69 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

Obviously you're not happy with the rate you're getting new stuff, and I'm not trying to invalidate that feeling - it's just my aim to give you some context in the hope that it helps.

MWO is a different animal than games like SOCOM, and is based on a different fantasy in the game. A lot of multiplayer games, particularly Back in the Day like Halflife, Quake, Unreal Tournament, or AvP. made their money by selling you the game, and most of them included multiplayer as an optional feature. More recent games have unlock mechanics, like Mass Effect 3's (very fun) multiplayer mode. The modern cost of development is higher (like, a lot) than even in 2002, so business models have changed as well.

Think about this: how many 'mechs would you comfortably use on the regular? I use around 10 of them regularly, plus a couple of extra 'mechs to fiddle around with via mech packs or random purchases. At the 2-3 days (call it 3) you've experienced to grind out a fully upgraded variant, I would be done with the terrible grind of purchasing my core stable in a month, not counting the Cadet bonus. Even if I insisted on playing a different 'mech every day of the month, I'd complete the grind in about a quarter of a year. That's not a lot of time for the longevity of the game's economy, but there's another benefit to giving players content gradually, especially when they're new.

MWO is complex. Just its movement mechanics are significantly different from most people's expectations, to the point that loading screen tips and 3rd-person mode (and the Academy) were implemented to help players deal with them. No other game I know allows - and requires - players to design their builds so thoroughly. Giving players gradual content isn't really about "stretching" the game's progression; there are about a thousand unique variants in the game, they've got time. It's about giving people the sense that they've worked for their stuff - and giving them time to learn and play their builds before moving on to the next thing.
Historically, new players did complain that it was too hard to get into the game with enough 'mechs to feel like they had options - that's why the game now gives you ~25mil. c-bills between the Cadet bonuses and the Academy. But what really threw new players was the actual complexity of the game. If you're still in T5, you probably still see a bunch of funky builds - Gauss rifles paired with SRMs, AC/10s with LRMs... Streaks. A lot of people who aren't used to paying the kind (and amount) of attention that MWO asks can end up with a bad grasp of the game's balance and mechanics. As well, a lot of people enjoy the collection aspect of the game - I kid you not, people bought Gold-plated Omnimechs for five hundred dollars (there were only a limited number of each available) purely to collect the shiny.

So I hope that helps you somewhat, and I do promise you - cbills will become irrelevant much faster than you think. I have over 121mil c-bills, and that's chump change.

[KursedVixen]

LordNothing, on 19 June 2024 - 05:24 PM, said:

realy think mc needs to be grindable. not very quickly mind you, no more than a few points per game. but the game isnt interesting unless i can keep collecting stuff, which sucks because i have most of it and payed well beyond what a game should cost. so little reason to do grind outside of events. if population decline is an issue, give old players reasons to come back and new players reasons to keep playing. players cant buy things if they are playing other games.

you kinda can in faction play.

Grospoliner, on 25 June 2024 - 11:26 AM, said:

To those saying they want ammo and repair bills. No you do not. Go play world of tanks for a few weeks and you will begin to understand how ammo and repair bills are negative reinforcement and contribute to a cancerous player base. If you think camping and hiding is bad now, wait until you learn what it is like when your progression is impacted completely by the actions of other people who play with the skill of a potato.

You want something to throw C bills at? Aks PGI for more paint jobs and bolt ons that can be bought with C bills. They can and should keep the "premium" cosmetics as premium and make the random stuff either or. An additional thing that could be brought in is mech equipment like gyros and myomer, and other items that can modify mobility and allow for more customization.

PGI should also reimplement the version of the mech lab that let you pick what weapon went into what hard point. It existed at some point but I dont recall if it ever came out of beta. That and new equipment would go great hand in hand. Basically they should emulate YAML at every chance in every game they make.

even warthunder changed this a little.

[KursedVixen]

Gasboy, on 22 June 2024 - 08:16 PM, said:

Did you want them to play the game for you too?



Oh no, it's a difficulty to grind cbills by playing a game. If it's so trivial, why does it need to be changed?

You can try out the different upgrades by going into mechlab, making the changes you want to try, and then going into the tesring grounds. All without spending cbills.

all without other players to shoot at... or be shot up by. Training grounds may be able to show you what a mech can do but it does not simulate 23 other mechs 12 of which are shooting at you or the other 12 which could run into you, block your shots and so on.

