs per cycle
  
• Decrease trial mech cycle time to one week
  
• Allow players to purchase and configure trial mechs for the duration of the trial.

Again, like League of Legends does with its weekly hero cycle. PGI also needs to consider redesigning how mech trees work. In LoL the only thing attached to a hero are the skins. Everything else is account bound and can be interchanged with any hero, owned or on trial. While I understand why the current system is the way it is (I'm maxed out on the mechs I use and am sitting on a pot of GXP), it is not as lucrative in player aquisition and retention as the system LoL uses.

Like I mentioned already, I'm beyond the point of needing to purchase or grind anything, I have all I want for the time being and everything I earn in-game just sits on my account. I still have over 5,000MC from my founders' purchase. So whether the systems changes or not makes no difference to me. However I love MWO and want to see it grow and deepen, but there are many things about the current meta structure that don't work so well on a widespread casual level.

In order to keep the game enticing for casual players, there needs to be more options. Otherwise many will get stuck in a grind and leave. And that benefits no one. So I hope when CW starts rolling out PGI takes down mech and pilot trees, rolling the former into a new pilot leveling system and the latter into a LoL-like rune system. Because the way the module system works is very taxing and offputting compared to similar systems in other games, like LoL.

[Bullseye69]

To anyone that says ther no drawback to the cbills nerf please remember on thing thing like UAV,artillery strike,airstrike and cool shot cost cbills. If you have a victory and use 9 shot collant then instead of 120,000 you only make 80,000 and if you happened to use a uav too the that 80,000 drops to 40,000.

Even running my founder or my one hero mech 80,000 to 180,000 is the max I have made since nerf, since I earning less I have forgon buying the orions and victor mech and trying to buy my 2 more trebs or trying the black jack. You can;t make enough quick enough when you only have a couple of hours a week to play to buy new things.

[-CIBO-]

Kushko, on 11 October 2013 - 09:45 AM, said:

Ok, i'll bite.
You compare MWO to LoL and state that the grind there is much worse.

Lets do a quick comparison shall we?
You say it takes 60-100 games to get a champion in LoL and games taking 30mins. Lets go with an average and say 80*30 which comes to 2400 minutes or 40 hours for a champion.
Now lets take a mech in MWO. An average player will make about 80k per match and his match will take 8-9minutes. For arguments sake lets take 8 (and ignore the silly 1 extra minute of waiting for the utterly pointless prematch lobby). Lets take a hypothetical mech that costs 12mil to buy and fit. Lets see...add, subtract, carry the eight...comes down to 1200minutes or 20hours. So half of what a grindly game like LoL has. Still pretty horrible, but better than nothing right? Well no...lets not forget we need 3 of pretty much the same mech to elite/master one. So we just went from 20 hours which a casual player could just barely stomach to grind, and got to a whooping 60 hours.

So the real question comes down to this; How can you possibly think LoL is too grindy but feel MWO is fine?

See that's where you're completely wrong. Nobody needs to elite or master anything. Especially in pubs. I haven't elited or mastered any of my mechs and have absolutely no problem. I have a Victor, Jenner and a Cataphract and I do perfectly fine with just basic efficiencies. I haven't bothered with trying to elite those on top of said reason because Phoenix is dropping soon and I'd rather spend the Cbills on decking the new mechs out. Maybe competitively sure. But that group is so miniscule.

The "grind" in MWO is the least "grindy" in any F2P game I've played to date. Not to mention there are plenty of cheap mechs that are obtainable in a handful of games. Planetside 2, Hawken, League, whatever... they're all extremely more of a time sink than MWO by a long shot.

Bullseye69, on 11 October 2013 - 11:52 AM, said:

You can;t make enough quick enough when you only have a couple of hours a week to play to buy new things.

Please tell me a F2P game that isn't like that. There isn't. How else would they make money? They wouldn't. That's why there's cash options for people who can't play enough to use earned currency. "But I don't want to pay" Well what kind of argument is that? You just want them to hand you free stuff so they make literally no money at all on top of probably how little they already make? Tough luck, because you aren't going to find anything out there.

