33 replies to this topic

[Kael Posavatz]

I've done a couple of pricing breakdowns. To be expected there is a curve since node-prices are static whether you are looking at a light mech or an assault. A locust may pay out six times its purchase price in nodes, but a Direwolf just over half.

I've used Thunderbolts for my price-comparisons because they are a nice middle-of-the-road mech that feature prominently in many FW dropdecks, and are a relatively popular mech for newer players.

Three thunderbolts (-5SS, -9S, -9SE) plus endo (all three) and double heatsinks (-5ss) requires just under 21million c-bills (plus cost of weapons, engines, etc) and after you’ve elited them you have three mechs that are the solid underpinnings of a FW dropdeck. Not as good as they could be with modules, and there are certainly better options, but not an entire waste.

Skill nodes to meet or better the live server skills, cost 5.3 million and can't actually be done (heat dissipation comes up short). But in the process of gaining those you also get a few skills that are quite a bit better (or didn't have before), so it more than balances out. Cost is about ~12 million a piece and you still have 38 nodes for armor and weapons (at the cost of another 3.8 million).

So, buying one mech under the new system is cheaper than buying three under the old model, but the costs of getting it to elite-equivalent level have climbed sharply (~6million, outfitting costs, and time vs ~11.3 million, outfitting costs, and time). Lolcust is ~1.7million vs ~7million, Direwhale ~17.7 million vs ~23million (plus outfitting costs and time).

Past the elite-equivalent level you start getting into the area where modules came into play. Under the old system modules were a capital expense. Once you bought them they were yours to keep and move around as you saw fit. Going back to the Thuds, a common module configuration was RaderDerp, Seismic, 2x weps, at a cost of 54million c-bills. But then tonnage changed and you decide to swap one for a Grasshopper and…whatever. Modules come off the Thuds and on to the new mechs and, hey, you aren’t shelling out 54 million again (assuming, of course, that you manage to port over all of the modules which I doubt). If you move just radarderp and seismic and buy new weapon modules, you'll have knocked 36million off your purchase order. And you didn't need to wait until your mech was elite/mastered or whatever. If you bought a new mech you could put a seismic or radar derp you already owned right on it at no cost.

Or, to put it another way, a fully kitted out 4xThunderbolt dropdeck (which I recall was a thing at one point) would cost ~99million for mechs, endo, heatsinks, and modules (plus cost of weapons and engines), under the old system and ~63million under the new (91 skill node unlocks). But if you wanted to change to a dropdeck with no thunderbolts you had a 54million c-bill investment under the old system that you could pull from to use with your revised dropdeck.


In the PTS that’s no longer the case. To those players with hundred of millions, or even billions of c-bills it might not matter much, to those scrapping by with a few dozen million c-bills who are suddenly experiencing a tonnage change in FW, or want to make a fairly substantial change to their dropdeck? That’s a rather different animal.




Finally, say you want to make a change or tweak your mech. Every node you replace costs 125k c-bills (remove 1 old node, add 1 new) which can make refitting a mech (especially an omni with the costs of pods added), an expensive proposition. And before anyone starts on Clanners OP, allow me to point out that a timeline advancement puts IS omnis on the near horizon.

[Barantor]

Padre Balistique, on 11 February 2017 - 09:18 AM, said:

on a night with my unit, I can change a build on my mech 5-10 times, for reasons from trying to find something else thats interesting, to having silly fun with themes like "Next drop all ERPPCs!"

On regular nights i can change a build 2-4 times, For anything from just not feeling the build i excelled at last time, to wanting to change my role and go, for instance, more snipey for a few rounds, then maybe some brawly after that.

Hell, even on my CW deck there is a somewhat regular altering of builds as I get tired of one role and want to experiment with builds for others.

How much do you play in a week though? I'm wondering how much altering someone does that only plays very casually.

Sometimes these systems are put in so you still have something to work for. I have friends who mastered the mechs they enjoyed and then basically quit the game because they felt there wasn't any more advancement. They might come back for a system where there is something to work for beyond the fun of actual playing.

