130 replies to this topic

[Svenz]

Awww....nice offer......but i'll wait for some assault hero mechs...if they exist

[bonapartist1]

This promotion is a joke.

Your game is overpriced Piranha, and you'd have to be a complete knob to buy a non-hero Dragon with MC.

At least this draws attention to the Dragon, my most favoritest mech in the whole wide world. Pssst, UAC5 loadouts work great.

Edited by bonapartist1, 26 January 2013 - 01:26 AM.

[Noesis]

Kargarok, on 25 January 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

Did we just get Garth Rolled?

[bonapartist1]

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg.

Edited by bonapartist1, 26 January 2013 - 02:44 AM.

[Gargoth]

how in the name of nine hells, did player base turn this informational thread to QQ warrior online again?e

"your game is overpriced"

Free to play? too expensive.... wait wat?

If it feels too expensive, then write a ticket about it or dont buy it?

Whining in multiple threads hardly gets you that attention you seek to whor...to "get" for yourself.

[Nehkrosis]

no way, its tank girl barbie!
seen you a few times, small game twud appear.

[Stingz]

Gargoth, on 26 January 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

how in the name of nine hells, did player base turn this informational thread to QQ warrior online again?e

"your game is overpriced"

Free to play? too expensive.... wait wat?

If it feels too expensive, then write a ticket about it or dont buy it?

Whining in multiple threads hardly gets you that attention you seek to whor...to "get" for yourself.

No, its people complaining about their awful attempt at marketing.

Let players use the Dragon-5N (horrible stock) as a trial mech, then lower the MC cost of the Non-Hero Dragons.
(The -5N can be good, but needs 3 tons of UAC/5 ammo, not 1.)

[Kserin]

I think people (myself included) are mainly frustrated with this deal because in it's place could have been a sale worth something. I am at the point where I am prepared to drop 20 ish dollars on this game but the prices are currently not where they need to be to make that attractive. It feels like their pricing model is based on the founders package... a package built for die hard mechwarrior fans who were prepared to drop 30/60/120 on any quality mechwarrior game. Those of us who want to support the game at lower but still meaningful price points seemto be not important to the publisher.

This deal feels like a slap in th face and proof that the people in charge of their business model ar out of touch with a (large) segment of their player base.

Thank you to the developers and for the hard work you continue to put into this game. I wish there was a way I could support your efforts, but at this point there are no packages that match my willingness to pay.

[Ratpoison]

Garth Erlam, on 25 January 2013 - 10:22 AM, said:

Oh man, what would that be? Now I wish to create one.


>_>

To be totally fair, the Awesome is pretty much the weakest mech in the game right now. The 9M is the only variant that can do okay, and that's because it can load an engine that makes it move fast enough to justify its low armor and firepower potential when compared to other assaults. And even then, you need to be an above average pilot to make it work, because picking that Awesome means the other team gets an assault for it, and it will probably be an Atlas. I hope to eventually see the weak mechs such as the Awesome come to a more balanced state so that they can compete with the other mechs of their class.

[Vassago Rain]

A 75% price cut on the worst mech in the game would still not make me consider buying it.

[Name75674]

I will be blunt, no more than one dollar per one million cbill is my limit. I bought a Hero mech to show my support for the game but the prices in MC for "regular" mechs are absurd. Sell empty chassis then... anything, but it costs near nine dollars with discount to buy your Dragons and that is just stupid.

No wonder every time I tried to get people into this game on other sites all I kept getting back was pay to win

[UnseenFury]

Vassago Rain, on 26 January 2013 - 06:41 AM, said:

A 75% price cut on the worst mech in the game would still not make me consider buying it.

I rest my case.

[Vechs]

Gargoth, on 26 January 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

how in the name of nine hells, did player base turn this informational thread to QQ warrior online again?e

"your game is overpriced"

Free to play? too expensive.... wait wat?

If it feels too expensive, then write a ticket about it or dont buy it?

Whining in multiple threads hardly gets you that attention you seek to whor...to "get" for yourself.

If you send in a ticket to the GMs with your opinion on something, they'll just tell you to come post it in the forums.

[jay35]

I'd drop a couple bucks for a regular chassis and I'm ready to pay up to $5 for a hero mech like the Ilya. Looking at the MC purchase page, I'd have to spend $30 in order to buy it. That's ridiculous and way out of line with reasonable pricing for a single variant (or even a set of chassis) in a game that will eventually have dozens of chassis for sale. Whoever did the pricing scheme for this game is hurting your ability to generate significant revenue from a wider audience, apparently in favor of big injections from a relatively tiny group of players. How silly.

If you really were BT/MW aficionados, your goal would be to get as many chassis into the hands of every player as possible and to earn real money doing so. Instead, what you have is a massive grind for every variant other than the hero mechs, which are overpriced in order to compensate for that broken revenue model. What you could have done is sold every variantother than the trial mechs for $1-$2 each, no c-bills needed. Just small impulse purchases that many people would gladly drop $10-20 on every week/month to buy a handful of new variants to play and experiment with and add to their collection. Then sell the hero mechs for $5 each. Now players feel like they're getting a reasonable amount of content for their money and you're earning far more than you could with the current broken pricing scheme.

Edited by jay35, 26 January 2013 - 09:34 AM.

[MoeX]

You all should be thankful. Those players spending real money on this game are financing our product/game. I will never understand how one would spend real money on mechs that are achieveable quite fast by grinding, but I don't have to. For me, I most likely will spend money only on mech bays, but whoever wants a shortcut...

Short summary: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT!

