42 replies to this topic

[Bulvar Jorgensson]

Why do we only have the MC cost of mech bays.

Where as allowing mechs to be bought with the mech bay included for C-bills, would have numerous advantages to all.

If you buy a mech (with the bay) then decide to upgrade the mech-bay to an MC one it then gives you another c-bill bonus or Exp/Gxp of 30% on top of any bonuses that mech already has.

this will allow the community to grow as I know my nephew loves this game but my brother will not buy him a single MC for this game as he see's it as throwing monies away, on a game that has not evolved much since my brother played in Beta.

If however he saw that my nephew could purchase his army of mechs for time played and upgrade his mech bays to C-bill/Exp bonus then he would be persuaded to part with some real cash.

PGI you need to do things to increase the exposure and long term prospects of this game, or you are in danger of losing out to easier/more user friendly games that are FTP and offer alot more to more players.

Heck why havent we seen sponsorship of skins...why have we not seen a Monster skin Mech, or Coca-cola skin, I know they are not cannon, but they could bring in much needed revenue that you could use to do more for this game.

Also be more forthcoming with future plans, keep people involved, give feed back on suggestions more, no one is asking for intricate details, just keep us in mind more.

Edited by Egomane, 13 May 2014 - 04:46 AM.

[crossflip]

There's lots of little conveniences that would convince more and more people to part with their cash, but as is the case with many F2P titles, PGI/IGP is afraid of offering up too much value for money. The mechbays we have right now are pretty decently priced (the only thing in the game I'd describe as such). Aside from their temporary moneygrab promotions I don't see PGI/IGP ever actually doing anything like what you've mentioned.

[Curccu]

If your nephew is playing hours and hours this game his dadda COULD support the game also..
developing game (even if it is slow), having servers + electricity + bandwidth for them is not free. With price of couple pizzas he could buy his son 10 mechbays.

PGI has also donated 3 mechbays with challenges lately.

edit: 3 not 2.

Edited by Curccu, 13 May 2014 - 07:25 AM.

[Kyynele]

The mechbays are about the best value you can get for real money in the game. Very affordable, add a lot of convenience and are permanent.

If someone's unwilling to "throw away money" to buy those, there seriously isn't anything he'd pay for in this game. Making the mechbays purchaseable with CB would in fact lower the conversion rate by a tremendous margin (because they're so obviously THE thing to buy with MC, even for the cheapest of players), leading to loss of profits.

Is there something stopping you from buying your nephew a couple mechbays yourself?

Edited by Kyynele, 13 May 2014 - 04:14 AM.

[Onmyoudo]

Curccu, on 13 May 2014 - 03:56 AM, said:

PGI has also donated 2 mechbays with challenges lately.

3, actually. Centurion, Thunderbolt and in between they gave away a free empty mechbay as well.

Mechbays are probably the one thing guaranted to get people to buy MC and they're also one of the few things in the game that has a reasonable MC cost. I'm fine with them not being purchaseable with c-bills.

[Rhaythe]

Agreed. Something has to pay for these servers. Most free-to-play games ask you to pay for convenience items, and mechbays are certainly one of those. Not required, but convenient. If you're enjoying this game regularly, it never hurts to spot the devs some lunch money.

Edited by Rhaythe, 13 May 2014 - 04:19 AM.

[SirLANsalot]

Free bays do show up on occasion (great move by PGI really).

5-7 bucks isn't much to toss at a game. Even if its "bad" by an idiots perspective, and your kid will have far more enjoyment out of the game even if its not for a "long" time.


Another way to look at it is this. IF the game becomes successful, then you will be VERY glad you made XX investment into it. If you didn't put money into, but the game dose become successful, then you are forever going to be kicking yourself for having not done so (like the people who did get founders, and those who didn't have the foresight to do so till it ended). IF it doesn't pan out, then you only out XX money you put in and you can laugh at those who did put more money in.

Now those XX numbers vary from person to person, as for me, I am heavily invested into this game, and as such am fighting hard to keep idiots and trolls from dragging it down with there lies and falsehoods. This is still a fledgling company doing a very big project from a series of games that spans a few generations now, so things are are going to be rocky regardless (by fledgling company I mean there only a 50ish man group vs a 200-300 sized developer). As such a smaller group like PGI can pretty much work on one thing at a time, if they were bigger, I am sure more things would be done sooner and more people would be dedicated to keeping game balanced ect ect.


So.
Do you want to see this group succeed or fail?