Maybe if PGI fixed their jacked up cash pricing (lolyeahrite) then maybe it would be better. That's why I picked up the overlord pack. It's probably the best deal they've had in terms of price to content.

Edited by Vorgier, 11 October 2013 - 04:20 PM.

[RamataKhan]

Vorgier, on 11 October 2013 - 04:14 PM, said:

Please tell me a F2P game that isn't like that.

Guild Wars 1 & 2.

[MonkeyDCecil]

I was literally about post a topic about this same thing. I recently had to matches where I got a good amount of kills, assist and other stuff. I got about 180,000 in one and 170,000 in the other. And I have premium time. WTF. On average I get around 120,000 for a win and that is with premium time. It just does not seem worth it to me. I will not send money on premium time anymore.

I would post pics I took of the end round screen but I can figure out how to post pics.

[Kushko]

Vorgier, on 11 October 2013 - 04:14 PM, said:

See that's where you're completely wrong. Nobody needs to elite or master anything.

You are right, I dont need more than 1 mech, i dont need to master any mech and i dont need to play MWO.

That being said, the question was not my or your need, but the fact it takes 3 variants of a certain mech to propperly "grind out" one single mech. Doesnt matter if we need to do it or not. You dont need more than 1 champion in LoL either, in fact you dont need any since their trial/free system is actually good.

Simple fact is that the current grind in MWO is not good for the players nor the game/PGI and while this is just my opinion, i think it is also the opinion of many others. There is also the fact that keeping the current grind will alienate many many players while reverting it back to its previous reasonable state will most likely not alienate anyone.

[Ph30nix]

Niko Snow, on 14 August 2013 - 02:03 PM, said:

It's easier to test and adjust this way: By first reducing the overall reward, we can observe the telemetry of how much less players are making overall during this period of time and thus make better judgement on the value of future rewards.

This also helps reduce the possibility of over-shooting our adjustments and giving away too many rewards. In such a scenario, we would have to nerf those rewards permanently and be left with much upset from any players who had grown accustomed to those greater reward levels.

In our current development: We can confidently counter frustrations with the current rewards implementation with the knowledge that more rewards will be coming, similarly to when rewards were previously adjusted last year.

Your other concerns should be addressed in future communications from the Dev Team on the upcoming rewards.

im sorry but as far as the "economy" goes, if you guys dont have enough data to project any currency issues then there is absolutely zero hope for this game.

It's not that difficult take saved data from 1000 games of players from each ELO bracket you have, compare their Cbill income with the old income method vs the new income method, Adding 4 more players is NOT going to magically increase the average income. 1 player out of 100 MIGHT get more income then they were able too in 8v8 but the chances of that happening are astronomical because the added possibility of focus fired will make it impossible for any one player to tag all 12 enemy mechs.

[Odins Fist]

Ph30nix, on 12 October 2013 - 09:29 PM, said:

im sorry but as far as the "economy" goes, if you guys dont have enough data to project any currency issues then there is absolutely zero hope for this game.

Ph30nix is partly correct, if THEY haven't collected enough DATA from thousands upon thousands of matches, and the C-Bill spending habits of THEIR player base by now, then that is a sad staement about the approach of how to adjust the economy.

I'm not making a statement or judgement about the current economy, i'm saying that if they haven't figured out how to approach it by now, then there are serious issues with the handling of the development of MWO..

The window of opportunity for MWO is closing a little more each day, that's the reality of the situation right now..

How many Pheonix pack type deals can they use to attempt to keep the player base playing..??
If you didn't see the strategic timing of the release of these things to keep the player base happy then I don't know what to say.
I'm not talking about when they are put on sale, i'm talking about when they are released.

When the faith in the game hits a low spot, you can almost predict with certainty that some scraps from the table will be brushed off onto the floor to keep the mice happy. Marketing is easy.. It's been done many time before.

[Roadbeer]

So, let me get this straight...

The purpose of MC is to buy your way out of the grind, but you're not going to buy your way out of the grind until they fix the grind so you don't have to buy your way out of it?

Did I read that right?

[Lunatic_Asylum]

Just enjoy the game. There is no grinding.

Edited by lunticasylum, 13 October 2013 - 08:23 PM.

[Grym]

Roadbeer, on 13 October 2013 - 08:18 PM, said:

So, let me get this straight...

