24 replies to this topic

[Xerik]

Does anyone else think the f2p costs are weird?

Typically, in most f2p games I play, I can buy something meaningful for 99 cents, and often I get roped into buying something for 5 bucks because its more meaningful.

At this point, I think a hero mech is what, 20 bucks? How does even make sense. I thought f2p is supposed to be about sapping players with too much expendable income for small little dings that end up adding up to more than the 15 bucks a month they'd be otherwise willing to spend.

I've already bought the founders mech thing, now I'm trying to rope friends into it, and typically I give them 15 bucks via paypal so they can skip the trial mech and I can guide them through picking and customizing a mech and then playing a few matches.

First, it should be easy to send them MC, instead of sending them money, then talking them through it.

Second, honestly, for 15 bucks, they should have either one decent mech + a paint job or something. I think there should be a starter package, similar to the founders packages, just no early tags, a certain amount of premium time, a mech they can actually customize (which is a large part of the fun for my friends at least), and a name, not just X MCs, it should be the New Pilots Package or something.

Third, I think it should be easy to get hooked into buying a lot of meaningless junk. Right now I look at the christmas stuff, or decorating my mech, and while I buy a lot of meaningless stuff all the time, i don't do it for mechwarrior because its just too dang expensive.

Also, a lot of f2p games I play give away their "paid currency" for promoting the game (facebook, twitter, etc), and then give away some paid currency for succeeding particularly well in the game or accomplishing a new milestone. It'd be nice to see something similar. Of course right now, the mc costs are so high you'd have to give a ridiculously expensive amount of MC to even be meaningful.

Its still beta, I understand, but I think you're more likely to have more money, if you reduce the prices.

[superteds]

Agree. About the only things priced sanely are mechbay slots.

There are many successful F2P's out there that prove you can make a ******* fortune on low-cost items - TF2 and hats spring to mind. People don't mind spending what is effectively change hiding down the back of the sofa, but when you have virtual items costing as much as a top up of petrol, you're going to have too many customers second-questioning if they actually want to do this.

A big problem they have is how MC and Cbill cost is tied together.

[Rodder]

You dont need a hero mech. Premium is better anyway and cheaper than 15 dollar.

Edit: I like the hero mech prices. They are not gamebraking, you dont need them, but they are cool and a great way to generate cash for the company.

Edited by Rodder, 24 December 2012 - 11:15 AM.

[superteds]

Also, this isn't even a difficult economic stance to take. Shops like Aldi/Lidl/Tesco/Netto/Sainsburys and many more fully realise that if the customer thinks something is cheap, they'll buy more. Stack it high, sell it cheap.

If anything it's curious that it's taken the gaming industry so long to cotton on.

[Mr Steik]

Offer a 50/50 deal. You pay 50% in MC and then some set ( probably high ) C-Bill cost. So people can still buy out right in MC if they want or people willing to put in the grind can use both.

That way MC still gets bought but it allows for a more semi reasonable RL price.

[Martini Henrie]

There have been give aways of premium time (penny arcade) and cockpit items etc. I assume you know this though, but I have never had game currency given. WoT has given me a cheap gold tank, and a few others have dropped the odd bits n bobs that I don't want or need.

It would be nice if the 20% MC offer was extended to end on the 2nd, but it's PGis boat and I don't feel entitled to demand anything.

Happy Christmas.

[keith]

u may not buy the hero mechs, but play the game. atleast almost ever game i see 1 hero mech per game. so if thats 1/16 of the pop got hero mechs that damn good for pgi. once the 90 ends on founders i'm sure most will repick up boosts. then lets not forgot skins, thats only phase 1. if they put in buy skin for X cost and u always have it.

[impaledface]

Only reason I bought mc was for mechbays, and unless you could buy paint for all your mechs for like 4x the cost of now, or lower the hero mech costs, I won't end up using mc for paint or hero mechs.

[Xerik]

I really feel like using MC for premium isn't a good deal at all, I really doubt many founders will be using MC for premium!

I don't have enough MC to click on 30 days of premium, but using MC for 3 days of premium costs 650 MC.
650MC for 3 days, * 10 days for 30 days, that would be 6500 MC.

6500 MC costs 30 bucks (US).

Thats double the price of buying WoW month to month, and all you get is extra xp and money.

I think to get 1 month of premium it should either cost 10 bucks, or 15 bucks + you get access to some sort of currently non-existing extra. Maybe you get 3 free paint jobs for your mech or something.

Again, I know its beta so this isn't really too serious...except I kinda feel like its actually a soft launch, and just like the switch from closed beta to open beta, it might just be a change to the website and now suddenly we'll all be in "the release of the game".

Also I'm not demanding anything... except for the opportunity to give them more small amounts of money, as right now I'm not going to use MC to buy anything except maybe to convert xp to general experience (which is actually a good price IMO).

[Agent 0 Fortune]

I bought a mech bay for $1, and the color black for another $1, but then I changed the color

On the other hand, I got 8 million free C-Bills so I can buy almost any mech and paint it blue and green using those c-bills.

What I find odd is the cockpit accoutrements, if PGI were really smart, you would give them all away for free, and require players to pay to remove them (talk about distracting).

[BlakeAteIt]

Is wow still $15 / month? if so, it would be $90 for six months.

180 days of MWO costs 13,500 MC. Which, if you buy in the larger bundles, is around $50-60.

360 days comes out to a little under $100.


