27 replies to this topic

[Alcom Isst]

Given:

• The average c-bills/hour gained by a premium player
  
• The rate at which PGI pumps out mechs
  
• The c-bill cost of the mechs that PGI pumps out
  
• The subjective cost to fully upgrade each mech to a point of viability

Question:

• For how many hours/day must a premium player play to keep up with PGI's mech output?
  
• (Same question) How often must a premium user play to buy each mech with c-bills, upgrade it, and not fall behind PGI's rate of mech production?

MechWarrior Online is a F2P game of the pay-to-reduce-grind variation. I'm trying to get various measurements related to this trait and the game's economy.

I'd solve this question myself, but I don't know when the mech release dates were/are, and I don't know what the average income of a premium player is. I would also like to know the same thing with regards to free players.

So, help please?

[Ultimax]

You don't have to buy every mech that comes out, and I don't think its expected that you will.

[Logan Hawke]

Ultimatum X, on 14 January 2015 - 06:40 AM, said:

You don't have to buy every mech that comes out, and I don't think its expected that you will.

Yes, I too hope to never use a good chunk of the content in this game. That is obviously how games are meant to be played!

[627]

You want a formula or something like that?

First, you can't buy all mechs PGI pumps out because hero versions are hard money only.

Before the phoenix and clan packs, there was one mech a month released for cbills, and for simplicity I'd say you need three variants from that mech to master them. (Some mechs like Hunchbacks have more than 3 variants).

So it's 3 Variants plus equipment. The average cost of a mech is roughly around 5 million across the board, now give it the upgrades of DHS (1.5mio) and Endo (depends, average 600.000 cbills) and for more out of the head math you buy one XL per chassis so you take 5mio extra. Add 2 mio for equipment and you have a price of 32,3 mio cbills for those three mechs plus one XL on average.

Now you make 100k-200k with premium per match. thats 161-323 matches you have to play.

take 10mins for every match and you know how long you need to grind.

Edited by 627, 14 January 2015 - 06:56 AM.

[Mercules]

Logan Hawke, on 14 January 2015 - 06:52 AM, said:

Yes, I too hope to never use a good chunk of the content in this game. That is obviously how games are meant to be played!

I'm sure if you ever played an MMO you hunted down and wore every piece of actual gear the game offered and all the cosmetic gear too, right? I mean who cares if your character was specced to use blunt weapons, you obviously went out and purchased all the bladed weapons as well.... or maybe not?

[Insects]

I imagine a lot of "premium players" just pay real $ to buy the packs rather than spend thousands of hours earning credits to buy all 24 clan mechs.
The real model of the game is to get people to say "I can grind for 20 hours to earn this, or I can value my time at above $1 an hour and just skip to the fun bit where I drive the mech without the grind".

[Logan Hawke]

Mercules, on 14 January 2015 - 06:59 AM, said:

I'm sure if you ever played an MMO you hunted down and wore every piece of actual gear the game offered and all the cosmetic gear too, right? I mean who cares if your character was specced to use blunt weapons, you obviously went out and purchased all the bladed weapons as well.... or maybe not?

Let's see... in an MMORPG the content is the story, end game PVP and PVE, dungeon crawls, epic lootz, and socialization.

In games like MWO, World of Tanks, and War Thunder the content is.... vehicles and endless deathmatches. Guess which one offers variety?

Edited by Logan Hawke, 14 January 2015 - 07:04 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Logan Hawke, on 14 January 2015 - 06:52 AM, said:

Yes, I too hope to never use a good chunk of the content in this game. That is obviously how games are meant to be played!

reverse question, do people in the MMO's do EVERY quest? of all factions? probably not. And they also do not gather every piece of equip. you get what you need and use. why owning every mech when thy just litter in the mechlab?

And a well done PvP game offers a lot more fun than an standard MMO where mostly the same happens. Especially in endless dungeon 0,1% loot runs its exactly the same everys time.

[Mercules]

Logan Hawke, on 14 January 2015 - 07:02 AM, said:

Let's see... in an MMORPG the content is the story, end game PVP and PVE, dungeon crawls, epic lootz, and socialization.

In games like MWO, World of Tanks, and War Thunder the content is.... vehicles and endless deathmatches. Guess which one offers variety?

