20 replies to this topic

[Hunka Junk]

So if 100 bucks gets you 25k mc, then 1000MC=4 dollars.

But it absolutely warps my head to try and calculate what a cbill is worth, especially since I don't think the straight up option of buying a batch of cbills with MC offers the best rate.

So, how much is 1 million cbills in MC? Dollars? Yen? Drachmas?

[mailin]

You do realize that you get c-bills for fighting, right? So, one way to think about is that c-bills are worth nothing becuase they cost nothing and can't be sold for real money. Another way to think about it depends on how much your time is worth.

But, if you really need a value, go ahead and make something up. I won't argue.

[Zoeff]

mailin, on 30 July 2016 - 07:22 PM, said:

You do realize that you get c-bills for fighting, right? So, one way to think about is that c-bills are worth nothing becuase they cost nothing and can't be sold for real money. Another way to think about it depends on how much your time is worth.

But, if you really need a value, go ahead and make something up. I won't argue.

Pretty much that. Like many F2P games theres a free in-game currency and a currency you need real money for. In MWO that's cbills for in-game currency and MC for real money.

How much you're willing to pay to convert MC to cbills is the value for you, I guess.

[jaxjace]

how much is your soul worth.

[Ace Selin]

The number 42

[Hunka Junk]

I understand that cbills are "free", but then again this "free" currency is being sold in the store...

Moreover, I guarantee PGI knows how much real world money 1 million cbills equals, so we who play should too.

I became curious about the value because of the supply keys and now I think I have an answer to my own question.
(And please spare me any platitudes about how supply keys are just there for rubes. I'm not asking anybody whether I should buy them.)

If 1000MC=4USD and a supply key costs 30MC, then:

400/33=.12

1 key is worth 12 cents

Now, just randomly, I took a mech out of the store:

An ebon jaguar sells for 12321989 cbills or 4930MC

12321989/4930=2499

Rounding it off:

1MC=2500 cbills

Therefore:

4mc-10k cbills

40mc=100k cbills

400mc=1million cbills

4000mc=10million cbills

We already said that 1000MC is $4, so:

$16=10 million cbills

10000000/16=625000

Which means

$1=625000

That being the case, then going with 12 cents per key

625000/12

means

.12 (1 key)=52083cbills

What can we take away from that?

The sell value for a key is reasonable (and was very likely calculated based on some very similar math to the above).

The 6.500,000 cbill bundle for 4000MC is a rip off, not to even mention the smaller cbill bundles.

I think I have my answer, but I welcome corrections to my math.

Edited by Hunka Junk, 30 July 2016 - 08:20 PM.

[Mazzyplz]

i been playing the game for years and i never noticed they sell cbills lol!!

yeah i guess it's interesting to know their value in dollars but does anybody pay for cbills really??

16$ for 10 million cbills is a ripoff to be honest.

you can do 10 million cbills in an afternoon playing the game. 2 afternoons if you get bad teams.

16 dollars? better spend the mc on a hero or something!

you can get the death's knell for under 4000mc with a bunch of commando goodies,
you can get the cicada or firestarter packs for a bit over 4000 mc and they also are worth so much more when the hero gives you 30% more cbills

[Void Angel]

Hunka Junk, on 30 July 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

So if 100 bucks gets you 25k mc, then 1000MC=4 dollars.

But it absolutely warps my head to try and calculate what a cbill is worth, especially since I don't think the straight up option of buying a batch of cbills with MC offers the best rate.

So, how much is 1 million cbills in MC? Dollars? Yen? Drachmas?

Never buy the MC C-bill packages. It's best just to buy Premium Time, and maybe a Hero of a chassis you enjoy - but if you must buy c-bills directly, buy the Cicada Champion 'mech and sell the whole thing back for c-bills. Best C-bills for MC ratio in the game.

PS: this fact means that you should have thought twice before guaranteeing that PGI knows how much real money a c-bill is worth. They're not really focused on monetizing c-bills; they're approaching c-bill economy from the standpoint of average rewards/time played, and putting in the packages as an afterthought.

[John1352]

1 c-bill is worth 1 Zimbabwean dollar.

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Howmuch money can you make in one hour at your job?
How many cbills do you typically make in an hour?
Now compare figures.

[Spitfire 03]

*Ahem*

1 C-bill is worth a full page of text sent via HPG.

Edited by Spitfire 03, 30 July 2016 - 11:59 PM.

[Roughneck45]

about tree-fiddy

[mailin]

Sorry Hunka Junk, but your math is flawed. Cache keys cost 25 mc, not 30. I believe someone else figured out that they are .09 each in real money. Maybe you're confusing that with the cost of mech bays which are 300 mc each.

[jss78]

John1352, on 30 July 2016 - 10:22 PM, said:

1 c-bill is worth 1 Zimbabwean dollar.

So one tenth of what it was worth yesterday?

At the risk of derailing the thread -- I've sometimes wondered how expensive 'mechs "really" are. In other words, how expensive they are in comparison to everyday items, or, how much one c-bill is really worth.

Does the lore anywhere mention how much a 31st century Big Mac costs in c-bills? Just to get a point of reference.

[Koniving]

Hunka Junk, on 30 July 2016 - 07:05 PM, said:

So if 100 bucks gets you 25k mc, then 1000MC=4 dollars.

