11 replies to this topic

[Fiaura The Tank Girl]

http://www.dorkly.co...fix-free-2-play

http://www.youtube.c...0&v=WXA559KNopI


Just a thought here guys but he is right on about how the F2P model should work.

The more you consider this the more you realize how outrageous some of the prices in game for things are.

About the only things I am happy to spend $$ on right now are cockpit items, mech bays, paint, and premium time. Everything else right now seems like a waste.

So here is a couple of suggestions that might help:
1. Make Premium Time actual logged into game time, not time done by day. More people will buy it because they will feel they are getting their $$ worth.

2. Make new paint scemes and cockpit items a thing that keeps happening. It will keep the money flowing if these keep showing up one or two at a time. Get some concept artists to draw these up on a regular basis and they shouldn't be terribly hard to program.

3. Bring in community Warfare, give us a reason to spend money in droves because we have a chance to get to be the end all be all of mechwarrior against the best players for a chance to win MC. Look at World of Tanks, literally players spend hundreds of dollars just to get themselves into a position to compete in community warfare and only 10% make their money back by holding territory. This is what we all want!

4. Listen to us, see what long term players are spending money on and make that more rewarding not just what players in general spend $$ on but what players who stay for 6 months or more are spending their $$ on. Then what players who left after 1 or 2 months, see what they spent $$ on. That is how you know what is working and what isn't.

Suggestion Rant Over.

[Moromillas]

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

About the only things I am happy to spend $$ on right now are cockpit items, mech bays, paint, and premium time. Everything else right now seems like a waste.

I'm actually still surprised people can afford this stuff. I don't know what their market testing is like, but when you look at the prices, it just seems off.

[Daggett]

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

The more you consider this the more you realize how outrageous some of the prices in game for things are.

About the only things I am happy to spend $$ on right now are cockpit items, mech bays, paint, and premium time. Everything else right now seems like a waste.

While i agree with you, don't forget that other players have different taste.
For example i don't care about cockpit items and paint. I even don't need premium any more. And i only bought one light hero while it was on discount.
So the only thing i regulary buy are new mech bays. And yes i too want to spend money for something. For example i would love a gifting feature to buy my friends some cbills, bays or mechs. And i'm pretty sure PGI is smart enough to have such a feature on their todo-list.

Same applies to CW. They know they have to bring this asap.

Regarging the prices they follow a simple and proven strategy. Early adopters have to pay high prices while more patient players like me will wait for a discount. You can be sure that they have enough numbers to know that their price model works for them.
Otherwise they would have changed it.

Similar applies to phoenix and clan packages. They are targeted at early adopters who are willing to pay for the right to be the first although they know that most of the stuff in that packages will be available for free a few months later.

In my opinion that's quite fair. Of cause i would be more inclined to buy those packages for a smaller price, but i would not blame pgi for their high prices when it works for them and enough players are buying. We all would choose the price tag with the most profit if we are honest.

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

1. Make Premium Time actual logged into game time, not time done by day. More people will buy it because they will feel they are getting their $$ worth.

From a player perspective i would love that too. But i don't think this will happen.
There is a high risk that although more people will buy it, they would buy it less often because they don't have to.
For me a month of 'fair' premium would be more than enough for two years. I guess the price for such a 'fair' premium would have to be much higher to make similar profits and this would of cause scare away most potential buyers.

Maybe it's worth to try, but a company can't change their monetization every few months to try things out. It would totally look planless and chaotic. And that's not the sign pgi should give to us currently

Imagine pgi does this change, realizes that it has a very negative impact on their income and then changes everything back. The shitstorm would be gigantic so i guess they will simply stick to this repeatedly proven model which is used everywhere (for example cellphone and internet flatrates or fitness studio contracts)...

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

4. Listen to us, see what long term players are spending money on and make that more rewarding not just what players in general spend $$ on but what players who stay for 6 months or more are spending their $$ on. Then what players who left after 1 or 2 months, see what they spent $$ on. That is how you know what is working and what isn't.

PGI currently does this on a highly precise level with their metrics (assuming they have good metrics).
You can be sure they know exactly which items are popular (and which are not and why), why players are leaving and so on. If this would be my game i would know every little detail just by collecting and analysing data (anonymous of cause ).

Edited by Daggett, 11 April 2014 - 08:50 AM.

[InspectorG]

Some advice:

For cosmetics look at Phantasy Star Online 2. People are going out of their way to convert $ to yen, via webmoney and an address in Japan just to get monthly limited color schemes/outfits/weapon skins.

Make premium cheaper and only used during game play time. I was kinda pissed i lost Premium time to server maintenance. I will unlikely buy more.

Cheaper mechbays or maybe they can be a reward. There was some kind of reward like this the other week but i had no way of knowing if i won one or how far i was to meeting the requirement.

More game modes.
Get that guy! : One mech on each team is 'it'. He always shows on the map and is a distinctive color and cant hide behind EMS. First team to lose 'that guy' loses.

Attrition:
Set time, if a player dies they can re-spawn at a significant penalty to the team's points. Most points at time of finish wins.

Bidding:
(for established teams)
Each team gets X points towards a victory condition. Before match each team can bid(victory points) against each other in order to choose from a pre selected pool of standard load-out mechs. Strategy can be: to escalate the bid, hoard desirable mechs, choose underiseable mechs and keep points towards victory,etc.

