299 replies to this topic

[goneLinkdead]

I don't agree with the current system, mostly because some chassis are just very poor with current weapon balance.

[Khobai]

Yes its absolutely punishment. Its a terrible gameplay mechanic.

If they wanted all the variants to get used a better way of doing would be to add a popularity system. So the less popular a mech is among the player base the more of a bonus it gets to c-bills or whatever.

[Lamont]

Hate this system. I have a hunchie and a jenner. I have absolutely no intrest in buying 2 other varients of each just to unlock elite and master slots. I spend the time and effort in the varient I like. I refuse to buy other varients because PGI wants to force a grind on me and wants my money. Increase the exp to double or tripple to unlock an alternate varient with a small MC transaction fee. Voilla, I've put a grind in and also they get a bit of my cash. Id much rather spend the time on the mechs I care about and when I want to try something new, I'll purchase an assault or heavy to try out.

Those of you that say that you had to grind the varients out to get your elite and master and everyone else should too...That's not helping any. We aren't saying we shouldn't have a grind and don't have to earn our perks, we just want an alternate path to getting our perks. It's bad design to force only one path to completing a task.

I hope the perk system is just a placeholder for now because there is no real specialization. Everyone has to buy the same exact perks to advance. I'm hoping once they get the game out they door and have a chance to reevaluate it, they will introduce some kind of skill tree so we can pick what branches we want to specialize in.

[Freqout]

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, in forcing me to spend time playing variants I might not otherwise pick, I've gotten to know and like several of them and expect to see them come up regularly in my general rotation. On the other hand with the bigger mechs, this can make it very expensive (and thus time-consuming). It might be better to have an xp requirement across all variants of the chasis line and, maybe, lower that total for each variant owned (and played) so that there's some incentive for spending the money on branching out.

[DerMaulwurf]

Freqout, on 18 November 2012 - 11:04 PM, said:

I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, in forcing me to spend time playing variants I might not otherwise pick, I've gotten to know and like several of them and expect to see them come up regularly in my general rotation. On the other hand with the bigger mechs, this can make it very expensive (and thus time-consuming). It might be better to have an xp requirement across all variants of the chasis line and, maybe, lower that total for each variant owned (and played) so that there's some incentive for spending the money on branching out.

I think making it expensive is the very reason why it was implemented like that.

Asking for CBills at every corner, while dangling the "save time through MC" carrot in front of our noses, is a big part of their business model.

[Mister Haha]

feels very .. overdone, but only in the heavier classes.

building up a cicada isn't all that bad - but building up an atlas? ugh.

[Asmosis]

No.

I'd say its annoying, especially when one of the variants is subpar (Jenner JR7-D comes to mind) but most are sufficiently different you can do different things with them. The Catapult and Atlas are good for this, as is the Awesome. Not sure about other med/heavy mechs but they looked decent.

[Rejarial Galatan]

in short, the entire thread at this point for me is TL:DR, so, odds are GOOD, I am about to repeat someone:

In Battletech, MOST, as in, 90%+ pilots/warriors/families spend entire lives/careers in a SINGLE chassis variant, and become experts with that particular chassis and variant. It is ludicrous to ask us to dump in some cases nearly 30 MILLION C-Bills on chassis we quite literally do not want. I will use me for an example. If I want any money what so ever by time the Clans become playable as a faction, I am stuck using Inner Sphere technology and that is bad enough. Add in the fact that I am an ASSAULT pilot this gets even WORSE. I pilot the AS7. I have the D model as my FOUNDERS mech, so that saves me SOME money, but, I still need to buy the damned other 2 variants just to MAX my D. Before you say: Use your MC, you have 20k worth Rejarial. I will not touch it, NOR my PREMIUM time until I can jump into my Timber Wolf, or for you IS freebirths MAD CAT. I am being made to waste time and effort on mechs that will serve me 0 purpose once Clan Wolf is a faction I can join. So, yeah, its punishing us alright, Clanners more than the rest, but still.

[Soulscour]

No it is not punishing. It is part of the game. I like my three variants most of the time. They usually play differently.

[Rejarial Galatan]

its not in the spirit of BT, nor is it in line with Canon/Lore. Let me ask you this Soulscour, you have your favorite car, lets say, for argument sake, its a 2013 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. You love this car, you are a GOD in this car. BUT, did Chevrolet say: To drive this car, you MUST ALSO BUY AND DRIVE the Camaro RS and SS as well? NO. Why? Because Chevrolet has enough respect to know that A. that is not financially sound, unless you sleep in Scroodge McDucks money tower and OWN said tower. B. have enough respect for you that they trust you can master the ZL1 w/out spending another 70k on 2 cars you sorta like, but are NOT the ZL1.

