36 replies to this topic

[KraftySOT]

Asrrin, on 30 March 2015 - 09:23 AM, said:

My god, it was an analogy, nothing more. It's basic tactics for any sort of advertising. Give away free samples of a product to get you to try it and like it so that a fraction of those who got free samples will go on to purchase. I mentioned drugs as a quip, but it's easily applicable to any number of things. Food samples, razor blades, detergents, toothpaste, digital services like netflix or gamefly. Stop trying to derail the subject.

It works, it gives people free stuff, and gives PGI more potential sales. It's a win win for everyone.

Those are great examples. Sorry I just take exception to the comparison of the black market, to the actual market. They operate fundamentally differently, and I hate that 'drug dealers give away drugs' analogy because its terrible, and woefully incorrect.

Yes. Free stuff gets people through the door. If they dont have much or any familarity with your product, it works even better.

However, giving a free Pinto, wont make you go out and buy a Pinto. Its still a piece of crap car that will explode if slightly bumped from the rear. Its a crap product. Mechwarrior Tactics gave away free things. Hawken gave away free things. DayZ gave away free things. Theyre all in the trash bin. (well DayZ is circling the drain last I checked). Battlefield 4 was circling the drain and gave away tons of free stuff, and it made no different into their fall patch last year actually fixed the game. All the free battlepacks in the world, wont make me buy your next DLC, if you dont actually fix the game. Ill just take the free stuff and then go ingame and fill my bank account up with tears.

Im not offering a solution here, im just saying that its more complicated than a simple solution, and a 'simple solution' is also "events are filling in the holes of the PaulEconomy'.

That would be great if the product was amazing. But its not.

Why do you think you see huge spikes of players during great events? Because theyre not playing the rest of the time. Theyre just taking the free stuff.

What would make PGI more money, is to have a great product people want to buy.

What made them so much money in the first place was a great IDEA people wanted to buy INTO.

Edited by KraftySOT, 30 March 2015 - 09:30 AM.

[KraftySOT]

And since the thread appears derailed...heres some hilarity:

http://www.vice.com/...source=vicefbus

"Curiously, one federal official told CBS News that ******* was found on the scene."

They were just trying to give free coke to the NSA...its hard to stay up late reading peoples emails.

Edited by KraftySOT, 30 March 2015 - 09:50 AM.

[Felbombling]

War Thunder does [did] an excellent job years ago of spurring the community to spend money. At the start of your playing 'career' you got a Tier I premium plane in the nation of your choice, and within the first ten matches or so you were getting free gifts of golden eagles, the equivalent to MechWarrior: Online Mech Credits.

If I had a say at PGI, I'd get FlyingDebris to mock up the Chameleon, a 50-ton 'trainer' Mech in the lore. Every new player would start out in this Mech through a tutorial session and then get to keep it as they played in game. It would come with both a 30% C-Bill bonus and a 30% XP bonus. Then I'd gift every player 500 Mech Credits to boot... enough to buy a Mech Bay or a new colour, hanging cockpit item... whatever. I think that would prove to be a great introduction to the game for just about everyone.

[Repasy Cooper]

Asrrin, on 30 March 2015 - 08:41 AM, said:

Seriously, every day on these forums I see tons of people complaining about how crap the economy is, mentioning how c-bill earnings for matches is not what it used to be. A closer inspection of the economy however would clearly show that we are at or above "pre-Paulconomy." During the reign of IGP yes, c-bill earnings tanked, not once, but twice, with promises that it would only be temporary. However, since PGI has been running the show, we have been getting events and tournaments at the rate of 2-4 per month. during challenges, the lowest hanging fruit is 1-3 days of premium time that by itself gives you parity with pre-nerf c-bill gains, but then on top of that you often have the chance to earn mechs, c-bills, and mechbays.

During tournaments, you are often getting per match c-bill bonuses, and during non challenge events you are getting grab bags with TONS of goodies, including pure MC! If you ever only grind out the low hanging fruit of every event you are getting extra rewards that put you much higher than normal earnings, and if you complete every event you are getting free mechs, mech bays, MC, premium time, cockpit items, even colors and camos. Almost every single week!

The economy is as healthy as it ever was, and if people stopped looking at the end of match score and started looking at the complete picture, they would realize it too.

Question: who is complaining about the economy, is it new players? They are probably just shell-shocked by the overwhelming difference in C-bill earnings before and after beginner bonus.

And I totally agree with you, challenges come out almost every week and I would have assumed that's more than enough to mitigate any displeasure over non-premium C-bill earnings. I like it this way compared to the alternative: Better earnings but little-to-none events (that would mean less earning mechs, mechbays, premium time, colors, decals). If people had lots of C-bills to spare from daily earnings BUT no free mechbays to purchase new mechs, there would be an even greater outcry among ftp players, and a lot more obscene trolling from ptw players.

StaggerCheck, on 30 March 2015 - 10:49 AM, said:

War Thunder does [did] an excellent job years ago of spurring the community to spend money. At the start of your playing 'career' you got a Tier I premium plane in the nation of your choice, and within the first ten matches or so you were getting free gifts of golden eagles, the equivalent to MechWarrior: Online Mech Credits.

If I had a say at PGI, I'd get FlyingDebris to mock up the Chameleon, a 50-ton 'trainer' Mech in the lore. Every new player would start out in this Mech through a tutorial session and then get to keep it as they played in game. It would come with both a 30% C-Bill bonus and a 30% XP bonus. Then I'd gift every player 500 Mech Credits to boot... enough to buy a Mech Bay or a new colour, hanging cockpit item... whatever. I think that would prove to be a great introduction to the game for just about everyone.

