72 replies to this topic

[Rogue Jedi]

I am afraid I cannot support this petition, here is why

as I have already had 7 "free" mechbays (one with the win five for a Champion Centurion and bay in February, one with the win 5 for free mechbay in March, one with the win 5 for the free not yet available for MC or Cbills Thunderbolt + bay in April, I would not be surprised if next weekend their is another free mechbay challenge.

PGI have been giving away free stuff with easy to complete challenges frequently of late, lets not convince them to stop.

edit: spelling

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 16 May 2014 - 12:35 PM.

[Xoxim SC]

Honestly I think you should be able to purchase mech bays with c-bills, but whatev.

Rogue Jedi, on 16 May 2014 - 12:34 PM, said:

I am afraid I cannot support this petition, here is why

as I have already had 7 "free" mechbays (one with the win five for a Champion Centurion and bay in February, one with the win 5 for free mechbay in March, one with the win 5 for the free not yet available for MC or Cbills Thunderbolt + bay in April, I would not be surprised if next weekend their is another free mechbay challenge.

PGI have been giving away free stuff with easy to complete challenges frequently of late, lets not convince them to stop.

edit: spelling

This isn't the case for everyone, some people actually keep and care about those mechs.

Edited by Todd Lightbringer, 16 May 2014 - 12:42 PM.

[Rogue Jedi]

Todd Lightbringer, on 16 May 2014 - 12:41 PM, said:

Honestly I think you should be able to purchase mech bays with c-bills, but whatev.



This isn't the case for everyone, some people actually keep and care about those mechs.

I have also kept the 2 mechs, the point I was trying to make is PGI (or maybe IGP, not certain on this) have been giving them away anyway, submitting a petition for extra free stuff which they have recently been giving you (albeit in exchange for playing an average of 10 games over a 4 day period) once a month anyway feels wrong to me.

a new or casual player gets relatively far more value from the free mech/mechbay challenges than us veterans, if you already have 20 bays an extra 1 is far less of a bonus than if you only have 4.

[DAEDALOS513]

Rogue Jedi, on 16 May 2014 - 12:34 PM, said:

I am afraid I cannot support this petition, here is why

as I have already had 7 "free" mechbays (one with the win five for a Champion Centurion and bay in February, one with the win 5 for free mechbay in March, one with the win 5 for the free not yet available for MC or Cbills Thunderbolt + bay in April, I would not be surprised if next weekend their is another free mechbay challenge.

PGI have been giving away free stuff with easy to complete challenges frequently of late, lets not convince them to stop.

edit: spelling

What are u saying? We are talking about keeping NEW gamers, and keeping them for the LONG-TERM. A give-away once in a blue-moon doesn't mean there are enuff bays to hold onto new players. Obviously you are a long-term player and are not putting yourself in the position of a new one.

I still say allowing a new player to elite 2 mech variants WITHOUT having to sell any is enough to get someone HOOKED on the game.

Do you know WHY Pokemon was SO successful? Because you had to CATCH THEM ALL! Same principle here! People innately have the desire to 'collect' things, especially things they enjoy and can look over and admire. If PGI gives people a garage with 6 mech bays (the last two earned by cbills) they WILL want to collect MORE. I am right on this!

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 16 May 2014 - 03:33 PM.

[Ljusdahl]

technopredator, on 17 May 2014 - 12:38 AM, said:

Please PGI implement:
every 1000 matches you get a free 'mech bay.

Such hardcore players that would play through several thousands of matches are most lively to spend money on the game anyway, I believe.

I was going to suggest something similar. Achievements that give you 300 MC at 50, 100 and 500 won matches. That will give all players a little taste of the currency(likely spent on bays, colors or premium time) and entice you to purchase more because it's cheap in comparsion to the grinding required. Similar to how grocery stores offer free food samples, they do it because it's profitable.

[Fiona Marshe]

My secondary account has gone from 4 to 9 mech bays just from ingame rewards. No MC spent on it at all.

[IraqiWalker]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 27 October 2013 - 09:40 AM, said:

4 Starting mech bays is fine. What PGI should do instead of increasing the starter mech bays is to allow for an additional 4 mech bays for c-bill purchase (maybe at 1,000,000 each).

This allows F2P players to expand their garage significantly while still maintaining incentive for eventual MC mech bay purchases and indeed whetting the appetite for more storage by giving them a taste. Retaining a hard limit on F2P mech bays prevents complete loss of sales potential while expanding the amount of potential free mech bays encourages players to invest more time in the game.

No, in my opinion that is a bad business approach on too many levels.

You see, the problem sin't with selling mechbays to players. It's WHICH mechabys are sold. For example. It's almost guaranteed that the 5th mechbay is the highest seller in this game. Almost everyone and their mom has bought a 5th mechbay. The 30th, not really, it's not even a fraction of one tenth the sales of the 5th mechaby.