Alternately, lets say you spend $100... (which is six months of wow + $10)

That gets yu six months of premium, PLUS 11500 (which two Ilya's, with 1kMC left over)

[Xerik]

I actually don't know how much WoW costs, since I haven't played it since shortly after beta, but in my head I think 15/month for traditional (IMO better) MMO cost structures.

If you look at very long term up front, I think you're right though, I guess the math works out, until you compare what you get.

Traditional MMO: $0 = no play, no fun, $100 bucks: for 6 months of gameplay + a cheap pizza.
MWO: $0 money= all the fun in the game, $100 bucks: 6 months of extra xp and ingame money + 2 custom painted mechs (that still give a bit extra money).

I "like" vanity items, but the return on investment is very poor for me, so it has to be cheap or I won't buy it at all. And faster xp doesn't do much IMO, because you don't need very much xp to (currently) max out a mech (not counting modules, only the 4x zoom really matters to me right now, and I have it).

[Jaynis]

Xerik. just to correct your pricing mistake. 30 days of premium is 2,500 MC. The other poster stated its under 100 bucks for a year of premium as well, not 6 months.

3,000 MC is 14.95. So for a month of premium and 500 more MC its 15 bucks.
This is a VERY common pricing scheme in F2P games. 10-12 bucks for 30 days of a premium time, which in most games will double exp/money gain, it varies from game to game basis though. Most games have you buy more of their cash than necessary as well.

I can't say no to cheaper things, but I feel Hero mechs aren't priced too badly, same with mech bays and most other things. I just feel they need more cheap cosmetic items, and a possible re-work of the painting system.

Not to mention the exchange rate for MC to GXP is nice too. 1000 MC will get you 25k GXP. We'll eventually have far more modules, someone posted a list of module names sometime ago to help back that up. You can also use GXP to quickly level up a Mech's efficiencies as well.

Also most people are going to be using premium for the Cbill increase, not the exp. Probably another reason for the Hero prices. They don't offer a bigger advantage over the other variants, but earn more money. Think of them like a more permanent Cbill boost. Instead of buying a few months of premium, you buy a Hero mech to make money instead.

I feel like people are looking at the Hero mechs wrong, and looking at them as more of a vanity item rather than a long term money farm, which is their primary purpose.

We have paints(still feel like it needs a rework), and cockpit item for vanity micro-transactions.

Edited by 7thD3adlyS1n, 24 December 2012 - 02:23 PM.

[Xerik]

Just to clarify, they don't let you click on those other time periods to see the cost unless you already own enough MC to buy it, so to most new players the cost must be infinite or just do the math.

15 bucks per month is fine, though what you get for premium isn't enough IMO.

For the 100 for 6 months, I know and BlakeAteIt know its 100 for the year, but the point was 100 for 6 months as arguably being better since you get 6 months of premium + 2 hero mechs.

I have trouble telling how much money the paints cost, so I don't buy the paints at all. I did buy a few cockpit items, because I had extra from my legendary package, otherwise I wouldn't have.

I realize that the credit card fees might be too high to make 99 cent transactions worth it, but 7 bucks being the lowest possible amount of MC I can buy definitely doesn't seem like an "impulse" purchase.

And I can't look at the hero mechs as being "a long term money farm", seeing as I already have the 4 CTP mechs, and still I don't use them because I'd rather care about my mech's appearance or build configuration options (I switch mechs every few matches) than simply making a bit more c-bills.

I did worry about c-bills before they removed R&R, so maybe then it made sense, now all mechs make money regardless of configuration, just some make more, and I (and probably everyone else who looks at hero mechs as vanity purchases) could care less about extra c-bills.

I believe hero mechs should be 15 bucks each (exactly 3000 MC I guess), because I'm presuming they can't add many, but if they could add a few dozen within the next year, I'd think they should cost probably no more than 10 bucks each.

paint jobs or cockpit items should cost 99 cents,but instead a santa costs 1000 MC which is 5.56. 5.56!?!?! Thats supposed to be a "micro" transaction? Maybe I'm just poor or old, but 5.56 isn't a micro transaction.

[Jaynis]

Well don't mean to drag Team Fortress 2 into it now, but if youw ant to buy a key, 2.50. you ahve to put 5 bucks into your steam wallet.

5-10 dollars are still micro-transactions. Regardless of opinion.

But hey, at least its not like Eve's first form of it where it was 40-60 bucks for a gold monocle. That enters the realm of macro-transactions.

[Xerik]

Regardless of opinion, no opinion can be stated as a fact and then followed by the words "regardless of opinion".

That monocle was ridiculous!

[verybad]

I think the issue currently is that they have limited content. I think some of the stuff will get cheaper in the future as newer better stuff (Clan toys for example) are released. It's the only sane way they can maintain sales.

Another thing they should do is have sales where MC is worth more, similiar to Steam sales.

Steam pwns my @$$ every time they have sales, and I don't feel like I'm being ripped off, even though I end up spending a lot of money...Like right now I'm buying 40 bucks in games and DLC.

The current proces simply aren't going to work well once the game is fully released.

Edited by verybad, 24 December 2012 - 06:16 PM.

[Xerik]

Argh! Those steam sales, that's exactly what I'm saying, come on MWO, feed my mindless need to buy cheap digital things!

[Kibble]

There is a simple explination for this. American f2p are for the most part greedy. Most would rather see the quick buck rather than the long term revenue. Are the price points made by IGP or PGI. That is what I would like to know.

[PoLaR]

The company making this game doesn't have a massive team as a lot of gaming companies have these days.

So, In order to support them we must pay a little extra.. or a lot extra.

I have no problem supporting something I enjoy :]