94 replies to this topic

[Gyrok]

LauLiao, on 26 March 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

The 150 million C-bills I have in the bank says I won't be grinding anything.

So you are prepared for 3 dire wolves? Good...hope you are saving for the rest of them...

150 mil will not buy you 3 dire wolves and 3 timber wolves...I would wager you are probably only 10-15 mil short for 3 of each though...good job...

[Jin Ma]

LauLiao, on 26 March 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

The 150 million C-bills I have in the bank says I won't be grinding anything.

150 mil in the bank says you will be grinding for another 100 mil to master the next clan chassis (nevermind the equipment to fit them to be playable). So just think about how long it took you to get that 150 mil. And grinding that again every time you want to master a clan assault mech. LOL have fun not grinding.

Edited by Jin Ma, 26 March 2014 - 04:41 PM.

[Craig Steele]

Gyrok, on 26 March 2014 - 04:17 PM, said:

So you are prepared for 3 dire wolves? Good...hope you are saving for the rest of them...

150 mil will not buy you 3 dire wolves and 3 timber wolves...I would wager you are probably only 10-15 mil short for 3 of each though...good job...

You think a Dire Wolf / Timber Wolf is going to be 50m?

In any case, the point is that anyone can purchase for free (excluding mech bays) the Omni's of their choice in a ludicrously short time line.

You're also discounting that when they are grinding XP they are earning C-Bills too.

Unless you place a lot of value on the C-Bill bonus (and by that I mean you want to pay real dollars for it) the time factor is negliable.

I only keep 2 of each IS chassis myself so I'll buy three, grind them out and sell. Heck if I can keep Omnipods in inventory I'll sell 2 and just use the customability.

If I had bought any of the first 4 omnis (Kit Fox, Nove, Summoner, DireWolf) al a carte or pack I'd be asking for my money back. I wouldn't get it sure, but thats how poor the scenario is.

It's a crazy call by PGI given the Clan packs don't appear to be selling that well and this release for C-Bills program disincentises purchases at the lower end of the budget, which is commonly where the margin is.

[Jin Ma]

Craig Steele, on 26 March 2014 - 05:01 PM, said:

You think a Dire Wolf / Timber Wolf is going to be 50m?

In any case, the point is that anyone can purchase for free (excluding mech bays) the Omni's of their choice in a ludicrously short time line.

You're also discounting that when they are grinding XP they are earning C-Bills too.

Unless you place a lot of value on the C-Bill bonus (and by that I mean you want to pay real dollars for it) the time factor is negliable.

I only keep 2 of each IS chassis myself so I'll buy three, grind them out and sell. Heck if I can keep Omnipods in inventory I'll sell 2 and just use the customability.

If I had bought any of the first 4 omnis (Kit Fox, Nove, Summoner, DireWolf) al a carte or pack I'd be asking for my money back. I wouldn't get it sure, but thats how poor the scenario is.

It's a crazy call by PGI given the Clan packs don't appear to be selling that well and this release for C-Bills program disincentises purchases at the lower end of the budget, which is commonly where the margin is.

direwolf is 30mil going by lore

[Gyrok]

Jin Ma, on 26 March 2014 - 05:24 PM, said:

direwolf is 30mil going by lore

Yes, I figured 29 mil per Dire Wolf and 26.5 mil per Timber Wolf, hence my quote about him being 10-15 mil shy of 3 of each...

[Roadkill]

It's simple, really. What they should do is something like this:

June 17:
Pack buyers get everything they bought. Yay! Early access.
Available for c-bills: Dasher, Fenris, Loki, Gladiator. Yay! F2P Clanners have something to play.

Each month thereafter will see 2 Mechs released. My guess is it will be one "Clan package" chassis and one new IS Mech per month. So you're looking at Feb 2015 if you want to buy a Masakari for c-bills.

Note that F2P players probably won't have access to "Prime" variants, as that appears to be the nomenclature that PGI is using to refer to the "Founders/Phoenix" versions of the various Clan Mechs. I assume that F2P players will be able to buy Prime Omni-pods to use on their A, B, C, whatever chassis, but they won't be able to buy the Prime chassis (read: CT) itself.

