23 replies to this topic

[Jman5]

I'm talking about the upgrades: The Artemis, Endo, Fero, DHS. Why do you charge players every time they switch in and out of an upgrade? A money sink? There are good money sinks and bad money sinks. Good money sinks give players positive reasons to spend money. Bad money sinks punish players for branching out. Repair and Re-arm was an example of a bad money sink and you rightly took it out.

If I see a cool build my friend is running I want to be able to try it out without too much of a hassle. Maybe it requires Endo, maybe it requires Fero. Charge me once to unlock it for that mech, but don't charge me every time I put it on and off. That's punishing people who like to customize their mechs. All you're promoting is static play where you don't change your mech too much.

Customizing your mechs in the mech lab are an integral part of the Mechwarrior experience. Upgrade installation/removal fees are a massive roadblock that does nothing, but get in the way of our fun. I shouldn't have to pay 1.25 million cbills because I was curious how artemis would feel on my hunchback, but then decided against it. Give me a one time fee, and then give me the freedom to take it on and off whenever I like.

Find another way to get that money out the players because this isn't working.

Edited by Jman5, 27 October 2013 - 08:45 AM.

[Deathlike]

It has been discussed before, and rather than going with the PGI line of "working as intended".... I would tend to agree with the sentiment that it needs to be looked at.

DHS however is and always has been a tax, so we know what it is. It's the current 1-2 hour grind to virtually make any mech better.

Endo and FF is more of a conscious decision. It's best to be used with smurfy's or some proper and more visible slot counting system, which you can only view AFTER you make the chances (or unless you're hitting close to the limits). FF has no benefits over endo in terms of tonnage usage, so it's a relatively easy decision to make.

Artemis however is a major decision. It is half the cost of DHS (750k) and it is a much more serious investment. The only build that has no serious consequence is with Streaks... where you gain the improved locking speed and no ill effects. Artemis and LRMs and SRMs require quite a bit of resources as it is per launcher (which is probably way more than it should cost, compared to like MW3, but similar to MW4). SRMs makes the most sense with the bigger launchers (if SRM hitreg was even reasonable)... LRMs is another issue altogether.

Anyways, experimenting with Artemis is quite expensive and is the only thing people themselves would like to find out for themselves. Everything else is either inconsequential or predecided for you by design.

Edited by Deathlike, 27 October 2013 - 08:53 AM.

[Sandpit]

yea I've never understood the mentality behind this. Let players design a mech in a "simulator" on the testing grounds before pying to bring it live. No changes to the testing ground, it's just there to see damage output and heat management before dropping millions into a refit only to find out it's not quite what you were wanting.

[Jman5]

Deathlike, on 27 October 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

It has been discussed before, and rather than going with the PGI line of "working as intended".... I would tend to agree with the sentiment that it needs to be looked at.

DHS however is and always has been a tax, so we know what it is. It's the current 1-2 hour grind to virtually make any mech better.

Endo and FF is more of a conscious decision. It's best to be used with smurfy's or some proper and more visible slot counting system, which you can only view AFTER you make the chances (or unless you're hitting close to the limits). FF has no benefits over endo in terms of tonnage usage, so it's a relatively easy decision to make.

Artemis however is a major decision. It is half the cost of DHS (750k) and it is a much more serious investment. The only build that has no serious consequence is with Streaks... where you gain the improved locking speed and no ill effects. Artemis and LRMs and SRMs require quite a bit of resources as it is per launcher (which is probably way more than it should cost, compared to like MW3, but similar to MW4). SRMs makes the most sense with the bigger launchers (if SRM hitreg was even reasonable)... LRMs is another issue altogether.

Anyways, experimenting with Artemis is quite expensive and is the only thing people themselves would like to find out for themselves. Everything else is either inconsequential or predecided for you by design.

Just so we're clear. I have no problem paying the initial unlock fee. I just think that once you do it should be over and done with. You can equip and unequip as you like. As a person who likes to customize I find it extremely annoying to pay so much just to experiment a little.

I can afford to do this because I don't buy a lot of mechs. But I'm not like most people. Most people are barely scraping by. This feature all but ensures they wont tweak their upgrades once they've gotten them in place.

Why does a game where customizing is so integral have such an onerous cost to play around with the customization? It's pretty telling that players "in the know" are basically encouraged to either use a 3rd party website, or just follow someone else's build because the cost of screwing it up are so high.

