297 replies to this topic

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

My own personal opinion:

I don't feel having to earn CBills to purchase 'mechs is a grind. If I want a specific chassis, I'm more than happy to get my 500k/hr (my own personal rate, with premium time) until I have enough for the 'mech I'm going for. I'm more than happy to play matches to get my 500k/hr so I can afford all the endodoubleartemis I want on it. And any weapons I don't already have a lot of spares of. I don't feel like any of that is a grind.

What I don't like, is having to earn the 500k/hr for chassis I'm not particularly interested in but am required to buy just so I can get the Elite efficiencies for the one chassis I do. Not to mention being required to either 1) play those 'mechs I don't want just in order to earn xp to Basic them out, 2) earn enough GlobalXP (which trickles in so pitifully slow) to Basic them out without being forced to play them, or 3) pay $ for MC to convert 'mechXP to GlobalXP.

For me, thats where the Grind comes into play. "Whee, I just got my first Catapult. Yay got the Basics. Sigh, time to save for 2 more Catapults I don't want just so I can get the Elites for this one single Catapult I do want."

Want the extra module slot? The situation can possibly become more of a grind.

To say that the requirement of buying 'mechs you don't want in order to progress in the 'mech you do want does not equate a grind? Shows a real lack of critical thought about the situation. You may not mind climate change, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or "isn't that bad".

[Suko]

Joseph Mallan, on 02 December 2013 - 10:37 AM, said:

But this isn't the game. It is only the combat mechanics of said game. As such it will get routine after so many drops, no matter how hard you try to fight it.

I started playing CS back in 2000 and continued to do so for many years. That game didn't entice me with an artificial grind. It wasn't like BF3/4 with unlocks, etc. It was what it was. The reason I kept playing was because CS had a more enjoyable core mechanic and faster turnaround on games. Most matches were done in 5 minutes or less and you started a new match instantly (not waiting 3 minutes in-between rounds to find another server/match to play on). Not to mention the player generated content kept things fresh and fun for years (I <3 you Jeepathon2k).

[Felicitatem Parco]

Joseph Mallan, on 02 December 2013 - 10:37 AM, said:

But this isn't the game. It is only the combat mechanics of said game. As such it will get routine after so many drops, no matter how hard you try to fight it.

Some people just don't acknowledge Community Warfare as something that the game will revolve around. They are sick of the current build, and are complaining that the rest of the game isn't done yet. Heck, there are people on the forums who have maintained that Community Warfare will never exist because MW:O is just a cash grab for your Founder's Money (later updated to Phoenix Money).

[Mister Blastman]

ShadowVFX, on 02 December 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

I started playing CS back in 2000 and continued to do so for many years. That game didn't entice me with an artificial grind. It wasn't like BF3/4 with unlocks, etc. It was what it was. The reason I kept playing was because CS had a more enjoyable core mechanic and faster turnaround on games. Most matches were done in 5 minutes or less and you started a new match instantly (not waiting 3 minutes in-between rounds to find another server/match to play on). Not to mention the player generated content kept things fresh and fun for years (I <3 you Jeepathon2k).

Artificial grinds are and have always been a pathetic excuse and crutch for lack of content.

Look at Chess. It doesn't have a grind, nothing to earn, nothing to gain... hasn't added a new piece in hundreds of years. It's still super fun to play!

If you build the core game right, no grind is ever needed because it is just so enjoyable and lasting to play it becomes a timeless classic.

That isn't to say new content isn't appreciated... Modders rule!

Edited by Mister Blastman, 02 December 2013 - 10:48 AM.

[Jon Gotham]

MustrumRidcully, on 02 December 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

It's quite possible that the end result will be that I play MW:O just as much as I play World of Tanks.
Which is: Not At All.
I don't know if PGI needs or could make use of my money, but I know I can get good use of my money without giving it to PGI.

World of Tanks to me seems a big turn-off. Pay-To-Win ammo, excessive Grind, not being able to play my best mech/tank/toon because of repair cost? Sounds totally like not my game.

Unfortunately when MW:O was announced it still totally looked like my kind of game. Giant Stompy Robots. Role Warfare. Information Warfare. Community Warfare. Whoa, that's awesome, do I pay you in €, $ or just my soul?

Sadly mate, I don't think I have ever played a F2P with a good model really. WOT ended up making me bitter and resentful and WT nearly made me cry when I realised what path their economy went down....
Currently, I'd love for CW to come I;d love proper role warfare and I pray PGI get their act together!

Oddly and really sadly, the only thing I don't like is the playerbase with their timidity and blobbing!

