Posted 16 February 2013 - 05:41 PM
I've tried to make this suggestion before in the suggestions forum, and it was meant with the same response, so I'm not actually surprised at how this thread turned out. People need to realize there are essentially four types of people who play this game. These people being the casual player, the tinkerer, the completionist and the collector. I'll give a basic run down of each type.
Casual Player - this is a person who will only sink maybe an hour or two into the game a day, or every other day.
Tinkerer - These guys like to play with mech configurations, as they're all ways trying to figure out how to squeeze that last bit of potential out of a build.
Completionist - has to collect and master every unit in the game.
Collector - has to have every mech in the game.
For the most part PGI is making money on the Tinkerer, completionist and collector when it comes to mech bay sells. For the most part those three group are the ones who are going to purchase a large amount of mc and mech bays with that mc. Now lets look at PGI Business motto "Not selling power, but convenience." The only thing MC can buy outside of premium time, which boost c-bill gain and xp, xp transfer to gxp for use on all mechs, and battle mech purchase is mech bays and "premium" colors. The first three apply to the business model as it saves the player time to buy mc for these things. The last two actually go against the business model because they're mc only.
Both mechbays and "premium" colors have no real convience value. Well mech bays do, but what convince value does "premium" colors have. Now remember battle mechs have both an mc price tag and c-bill price tag. What the opening poster is asking for is a similar option for the mech bays. Its been stated before a mech bay is just an empty space in short a hangar extension. SD Gundam Capsule Fighter Online does this, except one hangar expansion is another six slots a size of there hangar. In mech warrior online I presume one hangar extension gets one hangar slot, as opposed to four more.
Now lets look at the games built by cryptic studios. The guys who made city of heroes, before nc soft drove it into the ground. They've also made Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and are currently working on Neverwinter. In each of there games they have a currency exchange basically currency gotten by completing certain task. These special in game currency for example champions online uses questionite and it can be exchanged for perfect worlds currency zen. The zen acquired this method however can only be spent on Champions online. One zen will normally cost around 140 questionite, so for say 20 zen it cost a bit of questionite. The problem is that there is only so much zen available for each exchange rate, before its sold out and you move on to the next exchange rate. The rate is essentially all ways going up, so with enough time a free player can even earn things in the in game shop.
The only thing is I don't see something like a special currency, or an exchange coming into play until community war fare is in place. Even then the devs have said mech bays will be available as rewards for achievements, but I wonder how ofter that reward is given out on who knows how many achievements.