36 replies to this topic

[Angel of Annihilation]

Ironically this is the number I have came up with as well.

Currently according to the statistics page on the site, I have managed to earn a little over 230 million C-bills since the start of Open Beta. Since it roughly costs 10 million to outfit each mech this puts on pace to own about 23 mechs a year out of I think 93 currently released variants. This of couse doesn't take into account the cost of modules or the cost of experimenting with builds.

In fact my 230 million has only managed to buy me 14 C-bill variants and a semi-stocked inventory of extra weapons, engines and other equipment that tend to make it a little more convinient to upgrade new mechs with.

So yeah about 4 years if I wanted to try out each and every mech in the game.

Of course I am obviously making too many C-bills by being able to own 14 mechs in almost a year of play.

Now to be fair, I know several people that have double the stable I do and even some that own 70+ mechs but these people are outliers, not your every day average Joe player. The game needs to be balanced on the average Joe, not these types of players.

[Pezzer]

Real quick, just wanna add that (ironically) the Pheonix Package purchases have killed grinding as well. I'm at least saving my money/time/energy for the new pretty Mechs I'm about to have dropped into my inventory. I can wait a couple months, with some casual play in between now and then. But I was really hoping to try the Blackjack, and while I still will, I won't set myself up with the goal of Eliting them any more. not enough time, would rather play other games with the current grind tbh.

People aren't lying when they say the game doesn't feel like it's REWARDING them at ALL anymore. At the least, not being awarded for experimenting and getting creative with our builds. End up investing too much money in our mechs to take them apart and waste money adding new weapons to them, weapons that we may not even like in the end. Almost seems like we are being rewarded for cycling through the same 3 boring Mechs for weeks. Not only is that a dull gaming experience, but if I am forced to play the same mechs over and over again, I will most likely get bored of the game as a whole. Once again, no playtime/interest=no MC purchases. Or at least not as many, probably going to chip in for 20 bucks or less of MC just to buy a couple more bays.

EDIT: This game gets boring when you play the same 3 mechs for weeks, however (going to make this comparison again so that PGI realizes they are too different from Wargaming to make money off of the same ideas/economy) it does NOT become too much of a grind to play the same 3 tanks for weeks in WoT. Reasons:
1. I know I'm progressing up to something better/different/fun later on with my exp.
2. The maps, weapon types, stratagems, and playstyles are all so varied that it mixes things up. Currently, MWO is turning into "rush to middle-ish area of map, brawl, rinse and repeat. Oh man, Conquest...well, better do the same thing just near capture points!". It gets really boring w/o TS3 buddies/true teammates.
3. Being sneaky rewards you as a player most of the time in WoT. In MWO, if you aren't a Light, going alone/in a small pack to flank is a death wish unless you go over 100km/h.

Edited by Pezzer, 28 August 2013 - 03:54 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Duncan Longwood, on 28 August 2013 - 11:41 AM, said:

Thanks for pointing to something Bryan said early on in your post to let me know you don't know squat more than I do. You want to try to mince my argument apart at least have the decency to do a little math.. you probably know it as counting your fingers and toes. I was able to spit my post with a couple variables in it in 5 minutes. Sorry there won't be an excel spreadsheet to show all possible permutations and calculations. Eh-hole

Seriously? Name calling?

Sure, I'm going off the same information you are. I didn't claim to know more.

But the problem was you were using information you made up on the spot to create a "worst case scenario" then presented that as how things are.

Sure, I didn't bother to work out the math for how long it would take you to get 4 mechs to a "competitive" point. Mostly, because I'd have to do two sets - one for your make-believe situation (you have to have 4 mechs mastered in your ready bay to compete) and one for my "as Bryan outlined" situation (You choose one of your four ready mechs to pilot once you know what map you're on).

So, you invite a friend to your merc corp. He doesn't need four mastered mechs to be competitive. He needs one mech, with it's Elites and doubled basics.

