185 replies to this topic

[Mawai]

Pjwned, on 26 October 2013 - 03:46 AM, said:

Personally I would consider shelling out a few bucks for some mechs and colors/patterns if they weren't so ridiculously expensive and it seems more productive to let PGI know that than not, but then of course if you have enough people that like wasting money on absurdly overpriced content then you might as well keep it that way and not care if new players have a problem with it.

"riculously expensive" ... "wasting money on absurdly overpriced content"

These are relative terms

How many folks will go to the theatre to see the movie "Ender's Game" when it comes out. A trip to the movies by yourself, purchasing a drink and a snack will cost $20.00 and be over in 2 hours.

IF someone enjoys playing MWO and spends $20.00 on a hero mech that they play for 2 hours and have a great time with .. was it "wasted money" or "ridiculously over-priced"? It cost the same as a movie and they enjoyed playing it. However, in MWO, you get to keep the mech for as long as you like ... and the expense probably left room for a couple of extra mech bays or other items to improve your MWO experience ... and you get to continue playing the hero mech for as long as the game is operational ... possibly years.

Someone mentioned seeing a "candle" at a grocery shop for $20.00. A week of lattes at Starbucks is $20.00 and they last far less than 2 hours.

There are a lot of people out there on limited budgets, who can't afford a movie, who choose to buy food and pay rent rather than pay for entertainment ... but many of these folks will not have a computer or internet access and thus aren't possible clients for MWO. People who can afford a decent computer, a high speed internet connection, and the other things needed to play MWO ... well most of these could afford $20.00 for a hero mech and mech bays if they were interested.

So ... compared to other entertainment options currently available, the prices of items in MWO, although significant and perhaps somewhat expensive for a bunch of pixels and electronic content, could easily be seen by many to NOT be "ridiculously expensive" or a "waste of money".

[Harmatia]

KAT Ayanami, on 18 October 2013 - 01:10 PM, said:

You are so smart you are making my screen brighter!!!

Was it difficult to figure out that people that do not agree with PGI's prices will not buy PGI's merchandise?????

Its logical that people that bought Founders or Phoenix packages will be less likely to complaint since they already agreed with the terms and conditions of the purchase.

I don't think so, at least not for Founders. When that program was available there was no real indication of what $80 of in-game currency would get you. I like to think many bought-in because they wanted to support the development of a franchise they loved and missed. However with Phoenix people knew exactly what they were buying in relation to the MWO economy. In other words, yeah you probably won't find a lot of Phoenix owners complaining, but I think you can easily find a number of Founders that have.

Saarna, on 18 October 2013 - 01:10 PM, said:

Eighty buck for what amounts to an average DLC's ($10-15) worth of content is a damn lot, even if it offers fairly low prices on individual units when compared to the ridiculous baseline prices. Case in point, ten years ago the Mechwarrior crowd cried bloody murder when the two mech paks were released for MW4, each featuring four new mechs and assorted goodies for around $20.

And I'll bet you anything that quite a few of that crowd are still here, lauding the good content/price-ratio of Project Phoenix.

Keep in mind you have access to almost everything MWO has to offer for free. When a new map comes out, you don't pay a damn dime. When new equipment shows itself, ditto. So yes the parts people "elect" to pay for are going to be more than a game with a base rate in order to compensate for those that pay little or nothing. That's how this works.

IC Rafe, on 19 October 2013 - 07:05 AM, said:

Sorry, but i find a pricetag of 80$ (58euro) quite steep actually, considering bills, food, transport, rent, insurance etc. I have 50 euro per month in my budget for gaming, and can usually get a subscription out of that + some games off steam which has a lot more value for me.

Great news, you don't have to pay anything to play MWO! What an awesome "value".

[Diego Angelus]

Harmatia, on 30 October 2013 - 10:34 AM, said:

Great news, you don't have to pay anything to play MWO! What an awesome "value".

I don't agree this game is hardly free to play even advertising it as f2p is wrong. I guess most of you around here have zero experience when it comes to free to play model because you are supporting current system. In free to play game players should be able to earn every content that is related to gameplay and that includes mechbays unless they give at least good amount of it at start.Game is heavy grind as it is and having to sell hard earned mechs to get other is just painful. Also hero mechs with unique hardpoints that are better then some standard variants is just confirming what I'm saying.