[MustrumRidcully]

Prosperity Park, on 02 December 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

Some people just don't acknowledge Community Warfare as something that the game will revolve around. They are sick of the current build, and are complaining that the rest of the game isn't done yet. Heck, there are people on the forums who have maintained that Community Warfare will never exist because MW:O is just a cash grab for your Founder's Money (later updated to Phoenix Money).

The problem I see is when people put all their hopes on Community Warfare is that there is no guarantee that it's as awesome and engaging as they believe.

There were people that said stuff like "just wait for double heat sinks, then they'll revamp the heat system".
Then there are those UI 2.0 Previews people tried on the test server... They weren't all that convinced, despite most people thinking that the new UI should probably improve any shortcomings on the current one.

This is just another goalpost to hope for.

[Ghost_19Hz]

MustrumRidcully, on 02 December 2013 - 01:11 PM, said:

The problem I see is when people put all their hopes on Community Warfare is that there is no guarantee that it's as awesome and engaging as they believe.

There were people that said stuff like "just wait for double heat sinks, then they'll revamp the heat system".
Then there are those UI 2.0 Previews people tried on the test server... They weren't all that convinced, despite most people thinking that the new UI should probably improve any shortcomings on the current one.

This is just another goalpost to hope for.

I was probably one of those people telling everyone that the devs had everything under control and to just be patient. The incredibly slow development pace and lack of creativity that causes bad design/balance decisions eventually became too much for me. Most of my posts went from wide-eyed hopeful i'll give you all my ideas for free... to outright rude.

I just got wrapped up in the battletech universe coming back again, too excited i guess. I just play randomly now and then when my friends invite me, i still enjoy the basic gameplay, but i'm not getting my hopes up that community warfare will be anything special. I'm sure at least the basic gameplay will remain.

[SniperCon]

Aleksanteri Bekker, on 02 December 2013 - 10:40 AM, said:

What I don't like, is having to earn the 500k/hr for chassis I'm not particularly interested in but am required to buy just so I can get the Elite efficiencies for the one chassis I do.
...
...
...

Did you know that you only need three Elites for the weight class (not chassis) to unlock Master? That means you can have just one elite Catapult, one elite Jaeger, and one elite Cataphract and master them. You still have to grind three basic variants for each cassis, but only three elite variants for each weight class. Confusing I know.

[Aleksanteri Bekker]

SniperCon, on 02 December 2013 - 02:22 PM, said:

Did you know that you only need three Elites for the weight class (not chassis) to unlock Master? That means you can have just one elite Catapult, one elite Jaeger, and one elite Cataphract and master them. You still have to grind three basic variants for each cassis, but only three elite variants for each weight class. Confusing I know.

I did, yes. I did say the extra module slot "could" make the grind even worse because that one box does give more leeway into "how" you wanna get it But you're right to make that distinction clearly, which I failed to do.

[FunkyFritter]

I ultimately stopped playing this because I got bored of all my mechs before I could afford a new one. That won't be an issue for everyone, but if enough people are having the same reaction something needs to change.

[Soulscour]

Just curious. how many mechs do you have that you got bored? I have 43 but stopped playing for a couple months.

[Galenit]

Joseph Mallan, on 02 December 2013 - 10:37 AM, said:

But this isn't the game. It is only the combat mechanics of said game. As such it will get routine after so many drops, no matter how hard you try to fight it.

Thats it, we play an early basic-mechanics-build i would call alpha, at its best an early closed beta.

There is no goal, the only thing is to do the same thing over and over again and see some numbers increase more or less slowly ...

... sure it can be fun,
but it also is repeating and thats reducing the fun a little bit with every repition until it gets boring.

More or less income does not change anything on this!

[Joseph Mallan]

Prosperity Park, on 02 December 2013 - 10:43 AM, said:

Some people just don't acknowledge Community Warfare as something that the game will revolve around. They are sick of the current build, and are complaining that the rest of the game isn't done yet. Heck, there are people on the forums who have maintained that Community Warfare will never exist because MW:O is just a cash grab for your Founder's Money (later updated to Phoenix Money).

And to them I say maybe. We haven' seen any real improvement in the actual game itself. We have more maps, we have more Mechs, but we have mearly 2 scenarios with no real Prize for a victory, no sense of accomplishment. Murphy's Law has yet to claim/lose a single world, or steal any advanced Tech. We have fought for and won... Nothing. How captivating can that be? After a while even the Martial Olympiads get boring.

[Joseph Mallan]

Soulscour, on 03 December 2013 - 03:14 AM, said:

Just curious. how many mechs do you have that you got bored? I have 43 but stopped playing for a couple months.

