51 replies to this topic

[Frostiken]

This game is kind of weird. It's a Free-To-Play game that seems to want to act as if it's a conventional Pay-To-Play game. The F2P formula has been pretty well nailed-down both on other PC games that beat this one to market, and let's not forget the entire mobile game nonsense going on there.

Since this game is going to be on Steam soon, I really don't see it receiving a warm reception considering it lacks even the most BASIC elements that keep F2P games relevant for longer than their front-page time on Steam.

1) Add in daily log-in incentives. A major challenge for F2P games is just getting people to log in to begin with. They have all these other games to play, why play this one? A simple C-Bill 'paycheck' for logging in once every 24 hours would be nice. Roughly around 100k if you're a F2P player, perhaps 200k if you have a boost active. Not only does this get people to log in, but underperforming players can get a decent C-Bill income to upgrade their ****** mechs.

2) Regular special events. One weekend a month has double C-Bill rewards for all players, another weekend has double C-Bill rewards for boosted players.

3) Regular sales. There's literally hundreds of mechs to buy. Once a month, for a weekend, put a mech chassis on sale. And don't just stick the shittiest, worst mechs on sale every time. Make it a Hero mech or something. Additionally, there should be some sort of daily sale on the more minor items and an additional discount on MC if you have a boost active. Hell, put sales in in the form of something like 'ALL XL ENGINES MUST GO!' and they're 40% off, 'one per customer'.

4) Tone down the greed on the cash shop and the 'special' sales. $120 for the Clan mech pack? Seriously? It's four lousy ******* mechs, are you people out of your mind? This game doesn't exactly have a good reputation amongst anyone who's heard of it (*cough* $500 gold mechs).

5) There is almost zero reason to actually play matches. The C-Bill rewards are embarrassingly low and will tremendously demoralize any player who isn't winning most of his matches. Furthermore, there's no real 'hook' to the game, things to work towards. So with that said, let's kill two birds with one stone: implement a salvage system. Here's how it works.

After every round, tally up who was involved with killing what. Every single mech destroyed has a chance to drop salvaged 'parts'. Parts are non-functional until crafted together (which costs some C-Bills - at a discount if you're boosted!). The smaller and more simple an item is, the fewer parts it requires. A small laser, machine gun, etc. is instantly salvaged and doesn't need to be crafted. Large lasers might be two parts, AC-10s are three, AC-20s are four. Every round, a destroyed mech piece will be handed out to someone as well. If you put enough mech pieces together, you get a free mech! The top damage-dealer assist and the killer of a given mech get two chances to 'roll' on any loot from that mech.

Players can then keep or sell their salvaged loot. On that note, you seriously need to increase the sell refund to more than 50%. 50% is insulting. This isn't ******* Skyrim. I have a room full of guns behind me and I can sell every single one for near what I paid for - or sometimes more. 50%? Really?

6) Stop making new mechs and actually focus on working on the game itself. There are more than enough mechs right now. In fact I'd say there's too many. Stop being greedy, and work on the maps you claim to be working on.

Edited by Frostiken, 17 April 2015 - 10:39 PM.

[Sandersson Jankins]

Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

5) There is almost zero reason to actually play matches.

This is the only part I really want to address. You should be playing matches for fun! I guess if your specific idea of fun is making in-game currency, that's one thing (although, it sounds AWFUL)...but you should be having a blast firing off LAZORS that blow part bad guy robots, shooting dakka cannons that go BRRRRTTTT, and just being a fictional mech-jockey!


As a small aside (edit: oops i wrote a wall of text), in my view, PGI seems to make money off of a certain demographic. They have enough HARDCORE players that have wanted a good Battletech game since childhood (I'm one of them!) to spend sums of money on the game regularly. Many of these players (not one of them yet!) are in their late 20s and beyond, with stable incomes and great jobs. They've got the disposable income, and with something that makes them as happy as MWO (even if flawed!), they'll be more than happy to fork hundreds of bucks over.

