101 replies to this topic

[Lostdragon]

I can make as many Cbills as I need with premium time and a hero mech. Supply caches that give cbill times are not interesting to me at all, and the fact that is basically all you got just reinforces my conclusion that opening these would be a waste for me and most players who have been here a while and have millions upon millions of cbills already.

[Big Tin Man]

You say you opened 38 caches, yet your sold 12 of them for 50k...

[Oderint dum Metuant]

StaggerCheck, on 27 July 2016 - 10:35 AM, said:

Oderint, I'm pretty sure he came out ahead. Based on some quick math, he walked away with 8455000 C-Bills worth of loot, not counting the Mech Credits. Voila... plenty of Mechs in that price range. He actually got a free Mech... he just doesn't look at it like that.

He came out with cbills. that aren't an issue to obtain anyway. Why would i be happy to spend money on this?

[Ted Wayz]

How many matches did it take to get 38 supply caches?

Now calculate the number of cbills you would have earned if you bought premium time instead.

Crates are for suckers.

[Mawai]

Aloha, on 27 July 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

Wow... 38 caches and not a single mech, war horn, premium time, or module. PGI, you need to rework those odds.

He opened 26 crates ... sold the rest. He did not receive a "good" prize. He did comment that at least two he opened did not contain worthwhile prizes.

So ... this gives a total of 24 opened that could have had a grand prize. If the odds were 1/8 ... what are the chances of that happening? = (7/8)^24 = 4%. One time in 25 ... you will open 24 caches and not receive a grand prize if the odds are even. Not impossible ... but I would like to get more data so we can figure out what the odds of getting the grand prizes in these crates might be.

[MischiefSC]

Except you're basing your value off the $99 MC package. Obviously not as effective for the $5 package.

Beyond which you're spending real money to get 1 QP match worth of cbills.

Buying specific mechs for MC and selling them is still a better deal. The crates are a gambling mechanic, designed to get suckers parted from their money. Like every other gambling system in history.

[Mole]

I disagree with your assessment of supply caches being worth it, but you have done some very important science for all of us by showing just how incredibly rare it is to get anything decent out of these supply caches. I mean look at that, you opened 26 of them and you didn't get anything that couldn't be purchased from the 'mechbay after one or two quick play matches with CBills with the exception of a few free keys that give you the joy of unlocking even more crap. Supply caches are confirmed scam. Thanks for saving me the time of doing this kind of science myself. Wallet will not be opening for supply caches no matter what kind of shiny objects I see inside them. Moving on.

Edited by Mole, 27 July 2016 - 03:16 PM.

[Tatula]

Mawai, on 27 July 2016 - 02:59 PM, said:

He opened 26 crates ... sold the rest. He did not receive a "good" prize. He did comment that at least two he opened did not contain worthwhile prizes.

So ... this gives a total of 24 opened that could have had a grand prize. If the odds were 1/8 ... what are the chances of that happening? = (7/8)^24 = 4%. One time in 25 ... you will open 24 caches and not receive a grand prize if the odds are even. Not impossible ... but I would like to get more data so we can figure out what the odds of getting the grand prizes in these crates might be.

I read it as the 8 that he sold did not even contain items worthy of opening.

[Tyler Valentine]

StaggerCheck, on 27 July 2016 - 10:35 AM, said:

Oderint, I'm pretty sure he came out ahead. Based on some quick math, he walked away with 8455000 C-Bills worth of loot, not counting the Mech Credits. Voila... plenty of Mechs in that price range. He actually got a free Mech... he just doesn't look at it like that.

He spent real money for fake money... how did he come out ahead?
Most of us have tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around already. If you're space poor I can see an argument, otherwise, not worth it.

[Mawai]

Ted Wayz, on 27 July 2016 - 02:47 PM, said:

How many matches did it take to get 38 supply caches?

Now calculate the number of cbills you would have earned if you bought premium time instead.

Crates are for suckers.

Interesting question

Assuming a W/L rate of 50% and a 1/12 chance to get a crate then he would need to have played roughly 38x12x2 matches or 912 matches to earn 38 crates.

[Chagatay]

The evidence provided shows me that if you are:
1. New / Newish
2. Don't have lots of time to play (cbill acquisition rate is low)
3. Looking to convert MC to cbills as you have lots of mech bays and no mechs to fill them.

The crates are a good value (good MC to cbill rate).

However if you are (I match the following):
1. Veteran
2. Have a decent amount of free time (clearly, I am posting here)
3. Have piles of cbills and no free mech bays open (meaning that MC is usually used on more mech bays)

Crates are not worth it (mech bays offer more for cost). The only thing PGI might be inclined to do now is allow trading. I would gladly swap my boxes for 50k cbills* to another player to open.
*(probably need to make it a swap as opposed to free to stop effectively free cbill transfers)

[Accused]

Dude, all those crates and nothing but junk. I mean...wow.

[Mole]

All this thread has done is highlight perfectly how much of a scam these supply crates are.

