First off: you have to remember that PGI need to make money through sales of this game. This is essential to the rest of the discussion.
PGI have decided to make money by NOT selling a whole game in a one off purchase and by NOT selling blocks of content in large packs. This means the money has to come from somewhere else, mostly through steady, smaller payments.
"Free-To-Play" is the generic term for this, however it's a really misleading term. A far better thing to think of is "a defered payment strategy".
You also have to remember that every person playing without buying is a drain on their resources and their sales. So any freebie given out has to be made up for elsewhere as it isn't a neutral event but a negative sale. This means freebies have to either be something that drives that non-buyer into becoming a buyer or that gets buyers to buy more. Anything else is a loss on the financial balance sheet, and that balance sheet has to show an overall profit or PGI go broke.
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? 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.
Firstly: they already have one, it's the "First Victory Of The Day" reward and it's already modified by being a member. Could it be higher? Quite possibly. But to say they don't have one is a bit disingenuouse. Secondly the bigger those rewards the more sales are from them, because there is less incentive to get CBills through a paid method (membership multiplier, MC, CBill bundles, MC only mechs). Basically at the moment you get, say, a 50th of a mech from your daily log in. That's a 50th of a mech sale that PGI have given away (50th less need for members, 50th less need for MC purchase etc). If it were doubled to being a 25th of a mech that also doubles the extra lose for PGI, so they have to make that up somewhere else. Which could be higher cost of members, or the higher need for members, or of MC only items. You have to ask yourself "which one of these do I want to go up?"
You also have to remember that the games that give out bigger daily login bonuses tend to be for more solo player games, where the aim is to get people to log in by habit and spend a couple of minutes following a progression path to get their "oooh, I done good" fix. They tend not to be active engagement games like MWO, and they tend to be aimed at hooking "whales" (industry term for the small minority of players who spend the bulk of the cash) who will pay to progress or pay to win to get their fix. MWO is not a solo game, so you have the problems of a bigger login reward unbalancing progression and needing a slowdown elsewhere.
BTW by having that "you need a win to get your reward" criteria bonus you encourage people to stay in game longer and play more rounds. This is really important as it helps keep more people around and playing, so the folks that are playing just to play (who are more likely to have members or spend cash) have something to shoot at. If it's a 'log in, hit button, get a portion of a mech, log out' reward then less people in the queue.
Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:
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.
This would kill sales and attract a heck of a lot of people who don't make purchases. The current approach is mostly to give away mechs, which lead to further sales (one mech needs two other mechs to be able to max it out). Or its to highlight content which people aren't playing that much, to get more people playing it and leads to more spending.
Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:
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'.
Again, they have regular sales on. What you actually mean is "reduce the price on the mech I want", and I can understand that. But how will you make up the money that PGI didn't make from you in that instace? Also what incentive do they have for making the low cash item (MC) further reduce the amount of money they can make off the MC user? I know these are just pixles so the replication costs are nothing (other than the continued development, the promotion, the servers, etcetc) but they still need to make $X per person from the game.
Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:
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).
Again, where are they going to make up the sales from? And if people are giving out $120 for packs then what incentive do PGI have to lower the price? If the sales of them are too low then the price will go down, but at the moment it's where it is because it works and keeps PGI ticking along. Most of the mechs eventually become cbill purchases, so what people are paying for is the speedier access rather than the mech themselves.
As for the $500 gold mechs: yeah, and? There are far more expensive items available in other games, and those don't come with $250 of other stuff on top. I wouldn't personally spend $250 on a skin, but if others did then it's hardly different to other daft things people have happily spent their money on.
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. Furthermore, there's no real 'hook' to the game, things to work towards.
There is a major reason to play matches: they are fun. There is also, as you have identified, the incentive to get more CBills to buy 'better' mechs to then play matches in. If the basic game isn't fun / there is "zero reason to actually play matches" then maybe the game isn't all that hot to begin with.
Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:
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?
Again, this would lose sales from elsewhere. I'm not seeing where they are supposed to be made up from.
Frostiken, on 17 April 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:
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.
If there are more than enough mechs why do people keep on asking for more? If people are asking for more and are willing to pay over cash for early access to these mechs what incentive is there for PGI to stop making them?
Now, if maps are your thing then how much would you be willing to spend on access to them? Because, as said before, PGI need to make their dollar off of you, so would you be wiling to pay for that bit? Because whatever proposition you are putting forward has to include where the money is coming from or it will not happen. As, like it or not, PGI need to keep the money coming in to keep the game ticking over so that people can have the Free-To-Play experience that you think needs protecting.
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