Expanding to 6 (with number 5 and 6 being purcahsed via C-Bills) is significantly more reasonable than this plan, and even that is supremely ill-advised. Everyone will need a 5th mechbay. Almost everyone can live without the 9th. By increasing the number of free mechbays, you significantly decrease the number of spending customers, and your income. Nice gesture or not. At the end of the day, PGI needs money to keep the lights on for this game.

Increasing the number of free mechbays is a nice gesture, and will probably be liked, and wanted by the community, but it would be the wrong move for PGI to make (If I was them, I would have started with 3 free mechbays, not 4, more guaranteed income, and a shorter spending cycle between when the players need the 4th, and when they would need the 5th mechbays.)

[Void2258]

The Mechbay system is very unfriendly to new players. If they must have it, there should be a way to get them with C-bills (it can be a butt load of c-bills, but still possible).

To those who say "But PGI needs money!", I call bullshit. PGI get tons of money from the mechpacks they sell for $80-240 a pop. They can afford to increase player retention by enabling the free players to participate a bit more. Without free players, the game will die from lack of population, and I can tell you for a fact that a lot of free players quit as soon as they encounter the mechbay limit (imagine if league only let you have 10 champions and then you had to pay for "champ slots", and you can see how that would go over).

Edited by Void2258, 24 December 2014 - 08:34 AM.

[Illuzian Pryde]

I voted no because I think F2P players should have the option to purchase a few more mech bays for cbills with cost increasing per bay up to a limit of maybe 6 or 9 or possibly some extras with a few different achievements.

In saying that though, PGI quite frequently runs events where bays are given away for participation.

[IraqiWalker]

Void2258, on 24 December 2014 - 08:30 AM, said:

The Mechbay system is very unfriendly to new players. If they must have it, there should be a way to get them with C-bills (it can be a butt load of c-bills, but still possible).

To those who say "But PGI needs money!", I call bullshit. PGI get tons of money from the mechpacks they sell for $80-240 a pop. They can afford to increase player retention by enabling the free players to participate a bit more. Without free players, the game will die from lack of population, and I can tell you for a fact that a lot of free players quit as soon as they encounter the mechbay limit (imagine if league only let you have 10 champions and then you had to pay for "champ slots", and you can see how that would go over).

The most reasonable of the "purchase for c-bills" one is the one that allows you to go up to 6 mechbays total (4 free, 2 with C-bills). Anything more than that is a waste of money for PGI.

[Kuritaclan]

Werewolf486, on 24 October 2013 - 03:31 PM, said:

I think that all accounts should come with a total of 6 mech bays. After that if you want more then fine charge MC for them, but I really think 6 free mech bays instead of 4 is the right way to go.

6 Mechbay seems reasonable after cw has come. so you can farm 3mechs master them sell one. and so on. If you master the 4th Mech you need to additional Bays for it. With 4 mastered Mechs with a 1/1/1/1 dropdeck in mind it sounds reasopnable.

[HARDKOR]

I vote yes, for the six. It takes a minute to get addicted to this game and only addicts spend money, so we want to encourage new players to get hooked.

[Nightmare1]

This game already has a great free-to-play balance.

PGI has to make money somehow and Mechbays is a big portion of that.

I say no. Let PGI make a dime off of the Mechbays. Goodness knows it's easy enough to get around the restrictive four with all the free ones they hand out. I think I've won six or seven in the last year alone.

[UberStuka]

something should be done to help new players catch up with the rest of us. maybe noob lube, cbill boost, starter mechs they can actually own, more mech bays, premium time, mc etc etc....

[Nightshade24]

Corralis, on 28 October 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

I can't vote yes to this. Free players should be given very little. 4 bays is enough to fully master 1 mech and that is more than enough. Mech bays are also incredibly cheap.

really? You master 3 atlases. have 1 bay spare. oh funny story, You can only use one in CW and the rest are trials.

[Nightmare1]

Nightshade24, on 29 December 2014 - 04:17 PM, said:

really? You master 3 atlases. have 1 bay spare. oh funny story, You can only use one in CW and the rest are trials.

So, sell the two you don't want and you have three bays again, thus letting you Master another chassis.

After that, you'll have to start flipping Mechs like some folks flip houses to buy and build them. That being said, it's not that big a deal. I remember when I got my start a few years ago and had to grind with R&R. That was truly a long grind! Now it's not so bad. Even without using Premium Time or Hero Mechs, I'm making >200,000 C-bills per match.

Besides that, PGI gives away bukus of Mechbays for free. I've gotten six or seven this year alone. Four bays is hardly restrictive.

[IraqiWalker]

UberStuka, on 29 December 2014 - 04:00 PM, said:

something should be done to help new players catch up with the rest of us. maybe noob lube, cbill boost, starter mechs they can actually own, more mech bays, premium time, mc etc etc....

You mean like a "cadet bonus"? Personally, you want to help new players. Make the Cadet Bonus 30 games, instead of 25. None of us are going to be using it anyways, so it's not going to benefit us in the long run, and I doubt people will make a fuss over new players getting 2 million C-Bills more than they did way back when they started. Unlike mechbays, which will cause some people to go "but if we had that, I wouldn't have spent the money to get 2 more, I want a refund on those 2".

