113 replies to this topic

[Scarlett Avignon]

Norris J Packard, on 11 October 2012 - 08:31 AM, said:

This is kind of shaky ground as it doesn't remove the MC from the player's hands. Which is ideally what PGI needs to do. It would be feasible for a large group of grinders to hoard MC if they bought it all with CBills. It could get ugly fast depending upon what they plan to do in the future with MC.

People can hoard MC now by simply buying it with real money. I don't see how a market would affect this.

[Norris J Packard]

Franklen Avignon, on 11 October 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

People can hoard MC now by simply buying it with real money. I don't see how a market would affect this.

Because CBills are free, MC is not.

[Banditman]

Social Economy is the OPPOSITE of stimulating MC sales. MMO developers have realized this. If an item, once created, can be used over and over by different people, why would anyone ever again go about obtaining a "new" one. Items need to LEAVE the market permanently in order to stimulate the economy. This is why you see "soulbound" or "no drop" or whatever you want to call those items that can only be used by one person ever.

Mechs are currently much like those items. They can only be used by one person, ever. That's a GOOD THING. It stimulates the creation of MORE of those mechs, either through MC or grinding CBills.

The current lack of player to player trades is frankly one of the best things MWO has going for it.

[Scarlett Avignon]

Norris J Packard, on 11 October 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

Because CBills are free, MC is not.

C-bills require an investment of time to obtain, therefor they are not free. If the MC to C-bill exchange rate is regulated well, there wouldn't be a problem.

Banditman, on 11 October 2012 - 08:36 AM, said:

The current lack of player to player trades is frankly one of the best things MWO has going for it.

I completely agree. Unless you want to go to a completely player-generated economy (ew, let's leave that in Eve Online) there should be absolutely no trading of items in MWO.

[Norris J Packard]

Franklen Avignon, on 11 October 2012 - 08:40 AM, said:

C-bills require an investment of time to obtain, therefor they are not free. If the MC to C-bill exchange rate is regulated well, there wouldn't be a problem.

I understand and observe your point, the issue is that MC worth would probably be based off the value of Mechs. Take a Mech, divide the CBill value by its MC cost and you'll get a ratio, etc. Now it isn't that difficult for a group of people to muster up the value of an Atlas in a few hours of play (I am talking combined funds). If they all bought MC at the expected market value (again, probably using Mech MC values as a guideline be it has a direct MC and CBill value) with their CBills, it'd be pretty easy to just do that.

Edited by Norris J Packard, 11 October 2012 - 08:49 AM.

[Scarlett Avignon]

Norris J Packard, on 11 October 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

I understand and observe your point, the issue is that MC worth would probably be based off the value of Mechs. Take a Mech, divide the CBill value by its MC cost and you'll get a ratio, etc. Now it isn't that difficult for a group of people to muster up the value of an Atlas in a few hours of play (I am talking combined funds). If they all bought MC at the expected market value (again, probably using Mech MC values as a guideline be it has a direct MC and CBill value) with their CBills, it'd be pretty easy to just do that.

I don't thing there is a set MC to C-bill rate right now. If you notice, all mech variants cost the same amount of MC even though they have different C-bill prices.

Many other F2P games have very successful "Real Currency" to "In Game" currency exchange programs, though. It's not unprecedented, and is proven to work when done properly. The big advantage is that it offers EVERY service in the game to every person that plays, even if it's at reduced efficiency.

[Kazuar]

I really like the OPs thoughts on this. I would like to add a few thoughts of mine, too.

Now, as english is a foreign language to me, I beg for pardon in advance if some sentences end up incomprehensible. Just tell me, and I try to clarify my thoughts.



One thing to consider when talking about giving customers an incentive, is that customers, themselves, tend to be 'greedy' - we'll try and settle for the best deal, and one might compare items one could gain with MC with items outside of MW:O. This is because, well, everyone wants to make the most out of his/her money, right?