I've been quite sceptical about the whole free2play model, but MWO is quite good and balanced, because you can get almost everything with grinding and not spending money, and those things you have to pay for (Hero Mechs, colours etc.) in order to get them are not overpoewerd or a gamechanger or something.Hope it stays this way...

[jay35]

MoeX, on 26 January 2013 - 09:30 AM, said:

Short summary: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT!

But I want to buy. I want to give them my money. I want to support the game, and I want to own an assortment of 'mechs. They just make a highly unreasonable proposition to do so. When they get their pricing model in line, I've got plenty to spend. Until they do, I must refuse on principle as it is a terrible ROI, a poor return on the money invested.

[Thorqemada]

Ihmo the Dragon sale is a bold move having the Fang and Flame probably already pleased the passionate Dragon pilots and having the stock Dragons one of the least played Mechs.
This action will work out as "high barrier spending stimulus benchmark".

Edited by Thorqemada, 26 January 2013 - 10:41 AM.

[Butane9000]

I've been thinking about this for a couple days. But the current sale while good in spirit isn't good enough.

The issue is, with the Dragon costs being so cheap in C-bills there is no real incentive to spend real money on the stock variants. In fact stock variants aren't a good monetary investment unless you absolutely have no time and plenty of disposable income. Right now the things worth MC in the game are:

- Hero Mechs
- Mech XP to general XP conversions
- Mech Bays
- Camouflage skins
- Cockpit items

If you really want people to spend money on a stock variant any future sales at the very least should start at 50% and end around 75-80% off. Again, stock variants don't appear to be a real good dollar investment especially when it doesn't take very long to grind out the C-bill cost. Combined with the stock variants of all mechs regularly costing between $3.50 to $20.00.

[jay35]

Currently they have the pricing thing backwards, where the c-bill grind is manageable for most folks to do, but the comparative MC/$ amount is way too high. It should be the other way around: Make it an easy impulse buy to pay $1-2 for a regular variant or $5 for a hero mech, or a really long grind to do either via c-bills. That way you still offer a free way to earn them but you also incentivise most people to pay to acquire them instead of grinding them out, instead of relatively few people buying them.

It'd be pretty simple to model the additional revenue, since most players would find purchasing a variant to be worth $1-$2, you could calculate a much higher percentage of the playerbase buying a given mech vs the current percentage that actually buys it vs simply grinding it out or doing without it. Let's face it, nearly everyone playing this game would pick up at least one variant at a normal price of $1-$2 to play around with, vs either grinding it out (as some do, which creates zero revenue), overpaying to get one at the current price (which hardly anyone does, and thus providing relatively little revenue), or simply never getting one at all (which some do, and also provides zero revenue). And surely most people would continue to pop $1-$2 to pick up multiple variants, providing multiple sales per user -- from users who are currently providing zero revenue dollars. You'd also be gaining their additional playtime, which in turn attracts more players due to the added playerbase and added popularity of the game.

There are over 429,000 accounts on this forum. Let's say maybe half of them actually play the game regularly. 250k, for a round number. Let's say maybe 15,000 players actually drop $30 to be able to buy an Ilya hero mech, which is the least amount you can spend to get enough MC to pick one up. That's $500k in revenue.

It would only take a single $2 purchase by those 250k players to make that same amount of revenue. And realistically, those active players would spend a lot more than just $2, because suddenly the pricing makes sense and has a reasonable return in content for the money spent. Most players would readily spend $4-5 to buy 2-3 variants, and probably would spend much more than that.

In fact, $30 would actually get a reasonable amount of content into your mechlab in the game (roughly 15 variants instead of 1-3 variants at current prices, or 6 hero mechs @ $5 each, instead of 1 hero mech @ $30 in the case of the Ilya. Or any combination of variants and heroes that the user desires.) So instead of 15,000 players spending $30, you'd more likely have at least three times as many, say 75,000 players, probably more, spending $30 each, which is $2,250,000 in revenue. And then another 75,000 or more who drop $15, which is another $1,125,000 in revenue. And then another 100,000 players who spend maybe $5, which is still another $500,000 in revenue. So in this hypothetical, you're realizing $3,875,000 instead of $500,000, and garnering a boatload more enthusiasm and playtime by your audience, which in turn expands the popularity of the game, drawing in additional players, creating a momentum effect.

It also keeps all the pricing in nice even, consistent numbers, which is more attractive to people, instead of the current obfuscation of various MC prices for each variant and hero mech making it impossible to purchase just enough MC to acquire the specific items you want. (There's real data behind Apple's decision to use fixed pricing increments in their iTunes store and appstore. They actually put in work to study consumer behavior and the impact of various pricing models. And the results speak for themselves.)

I hate to use hypothetical numbers in an example because people will try to argue details or pick them apart instead of focusing on the point of the argument, but whatever. It needs to be discussed because the pricing model right now is absurd and it's keeping a LOT of people who would gladly spend money on this game from doing so, and that in turn is significantly reducing the revenue they could be bringing in and using to make this game truly great.

And as those of us who've sold digital product before know, the biggest hurdle is getting the consumer to invest the first time. Once they've made that first investment, they're much more likely to make future investments. Currently, the bar is set much too high for the first investment and for the subsequent ones as well. It should be an easy $1-$2 sale to pick up a mech variant, which also makes it much easier to continue to make those investments on an ongoing basis and is much less of a noticeable impact on their budget the way $30 all at once can be. Sorry for the digital product pricing 101 lesson, but this stuff matters and I really want to see this game succeed long term and actually attract and keep the attention of a large playerbase while bringing in significant revenue.

Edited by jay35, 26 January 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[Harmatia]

This is a nice promo for new players.