52 replies to this topic

[Grax]

So Bryan Ekman tried to "spin" the term "PayToWin" into something that doesn't even come into consideration for MWO. However, his own wording gives it away that the game itself WILL be "PayToWin", and that you WILL be able to buy mechs of different sizes with RL currency.

Quote:

Quote

Bryan Ekman said:

There are those who will rumble about Pay-2-Win, which equates to the person with the biggest wallet winning. I’m not going to lie, some things can and will allow you to acquire items faster, or even instantly with real cash.
Foul! Foul! You said you can’t buy a tactical advantage! That’s a stick! That guy with the wallet is going to be able to buy the biggest, bad assed items in the game! He’s going to kick my **** with his wallet.

Well here’s some food for thought, maybe the biggest isn’t always the best! To take a quote from an early MechWarrior® presentation – This is not your father’s MechWarrior®! One of our core pillars is Role Warfare and is designed to, well – level the playing field – another concept from our original design. We're doing away with the arms race and making BattleMechs of all shapes and sizes have a purpose and role on the battlefield.

Bolded & Underlined the part that caught my clan's attention, and therefore mine.

Thoughts ?

[Hunter McGee]

Being a business owner myself, I cannot fault them for making a buck (Whatever the Buck will be worth in 6 months!) And everyone has to understand that there needs to be some form of financial compensation or they will go belly up real quick. I, as well as everyone else here, do not want to see that happen. And I will do whatever I have to do to keep this going! If that means buy equipment, then I will do it. I also think that a lot of other people will do the same.

On the other hand, it would pain me deeply to see the wallet win over the Wolverine. Sure, sell things, WE WILL BUY THEM! But I still do not believe that this endeavor will fall to the dollar. Try not to read between the lines too much.

Man fails more often than not by trying to cross the bridge he has yet to arrive at.

[Frantic Pryde]

He also clarified somewhere in that thread that you will not be able to buy anything with real cash that you can't get by simply playing.

Also, as to the underlined phrase, there has already been a lot of talk about mechs having roles. He's trying to say having a 400ton lance using going tom win you games and since he know a lot more than we do about how this game will play I feel pretty confident about this not being pay to win.

[Sixpack]

Fearmongering and overinterpretation.

Sit back, drink a beer and wait for more information or the beta.

[Hayden]

Sixpack, on 07 November 2011 - 12:36 PM, said:

Fearmongering and overinterpretation. (emphasis added)

Sit back, drink a beer and wait for more information or the beta.

Agreed. Toss back a few martinis and be patient.

Edited by hayden, 07 November 2011 - 12:38 PM.

[Silent]

The sky is falling!

[John Clavell]

I think what is being implied here is that unlike in many of the older MechWarrior games where you would just want to get into an Assault as it was in many cases conceived to be the bee-all and end-all (thought, that is a perspective view per individual IMHO). It was noted that the balance of the game would shift to giving classes, like the light mechs rolls so each class can excel in their own right. And to take a lance of assaults vs a more rounded lance might well be a disadvantage to the assaults heavy lance. Now all of this will depends on the game design right, which we don't know much about when it comes to nitty-gritty.

Anyway. I think he's statement, which you have highlighted is counter productive in a pay to win perspective. The rest of the sentence clearly defines his meaning, you've just decide to focus on one part of that. Having mechs in different rolls, or even owning all the mechs in the game through real life cash purchase dose in no way constitute pay to win if everyone else has access to these mechs through game time only. A pilot with every mech in the game does not make him better at playing or more skilled than a pilot with only 10 mechs.

Where Pay 2 Win comes in if there are weapons, mechs, or ammo, or other enhancements which give you an actual advantage over pure skill. Let's say you can buy a ER Large uber laser that does the same damage as an AC20, at the same range as a PPC with hardly any heat, but it costs $400. Will someone buy it? Yes, it would give them a massive advantage over people not willing to pay for that advantage. This sir, is PAY 2 WIN. What you have described is not pay to win. It's like Team Fortress 2 and hats, everyone wants all the hats. Some invest time to get them. Others cant be arsed and pay almost $20 to get the latest create of goodies. But they don't have an in game advantage over other players.

