What I would like to see ... for better or for worse ... is a concise statement of what they plan to do with MWO. What features are planned, what is their priority and a semi-reasonable time line for delivery ... not fantasy numbers made up on the spur of the moment but thoughtful responses based on resource availability and developer estimates for feature implementation time.
I would also like to hear what the current long term vision for the game is. Games change, plans change ... I personally would not hold PGI to two year old promises based on dreams and wish fulfillment (or the desire to recruit funding) rather than reality ... but I would like to hear what the current and goals plans are ... how they can concretely bring the current game closer to their vision (and the vision of the players).
In my opinion and I suspect the opinions of many others ... there are a lot of things PGI could consider doing to make MWO a better, more fun and deeper game to play ... all of which should work to increase the game playerbase and revenues.
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Here is one example ... I think that they have missed a bet with the experience system.
Current -
- same skiils for all mechs
- have to unlock 3 variants of one chassis at basic to unlock the elite tier
- completing master gives an extra module slot
- there is nothing to do with excess xp except convert it to GXP for MC
Some ideas -
- create a skill tree with 32 base level skills or 8 skills with 4 ranks each or some other variation ... only allow a player to choose 8 of the 32 for any variant ... allow each variant to have different skills selected
- Implement 16 elite skills - choose 4
- Implement 4 master skills - choose 1
(note: if that is too much work ... do 16,8, and 2 .. but it won't be as much fun for the player)
- This allows each variant of every mech you own to be skilled up differently for different roles (depending on what is available in the skill tree).
- This makes grinding each variant MUCH less boring since each may have a specific use when the training is complete (beyond one or two different hard points or some quirks)
- skills can be used to support role and information warfare concepts
- if PGI is having trouble creatively coming up with skills ... ask the community and open it up to every employee ... I am sure there would be thousands of ideas and variations ... you only need to choose and balance about 50.
Why would PGI go to this effort? TO generate revenue.
The present system doesn't provide much in the way of revenue generation opportunities ... but if folks really want to level up different variants with different skill trees .. they might be much more willing to spend real money to reduce the grind.
- spend MC for XP on a particular variant (This is not pay to win ... since everyone can earn XP and GXP simply by playing the game ... at least that is the usual argument against pay2win
).
- charge an MC fee to respec the XP on a given variant.
- continue with the XP to GXP MC conversion fee