6 replies to this topic

[Gubernaut]

Hey I was wondering about the pay aspect of MWO. Are their some mechs and items that can only be bought with Mech Credits and can't be bought with Comstar Bills? Can you be competitive with grinding or is the disadvantage quite big with out paying?

[sycocys]

Yes there are a small amount of mechs only available for MC. They are no more (usually slightly to a bit less) competitive than the c-bill variants.

No purchasing is necessary for any aspect of the game. It's function is to speed up mech/weapon/upgrade acquisitions or to paint your mechs fancy colors.

So you can function perfectly fine without paying anything, premium time and mech packs will help you fill out your bays faster and they do support the game.

[coe7]

GreedyPoor, on 06 June 2015 - 02:37 PM, said:

Hey I was wondering about the pay aspect of MWO. Are their some mechs and items that can only be bought with Mech Credits and can't be bought with Comstar Bills? Can you be competitive with grinding or is the disadvantage quite big with out paying?

Yeah, completely. There is no real p2w aspect in MWO, because you can buy majority of the mechs in f2p and eventually all new hulls will become f2p hulls. You kinda need to buy some MC at one point or another to get mechbays, but we are talking small bucks there or you can gain your MC out of events or faction warfare. Requires a bit of effort, but not whole alot.

Simply put, you can't toss money at MWO to become good, you still need to play the game, unlock the chassis master skills, etc.

You buy the mechs for real money, because you enjoy the game and find the hull intresting / bonus items, such as colors or cockpit stuff are you thing, basicly to skill them up bit earlier than pure f2p. Or just out of pure support for the game.

In competitive leagues, only F2P mechs are allowed anyway.

Some stuff to read up:

http://raksarmory.bl...rgaming-vs.html

Info how to best use MC if you decide to get it:

http://metamechs.com...ng-c-bills-mwo/

Edited by coe7, 06 June 2015 - 02:54 PM.

[stealthraccoon]

But it's a lot of fun to toss money at MWO in order to suck fashionably ! (aka Urbanmech)

I throw money at the game because I lack the time to actually grind out much of anything - there are no super-ultra-mega-deathray weapons that are bought with cash - MC just makes it easier to play dress up with your dolls... err, I mean big manly stompy robots...

[Skarlock]

GreedyPoor, on 06 June 2015 - 02:37 PM, said:

Hey I was wondering about the pay aspect of MWO. Are their some mechs and items that can only be bought with Mech Credits and can't be bought with Comstar Bills? Can you be competitive with grinding or is the disadvantage quite big with out paying?

Long story short,

1. Hero mechs are permanently behind a paywall, but are not as good, or only equal to other mech variants generally. What they actually give you is bonus cbills per match, they aren't actually more powerful.

2. When new non-hero mechs come out, they are for real life money only, then later on for MC, then finally they go up for sale for cbills. Sometimes you can get custom skins or what not for pre-ordering, but they are cosmetic differences only from the variants that will be for sale at some point a few months down the road for cbills. So early adopters get mechs first, then later on everyone else can buy for cbills.

3. You do need mech bays to hold any mech you purchase, but you can get them for free by doing a lot of community warfare matches and getting your ranks. Ranks 2, 6, 10, 14, and 18 I think give free mech bays as rewards, so that's something like a potential 50 bonus mech bays for free. In addition, various events give the chance to win yet more mech bays. They are also really cheap if you want to buy them for a bit of rl money.

4. There are consumables (priority air/arty strike, advanced uav, etc) that you pay 2 cents (roughly) per use, but there is a pilot skill that upgrades the cbill variants to the same quality as the MC variants. It's a lot of GXP to save up, but it's possible, so again, you can grind it out or pay money, or pay money to convert mech xp to gxp.

5. Lastly, a lot of the holiday related events give small amounts of MC as a reward, so even if you don't want to pay for a hero mech, it is probably possible to get enough MC and save it up for a hero, eventually.

[Tarogato]

I joined a competitive unit and participated in competitive tournaments as a free-to-play player. I still am a free player. I own 35 mechs and counting, including a Hero mech and a few MC-only colours and camo patterns earned by playing weekend events and such.

It's completely possible, you just need to have a LOT of time on your hands.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Here are some answers for you:

1 - You can buy enough of any chassis to Master it via pure c-bills, though you might have to wait for a few months after they first go live on account of the early access packs.

2 - You can spend real money to buy Hero variants with unique paint (and sometimes geometry) and hardpoint configurations, but they're pretty much never must-have, though a few are performance outliers currently (the Huggin being the most famous one right now I'd say).

3 - MC makes the grind marginally faster, though stacking Hero or special preorder variant bonuses with Premium Time can speed it up significantly. Generally, though, you can run a pure free account without much trouble if you have a little patience and are halfway decent at the game. For example, I run a free-only Clan alt account, and was able to leverage sales and giveaways and rewards for event participation into 3 each of the Ryoken (Stormcrow) and Mad Cat (Timberwolf) mechs. If I spent more time on it I'd probably have some Lokis (Hellbringers) and/or Daishis (Dire Wolves) as well, but I play more on my IS main (this account) and so don't earn nearly as much as I could on my Clan account.

4 - It's possible to get c-bill consumables with exactly the same performance as the MC consumables, by means of spending GXP on the appropriate unlocks. I haven't ever used an MC consumable except for the free ones that I got in some of the events. At 40k c-bills per use, if you are't doing well at maximizing earnings then you'll find yourself stagnating or even losing money if you spam both consumable slots every match, but using them with care and finding your stride with the game can make it so you don't even notice the c-bill hit for using both consumables on a regular basis.