34 replies to this topic

[goldfenix]

Just doing some fast math here. In the round I just lost in my Awesome I earned about 82k, lost about 50k to repairs.

At this rate, it will take me 19 rounds to afford a single ER PPC.

If I wanted the Capture Module, that's 190 rounds. At 10 minutes per round that comes to 31.6 hours.

[RiceyFighter]

Doing pubs and you will be mostly loosing. Go join a TS server or join a clan to increase your winning rate. It only takes me a day to earn 6 mills when I play with my clan.

Edited by RiceyFighter, 27 November 2012 - 08:18 PM.

[goldfenix]

RiceyFighter, on 27 November 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Doing pubs and you will be mostly loosing. Go join a TS server or join a clan to increase your winning rate. It only takes me a day to earn 6 mills when I play with my clan.

Crunched the numbers for you. It came to about 13 hours of all wins to buy the module.

Edit: Thanks for your edit as well, I appreciate the increased polite discourse.

Edited by goldfenix, 27 November 2012 - 08:20 PM.

[Axeman1]

If there wasn't a grind, PGI wouldn't make any money. Now how much of a grind there is, and how much of a grind there should be is subjective.

[Ceesa]

Axeman1, on 27 November 2012 - 08:22 PM, said:

If there wasn't a grind, PGI wouldn't make any money. Now how much of a grind there is, and how much of a grind there should be is subjective.

If the grind is too difficult, no one will stick around to play. It's all about finding the right balance.

Honestly though, the way the game is currently balanced, the only way to make money quickly is by playing light mechs with laser loadouts. And we know what that means: jenners. It's no real surprise that we see so many of them, after all.

When I play this game, I'll do a bunch of rounds in my commando to finance a few rounds in my K2. I want to eventually earn enough money to get some more mechs and then have some fun outfitting them, but I can't do that by playing with my favorite mechs. Instead I have to grind it out with my commando, so once more into the breach I go with my little "pew pew" commando in tow.

[Vexgrave Lars]

You SHOULD be able to buy enough MC points to get started..

Buy a WANG and then Master in 1 mech. I mastered the Centurion ( 3 not 4) in 5 Days and its a matter of time to plug in my first module, and I'm doing the Raven next.

Then use premium account time to buy a tonne of weapons gear and mods and such and play to it as much as you can to earn C-bills.

Note* When buying other mechs with MC's to get Cbills through selling, its kind of a waste but it will get you into a 3050 Endo steel X2 heatsink build that will survive a lot better.

All this for about $59 US, but it will get you started without the huge up hill grind.

Happy holidays.. now pay sucka!

Tonight I earned about 4 Mil and I suck.

Edited by Vexgrave Lars, 27 November 2012 - 08:31 PM.

[Daekar]

They will need to increase non-premium earnings to retain players. I expect more of these threads soon, as Founders who are "going without" discover the grind for themselves. I know I don't have the patience, so I'll be keeping premium time for a while.

[MrPenguin]

As a fellow awesome pilot, my biggest recommendation is to not pilot an awesome in pubs. Well, unless you have a team carrying build. I have an 8R with a brawler build, I can solo fend off/kill lights if i need to with my build. So I'm able to solo a bit with it. But I gather since yours is more expensive to fix then mine (38k) I gather your build is far different from mine.

Still, get a medium or light mech for pubs. At least that way if you lose you won't end up with a massive hole in your pockets.

Also, never refill ammo. Just find room to add an extra ton of ammo and tick off auto-rearm. You'll save a ton of money that way.

And never buy FF. Just don't.

goldfenix, on 27 November 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

Crunched the numbers for you. It came to about 13 hours of all wins to buy the module.

Edit: Thanks for your edit as well, I appreciate the increased polite discourse.

I could that in far less time. If you want, I could tell you how I do it. And no, i don't have premium.

Edited by MrPenguin, 27 November 2012 - 08:56 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Daekar, on 27 November 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

They will need to increase non-premium earnings to retain players. I expect more of these threads soon, as Founders who are "going without" discover the grind for themselves. I know I don't have the patience, so I'll be keeping premium time for a while.