Weight class only matches of current modes.

1v1, 2v2, 4v4,etc death matches that can be spectated.

Faction Warfare. Its there to be used.

I am a long time Battletech fan and do not mind a bit of a grind fest. But the prices seem steep for what you get.

[Ovion]

Personally all I can justify buying is Mech Bays, and occasional sale items (like 50% off colours (but I have the 4 I want, so no more!), and I'll admit I bought a couple of cheapo light champions because it saved me about 100 matches for £3-4 total, which I can honestly live with.)

Cockpit Items, being purely cosmetic for £1.50 to £3 each I don't think I'll ever buy.

Everything else is grinded up and earnt, and will remain so.

I'd imagine from player responses I've seen, a LOT feel and buy like I do.

[Fut]

InspectorG, on 11 April 2014 - 08:40 AM, said:

Attrition:
Set time, if a player dies they can re-spawn at a significant penalty to the team's points. Most points at time of finish wins.

Please no. As per the MWO Game Page, MWO is a tactical Battlemech simulation - and nothing is further from simulation than respawing in matches.

Edited by Fut, 11 April 2014 - 09:31 AM.

[cSand]

I dunno... I don't see a problem with the prices too much, since it's all cosmetic stuff. Mechs can be a little pricey though so bad it's ridiculous. They certainly aren't nickle and diming us for any game changing features

You get the cake for free. If you want the multicoloured icing then pay for it!!

Edited by cSand, 11 April 2014 - 09:43 AM.

[Bobzilla]

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

1. Make Premium Time actual logged into game time, not time done by day. More people will buy it because they will feel they are getting their $$ worth.

A toggle that is turned off with a MC cost.

[LauLiao]

Natalia Uchevnikov, on 11 April 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

About the only things I am happy to spend $$ on right now are cockpit items, mech bays, paint, and premium time. Everything else right now seems like a waste.

So what you're saying is that Hero Mechs are too expensive, because that's the only other thing that's only buyable with cash. You could have just said so right off the bat and saved yourself a lot of typing.

[Mechteric]

Moromillas, on 11 April 2014 - 08:04 AM, said:

I'm actually still surprised people can afford this stuff. I don't know what their market testing is like, but when you look at the prices, it just seems off.

The Mech Bays are resonably cheap ($1.50), the colors aren't too bad either but only since they are permanent and for all mechs (~$2.00). The single use camos are cheap (~$1.00) but a waste if you ever would like to change it, they really should make camo's unlocks for all mechs then just charge $5-10 for them.

Where I would agree the prices are off would be in the mechs themselves. Currently they range something like $20-40+ depending on weight and champion/hero. IMO $25 should be the most expensive for say the Boar's Head, then only like $15-20 for normal Atlas, and scale down price by weight from there.

Also they should have mech bundles (not the current bundles where you only get one mech, but bundles of multiple mechs) that give big discounts.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 11 April 2014 - 09:52 AM.

[Moromillas]

CapperDeluxe, on 11 April 2014 - 09:51 AM, said:

The Mech Bays are resonably cheap ($1.50), the colors aren't too bad either but only since they are permanent and for all mechs (~$2.00). The single use camos are cheap (~$1.00) but a waste if you ever would like to change it, they really should make camo's unlocks for all mechs then just charge $5-10 for them.

Where I would agree the prices are off would be in the mechs themselves. Currently they range something like $20-40+ depending on weight and champion/hero. IMO $25 should be the most expensive for say the Boar's Head, then only like $15-20 for normal Atlas, and scale down price by weight from there.

Also they should have mech bundles (not the current bundles where you only get one mech, but bundles of multiple mechs) that give big discounts.

Sort of, I'm seeing ~1.75, if you were to buy the cheapest deal, 7.50, that only gets you 4 Mech bays. When you compare that to what you have and just selling a Mech, it's not really that great a deal.

The paints, the paints are crazy, that's what shocks me the most. Like you said, massive depreciation value on single buy paints, rather than unlocks. And you don't just buy one paint and that's it, you buy 3 paints and a camo. With that, you can easily spent 16 to 32 for a paint job.

I don't even want to look at the hero Mechs.

[Fiaura The Tank Girl]

More Suggestions:
4 C-Bill / Mech XP / GXP / Mech Bay Bombs.

Literally players at the start of the match have a bomb inside their mech, when someone kills them or they activate it (Which will kill them if they do it), all players within 400m who complete the match with a kill or assist. Only one per match can be activated or will go off.
Players who receive this get a huge boost to C-Bills or Mech XP (like 200% for the match) or All XP For the match is GXP or a free mech bay, totally random what they get. And usually the C-Bills or Mech XP. The player who detonated it, gets nothing. However, everyone gets informed that it happened and in their stats page there is something to indicate to them the player responsible for the bonus given. I bet you sell them by the dozens.

5 Mech Skill Trees

Reconsider how skill trees are done once CW is put out. Consider that not every mech should have the same skill tree and that the master tree should be more expansive than it is now. There should be a unique skill in the elite trees and a unique skill in the master tree, in addition to the ones there are, for each individual mech chassis (possiblly difference based on variant if the variant is really different from the others). This should be the real motivation for maxing out a mech.