16 replies to this topic

[Armored Yokai]

You Payed to have Bigger Guns and face off other mechs that are too low priced and shabby
i.e If you were a rich person with a whole company of mechs going against a whole company of mechs that were poor models or had bad weapons or too little money to hold repairs
of course you are going to win... well unless your Pilots have the mind of a slug and the poor pilots have the mind greater than Kim Ung-yong.

Tell me what you guys think!

[Anjian]

Pay to Win or not, Battletech has always been a rich man's game. How much does it cost to buy the kits, the TRO books, buy the various pieces and so on.

Nothing was even more richer than the Dark Age/Age of Destruction Klix games, which actually made up the gap from the post Mechwarrior 4 era. This was at the height of the Magic The Gathering craze and other collection games, and Dark Age was an attempt to bring Mechwarrior into the collectible era of games.

Its not unusual for people to buy an entire expansion box for about $400, which can hold about 33 boosters, containing every mech, artillery and vehicles for that series, plus three uniques. Since there are five uniques, you probably have to buy them or trade for them. Once the pieces are made and distributed, they are no longer made again, so you only have to look forward to the next series. So people would buy, trade, auction or trade them in eBay. Some pieces proved their value in tournaments, such as the Liao Peasants, so as a result, their prices would rise higher than others, while others would lose their value. Some of the pieces there could easily go for $80 or even over a hundred. Mason Dunne's Mad Cat, everyone?

That's really Pay to Win in my book, or more like Collect to Win. But its typical of these kinds of games, and you do get own a physical plastic piece of sculpture, that in some cases, actually looks good in a display cabinet.

That era seems to be over now, at least the apex of the craze is. Of course, the remnants of the Collection Game era is there in various forms, like Pokemon, Yugioh, etc,.

Then came a new kind of game, starting in the late 2000s and early 2010. Today is the era of the F2P Micro Transaction Game. The current gold standard for this is probably World of Tanks, along with League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 (DoTA). Some of these games are making so much money, they exceed even traditional MMOs using subscriptions or the best selling console games. Allods Online, War Thunder, are more of these games. MIcro Transaction games proliferate in mobile --- they account for much of the income in mobile game apps --- as well in in browser and social networking games, like Zynga games in Facebook (Farmville etc,.).

Mechwarrior Online fits into this new paradigm. The franchise has evolved to fit the gaming paradigm of that era, and Battletech/Mechwarrior has gone through just about everything from the board games, the single player PC game, the PC game with multiplayer online, the console games, the collectible games, and now the F2P Freemium games.

This is probably why the old Hard Core is in a culture shock. They might have expected something like a successor to MW4, but got a hybrid arena game with the World of Tanks format. If you really want to understand what is the thinking behind MWO, you need to try WoT, a game which in 2013, brought in at least $376 million in revenue for that year.

The Freemium games are borderline P2W. One can always argue what exactly P2W is, what defines it, what game elements justify that it is or not. My impressions of that its always clever shades of grey and people are always shifting that goal post between white and black depending if you are a fanboi or a critic.

But one thing for sure, is that they are making the concept of Pay To get Advantage socially acceptable, and every F2P game out there that is adding these elements, every MMO that is going "free", every subscription MMO that is adding "pay" items, is adding to that tidal wave. There is always people who got more money than time to grind and are willing to pay for it. In fact this has become socially acceptable in Europe and in Asia, North America is still struggling with that concept. MWO's pay schemes are not unusual, they are typical of F2P games in Asia and Europe, but its a cultural shock for what appears to be MWO's predominantly North American audience. But PGI might be gambling, even those regional culture barriers are going to be overturned. And they will, sooner or later. People will just have to accept that it is.

The one thing for sure though, it helps finance and keep non "mainstream" games going, games that otherwise won't be acceptable by a big bucks publisher.

Edited by Anjian, 24 June 2014 - 11:29 PM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

MW:AOD was fun stuff.

I have 2 tool boxes full of mechs, another shoe box with random pieces and the Ares. 1 of my tool boxes is actually loaded up with my own modded army, complete with their own pilot cards haha.

Knights Republic Legion, black, red, gold and silver mechs, packing a pretty hefty amount of armor with rather durable dials, compared to the regular mechs. 18 ending defense lol.

Then my dad and bro each have a box of thier own full of these little Wizkids creations. Fun game, but Dice really hate me.

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 24 June 2014 - 11:32 PM.

[Steven Dixon]

P2W is really a subjective term. Some people consider a game P2W if a person can use money to gain any advantage even if its effectively miniscule and certainly not a 'win' button. I don't agree with this, but I understand the viewpoint. The clans however don't really fall under this category because you can buy them with in-game currency.

In reality its pay for early access, this is pretty common. Now if clan mechs were closer to the lore where they were significantly overpowered then I would probably be inclined to sympathize with people claiming P2W (even if it's really just early access) but several clan mechs are arguably inferior to IS mechs. Even the ones that are better aren't that much better, I'll take a good pilot in a victor over an average pilot in a timberwolf any day of the week.

