68 replies to this topic

[plaguebreath]

First of all sorry for my bad english, today I've been looking at my stats on profile and take a closer look to my banked hours that's about 672 hours so 28 days. As I am founder I already wasted 28 days of premium because offcurse I did not played all the days together but just 2 hours for some days. Based on that I suppose I will never activate my premium time and nor will buy anymore of it. Based on that assumtion and on the fact that I'm sure I'm not the only one that have not much time to play MWO as I would like to, why not change the way Premium Time work ? You deduct Premium Time just if player effectively log on game (24 hours starting from time player log in at day ?)
Change Value of Premium Time, you sell pack with hours: 24 hours, 168 hours ecc .... you will improve the quantity of players that will buy premium time and will be good fix for all the waste done till now. If anyone have other suggestions write here and let's see if someone high up in PGI read about it.

[WarHippy]

This topic comes up from time to time, and boils down to two different view points. One group sees premium time as a subscription that you buy for ~$15 a month that should keep ticking away regardless of if you are playing or not, and the other group pretty much wants to be able to milk every last second out of the premium time. Neither side is wrong exactly, but neither side is particularly willing to budge on their view.

For me I am fine with the way it is, and while I see the benefit of having premium time only ticking away while I am playing I also understand that the price would need to drastically go up to cover it. As an example you have 28 days of premium time but you only play a couple hours a day. If it only counted when you played it would last for 336 days. That is nearly a year of premium time for less than $15. Do you really consider that a good idea?

[Yellonet]

As a customer I'd be pretty stupid if I said I wanted it to keep ticking while I'm not playing the game.
But to be honest I don't really care that much to make a fuss about it.

[MeiSooHaityu]

I don't particularly like how Premium Time ticks away when not used, so I don't purchase it directly (any PT I have was won or came with a mech package).

Mostly I don't feel I play enough to warrant buying it, because if I did, it wouldn't be much of a value for how little I'd use it.

That being said, the cost PGI charges for Premium Time probably takes into account the average player's active play time. If they were to change the cost model for only active time usage, the cost of PT would have to go up multiple times over to earn them the same amount it does now. This is because it lasts much longer so people buy it much less. Either that, or the same prices get you far less time. Regardless, if the price model changed, it wouldn't be giving the player drastically more value. Basically, you are going to be paying about the same one way or the other. Its more options that equal out to about the same in the long run on average. You would probably be better off with the straight time and playing the heck out of the game lol.

Clearly the more you play, the more you use and the better the value. That is why I don't buy it (poor value for me), but someone who plays a lot might get more out of it. In either case, it is just something the consumer needs to weigh in their head and figure out whether they play enough so that PT is worth it to them.

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 31 August 2015 - 12:01 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

I wish I could activate banked time in one day or one week squirts.

[TLBFestus]

I did the math awhile ago, and it's possible for PGI to offer "online only" premium time for the equivalent cost to the player is the current "always on" premium time that they offer now.

Keep in mind that the simple calculations I would NOT lose PGI any money, and should make them money. I have no idea, other than they just aren't interested, why they don't look into it to expand the paying customer base.

Here it is;

Quote

Yeah, no way that they would sell premium time in it's current form as an "only active when online" function. As someone pointed out that is 168 hours of game time for a week, and about 700 hours per month. Buy one month and you've got 700 hours to burn.

If they did that they would have to step up "Mechs for Sale" production to ludicrous levels (This..is ...a ....joke)!


Now.....if they wanted to offer different Premium time Options it could look like this;

• Regular Premium time as it currently exists, continual run down to zero in blocks of 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year
  
• "Online Only" Active Premium time which only runs when logged in. Naturally it would sell for the same price per block, but the hours you get would be drastically REDUCED.

Just for arguments sake, assume that the average player plays 2 hours a night, every night. That's 14 hours a week. On average there are 4.2 weeks in a month, which is 58.8 hours a month, or 705.6 hours a year.]

Basing this on 25000 MC, for $100 (best deal) , meaning 250 MC per DOLLAR and then round everything to make it easy and they could sell "Online" Premium time for;

2 hours for 250 MC or $1 (equivalent to 1 day non-stop)

15 hours for 1850 MC or $7.50 (equivalent to 7 days non-stop)

60 hours for 7500 MC or $30 (equivalent to 1 month non-stop)

180 hours for 22,500 MC or $90 (equivalent to 3 months non-stop)]

750 hours for 40,000 MC or $175 (equivalent to 1 year non-stop)

]For the math geeks in the crowd, these are ROUGH figures based on 125 MC per Hour, based on 2 hours per day playing time, and then tweaked a little for "volume discount" effects.

I'm sure that these numbers would need some serious adjustment by someone with more math skills than I , but at least it puts things into some perspective and acts as a jumping off point for discussion.

Obviously I don't know if 2 hours per day is a good average or not, for some it will be too little and others too much, but therein lies the benefit of offering the option to buy it in the current "always active" blocks if you are a hardcore, live in your moms basement, wife divorces you and you don't even notice it kinda guy.

Assuming the numbers are tweaked correctly and they would need some good statistics, which I'm sure PGI has, to tweak them appropriately, they would not lose any money.

