43 replies to this topic

[Platros]

Civilized discussion please. I'm installing the game now since mechs fascinate me, being a free game there's obviously some sort of micro-transactions (from what it looks like, buying mechs). I would like to know if/how much this game is pay to win if possible please! Also, what is premium game time? Will playing f2p screw me over? Thanks!

[p4r4g0n]

This has been discussed so many times it is not even funny.

Short answer, No.

The 4 mechbays you start with can be supplemented with free mechbays from events or Faction Play achievements.

Mech available only for cash are generally not notably better than those available for C-Bills.

Premium time is a XP and C-Bills income booster.

You are only screwed as a free to play if you think grinding 2-4 hours a day to earn C-Bills or "levelling" mechs is unacceptable.

[paws2sky]

Honestly, f2p works fine if you have patience. Sometimes, lots of patience.

PGI runs numerous special events where you can earn stuff, from C-Bills to MC (in small amounts, usually) to cockpit bling to Premium Time to other stuff (including the occasional free mech).

Premium Time gives you a boost to XP and C-Bills rewards.

[Platros]

p4r4g0n, on 26 April 2016 - 06:49 PM, said:

This has been discussed so many times it is not even funny.

Short answer, No.

The 4 mechbays you start with can be supplemented with free mechbays from events or Faction Play achievements.

Mech available only for cash are generally not notably better than those available for C-Bills.

Premium time is a XP and C-Bills income booster.

You are only screwed as a free to play if you think grinding 2-4 hours a day to earn C-Bills or "levelling" mechs is unacceptable.

I was not trying to be funny, thank you for your awesome response!

paws2sky, on 26 April 2016 - 06:51 PM, said:

Honestly, f2p works fine if you have patience. Sometimes, lots of patience.

PGI runs numerous special events where you can earn stuff, from C-Bills to MC (in small amounts, usually) to cockpit bling to Premium Time to other stuff (including the occasional free mech).

Premium Time gives you a boost to XP and C-Bills rewards.

Awesome, thanks!

[Moebius Pi]

I'd say 99% No, not pay to win.

Of the 1% that is sorta kinda? Only when you get an over-quirked Hero mech that dominates this or that niche or just ends up being ridiculously strong. Right now the Oxide gets that finger-point, the Huggin has in the past (both for mostly similar reasons) in the light category, but that's generally a -big- exception and only tends to last until the next quirk pass (which -can- take too long at times).

Mind you, it's not the -only- strong Light mech choice out their right now, but you'll find plenty of threads of it being a tad (or not-so-tad) overamped. The Arctic Cheetah had that syndrome for quite a long time to boot before it's c-bill release, and prior to that it was the Firestarter (and way, way back when the Ember Hero was noted for such to an extent). Usually there is one outlier that comes around and just proves to be a vicious workhorse that just ends up being very nasty, though rarely is it ever "essential".

Premium time gives you a decent increase in your payouts, kinda like it does on say, League of Legends regarding IP earnings, but isn't essential to get far (it's what, 30% more? Or is it even that?) once you find your groove. Definitely helpful for a new player, but good mech and loadout suggestions tend to up your earnings far more far faster.

The only thing you'll find you'll consistently get the itch to drop money on is Mech Bays as a new player so that you can get more mechs later (Hero mechs are nice-ish, but honestly their non-real dollar variants are consistently stronger in almost every case); you can earn them via match grinds in Clan/Community/Faction warfare but it's very harsh on many new players and can be a painful slog without optimized mechs (though plenty of forum advice on loadouts, some good guides out there on a couple websites as well as helpful units if you sniff around).

Luckily for mech bays they're fairly cheap vs a substantial dollar investment, and when the sales for them go on our events with them as rewards they're kinda like gumballs. Those events where you can snag them or MC (microtransaction money, really) or both along with colors, cockpit items etc. are fairly common these days, so I'd say overall f2P isn't going to do much to you at all. You can play, do those events and eventually Faction/Community etc. mode when confident and you'll have extra bays without so much as a dime spent.

Getting the swing of which mechs you enjoy and consistent loadouts... that will take some getting used to and will likely be your biggest hurdle, not $ investment.