[Curccu]

Onmyoudo, on 13 May 2014 - 04:17 AM, said:

3, actually. Centurion, Thunderbolt and in between they gave away a free empty mechbay as well.

Mechbays are probably the one thing guaranted to get people to buy MC and they're also one of the few things in the game that has a reasonable MC cost. I'm fine with them not being purchaseable with c-bills.

Oops forgot TB... it's so terribad mech that my brains must have rejected that memory.

[Blood Rose]

Curccu, on 13 May 2014 - 04:20 AM, said:

Oops forgot TB... it's so terribad mech that my brains must have rejected that memory.

Actually its quite a nice one Mine has 2ERPPC in the right torso and enjoys hill-hump sniping.

[El Bandito]

Bulvar Jorgensson, on 13 May 2014 - 02:39 AM, said:

Why do we only have the MC cost of mech bays. Where as allowing mechs to be bought with the mech bay included for C-bills, would have numerous advantages to all. If you buy a mech (with the bay) then decide to upgrade the mech-bay to an MC one it then gives you another c-bill bonus or Exp/Gxp of 30% on top of any bonuses that mech already has. this will allow the community to grow as I know my nephew loves this game but my brother will not buy him a single MC for this game as he see's it as throwing monies away, on a game that has not evolved much since my brother played in Beta. If however he saw that my nephew could purchase his army of mechs for time played and upgrade his mech bays to C-bill/Exp bonus then he would be persuaded to part with some real cash. PGI you need to do things to increase the exposure and long term prospects of this game, or you are in danger of losing out to easier/more user friendly games that are FTP and offer alot more to more players. Heck why havent we seen sponsorship of skins...why have we not seen a Monster skin Mech, or Coca-cola skin, I know they are not cannon, but they could bring in much needed revenue that you could use to do more for this game. Also be more forthcoming with future plans, keep people involved, give feed back on suggestions more, no one is asking for intricate details, just keep us in mind more.

A good F2P game will offer every vital content without the player to pay a single cent, at the expense of intense grind. Take a look at League of Legends. It is long to grind for levels, champions, full sets of runes, and rune pages, but with enough time invested, you can get all those for free. Of course you can get some of them with real money.

Sure, most players will opt to grind out the mech bay if it is purchasable by C-Bills, but the grinding will keep the player base high, and matchmaking more forgiving. A lot more players can be retained, if they see that their collection is not dead end at 4, without coughing up real cash.

In MWO, your mech selection is severely limited by the 4 mech bays you start with. Mech bays are relatively inexpensive, but just the fact one must spend money for a F2P game to even have a decent variety is a major turnoff for many many players. There are other F2P games that are much less limiting, yet are more successful at getting cash from players.

Bottom line is, a limiting F2P game such as MWO cannot attract and keep big player base, no matter what. That has direct negative effect on matchmaking, which further lowers newbie experience. Make mech bays purchasable with C-Bills, if you know what's good for ya, PGI.

Edited by El Bandito, 13 May 2014 - 09:17 AM.

[Bulvar Jorgensson]

Maybe I placed this post without clarifying some points.

Both myself and my brother have dropped over £300 into this game....which is way more than I have even payed in any of the FtP or any online game ever since 1996 when we started playing asherons Call.

Do I feel like I have value for money spent, Not so far...it seems that rather than encouraging new players with decent buy ins (other than the Clan packs).

I am not asking for lots of freebies, let us just have an even handed approach to value for monies/time.

Why can not someone who puts in 200 hours of free play have the ability to get mech bays without paying real life cash (who is to say he has not got 6 friends playing who buy items for RL cash)...if it is free to play then allow it to be so...if you need to buy items to allow people to enhance their playing of Mwo then Allow individual bays to be bought not Blocks of MC with a poor expedential increase the more you buy....(my average monthly purchase is £30) before I get flamed on that one.

[Onmyoudo]

Bulvar Jorgensson, on 13 May 2014 - 05:15 AM, said:

Why can not someone who puts in 200 hours of free play have the ability to get mech bays without paying real life cash (who is to say he has not got 6 friends playing who buy items for RL cash)...if it is free to play then allow it to be so...if you need to buy items to allow people to enhance their playing of Mwo then Allow individual bays to be bought not Blocks of MC with a poor expedential increase the more you buy....(my average monthly purchase is £30) before I get flamed on that one.

Bolded relevant bits. Free play is free play regardless of time spent doing it. The limitation of not paying money is that you can only own 4 mechs (per account). Given that you're not stopped from having those mechs be good mechs that can play competitively and there's no P2W, there really isn't an issue with this.