[Roadkill]

Craig Steele, on 26 March 2014 - 05:01 PM, said:

You're also discounting that when they are grinding XP they are earning C-Bills too.

Not nearly fast enough. In fact, c-bills come in so slowly relative to XP that you might as well ignore them.

It cost me ~14 million c-bills to buy and outfit my Banshee 3E. I've since earned enough XPs to unlock all Basics and save ~10k XP for Elites, and I've only earned back ~3 million c-bills. So I've earned roughly 24k of 57k needed xps (42%), while earning roughly 3 million of 14 million c-bills (21%).

It will be roughly twice as bad for high-end Clan mechs. You'll have 50k+ extraneous Mech XPs on each of 3 variants within each chassis before you've earned back the c-bills you spent buying them.

[Quaamik]

Lancer Deistler, on 18 December 2013 - 08:36 AM, said:

If PGI sticks to their release pattern from the Phoenix Pack of one mech per month, it means this:

Predicted Release Dates:
17.06.2014 - Kit Fox/Uller
15.07.2014 - Nova/Black Hawk
19.08.2014 - Summoner/Thor
16.09.2014 - Dire Wolf/Daishi
21.10.2014 - Adder/Puma
18.11.2014 - Stormcrow/Ryoken
16.12.2014 - Timber Wolf/Mad Cat
20.01.2015 - Warhawk/Masakari

...........

Aint never gonna happen.

If PGI released even a single variant of a single clan mech that people pre-ordered for real $$ on the same day, or even in the same month as the pre-orders were delivered they would NEVER sell another pre-order.

Free to play does NOT mean this is a charity, or that content is free to develop. PGI has to make money from new content or they won't be in business (and this game would go down the tubes).

A realistic timeline is more like:

July 2014 (MC) / Aug 2014 (CB) - Kit Fox/Uller
Aug 2014 (MC) / Sept 2014 (CB) - Nova/Black Hawk
Sept 2014 (MC) / Oct 2014 (CB) - Summoner/Thor
Oct 2014 (MC) / Nov 2014 (CB) - Dire Wolf/Daishi
Nov 2014 (MC / Dec 2014 (CB) - Adder/Puma
Dec 2014 (MC) / Jan 2014 (CB) - Stormcrow/Ryoken
Jan 2015 (MC) / Feb 2015 (CB) - Timber Wolf/Mad Cat
Feb 2015 (MC) / Mar 2015 (CB) - Warhawk/Masakari

I could see them moving up the 2015 MC releases to Dec 2014, to try to cash in on Christmas buying, but that's it. I don't foresee a rollout much faster than this.

Edited by Quaamik, 27 March 2014 - 02:48 PM.

[Lancer Deistler]

Well Russ stated in the last NGNG Podcast, that the release Pattern would be 2 Mechs a month for the Clanpack Mechs.
Source: https://soundcloud.c...-part-2#t=28:36
Bryan earlier said they would release 1 Mech per month.
Source: https://soundcloud.c...odcasts#t=33:13

However i bought a Timberwolf a la carte after i heard the new release plan from Russ.
I simply don't understand why some are so bothered that they will be availiable for C-Bills.
Buying them per $ saves you the grind, you get the mechbays, you get a hero Version for each chassis, you get premium time and you get some extra fluff. That are enough selling points for me. If you buy a clan pack so that you can brag about how much money you have and what sore loosers all the other people who can't afford theese packs are, than you buy it for the wrong reasons and you should question your character. BTW: You can still do it with the 500$ vanity mechs.

