33 replies to this topic

[Chuck Jager]

My experience is that if you need to lower your prices to get customers, it is usually the quality of the product that is lacking.

[Davers]

LordKnightFandragon, on 26 April 2016 - 04:11 PM, said:

Naw, you make money with cosmetics, people love cosmetics, paint jobs, decals, inscriptions, ornaments, all the various things in game now.

You would think that. But PGI seems to have stopped making new patterns. When was the last one made? Seems like over a year ago. You would think that they would be rolling out more if they were profitable. I thought for sure they would at least sell the camo of the popular lore units, but so far nada.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Lot of business moguls in this thread.
True titans of industry Im sure.

[Khobai]

lack of free mechbays arnt the problem

you can get tons of free mechbays from CW

the problem is NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY CW


What they need to do is fix CW. Remerging the solo and group queues is not fixing CW. Its just recreating the same problem that forced them to have seperate queues in the first place. Its like PGI doesnt learn... theyre like a dog chasing its own tail.

CW is a mess because theyre trying to populate 10 different factions when they barely have a player base large enough to populate 2 factions. Reducing the number of factions is the CORRECT place to start to fix CW.
Making solo players be at the mercy of groups again doesnt fix CW.

Edited by Khobai, 26 April 2016 - 09:23 PM.

[Raggedyman]

Blitxll, on 26 April 2016 - 03:54 PM, said:

What I propose is a C-bill price attached to mech bays (10-20 mil a bay) and a GXP price attached to pay wall mechs (50,000 - 100,000). these are rough prices.

So your plan to make PGI more money is to remove the need for people to buy the things that are making them money?

A bold strategy, I'll grant you that.

BTW, I have some magic beans you might be interested in buying.

Blitxll, on 26 April 2016 - 04:26 PM, said:

I think this game is awesome but the current F2P is not F2P.

The whole thing is not F2P, I'll grant you that. However there is plenty of it that is, sufficent for you to be able to play the game for free. Yeah, the niftier mechs cost money and if you want to keep all your mechs you have to shell out some cash. But if you want to have the delux experience then chip in some coins and help support the game

Blitxll, on 26 April 2016 - 05:30 PM, said:

It will effect the bottom line negatively initially that is a guarantee but there is the potential that it will increase the overall gains in the long run.

Please, never try to run a business.
Risk is inherent to entrepreneurial behavior but you really need to learn how to sell something

Blitxll, on 26 April 2016 - 05:30 PM, said:

Like I said before you can't sell something to someone who's not there.

But everything you've IDed is stuff that becomes important once a player is here and has been around for a while!

Mechbays cost money because you buy them once the free ones have run out. Hero and Champions are things you start looking at once you've played a few rounds and got a feel for it. Having them available at millions of CBills or Xp doesn't help get people into the game, as those are all long-term commitment incentives. You need to get people liking the basic game before they even consider putting in the hours to get those things for free.

Edited by Raggedyman, 27 April 2016 - 03:45 AM.

[El Bandito]

The game needs more boobs

[JC Daxion]

Where do people get the idea that F2P means, I never should spend money? I have played a few F2P games, and guess what, all i have spent a bit of money. Typically under 50 bucks total.. and my, my what a surprise it is the cost of buying a game.



This game and DDO have 2 of the best FTP models around.. Play 1k's of hours, and not really miss out on contect.. though honestly DDO you need to purchase a lot of content, but their sales make it work out, so over the course of a few years, you have spent peanuts on an online game..STO, and SWTOR are two others that both have very good FTP models, But none of them are as good as this one. WOT from what i hear is far worse from everything i have read.

I swear so many people forget, or maybe don't know that all online games used to cost 15 bucks a month,, didn't mater if you even logged in.. FTP is such a deal these days..

180 bucks i can play one game for a year in the old way.. Or now, i can spend 9 games and enjoy them for the same price, and most likely play them a few years or more.

[Almond Brown]

Blitxll, on 26 April 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

Did not know about this well I guess thats good to know.
Some pay wall mechs are superior to there variant counter parts. Oxide comes to mind.

So you have bought and drive an Oxide yourself then? Otherwise, without educating yourself, you seem to be relying on the hearsay of others here. That is always bad. At least take the time to be educated about your topic before suggesting such crazy stuff on how to "fix" MWO...

[Mechteric]

I agree that Mech Bays should be purchasable by some amount of CBills at the least.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Davers, on 26 April 2016 - 07:24 PM, said:

You would think that. But PGI seems to have stopped making new patterns. When was the last one made? Seems like over a year ago. You would think that they would be rolling out more if they were profitable. I thought for sure they would at least sell the camo of the popular lore units, but so far nada.