We don't even get anything in the acadmy that shows splash damage so fire your CERPPC at the turret in the acadamy and then the damage says 10 because the turret doesn't receive splash damage due to it being one solid object which can lead players to think that the clan ERPPC only does 10 damage or the same with and splash damage weapon like the HAG or other ppcs.

Edited by KursedVixen, 25 June 2024 - 10:22 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

KursedVixen, on 25 June 2024 - 10:12 PM, said:

you kinda can in faction play.

That is if you CAN play FP, and that already takes people lining up to play it. So it's a hard sell compare to say QP. Now imagine people being culture-shocked by actually having to work together, to do certain objectives say in siege, versus a possibly competent enemy team. Takes me back when Boreal Vault had so much ER Large Lasers, and though even you're just at the edge of max range, they can just nail you with constant chip damage. Nobody could open the gates!

Although ultimately, things considering, we have events that give out MC and C-Bills, so it's basically that.

In hindsight,we could put FP objective matches, without Drop-Decks. Might make it more enticing to players.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 25 June 2024 - 10:30 PM.

[Void Angel]

Telling newbies it does 15 damage is misleading, though - remember, it's effective damage that kills. The Academy is trying to teach the basics of how to kill 'mechs and move around; I really don't think we want it to teach damage farming.

[Waponiwoo]

Void Angel, on 25 June 2024 - 10:01 PM, said:

.

ive been playing for 3or 4 for months and have never not been riding zero cbills, even cbills from too many legendaries and other things. im tier 3 and play different builds constantly, many very not meta. the whole fun is tweeking the mechs and giving it a go, but simple adjustments can easily be millions if you bump engines. its painful for now reason. if i had your 120mil i would run through it in a weekend without trying. that is scary actually because i thought eventually i would have most engines and things sitting around so cbills would actually build and be no concern. i guess the random 1mil to swap between armor types n heat sink types adds up.

happy to fund the game buying new hard point legendaries, fun bolt ons like the the otomo pack or w/e, and those come every month, so not really seeing the regular mech trickle a business model at the moment. hell, just got the ferroblast, fun set up, but i had like 5 builds to try on that thing so far. most had different engines so it was millions on top of the cbills they give with it. i want to try more.

for game progression, i can see that in mw5 or some mmo version of this, but its not that. its a quick drop shooter. just feels like grind for the sake of grind.

for new players the 25mill is 2 mechs basically. not enough for mistakes. i know how to build from mw4, mw5 a bit so like i know i want an arrow and an ac20 hunch and the basic weap types, etc. i think what kills new new players is the standard builds are mostly lore based and suck. this forces them into the mechlab immediately. like take the ac hunch. standard of standard mechs, but default is no endo steal at like under 70kph. any of us would have that thing at 90kph with a light engine and a couple mls before dropping once. they should all have a default good build buy and a drop down to buy the lore version instead imo. peeps could mostly skip the mechlab for years if they wanted. the loaner mechs were a good idea but people will want to buy a mech pretty soon.
another issue is the balance. as good as some things are in this, like LOVE the perk system, many things still need work, just dont work as expected, or are simply non viable. literally just flag that stuff with a red star with a tool tip warning.
the skill tree doesnt help at all either. oh you dont know that you have 15% less armor than everyone? wait ecm is useless without skills and is not well described in the first place? radar dep being essential? some heat for speed trade offs are fine but some of those things should be stock to a usable level.
like half the mechs being out in the cold on hardpoints and quirks is also an issue. at least like just tool tip them in the store with like an average k/d ratio for that varient or something to give a noob a clue that its still being worked on.

anyway, but yeah i dont see how a lack of cbills helps someone figure out anything at a good pace. if anything they cant find what they like as fast.

Edited by Waponiwoo, 26 June 2024 - 12:50 AM.

[Gasboy]

KursedVixen, on 25 June 2024 - 10:19 PM, said:

all without other players to shoot at... or be shot up by. Training grounds may be able to show you what a mech can do but it does not simulate 23 other mechs 12 of which are shooting at you or the other 12 which could run into you, block your shots and so on.

We don't even get anything in the acadmy that shows splash damage so fire your CERPPC at the turret in the acadamy and then the damage says 10 because the turret doesn't receive splash damage due to it being one solid object which can lead players to think that the clan ERPPC only does 10 damage or the same with and splash damage weapon like the HAG or other ppcs.

Two of the upgrades (ferro and endo) don't require the mech to be shot at to see the benefits of, simply getting more into your mech will do that.

Artemis is very easy to test in the testing grounds.

The difference in heat sinks can also be tested.

