110 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

StaggerCheck, on 10 October 2016 - 12:19 PM, said:

Deathlike, this is pretty brutal. You could set yourself up with a hero Mech and premium time, making 500k + per match. Why would anyone ever have to open their wallet again? You'd be swimming in C-Bills on the strength of a single Mech.

At this point, player retention is better than outright gouging everyone like some sort of miser.

It's easier being a MechWarrior miser in this game instead of someone wanting to experiment with the mechlab w/o a large stockpile.

Experimenting with XL engines is almost like buying a Medium mech. While you can reuse engines... planning around mechs requires you to have figured out the engine you want in advance and that's not what new players know about.

[Angel of Annihilation]

I actually kind of understand what they are going for by making us do it and wouldn't even have an issue with it if it wasn't so damn hard to earn C-bills and everything else wasn't so damn costly.

The reason I believe they weren't this route was to add diversity. Lets face it, if they didn't make it so you had to play 3 chassis, people would just cherry pick a few of them and the rest wouldn't even see the light of day. So I kind of see this is a good thing.

However, I earn an average of 153k per match (probably 200k when I am running premium) which means to by one mech I have to generally grind 65 matches and that is assuming the mech only costs me 10 million to buy. This doesn't count outfitting costs like swaping out DHS, Endo, FF, engines and/or weapons. Adding this stuff costs millions more. Then you have to buy 3 of them.

Then you tack on the cost of buying modules for the mech and if you don't want to play the swap-o-rama minigame with your modules, your generally looking at another 10 million per mech. Even if you are ok with swapping, you will easily end up having to spend tens of millions in C-bills to get 1 each of every module you might need.

This can get pretty stifling really quick when you start thinking about just how many matches you will actually need to play to master out that Direwolf you so admire. Buying and outfitting a set of 3 of them will set you back about 100 million unless you have a ton of Clan weapons and all the modules you need sitting around. That is pretty daunting for a relatively new player that fell in love with the Direwolf right out of Cadet Training.

So honestly about the only way you can have a sizable stable of mechs available to play is if you are willing to open your wallet and open it often. I would actually say 70% of my stable is cash bought mechs right now so the OP has a very, very valid point.

On the other hand, the model they are using now with the mech packs isn't so bad. For $20 a month, you get 30 days of premium, plus 3 of every new mech in the game, plus a ton of other goodies if you pre-purchase. It is a hell of a deal if you want to get right down to it. Premium is about $12 per month so your getting 3 mech bays, 3 mechs and all those goodies for only $8.

As far as Armored Warfare. Honestly they have the absolute best monetary model I have seen in a game. They just get it. Premium tanks are very reasonably priced and the economy progression is fast enough that you never really feel like you have to sell of your old vehicles in order to afford new ones. XP conversion is cheap enough that you don't even think twice about doing it. Overall they have opted to price most things at a level that you don't have to think twice about spending the money and it is great. Too bad that game is kind of crappy, at least in its current state.

[The Pug Commander]

yea and then there are the guys with hundreds of millions of cbills and nothing to spend it on lol

[Imperius]

The Pug Commander, on 10 October 2016 - 10:03 PM, said:

yea and then there are the guys with hundreds of millions of cbills and nothing to spend it on lol

[C E Dwyer]

People should try playing world of Tanks at T8 without premium time, before they try calling this game a grind, because, unless you are very very good and consistently get kills and are on the winning team, you will lose money and end up broke.

Tier 5 is the level ground where even an average player will make money on a game lost.

T10 was designed so that even good players will struggle to make in game credits

Now this IS a deliberate ploy by Wargaming, and one they have openly admitted to, It's effectively a pay wall designed to make them money, while not actually being a pay wall, because you can play lower teirs and make a little money to suppliment your T8 play but this takes a very long time.

A Single T8 tank takes a lot longer to master, than Three Mech variants, I mastered the ButterBee in a weekend

[C E Dwyer]

The Pug Commander, on 10 October 2016 - 10:03 PM, said:

yea and then there are the guys with hundreds of millions of cbills and nothing to spend it on lol

That's because they chose to not buy things with MC and make more mechs available to spend it on.

I don't get people that are founders and haven't spend there MC bonus, because one day the servers really will close, and that money will have been wasted, but it's their choice, though to me it seems more like cutting your nose off to spite your face.

[DGTLDaemon]

Frankly, the only real problem I see with the current three-variant skill tree is that it indirectly forces you to purchase more mechbays. The grinding time itself is not unreasonalbe, although it can differ significantly depending on the weight class... but that's an inherent problem of the existing XP system which makes it easier to earn XP with heavier, harder-hitting mechs.