I ask these questions because if the most vocal of us only take into account a certain playstyle or a certain thought process on the game as a whole we could end up harming the game as much as we think we are helping it.

Also from what I've seen so far, the weapon bonuses aren't as big as some of the other trees, so I might try and figure out an average for myself in time/matches investment if you were experimenting a lot.

[Drebin Cormack]

Barantor, on 11 February 2017 - 09:15 AM, said:

I didn't want those two other mechs, I usually sold them right after.

And I think you hit the nail right on the head. You could recoup some of your loss after mastering the mech you liked. You can't do this in the current system. I can't get that 9.1 million c-bills back that I spent mastering my mech? Fine. What I have a problem with is that to respec from lbx to ultra in my Orion IIC it costs me 2.5 million c-bills. Money that I have nothing to show for. Just because I decided to switch up my loadout to see if I liked it more with those skills.

I'm not arguing for or against the rule of 3. Personally I could go either way on the subject, but it's better than what they're proposing at this point.

[Drebin Cormack]

To be honest, it sounds like PGI got together and started looking for a way to make c-bills disappear. Currently the only way I know for that to happen is if you decide to sell equipment you've bought or if you did really poorly in a match you've just used 80k in consumables on. They look at accounts with c-bills in the billions, and ask "How can we make this poor sap who's obviously addicted to our game spend more money?"

At least that's my take on it. Opinions? Other interpretations?

[Alan Davion]

Barantor, on 11 February 2017 - 08:19 AM, said:

I don't understand some folks love of having 3 mechs, especially if you only really want the one.

There has been several chassis where I like only one or two variants that are offered, yet had to level up one that I hated. I have viewed it as an 'excess tax' and grind when I've had to do those, or when I've found the one variant in a chassis that I did not like and then went and bought a different one.

I don't like pokemech, I want to be good in a few mechs and could care less about the rest.

I like that it is less expensive compared to currently when calculating 3 mechs.

There's a coupe different points in the conversation you're having with Bud and Padre.

You don't like pokemech. Great. You don't need to understand why some people do.

Some people are fans of an entire chassis, not just a specific variant of that chassis like you.

Take me for example. I love the Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Griffin, Warhammer, Marauder... Fack it... I love all the Unseen, now Classic mechs. No explanation needed. That's just who I am.

And you are who you are. Don't try to understand it, you'll just end up with a headache and end up stepping on other peoples toes.

Be yourself, like what you like. If someone like you comes along to say "Hey, we like the same thing!" Great.

If someone likes more than you do, don't try to figure out why if they like variants that you didn't like because they didn't fir your playstyle. They might have fit their playstyle.

It's that simple.

Edited by Alan Davion, 11 February 2017 - 10:19 AM.

[Dogstar]

>I don't understand some folks love of having 3 mechs

Most of the IS mech packs I've bought have five or more variants - Cyclops, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, etc. Each variant has different set of hardpoints and quirks.

Now if quirks are going away then each variant will only have hardpoint differences so there's no reason to keep all of the different variants just the 'best' ones. Especially considering the cost of skilling up all those variants.

But mech pack are sold with loads of variants - why on earth would I buy a mech pack in the future if I'm going to end up selling half of them?

PGI are shooting themselves in the face with this change, their sales are going to plummet, and plummeting sales puts the future of the game in considerable doubt for everyone.

[Drebin Cormack]

Dogstar, I heard somewhere that they were going to be restructuring the mech packs in the near future. Maybe to coincide with the 3060 update?

[FupDup]

Your comparison is flawed because you're purchasing a full set of modules for every mech. You're not supposed to do that in the current live setup. You're supposed to swap modules around and save massive amounts of money.

[Kael Posavatz]

Drebin Cormack, on 11 February 2017 - 10:50 AM, said:

Dogstar, I heard somewhere that they were going to be restructuring the mech packs in the near future. Maybe to coincide with the 3060 update?

In march we're supposed to get a mech pack with 2 is mechs and 2 clan mechs. No idea how many actual variants of each. At least one of each would be a future-timeline mech.

Russ has also said that they might go as 3068.

