This was fine. It gave a noticeable rate of progression and allowed player to purchase mechs and equipment at a decent rate.
Then C-bill earnings were nerfed. Hard. You would generally see about 100,000 C-bills per win. Really really good matches with bonuses could break 200,000, but this was rare. Overall, the average reduction in C-bills earned per match was about 40%. We were promised that a variety of new bonuses and categories would be introduced to support role warfare, and that these would balance out the reduction with additional ways to earn C-bills each match. Other than TAG/NARC bonus, these categories didn't materialize. The ability of players to acquire new mechs or equipment or customize the ones they had was slowed down significantly. Not a big deal for people who'd already accumulated tens or hundreds of million of C-bills, but for those who hadn't, especially for brand new players, customizing mechs became a painfully slow process.
Well, they never gave a time limit on the promise of additional ways to earn C-bills, so technically it has now been fulfilled. Sort of. With Community Warfare on the horizon, we finally have more categories to earn C-bills with -- protecting friendlies, staying in formation, etc., etc.-- but unfortunately, rather than adding to the total amount of C-bills we can earn per match, the existing C-bill amount has just been split up among a bunch of new categories. The result? Average earnings per match have dropped. Again. Now a win will frequently net less than 100,000 C-bills. Really good games don't even get you to 200,000 most of the time. I'd estimate the average earnings have dropped about 20% from where they were before the new CW-based categories were patched in.
This is unacceptable. Post C-bill nerf, you could expect it to take you about 10 games, wins and losses, to earn 1 million C-bills. If you're shooting for an expensive chassis, let's say 8 million C-bills, that's 80 games to earn 1 mech. That doesn't even count customizing it, which increases the cost by 50 to 100% (Endo, Dual HS, possibly an XL engine upgrade, maxing armor, any additional ammo, etc), and keep in mind this customizing is required to make the chassis competetive. This makes it almost 160 games just to earn one expensive playable mech.
And now, with all the new ways to earn C-bills, ways that were supposed to make thing better, it's even worse. C-bill earnings should probably be doubled across the board. Earning C-bills is just painfully slow now, and will only serve as a turnoff to people new to the game.
Disclaimer: none of these numbers have been datamined, they're based on empirical first-hand observation and estimations.
Edited by Sable Phoenix, 25 October 2014 - 11:26 AM.