99 replies to this topic

[Tarogato]

Ordinarily I compare MWO to World of Tanks because they are identical style games. But what's the point in comparing two games that are so ridiculously grindy? I would say that World of Tanks is much worse than MWO and it's even P2W to boot, yet it's still an extraordinarily popular game with one of the highest populations in the online gaming industry at the moment and it's been around for a quite a long time now.

*shrug*

[Summer Gleeson]

At times the grind can feel a lot worse than it is. Overall however, it doesn't even resemble a nightmare.

I am however a big fan of all the MC only rewards and premium time PGI all but gives away quite regularly for every silly challenge that can be completed half sleep while cooking dinner. Certainly makes things much better when you're a weekend warrior for xp and C-bills.

[XX Sulla XX]

It depends on your style of game play etc. If you do not feel the need to master every single mech that helps. If you spend at least some money on mech packs that helps. If you look for deals that helps. And even if you spend no money on the game as long as you are smart of have time its fine.

[Felbombling]

The grind in MW: O is a total breeze compared to games like World of Tanks or War Thunder. Different, for sure, but a breeze by comparison.

[MischiefSC]

Hasn't seemed that bad lately. Steady sense of progression, constantly upgrading my gear, I feel like side-grade changes are a worthwhile expenditure of time.

Oh, wait. I've been playing Payday 2 and Fallout 4 for the last month or so. That's why it's been so cool.

The grind in MW:O feels arbitrary as ****. It's designed around you buying mech packs. Without mech packs or premium time it's pretty sucky.

[Dr Marie Delacroix]

I decided to start this alt account to see how the NPE was and the cbill grind for me wasn't too horrendous. What did get me was the GXP. Fortunately the double xp weekend helped.

So far I have 3 Hellbringers (mastered), 2 Arctic Cheetos (mastered, sold 3rd one off), and 2 Ebon Jaguar.

For modules, I have 3 Seismic sensor, 1 Radar Deprivation (can't equip yet because it's a staggering 15k gxp), 1 large pulse cooldown, and 3 gauss cooldown.

What really helped me was the free premium time being given away and the fact I'm not a complete potato when it comes to playing the game. I did cheat a bit and used the free mc to get some gxp converted. The two trials I used the most was the timberwolf and thunderbolt.

*Bonus: Also killed a gold timberwolf, he was a LRM boat.

Edited by Dr Marie Delacroix, 29 November 2015 - 05:56 PM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

The last patch (or maybe the one just prior, but I think it was the last one) made several significant improvements, adding rewards that didn't exist prior, and boosting many other rewards (with a slight reduction for killing blow payouts, which is fine with me). I've noticed maybe a ~20% increase in income, which makes it a lot more comfortable to grind c-bills, even on my alt accounts sans any mech bonuses or Premium Time.

My smurf account has been levelling T-Bowls, and I'd been afraid that it'd take forever to earn enough for a third with upgrades, but after the reward rework, and with the event handing out PT, I managed to pick up my third far sooner than expected.

[El Bandito]

Cavale, on 29 November 2015 - 02:23 PM, said:

We just doubled rewards, like, a month ago.

It's good now.

Doubled the rewards...hahahaha! Oh wait, are you serious?

Dr Marie Delacroix, on 29 November 2015 - 05:55 PM, said:

I decided to start this alt account to see how the NPE was and the cbill grind for me wasn't too horrendous. What did get me was the GXP. Fortunately the double xp weekend helped.

So far I have 3 Hellbringers (mastered), 2 Arctic Cheetos (mastered, sold 3rd one off), and 2 Ebon Jaguar.

For modules, I have 3 Seismic sensor, 1 Radar Deprivation (can't equip yet because it's a staggering 15k gxp), 1 large pulse cooldown, and 3 gauss cooldown.

What really helped me was the free premium time being given away and the fact I'm not a complete potato when it comes to playing the game. I did cheat a bit and used the free mc to get some gxp converted. The two trials I used the most was the timberwolf and thunderbolt.

