51 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

The F2P model is designed to encourage the player to open their wallets...

The premise that one could, over the long-haul, tolerate the snail pace grind and ultimately forgoing the more practical resignation to purchasing MC is both highly optimistic and illogical.

F2P is after all a "business model" that is supposed to ultimately net profit for PGI and IGP...

If the economy is too lax and c-bills are earned at too high a ratio, too many potential "paying" customers will feel little compulsion to open their wallets resulting in a fairly mundane fiscal picture and a questionable long-term successful forecast.

And if anyone believes softening the economy will solve the farming problems... I argue you are underestimating the flawed logic that farmers adhere too... "If" farming was an end to a means we would eventually see the number of farmers decrease due to the fact that eventually they obtain what ever amount of currency they needed and they proceed playing the game as designed. Sadly, it's done nothing of the sort... For them it's a game fueled by cheating the system and softening the economy will only sweeten the pot and encourage their abuse that much more.

Edited by DaZur, 30 November 2012 - 11:46 AM.

[Naeron66]

Master Q, on 30 November 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

My build for this analysis is an all-lasers build of a Centurion CN9-AL. It has Ferro-Fibrous armor and Endo-Steel, but not Artemis nor +40% Heat Sinks (I refuse to call those bastardizations "double"). The engine's a standard, non-XL 215.

So you are using an upgrade that raises the repair bill in every battle and is otherwise pointless - i.e. FF. No one should use it in MWO until they make it worthwhile.

Use DHS instead then report back.

[Naeron66]

StaggerCheck, on 30 November 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

The reward system is stacked to promote farming. Take that 75000 C-Bills given out, win or lose, and instead make it 5000. Then up the Kill and Assist rewards to 5000 each. Now double the C-Bills for everything else... damage done, spot assits, base capture, etc. Suddenly you are into a situation where participation determines C-Bill payout, not appearing on the battlefield.

Would anyone honestly write a script that rolled battles for 5000 C-Bills a pop? Possible, but I doubt it.

Nope, just take action against farming via exploiting the reward system:
http://mwomercs.com/...using-exploits/

[Scratx]

Master Q, on 30 November 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

My build for this analysis is an all-lasers build of a Centurion CN9-AL. It has Ferro-Fibrous armor and Endo-Steel, but not Artemis nor +40% Heat Sinks (I refuse to call those bastardizations "double"). The engine's a standard, non-XL 215.

Emphasizing what you're doing wrong.

[Malrock]

Scratx, on 30 November 2012 - 12:21 PM, said:

Emphasizing what you're doing wrong.

This attitude is FAIL. If an option legitimately given to us by the game is nothing more than a trap for noobs then it has no place in the game in the first place and should be removed. There should be no utterly wrong and terrible things that make actively make your mech worse. But ultimately the forum community recognizes this "upgrade" as a terrible thing, and therefore it ought to be either drastically reworked or just removed as this is a poor game design decision.

[LordBraxton]

Merlevade, on 30 November 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

The Space Pope is planning to commence a crusade against the ingame economy due to the threat it poses to new players actually continuing to play the game.

All who participate will be offered indulgences for their sins.

I hold three fiefs with eight score hide each.

I have two score loyal retainers and three hundred able bodied levy.

I will take up the space cross, god wills it!

[Scratx]

Malrock, on 30 November 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

This attitude is FAIL. If an option legitimately given to us by the game is nothing more than a trap for noobs then it has no place in the game in the first place and should be removed. There should be no utterly wrong and terrible things that make actively make your mech worse. But ultimately the forum community recognizes this "upgrade" as a terrible thing, and therefore it ought to be either drastically reworked or just removed as this is a poor game design decision.

FF is a legitimate (if inferior to Endo-Steel) option to reduce weight. However, it doubles armor repair costs. That's what I was emphasizing he was doing wrong. There is just about no mech where it's really worth installing that if repair costs are a concern.

We all do know FF as it is now completely, totally and utterly sucks because the benefits aren't worth the extra bills. I do believe I've heard the devs may rework it to make it more useful but atm it is just a weight reduction ...

... and of course a wallet grinder.

[Kommisar]

Don't mix the arguements. No is trying to justify the inclusion of FF, as it currently exists, in the game. What we are saying is that in terms of economics, it is a TERRIBLE idea to put it on a mech. It is the worse thing you can do to mech if you want to make C-Bills. Why? It's expensive. More over, it is the thing on your mech that is almost gauranteed to get torn-up each round. You are not always going to lose a weapon, engine (even XL), or such. You will, save for a few very rare occassions, lose armor.