Nightshade24, on 29 December 2014 - 04:17 PM, said:

really? You master 3 atlases. have 1 bay spare. oh funny story, You can only use one in CW and the rest are trials.

For the longest time what I did is I master a mech by looking at the hardpoints, seeing which variant I will like the most, and making that my last purchase, while I go through the one I hated the most first (for example, I mastered the Spiders by taking the 5V first. Basic'd it, and sold it purchased the 5K, basic'd it, and sold it, got the 5D, basic'd it, elite'd, and mastered it) (It helped that I had already mastered the commandos first). I only needed one mechbay to master a chassis. As for CW: No new player should EVER get into CW. Not until somewhere around their 800th match.

[kosmos1214]

i can see this i honestly feel that 4 is a little to short for this game you need to get peaple hooked before they will spend money

[Void2258]

Explain the BENEFIT of the mechbay requirement to the game. Not to PGI, but to the game itself. Every other way they can make money is also beneficial to the game (or at least neutral for the cosmetics), giving players options if they want them but not punishing players if they don't, while mechbays are detrimental. How does arbitrarily changing the number make a difference to the underlying problems the system introduces?

For those of you who point to money, I repeat that there are many many many other systems in place that are both more profitable and, again, non-detrimental to the game and to player retention. The mechbay system is the equivalent of nickel and diming people who are already buying a car from you - it won't make them buy something they weren't already going to buy, but it could make them walk out in disgust at your penny pinching.

It is not a significant source of revenue compared to anything else in the game, and it is the only source of revenue that is proven to cause people to leave without spending any money (every single person I have shown the game to has left over this without spending a dime). No one left because they could pay for mechs if they want to. No one left because they could pay for paint if they wanted to. But plenty of people have left because they signed up for a free-to-play game only to discover that they were only able to play a very small part of it. As with any free to play game, the revenue comes from large purchases by "whales" (in this case the people who bought $500 gold clan mechs, bought every mech pack, all the paint, etc.), where the rest of the player base exists to play against these whales. Without both whales and "guppies" (those who play a lot but contribute little to $0), the game collapses. Mechbays are inconsequential for whales and are a drop in the bucket compared to the money they bring in from larger purchases, but they are more than enough to drive away the guppies.

"It gives very small amounts of money to the devs" is not a good reason to have it if it destroys the game in the long run. Penny wise and pound foolish results in a failed game. So again, if you want to keep the system, explain the benefit it brings to the game, and how this benefit offsets the drawbacks.

Edited by Void2258, 04 January 2015 - 07:53 PM.

[IraqiWalker]

Void2258, on 04 January 2015 - 07:04 PM, said:

Explain the BENEFIT of the mechbay requirement to the game. Not to PGI, but to the game itself. Every other way they can make money is also beneficial to the game (or at least neutral for the cosmetics), giving players options if they want them but not punishing players if they don't, while mechbays are detrimental. How does arbitrarily changing the number make a difference to the underlying problems the system introduces?

For those of you who point to money, I repeat that there are many many many other systems in place that are both more profitable and, again, non-detrimental to the game and to player retention. The mechbay system is the equivalent of nickel and diming people who are already buying a car from you - it won't make them buy something they weren't already going to buy, but it could make them walk out in disgust at your penny pinching.

It is not a significant source of revenue compared to anything else in the game, and it is the only source of revenue that is proven to cause people to leave without spending any money (every single person I have shown the game to has left over this without spending a dime). No one left because they could pay for mechs if they want to. No one left because they could pay for paint if they wanted to. But plenty of people have left because they signed up for a free-to-play game only to discover that they were only able to play a very small part of it. As with any free to play game, the revenue comes from large purchases by "whales" (in this case the people who bought $500 gold clan mechs, bought every mech pack, all the paint, etc.), where the rest of the player base exists to play against these whales. Without both whales and "guppies" (those who play a lot but contribute little to $0), the game collapses. Mechbays are inconsequential for whales and are a drop in the bucket compared to the money they bring in from larger purchases, but they are more than enough to drive away the guppies.

"It gives very small amounts of money to the devs" is not a good reason to have it if it destroys the game in the long run. Penny wise and pound foolish results in a failed game. So again, if you want to keep the system, explain the benefit it brings to the game, and how this benefit offsets the drawbacks.

No other item in the game generates as much profit as mechbays do. Hands down. Not starter packs, not MC packs, not hero mechs on sale, and not cosmetics. The Mechbays generate the most profit ever, and the 5th mechbay has a 100% chance of being purchased by an overwhelming majority of the player base. The 6th too. Sometime around the 10th the percentages drop to something like 50% ... No other item guarantees profit like mechbays. Pure, and simple.

I would rather they reduce the price on hero mechs. That won't hurt their profit margins by much, nowhere near as hard as giving 2-4 mechbays for free.