191 replies to this topic

[Kristov Kerensky]

Funkmaster Rick, on 14 March 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

Having played a great many F2P games in my time (and certainly spent money on some of them), I feel confident saying that MW:O has the worst grind of any of them. I average about 100k income per game. What with disconnects and people hiding just to be contrary, I'd say I can expect a gametime of at least 8 minutes on average. Consider this when based against the cost of buying a Dire Wolf. Oh, but you have to buy three copies of the Dire Wolf. Sure, the additional 10% speed boost isn't absolutely necessary, and you don't really need to double that 7.5% heat dissipation, but your very mastery of the 'mech is questioned by the language of the UI, by how the game tells you you're running a basic 'mech, not an elite 'mech. It questions your very piloting skills for not having bought the same 'mech three times and tripled the grind. So let's look at what it actually costs to buy a Dire Wolf. 3x chassis= ~52 million C-bills 1x ea. Radar Deprivation, Advanced Seismic, and a weapon mod of whatever makes the most sense= 15 million C-bills We're not even counting whatever cash you spend on testing various builds out on it, and we're at ~67 million. Divided by 100 000 gives us the number of matches required to earn that amount of money on average: 670 Multiplied by 8 (average match time, a rough estimate), we get the minutes of play-time required: 5360 Divide by 60 for the number of hours: ~90 So about ninety hours of playtime to go from nothing to one complete Dire Wolf with all the efficiences and most of the modules filled. After ninety hours of grind, you now have an effective 'mech. So, only three more 'mechs till you have a reasonably competitive CW dropdeck, though luckily they won't be as expensive as the Dire Wolf. And I'm a reasonably good player, so for a lot of the population that number's going to be even longer. So let's assume (very generously) that an average player can afford to spend ten hours a week gaming just on this game alone. Anybody with one or more children, a full-time job (that doesn't involve gaming), any kind of family that relies on you, or any of the myriad things that make up daily life from week to week will recognize that number as unrealistically high, but we're being generous in our assumption. Nine weeks for a Dire Wolf. Assuming nothing gets in the way, that's more than two months for one 'mech. Probably the most expensive 'mech in the game, but I'd like to think that with the number of 'mechs and variants out there now, a month would still be considered slow for an F2P grind. Yeah, they could double the average income and things would still be rather ridiculous. ADDENDUM: It's worth noting that (as far as I am aware) the publisher usually has more control over the pricing model in this sort of a game than the developer. However, I may be wrong.

Hang on, you just did the math for 3 Dire's fully kitted out and then make it out that that would give you 1 Dire, what?

[Funkmaster Rick]

Kristov Kerensky, on 14 March 2015 - 12:07 PM, said:

Hang on, you just did the math for 3 Dire's fully kitted out and then make it out that that would give you 1 Dire, what?

Good question.

If I was doing the math for 3 Dire Wolves, I'd have to add another 30 million into the mix - two more seismic and radar dep modules, plus two additional weapon modules at 3m each. So, another 300 games, and that gets you three Dire Wolves, I guess.

I admit, I presented it specifically around the idea of going from nothing to one fully-kitted 'mech. That's the bias in my data.

I play CW from time to time, so I'd imagine that's where that particular bias comes from - the need two kit out four different 'mechs (with some exceptions if you choose to fit two of the same chassis into your deck) from scratch. At that point, you're forced to buy each chassis three times even if it's only to get the efficiencies fully locked for a single one. You're right, the additional investment to turn that number from one to three is significantly smaller for the same reward.

But the basic point was to illustrate how long it takes to go from nothing to one fully-kitted Dire Wolf. And along that path, it has to be acknowledged that the game was designed to make you walk the same path three times as a form of artificial delay.

[Vassago Rain]

Funkmaster Rick, on 14 March 2015 - 09:59 AM, said:

Having played a great many F2P games in my time (and certainly spent money on some of them), I feel confident saying that MW:O has the worst grind of any of them.

I average about 100k income per game. What with disconnects and people hiding just to be contrary, I'd say I can expect a gametime of at least 8 minutes on average. Consider this when based against the cost of buying a Dire Wolf. Oh, but you have to buy three copies of the Dire Wolf. Sure, the additional 10% speed boost isn't absolutely necessary, and you don't really need to double that 7.5% heat dissipation, but your very mastery of the 'mech is questioned by the language of the UI, by how the game tells you you're running a basic 'mech, not an elite 'mech. It questions your very piloting skills for not having bought the same 'mech three times and tripled the grind.

So let's look at what it actually costs to buy a Dire Wolf.

3x chassis= ~52 million C-bills
1x ea. Radar Deprivation, Advanced Seismic, and a weapon mod of whatever makes the most sense= 15 million C-bills

We're not even counting whatever cash you spend on testing various builds out on it, and we're at ~67 million.

Divided by 100 000 gives us the number of matches required to earn that amount of money on average: 670

Multiplied by 8 (average match time, a rough estimate), we get the minutes of play-time required: 5360
Divide by 60 for the number of hours: ~90

So about ninety hours of playtime to go from nothing to one complete Dire Wolf with all the efficiences and most of the modules filled. After ninety hours of grind, you now have an effective 'mech. So, only three more 'mechs till you have a reasonably competitive CW dropdeck, though luckily they won't be as expensive as the Dire Wolf.