This shouldn't have to be a big decision. I shouldn't have to factor in "well what if I don't like it..." Can you imagine a new player getting his first upgrade only to realize after one game he needs more slots for heatsinks because it's nearly unplayable on hot maps? Oh I'm sorry you need to play a dozen more games in that POS before you can make your mech playable again.

It's ridiculous.

[AlexEss]

Sandpit, on 27 October 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

yea I've never understood the mentality behind this. Let players design a mech in a "simulator" on the testing grounds before pying to bring it live. No changes to the testing ground, it's just there to see damage output and heat management before dropping millions into a refit only to find out it's not quite what you were wanting.

Simple answer, it was not needed for beta and we still technically run on beta setup

I am sure that it will go in once the CW is up and running and someone can find the time to code it.

Edited by AlexEss, 27 October 2013 - 09:21 AM.

[IIIuminaughty]

LOL these broke *** mechwarriors

[101011]

StrataDragoon, on 27 October 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

LOL these broke *** mechwarriors

Why doesn't PGI just give a 600,000,000,000 C-bill boost to new players? That would solve ALL our problems with the economy!

[Jman5]

StrataDragoon, on 27 October 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

LOL these broke *** mechwarriors

I'm sitting on 250 million cbills, so this isn't about me being too poor to upgrade. It's about removing bad money sinks that stifle customization for no good reason. It's about making the game more friendly to new players instead of punishing them with random fees.

We've seen PGI remove Repair and Re-arm because it was a bad money sink. We saw them add a permanent paint purchase instead of fees every time you change your mind.

Now it's time to fix the pointless upgrade fees.

[Galil Nain]

I recall reading somewhere (I think it was in one of the AtDs, but I can't be bothered to check right now) that the devs are looking at the upgrades from the point of view that adding them to a mech, or reverting back to standard equivalents, requires a lot of work by the mechbay technicians, so the cost in both directions is to cover this.

Now that being said, I see a number of issues with this argument:

1. If you upgrade and pay the high fee (parts + labour), then downgrade and pay the lower fee (just labour), why do you then have to pay the high fee to upgrade back again? You already have the parts, so once the upgrade for a particular variant has been paid once, you should only have to pay the lower amount to swap back and forth no matter how many times you do it!

2. DHS. You already have to pay for the external SHSs/DHSs, so why should you have to pay a conversion fee? If it's to cover the cost of swapping out the engine's internal HSs, then why doesn't this fee change when you change the engine to one with a different number of internal HSs?

3. Artemis. Basically what Deathlike said above. You're already paying more per launcher (and sacrificing an additional slot per launcher) and per ton of ammo, so why should you have to pay this too? Surely if this is something that you are going to need to "unlock", it should be a skill-tree type unlock and shouldn't force you to have only Artemis-enabled launchers once taken. I think it should be possible to have Artemis LRMs and non-Artemis SRMs (or vice-versa) on the same build, but the current dynamic doesn't allow for this.

[Deathlike]

Jman5, on 27 October 2013 - 09:19 AM, said:

Just so we're clear. I have no problem paying the initial unlock fee. I just think that once you do it should be over and done with. You can equip and unequip as you like. As a person who likes to customize I find it extremely annoying to pay so much just to experiment a little.

Sure, I'm fully aware there will be an initial cost sink that will exist. It sucks being "cost conscious" in design decisions and on the same note and then already having buyers remorse.

Quote

I can afford to do this because I don't buy a lot of mechs. But I'm not like most people. Most people are barely scraping by. This feature all but ensures they wont tweak their upgrades once they've gotten them in place.

I think most people are in the same boat, but the "restrictiveness" of the system actually prevents saved profiles, for fear that your changes will cost money if they have to alter stuff like endo/ff/artemis at will (DHS is an unlikely candidate to be changed).

Quote

Why does a game where customizing is so integral have such an onerous cost to play around with the customization? It's pretty telling that players "in the know" are basically encouraged to either use a 3rd party website, or just follow someone else's build because the cost of screwing it up are so high.

I've seen threads to that effect where some newbies are like "wtf happened to my money". The lack of a tutorial that covers this in conjunction with relying entirely on 3rd party sources to get into is sad. If you switch to DHS (since most mechs don't have it), then switch out of DHS (to see the difference), then switch back to DHS (hopefully having figured out that SHS is a total mistake), you have already wasted 3.75m C-bills on "finding out" the differences between the two. You might as well have wasted an entire weekend of gaming to accumulate that much (with or without premium, it matters not).

