60 replies to this topic

[ExplicitContent]

DV McKenna, on 22 February 2016 - 10:57 AM, said:

It's not so much that things are overpriced it's that there appears to be no thought into the pricing model.

Buy a mech for what 1500-3000 MC (at work don't have the game to cite a particular example)

Buy a cammo Colour 1000MC....(really..colours should be cheap and pushed in volume!)

The other one that annoys the crap out of me is MC-Cbill packages. The prices the for cbill amount is absolutely shocking... Its like PGI don't want money.

Let the whales flex their wallet to get cbills they don't have the time to farm/shorten the time it takes. Cbills cost them nothing to create this is something so basic and pure profit that could be shipped in bucket volumes making them so much money.

Changing the cost of the MC-Cbill conversion would have a trickle down effect that I am sure PGI is trying to avoid. Currently if you buy a mech you have the option to buy for Cbills or MC. The relative cost relationship appears to be between 2497-2500 Cbills per MC cost. Sure, they could increase the exchange rate for purchasing Cbill bundles with MC, but it will never exceed 2497 Cbills per MC or they would never sell an MC-Cbill pack again.

Edit: I only checked a few mechs for that ratio. Someone may be able to find some that have different rates, I just did a few to see if it was relatively consistent.

Edited by ExplicitContent, 23 February 2016 - 05:29 PM.

[JC Daxion]

Sandpit, on 22 February 2016 - 12:32 PM, said:

Because no other online multiplayer game has allowed custom images before...


I love it when a company like PGI tries to use that as some sort of legitimate reason against something like this. It's rather simple. Set up rules (hello ToS and CoC) about decals.

If a player violates those rules, they lose their decal and aren't refunded the cost of it and if it's a repeat offender, you get into more serious penalties.

All the "but offensive" "but copyright" "but legal reasons" is a bunch of BS. If we were talking 20 years ago players might be ignorant, young enough, and otherwise oblivious enough to believe something like that, but thanks to 20 years of life experience (including gaming), I know for a fact that it's just an excuse not to do it because none of those reasons have stopped or slowed down any other company from doing the same thing.

PGI should contact companies behind games like Warthunder and Star Citizen because those devs apparently are clueless to the "danger" of allowing players to customize their vehicles...

what are you smoking.. One of the biggest reasons why it's not done are purely legal. They would have to have every decal checked by someone for Copy write infringement. If anything slipped through, PGI would be held liable and open to a lawsuit, which even if it was tossed out of court, it would cost them money.


Games like second life can fall under a different category, as they are 1k's of private people using a platform to make custom mods. It is entirely different when a company that makes the game is making the money selling someone else decal.

Not to mention having to add all these decals, skins, locations.. we have how many camos? and still all mechs can't use them all. Adding what could be 1000's of camos would need a whole new system, or some sort of dynamic system that would use generic spots..


Its all a crap ton of work on top of all the legal BS. All it takes is one company to go hell bent, and it could sink them in legal costs. Just look at Mojan and what they had to go through with the word "Scrolls" It it wasn't for Notch's Extremely deep pockets and fighting it on principle it would of tanked any smaller company. Even with his cash, it still did not end all that well, and had lots of stipulations.


City of heroes is another one that got sued, because people made heroes that could look like marvel characters. They were backed by a pretty big publisher, and it cost them a good amount in the end. Game got sold not long after, though they did move on to champions.


Would i like to see it down the road? Surely.. though i'd bet they could do it in house making their own symbols, and give us tons to choose from would be far easier, as assets would be the same, nothing to convert, ext.



But in the mean time, i'd much rather have the art devs, re-sizing mechs, retro-fitting camo, updating maps, making new maps than a decal..

Edited by JC Daxion, 23 February 2016 - 05:36 PM.

[Bill Lumbar]

JC Daxion, on 23 February 2016 - 05:35 PM, said:

what are you smoking.. One of the biggest reasons why it's not done are purely legal. They would have to have every decal checked by someone for Copy write infringement. If anything slipped through, PGI would be held liable and open to a lawsuit, which even if it was tossed out of court, it would cost them money.