I do wish, though, that the game population was large enough to allow PGI to further split the queues based on the mech mastery level, i.e. so that players who have not leveled their mechs yet would not play against those with elited/mastered mechs. With the current system, you end up in a kind of a vicious circle: not having your mech leveled puts you at a competitive disadvantage, which makes it harder to earn XP and level your mech... But I guess this is all wishful thinking. I doubt PGI are even considering something like this, given the population issues MWO is facing.

[Trollfeed]

DGTLDaemon, on 11 October 2016 - 03:52 AM, said:

Frankly, the only real problem I see with the current three-variant skill tree is that it indirectly forces you to purchase more mechbays. The grinding time itself is not unreasonalbe, although it can differ significantly depending on the weight class... but that's an inherent problem of the existing XP system which makes it easier to earn XP with heavier, harder-hitting mechs.

I do wish, though, that the game population was large enough to allow PGI to further split the queues based on the mech mastery level, i.e. so that players who have not leveled their mechs yet would not play against those with elited/mastered mechs. With the current system, you end up in a kind of a vicious circle: not having your mech leveled puts you at a competitive disadvantage, which makes it harder to earn XP and level your mech... But I guess this is all wishful thinking. I doubt PGI are even considering something like this, given the population issues MWO is facing.

So much this. PGI shot their own foot with their mechbay system. Other similar lobby grinders have game progression tied on technology trees which you open further with accumulated exp. In MWO your progression is in how many mechs you have purchased. The problem occurs when new player has filled his few first mechbays and realises that he can't progress in the game without buying mechbays with real money and leaves the game.

Mechbays are a big problem for player retention because you can't progress in game without real money. It's like armored warfare or war thunder started demanding real money so you could advance one tier.

[DGTLDaemon]

Trollfeed, on 11 October 2016 - 05:35 AM, said:

Mechbays are a big problem for player retention because you can't progress in game without real money. It's like armored warfare or war thunder started demanding real money so you could advance one tier.

To be fair, PGI do regularly give out mechbays - either directly as event prizes (usually in the form of mechs that come with mechbays), or indirectly as MC which can be used to purchase mechbays. However, you have to spend a considerable time in game to accumulate those. For a new player, the lack of mechbays combined with the requirement to grind out three variants of each chassis can be quite frustrating.

[Bombast]

Cathy, on 11 October 2016 - 01:20 AM, said:

People should try playing world of Tanks at T8 without premium time, before they try calling this game a grind, because, unless you are very very good and consistently get kills and are on the winning team, you will lose money and end up broke.

Tier 5 is the level ground where even an average player will make money on a game lost.

T10 was designed so that even good players will struggle to make in game credits

Now this IS a deliberate ploy by Wargaming, and one they have openly admitted to, It's effectively a pay wall designed to make them money, while not actually being a pay wall, because you can play lower teirs and make a little money to suppliment your T8 play but this takes a very long time.

A Single T8 tank takes a lot longer to master, than Three Mech variants, I mastered the ButterBee in a weekend

Oh yah, WoT gets brutal as you get up the tree. You either have to have multiple premium T5-6 tanks, a premium T8, or you have to be leveling multiple lower tiers tanks at the same time as you're pushing the T8-T10s. Takes a lot more time then MWO, though it's easier on the garage space.

[Kylere]

14500 exp each and the cost,which you can in part recoup by stripping the mechs and then selling them. You can basic a mech in an hour, and then be done with it.

Of all the bad, picking this is odd.

[Jownz]

I understand they say this is a free to play game. You obviously like the MechWarrior IP. So why don't you save yourself some grind and support the game by throwing a few bucks at it ?

Mech bays are cheap and I really can't stand when people complain about the developers designing a grind or whatever you want to call it to force you to spend some money. Of course they do! this **** isn't free to develop and it's definitely not free to keep a company running. So if you like the game spend a few dollars, buy a few mech's, buy a few mech bays and enjoy the game the way it was meant to be played.

People need to stop complaining about a company that is trying to make money and develop what we all love. Thanks!

