82 replies to this topic

[Alan Davion]

Mechwarrior1441491, on 04 June 2017 - 09:17 AM, said:

You don't need 3-7 of the same mech.

Oh yes you do in fact. According to a tweet from Russ a few months back, the skill tree was purposefully designed to cut down on people experimenting with different builds on a single mech, and encourage people to buy multiple copies of the same mech to "experiment" with different builds.

[Mechwarrior1441491]

Hahahah

Just like they envisioned players having to sometimes play with damaged mechs with R&R because they couldn't afford to fix their mechs?

Slash the cost of mechs.


If they hadn't of pulled Solaris, I would have said, make it a paid add on. Paying users get that game feature. Mechs that are destroyed have a cool down before they can be used again. This would help their little "buy multiple mechs of the same type".

No reason to buy yourself passed the pay gate anymore.

Edited by Mechwarrior1441491, 04 June 2017 - 09:24 AM.

[Alan Davion]

Mechwarrior1441491, on 04 June 2017 - 09:20 AM, said:

If they hadn't of pulled Solaris, I would have said, make it a paid add on. Paying users get that game feature.

The games population is already obscenely low, low enough where people are complaining of being put up against Tier 1 players all the way down in Tier 5. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but PGI can't afford to separate players anymore than they already had.

Remember when they tried to separate the CW/FW queues? The ultra-comp-meta-try-hards flipped their shite cause they couldn't farm the pugs cause there weren't enough players, not to mention they were all Clan side while the PUGs were all IS side.

Then of course we also get into the "CW IS HARDCORE YO~!" argument, which they are quick to renege on when they don't play against the other "hardcore" groups and cry that they don't have anyone to farm the shite out of, creating an endless circular mess for PGI to try and fix.

[Spheroid]

@Bandito: There is no untapped demand for Phoenix mechs. The meta has become more lethal and better deals are available. The only people who would buy them are new "old school" lore hounds who I suspect don't exist. If they do they are probably spending money on Harebrained Scheme's Battletech game.

The aggrieved original owners of Phoenix do exist however. Is it not better to avoid upsetting a known customer than to hope to attract speculative new ones?

The Locusts in Phoenix are horrible and suck compared to the Pirate's Bane mastery pack. The Wolverine-6R is a rare sight, ditto the SHD-2H.

The Thunderbolt-5S is not that great either when you can bring 5SS, 9SE or Top Dog. The Battlemaster-1G is a good mech, but again there is a Battlemaster mechpack. The Hellslinger is far more unique looking Battlemaster than the 1G with grey paint and radiators.

CW is a sick and dying gamemode. No one is going to buy expensive Phoenix packs when they could use more lethal mechs to earn maximium loyalty through higher matchscore.

If people just wanted a lethal set of assault mechs they can still buy Kodiaks, Marauder-IICs and Scorches.

Finally the whole thing was setup as a package deal, but thanks to the new skill system most of the variants will never see play. Why pay for something you will never use? If you make it ala carte you cannibalize hero and mastery packs sales. There is no compelling reason to reopen phoenix.

What would you charge for a BLG-1G(p)? More or less than a Hellslinger? It would have to more to reflect the loyalty boost making more expensive than the already costly non-sale price of an eighty-five ton hero.

Edited by Spheroid, 04 June 2017 - 10:04 AM.

[Dee Eight]

Xetelian, on 03 June 2017 - 09:46 PM, said:

I think you're missing that fact that those tanks come with 3000 Gold and Premium time and as it says 7 more items.

The ultimate and loaded tank prices do, the basic tanks do not. The 4 more items on the ultimate chrysler tank consists of 3 tank/weapon upgrade modules and credits (C-bills) but ZERO premium time. The 7 more on the sherman variant are 30 days of premium, 3 modules, gold, credits, a crew bonus and a customization bonus and those are both essentially the early-adopter bonuses. If you go down a bit to an older premium tank like the Tier 8 Object 112, for $64 you get a tank and a garage slot. That's it.

With our older mech packs, you continue to get whatever came with the packs outside the early adopter bonus window, for years afterwards. You want discounted premium time, buy any $20 mech pack from the Marauder up to the Javelin and get cockpit items, banked time, 3 mechs you can sell for c-bills, and 3 bays. You want active premium time you go to the gift store and buy a mech bundle like the locusts for $13 and get 3 bays, and three mechs you can sell and two of those have XP or Cbill bonuses. Packs from Origins IIC or older come with faction content but only get premium time when spending $40 or more and even then it was a lot less than you got with the later packs for your money. There's also the steam performance packs which now are great values under the new skill tree system since you don't need to buy other variants to master them, and you get MC, Cbills, full camo unlocks, three color unlocks, and 30 days active premium time, along with two cbill bonus mechs.