[davoodoo]

If you put your bar low enough anything can be worth your money.

Mawai, on 27 July 2016 - 03:27 PM, said:

Interesting question

Assuming a W/L rate of 50% and a 1/12 chance to get a crate then he would need to have played roughly 38x12x2 matches or 912 matches to earn 38 crates.

912 matches, if you won ill assume you did at least average, so about 200k per win base x 456 matches. That alone will be 91.2mil cbills without premium on wins alone, when you add that 8mil and lets round it up, 8% of total earnings or 16mil round it up, 15% of total earnings.

What you need cbills for at this point i ask?? spend that 1k mc for 4 mechbays so you can use these cbills...

Edited by davoodoo, 27 July 2016 - 06:03 PM.

[El Bandito]

As everyone had said, veterans have much less need for opening the crates compared to newbies.

Tyler Valentine, on 27 July 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

He spent real money for fake money... how did he come out ahead?
Most of us have tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around already. If you're space poor I can see an argument, otherwise, not worth it.

People spend real money for pixels, how are they coming out ahead? Pay for convenience is a thing. And well, some people just love to gamble.

Also, "Most of us with tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around" are actually the minority, I suspect. Heck, I've been playing this game for four years, and my stashed C-Bills never went above 30 million. There is always need for more C-Bills, unless one is an avid pack purchaser with hundreds of hours of PT banked.

Edited by El Bandito, 27 July 2016 - 08:09 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Seems like a waste of time and money to me. C-bills or c-bill equivalents are NEVER worth MC.

[davoodoo]

El Bandito, on 27 July 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

As everyone had said, veterans have much less need for opening the crates compared to newbies.



People spend real money for pixels, how are they coming out ahead? Pay for convenience is a thing. And well, some people just love to gamble.

Also, "Most of us with tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around" are actually the minority, I suspect. Heck, I've been playing this game for four years, and my stashed C-Bills never went above 30 million. There is always need for more C-Bills, unless one is an avid pack purchaser with hundreds of hours of PT banked.

20 mil cbills here, 0 mechbays open.

Had over 50 mil, but bought myself 3 hunchbacks IIc.

Im nowhere near completing my mech collection and im sitting at 27 mechs out of which 9 are mechpacks, 2 are hero and 4 are event rewards.

Edited by davoodoo, 28 July 2016 - 02:05 AM.

[Satan n stuff]

El Bandito, on 27 July 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

As everyone had said, veterans have much less need for opening the crates compared to newbies.



People spend real money for pixels, how are they coming out ahead? Pay for convenience is a thing. And well, some people just love to gamble.

Also, "Most of us with tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around" are actually the minority, I suspect. Heck, I've been playing this game for four years, and my stashed C-Bills never went above 30 million. There is always need for more C-Bills, unless one is an avid pack purchaser with hundreds of hours of PT banked.

I've had at the most a hundred million or so, back when I was saving up to build wave 1 clan mechs. I actually ended up broke after that because I didn't have a large stash of items to build with. Nowadays I tend to sit between 5 and 20 million Cbills. Of course I do have billions of Cbills worth of stuff sitting in my account, most of which I actually did earn by playing matches.

[Mawai]

Tyler Valentine, on 27 July 2016 - 03:19 PM, said:

He spent real money for fake money... how did he come out ahead? Most of us have tens, if not hundreds of millions of c-bills lying around already. If you're space poor I can see an argument, otherwise, not worth it.

He spent less than the cost of a latte at Starbucks ..
He spent less than the cost of two cups of coffee ..

He acquired between 8 million and 16 million cbills depending on whether he just sold the items back or actually could use them.

8 million cbills is enough to buy a lot of different mechs. If average match income is about 100k then that represents the earnings of about 80 matches. 80 matches would likely take more than 12 hours of game time to complete (6 matches/hour is optimistic so it could be more like 15 hours or more).

Do you have any idea how much many of the MWO players would make in 15 hours of work? Even at minimum wage, the income is close to $150.00.

The bottom line is ... if you can afford a cup of coffee and do not already have a bank full of cbills ... then opening the crates is probably worthwhile from the perspective of playtime saved vs cbill earnings.

On the other hand, if you don't have the cost of a cup of coffee, or have a philosophical problem with supply crates ... then don't open them ... the choice is yours, no one is forcing you to open them ... sell them for the extra 50k income. Even at 50k each ... the OP made almost 2 mill cbills extra ... the cost of a cup of coffee or two resulted in a bonus of 6 to 14 million cbills.

Make your own decision about it ... but based on the numbers presented there is no reason to claim that folks who spend MC to open crates are making some sort of fundamentally obvious mistake. It is simply personal choice

[TWIAFU]

Aloha, on 27 July 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

Wow... 38 caches and not a single mech, war horn, premium time, or module. PGI, you need to rework those odds.

Wow, you skipped #18

Not to mention the OP never listed what else was in the boxes, so, yea.