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[Calidus]

I would humbly suggest that the current system of monetization is sacrificing market share(ie playerbase) for short term profits. The Founders program was brilliant because it focused on monetizing the core player base. Other successful free to play games like Dota 2 and LoL do they same thing. They don't try and monetize new players they try get as many new players into the game as much as possible then add those new players to the core player base. They also don’t sacrifice balance when it comes to monetizing players. This is where trial mechs come in.

Trial mechs in there current from come across as a tool to monetize new players. Trial mechs are bad for the game. First they are terrible for balance, because they are terrible for balance they give a bad impression of an otherwise good game to new players. Trial mechs also effectively remove half the content from the game. People love the mech lab! The mech lab is half the fun of mech games. Trial mechs are weak so new players they can choose to buy MC to skip playing with them.

What does your core player base want? They want fun mechs and weapons, why else would they playing a mech game but they also want an endless supply of competitive matches.

Who benefits from more balanced trial mechs? The core player base does, they played more than the new players. If the core player base averages 8 hours a week of game play. Then lets assume the average new player averages about 2 hours a week (I am pulling these numbers out of the air, but you get the point). They get 4 times the benefit of new players in this example and that doesn’t even include the size difference between the two groups. So why is the onus being put on new players to spend money when the core playerbase is the one who benefits from it more? Trial mechs are basically serving as a regressive tax. This brings us to two questions.

How to make trial mechs makes more balanced and more fun without making the core player base that already spent money feel cheated? I believe that solution can come from the early stages of close beta with some tweaks. When you joined the close beta you were give a pile of CBills and MC, in order to test out mechs. This gave the player a chance to pick a mech and customize it to their liking. I believe the solution to to be renting mechs. Renting mechs can allow new players to customize a mech and play with to see if it fits their play style. The mechs available for rent can rotate on a weekly schedule. There can be a flat CBill cost per match, based on the weight of the mech. Rent = Tonnage *1000 Cbills. This improves the new play experience and provides more balanced matches for the core player base. It also has the side effect of making premium time more valuable to new players.

Renting mechs does create technical problems. The First one that comes to mind is handling weapons on the rented mechs. There would need to be a way to prevent players from selling weapons off of rented mechs.

This leads to much harder question how to continue to monetize the core player base when they a significant amount of both MC and CBills? Camouflage and Paint are both excellent ways to monetize the core player base, but I agree with a few other threads that say they would rather pay a higher initial cost and have free use of the item they purchased rather than have it tied to a specific chassis. Hero mechs are another great idea as long as balanced is preserved. I think premium time is not being used as effectively it as could be in terms of monetization. Once a player is established it’s value decreases significantly.

TLDR: Trial mechs are bad for everyone in the game. Renting mechs is a valid solution to trial mechs. Trial mechs try to monetize new players when the game should focus on getting them to play more. PGI needs to monetize find more ways to monetize the core player base. Premium Time could be used more effectively. So how does PGI continue to monetize the core player base when they a significant amount of both MC and CBills?

Calidus