42 replies to this topic

[Mister Blastman]

Here's a controversial idea...

Pay 60 bucks... get the entire game!

[DAYLEET]

Tetra Winner, on 15 July 2015 - 10:55 PM, said:

The C-bill grind in this game is absolutely awful. With prices per mech the way they are now, new players will not be adopting this and sticking to it. They have no clue that the same C-Bills they want to purchase a bad-ass mech with will have to divert to engines, heatsinks, weapons and by the time they get into all that, suddenly buying a LIGHT in retrospect made more sense if they wanted to customize something different other than being locked to trials.

If PGI lowers MC prices for mechs, or increases C-Bill gain substantially; instead of contributing zero money since getting my Founder's pack, I would immediately buy more mechs with MC since I could then dedicate C-Bills to equipping them the way I want.

But really. Do you know how hard of a sell this game is for new players? If you could have seen my friend's face when I described how you need to purchase storage for mechs - he literally didn't understand it.
"Is the garage or whatever customizable? Can people visit it? " No.
"Can other players invade and shoot you or can you attack other people's bays?" No.
I had to explain it like this in League terms:
"You need to pay for Pulsefire Ezreal. On top of that, you need to pay for a closet to store his armor in."

Your packs could use discounts too. 90 dollars? You could get an entire special edition game, complete with multiplayer, stable servers for europeans and hundreds of hours. How about you guys calm down. Thanks, Piranha.

I wasnt going to discuss Cbills earning but realisticaly they have the same problem/impact the MC's have.

I believe that by starving the populace you are limiting the game potential and the community. If Cbills make it hard to get 3 mechs per week AND outfit them for new players then 3 things can happen.

1: They will pay cash for the flavor of the month that everyone is tired of seeing but you can't blame them because they want the best for their cash.
2: They are going to wait till they have enough cbills and then ask which is the best mech they should buy.
3: They will go away and wont return.

None of these options are optimal or gratifying.

There is so many mech to choose from now with so little choice when you are starved.

For me and a lot of the forum goers it's not a problem obviously. I don't spend cash in this game anymore, the cbills are good enough for me to buy 1 mech every week if i so choose. BUT thats mainly because i already bought all my mech with cash and i have a huge inventory of everything to chose from when i outfit mechs. I average good earning because ive played the game for 2 years and still own premium. I rarely feel the need to get new mech because i already own so much.

Im not gona renew premium time even thought it's very nice to have but not until the monetization has been revamped because right now premium isnt a substitute to buy mech with Mc's it's just for outfiting(so i guess i have to decide where i think my cash will be worth now because everything cost money in this game). The last mech i got was the Griffin because the ecm was on cbills option so i bought 3 Griffin with cbills, i completed my Crabs with cbills too and replaced my, now useless, HGN732 for the 732B. Now i would need to grind some CW for mechbays as i have 1 left. Or i could sell redundant, none prime clan mech. I have it pretty easy.

I would like new players to have more choice, i wish that buying 1 bundle of each class didnt cost over 28k(more than 100$) MC's only to have 12 mech. The new players are going to suck no mater what mech they buy, at least have them have the option to buy more mech easily so they learn more about the game and just have more fun and more choice instead of thinking that the game is too hard and leave.

Right now it's easy to see the game as nothing else but earning and efficacity and that's just wrong. I see people saying they play one game mode because it pays more, while thats insane for me, i never had to earn my cbills and i have to admit, when you are building your mech base, it's all about Cbills or MC's.

[DAYLEET]

StaggerCheck, on 16 July 2015 - 09:09 AM, said:

Long story short... there are customers you want to have, and customers you can live without. I'm thinking PGI has decided that they can survive with the whales and don't really need to cater to the zero-sum players who intend to only play for free. I.

I understand that the F2P industry is still in it's infancy, but whales die eventualy. Im pretty sure 2 generation of whales have already died in MWO with a third on it's last breath the 3rd Clan Invasion Wave.

RIP Founders Whales.
RIP After open beta Whales.

I could be wrong, but seeing how much mech they have been pumping last year didn;t feel like a golden age but more like a rush to get what you can from your customer base.

[DAYLEET]

Mister Blastman, on 16 July 2015 - 09:21 AM, said:

Here's a controversial idea...

Pay 60 bucks... get the entire game!

F2P model can't survive from 60 buck from everyone, but asking everyone 2k is not realistic either.

