103 replies to this topic

[Dogstar]

So they've reduced the c-bill cost per node by 40% to 60k.

• I have 111 mechs with no intention of selling any
  
• 111 x 91 x 60k is 606 million c-bills
  
• I earn on average 158K per match
  
• 606 million/158k is 3,835 matches to pay for skill tree nodes

Okay that's a bit of a grind but how long will it take me?

• I played approx. 1500 matches last year (wow that's a lot more than I thought!)
  
• 1500/52 = 28 matches per week
  
• 3,835/28 is 136 weeks
  
• 136 weeks is about two and a half years

TWO AND A HALF YEARS!


Just to skill up my existing mechs, let alone buy any more

P.S.

I've got about 9 modules in total so I will be getting back very little from the 'refund'

There's literally no incentive to buy new mechs under this system

In the last year I bought:

• Resistance and Resistance II $160
  
• Archer, Rifleman, Marauder, and Warhammer $200 (ish)
  
• Phoenix Hawk $85
  
• Cyclops $70
  
• Mastery bundles - Locust, Firestarter, Raven, Spider, Centurion, Hunchback, Shadow Hawk, Griffin, Wolverine, Vindicator, Cataphract, Catapult, Dragon, and Battlemaster $300+?
  
• Oh and the crappy Urbanmech $15
  
• Preordered Assassin, Roughneck, Javelin $110

That's almost $1000 per annum for me and anyone else like me which mean that potentially PGI is facing a two and a half thousand dollar loss of income over the next two and a half years thanks to their decision to tax me for buying skill nodes.


I'm just one player but there's lots more like me, guys who fondly remember the original Battletech board game, want to recapture some of that nostalgia and are prepared to collect the mechs they want.

Screwing us over is not a sound business decision, it is rank stupidity.

Edited by Dogstar, 24 February 2017 - 11:05 AM.

[TercieI]

This is the thing I've been saying. It's just a suicidal business model.

[50 50]

Dogstar, on 23 February 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

TWO AND A HALF YEARS!
Just to skill up my existing mechs, let alone buy any more

Are you skilling them up from scratch and not going to use any of the refunded XP or c-bills you will be getting?

That's dedication and determination.

[Skribs]

How much will you get back from modules? My guess is that it will take you 1.5 to 2 years to catch back up.

[MechaBattler]

They're not giving us any c-bills for the mechs we have. Only modules. That's the part that bugs me. I only bought maybe 12 mill worth of various modules. So I'd be able to afford the mastering of 2 mechs, 3 if I'm forgetting some modules. Now you have to go back to grinding if you want all your old mechs to be optimized.

If they gave our current mechs a "legacy" discount if it's mastered. Then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But at the end of the day they're asking people who already did the grind for their mechs to go back and grind millions more c-bills just to be mastered again.

[Nightbird]

How many mechs do you have mastered and fully equipped with modules? The new numbers will allow you to master multiple mechs for each fully equipped mech you had before, unless you only switch one set of modules around. Even then, you're comparing skills+modules in the new tree system to skills alone in the old system. That been said, even under the old/current system you don't play enough to master your mechs right? You need 6000 matches to master your 111 mechs based on your score.

[soapyfrog]

ironnightbird, on 23 February 2017 - 01:13 PM, said:

How many mechs do you have mastered and fully equipped with modules? The new numbers will allow you to master multiple mechs for each fully equipped mech you had before, unless you only switch one set of modules around. Even then, you're comparing skills+modules in the new tree system to skills alone in the old system. That been said, even under the old/current system you don't play enough to master your mechs right? You need 6000 matches to master your 111 mechs based on your score.

He's still losing a big chunk of the vlaue he already had. That is both time and money being flushed down the toilet.

Many of us are in the same boat.

If you do not feel it because you have not spent very much or any real money, then I am envious. I wish I had not spent what I have.

[50 50]

MechaBattler, on 23 February 2017 - 12:47 PM, said:

They're not giving us any c-bills for the mechs we have. Only modules. That's the part that bugs me. I only bought maybe 12 mill worth of various modules. So I'd be able to afford the mastering of 2 mechs, 3 if I'm forgetting some modules. Now you have to go back to grinding if you want all your old mechs to be optimized.

If they gave our current mechs a "legacy" discount if it's mastered. Then maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But at the end of the day they're asking people who already did the grind for their mechs to go back and grind millions more c-bills just to be mastered again.

12 mil is a very low amount for modules.
That might be about right if you only have 4 mechs.
Given Radar Deprivation is 6 mil, not sure how much seimic is, then any weapon modules... plus any others. You probably have quite a bit more if you went through and had a closer look.
The c-bills can be earned quite quickly though, particularly with premium time active, not forgetting some of these events where MC and c-bills is literally thrown at us and other small bonuses that pop up. Supply caches for example. One of those is 50,000 c-bills if you sell it. Can also look at funding by selling off excess components. For example: I seem to have a large supply of medium lasers in my inventory, amongst other things, but I go through and sell a bunch of these left overs every now and then for a c-bill boost. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

[Felicitatem Parco]

50 50, on 23 February 2017 - 01:33 PM, said:

12 mil is a very low amount for modules.
That might be about right if you only have 4 mechs.
Given Radar Deprivation is 6 mil, not sure how much seimic is, then any weapon modules... plus any others. You probably have quite a bit more if you went through and had a closer look.
The c-bills can be earned quite quickly though, particularly with premium time active, not forgetting some of these events where MC and c-bills is literally thrown at us and other small bonuses that pop up. Supply caches for example. One of those is 50,000 c-bills if you sell it. Can also look at funding by selling off excess components. For example: I seem to have a large supply of medium lasers in my inventory, amongst other things, but I go through and sell a bunch of these left overs every now and then for a c-bill boost. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

12 million is one Mech's worth of modules.

