88 replies to this topic

[Kiiyor]

I've new playere'd with Alts a lot, in the name of SCIENCE, and in the name of gifting my friends semi-decent accounts.

I disagree completely that the game is pay to win. If an argument is to be made for it, it's far more nebulous than the certainty you seem to have with the application of the concept here.

The biggest issue (at least in my eyes) isn't new player earnings, it's the fact that many new players won't have any idea about which mech would best suit their playstyle. While you absolutely can afford to buy a decent mech flush with your cadet earnings, If you buy a crap mech, or a mech that you suck at piloting, you're going to have crap matches. Trial mechs don't really offer an indication of how the mech performs when spec'ed for meta.

I think there needs to be some sort of token system that offers you a cooling off period for your mech purchase. 24 hours. If, at the end, you feel that the mech isn't for you, you get your cash refunded. 3 tokens should prevent abuse of the system.

[Widowmaker1981]

Kiiyor, on 15 April 2015 - 03:00 AM, said:

The biggest issue (at least in my eyes) isn't new player earnings, it's the fact that many new players won't have any idea about which mech would best suit their playstyle. While you absolutely can afford to buy a decent mech flush with your cadet earnings, If you buy a crap mech, or a mech that you suck at piloting, you're going to have crap matches. Trial mechs don't really offer an indication of how the mech performs when spec'ed for meta.

This actually happened to me, i had no real clue what was going on with the cadet bonus, once i could afford it i bought a Catapult, then ended up wasting almost all the rest of it tinkering, equipping ES and unequipping, etc. Once i realised that the cadet bonus earnings dried up and i had a POS mech and only 1 of them... I started a new account. Saved the C-Bills from cadet, didnt buy anything and went straight for Highlanders... I DIDNT come onto the forums and whine like the OP though...

[Kuritaclan]

KharnZor, on 14 April 2015 - 10:58 PM, said:

And even then its still not really pay to win, i mean who spends MC on them?
Anyone willing to admit they spent MC on consumables?

I got by events many conumables worth of mc - i never use them xD - maybee if a event comes around i will equip them, but i am to lazy to switch my c-bill ones, and they are anyway highly situational, more a stats boost on the endscreen than a income multiplier.

Widowmaker1981, on 15 April 2015 - 03:06 AM, said:

This actually happened to me, i had no real clue what was going on with the cadet bonus, once i could afford it i bought a Catapult, then ended up wasting almost all the rest of it tinkering, equipping ES and unequipping, etc. Once i realised that the cadet bonus earnings dried up and i had a POS mech and only 1 of them... I started a new account. Saved the C-Bills from cadet, didnt buy anything and went straight for Highlanders... I DIDNT come onto the forums and whine like the OP though...

Well you start the game from fresh after you got some knowledge. This is not a good situation for new players. Yeah false buy of mechs and equipment dry you out rather quickly in the early stage of the game. And it lasts long to get enough c-bill after this to overcome the bad first decision, while you ramp up the learning curve.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 15 April 2015 - 03:09 AM.

[Kiiyor]

Widowmaker1981, on 15 April 2015 - 03:06 AM, said:

This actually happened to me, i had no real clue what was going on with the cadet bonus, once i could afford it i bought a Catapult, then ended up wasting almost all the rest of it tinkering, equipping ES and unequipping, etc. Once i realised that the cadet bonus earnings dried up and i had a POS mech and only 1 of them... I started a new account. Saved the C-Bills from cadet, didnt buy anything and went straight for Highlanders... I DIDNT come onto the forums and whine like the OP though...

Well done. Trial and error! Not trial and whine spectacularly.

It is an issue though, one I worry about. How many people have walked away because their first mech didn't fit?

[Felbombling]

Frost, I feel your pain, but you don't know what a 'grind' is until you've invested time into something like World of Tanks, War Thunder or even a game like World of Warcraft with a faction grind. You can literally play hundreds of games at an average of ten minutes a game in order to advance down a tech tree on a tank in World of Tanks.

The grind here in MechWarrior: Online is nothing. It just feels extra painful due to the nature of the 'thrown to the wolves' matchmaking.

[Kiiyor]

StaggerCheck, on 15 April 2015 - 03:13 AM, said:

Frost, I feel your pain, but you don't know what a 'grind' is until you've invested time into something like World of Tanks, War Thunder or even a game like World of Warcraft with a faction grind. You can literally play hundreds of games at an average of ten minutes a game in order to advance down a tech tree on a tank in World of Tanks.

The grind here in MechWarrior: Online is nothing. It just feels extra painful due to the nature of the 'thrown to the wolves' matchmaking.

