2 replies to this topic

[Jalak Bali]

Dear PGI,

I won't tell you I know how to make the game better since I am not a programmer or game designer (not professionally at least). But I can tell you something about your business plan since I am the head of a marketing department of a distribution, wholesale and retail company.

Here's the down-low: your camo pricing sucks. Not sucks as in "I as a customer don't like it" but more in "you're limiting your revenue potential". Let's review your current pricing plan: customers pay real money to apply most of the camo skins and most of the colors for any mech they own. That's it. I don't even have to look at your data and I can tell that the percentage of customers who applied a paid skin/color and re-apply it thus erasing the previous one is very, very small compared to all the customers who paid for the camo once per mech. What you're doing is actually giving your customers a penalty for wanting a different camo/colors. This restricts their purchase. Let's put an example: give your customers 4 mech bays and only 4, forever. After they have 4 mechs, they can only sell one of their mechs to get another. So very, very few will do this. Why? Because a lot of your customers play the game to get most if not all of the mechs. The different mechs are what giving the game flavor (after all, the gameplay itself is rather simple and redundant). That and the completist mentality (borderline OCD) of most gamers. You WANT them to get all of the mechs. You WANT them to purchase all the mechbays. That's the reason for playing.

So why limit the camo?

Look, you don't even have to lower the pricing if you're worried about revenue. The core idea is making a customer spend more money on camo/colors on a mech. By erasing his previous purchase, you're stopping them from giving you more money since there is NOTHING to collect, nothing to complete. A customer will try to think up the best camo/color scheme or one he would be most comfortable for a long time and just buy that even if he has a ton of MCs sitting in his wallet. This is because any new purchase will mean the previous one goes to the trash instead of the collector's cabinet.

So what should you do?

Let the customer keep any camo/color they purchased PER MECH. This would enable, potentially, for a customer to buy all the camo and all the colors for his favorite Atlas, just so he can fiddle around with all the different colors and camo combination and drop down with whatever fashion he's in the mood for at the time. If he like another mech, he can do that with that too. All the camo. All the colors. Can you hear it? That's the sound of the cash register.

You're welcome.




PS> You can also set up weekend deals of color packs for discounted price. If you think the game still needs a money sink, make color/camo application costs c-bills, per camo and/or color. I didn't even dwell into the realm of uniforms, where the lance would use similar colors to identify themselves. Your current pricing plan makes it so that any time you changed your official lance you potentially have to spend more money to get their uniform.

[Mechteric]

I believe its been stated they will be coming up with permanent camo purchasing options soon, just haven't had any further details on how much that will be versus one-time paints, etc.

[MoonUnitBeta]

Hey! Looks like we share the same kind of views. Made a thread on this but I think the difference is that I'd like them to be available to all mechs. You buy a paint for MC, get's slapped on that particular mech, Afterwards the MC cost is converted to C-Bills by a factor of 100,000. Such a factor still makes certain paint schemes, like phranken, harder to obtain, but reasonably priced for buying it the first time.
This is my thread if you want to give it a gander. Maybe collaborate on some ideas.
http://mwomercs.com/...ofits-mc-to-cb/

To buy all camo once, that's 5750mc. I figure that seems pretty low, but at that price, that's a pretty much gauranteed purchase for me. If that's too cheap, they can restrict it to each mech weight class (light, heavy, medium, assualt). So if you buy a camo for an atlas, you can't use it on a jenner, but you can on an Awesome. I dunno about the CB if it's restricted like this. But the plus side to having the CB is to encourage people to buy premium time to gain more CB quicker. I have 11 mechs right now, and to paint them all phranken, or switch around colours would cost a fair bit on CB side. It'd take a long time to get enough CB to paint.

Also asked these questions in the Ask The Devs 31. Can you think of any others?

MoonUnitBeta, on 28 January 2013 - 05:40 PM, said:

In regards to the answers given about owning camo in last week's Ask The Dev's... (i'm so happy. prepare to receive a $100 cheque from me! ... if done right : P )

I. Will Camo (patterns and colours) as a one-time MC purchase be available to all mechs, or by mech type(heavy, medium, etc.), or chassis(Jenner only, Commando only, etc.)?
II. Will Camo cost the same MC wise?
III. Will Camo cost a C-Bill fee after purchasing with MC (could help economoy)?
IV. Unless it's free after buying with MC (no C-Bill fee), will there also be an option to purchase with MC even after we own it (for those who want to skip the C-Bill grind)?
V. Will those who paid MC for Camo in the past need to buy it again to own it, or will prepurchased Camo be credited?

Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 01 February 2013 - 08:22 AM.