Matt Newman/PGI: thanks for running this event. With MWO, and despite the age of the game and the shift of attention to MW5, I think that your company still has the infrastructure here for the game and the associated revenue stream to keep going for quite some time. But I do think it is going to take wise management to get the most out of it that you (as a company) can. I think that with some reorganisation of web content and reconsideration of pricing (let me be blunt: reduction), you can help extend the lifespan of this game for the mutual benefit of players (whether existing players, like me, or new players coming across MWO) and yourselves. I'm not a company director, I'm not a game developer, or anything like that, but here are some suggestions (which no doubt others have raised before, but take this as a contribution in good faith):
1. Keep running events, and keep releasing monthly patches. (As you have been.) Ensure that both of these (events and patches) are sensibly designed and definitely do not make anything in the game worse ('first, do no harm'). Consult with the playerbase beforehand regarding potential patch changes, whether just a small group of veteran players or the playerbase as a whole. You're not obliged to take any of our feedback on board, obviously, but hopefully we can help catch any potential problems, and at the least, we know that we've had the opportunity to have a say.
2. Make everything available in both the in-game store and the web-based store. A long time ago, I asked for the KDK-3(C) to be made available in the gift store, so I could buy one for a friend. I checked just now, and it still isn't available. Not a problem for me now (I ended up just giving the cash to my buddy), but the problem is that any new players discovering this game will not see the full range of items available. You want your customers to be aware of everything that they
could buy from you. You want attractive images of those items on display. If you conducted a customer survey, no one should be in a position to say to you that they just weren't aware that X was available for purchase.
This suggestion also applies to new items that could be available for purchase. Look at how long it took for GSPs to be available, when the playerbase (including me) were pointing out to you that this would be something we would be interested in buying, just that the mechanism didn't exist yet. Bottom line: maximise the opportunities for your customers to buy things from you, make sure they are aware of those things, and make it as easy as possible for the transaction to be done.
3. Significantly reduce prices on mech packs and include a GSP package as part of every mech pack. When I say 'mech pack,' I mean
every possible package that a customer can buy, that involves more than a single mech: mastery packs (as they used to be called), mech packs (most prominent in the web-based store), Steam packs, dropship deals ... all of them. When you introduced the skill tree, you removed the 'rule of three' for skilling up mechs and you introduced a significant amount of grind (essentially forcing players to work to get the functionality of the old modules on every single mech, even if they hadn't wanted to do that). As things stand, and I know many people have pointed this out before, one of your key selling models (mech packs) just mismatches what is happening in the game (buy and skill up single mechs, with no need for mech packs). This inconsistency needs to go (i.e., get rid of mech packs and introduce a new model with single mechs for purchase through both the in-game store and the web-based store) ... but that would take a lot of work, and I appreciate you probably don't want to do that ... so make the packages more attractive by reducing prices and adding GSP packages. (Maybe the official release of MW5 would be a good point at which to do this.)
First, the expensive mech pack model doesn't make sense in the current state of the game. And if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't instil a lot of confidence in new players coming across this game. Would you have confidence in someone selling a product when there's an obvious mismatch between the packages they're selling and the way in which the product is being used? No. At best, the seller looks incompetent, and at worst, the seller looks deceptive.
Second, it can be a significant turn-off to new players (a friend introduced me to MWO a few years ago, and I almost never even started playing this game, because I visited the web-based store, scrolled down to the earliest mech packs [since I wanted to see what the 'start' was like], and almost fell off my chair at the prices for the Clan invasion packs). Don't scare off your potential customers.
Third, given that this game is late in its lifespan, you should maximise the likelihood of players (customers) wanting to spend
something (rather than nothing) on the game. With prices as they stand, you polarise your customers' purchasing: they have to spend either a lot or nothing. There has to be something between those extremes, otherwise you're missing out on revenue.
I haven't actually dropped into a mission on MWO for some time now (real life priorities, and the Epic Games Store situation was a disappointment), but I'm still passionate about MWO. It's now the one computer game I've spent the most actual hours playing (even beating Elite across the various versions and platforms I've played) and the only game I've made videos about. I think it's still got some life in it yet, and speaking for myself I'd like to see the game continue for as long as it can.
Sorry this isn't written as concisely as it could be, but I hope these suggestions help in some way.
Edited by Deeber, 29 September 2019 - 06:10 PM.
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C337Skymaster, on 29 September 2019 - 03:42 PM, said:
(the lbx10 reward instead of lbx20)