Excellent point. WT and WoT ate portions of my soul. The grind here is a soothing balm in comparison.

[Joseph Mallan]

Frostiken, on 14 April 2015 - 08:47 PM, said:

Yeah that's not the point.

Also even with the 30% CBill bonus and my boost, the income is pathetic. Not to mention the Founder mechs are giant piles of **** and require several million CBill investments, because PGI designed them for before the Clan invasion timeline.

Strange. Non of My Atlas have Endo, XL or FFA. Doubles yes. Most of My Mechs are Endo and Doubles. Upgrading to Doubles from scratch is 19 matches at my average 85K C bills per match. Thats 6 hours at a leisurely 3 matches per hour. Thats ONE night of gaming for an old man like me.

Widowmaker1981, on 15 April 2015 - 03:06 AM, said:

This actually happened to me, i had no real clue what was going on with the cadet bonus, once i could afford it i bought a Catapult, then ended up wasting almost all the rest of it tinkering, equipping ES and unequipping, etc. Once i realised that the cadet bonus earnings dried up and i had a POS mech and only 1 of them... I started a new account. Saved the C-Bills from cadet, didnt buy anything and went straight for Highlanders... I DIDNT come onto the forums and whine like the OP though...

LOL I did this in SWTOR and Neverwinter and I KNOW the rules of D&D!

Players here act like you have your Toon maxed and perfect in 2-3 hours of gaming. Heck in SWTOR it took the intervention of the Lawmen to keep me "properly equipped". And you can make your own swag in that game!

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 15 April 2015 - 03:24 AM.

[Estonniel]

Yep, as i stated. Ask around. the start of the game is a bit hard but ones you have mechs to simply fall back on that you did manage to master out. its always your money grind machine. wins differ on how well you perform. even without premium time you can hit 350,000 Cbills on very good runs. but yea new guys have to bite a bit passed the starting blockade and make the Cbill economy work. Mechspecs also will get you insight on what works for most ppl, however experience may variate from person to person.

back in the old days you even had to Repair your mech after every game played. glad they got rid of that. and not to think about re buying Ammo clips for your mech every game you shot a Gauss or AC round. as that would be Hard mode

[sneeking]

I think we all wasted our cadet bonus ( well most of us) except those who started before it existed lol.

I wasted my cadet bonus or at least I felt like I had at first.

Bought a set of spiders ( I thought id be a instant light pilot ) because I destroyed the whole of activisions mw2 gbl in a fire moth

Wrong !

Spiders didn't work for me and I had to grind centurions without cadet bonus lol.

All is good though ( I went back to those spiders ) I can be quite frightening in a light mech when the mood strikes

[LordBraxton]

This game is NOT pay 2 win. This game is just exorbitantly expensive to play at all. Premium should double earnings. Mech prices are ludicrous. The level 3 chassis to elite a mech system has always been horrible. PGI is milking an aging fanbase. We've said it all before and nothing is gonna change, and I'll still probably buy the next IS mechpak.

Edited by LordBraxton, 15 April 2015 - 03:29 AM.

[Insects]

Frostiken, on 14 April 2015 - 08:22 PM, said:

I play a few matches, but I'm frustrated and want to actually play with my own mech. Since I'm new, I'm basically not getting **** for bonuses and earning maybe 80k per match on average, both because of my constant losing and lack of boosts and bonuses. Whatever, right? After playing about a dozen rounds, I have almost a million C-Bills. Great! Let's go see what I can buy!

...

Oh.

Oh my.

I can't buy ****. The cheapest mech in the game STARTS at about 1.4 mil. At this point I've had maybe 3 or 4 hours in this game (including time spent dicking around with the UI that's completely impenetrable for new players, and time spent learning just how to play), and I have been so far unable to do ANYTHING. I can't play with the mechlab. I can't spend skill points. I have been given absolutely nothing to 'grab' me.

You get over 8 million just for dropping in the first 25 games, so its not quite as terrible as you make out.

I do think that a full 3 chassis, with XL included for the lights, would be better cadet bonus though.
Perhaps limit choice to just 4 selected mechs for this, so people cant get everything just by making 50 alt accounts.