I run an Atlas at a profit. Even if I lose; which almost always means having lost my right torso, right arm, 2 AC/5s, a Large Laser, some level of engine damage, and ammo; I still make some money off the old girl. And all of those loses pale in comparison to losing a few tons of FF armor!!! In terms of cold, Gordon Greko capitalism if you mount FF armor on your mech, you should then have your mechanic strap non-functioning weapons all over the outside of the mech to protect your valuable FF armor.

We are not saying that FF should remain as some sort of "trap". But, as it stands, it is a trap. We are just trying to warn the new guys and recommend a way for you to start making some money. Coating your mech in destructable gold-pressed latinum is not the course of a cash concious mercenary trying to make a profit off his mech.

I suspect, in the future, things like FF will make a return as part of the faction warefare. It will be something that your faction will reward you with for loyal service to the House and such. You earn a high enough rank in the Free Worlds League and they start picking up xx% of your FF costs. But this is only pure speculation.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Indeed if one suffers forward driving a 74 Gremlin for their entire career in the game then there will be no risk of loss.

Of course that's almost as fun as really driving a 74 Gremlin.

I can see the advertisement now!

MechWarrior Online "Free to Play"

Disclaimer: as long as your okay with sucking, driving a crap mech, and being a target for our paying clients.

Having spent a month F2P saving, and now a little more than week on premium time, the difference is drastic.

But NOT in the buying of stuff.. its the upkeep cost that make the difference. And it will be that cost that is going to send more new players running than not.

Personally I don't care.. I 'm comfortable with it and have a system that works for me. New players may not be so flexible.

Edited by Vexgrave Lars, 30 November 2012 - 01:17 PM.

[DaZur]

Vexgrave Lars, on 30 November 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

MechWarrior Online "Free to Play"

Disclaimer: as long as your okay with sucking, driving a crap mech, and being a target for our paying clients.

And this is different than any other F2P game how?

Paying customers have the benefit of expediting the process obtaining access to premium content. What is your time grinding worth to you in a nutshell...

I've played my share of other F2P games and there is ALWAYS a chance to encounter a premium player and be at a deficit to them...

Granted... most have a "new player sandbox" that allows new players to "get their feet wet" while at the same time not containing any incentive for the premium players to play within that sandbox (Some do just to stomp... but I digress)

[MustrumRidcully]

There are many things that can help the economy and the gameplay of the game as it is affected by the economy.

1) Change the Reward System for Trials
Trial Mechs should gain 100 % C-Bills and XP, but only for "active" rewards. Things like dealing damage, spotting, kills and assists as well as salvage. If they don't need to be repaired, they don't need to get the basic reward for losing.
In addition, the Salvage reward should be based on the active rewards - that means if the team in total made, say 2,000 XP, split the salvage rewards in accordance to the XP players earned. (So the guy that earned 100 XP gets 10 % of the salvage, and the one that got 200 gets 20 % of the salvage.)

2) Increase the Active Rewards
All active rewards should be increased. Double the rewards for dealing damage, spotting, kills, assists and capping.

3) Change the Basic Reward System for Owned Mechs
The state you enter a match in affects the amount of rewards you get for winning or losing. Active rewards are not affected, but if you enter a match witha mech at 50 % state, you only get 50 % of the reward for winning or losing.

4) Lower the cost of Ferro Fibrous Repairs (Minor Tweak)
FF is the weakest upgrade in the game, adding very little benefit to your mech for a high price in crits. At least don't also make it raise the repair bill! My advice, have FF cost only 1/2 the normal repair cost for armor.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 November 2012 - 01:50 PM.

[LauLiao]

How about instead of having flat rate win/loss rewards with bonuses for performance, you make the win/loss rewards tied to a percentage of the value of the mech you're driving? A strict flat percentage might not be the ideal, but something... An Atlas could could win big bucks or you could end up with a huge repair bill, and alternatively, a Commando would earn you less in a win but maybe you could still earn a few bucks in a loss.

No, this idea is not particularly well thought out, and may not be practical but I figured offering suggestions and pitching ideas was better than specious arguing.

[Kommisar]

LOL

Okay. Trust me. Ferros Fiber armor is far, far, far, from the "Leet" uber-gear that makes "win-sauce". It's not. At all.

You can build a fantastic, tricked out mech without FF. You can lay down the smack without FF. And if you run into a guy that is running FF, you don't have to run away, group up on him, or anything else special. You just shoot him and feel bad (maybe) for hte poor guys repair bill.