[JC Daxion]

Wronka, on 16 July 2015 - 06:12 AM, said:

After my first month I had realized I had already spend equal to what any new game costs. The only problem was, I still didn't really have anything. By the end of my first year I had spent over $200 for nothing more than premium time, various MC purchases paints/camos/etc, mechbays, and a few more hero mechs. $200 may sound like nothing to some of you (as I'm sure many have spent more than that for a single mechpack), but that $200 is roughly $16 a month, which is more than any monthly prescription based game I have ever played. And yet still I didn't have any mechs.
.

By more if you mean a dollar, then ok.. All the monthly sub games i ever played i paid 15 bucks a month, and spent literally 1000's of hours playing to buy things like armor, weapons, ships.. ect.. (that was SWG), if i just spent my 15 dollars, and did nothing, i would have nothing. In the case of city of heroes,, i spent nearly 300 hours getting a hero to max level.. you didn't earn things at least in the beginning, you just spent game play leveling, so in effect, your 15 dollars a month gave you nothing other than the ablity to play, and earn things.. Kinda like tthis with going just premium..

in the case of DDO, this is much more like this as you spent money, to buy content packs, (similar to mech packs), spend 50-60 bucks and a year of time and you can get a ton of stuff.. For around 100 bucks (just bought another 15 dollar MC package), I have 49 mechs, 6 heroes, maybe 15 paints i bought too, only one camo. Sure it took 2 years, but i had a ton of fun over that time I don't really think that is a bad deal..

Increase the c-bill grind i really don't see as a good idea, as it can take a long time for a semi casual player to earn 30m for modules on just a single mech, that means months for some players, doubling or trippling that makes no since.. Unless of course you increased the prices, but also increase the premium bonuses, but that would mean a revamp of the entire system, and i don't think that is really a good idea at this point. More options on sales would be a much better way to go IMO.

I don't really see an issue with making things slightly cheaper, especially on older stuff, or stuff considered "starter", Or giving bonuses to people that keep up monthly premium subs.. Buy a month, get a bonus mech bay, 2nd month, get a Standard paint of your choice, get a 3 month package add on a bonus mech, ect.., pay for 6 months get a hero.. that sorta stuff. It would give incentive for more people to spend on monthly subs, and earn mechs, which you learn to play, and learn each mech. They really are vastly different if you play a wide variety, and not just meta of the month

LordKnightFandragon, on 15 July 2015 - 08:05 PM, said:

Decrease in alot of the prices, both MC and Cbill. MWO inflated the costs by fooling us into believing we are buying 3 mechs, when really its just 1 copy pasted 3 times. THen make the cbill prices and in game grind significantly higher then it really needs to be just because I guess they didnt know what they really were trying to do with this game besides get rich off the fanatical devotion alot of us have for a shiny new mech game.

CLan mechs, 10-15 for 1 mech would be cool. IS mechs, much the same.

Cbill earnings in game need to go up by about 2x-3x.

This game for the most part is a joke. ITs improving, but its obviously just a quick money grab for PGI.

Bad idea on increase the c-bill grind as i stated above.. but mechs already cost less than 10-15 dollars for many, espeically on sale, you can get many for half that.

If ya think the game is a joke though, maybe it is time you take a break.. from what i have noticed on many of your recent posts, you seam pretty unhappy with the game over all. Maybe your not i dunno, but it sure does come across that way.

I hardly see this game as a "cash grab" a word that is so over used, and tossed around on every forum everywhere.. Goto a movie spend 15 bucks, it is a good time for 2 hours,, ask for 15 on a game you could play for 50 or 100... Instant Cash grab! We got a pretty darn fun game that is 3 years old, and really just a tiny bit longer than that in development. most games don't even see the light of day before 3-4 years.. Perhaps come back in 1-2, and maybe it will have enough to keep you satisfied. Maybe i am crazy, but i only play games i really enjoy and make me happy..

DAYLEET, on 16 July 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

F2P model can't survive from 60 buck from everyone, but asking everyone 2k is not realistic either.

Actually, most FTP games, get around 5% or so of the people to actually spend a dime, so if everyone paid 60 bucks, this game would have tons of revenue.


and just remember 180 per year was industry standard for any online game, that had constant updates (no i'm not counting starcraft, or peir to peir, im talking games that run servers and such) It was like that till just a few years ago, and it survived like that for well over 15 years

Edited by JC Daxion, 16 July 2015 - 10:07 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

DAYLEET, on 16 July 2015 - 09:53 AM, said:

F2P model can't survive from 60 buck from everyone, but asking everyone 2k is not realistic either.

But it can!

Let us host our own servers and make our own maps. Bam! That cuts their costs tremendously.

