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"Hey, everyone! We would like to announce that we're making the next MechWarrior game! We're passionate about BattleTech, and we intend to make the best d amn MechWarrior game money can buy using only the most modern of technology platforms! And it'll be available to everyone, free!"
"You money-grubbing W HORES!"
Seriously, that's all I see in these vicious debates about the pricing of MechWarrior.
They've very specifically cited League of Legends as the inspiration for their model. I think this is pure farking Genius with a capital G, because League of Legends's model is not only highly profitable to the company (and thus highly likely to earn us those expansions/DLCs/spinoffs/renewing the license that we WANT from a company that is so crazy in love with BattleTech that they're literally making a game for it with no guarantee it'll turn a profit!), it's also extremely friendly to the consumer.
But a lot of people don't seem to understand how friendly LoL's pricing model is to them. They assume that if you can buy something for a game, it's unbalancing--which is a fair assumption, if they had just said "Free to Play" since a lot of F2P games take that bulls hit route. But they didn't just say F2P. They said they looked at LoL, liked what they saw, and THEN made the F2P decision.
So, to clear things up for those who are misinformed about how the F2P model can be done PROPERLY, let me give you a run-down of League of Legends' pricing model.
*ahem*
League of Legends is free to play. What that $0 price-tag gets you is access to 10 champions (semi-randomly assorted ones which rotate each week, guaranteeing you access to all the champions to try, lots of variety for you, the consumer, for free), and all the battle modes.
There's an in-game currency, which has been hinted at will be in use in MWO ("C-Bills" and "Recognition" were mentioned in the press release as earned by playing missions), which you can use to buy... get this... everything in the game except for purely cosmetic reskins of champions you own. You cannot buy the in-game currency with real-world money: real-world money gets you a separate currency which can only be used on certain, less-useful things which don't confer any advantages.
To repeat: LoL's in-game currency buys you everything in the game. All you need to do is play, and you will earn massive wads of this in-game currency at an extraordinarily high rate. 200-500 per victory, when the most expensive thing in the game costs 6,000.
The only thing real currency is good for is reskins and new champions. Reskins you can ONLY get through real currency (and reskins, obviously, don't provide a tactical advantage), and new champions are, again, just as easily bought through the in-game currency.
And just to give you a sense of how much the real-world currency stuff is... $10 gets you a new champion, $5 gets you a new skin. That's not really much of a price, considering most people don't buy champions, and the few people who buy skins only do so after getting hundreds of hours in a game. 100 of hours of enjoyment for $5 in price? You pretty much only get deals like that from Steam sales.
*GASP* But didn't I say champions can be bought? Surely that's insanely unbalanced, with rich players having the tactical advantage! ...well, no, not really. Remember, you can buy any champion, new or old, with the in-game Monopoly money.
How much Monopoly money do the best champions in the game cost, then? Why thank you for asking all these convenient questions, Internet Straw Person! Annie and Ashe, who are used in championship matches by people who do this game for a living, cost 450 IP apiece. For those not keeping track, that means that by the time you finish the tutorial and do your first 'real' match against some i diot-bots, you'll have made enough IP to buy one one of the best champions in the game.
That's just two champions though! Surely the rest cost exorbitant amounts of money, right? Monopoly or otherwise? Well, no. Alistar, Amumu, Cho'Gath, Janna, Morgana, Tristana, and Zilean all cost 1,350 IP, and are considered some of the best champions in the game. That's a couple days of playing to save up for one. And Tristana's actually free.
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So for those of you who've kept up so far, you've discovered a few things about League of Legends:
- Real money can only be spent on new champions and new skins for champions
- People rarely buy new champions
...well, no. $5 per skin, over the course of however many thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of accounts there are across the globe, and that adds up fairly quickly. Riot Games might not be building a Scrooge McDuck tower to swim in, but they certainly can afford to maintain their staff and continue adding content to the game (which keeps the game alive, keeps people coming back and keeps new people joining, which of course nets them $5+ per person).
Even if you don't believe that math, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Riot Games continues to thrive in spite of the fact they have a Free to Play model that consists of NO tactical advantages being for sale (remember: the best champions in the game are so dirt-cheap that you don't need to play a dime to have a roster of the best champions in the game by the end of your first month of play).