Edited by Dee Eight, 04 June 2017 - 10:02 AM.

[Ted Wayz]

DAYLEET, on 03 June 2017 - 10:39 PM, said:

I was always a fan of finding someone in a much worse situation than me and then feel good about my situation.

It is what abused people do to justify their situation.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Ted Wayz, on 04 June 2017 - 10:04 AM, said:

It is what abused people do to justify their situation.

I really hope you mean that in a general sense, and you're not equating the price of 'mech packs to mental and physical abuse...

[Ted Wayz]

Jay Leon Hart, on 04 June 2017 - 10:18 AM, said:

I really hope you mean that in a general sense, and you're not equating the price of 'mech packs to mental and physical abuse...

Why? You want to start a crusade over an internet post.

Are you that fragile?

[Dee Eight]

MrJeffers, on 04 June 2017 - 08:41 AM, said:

^ This.

PGI has greatly devalued the pack values. First they removed premium time from the base pack, something that previously included 30 days *banked* time. Second, they removed banked premium time and it is now auto-activating. And lastly, with the skill tree, the removal of the rule of three, and an increase in the total cost of skills for 3+ mechs.

I have to assume that given the Wave 1 badge... you're suffering long term memory failure ? Before the Marauder, the older packs didn't get ANY...NONE...ZILCH....ZERO premium time at the lowest pack price levels (ok yes the Urbie got it for $20 but really that's just putting frosting on a bad mech anyway).

Wave 1.... $160 via alacarte to get to 30 days of banked time or just outright the $90 for the thor level pack.

Wave 2... $90 for the Loki collection to get 30 days of banked time, and nothing via alacarte.

Wave 3....$60 for the shadow cat level to get 7 days

Res 1/2 and Origins.... $40 pack levels got you 7 days.

[Spheroid]

@Dee: He may have been an early adopter. I got the 30 days from both Talon and Resistance 2 Wolfhound pre-orders.

Edited by Spheroid, 04 June 2017 - 10:31 AM.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Ted Wayz, on 04 June 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

Why? You want to start a crusade over an internet post.

Are you that fragile?

No, I just hoped you weren't such a vile specimen of a human being. Oh well.

Edited by Jay Leon Hart, 04 June 2017 - 10:38 AM.

[Ted Wayz]

Dee Eight, on 04 June 2017 - 10:23 AM, said:

I have to assume that given the Wave 1 badge... you're suffering long term memory failure ? Before the Marauder, the older packs didn't get ANY...NONE...ZILCH....ZERO premium time at the lowest pack price levels (ok yes the Urbie got it for $20 but really that's just putting frosting on a bad mech anyway).

Wave 1.... $160 via alacarte to get to 30 days of banked time or just outright the $90 for the thor level pack.

Wave 2... $90 for the Loki collection to get 30 days of banked time, and nothing via alacarte.

Wave 3....$60 for the shadow cat level to get 7 days

Res 1/2 and Origins.... $40 pack levels got you 7 days.

At some point people will figure out PGI has no continuity or plan, and that they are grasping for revenue.

Back in the day packs were expensive but leaderboard events would have thousands of participants. Today even the $20 packs barely draw 1000 participants to the leaderboard events.

PGI needs $$ so they will try and get you to buy MC or premium time, plain and simple.

You see PGI doesn't make coherent, well thought out business decisions. They just scramble when they realize they make bad ones. Unless someone can explain how the skill tree was a business decision.

Jay Leon Hart, on 04 June 2017 - 10:31 AM, said:

No, I just hoped were weren't such a vile specimen of a human being. Oh well.

Oh, you are allowed to call someone a vile human being without knowing the context of what they say.

You are right, I am a bad person.

[Imperius]

Ted Wayz why are you mad and grumpy now?

[Ruar]

Skill tree as a business decision.

Customer base was unhappy with rule of 3. Skill tree was either required because the old system was locked to three mechs (doubtful but it was old code) or the ST was a great excuse to throw players a bone while forcing a somewhat unpopular change.

Skill tree allows for future balance. They are actually being iterative with it which is nice. Implement ST, see if there are issues with the original concept, adjust qurisk/weapons, adjust ST based on the stats from all of the changes, continue monitoring stats and adjusting as needed.

Skill tree in theory is more interesting to current gamers. Most FPS players are used to some kind of customization of their character. Whether it's weapon unlocks, skill choices, or role focus there is some kind of choice in all FPS games these days. PGI is trying to shift MWO into the same realm as the other FPS.

