41 replies to this topic

[Rick Windwalker]

Bilbo, on 07 April 2016 - 02:45 PM, said:

What game actually runs premium time or it's like, only while you are actually in a match? The argument has always been made, here, that next to none do so. I don't generally play anything else where it's offered, so I don't have any real experience with the matter.

e.g. the Battlefield 4 XP Booster system is a fair trade...

[Bilbo]

Rick Windwalker, on 07 April 2016 - 03:01 PM, said:

e.g. the Battlefield 4 XP Booster system is a fair trade...

How does that work?

[Roadkill]

Deathlike, on 07 April 2016 - 03:01 PM, said:

It's worthless.

In order to make it "worthwhile", it would have to be less than 1/10 the regular cost of 1 Day Premium Time... realistically it would have to be 10 MC or even 5 MC to be tempting.

So, it's worthless from a logistical cost standpoint.

Should have been a simple "double the payout from this match" button. Then it might be worth 100 MC, because you could use it on a first win during a double XP weekend to get 8x for 1 match.

Otherwise... yeah, typical PGI way too high pricing. They really don't understand microtransactions.

[LordNothing]

whats the source on 100mc/match? is that speculation or was there an actual source?

[Deathlike]

Just for reference, 1 Day Premium Time is 250 MC.

So, even if you were to waste one day's worth of premium, that would come to "3 ("2.5") good matches" to believe it's a good deal.

The reality says that if you spend at least 1 hour just dropping into matches (likely to do 6 matches per hour - suggesting that you spend on average 10 minutes), you'll probably make that back easily on just 1 day's worth of premium time over the "100 MC Good Game" deal... assuming you are at least reasonable good or average.

Of course, this doesn't account for bulk Premium Time deals (like the 360 day one), but that's a really large transaction to begin with (even when it is half off, you'd have to spend at least $50 of MC on it IIRC).

LordNothing, on 07 April 2016 - 03:10 PM, said:

whats the source on 100mc/match? is that speculation or was there an actual source?

It is listed in the April roadmap post.

Edited by Deathlike, 07 April 2016 - 03:13 PM.

[Roadkill]

Kaeb Odellas, on 07 April 2016 - 01:28 PM, said:

Apparently I have 20,376 hours of banked premium time. That's almost over 2 years' worth.

I feel like such a nub. I only have 13,872 hours banked.

[NoiseCrypt]

It doesn't make sense to compare the MC value of the Boost to 1 Day Premium Time.
1 Day Premium Time have to be bought up front, and then you are basically tied to your computer until you feel that you have gotten whatever you feel like is enough out of it.
The Boost is applied after a match, which means that players who only play a few matches, can boost that one awesome match they have once a week.
It's two different concepts with two different applications. They only share their goal.

[Mawai]

I'd think 50MC might be a more attractive price point than 100MC in that it might drive more sales without undercutting folks who buy a day of premium time. This would essentially be valuing a day of premium time at 5 bonus games rather than 2.5 ... but I can see it either way. On the other hand, the week or month purchases of premium time would still make more sense.

The one point to consider is that with the individual purchase you can boost those matches with the greatest earnings in terms of XP and cbills ... however at 100MC ... I am not sure it is an attractive enough option.

Edit: 3000MC is $15.00 ... so 100MC is rougly $0.50. So the real cost is basically 50 cents every time you decide to boost earnings from a match.

Edited by Mawai, 07 April 2016 - 04:26 PM.

[LordNothing]

100mc only would work if it was a 2-3x multiplier, and stackable against premium time. you want people buying premium time and you want them spending mc on their better games to net larger scores. using it solely as a stand in for premium time, that excludes those who buy premium time from spending more money.

[Khobai]

premium time should come with other benefits like free/reduced cost consumables and being able to access every color/camo.

[dario03]

Khobai, on 07 April 2016 - 08:51 PM, said:

premium time should come with other benefits like free/reduced cost consumables and being able to access every color/camo.

