21 replies to this topic

[Naduk]

The current proposal is far to convoluted for its own good
We do not need more currencies in the game (SP/HSP)
this not only makes the future a nightmare of confusion for everybody

it also makes the refund concept completely unfair in far to many cases
many management styles were encouraged under the old system and the current refund proposal is harmful in many situations

This is my proposal
We condense all prior currencies into similar pools and expand their use
this allows a full refund all purchases relating to the old system
modules, consumables, provide their Cbill or MC cost
skills, mech XP and mech unlocks are gathered into a single XP pool
(that means individual mechs no longer hold any historical XP and future mechs gain no individual XP either)

All consumables and modules are refunded
ALL forms of experience are refunded and merged into a single XP pool



This will allow a cleanup of the skill purchase interface and allow players to focus on skill choices instead of be bamboozled by confusing options and conversion rates

It will also allow ALL players to have their total worth of play time, experience and expenditure refunded and be usable in the new system
all older styles of inventory management will transfer with equality to the new system



with out the need for excessive new cost conversion systems a clean and precise interface can we provided

space can instead be used to show players when they will need to purchase nodes or not

When the player confirms a selection they will be presented with a purchase window similar
with the option to pay with what ever currency you wish is open to all
(note that if no new nodes are selected this screen would not be seen)



The numbers are random and only to give the idea
But this would allow skills to be purchased for any mech from ANY available resource
players at any stage of the game will not have their time or purchases devalued

regardless of previous management styles, you will get back exactly what you put in

this would also open the door for spending in new ways for future content

[Naduk]

thats really not very constructive Shevek

there is lots and lots of good things about the new skill tree

the biggest issue is the transition

other things can be addressed as we go
but the phase in really needs to be right

[Mycroft000]

I much prefer this refund concept.

[Monkey Lover]

I dont think i understand 100%, isn't this how they were going to do it before ? This ran into the problem some people who basically didn't buy modules were not going to get back enough cbills to fully node their mechs again.


I do agree with you the extra currency stuff is ugly. In a year how many people will still have anything to spend. Maybe they can give hsp in events so at least it gets used.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 26 April 2017 - 09:05 AM.

[Naduk]

yeah monkey its similar to what they had originally planned
the biggest change is the way you can spend your cbills/xp and a refinement of how its given back to us

a corner stone of my proposal is to remove GXP and individual mech XP

so regardless of how many modules you own or dont
the XP we have accrued over our various chassis would become available to use across the board
instead of being locked to individual units

for example
it takes 64,500 XP to master a mech in the current system
yet mechs that reach max mastery still accrue XP and it is locked to that chassis unless you convert to GXP via MC

regardless of how "cheap" a player was or not, they still build XP beyond max level
and im sure you still find that most players of veteran status will have several mechs with well over 200,000 xp they cannot use
unlocking this income would equalize the disparity between the management styles

because those "cheap" players are quite likely the ones who buy more mechs and mech bays
instead of the splurging players who dump loads into modules to maximize their builds and grow their collection slower

but where ever you fall in the gaps of the old system
my proposal would have you covered as you dont lose out on what you had previously put in

providing a flexible payment system will allow any player of any standing , new , old, rich, poor
to take full advantage of the new skill tree based on what ever effort/ time/ money/ skill they had put into the game previously

[Nicodemus Rosse]

Merging past XP and GXP makes sense to me, easier to start with a single universal pool of GXP to spend on skill trees, but going forward it doesn't seem that bad to keep XP and GXP earnings more or less as they are now (pre-skill trees).

Making all future earnings of XP effectively into GXP will strongly incentivize people to farm (G)XP in the Champion 'Mechs, which might cause issues?

[Cato Zilks]

Naduk, on 26 April 2017 - 07:22 AM, said:

The current proposal is far to convoluted for its own good
We do not need more currencies in the game (SP/HSP)
this not only makes the future a nightmare of confusion for everybody

I agree 100%

Naduk, on 26 April 2017 - 07:22 AM, said:

We condense all prior currencies into similar pools and expand their use
this allows a full refund all purchases relating to the old system
modules, consumables, provide their Cbill or MC cost
skills, mech XP and mech unlocks are gathered into a single XP pool
(that means individual mechs no longer hold any historical XP and future mechs gain no individual XP either)

I hear you saying that everything should be GXP. For the refund, I think this is fine. but from that point going forward we shroud only have regular XP. It is slightly more complicated, but not terribly so and it makes more sense going forward.

