3 replies to this topic

[WithSilentWings]

A year or two ago I gave MWO my full support. I purchased a legendary founders package, and I had very high hopes. I played the game frequently for a while, but the $120 didn't go far and the game became way more of a chore from my perspective.

I never liked the arcady experience from MW4 and MechAssault and from an in-match gameplay perspective MWO does really well.

Unfortunately I feel like the fun ends there. There are some fundamental problems with the rest of the game:

• Players are forced to use variants they don't like or have no interest in to max out performance on a variant they do like (XP) this means:
  
  • You need to open or purchase a mechbay slot
    
  • You need to purchase the variant
    
  • You need to take time to customize and purchase customizations to be competitive
    
  • You need to play dozens of matches with a mech you don't like
    
  • In the end you are left with little/no reward vs time spent and if you want to sell the mech you will receive a fraction of it's value.
• Customizing a mech can be prohibitively expensive:
  
  • Small tweaks can come with a gigantic price tag. If you build a variant with an XL300, play a match, and decide to try it with an XL305, the cost is huge. You will need to play for a few hours in many cases just to make up for this.
    
  • If it turns out the idea you had for a new variant "just doesn't work" you have flushed often 10 to 20 million c-bills down the drain and again, you can barely recuperate anything by selling the chassis.
• Even when you can get a team of friends working and playing together, the game doesn't really lend to an optimal team composition:
  
  • Half the team is perpetually playing variants they don't like just to unlock the XP rewards (as mentioned earlier)
    
  • A few players are perpetually trying their "new design" that will need to be tweaked over the next 100 games because of the prohibitively high costs of customizing/tweaking.
    
  • Many players won't always want to fill a particular role, and to have the freedom to switch roles there need to be multiple team members who have alternate "maxed-out" or competitive builds they can swap out to keep the team well balanced.
• Visual customization (paint schemes) are much too expensive for what they are. Basic colours and some patterns should just be completely free. You can see in most games everyone is stock colours etc. because nobody sees value here.
  
• MC costs far too much, or rather the MC cost of mechs, paints, etc. are far too high.
  
  • This is not the first mechwarrior game to have 20+ mechs, but it IS the first mechwarrior game to clearly state to players from the get go that unless they spend $500+ they will never be able to own, customize, or play with more than a handful of mechs.
    
  • Players are given the alternative option: resign your entire life to MWO and then you can probably get a new variant every few days.

I am thinking a lot of these problems would be mitigated if:

• XP trees did not rely on alternative variants.
  
• There were some kind of limited time refund on parts or customization, or something to mitigate these costs. Customization isn't really being rewarded as much as it should be--a better way to say this is there are too many roadblocks to creating a truly personal customized mech that works for you.
  
• MC costs were much lower ($2 per 20 tonnes of mech, $1 mech bay, $1 camo pattern per chassis etc. feels right to me but obviously anything lower is better)

I think there needs to be less of a focus on "save up and buy this one mech for $30 and don't buy another mech for 2 months" and more of "purchase 3 of this same variant for convenience and buy a new mech every few weeks for $3-5 each".

The cost and the grind are unbearable considering the freedom to experiment in previous mechwarrior titles. I could live with it for a while but it has worn me down over time. I just don't enjoy playing and won't until I can pick up some new variant to mess around with for a reasonable price and/or with reasonable grind time.

I had high hopes for the free to play model early in this games life cycle but I have resigned to the fact that I would enjoy a simple single player campaign so much more at this point. I would go to great lengths to help turn this around and it seems to be a common sentiment on these forums.

[Ordellus]

WithSilentWings, on 24 March 2014 - 12:05 PM, said:

A year or two ago I gave MWO my full support. I purchased a legendary founders package, and I had very high hopes. I played the game frequently for a while, but the $120 didn't go far and the game became way more of a chore from my perspective.

I never liked the arcady experience from MW4 and MechAssault and from an in-match gameplay perspective MWO does really well.