I'm not defending them much; the prices DO seem rather ludicrous. But with the demographic that has made them the most money having large amounts of disposable income, or insane dedication to the game, why would they do anything different? Keeping in mind that they are a company, and like it or not, their first goal will be to make a profit.

Of course, ideally, a great MWO game will make them plenty of money. So it ain't all bad! It isn't going to be the massive, in-depth, lore-based, persistent world of Battletech that I want, because it won't make them much money. But making a solid mech game, compromising between BT lore and MWO-original creations is within their vision. I'll settle for it.

Edited by Sandersson Jankins, 17 April 2015 - 10:53 PM.

[Durant Carlyle]

Check the page again for the $120 package -- you get a lot more than four 'Mechs. You get 12 'Mechs and 12 Mech Bays (16 'Mechs and 16 Mech Bays for Early Adopters), 60 days Premium Time, 4 Titles, 4 Badges, and 4 Faction Content selections (that's 12 Cockpit Items, 12 colors, and 4 patterns) . Plus, you could get the Monthly Rewards (another 51 days Premium Time, 3 Cockpit Items, 3 Colors, and 3 modules). That's a lot of value.

And if people have a problem with $500 Gold 'Mech packages, they shouldn't visit the Star Citizen site -- they have packages selling for $15,000.

Reason to play? I agree with SJ -- It's F-U-N!

Actual salvage isn't going to happen -- it could never be made fair.

Too many 'Mechs? You're definitely wrong there.

[Frostiken]

Sandersson Jankins, on 17 April 2015 - 10:53 PM, said:

This is the only part I really want to address. You should be playing matches for fun!

I worded that poorly, but like it or not 'hooks' in gameplay are here to stay. It's why so many games have little progression systems and such to keep track of - it keeps people playing and gives them goals to play towards. Sorry but 'playing for the sake of playing' no longer cuts it, and it hasn't cut it for going on eight years now. If MWO doesn't adapt it's going to get edged out by other games that DO.

I would say the biggest flaw that isn't easily fixed is that MWO has nothing that's "cheap" to eat up your money. Yeah sure you need some funds to customize your mech, but once you have a loadout or find a playstyle that works for you, it's not like you're going to be re-buying lasers all the damn time.

Planetside 2 is full of **** like this. Optics for guns, sales all the time and things that are cheap, little upgrades for your vehicles that cost progressively more certs... there's almost always something you can afford, somewhere. Really, once you have all the mechs you want upgraded how you want (which doesn't take too long, really), what else is there?

Quote

Actual salvage isn't going to happen -- it could never be made fair.

That makes no sense, what exactly about it needs to be 'fair'? You hand the **** out basically at random.

Edited by Frostiken, 17 April 2015 - 11:39 PM.

[Sandersson Jankins]

Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 11:37 PM, said:

I worded that poorly, but like it or not 'hooks' in gameplay are here to stay. It's why so many games have little progression systems and such to keep track of - it keeps people playing and gives them goals to play towards. Sorry but 'playing for the sake of playing' no longer cuts it, and it hasn't cut it for going on eight years now. If MWO doesn't adapt it's going to get edged out by other games that DO.

REDACTED FOR SPACE

That makes no sense, what exactly about it needs to be 'fair'? You hand the **** out basically at random.

That's a shame. I've loved games with huge and hard grinds, all those early alpha access steam games that Dayz catalyzed (hey, I played that the day it went into open beta, too!). But I still play games because in every single match, round, or game I play, I WILL have fun.

But you're right. Unfortunately. TONS of players are addicted to that pixel-crack, and crave any sense of perceived "progress". And I think I knew what I meant, I just have to sink my teeth into anything I can because it's nearly 4AM and I'm on a slow night shift. Thanks for providing me a venue for that

For the second part, he does have a very good reason. If salvage was implemented (barring some miracle of a complicated beast to code and implement..not likely), the best players would benefit. Much to the chagrin of newer players, many of whom you're trying to benefit! They'd say "why does this guy that has 2.5 years under his belt get so many more cool things than I do?"