It also makes everyone actually grind new mechs up and avoids unfair advantage to old accounts that have stockpiles of GXP.

[Naduk]

Nicodemus Rosse, on 26 April 2017 - 09:48 AM, said:

Merging past XP and GXP makes sense to me, easier to start with a single universal pool of GXP to spend on skill trees, but going forward it doesn't seem that bad to keep XP and GXP earnings more or less as they are now (pre-skill trees).

Making all future earnings of XP effectively into GXP will strongly incentivize people to farm (G)XP in the Champion 'Mechs, which might cause issues?

the only issue that would create is a increase in sales for PGI
and that only means good things for the game overall
realistically its no different to a current hero mech that incentivizes getting cbills

people have long complained about grind times
if they feel they can buy a champion and "farm" easier
well let them, its no problem
its not like that affects balance at all

[Meihru]

i will TRY to keep this short

i did some maths after i noticed the change in the module refund system.

going the original plan (full cbill refund for modules) i would get about 2.000.000.000 Cbills (2 billion), +/- 100 million
which would have been enough to FULLY level about 185 mechs (assuming the theoretical max 242 skillnodes)
in reality i dont even need half of those nodes, so i could level all those 185 mechs as needed and still have 1 billion to spend for mechs, weapons, engines etc etc.


BUT now its changed to GSP

i will spare you with the exact maths of all the xp/gxp/modules etc etc i have, i will just throw in some small endresults i got.

with the GSP i get as "refund" i can level 183,4 Mechs (again, assuming 242 nodes)
again i go more realistic and say i only need half of those nodes unlocked. now i can level 360 mechs (there arent even that many mechs in the game yet)

now i take xp/gxp into account that those mechs/the account already has. so i can substract 91 sp for all mastered mechs etc. which gives me even more gsp to level other mechs.
so effectively i can level way more then 400 mechs.
Thats more mechs i could ever buy in the lifespan of this game, but i cant do anything else with those "GSP", so they are pretty much useless.

i only have 190 mechs, because i invested in modules instead of mechs
and i dont get the money to invest in mechs. i get GSP i can use for mechs i cant buy since i dont get the cbills to buy them.

Now here comes the big point:
those who invested in modules are flooded with gsp they cant use
those who cheapskated get less gsp but dont need them anyways. they have more mechs (since they didnt invest in modules instead) AND already have their xp on those mechs (which gives them hxp to straight level them).

so, long story short: with the current change to refund, cheapskaters are rewarded for investing into mechs while the ones who actually bought modules are punished up to a point where i think PGI just thinks "F you, we dont care"


Why even change it to this system?
with the old refund system it was fair for everyone
you invest in modules? ok, here is the money back so you can buy mechs/equipment/etc.
You invested in mechs/equipement/etc? ok, so you get less money.

NOW it is just a straight kick in the nuts for everyone who bought more modules then the typical cheapskater.
i am aware that this specific issue
I will dont even mention all the other flaws with those refund changed because they are just minor issues nearly no one will even notice


so, why not stay with the original refund system? (cbills back for ALL modules)? there is literally NO reason tho change it the way it is no.
the money would ahve been on the account regardless, just in form of mechs/equipement. but as it is now module buyers literally get robbed of that money they invested into it, because they get so many GSP that they will never be able to use/spend them. while Cbills remain solid. we can use them AS NEEDED for skills, for eequipment/mechs etc (just like those who bought mechs instead of those modules already did in the past)

i dont care that much about the amount of the money i loose.
i care about the way that we get punished for buying modules to begin with, while "mechbuyers" get rewarded for it

so honestly, change that. get back to the old refund system.

I would even say throw every single xp/gxp in a gxp pot we can convert to gsp. some people have mechs with over a million xp, which we will never be able to spend. WHY punish us this hard?

