115 replies to this topic

[CyberCrist]

Personally I could care less about what they are charging for and what another person will be able to buy. I just want to play the game

[Pvt Dancer]

RedHairDave, on 05 April 2012 - 05:54 AM, said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=AWMBeLrZoyw

http://www.youtube.c...e&v=AWMBeLrZoyw

if they follow this, all will be well in the world

That was freaking awesome!

[Insidious Johnson]

Overhead flares, $100 each.

[Titus Pullo XIII]

How about 25 cents per autocannon round? Too much?

[LordDeathStrike]

ild like to see paint jobs for 1.99 each for cool artwork options.

skins for 2.99 or something like that for updated artwork options.

9.99 for mechlab access would be a good seller, maybe even at 19.99 (you can compete without the mechlab, but it will be in straight up stock mechs, with the mechlab you can add ammo or heatsinks or armor in exchange for losing something else to make room)

cbills, the in game currency, beat the asian farmers at their own game by selling cbills for real dollars. you can either farm them over long hours, or spend $5 on however many it would take you 10 hours to farm the hard way. since theres no trading of cbills in game outside of buying things from npcs, this doesnt hurt anyone.

[Pvt Dancer]

@LordDeathStrike

Mechlab is free as far as I can tell, due to how the Dev blog presented it.


As for skins, since we are on the subject, WoTs has 3 tiers for skins... 7 days, 30 days, and Permanent. The 7 and 30 day options are avaible through in game currency and only real cash will give you your skin permanent... and it is super cheap really in comparison... probably less than .50 cents depending on the tank and it's tier. A Tier 1-2 tank is cheaper skin wise than a tier 9-10.

But I have to agree with Rambo, ... if something like skins are not permanent, I would never spend money on them. Trust me Sylow, I like Ice Cream, but I know what I am getting when I buy it. How they seem to be doing skins here looks very exciting. I can see how LoL uses it to make money if they have something like 40+ classes and no permanent skins... The special skins here look neat and may be worth real money, but if they are not permanent, it wouldn't be worth it when the skin maker that you get for free looks to be just as entertaining and... well... free.

[Rambo Calrissian]

Sylow, on 05 April 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:

They are now? Interesting. I haven't been in the game since about 2 years, but at that time a lot of stuff was on a timer. If they found that they had to make them permanent, then i guess the "temporary doesn't sell" is true.

Hmmm ... I thought they always were permanent.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I never heard about Skins only being temporair in LoL.
I think this would have been mentioned in the shop then.
Also there are even Skins which aren't sold anymore and you had to buy them before to own them.

[Diomed]

World of Tanks fails in that they have made some parts of their game 'Pay to Win'. The Premium Tanks in that game are only available for real-world money, realistically that is, and while these tanks are not as good as all of their peers (except for the Type 59 which is) they are very powerful and they make a tremendous amout of credits. The tanks are priced at rediculous levels ($35 for the Type 59 and over $60 for the Lowe) and so their performance has to be good. Their proponents will lament their performance and try to convince everyone how 'gimp' they are but this is just linguistic sleight of hand. They are either lying to themselves, to us, or to everyone at once.

These type of things should be avoided in MWo. There should be nothing dealing with ingame performance that costs real-world money. You can speed up xp gain, that would fall into their model of time vs. money, but do not give people with more money (or lower IQ who think $65 for one unit is ok) more power, that is not fair. The real world already works this way let's not ruin our virtual worlds with this fallacious concept.

Edited by Diomed, 06 April 2012 - 07:38 AM.

[Saryk]

I am a huge fan of World of Tanks. They have a good way of making money and I don't feel bad spending it there.

[AngelOfClans]

How bout just a flat fee monthly for unlimited play. some months i play more than others and do not have a lot of extra cash. gives yall steady income and me time to play when i want. use the KISS method keep it simple stupid

[Ramien]

Why not allow House pilots the chance to buy their way into specifc house units? (That's how House Steiner normally does it anyways, right?) Mercs can pay extra to belong to various canon mercenary units. Any premium unit has a logo that can be added on the player's mech, of course.

Unique scenarios could also be premium content - both as a way to keep them from being overcrowded, and so people know to expect a non-standard scenario that's of potentially higher difficulty - but that may have ramifications in the larger game.

[Pvt Dancer]

At E2C2 at the Game Developer's panel, I asked this question (Is a premium account needed in a F2P game to generate money or can micro transactions provide enough money to sustain).

The answers were, same as the opinions on this thread... mixed. The general consensus was that the company (Piranha) needed to ensure that they created a high quality game to begin with and this could enable them to get enough people in to make micro transactions viable because you need /alot/ of them. To reach that point it takes a good amount of money and time, as subscription based games could afford to get the game out earlier and cheaper and work on the game with a cash flow to support continued development (Game updates, patches, ect).

At the end of the day, it depends on the players as much as as the developers... the have to make stuff we actually want to spend money on for micro transactions to work and judge their cost (if it is to expensive or underpowered no one will buy it). Same obviously goes for subscriptions, as they need to give the subscription people their money's worth in a free game. Dedicated free to play is still kinda new, as WoTs for example just had their 1 year anniversary last weekend.

