157 replies to this topic

[Dark Jackal]

WM Quicksilver, on 10 September 2014 - 09:50 PM, said:

I am asking you when customer service came up in the discussion, because I don't remember it even coming up?
Never did I say or suggest businesses survive without customers, again, not sure why this was even brought up.

I take it that when you post on here you're not really a customer to PGI if you feel the way you do if you don't understand the customer is the heart of everything. So why should your voice be heard if you don't consider yourself and the activity you do here being that of a customer yourself? If you do, then you answered your own question.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

[Dark Jackal]

Mirkk Defwode, on 10 September 2014 - 12:24 PM, said:

Use the SWTOR subscription system of a monthly fee with weekly real money added to your account and premium permanently activated for those bonuses. This can be used as a month to month subscription base for constant income while still allowing the F2P model overall.

With this the users should get free items from time to time, namely this could be camo patterns or colors instantly added to the user account. SWTOR does this with a random grabbag item you open a chest for monthly. The premium unlock system from Battlefield 4 for purchasing their outright premium system is another good example.

Diversifying content in a non-pay2win setup. This can be done through the addition of weapon variants that are all in balance with each other but have slightly different behavioral characteristics. Namely have a Laser from 'X' burn a little shorter but generate more heat equal or greater to the percentage of the burn time increase. It'd allow for more users to feel more attached to their customizations on mechs. (Laser example is just that - an example - similar stylings can be done with the mechanics for all different weapon types.)

YES! Having something like 500 cartel coins from Star Wars, or 500 points from SOE was a smart move by both businesses for their clients that subscribe to the service on a per month basis. So you get nearly the same benefits in most cases if you sub for 1 month then take a break compared to someone that subbed 6 months and gets burned out and drops the game for a year. And, both get rewarded for each month equally the 500 coins. It has a number of side benefits besides just mere retaining of customers in the sense that it makes it easier for folks as it gives their customers optionality.

This is what free to play is all about, giving the customers more options, not less.

Then, you will have folks not feel like they are just throwing good money after bad if they don't think cosmetic items or re-skinned items are worth additional monetary input than what they are already paying a sub or what's already available to grind towards. Or to reput it, the 500 a month also has another benefit in the sense that those items PGI invested time into will begin to be used more often as people have incentive to use the system with a number of options at their disposal without feeling obligated to put in more than what they already invested towards one or two specific things. Otherwise there is stagnation on the store page and those items that were worked on essentially don't get sold and are only bought by less people overall which makes for some bad business sense.

Good moves by BioWare and SOE.

Edited by Dark Jackal, 11 September 2014 - 08:18 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Dark Jackal, on 11 September 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

I take it that when you post on here you're not really a customer to PGI if you feel the way you do if you don't understand the customer is the heart of everything. So why should your voice be heard if you don't consider yourself and the activity you do here being that of a customer yourself? If you do, then you answered your own question.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Are you delusional, where did I ever say any of that?
You are putting a lot of words in my mouth and assuming I believe something which I don't.

[Dagda Morr]

Everything needs to be cheaper.

The people who love this franchise likely did when they were kids and are now at the age when there are family and other important things to spend money on. I can justify spending a few $ on a mech, but when it gets to the amount required to take my whole family out to the cinema you can guess which I am going to choose.

Overall I just want to be able to make a quick impulse buy to get a mech and play it - the game play currently just makes grinding mechs with cbills a chore and the cost of mechs for MC is just too much.

[Dark Jackal]

WM Quicksilver, on 11 September 2014 - 08:32 AM, said:

Are you delusional, where did I ever say any of that?
You are putting a lot of words in my mouth and assuming I believe something which I don't.

Oh I see, the English language leaves for some words that can be omitted if the party is following what the person is saying. So, let me add in what was omitted to help you move along and be part of the fun.

Dark Jackal, on 11 September 2014 - 07:49 AM, said:

I take it that when you post on here you're not really a customer to PGI if you feel the way you do if you don't understand the customer is the heart of everything. So why should your voice be heard if you don't consider yourself and the activity you do here being that of a customer yourself? If you do consider yourself a customer and your voice should be heard, then you answered your own question.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

[girl on fire]

El Bandito, on 10 September 2014 - 07:52 PM, said:

Here is another way to keep healthy amount of population while rewarding highly active gamers.

Make it so we can convert XP into MC.

Perhaps 2000 XP = 1 MC (subject to change, of course). That way, people have a lot more incentive to play, and feel the grind is actually rewarding.