[Elizander]

DAYLEET, on 15 July 2015 - 05:41 PM, said:

Cutting prices don't mean slicing your own throath as a business. It means you sell more, it means you become more popular and sell even more. At least that's the whole point.

As much as I'd like this to be the ideal it's not always the case. Some games rely heavily on whales and reducing whale revenue will pretty much make you earn less than you would have. This is based on real experience with game publishing and mobile games as well.

Games that limit the prices to low and not accommodate whale potential earn much less if they don't have the millions and millions of players which PGI does not have. You can sell peanuts and get rich if you had a billion customers, but MWO is primarily whale driven.

A whale will buy something if the max price is $5 or $240. You sell it for $5 will it guarantee that you will get 48 other people to pay you $5 for every whale that you have? Not likely and you lost the extra money that the whale was willing to pay for fun shinies. The sad truth is that whales can easily overwhelm dolphins and minows in terms of what they earn for the company. It won't even be a surprise to me if half of PGI's overall revenue is from whales alone.

I do agree they need some cheaper options, but the pre-order pack prices will probably stay that way.

[DAYLEET]

Mister Blastman, on 16 July 2015 - 10:17 AM, said:

But it can!

Let us host our own servers and make our own maps. Bam! That cuts their costs tremendously.

Servers and bandwith cost next to nothing. The people working on the game cost a lot.

[DAYLEET]

JC Daxion, on 16 July 2015 - 10:03 AM, said:

Actually, most FTP games, get around 5% or so of the people to actually spend a dime, so if everyone paid 60 bucks, this game would have tons of revenue.

I guess the industry needs to change if only 5% give them a dime.

But all unrelated numbers apart, We both know it's impossible to not pay a dime with MWO, only recently could you get free mechbays. Just look around, how many mech do you see without visual customisation per game? 2 or 3 all (C). I think if PGI was to tell us how much cash they have in the bank you would fall over your chair, but that's no reason to think everything is fine and more imporantly thats no reason to think it can't get better. Sure changing the pricing model it would be a scary thing to do, it works right now, maybe they lack the faith that it can work better.

[Water Bear]

Alistair Winter, on 15 July 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

TL;DR.

But I agree with the statement in the thread title. A cut in MC price is in order, as the game will be 3 years old soon.

There's really something to be said for making one's posts as concise as possible. If a paragraph can be made into a short sentence, do it.

[Thunder Child]

I'm all for a reduction in the MC cost of individual chassis. The Mastery packs should stay as they are, because you get a Hero, a Champion, a normal, and all the Mechbays to go with it. Maybe add some Premium as well, a week if they don't have it.

[Trev Firestorm]

I typed this up once already but the forums logged me out and deleted it upon posting:

Why not do a step-down of price for older mechs and/or unpopular mechs... say 6 months to a year after cbill release the price drops to 75% then a year later 50%... This way there are some cheaper options for newer players but if you want the new hotness or the most popular mechs, pay the premium. (% just examples, actual tweaking surely needed... or just many more frequent and predictable sales)

Also cbill rewards need an overhaul for more reasons than just the costs in-game.

Edited by Trev Firestorm, 16 July 2015 - 02:32 PM.

[Conan Librarian]

Many bugs and lack of standard features, slow addition of new features and wonky balancing would be enough to kill any other shooter/sim.

But PGI has rights to good IP with many well-paid adult fans and a great mech design team. So they made a game focused on "milking whales" with low effort. They don't want to compete with other AAA titles - they know they can't.
(If you disagree with me here - please compare MWO, even in current state, with MW: Living Legends mod that was made by a couple of pizza-fueled MW fans in their free time, for free)

This is more collectors game than a shooter - without IP and good mechs this game would be sooooo dead long time ago.


Don't get me wrong, the game is heading in the right direction but it takes so frigging long to get simple features - all while players pay triple or more times more money for content than in finished AAA title.


In that state, I'd be very surprised if PGI changed anything about MC prices. Sadly.

Edited by Groovy4life, 16 July 2015 - 03:11 PM.

[keith]

about mc prices. they should lower prices on mechs that have been out for a while, kinda like moba. i will use the frist mechs in the game as an example. hunchy, jenner cata, dragon and atlas. the first 5 mechs in the game should have their mc prices dropped by X amount. even if they lower those mechs prices by 50% if someone drops MC on them it would be enough to get 20+bucks out of them. thats a great intro to this game, and those mechs are not bad

[DAYLEET]

I understand the logic behind lowering the price of old mech, it seems other f2p games are doing just that.

