78 replies to this topic

[JC Daxion]

Lorcryst NySell, on 21 August 2016 - 10:33 AM, said:

You can get 50 Keys for 7 dollars ... that's absurdly cheap ... rip off, really ?

Yea no kidding, and even just selling all the stuff for c-bills, you WILL get more than enough money to buy a heavy mech, possibly even an assault. Even clan stuff.. You also do have the chance for something better..

Not to mention you can just buy keys with event money, so free, unless of course you count having to pay for your computer, and ISP..

[Wintersdark]

Ace Selin, on 22 August 2016 - 08:34 AM, said:

I find it boggling that 2x Clan UAC5s are a actually rare item. Wow. A single Clan PPC uncommon. I mean geez.

2xUAC5 = 800,000 cbill buy value, 400,000 sell value (it's 50%, right? I forget); that's why.
cERPPC = 600,000 cbill value.

For use with experience and stuff already, that's garbage. For a newer player, it's not bad. IMHO still not worth the risk of the junkier things vs. spending money (if you're gonna buy stuff, just buy what you want and avoid the risk to maybe get something "Well, I guess I could use that...")

But yeah, *IF* you're someone who still has to buy weapons and such for builds, even new mech's builds, then maybe it's worthwhile. You lose a lot of value when you're just selling the stuff though (and the hassle of actually selling it, which lets face it you probably won't bother doing)

Edited by Wintersdark, 01 September 2016 - 08:31 AM.

[blood4blood]

Combine a little statistics with a little psychology (intermittent rewards to reinforce learned behavior) and of course the chances of getting the good stuff are terrible. Vegas and Atlantic City would have gone broke years ago if gambling paid off.

[Kirkland Langue]

blood4blood, on 01 September 2016 - 08:52 AM, said:

Vegas and Atlantic City would have gone broke years ago if gambling paid off.

Casinos pay out in cash.
PGI pays out in.... well nothing. You don't even get to keep the electrons they use to make changes to your account.

[SamsungNinja]

I'm just going to put this out there.

When you look around the F2P genre, gamble boxes are always skewed, otherwise they wouldn't be profitable. Furthermore, most gamble boxes are 10-20x the cost of MWO's key system. Then, consider the fact that many games don't even show you what's in the box. You just get a vague description of the bulk contents with the big chase prizes highlighted.

Based on my experience of playing many F2P titles and working on F2P games, I have to credit PGI with creating the most equitable gamble box system I've yet seen, and (so far) not being retentive about giving away keys for free.

So far, I have bought one key, and while I got something marginally useful, I've received cockpit items and a lot of C-Bills from boxes that I opened with the keys I got in events. That's pretty cool for something that I mostly don't have to spend money on. Oh, and if the box is full of garbage? 50k C-Bills I wouldn't have had before.

It's an all-around great system--even more so, now that they've elected to highlight the probability of item drops (for even better management of player expectations). But, before you say it, I know--PGI can't do anything right and they're a bunch of greedy hustlers. There's no need to remind me, I know many of you feel that way. But, I digress.

Now, I do have one major gripe about the boxes. There's a few items in there for which the purchase price would have been 50,000 C-Bills, but the sale price is only 25,000 C-Bills.

I feel that this needs to be corrected and these items removed. Players should never feel like opening a box was a mistake. While there's some subjective divergence on what that means to an individual (and is therefore impossible to quantify), receiving an item (esp. one that you have no use for) with a lower sale value than the box it came out of is a pretty pooptastic feeling--one that I feel would be universally agreed upon.

Therefore, I hope that PGI takes note of this and removes the sub-50k sale value items from the boxes. It's bad enough when you land on a C-AMS instead of the Centurion or shiny module, but at least I don't feel ripped off. There's enough of a subjective value* differential to make the boxes feel risky. You don't need insult on top of injury.

* Subjective value is used to describe the situation wherein an item with little use to one player may be of great use to another. E.g. the veteran player sees less value in 2x Large Lasers because he/she likely has a stockpile of them, while the new player saving up for equipment (or can't afford them yet) just received a decent boost to his/her experience.