YOU ARE NOT A NEW PLAYER. Your experience is not NPE. New players are not gonna kick ass and take C-Bills right away. They instead will likely die early on, and fast.

Veterans who are creating a new account should never speak for newbies.

Edited by El Bandito, 29 November 2015 - 06:01 PM.

[Foxwalker]

Dr Marie Delacroix, on 29 November 2015 - 05:55 PM, said:

I decided to start this alt account to see how the NPE was and the cbill grind for me wasn't too horrendous. What did get me was the GXP. Fortunately the double xp weekend helped.

So far I have 3 Hellbringers (mastered), 2 Arctic Cheetos (mastered, sold 3rd one off), and 2 Ebon Jaguar.

For modules, I have 3 Seismic sensor, 1 Radar Deprivation (can't equip yet because it's a staggering 15k gxp), 1 large pulse cooldown, and 3 gauss cooldown.

What really helped me was the free premium time being given away and the fact I'm not a complete potato when it comes to playing the game. I did cheat a bit and used the free mc to get some gxp converted. The two trials I used the most was the timberwolf and thunderbolt.

*Bonus: Also killed a gold timberwolf, he was a LRM boat.

Wait, all that in an Alt account? I guess you used actual cash, cause just the 3 Loki mechs cost around 40 Million C Bills. I am not sure how you did it, but maybe we are not talking about the same thing. I think of a new person just getting in and trying to level up mechs with no initial $$$ investment to see if they liked the game.

You are right the grind is not so bad if you infuse a boatload of cash into the game. But as el Bandito said, it is hard to compare yourself to a new player, as you know what to buy and second it is hard to compare a purchased grind to one with zero dollar input.

[Parmeggido]

My brothers and I thought we would try Perfect World International a couple years ago. As the one with the most time, I tried to get some of the crafting skills going to make sure we had decent gear. Here's how that system worked. You make stuff, you get crafting xp, and level up after every few items. No problem, easy enough. Then, you start needing better and more materials to make stuff, including combined materials that eat up several others, so you now need 10-15 things per item, up from 3-6, and the drop rates on a lot of the stuff are just bad. This is compounded by the fact that as you level up and leave the same level range as the monsters, it decreases the drop chances. So fine, whatever, it's definitely grindy, but doable. Then, you hit the crafting level where you must complete a quest to reach the next level. For the quest, you have to craft 3 items, each one a special extra rare variant of it's base item that only has a low % chance to appear with every attempt. So in order to level the skill, you have to spend hours gathering materials to make other materials to make items that may not be the appropriate rarity, forcing you start all over again. I gave up.

Now, let's compare that to MWO. Repair and Rearm are gone, so the only time you lose money is if you waste consumables. While it may be slow at times, you can at least make progress with every match if you've got something you're trying to get. Sure, finding out a mech is really bad can be awful, but I've never felt like I was going backwards or completely wasting my time here.

Maybe the PWI experience was just so bad that anything else seems great, or playing what are now older rpgs, like Grandia, Suikoden, some of the Phantasy Star series, and Star Ocean the Second Story, to name a few, have inured me against general grindiness.

[Bishop Steiner]

Well, it's certainly not bad since the last patch or so, when the Paulconomy was finally broken. In less than a week of moderate play started a new acct, and bought 3 victors, and semi upgraded them, all using in game currency.

[El Bandito]

Tarogato, on 29 November 2015 - 04:24 PM, said:

Ordinarily I compare MWO to World of Tanks because they are identical style games. But what's the point in comparing two games that are so ridiculously grindy? I would say that World of Tanks is much worse than MWO and it's even P2W to boot, yet it's still an extraordinarily popular game with one of the highest populations in the online gaming industry at the moment and it's been around for a quite a long time now.

*shrug*

Cause far more players care about being a badass in WWII--where they can relate more easily, than being a badass in 31st Century Inner Sphere.

[fogsworth]

New player here.