1. Most people click right through the "story" in MMORPGs. "Yeah yeah... lost daughter... just tell me what I need to do to finish the quest."

2. You don't get to label PVP as content for one game and ignore it as content for the other game. So really that just gets tossed out.

3. I'm sure you have NEVER skipped quests that you weren't not interested in or that you had outleveled because you just made a statement about not using parts of the content in a game. So obviously you do every single quest for every faction with every possible build using every weapon and piece of armor in the game.

4. MWO is just as much about socialization... unless you only PuG and even then i've had entertaining conversations with PuGgers while in the solo que.


No one uses "ALL" the content in game. I can think of single player games where there are options and classes and missions/quests I just skipped even on the 3rd or 4th playthrough because they just didn't appeal to me. Mechs are the same way. Are you going to play a mech you end up hating just because it is content? No.

[Greenjulius]

Logan Hawke, on 14 January 2015 - 06:52 AM, said:

Yes, I too hope to never use a good chunk of the content in this game. That is obviously how games are meant to be played!

Understandable if you treat MWO as a game with a beginning and an end, but it's not. I'm a completionist when it comes to most single player RPGs, but MWO isn't the same thing.

It has a constant stream of new things coming into the game, and there's no reason anyone needs even half of it.

As the game currently stands, there are 210 mechs in this game, at least according to Smurfy. That's not even counting the special Founder, Invasion, Phoenix and personalized variants floating around. Who could possibly need that many? I feel like I've got to many, and I only have around 60.

Edited by Greenjulius, 14 January 2015 - 07:27 AM.

[Mechteric]

You don't need all of the mechs, many of the them are really terrible (in comparison to other more worthwhile mechs in the same area).

[Mercules]

joelmuzz, on 14 January 2015 - 07:01 AM, said:

I imagine a lot of "premium players" just pay real $ to buy the packs rather than spend thousands of hours earning credits to buy all 24 clan mechs.
The real model of the game is to get people to say "I can grind for 20 hours to earn this, or I can value my time at above $1 an hour and just skip to the fun bit where I drive the mech without the grind".

This.... Why would I bother spending time AND money when I could skip a couple drinks at the bar and buy a mech instead?

[Greenjulius]

CapperDeluxe, on 14 January 2015 - 07:25 AM, said:

You don't need all of the mechs, many of the them are really terrible (in comparison to other more worthwhile mechs in the same area).

I can attest to this... I knew locusts wouldn't be terribly useful, but I picked them up anyway because I felt like a challenge was needed. It delivered!

There will never be enough mechs to fill that hole in my soul that wants a Mechwarrior 5... But at least that "next mech" might be just what I've been wanting to try for a long time! I'm looking at you, Victors / King Crabs / Wolverines / Hunchbacks / Jagers / Dragons!

Mercules, on 14 January 2015 - 07:29 AM, said:

Why would I bother spending time AND money when I could skip a couple drinks at the bar and buy a mech instead?

That, and if we didn't have MWO, would we even have a current and active Battletech game?

Edited by Greenjulius, 14 January 2015 - 07:33 AM.

[Cion]

Alcom, I find very interesting what you are attempting to do.

You can get mech prices and lists in game or smurfy. In smurfy you can simulate the costs of making a mech usable (double heat sinks, etc).

Please know that the rate of new mech releases has greatly varied over the years. 2014 was new mech mania. I'm guessing this year we'll see a fraction of that quantity.

It's subjective the amount of cbills it takes to make a mech usable, since in IS you can swap engines so not every mech needs a new engine. You could just use a flat number, say 9 million c-bills.

Good luck and post your results!

[Ultimax]

Logan Hawke, on 14 January 2015 - 06:52 AM, said:

Yes, I too hope to never use a good chunk of the content in this game. That is obviously how games are meant to be played!

If you feel the need to own everything, all the time, the instant it is available - then it's on you to spend the required game time or money to do that.


It's not necessary to play the game, and for many players it's not even necessary to enjoy the game, to own every single mech and acquire every new mech as fast as PGI produces them.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 14 January 2015 - 07:50 AM.