You don't need three modules to be competitive. You don't need any modules to be competitive. Modules can be useful, but are very minor and simply aren't going to be the difference between victory and defeat. Further, you can move modules around from mech to mech, so you don't need 12 of them.

So your buddy will need to buy three mechs, and outfit them. Realistically, most mechs cost roughly 8-10m cbills to get Kitted Up (DHS on all, ES/FF on lights, ES on med/heavy, and ES on the odd assault). Lets pick a Jagermech, because it's pretty middle of the road/moderately expensive, and definitely a competitive beast. We'll hit him up for 9m cbills to each - He'll probably buy an upgraded engine for the one he wants to master, but the other two can run stock engines. He's new, so he should probably stick with an STD engine build anyways initially. 27m cbills.

His Cadet Bonus will pay for the first Jag, excluding the regular income during that period. That brings him down to 18m cbills required. He'll make roughly 500k an hour (more if he goes premium/hero), and even as a newbie this will be trivially easy if he's playing in a group with your merc corp for training while he farms. He's got 36hr of playtime required for that. And that time will be spent largely learning the game, anyways, along side merc-mates.

That's a lot more reasonable. And he could cut those costs even more by limiting upgrades on the other two Jags, and just piloting them long enough to get them levelled up.

Or, he could do it with Hunchbacks. There, he can be competitive at 7m for the upgraded hunchie and 5 each of the others. 17m cbills, leaving only 9 needed after Cadet bonus. 18 hours of play without hero or premium.

[Wintersdark]

My stats: I've made 320,246,524 cbills since the start of open beta, with an average of 8 matches per day. I've got... 20 cbill variants, in 10 months. Also a bunch of Hero mechs. It's a little skewed, because of R&R in early OB resulting in effectively zero income for my first while, but whatever. 8 matches per day is not a lot - that's pretty light gaming for a lot of people. Add to this mounds of engines, modules, what have you.

I make roughly 30% less now, so that would take me down to 14 cbill mechs if we'd made this much the whole time, roughly speaking. That's fine in my books. You could either buy a few more with MC, be they heros or regular variants, or whatever else. If I played like some of the folks here, where I could put hours in every day, it would be a hell of a lot higher.

*shrugs* Of course, I'd like to make more. But even at this point, things go along reasonably enough. You'll probably want to either buy premium time or a hero mech or two for random cbill farming, but that's entirely reasonable in a F2P game.

[Kdogg788]

I'm at 391 million career earnings myself

Anyways, if I were a conspiracy theorist I would say that the Cbill nerf conicided perfectly with the Phoenix packages and Saber reinforcements. Don't want to pay those CBills for new mechs and accumulate them in game? Just grab a Phoenix pack, and poof mechs are there for you. Hey the Phoenix variants may even come with upgrades such as XLs, DHS, Endo, etc.

-k

[Dodger79]

I used to buy every new Mech on release, many of them even with MCs to have the CBills to customize the Mech even becore the first time i play with it. Now, after the CBill nerf, i as a casual player simply do not earn enough in a reasonable time to customize a Mech, therefore i do not buy new Mechs with MC. And therefore no Mechbays, camos, cockpit items etc (every Mech i own has a camo with some of my many bought colors and most of them have cockpit itemy). Yo earning less CBills has stopped me from spending real money. In fact, after spending more then 500$ and never running without premium since back in closed beta, my premium time just ran out this week i wont even buy more of it because the benefit is too low now...

[Shae Starfyre]

There is one thing I am not hearing in these time frames are the comparisons, logical ones, to the end game of other games.

For example, D&D Online, for example or whatever, you may be able to get a top tier character leveled fairly quickly with support; but that doesn't mean you will have all the best equipment.

That equipment takes a lot of time.

And if you compare this to EvE online, this game is a breeze when it comes to end game accomplishments.

For a free to play game, there is nothing wrong with the advancement of this game from a free perspective.

I see no arguments in any of these threads that suggest otherwise.