Here's the thing. MechPacks go on sale 4 months before content is injected. So a March sale puts us at a July patch. Timeline is supposed to hit in june/july.

So the question becomes...what happens if content is supposed to be injected and the game isn't ready for it?

The skill trees were supposed to come out in 10 days, but it's been pushed back a month. No idea what that does to the scheduling for the timeline advancement but it can't be good. If they delay the MechPack they risk disrupting their revenue stream since February is already lacking a mechpack (so was September but we got the Clan Wave I heroes so we may be looking at something similar with Wave II or Resistance I).

[Drebin Cormack]

Yeah, I don't purchase anything until it's available in game. That's pre-ordering, and it's something that I almost never do. It's a pretty stupid thing to do as you're purchasing something in the hopes of it being worth it. With the constant balance changes, the buffs and nerfs, I'd argue that it's impossible to tell exactly what you're buying will be a few months down the road.

If things have been pushed back a month, because atlas forbid they just remove the costs for respec and release it as is and patch out the bugs later, I doubt that would affect the release date of mech packs.

[Padre Balistique]

Kael Posavatz, on 11 February 2017 - 09:29 AM, said:

Finally, say you want to make a change or tweak your mech. Every node you replace costs 125k c-bills (remove 1 old node, add 1 new) which can make refitting a mech (especially an omni with the costs of pods added), an expensive proposition. And before anyone starts on Clanners OP, allow me to point out that a timeline advancement puts IS omnis on the near horizon.

IS Omni's are meaningless, especially the 3060 IS Omnis, and will do nothing for balance, when the issue of balance is with clan range, weight and damage superiority, but this is a conversation for another thread.

[Barantor]

Dogstar, on 11 February 2017 - 10:31 AM, said:

>I don't understand some folks love of having 3 mechs

Most of the IS mech packs I've bought have five or more variants - Cyclops, Marauder, Phoenix Hawk, etc. Each variant has different set of hardpoints and quirks.

Now if quirks are going away then each variant will only have hardpoint differences so there's no reason to keep all of the different variants just the 'best' ones. Especially considering the cost of skilling up all those variants.

But mech pack are sold with loads of variants - why on earth would I buy a mech pack in the future if I'm going to end up selling half of them?

PGI are shooting themselves in the face with this change, their sales are going to plummet, and plummeting sales puts the future of the game in considerable doubt for everyone.

I too do not understand this, unless quirks come back inside the tree and we are only getting a glimpse now of the 'baseline' of the skill tree system.

I hope they have a plan.

[Kael Posavatz]

Drebin Cormack, on 11 February 2017 - 09:58 AM, said:

To be honest, it sounds like PGI got together and started looking for a way to make c-bills disappear. Currently the only way I know for that to happen is if you decide to sell equipment you've bought or if you did really poorly in a match you've just used 80k in consumables on. They look at accounts with c-bills in the billions, and ask "How can we make this poor sap who's obviously addicted to our game spend more money?"

At least that's my take on it. Opinions? Other interpretations?

I suppose that's one possibility. It's not one I thought of, and thinking about it makes me rather sad.

As pitched back in...2011? CW was supposed to have a vibrant, functioning in-game economy that...okay, I suppose it was a bit of a pipe dream but still.

Yes, there are some long-time players floating around with hundreds of millions if not billions of c-bills. I think PGI actually announced the first time someone cracked the 10-digit c-bill line back in early 2014? And, really, there isn't much for those players to do. For a while they could buy additional segments for planets under their control but that disappeared with the introduction of the tug-of-war system. I suppose they can fund unit recruitment costs. Otherwise, yeah, not much to do.

I'm not sure how this line of thought is supposed to make the game 'better' or 'more meaningful' for those players, if this is the line of thought PGI is treading. Frankly, I don't think it does much of anything for them.

[Kali Rinpoche]

It is not cheaper for those of us that have huge mech stables. I will be 1.2 billion in the hole after spending a billion cbills. This billion will have to be earned to get back the the content I already unlocked. No thanks.

Edited by Kali Rinpoche, 11 February 2017 - 06:02 PM.