41 replies to this topic

[Kartr]

Edit: sorry in advance for the wall of text. I had it nicely formatted with bullets and indents, but that didn't translate through when I hit post.

Every game has to make money. In the past Online games generally made their money through box sales, subscriptions or both. Recently though there have been a number of games that are known as Free to Play that make their money through micro transactions. Games like Lord of the Rings Online, World of Tanks, Star Trek Online and a couple comicbook superhero games, just to name a few. All these games have cash shops where items are sold for real money, items that enhance your gameplay without making you to powerful, though some do it better than others. Here's a few ideas I had about what might be charged for in MW Online to keep the game afloat. Let me know what you guys think of them and what else you think might be charged for.

I. Rare 'Mechs.
My guess is that there are going to be some 'Mechs that are canonically extremely rare in BattleTech which will be found in the game store. Putting them in the game store helps keep them rare on the battlefield (hopefully). They might also work like premium tanks in WoT where they earn slightly more money per battle, if you're fighting for a house military you might also get a slight increase in rank xp per battle by using these 'Mechs as well. The rational is that you're driving a rare 'Mech which makes you more noticeable/famous/infamous which allows you to command higher fees or get promoted more easily.

On the other hand rare 'Mechs might work like specialty ships in STO. There's no bonus to buying the original Enterprise in that game, but it looks cool and for the old timers who have fond memories of it it can be worth the money. Same for 'Mechs, you had a 'Mech you really liked to tabletop with back in the day, but its technically a rare 'Mech you'd have trouble finding, so they put it in the store and you can buy it fulfilling those life long dreams of driving the thing.

The one thing that store bought 'Mechs cannot have is any sort of battlefield superiority to 'Mechs acquired normally. They have to reflect the same capabilities they would have on the TT when compared to other 'Mechs.

II. Major 'Mechlab modifications.
Personally I think the 'Mechlab cannot work like either the TT rules, MW3 (which was a very accurate representation of the TT rules if I remember correctly), or like MW4. With complete freedom to customize 'Mechs it destroys the uniqueness of certain models, it can ruin game balance and its horrible from an engineering stand point.

a) Uniqueness: if any 'Mech can be modified to carry any load out then they're nothing more than skins. Any load out means the 'Mechs no longer have their traditional play styles, the ones that made them unique and interesting when played on the table top, or read about in the books. 'Mechs become simply a "what do I think looks the coolest" rather than "what fits my playstyle."

b ) Game Balance: I'm not talking about MMO style DPS/Tank/Heals, paper/rock/scissors style balance here. I'm talking the idea of creating a 50 ton 'Mech with 12 medium lasers, max armor and enough double heatsinks to dissipate the heat (my brothers ride in MW3). Simply put given a full freedom 'Mech lab people will be munchkins and create "boats" which while are effective don't require any real skill to play and aren't a whole lot of fun for non-munchkins.

c) Engineering standpoint: Different weapons are going to have different effects on the chassis that have to be taken into account when designing the physical structure of the 'Mech. Ballistic weapons don't generate much heat, but there's a ton of recoil and you have to dispose of the shell casing (unless you use caseless or are firing Gauss weapons), lasers on the other hand have zero recoil but generate a lot of waste heat and need copious amounts of energy. The stock Hunchback is going to be designed to handle the recoil from an AC/20 and disposing of its empty casings.

If you change the load out to be lasers the reinforced structure is going to be useless and is going to be subject to heat stresses it wasn't designed for, this will decrease the lifetime of the frame and increase the chance something mechanical could go wrong and knock your 'Mech out of action. There is an official variant designed to handle the heat of multiple lasers, but not the recoil of an AC/20 (its the one in the trailer) so going back to an AC/20 is going to cause all sorts of problems with the frame that's designed to deal with heat not with recoil.

My suggestion is a 'Mechlab where things are divided into three categories:
1. Instant/basic tasks: Things like changing your paint scheme, changing the type of armor, adding decals, and modifying the camo pattern. There would be a selection of paint schemes, camouflage and decals that would cost C-bills. There would also be additional schemes, camo patterns and decals you could buy using real money. Both C-bill and real-bill versions of these items would have no effect on game play, it would be cosmetic only. Armor would always be bought using C-bills and never real-bills.