[MeiSooHaityu]

#F2Pproblems

[Hans Brackhaus]

I started playing in July, and I've never felt the game was a "scam" or even a particularly bad grind. I didn't even blink at the requirement to level 3 variants, it's just their progression mechanic. It doesn't even take that long to basic a mech if you can get a couple decent games in. And you can (eventually) get all the mechs you want just by playing and earning in-game currency. I came from Star Trek Online, where any ship worth having was only available for real cash (25-30 dollars usually for a single ship) or through a massive grind that people were saying took them a year to get enough resources for a ship. So no, the MWO grind isn't bad at all.

As to the new player experience, my only 2 real complaints are that the academy tutorial doesn't do much to prepare you for the reality of the game, and that having only 4 mechbays to start is too restrictive. I don't have a problem spending money on the game because I enjoy it, but someone who wants a truly F2P game is going to suffer.

[Deathlike]

DGTLDaemon, on 11 October 2016 - 05:44 AM, said:

To be fair, PGI do regularly give out mechbays - either directly as event prizes (usually in the form of mechs that come with mechbays), or indirectly as MC which can be used to purchase mechbays. However, you have to spend a considerable time in game to accumulate those. For a new player, the lack of mechbays combined with the requirement to grind out three variants of each chassis can be quite frustrating.

I suggest you look at all the "free mechbays" given out this year.

There's only 3 times this happened so far... ALL of them gated behind CW/FW as the top prize.

Unless you have a good group and have a grasp of CW/FW, that is a lot of work to obtain them.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Deathlike, on 11 October 2016 - 08:23 AM, said:

I suggest you look at all the "free mechbays" given out this year.

There's only 3 times this happened so far... ALL of them gated behind CW/FW as the top prize.

Unless you have a good group and have a grasp of CW/FW, that is a lot of work to obtain them.

Yeah, they have definitely dropped off on giving free mechbays, and the fact new players still only start out with 4 is atrocious.

[Deathlike]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 11 October 2016 - 08:33 AM, said:

Yeah, they have definitely dropped off on giving free mechbays, and the fact new players still only start out with 4 is atrocious.

It's the hint that the NPE is atrocious.

I get that you shouldn't be giving them away like candy, but this is why being an MWO miser is a thing.

[The Pug Commander]

yea this game compared to wot or world of warships is like no grind at all. Although I wish mwo had a pilot skill system similar to those games

[DGTLDaemon]

Deathlike, on 11 October 2016 - 08:23 AM, said:

I suggest you look at all the "free mechbays" given out this year.

OK, let's take a look indeed. I started playing MWO in January of this year. If my memory serves me right, I have gotten the following mechs (each of which came with a mechbay) as event prizes up to this time:

- Cicada
- Ebon Jaguar
- Shadow Cat
- Mad Dog
- Nova
- Executioner
- Zeus (got this one together with the EXE because of the "glitch" with a recent event)

Even not counting the Zeus, that's a total of 6 mechbays with free mechs sitting in them. Seven, if you count the free mechbay they're giving out as this year's loyalty reward for 100 matches played. But that's not even the end of it. Now let's take a look at my MC balance. I started out with zero MC, and I'm currently sitting on 4,098 MC + 400 MC that I'm gonna get at the end of this event. I've so far purchased a single pack of 1,250 MC (and got another free mechbay while I was at it ), and already spent 900 MC to purchase 3 mechbays. I've also won 500 MC from a supply cache - we'll discount that because it's a variable factor. If my math is correct, that's a total of 3,648 MC earned through various events. That is equivalent to another 12 mechbays at full price, or 24 if I wait until the next sale (which is what I intend to do). That's pretty generous, by my standards. But, as I said, you have to invest a considerable amount of time and effort into the game to collect all those mechbays and MC. For a new player, the initial limitation of 4 mechbays together with the need to level at least 3 variants of each mech can be indeed very frustrating.

[Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky]

Cathy, on 11 October 2016 - 01:20 AM, said:

People should try playing world of Tanks at T8 without premium time, before they try calling this game a grind, because, unless you are very very good and consistently get kills and are on the winning team, you will lose money and end up broke.

Tier 5 is the level ground where even an average player will make money on a game lost.

T10 was designed so that even good players will struggle to make in game credits

Now this IS a deliberate ploy by Wargaming, and one they have openly admitted to, It's effectively a pay wall designed to make them money, while not actually being a pay wall, because you can play lower teirs and make a little money to suppliment your T8 play but this takes a very long time.

A Single T8 tank takes a lot longer to master, than Three Mech variants, I mastered the ButterBee in a weekend

The worst part of the WoT grind... Is its accompanied by a toxic community... I am terribad at world of tanks... And i have gotten team killed a multitude of times during my NPE... I quit WoTs very quickly...