Logic that is used is just wrong It punishes people for not spending enough money and rewarding players that spend a lot and that is not balanced. free to play game should offer equal experience to everyone no matter how much money they put in game. Even people that don't give money can contribute to game in many different ways and when you run f2p game you want them aboard with you not kick them out. Just imagine what would happen if Dota 2 done same as MWO. I played Dota 2 for a year without spending money on it and now i have putted 200e+ in it. I wish MWO done same as Valve because I Don't see my self buying anything but mechbays until they start to use head and make this game what it should have been at start But i doubt that will ever happen. Its just sad PGI made very good game and I'm sure they can make more money and make us happy in same time if they wanted to but some ****heads out there don't realize what they are actually doing .

[Ecto Cooler]

Diego Angelus, on 30 October 2013 - 11:19 PM, said:

I don't agree this game is hardly free to play even advertising it as f2p is wrong. I guess most of you around here have zero experience when it comes to free to play model because you are supporting current system. In free to play game players should be able to earn every content that is related to gameplay and that includes mechbays

Does the game cost you any money to play it? No, therefore it's free to play. You can makeup whatever definition you want in your own mind, but you're just being disingenuous. Besides, you can earn everything in the game with the exception of mechbays and Hero mechs without paying a cent. The time you want to devote to that is up to you and will come quicker if you spend money. There are lots of F2P games out there that have far worse models, are more expensive, and are pay to win. You don't seem to mention any of those though and imply that you're the only one who has any experience with F2P games.

Diego Angelus, on 30 October 2013 - 11:19 PM, said:

Logic that is used is just wrong It punishes people for not spending enough money and rewarding players that spend a lot and that is not balanced. free to play game should offer equal experience to everyone no matter how much money they put in game.

Drama queen. How are you punished for not spending money? You DO get the same experience as everyone else.

[Diego Angelus]

Ecto Cooler, on 31 October 2013 - 04:21 AM, said:

Does the game cost you any money to play it? No, therefore it's free to play. You can makeup whatever definition you want in your own mind, but you're just being disingenuous. Besides, you can earn everything in the game with the exception of mechbays and Hero mechs without paying a cent. The time you want to devote to that is up to you and will come quicker if you spend money. There are lots of F2P games out there that have far worse models, are more expensive, and are pay to win. You don't seem to mention any of those though and imply that you're the only one who has any experience with F2P games.




Drama queen. How are you punished for not spending money? You DO get the same experience as everyone else.

Yeah it does cost me mechbays can't play without them if it was up to me i would buy that at all it just takes money from my pocket without getting anything in return just basic needs that should be free in first place. It also costs me hero mechs if i want that variant since i can't get it otherwise. Having mech bays and not having gives two different experience when playing game. How are I'm punished you ask?Here we go again MECH BAYS"if i don't pay then I need to sell mech to get different one well i can only have all variants of one mech. Hero mech are another issue I mean why make unique variants that you can access only with paying makes no sense since they call game free to play. If you had experience in f2p models you would know what I'm talking about since we put games in three categories Free to play,Pay to have fun and Pay to win.

I'm not drama queen I like game and I will pay for things I have to but they could get more money from me if they did good job with market and sold good stuff. This system doesn't increase player base and less people they have less money they make simple.

[Ecto Cooler]

Diego Angelus, on 31 October 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

Yeah it does cost me mechbays can't play without them if it was up to me i would buy that at all it just takes money from my pocket without getting anything in return just basic needs that should be free in first place. It also costs me hero mechs if i want that variant since i can't get it otherwise. Having mech bays and not having gives two different experience when playing game. How are I'm punished you ask?Here we go again MECH BAYS"if i don't pay then I need to sell mech to get different one well i can only have all variants of one mech. Hero mech are another issue I mean why make unique variants that you can access only with paying makes no sense since they call game free to play. If you had experience in f2p models you would know what I'm talking about since we put games in three categories Free to play,Pay to have fun and Pay to win.

I'm not drama queen I like game and I will pay for things I have to but they could get more money from me if they did good job with market and sold good stuff. This system doesn't increase player base and less people they have less money they make simple.

1. There are no such thing as "basic needs" in a video game. You don't need additional mechbays, and they're cheap anyway. Who are you to say what should be free?
2. If you think Hero Mechs give any kind of special advantage, that's only because you're new and don't know any better. Unique variants, maybe, but nothing advantageous.
3. "We" put games into three categories -- who are we? That's your own arbitrary system. Who cares? You don't have to pay anything if you don't want to.
4. What "good stuff" should they sell that they currently don't?

How do you know what increases the player base? Sorry, but your complaints are trivial and poorly thought out. Stop telling me if I had experience with F2P games I would think differently.

