114 replies to this topic

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Pendraco, on 11 September 2014 - 10:42 AM, said:

If you stop buying consumables, add premium time and a Hero type Mech it's amazing how fast the C-Bills pile up. During the last challenge I earned close to 8 milllion C-Bills trying to Unlock the 6.5 million C-Bill reward!

P2W

[Pjwned]

Pendraco, on 11 September 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

The game is perfectly playable and FREE TO PLAY. Don't like the Grind that FREE TO PLAY offers you? Consider a subscription of $14.95 a month for Premium time and 500 mc to spend as you like and start swimming in C-Bills.

You don't need consumables to be effective either, wait until you have millions and millions ...then start using consumables.

When faced with the option of "deal with an insufferable grind or pay up" a lot of people will just go with the 3rd option of "f*** this game."

[Mothykins]

Ok, Here's a Better idea. Go to your Stat Page, and tell me what your Accumulative C-Bills Per Match reads.

85,238.33 Is mine. I've played about 14,000 matches, and my win loss is pretty much 1:1

As I said, I'm average.

I am about what the average player manages. I'm not great at the game, and I can only spend ~2 hours a day on this.

This is even LESS than I originally stated.

Keep telling me it's easy to progress. Keep going. I'm not buying it, as so far all you tell me to do is buy a Hero 'Mech.

[Armament]

Cavale, on 13 September 2014 - 08:03 PM, said:

Ok, Here's a Better idea. Go to your Stat Page, and tell me what your Accumulative C-Bills Per Match reads.

85,238.33 Is mine. I've played about 14,000 matches, and my win loss is pretty much 1:1

As I said, I'm average.

I am about what the average player manages. I'm not great at the game, and I can only spend ~2 hours a day on this.

This is even LESS than I originally stated.

Keep telling me it's easy to progress. Keep going. I'm not buying it, as so far all you tell me to do is buy a Hero 'Mech.

That sounds really painful.. my average c-bill gain is nearly 3x that. Using premium time and hero mechs of course. I probably would not play the game if it wasn't for those boosters. The grind is ridiculous without them.

[p4r4g0n]

@OP If you are playing anything less than 20 - 25 hours per week, we have very different ideas about what grind means and realistically, the F2P model wasn't designed around your available playing time.

[Mothykins]

p4r4g0n, on 13 September 2014 - 08:48 PM, said:

@OP If you are playing anything less than 20 - 25 hours per week, we have very different ideas about what grind means and realistically, the F2P model wasn't designed around your available playing time.

So, what, this game is supposed to be a second job? I thoughts games where supposed to be for fun. To enjoy.

Not something I need to treat like a job.

[Pjwned]

p4r4g0n, on 13 September 2014 - 08:48 PM, said:

@OP If you are playing anything less than 20 - 25 hours per week, we have very different ideas about what grind means and realistically, the F2P model wasn't designed around your available playing time.

Not even high-end raid guilds in WoW expect people to play that much, your expectations are insane.

[p4r4g0n]

@ Cavale If you want a decent stable of mechs i.e. 10-15 go to mechs, fully equipped with all modules and a couple of tens of million C-Bills stockpiled to buy the latest mech releases as a free player, then yeah, you'd pretty much need to put in those kind of hours. Based on my past experience with other F2P games especially the ones from Asia, MWO is less demanding than most.

@Pjwned Never played WoW as I dislike paying monthly subs for an online game and have no idea how comparable a "high-end raid guild's" expectations of their members play time is to a F2P situation. However, if I had to put in those kind of silly hours in a P2P game to get access to content, I'd think I was getting ripped off.


In the final analysis, as others have already alluded to in this thread, any F2P depends on establishing an appropriate trade-off between time vs convenience (i.e. cash purchased boosters) in order to remain in business. While I do not have access to PGI's statistics to confirm that PGI has attained that ideal equilibrium, the hours I cited are not significantly divergent from most F2Ps I have played IF you want to have access to most of the content available.

[kesuga7]

flash news

consumables aid more experienced players who can spam them every game without worry of c-bill loss

while newer players are penalized with a longer grind if used

Edited by kesuga7, 14 September 2014 - 01:01 AM.

[STEF_]

Cavale, on 11 September 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

We have an issue, and it isn't all gameplay.


Starting off, We've all complained about the high pricing for everything. All of us. At least once. And it sucks, but We've been getting ton's of sales as of late, which take the hurt off. I don't see this changing quickly, and here's why:

• The game has been up for years at this point. If you drop the price, all the players who've already sunk money into it will be understandably upset.
  
• If you try to mitigate that damage with refunds/free in game stuff, you now need to track the many thousands of players and how much they've spent, which takes up tons of resources.
  