Half of us have already bought all the mechs we'll ever want and are sitting on 50 million+ cbills with nothing more to buy till the Stalker comes out, I think many founders will continue to spout "economy is fine!!!!!" nonsense since they no longer need money.

[Secundus]

I just played a round where I got 5 kills and around 750 damage, it was me in my Atlas against a Jenner last standing, we lost to a cap. I had all my weapons intact, but my rear armour was stripped and my core was "yellow" damaged. I ran with 2 LL, 2 SSRM (200 ammo), 2 ML, and 1 gauss rifle (30 ammo). For the loss with bonuses I got 99,000 cbills, to rearm and repair despite not using all my ammo apparently cost me around 92,000 because I only ended up with $7k more than went in with. With a win it would still be well under $100k after repairs. I'm not prepared to subscribe to XP boosters for any regular length of time, and this just seems way too prohibitive to play without one. I'm really torn with when to use my founders time, if I use it now I use it during this barebones version of the game in a game mode I'm beginning to absolutely loathe, or I wait until more content comes out and risk never using for fear the game tanks before becoming much more than it is now.

This business of free to play games sucks, they always seem to be more like free to try, fleeced to play.

[RiceyFighter]

Here are my numbers:

I run a founders Catapult with no premium. When I win I make about 180k. 30k repair since I don't rearm. So total I make 150k Per 10 minutes playing matches.

Capture module is 6 Million

6 Mill / 150k = 40.00 games.
40*10 minutes = 400 Minutes
400 Minutes / 60 Minutes per hour = 6 hours and 45 Minutes.

If I activated my premium it be a lot faster I would be making 200k with my laser hunchback. So that will make it 5 hours.

Edited by RiceyFighter, 27 November 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

goldfenix, on 27 November 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

Just doing some fast math here. In the round I just lost in my Awesome I earned about 82k, lost about 50k to repairs.

At this rate, it will take me 19 rounds to afford a single ER PPC.

If I wanted the Capture Module, that's 190 rounds. At 10 minutes per round that comes to 31.6 hours.

http://mwomercs.com/...chwarrior-style

[5th Fedcom Rat]

RiceyFighter, on 27 November 2012 - 08:17 PM, said:

Doing pubs and you will be mostly loosing. Go join a TS server or join a clan to increase your winning rate. It only takes me a day to earn 6 mills when I play with my clan.

You're right of course, but this isn't a valid solution to the problem. For every match your team wins, another team of 8 players has to lose, and suffer the economic penalty associated with that. In other words, your solution is a zero sum game where only some win, and the other half lose. Would be more fruitful if the economy were made just a tad easier on everyone.

[RiceyFighter]

5th Fedcom Rat, on 27 November 2012 - 10:22 PM, said:

You're right of course, but this isn't a valid solution to the problem. For every match your team wins, another team of 8 players has to lose, and suffer the economic penalty associated with that. In other words, your solution is a zero sum game where only some win, and the other half lose. Would be more fruitful if the economy were made just a tad easier on everyone.

If that was the case PGI would be broke and this game would be discontinued.

[Zanathan]

Are you rearming your ammo? Tip is not to to save on the expensive ammo.

[goldfenix]

Now that I've had some time away from the game, let me try to explain my issue with this.

The problem basically boils down to that I want to be able to put money into the game when I want new mechs or toys. That's fine. I'm already 60 bucks in and I honestly feel they've given me a solid amount of fun over the last few months to make up for it.

However, these extremely low rewards for non-premium accounts are what get to me. I expect to be able to put money in to allow myself to make enough money that over the course of a week of perhaps an hour a night to buy a nice new big shiny engine. I'm not asking much with that.

But I'm not always going to have a premium account. Some months I'll have none, some months it'll be there. But the rewards are so paltry under non-premium that I honestly don't think I'll play the game during those times. And don't forget, this is as a person who has already put a full-priced game's worth of money into this. What about the poor free-to-play guy?

