1105 replies to this topic

[Kilrein]

InnerSphereNews, on 27 August 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

September Creative Developer Update

Economics

As for the economics, we’ve heard some talk about the reduction in C-Bill rewards. As previous replies to the community in the latest ATD have stated, we needed to rein in some of the rewards a bit as they had grown beyond our original thresholds by about 16%. This is normal and common as a game evolves and players become more efficient. The addition of 12v12 also required a tuning pass to lower the earning by around 13% to account for an additional 8 players on the battlefield. The future vision for CB and XP rewards includes a more granular, role based approach currently in design and development. These expanded earnings will reward players directly for performing specific roles, allowing them to distinguish themselves.

Some economic math from our telemetry data:

• Average match time is 8.4 minutes.
  
• Average CB/match is 79,069.
  
• Average CB/hour is 564,778 if you only have 1 BattleMech to use.
  
• New players can earn 7,981,686 in cadet bonuses during their first 3.5 hours in addition to between 1-3 million in regular game earnings.

[color=#CCCCCC]

[/color]

So c-bills were 16% past threshold so you dialed them back almost 66%?

Once again, that math confused me.

My matches are taking on average 35% longer (6:35 increased to 8:53) and and I'm earning on average 53% less C-bills per match (160k avg to 75k average). So my c-bills per hour went from 1,458k/hr to 506k/hr? In other words I am earning approx 34% of the c-bills I was previously which just doesn't make sense in light of your 'beyond our original thresholds by about 16%' statement.

Congratulations on making this a pure F2P game for me. I'm glad your target demo is increasing but I'm pretty sure that I am absolutely the target demo you need to stay in business. One with limited free time, a love of the BT universe, a very high income and significant disposable income.

[Jyzene]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

Thank god!!!! Someone understands!!!!!!!

My post was hardly a compliment

[dangerzone]

Kunae, on 27 August 2013 - 04:50 PM, said:

Young "man", you show, through your posting, that you are not nearly as mature as you like to think you are.

A word of advice... if you don't understand a topic, as you obviously don't this one, it's best not to open your mouth at all. I suggest you read the entirety of this thread, without taking any statements in it personally.

Kunae, on 27 August 2013 - 04:50 PM, said:

Young "man", you show, through your posting, that you are not nearly as mature as you like to think you are.

A word of advice... if you don't understand a topic, as you obviously don't this one, it's best not to open your mouth at all. I suggest you read the entirety of this thread, without taking any statements in it personally.

Dude. I'm active on these forums. I just do not choose to post because of the usual shitstorms. I am on here at least 30 times a day refreshing and waiting for an update. Whether it be a ATD, dev update, feedback thread, command chair post...even the popular forum topics.

I know where most of the community is coming from, believe me. I've just never seen so many grown men and women cry over something as simple as this. Cry over the expensive electric bill, cry over your mortage, cry over car payments, but not this.
I am just a little shocked as to how everyone is reacting. Seriously, chill out.

Also, you do not know me. I speak my mind how I speak my mind. that does not make me immature. I could very easily say some pretty damn vulgar **** to all of you at my disgust in all of you, but I choose not to, because unlike the lot of you, I realize that insulting, QQing, and posting rude comments about other people do not get me anywhere in life.

Simple as that. Resume your QQing, mechwarrior.

[Ohsh]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Dude. I'm active on these forums. I just do not choose to post because of the usual shitstorms. I am on here at least 30 times a day refreshing and waiting for an update. Whether it be a ATD, dev update, feedback thread, command chair post...even the popular forum topics.

I know where most of the community is coming from, believe me. I've just never seen so many grown men and women cry over something as simple as this. Cry over the expensive electric bill, cry over your mortage, cry over car payments, but not this.
I am just a little shocked as to how everyone is reacting. Seriously, chill out.

Also, you do not know me. I speak my mind how I speak my mind. that does not make me immature. I could very easily say some pretty damn vulgar **** to all of you at my disgust in all of you, but I choose not to, because unlike the lot of you, I realize that insulting, QQing, and posting rude comments about other people do not get me anywhere in life.

Simple as that. Resume your QQing, mechwarrior.

lol

[Royalewithcheese]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

stuff

hey man i like the mad cat in your signature

EDIT: everything above the sig is kinda questionable tho

Edited by Royalewithcheese, 27 August 2013 - 05:03 PM.

[Lamenter captain]

Tennex, on 27 August 2013 - 01:42 PM, said:

what i want to know is, how within a week they already have information on player retention and 3PV.

are their standards for retaining players only 1 week? (since thats only how long its been since 3PV has been implemented)

Maybe they were talking about over all retention as in less people quit playing after 3pv than they had planned on.