It's been month since I even looked at my CBILL amounts, stats, whatever, and I enjoy the game everyday.

4 years, is a drop in the bucket....go play EvE online for 10 years, and then quibble.

[Fitzbattleaxe]

Back in my day, $50 bought you a full game, complete with single player campaign and a free multiplayer mode, and you could unlock all the content in under 100 hours of gameplay. Now I'm not going to express some sort of moral outrage over the fact that MWO is different, but this whole free-to-play model seems a bit silly, if you ask me.

[MizarPanzer]

The best option for a freeloader in a micro-transaction F2P game?

It's called 'specialisation'. If you pour all your effort into mastering a couple of mechs, then these couple of mechs will be no less effective than someone who brought them with MC then mastered them with free exp. If you want to generalise and collect all the mechs in the game, well then you should expect a large amount of time and/or monetary investment. Face it, it would've taken years even before the Cbill nerf. Face it, because it would've taken years to collect all 'end game' vitual items in any MMO out there.

A MMO is a time sink.......and it is designed to be that way. Hey, even non-MMO shooters/RTS has a levelling system where a large amount of time is required to reach 'end game'.

In the end, I'm just glad that in this F2P game, once I mastered a mech I like, I can play it whenever I like without needing to pay a dime extra. I don't think you can say the same about.....say the shiny Battleship Lv5 training you have just completed on EvE.

Edited by MizarPanzer, 29 August 2013 - 01:58 PM.

[ollo]

MizarPanzer, on 29 August 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

Face it, it would've taken years even before the Cbill nerf. Face it, because it would've taken years to collect all 'end game' vitual items in any MMO out there.

I don't need to 'face' anything i already know. In fact, that's exactly my point, there was and is is absolutely no need to nerf CB-earnings. Judging from the comments on this i read so far it completely backfired:

• People that defend PGI usually say generic stuff like "welcome to F2P" or "well buy them with MC", and i doubt in many cases they spent even a single dime on the game (at least they never speak about their spendings, and i haven't watched for founders tags before, but LO and behold, the defenders in this thread have none)
  
• Most People that actually bought mechs with MC and spent a lot of $$$ on the game already (according to their posts, somtimes hundreds of dollars) are now spending less and feel discouraged
  
• People that are not already in the game... well, there is most probably not even a single post that in the forums states MWO does have a great new player experience, quite the opposite

While PGIGP makes at least some progress all in all and was able to build a fun, but sadly not diverse core game, i still think they spend a way too great portion of their time on hammering nails in the coffin. May it be with 3PV, CB-nerf, or general failure to communicate. But as always, we don't have the data, so they might drown in $$$ now that everyone and their dog wants to buy mechs with MC - but i doubt it.

[Angel of Annihilation]

ollo, on 29 August 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

I don't need to 'face' anything i already know. In fact, that's exactly my point, there was and is is absolutely no need to nerf CB-earnings. Judging from the comments on this i read so far it completely backfired:

• People that defend PGI usually say generic stuff like "welcome to F2P" or "well buy them with MC", and i doubt in many cases they spent even a single dime on the game (at least they never speak about their spendings, and i haven't watched for founders tags before, but LO and behold, the defenders in this thread have none)
  
• Most People that actually bought mechs with MC and spent a lot of $$$ on the game already (according to their posts, somtimes hundreds of dollars) are now spending less and feel discouraged
  
• People that are not already in the game... well, there is most probably not even a single post that in the forums states MWO does have a great new player experience, quite the opposite

While PGIGP makes at least some progress all in all and was able to build a fun, but sadly not diverse core game, i still think they spend a way too great portion of their time on hammering nails in the coffin. May it be with 3PV, CB-nerf, or general failure to communicate. But as always, we don't have the data, so they might drown in $$$ now that everyone and their dog wants to buy mechs with MC - but i doubt it.