I have 3. I have mastered all but 6(Locust, Commando, Spider, Kintaro, Cicada, Dragon, Quickdraw) plus the Phoenix.

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 03 December 2013 - 04:29 AM.

[Soulscour]

The gameplay balance has gotten significantly better.

[Roadkill]

topgun505, on 02 December 2013 - 04:54 AM, said:

I have 40 mechs. 35 of which are fully elited or mastered (and the other 5 arent just because I'd never play them). And that's not including other mechs which I skilled up and since sold. And nearly all of that was done WITHOUT premium time.

The grind isn't bad. Suck it up buttercup.

I have 48 Mechs. 31 of them are at Master 1/1. Another 6 are at Elite 8/8. 2 are Mechs that I never intend to play, but bought so that I could level up the 3rd in the class. The remaining 9 are Phoenix Mechs that I haven't had the time to level up yet.

Some of that was done early in Open Beta when Founders were getting "free" Premium time. The bulk of it was done without Premium, but before the 12-vs-12 c-bill nerf. The last 6 that I've leveled up were done with Premium, but after the 12-vs-12 c-bill nerf.

Also, some of that was done while I was unemployed and had all the time in the world. But some of it was also done while employed and "time starved" as the label goes.

So I've seen the grind from just about every angle. The current grind is really bad if you have a job/life and aren't paying for Premium time. It's barely tolerable if you buy Premium, but frankly if I'm paying for a game and that makes it barely tolerable then I'm not going to stick around for very long. Repeatedly playing a slightly modified form of Death Match isn't going to cut it.

I recently tracked some numbers. I played 30 games and went 16-14 during those games. I earned about 3.1 million c-bills during those 30 games, so that's an average of about 103k/match. But that's distorted by the fact that I used the BLR-1G(P) for 16 of those matches. If you factor out that Mech's 30% c-bill bonus, I earned roughly 87,250 c-bills/match on average. I'm not top 1% good, so I'm quite certain that most of the people posting could easily beat that. But forum posters are what, 10% of the players in the game? The masses probably earn less than that.

I also ran some numbers on the rest of my Phoenix Mechs. It looks like I'm going to need around 6 million c-bills each for the Thunderbolts and Shadowhawks in order to outfit them the way I like. (That's primarily DHS and an XL engine.) That means it's going to take me ~408 matches just to outfit Mechs that I bought using MC.

408. Or I could pay them more money in order to cut that down to roughly 275 matches. On a typical night, I can get in about 5 matches per hour and I get to play for about 2 hours. I get to do that about twice a week.

So if I buy mechs with MC, then buy premium time to reduce the grind, it's still going to take me about 14 weeks (nearly 3.5 months) just to earn the c-bills to outfit those 6 Mechs.

So yes, the grind is bad. The strange thing is that I don't think it would take much to make it significantly more bearable. Boost c-bill earnings so that we earn ~100k/match (without bonuses) on average instead of 87,250. About a 15% boost in earnings would help a lot because it would give players just enough extra cash to experiment with builds a little bit while grinding. As things stand now, most players can't afford to make any build mistakes.

On the plus side, I'll barely get all 6 of them to Elite 8/8 during that same amount of time. That's a separate issue, but what it implies is that PGI is actually producing new Mechs too quickly. Someone who plays 4-5 hours a week can't possibly level up Mechs at the rate they're being produced, even if they use MC to buy those Mechs. The rate that we earn XPs is so slow that it's costing PGI money.

Edited by Roadkill, 03 December 2013 - 12:25 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

topgun505, on 02 December 2013 - 04:54 AM, said:

I have 40 mechs. 35 of which are fully elited or mastered (and the other 5 arent just because I'd never play them). And that's not including other mechs which I skilled up and since sold. And nearly all of that was done WITHOUT premium time.

The grind isn't bad. Suck it up buttercup.

52 mechs here. what grind?

[A banana in the tailpipe]

The grind is the reason I've stopped playing for the most part. Not enough progression where I feel like a few matches a day matter.

[Joseph Mallan]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 03 December 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

52 mechs here. what grind?

3 Mechs here. What Grind?

[Zerberoff]

Mister Blastman, on 02 December 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

Artificial grinds are and have always been a pathetic excuse and crutch for lack of content.

Look at Chess. It doesn't have a grind, nothing to earn, nothing to gain... hasn't added a new piece in hundreds of years. It's still super fun to play!

If you build the core game right, no grind is ever needed because it is just so enjoyable and lasting to play it becomes a timeless classic.

That isn't to say new content isn't appreciated... Modders rule!

How much money do you spend to play chess? can you keep runing a company with it?

...dunno what else to say beside that there are much more whorse F2P models out there.