Heck, you can even run an XL engine and be okay if you don't completely suck. Note, if you do, don't run it. I never run XL engines and I'm very competitive. Want that Gauss Rifle, great. LB-10x? The single most expensive weapon system in the game? Fine... it stinks as a weapon; but the repair bills on it are not going to cripple you. Double Heat Sinks? Sure, those are not going to effect your costs significantly.

Ferros Fiber? You'll save a few tons. Maybe 6 if you are in an Atlas and you are willing to give up that many critical slots. Less for a medium mech. But heaven help you paying for it!!!

You can have all sorts of neat gear and be fine. FF is the trap. The mechwarrior folly. Only to be used by Princes of the Great Houses and their Honor Guards. After all, they have the resources of thousands of worlds to pay the bills for their pretty, barely even useful enough to notice extravagance.

It's the equivalent of putting crome spinners on a Humvee doing EOD patrols around the green zone. Serves no purpose and costs you a ton.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still getting a feel for the economy sans my Premium Account. I don't have a founders mech, just my old Atlas D. So far, I have noticed the hit to my per-round profits; but I'm still making money. I don't play all day (work, kids, life...) and am lucky to get in 2 hours a night. Assuming that I don't go painting my mech (another debate), I should be able to afford to buy a Stalker when it is released in two weeks with CBills I've earned. That doesn't seem to bad.

PGI has to make their money to keep the game operating. So, there has to be a motivation for people to put real money in the slot. I agree, it's no good for the game if it goes to far; but man. You have to earn stuff. Time or $$$. I sunk in my money for a founders package so I got MCs that got me my first Atlas. I've grinded for the other 2 Atlases and my Awesome.

I do want new players to stick around! I want this thing to thrive. But, at the same time, if you want the easy path to bling-bling; drop a few bucks. Thems the breaks kids. Otherwise, you'll have to grind for it. Plus, if you just handed a new player a big, tweaked out mech, guess what. He's now going to get utterly pounded into scrap with a fancier mech! He hasn't learned how to play well enough for any of the tweaks to make a difference. Plus, by grinding through some trial mechs, a player will learn what he does and does not like without paying for it first. Which, IMHO, is a much better way that finding out you hate Assault Mechs after you pay for one.

Where things start to break down is with the initial Commando purchase they recommend. I don't think this is a smart move for the majority of players. My impression is that you will be making less money in a commando (on average) than you will in a trial mech. So, hold off and keep trialing until you can get a slightly bigger mech. Like a Hunchback or Jenner.

The trap you run into is if you make running a Trial Mech more profitable than running your own, custom mech. That is the balance that has to be struck. I'm sure the Devs are watching the stats on this one like a sailor watches ****. They'll tweak it out in the next several weeks and find the right fit.

[Stormur Herra]

[color=#959595]You're all looking at it the wrong way. If the game isn't fun right away, people won't open their wallets to make it fun. They will just move along to the next game.[/color]

XenonCx, on 30 November 2012 - 10:30 AM, said:

Honestly, I don't see this "free to play" system as much different than the old shareware models of yesteryear. It's a chance to demo the game without monetary investment. We all know it takes money to keep a business up and running, not to mention continued development. I don't expect to have a "great" experience playing for free, nor should anyone else IMO.

The problem is that there's a lot of F2P games out there today. If this one isn't fun before you start paying people are going to go to something else. This isn't 5 years ago when F2P would have been very novel and you would have had hordes of players just because of that.

You have to get people hooked and right now the game isn't going to do that for most people. Honestly the only reason I tried and kept going is because I have a friend who is a very hard-core MW fan.

Quote

[color=#959595]The F2P model is designed to encourage the player to open their wallets... [/color]

[color=#959595]The premise that one could, over the long-haul, tolerate the snail pace grind and ultimately forgoing the more practical resignation to purchasing MC is both highly optimistic and illogical.[/color]

[color=#959595]F2P is after all a "business model" that is [/color]supposed[color=#959595] to ultimately net profit for PGI and IGP...[/color]

[color=#959595]If the economy is too lax and c-bills are earned at too high a ratio, too many potential "paying" customers will feel little compulsion to open their wallets resulting in a fairly mundane fiscal picture and a questionable long-term successful forecast.

[/color]

[color="#959595"]Actually, the problem is that if you make the grind too harsh the F2P players will never get hooked enough to throw real money at it. More likely they get frustrated and quit and do something else more fun. Now I agree making C-Bills rain down from the sky wouldn't help. Realistically mechs need to either come faster or their equipment/upgrades cheaper (so when you buy that 1.9m commando you then don't have spend 3.2m for an engine immediately after). Or maybe the solution is even letting someone pick one mech for free after 5 games from a reduced list. (They'd still have to pay for gear for it.)[/color]

Naeron66, on 30 November 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

So you are using an upgrade that raises the repair bill in every battle and is otherwise pointless - i.e. FF. No one should use it in MWO until they make it worthwhile.