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So what does this mean for MechWarrior Online? Am I going to have to buy individual AC/20 rounds?
No. What this means is that there are a metric ton (none of those d amn imperial tons) of ways for the MechWarrior Online staff to make money off this Free to Play game without if ever hurting the community.
For example, mercenary companies usually get unique paint jobs, sometimes for the entire company and sometimes just for each soldier's 'Mech. Imagine a game where you get a set of 4 or 5 paint jobs you can put over your 'Mech... but if you want black flames on a silver background or you want your 'Mech to have high reflectivity and look like a mirror in the sunlight, you'll have to pay $5.
Or, what if they directly copied the rotation/purchase model? You, as a young MechWarrior, start out ASSIGNED to your 'Mech. You get a selection of ten randomly selected 'Mechs each week. You can play them to your heart's content, and by the end of the week? You've earned enough C-bills to buy a 'Mech to call your own, which you never have to worry about being out-of-rotation. And what if the best 'Mechs in the game, the best at tournaments and mission play alike, were the cheapest to buy with this in-game currency? But, if you want to buy a 'Mech immediately with no hassle, you can lay down $5. Again, everyone basically has free access to the best 'Mechs because they're so dirt-cheap to buy with in-game currency... the more expensive 'Mechs are the more exotic ones, the ones nobody ever uses anyway except to look flashy, and which are almost as easily purchased with in-game currency.
What about 'Mech variants? I can imagine a system where you have an Atlas-C as the default Atlas. What if you want an Atlas-K instead? You can either save up C-bills for the ability to switch between those two weapon load-outs, or shell out $5. (The Atlas-C and the Atlas-K are almost exactly equal in terms of power, it's only their style of play which is different.)
Or what about voices? Games like these frequently include pre-recorded voice files for giving commands ("Follow me", or, "look out!") for those without microphones or just those who prefer professional voice actor voices to their own. What if there were 2 male and 2 female voices for free, but if you pay $5 you can get that one awesome voice you previewed on the store page.
Or, how about this: The Clans are distinguished because they're HIGHLY trained. In the BattleTech game, you have to increase the average gunnery and piloting skill of enemy combatants from 4/5 to 3/4 (lower is better) when fighting Clans, because they're so much more damned experienced at combat, they're doing it every day since the moment they hit puberty. What if you had to buy access to the Clan side of the war using in-game currency (representing 'experience') in order to prove you're a good enough MWO player to handle it... but of course, you could just throw down $5 to get in immediately?
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What I'm trying to say is, it's incredibly possible for this MechWarrior Online to make a profit without ever hurting the players. All they have to do is follow the League of Legend model, where it's only vanity and extreme acts of laziness which make people buy things in it--and in neither case do you get a tactical advantage (no, buying a new champ does not constitute a tactical advantage when, again, the best champs are so cheap as to be nearly free).
And, they mentioned they're looking at the League of Legend model when designing their game.
Quite frankly, I'm not at all worried that they're going to start charging for LRM-20 shots or weight classes or individual 'Mechs. They can turn a massive profit, enough to keep the game being improved and expanded all across the next decade, if they just stick to the basics of paint jobs and 'Mech variants and voices and maybe even Clan access.
I would pay $5 for an awesome growly Inner Sphere veteran voice, $5 for a skull-and-bones paintjob, and $5 for immediate access to my favorite Inner Sphere 'Mech. I might even be willing to skip ahead of the Inner Sphere and go right to the clans for $5.
That's $20 total, less than I've spent on junk food in the last
Edited by Mr. Smiles, 02 November 2011 - 05:05 AM.
Best can be defined as "Easy to learn, difficult to master" or it can be defined as "Difficult to learn, harder to master, but well worth the effort." I called 'best' and 'cheap' the ones who are easy for newbs to learn, but when mastered become unstoppable killing machines... you seem to call 'best' the expensive ones who are nigh impossible for newbs to learn, but when mastered become unstoppable pentakill machines... I don't think either of us is necessarily right, it's just a difference of opinion (and one I biased to make my point in my writeup 
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