Games like second life can fall under a different category, as they are 1k's of private people using a platform to make custom mods. It is entirely different when a company that makes the game is making the money selling someone else decal.

Not to mention having to add all these decals, skins, locations.. we have how many camos? and still all mechs can't use them all. Adding what could be 1000's of camos would need a whole new system, or some sort of dynamic system that would use generic spots..


Its all a crap ton of work on top of all the legal BS. All it takes is one company to go hell bent, and it could sink them in legal costs. Just look at Mojan and what they had to go through with the word "Scrolls" It it wasn't for Notch's Extremely deep pockets and fighting it on principle it would of tanked any smaller company. Even with his cash, it still did not end all that well, and had lots of stipulations.


City of heroes is another one that got sued, because people made heroes that could look like marvel characters. They were backed by a pretty big publisher, and it cost them a good amount in the end. Game got sold not long after, though they did move on to champions.


Would i like to see it down the road? Surely.. though i'd bet they could do it in house making their own symbols, and give us tons to choose from would be far easier, as assets would be the same, nothing to convert, ext.



But in the mean time, i'd much rather have the art devs, re-sizing mechs, retro-fitting camo, updating maps, making new maps than a decal..

Funny.... DOW and many other games have done it...so how does what you have said apply? Legal mobo jombo and "reasons" to why PGI can't allow custom badges? Hmmmmmm, interesting....interesting indeed.

I could be wrong here....but I believe if a third party uploads the content.... "us", PGI is not libel for anything.

Edited by Bill Lumbar, 23 February 2016 - 05:49 PM.

[Intrepid]

Sandpit, on 22 February 2016 - 12:32 PM, said:

It's rather simple. Set up rules (hello ToS and CoC) about decals.

If a player violates those rules...

Says the guy who does not follow them himself

[KahnWongFuChung]

I only have a few pics to describe PGI and there MC pricing model and ridicules C-bill packs and in-game C-bill rewards per battle.

[JC Daxion]

Bill Lumbar, on 23 February 2016 - 05:47 PM, said:

Funny.... DOW and many other games have done it...so how does what you have said apply? Legal mobo jombo and "reasons" to why PGI can't allow custom badges? Hmmmmmm, interesting....interesting indeed.

I could be wrong here....but I believe if a third party uploads the content.... "us", PGI is not libel for anything.

What games exactly allow you to use custom content? I'm not talking games with mods, I'm talking MMO/online server side pvp style games.. (got any screenies of um? I'm very curious)

I know second life does stuff like that, but that game is all mods, which does not fall under the same banner. just like no-one got sued when people made spider-man skin in Freedom force. But again that is totally different than how this would need to be done, as stated, No mods allowed. that means only official PGI content can be used, which they can't use other peoples CO'd stuff.

[Tarogato]

imo, yes. Almost everything in the game is priced too high.

Paint is too expensive.
Camo are too expensive.
Cockpit items are too expensive.
Hero mechs are too expensive.
Mastery Bundles are... okay.
Mechbays are ... fine.
Mechpacks are ... kinda on the expensive side.
Premium time is okay, I guess.

I feel like more people would buy MC if paint colours and cockpit items were half the current price. I certainly would feel more open to spending money if I got more content for it. But being as a single paint colour can be $5 US (almost $7 canadian)??? No way. Not spending money for that little of a value. Not happening at all.

[Nightshade24]

Well indivude items I think they are a little bit pricey.

However the mech packs is a money grab, the Locust (20 dollar "worst value" of the package) was 160 USD worth fo MW: O content for 20 dollars. Cut all prices in MW: O by 50% and that' still 80 dollars of content for 20 dollars.

Many games would just throw in a 25 dollar value for 20 dollars and the extra incentive is "limited edition bla and you get to play 1 month earlier than most people".

Lupis Volk, on 22 February 2016 - 12:36 PM, said:

Yeah in War Thunder people used the custom skins to make historic german planes.

