A game that forces players to create new accounts or backtrack progress is badly designed. There is no getting around that basic fact.
Cheapest MC package is ~$7. You can get 4 bays with this. That's $1.75 per bay. That might not sound bad, but you're paying to buy
an empty space to put something. And it's $7 you could spend on something else. A 'Mech, a paintjob, another game (including tons of other F2Ps that don't do this, or indie games or steam sales allowing you to get AAA games for less).
It feels bad to pay for a slot to hold the potential for something else. Mind you, yes, the F2P player can master variants from every chassis in the game by spending time and not paying a dime (
that's a good thing), or they can pay some money to skip the c-bill grind (
that's a good thing) and cut the xp grind (
that's a good thing).
~89% of the chassis in the game (50/56) are available to F2P players (
that's a good thing). The 6 that aren't available (~11%) don't prevent them from mastering the other variants of their favorite chassis (
that's a good thing). I understand the hero thing. I disagree with it, especially in the case of Flame/Fang having the best Dragon hardpoints, and Ilya having unique advantages over other Cataphracts, but I understand it. That's another topic, and I'm not trying to digress.
What I mean is that PGI has done a lot of good things for the F2P player, uut bays are still MC-only.
There is an immense amount of content here available for free. I'm not denying that. I love that.
But hitting a F2P wall is not fun. The fact that you keep experience when selling a chassis is the only thing that makes this even close to tolerable. What happens to people who picked four 'Mechs that are all different, and don't want to sell them? Say they did this, got all the xp required on each one for the 8/8 basic, but now need to get two other variants of the chassis, two variants that they might nto want to play, and then what? They don't have the slots for that. What are their options? Buy MC ($$$) or...Sell one of their current chassis.
So they sell a variant. They'd have to pay for the DHS/Endo/FF upgrades again, only get 50% back when selling the chassis, set them back even more time, and only be able to get to "basic" on that chassis again (this needs to happen three times to get to Elite, at the time of this writing).
Some players don't want to pay for 'mech bays. You know why?
1: They're being "forced" to - they have no other way to acquire the item. That's not satisfying. Making a purchase because someone
feels forced to isn't fun. It makes them feel dirty.
2: If they don't buy it, they have to throw away time, c-bills (if any upgrades on the chassis), and progress by selling a 'Mech that they've decked out.
3:
It is nothing. It is literally an empty space. Most people don't like paying for an empty space.
There are people who want to monetize the hell out of this game if there was something worth monetizing.
I'm not even going to bring up the "since it's open beta, we need slots to test" and "creating multiple accounts is against the ToS" arguments. F2P players making new accounts to circumvent 'Mech bay limitation just proves that the current implementation is a poor design.
Edited by Volume, 14 February 2013 - 03:40 PM.