Use DHS instead then report back.

Then why is it in game? You should not have options whose sole purpose is to allow players to shoot themselves in the foot.

[Stanton Langley]

I ran a CPLT-C1 with several tons of Artemis IV ammo, XL engine, endo-steel, and DHS and had 70k profit on a win after being mauled (not including the 35k founders bonus). I get the feeling that your numbers are slightly off. That being said, I agree there should be further tweaks to the economy-- it felt about right with founders + premium when I would have 180-250k profit on a win. Even losses in owned mechs should be rewarding and I like your suggestion of reducing the earnings for trials.

[Stormur Herra]

DaZur, on 30 November 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

And this is different than any other F2P game how?

In LotRO, you can play all the races and all but 2 of the classes for free up to about level 20 before you even notice you're F2P. If you're not hooked by then, then you can move on. If you are you can either start paying them or slowly earn in game currency and move forward.


DDO is a bit less forgiving than LotRO, but in both games you mainly pay to unlock content. You do this one time for all characters on your account. It's not like here where you have to buy the premium time just to progress at a decent rate or buy the mechs for DOUBLE-DIGIT amounts of dollars. (A DDO quest pack runs you $3-$8 or so.)

In LoL, which I started 2 days ago you get enough starting cash to buy a champion (not to mention their rotation of free ones is bigger than the selection of trial mechs, and the runes/masteries customization is usable in conjunction with the free champions, unlike the trial mechs here). In LoL so far I'm 3-1 in PvP games and that 1 loss we were down a player due to him being disconnected (3v2 is hard). In Mechwarrior, I spent the first game running into a wall, the second barely able to drive around without getting stuck. It took a lot longer before I even got a kill.

In PotBS... I'm not even sure why you would ever pay them. (That's a bad model for them not for the players.)

[Darwins Dog]

I think that the economy still needs (and will get) a boost. Up until recently a large portion (majority?) of the players had premium time. Now there are a lot more who are waiting to start it, and some more accurate numbers are coming in for PGI to use for adjustments.

As it is now, FF is not at all economical to use. The cost to repair is too high.

Artemis is good for non-LRM boats who don't rely on missiles, but it's too expensive for the average catapult.

I agree with the idea that play rewards should get a bump, to encourage play over farming.

[Vexgrave Lars]

DaZur, on 30 November 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

And this is different than any other F2P game how?

Paying customers have the benefit of expediting the process obtaining access to premium content. What is your time grinding worth to you in a nutshell...

I've played my share of other F2P games and there is ALWAYS a chance to encounter a premium player and be at a deficit to them...

Granted... most have a "new player sandbox" that allows new players to "get their feet wet" while at the same time not containing any incentive for the premium players to play within that sandbox (Some do just to stomp... but I digress)

I suppose its not at all.. this is my first F2P experience. Such as it is, and i'm having fun.

Of course I'm on premium time now.

Not so much, no where near so much fun when it was a JOB.. I mean when I was in a trial mech saving so I could play my purchased mech 1 match out of 6.

[MustrumRidcully]

One of the tricks with F2P is - if you've already played for a few days and had great fun fighting and customizing and then find something that could benefit a lot from paying money* it becomes much more attractive to actually pay for it. You already invested so much time, what is a little money to make life easier?


*) (not a paywall. Just something really convenient - like realizing that you just maxed out one of your mechs and have a lot of spare XP - and you really were dying to try out another mech, and there is a lot of Mech XP that could be converted lying around... Or you are finally joining a Guild with Guild colors, and you could either pay hundreds of thousands of C-Bills to repaint all mechs, or you could buy the pattern and color unlock for MC and apply it without losing all your hard-earned cash...)

[RonanFrost]

The whiny, entitled opinion of so many "members" of the community is appalling, imho. This game is not going to be funded by a government, or your favorite charity. It's going to be funded by micro-transactions from true fans that enjoy playing the game, and are appreciative enough to be happy to contribute.

The PGI team are people, with families, and lives, and bills of their own. Am I naive enough to think they're living off of scraps? Not in the least. But I do believe that their toils, the fruits of which are entertainment for tens of thousands, are worth it.

Yes, we see that it's going to be hard work to play the game without premium, and tedious to maintain being a cheapskate. If that's how you intend to be, deal with it. I, for one, feel like it's generous of the rest of us, to allow you to play the game on our dime. Think of it that way. Is there room for some adjustment, probably. The overall feel from those of you griefing the forums, however, is the first thing that needs to change.