New players might be more interested in the game if they can play the ST mini-game and not just the main game. Players have choice, they should feel satisfaction faster as they get a new node every match or so instead of the grind between getting skills in the old system. Whether you agree with those considerations or not is moot, the fact is the ST can be sold using those terms.

A working ST means future mech packs can be based on individual chassis instead of the current system. They even told us they have plans to change the way mech packs are presented. I assume it didn't happen right now because they weren't sure how the ST would work going live and wanted to wait to make sure it was working before implementing change. I assume next months mech pack release will show a new system.

In the end the ST should provide more revenue because more players are playing, more new players are staying, and mechs are individually cheaper so will appeal to more players overall. Revenue goes up because of quantity of purchases spread across a bigger player base.


Now, I'm not saying I agree with the reasons I listed, but it's how you can sell the ST as a way to increase profits.

The rule of three had to go one way or another. I think using it as a way to get acceptance of the ST was a smart marketing move.

I think future balance absolutely applies but at the same time the web design of the ST and having 91 nodes to purchase will make balance very difficult. A simplified ST with linear branches and fewer total nodes would be much easier to balance.

I think interest in the ST is not what they hoped and I blame this again on the web design and low numbers per node. There are much better ways to make the ST happen.

New player interest will probably be minimal due to web design, the noticeable grind while trying to experiment builds, and complexity of the ST. It should have been easier to use and simpler in design.

I think they should tell us about their thoughts on how to change the mech pack sales. Keeping it a secret doesn't really help because they really need the input of the people they are hoping will spend money on their product. I'm not sure they can strong arm people into buying mechs simply because this is no longer the only BT game on the market.

Overall I like some parts about the ST but I can also see how much better it could have been if they had listened to their player base about the problems with the design. PGI's refusal to compromise on the design of the ST will be costly. It has already cost them some players, it has cost them revenue, and the most important part is I think it will cost them future players. I don't know why PGI insisted their design was the best option, but I think they already regret that decision.

[Felbombling]

If an Atlas cost $1.00 and / or a Locust cost $0.20, people would still b!tch about the price structure in MW: O. That has been my experience when talking about PGI price structure in the past. I remember a guy suggesting that a player should be able to afford a Dire Wolf with in-game currency after four games, and that anything more than that was a horrible grind. Good luck with this thread, CK16... you're gonna need it.

[Tordin]

PGI needs to add premium back to packs. And as a bonus, let the added premium time be BAKED.

An example:
Standard pack could add 14 days banked premium time
Collector pack could as usual, as of now Civil War set-up, add 30 days banked premium time
Ultimate pack could give you 54/ 60 days of banked premium time.

Heck, even a Hero or Reinforcement add-on should give you a few days as a pat on your shoulder, like 7 days or something.

Glad PGI have reduced the cost of Light mech packs AND now removing Premium time requirment from private lobbies. So maybe this is why they removed the premium time from Standard packs and halved the amount from 60 to 30 for collectors pack, to compensate? Not sure what the real reason behind the changes of premium time is though, just a guess.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

cazidin, on 04 June 2017 - 05:33 AM, said:

Just wait, soon we'll only have to pay $10 per mechpack...

...for a single mech.

They already cost more than that if you buy individual mechs for MC, at least more than half of them do. Mech packs are a good value if you want or like at least 2 of the variants, but some would be happy to pay only $10 for the one variant they really want.

[Sarsaparilla Kid]

Alan Davion, on 04 June 2017 - 09:19 AM, said:

Oh yes you do in fact. According to a tweet from Russ a few months back, the skill tree was purposefully designed to cut down on people experimenting with different builds on a single mech, and encourage people to buy multiple copies of the same mech to "experiment" with different builds.

Russ was talking about multiple copies of the same variant, like the GHR 5H for example, not the different variants within a chassis, which is how they are still selling them. It would be nice if the mech packs offered 3 of the variants of your own choosing where you could choose multiples of the same variant rather than be stuck with one of each, as we often see that one variant or more ends up being less desirable than others.

[Alan Davion]

Sarsaparilla Kid, on 04 June 2017 - 01:12 PM, said:

Russ was talking about multiple copies of the same variant, like the GHR 5H for example, not the different variants within a chassis, which is how they are still selling them. It would be nice if the mech packs offered 3 of the variants of your own choosing where you could choose multiples of the same variant rather than be stuck with one of each, as we often see that one variant or more ends up being less desirable than others.

That is what I said, maybe not as specifically as you, mind, but I did say that.

[Ruar]

Why would anyone buy multiple copies of the same mech just to experiment with? Especially in the end if you realize you don't like the mech and move on to something different.

The only reason I can see for getting multiple copies of a mech is to put them in a drop deck. Or if I die a lot and want to get into a new match quickly.