[Kuritaclan]

Estonniel, on 15 April 2015 - 03:23 AM, said:

Yep, as i stated. Ask around. the start of the game is a bit hard but ones you have mechs to simply fall back on that you did manage to master out. its always your money grind machine. wins differ on how well you perform. even without premium time you can hit 350,000 Cbills on very good runs. but yea new guys have to bite a bit passed the starting blockade and make the Cbill economy work. Mechspecs also will get you insight on what works for most ppl, however experience may variate from person to person.

back in the old days you even had to Repair your mech after every game played. glad they got rid of that. and not to think about re buying Ammo clips for your mech every game you shot a Gauss or AC round. as that would be Hard mode

Actually i would like to see the R&R back into the game and a over all functional economy with players who can sell each other equipment and mechs. You can provide credits to new players and have a buddy system with the creditor - who get some interest of your earnings when you play games - however the usual income is a bit low, or at least in non optimzied mechs, and when you are new to the game so you will barely make 200+ damage. If you are skilled and a vet you do like 1k+ dmage here and there and the payment is good for such a 15min game.

Also Refit and Rearm as thought at that time, would not apply if you were in a house faction and was a coutner to be a mercenary/lonewolf. However CW did started a long time later, and so this "thought" never got realised.

Now cw is introduced you could get a fair share for the number of planets which are hold by your faction, to make an effort that your faction wins. And so on. The economy could be much better in this game. But i guess there is no manhours left by the developers to make this happen.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 15 April 2015 - 03:43 AM.

[Bigbacon]

It really isn't that bad....although I've always used premium time up until the last week or so.

buying mechs with MC isn't pay to win, more like pay to advance, sorta. they have to make money some how...free to play is just that, it is free to play but if you want to get more stuff faster, then spend some money.

I just wish they'd make equipment purchases do-able with MC..Let me get my XLs with it!!

R&R sure as hell wouldn't solve anything, it would make it worse and the game already doesn't have enough players as it is and they'd lose more and most certainly not retain anymore if they brought it back.

without premium time, I can average maybe between 80-100k a round, with premium it seems to be 150 to 180. LRM boating can usually push me into the 250 range with premium time. Don't think I've ever seen a 300+ round.

Edited by Bigbacon, 15 April 2015 - 04:08 AM.

[LordBraxton]

The only P2W argument I could stomach would be relating to the excess of early access content we see now. It's not the fact that you get it early, it's the fact that there is ALWAYS something to have early, so if you always pay, you will always have the shiny toys the free players do not. Often this gives advantages.

[Kuritaclan]

Best to say it is pay2progress with a full free2play szenario if you do da grind harder than those who pay to "grind less".

Sure the new Mechs have in some variants better hardpoints and so on. But look at clan wave II - Mist Lynx, Ice Ferret, Gargoyle all were not impressive to what we had up untill this time, only the HBR was a asset. And this with its ECM was more a Team advantage. As a Mech for it's on it was not better compared to other meta-mechs at this time.

Edited by Kuritaclan, 15 April 2015 - 04:29 AM.

[Catalina Steiner]

Due to the reason the thread opener couldn't frame his criticism more productive and the fact that he is using strong language, this thread was moved to K-town.

I also needed to edit the title, it was a world too long.

[Moomtazz]

I don't understand the players who are against an increase in C-bill rewards. Grindy feeling games like this reduces the amount of players and from what i can tell MWO needs more new players.

I just came back from a several month break and in the last two weeks I have been playing about 2 - 4 hours a day. I've used Hero mechs about 80% of the time and three days of Premium time. I made about 16 million C-bills in the time in solo drops only.
I make more C-bills than a new player would and 2-4 hours a night is pushing the limit. If you take away the Hero bonus I would make about 6 million a week. I don't think that number is high enough to encourage players to stick around.

[MarineTech]

Right...

What's all this then?

Ahhhhh. I see.

Another pay to win thread.

And once again, the OP has failed to fully grasp the concept of "Pay to Win."

Just because you have no patience, and are unwilling to work for what you want.

Does not mean the game is "Pay to Win" no matter how much you might really want it to be.

[Heffay]

It is pay to win. But that really depends on what your definition of "winning" is.

[Tesunie]

Stefka Kerensky, on 14 April 2015 - 11:04 PM, said:

SO, I ended to have a lot of alt account, but ZERO fun if I wanted to farm c-bills to buy more mechs.

"Farming" c-bills is playing the game. You have to play the game to earn c-bills. Yet "farming c-bills" is no fun. Does this mean the entire game is no fun?

I'm sorry, I can't see your logic here. I have fun playing the game. Grinding for my next project is just something that drives me to continue playing. Earning experience on a specific mech drives me to continue to use different mechs to master them all.

All this I get just for playing the game and having fun doing so. If you aren't having fun playing the game (and thus earning c-bills), maybe this isn't the right game for you? Or you just haven't found that playstyle that works for you that you can enjoy playing.