Perhaps the old guard will benefit too much from this, but isn't it fitting that we, the long time players should be rewarded for keeping the game afloat for so long?

or how about a daily mission (like Kill 5 players or something) that rewards a small amount of MC?

[Mirkk Defwode]

Pjwned, on 09 September 2014 - 08:41 PM, said:

How many of those games let you rent equipment by making you pay real money though? I know there's some Korean grindfest MMO stuff (bleh) that does that, but to be frank those games might as well not exist for the sake of comparison because of how different the games and the demographics are, and I can't think of other examples of games that do that.

As for it being insulting it's more about how much of a ripoff it would be to rent something 10 times before owning it and end up paying significantly more money than if you had just bought it. I also just don't like the concept of renting mechs much personally, especially not for real money, and especially when trial mechs are already rental mechs in a way anyways.

Blacklight Retribution is an example of this. Which is made by Zombie Interactive out of Seattle.

All around good shooter, but the rented equipment system is effectively like a trial system. You can rent it to see if you like it - then purchase it if you do or let it expire and go back to what you had before.

Personally I wasn't really a fan of the methodology - but I could see it working like how we have trial mechs now. When you create an account your first set of equipment is actually rented gear and you need to use the first 10 game bonus to purchase additional equipment. Then it's an extremely slow grind to be able to get other gear beyond that original package.

So if you're not looking to spend money that title is actually rather painful to advance and have a sense of progression. Spending money simplifies it but the prices seemed a little out of sorts for full purchasing of items which seemed the better overall value.

Much of the MWO business model does mimic Wargaming.net and their series of F2P games, but there are aspects that I'm glad we don't have like the gold ammo...

Overall vanity items like camo and paint should be less expensive overall and making a purchase for the chassis shouldn't cost more than the cumulative cost of buying it for the variants that exist like it currently does. Buying it for everything if anything at all should be less expensive as you're buying the bundle of it rather than paying for a bunch of individual purchases.

Though after reading much of the debate, I think the discrepancy in saying the business model is so broken and yet people support it doesn't completely involve just the model. You need to look at the intellectual property being presented. There are fanatics for the Battletech Universe, I am admittedly one of them, and the ability to have a title as well as ensure it's survival through funding it for the larger projects despite a poor track record of performing/delivering on the product may make me a fool. But a fool can still be a customer and the philosophy for retail or sales oriented businesses is that 'the customer is always right.'

Now as software development businesses were mentioned if a product like Office or Windows is shipped with major defects they are fixed through iteration and patching as rapidly as possible for major functionality issues. As I work for one of those major software companies I know the internal process of why it's shipped that way and how it's prioritized post ship to get those issues corrected.

The lament that many of this community experience is that we feel we have very little overall interaction with the developers through where they send us to contact them. Namely these forums. While if you're a social media junky you tend to get more attention and direct response through twitter. I'd personally like to see a full dedicated community manager post even just a "we're looking into this" or "thanks for the feedback" on many of these threads that carry inherent value and have reasonable suggestions or critiques.

Edited by Mirkk Defwode, 11 September 2014 - 11:31 AM.

[Pjwned]

El Bandito, on 11 September 2014 - 07:11 AM, said:

If people want to use Hero mechs, Champion mechs, or Premium time to speed up XP farm, then they will have to buy those first with cash--which suits PGI's profit agenda, IMO. Besides, to earn mere 100 MC, you will have to win 100 matches, and that helps population retention and expansion.

Unless of course, PGI's servers cannot handle more players than current amount.

You seem to forget that you buy hero/champ mechs and premium time with MC, which with your system is acquired freely, so actually it doesn't necessarily suit PGI's profit agenda (not that I care too much about it). With the XP boosting nature of champ/hero mechs and premium time it would essentially mean that you earn MC faster, which seems a little weird since you would be using free MC to earn more MC faster.

Like I said it still also doesn't solve the XP system being bad and not fun to deal with, it just makes excess XP not worthless and that's it, that doesn't sound particularly fun.

girl on fire, on 11 September 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

or how about a daily mission (like Kill 5 players or something) that rewards a small amount of MC?

That would have a lot less of an impact on the game, but still a significant shift in the business model.

Edited by Pjwned, 11 September 2014 - 09:43 PM.

