277 replies to this topic

[Sulf]

Though there seem to be several different options of how to fix the camo issue, ranging from minor to extreme, almost everyone agrees that the current mechanic is not working. Hopefully this gets solved one way or another.

[Bodach]

Here is my 2 cents: put in a true color pallet that we can use to choose our own colors. Allow us to permanently buy the color/skin combo for a specific chassis with MC or rent with CB. Also, allow us to use this for all our mechs, including the founders mechs because there is no reason we should not be able to customize them.

[Andrew Waltfeld]

I really like the potential behind the camo spec system. So many endless options.

However like many others I'm very hesitant to spend so much money for a design I'll be tired of in few days :/

It's been beaten to death, but allowing us to buy the paints individually and unlock them would incentivize me to buy a lot more than I am planning on atm. For example, since I have the PC gamer skin, I've been able to paint all my mechs all sorts of patterns with the free pattern and colors. Right there is a missed opportunity for MC transactions.

Ok here is my rough idea on how Camo Spec should work.

• You can buy a single color for 500-1000 MC, this permantly unlocks it. (ie just like the PCG Colors) PGI, you went and put in SO MANY colors, honestly I'd buy a ton of them. Probably like 15 to 20 colors, if youd let me.
  
• Charge a small painting fee everytime you use the color. 25 MC would probably be right. Since i've already made the investment on the paint pots, I'd be more likely to keep spending small amounts, this is cheap enough to do it frequently but would add up.
  
• The above should be the same for the patterns, but at a higher cost since they are more unique. Either keep the pricing as is, but unlock the pattern for just that variant, or offer a complete unlock for 2000-5000 MC.
  
• For added MC goodness, you could give the player the option to save a pattern/color combination, with a custom title for lets say 300 MC. This would purely be a convience thing, as the player could always manually record combinations, but I bet plenty of people would bite on this, especially if they have the ability to make SO MANY different combos with their unlocked paint.

With the current pricing system, I am unlikey to spend much MC on the camo system. I can make do quite a bit with just the free PCG colors. With the above described system I would probably drop $100 just to get me started, with continual small charges as I go along. Heck all you'd have to do is add more cool colors and keep me buying paint pots forever.

Think about it PGI,
Andrew Waltfeld

[ExecutorImperious]

I'd like it if I could customize my Founder's mech's colors beyond one color that I can barely see.

[White Bear 84]

I couldnt resist.. ..have only used one colour so far, not yet sure on the camo.. ..waiting to see what else comes out. Anyone else find the shades a bit dry and very similar?? Regardless they do look cool!

[Jyi]

ForceUser, on 28 November 2012 - 05:20 AM, said:

This amuses me.

People are complaining about the cost of a purely cosmetic item that has absolutely no effect on game play and that is 100% optional AND HAS IN GAME CURRENCY ALTERNATIVES. A skin in lol can go for as much as $14 apparently and people are complaining about a skin costing as little as half a dollar?

Wow people, Get some perspective all up in this place.

A skin in LoL can go as high as $14, but doesn't always. Also, once you buy it, you will always have it. Also, in LoL you can buy most things by grinding the in-game currency (can't remember its name), it doesn't have that many money-sinks that can be bought with real money only.

In MWO, if you buy the 3000 MC for $14,95, you get approx 200 MC per buck. A single color can cost as high as 250 MC. Painting one mech in 3 of the expensive colors can thus cost 750 MC, or about $3,5. If you want to paint 3 mechs of the same chassis (as you are mastering them) in your clan's or merc corp's colors (if they are the expensive ones), it goes up to ~$10. If your corp happens to use a pattern in addition to custom colors, the price can even double, so $20 for 3 mechs of same chassis. And if you ever want to change them, you have to pay all over again. And that's in addition to all the other money-sinks, like premium time, hero mechs and mech-to-pilot-xp-convert, which is almost mandatory for smooth play!

I think we all agree that customizing all the details of a mech, including it's looks, is one of the most crucial things in this game - perhaps evenly so with actually shooting things. So we need to have a system that doesn't make us feel bad about paying. The current system doesn't feel rewarding, it leaves a rotten taste in the player's mouth. I paid for the damn Legendary Founder - that's more than I have ever paid for any game. Now I'm feeling it barely gave me what I paid for, as I've already used over half of my MC on mechs, mech bays and xp conversion. I want to buy at least some of the unique hero mechs, I like that, and I need to have some mech bays, and xp conversion is a must unless you want to grind ages for every pilot skill. That doesn't leave any money over for paints, especially when I can't change them free-of-charge if I get bored with them.