And perhaps rightfully so. I'd LOVE a salvage system, personally. Maybe that's just greedy of me because I'm an above-average (with plenty of people that could kick my ass) player.

[One Medic Army]

6) Premium time, the big steady revenue stream of F2P games, just plain sucks in MWO. Premium time is supposed to be a monthly installment that people pay when they have jobs and can't afford to play 3+hours a day to progress. Premium time in MWO ought to be minimum 100% extra XP and CBills, to put it in line with other F2P games currently on steam. It's not there for people grinding day in day out to get stuff faster, it's there so the casual player who only logs 5-10hours/week or less of game time can get a new vehicle/level/whatever every week or so.

Edited by One Medic Army, 18 April 2015 - 12:01 AM.

[Paigan]

Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

This game is kind of weird. It's a Free-To-Play game that seems to want to act as if it's a conventional Pay-To-Play game.
[...]

Sorry I stopped reading right there because everything beyond that can pretty much only be nonsense.

You can get EVERYTHING in this game eventually without paying, even mechbays.
The only single one difference is: if you want to have it "right now", you have to pay.
So your point is completely mute.

I played Eve-Enline (monthly fee) and I played Entropia (ultra-mean and hard cost-intense. Everything you use degrades and costs real money in the end to repair. The best you can ever hope for is 99% efficiency and some kind of "lottery" when looting enemies. THAT is pay-to-play).

MWO's pay model is kindergarten in comparison.

And you must let them SOME way to earn money because constantly maintaining and enhancing the game is a high-tech engineering task.

If anything, this game must get more developer-friendly, not even more free to play.

Being a software developer myself, the "everything must be free" mentality of people really makes me aggressive at times.
We want to eat, too, you know.

Edited by Paigan, 18 April 2015 - 12:19 AM.

[Madcap72]

I played for years without paying a dime.


Then I paid 14 bucks to get in on the loyalty program and got (l) mechs.

Then, I played more.


After than, I paid less money for the Waith pack (80 bucks or whatever) than I put into Battlefield 3 and two expansions...


I'm still playing the hell out of MWO.

I enjoy MWO not baing like other F2P/ Pay to win games. Everything is accesable, what you have to pay real people money for doesn't give some huge advantage.

The game always comes back to induvidual skill, planning, and leadership.

[Bluttrunken]

Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

5) There is almost zero reason to actually play matches. The C-Bill rewards are embarrassingly low and will tremendously demoralize any player who isn't winning most of his matches.

I stopped reading at this point.

[Moon Master]

I agree.

Even if they just increase earnings by a shat load, it would make the game a lot more fun.

Also they could make it so buying Cbills was a much better deal.

Currently its like 5 bucks, for 1 million...... I think 1 buck per million would be more tempting...

I find the whole system to be insulting, and I only play cuz I really enjoy the game, and am a bit hooked.


Only problem is, the poor saps who have like 1500 dollars into this game already..... If you made the pricing reasonable, they would feel so bad.

I'm not sure what can be done about that.

Edited by MechWarrior0975971, 18 April 2015 - 12:41 AM.

[Sandersson Jankins]

MechWarrior0975971, on 18 April 2015 - 12:41 AM, said:

Only problem is, the poor saps who have like 1500 dollars into this game already..... If you made the pricing reasonable, they would feel so bad.

I'm not sure what can be done about that.

I highly doubt that most high-paying customers would feel a significant blow to their pride. If they've spent that much, they're one or more of these:

1) Complete BT fanatic

2) 21+ (I'd actually say 25+) years old with a stable, well-paying job, and a BT fan.

3) Someone with enough income/assets to not give two shits about $1500.

I feel that the first two combined comprises most people that have given that much to MWO/PGI. They do it for the love of the BT universe/franchise, and the hope that the very best BT game can be made with that money. Having an amazing BT experience is very important to these people.