Now, I can only speak for myself, but I would have bought MCs already simply to have them ready in case I really want something. However, I feel spending 10$ at once is a bit too much to spend 'for the sake of spending'. For 10$, I can have a nice evening with my friends, meeting somewhere and ordering a pizza or something. For me, at least, RL trumps videogames. IF there where a 5$ option, however, I'd compare that to a pack of cigarettes. I'd have to choose, fun or smoking. Clearly I could smoke less this month

It's about having options, and choice. By offering different options, people can make 'their' best choices. Also, 10$ is a tangible amount, simply by having two digits. 5$ much less so. And I could see myself spending that amount repeatedly.
The 'lowest priced' offer also serves as a threshold. As it stands now, PGI doesn't seem to want my 5$, simply by not offering to take it. Now, I could save up my money and take the 10$ offering, but then my expenses become tangible again. 5$ are spend very easily, and personally, I would probably spend them more than twice as frequently than 10$.



Simultaneously however, PGI understandably wants people to spend money in a 'the more, the better' fashion. After all, if a player is ready to get his/her wallet out, you'd rather have them spend 15$ instead of 5$, for example. And here, I would play on the customers 'greed' - with bundled offers! This is already considered in the 'buy MC' page (and I could imagine MCs are spent quickly once you have them), but you can do this in your ingame store, too. Having incentives to spend money is good, but having incentives to spend more money is also good, and I think one can make people spend more money with the prospect of saving money.

For example, if the 'Buy MechBay' Button would redirect me to an ingame store, where I can pick and choose between severel MechBay offers, let's say 1000MC for four, 600MC for two or 350MC for one, I am confronted with a choice of how to spend my money. And I want to make the most out of it. I might want to spend only 5$ a month, but I can save about 3$ by spending 8$. But I can't buy 1000MC exaclty, only 1250MC, so I'm left with 2$ spare that now belong to PGI. I'm not planning on spending them, but now that I have these 250MC loose in my pocket, maybe exchanging XP to gXP isn't so bad, after all? Can't change em back to dollars anyway.

At the same time, those that can't or won't spend more than 5$? They have the option to keep within their limit, and more importantly, their money is still welcome.


Well, these are my 2 cents, hope they have some merit

[Airwolf]

My own opinion...

Stimulation of the MC economy is important ... very important to the life of this game ... income generation for continued support and enhancement of the game. After they turn off the sales of Founders Packages, MC purchases appear to the the primary/only method of income generation.

I feel that there is another avenue that seems to have been overlooked/ignored and should be looked at that. An MWO store with hard, "hold-in-your hands" merchandise. Stuff that will get people to open up their wallets and melt their credit cards

Examples:

- Coffee mug (and I'm talking about a *REAL* mug ... 12-16 oz ... NOT an 6-8 oz cup) w/ the MWO logo and 1 mech on the front / back of the mug (so you can see it regardless of whether you're right or left handed). Just the base mech, not every variant cause, well ... that's going a bit overboard. A collectable item ... Collect the entire set!!! I guess you could also offer a 32oz Mega Atlas mug (I'll take two, please).
- T-shirts
- Baseball caps
- Mouse Pads
- Patches
- Polo Shirts
- Wind breakers
- Mech Tie tacks
- Bobblehead mechs (I'm not taking credit for this one, someone else mentioned it)
- Bumper stickers ... (My Jenner is smarter than your Atlas) (AS7-D Atlas -- when negotiations need a little 'help') (LRM boats -- Bring the Rain!) etc.
- I don't know *why* this *just* popped into my head but (and I'll apologize IN ADVANCE for it) ... A dancing Atlas in a hula skirt (yeah, I know, shoot me now).
- Plastic 12-16 oz.mech drinking cups
- Etched mech glassware
- Chess set where the pieces are represented by mechs

The list goes on and on ....

Obviously, I haven't done any research into what kind of startup costs there are associated with each item mentioned (I figure that some are relatively low while others are prohibitively high).

I figure that the following could be one way that things could be done ... and make sure that the community understands that it is a MAYBE, not a guarantee to be in the MWO store ...