2. Normal tasks: Normal tasks is simply switching weapons around, adding/removing heat sinks, increasing/decreasing the amount of armor protection and where its placed, and adding or removing non-weapon components like BAP, C3 and Guardian ECM. These tasks would never cost real-bills, never ever.

a) Each change would cost the price of the item being added (regardless if you owned it already) and a fraction of the cost of the 'Mechs purchase cost. This price is cumulative, every thing you want to change you have to pay its cost and the fractional cost of the 'Mech. If the fractional cost of the 'Mech is set to 1/8th and you change 8 things you just spent as many C-bills as it cost to buy the original 'Mech, plus the cost for every single item you added.

b ) There would also be a time component. For every change you made there would be a 4hr real time wait to complete the task. This time "cost" would be cumulative as well. For the 8 changes scenario your 'Mech would be out of action for 32 hrs forcing you to play one of the other 'Mechs in your stable.

c)Tthere is also constraints on what you can do.

1. You cannot change one type of weapon to another, so no ballistic to energy to missile. If you want to change the types of weapons it has you have to buy the proper variant.

2. No change can be greater than one degree of separation. Weapons would have degrees of separation for example a Large laser would be one degree from a Medium Laser, a PPC and an ER Large Laser. So if you had a Large Laser the only things you could change it for would be Medium Lasers, a PPC or a Large Laser (assuming you had the criticals and the tonnage for it). AC/20 could only be swapped for a Gauss or AC/10. An AC/10 can be swapped for an AC/5, LB/10X or an AC/20. Missiles would be similar, SRM6 being once removed from SRM4s, LRM-15s and LRM-20s. While LRM-10s would be once removed from LRM-5s, LRM-15s and SRM-4s.

3. You can conduct multiple changes. If you have an AC/5 and you want to replace it with a Gauss you would have to strip the AC/5 and replace it with an AC/10 once that change was done you could replace the AC/10 with an AC/20 and finally the AC/20 with the Gauss rifle.

d) You could buy "extra techs" from the cash shop that would decrease the modification time and cost by a percentage. The greater the percentage the more real-bills it cost and you cannot buy anything larger than a 50% reduction in time and C-bill cost. These would be time based buffs that could last a few hours or days, or the could be based on job, reducing the cost of a single job by whatever percentage.

3. Total Rebuilds: This level of task is the most extreme and covers structural modification. Changing engines in any way, rating or type (standard, XL) and changing skeleton (endosteel, standard) or any other type of modification that requires the total dissasembly of the 'Mech falls under this category. There would be three separate costs to do this:

1. Real-bills: You would have to go to the cash shop and buy a token of some kind, call it an "engineering team" token. This would be a flat charge paid any time you wanted to change the basic structure of the 'Mech.

2. C-bills: There would be a flat charge in C-bills which could be 2 to 3 times the cost of the 'Mech to reflect the labor. The cost of the new equipment (engine, chassis) would also be charged.

3. Time: The extensive nature of the changes would put the 'Mech out of action for a week.
Any other modifications at this time would not be charged the normal fraction of the 'Mechs cost as the 'Mech is already being disassembled, however you would still have to pay the cost of the components. Adding or removing jump-jets would fall under this level, but would cost less in all categories and you would have to pay normal full prices for any weapon/equipment/armor modification.

This 'Mechlab would allow people the freedom to come up custom 'Mech configurations, yet it would minimize the ability for people to create "boats" and make variants more important. It would also help 'Mechs keep their identity rather than becoming generic skins. And it would reflect the serious amounts of money and time it takes to customize 'Mechs. All of this while being more sound an idea than willy-nilly modification.

III. Time based loot perks: If winners and loosers get paid for participating in battle and the winners get salvage (either based on their contribution or randomly determined by the game) then these perks would increase the value of your rewards. It would simple increase the value of what you recieve by a percentage (no more than 10%). If you get paid x C-bills normally you'd get paid 1.1x C-bills. If you got salvage valued at y C-bills normally, you would recieve salvage valued at 1.1y C-bills. These buffs would last for a limited time before they wore off.

IV. Partial subscription/premium/VIP: Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online allow people to be monthly subscribers. Monthly subs get access to things that F2Pers have to buy piecemeal, like quest/mission packs, zones, multiple characters, multiple ships, etc. World of Tanks has the "premium account" which increases the amount of experience and money you make per battle. MechWarrior Online could use something similar to either idea depending on how they're going to do missions and battles.

So four different revenue generating ideas, and an extensive idea for 'Mechlab. What're your guyses thoughts, opinions and ideas?

Edited by Kartr, 01 March 2012 - 09:20 PM.