Quote

This shouldn't have to be a big decision. I shouldn't have to factor in "well what if I don't like it..." Can you imagine a new player getting his first upgrade only to realize after one game he needs more slots for heatsinks because it's nearly unplayable on hot maps? Oh I'm sorry you need to play a dozen more games in that POS before you can make your mech playable again.

It's ridiculous.

It values the "min-maxing" of players while punishing players that experiment often. For people hating on the min-maxing, the C-bill sink as it currently stands is completely out of whack. There should be more to MWO than the cookie cutter builds and I guess the system "doesn't pay well" for that.

Edited by Deathlike, 27 October 2013 - 01:09 PM.

[Sandpit]

101011, on 27 October 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

Why doesn't PGI just give a 600,000,000,000 C-bill boost to new players? That would solve ALL our problems with the economy!

OR, they could require your post to be at least somewhat constructive as opposed to, ya know, like that.

[SirLANsalot]

Paying to unlock is ok, but paying to REMOVE it is kinda stupid. Paying again to add it back on would still make it the c-bill sink it needs to be, but paying for it both ways (on and off) was always kinda ********.

Buying it once and being done with it, doesn't make it the c-bill sink it needs to be, money saving systems like smrfy is the way to save yourself billions of c-bills. Just like in EvE when using EFT or Pyfa or build your ship LONG before you even when to high sec to buy it.

[101011]

Sandpit, on 27 October 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

OR, they could require your post to be at least somewhat constructive as opposed to, ya know, like that.

Sorry, just venting. In my defense, his post wasn't constructive either (neither is yours, funnily enough). On topic, I agree that the current costs are incredibly prohibitive, but they do make sense in lore. You would have to actually pay to change your 'mech, and you would have to pay for the materials. If you want a MechWarrior sim, that's great...but you have to follow the rules, and that means that there should be some kind of cost for changing a core part of your 'mech.

Edited by 101011, 27 October 2013 - 02:37 PM.

[Lexx]

I can understand paying to upgrade a mech, but we shouldn't have to pay again to downgrade them.


It's a lot of work for the techs, but so is swapping out an engine, changing out weapons, and repairing a destroyed mech and we don't pay for any of them.

Also, it makes no sense that we spend millions to upgrade heat sinks, structure and armor; yet we get nothing extra for all that when we sell the mech. An upgraded mech should be worth more than the standard chassis giving back 50% of the c-bills put into the upgrade. If they have these upgrades already they cost more when you buy them so it only makes sense that they would also sell for more.

Edited by Lexx, 27 October 2013 - 03:02 PM.

[Sandpit]

101011, on 27 October 2013 - 02:34 PM, said:

Sorry, just venting. In my defense, his post wasn't constructive either (neither is yours, funnily enough). On topic, I agree that the current costs are incredibly prohibitive, but they do make sense in lore. You would have to actually pay to change your 'mech, and you would have to pay for the materials. If you want a MechWarrior sim, that's great...but you have to follow the rules, and that means that there should be some kind of cost for changing a core part of your 'mech.

no skin off my back, it just seems like lately the majority of posts on here offer nothing more than sarcasm with a side of snark. I firmly believe that this has helped lead to the position the devs have seemingly taken in dismissing most ideas on here. We all get frustrated but usually when I snark I also try to add something constructive lol I still think there should be a way to test out a mech design without dropping millions of c-bills into something to decide it doesn't do what you thought or isn't your cup of tea. Especially when the documentation on most items in the game are just horribly lacking in detailed descriptions.

[Galil Nain]

Lexx, on 27 October 2013 - 02:59 PM, said:

I can understand paying to upgrade a mech, but we shouldn't have to pay again to downgrade them.


It's a lot of work for the techs, but so is swapping out an engine, changing out weapons, and repairing a destroyed mech and we don't pay for any of them.

Also, it makes no sense that we spend millions to upgrade heat sinks, structure and armor; yet we get nothing extra for all that when we sell the mech. An upgraded mech should be worth more than the standard chassis giving back 50% of the c-bills put into the upgrade. If they have these upgrades already they cost more when you buy them so it only makes sense that they would also sell for more.

I'm assuming that this is in response to my post, due to the mention of mechbay techs.

