333 replies to this topic

[Bront]

CapperDeluxe, on 15 October 2014 - 06:24 PM, said:

OP: I don't think you should include the modules in your calculations. Modules are completely ancillary, and while some of them add a decent enough advantage (really just seismic and decay) they aren't a core part of the cost of a mech (and as such are more "end-game" content). Also you can buy one and be done with it, no need to make the cost part of every mech purchase.



But otherwise I agree to some extent that the earned CBills don't match up well fairly enough against the amount of time played to earn them.

But that's actually where the economy has fallen apart for me. Modules, particularly weapon modules, and practically required in the group queue if your ELO is above average of you have good friends (I definately qualify via the latter, my ELO is likely above average as well, but I could be wrong). 12% extra range and 12% faster firing makes a huge difference in the hands of a skilled opponent, and matches where I have no chance eat into my CBill earnings. So in order to get my CBill earnings up, I need to save up for these modules, and either limit myself to a single mech or mechs with the same loadout and change modules regularly (costs me time and is annoying), or save up cbills for modules, when I'd rather get more mechs.

Throw in consumables, which are a tax on your earnings (Though they help you win, and some can earn a lot of the cost of use back, they still drain your cbill income), and the earnings level in the game is just in a frustrating place.

[Joseph Mallan]

Bront, on 15 October 2014 - 03:05 PM, said:

CBill earnings are bad, and have been bad for a while now. Earning between 80,000-120,000 cbills a match is just not enough, and it's costing the game players, and PGI money.

Uh oh, here comes a bunch of numbers

Your average player without premium time (PT) rakes in the fore mentioned 80,000-120,000 cbills a match (Good players may earn more, bad players may earn a bit less, this is ultimately an average over hundreds of matches for an average to below average(AKA New) player). We'll put that number at 100,000 for math purposes. We'll also assume that, say, from hitting play to getting back to the mech lab takes about 10 minutes on average. Sure, it can take over 20 sometimes, and sometimes it can be under 5. 10 is a nice, round number we can do some math with.

So, how much does it cost to kit out a mech? That can vary, but I'll throw some numbers out here.

Using the Shadowhawk 5M as a baseline for IS mechs (because it comes with all the upgrades and an XL Engine stock), and throwing around a little extra money to customize the weapons a bit, we get to around 10,000,000 cbills to kit it out (8.5 for the mech, 1.5 for extra stuff to mount on it). Some mechs will cost more, some will cost less, but we'll use this.

But that's not all. We now get to modules, that have become a nessessity in the group queue if you want continued success. You get 2 weapon modules at 3,000,000 each, and 2 regular modules at 2,000,00 to 6,000,000 each. We'll ignore consumables, as they eat at your earnings more than cost for the mech build. So, that's around 10,000,000-18,000,000 cbills for modules. WHile it's usually closer to 18 mil, we'll take the middle number of 14,000,000.

So, the mech build is 10,000,000, and the modules are 14,000,000. That's 24,000,000. For one mech.

But wait, don't you need 3 mechs to master a chassis? So, that's 2 more 10,000,000 purchases. We'll even be kind and share the modules, so no extra cost. So that's 44,000,000 cbills for 3 mechs, only one of which is fully kitted out with modules.

So, back to our earnings, at 100,000 a drop, that's about 440 drops to earn the cbills to build those mechs. At 10 minutes a drop, that's 4400 minutes, or 73 hours, 20 minutes of game time. To build 3 medium mechs, and outfit modules on one of them.

Think I was low on earnings? if we go up to 120,000 a drop, you're at about 367 drops, or just over 61 hours of game time.

How about we ignore the modules? Plenty of folks don't drop with those. Well, now we're down to just 30,000,000 for the 3 mechs, or 300 drops, or 50 hours of game time (or 250 drops and 41 hours 40 minutes with 120,000 a drop).

But wait, what about the 8,000,000 bonus CBills from being a new player?

So, that's 80 (or 67) fewer drops needed, saving a new player a little over 13 (or 11) hours. Once.

So, Bront, what's your point? That's a lot of numbers

My point is this. The lowest amount of time spent in the game with the above numbers is just under 42 (31 with the new player bonus) hours to master 3 medium mechs. 3. Part of the fun of this game is playing many different mechs, building them out, trying new things, and collecting them. With the current CBill grind, it's hard to keep new players interested long enough for them to start getting the payoff for their play (owning 3 of the same chassis so they can master out all the skills, forget putting modules in). That's an awful lot of grind to get so little for it in the game.

But how does that hurt PGI?

It hurts them in several ways.

1) Mechbay sales. I've argued in another thread about them being available for CBills, but at the moment, they aren't, and they're the very definition of a micro-transaction that MWO is looking to encourage. If it takes me a day of playing the game in order to even need one of these, that could be anywhere from a week to a month of actual time before I need to spend a miniscule amount of money on them. So it's seriously hampering a potential money-making transaction.

