27 replies to this topic

[Zoid]

I'm curious about this from a business standpoint. It seems to me that having a challenge that just requires an immense amount of playtime is counter-productive to the game making money.

-Players get a lot of C-bills, reducing the number who decide to buy stuff with real money.

-Players get a lot of XP and GXP, reducing the number who convert XP to GXP (by using real money).

-Servers take a lot more strain.

-Players get burned out and don't come back for a while, perhaps even uninstalling.



Free to play games usually operate under the premise of requiring a lot of real time or a little money, where by "real time" I mean weeks/months of play. These grind-like-crazy-in-three-days challenges seem to run counter to that because they allow people to collect a load of in-game currency quickly along with a new 'mech.

I know the playerbase would probably prefer a drastically less grindy challenge, such as one that bases your challenge score on the square of your game score (so a 50 point game would be worth 1/4 of what a 100 point game toward the challenge). It seems to me that it would make better business sense to, so why do they do it?

[AntiCitizenJuan]

They have a good reward for players who can only play casually this weekend and a reward for players who play all weekend.

Seems pretty fair to me

[Brody319]

its a challenge? key word here being challenge. something that is difficult to do.

[Wolfwood592]

Free mech for regular play that many players would reach over a weekend?

Seems like a great deal to me and very fair considering the mech/mech bay you get.

[Fate 6]

I agree with you in terms of the grinding. After the Victor challenge I had earned something like 6mil Cbills so I was pretty set to get a clan mech without needing money.

I should add that I like the challenge aspect and really thought the last challenge was great because it pushed players to the limit and people played in a much more focused way.

[Zoid]

I'm going to assume the first two replies are due to my lack of clarity and not your reading comprehension.

I'm not saying it's not fair, they're giving stuff away for free for what we do normally; there's nothing unfair about that no matter what the rules.

It's also not really difficult. Getting one kill and one assist are pretty easy to do in most games. ELO is intended to set you at a place where you win 50% of your games, so you're talking 60 games minimum. A "hard" challenge would be one where you had to get 20 kills in 5 games or less, this just requires a ton of playtime.

My question is more of why they design the challenge to require EVERYONE to grind like crazy, thus obtaining a ton of C-bills, rather than one that is actually difficult. It seems to not make much sense.

Wolfwood592, on 16 January 2015 - 09:49 AM, said:

Free mech for regular play that many players would reach over a weekend?

Seems like a great deal to me and very fair considering the mech/mech bay you get.

Again, not the point, but it's still a crazy amount of grinding. You should need to play 60 games in order to get your 30 wins. Even if you get the challenge done in each of those games and they take 10 minutes each, that's still 10 hours of play out of a 72 hour challenge. It's probably going to be closer to 12-14 hours for most people. That's about half the time that a normal person would spend sleeping this weekend.




My point is simply that a lot of play (and thus a lot of in-game currency) over a very short period of time is usually not good for a F2P game, since it discourages people from spending real money. This is why the format of the challenges confuses me.

Edited by Zoid, 16 January 2015 - 09:57 AM.

[AntiCitizenJuan]

Zoid, on 16 January 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

I'm going to assume the first two replies are due to my lack of clarity and not your reading comprehension.

I'm not saying it's not fair, they're giving stuff away for free for what we do normally; there's nothing unfair about that no matter what the rules.

It's also not really difficult. Getting one kill and one assist are pretty easy to do in most games. ELO is intended to set you at a place where you win 50% of your games, so you're talking 60 games minimum. A "hard" challenge would be one where you had to get 20 kills in 5 games or less, this just requires a ton of playtime.

My question is more of why they design the challenge to require EVERYONE to grind like crazy, thus obtaining a ton of C-bills, rather than one that is actually difficult. It seems to not make much sense.

Because getting 30 Wins with 30+ kills and 30+ assists is actually a challenge

[Burktross]

Population.

[Starbound]

This one actually seems pretty easy to me. I mean, its the goal of pretty much every game to kill the other team so its not like we even have to do anything special. Granted, you have to win, kill and assist each match so it'll be quite a few games but even so, I don't even have to change my play-style for this.

[Zoid]

AntiCitizenJuan, on 16 January 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

Because getting 30 Wins with 30+ kills and 30+ assists is actually a challenge

Again, no, no it is not. A challenge would be to get 12 kills in a single match. This is a grind.

And holy shitballs, NOT THE POINT. I'm asking why they keep doing this since it seems counterproductive for a F2P game. Are you all really this bad at reading comprehension?

[Roadkill]

I like these, even though they take a lot of games to complete.

Challenge? Not really. To get 30 points in this format (and with the current 666 matchmaker) will take me probably 65-70 games. I usually get a kill and an assist in a win, so it's just a matter of finding the time to play 70 games this weekend.

And for that I get a free CTF-3D(c). Kewl!

[AntiCitizenJuan]

Zoid, on 16 January 2015 - 10:02 AM, said:

Again, no, no it is not. A challenge would be to get 12 kills in a single match. This is a grind.

And holy shitballs, NOT THE POINT. I'm asking why they keep doing this since it seems counterproductive for a F2P game. Are you all really this bad at reading comprehension?

No youre just asking a really ******* dumb question. So get off your high horse.
They want people to be playing their game all weekend and making CBills so they buy mechbays.

You get a free CTF with a mechbay and say you dont have any more free mechbays, so you buy 2 more and then buy 2 more CTFs with cBills to master CTFs. Then you find out you like CTFs and want to get a custom paintjob. More money.

This isnt about us its about PGI making money, and most people should understand that and not have a problem with that.

Edited by AntiCitizenJuan, 16 January 2015 - 10:37 AM.