You only need to shoot one of the mechs in the CT to see the spread effect of Clan ERPPC.

But you're right in that testing grounds are limited, but I think they will give you a good idea of how your mech moves and feels. How well it disperses heat. If we could get into private lobbies from the mech lab, that could help more I think.

[LordNothing]

KursedVixen, on 25 June 2024 - 10:12 PM, said:

you kinda can in faction play.

even  warthunder changed this a little.

ive played fp since it first came out and i made at most 15 mc. other than from reward trees which are finite. grinding those trees given our current level fp activity is not a good use of my time. the current event is boosting the activity but that will end eventually and were back to getting a few games on peak days only.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 June 2024 - 07:25 AM.

[feeWAIVER]

The6thMessenger, on 25 June 2024 - 09:21 PM, said:

I didn't said that you said those neither. But I am simply thinking ahead of how it could be done specifically.

See, it's easy to say "lets do this", but to forget the steps before or after those -- almost like it is kept vague for plausible deniability when execution is ultimately bad. Like how involved those factions supposed to be, the difficulty of acquiring and maintaining a mech, and the benefits of being in those faction and more importantly, how conceptually different it is.

But if you disagree with the conclusions, please give your own and explain.



Irrelevant.

Me having played other pvp-mmo or not, does not guarantee that such configuration would be successful in MWO2 if done. And if anything, based on the initial attempts of MWO during beta, says the opposite -- such as Repair-Rearm being unfun, and abusable -- almost like people will naturally game the system to have an advantage.

INB4: "We could have armor automatically repaired after a certain time, but use economy to expedite repair."

Could work, but I don't think making players not-play is a solution to things, nor the use of premium currency just to solve little annoyances to be a fair mechanic.



Yet that which you want is better executed some other game.

Careful, you're gonna pull a muscle with these stretches you're trying to make.

All I said is I want a pvp mmo with risk vs reward economics, where scarcity is a possibility, and trade is enabled between players- with the caveat that players can pledge loyalty to help subsidize them.

Everything you're adding to it, all these wild extrapolations, are all obvious strawmen. Stop that.

Edited by feeWAIVER, 26 June 2024 - 07:24 AM.

[LordNothing]

at least add more mc to supply caches. in all cache levels. commons might get 100mc maybe one in four. this might go up to 500, 1000, 5000 for other cache tiers. then i have a reason to play an afternoon when there is no event and when i dont have a new mech.

you can also do mc payouts, maybe 1/50th of your match score, when you have active premium time. you might also have some paid cockpit items that enable mc grind when installed in your mech or a mech bonus on certain cash only mechs.

the one time payout you get with legendaries is pretty good, but you know you are hunting your whales to death.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 June 2024 - 07:38 AM.

[epikt]

feeWAIVER, on 26 June 2024 - 07:21 AM, said:

All I said is I want a pvp mmo with risk vs reward economics, where scarcity is a possibility, and trade is enabled between players- with the caveat that players can pledge loyalty to help subsidize them.

Sorry to hijack your convo with a Clan Wolf avatar, but a lot of players don't want that, casual or not.
"Risk/reward" economics is a hassle for everyone except those who want to recreate all of what suck IRL in their video games.

LordNothing, on 26 June 2024 - 07:36 AM, said:

at least add more mc to supply caches. in all cache levels. commons might get 100mc maybe one in four. this might go up to 500, 1000, 5000 for other cache tiers. then i have a reason to play an afternoon when there is no event and when i dont have a new mech.

you can also do mc payouts, maybe 1/50th of your match score, when you have active premium time. you might also have some paid cockpit items that enable mc grind when installed in your mech or a mech bonus on certain cash only mechs.

If you have no reason to play other than earning coins, you should play ****** play-to-earn crypto games or maybe just get a job. I mean, playing for fun isn't a thing?
MWO is already very generous with free stuff (free mechs every month, loot bags, etc).

[Void Angel]

Waponiwoo, on 26 June 2024 - 12:43 AM, said:

ive been playing for 3or 4 for months and have never not been riding zero cbills, even cbills from too many legendaries and other things.

You've been playing for less than half a year; trust me, you were right about eventually having things like extra engines lying around (which is why people tell you not to sell them.) You're just not there yet. The rate at which you're experimenting is overreaching your income for the time being.