[Mawai]

Diego Angelus, on 30 October 2013 - 11:19 PM, said:

I don't agree this game is hardly free to play even advertising it as f2p is wrong. I guess most of you around here have zero experience when it comes to free to play model because you are supporting current system. In free to play game players should be able to earn every content that is related to gameplay and that includes mechbays unless they give at least good amount of it at start.Game is heavy grind as it is and having to sell hard earned mechs to get other is just painful. Also hero mechs with unique hardpoints that are better then some standard variants is just confirming what I'm saying.

Logic that is used is just wrong It punishes people for not spending enough money and rewarding players that spend a lot and that is not balanced. free to play game should offer equal experience to everyone no matter how much money they put in game. Even people that don't give money can contribute to game in many different ways and when you run f2p game you want them aboard with you not kick them out. Just imagine what would happen if Dota 2 done same as MWO. I played Dota 2 for a year without spending money on it and now i have putted 200e+ in it. I wish MWO done same as Valve because I Don't see my self buying anything but mechbays until they start to use head and make this game what it should have been at start But i doubt that will ever happen. Its just sad PGI made very good game and I'm sure they can make more money and make us happy in same time if they wanted to but some ****heads out there don't realize what they are actually doing .

LOL. Well, I have played a few free to play games (not DOTA2 though so perhaps it is different). In these games they sell:

1) cosmetic items
2) bank space for storing stuff (equivalent to mech bays) ... in most cases this bank space can not be obtained by in-game activities or if it can it costs a very large amount.
3) premium ammo
4) armor and weapons - sometimes these provide a distinct in game advantage (i.e. somewhat pay 2 win) and at others it just saves time
5) access to premium content - zones/encounters
6) higher priority access to server queues
7) Consumables (some of which improve in game performance and others which just reduce grind time).
...


There are many things that are sold in free2play games and MWO doesn't appear any better or worse than the other games out there ... except that MWO has avoided (for the most part) offering significant pay2win options.

In my opinion, hero mechs do not offer any significant in-game advantage. Most, if not all, hero variants can be beaten by a decent pilot in any of the other variants of the same mech (which is actually mostly irrelevant since MWO is a team game and individual mech performance is surpassed by coordination, focused fire and reasonable strategy (i.e.don't run at the opponents one by one or give them chances to hit you multiple times while you plink away with your one shot ... also known as peeking over ridges and around corners where you know they are waiting)).

Edited by Mawai, 31 October 2013 - 06:38 AM.

[Mawai]

Diego Angelus, on 31 October 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

Yeah it does cost me mechbays can't play without them if it was up to me i would buy that at all it just takes money from my pocket without getting anything in return just basic needs that should be free in first place. It also costs me hero mechs if i want that variant since i can't get it otherwise. Having mech bays and not having gives two different experience when playing game. How are I'm punished you ask?Here we go again MECH BAYS"if i don't pay then I need to sell mech to get different one well i can only have all variants of one mech. Hero mech are another issue I mean why make unique variants that you can access only with paying makes no sense since they call game free to play. If you had experience in f2p models you would know what I'm talking about since we put games in three categories Free to play,Pay to have fun and Pay to win.

I'm not drama queen I like game and I will pay for things I have to but they could get more money from me if they did good job with market and sold good stuff. This system doesn't increase player base and less people they have less money they make simple.

Well ... the game offers 4 mech bays for free. This allows folks more than enough room to try the game and decide whether they like it or not. They can easily master 3 variants of one mech ... keep the one they like and then master another 3 variants ... or if they are in the same weight class they just need basic proficiencies in 3 variants to unlock master in the one they want to keep.

This takes a lot of play time .. by this time a person will know whether they like the game or not.

However, you are correct in one aspect, although you can play the game FOREVER for free ... your choice of mechs will be limited due to the number of mech bays available unless you continue to buy and sell and switch mechs. If you are willing to do this you can still master every mech in the game ... it just costs you more and you won't have access to more than 4 mechs at a time. You still have full access to the game, all mechs, all maps, all content ... just not all at the same time.

This seems to me to be an entirely reasonable constraint. If someone likes the game sufficiently to use up all four of the mech bays, master multiple mechs, play for hours ... it seems pretty reasonable to ask for the price of a cup of coffee to store another mech. It is a convenience feature. If a player uses up all the mech bays, likes the game well enough to play for hours, but won't spend $1.50 for a mech bay then it seems to me that they are very unlikely to ever spend money on the game.

Edited by Mawai, 31 October 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[Diego Angelus]

Mawai, on 31 October 2013 - 06:57 AM, said:

Well ... the game offers 4 mech bays for free. This allows folks more than enough room to try the game and decide whether they like it or not. They can easily master 3 variants of one mech ... keep the one they like and then master another 3 variants ... or if they are in the same weight class they just need basic proficiencies in 3 variants to unlock master in the one they want to keep.