Unfortunately I feel like the fun ends there. There are some fundamental problems with the rest of the game:

• Players are forced to use variants they don't like or have no interest in to max out performance on a variant they do like (XP) this means:
  
  • You need to open or purchase a mechbay slot
    
  • You need to purchase the variant
    
  • You need to take time to customize and purchase customizations to be competitive
    
  • You need to play dozens of matches with a mech you don't like
    
  • In the end you are left with little/no reward vs time spent and if you want to sell the mech you will receive a fraction of it's value.
• Customizing a mech can be prohibitively expensive:
  
  • Small tweaks can come with a gigantic price tag. If you build a variant with an XL300, play a match, and decide to try it with an XL305, the cost is huge. You will need to play for a few hours in many cases just to make up for this.
    
  • If it turns out the idea you had for a new variant "just doesn't work" you have flushed often 10 to 20 million c-bills down the drain and again, you can barely recuperate anything by selling the chassis.
• Even when you can get a team of friends working and playing together, the game doesn't really lend to an optimal team composition:
  
  • Half the team is perpetually playing variants they don't like just to unlock the XP rewards (as mentioned earlier)
    
  • A few players are perpetually trying their "new design" that will need to be tweaked over the next 100 games because of the prohibitively high costs of customizing/tweaking.
    
  • Many players won't always want to fill a particular role, and to have the freedom to switch roles there need to be multiple team members who have alternate "maxed-out" or competitive builds they can swap out to keep the team well balanced.
• Visual customization (paint schemes) are much too expensive for what they are. Basic colours and some patterns should just be completely free. You can see in most games everyone is stock colours etc. because nobody sees value here.
  
• MC costs far too much, or rather the MC cost of mechs, paints, etc. are far too high.
  
  • This is not the first mechwarrior game to have 20+ mechs, but it IS the first mechwarrior game to clearly state to players from the get go that unless they spend $500+ they will never be able to own, customize, or play with more than a handful of mechs.
    
  • Players are given the alternative option: resign your entire life to MWO and then you can probably get a new variant every few days.

I am thinking a lot of these problems would be mitigated if:

• XP trees did not rely on alternative variants.
  
• There were some kind of limited time refund on parts or customization, or something to mitigate these costs. Customization isn't really being rewarded as much as it should be--a better way to say this is there are too many roadblocks to creating a truly personal customized mech that works for you.
  
• MC costs were much lower ($2 per 20 tonnes of mech, $1 mech bay, $1 camo pattern per chassis etc. feels right to me but obviously anything lower is better)

I think there needs to be less of a focus on "save up and buy this one mech for $30 and don't buy another mech for 2 months" and more of "purchase 3 of this same variant for convenience and buy a new mech every few weeks for $3-5 each".


The cost and the grind are unbearable considering the freedom to experiment in previous mechwarrior titles. I could live with it for a while but it has worn me down over time. I just don't enjoy playing and won't until I can pick up some new variant to mess around with for a reasonable price and/or with reasonable grind time.

I had high hopes for the free to play model early in this games life cycle but I have resigned to the fact that I would enjoy a simple single player campaign so much more at this point. I would go to great lengths to help turn this around and it seems to be a common sentiment on these forums.

Every single thing on here in intentional.

If they make the "free" playstyle a boring, 30 hour grind... they can "persuade" you to buy MC

They don't care if you have fun, they simply want to make as much money as possible for the worst possible service they can provide.

No pride here, just greed.

[Tastian]

I understand why they make things expensive. They need to pay the bills. However, I would personally spend alot more money on this game if things were cheaper. Keep the insane 3 mechs to master but make mechs, colors, patterns, mechbays, premium time cheaper.

I'd be buying things like crazy if:
1) colors were like 5 for a dollar.
2) standard mechs were about $0.75 per 1,000,000 C-Bill cost (ie HBK-4SP is 3,632,484 cbills which is about $2.75)
3) hero mechs were about a third their current price (ie Grid Iron cost about $5)
4) camos were a dollar per chassis (unlocked for all variants of that chassis)

But as it is; things are too rich for my blood

Edited by Tastian, 24 March 2014 - 06:27 PM.

[WithSilentWings]

That is exactly the problem. If the prices were more reasonable, people would willingly spend more money in less time.

I will simply have to lament my initial $120 purchase and refrain from spending any more. If prices never drop dramatically, I guess it's not the game for me... If they do, the publisher will be getting more of my money.