Your echoing my thoughts here, I even made a post about how you could have One Billion C-bills and not own all the C-bill content available in this game. In fact the majority of people that have been playing since open beta started have probably earned well less than 500 million, much of lost forever in the form of sold mechs and equipment that sell for about half the buying price not to mention money lost changing back and forward between Artemis or Endosteel to test builds.

Additonally it isn't like we have reached max content either. There tons of new mechs coming out and more on the horizon, not to mention we don't have a clue if their will be any other sort of money sinks attached to the CW side of this game when it comes out.

Anyway just like you state, there was exactly zero need to reduce C-bill earnings and because of that I just don't get why PGI would tork off their playerbase just because it might have taken 3 years instead of 4 year of constant, continuious gameplay to reach only what is currently released. I mean they can't seriously expect to retain most of their exsisting client base that long, at least not them actively playing 5+ hours a day. At most I can see myself maybe playing hard for another 6 months to a year and then just dropping in casually every so often when I am bored. This is especially the case if I can't earn new mechs fast enough to keep things fresh.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

W8 what?I already have each c-bills mech and each module(GXP from farming not XP-GXP for MC) and I know I didn't played it for 4 years.

[Shae Starfyre]

JudgeDeathCZ, on 30 August 2013 - 01:41 AM, said:

W8 what?I already have each c-bills mech and each module(GXP from farming not XP-GXP for MC) and I know I didn't played it for 4 years.

Right? I am in the same boat; but then we probably play a lot (looks away sheepishly).

[Dodger79]

JudgeDeathCZ, on 30 August 2013 - 01:41 AM, said:

W8 what?I already have each c-bills mech and each module(GXP from farming not XP-GXP for MC) and I know I didn't played it for 4 years.

Reading comprehension is not your strength, right? The threadopener clearly wrote that you can earn everything in year if you play every day. But only a minority is able to play that often. I'd say nobody with a fulltime job and a family is able to play atleast an hour every day, not to mention people that have other hobbies, too. But exactly these people should be the target demographic and the ingame economics should be balanced around their needs. Measuring the economics on the success of a handful of coregamers does not sound right for me. Simply because these players will _always_ play often enough (and good/successful enough) to earn enough for a reasonable progress in the game. But the working familyfathers with only a couple of hours per week, that is where the money is. But if you earn to few CB to customize a Mech, why on earth should i buy one with MC? That makes no sense.

Edit: and in addition the current metric of how to earn CB leads to a playstyle that forces you to not play for the win but for as many assists as you can get. If you play to win and bring down a few enemies pitbull-style (read: attack a target till its down and _not_ spread your fire everywhere with almost no effect) you will not earn much CB (nor XP). So the current mechanics punish players that simply play to win. And i dont even mean basecap-rushers but effective, win-orientated players that can hit what they aim at...

Edited by Dodger79, 30 August 2013 - 05:23 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Cbill nerf is less $$ for PGI in the end

Debatable. PGI's marketing has ALWAYS been questionable from the start...

One could argue less cbills is less $$ for PGI in the end because free players wont stick around as long if they cant earn cbills fast enough to progress at a reasonable pace.

[ollo]

JudgeDeathCZ, on 30 August 2013 - 01:41 AM, said:

W8 what?I already have each c-bills mech and each module(GXP from farming not XP-GXP for MC) and I know I didn't played it for 4 years.

How many hours do you play each day? Premium? Heroes? Played a lot before the nerf aka you-all-earned-too-much-CB-the-whole-time?

[ollo]

Khobai, on 30 August 2013 - 01:28 PM, said:

Debatable. PGI's marketing has ALWAYS been questionable from the start...

One could argue less cbills is less $$ for PGI in the end because free players wont stick around as long if they cant earn cbills fast enough to progress at a reasonable pace.

I'm not sure if PGi is aiming only at the long tail. IMHO, there's much more money in the numerours people who yould only spend a few bucks on the game. If they threw CB around, i doubt it would seriously harm their income - you need a mechbay, around a dollar for each mech, and there are way more people wanting to keep their loved variants than would pay 5$ for a frecking color.