This takes a lot of play time .. by this time a person will know whether they like the game or not.

However, you are correct in one aspect, although you can play the game FOREVER for free ... your choice of mechs will be limited due to the number of mech bays available unless you continue to buy and sell and switch mechs. If you are willing to do this you can still master every mech in the game ... it just costs you more and you won't have access to more than 4 mechs at a time. You still have full access to the game, all mechs, all maps, all content ... just not all at the same time.

This seems to me to be an entirely reasonable constraint. If someone likes the game sufficiently to use up all four of the mech bays, master multiple mechs, play for hours ... it seems pretty reasonable to ask for the price of a cup of coffee to store another mech. It is a convenience feature. If a player uses up all the mech bays, likes the game well enough to play for hours, but won't spend $1.50 for a mech bay then it seems to me that they are very unlikely to ever spend money on the game.

So you are saying this is Free to try I guess you are right about that one. If game has heavy grind,premium content, and limited slots its pay to have fun and if you add premium ammo and stuff like that its pay to win and that is it pure and simple.If game is pure Free to play that means there is no difference between people that pay and ones that don't at least when it comes to game experiance only thing that paying people have are cosmetics, exp/c-bills boost but that is about it. Mawai its not reasonable to punish people for not paying in f2p game its just wrong especially when game is not tier based I mean even game with worst f2p model out there gives more slots (WOT) then MWO. Do you find in fun to buy mech bays ? I know i don't I want to buy cool stuff why they don't let me buy beak for raven or cat I would be first one to buy something like that.

Edited by Diego Angelus, 31 October 2013 - 08:46 AM.

[Elizander]

I do agree that MWO should give a few more mech bays to free users. This limit to how many mechs you can own is probably the biggest restriction that loyal free users have.

[Alistair Winter]

I'm happy to support the latest Mechwarrior game. It's important to send a signal to developers out there that there is money to be made, so they will keep the series alive. Whether PGI makes the next Mechwarrior game after this one, I don't really care. They've done a good job, but they're too small, they lack the resources to create the game we're all looking for. I'm not paying just for this game, I'm paying for future games. So yeah, I don't regret spending money on this game.

But to all those middle class big spenders, looking down at other players for not forking out tens or hundreds of dollars on this game, please remove your head from your digestive tract and reflect upon the fact that you're probably among the top 1% richest people on the planet. And while it's good to spend money on a good cause, there are quite a few good causes that rank above supporting a video game. In short, power down your high horse.

[Amsro]

Diego Angelus, on 31 October 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

So you are saying this is Free to try I guess you are right about that one. If game has heavy grind,premium content, and limited slots its pay to have fun and if you add premium ammo and stuff like that its pay to win and that is it pure and simple.If game is pure Free to play that means there is no difference between people that pay and ones that don't at least when it comes to game experiance only thing that paying people have are cosmetics, exp/c-bills boost but that is about it. Mawai its not reasonable to punish people for not paying in f2p game its just wrong especially when game is not tier based I mean even game with worst f2p model out there gives more slots (WOT) then MWO. Do you find in fun to buy mech bays ? I know i don't I want to buy cool stuff why they don't let me buy beak for raven or cat I would be first one to buy something like that.

Elizander, on 31 October 2013 - 08:53 AM, said:

I do agree that MWO should give a few more mech bays to free users. This limit to how many mechs you can own is probably the biggest restriction that loyal free users have.

Yeah so Mechbays = $1.50

If you have played the game long enough to master 4 mechs with the starting mechbays, adding pocket change for a few mechbays is just courtesy, I mean you must have already got 20 hours of entertainment. That's 2-3 full length games (honestly most new games are so damn short)

$50 gets you 40 mechbay's, for the price of a retail game you can have more mechs then you know what to do with.

But I digress obviously EVERYTHING should be free to all

[Haniwa]

So you basically paid for hope?!

You hope that money stops ruling the buisness world/gaming industry?

Sorry dude. All I see is another rip-off from the developers. A good one.

Next year, when the game will have the same features it has now, there will be a clan package to rip-off the next generation of players.

I loved that game in closed beta, but instead of improving they chopped features and made the game worse.

[Icedman]

Ecto Cooler, on 18 October 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

How much do you want to bet the majority of the complainers in this thread and others don't have a Founders Badge or Project Phoenix one?

I have both. And I regret both. Got my founder's pack, played for a while, came back and was enticed by the Phoenix pack. Lesson learned and shame on me for spending another $80 on the Phoenix.

It's like the saying "If you look around the table and can't see the sucker, get up and leave because the sucker is you" ... yup, I was totally the sucker.