But it absolutely warps my head to try and calculate what a cbill is worth, especially since I don't think the straight up option of buying a batch of cbills with MC offers the best rate.

So, how much is 1 million cbills in MC? Dollars? Yen? Drachmas?

Lore answer?
Currency:
1 Cbill to US Dollars so the 'in universe' value:
Game Year -- Source Year -- Current ^[4]
3025 -- 1986: $5.00 ^[5] -- 2010: $9.95
3052 -- 1991: $5.00 ^{[6] --} 2010: $8.00
3062 -- 1999: $3.00 ^[7] -- 2010: $6.54

The MWO value?
Evidently 1 cbill is worth 0.0004(rounded down)
So. 1 cbill is worth 1.6E-6 cents. That is: 0.0000016 dollars.

This is based on the comparison Of the 4 dollars for 1,000 MC, the MC to chill ratio on the cheapest mech in mwo, and that's pretty much where I stopped as it is all relative.
Now for something much cooler to think about scientifically and mathematically...

Enjoy!

Edited by Koniving, 31 July 2016 - 10:58 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

in general I get between 100 and 250k cbills per quick play match a match can take between 3 and 15 minutes, I take home about £7 per hour (after tax national insurance, pension, earning a total of 10.41 per hour), so 1 hours labour is worth somewhere between 400k and 5 million cbills, which means £7 is worth somewhere between 400k and 5 million cbills.

such a high margin of error makes those figures pretty much worthless, but if I was playing MWO to earn cbills (I do not) that would be the financial value of c bills to me

if you purchase a Locust costing about 1.5 million cbills that will cost close to half the MC you get from the $6.95 MC pack,
a Mech costing about 3 million cbills purchased in MC = about the same amount of MC as you get with the 6.95 MC pack
a 7.5 million cbill Mech costs about 3,000 MC or what you get for $14.95
a 16.5 million cbill Mech is worth about the same as $30 of MC
if you buy the higher cost MC packs you sill get higher Mech value for the same MC, for $6.95 each $ is worth 179 mc, spend 99.95 and each $ is worth 250
99.95 of MC will buy you 65 million cbills worth of Mech, assuming you pay full price for both the Mechs and cbills, so that is about 650k cbills per $ vs about 500k cbills per $ for the $6.95 MC pack

[Keltan]

Boogie138, on 30 July 2016 - 11:28 PM, said:

Howmuch money can you make in one hour at your job?
How many cbills do you typically make in an hour?
Now compare figures.

If you make a lot of money and can't play very often, then buying Cbills with real world dollars becomes attractive. Why grind out the cost of some modules when you can just buy the needed currency with, what to you, is a trivial amount of money?

[S 0 L E N Y A]

Keltan, on 31 July 2016 - 08:11 PM, said:

If you make a lot of money and can't play very often, then buying Cbills with real world dollars becomes attractive. Why grind out the cost of some modules when you can just buy the needed currency with, what to you, is a trivial amount of money?

Agreed.
Though personally I prefer to grind when possible.
Early on a I bought a couple mastery packs to get myself going, after that real cash was primarily focused on mc for mechbays, a few pre-orders and some vanity items. My policy these days is pretty strict when it comes to no cash for grindable stuff, however Im sitting on over 100 mechs and tons of modules, so it isnt like I am at a loss for anything.
MC mostly goes to mechbays just so I can screw arround with mechs I passed up on before. At this point it is getting pretty hard trying to find something new that I wont completely hate.

If this was not "mechwarrior" I dont think I would throw so much cash at the game. However, considering I religiously spent $15 a week on a prior version of Mechwarrior I dont feel TOO bad.

[kesmai]

Nothing.
Nada.
Niente.

[Lorcryst NySell]

jss78, on 31 July 2016 - 07:56 AM, said:

Does the lore anywhere mention how much a 31st century Big Mac costs in c-bills? Just to get a point of reference.

Spitfire 03, on 30 July 2016 - 11:58 PM, said:

1 C-bill is worth a full page of text sent via HPG.

Here's your Lore answer : if my memory serves, in the first edition of the MechWarrior TableTop RPG, the value of the CBill was determined by the number of characters in a message sent via ComStar HPG units.

The "real" currency used by the Houses and mercenaries was a bit more complicated than that, since every House and organisation had it's own currency, but the basic "1 bill = bread for a day" was still true as the basis of all the various economies ... it's when you converted Kurita Yens into Davion Dollars while being in the FRR that things got really wonky, because of the various changing alliances and such.

So if I base my math on the current price of bread and a Big Mac here in Belgium in 2016, a loaf of bread is roughly 2 euros while a Big Mac is around 6 euros, so in the MWO universe a Big Mac would be somewhere along the lines of 3 CBills (and between 2 and 15 "local currency" depending on where exactly the buyer would be in the Inner Sphere).

In the Lore, the CBill was introduced as a "common currency" because of the mercenary units that worked for everyone ... the cost of a page of text was actually counted in "local currency" most of the time, but some inter-House trade deals were conducted in CBills.

I lost my sourcebooks 15 years ago in a move, but I might be able to find them online and unearth the conversion tables for the various currencies ... if someone shows more than a passing interest, because that would be a hard task ...