[Tarogato]

F2P means you start with four mech bays, so you can only own four mechs at once. You can earn more mechbays via Faction Play, by taking either the Mercenary or Loyalist route. You can occasionally win mechbays during weekend events (they will appear on the mwomercs front page from time to time). You can also win MC for free, which can be spent on mechbays (which are 300MC each or 150MC when they are on 50% sale).

In other words, choose your mechs carefully. Play the trial mechs extensively before you decide which mech(s) to buy.


There is nothing in this game that I would consider "pay to win." The strongest pay-only mech in the game currently is the Oxide, which, despite being (disputably) the best light mech in the game, it's still just a 35-ton light mech with mediocre hitboxes. It alone does not win games, a pilot can carry a match piloting almost any other mech just as effectively and the marginal advantage that the Oxide holds over other light mechs really only rears its ugly head in competitive league play.

Also keep in mind, that while there are MC-only consumables, the C-Bill versions of these can be upgraded via GXP to be equivalent/identical to the MC versions.

---

Source: I'm a 100% free-to-play player, with now 70 mechs owned, also playing a little on the competitive scene. It can be done. Be prepared for a hell of a timesink though.

[Not A Real RAbbi]

^^^ NAILED it.

This is as good a F2P model as you're likely to see. Farmville got nothin' on us.

MOST (there are exceptions) of the cash-only mechs aren't the best variants for their chassis. There ARE mechs BOUGHT in packages, but those are pre-orders. It's not buying exclusive mechs, but buying exclusive EARLY ACCESS to them. They all become available for C-Bills eventually, and a lot of players will wait for that. The 'Hero' and 'Champion' variants are the only ones that will not be available for C-Bills at some point. Again, you don't need those, and in most cases they aren't even the best variant of the chassis.

There are things that can be bought for cash or MC (in-game currency bought with IRL $$$), like cockpit items and paint schemes/colors. Those have ZERO effect on your chances of winning or losing a match, and are pretty much just there for appearance and so on.

There are consumable modules available for purchase with MC, but that's one of the WORST ways to spend MC in the game. You can make the C-Bill versions every inch as good by investing a little XP into the appropriate skills.

Premium Time costs MC or $$$. It's simply there to make the grind a little faster. It increases the C-Bill payout and XP reward for each match. On the other hand, that XP reward stacks with the First-Victory-of-the-Day bonus (double XP for your first win IN EACH VARIANT OF EACH MECH EVERY DAY), which is there whether you use PT or not. You can WIN PT (reward for certain ranks in Faction Warfare, reward for the frequent weekend challenge events, etc.).

You can BUY packages of C-Bills with MC or IRL $$$, I think, but that's about the WORST idea ever. It's EASY to earn C-Bills. A BAD loss in Quick Play, you should still net a good 60,000-80,000 C-Bills. A decent win can go over 200,000 without PT or anything else. That's for a match that took maybe 10-15 minutes of your time, including the wait time in queue and the voting screen and the readying-up and the match summary. More or less, you should be able to grind up 500,000+ C-Bills per hour without PT or any other bonuses. Of course, as a new player you get that CADET BONUS, so you'll come out of your 25th match hopefully with SEVERAL MILLION C-Bills (maybe 10+ million, depending on you) to make your first mech purchase.

But you don't even EVER have to BUY a mech. The Trial mechs are free to use as much as you like. You get the XP from using them, you get the C-Bill payout from the matches, and it cost you NOTHING AT ALL to acquire the mech. The one bummer is that you can't modify the mech in any way if it's a Trial, but that's okay. Most (if not all) Trial mechs now are also CHAMPION mechs, and the builds for those mechs were submitted by your fellow players and voted on by us and all that. Some of them are pretty darned good. NOT ALL, but some.

So, let's review.

You don't have to pay anything to start. You get paid EXTRA in the beginning. You only have FOUR (4) mech bays to start out, but there's no requirement at all ever for you to buy even ONE mech, and any that you win for free will come with an extra mech bay to house them. Most of the best mechs in the game, though, can be bought without a dime of IRL money. You don't pay for time spent on the game. You don't pay for ANYTHING unless you WANT to, and even then you're paying for either eye candy or an accelerated grind.

Yeah.