The mech leveling system is a turn off. I mastered Sparky after 2 weeks of binge gaming and shudder to think about the effort required to repeat this process 2 or 8 more times to become elite. It's not fun to level a mech that you didn't want in the first place and plus the mech load outs aren't very powerful. To improve the loadout with a double heat sinks or an XL engine would delay the purchase of the next mech. I'd be interested to know how many people give up. Also, my apologies for joining games with my unmodified GRF-1N.

Also, this three kinds of currency (c-bill/MC/cash) thing is the old free-to-play model. The new model is heroes of the storm. One, earnable, in-game currency (gold) and then use plain cash to instant-purchase things. There's no MC equivalent.

MC is predatory because always some is left in the bank and you have to buy a lot at once to get a good rate. It's one sided: the customer always leaves MC on the table (doesn't receive full value), but Piranha never leaves cash on the table. The Heroes of the Storm model is fair to both sides and completely transparent, since you pay in dollars. I shouldn't need a spreadsheet to figure out how much something costs.

IMO the new player experience and economic model should be re-evaluated to be more fun and transparent. Things are moving the right direction with the gift shop and steam store.

Despite my gripes, the game itself is really fun after you get used to not walking where you are looking, but it's close to being overshadowed by the economic model. In Heroes of the Storm I was aware of the economic model, but it was always in the background. It didn't seem to affect my enjoyment of the game. Goals felt attainable. Plus, every week things went on sale. People really look forward to if their next hero will be included. I purchased more than one this way.

Also, for the record, I'm a premium member. I'm willing to spend money, it's just that I don't see things I want at the right price. I consider the bundles to be a good deal, but I'd need 8 more of them. It sours me on the idea. Even if I metered it out and got 1/mo $30 is more than I want to spend. Plus the 1/2 off time thing throws a wrench into the works. The bundles are a good deal because of the free time. Who is running this marketing department!

Edited by fogsworth, 30 November 2015 - 12:40 AM.

[Stelar 7]

No.

[Jun Watarase]

The problem is the completely unnecessary grind.

Buying 3 mechs, 2 of which most players wont use after mastering the variant they want, is really really dumb, especially for clan mechs with the omni pod system. Its a blatant grind addition.

And to make it worse you HAVE to buy the stock load out. You spend millions and millions of c-bills buying engines and weapons that most players will sell back immediately afterwards. You cannot choose to buy the striped version of the variant. This is really dumb as well.

And the global xp grind is ridiculous, at least there are other ways to get global xp now (achievements and LP) but previously, you could only grind it at a super slow rate.

[Black Fish]

I don't find the 3 'Mechs to master fun too, although sometimes you discover this really fun variant that way.
If you think the concept of grinding is to get people to buy with real money you would only be half right, even less. The point of grinding and C-Bills sinks are to create progress and anticipation towards the new 'Mech you spotted that looks cool. Getting enough 'Mechs means you can start playing a more complicated game mode called CW (hypothetically speaking!) Want to go competitive? grind some more to get modules.
Grinding and sinks help elongate time you can play the game without getting bored. Getting there faster require you to invest money, which is how F2P games earn their salary.
If you had all 'Mechs unlocked from the get go, would you play them all? I think not, you would find a few you like, stick to them and when you'll get tired of them you will feel like you've seen them all and quit. there wont be the thrill of getting into a new 'Mech you worked so hard to get.

[fogsworth]

Yeah, I definitely agree unlocking stuff is actually kind of fun. I don't know if you ever played Diablo 2, but if you used the trainer to become a god the game instantly became boring. The trick is finding a rate of unlocking that isn't frustrating.

[Illuzian Pryde]

fogsworth, on 29 November 2015 - 11:07 PM, said:

New player here. The mech leveling system is a turn off. I mastered Sparky after 2 weeks of binge gaming and shudder to think about the effort required to repeat this process 2 or 8 more times to become elite. It's not fun to level a mech that you didn't want in the first place and plus the mech load outs aren't very powerful. To improve the loadout with a double heat sinks or an XL engine would delay the purchase of the next mech. I'd be interested to know how many people give up. Also, this three kinds of currency (c-bill/MC/cash) thing is the old free-to-play model. The new model is heroes of the storm. One, earnable, in-game currency (gold) and then use plain cash to instant-purchase things. There's no MC equivalent. MC is predatory because always some is left in the bank and you have to buy a lot at once to get a good rate. It's one sided: the customer always leaves MC on the table (doesn't receive full value), but Piranha never leaves cash on the table. IMO the new player experience and economic model should be re-evaluated to be more fun and transparent. Things are moving the right direction with the gift shop and steam store. Despite my gripes, the game itself is really fun after you get used to not walking where you are looking, but it's close to being overshadowed by the economic model. In Heroes of the Storm I was aware of the economic model, but it didn't seem to affect my enjoyment to this degree.

Regardless of whether I agree or not, this is the exact feedback PGI should be listening to. I'm (clearly) a long time player and everything listed above wouldn't really bother me if it was improved.

We should all like this guy's post to get PGI looking at it because if we're still having problems capturing new players we're just going to be stuck with each other.

[Pika]

Black Fish, on 29 November 2015 - 01:36 PM, said:

When I started playing I remember I thought the grind was pretty intense...
But after an approximate comparison with the only other game I play, League of Legends, I found MWO to be not as terrible as I thought:
MWO

• Currency earning per match: ~100,000 C-Bills
  
• Average match duration: ~10 minutes
  
• Average 'Mech costs: 10,000,000 C-Bills (this is a really rough estimation, upgrades included)
  
• Hours needed to unlock a 'Mech: 'Mech cost \ currency earning * match duration: 16:40 hours

LoL

• Currency earning per match: ~84 Influence Points
  
• avarage match duration: ~37 minutes
  
• Champion Unlock costs: 6300 IP (I took the most common Champ prices)
  
• Hours needed to unlock a 'Mech: Champ cost \ currency earning * match duration: 46:15 hours

Important things to consider:

• LoL has a +250 IP (currency) per 22 hours bonus system, per account, MWO has double XP per day bonus system per 'Mech.
  
• LoL also have unlockable Rune Pages and Runes, MWO has unlockable and purchasable Modules
  
• Investing money into LoL can be used cosmetically and to unlock Champions and rune pages. Investing money into MWO can be used cosmetically, to unlock 'Mechs and to temporarily and permanently increase currency gains, by up to 80%
  
• LoL does not offer sales with in game Currency, MWO offer, though rarely, sales with in game currency on 'Mechs and Modules.
  
• MWO host events that can net C-Bills and other perks, LoL offer weekly sales for real money currency and occasionally other sales an challenges.
  
• Important to not MWO has a limited 'Mech Labs that can only be unlocked with money, but can be earned, to some degree. LoL has no restriction to number of champions owned.

With these in mind, what are your thoughts on the grind in MWO and if you can add some other games to compare to it would help to shed some light on how grindy this game really is.



Any thoughts on this?

In free accounts it's not BAD it's just a bit tedious. When you have games like LoL where you can't even play it properly until level 30, WoT\WoWS where the grind is _SO_ bad it basically forces you to get premium time AND premium tanks\ships post T4 unless you have the patience of a saint.

Could the skills trees use adjusting in MWO? Yeah. Is it really that bad? Not really, aside from C-Bills skilling a whole chassis can be done in a single evening. So eh~

fogsworth, on 29 November 2015 - 11:48 PM, said:

Yeah, I definitely agree unlocking stuff is actually kind of fun. I don't know if you ever played Diablo 2, but if you used the trainer to become a god the game instantly became boring. The trick is finding a rate of unlocking that isn't frustrating.

Oh man. I used to play the **** out of Diablo 1 when I was a kid. I remember when I found trainers were a thing and niave little me spent HOURS just... chucking books and loot around in a game. I thought I was a saint to the community. Couldn't understand the hate. Good tiemes

Edited by Pika, 30 November 2015 - 01:54 AM.

[TheArisen]

If you're good, the grind isn't bad. If you get premium time I'd almost say it's pretty alright, not great, but oh well. When I first started the game I really wanted a Banshee 3M, I was excited thinking about the day I got it. Basically, having a mech you're working towards next helps.