[Nicole Metal]

first hell ya
now i will read topic

EDIT
I dont like your mech lab idea it is a no go and you should be shot for thinking about it. If you are doing a clan battle and you need to switch out for a load out to support eachother well then you are SOL and there for cant play the match, or say you have a nice mech but a crappy load out for wepons and want to switch around real quick (example from MW4) a fire fly I think it is comes with 2-3 machine guns and I think 2 small lasers, well screw machine guns to be a little more of a light scout sniper, I want to take all of that off and throw on 2 med lasers. So mechs dont become skins I do think that the way MW4 did mech lab is nice where you had to equip wepons where they fit, I didnt like it at first but I did learn to like it, this goes for adding stuff like JJ's or other mods and engine upgrade. As far as moving weapons around I do agree with you but you dont have to buy it every time, only if you dont have it, if you take somthing off it is not going to get destroied will just get packed away. Skins and rare mechs sound like a good idea though.

Edited by Nicole Metal, 01 March 2012 - 09:41 PM.

[Earthtalker]

I thought this deserved its own thread when I first saw it.
Thanks for explaining it in more detail than in the other thread.
I agree all the way, man.
You sir have my Shadowhawk.

[Volthorne]

A couple things.

1] I like the idea of the change-out cost. The problem is if you buy a 70t mech and you want to customize it specifically for your liking (range/damage output), which requires swapping out all the weapons. Now assume you have 12 weapons. Going off your figures of theorhetical 1/8 mech cost + weapon cost, you just bought a frigging 100t mech and then some. That would make people really pissed off, unless you're winning C-bills at a rate of 100mil+ per match. I'd suggest something low, like 1/5th of the weapon price + 1/10th of the mech price, for maintenance and upkeep.

2] The tiered weapons? No. Just no. A hardpoint is engineered specifically to house a certain weapon type (with the exception of omni-hardpoints), so any weapon should be able to go in it's specific hardpoint, provided that it doesn't pass certain limitaions (nothing above Small/Medium weapons on light mechs, due to structural integrity issues. Etc, etc). I do agree that variants should have to be bought seperately, though.

3] Anything giving pay-2-players more uptime than non-payers is a terrible idea. You DO NOT f**k with uptime/downtime. Ever.

4] A better solution to deal with "boats" would be to limit the number of types of the same weapon you can house in a hardpoint, and hardpoint types can NEVER be changed unless you swap to a new variant of your chassis. Ex: 1 LLaser = 1.5 MLaser = 2 SLaser, with a max of 6 SLasers. Even uber-advanced cores can only supply so much power before they reach their supply cap.

Edited by Volthorne, 01 March 2012 - 09:55 PM.

[Kenyon Burguess]

it can work if the weapon systems themselves are balanced. MW4merc isnt too awful of a system to start looking at how things work. but no matter what the devs decide, at the end of the day when the fafnir hits the street it doesnt matter what you put in your IS or clan mech. double HGR is the trump card.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Fafnir

[Kartr]

Nicole Metal, on 01 March 2012 - 09:19 PM, said:

first hell ya
now i will read topic

EDIT
I dont like your mech lab idea it is a no go and you should be shot for thinking about it. If you are doing a clan battle and you need to switch out for a load out to support eachother well then you are SOL and there for cant play the match, or say you have a nice mech but a crappy load out for wepons and want to switch around real quick (example from MW4) a fire fly I think it is comes with 2-3 machine guns and I think 2 small lasers, well screw machine guns to be a little more of a light scout sniper, I want to take all of that off and throw on 2 med lasers. So mechs dont become skins I do think that the way MW4 did mech lab is nice where you had to equip wepons where they fit, I didnt like it at first but I did learn to like it, this goes for adding stuff like JJ's or other mods and engine upgrade. As far as moving weapons around I do agree with you but you dont have to buy it every time, only if you dont have it, if you take somthing off it is not going to get destroied will just get packed away. Skins and rare mechs sound like a good idea though.

Better not miss.

That's the whole point, in BattleTech BattleMechs can't be swapped around quickly or easily or even cheaply. That's the domain of the OmniMech. OmniMechs are significantly more expensive because they're over-engineered to be able to handle all the different kinds of stresses the different weapons systems are going to put on them. They also use advanced and complex mounting systems and interfaces so they can take all kinds of weapons quickly and easily.

