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Find the line of 69's. Everything below that is the bare minimum you need to know to say whether or not you support.
Hey guys. I've been playing MWO since it came out. Not saying that makes my opinion superior to anybody's, I'm just saying I've seen MWO as it's always been. Pre clan, post clan, post UI2, post CW. I wasn't always around but I usually spent at least 4 months out of the year dedicated to MWO. Hardcore, learning the lore, learning the tactics, the builds. MWO is a well balanced game, and it really expanded the tank aspect of Battletech. After MW3, MW kind of turned into a twitch shooter; still very deep in the meta, but it did turn arcade-e, and MWO executed the tank feel perfect. Even though that continues to bring me back, because its an itch nothing but MWO and Chromehounds has scratched, there is one thing that always makes me sour: C-bills.
One match, if you know what you're doing, will get you around 125k C-bills, maybe 200k on a common basis. Even then, the cheapest single variant of a single chassis costs 4m (lets be honest, anything cheaper isn't truly competitive in meta, even then its going to be a light for sure). That means at least 20 matches where you win, because losing usually means less than 200k, and 20 matches is assuming you're buying the cheapest mech and always having a tier 2-1 performance. Unless you know about exploits but tsk tsk. So when you're literally trying to get literally the cheapest mech and you are literally doing objectionally the best you can, that's at least 160 minutes of doing all that (assuming an average of 8 minute matches). Or 2.5 hours. If you're god and going for the poorest options. And along the way, you have to buy all the upgrades. Don't like the engine? Standard is around 40 minutes of grinding. And Xl is more like 1.25 hours. Weapons? Lets say for some reason there's an assault for 4m. Good weapons will run at least 1-2m, another .75-1.75 hours of grinding.
Grinding. Grinding. Grinding. Always on the grind with MWO.
Its a F2P game, you should expect the grind I hear you say. But here's the problem, in 5 years I've dropped a good 400$ on this game, more than any other game, and I STILL feel like I have less access to basic features than I do on something as grind dependent as WoW. Its stunning when I see a single color on a pallet of colors cost 500MC. Its appalling when I see a single variant on a single chassis cost upwards of 40$, and its not even a package. Yeah it includes a lot of bells and whistles, but those should be the things you have to grind to get. This is my point of view: when the steam release comes, it won't help MWO one bit, because they'll figure out MWO is a terribly priced piece of software. Just look at any youtube video exposing video games for things like charging 60$ for an in game cosmetic. But at least that cosmetic has a whole model and does something while MWO is charging for single colors. The Steam release isn't going to go well. In fact, its no secret MWO has had money problems in the past. The problem has always been stated to be low player population, but I guarantee a large part of the problem is just how expensive MWO is. MWO is the ferrari of games without actually being a ferrari. It looks like one, it sounds like one, its even priced like one, but it doesn't do what a ferrari does; after a few months, it stops feeling like a ferrari but you sure feel like you paid for one.
Rant over. Consider it a reason to be offended and reply and defend whatever point of view you want.
The point is if MWO is going to get over this consistent low population problem, I don't think steam is going to solve it. Steam is not the cure all for monetary problems, and its certainly not the cure all for low population problems. The real problem, in my eyes with MWO, was at first a balance problem, but always a pricing problem. Lets be honest, most players (and I'm willing to start a poll to back up the claim that 50% of players have this view) believe MWO, in some way, is terribly priced. Every time over the past, what, 4 years I've made a post about how horrible the pricing is, everytime the majority of replys are "We all know this, deal with it," or some variant like, "Its early access," or something to that nature. So PGI, please address this.
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But I think as a complainer, and by putting this in the feature suggestion forum, I should have a concrete solution.
Just let us buy whole chassis for the price of a single variant. I understand if champion or hero variants have to be sold individually, but at least make the 3-5 base variants an all in one package. I think this could help the pricing problem because when you have more variants to play with, the game is more likely to hold your attention. I don't know how much it would improve sales (knowing that buying a chassis means its base variants as well will make me at least more likely to buy!), but it can only improve sales if chassis cost as much as variants. Now that presents a few problems:
1) Hero/Champion mechs could lose value
Just make the xp bonus bigger
2) People would just use the best variants, the others would be waste.
And people don't already do that? At least giving people access to those other variants will make them more likely to use it. If the cost of the best variant was the cost of all variants, it wouldn't hurt diversity, it would help. People would be less paranoid about getting the wrong thing, all they have to worry about is the chassis. I think giving access to all variants would make more WTF builds happen. Its your opinion of if its a good thing.
3) That means less for people to buy
PGI stop. You're already charging for individual colors whilst also charging for the camo whilst also charging ridiculous amounts of real world cash or time for the single variant of the single chassis you can use that single camo on, you have enough for people to buy. Just shift things around, cheaper mechs means more time/money to spend on other things like weapons. Or cosmetics, why can't we buy cosmetics for C-bills!?
Edited by 3lementface, 08 January 2016 - 09:30 PM.