The second bit, as you pointed out, is that it enhances the play of MWO in the form of being able to collect more mechs. All F2P games are based around enhancement costing money, and again in this game there is no P2W wall crippling your fun. As much as I think most things in this game are way too expensive in a real world currency to MC ratio, it's still a F2P model at the end of the day.

As for the third point, it seems what you are really complaining about in this thread is that you feel you're not getting enough MC for your real money, or that that MC doesn't go far enough. As in my last paragraph these are perfectly valid opinions (that I and many others happen to share) but have nothing to do with mechbays specifically.

[Curccu]

Bulvar Jorgensson, on 13 May 2014 - 05:15 AM, said:

Why can not someone who puts in 200 hours of free play have the ability to get mech bays without paying real life cash (who is to say he has not got 6 friends playing who buy items for RL cash)...

Because hes cheap ****.

Blood Rose, on 13 May 2014 - 04:33 AM, said:

Actually its quite a nice one Mine has 2ERPPC in the right torso and enjoys hill-hump sniping.

I'll take Quickdraw over TB any day for that job.

[Redshift2k5]

Mech bays are a convenience feature. In a free to play game where you did not pay any up-front cost to play the game, conveniences that would otherwise be included for free in a paid game must be offered for real money currency.

You may actually generate any number of free accounts and have as many mechbays as you want- but putting them all together is, of course, far more convenient, and conveniences are monetized.

Would this person have paid $9.99 up front to play MWO? If so then they should have no qualms with paying a small amount of money to enhance a free account with a small amount of paid content. Just because a game is free to play does not mean anyone should feel they never need to pay to play the game, but it does let you choose how much you feel comfortable paying. If you enjoy it enough to need more mechbays, you probably should be paying a few dollars.

Everyone should also be on the watch for promotional events which can earn a player a free mech/mechbay.

[Ngamok]

Rhaythe, on 13 May 2014 - 04:18 AM, said:

Agreed. Something has to pay for these servers. Most free-to-play games ask you to pay for convenience items, and mechbays are certainly one of those. Not required, but convenient. If you're enjoying this game regularly, it never hurts to spot the devs some lunch money.

Guild Wars 2 comes with 5 character slots. If you want to play all 8 classes, you have to buy the other 3, and they are more money than a Mech Bay. Star Trek Online starts you off with 2 starship hangers I believe. Star Wars The Old Republic starts F2P players with 2 character slots and so on and so on. This is nothing new in the gaming world. So I agree, the company has to make some lunch money like you said.

Edited by Ngamok, 13 May 2014 - 07:09 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Mechbay pricing is pretty good. PGI has also included free mechbays in several of their giveaway challenges over the last couple of months. I'm half expecting a May giveaway challenge of some kind soon (maybe next week, around the patch).

I also suspect that, as they continue to refine achievements and the New User Experience, they'll add ways for people to earn extra Mechbays (to get from 4 to 6 at least).

[Phlinger]

Mechbay pricing is pretty good, but, it would be nice to be able to buy the occasional one with C-Bills. Like have a time=played unlocking effect. Say every 20 hours played in matches. Would take much longer than you think. matches are from 5-15 minutes each. After that, allow the player to buy one for say 5mil c-bills. Most wouldn't even realize or care that they were unlocking more bays until they had one unlocked and realized they could get a shiny new mech for their stable.

I have no problem with the current way it is now though. Smaller purchases is how FTP games should run. It's the 55$ mechs I have a problem with. Can buy a whole new game for that price.

[Ovion]

Yeah, the Mechbay pricing is fine.
At 90p a bay (roughly), and getting 10 for a 3000MC pack, this is fine and helps support the devs.

I have no problem with this.

I DO think that you should be able to earn +1 through the starter achievements (maybe for purchasing your 4th mech).

[Captain Stiffy]

crossflip, on 13 May 2014 - 02:54 AM, said:

There's lots of little conveniences that would convince more and more people to part with their cash

This. They monetized ALL THE WRONG THINGS! They put in cash barriers where it is most annoying and offer no subscription that will get you want you want for a flat rate. Whoever is running their marketing has dollar signs blocking the actual developers vision. I hope. I hope people don't WANT to make a game with this kind of F2P model... I take solace in believing that they are told to and spout BS about it to keep their jobs.

Kinda like Winston in Ghostbusters.

[Gigastrike]

Mech bays are the one place where they actually have me hooked. I think they're doing a good job there.