[jaxjace]

Mercules, on 14 January 2015 - 07:23 AM, said:

No one uses "ALL" the content in game. I can think of single player games where there are options and classes and missions/quests I just skipped even on the 3rd or 4th playthrough because they just didn't appeal to me. Mechs are the same way. Are you going to play a mech you end up hating just because it is content? No.

Let me stop you right there, I have 100 mechs, they are all equipped with engines weapons and are fully loaded for CW matches. Eventually i plan to have every mech built up that way, then ill buy modules.

And yes, I play them ALL. not all as MUCH but i play them all.

Edited by jaxjace, 14 January 2015 - 10:28 PM.

[Mercules]

jaxjace, on 14 January 2015 - 10:27 PM, said:

Let me stop you right there, I have 100 mechs, they are all equipped with engines weapons and are fully loaded for CW matches. Eventually i plan to have every mech built up that way, then ill buy modules.

And yes, I play them ALL. not all as MUCH but i play them all.

Cool... you are about half way through on mechs and no way through on modules. When do you start picking up all the paint schemes and camos for all 190+ Mechs?

[Logan Hawke]

Mercules, on 14 January 2015 - 07:23 AM, said:

1. Most people click right through the "story" in MMORPGs. "Yeah yeah... lost daughter... just tell me what I need to do to finish the quest."

2. You don't get to label PVP as content for one game and ignore it as content for the other game. So really that just gets tossed out.

3. I'm sure you have NEVER skipped quests that you weren't not interested in or that you had outleveled because you just made a statement about not using parts of the content in a game. So obviously you do every single quest for every faction with every possible build using every weapon and piece of armor in the game.

4. MWO is just as much about socialization... unless you only PuG and even then i've had entertaining conversations with PuGgers while in the solo que.


No one uses "ALL" the content in game. I can think of single player games where there are options and classes and missions/quests I just skipped even on the 3rd or 4th playthrough because they just didn't appeal to me. Mechs are the same way. Are you going to play a mech you end up hating just because it is content? No.

1) A lot of people do depending on what game it is, some have better story than others. But the point is that it is additional content there for someone to enjoy.

2) I certainly do get to label it content for both, and I did. It's just it makes up the only gameplay content for one of the examples while it makes up one of the options for gameplay content for the other. So really your counterpoint just gets tossed out.

3) Correct, I play what I find fun... you see, my comment was in response to your claims that the 'equipment' in MMORPGs is the same thing as the mechs in this game, which frankly is a ludicrous assertion. If you really want to make the comparison, each mech is a tiny portion of the content of a character, class, and specced equipment all rolled into one small package. And even that comparison isn't very good.

4) MWO is about socialization too. Really. Is that right. So all those places in general chat people can talk and all those intense hours long PVE sessions with your clan/guild/group having a blast and all the areas people congregate and hang out and talk in game are very, very present in MWO right? Playing endless deathmatches with your gaming group while on their teamspeak isn't socialization in the same sense in the slightest. There's no in game tools for socialization. Even socializing with your group outside of matches is difficult to the point that I've yet to hear of anyone use it. It's so bad that the one person in my group that doesn't have a mic uses the teamspeak chat function rather than the in game one.

Your assertion that 'no one' uses all the content in a game is fairly correct, but is completely ignoring the point I was making. But it does seem as though you don't realize that mechs make up the entirety of content in this game outside of the deathmatches. No, people aren't going to get all the mechs. But pretending that everyone should just be happy and never get bored with just a handful of them is unbelievably short sighted.

Edited by Logan Hawke, 15 January 2015 - 07:14 AM.

[Asyres]

This is all hopelessly easy math, and all of the information required is available to anyone who makes even a cursory effort. If I were to do this (I won't, by the way), I would make a spreadsheet listing every mech variant with it's cost, along with check boxes for required upgrades (endo, DHS, sometimes Ferro for IS mechs, generally 1-2 omnipods for clan mechs). This would give me the total cost of buying and performing non-preferential upgrades on every mech. Then, I would divide that by the number of days since the start of open beta, giving me the average cbill cost per day.

[UnHolyLegion]

Greenjulius, on 14 January 2015 - 07:31 AM, said:

That, and if we didn't have MWO, would we even have a current and active Battletech game?

Just wish we had a better more fleshed out one