2 Mech modules + 2 weapon modules, and that's only if you're using the cheapest of the Mech modules.

If you have been module-swapping instead of buying modules for your Mechs, then you have been bypassing the Mastery Economy.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 23 February 2017 - 01:46 PM.

[TercieI]

Prosperity Park, on 23 February 2017 - 01:45 PM, said:

12 million is one Mech's worth of modules.

2 Mech modules + 2 weapon modules, and that's only if you're using the cheapest of the Mech modules.

If you have been module-swapping instead of buying modules for your Mechs, then you have been bypassing the Mastery Economy.

18MM is the more normal figure.

I will be getting around 1.2B back from modules, all 398 of my mechs are mastered and I will still have a shortfall of around 900MM, or 160 mechs. I've spent a lot of USD, a lot of CB and a lot of time and the goalposts are moving. It's irritating and has made me much less inclined to spend.

[Nightbird]

Shortfall of 160 mechs... but how many mechs did you have a full set of modules on? Probably fewer than the 268 you can fully master now. In fact 1.2B divided by 18M is only 67 sets of modules. You gained 200 free sets of modules and lost 160 mastery, not a loss-loss trade. If you prefer the mastery, just do half the nodes in the new tree and you can bring your mechs to the same skill mastery as before, it's just the new tree is taller.. and cheaper.

It's not that I don't recognize that module swapping as a loss, but you do gain things too. It's a win-loss deal. Almost all my mechs are cbill bonus, so it's not like I play for free.

Edited by ironnightbird, 23 February 2017 - 02:12 PM.

[Roughneck45]

Prosperity Park, on 23 February 2017 - 01:45 PM, said:

If you have been module-swapping instead of buying modules for your Mechs, then you have been bypassing the Mastery Economy.

ironnightbird, on 23 February 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

but how many mechs did you have a full set of modules on?

This is completely irrelevant really, we used the system they gave us.

Had modules been locked to specific mechs from the start of it all we wouldn't be upset now. We would have been upset at the absurd cost of modules when they first implemented them.

No benefit to having multiple variants devalues the packs and devalues our purchases.

Edited by Roughneck45, 23 February 2017 - 03:36 PM.

[MechaBattler]

Pretty much what Prosperity Park said. Starting to feel like it's their way of forcing a c-bill sink that you can't swap around.

[Skribs]

That's what they want, but its going to backfire bad.

While we're farming cbills to level old mechs we won't be buying mech packs because we already have Mechs to level.

[Bellum Dominum]

Skribs, on 23 February 2017 - 03:00 PM, said:

That's what they want, but its going to backfire bad.

While we're farming cbills to level old mechs we won't be buying mech packs because we already have Mechs to level.

I'd like to know how you keep making this claim. Every one of us (that I've read so far) that have large amounts of mechs do not have them all already mastered. Why would that change with the new system? What about that is a reasonable expectation? That for some reason we're all of a sudden going to prefer to master each and every one of our mechs instead of 'oh shiney' when a new mech pack comes out... as we've been doing the past 4+ years?

[Dee Eight]

Dogstar, on 23 February 2017 - 11:44 AM, said:

In the last year I bought:

• Resistance and Resistance II $160
  
• Archer, Rifleman, Marauder, and Warhammer $200 (ish)
  
• Phoenix Hawk $85
  
• Cyclops $70
  
• Mastery bundles - Locust, Firestarter, Raven, Spider, Centurion, Hunchback, Shadow Hawk, Griffin, Wolverine, Vindicator, Cataphract, Catapult, Dragon, and Battlemaster $300+?
  
• Oh and the crappy Urbanmech $15
  
• Preordered Assassin, Roughneck, Javelin $110

That's almost $1000 per annum for me and anyone else like me which mean that potentially PGI is facing a two and a half thousand dollar loss of income over the next two and a half years thanks to their decision to tax me for buying skill nodes.

That's terrific however I've spent MORE, and there are plenty of others like me who will keep PGI afloat than there are folks who are like you.

[Nightbird]

In the new system by the time you get enough xp to master it, you'll also earn enough c-bills to master it and more. The argument it will take you more matches to master a mech is false, what is true is you'll have less cbills earned during the leveling process as a result, but one can also argue that you save cbills from not buying variants you don't want anymore.

Edited by ironnightbird, 23 February 2017 - 04:26 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

psst if a 2.5k loss of revenue over a year is going to have any sort of impact at all upon the development company... then the game is long past doomed. no offense just a fact. even a 125k loss over an entire year should barely be noticeable which would require a loss of 50 people spending that much a year and only be the salary of a single developer and possibly not even including their benefits package...

[FupDup]

ironnightbird, on 23 February 2017 - 04:22 PM, said:

In the new system by the time you get enough xp to master it, you'll also earn enough c-bills to master it and more. The argument it will take you more matches to master a mech is false, what is true is you'll have less cbills earned during the leveling process as a result, but one can also argue that you save cbills from not buying variants you don't want anymore.

Saying that you save money by not buying as many variants is fairly moot, because obviously fewer mechs equals fewer resources.

The only fair way to compare costs is to compare an equal number of mechs for both live and PTR.

[soapyfrog]

ironnightbird, on 23 February 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

It's not that I don't recognize that module swapping as a loss, but you do gain things too. It's a win-loss deal. Almost all my mechs are cbill bonus, so it's not like I play for free.

That it is win-loss is completely arbitrary. PGI could make it win win (no c-bill cost for skill nodes, no cost or loss to respec) and they would have no massively unhappy customers and our spending habits would not change.

In fact a system where skill nodes do not cost c-bills and respecs cost nothing and make you lose nothing is simply good for everyone. There are plenty of other ways to c-bill sinks that are opt in and not punitive.