I honestly wish I could turn off the founders and Phoenix forum tags (if you can, I can't find it).... it is embarrassing that I've spent this much money on a game in this state.

[Primez]

Mawai, on 30 October 2013 - 08:29 AM, said:

How many folks will go to the theatre to see the movie "Ender's Game" when it comes out. A trip to the movies by yourself, purchasing a drink and a snack will cost $20.00 and be over in 2 hours.

Implying I don't go during the showing that is the cheapest for $5.50 and sneak in a drink and a snack. You good sir are a sucker for paying retail.

[Ecto Cooler]

Primez, on 01 November 2013 - 01:33 AM, said:

Implying I don't go during the showing that is the cheapest for $5.50 and sneak in a drink and a snack. You good sir are a sucker for paying retail.

Interestingly enough the reason the prices of drinks and snacks are so inflated in theaters is because they cannot sustain themselves on ticket sales alone, they'd be out of business. If everyone adapted the same practice as you, we wouldn't have movie theaters anymore. You really missed the point of the example anyway, which he was just explaining entertainment prices vs. time. You can substitute lots of activities instead of a movie if you wanted.

[Diego Angelus]

Ecto Cooler, on 01 November 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

Interestingly enough the reason the prices of drinks and snacks are so inflated in theaters is because they cannot sustain themselves on ticket sales alone, they'd be out of business. If everyone adapted the same practice as you, we wouldn't have movie theaters anymore. You really missed the point of the example anyway, which he was just explaining entertainment prices vs. time. You can substitute lots of activities instead of a movie if you wanted.

That is not real problem real problem is that they ask for too much and they don't let people enjoy game for free and they advertise it as such. Its sad that people think that game can't be fully free to play and make money at same time. Giving everyone same game experience is essential for f2p game. I'm sure that 90% or more of player base pays so what is the point of this model ?

Point of free to play model is to have very big playerbase and they buy few stuff here and there while those like founders and phoenix owners would still spend same amount of money just because they care and get cool stuff in process. So they can get more money/players witch means bigger popularity and eventually it has chance to become good esport. Like this you can forget about all the goodies that comes with free to play model. Now I'm wondering why they started with F2P model since its obvious they never planed to do it right. If they wanted to go like this right way to do is something along lines of Star citizen.

Now what about competitive side of mwo just take a look how it affects them, its scary what those guys have put up with I mean In a whole year they didn't add private lobbies that alone says enough now add hero mechs and weeks of waiting for standard variants of phoenix mechs you get quite clear picture in what direction we are going. If they don't change way they do things I don't see bright future witch sad because they made good game.

[Primez]

Ecto Cooler, on 01 November 2013 - 07:08 AM, said:

Interestingly enough the reason the prices of drinks and snacks are so inflated in theaters is because they cannot sustain themselves on ticket sales alone, they'd be out of business.

I can't honestly believe this is a fact. Out of the 3 movie places in my area the tickets are as followed $5.50, $5.00, $5.00. The big corporate one is $5.50 and there snacks prices have a high markup. I'm talking 10 bucks for a small popcorn. Yet the $5.00 locally owned business only charges 5 bucks and there tickets are less by 50 cents. Then the final being the drive in, has no rules about bringing food and usually when you pay you can 2 movies instead of one. If they were hurting so much they would have rules or being jacking up there price to work but thats not the case.

While there is an entertainment vs price, we don't really have any other options when it comes to a battletech/mechwarrior game. I didn't miss the point he compared going to the movies to a 20 dollar mech. It not realistic to say 20 dollars because it doesn't cost that much, even in big cities it doesn't. But the whole point is moot because we can't take our business to competitors because there are none.

Edited by Primez, 01 November 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[Ecto Cooler]

Primez, on 01 November 2013 - 08:30 PM, said:

I can't honestly believe this is a fact.

http://www.gsb.stanf...nn.popcorn.html
http://www.cbsnews.c...ved-the-movies/
http://business.time...cession-stands/

Expensive snacks keeps ticket prices down and movie theaters in business. You could have taken a minute to use Google and find out if it was true or not, instead of just ranting on about why you didn't think it was.

Edited by Ecto Cooler, 01 November 2013 - 10:04 PM.

[MadcatX]

Diego Angelus, on 31 October 2013 - 04:56 AM, said:

If you had experience in f2p models you would know what I'm talking about since we put games in three categories Free to play,Pay to have fun and Pay to win.

I'm assuming by Pay to have fun you are referring to "freemium", which is what this game is. A pure F2P (and honestly there isn't that many on the market) makes cash of vanity items alone and don't have "soft" paywalls. But as mentioned before, this is a very common practice thus I don't make a fuss about it.