Edited by SamsungNinja, 01 September 2016 - 04:59 PM.

[Ghogiel]

The cache I found worth openning is the one with the jenner and pug with helmet> it only has 2-3 common items and one of those is 50MC.

[Brizna]

I have to completely agree with the OP, you always get the worst item in a cache, for example I got a suckoner last week....

[Astrocanis]

Lorcryst NySell, on 21 August 2016 - 10:33 AM, said:

You can get 50 Keys for 7 dollars ... that's absurdly cheap ... rip off, really ?

Yes. Because of those 50 keys, the chances are that you'd be better off simply buying CBills than the keys. At least, at that point, you are going to guarantee that the actual money that you have spent will get you something useful.

Scam? Not really. A tribute to greed? Pretty much.

[KKillian]

Agreed, outta the 15 or so boxes I've opened the only thing of any use I got was... more keys. The times it has "almost" rolled the gold items (landing on them) it then "ticks" over to the next item, IF it lands on the blue or white, it doesnt "tick" over an extra time. It visibly looks like some jackhole is pushing the thing over behind the scenes if you're about to win a decent item.

I'd be more comfortable losing if that "extra" tick didnt happen randomly, its like someone standing inside the wheel box on the price is right to ensure noone lands on a dollar. Whoops, bumped the wheel!

Edited by KKillian, 02 September 2016 - 07:11 AM.

[Ghogiel]

Not all boxes are equal. Stop openning the ones with 5 crappy commons as you will always get ripped off.

There are at least a couple boxes that are decent with good common items and ony 2-3 commons. Basically stop openning the boxes trying to get the jackpot, open them to get the common item. If you are getting the common 9/10 anyway at least having 1/3rd of those being 50MC is worth it lol.

[Dee Eight]

When the only common item in the box is the 250,000 c-bills... you know right there you're not coming out any worse than that and you've just had a MC to C-bill conversion rate of 1:10,000. That in comparison to the best other MC conversion, the locust 1E champion for 760MC which can be sold for about 1.9 million c-bills, which is thus a 1:2500 ratio.

[Celtic Warrior]

I sell the ones I get, I don't need a hamster wheel for my cockpit.

[Tawittle]

i've gotten 500 mc, 360 target retention (sold for 3 mil), and artillery accuracy (sold for 2 mil) from supply caches, in addition to lots of 50 MC/250k Cbills/LRMs/PPCs/Gauss/AC/UAC/omnipods that I normally sell or sometimes keep. I've also opened 3 supply cache keys 2 or 3 times.

It's not a complete scam, but if you are opening caches to get a whole mech variant or specific module you are going to be sorely disappointed.

[Good_Cat]

I got scammed too .....s**tish thing available in the cache.

[xSleeZyx]

Good_Cat, on 02 September 2016 - 03:34 PM, said:

I got scammed too .....s**tish thing available in the cache.

You didn't get scammed, especially in terms of cbill value.

I also won a mech and i'm very happy for it. Even if i won't use it, it's a free mechbay + couple milions of cbills.
So yeah, that's winning the lottery.

I've personally not decided yet wether to sell it or not. ^^ I'm mostly a light user, but it might come in handy some day, who knows.

[Good_Cat]

xSleeZyx, on 02 September 2016 - 03:42 PM, said:

You didn't get scammed, especially in terms of cbill value.

I also won a mech and i'm very happy for it. Even if i won't use it, it's a free mechbay + couple milions of cbills.
So yeah, that's winning the lottery.

I've personally not decided yet wether to sell it or not. ^^ I'm mostly a light user, but it might come in handy some day, who knows.

swap my Zeus for your Highlander

[Requiemking]

Good_Cat, on 02 September 2016 - 07:57 PM, said:

swap my Zeus for your Highlander

Aye, the Zeus isn't THAT bad. There is certainly worse Assaults you could be getting (Victor, IS Highlander, ect...).

[PocketYoda]

Yes its a scam and with the amount you pay on keys you could have bought the mech.

[Beaching Betty]

Its just luck. Trust me.

I got some good drops from it, like a 3 days premium time.. Im a F2P so I find that great..