[A] Take a poll to see if it's even worth investigating.
[B] If it's worth investigating, then get estimates as to how much it would take to actually produce said item. Using the coffee mug as an example, from what I've heard, all you basically need is a 'camera ready' picture file (e.g. photo mugs).
[C] Determine sale price of said item (for god's sake keep the price competitive). Offer it to the community as a pre-order item that will not be billed to the customer until it actually ships. Show the minimum number of units that need to be pre-ordered before an actual initial production run can be made as well as the current number of units that have been pre-ordered.
[D] If enough pre-orders are made, then do the initial production run and add it to the MWO store.
[E] For those items that are potentially collectable items, like the coffee mugs, maybe offer as a set of 'x' number of different mugs at some discount (5-10%?)

... rinse ... repeat ....

Edited by Airwolf, 11 October 2012 - 10:34 AM.

[BanditRaptor]

Airwolf, on 11 October 2012 - 09:49 AM, said:

My own opinion...

Stimulation of the MC economy is important ... very important to the life of this game ... income generation for continued support and enhancement of the game. After they turn off the sales of Founders Packages, MC purchases appear to the the primary/only method of income generation.

I feel that there is another avenue that seems to have been overlooked/ignored and should be looked at that. An MWO store with hard, "hold-in-your hands" merchandise. Stuff that will get people to open up their wallets and melt their credit cards

Examples:

- Coffee mug (and I'm talking about a *REAL* mug ... 12-16 oz ... NOT an 6-8 oz cup) w/ the MWO logo and 1 mech on the front / back of the mug (so you can see it regardless of whether you're right or left handed). Just the base mech, not every variant cause, well ... that's going a bit overboard. A collectable item ... Collect the entire set!!! I guess you could also offer a 32oz Mega Atlas mug (I'll take two, please).
- T-shirts
- Baseball caps
- Mouse Pads
- Patches
- Polo Shirts
- Wind breakers
- Mech Tie tacks
- Bobblehead mechs (I'm not taking credit for this one, someone else mentioned it)
- Bumper stickers ... (My Jenner is smarter than your Atlas) (AS7-D Atlas -- when negotiations need a little 'help') (LRM boats -- Bring the Rain!) etc.
- I don't know *why* this *just* popped into my head but (and I'll apologize IN ADVANCE for it) ... A dancing Atlas in a hula skirt (yeah, I know, shoot me now).
- Plastic 12-16 mech drinking cups
- Etched mech glassware
- Chess set where the pieces are represented by mechs

The list goes on and on ....

Obviously, I haven't done any research into what kind of startup costs there are associated with each item mentioned (I figure that some are relatively low while others are prohibitively high).

I figure that the following could be one way that things could be done ... and make sure that the community understands that it is a MAYBE, not a guarantee to be in the MWO store ...

[A] Take a poll to see if it's even worth investigating.
[B] If it's worth investigating, then get estimates as to how much it would take to actually produce said item. Using the coffee mug as an example, from what I've heard, all you basically need is a 'camera ready' picture file (e.g. photo mugs).
[C] Determine sale price of said item (for god's sake keep the price competitive). Offer it to the community as a pre-order item that will not be billed to the customer until it actually ships. Show the minimum number of units that need to be pre-ordered before an actual initial production run can be made as well as the current number of units that have been pre-ordered.
[D] If enough pre-orders are made, then do the initial production run and add it to the MWO store.
[E] For those items that are potentially collectable items, like the coffee mugs, maybe offer as a set of 'x' number of different mugs at some discount (5-10%?)

... rinse ... repeat ....

T-shirts are super cheap and great advertising, PGI should really get on that.

[Norris J Packard]

It is certainly a way, but it's more of an accessory to the game and not so much directly related the game itself.

Unless of course they threw in special vanity items (skins, etc.) with the purchase of certain items.

[Lyoto Machida]

Draco Argentum, on 11 October 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

I was already worried about camo skins being p2w. Now you're suggestion skins that are intentionally hard to see? Thats such an aweful idea that even with the clever preorder system your post is detrimental to the game. Remove that junk before the devs see it.

Umm...isn't that the whole point of camos???

