17 replies to this topic

[Recon777]

In case nobody's run the numbers yet, I just was looking into whether or not to buy premium time.

The "most popular" MC package is 6500MC for $29.95.
This is 217MC per $1.00
I noticed that when you buy mechs and choose between using CBills and MC, the ratio is 2500CBills per 1MC.

This means the ratio of CBills per $1.00 is 542,500.

30 days of premium time costs 2500MC.
This is the equivalent of 6,250,000 CBills.

Premium time gives 50% bonus on earned CBills from playing.
In order to gain 6,250,000 CBills as a bonus for having premium time, you will have had to earn 12,500,000 CBills over the course of 30 days, or 416,667 CBills per day on average.

So, in conclusion, if you earn more than 420k CBills daily, on average, then 30 days of premium time is worth the purchase for you. If not, then it isn't.

For the average player, I suppose this is 10 minutes per match for what, 65k CBills? Maybe about an hour a day as a threshold of value.

[The Boz]

The calculation gets complicated if you include Hero mech purchases...

[Edustaja]

Someone should calculate the Cbills gained by selling (C) variant equipment and mechs.

[Wintersdark]

Herm, I run premium time.

I earn typically 150-225k per win, and 80k or so per loss. More overall, of course, when I'm running a hero mech but I tend to just play any given mech till I get a win, and I only have 3 Hero Mechs of my 26, so I tend not to have a lot of Hero runs.

So you're telling me 2 wins a day pretty much balances out my premium time vs. simply buying stuff with ? That's fair enough. I don't play every day, but when I do I get a lot more than 2 wins.

Edustaja, on 22 September 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

Someone should calculate the Cbills gained by selling © variant equipment and mechs.

This is probably the most efficient way to convert $ to directly. But you also want to look in terms of value of mechs, because much, much more efficient than that is buying the mech you want for and skipping the step entirely.

[Threat Doc]

Thank you for sharing these numbers Recon777. When I am able to afford to put money into MC, I will be doing it primarily for GXP conversion, I think, and then to work with the rule about having to master three 'Mechs to reach the Master tier on each. Now I know that, if I'm going to do that, I should plan to play somewhere around four to six matches a night, at least. Thank you.

[FactorlanP]

The better investment, in my opinion, is a Hero mech that you enjoy playing.

[Locan Ravok]

Nice post Recon777.

I tend to think that using real money to buy mechs in this game is kind of pointless, unless you have very few mechs to play with. If you play you get cbill, and there is nothing that you can do with that except buying and customizing new mechs.

Ow but you have hero mechs... that give you bonus cbill that only serve to buy and customize new mechs.

Just play the game and eventually you will get all the mechs you need.

[Appogee]

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.

IF you earn <420k CBills daily, on average

THEN it's more profitable to:

Option 1) buy $30 of MC, and then buy Mechs with those MC

Than it is to:

Option 2) buy 30 days of Premium Time and grind CBills.

Do I have that correct?



The other key difference of course is that buying Mechs for MC gets you your new Mech straight away, and with minimum fun/frustration (depending on how you feel about playing 30 days of matches).

[Xeno Phalcon]

After the cbill nerf I couldnt justify spending MC on premium time any longer, and absolutely refuse to buy cbill mechs with MC. At best I would say a hero mech thats gone on sale, but the only heros I might enjoy are also sub par compared to their cbill versions so for me its the occasional paint job and camo goodie is all the breadcrumbs I'll offer.

[Recon777]

Appogee, on 22 September 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

Let me make sure I understand this correctly.

IF you earn <420k CBills daily, on average

THEN it's more profitable to:

Option 1) buy $30 of MC, and then buy Mechs with those MC

Than it is to:

Option 2) buy 30 days of Premium Time and grind CBills.

Do I have that correct?



The other key difference of course is that buying Mechs for MC gets you your new Mech straight away, and with minimum fun/frustration (depending on how you feel about playing 30 days of matches).

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm glad I communicated this correctly.