People would have MORE options, and PGI would likely have more income.

Edited by TLBFestus, 31 August 2015 - 11:57 AM.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

WarHippy, on 31 August 2015 - 11:21 AM, said:

This topic comes up from time to time, and boils down to two different view points. One group sees premium time as a subscription that you buy for ~$15 a month that should keep ticking away regardless of if you are playing or not, and the other group pretty much wants to be able to milk every last second out of the premium time. Neither side is wrong exactly, but neither side is particularly willing to budge on their view.

PGI should probably consider selling both types.

[plaguebreath]

WarHippy, on 31 August 2015 - 11:21 AM, said:

If it only counted when you played it would last for 336 days. That is nearly a year of premium time for less than $15. Do you really consider that a good idea?

Offcurse I am talking about future purchase of premium time. Maybe u not see it as waste but I just give my opinion about it.

[Torezu]

Perhaps, but then you would hear the loudest complaining yet recording on the forums about matchmaker wait times...

[Kubernetes]

Yeah I've never purchased premium time precisely because it's always running. On my days off I can pilot maybe 8 hours at most. That means I can only use 1/3 of any day's premium time. If I could run it in 4-hour blocks I would be way more inclined to buy it.

[AlphaToaster]

TLBFestus, on 31 August 2015 - 11:49 AM, said:

I did the math awhile ago, and it's possible for PGI to offer "online only" premium time for the equivalent cost to the player is the current "always on" premium time that they offer now.

Keep in mind that the simple calculations I would NOT lose PGI any money, and should make them money. I have no idea, other than they just aren't interested, why they don't look into it to expand the paying customer base.

Here it is;

Along this same line, they can also do single game, Premium Shots, call it 40mc single use consumable that grant's premium bonus for that one game. Used the same way as other mc consumables. Pilot has to trigger it before mech death or game's end to count.

[Felbombling]

If you buy premium time at the worst possible rate, I think it works out to $1.40 a day. Asking PGI to break that down by the hour is basically asking them to keep track of multiple $0.06 increments.

[plaguebreath]

Well I not think it will be a so impossible task, btw we talking of add more money to their wallet

[Kira Onime]

I just wish I had more options to active it instead of just 30days or all of it.

[KodiakGW]

Mister Blastman, on 31 August 2015 - 11:46 AM, said:

I wish I could activate banked time in one day or one week squirts.

I don't think that 7 day activations is to too far out of the realm of possibility. I rarely can commit to being able to take advantage of a full month of premium time. It is needed for so much when it comes to private matches. Maybe you want to get together with some friends who want to try out the game before they are thrown to the PUG and CW ROFLSTOMP groups. Also, most league teams need a few that can run premium so they can set the proper game parameters.

I mean, they give 7 days banked as the Premium time in Medium mech level of every pack. So why not 7 day activations?

[FupDup]

I wouldn't mind PGI charging me for things I'm not using (aka PT while not playing) if it actually had a much stronger effect WHILE I was actually using it. As it is now...meh.

[sycocys]

I've got almost 7,000 hours banked. Had more decided to use some for my summer vacation then last minute I got assigned some work out of town.

The current system is pretty terrible if you don't have the opportunity to play a few hours every day, at least with a subscription game I could just put it on hold for the extended periods of time I couldn't be around to use the service.

[Lorian Sunrider]

The fact that they effectively hide how to activate only 30 days of premium time per set is ********.

Shows that they are using it as a shameless cash grab.

I don't mind paying a subscription. But be upfront about it.

[Zeoraimer]

7 days activation of banked Premium Time would be nice.

I just activated 30 days of my 6 months banked PT, but only because of the event covered a bank holiday weekend. I'll probably only use it another 3 times - the next 3 weekends...

[Lykaon]

plaguebreath, on 31 August 2015 - 11:12 AM, said:

First of all sorry for my bad english, today I've been looking at my stats on profile and take a closer look to my banked hours that's about 672 hours so 28 days. As I am founder I already wasted 28 days of premium because offcurse I did not played all the days together but just 2 hours for some days. Based on that I suppose I will never activate my premium time and nor will buy anymore of it. Based on that assumtion and on the fact that I'm sure I'm not the only one that have not much time to play MWO as I would like to, why not change the way Premium Time work ? You deduct Premium Time just if player effectively log on game (24 hours starting from time player log in at day ?)
Change Value of Premium Time, you sell pack with hours: 24 hours, 168 hours ecc .... you will improve the quantity of players that will buy premium time and will be good fix for all the waste done till now. If anyone have other suggestions write here and let's see if someone high up in PGI read about it.

A simple break down of 24 hours.

I am human so I need to sleep 8 hours of 24 used

I also require food and other biological neccesities 10 hours of 24 used

I don't get to have internet a home and food for free I work 18 hours of 24 used

But wait I don't live where I work I need to commute to work 20 hours of 24 used

I now have time to play mechwarrior I have 4 hours of premium time left on the clock

I click launch and watch the search widget spin for 5 minutes

I enter a match that lasts 5 minutes

Effective average use of 24 hours of premium time is 2 hours on a good day.

Less than 10% of premium time is actually used by an average consumer

Edited by Lykaon, 31 August 2015 - 03:04 PM.