[Frostiken]

Sandersson Jankins, on 17 April 2015 - 11:54 PM, said:

If salvage was implemented (barring some miracle of a complicated beast to code and implement..not likely), the best players would benefit. Much to the chagrin of newer players, many of whom you're trying to benefit! They'd say "why does this guy that has 2.5 years under his belt get so many more cool things than I do?"

I thought I made it pretty clear that anyone who helps out gets put into the lottery. The only reason it would be a 'rich get richer' scenario is if your development team is a bunch of imbeciles who program it that way. It's a computer program, we can make it give all the loot to the guy who disconnected in the first thirty seconds of the match, if we want.

If four people chew up a mech, three of them get an assist and one gets a kill. Six lottery tickets are handed out - two for the killer, two for the top assister, and one each to the two helpers. You could even get rid of the extra ticket for the top damage-dealer if you want to make it more fair. That sounds like a pretty even match to me.

Furthermore, it's not like you're going to be salvaging **** that you can't get by other means. There's pretty much no gameplay advantage to building salvage. It's there for two reasons: to give people little carrots to enjoy at the end of the round, and to compensate for how laughably **** the C-Bill rewards are. IF we aren't going to do this salvage system, then I pretty much would damage an immediate DOUBLING of all C-Bill rewards. The current reward levels are plain and simple complete ****, especially for Free-To-Play players.

k05h3lk1n, on 18 April 2015 - 12:34 AM, said:

I stopped reading at this point.

I stopped caring about you as a person at this point.

[Roadbuster]

1) I log in to play around with big stompy robots and to have fun with friends. 100k-200k CB? Who cares?


2) We have a large number of events. Sometimes they are great, sometimes...not so. But they all offer nice rewards and get a lot of players online.


3) And if possible you'd like to get everything for free...
There are sales almost all the time. They include ALL mechs, not just the ones you deem crap.
We had sales on normal mechs, sales on hero mechs, sales on mechbays, sales on MC, get premium time for free every now and then,...
What else do you want?
Btw., making things too "easy" to get would defeat your 1) point.


4) "$120 for the Clan mech pack? Seriously? It's four lousy ******* mechs..."
Err, no. It's 12 mechs (4 of them give a 30% CB bonus), 12 mechbays, badges/titles, 60 days premium time...blablabla.
You don't have to buy any pack, because all these mechs can be bought with CB.
And regarding the $500 gold mechs...that's not for the content. It's if you want and can support the development of the game.
And it's more reasonable than a $18.000 pack of Star Citizen, no?


5) So, instead of CB we earn salvage parts. You can only salvage what you kill, so if you lose you earn less (same with CB).
Then you can get different stuff with the salvage parts which become more expensive depending on the complexity of the item. Like different CB prices?
Let's just change the word "C-Bills" to "Salvage-Points" and it's basically the same.

Also, getting much more than 50% back for selling stuff would again defeat yout 1) point.


6) The more mechs, the more variation. I'd rather not have a game were everyone plays the same 5 mechs.
And regarding maps...we just got 2 new CW maps and they work on improving some of the existing maps which grew too small for 12vs12 matches.

[Sandersson Jankins]

Frostiken, on 18 April 2015 - 12:51 AM, said:

If four people chew up a mech, three of them get an assist and one gets a kill. Six lottery tickets are handed out - two for the killer, two for the top assister, and one each to the two helpers. You could even get rid of the extra ticket for the top damage-dealer if you want to make it more fair. That sounds like a pretty even match to me.

Furthermore, it's not like you're going to be salvaging **** that you can't get by other means. There's pretty much no gameplay advantage to building salvage. It's there for two reasons: to give people little carrots to enjoy at the end of the round, and to compensate for how laughably **** the C-Bill rewards are. IF we aren't going to do this salvage system, then I pretty much would damage an immediate DOUBLING of all C-Bill rewards. The current reward levels are plain and simple complete ****, especially for Free-To-Play players.