[Craig Steele]

Lancer Deistler, on 27 March 2014 - 11:54 PM, said:

Well Russ stated in the last NGNG Podcast, that the release Pattern would be 2 Mechs a month for the Clanpack Mechs.
Source: https://soundcloud.c...-part-2#t=28:36
Bryan earlier said they would release 1 Mech per month.
Source: https://soundcloud.c...odcasts#t=33:13

However i bought a Timberwolf a la carte after i heard the new release plan from Russ.
I simply don't understand why some are so bothered that they will be availiable for C-Bills.
Buying them per $ saves you the grind, you get the mechbays, you get a hero Version for each chassis, you get premium time and you get some extra fluff. That are enough selling points for me. If you buy a clan pack so that you can brag about how much money you have and what sore loosers all the other people who can't afford theese packs are, than you buy it for the wrong reasons and you should question your character. BTW: You can still do it with the 500$ vanity mechs.

What you're describing is a value equation, and for you it makes sense.

No one can (or should) take that away from you.

But for many, it becomes a no brainer the other way.

If you have time, you don't need "premium time" you just press launch again. And so on and so on.

From a PGI point of view, they know better than me I am sure but it looks like they are cutting their revenue.

There is a percentage of the paying population that buys for "I got this and you don't" factor, and another percentage that buys carefully within budgets. I don't think its really fair to have a derogatory opinion of them for their actions, they are just as entitled as anyone else to spend their money as they wish according to their value equation.

I suspect there are a lot of people looking at this announcement and say if I buy X mech which I really like, and a few mech bays, thats better value for me than a pack.

And thats where PGI miss out on the revenue. You just can't change the equation, releasing mech's earlier for C-Bills means less people paying for them. Cause you know, they are free? The only saving grace profit wise is if they are over charging the payers to pick up the margin, but that sort of data is hard to work out.

I use a comparison to demonstrate

Company A incurs costs of $500 to acquire and sell 100 units at $10 each to get revenue of $1,000. Total Profit $500-

Company B incurs costs of $500 to acquire and give away for free 25 units, but selling 75 of them. To make the same profit of $500 the sale price on each of the 75 items is $13.33.

Does that make sense?

So unless you think PGI is having a sudden attack of goodwill, people paying for Clan packs are probably paying 'more' to subsidise this recent announcement of 2 Clan mechs per month. For some people it will still represent good value and they buy, and all power to them.

I just think its a commercial call they did not need to make.

[DevilCrayon]

Except there's no per-unit cost to "manufacture" more clan 'Mechs. Concepting, modeling, rigging, texturing, animating and tuning one copy of a Timberwolf has the same real-world cost as 1000 of them. You don't need to do the same loss-leader economics with virtual items.

[Jin Ma]

DevilCrayon, on 28 March 2014 - 01:54 PM, said:

Except there's no per-unit cost to "manufacture" more clan 'Mechs. Concepting, modeling, rigging, texturing, animating and tuning one copy of a Timberwolf has the same real-world cost as 1000 of them. You don't need to do the same loss-leader economics with virtual items.

exactly so why would they risk messing with their price point. Unless its targeted at a more hardcore audience whom are willing to spend that extra time/money

Edited by Jin Ma, 28 March 2014 - 02:18 PM.

[Craig Steele]

DevilCrayon, on 28 March 2014 - 01:54 PM, said:

Except there's no per-unit cost to "manufacture" more clan 'Mechs. Concepting, modeling, rigging, texturing, animating and tuning one copy of a Timberwolf has the same real-world cost as 1000 of them. You don't need to do the same loss-leader economics with virtual items.

I guarantee you there is a cost. There's salaries for designers, storage capacity, delivery, marketing and so on and so on.

PGI is a commercial enterprise and I am sure that it has costs.

Ergo, any time you give away free stuff that you produce, you are reducing revenue. Otherwise it would not be free

[Tyra]

I hear about clan mechs, so I figure maybe it's time to come back...but December for a Timber Wolf? Guess I'll hold onto my remaining founders MC and come back then. >.>

[Savage Wolf]

Tyra, on 28 March 2014 - 11:04 PM, said:

I hear about clan mechs, so I figure maybe it's time to come back...but December for a Timber Wolf? Guess I'll hold onto my remaining founders MC and come back then. >.>

No, Timber Wolf will most likely be available for C-Bills in september.