It will be interesting to see how the finial product is handled, we will just have to wait and see.

Edited by Pvt Dancer, 01 May 2012 - 11:12 AM.

[Orzorn]

Sylow, on 05 April 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:

They are now? Interesting. I haven't been in the game since about 2 years, but at that time a lot of stuff was on a timer. If they found that they had to make them permanent, then i guess the "temporary doesn't sell" is true.

Rambo Calrissian, on 06 April 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

Hmmm ... I thought they always were permanent.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I never heard about Skins only being temporair in LoL.
I think this would have been mentioned in the shop then.
Also there are even Skins which aren't sold anymore and you had to buy them before to own them.

Skins were always permanent. I saw this having been in the LoL beta and played for 2 years.

[iamunkle]

verybad, on 29 March 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

If those potential players aren't spending money, then they're not paying for the production of the game, which is undoubtedly millions of dollars. They can still play the game and the free content however. Just not all the stuff.

Free to play means exacly that. It's free to play, not free to get all the toys that are available to it. Cosmetics aren't going to pay for the game,

You are't gonna have everything available for free, at least not without a grind for Cbills to pay for it.

They already said that you won't be able to buy experience points/ training, and that you won't be able to buy skill. They didn't say equipment other than modules would be available for cbills only.

I'm sure the people in Piranha are fans of the game, but it's a bit ridiculous to believe that they're building the game and expecting to take a loss on it because of the goodness of their hearts. I'm not considering making a profit on the game a negative thing at all, it's to be expected.

You don't build a big game development company by giving away charity. There will be some free content, but most will have to be purchased. That's how F2P works. It's a business model that works this way. It's completely reasonable, if you want something, you can buy it, or you can grind for it. Grinding takes a while.

Think of it like getting a set of earings for your girlfriend. If you know the jewler, but are broke, you might offer to trim their lawn for a few weeks to get those earings. Or if you've got the money, you buy those earings. Either way you get the earings.

fair points.

end of the day you you either have the better equipment early, with less exp, or get it later with more.

do you think in regards to experience they'll have the exp system WOW had? where if you cant play for a week you can gain xp faster for a certain amount of time? to catch up to friends ?

[goon]

You guys do realize you are all spouting "avoid pay to win" and then contradicting yourselves by suggesting content like Mechs be locked behind a price tag right?

Generally this thread is full of really bad ideas for monitization, like, for example, if at any point you can only get Clan Mechs via micro-transactions the game will become pay to win because they are absurdly powerful, sit down and take a minute to think about what you are suggesting they sell from their walled garden. also the idea that if you don't get money out of every person playing you're losing money is moronic, the life blood of a F2P game is it's player base, for a free to play game to survive it needs to get as many people playing as possible, not necessarily as many people paying as possible. word of mouth and good recommendations will keep attracting people and the better the players feel about playing the game the better they will feel about spending money on it.

Now if you study the new videos of the Mechlab 'MC' is probably their Premium currency as you can choose to buy mechs with it or Cbills, weapons on the other hand can only be bought with Cbills going from the options available in the build they showed and from what they've detailed in the past the following may also be true:

Special Cosmetic stuff will likely cost 'MC' (hula girls, special camo and what not)

Hanger Space will likely cost 'MC'

A Premium account for a set amount of time for 'MC' that increases Mech and Pilot XP and Cbil gains are likely

Creating a Merc Company will likely cost 'MC' or a very large sum of Cbills, possibly only 'MC.'

You can buy your way to Mechs but once you get there you will have to pay for upkeep and modifications with Cbills.

Dropships will likely work the same way, Cbills or MC to buy it, Cbills to keep it running.

Pilot Training we haven't seen but it's questionable to say to weather you will be able to 'MC' your way up the talent tree (most likely not.)

the Moduals unlocked from from the Pilot Tree will probably be Cbill only purchases as they augment a mech to serve better in a particular role or style of play, same with Pilot skills and Mech chassis bonuses, and these effect gameplay.

Most likely MC generally is a currency that lets you buy more things that you would like to have but don't need to play. This all being said I do hope there is a way to Gain MC in small amounts in Faction Warfare and Merc Contracts.

Also a little side note, the fact that you can only buy weapons and ammo with cbills may be an indication that you can salvage them after missions, whole mechs are unknown and probably wont happen given the persistent nature of the mechs themselves and PG are keeping their mouths shut about the whole thing but weapon, ammo, and equipment salvaging is certainly possible.

[Redshift2k5]

Obviously being able to buy mechs(and new weapons/equipment to customize them with) with real money will be giving an advantage to people who spend $$ in the short term. Until less-paying customers have a chance to catch up via in-game-currency earnings.

It still isn't pay to win, even though there is a bit of a short-term advantage, because everyone could get the same mechs and the same weapons wholly for free. It will take time, so all you've really bought is time. And more expensive mechs do not constitute better mechs, cheap mechs with good tactics and ideal loadout can triumph over a fancy one.

I for one look forward to dropping a bit of cash on the game to get a mech a bit early, so I can enjoy more dakka with less grinding, and save my C-Bills for customizing