Though Call of Duty should be another game to look at with user generated "decals".

"give them an inch and they take a mile"

In WT those custom content is user sided only. Much like the sound mods. What PGI wants to do with custom content is to have everyone see it and for everyone to see it everyone must have it downloaded. Which means if everyone and their mother wants 1 special decal/ logo. Than we got more than the games size worth of decals to add to the game.

WT's counter to this is competitions and barely uploading the best of the best skins (often historically accurate) and make it premium and impossible to get otherwise unlike other skins in WT.

The main (Battletech/ fanbase) idea for Decals is showing of the company and faction you are with. What's the point of having a custom decal no one else will see?.. another problem is PGI needs a lot of resources to make the game mod friendly without the game assuming that random Pokemon ball decal is you trying to hack the game for advantages. an exageration but it gets very finicy when we go into the topic of modifying MW: O content.

overall it'll be pointless for PGI to dabble in that now. I would like at least a dozen IS omnimechs added first, the introduction of the late 3050 weapons, CW to be finished, Solaris added and finished, the single player campaign added. etc before I go into custom decals.

I guess you can say PGI's problem is they are to generous. They do not want people to pay to use a custom decal or no more than a normal one. They do not want to say you guys can get one but not you other guys... Something tells me in the end of the day it'll be exclusive to only the big units like say 228. Because what's the point of wasting effort to make a decal insignia for a 3 man unit that only has 1 active member?

[Hades Trooper]

KahnWongFuChung, on 22 February 2016 - 10:48 AM, said:

Lets just say I would love to see a PGI sales chart for each month or a year since the start of the game it would say a lot about the state of MWO overall plus a true actual player count.

The reason I posted this topic is to see how many players feel PGI'S MC prices are Crazy or everything is overpriced 50% or more.

I look in the MWO store or Steam items and I just cant bring myself to buy the items when I feel paying such high prices for a virtual item is insane.

If MWO'S MC items were 50% or more less and inline I would buy a lot of stuff but after 3 years I just cant buy items I feel are too over priced no matter how much I would like to have them.

I know some will agree and some will say its all relative to the fun you have with the virtual items you buy but lets hear what you have to say about MWO'S MC prices not criticism about me.

P.S and to those poor players that pay up and above the America USD prices lets hear what you have to say also.

As an Australian, the price are just stupidly over priced.

I won't pay for colours, i just have the ones i win for free plus the ones i get from packs. Even at 50% i'm not paying 1000MC for a colour when i get 1250 for $10 Aus.

i honestly think they'd get a big sales numbers if they reduce there pricing and actually had some micro transactions instead of all these over priced options.

[Onimusha shin]

Prosperity Park, on 22 February 2016 - 03:18 PM, said:

The cost is too high, as if they don't want my money. I can't even see my Mech in combat, so why should I pay cash to have somebody else see my custom paint? Can I send an invoice to everyone who looks at my Mech when I have it painted in MC-only paint?

I would spend more on this game if I thought it was worth the money. I would buy more Mechs if the grind was not as long, and I would buy cammo for those Mechs. But, they are happy with me not providing continual income.

Vanity is an overpriced thing. And it's nice that people who like to look cool even if they can't see their own mechs in action most of the time, are still helping to support the F2P game model through their 'generous' spending. I have no problems with peeps spending that much on cosmetics if they keep the game free for most of us, LOL!

Tarogato, on 23 February 2016 - 11:28 PM, said:

imo, yes. Almost everything in the game is priced too high.

Paint, Camo, Cockpit items, Hero mechs are too expensive.
Mastery Bundles are... okay.
Mechbays are ... fine.
Mechpacks are ... kinda on the expensive side.
Premium time is okay, I guess.

I feel like more people would buy MC if paint colours and cockpit items were half the current price. I certainly would feel more open to spending money if I got more content for it. But being as a single paint colour can be $5 US (almost $7 canadian)??? No way. Not spending money for that little of a value. Not happening at all.

EVERYTHING HE SAID!!!