[dangerzone]

mint frog, on 27 August 2013 - 04:58 PM, said:

So in order to get PGI to stop making a good game into a bad one I need to change careers?
Sorry but I already have a job that I do very well. It's not inappropriate for me to ask someone else to do their job well too.

Thank you for proving my point. now go play mechwarrior

[Wales Grey]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

Thank you for proving my point. now go play mechwarrior

Point proven: PGI are bad at their job. They are so bad, they don't realize they're doing it wrong until people who aren't even in their profession notice the trainwreck that they've generated and tell them.

edit: It's funny, you telling people how wrong they are when you can't use punctuation or capitalize things correctly.

Edited by Wales Grey, 27 August 2013 - 05:10 PM.

[Justy Starflare]

I have no idea if anyone from igp/pgi is going to read this bit I'm glad you guys are raking threats seriously there's also of internet bravery going on and punishment like getting accounts deleted would be acceptable to me. But on this "silent majority" vs "vocal minority' I'm gonna call you out and say "BULL DUNG" you are being completely dismissive of your fan base. There are other forums where the posts don't get deleted like they do here an polls that tell a whole other story to that garbage you just tried feeding us.

Edited by Justy Starflare, 27 August 2013 - 05:11 PM.

[Protection]

Quoting user "on an island" but having formatting issues:

Quote

PGI claims that August was a great sucess in terms of appealing to a broader audience and adding new players. The numbers that they bring in should more than offset the ones that leave in fustration right?

The numbers don't support that assertion. Since the last patch they've added approximately 2,421 new players compared to roughly 500,000 existing players. This doesn't seem to be the large increase that they were professing. There doesn't seem to be any major uptick in the popluation trend at all.







Date...............Population
31-Oct-2011..........405
1-Nov-2011...........9010
27-Nov-2011..........27638
21-Dec-2011..........34424
27-Jan-2012..........47027
27-Feb-2012..........56250
13-Mar-2012..........68127
8-May-2012...........93594
5-Jun-2012...........137581
23-Jul-2012..........197383
2-Aug-2012...........223362
17-Aug-2012..........250611
16-Sep-2012..........285781
16-Oct-2012..........353948
4-Nov-2012...........391808
2-Dec-2012...........408720
25-Jan-2013..........429353
21-Feb-2013..........440500
6-Mar-2013...........445964
14-Apr-2013..........462031
5-May-2013...........467889
10-Jun-2013..........482185
16-Aug-2013..........509281
19-Aug-2013..........510603
21-Aug-2013..........511322

[Deathlike]

The only ninja CW announcement to be made: How loyalty points will be collected in your Pheonix Project loyal point accelerated mechs.

Otherwise, the entire content of the creative update post is equivalent to "Everything is fine" while the house of cards PGI built burning to the ground.

[TLBFestus]

InnerSphereNews, on 27 August 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

September Creative Developer Update

What an August! We released some really big features in 12v12 and 3PV: Both have been a great success and delivered on our goals of adding more action, tactics, and deeper gameplay (12v12), while continuing to make the game appeal to a broader audience of gamers (3PV). After releasing 3PV we saw an immediate improvement in our target demographic, with a good bump in new player retention!
Bryan Ekman

Excuse me if I find this statement a tad disturbing Mr. Ekman. A year ago when I paid my money to be a Founder, every indication you folk gave was that I was your "target demographic".

Back then we were told first person only and honestly I could live with a separate queue (til 1st person atrophied and died at the hands of your "new demographic" anyhow), we were told no coolant flushes, and a host of other things that you have backtracked on.

So, be honest, we aren't your target demographic and really never have been are we? I'm feeling best described as a stepping stone, something to be used and left behind as you reach for the new bigger and more financially milkable new demographic.

It's OK really, just be honest, quit leading me on and just make a clean break with us. Sure it'll hurt but it'll be over sooner.

UPDATE- after fuming over this last update and it's implications, I find myself inching towards requesting a Founders pack refund, something I wasn't considering before.

I believe it's possible if you start reading the Canadian Competition Bureaus position on misleading advertising and labelling, in particular "False and Misleading Representations".

Feel free to read it yourself and make up your own minds;

http://www.competiti.../eng/02776.html

For myself, if I don't see some mea culpas, a decent apology, and some move to take care of first person players by launch I think I'll file some complaints and demand my $120 back. Geez, and I was really hoping for some positive news this week.

Edited by TLBFestus, 27 August 2013 - 05:38 PM.