NOT P2W at all.

[northpow]

I don't think it is pay-to-win. I have spent nearly $200 on this game, but I don't think that it helped my performance -- nor did I want it to help my performance.

When people spend money in this game, 90% of it is to unlock new mechs for the sake of variety and for quicker mastery. So money will grant you a greater variety of mechs to try, and maybe that will help you become a better player, but in general you can't pay to get better. When I have spent money, it was always for Mastery Packs but that didn't make me a better player, it just unlocked more mechs.

I agree w/ the above poster that Hero Mechs are the 1% exception because their quirks can make them better than the average mech. But I am not sure how much this impacts things in practice.

In general I think MWO has done a fantastic job of getting paying players like me, without destroying the experience for everybody else. But that's just my opinion.

[Koniving]

Oxide was a piece of garbage and still is. The exception is that by some fluke of stupidity it alone got the intended generic structure quirks for the Jenner chassis and is getting fixed next month after seeing how it pans out versus standard Jenners without structure quirks. A Jenner that can't jump isn't a Jenner; it's a fairly expensive coffin.

If anything comes close to pay to win, it's a hero mech with ECM like the Pirate's Bane. The ECM makes them hard to detect on sensors/radar. But one shot and poof, fried Locust.

If you wanna point out overpowered lights, I just need to point to the Panther 10K. But it's a free mech and it has legitimate reason for it.

There isn't anything in the sense of 'pay to win'. It's more 'Pay to look cool,' with 'Pay to get stuff faster', with 'pay to use these Frankenstein Mechs we crafted by being loosely based on some list of hero names and splicing together hardpoint configs (poof, heroes!)'.

(Been playing for 4 years; have spent well over a thousand dollars and have over 190 mechs [this is after having sold some 20-30 something mechs over the 4 years). Still largely love the free stuff more than the 'pay to lose' mechs you often see... but damn those lovely paintjobs just sucker me in).

[WANTED]

Definitely not p2w. I've spent maybe 60 bucks in 3 years total on this game and I have plenty of mechs and mechbays as well as free cockpit items from events. One of the reasons I like this game as it doesn't force me to pay over and over to keep up with the meta. If you do spend real money just wait for the sales which happen frequently and buy the mech you want the . I got the Yen Lo Wang for 50 percent off couple years back during a sale and best mech I played for awhile only cause of the 30% Cbill boost. I use him to farm chills sometimes but I have only bought that mech and the marauder pack since I started playing years back.

Edited by WANTED, 26 April 2016 - 08:08 PM.

[Kali Rinpoche]

Definitely not pay to win. Spending a few bucks can help with the mech bay situation. I'd be considered a whale by some, but I spend money to help keep the game afloat b/c I enjoy it that much. I prefer to have premium time running to cut out some of the grind.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 26 April 2016 - 10:09 PM.

[White Bear 84]

Koniving, on 26 April 2016 - 07:56 PM, said:

It's more 'Pay to look cool,' with 'Pay to get stuff faster', with 'pay to use these Frankenstein Mechs we crafted by being loosely based on some list of hero names and splicing together hardpoint configs (poof, heroes!)'.

Still largely love the free stuff more than the 'pay to lose' mechs you often see...

Lol Koniving your description of the hero mechs is such a sales pitch! But pay to lose? Really? Oxides are dominating the FP scouting for IS as far as lights go, the Huggin is still viable there too. YLW has *always* been a stable hero mech, although not so much in the competitive scene (due to weapon location). The St Ive's is ironically really the best vindicator out there thanks to quirks, then there is the Bounty Hunter (Marauder) and Black Widow (Warhammer) which are both fantastic mechs to pilot..

..not saying they are all great (i mean we have the pretty babies, dragon slayers and x5's..) but they are definitely not pay 2 lose.

Stick with pay to get rich faster..