As for hero mechs, it doesn't matter if you use them or not - the threshold is still 420k cbills per day as to whether purchasing premium time is worth it. If you use a hero mech, you just get your 420k with less work. And since you can't buy a hero mech with cbills, there really is no choice as to whether to use MC or cbills to purchase that hero. If you are going to use your hero mech a lot, I guess whether it is worth it or not depends on a calculation of how long it takes you to "pay off" that hero mech with the cbills that he's earned you.

So for example, lets say you buy the Protector for 5625MC.
This is the equivalent of 14,062,500 cbills.
The Protector earns you an additional 30% to your cbills.
So this means after you have earned 46,875,000 cbills USING your Protector not including his bonus - its 60,937,500 then, you have "paid him off".
At an average of 70k (again I am totally guessing) per match, this is 670 matches.
Each match being roughly 10 minutes of realtime.
Therefore, you must play roughly 111 hours with your Protector in order to make it "worth" the investment, rather than just buying premium time.

Edited by Recon777, 22 September 2013 - 04:37 PM.

[Deathlike]

Recon777, on 22 September 2013 - 04:32 PM, said:

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm glad I communicated this correctly.

As for hero mechs, it doesn't matter if you use them or not - the threshold is still 420k cbills per day as to whether purchasing premium time is worth it. If you use a hero mech, you just get your 420k with less work. And since you can't buy a hero mech with cbills, there really is no choice as to whether to use MC or cbills to purchase that hero. If you are going to use your hero mech a lot, I guess whether it is worth it or not depends on a calculation of how long it takes you to "pay off" that hero mech with the cbills that he's earned you.

So for example, lets say you buy the Protector for 5625MC.
This is the equivalent of 14,062,500 cbills.
The Protector earns you an additional 30% to your cbills.
So this means after you have earned 46,875,000 cbills USING your Protector not including his bonus - its 60,937,500 then, you have "paid him off".
At an average of 70k (again I am totally guessing) per match, this is 670 matches.
Each match being roughly 10 minutes of realtime.
Therefore, you must play roughly 111 hours with your Protector in order to make it "worth" the investment, rather than just buying premium time.

Translation: You must actually love the game AND the grind with the mech you bought to appreciate it?

The ROI on the Protector doesn't seem appreciable, compared to something like the Ilya or maybe the Misery or even the X5 (which at least makes more sense than the CDA-3M cost in MC).

I can only imagine how people feel about their Pretty Baby.

Edited by Deathlike, 22 September 2013 - 04:40 PM.

[Sandpit]

Personally the only value I've ever seen out of mc, other than aesthetic purposes) would be hangar bays and a hero mech if you see that you would enjoy piloting a lot. Other than that the mc costs of things in this game are just far too expensive. If you can purchase a full game for what you would spend on a shiny new mech I can't see that as being cost effective when you could just save up c-bills for the same item. The only players I have ever seen that the mc costs might appeal to are casual players with little time but even those would be sparing as the typical casual player is going to find it difficult to spend $20+ on a single mech. Not to mention that casual players by definition aren't generally going to be the ones with high retention numbers that will invest into things like the meta game and as it stands now what's the purpose of buying these things anyway? What value is there on them (other than personal value a player places on them of course) as in, what's the point? No matter how many mechs you buy, no matter what you do in the game at this point, there is no long term value other than dropping in and shooting other players, rinse and repeat (although some will be fine with this most gamers will lose interest eventually). I love the OP's post and I think it really highlights some of the problems with the ideologies of the dev team at this point. They really need to add some additional value to mc and add some purchases that don't require a player to invest the same amount of money they would spend on a full game for a single in game item. The premium time really isn't going to have any value until players have something to work towards in my opinion. Simply spending money on premium time in order to rush ahead to buy another mech just so you can play yet another deathmatch with no actual goal will get you some front end cash but is going to hurt you in the long run. The retention values of this game for the average gamer are exceptionally low especially when you consider the fps market and how flooded it is with games that offer you the same basic gameplay for less money.

[Deathlike]

Sandpit, on 22 September 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

The retention values of this game for the average gamer are exceptionally low especially when you consider the fps market and how flooded it is with games that offer you the same basic gameplay for less money.

