13 replies to this topic

[Marduk2]

I have gotten back into this game recently, and I'm debating whether I'll continue playing. I greatly enjoy the mechanics, but the business model is the sticking point. In terms of actually affording new mechs, thats not a problem, I have a job with sufficient disposable income to buy what video games I want, and I'm well aware that in F2P games I'll probably spend real money, often in large quantities, if I enjoy the game (I've spent upwards of $400 on Warframe, because I just love the game that much). However, for me to KEEP playing, I still need to unlock free content at a reasonable clip. So, what I want to know is, how far will my money and time go? How much money (in USD / CND) does it cost to purchase and optimize a good Mech, and how long do I have to play to unlock them with C-Bills? I would cite League of Legends and Warframe as games I play that have good business models, while Hearthstone and Planetside 2 are the upper limit of what I consider "reasonable".

[delushin]

Get a hero mech or something that has c-bill boost, buy some premium time and depending on how you do in a match you can be getting lights and mediums pretty quick. If you have really good matches you could see new mechs being bought with in a few days, then depending on the build you want a half day or so to have it complete. This of course is all subject to the actual time you can put in per day and the better you do in a match the more c-bills.

If you are wanting to increase your number of mechs then I would not recommend playing CW, especially if you are solo queuing. CW does have the option to be reward with mech bays which is good, but you can also just buy them with said disposable income.

You could also just buy some mastery packs and then use the hero mech in those packs to grind the c-bills to upgrade the bought mechs. This will come down to whether you want to play IS or Clans or both though, Clans can be bought still with the different Wave packs as well to really boost your mech numbers.

You also don't need to really spend anything however again the build up of mech will be dependent to how much time you can put in and how you do in a match. I actually dont really take much notice to the earnings at end of match but I am going to have a stab and say with a hero mech, premium time and doing ok in a match I think you can walk away with 200k c-bills. So with that and looking at a match taking fifteen minutes or so, you could a million per hour -again I am not in game and purely just throwing some figures around off my head.

The more expensive mechs are upwards of 15 million, but you could also buy MC and then change that to c-bills or use MC to buy the mechs you want and then just grind the money for upgrades. You can just get $99 worth of MC and use some to buy some bundles (pretty good value) or buy a couple of mechs and then convert some MC to c-bills (I think the max per time is 6.4 million) which can be used to upgrade said purchased mechs, be warned though if you need an XL engine that alone for a big mech can cost 5-6 million.

TL;DR - Grab yourself $99 worth of MC, buy a mastery pack of some mechs your interested in playing, convert two lots of MC to c-bills and have fun!

*** WARNING *** Sometimes there are bonus deals when purchasing MC that give you a mech and mech bay etc, this could happen two days after you buy MC.

Edited by delushin, 11 March 2015 - 02:40 PM.

[mailin]

Honestly, all you may want to spend real money on is mech bays and either the occasional hero mech or premium time. I believe mech bays work out to be around $1.00 US each. Most players buy those because you only get 4 mech bays to work with initially and to level up a mech you need to buy 3 variants of a chassis.

Premium time helps a lot with the grind and it's available relatively inexpensively. (I don't have the exact figures, but I believe you can get 1 month for around $15.00 US.)

Hero mechs are priced based on the weight of the mech and can be had for at most, I believe around $30 US.

As far as how long it takes, there are many here who feel that the grind in this game is easier than other F2P games, while others feel it takes a little longer. I don't have anything to compare MWO to, because this is the only F2P game that I play.

[MHMarx]

What i like about MWO is that you can improve your account without spending a dime.

You can win premium time and mech bays on tournaments and challenges.

The only things i spent money on was colors, camos and cockpit items, but i also got some of these making MC on events and some CW ranks.

[Flak Kannon]

Hi Mar,

I have been playing this game since its near inception.

If you enjoi the intellectual property here, enjoi the game mechanics, and are not put off by the community, then I feel the ~ $12-$15 per month that PREMIUM TIME costs if a fair price point.