If I'm trying to sell my friend on the game, here's what I have to tell him right now.

Quote

"Hey, come join me. This game is amazing and has a ton of mech customization. It's fun. Try it out. Okay, but to try it out you first need to play maybe 30 rounds in a trial mech to buy this Jenner. Okay, you've got the Jenner, now you should spec it out with some cool stuff like double heat sinks. Let's play another 20 rounds so you can buy those. Neat, now let's get you an XL engine so you can go fast. It'll only take us grinding for about 100 rounds. We'll be there in no time!"

And this is every single public player they're trying to sell the game to. I honestly don't know how they'll sell the game to new people at this rate. Compare this to World of Tanks, where your first round of the game you make enough to buy probably two new parts for your first tank.

That's the ultimate problem. I can easily already see that the game will not be able to get new blood into the game. And considering that I adore the game, that depresses me immensely.

Truly, truly, truly I want this game to succeed. I'm not jumping ship or anything, and I think there's still great opportunities to move in better directions. But this current system is just so bad that I fear for the game's long term potential.

Remember, the answer cannot ever be, "Just get better at the game" or "Play with clans." A free to play game needs new blood constantly, and you need to entice these people in, not scare them away on the front doorstep.

That's why I ran some math today. To try and feel what the new player must feel during their first rounds. And I gotta tell you, it doesn't feel good. Not one bit.

Edited by goldfenix, 27 November 2012 - 10:35 PM.

[Secundus]

RiceyFighter, on 27 November 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

If that was the case PGI would be broke and this game would be discontinued.

Quite the opposite, people will look at MC prices, see that for any longevity for the game in the form of premium income bonuses will cost them between $60 and $120 and still only be a temporary upgrade to their experience. They will see the rip-off for what it is and leave and tell their friends it's crap. I've already told everyone I know not to even try this game at this point. When players are being told to run crappy mechs for hundreds of rounds to make any decent money, the game has turned into a job and that will kill the game for most people (and ultimately everyone).

[Hellen Wheels]

Daekar, on 27 November 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

They will need to increase non-premium earnings to retain players. I expect more of these threads soon, as Founders who are "going without" discover the grind for themselves. I know I don't have the patience, so I'll be keeping premium time for a while.

JMHO, but MC is WAY overpriced.

I don't understand how they expect to make this MW iteration viable in the long run with the current cost of MC.

If they really want to make some bucks, I would suggest renting "premium" server space so private leagues can run their own circuses. Just a thought.
=H=

[Taizan]

goldfenix, on 27 November 2012 - 08:16 PM, said:

At this rate, it will take me 19 rounds to afford a single ER PPC.

Or 8 rounds with a trial mechs, you decide. Assault mechs aren't really good money makers because of their high upkeep.

Just saw you are elite founder. Shouldn't you guys be rolling in C-bills? Hm.

Edited by Taizan, 27 November 2012 - 10:59 PM.

[Secundus]

Taizan, on 27 November 2012 - 10:58 PM, said:

Or 8 rounds with a trial mechs, you decide. Assault mechs aren't really good money makers because of their high upkeep.

Just saw you are elite founder. Shouldn't you guys be rolling in C-bills? Hm.

I have a catapult, hunchback, atlas, and cataphract. I bought the catapult with MC when it went open beta and the rest was earned through premium bonus earnings. I'm sitting on about 6.5 million cbills. I've played about 250 rounds since open beta and probably spent around 4-5 million on weapons, items, and engines. I don't play all that much, I played a lot more than I normally would these last few days knowing that the premium was ending. I've only pugged and I have 100 wins to 156 losses and a 1.07 K/D raio. The earnings without premium are pretty abysmal, at least when running my catapult or atlas with the repairs, even with the premium it felt a little grindy, but I'm now finding the experience to be much more daunting as I expected it would once the premium timer stopped. I don't have a founders mech so I'm not getting that extra bonus those folks that have one do.