They might not be profitable in this game because they cost to damn much. 750-1200 or so for a single camo on a single mech. (Actually is it even singlular in this game)? Maybe its just people cant accept the prices for them....seems to steep for 1 camo.

Again, I use Planetside 2 as how I personally think it should be done. You buy 1 camo for 5 bucks and it applies to your account. Proof that the system works is you wont find anyone above Lvl 20 that isnt dressed out in camo on both the gun and the soldier, helmets(which are 5 bucks), Armor(which is 5 more bucks), armor on their planes(another 5), ornaments on their vehicles, 5 bucks each, decals on their soldiers and planes, another 5 bucks.

ANd its for the account, not for 1 single class on one single soldier. I mean, the armor suits are class and faction specific, the helmets are faction specific, but even then, they apply to any soldiers who fall under said banner.

Planetside 2 can make like 20 bucks off one soldier for one faction in this game and people happily do it. They can make another 20 off their vehicles, and people do that as well. ****, Planetside 2 even sells voice overs, you can make your soldier sound different and people do that to. I guess Planetside 2 has found a nice Price vs Value and it works.

PGI could stand to do the same. Camos should come down from 750-1200 a pop down to 500-750 a pop. Cockpit items would probably sell better if it was 500 for 1 which you could put in all your mechs, over 1 per mech for 5-10 bucks.

[Blitxll]

From a pure numbers point of view the Oxide is greater then its variant counterparts. Obviously the burst Damage from an SRM build is more about skill and positioning but that's not what i'm talking about. On paper the Oxide is better.

The goal of this idea was to increase the players base by adding incentives that players could actually achieve while PGI is still being able to make money because of the amount of in game time required to get new incentives. The only people that really benefit are those that don't have oodles of dollars to put into a game anyway or those who have lots of free time on their hands.

Yes there are free mech bays but they are not easy to acquire actually its quite frustrating. FW in my limited experience is hard to get into invasion games (admittedly its probably cause i'm apart of Liao), Generally im waiting 10 mins, usually if i have to wait any longer then that its not worth my time. With the advent of the new scouting mission, literally the only reason I have any free mech bays at all, i've been able to acquire some LP. The current problem with scouting for me is if im against clans i don't even bother fighting them cause they have superior fire power so every successful scouting mission I have had against the clans have just been me running around capping not firing a single shot. I know that's the game mode but its kind of dull.

So I guess another alternative to my idea is make FW more accessible. maybe lump the IS and the Clans into 2 big groups until the player base is big enough to support multiple factions. Right now those free mech bays cost a lot of frustration. If your trying to keep new players generally you don't want to frustrate them.


Side question can clans fight clans? cause that would be sweet.

Edited by Blitxll, 27 April 2016 - 10:36 AM.

[Alex Morgaine]

At least adjust the camo pricing. That's screwed up to the point where even one shots are not really worth much.

Unlocks for camo definitely need to be lower priced.

[Thunder Child]

Actually, rather than making Mechbays Free (one of PGI's Main Money earners), I think what would encourage new players to stay would be to give them a free mech once they have completed the Academy (All teh missions!).
Or maybe, give them Tiers of Academy.
So, complete the Basic Training, and nothing else, no Freebie. Complete Basic Training and Fire Training, get a choice of a Free Light. Complete a couple of training missions, get a choice of a free Medium instead. Complete most of the missions, get a choice of a free Heavy. Complete ALL TEH MISSIONZ! Get a choice of a Free Assault. Maybe even make it a (C) variant. This mech would come with it's own mechbay, but would be locked to it like the Loyalty and Prime variants. Possibly have the (C) variants be of Chassis that are already in the Academy, so that people have an idea of what it's like before they pick it.

Just an idea.

[Pjwned]

ScarecrowES, on 26 April 2016 - 04:41 PM, said:

Ummmm... so your plan to make PGI more money is for them to give away one of their primary income streams away... for free?

Makes sense.

So... Free to Play. The idea in a Free 2 Play game is not that you will literally never pay a dime to play the game. It's that you CAN never play a dime to play the game, but you will meet with certain undesirable restrictions, or be faced with myriad tempting incentives, that will make you want to plop down your hard earned cash.

You could play MWO for years and not pay into the game, if you choose. The idea is in making people choose to pay, and MWO does this very well. In fact, the Free 2 Play model is often far more lucrative than the traditional package price model. Interested players under a Free 2 Play model are vastly more likely to spend on incremental pricing than they would getting the same product for a set price. Folks like us are often called Whales. We're the ones who keep the game running.

So the price model has literally nothing to do with the player base.

You are completely ignoring that players would still have the option of buying some mech bays for cash, and that 10 (or even 20) million c-bills would be a lot to pay for 1 mech bay, but of course still achievable which would be the point.