[Kaldor]

This is what I read:

"F-You, you're all a bunch of selfish whiners on an island, bro" (a guy in my unit said that)

And

"Screw the people that got this game off the ground. We are going after the COD kiddies with daddies credit card and a 15 minute attention span" (Ive suspected this for quite awhile)


Do they expect another million players on release? They are missing this fact. Anyone that was or is willing to play this game long term already has played and quit or is still playing. It would be very interesting to see the amount of Founder accounts still active...

Edited by Kaldor, 27 August 2013 - 05:17 PM.

[IceCase88]

<---- Definitely not a Goon. We have sparred a few times in debates.

Now we know why 3PV was set as a default... to make it a success. Now that 99.9% of players have removed 3PV as the default why don't you take another look at your "success." Why foresake your paying members for non-paying members?

[Kilrein]

DragonsFire, on 27 August 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

I pretty consistently finish in the top 4, without premium or a hero mech and generally don't see anything below 110K unless it was a cap win only, so those numbers don't seem that inconsistent.

Edit: And perhaps your results have been different, I just know what I've seen thus far.

I have no clue how you are consistently seeing 110k unless you are driving hero mechs. Case in point. Not sure how these matches could have gone better but look at the immense c-bills.

http://i767.photobuc...zps537bddcd.jpg

or

http://i767.photobuc...zps0ec286ce.jpg

So unless you are pulling this type of match off every time, I doubt your words sir.

* And can I say how SAD it is that this forum can't support pasting images into posts? Even shrunk down to 1/4 the size, still gives me that wonderful 'post_too_short' error

Edited by Kilrein, 27 August 2013 - 05:25 PM.

[Kunae]

Kilrein, on 27 August 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

I have no clue how you are consistently seeing 110k unless you are driving hero mechs. Case in point. Not sure how these matches could have gone better but look at the immense c-bills.




So unless you are pulling this type of match off every time, I doubt your words sir.

* And can I say how SAD it is that this forum can't support pasting images into posts? Even shrunk down to 1/4 the size, still gives me that wonderful 'post_too_short' error

FTFY

[Duncan Longwood]

Is it just me or has every recent move by PGI made the game more hostile to team players?

The whole "cbill nerf workaround" is great if you are pugging solo, not so much for team-play, but let's be honest... you could do the same thing before the nerf.

The "vocal minority" that is so readily dismissed happens to be the "community" of MW:O... you know, the ones that pay for Teamspeak servers and organize merc corps, make podcasts and youtube videos? You know, keeping people engaged with your brand... please hire someone with a business degree or borrow someone from IGP, your understanding of marketing and economics is lacking.

If you aren't making a mechwarrior sim, I have some bad news for you... The call of duty guys are making call of duty with mechs already... it's called Titanfall... you cannot out-call-of-duty the guys that made call of duty. Whoever told you that you could was lying.

[Deathlike]

I'm not a good player by any stretch... I don't have hero mechs or use premium time (I've only used the freebie ones that I ever get... and still have one hour stored away for double XP weekend).

My average winnings is only 90k (close to 94k).

If I were using Premium, it would be a little under 140k.

If I were using a hero mech, it would be around 120k.

The fact that the overall payout is LOWER, will make ALL newbies who play this game suffer MUCH LONGER until their next variant or mech.. let alone trying to optimize the initial mech they got.

Seriously, PGI does not know the meaning of the word "retention". They have not even defined their terminology or ANY of their metrics used.

Also, I got around to posting how you "collect" in MWO in terms of c-bills. I can already tell you that Conquest now truly sucks when you lose:
http://mwomercs.com/...uick-breakdown/

Edited by Deathlike, 27 August 2013 - 05:30 PM.

[FactorlanP]

I honestly don't know why there continues to be Goon hate these days.

The Word of Lowtax folks have actually been working pretty hard to improve the game.

I'm not one of them, by the way. Never have been. I find Anders communications extra fun to read also.

[DragonsFire]

Kilrein, on 27 August 2013 - 05:23 PM, said:

<snip for brevity>

Those totals would generally place you in the top 4-6 of a round, depending on the competition and placement of the other folks in with you. Your earnings are consistent with what I stated earlier about generally not seeing less than 110K for rounds when I am consistently in the top 4.

Edit: Please do not mistake my intent to inform as implied approval, because it's not. I would also like to see more specific role based or mech based rewards make their way into the game to help offset the loss and give incentive to folks to perform better/do specific tasks.

Edited by DragonsFire, 27 August 2013 - 05:33 PM.