[BlackWidow]

Norris J Packard, on 11 October 2012 - 12:25 AM, said:

And what about useful Vanity Items, isn't that P2W? Well... sorta kinda. See, PGI already plans on doing this with the Hero Mechs. If you're clever enough, you can access the .xml files and see that it is their intention to add Hero Mechs as a separate variant of a Mech, rather than just a skin. So if a Hero Mech is added with custom equipment, or perhaps a "better" hardpoint allocation this could be seen as a form of P2W since it is offering a distinct advantage.

Careful with this part. My only critic of your MOST EXCELLENT THREAD! It's easy to be careless with statements like this. You said *could* be seen as P2W, but it only took a few posts before some grabbed this and ran with it. It just fuels their unjustified fires.

Why? Because at this point it is pure conjecture and speculation and serves no purpose. Unless you are trying to dig up the P2W threads. They have been done to death.

But for sake of argument even *if* a HERO mech did indeed have unique hardpoints _and_ *if* it was MC purchase only this could cause some concern. But, with at least three (3) variants of each mech available you would be hard pressed to prove it was causative and not simply correlative. For instance, the HERO mech proves to be popular. Within that population there are a number of EXPERT pilots who like this mech as well. As such, the perception could be the mech is slightly OP simply because a number of BETTER skilled players are playing it. And playing it well.

Again, playing devils advocate, let's say the K-2 Gauss-a-pult was a HERO mech. The already divided community would absolutely lose it's collective mind. But, again, the *cause* of this would be the current OP nature (IMHO) of the gauss in that chassis. So, it's possible but until it actually happens I will give PGI the benefit of the doubt to see that potential cliff and avoid it.

Other than that, EXCELLENT post. I wish insightful threads like this were the norm instead of the <1%.

OOOO! I just thought of something. If there really want to stay true to a HERO mech, couldn't you argue there are no hardpoints at all? Rather that it would be a FIXED build out? Now *that* is an interesting thought, if I do say so myself.

[BanditRaptor]

Lyoto Machida, on 11 October 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

Umm...isn't that the whole point of camos???

Pretty much.

[Samurai]

BlackWidow, on 11 October 2012 - 03:39 PM, said:

Careful with this part. My only critic of your MOST EXCELLENT THREAD! It's easy to be careless with statements like this. You said *could* be seen as P2W, but it only took a few posts before some grabbed this and ran with it. It just fuels their unjustified fires.

Why? Because at this point it is pure conjecture and speculation and serves no purpose. Unless you are trying to dig up the P2W threads. They have been done to death.

But for sake of argument even *if* a HERO mech did indeed have unique hardpoints _and_ *if* it was MC purchase only this could cause some concern. But, with at least three (3) variants of each mech available you would be hard pressed to prove it was causative and not simply correlative. For instance, the HERO mech proves to be popular. Within that population there are a number of EXPERT pilots who like this mech as well. As such, the perception could be the mech is slightly OP simply because a number of BETTER skilled players are playing it. And playing it well.

Again, playing devils advocate, let's say the K-2 Gauss-a-pult was a HERO mech. The already divided community would absolutely lose it's collective mind. But, again, the *cause* of this would be the current OP nature (IMHO) of the gauss in that chassis. So, it's possible but until it actually happens I will give PGI the benefit of the doubt to see that potential cliff and avoid it.

Other than that, EXCELLENT post. I wish insightful threads like this were the norm instead of the <1%.

OOOO! I just thought of something. If there really want to stay true to a HERO mech, couldn't you argue there are no hardpoints at all? Rather that it would be a FIXED build out? Now *that* is an interesting thought, if I do say so myself.

Good point. Guess we will just ahve to way and see.

[Norris J Packard]

BlackWidow, on 11 October 2012 - 03:39 PM, said:

Careful with this part. My only critic of your MOST EXCELLENT THREAD! It's easy to be careless with statements like this. You said *could* be seen as P2W, but it only took a few posts before some grabbed this and ran with it. It just fuels their unjustified fires.

Why? Because at this point it is pure conjecture and speculation and serves no purpose. Unless you are trying to dig up the P2W threads. They have been done to death.