Edited by John Clavell, 07 November 2011 - 12:45 PM.

[Redraider]

You must be part of the crowd that believes the premium tanks in WoT are vastly superior to their counterparts.

[pizza koopa]

My assumption on what he means is that mechs will indeed be purchasable, but he tries to say that having the Atlas is not an auto-win because they are making all the classes useful for different roles. I still would like to see the final details on what exactly is going to be purchasable but for now I honestly just trust that they will make it something we can agree to.

But he also says that things will be acquirable through a variety different means, so just because a mech can be outright bought with real money does not mean that its the only way to get it. If you play the game a lot and amass enough in-game money, you can probably get everything you would want for free. That is just my assumption, but remember they said the things you can buy will not net you a tactical advantage.

They have tried to say repeatedly that this game will NOT be Pay 2 Win. They knew that it would be one of the primary concerns of the community from the get go. For now I actually like the idea of free-to-play. I think its an interesting business model because it means you can pay as you go rather than try to invest all your money up front only to be disappointed. It also means that they are going to be pressured that the game is actually GOOD and something you are willing to spend money on for a longer period of time. Not some cash in on the MW name that ends up being disappointing. If people do not like the game and do not think its fun or true to Mech Warrior or Battletech, they will not spend another dime and the revenue stream will run out. They WILL be compelled to make this interesting and keep you playing.

Besides, think of how many friends you can easily convince to try Mech Warrior because its free. This could honestly make the series explode.

[SJ SCP Wolf]

Why does it automatically mean you are going to be better? The boded part matters most imo.

ex. "Special offter this weekend buy an Atlas Prime for 5 dollars!" Yay grats

Happy player logs in joins the fight and gets creamed by 2 guys in lights.

[Kaemon]

If panic was a race, you would be the guy that tries to out sprint everyone in the first 100 yards just to make it on TV.

Way too early.

[Cake Bandit]

Kaemon, on 07 November 2011 - 12:48 PM, said:

If panic was a race, you would be the guy that tries to out sprint everyone in the first 100 yards just to make it on TV.

Way too early.

Exactly this, sit back, relax, and watch the video in my signature.

[Lori Black Widow Carlyle]

Don't let yourselves be fooled!

Bryan Ekman @ PCGAMER said:

So you talk about upgrading skills, a leveling system, upgrading your Mech, and this is such a tricky area for F2P games. There are all these fears about pay-to-win games, and Mech aficianados, they know the specs on a Mech. They know what the Mech is capable of. How is progression going to work? It’s F2P, but obviously money comes into it somewhere. What does your money buy you?

BE: One of the most important things in any F2P games, in my opinion, is not allowing players to buy skill. The fastest way to destroy your game is to allow your players to buy something that gives them a tactical advantage over an enemy. So we’ve been very careful about what you can purchase and what you need to earn.

Can you get into items and upgrades yet?

BE: You’re going to to be able to purchase, using a variety of different methods, Mechs, Mech pieces, skills – but I’ll be careful with what i mean about skills.
When it comes to the pilot, you’ll be able to train your pilot to fit the role that you like. But you won’t be able to pay real cash for pilot training, for example. That would be through earned experience points or earned in-game cash. So you would actually have to play the game to upgrade your pilot. Anything that would affect or give your a tactical advantage, you can’t purchase with real cash. You have to earn that by playing the game.

So we have a pilot tree, a skill tree. As you level up you can unlock new features and new abilities. So if you want to be a scout, you would get skills related to information technology, or being able to move faster, hide, things like that. If you wanted to be more of an assault person, it would be more related to weapon control and such.

Full interview here.

[Grax]

Obviously I'm in the minority within the VOCAL majority that doesn't want to see kids trolling around the battlefield in HeavyMechs that they bought for $60 from the cash shop, and haven't even tried to earn it. Instead they use their parent's CC to get that "cool badass" mech to get right into the battlefield.


Might I point out that the World of Tanks developers had the EXACT SAME TONE towards PayToWin, but ended up going that route post-launch after they saw the money rolling in from the cash shop.