The purpose of MC is to buy your way out of the grind, but you're not going to buy your way out of the grind until they fix the grind so you don't have to buy your way out of it?

Did I read that right?

The problem isnt just the grind. The "buying yourself out of the grind" would cost way more than many are willing to pay.

Hell, ive bought legendary founder, pheonix, and saber pack. All together that way more than ive invested in any other game.

Their MC price scheme is terrible for the average gamer. And downright punishing to avid players.

[Kushko]

Roadbeer, on 13 October 2013 - 08:18 PM, said:

So, let me get this straight...

The purpose of MC is to buy your way out of the grind, but you're not going to buy your way out of the grind until they fix the grind so you don't have to buy your way out of it?

Did I read that right?

You read it right, but it would appear you're not getting what it means.

Buying mechs with MC should be to save time not to avoid a soul shattering grind. The fact is if people are happy with a game, they are also happy with spending more money on it and vice versa if people are unhappy with a game they will be less likely to spend money on it or if they do they will feel horrible for caving in. Now i know that the economy/grind is not the only thing making people happy/unhappy with the game, but done right or done very badly it can have a pretty substantial impact on it. And as it currently is, MWO is more in the done badly category.

[Roadbeer]

Kushko, on 14 October 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

You read it right, but it would appear you're not getting what it means.

Buying mechs with MC should be to save time not to avoid a soul shattering grind.

[Graywar]

RamataKhan, on 11 October 2013 - 09:13 PM, said:

Guild Wars 1 & 2.

GW isn't F2P. Not at all. You have to buy the game to be able to play it.

[MischiefSC]

It's not ideal but it's manageable. When I can play I tend to drop a lot of games though, so perhaps I'm playing enough that I'm still feeling like I'm making progress? I have a friend who plays rarely and is always broke. The result is that he can't progress measurably, gets frustrated and then plays less. Premium time is worthless to people whos problem is less playtime thus there is no solution save for the absolutely silly MC prices to buy mechs outright. You don't have to be poor to feel like spending $30 for a single mech is an absolute sucker move.

Cammo and paints? ..... I guess that's alright. Not that worth it to me simply because I play a lot of different mechs. Mech bay prices? Perfect. Cost of premium time? For someone who plays often it seems priced well, if I played less I'd never touch it. Hero mechs and MC mech purchases? Given that some hero mechs are significantly advantageous vs other variants of the same chassis (Wang, Ilya, Boars for example) I can sorta see that but it's pretty steep. Standard mechs for MC though? Slightly less financially viable than heating my home by burning dollar bills for warmth. Could you? Yes, but regardless of how rich you are it's still going to make you feel like a chump sooner or later.

Shorten premium time duration to hours, not months. Make it only count when you're IN MATCH - after the loading screen even. Would probably sell a lot more of it while not significantly reducing the cost/benefit balance. I'm sure you guys have the metrics on how much actual playtime a 30 day stretch of Premium time averages out to.

[Kyrie]

Niko Snow, on 14 August 2013 - 11:12 AM, said:

We appreciate your concerns on our recent changes to C-Bill earnings.

As an online game, MechWarrior Online requires close attention to economy balance. We have been actively monitoring and tweaking our rewards system in preparation for upcoming features and overall economy design.

As we move closer to the game’s Launch on September 17, our developers will be addressing the community in an official post on our forums with a focus on C-Bill earnings and other reward systems.

Thank you again for your feedback and patience while we continue to adjust the game’s economy.

Did we ever get the dev update on this issue?

[ClumsyKlutz]

Ah i see..

It is "better" to discourage new players now, when there is very little content to speak off, with adjustments to the game for content that may or may not come, because it will be even harder to attract people who have played the game and have been discouraged up front.

Okay..would someone please explain to me, why that makes sense?

I just "hope" for PGIs sake, that the whales will stay to be milked at will until PGI has filled their pockets enough or bring out MWO with the content promised 2 years ago.

Either way, PGI has done a good job at milking...that's an accomplishment that will not go away..

[Kyuzo]

for those of you making 80k or so you guys are lucky grinding in a trial mech and only making 30-60k is harsh