Outside of that blob of text, I thought you just said that other F2P games fake money is worth more than this game's fake money.

[Sandpit]

That's almost exactly what I said actually. I apologize for the block of text but for some reason these forums won't acknowledge enter to open a new line. Yes other games' fake money is worth more than this game's. If that doesn't make sense to you then you just fail to see how that value makes players more apt to actually buy that fake money. A consumer will spend their money on things that hold more value to them. That's my entire point. As it is now there's not real value here. There's no endgame. There's no goals. There's no storyline. There's no recorded competitive value at all. We go to movies, buy games, and read books because we become emotionally invested and entertained. There's no emotional investment here nor is there any real long-term entertainment. You can only ride the stompy robot deathmatch bandwagon so long before it becomes boring and repetitive.

[Deathlike]

Sandpit, on 22 September 2013 - 05:51 PM, said:

That's almost exactly what I said actually. I apologize for the block of text but for some reason these forums won't acknowledge enter to open a new line. Yes other games' fake money is worth more than this game's. If that doesn't make sense to you then you just fail to see how that value makes players more apt to actually buy that fake money. A consumer will spend their money on things that hold more value to them. That's my entire point. As it is now there's not real value here. There's no endgame. There's no goals. There's no storyline. There's no recorded competitive value at all. We go to movies, buy games, and read books because we become emotionally invested and entertained. There's no emotional investment here nor is there any real long-term entertainment. You can only ride the stompy robot deathmatch bandwagon so long before it becomes boring and repetitive.

Pretty much that and then some. You got to hold people's attention longer than the "same stuff, different day" routine. There are other games I play that do that, but at least they can change it up occasionally... just not in this game.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 September 2013 - 11:12 PM.

[Demos]

Recon777, on 22 September 2013 - 04:14 AM, said:

In case nobody's run the numbers yet, I just was looking into whether or not to buy premium time.

The "most popular" MC package is 6500MC for $29.95.
This is 217MC per $1.00
I noticed that when you buy mechs and choose between using CBills and MC, the ratio is 2500CBills per 1MC.

This means the ratio of CBills per $1.00 is 542,500.

30 days of premium time costs 2500MC.
This is the equivalent of 6,250,000 CBills.

Premium time gives 50% bonus on earned CBills from playing.
In order to gain 6,250,000 CBills as a bonus for having premium time, you will have had to earn 12,500,000 CBills over the course of 30 days, or 416,667 CBills per day on average.

So, in conclusion, if you earn more than 420k CBills daily, on average, then 30 days of premium time is worth the purchase for you. If not, then it isn't.

For the average player, I suppose this is 10 minutes per match for what, 65k CBills? Maybe about an hour a day as a threshold of value.

Nice calculation, but also only correct for ppl, who would buy standard mechs for MC, therefore utilizing the ratio of 1 MC = 2500 CB.

My personal benchmark was the fire sale. I bought some mechs for MC at 50% reduced, or 1 MC = 5000 CB.
So I need to play 2 hours per day (or at least 60 per month), just to make Premium time "profitable" for me.

But unless I have more confidence in PGI, I'll beither buy premium time nor mechs for MC, including Heroes.

[Horks]

This value system is flawed.

When the local amusement park runs a promotion to bring in a soda can, and get $5 off admission, should I start valuing soda cans at $5? Ofcourse not, and to set the value of MC at the cost of buying stock mechs is similar.

[Wintersdark]

Horks, on 27 September 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

This value system is flawed.

When the local amusement park runs a promotion to bring in a soda can, and get $5 off admission, should I start valuing soda cans at $5? Ofcourse not, and to set the value of MC at the cost of buying stock mechs is similar.

Your analogy is nonsensical in this context. He is showing the line where you can save money by simply buying your cbill mechs with MC rather than purchasing Premium Time to earn cbills faster and buy those same mechs with cbills.

Obviously, this isn't applicable everywhere. Your cbill:MC valuation will change depending on what you're doing - if you need to buy engines, for example, to do that with MC requires purchasing something and then selling it to get cbills, which is far less efficient.