35 replies to this topic

[ReemusX]

Would be nice to see Premium Time counted as play time and not an expiring "alarm" clock.

I work 12hrs a day, sleep 5, play 3-4hrs a day on MWO (grinding right now). Essentially, I only get about 3-5hrs of my premium time I buy per day.... Yes it would greatly benefit the player... but will probably never happen.

I can still wish right?

[Bilbo]

People have been wishing for as much since premium time was introduced. As you say, though, it will never happen. Best you could likely hope for is that at some point they sell it in smaller increments. Likely to cost you more money in the long run though if you play regularly.

[ReemusX]

Yea it's not a huge deal to me but I happened to notice it since I have slowed down (lot of work slammed on me lately) on game...and seems every time I fire up MWO I am adding premium time to make the most of my short play time.

A 4 hour option would be awesome I think....

Edited by ReemusX, 01 February 2016 - 05:11 PM.

[Bonger Bob]

better option would be tickets you can buy in bulk to use on drops before you launch, 1 drop burns one "premium" ticket and gives the premium rewards for that round only accordingly.

then wait times, down time, bad game times ( that ceasefire in CW is right in my prime-time ) could all be worked around without having to burn large portions of what you purchased.

I feel your pain OP, i refuse to buy premium time as it is largely wasted, and i still manage to be online for around 20 matches a day.

[3xnihilo]

I try to view premium time as a subscription for whatever length of time I purchase instead of x number of hours. For $12 something I get a 1 month subscription. The ticket idea is pretty cool though. If premium time was only active when you played they would have to increase the price by a whole lot.

[Imperius]

I have like 740 days of premium time... I'm not worried or using it

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I'd be perfectly happy if PGI converted all Premium Time into a "played games" count instead of continually ticking timer. Even a terrible conversion rate, say, 1/hour, would be worth it to me.

30 days? That's 720 games. Yes, please!

Have CW games count for 2 if you must, and certainly have it take one off your game total when launching a Private Lobby with PT-exclusive options enabled (add a pop-up saying "Enabling this feature will deduct one game from your Premium Time total").

[Bonger Bob]

3xnihilo, on 01 February 2016 - 05:33 PM, said:

I try to view premium time as a subscription for whatever length of time I purchase instead of x number of hours. For $12 something I get a 1 month subscription. The ticket idea is pretty cool though. If premium time was only active when you played they would have to increase the price by a whole lot.

no, premium time could still have a place, all be it in an altered form : chat channels, private lobby's etc. If anything the upcoming increased dependence that is happening with premium time is not a good thing for players, its just another attempt to milk the players.

[Accused]

I have almost an entire year's worth of premium time and no desire to use it.

And yes I'm one of those people who might still consider this game not feature complete.

If I could use 12 hour portions, I might use it though.

[Bonger Bob]

Accused, on 01 February 2016 - 05:41 PM, said:

I have almost an entire year's worth of premium time and no desire to use it.

And yes I'm one of those people who might still consider this game not feature complete.

If I could use 12 hour portions, I might use it though.

see that's saying something about its lack of value and appeal, over a years time accrued and ready to go, yet still won't use it.

I feel sorry for founders like this, sold a dream, given a last place prize they don't want.

[AEgg]

A fair number of games do have "while active" premium time. Expect an hour of "while logged in" time to cost as much as a week or two of "always running" premium time.

[Bonger Bob]

AEgg, on 01 February 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

A fair number of games do have "while active" premium time. Expect an hour of "while logged in" time to cost as much as a week or two of "always running" premium time.

yup, when those games only revenue stream is tied to "subscriptions", Russ / PGI have long been gaining far more revenue from mechs and mech packs than they have ever likely yielded from premium time purchases.

the fact that they are adding features in to attempt to add further value to premium time, its obvious even PGI see that premium time is poor value. All they are doing now with it is making it more of a paywall and migrating away from true F2P.

how long till you can only do CW if you have premium time, or drops are limited to a small number per day if you have no premium time ??

they need to make changes to make it more appealing while not penalizing those that don't play 40hrs+ a week.

[SuomiWarder]

Would live with a changed price structure without complaint if I only paid for games/time in game. I don't bother buying premium time because I know I will only use a small portion as I don't log on more than around four hours a week these days.

[C I L L I P U D D I]

That means if you buy 30 days of premium time you're actually getting 6 months of premium time is you want it to just count the time you're playing.

Math: 4 (max hours playtime) x 30 (a month) = 120 (hours total per month) / 24 (hours in a day) = 5 (totals days played per month)..... 30 (days of premium time) / 5 (days total played) = 6 (total months need to equal 1 month of premium time)

So you buy 1 month's worth of premium time and you would actually be good for half a year. Yeah, don't think PGI would be down with that marketing strategy.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Do you think changing the way premium time works would really benefit the average player? It wouldn't be this big bonus, just another way to count it.

Just remember, if Premium Time shifted to time played, PGI would make the proper adjustments to make sure they were still earning their money. Premium Time would cost a lot more for a lot less just to even out.

No matter how you look at it, PGI still makes their money off of it.

[Ted Wayz]

I have about 1.5 years due to mech packs. If they stretched it out I would never have to buy premium time or another mech pack again.

Maybe if they provide more things people want for MC they might change it. But for now mechs and premium time are about it so I doubt they will change it.

[JudgeDeathCZ]

I wish I can choose to get 100% c-bills instead of 50/50 .

[Hades Trooper]

ReemusX, on 01 February 2016 - 05:00 PM, said:

Would be nice to see Premium Time counted as play time and not an expiring "alarm" clock.

I work 12hrs a day, sleep 5, play 3-4hrs a day on MWO (grinding right now). Essentially, I only get about 3-5hrs of my premium time I buy per day.... Yes it would greatly benefit the player... but will probably never happen.

I can still wish right?

No, no other game does it's premium time as game time played, why should MWO. The amount of time each person plays is up to them, you got 30 days of premium time, why should it have to cater to your personal needs.

$12 a month for premium time is extremely cheap.

[C I L L I P U D D I]

Because Hades Trooper, some of the player base wants content but does want to pay for it. They want shiny new mechs but don't want to spend $45 on them. They want premium time but only on their time. They want new content and mech balancing and all these different things, but don't want to put out. Want, want, want, want. A company goes through a complete change over from another company, who was obviously in it for just the money, takes a bit over a year to get things sorted out from them, starts trying to pump out new content, and tries to do what some of the more reasonable community likes and asks for, but they want them to do it...for free. All the while, holding how much money they've spent over other parts of the community. Seems a bit ironic.

[Mawai]

People have been asking for pay per use or short term premium time for years.

Unfortunately, to make it cost effective for PGI they would need to use a pricing model that many might find to be too expensive.

At the current rates, a month of premium time is something like $12.00. If an average player plays 30 games a week for about 120/month then you are paying about $0.10/match for the premium time bonus. On the other hand, if an average player plays 10 games a week then the cost is $0.30.

Would you be willing to pay $0.10 to $0.30/match for the bonus?

Keep in mind that PGI needs to maintain revenues to keep the servers operating. In addition a pre-paid plan should be more cost effective than a pay per match plan since it rewards the player who chooses to put a larger sum of money in at one time.

In terms of MC (which seems to be $0.04/MC at the best rate) then would you pay 3 to 10 MC/match for the premium time bonus? What if PGI added a check box for automatic MC withdrawal to cover premium time expenses?

I think the problem is that it would require development time and it might not result in any change in revenues while causing some customer service issues when folks say ".. but I left it on by accident ... I want a MC refund!"