2) Customizations. There's little need to buy camo on mechs I don't own. Much like Mechbays, camo is hurt by the ability to get mechs in the first place.

3) Gaining free players. Free players help keep a game alive, and provide content for players who pay in a PvP F2P game. If the grind it so taxing, free players simply won't stick around.

4) Converting free players to paying players. Allowing players something to show in the game they play for free will tend to make them comfortable opening their pocket books for the game. The more free players you keep, ultimately you get more that end up becoming paying players.

Won't raising CBill earnings prevent money players from buying mechs with MC?
Yes, and without CBill mech purchase data, I can't say if that's a big income stream with PGI outside of the pre-sale packages they've been working on (which clearly are a big income stream, because they keep doing them). It may cut down on MC mech sales for standard mechs (which most players feel are too expensive anyway), but it could easily make up for it with mechbays and camo costs, or in premium time/hero mech sales.

Remember, we're also growing the player base by making the game more accessable, so there could be high volume small item sales increases to make up for lost MC Standard mech sales. They could also find other ways to let players spend money (can be discussed elsewhere).

But I own everything I want. I don't need CBills anymore.

Modules were aimed at this crowd, but that's a possible end game in every game anyway. Folks with all the CBills that are still playing will continue to play anyway, and aren't really effected by a potential CBill boost.

That's a lot of text, can you sum it all up (TL;DR)?

The grind in MWO is currently pretty bad. It can take days of real game time to earn the in game currency to afford all the things that make the game fun, let alone the top tier gear that competitive players need (Modules). Reducing this grind will ultimately help increase the number of players who come and stay, increase paying players, give folks better reasons to buy the small items, and provide for a better game experience for new and current players alike. I think PGI needs to consider raising CBill earnings to help the new player as well as the long time current player experience, particularly as they have worked on adding things for players to spend their CBills on that are extremely expensive (more so than many mechs). I think they have a lot to gain, and very little to lose by making such a change.

Its a good post Bront, but this isn't Pokemon, I HAD to have more than 2 Mechs, I could have a great time playing in just my D-DC or Hellslinger. There is no NEED to make more money that we do unless you are a collector, but this isn't a collector game like Pokemon. We don't have to have them all. That isn't the objective of the game.

[Karl Marlow]

Karl Streiger, on 15 October 2014 - 11:27 PM, said:

To die is cheap and 170 games are months for me - even with premium time it would need months

Yeah when it starts becoming a chore to grind It's time to rethink things a little bit. If you are having fun the money just starts to accumulate over time.

On the other hand if you are feeling forced to play 170 games at let's say 10 minutes average a match when you include searching and whatnot. You are spending 17 hours to get one mech.

EDIT actually my math is wrong. IT isnt 17 hours it is 28 hours.

Meanwhile you could just go down to McD's or some other fast food restaurant of your choice and flip handburgers for a weekend and buy the Dire Wolf Package outright. 16 hours of work that way and you get not just 1 Dire Wolf you will have to find a Mechbay for but 3 Dire Wolves and 9 Other clan mechs all with their own bays and other package rewards. All for 12 hour less work. It's not like you have to stay at McD's after you reached your goal.

Sometimes I think you guys make it hard on yourselves. IF It isn't fun to grind then you can pay real money. that is why the option is there.

EDIT: Hell if you just work that 28 hours at McD's you would be damn close to just buying a Makasari package

Edited by ThomasMarik, 16 October 2014 - 05:48 AM.

[Bront]

MoonUnitBeta, on 15 October 2014 - 07:40 PM, said:

Do you see that "If you had premium time you could have earned 40-60k more c-bills" in the center of the end of round screen? If you want to talk numbers OP, then you should count how many times you see that message in your screen and mark down the amount you see that you could have earned. Then, in a month, tally it up. I want to see you come in here and complain about c-bills after that. You could be earning a heck of a lot more if you had premium time. And it's not unreasonably priced either.

Full disclosure. I have Premium Time currently running, and I own 2 Hero mechs and the Overlord (P) mechs, so my earnings higher than in the OP, but I was detailing an average player, Even then, the earnings seem depressingly small, particularly when I drop 80,000 on consumables that match (which I don't do every match fortunately).

[UnsafePilot]

Skipping modules and consumables when you're grinding saves huge amounts of cbills but only causes a little bit lower match performance in my experience.

I think it's time to back off on min/maxing when it starts making a game feel like work.

[Joseph Mallan]

Bront, on 16 October 2014 - 05:51 AM, said:

Full disclosure. I have Premium Time currently running, and I own 2 Hero mechs and the Overlord (P) mechs, so my earnings higher than in the OP, but I was detailing an average player, Even then, the earnings seem depressingly small, particularly when I drop 80,000 on consumables that match (which I don't do every match fortunately).