That's just my 2 cents, if people want to call it P2W, then that's what they will do.

[Vandul]

Early Battletech was an unscaled arms race, not P2W.

MWO is an unscaled convienence race, not P2W.

PGI is a business, not a social program.

[vash021]

Everything is pay to win because nothing in life is free

Who would give you a 100 ton mech for free???

[That Dawg]

Armored Yokai, on 24 June 2014 - 05:36 PM, said:

Tell me what you guys think!

that you and maybe others have justified the latest, blatant, pay cash to purchase a superior mech in every way that is NOT available in the traditional sense of 'grinding' and saving up for one, like the atlas DDC for instance. That wasn't a mech a year ago you could drop 50 bucks on, load up and tear into the other poor morons trying play the game in the traditional sense.

And your reasoning is, what? thats the way it is? the way it was?
No, the game was changed recently to favor those with cash. Bad move, time will tell if they screwed themselves or not.

I would drop another hundred no problem, I can afford it easily, but I wont because I'm not sure if this game will be around that much longer.

[AlexEss]

ThatDawg... You must have missed the little storm when the YLW was released... A Cent that can mount a AC/20 and have a higher engine cap then the others... it was clearly P2W by the estimate at the time... Sure you traded away the missiles but a AC/20... omgwtfbbqfordfocus....

As for the clan mechs... Meh... Said AC/20 still kill them... So it is all good.

[That Dawg]

AlexEss, on 25 June 2014 - 03:57 AM, said:

ThatDawg... You must have missed the little storm when the YLW was released... A Cent that can mount a AC/20 and have a higher engine cap then the others... it was clearly P2W by the estimate at the time...

Trying to think back, wasn't that released for fake game credits at the same time, or shortly after?
Wasn't that back when MWO would actually address problems, spend man hours fixing problems instead of pouring time into purchasable, or total wasted events, like that horrid UI2 thing?
things have changed, maybe everyone doesn't agree, but for an old gamer like me, its changed.
Rather blatantly with the 'gold' mechs, and packages offering a tremendously more powerful mech than what could be 'earned' in game. All the while promising clan wars when it just seems like wallet wars?

[Lucian Nostra]

ThatDawg, on 28 June 2014 - 04:20 AM, said:

Trying to think back, wasn't that released for fake game credits at the same time, or shortly after?
Wasn't that back when MWO would actually address problems, spend man hours fixing problems instead of pouring time into purchasable, or total wasted events, like that horrid UI2 thing?
things have changed, maybe everyone doesn't agree, but for an old gamer like me, its changed.
Rather blatantly with the 'gold' mechs, and packages offering a tremendously more powerful mech than what could be 'earned' in game. All the while promising clan wars when it just seems like wallet wars?

Nope Yen-lo is a hero and all heroes have always been MC only. There was a Cent with an AC/20 prior to the Yen-lo release that had an AC/20 capable arm though. it was removed when Yen-lo came out.

Uh addressing problems.. PGI still does, they still work on them, the fervor behind getting them fixed has abated though because the problems aren't as.. detrimental to the game. The Lag shield of old was a terrible problem...

And honestly if you think the clan mechs have tremendously more power than IS mechs than.. all I can say is that it's true that you don't own them..

I understand your in the have-not category either through reluctance to drop money or inability to afford it, but that doesn't make what you don't have tremendously powerful. Some stuff needs tweaks for sure but.. yeah

Edited by Lucian Nostra, 28 June 2014 - 07:17 AM.

[DasaDevil]

wtb mechwarrior 2: mercenaries remake

[CMetz]

I don't understand why people think there is such a p2w element in this game... I pretty much defy anyone to name a mech that cannot be countered by a free to own mech.

[Tovan Cassidine]

QFE

Vandul, on 25 June 2014 - 03:09 AM, said:

PGI is a business, not a social program.

[ShinobiHunter]

Mechwarrior wasn't always pay to win. Before this it was pay to play....

[Bartholomew bartholomew]

here I thought he was talking about all the other games before. And you had to buy (pay) just in order to play them at all.

[anonymous161]

Not really p2w but pgi largely so far is hardly a game developer compared to other companies that actually make games with impressive graphics and unique fun interesting story lines.

I appreciate pgi making a game I can just go online and blow up other mechs but hardly will ever be a number one game that leaves a lasting appeal too me personally. I play this to kill some time not to really engage myself in a deep story like saving the universe from the reapers in Mass Effect, or saving the human race from the Covenant in Halo.

It is a shame that this couldn't be one of those games with an epic story and an epic fight to win but it's still fun.

[RAM]

Anjian, on 24 June 2014 - 11:28 PM, said:

Pay to Win or not, Battletech has always been a rich man's game. How much does it cost to buy the kits, the TRO books, buy the various pieces and so on.

?
Less than $60 for The Battletech Introductory Box Set on Amazon - how much cheaper does a complete game need to be?


RAM
ELH