[Rogue Jedi]

as a new player you get 4 Mech Bays, the tutorial pays out 5 million, you get match earnings + 12 million for the first 25 games, you should have 18-20 million after the tutorial and the first 25 games.

spending real money on this game can;
get you stuff more quickly,
make your Mechs look better ^{(there area only a few paints available for cbills, and no cbill patterns)}
increase your earnings ^{(helps get stuff more quickly)},

real money or MC purchased with real money buys;
Mechbays
paints, ^{(I think there are 6 or 8 available for Cbills)}
camo patterns,
cockpit items,
regular Mechs ^{(also available for Cbills)}
Hero Mechs ^{(30% cbill earnings boost, unique varient, unique cammo pattern)}
Champion Mechs ^{(upgraded versions of regular Mechs with a 30% XP earnings boost)}
Premium Time ^{(50% cbill and XP earnings boost)}
Mech Packs ^{(when a Mech is first released it is part of a preorder pack, older packs include 3 varients of each Mech, including 1 varient with a cbill bonus, with Mechbays and you can purchase the pack in tiers, the first tier was the light Mech, second tier was light and medium, 3rd was light medium and heavy, 4th was light medium heavy and assault, more recent packs are just a single chassis pack with optional addons for more variants, cbill bonus variants. the sincle chassis pack which better value if you just want that specific Mech but the old packs were much better value if you wanted all the Mechs in the pack, additional contents vary but can include premium time, faction content including camo pattern, paints and cockpit items)}
Mastery Bundles ^{(3 variants of a chassis including the Hero, Champion and 1 regular variant, also some premium time and cockpit items)}
exchange Mech XP for GXP, ^{(GXP is used to unlock modules which can give the Mech small improvements in certain areas, GXP accrues at 5% the rate of Mech XP, while you can use GXP to unlock Mech skills I do not recommend that)}

[ImperialKnight]

it's kind of p2w-early-sort-of-depending-on-the-mech

outside of heroes, which mostly are not the strongest of the chasis, most mechs are released for cash then CBills.

so if a beast mech is released, those with cash can use them first. but eventually the mech will be released for CBills.

in the current crop of mechs, IS beast = Black Knight, Clan beast = Timberwolf, both of which are available for CBills

it also depends on the player and how the mech is built. In the case of the Oxide, it's good, but only if you build it and play it properly. put 6xLRMs on it and watch other lights descend on you like sharks with blood in the water.

[Dibujor]

No, it isn't. In fact it's one of the best F2P games (in that aspect, and in that only) that I have played. Nothing you can buy with real money gives you any advantage over another player that doesn't pay a dime. As other commenters have said, you only pay to "avoid grinding" or pay to "look cooler" or to be among the firsts to have something. In the end all mechs (except heroes and champions) end up going for Cbills (ingame money) and those heroes and champions don't have any advantage other than a boost to Cbills or XP so, again, paying to "shorten the grind".

[Danjo San]

nope... even with saving all your c-bills and just piloting trial mechs you can be a monster. Your skill, positioning, weapon management, and team coordination are the factors that determine if you win or not. Certain mechs will influence some of those factors, but rather than that, it boils down to you as a pilot.
If you are constantly losing matches consider one or more of the said factors above to be your problem.
For example. If you get left behind and die early in the game, your positioning and team coordination need to be worked on.
If you are constantly overheating or have too much or too little ammo for your weapons, your weapon management needs to be worked on,
If you are sticking close to your team, listening to voip, following orders and still die early, there is still room to work on positioning, your skill will grow once all other factors are optimized.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Its pay to be impatient (new mechs cost real money for several months) or pay to look pretty.
That is it.

[Cold Darkness]

i dont think most people in here understand the term "pay to win"

anyways: this game is not pay to win, because you can get most stuff by just playing the game. the grind is also relatively small compared to many other f2p titles.
the few things out there you can not get easily by just playing, do not represent p2w mechanics either, as they are usually on par with free things, not stronger.

the mentioned oxide is currently stronger then other jenner-mechs but that may change at any given time, and even in its current form, its not like it will outperform its peers by a large margin.

[Rhavin]

As someone with a large gameing budget I have spent quite a bit on this game, it hasn't made me any better than anyone else.

The new 20 dollar mech packs are great though, not pay to win but if you get the preorder bonuses you are basically paying to skip some grinding of cbills (still have to grind out gxp to unlock the modules.

So as others have said, pay to be impatient. Skill can't be purchased.

[Solarise03]

nah, its free, u just need good PC to get high fps, its all about positioning