[Bobdolemite]

Been perusing this thread and figure ill weigh in:

1.) Subscription option with loyalty rewards (standard 14.99 per month) offers benefit of being "committed" to MWO and PGI's coffers. Premium time for the duration + bonus monthly MC. (discounted mech bays would be a nice benefit as well.) loyalty benefits could increase with time, netting you more MC or other goodies.

many games use this model and I have 0 issues paying once per month for something I believe in. Getting a monthly bonus of MC allows people to save up for for either a steady steam of camo / colors / cockpit items / mechbays, or to save longer for something like a hero mech.

2.) Reduce (significantly) the cost of camos and especially paint / cockpit items. (20mc - 100 tops)

I have never bought a cockpit item, they mostly serve 0 function other than aesthetics, and cost 500 mc per. I could get a mechbay or something else useful for this price. They should be dirt cheap and plentiful (cheapest items in the game)

Paints should (IMO) be at least half what they are now (the idea of 10-15$ worth of MC for a single paint is supremely misguided. They should be closer to $1 of real money per paint, and 2-5 per camo IMO.

3.) Cbill earn rate - I am a casual player, in part due to the amount of time it takes to get anything done around here. It took me three weeks to buy and master the Timberwolf (a single mech) and this IMO is too much time to ask of "most" people. IMO there should not be a mech in this game that you cant master in 7 days with 3-4 hours of gameplay per day.

One of two things could happen here: a.) bump non-premium cbill rates (just make it what premium people earn, and bump premium pay by the same difference they share now (what is it 50%?) result is premium people rake in the cash (making it desirable) while standard F2P people still can make 200k in a single good match.

b.) Lower the price of mechs across the board (mostly clans, as they are obscenely expensive for no real good reason) I prefer option a. IMO earnings are far too low.

4.) Cost of Modules - modules are obscene, most of them are twice the cost of the mech you will equip them on. I don't really get to enjoy them since I have to make a choice (more mechs to master or modules to make one mech marginally better) Weapons modules especially are out of my reach, with the sheer number of them and cost (especially when your looking to equip at least 2 to a mech for max effect.

(ill edit this with more later, life is calling and I must answer)

Edited by Bobdolemite, 01 January 2015 - 01:10 PM.

[Raggedyman]

Camouflage could be a great seller if you were able to select it whilst in the ready room, rather than having to pick something blind before dropping.

[Kuritaclan]

Well if you have a couple of stocking suffer like events around the year (4 to 8) and every half year a 50% mechbay sale, with enough time in front for announcement and or fixed dates - F2P would be ok. You can tell new players go for the events, and after a couple months you can buy mechbays etc. Since this the only thing you need as F2P Player.

Everything else is bonus - and who wanna have shiny mechs and or cockpits or premium time - Spend your real money.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 01 January 2015 - 01:24 PM.

[Pjwned]

Raggedyman, on 01 January 2015 - 01:16 PM, said:

Camouflage could be a great seller if you were able to select it whilst in the ready room, rather than having to pick something blind before dropping.

Camo spec and paint colors should not be about offering a tactical advantage on certain maps.

[Burktross]

El Bandito, on 08 September 2014 - 07:37 PM, said:

LOWER. THE. PRICES.

Make mechs, colors, camos, cockpit items more accessible to the casuals--you know, the type of crowd PGI began to suck up to, with the inclusion of 3PV?

Once casuals begin dropping money, they will be hard pressed to leave--thus making them more likely to drop more dollars. Kinda like TF2, LoL, or Dota2. Casuals spending few dollars each, in the long run, will be more profitable than only whales spending hundreds.

Add to the fact that many of the whales are now disappointed with PGI, and no longer drops money, attracting the casuals with lower prices is the next logical move.

This please!

[Raggedyman]

Pjwned, on 01 January 2015 - 01:42 PM, said:

Camo spec and paint colors should not be about offering a tactical advantage on certain maps.

So we should have camouflage but it should give no tactical advantage?

Tell me, out of curiosity: why does camouflage exist?

[Pjwned]

Raggedyman, on 02 January 2015 - 05:53 AM, said:

So we should have camouflage but it should give no tactical advantage?

Tell me, out of curiosity: why does camouflage exist?

A somewhat late response, but...

In real life it exists to conceal things, but in a video game like this there's no need for it do anything other than make a mech look a bit cooler.

If you can demonstrate how changing camo spec based on what map you're on would be anything other than a pain in the ass, and arguably pay2win to an extent because the vast majority of colors and anything other than basic camo is MC exclusive, then I'll concede the point; this isn't even getting into how viable such a feature would be from a technical standpoint.