It should at least make consumables free in private matches. You need 2 people with premium to do a private match with less than full teams but beyond that you get zero benefit from premium time in private matches. So if you were doing a 4v4 and everybody had premium that would be 6 (or 8 depending on how you look at it) people getting nothing despite the fact that they bought premium and are in game playing.

[TLBFestus]

Alan Davion, on 07 April 2016 - 02:11 PM, said:

People have argued that before, problem is, for those people who have 1-2 years worth banked up already, that suddenly gets exponentially increased, possibly 2-3 times as much, if not longer.

That devalues the premium time considerably and PGI loses money.

There would be NO need for the banked premium time to be affected.

PGI could sell Premium time just as it exists now, and "online only" Premium time which would operate differently, similar to the way I've described below;

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.

Im betting that the "active" premium time would turn out to be very popular, and PGI would sell more of it and make more on it than the current system.

There's NO need for the banked time to be converted to "active" time, it stays as is and runs continually. When the player runs out they can chose to use which ever method suites them the best.

Edited by TLBFestus, 07 April 2016 - 10:01 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

100MC is like, 50c? Yeah. I'm not about to pay 50c for an extra 100k

[Sagamore]

If this stacked on top of existing premium time it may be worth the 100 MC.

[Kuritaclan]

Nik Reaper, on 07 April 2016 - 12:28 PM, said:

Ok so now you have the option to "buy out" a match at the end match screen for the same bonuses running premuim would give you at the price of 100 mc...

1.1 Million C-Bills cost 800MC. So essentially thats what the 100MC as a one shot is priced against. But actually i can not think of anybody who would by C-Bills for MC in that way. Either way. I don't see this work.

When would it work? Maybee 100MC. The game you inject it gets 2xC-Bill and your next 9 Games get boosted by 1.5x. Then it is a 2hour boost and priced smaller than 1 day prem time for 250MC but is "weaker" compared. Anyway you get something out of it for those who don't play that much @ a day.

[Troutmonkey]

If anything the 100MC should be stackable with premium time

[DovisKhan]

Render, on 07 April 2016 - 01:10 PM, said:

250 MC for 1 day of premium time is a frekin total wackjob ripoff

~20 EUR for a month, it's actually much more sensible to buy a mech pack for 20, you get 30 days premium, mechs and cockpit items

[NoiseCrypt]

dario03, on 07 April 2016 - 08:59 PM, said:

It should at least make consumables free in private matches. You need 2 people with premium to do a private match with less than full teams but beyond that you get zero benefit from premium time in private matches. So if you were doing a 4v4 and everybody had premium that would be 6 (or 8 depending on how you look at it) people getting nothing despite the fact that they bought premium and are in game playing.

Premium Time giving access to "unlimited resources" in private matches is an awesome idea. But it would probably be a mess to implement.
I also think that all "existing" trial-mechs should be available for people with active premium time. It would in no way add any gameplay advantages, other than diversity.

Edited by NoiseCrypt, 08 April 2016 - 01:27 AM.

[Pjwned]

NoiseCrypt, on 07 April 2016 - 01:05 PM, said:

It is really good value for people who only play a couple of matches a week, or maybe once a day on average. They don't waste a ton of premium time, and can boost that single match where everything goes right.

It's not meant to be a cheap way of getting the same value as Premium time, as you suggest.

There's still a difference between being as valuable as premium time (which isn't saying much because premium time value is dogshit) and being a blatant ripoff option that shouldn't be used ever, which in this case the latter is true.

At 100 MC a pop it's better to just buy c-bill packages directly with MC rather than boost 1 match.

If the boost were to cost 10 MC I would consider having a little bit of MC lying around for those really exceptional matches, but at 100 MC I just won't use it at all period.

This is the perfect chance for PGI to get some actual MICRO transactions going, but of course as usual they blow it and their asking price is WAY beyond reason for what you get.

[NoiseCrypt]

Pjwned, on 08 April 2016 - 02:51 AM, said:

At 100 MC a pop it's better to just buy c-bill packages directly with MC rather than boost 1 match.

Any math to support that claim ?