A BattleMech comes in different factory variants which take a lot of effort and money to change. A Lance either needs a proper balance of BattleMechs to begin with or it has to learn how to adapt to make up for not having a particular role. A MechWarrior also has to learn how to adapt to fighting in different situations where his/her 'Mech isn't optimized for. A real campaign could have you landing in a savannah or grasslands and moving into forests across mountainous and into a city all within a couple of days with no time swap weapons to optimize for the terrain.

OmniMechs on the other hand can be optimized for the mission at hand or to be tailored to the MechWarrior's taste. Even then while the Omni' might be optimized to fight in desert or urban terrain or whatever, odds are that a campaign will see you moving through different types of terrain to quickly to optimize your 'Mech before every sortie.

Only OmniMechs have the ease customization you seem to be craving. Personally I think we should have to wait for that level of customization until we get access to Omnis just like the MechWarriors in the canon.

Having the cost of each weapon being paid every time you mounted it is to account for the labor cost. The cost could easily be changed to a fraction of the weapon rather than the full cost if you already have it in your depot.

Earthtalker, on 01 March 2012 - 09:35 PM, said:

I thought this deserved its own thread when I first saw it.
Thanks for explaining it in more detail than in the other thread.
I agree all the way, man.
You sir have my Shadowhawk.

Thanks I appreciate it! What do you like most about it though?

[Will Hung]

Yes, please allow us to buy rare and vintage Mech chassis that do not have a distinct edge over current production models. We love our classic Mechs.

[Kartr]

Volthorne, on 01 March 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

A couple things.

1] I like the idea of the change-out cost. The problem is if you buy a 70t mech and you want to customize it specifically for your liking (range/damage output), which requires swapping out all the weapons. Now assume you have 12 weapons. Going off your figures of theorhetical 1/8 mech cost + weapon cost, you just bought a frigging 100t mech and then some. That would make people really pissed off, unless you're winning C-bills at a rate of 100mil+ per match. I'd suggest something low, like 1/5th of the weapon price + 1/10th of the mech price, for maintenance and upkeep.

The numbers I tossed out were just to establish the idea, the would obviously have to be balanced to fit the needs of the game. However I believe that they should be balanced to be on the high side to help dissuade munchkinizm.

Volthorne, on 01 March 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

2] The tiered weapons? No. Just no. A hardpoint is engineered specifically to house a certain weapon type (with the exception of omni-hardpoints), so any weapon should be able to go in it's specific hardpoint, provided that it doesn't pass certain limitaions (nothing above Small/Medium weapons on light mechs, due to structural integrity issues. Etc, etc). I do agree that variants should have to be bought seperately, though.

The idea behind this was that while a hardpoint may be designed to take a certain type of weapon (ballistic, laser, missile) it was also designed to take a certain class of weapon. It's going to have be designed with proper amount of heat dissipation/tolerance or reinforcement to withstand a certain level of recoil, and a certain volume. Decreasing the weapon size means you also decrease the volume which means you have to construct new bracing to secure it. Increasing the weapon size means you have to do the same thing as decrease only this time get bigger, you also have to reinforce it to withstand higher recoil or higher heat in the case of energy and ballistic weapons.

Now rather than having to build it increments what if the greater the difference the greater the cost? Because honestly it didn't make much sense to me to put in an AC/10 to get to an AC/20, but I at the time I couldn't think of another way to show the extra cost it would take to increase the volume, change where the mountings were and reinforce it to take the increased recoil. Not to mention redoing the feed system to handle large rounds or rate of fire or both.

Volthorne, on 01 March 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

3] Anything giving pay-2-players more uptime than non-payers is a terrible idea. You DO NOT f**k with uptime/downtime. Ever.

Something I can sympathize with, but you need some reason for some people to pay for the game. Also since its a one time purchase to get the 'Mech the way you want it, it wouldn't be a huge re-occurring cost or significant down time. Do it once to get the 'Mech just the way you like it and then you never change it and never have any down time. Its not like people should be changing their 'Mechs every other week.

Volthorne, on 01 March 2012 - 09:53 PM, said:

4] A better solution to deal with "boats" would be to limit the number of types of the same weapon you can house in a hardpoint, and hardpoint types can NEVER be changed unless you swap to a new variant of your chassis. Ex: 1 LLaser = 1.5 MLaser = 2 SLaser, with a max of 6 SLasers. Even uber-advanced cores can only supply so much power before they reach their supply cap.