I stopped caring about you as a person at this point.

So in this tentative system, if an enemy mech is destroyed, each mech that did ANY damage to him will have an equal chance of salvage? Good lord, man!

Forget the new players for a moment. The above-average players that thrive on earning winnings will be IRATE at that! Not only will you have newer players managing to splash an ML on a bad guy at 400m one time getting the same chance of a reward as the guy that did a massive majority of the damage? Even above that, you'll have scumbags picking the fastest light mech they can, equipping 1 ML or LL to it. They'll run around the map giving every bad guy they see the flashlight treatment a single time. That'd be the very best way to make money, unless you made salvage rewards so small they'd be pointless.

Now, I agree that a salvage system is a GOOD thing, implemented properly. Don't misunderstand that. I'm on your "side" more or less, given that you want to improve MWO as a whole. And I agree with you that salvage would not confer an in-game advantage to anyone, in the long run. That isn't the problem.

The implementation of the salvage system is the achille's heel, not the broad concept.

I'm strapped for time a bit (actually have to get work done around here at times), but please, I'd really like to see your response. Hell, we can hash out the very best salvage system possible right here on the forums!

...too bad we'll have to then tweet it in 140 characters or less over and over on twitter to see any chance of it working

[Frostiken]

Paigan, on 18 April 2015 - 12:18 AM, said:

Blah blah blah

Literally nothing you wrote had ****-all to do with anything. Great, you play EVE. Nobody cares. EVE isn't an FPS game trying to compete against other Free to Play FPS games. And Entropia? I had to look that up... are you serious? That's what you're going with? 99.999% of people have never even heard of that game, and a quick google suggests it's pretty much failing and has an outrageously tiny player count. Neither of these games are even in the same freaking GENRE.

Quote

Being a software developer myself, the "everything must be free" mentality of people really makes me aggressive at times.
We want to eat, too, you know.

You obviously are a pretty ****** software developer if you think you know better than, say, the billionaires who make mobile Free To Play games, or the billionaires at Valve, or the probably-not-billionaires-but-close at SOE. Yeah, there's a reason you guys are the code monkeys, and nobody asks you how to get players to play your game.

Seriously, you're comparing Mechwarrior Online, an FPS game that's supposed to be going to Steam and is going to be immediately noticed by thousands of players who have absolutely zero vested interest in Battletech and therefore no immediate reason to play it... to this?

[Frostiken]

Roadbuster, on 18 April 2015 - 12:58 AM, said:

1) I log in to play around with big stompy robots and to have fun with friends. 100k-200k CB? Who cares?

I'm not talking about people like you, who was already invested in the Mechwarrior franchise enough to drop $120 on the game before it was even out. I'm talking about attracting NEW PLAYERS TO THE GAME, people who don't know what the **** Mechwarrior is, don't give a **** about the lore, and I want to play a Free To Play game.

You already play this game. What you want and get out of the game is honestly completely irrelevant to this topic. What part of that do you not understand? There's some people on this forum who would literally play anything you slap the Battletech franchise on, and will fork over stupid amounts of money without a second thought. What they want or why they play a game doesn't matter, because you're going to get these idiots' money anyway. The point of this post is to make sure that as a F2P game, once it's opened up more to people who *aren't* a bunch of Mech-obsessed fanboys, that it will be able to keep and sustain players long enough to pry some money out of their hands.

Edited by Frostiken, 18 April 2015 - 01:11 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Frostiken, on 18 April 2015 - 01:05 AM, said:

I'm not talking about people like you, who was already invested in the Mechwarrior franchise enough to drop $120 on the game before it was even out. I'm talking about attracting NEW PLAYERS TO THE GAME, people who don't know what the **** Mechwarrior is, don't give a **** about the lore, and I want to play a Free To Play game.