Perhaps I should re-iterate, this was not me using that as a suggested justification, it was one of the devs in an "Ask the Devs" answer a few weeks ago.

Personally, I agree with you that if you're going to charge for labour for some mechbay activities, this should be extended to ALL mechbay activities (perhaps with a price per ton/critical being removed/installed), even where the parts are coming from stock you've already got. That being said, I'd rather not give the devs any more ideas for c-Bill sinks (they're already talking about bringing back R&R at some point!).

[Edit] Also, your point about selling upgraded chassis is very valid (unless they have implemented somewhere in the code that if you sell an upgraded mech, then buy the same variant again, it'll retain all the upgrades you purchased for its predecessor, but I think that this is unlikely to be the case). Also, how many people are going to sell a mech for half its value, then pay full price to get it back?!?

Edited by Galil Nain, 27 October 2013 - 03:20 PM.

[101011]

Sandpit, on 27 October 2013 - 03:08 PM, said:

I still think there should be a way to test out a mech design without dropping millions of c-bills into something to decide it doesn't do what you thought or isn't your cup of tea. Especially when the documentation on most items in the game are just horribly lacking in detailed descriptions.

This is where I agree with a previous post in this thread - testing grounds should allow you to take anything in, regardless of cost, that is, allow people to test their builds BEFORE purchase.

Galil Nain, on 27 October 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Personally, I agree with you that if you're going to charge for labour for some mechbay activities, this should be extended to ALL mechbay activities (perhaps with a price per ton/critical being removed/installed), even where the parts are coming from stock you've already got. That being said, I'd rather not give the devs any more ideas for c-Bill sinks (they're already talking about bringing back R&R at some point!).

I think of it like this; changing a Medium Laser to a Small Laser is relatively simple. Now take Regular Structure and switch it to Endo-Steel. You are quite literally changing the entire inside of the 'mech, where everything goes, how it's arranged, and pretty much everything to do with the core structure. Yes, it's going to cost quite a bit to do that. You can't just do a one-time purchase either, because if you did that, it would mean you would have to take the old skeleton of your Atlas and just put it on a coat-hanger in case you ever needed it. Should they put in a cost for tech time? I don't think so, at least, not for House units. (Why would a MechWarrior be paying the techs?) Maybe that could be added to merc units to differentiate them (with increased income or some other perk, of course) in the future. Hmmm...

Edited by 101011, 27 October 2013 - 03:30 PM.

[keith]

Jman5, on 27 October 2013 - 09:57 AM, said:

I'm sitting on 250 million cbills, so this isn't about me being too poor to upgrade. It's about removing bad money sinks that stifle customization for no good reason. It's about making the game more friendly to new players instead of punishing them with random fees.

We've seen PGI remove Repair and Re-arm because it was a bad money sink. We saw them add a permanent paint purchase instead of fees every time you change your mind.

Now it's time to fix the pointless upgrade fees.

no they removed R&R because of ppl like me. i would add an extra of ammo, and just use the free 75% they gave me. armor cost nothing to fix, well norm armor. FF was a different story. ammo costed so much it was better to abuse the system. the current system of gaining cbills is horrible. a norm player gets a 100k in a match if u play norm without trying to get money. it should be once u buy an upgrade u can switch freely between them. giving u a semi money sink.

[Jman5]

I saw that post a while back about technician costs for upgrading and downgrading and frankly I thought it was a pretty big non-answer. Right now these "technicians" don't even exist except to be used as a lazy excuse. If you can't explain clearly from a design perspective the merit of this cost existing than it's dumb. It's a legacy money sink that wasn't really thought through and does nothing but stifle experimentation.

I am perfectly fine with money sinks but they should be positive experiences that give players something beneficial for spending. Buying mechs, items, and upgrades are a positive experience. Paying to downgrade an upgrade is a punishment for trying different things.

Upgrade costs need to be changed to a 1-time charge per mech.

[Deathlike]

101011, on 27 October 2013 - 03:17 PM, said:

This is where I agree with a previous post in this thread - testing grounds should allow you to take anything in, regardless of cost, that is, allow people to test their builds BEFORE purchase.

That is the reason UI 2.0 has to be completed. There's no mechanism at this moment to make this occur. I'm sure you could do it with the current interface, but more frankencode ontop of frakencode is not maintainable and probably would make this messier than it could be.