I have run Premium Time almost non-stop, as I like to support this property, and the +30% Cbills and XP make for not so of a GRIND.

I am never without cbills, and when the Hero mechs go on-sale ever now and again, I pick one up.

If you only run Premium Time, you will have enough assets to do most of what you want to do.


Remember - Never Sell a Chassis, Never Sell an Engine, and Never sell your weapons. Its like throwing money away.

Buy Mech bays when they go on-sale for 150 MC. Buy 10-20 at that time, that'll keep you in bays until the next sale.

And just Enjoi the pace of the game. Each mech you will learn a bit more. Some you'll like, some you'll not like, but still don't sell it, you may one day come back to it if it gets positive quirks or your play style preference changes.


Stacking Hero Mechs, plus Premium Time, plus the occasional weekend event that bumps up earning can be a quite the haul in Cbills.


Just have fun. Invest at your own comfort, and like I said, if ~$15 a month isn't a great expense to you as its not to me, run that Premium Time.

Edited by Flak Kannon, 11 March 2015 - 03:06 PM.

[JC Daxion]

really to me the best way to start out is to buy a mastery pack, and use that hero! I personally have made tons of money in my jester, and a couple other mechs.. more than enough to fill 47 bays over my few years playing. I play a few hours a couple times a week, and some long weekends over that time.

I have spent 45 bucks so far, and have banked another 30 worth of MC i have not touched yet. Over all, i find this FTP model pretty darn good for over all value, as long as you are not the kinda person that has to have everything right this second. If a game that lets you set a goal for 3 months, or 6 months down the road is your kinda game, it could be for you.

my personal goal is to get modules for my top 10 mechs before summer,..

[Kenyon Burguess]

play CW and change factions frequently and you will get all kinds of free stuff

[delushin]

Geist Null, on 11 March 2015 - 03:35 PM, said:

play CW and change factions frequently and you will get all kinds of free stuff

I support people getting into CW as its the best part of MWO for me anyways ... however ...

@OP please remember this:

• If you drop solo and get matched with other solo droppers and put against a 10-12 man you might walk away with nothing for about a 20-30 minute time frame
  
• CW is best experienced with a unit and in a larger group as possible with communications
  
• I highly recommend you have your two drop decks sorted before going in if your IS - 240 and 250
  
• Join a unit that does CW you will have more fun then solo
  
• Don't read any forum posts around how crap CW is, join a unit to do it with

Edited by delushin, 11 March 2015 - 04:30 PM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Lol, if all you did was grind the game? You would need like 300 games to get 1 stock decent mech, then another 600 for the other 2 and the mastery lvl and then prolly another 200 for the modules and stuff.
If you use MC, you make much better progress.

[990Dreams]

Use MC for MC exclusive Mechs, or real dollars for packages (Clan, Resistance, etc.). As far as upgrading, save your C-Bills for buying the equipment and things, since you can't buy those things with MC (unless you buy a C-Bill package, but there are better uses for MC IMO).

[Bishop Steiner]

mailin, on 11 March 2015 - 02:36 PM, said:

Honestly, all you may want to spend real money on is mech bays and either the occasional hero mech or premium time. I believe mech bays work out to be around $1.00 US each. Most players buy those because you only get 4 mech bays to work with initially and to level up a mech you need to buy 3 variants of a chassis.

Premium time helps a lot with the grind and it's available relatively inexpensively. (I don't have the exact figures, but I believe you can get 1 month for around $15.00 US.)

Hero mechs are priced based on the weight of the mech and can be had for at most, I believe around $30 US.

As far as how long it takes, there are many here who feel that the grind in this game is easier than other F2P games, while others feel it takes a little longer. I don't have anything to compare MWO to, because this is the only F2P game that I play.

I pretty much never buy premium time. I just win it in contests, then activate it when I know I have a chunk of time to devote.

