63 replies to this topic

[Craig Steele]

theta123, on 06 March 2014 - 04:00 AM, said:

A business is set to thrive and keep on thriving. Many companies erected with a great product but the,failed to keep performing like that. One of the main reasons for the many bankruptcies is the massive short term profits that are expected, and maximum profits. The same goes for video games. How many studios dint brought out instant classics, only then to **** the community in the back by releasing a dumbed down, lamed up sequel wich is intended for "a broader audience?"Many of those studios, are now bankrupt.

In the Free MMO genre, if you release solely money orientated items, then you alienate your community wich will turn their backs to you in the LONG run. PGI is one massive example of this. Everything that is released, is money orientated first, then after a long time, Maybe for the community.

-Hero mechs are okay, every MMO has their type. PGI makes the first mistake here in overpricing them

-Releasing new content: Paying players first, then after a while non paying players. As it stands now, you pay alot, and then get exclusive acces to a mech chassis for 2-3 weeks, even longer. All this time, Free players are getting this rubbed in their nose. It would be better, to lower the price as an 'exclusive discount purchase" and then release the new content 2 weeks later, at most.

-Events. They are all money related once more. Discounts on MC...Patterns and sometimes mechs. Yet again no love for non-paying players. World of tanks, Warthunder..you name it. These games ALL released events wich suits both Paying as non paying players. KV-5 tank 2500 gold reduced in price! And Silver discounts for all these tanks!
Or war thunder with their amazing events. Win X amounts of matches, recieve That amount of gold. Man i LOVED those events. X amounts of wins= THIS epic cool plane for free! Now it seems PGI did caught up to that..The free Champion Centurion mech? That was one great move


All these things, are long term investments. Games like WoT and WT..They all did this. The massive community support then quickly follows. I helped many players into WOT and WT. I have only felt the need to help one person in MWO.


One of my friends owns a buisiness. And he applied that long term investment thingy. He owns a coffee bar in antwerp. He did things like discounts, Double morning coffee mondays. Free muffin friday if you buy a coffee with 2 people. Things like that. His revenue Doubled to tripled. After 7 years, he passed on the bar to his friend because of health problems, but he made ALOT of money doing this


So PGI. putting all that people on MONEY income....Not good in the long term.You might be a monopoly now. But as Wargaming/WOT found out, that does not stop other companies. War thunder came, with a much better game, and they are the ones making fortunes now.

So let me see if I have this right.

The game went 'live' in what October?

And you're upset the group has not in it's first six months done what it took other groups years to do. Even your freind in the coffee business didn't show up on day one and re invent the business practice, he operated it for a while and got to understand his customers, then probably sought feedback before he implemented any changes.

You can't look at the end of one groups journey and criticise PGI because they haven't done everything someone else did.

F2P does require strong participation, yes we agree on that. But I think's also important that both F2P and paying customers have realistic expectations. I can see where in the past PGI have set (or encouraged) unrealistic expectations but in fairness to them, the lest couple of months they seem to be better.

I think it's a bit rough this type of thread keeps coming up. It's almost as if some people want the game to fail so they can beat their chest and say "I told you so" without realising it's their own activities that are contributing to the issues.

How short memories are. It was only 5 months ago or so that PGI released a Jenner for Sarah's fund and donating funds to her cause. Clearly the actions of a money chasing company with no interest in its community. How dare they take their resources to create a special one off product and donate the funds raised from it's sale to a charity.

The OP here implied that because PGI have x number of people working in art that they are money grabbing cash seekers. There's just no constructive basis for those sort of inflamatory deductions on that tiny sliver of assumption / deduction.

As to your points

- Hero mechs, the people buying them don't think they are overpriced, and I see enough of them on the field to believe they sell OK. You might think they are overpriced, but you also might not be the target customer.

- Releasing new content, if your argument is to reduce the face price cost, how is that revenue going to be replaced. Are you endorsing mech bays at 3 or 4 times the price to make up the revenue gap, or are you supporting sacking staff members from art or support so that the flow of new releases / updates becomes a trickle? What you take away in one hand you must repleace, please expand how you propose to replace revenue lost with your strategy.

-Events, just had 2 in 2 weeks, Centurian and free MC for medium solo players (leader board). I haven't seen it but our group theorises that the new UI enables them to do these things better now and has been the trigger. We might be wrong, but it's clearly what you are asking for and it's already here.

[Meteor Hammer]

Yeah, in an interview on NGNG one of the devs said that UI 2.0 meant that they could do sales and events on the fly without having to take the servers down to do it.

It would be foolish to suggest that PGI have not made mistakes, but they are not Satan incarnate either. Further we have no idea what the monthly costs for PGI are. How much does PGI have to pay Microsoft a month for the licence? How much does PGI have to pay IGP per month? (IGP as publishers would have injected a sizeable chunk of cash into PGI to get hte game going, but they make their money by getting more back).

The accusation that they are greedy when you don't have the first idea what their sales numbers or expenses are is just a naked assertion. Also Mr. OP, look at your signature. It applies to you too you know?

[Ordellus]

Rokuzachi, on 05 March 2014 - 01:53 PM, said:

This game needed a phenomenal early showing/launch to get more heads on the project, which would have likely meant snowballing success like certain other online match-based games that you can't surf the internet without hearing about or seeing an ad for.

Instead it's been hamstrung from the start and this is the result. Small crew for an ambitious project. I've seen less ambitious projects with much larger headcounts.

and much smaller headcounts, with much less money.... make vastly superior games

[Ordellus]

Meteor Hammer, on 06 March 2014 - 06:41 AM, said:

Yeah, in an interview on NGNG one of the devs said that UI 2.0 meant that they could do sales and events on the fly without having to take the servers down to do it.

It would be foolish to suggest that PGI have not made mistakes, but they are not Satan incarnate either. Further we have no idea what the monthly costs for PGI are. How much does PGI have to pay Microsoft a month for the licence? How much does PGI have to pay IGP per month? (IGP as publishers would have injected a sizeable chunk of cash into PGI to get hte game going, but they make their money by getting more back).

The accusation that they are greedy when you don't have the first idea what their sales numbers or expenses are is just a naked assertion. Also Mr. OP, look at your signature. It applies to you too you know?

If their costs are so high that 90% of their efforts must go to constantly scraping for money, then they will be going under soon....and would be just a shitty for pushing so hard to sell a product that would soon be useless to its purchaser...

So again, the blatant greed is evidence of nothing more than how little they care about their customers.... which is a bad model.

Or are you actually suggesting:
1) that the company will monetize the crap out of everything and then suddenly change their minds and refocus their entire enterprise towards making game everything its customers want....

or 2) They couldn't just actually make a game worth paying for, unlock all content, and charge a subscription fee to stabilize their income....

Of course not, b/c we all know F2P games make tons of money.... plus MS wouldn't have extending the creative license (so they can keep pumping out cash mechs) if the current model wasn't raking in the dough.

Edited by Ordellus, 06 March 2014 - 07:57 AM.