[Nightshade24]

Tarogato, on 23 February 2016 - 11:28 PM, said:

Mechpacks are ... kinda on the expensive side.

Considering a 20 dollar pack most of the time often goes between 100-170 USD worth of content in game for 20 dollars?
Even if we cut PGI prices by 50% 50-85 dollars for 20 is still a steal.

[Torgun]

Nightshade24, on 24 February 2016 - 12:53 AM, said:

Considering a 20 dollar pack most of the time often goes between 100-170 USD worth of content in game for 20 dollars?
Even if we cut PGI prices by 50% 50-85 dollars for 20 is still a steal.

That simply tells you that the in-game prices when you're not paying before release are totally out of whack. I'd be interested to see what mechpack that cost $20 has $170 in store costs though, I find that quite a bit higher than possible. $60-$80 dollars sure, but $170... ?

Edited by Torgun, 24 February 2016 - 02:05 AM.

[Nightshade24]

Torgun, on 24 February 2016 - 02:04 AM, said:

That simply tells you that the in-game prices when you're not paying before release are totally out of whack. I'd be interested to see what mechpack that cost $20 has $170 in store costs though, I find that quite a bit higher than possible. $60-$80 dollars sure, but $170... ?

The Locust for the phoenix pack came with nearly 160 USD (2 mechs, the premium, the mechbays, the premium time, the cockpit items, the 3 colours, etc.) Meanwhile for 30 dollars the steam pack for lights is around... 190 dollars? THis is due to having 2 premium mechs, A LOT of premium, two mech bays, 2 perma skins, and all the other common misc stuff in the pack. (The Steam packs have really high value due to having 2 premiums instead of 2 c-bill + 1 premium).

However this may or may not be a direct indicator that the prices of the normal stuff is out of wack is a bit wrong, as I said above having 1/2 of the price is still a lot and having 1/4 just barely puts it down with other games in terms of package price but this will make htings like mechbays cost 70 mc, the boars head for eg at 2000 mc, etc.... critically under priced. PGI being a small indie company that came out of bankrupcty in 2012 basically. I do not think they are ready to make MC products cost the same as a used tissue. However 30-50% reduction wouldn't be to bad

I just checked an ol thread where I did the math and found my math working for a few classic mechs and the light performance pack which is actually over 100 dollars for 30 dollars.
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__4833021

However I forgot to mention that the more recent packages have varying value for the lower end of the spectrum and such, however phoenix mechs were a cash grab especially with the reinforcement pack (2 prems, 4 c-bills, for 15 dollars, total: 6 mechbays)

On other end of the spectrum the founders is very interesting... especially since the top tier had 80 dollars of MC to go with it... making it effectively have nearly 2/3rds of it's pack price in MC while it has 4 premium mechs and lots of prem time. However the top tiers often seem staggering especially the top tier clan package for wave 1 which at the time was over 500 USD of savings (which means buying a Golden mech in MW economy was still saving money).

Wouldn 't still mind a reduction in prices (20-30%). However I do not know how to feel about it because other games like WT have almost increased their prices by 7 x in the past few years... T

Edited by Nightshade24, 24 February 2016 - 11:13 AM.

[Bobzilla]

I'm pretty sure Freespace 2 had the ability to upload custom decals for pvp. I'm pretty sure that was the game, I kind forget tho, was like 15+ years ago. Which just goes to show, if they could do it back then...

PGI could protect themselves by changing the user agreement to say any infringement is on the user.

[Exilyth]

For decals, just make a subforum for user created decals, have users vote for decals regularly and the best decals are implemented and sold for MC. Small % of the profits go to the decal creators, who have to give all rights to PGI. If 5 or 10 decals would have to be checked for copyright after each voting, we would get custom decals, PGI would get more profits from decal sales and the efforts for implementation and moderation would be minimal.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

The 50% off sale price is the normal price. The non sale price is a 100% ADHD gotta have it now tax

Edited by Narcissistic Martyr, 24 February 2016 - 11:53 AM.