[NextGame]

Marduk2, on 11 March 2015 - 02:18 PM, said:

I have gotten back into this game recently, and I'm debating whether I'll continue playing. I greatly enjoy the mechanics, but the business model is the sticking point. In terms of actually affording new mechs, thats not a problem, I have a job with sufficient disposable income to buy what video games I want, and I'm well aware that in F2P games I'll probably spend real money, often in large quantities, if I enjoy the game (I've spent upwards of $400 on Warframe, because I just love the game that much). However, for me to KEEP playing, I still need to unlock free content at a reasonable clip. So, what I want to know is, how far will my money and time go? How much money (in USD / CND) does it cost to purchase and optimize a good Mech, and how long do I have to play to unlock them with C-Bills? I would cite League of Legends and Warframe as games I play that have good business models, while Hearthstone and Planetside 2 are the upper limit of what I consider "reasonable".

So what I would say is that MWO in general is pretty expensive in my opinion. I would like to see them do something to lower the cost of entry for newer/returning players by bringing the MC prices down on older mechs on a permanent basis. I think it would encourage people who aren't as fortunate as many of us to have a chance to contribute to the game and furnish themselves with a greater catalogue of mechs to play with, which in turn gives them a reason to stick around and keep playing.

Personally don't mind the current business model, which is pack based, as when they do a pack bundle the bonuses that come with it are generally worthwhile, and for other mechs people can always just wait till they have a sale to be honest.

Edited by NextGame, 12 March 2015 - 06:13 AM.

[Scyther]

As others have said, a good mastery pack is worthwhile.

Here are some things to consider:

- Mech Packs: when a new mech pack is released, the lowest package ($20-$30) bought early will get you 3 (light) mechs, 3 bays, and a whack of premium time and other freebies. This alone can keep you in premium time most of the time.

- Weekend challenges and tourneys help to pick up more premium time, free items, mechs and mech bays. Many people dislike what they call the 'freakends' (meaning horrible play due to challenges etc). I personally do not find very much difference between weekdays and weekends or challenges, although maybe Sundays do tend to be wonky. Regardless, bad play means the other teams are playing just as bad.

- Once you have 4 mechs (4 IS or 4 Clan) that you can make a 'drop deck' with, you can do 7-day contracts in CW (Community Warfare) with different factions to quickly pick up another free mech bay (plus C-Bills and GXP) from each faction.

For a 'how long do I grind?" example, I bought the Resistance Fire pack giving me 3 new light Panthers. They took about 40 matches each to 'elite' (complete 2nd tier of skill tree). Depending how you cycle between mechs, that is about 6-7 hours to 'elite' a light mech.

I built up a fair bit of credits playing on premium time/challenge weekends, so when StormCrows went on sale I bought 3 for C-Bills. They took about 30 matches each to 'elite' (as strong mediums) and 42 matches (ish) to 'master'.

I typically play a mech until I get the daily double, then move to the next mech. So those match counts are spread across multiple days to pick up extra double-xp matches.

When premium is active, I tend to earn about 100,000 C-Bills per match. So 120 matches for the Panthers, 120 for the Crows, I likely earned back 24,000,000 C-Bills while leveling them. Enough to buy the next couple mechs, anyway.

The Catapract and Stalker mastery packs seem useful. Not sure if the Jagermech/Firebrand has one yet but it would be a nice one also.

Sales are frequent enough that you may want to just play with what you have until you see a decent MC/mech sale.

(PS: business model opinion> not bad, need to work on their monetization options as they need to broaden out from just 'mech pack' releases as their mainstay.)

Edited by MadBadger, 12 March 2015 - 09:13 AM.

[Bobzilla]

I see premium time and hero/champs like this.

Spend money to lessen grind.
Grind to get new mechs.
Grind new mechs.
Spend money to lessen grind.

There really isn't any point in PT for me. For me any mech I play enough gets boring and i'll want a new type. It's a cycle, that PT or heros just make me go around faster, but im still going in circles. Might as well save money and enjoy the ride.