That's the whole point of not letting people switch from ballistics to energy in a hardpoint. Though a cap on how much you could have would probably be a good idea, keep people from dropping all the ballistic and missile weaponry to free up to pack every last laser they could into that area. Though it would be kind of funny to watch them max ever single possible laser in one portion of the 'Mech and then have that part get blown up and now they're weaponless.

[Alaric Wolf Kerensky]

Some solid ideas. Some I have though of myself, most I have not though. I am all for refit costs, especially for non-omni 'Mechs, as it takes SO MUCH work to change them.

[Volthorne]

Well, there are a number of models out there that offer up decorative items and what not for cash sums, though they offer no stat increase. You could, perhaps, buy a mod that chages your rockets to potatoes for shites and gigs.

Edited by Volthorne, 01 March 2012 - 10:31 PM.

[Earthtalker]

The real-bills extreme modification breakdown is probably the best way to combat boating. Real money+C-Bills+componet cost+technitians+facility space rental for conversion* mech downtime=a huge investment of not only time and money but of "Do I really want to make my Charger a TRUE assault mech this way, or should I just get the variant and lightly tweak it to my tastes for a whole lot less money and down time?". It solves alot of problems while at the same time is there for those who have the funds(real and ingame) to do so if they choose.

[FinnMcKool]

its a sound concept , lets wait and see what the DEVs have for us.

[Kartr]

FinnMcKool, on 01 March 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

its a sound concept , lets wait and see what the DEVs have for us.

Can't wait to hear/see how the devs have decided to handle it! Until then though I'm going to speculate and debate the possibilities and their advantages and disadvantages.

[Aleksandr Exodus Cameron]

being a BT purist I'd prefer that they stuck to the way things are in the boardgame. I like the idea of being able to mix up ammo load outs, but being able to reconfigure mechs like omnimechs seems somewhat contradictory to the setting.

"Life is cheap, but Battlemech's aren't", so reconfiguring them should be prohibitively expensive, not to mention extremely difficult without the right equipment (i.e. inside a dropship). the average merc company has enough trouble getting their hands on the parts they need to keep their mechs going, let alone being able to swap weapons out.

this also becomes more important if weapons can be disabled or destroyed during game play, and you find yourself having to revise your role or strategy because you don't have the same capabilities anymore.

this is where the information side of things should come in. being unable to reconfigure your mech would mean more time and thought would be put into the makeup of a lance/company, and scouting information that much more important.

after all, knowing what you're up against becomes a lot more important when you decide how/where/when to deploy your forces.

that's my opinion anyway.

[Kartr]

Aleksandr Exodus Cameron, on 01 March 2012 - 11:12 PM, said:

being a BT purist I'd prefer that they stuck to the way things are in the boardgame. I like the idea of being able to mix up ammo load outs, but being able to reconfigure mechs like omnimechs seems somewhat contradictory to the setting.

"Life is cheap, but Battlemech's aren't", so reconfiguring them should be prohibitively expensive, not to mention extremely difficult without the right equipment (i.e. inside a dropship). the average merc company has enough trouble getting their hands on the parts they need to keep their mechs going, let alone being able to swap weapons out.

this also becomes more important if weapons can be disabled or destroyed during game play, and you find yourself having to revise your role or strategy because you don't have the same capabilities anymore.

this is where the information side of things should come in. being unable to reconfigure your mech would mean more time and thought would be put into the makeup of a lance/company, and scouting information that much more important.

after all, knowing what you're up against becomes a lot more important when you decide how/where/when to deploy your forces.

that's my opinion anyway.

Grats on your first post!

All of that should be captured by a system similar to the one I laid out as I tried to make it fit the way the TT and the novels portrayed the universe.

[garx8]

What you have here is pay to win. it gives a real advantage to someone with a fat wallet.as one poster already said you don't f**k with down time. Now i'm assuming that all the mechlab abilities you discuss can be purchased with all in game c-bills at a higher cost than with the combination c-bill/real bill you have,but lets take a look at what you have here. lets say that we both want to change the same 3 things on a mech. You have the money to purchase these things all at once. and i have to eather save up or play for weeks to earn enough c-bills to do these changes.i would also probably do them one at a time as I got the "money" whitch means more down time because i have to wait the full change out time for each.Not to mention the fact that i would have to pilot with out it being complete.

[Thorn Hallis]

I think that "premium" mechs (i.e. bought by hard currency), that have no own xp-tree but makes the pilot earn more C-Bills, are highly likely.