[Vassago Rain]

Rejarial Galatan, on 19 November 2012 - 12:10 AM, said:

in short, the entire thread at this point for me is TL:DR, so, odds are GOOD, I am about to repeat someone:

In Battletech, MOST, as in, 90%+ pilots/warriors/families spend entire lives/careers in a SINGLE chassis variant, and become experts with that particular chassis and variant. It is ludicrous to ask us to dump in some cases nearly 30 MILLION C-Bills on chassis we quite literally do not want. I will use me for an example. If I want any money what so ever by time the Clans become playable as a faction, I am stuck using Inner Sphere technology and that is bad enough. Add in the fact that I am an ASSAULT pilot this gets even WORSE. I pilot the AS7. I have the D model as my FOUNDERS mech, so that saves me SOME money, but, I still need to buy the damned other 2 variants just to MAX my D. Before you say: Use your MC, you have 20k worth Rejarial. I will not touch it, NOR my PREMIUM time until I can jump into my Timber Wolf, or for you IS freebirths MAD CAT. I am being made to waste time and effort on mechs that will serve me 0 purpose once Clan Wolf is a faction I can join. So, yeah, its punishing us alright, Clanners more than the rest, but still.

>implying you have any honor and right to drive a timber wolf after dissing the glorious great father's second most favored mech.

[Soulscour]

Rejarial Galatan, on 19 November 2012 - 12:21 AM, said:

its not in the spirit of BT, nor is it in line with Canon/Lore. Let me ask you this Soulscour, you have your favorite car, lets say, for argument sake, its a 2013 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. You love this car, you are a GOD in this car. BUT, did Chevrolet say: To drive this car, you MUST ALSO BUY AND DRIVE the Camaro RS and SS as well? NO. Why? Because Chevrolet has enough respect to know that A. that is not financially sound, unless you sleep in Scroodge McDucks money tower and OWN said tower. B. have enough respect for you that they trust you can master the ZL1 w/out spending another 70k on 2 cars you sorta like, but are NOT the ZL1.

I'm sorry but I'm not buying into yourcar purchasing comparision, one because I'm not into cars and two because it involves a whole lot more money. Only money, you really need for this game is to buy mechbays. In addition, you can argue the opposite with cars like the Ferrari 599xx which you can purchase but you're not allowed to have. You can set up an appointment and they bring you the car that you own to drive on a track. Is that fair?

Edited by Soulscour, 19 November 2012 - 12:35 AM.

[CheeseThief]

I'd be a lot more inclined to spend MC if everything was easier. I've been playing my founders Atlas off and on since launch, upgrading, downgrading, and generally screwing around with builds, the end result is 7 million c-bills in the bank and 70,000 mech XP.

I'm perfectly happy to spend the required 2860 MC to convert the XP needed and elite my Atlas-D(F) chassis.
I'm not happy to have to grind for months to get the needed C-bills or spend 7940 MC on the chassis that I don't want, just so I am given the option of spending money to skip them.

Good job PGI, your stupid business model is getting in the way of me spending money.

[MustrumRidcully]

I don't know if punishing is the right word. I think it could work - requiring additional mech variants to be bought - if they would also retain the base benefits, and simply stack on new.

Let's say we keep with the current mech efficicenies, boring as they may be - imagine the bonuses stack between the variants - so if you got Cool Running on 3 Mech Variants, you get three times the bonus for each mech!

Suddenly it sounds much more interesting to me, and it may be worth it. It's still a bit grindy, but I don't have to just buy what I already have - I upgrade.

[Elizander]

I kind of like the fact that I can try out different variants. That's just me though.

[El Penguin]

I'm fine with the mechanic as long as the game is still enjoyable free. It lets you play the game for free but trys to fill up your slots with mechs so you either buy temporary mechs and waste CBills or spend real money on more mechbays or just ignore the bonuses. Since the mech bays are a good price ($1.80~ I think) I find it pretty reasonable for a F2P game.

As for the grind, premium speeds the process quite a bit I think. It can take less than a week to buy all 3 atlases if I remember right. (ofcourse depends on how much you play) So they give you that option as well to speed it up fast.

I'd be worried if they try to experiment with some other system to try to pull cash in. With all these greedy companys nowadays it could of been worse.

[Rejarial Galatan]

Soul my point is, it has no canonical merit to force us to spend an ungodly amount of CBILLS on variants we do not want. pure and simple.

[Spiral Eddie]

Its all about selling MC, the more mechs you have the more bays you need, simple. This game is full of lots little time sinks that have no real purpose except for making you spend more time on the game outside of games, an example is the time it takes your mech to be ready after a match is completed, its about 20secs, not much and of course you can switch mechs but sometimes you want to grind a mech but you need to wait for the 20 secs.
My point is the game is built with many micro transactions which is ok if done right but i think the game devs need to work on the balance a bit so you dont feel like you are being leached of your game time and MC.
And yes I am a premium player and I bought my first two mechs with MC , so i am not whining about paying, just value for money

[Skulltaffy]

BalzaSteel, on 18 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

funny how every silver lining seems to have a cloud isn't it?

basicaly what it boils down to is you want to have all the advantages but your too lazy to earn them, that's your problem not the games.

BalzOut

Missing the point. You dont have to earn them or even try all you need to do is participate. If you spend money its even less involved. And while not permanent or unbeatable its like paying for a lead in a race which does punish ayone unwilling or unable to pay not just reward investors.

Edited by Skulltaffy, 19 November 2012 - 02:24 AM.

[KhazadNo]

Steel Talon, on 18 November 2012 - 04:22 PM, said:

3-variant systam is dumb, It forces u to play variants u dont like for some reasons jut to elite your favourites

This is not correct. You are forced to either pay real cash (to transfer XP) or play variants you don't like(free to play).