And I'm a reasonably good player, so for a lot of the population that number's going to be even longer.

So let's assume (very generously) that an average player can afford to spend ten hours a week gaming just on this game alone. Anybody with one or more children, a full-time job (that doesn't involve gaming), any kind of family that relies on you, or any of the myriad things that make up daily life from week to week will recognize that number as unrealistically high, but we're being generous in our assumption.

Nine weeks for a Dire Wolf. Assuming nothing gets in the way, that's more than two months for one 'mech. Probably the most expensive 'mech in the game, but I'd like to think that with the number of 'mechs and variants out there now, a month would still be considered slow for an F2P grind.

Yeah, they could double the average income and things would still be rather ridiculous.

ADDENDUM: It's worth noting that (as far as I am aware) the publisher usually has more control over the pricing model in this sort of a game than the developer. However, I may be wrong.

We used to make like 4x the current income. That was without cashmechs, premtime, and silly events to boost player numbers during weekends.

I don't recall december and november looking so transparently desperate.

Here's my gigantic thread from october last year.

http://mwomercs.com/...it-affords-you/

It was put in k-town because god forbid someone does math to cover how awful the grind is.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 14 March 2015 - 12:24 PM.

[Funkmaster Rick]

Vassago Rain, on 14 March 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

It was put in k-town because god forbid someone does math to cover how awful the grind is.

To be fair, it looks like that particular thread was booted to K-town because it had become too big a pile of trollbait. At the end, it was just petty arguments between trolls.

Probably one of the better reasons to delete a forum post. I've seen worse here, and feel confident saying it wasn't moved because of truthbombs.

Edited by Funkmaster Rick, 14 March 2015 - 01:24 PM.

[Satan n stuff]

Joseph Mallan, on 10 March 2015 - 02:24 AM, said:

The Great Mech Depression ended in Closed Beta.

I'm guessing a lot of the players complaining about rewards now have never had to pay 6 million cbills to repair their mechs.

[CantHandletheTruth]

Satan n stuff, on 14 March 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

I'm guessing a lot of the players complaining about rewards now have never had to pay 6 million cbills to repair their mechs.

Yeah, they weren't making 3.2 mil on a good win either. People that knew what they were doing were sitting on hundreds of millions during that phase of CB.

I had every chassis in the game and 70mil sitting there as screw off money.

Edited by CantHandletheTruth, 14 March 2015 - 02:19 PM.

[Satan n stuff]

CantHandletheTruth, on 14 March 2015 - 02:19 PM, said:

Yeah, they weren't making 3.2 mil on a good win either. People that knew what they were doing were sitting on hundreds of millions during that phase of CB.

I had every chassis in the game and 70mil sitting there as screw off money.

You didn't get 3.2 million, you got 1 million just for showing up and about 1 million for winning, that was it. If you were running an XL engine, one backshot could eat up all your profits. Losing such a mech meant that you were deep in the red every single time, regardless of whether or not you won.

[Vassago Rain]

Satan n stuff, on 14 March 2015 - 02:31 PM, said:

You didn't get 3.2 million, you got 1 million just for showing up and about 1 million for winning, that was it. If you were running an XL engine, one backshot could eat up all your profits. Losing such a mech meant that you were deep in the red every single time, regardless of whether or not you won.

No one actually paid for RnR. The system didn't work at all, and only punished people who didn't know better.

[Satan n stuff]

Vassago Rain, on 14 March 2015 - 02:59 PM, said:

No one actually paid for RnR. The system didn't work at all, and only punished people who didn't know better.

So all the mechs with badly damaged armor and internals befure they'd even been hit were just my imagination then?

[Burktross]

LordKnightFandragon, on 13 March 2015 - 04:20 AM, said:

CW is more about duking it out with the enemy then it is playing the objective, its basically just a skirmish with respawns. Idk why the objectives are even there.

You're funny.
I wish CW involved fighting. All that happens is one shot kills, camping, and the occasional light/stormcrow rush

[Rossario x Vampire]

Satan n stuff, on 14 March 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

I'm guessing a lot of the players complaining about rewards now have never had to pay 6 million cbills to repair their mechs.

I'm guessing a lot of new players just reached Cadet Bonus 5 and went back into World of Tanks

You can still lick your beloved Paul.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Burktross, on 14 March 2015 - 03:06 PM, said:

You're funny.
I wish CW involved fighting. All that happens is one shot kills, camping, and the occasional light/stormcrow rush

I do to, I wish this whole game had more depth and point to it.

I was in the most fun loss ive had in a long time in a game though. We ended 36-36, 2 minutes left in the CW game before we finally lost. Went alot better then I had initially said, saying this will be over fast, and after watching the opening moments of us going 1-11....it went surprisingly well.

CW is a fair bit of fun when its not just meta mechs and cheese tactics ending the game in 45 seconds. If I had a better PC to run this game....ugh. Prolly be alot more fun even yet. Still, ended with a 167 match score, 900 some damage, a few kills. Good enough match for me.