[El Bandito]

AntiCitizenJuan, on 16 January 2015 - 09:39 AM, said:

They have a good reward for players who can only play casually this weekend and a reward for players who play all weekend.

Seems pretty fair to me

3 day premium time is not a good reward for casual weekend players, as there is no way they can save the Premium time for later once it is activated. Which in turn forces them to play more or lose the bulk of it. I suppose it is still better than a single mechbay.

Edited by El Bandito, 16 January 2015 - 10:40 AM.

[blood4blood]

AntiCitizenJuan, on 16 January 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

You get a free CTF with a mechbay and say you dont have any more free mechbays, so you buy 2 more and then buy 2 more CTFs with cBills to master CTFs. Then you find out you like CTFs and want to get a custom paintjob. More money.

This isnt about us its about PGI making money, and most people should understand that and not have a problem with that.

^QFT. Oh, and if you want even more c-bills, I'm sure PGI will be happy to sell you an Ilya for MC.

Personally I'm happy about this one because I already have an Ilya, but no other CTF's. So most likely I'll grind for the free Champion variant, then buy MC to get a mechbay, then spend c-bills on a third CTF (that Davion sale looks useful there, think PGI might have planned it that way?)

Overall the sale & the event make good business sense, while offering players a freebie and some (relative to normal prices) bargains.

[Zen Idiot]

..its a challenge not a gift?

[mogs01gt]

Roadkill, on 16 January 2015 - 10:10 AM, said:

I like these, even though they take a lot of games to complete.

Challenge? Not really. To get 30 points in this format (and with the current 666 matchmaker) will take me probably 65-70 games. I usually get a kill and an assist in a win, so it's just a matter of finding the time to play 70 games this weekend.

And for that I get a free CTF-3D(c). Kewl!

This! Last challenge I did it in like 40 games so I hope I can do the same here.

[MATRAKA14]

I remind with nostalgy the 5 wins for the centurion or a mechbay, 30 are too much.

Edited by MATRAKA14, 16 January 2015 - 12:31 PM.

[Huginmunin]

Zoid, on 16 January 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

My question is more of why they design the challenge to require EVERYONE to grind like crazy, thus obtaining a ton of C-bills, rather than one that is actually difficult. It seems to not make much sense.

The more difficult you make the challenges, the more you limit the number of people who actually complete the challenge. It's one thing to say

"Well, if you dedicate two or three good long playsessions to this you'll probably make it.",

it's quite another to say

"You better hope you drop with a really good team, or get very very lucky, and casuals shouldn't even bother."

If I log in and strive all weekend and don't succeed, that's going to alienate me from the game.

Besides, the more difficult the challenge, the more it'll distort gameplay, and almost certainly not for the better. Even something as seemingly simple as "you must survive the match to score a point" caused huge amounts of counter productive behavior.

Edited by Huginmunin, 16 January 2015 - 12:54 PM.

[Ang3lsDem0n]

Just will Copy what I said elsewhere about the challenge.

This honestly by far makes me question if PGI has their head on their shoulder. So we need A win, A kill, and A kill assist in a single game and not just a total. I've seen soo many issues because of this dumb challenge and just can tell it will just get worse as the weekend goes. Such issues as someone getting a kill and doing a little damage to others and the disconnecting, "Yoloing" it and throwing away their mech to get a single kill, teammates running in front of you more often than normal to "steal" that kill from you. I honestly thought PGI would put more thought into their challenges before just throwing them out there. All this chllenge is doing is promoting bad gameplay.

[Cion]

Zoid, on 16 January 2015 - 09:52 AM, said:

I'm going to assume the first two replies are due to my lack of clarity and not your reading comprehension.

I'm not saying it's not fair, they're giving stuff away for free for what we do normally; there's nothing unfair about that no matter what the rules.

It's also not really difficult. Getting one kill and one assist are pretty easy to do in most games. ELO is intended to set you at a place where you win 50% of your games, so you're talking 60 games minimum. A "hard" challenge would be one where you had to get 20 kills in 5 games or less, this just requires a ton of playtime.

My question is more of why they design the challenge to require EVERYONE to grind like crazy, thus obtaining a ton of C-bills, rather than one that is actually difficult. It seems to not make much sense.




Again, not the point, but it's still a crazy amount of grinding. You should need to play 60 games in order to get your 30 wins. Even if you get the challenge done in each of those games and they take 10 minutes each, that's still 10 hours of play out of a 72 hour challenge. It's probably going to be closer to 12-14 hours for most people. That's about half the time that a normal person would spend sleeping this weekend.




My point is simply that a lot of play (and thus a lot of in-game currency) over a very short period of time is usually not good for a F2P game, since it discourages people from spending real money. This is why the format of the challenges confuses me.

Ok OP, here is the business answer (since most others are giving other answers)

Everything has a value which can be translated to real world cash. Mechs have a value, mc has a value, and play time (aka population) has a value.

Yes, by playing you are providing value to the company. Free players (and paying players) provide value to PGI with their time, acting as opponents to other players.

So probably someone business minded figured out that the time it takes to play to get those 30 points (did someone say 14 hours?) is equivalent to the cost of the cataphract + mech Bay.

Now why 30? That's a LOT of matches. A mech + mech Bay is expensive.

Here's another business trick. There are many who will try to get the 30 points, but will either quit along the way, have real life happen, or simply almost make it before the time runs out. That means they played more than normal and got no additional reward, so that free extra value to PGI.

the business reasons goes on. There is marginal value to customers that already bought the mech. Therefore this challenge is more attractive to non paying customers. The challenge passively selects it's target audience.

Etc etc.