[Bill Lumbar]

JC Daxion, on 23 February 2016 - 11:16 PM, said:

What games exactly allow you to use custom content? I'm not talking games with mods, I'm talking MMO/online server side pvp style games.. (got any screenies of um? I'm very curious)

I know second life does stuff like that, but that game is all mods, which does not fall under the same banner. just like no-one got sued when people made spider-man skin in Freedom force. But again that is totally different than how this would need to be done, as stated, No mods allowed. that means only official PGI content can be used, which they can't use other peoples CO'd stuff.

I think I already explained one game that allowed players to upload their own badges.... required us to create them, and it had solo and PvP. Dawn of War. There was no reason for DOW to make anything official...or official PGI anything.... just add a the same of similar feature and then mod when needed from people adding stuff they deem not acceptable. Or add the option for players to see or not see others badges... pretty simple really. How did DOW pull it off? Really not that complicated.

[LegendaryArticuno]

It's called Steam Workshop.

Except PGI refuses to acknowledge Steam even exists.

[JC Daxion]

Exilyth, on 24 February 2016 - 11:19 AM, said:

For decals, just make a subforum for user created decals, have users vote for decals regularly and the best decals are implemented and sold for MC. Small % of the profits go to the decal creators, who have to give all rights to PGI. If 5 or 10 decals would have to be checked for copyright after each voting, we would get custom decals, PGI would get more profits from decal sales and the efforts for implementation and moderation would be minimal.

I like this idea... Like i said, i am not against custom skins/badges ect.. But for an online game that runs server/client this is probably the best bet.. Personally i would love to see 100's of unique add-ons

Bill Lumbar, on 24 February 2016 - 03:26 PM, said:

I think I already explained one game that allowed players to upload their own badges.... required us to create them, and it had solo and PvP. Dawn of War. There was no reason for DOW to make anything official...or official PGI anything.... just add a the same of similar feature and then mod when needed from people adding stuff they deem not acceptable. Or add the option for players to see or not see others badges... pretty simple really. How did DOW pull it off? Really not that complicated.

Like i said, This game does not allow mods and for good reason. Even graphical mods can give advantages, just look at the changes they have made as of recent to laser fire. It's a single player game that you can play MP.. Its not a server side, FTP game.. totally different models, and subject to different rules.

They also could not put the CO infringement on the user, they would be the ones selling it and in violation..



Like i said, the best we can hope for is what the other user i quoted stated, or PGI decides to make their own logo's. Anything user made, i would think would need it's own CO, Or maybe fall under an umbrella of PGI, and then i'm sure it would cost a good amount of money to add it to the game.

Like in CW a big guild wants their own icon on all their mechs.. It would have to go through the process of being added, all camo updated, though the new tech that they can overlay would work perfect for it, and then pick the location, not only that, it would need to be added to every mech in the game, or maybe a list of mechs that could use it.. then a Mekpak would have to be added to the game, (Like the Hotrod pak for example) Its a lot of work.. Its not as easy as just making a mod in photo shop or some modeler program, and then running it on your own rig.

No clue how long it would take, but i would have to think a few days at least, and some coding on top of that going by what russ has stated in town halls about updating older mechs to new camo, because camo is the way this would work.

again, that is also why i stated they would also need to create a modular camo, then add them to every mech in the first place. could be something like, chest, arm, leg.. then need to fit the size requirements or scale.

Single player game, very easy job to make a mod.. FTP, server/client game.. HUGE job, and tons of legal issues that could come up.. But if it was added, i would see it costing hundreds of dollars, if not 1000's.. But hey, a large guild, with 500 people.. and each pays 5 bucks or something.. i could see it working in a case like that. But certainly not your own custom logo, for 5-20 bucks.. Unless they come from PGI's stock logo kits..

Edited by JC Daxion, 25 February 2016 - 12:01 AM.

[PocketYoda]

Yes big time, especially mech bays.. And those older packs need to be addressed to modern pack pricing..

The fact that content takes months to even get to the game is laughable as well..