1 reply to this topic

[Borengar629]

Hello everyone.

It has been a long time since I last posted here on the forums. I have been playing the game since closed Beta with some very long breaks in between. I just returned to the game some days ago and really enjoy my time with it so far. But then I stumbled accross some videos stating that the game is basically on life support at the moment which is sad but quite understandable to be quite honest since I can imagine developping MW5 and MWO at the same time stretches resources very thin for a studio of PGI's size.

That being said I still hope that there are at least some resource left to improve upon MWO in the meantime and this is where my suggestions come in. I am trying to keep it brief and as structured as possible but I appologize in advance for the wall of text as well as my bad english (I am german so have mercy^^)

1. Subscription model

It always baffled me that MWO does not have a sub model like pretty much any other F2P game.
As far as I understand it the Mech Packs have not been generating enough revenue over the last year. Given the price point to value ratio this is not really surprising to be honest. We are at a point in the game where there is a mech for every role in every weight class. So people think twice before investing real money instead of just grinding out a mech that basically does the same like the new one.
A sub model would generate revenue independantly from actually creating new content.
Here is an example how it could look like:
https://docs.google....jqNQ/edit#gid=0
Upon paying let's say 30,-€ you'd get access to a daily login reward for the next calendar month, have premium time for that very much, as well as access to subscriber events running throughout that month. These events should be standard events like the weapon challenge we have right now and not be restricted to specific mechs. Just instead of having 5 days to complete it you'd have a month.
That would encourage people to not only pay for the game but also to actively play it.

2. Mech Packs

Like I said I am of the opnion that the pricing of the monthly packs is way to high right now. But with the sub model premium time would be redundant and could be eliminated from the equation for the packs.
Also the early adopter rewards should be taken away or be redistributed.
Standard packs should 4 mechs with 4 bays including the special variant for 20,-$. Not having a mech that provides a real ingame benefit in a pack that comes for real money is quite off-putting in my opinion.
The collector's pack should add the titles, badges as well as the reinforcments and should cost 30,-$.
The ulitimate pack should then add the hero variant and the early adopters rewards (but not only for early adopters but by default) at a prive of 40,-€.
That way each tier would provide enough tangible beniefit to justify the price tag.
And as we are talking about digital goods that don't produce any costs after being developped it is far better to sell more units at a reduced price than sell fewer units at a premium cost which is what is done right now. 70,-€ for a single mech chassis is simply too much. Sure there are 7 varianty of said chassis but if we are honest you hardly play more than 3 of them actively.

3. Paragon Mechs

The name of course is up for debate^^ But there should be mechs that provide 30 % bonus to faction standing by default. They also should be unique variants like heroes, be also only available for MC and come at the same price. This may sound useless but it will tie in with the next point so bare with me there.

4. Changes to Faction Play

Faction Play should by any means the core of the game. Right now it feels more like the byproduct of Quickplay which is very very unfortunate.

First off I think that Faction Play also needs Quickplay as a mode so players are encouraged to only play in the context of FP to begin with. To separate it from normal Quickplay the C-Bill Rewards of normal Quickplay should be reduced and there should be no separate group and solo queue there. That would autmatically make FP Quickply more attractive and would turn Normal Quickplay into what it should be. Nothing but a testing ground that gives you at least some rewards and a test bed for groups to train.

Also we need to break the strict divide between IS and Clan tech. It is the single most off-putting feature in FP in my opinion.
Breaking this up also provides a great opportunity for content as well as generation of revenue which is why it has always baffled me that this is not being done already.

Make Faction standing into a currency. With the currency you should then be able to unlock mechs and equipment as salvage. This would unlock the faction restriction for the specific piece of equipment or chassis. And just like Solaris mode opening you selection would only show the mechs you are allowed to pick.

That would give us a lot to do without the need for PGI to actually create new content. And it is also where the Paragons came in and be very useful.

5. Changes to the new player experience

I have brought many friends into the game over the years but literally not a single one still plays the game and not many of them even lasted until the end of their cadet bonus. I am not talking about the most casual of players here.

The implementation of the Academy was a step in the right direction in my opinion. The cadet bonus on the other hand was not. Showering new players in C-Bills without them having the slightest clue what to spend them on is bad. This results in players buying bad mechs for beginners, filling their mech bays with stuff they end up not liking and ultimately stop playing the game.

Instead they should be forced to play through the entire Academy and then forced to play 3 matches in first a light mech, then a medium and so on. After that there should me a Mech Lab tutorial with puzzlelike challenges to solve like build a medium mech that runs at least 95 kp/h, has a firepower of at least 40 and a heat managment of at least 1.25. During these puzzles popups with tooltips could explain the details of mechbuilding.

After that they should be given 4 mechbays and 3 mech coupons for standard and 1 hero mech coupon as well as 4 million C-Bills.
This may sound like a bit much at first but it is really not. 4 Bays should be the default because it allows new F2P players to hop into Invasion right away. A hero mech to give them a sense of being given something special and valuable should also be standard.
And 3 Standard mechs and 4 mio C-Bills is also not that much. The cadet bonus amounts to what? Around 15 mio if I am not mistaken. That seriously limits the options for new players dispite being much money.

But again this is just my opinion. We need new players and we need them to stay. So there is nothing wrong with showering them in stuff they really need in the beginning instead of money that they will spend on stuff that they cannot possibly assess the value of.

Conclusion

I know that this is much to ask given the circumstances and the fact that maybe not many will even like these ideas. But I feel like this would get this game back on track where it belongs and maybe even generate enough revenue so PGI may port it over to Unreal engine once they are done with MW5.

Sorry again for the lenght of the text and the quality of my englisch^^
Hope everyone is having a great day. Greetings

[Stingray Productions]

I honestly have a different model in mind. At first I think players would "HATE" it, but perhaps it would be accepted if it where the only way to keep MWO from going under. Of course, I don't know how they would do this, but they have plenty of traffic on their website and the game launcher. They might include paid ads on their website and console, maybe even like google ads or something. I've seen where 100,000 views can equal $1,000 sometimes. Well, who knows if that'd be enough really, but it's just a thought I'm throwing out there.