But no. Everything is for sale in this game, Mech, Hangar space, Time, Camo/pattern customisation and colors to go with it, cockpit item, EVERYTHING. Reduce ALL mc prices by half because we already are supposed to pay for everything, we already are in any case.

[Mister Blastman]

DAYLEET, on 16 July 2015 - 01:05 PM, said:

Servers and bandwith cost next to nothing. The people working on the game cost a lot.

Err no, servers cost quite a bit when you have a really small development team...

[lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]

Joseph Mallan, on 16 July 2015 - 02:13 AM, said:

But thats collectors for you.

Same goes for MW:O.

"*GASP* A new mech pack is coming out! Ooooooh if I pre-purchase in advance I get the full pack, I get horns, and paint jobs, and premium game time, and mech bays! *throwthrowthrow*"

"Wow I hate these mechs! The balance is all wrong, quirks are wrong, and other mechs can do just as well as the mechs I bought if not better... why did I pay fo.... OOOOOH A NEW MECH PACK! *throwthrowthrowthrow*"

I mean, seriously, I doubt that this game wouldn't have gotten this far if it wasn't for pokemech collectors. I bought a few mech packs in faith that things would change and get better at a reasonable pace and scale, especially after IGP left the building (because I felt things would improve both developmentally and price economy wise.)

Personally, I don't feel the "value" they do with their pricing and with what I'm getting in return, so I won't pre-purchase again, nor pay money for services. I agree with Day Leet about pricing, but I don't believe PGI sees things that way... as they've had a LOT of time to adjust EVERYTHING after IGP left, and after Transverse crowdfunding failed (which with all due respect was a huge tell in how I believe they see business modeling and the over-value of their product.)

But bottom line, is if reliable collectors people continue to give the company enough money to meet whatever number to keep PGI overhead satisfied... then they aren't likely to concern themselves with making any/all their digital IP affordable for poor money impaired folk.

TL:DR
Would I like to see prices come down? Yes, I think their value is hyper inflated.
Do I think it will happen? No, too many people throw money at the current business model to convince PGI to do otherwise.

Edited by 00ohDstruct, 16 July 2015 - 06:23 PM.

[Ace Selin]

Problem

StaggerCheck, on 16 July 2015 - 09:09 AM, said:

...

Maybe all true, but i also think that many of the whales that got the initial mechs packs due to needing more mechs for different things and as variety is the spice of life, have had their fill, except collectors, because when you have 120-200+ mechs after buying 5 packs, many wont need another 12 mechs or anymore at all (because of mechs having overlapping styles and weight classes & as you can only use so many at a time). So finding more whales isnt as easy as getting many people to pay for a lot of smaller / less costly items, when the old whales are no longer buying.

[DAYLEET]

Ace Selin, on 16 July 2015 - 06:39 PM, said:

Problem
Maybe all true, but i also think that many of the whales that got the initial mechs packs due to needing more mechs for different things and as variety is the spice of life, have had their fill, except collectors, because when you have 120-200+ mechs after buying 5 packs, many wont need another 12 mechs or anymore at all (because of mechs having overlapping styles and weight classes & as you can only use so many at a time). So finding more whales isnt as easy as getting many people to pay for a lot of smaller / less costly items, when the old whales are no longer buying.

And like i said, it was fine at first because there was few mech, few of everything. The price reflected that. They were also funding the base of the game and couldnt realy hope for a broader public. When asked about more publicity, Russ has said that his public, battletech fan, already knew about the game(ie more pub would be useless). We know population is starting to grow because we now have servers in other country and that's a good thing. Maybe it's Battletech fan that waited to get in and i expect those to more readily spend like we mostly all did. I don't think the current model can ever appeal to any one else though and i consider that a problem. To me, that says small vision about the game and i don't like that. There is hundreads of mech to be bought, with tons of colors and tons of vanity item. Do they realy only hope that a few people will buy a few things? as opposed to try and hope to have everyone wanting everything your game has to offer? The more mech everyone has, the more diversity we will see and the more enjoyable the game will be.

[Karamarka]

camo prices are ridiculous

cosmetic price is ridiclous

you think people buy this stuff in bulk when its so expensive? nope

I bought the clan wave 1 and wave 2 packs.

Wave 2 came with the faction camos, 4 for each chassis.

If i were to buy the exact same camos, for my wave 1 mechs. It would cost me 48,000 MC.

Or 12,000 MC per faction, for all 8 chassis.

no way.

Still waiting for PGI to give wave 1 owners their free faction camos that they said would be retroactive with wave 2.