[Nicole Metal]

Ok so I slepted on this and the whole time ting still is a no go on one major thing, what about system jumps??? So if you want refitting to take xhours well then jumping from planet to planet or system to system should take xhours right??? I mean why cant we change in transit and be done by the time we get where we are going???? I just think it is wrong because you would have to apply time to so much more.

[Kartr]

garx8, on 02 March 2012 - 12:27 AM, said:

What you have here is pay to win. it gives a real advantage to someone with a fat wallet.as one poster already said you don't f**k with down time. Now i'm assuming that all the mechlab abilities you discuss can be purchased with all in game c-bills at a higher cost than with the combination c-bill/real bill you have,but lets take a look at what you have here. lets say that we both want to change the same 3 things on a mech. You have the money to purchase these things all at once. and i have to eather save up or play for weeks to earn enough c-bills to do these changes.i would also probably do them one at a time as I got the "money" whitch means more down time because i have to wait the full change out time for each.Not to mention the fact that i would have to pilot with out it being complete.

No that's not how it works. Normal changes like swapping a Large Laser for an ER Large Laser or dropping a Guardian ECM for more armor would only cost C-bills. Doing something that requires you to completely rebuild the 'Mech such as changing the engine or chassis would require you to pay real-bills. If we're changing the same three weapons/systems we pay the exact same amount of C-bills. If one or more of those systems is engine or chassis then we pay the same amount of real-bills as well. There's no pay to win here, everyone has to grind out a ton of C-bills to be able to modify their 'Mech.

The time it takes to change an item is cumulative. If you change 3 items its going to take you the same amount of time whether you do all three at once or do them one at a time as you get the money. Also 'Mech pilots in Universe that wanted to modify their 'Mechs didn't make all the changes all at once, they had to earn the C-bills for it, and sometimes wait till they acquired the parts through salvage. While they were waiting to be able to get the money/parts for the next modification they sucked it up and piloted the 'Mech they had not the one they wanted.

Nicole Metal, on 02 March 2012 - 07:23 AM, said:

Ok so I slepted on this and the whole time ting still is a no go on one major thing, what about system jumps??? So if you want refitting to take xhours well then jumping from planet to planet or system to system should take xhours right??? I mean why cant we change in transit and be done by the time we get where we are going???? I just think it is wrong because you would have to apply time to so much more.

The 'Mechlab time is completely different from jump point transit time. The 'Mechlab time is a function of game balance to keep mods more rare and help dissuade munchkinizm and make the un-canon hotswapping of weapons before every mission impossible. The fact that it helps represent the way things work in universe is a side bonus, but is less important than the game balance reason.

There's no game balance reason for dropships to take hours/days for you to get into action. I expect that they will have a "range" for attacks. You pick your current location and then you can only participate in battles that take place in a 30ly radius on the map (30ly being the longest distance K-F drives can jump in a single jump). Dropship transit could just be considered the loading screen time and I think it'd be cool instead of just having a loading bar, the screen displayed the sun and the planet and a little DropShip. The DropShip would be the loading bar and its progress would be tied to how fast your pc connected to the game and loaded up the environment.

Edited by Kartr, 02 March 2012 - 10:30 AM.

[BerryChunks]

Kartr, on 01 March 2012 - 09:18 PM, said:

I. Rare 'Mechs.
My guess is that there are going to be some 'Mechs that are canonically extremely rare in BattleTech which will be found in the game store. Putting them in the game store helps keep them rare on the battlefield (hopefully). They might also work like premium tanks in WoT where they earn slightly more money per battle, if you're fighting for a house military you might also get a slight increase in rank xp per battle by using these 'Mechs as well. The rational is that you're driving a rare 'Mech which makes you more noticeable/famous/infamous which allows you to command higher fees or get promoted more easily.

Not really. if rare = more power, everyone will buy it.Lets say they sell mad cats. Everyone will buy a madcat, because its easy to shell out money to get it for no effort.

Thus everyone is fighting in mad cats.

I'd rather pay a monthly fee, or pay a box fee of 60-70$, FOR REAL, than have RMTs give people access to better mechs or weapons.

RMTs work for leveraging money out of poorer people who cant afford box game lifestyles, and supporting the whole by giving people unfair advantages for giving up 100-200 dollars for video game stuff. There's a person who spent 1000$ in evony to be untouchable. It's a socialist model that doesn't really allow in game competition seriously, but provides the illusion of it by all the poor people scraping each other while the real people who pay the way for the game with their 100s of dollars are always at the top.

Edited by BerryChunks, 03 April 2012 - 08:16 PM.