But for sake of argument even *if* a HERO mech did indeed have unique hardpoints _and_ *if* it was MC purchase only this could cause some concern. But, with at least three (3) variants of each mech available you would be hard pressed to prove it was causative and not simply correlative. For instance, the HERO mech proves to be popular. Within that population there are a number of EXPERT pilots who like this mech as well. As such, the perception could be the mech is slightly OP simply because a number of BETTER skilled players are playing it. And playing it well.

Again, playing devils advocate, let's say the K-2 Gauss-a-pult was a HERO mech. The already divided community would absolutely lose it's collective mind. But, again, the *cause* of this would be the current OP nature (IMHO) of the gauss in that chassis. So, it's possible but until it actually happens I will give PGI the benefit of the doubt to see that potential cliff and avoid it.

Other than that, EXCELLENT post. I wish insightful threads like this were the norm instead of the <1%.

OOOO! I just thought of something. If there really want to stay true to a HERO mech, couldn't you argue there are no hardpoints at all? Rather that it would be a FIXED build out? Now *that* is an interesting thought, if I do say so myself.

I understand your meaning, but anyone who plays with me knows that I only build min-maxed Mechs for people, and I abhor "fun" as people would see it. I get it, for some people having two LBX-10's is neat, and so on, but to me I can only retch at such monstrosities in the face of much cooler (heat wise), lighter, faster, powerful, etc. builds. If a Hero Mech comes with unique equipment (many of them do, unless PGI changes this), or even just different hardpoints many people like myself will be doing extensive testing on paper and in game with them to determine their competitive viability. I prefer to sit and look at spreadsheets for hours and hours long before I ever actually buy a Mech. And I know that this seems overly boring to a lot of people, but this is just two different playstyles.

Edited by Norris J Packard, 11 October 2012 - 06:01 PM.

[Samurai]

Norris J Packard, on 11 October 2012 - 06:01 PM, said:

I abhor "fun" as people would see it..

Ok. Now you have piqued my interest. You abhor fun or just what other people normally think of as fun?
But I get the spreadsheet part. Same with WOW and especially with Battletech, I get that. Theorycrafting is a meta-game in itself sometimes. With BT, the building *is* part of the game.

And you are not alone, obviously.

Enjoy!

[Norris J Packard]

Samurai, on 11 October 2012 - 06:39 PM, said:

Ok. Now you have piqued my interest. You abhor fun or just what other people normally think of as fun?
But I get the spreadsheet part. Same with WOW and especially with Battletech, I get that. Theorycrafting is a meta-game in itself sometimes. With BT, the building *is* part of the game.

And you are not alone, obviously.

Enjoy!

What people normally think of as fun in the freedom to create their own Mechs. Oh, you took Machine Guns? That's neat, I'm not playing with you! A PPC in your Jenner? That's swell. Don't call this number again. And so on.

[Nuds]

The section with the social economy really caught my attention, It is exactly what me and my friends have been looking for, it would be a great way to players to introduce other players to the game with out having them slog through the trial mech grind alone. I know that when I introduce a new friend to TF2 I always trade some of my spare equipment to them because i wanna give them options and allow them to find their own way to play the game. I could even see an advanced auction house like an mmo or Car racing games like Forza. Imagine people getting enjoyment out of tuning mechs to sell them to an adjusting market, building up a customer base for the mech variants they produce. it would be an excellent way to add depth to the game beyond just the combat. I could even be worked in with the faction system that PGI talked about, maybe have tariffs on mech tuners from other factions or things like that.

thank you for the thoughtful topic, we need more discussion like this.

[Draco Argentum]

Lyoto Machida, on 11 October 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

Umm...isn't that the whole point of camos???

Yes, yes it is. Note how I said I was already worried about camo being pay to win. Even just a soft greenish colour with some lines breaking up the form would be a paid advantage. But heat vision ignores that so its probably acceptible. Norris suggested intentionatly selling schemes that would be less visible on IR. This is a complete gold syndrome idea if ever I heard one.

[Norris J Packard]

Draco Argentum, on 11 October 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

This is a complete gold syndrome idea if ever I heard one.

I'm suffering from "Gold Syndrome"?