I don't drop that kind of money on any drop. Ever!

[Angel of Annihilation]

I want to add something to the no time or money debate.

The reality is the economy sucks right now. I used to be an Executive Level Banking Branch Manager making $70k per year BEFORE bonuses, now I am barely breaking $36k a year which is about what I made 15+ years ago and I still work on average 45+ hours a week with a 22 mile one way commute. The point is, it isn't only the younger players that don't have alot of free time or money.

That being said, I do absolutely think PGI would find themselves in a better place if they catered to our current economic situation and reduced the grindiness of the game.

For myself, for example, I usually get fairly bored with a Chassis about the time I get it fully mastered so my enjoyment of the game comes directly from being able to move on to a new set of mechs one right after another. However, I rarely have the C-bills to be able to do this so each time I hit that grind point, especially if an extended period is required to get the next new mech I want, there is a risk I will get bored and move on to another game, at least for a while. It has happened several time in the past so far and when it does, it is usually 2-3 months that I am not in the game. That is 2-3 months of lost premium time for PGI.

Additionally being able to acquire mechs faster, encourages the purchase of bays to accommodate them. Sure I am going to sell some of the variant I acquire but most of the time the reason I sell a variant is because I want to shortcut my C-bill requirements to the next mech rather than any actual real desire to sell off the variant. This being the case, PGI has lost probably a dozen or more mech bay purchases from me due to the C-bill grind because every variant I sell is one less bay I need to buy.

Now I have to admit, alot of my Pre-purchase package buying decisions are at least somewhat influenced by the fact that I am saving myself weeks or sometimes months of time grinding out C-bills so there definitely needs to be at least some grind to help drive these sales but if I am honest with myself, the biggest selling point on the pre-purchase is the early access you receive.

Point is, I think the game would actually be alot more enjoyable, draw alot more new players and generate alot more profits if we saw around a 50% increase in rewards across the board. I also think module costs need to be reduced massively. I mean people should be focused on the next new mech they are going to buy, not making a decision on if they should invest in modules at the expense of postponing getting that shinny new much by as much 2-4 weeks.

[Bront]

Spheroid, on 15 October 2014 - 09:12 PM, said:

PGI gave 10 million away in cash away, multiple days of premium, etc., etc.

The large CBill giveaways are a very new things. I think the first 50 win challenge was the first time a bunch of CBills was an option for something to win (and folks complained about it, strangely enough, though it was the requirements not the reward).

Anyone looking at how fast they've made money the past month or two? Remember PGI handed out 23,000,000 for free for the first time ever.

Look, I'm not saying double CBills or cut the cost of everything in half, but a 20-30% CBill boost (IE, restore the economy to it's prior state) makes sense, particularly since you've now added the Module grind that was not in the game back then.

Does Premium Time help? Yes. Does it help enough? That's debatable, but when earnings go up, so does the value of PT (it's still makes your time 50% more efficient).

[Joseph Mallan]

The reality is there is no economy Drake!

[Karl Streiger]

ThomasMarik, on 16 October 2014 - 05:45 AM, said:

Sometimes I think you guys make it hard on yourselves. IF It isn't fun to grind then you can pay real money. that is why the option is there.

You can spend real money in the game? Didn't know that yet

Anyhow the problem is - if i play an evening full of fun - i get little bit depressed when the number at the lower left corner hasn't changed much.

And i don't think its a good F2P game - when currently only 7 Mechs in my garage were payed with C-Bills - and of them only 2 after the economy nerf - heck afaik i did even earn more when RnR was in game.

That was a grind worth my time - i did run a Commando - good thing earned me 180k - after a destruction and a defeat. But while people can't play fair - we lost RnR and we lost the idea behind light and medium mechs.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 16 October 2014 - 06:08 AM.

[Ultimax]

Glythe, on 15 October 2014 - 09:32 PM, said:

Thinking about buying a set of 12 clan mechs is just ridiculous.

The problem is that you believe you need to buy 12 clan mechs all with cbills.

Do you really need 12 or do you want 12.


Sometimes we have to reign in our desires, and focus on what we really want or even better what we actually need.

[Xyroc]

Please give me an example of another F2Ps that makes it where you can buy new tanks, champs , etc. without spending more than just a few hours of game play. I dont know one .. I play a number of F2P titles. MWO is right on par with time devotion needed.

If you want an assault dont expect it to come easy. It shouldnt.

[Bront]

Joseph Mallan, on 16 October 2014 - 05:43 AM, said:

Its a good post Bront, but this isn't Pokemon, I HAD to have more than 2 Mechs, I could have a great time playing in just my D-DC or Hellslinger. There is no NEED to make more money that we do unless you are a collector, but this isn't a collector game like Pokemon. We don't have to have them all. That isn't the objective of the game.