You already play this game. What you want and get out of the game is honestly completely irrelevant to this topic. What part of that do you not understand? There's some people on this forum who would literally play anything you slap the Battletech franchise on, and will fork over stupid amounts of money without a second thought. What they want or why they play a game doesn't matter, because you're going to get these idiots' money anyway. The point of this post is to make sure that as a F2P game, once it's opened up more to people who *aren't* a bunch of Mech-obsessed fanboys, that it will be able to keep and sustain players long enough to pry some money out of their hands.

You know, you're a very negative person.

If you keep that attitude up, this thread will be locked or thrown into K town, just like your other one.


Probably for the better, you certainly aren't good for the new player experience, insulting every other person posting in this thread.

[Torgun]

Mcgral18, on 18 April 2015 - 01:12 AM, said:

You know, you're a very negative person.

If you keep that attitude up, this thread will be locked or thrown into K town, just like your other one.


Probably for the better, you certainly aren't good for the new player experience, insulting every other person posting in this thread.

While I agree he comes across overly aggressive at times, to be fair he's been replied to with a bunch of really irrelevant posts also which would frustrate most people.

OT: I don't really think PGI cares about attracting new players at this point, to be honest I'm not even sure they're really serious about going on Steam. But if they do it's most likely to just get some fresh noobs to make the player count a bit higher for all the 25 games when they get the cadet bonus and then quit because **** is way too grindy. This game is almost entirely funded by whales these days (the store prices have pretty much made it so) and as such all prices and designs will be based on what will make them keep tossing money at PGI. Nothing is ever going to change about that.

[Roadbuster]

Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

1) Add in daily log-in incentives. A major challenge for F2P games is just getting people to log in to begin with. They have all these other games to play, why play this one?
...
Not only does this get people to log in, but underperforming players can get a decent C-Bill income to upgrade their ****** mechs.
...
Really, once you have all the mechs you want upgraded how you want (which doesn't take too long, really), what else is there?
...
IF we aren't going to do this salvage system, then I pretty much would damage demand an immediate DOUBLING of all C-Bill rewards. The current reward levels are plain and simple complete ****, especially for Free-To-Play players.

I don't get it.

I agree that something else besides getting new mechs/modules (outside of CW) would be nice.
You're right when you say MWO needs something else to hook players.

But then you go on saying that things are too easy to get, and getting everything you want doesn't take long, followed by a demand to get more rewards because it takes too long or is too hard to get what you want?

[Sandersson Jankins]

Frostiken, on 18 April 2015 - 01:05 AM, said:

I'm not talking about people like you, who was already invested in the Mechwarrior franchise enough to drop $120 on the game before it was even out. I'm talking about attracting NEW PLAYERS TO THE GAME, people who don't know what the **** Mechwarrior is, don't give a **** about the lore, and I want to play a Free To Play game.

You already play this game. What you want and get out of the game is honestly completely irrelevant to this topic. What part of that do you not understand? There's some people on this forum who would literally play anything you slap the Battletech franchise on, and will fork over stupid amounts of money without a second thought. What they want or why they play a game doesn't matter, because you're going to get these idiots' money anyway. The point of this post is to make sure that as a F2P game, once it's opened up more to people who *aren't* a bunch of Mech-obsessed fanboys, that it will be able to keep and sustain players long enough to pry some money out of their hands.

Oh comon, you don't need to spend time on a petty argument about the broad picture. You claim to want to implement a salvage system. Could you look at my reply to you in the thread and make constructive criticism or a new proposal for salvage?

You're overly-aggressive to some posters, but that doesn't bother me much. You want the same thing I want; a good salvage system.

Let's make it, you belligerent ape! HELP ME STOP FIGHTING AND HELP ME. Hell, call me ANYTHING you'd like, I'll laugh it off, or even get mad if that's your desire! Just try and be helpful! All you're doing is telling people they're wrong, and why they're wrong, using semantics and concerning yourself with some vague ideals. Help me make a salvage system! SOS!

unless you prefer fighting, which is, of course, your choice

Edited by Sandersson Jankins, 18 April 2015 - 01:31 AM.