• The sale prices are generally closer to what I'd personally consider "in line" anyways, with a few exceptions.

That said, We still have an issue where MC to C-bill and MC to Premium time are not equal to what they give you.





We also have an issue where expansion requires real world money - Mechbays, though PGI has been doing it's best to give those away as part of challenges. This is a great move on their part, as long as it becomes a semi-recurring theme.



"So what's the problem? It can't be just Premium Time."


Glad you asked.


The problem is the games current C-Bill rewards. Even with Premium they're terrible. This is a serious throttle to players.



The following is based off of myself, who is an average, if not below average player.

I've bought a single 'Mech in game in the last three months, because it's not easy to create any in game income with the current model. This is while running a Locust....

And with the word "locust" I stopped to read.

Last solo challenge I farmed enough c-bill to buy 3 (three) thunderbolt and to upgrade them.
Furthermore, with the premium time gift, I farmed enough to buy 3 ctf.

I think that buying an hero mech is a good investment, because it gives you 30% more c-bills forever.

Then, I think locust is not a good choice for farming c-bills.

Good hunting!

[STEF_]

Cavale, on 13 September 2014 - 09:28 PM, said:

So, what, this game is supposed to be a second job? I thoughts games where supposed to be for fun. To enjoy.

Not something I need to treat like a job.

I think that the grind mechanism is quite realistic.
The more you work/play the more you earn.
The same thing is with the "for fun" matter.
The more you enjoy a work/game, the more you want to work/play.
Less joy, less work/play, less money/c-bills.

[meteorol]

Cavale, on 13 September 2014 - 08:03 PM, said:

Ok, Here's a Better idea. Go to your Stat Page, and tell me what your Accumulative C-Bills Per Match reads.

85,238.33 Is mine. I've played about 14,000 matches, and my win loss is pretty much 1:1

As I said, I'm average.

I am about what the average player manages. I'm not great at the game, and I can only spend ~2 hours a day on this.

This is even LESS than I originally stated.

Keep telling me it's easy to progress. Keep going. I'm not buying it, as so far all you tell me to do is buy a Hero 'Mech.

You have no idea what the average player manages. You know your income and maybe the income of some of the guys you play with. Stating that this is about the average income is nothing but an assumption that you can't prove in any possible way.

I'm averaging 114987.4 and that while playing nothging but conquest, which gets you less than skirmish. I could claim this is about average aswell. Since i'm spending way less than 2 hours per day on this, i guess i'm counting as average casual. I had over 100k average income before ever touching my first hero mech. I don't if this is average, just like you can't possibly know if your 85k are average or below average.

Edited by meteorol, 14 September 2014 - 03:44 AM.

[Sorbic]

meteorol, on 14 September 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

You have no idea what the average player manages. You know your income and maybe the income of some of the guys you play with. Stating that this is about the average income is nothing but an assumption that you can't prove in any possible way.

I'm averaging 114987.4 and that while playing nothging but conquest, which gets you less than skirmish. I could claim this is about average aswell. Since i'm spending way less than 2 hours per day on this, i guess i'm counting as average casual. I had over 100k average income before ever touching my first hero mech. I don't if this is average, just like you can't possibly know if your 85k are average or below average.

And now he knows your average. And he's probably already seen a ton of others claimed averages... He wasn't claiming to be exact.

[Mothykins]

meteorol, on 14 September 2014 - 03:30 AM, said:

You have no idea what the average player manages. You know your income and maybe the income of some of the guys you play with. Stating that this is about the average income is nothing but an assumption that you can't prove in any possible way.

I'm averaging 114987.4 and that while playing nothging but conquest, which gets you less than skirmish. I could claim this is about average aswell. Since i'm spending way less than 2 hours per day on this, i guess i'm counting as average casual. I had over 100k average income before ever touching my first hero mech. I don't if this is average, just like you can't possibly know if your 85k are average or below average.

Well, my original numbers where based on the average from numerous people's screenshots, as well as the average match where i did more than 300 damage and at least one kill. So, yeah.

[LCCX]

Fut, on 11 September 2014 - 11:50 AM, said:

Here's your problem... You're impatient.

But it's a problem for the game if a LOT of people are impatient (and in my experience they are), and making the C-Bill outcome of matches feel unrewarding is a bad way to encourage them to spend money. Making matches feel unrewarding is a way of making *the game* feel unrewarding. Making them want things enough to pay for them is necessary (F2P business model after all), but that could be done without negatively impacting the "rewarded!" feeling of matches (at least those where they play well, get a couple kills, and do decent damage). I imagine PGI could double c-bill earnings, double mech bay MC costs, and come out ahead.