I suppose I'm the only true BattleTech fan here, how dissappointing . I'd easily pay $20/month for this game simply because paying a FLAT monthly fee evens the playing field. Rather than me only spending $10/month in the cash shop compared to kids spending $200/month to kill me with CurrencyAmmo.

[Odin]

Lori Carlyle got it right.





Quote BE:
"""Anything that would affect or give your a tactical advantage, you can’t purchase with real cash.

You have to earn that by playing the game""".

RPG stats = play to win

[Trixie]

Whenever I see threads like these I wonder if there is an intentional intent to mislead and upset people.
Sure seems like it.

[CobraFive]

P2W doesn't mean paying players are on a higher level then free ones. It must be so, otherwise there would be no reason to pay, and MWO must make money, plain and simple.

P2W means the MORE you pay, the MORE powerful you are. So as an example, say you could buy 'mechs, but not guns. You would buy the 'mech you want, and you'd be at the same level as anyone else who paid and bought the 'mech they want. A free player might not have the 'mech they want right away, although they could get it eventually.

But if for example you could buy 'mechs, and also buy say 'repair kits' or something silly that healed you mid-mission, that'd be pretty P2W: Whoever spent more on repair kits would win the fight. Or for another example, if objectively stronger 'mechs costed more money, that'd be pretty P2W as well, since the more you pay, the stronger you are.

Battlefield heroes had this for example, or APB: You could buy stronger guns with money, and they only last so long. So you must keep paying, and who pays more for guns, wins.

So being able to buy "Bigger" 'mechs which, as he says right there in his blurb, are not objectively stronger, I don't think this automatically makes it P2W by any means.

What does worry me is that he says that if you don't want to pay for big guns you can be a commander, or scout... which worries me, that if you want to be an assault/offensive player, you'll need to be buying guns.

[Samson]

I've said before that I am not against buying mechs. If I want a GHR-6K or some such thing but I don't have the c-bills to swing it but I really don't want to play to earn it I could drop $5 or whatever and buy it, I will. I am not against buying mechs with RL money, but for any equipment, so long as it's available to you with c-bills AND RL$ I don't have a problem

[Orzorn]

cobrafive, on 07 November 2011 - 02:23 PM, said:

What does worry me is that he says that if you don't want to pay for big guns you can be a commander, or scout... which worries me, that if you want to be an assault/offensive player, you'll need to be buying guns.

I doubt that's true, though. There are so many mechs in the Battletech universe that can brawl it out for extremely cheap C-Bill costs. Just look at the Urbanmech in your signature. That mech is the master of urban combat, and its only 1,471,925 C-Bills.

Remember, the main 4 roles are scout, command, support, attack, not light,medium, heavy, assault. You don't have to have an assault mech on an attack role, it could just as easily be a cheap Urbanmech R60L version that wipes the floor with most mechs in a single shot.

And I don't even mind little kids going out and buying the "BESTSTEST SUPAR COOL ASSAULT MECH!" with their mommy's credit card. Just more slag on the bottom of my mech's foot. A bigger mech isn't always better, and it can never make up for real skill.

I think you said it best, however when you said:

Quote

But if for example you could buy 'mechs, and also buy say 'repair kits' or something silly that healed you mid-mission, that'd be pretty P2W: Whoever spent more on repair kits would win the fight. Or for another example, if objectively stronger 'mechs costed more money, that'd be pretty P2W as well, since the more you pay, the stronger you are.

THAT is what Pay-to-Win actually is. Buying a mech won't make you win the game, just like buying heroes in League of Legends won't make you win. Even buying weapons won't make you win. No, you have to get something that abstractly affects the game, like some sort of damage booster, instant-heal, and stuff that doesn't fit into the actual canon of the world.

[Sesambrot]

I've almost gotten used to seeing threads like these around here, but they seem to become more and more stupid!
Right now we've reached a point where it's just plain ridiculous. There are actually some valid thoughts behind topics like these, but the way people are going about it lately only makes 'em look like morons!

Such topics have become hardly anything but hatespeeches in all bold!
Especially this one heavily reeks of troll!

You can actually be proud of yourself, now I'm so disgusted of myself for giving you attention that I have to take a shower.

- Sometimes I get the impression that certain people are being idiots on purpose... -