[Naduk]

i feel your pain Meihru

im set to have 678,000,000 cbills taken from me
they want to lock that into devalued GSP's that i would need to buy 167 mechs to be able to use properly

small change compared to your amount
still i had no idea my account was even worth that much
that said i have been buying mechs and cbills since 2012 so it does make sense

i still want a fair system
hence my proposal
i believe that it should not matter how you played or chose to use your resources
all ways are valid as the game allowed them

i believe simplification of the available resource pools will help fix this issue

[Gazbeard]

@Meihru

I understand your concerns, I really do, and I would have them too if I were in your position.

However, as a new player with only about 2 dozen mechs (and another 14 arriving on 18th July ) and half a dozen modules, the new system under PTS 2.0 is good for me.

I'm thinking that maybe PGI wants to give the newer and smaller-mechbay players a leg-up to help them grow?

[Naduk]

new players would benefit more from my suggestion than PGI's current offering

because if you have 1 mech that is your go to solid performer
you can use it to quickly strengthen your other units
being able to use your cbills or XP interchangeably for skills would give you a huge amount of flexibility

the time when you are strapped for cash because you just did a big overhaul on a mech build
you can use your XP to level a mech instead of cbills ...

[OMCBOONE]

How about PGI gives the people a option. To either exchange modules for cbills or gxp or a combo of both.

Not sure how to implement. Perhaps when we log on the first time after patch, we go to a list of our current modules and we then click a box for cbill or gxp for each module and then apply.. Boom Done..

I myself am okay with PTS refund system as is but it sounds like a lot of people are not. This way we can get what we want.

[Meihru]

OMCBOONE, on 26 April 2017 - 01:10 PM, said:

How about PGI gives the people a option. To either exchange modules for cbills or gxp or a combo of both.

Not sure how to implement. Perhaps when we log on the first time after patch, we go to a list of our current modules and we then click a box for cbill or gxp for each module and then apply.. Boom Done..

I myself am okay with PTS refund system as is but it sounds like a lot of people are not. This way we can get what we want.

how to implement? that would be VERY easy.
take the value of all modules combined and then take a slider with 45k cbill steps (cost of 1 skillpoint). done. very easy and quick to implement. its just exactly the same as you get with converting xp to gxp etc.

the thing is, i get the feeling that they just dont care at all and dont even TRY to think about such easy solutions which would satisfy everyone :/

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Monkey Lover, on 26 April 2017 - 09:04 AM, said:

I dont think i understand 100%, isn't this how they were going to do it before ? This ran into the problem some people who basically didn't buy modules were not going to get back enough cbills to fully node their mechs again.


I do agree with you the extra currency stuff is ugly. In a year how many people will still have anything to spend. Maybe they can give hsp in events so at least it gets used.

All they had to do was give us GSP/GXP instead of HSP/HXP and just accept that we are going to use it differently (after all, it's a completely new system). It really was that simple.

[EasyPickings]

Naduk, on 26 April 2017 - 09:46 AM, said:

regardless of how "cheap" a player was or not, they still build XP beyond max level
and im sure you still find that most players of veteran status will have several mechs with well over 200,000 xp they cannot use
unlocking this income would equalize the disparity between the management styles

I agree. All of the "extra" XP becomes wasted. It's not carried over in this new system; it's just lost.

In the old system, I could spend MC to convert that extra, accumulated XP into GXP for use on any mech. This allows me to use all of that extra XP on my favourite mech to quickly Elite any new mechs that I get - albeit at a cost.

We lose all of that potential in this new system because any XP over and above Master level is lost.

[Excalabur50]

This proposal is excellent as it is fair and simple as you can then level your mech with either XP - Cbills or MC everyone wins there's no pay to win so everyone should be happy and you fairly get back WHAT YOU PUT IN if it wasn't much you don't get much if it was heaps then you should be back heaps

[Naduk]

I had completely forgotten about MC converting XP to GXP
I don't think that's been covered in the refund at all
Let alone the design of their system

Yet another reason to use a system like what I have proposed

We don't need skill points as yet another currency

[Excalabur50]

Never even gave that a thought myself TBH

[Meihru]

Well it's obvious we won't get those refunded, some players spent enough mc to convert millions do into gxp