Actually, with Community Warfare, you'll need 4 mechs, and unless you want to take 4 of the same mechs that are 60 tons or less, you'll need at least 2 different chassis types, which means at least 6 mechs to master the 4 you want.

And that's the thing, the Pokemon effect appeals to people and makes them want to spend money on the game. Feeding that just enough with in game rewards will keep people around and coming back.

Viktor Drake, on 16 October 2014 - 05:55 AM, said:

people should be focused on the next new mech they are going to buy, not making a decision on if they should invest in modules at the expense of postponing getting that shinny new much by as much 2-4 weeks.

This is a large part of my point. And is a problem.

[Joseph Mallan]

Bront, on 16 October 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

Actually, with Community Warfare, you'll need 4 mechs, and unless you want to take 4 of the same mechs that are 60 tons or less, you'll need at least 2 different chassis types, which means at least 6 mechs to master the 4 you want.

And that's the thing, the Pokemon effect appeals to people and makes them want to spend money on the game. Feeding that just enough with in game rewards will keep people around and coming back.


This is a large part of my point. And is a problem.

I have 6. Only cause I MUST have 4. Although I still have to decide which Heavy will be my final selection.

[Vandul]

Here OP, let me help you.

[Alistair Winter]

FupDup, on 15 October 2014 - 03:18 PM, said:

The Paulconomy™ knows no mercy, no respite.

After listening to the recent Town Hall meeting, it's clear that this is Russconomy. Can't blame Paul for everything, I'm afraid.

Troutmonkey, on 15 October 2014 - 03:27 PM, said:

Want more CBILLs? Hand over your Credit Card, because that's how F2P works.

Want more players? Hand over some rewards, because that's how gaming works.

The economy can survive on whales generating enough income, but you still need players online when the whales log in and want to have some fun. And most of those players keeping the whales entertained will be people who spent nothing or very little on the game. When those players get bored, the game dies.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 16 October 2014 - 06:29 AM.

[Revis Volek]

Jetfire, on 15 October 2014 - 03:28 PM, said:

I would just like to see an adjustment that rewards proportional to the value of the mechs you killed, killing a clan mech should yield proportionally more CBills on the core concept of salvage.

But you aren't not salvaging anything yet in the game so why? So then clammers will get more money for killing an Atlas then over a Raven? I;d love this as all you see is Heavies and Assaults anymore....my KitFox loves tha back fat!


Now OP, I have to agree your math is over exaggerated horribly. SHD's go for 4 mill like was previously stated, you can swap Modules, engines and weapons between mechs. So the only real NECESSARY cost is the Mech bay, Mech and Upgrades. Most mediums set you back 4-6 mill which according to your math will take less than an hour to acquire one...

i dont see the issue....other then this thread is full of those looking for INSTANT GRATIFICATION. Sometimes you have to work to get what you want the most or pay money for it.

Edited by DarthRevis, 16 October 2014 - 06:36 AM.

[Bront]

Joseph Mallan, on 16 October 2014 - 06:21 AM, said:

I have 6. Only cause I MUST have 4. Although I still have to decide which Heavy will be my final selection.

FYI, they're going tonnage, not 1/1/1/1. Likely 240 tons.

[Reno Blade]

There are a lot of replies which I didn't check, but I look at it like this:

To get a basic light/medium to start doing some stuff, you need some 5-6 million.
With the 28million of the cadett bonus, you can get 1-2 good mechs or even 4 medium mechs with some upgrades.
The fact you can't put everything maxed with best setup all upgrades and top modules from the start makes it a grind for the typical f2p model.

If you are very focused, you can spend all the cadett bonus Cbills for one mech, upgraded and equipped + a module (which you won't have GXP for at the beginning,...).
The fact you need 3 mechs to master something does only partly connect to the income.

If we need to change something, it is the effect of Double-Basic skills for a mech with 4/4 elite unlocked.
The bonus is so huge, that you NEED to have the 3 mechs to level one up to 4/4 elite (or 0/1 master) to be on equal ground with others.

But, if you don't play the game, why whould yo need an super equipped, mastered mech + modules ?
If you are just playing casually, you can skipp the elite+module grind and spend 3/4 of the money for more mechs (if skipping 2 of 3 variants + 1 or 2 modules).

[Joseph Mallan]

Bront, on 16 October 2014 - 06:34 AM, said:

FYI, they're going tonnage, not 1/1/1/1. Likely 240 tons.

I know. My Sara was a Charitable donation. I must keep it. My (F)Atlas... I have to have. After that... I (almost) have the mix I need. So I will have 6 Mechs once Dropships are here with 2 being dust collectors.