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Some people consider monetization an evil topic. However, without monetization MWO will cease to exist. People have to pay for something so that PGI can develop features, keep the lights on, run servers and pay bills.
What does this mean?
Most development will require ways to generate revenue in order to justify the resources expended. This can be either through increased player retention or through spending by individual players.
As a result, and as has been stated/suggested in some of the dev posts, we can probably expect community warfare to bring with it monetized aspects in order to increase income and generate revenue.
However, the players may or may not like how this is implemented. After implementation the players will likely have very limited ability to effect change. There are a small handful of people designing CW ... there are hundreds or thousands of players on this forum.
Assuming monetization as a necessary evil ... the purpose of this thread is to ask players to contribute ideas that they would find acceptable or useful in the monetization of CW.
Many free to play games can and do have premium content that involves added costs if players want to participate. It is possible that some or all of CW may be already planned to be this type of premium content. Before the developers present a fait accompli .. lets see if we can come up with some additional suggestions or ideas to try to guide the monetization in directions that we think might work.
Here are some to start this off ... not all of these are even good ideas ... and you would not necessarily use all of them at once ... but they are ideas
1) CW pay per match fees. Each player dropping in a CW match must pay 1MC (players with premum time have no cost). Nets PGI 24 MC/CW match played ... but from an individual player point of view ... they can purchase thousands of matches for $10.00
2) MC fees for the formation of mercenary organizations.
3) MC entry fee for a player to sign up for CW. This gives the player the option of dropping in CW matches.
4) MC costs for CW related items ... drop ships? transport between planets or theatres of operations? (very design related)
5) MC costs to access specialty stores with specific CW mechs or variants. Some items only available in CW for MC purchase ... perhaps not available outside CW or early release to CW participants.
Also, believe it or not ... not everyone desperately wants CW. Some folks will be quite happy dropping in the current random open matches ... bring whatever mech you want free from constraints. However, these types of matches are inconsistent with faction based community warfare ... particularly when it comes to clans vs. IS. People have to be able to choose to participate in community warfare ... participation has to be optional. Months of development time are being spent to create CW ... which not everyone will play ... so it needs to be able to pay for itself ... this is a chance to suggest to PGI how to do that.