[Black Arachne]

Lower the Prices - currently way to high

Mechs $10-$15 - including the mechbay and variants
Increase amount of credits earned per game by 50% - also reduce cost on mods/upgrades/etc...

Grinding is not fun - and despite the current grind - I will not pay for an overpriced virtual item.

[Fate 6]

In Warframe, for example, I paid about $10 for a nearly complete color palette. I think a bit more would still be reasonable in MWO. Camo schemes should be cheaper for full chassis. I haven't purchased any colors/camos/cockpit items because I've felt it's not worth it when I can get a mech package instead, with the colors/camos those come with. Even without the packages, the cosmetic items still feel like too much.

Hero mechs cost too much for sure. For content that is unique and affects gameplay, to give it such a price barrier seems quite questionable. Some mechs, namely the light heros, are hugely different from the other variants. The Ilya, when it was released, was crazy good and the only mech that could load 3UAC5s.

[Tombstoner]

Salvage boxes - opened with Comstar access key purchased for real cash.
% chance - tier - reward
75 I - CB's
10 II - weapons, AMS, ECM
5 III - Endo/fero upgrade
4 IV - engines
3 V - modules, camo colors - patterns
2 VI - mechs IS (1)
1 VII - Mech clan (1)
.5 VIII - Mech lance (4)
.1 IX - Star leauge era mech


Give players a 1 % cumulative chance to have one drop then reset the % chance.

The game has a huge amount of content but the only way to access it is with huge chunks of cash in game and out.

Free to play must have a micro payment system with rewards that justifies dropping 5-10 bucks to open 10-20 salvage boxes. Who wouldn't love to open a box and get a new mech.

Edited by Tombstoner, 06 January 2015 - 08:00 PM.

[Black Arachne]

Fate 6, on 06 January 2015 - 07:19 PM, said:

In Warframe, for example, I paid about $10 for a nearly complete color palette. I think a bit more would still be reasonable in MWO. Camo schemes should be cheaper for full chassis. I haven't purchased any colors/camos/cockpit items because I've felt it's not worth it when I can get a mech package instead, with the colors/camos those come with. Even without the packages, the cosmetic items still feel like too much.

Hero mechs cost too much for sure. For content that is unique and affects gameplay, to give it such a price barrier seems quite questionable. Some mechs, namely the light heros, are hugely different from the other variants. The Ilya, when it was released, was crazy good and the only mech that could load 3UAC5s.

It's 4.99/75 platinum for 90 colors.

Edited by Black Arachne, 06 January 2015 - 07:38 PM.

[Tasker]

I'll start this off by saying that I'm a recently returning player (haven't touched the game in maybe 18 months) and that I understand that the developers need to, you know, make money, in order to continue supporting the game.

1. Cash shop prices are too high. I say this as a 'whale' type of playerwho has bought camo and paints, and will buy more camo and paints at some point. 1,000 MC for a color or camo scheme is downright insane. Ideally, you should cut the prices by about 1/5 or even 1/2. I would absolutely buy more stuff if I didn't think the prices were absurd. I have no problem with buying stuff or supporting the game -- in fact, I bought a Founder's package specifically just to support the devs -- but the part of my brain that manages my money screams "Are you nuts?" when I see that it's going to cost something like 5 bucks to repaint a mech. Camo in particular is sort of a horrible deal, since it doesn't seem to unlock across different chassis.

My unit mates and I were joking yesterday about how the best value of the Resistance packs was from the paint colors that come with them.

2. Take the example of a competing product and allow players to get MC from Clan Wars. Not a huge amount, mind you, but just a trickle -- say 10 MC or so -- for a player who has participated in a successful CW drop each day, might stimulate people to go halfway on a MC-only purchase. And I think it would make the CW system a little bit more compelling.

3. Make premium a little bit more appealing, or perhaps add a 'premium plus' option. Allow players with premium to untick one map (and its variants) that the player won't be dropped into. Forest Colony is awful, absolutely awful with 12 mechs on the field. I'd legitimately pay money NOT to play that map.

4. Finally, I think the preorder -> MC -> C-Bill staggered unlock of mechs is actually pretty sharp. Might I suggest including 'stretch goals' with these, though? Say, if you sell so many pre-order packs, then a new map -- one that somehow fits the pack theme -- will be added to the game? Figure out how many preorders would make it worthwhile to budget out art, design, etc. for a new map and go from there. Everyone loves new maps, even if they don't necessarily love the mechs in the pack.