Try to spend more time refining your tactics in addition to your builds - one of the mistakes people make is to change things too quickly. Now that you're in Tier 3, you can be matched with anyone: from a Tier 5 who insists on using a steering wheel all the way up to the occasional comp player (that's rare; the matchmaker only expands tier matching if the matches are taking too long to populate.) That means that you're going to run into dramatically different tactical responses to your own builds and tactics - which means you have to play more matches to see how the build typically performs, as well as what you could do differently to make it work. You've also got 16 Trial 'mechs freely available - with built-in skills - to help satisfy your desire for variety (they're also good builds.) But... this game is going to ask you to think about things; that's one of the design points that sets it apart from other games in its genre. You're already doing better at that than a lot of people (there's a reason they're still Tier5) - and that's probably the very reason that you're running through your funds so fast.

Your economy will get more robust as you get more engines and the like; particularly if you strip 'mechs you're not using (you can use the MechDB build codes to rebuild them later) while you experiment with other chassis - that's what I used to do.

[Waponiwoo]

Void Angel, on 26 June 2024 - 12:16 PM, said:

i can tell if a build is workong as expected usually in one match. but build variety is more of a choice to try fun stuff. for example the ferroblast i swapped to a 2lbx10 2lppc xl at one point. two matches i ran out 9f ammo about 600 dmg dealt. it needed another half ton and gyess what? a different engine to hold it. millions.

telling a new player they cant rebuild simple stuff like that without another half day of grinding, or dont worry money means nothing after SIX MONTHS, is just bad business. it expects a level of commitment that drives people away.

[Void Angel]

It expects a level of thought and economic management that has been consistent throughout the genre. Sorry you're not getting what you want out of the game economy.

It's not "bad business" because you can't be a clothes-horse with 'mechs without much effort. There's reasons to have a slower economy in a game like this.

[Bud Crue]

Waponiwoo, on 26 June 2024 - 12:33 PM, said:

i can tell if a build is workong as expected usually in one match. but build variety is more of a choice to try fun stuff. for example the ferroblast i swapped to a 2lbx10 2lppc xl at one point. two matches i ran out 9f ammo about 600 dmg dealt. it needed another half ton and gyess what? a different engine to hold it. millions.

telling a new player they cant rebuild simple stuff like that without another half day of grinding, or dont worry money means nothing after SIX MONTHS, is just bad business. it expects a level of commitment that drives people away.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your complaint here, because while I agree the grind can be incredibly frustrating, with all the free stuff they give away regularly, it is perhaps the best it has ever been, and it is most certainly better than at the end of the three-mech model (maybe even during the three-mech model era, but I think it was still easier then without having checked the history and the math). The whole point though is to make it uncomfortable enough so that you, the new player are enticed to spend money, however foolishly, to get around that grind. You want that new engine without having to grind for half a day? Well then, PGI has this handy dandy store where you can buy c-bills for real money, via MC purchases (just grind, trust me, never buy c-bills)) to make that grind easier or avoid it all together.

This may be "just bad business" as you say, but from PGI's perspective it is the entire point of this particular model of business going on 12-13 years now.

Edited by Bud Crue, 26 June 2024 - 02:57 PM.

[LordNothing]

epikt, on 26 June 2024 - 09:33 AM, said:

If you have no reason to play other than earning coins, you should play ****** play-to-earn crypto games or maybe just get a job. I mean, playing for fun isn't a thing?
MWO is already very generous with free stuff (free mechs every month, loot bags, etc).

approaching this from a player count perspective. its low, its diminishing. id play a lot more if i could grind for the stuff i dont already have. if i can buy it with cbills, i already have it. i burned through my crypto stash on legendaries. i already play every event for mc and mech bays (most of the monthly mechs get sold). yet still somehow play fewer than 30 games a season. i could easily quadruple that if there was a reason to play.

i paid more than my fair share into this game. so calling me a freeloader is totally uncalled for. you want the game to survive, feed your whales.

[The6thMessenger]

feeWAIVER, on 26 June 2024 - 07:21 AM, said:

Everything you're adding to it, all these wild extrapolations, are all obvious strawmen. Stop that.

It isn't, I didn't say that you said it. Might want a crash-course on logical fallacies if you're gonna toss technical words around. I simply explored possibilities to which you had every opportunity to pitch in and clarify, but you refusing to elaborate, kinda shows you don't really understand what it takes. Closest actually is "Slippery Slope", which isn't technically a fallacy but can be fallacious depending on whether the steps are or aren't really inevitable.