Give us the ability to buy colors, for every existing mech and all mechs that are coming, for a reasonable price. New decals, patterns and cockpit items, that should also all be permanent once bought, are a "renewable resource" that should be enough to make plenty of money to run this game - there are literally endless possibilities with those.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I like the mechanical functions of the painter. I also like having access to a limited palette of c-bill colors. What I don't like, and what I think will lose PGI a lot of sales, is the fact that you have to spend MC on a "premium" color each and every time you want to apply it to something.

I have several friends who want to spend money on cosmetic stuff, but refuse to do so when the premium paints are not unlocks. I am restricting myself to my PC Gamer paints and the c-bill ones. I know for a fact that I and many of those I play with would gladly spend money on proper color unlocks, even ones we aren't immediately using, just for the sake of having them available to do with as we pleased.

If PGI wants to have a "pay as you go" color shop, then they should consider lowering the single use purchase price to a few MC each time, and then have a permanent unlock option for many times the cost (say, 15 MC for Marine Black once, or 300 MC for permanently unlocking it). That would give both sets of players what they want, making those who just want to pay as they go more likely to fiddle with multiple paint jobs (since it's so much cheaper to mod their stuff) and allowing those who want unlocks to have them at a cost sufficient to make up for many potential "lost sales" of individual paint applications. Having such a system would seem most likely to maximize revenues over time.

The fact that they tease such a system with the PC Gamer color unlocks (which I love, by the way) simply illustrates in stark clarity the lost potential of the current pricing rules.

[Jyi]

There has been a lot of controversy on the latest patch and the new color schemes pay-model. I think I'm not exaggerating if I say that most of the players dislike how the system works. So I thought we should have a poll to see what kind of system would be the best - both for us players and for the developers to make the most money. Remember, high costs almost never means high income - it's when the choices are alluring enough that money comes raining in.

Edited by Jyi, 28 November 2012 - 03:51 PM.

[DerelictTomcat]

I had to void out my vote as I can never see spending real world money on a different color for my in game mech.

[Vorg]

If you must charge mc for painting mechs, limit it to selection of pattern. Charging for a one use color which can't be transfered between mechs every time you change it, is going overboard. And instead of a massive list of of colors, a MUCH BETTER system would be a simple 3 bar (RGB) slider with direct entry numeric fields below each. Make the color slot selector the color sample box to show what it will be.

And STOP CHARGING MORE FOR A COLOR THEN A WEAPON. THAT IS INSANE!

[Atayu]

Adding my 2cents. The price of patterns is ok and that every time you change to a new pattern you loss old is ok as well. What is not ok is having to buy the color every time we want to use it. If this really is the system they are going to use I will never use the system much as I am not going to spend over 20,000MC to paint the mechs I already have much less ones I add in the future. I mean it would be over 80 dollars to custom paint the mechs in my bay right now this is just a joke. With how the system works now I will be buying no colors as You do not get to keep them witch means there is no point in buying patterns. So this hole feature will get no MC from me. While if you keep the colors for use on mutable mechs and mechs you get in the future I would have probably dropped 5,000 plus MC on it no big dal how it is now it is worthless.

[JohnnyC]

The fact that you don't get to keep colors you purchase is flat out greedy. I read the email talking about the new paint system, logged in all excited, and was resoundingly disappointed and kind of disgusted.

Here's what would need to be different:

Offer paint packs and patterns for a one time MC cost. Once you own them, they're yours to use as you see fit on whatever mech you want at no additional cost. If you ABSOLUTELY feel the need to charge us beyond that, make a small Credit fee (NOT MC) fee to paint the mech.

As it stands, you're turning me off... a lot. Nothing sits worse than being excited about a new feature only to find that not only is it ridiculously expensive, but you broke the one skin I have (can't apply the PC Gamer skin unless you have MC in your account). Whoever's bright idea it was to try and milk this system for every penny you could squeeze out of us just sucked the joy out of having the feature at all.

Epic fail PGI... get it together.

[Scarlett Avignon]

I do think that we should own the colors we buy, possibly for all mechs we own. Paying C-bills isn't a bad idea for reapplying them, though. Gotta pay the paint shop, you know

[Lucinator]

I think that the colors really should be a free add-on like most games, or at least much cheaper than it is now.

[Twokings]

Unsure if this is the right place to make this post, but here goes. Love the patch but unable to paint all mechs. I have three : a hunch, a dragon and a cataphact. Only the cat can be modified. Is this how it works or just my trouble.

[JagdCrab]

Basic colors needed to be changed. We do have lots of variations of Green for MC, but none white for exampe, that's a bit... you know.