I like this idea! I'm not sure if the Chameleon trainer mech is necessary, but starting a new player out with bonus MC ought to entice more players into buying MC later on. It would be a good business move for PGI.

Edited by Repasy, 30 March 2015 - 11:03 AM.

[El Bandito]

KraftySOT, on 30 March 2015 - 09:03 AM, said:

What like League of Skins, World of T-59s, and War Blunder?

League does not gate players with mechbays. As long as you grind the in game currency, you can get the 120+ Champions, without a dime spent. I have 85 Champions after 4 years of playing--none bought with real money.

League also does not require a player to purchase 3 champions to play one optimally.

Edited by El Bandito, 30 March 2015 - 11:27 AM.

[Burktross]

I like to play on my own time and earn a decent amount doing so, not being held hostage (in a time schedule sense) by the need to get money purely from events.

[Sir Wulfrick]

KraftySOT, on 30 March 2015 - 09:13 AM, said:

LoL is terrible. ... it has boobs... Theres literally nothing to like about it.

While one hates to lower the tone of discourse... You say that in a manner that suggests it's a BAD thing.

On-topic, and with regards to the OP, I have to disagree that earnings are fine. Yes, the events and so forth are very nice for offering numerous rewards only otherwise available for payment, but consider the length of a CW game. The first few times I played CW I was very happy with the amount of CB I'd made, particularly for a loss (let's say 250K) but I quickly realised that this 250K was spread over the course of half an hour - typically one could fit FIVE games in to that same space, thus equating to perhaps 50K for a loss (per game) and 100-200K for a win.

Pure earnings aren't that great after all, particularly given the staggering cost of some weapon systems and horrible cost of the modules! OK, it could be argued that modules are "end-game content" (a phrase I personally hate) but I feel that the "end-game content," if we must use such corporate bullshit, ought to be playing for a 'side,' i.e. a faction. At war with other factions. WARFARE ought to be the end game, not a bad case of shiny gear syndrome.

PGI needs to put the WAR in to Mechwarrior.

[KraftySOT]

El Bandito, on 30 March 2015 - 11:15 AM, said:

League does not gate players with mechbays. As long as you grind the in game currency, you can get the 120+ Champions, without a dime spent. I have 85 Champions after 4 years of playing--none bought with real money.

League also does not require a player to purchase 3 champions to play one optimally.

Im not saying its not a better grind than MWO, im just saying its not a great game either. One game can be better than the other in many aspects, and both of them still be bad.

[Torgun]

So OP is basically saying CBill earnings are not fine, because there are very few who actually has time to play lots on all the events. And if you miss the events, you're back to the Paul-grind.

[KraftySOT]

Sir Wulfrick, on 30 March 2015 - 11:49 AM, said:

While one hates to lower the tone of discourse... You say that in a manner that suggests it's a BAD thing.

If youre a 13 year old male its awesome sauce. If youre in your 40s, theres redtube. And the Backpages. Or wives. Yeah....wives...

And id say were missing the War, and the Warrior, part of Mechwarrior.

Edited by KraftySOT, 30 March 2015 - 11:57 AM.

[Pjwned]

When considering events I do agree c-bill earnings are generally pretty decent...if you already have a decent stable of kitted out mechs, and with the mech tree grinding and modules there are still a lot of expensive necessities so c-bill flow can still seem low considering that. New(ish) players are also still left in the dust and get their ass reamed with sandpaper in the mech lab regardless of events, and this especially needs to change.

Sometimes c-bill rewards simply are just too small though, and this is due to a not so great reward system where even great matches can give pretty meh rewards (though on the other hand with some luck you can get really awesome rewards) or extremely pitiful rewards on a loss whether or not you did at least decently, and this could use to be changed if rewards are not simply increased outright.

Edited by Pjwned, 30 March 2015 - 12:04 PM.

[Virgil Greyson]

KraftySOT, on 30 March 2015 - 11:54 AM, said:

Im not saying its not a better grind than MWO, im just saying its not a great game either. One game can be better than the other in many aspects, and both of them still be bad.

[Zoid]

Torgun, on 30 March 2015 - 11:56 AM, said:

So OP is basically saying CBill earnings are not fine, because there are very few who actually has time to play lots on all the events. And if you miss the events, you're back to the Paul-grind.

Sort of. You still get a good does of premium time from most of them that can be saved for later (earn it and then don't log in again until you want to use it).

If I don't have time to go for the big prize, I just get the premium time and save it for an event that I do have time to do, works very well.

[KraftySOT]

Virgil Greyson, on 30 March 2015 - 11:57 AM, said:

Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism...at least its an ethos.

[Alex Morgaine]

Having the chameleon as a starter mech would be a decent idea, with lots of energy slots, a few ballistic slots, basic by virtue of design as a training unit, I think just adding a few empty missile slots (6 tube and 10 tube, maybe 15 tops) to experiment with in a side torso would make the chameleon a perfect trainer mech.
Use the 7v, 7w, and 7z, add the suggested missile slots to the 7v (the trainer), and quirk each: 7v with general mobility and armor quirks only, maybe cooing bonuses, 7w with energy centric only, 7z with large laser quirks. The missiles are to let new players play with -rms and see how they work mostly.
Something like that.

Edited by Frosty Brand, 30 March 2015 - 02:51 PM.

[Alex Morgaine]

Oh wait, make all 3 have armor buffs, mobility and cooling only on the trainer.

[Xetelian]

Currently my earnings are the lowest they've ever been and free premium time from events does NOT lighten this grind.