It's cheap and easy to toss ideas, to cite other successes, that's why we get products chasing trend. I'm sure, vaguely enough, there's bound to be one successful take, theoretically. But PGI has been down this road before and sought the result, so I have my doubts of it's efficiacy.

epikt, on 26 June 2024 - 09:33 AM, said:

Sorry to hijack your convo with a Clan Wolf avatar, but a lot of players don't want that, casual or not.
"Risk/reward" economics is a hassle for everyone except those who want to recreate all of what suck IRL in their video games.

TRUE.

PGI has been down this road before. It works with MW5 because there is truly NO risk, and your level of involvement isn't a detriment to your overall success rate -- as in grinding up good ****, to get good ****.

Online, where **** persists, where everyone else can play it as if it's their actual job, sucks.

PS: I'm in exile.

Edited by The6thMessenger, 26 June 2024 - 04:18 PM.

[Waponiwoo]

Bud Crue, on 26 June 2024 - 02:55 PM, said:

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your complaint here, because while I agree the grind can be incredibly frustrating, with all the free stuff they give away regularly, it is perhaps the best it has ever been, and it is most certainly better than at the end of the three-mech model (maybe even during the three-mech model era, but I think it was still easier then without having checked the history and the math). The whole point though is to make it uncomfortable enough so that you, the new player are enticed to spend money, however foolishly, to get around that grind. You want that new engine without having to grind for half a day? Well then, PGI has this handy dandy store where you can buy c-bills for real money, via MC purchases (just grind, trust me, never buy c-bills)) to make that grind easier or avoid it all together.

This may be "just bad business" as you say, but from PGI's perspective it is the entire point of this particular model of business going on 12-13 years now.

the compaint is more the way its done hurts people less familiar with mech warrior, or just less familiar with mwo. it also punishes build experimention for new players, and thats the games real selling point over other fps. like my ferroblast exanple. i even paid 15 bucks for a mech (well with mc and war horns etc) but great pgi got paid. simply because engine costs are terrible and engine sell back prices are a joke, tinkering with the just bought mech is painful. its too much. doesnt even make sense to try and get people to buy additonal cbills with cash imo since those options are obviously an after thought at best and just crazy prices. i look for excuses to give this low player base game money but thats insulting. it really hurts enjoyment of the game. pair that with just bad stock mechs, and just a bunch bad mech varients, and any non mechwarrior fanboy probably backs out in a couope hours.

Void Angel, on 26 June 2024 - 12:59 PM, said:

It expects a level of thought and economic management that has been consistent throughout the genre. Sorry you're not getting what you want out of the game economy.

It's not "bad business" because you can't be a clothes-horse with 'mechs without much effort. There's reasons to have a slower economy in a game like this.

having to pay several million for a new engine becaused i guessed ammo wrong by half a ton is bad design, intentionally or not. does it make sense lore wise? maybe. but so does waiting for repairs and other stuff that is just bad for a game like this. hell, trading the engine in at 70% makes more sense lore wise.

[KursedVixen]

Void Angel, on 25 June 2024 - 10:32 PM, said:

Telling newbies it does 15 damage is misleading, though - remember, it's effective damage that kills. The Academy is trying to teach the basics of how to kill 'mechs and move around; I really don't think we want it to teach damage farming.

Then why have splash at all? why tell people that KMDD's matter more than the klling blow?

Edited by KursedVixen, 26 June 2024 - 05:11 PM.

[Void Angel]

KursedVixen, on 26 June 2024 - 05:11 PM, said:

Then why have splash at all? why tell people that KMDD's matter more than the klling blow?

The game doesn't tell people that. KMDD is a bonus that encourages people to focus their fire - because total damage does matter too. It's great if I can deal more effective damage, and the component destruction and killing blow bonuses will come with that - but it's also useful to just deal damage. My UAC/2 builds don't stop firing just because the target twists; I want it all on his main weapon torso, but there's value in doing opportunity damage to other components as well. That's the same reason that splash damage exists. It's not nearly as valuable as primary weapon damage, but it gives you some extra damage and can still hit structure when you miss the open component you're aiming at by just a bit. I had a match today where a Dire Wolf on the winning team had three kills - and 183 damage. With LRMs, so all of it was scattered. The people who actually did the work to kill those 'mechs deserved a reward too, and that's what KMDD recognizes.

There's a misunderstanding about the reward system where people think that an assist is rewarded more than a killing blow - it isn't, because every killing blow also includes component destruction, but you have to look at all the bonuses to see the forest for the trees sometimes. It's a common complaint that the game's reward system prizes damage too highly in match score and rewards, but that's a different question.