[Kraven Kor]

Cost both in CBills and in MC are ridiculous.

If unlocking a color set and/or pattern were a one-time buy, 125 to 250MC seems right.

If you have to do that for each mech and or variant? No. Not buying.

A full paint job on a mech should not cost more than any single weapon in the game in CBills.

MC purchases should unlock for all mechs owned.

Then give us more patterns and such to choose from.

You will always do better selling us more stuff for less money than you will by price gouging.

[Itzi]

Faction wise I'm a little disappointed there no Emerald Green for House Liao
there are the blues, reds purple, yellow for the other factions, some are as basic colours.

how come theres no love for the CapCons?

[Gowan]

At the risk of being boo'd off the forums, I really think Planetside 2 has a good solution to this. We should be able to purchase permanent skins and color packages for our 'Mechs -- because my 'Phract Daddy with the Phranken scheme looks pretty mean, but my group wants to run a parade scheme when we're running together. Right now, PGI isn't encouraging me to spend money on camo, they're making me choose between two purchases.

Right now, my 'Phract has the Phranken scheme because I like it. My unit is just gonna have to deal with the fact that I don't match, but I want to keep the camo that I dropped cash for -- I'm not changing it, and I'm not paying for any more camo for that mech, probably ever. Otherwise, the money I spent on the Phranken scheme was a complete waste -- I may as well have burned it in the back yard.

If I could own and swap between paint schemes, though, I would have already bought them both, plus a couple standard utility camos just because I like the options.

I get the concept of changes costing money, and if it was a matter of dropping a couple hundred C-bills to swap camo schemes, I would be all for it -- but I don't want to keep throwing cash into a furnace. All of my other mechs have default paint schemes with PC Gamer colors, and I regularly change the color selection and swap the pattern between the PCG skin and the default pattern. I just like changing it up.

Speaking for myself (and the majority of my unit), I am not willing to drop any more cash on an item that I can't actually keep -- but on the other hand, if these were skins we could come back to later without re-purchasing them, we would have already purchased several.

I seriously hope PGI re-evaluates this system, because (in my case, at least) it's actually costing them money.

[Brandeis]

As has been proven in the past, being vocal about the issues that cause displeasure with a game, seems to be the only way to get those issues resolved. So, like my fellow players on this forum, I too feel I must speak my piece.

Firstly, I must say that I love the idea of the Camo Spec. I currently have used the default paint scheme and combinations of the free colors, and I like the look that I have chosen. I feel that the default pattern has a lot of character to it, and I'm sure a lot of thought was put into making it look as it does, and for that I applaud the artists involved. If I were to make a request for further content, it would most certainly be for a clean version of this pattern, one with sharper lines, and brighter colors.

As far as the pricing goes, on the whole I do not mind paying a fee in C-bills to apply colors to my mech, I have the Founder's Jenner and I have already converted much of my free MC into almost 6 months of premium time, so getting more C-bills only requires me to continue doing what I have already planned to do, which is to play the game. I also do not mind purchasing more MC, I already have and will continue to do so, in order to continue having a premium account, to purchase more hero mechs, and to purchase more mech bays with which to house them. However the hero mechs and the mech bays are permanent additions to my account, while currently all but the five basic colors and the default pattern are not.

Because of this, I will not be investing real money into the Camo Spec as it currently exists. When I pay for something in a game, I want to know that the something I am paying for will always be there. All other vanity items are permanent, if I purchase a bobblehead, or a house flag to hang in the cockpit of my mech, I can then take them with me when I move between mechs. As much as it breaks from reality to do so, I think it is only fair that the patterns and colors I use also follow me from mech to mech. As I stated before, I do not mind paying a C-bill cost in order to have a color applied to my mech, and I will gladly do so, but when I purchase a new color or pattern for MC, I want to do so knowing full well that the color is a permanent fixture on my account, not something that I will need to re-purchase should I decide to temporarily chose a different look whilst on a flight of fancy. If changes are made, and the colors and patterns do become unlockable features that can be used repeatedly, then I will certainly be more than happy to invest in a palette of colors with which to paint my mechs that will reflect my personality and style. Until that happens, however, I will continue to limit my financial support to those things that I perceive to be a better value.

I do enjoy this game a lot, and I am looking forward to the new content as it rolls out, I know it is said that this is only the first phase for the mech customization options. I hope that the developers listen to the advice given here, and in the suggestion forum, and in the next phases, they change the pricing model to better fit the desires of the customers. I believe that doing so will win them much greater support in the long run. I also hope that my fellow players are not discouraged by the naysayers in the crowd, and continue to make their voices heard.

Hapy Hunting
-- Brandeis