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[Mechwarrior:Online] Weapon Rebalancing on the 21st. Oosik Sigs on P19
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It's a multiplayer-only game. They tried to get funding funding for a single player game originally, but no one wanted to invest in a single player MechWarrior, so they found someone to fund a F2P multiplayer game instead.
Non-team modes are going to be a long way off(I think the devs said a Solaris-type mode is at least a year away). The focus of the game is going to be Community Warfare, which necessitates teams as you'll be fighting over territory.
That was probably the source of a lot of my confusion, I thought that was a launcher, it certainly looks like a launcher, and launchers traditionally only have a launch button, maybe some patch notes, and a whole lot of useless junk like ads. I didn't look at the launcher/lobby/UI at all when I had the game installed.
That's somewhat dissapointing, though not unexpected. Still, for a free game it looks like there's a lot of potential. I just wonder how they expect to make any money, or if they even do expect to.
1) The ability to own more mechs than just 4 through additional Mech Bays
2) Special mechs only available through RL monies (translated to the currency of Mech Cash = MC), which have different hardpoints configurations or various other benefits over normal mechs, though thus far any advantage they have is fairly small
3) Special one-shot consumables, though these are matchable through spending in-game currency instead
4) Premium time, which offers faster generation of experience and in-game currency
The best value is arguably the Mech Bays, though the Premium time can be very nice if you're just starting out. Some of the cheaper Hero mechs may be worth it depending on how much MC you have sitting around.
edit: Whoops, sorry, forgot about
5) Pretty color and camo. Colors are universal, camo patterns are by chassis
So many damn mech bays...
AND MORE WILL BE PURCHASED.
Though I will be clearing some space out soon. A lot of the reason I need so many mech bays is that I'm trying to skill up too many mech types right now, so I need all the bays to get them through the Basic levels. Can start ditching some when I get up to Elite, though, because I'll have plenty of mechs in the same weight class.
I've got two months of Premium time and have yet to feel compelled in the slightest to actually use it, because I can get everything I need out of normal play. I've got something like 20 mechs at the moment and I'd like to get 4-5 of them skilled up before getting anything else, which will keep me occupied for a while.
MWO is the only F2P game I've ever played where a) the F2P part is not only kickass, but doesn't feel gimped at all in favor of premium players and b) has been (off and on) good enough that I would actually pay money to play it. I could likely only ever buy more mechbays and be completely happy with that, and I would only need the extra mechbays because otherwise I wouldn't have anything to do with the gobs of money I make from normal play. Basically, when the game is fun, the problem is that you'll have too much money from the F2P for the standard 4 mechbays to be enough, so the issue is that the game is essentially giving you too much stuff to do for people to be content with just 4 mechs.
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
Nah. Almost every bit of real money purchases in this game either make your mech look pretty or reduce grind. Nothing scary here.
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
No room for fun anymore, just winning. I guess as long as the full game is hidden behind progression, and the only way to progress is win. You play to win because you literally have to win to play.
Well, your viewpoint is definitely different than mine!
I find F2P incredibly straightforward. If I enjoy the game, I have a way to directly support it until the moment the servers die.
I guess the sticking point is that "support" is not a binary thing anymore. With normal games, you either bought it or you didn't. With F2P, you could buy the cheapest thing, and you have then given some support, and then you basically have to decide how much support you want to give, but then the actual desirability of whatever it is you may or may not buy has distorted what would otherwise break down to a Pay What You Want system a la Humble Bundle. If you are not super careful (or if you are a kid and don't know any better), you might actually pay way more than any video game normally costs just because you wanted the stuff. It's the worst kind of slippery slope: The kind where you are broke at the bottom.
But that complaint has nothing to do with this particular game, it's a complaint about the entire business model.
Conversely, you also end up supporting a game that grows into far more than what it could have been if it had done the standard retail thing. All the other MW games were one-shot deals where you got a campaign and multiplayer mode, then expansions or sequels years later if the original did well.
With MWO, they started at the core of the game (the combat), and are using the profit to expand the game more and more. Generally, MWO is much more enjoyable than the min-max silliness of all the previous games. If things go right, we'll also get a persistent metagame which is vastly superior to just jumping on a server with some other folks and shooting each other up.
Paying into MWO at any level is basically paying to get a game which will do far more than any other MW game in making the whole thing an experience instead the exact same thing as every other MW game before it. Not to mention that there is zero pay-in required to play a bunch and find out if you like what the game is about, and you can get to an enjoyable level of gameplay fairly quickly.
After this and planetside 2, I determined that since I at most, spend 30 dollars on a game, that I would spend 15 on MWO if it was fun.
I sank 30 hours into it and said "Ok, here's 15 bucks for premium time and a mech bay". But I'm pretty frugal. Some people have different limits for what they'll pay for.
So yeah, give it another shot, and if it's fun and you play a lot, spend money on what's important to you.
FYI: Image above links to my webcomic, and is (mostly) SFW. Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
I haven't paid anything yet and gotten an incredible amount of time out of the game. I can't say that I have had an optimal amount of fun, but none of the items for sale would appear to address that either. I'll be picking up some mechbays soon I'd imagine.
Having to buy three mechs to have the one variant I want take advantage of the XP bonuses is my biggest annoyance followed closely by mandatory Double Heat Sink upgrades.
That sounds sort of ridiculous, you pay for what you want that you feel is a good value for the money you are giving. You support the F2P portion by playing the game and providing a player base for the game, so that people actually enjoy and play it and want to put money into it.
I had the same argument recently with someone regarding MMO subscription fee's, where they said it was a ripoff because the total of all subscribers was larger than the cost of servers and infrastructure. I had to explain to them, that you only pay a subscription for what you feel has value, the provider making or losing money on your subscription should have no bearing on your decision to purchase. (Unless you are some sort of moneybags philanthropist).
It is a very valid point, and from the business perspective it is why it is such a lucrative model. They have a few different types of players:
1) The player who will not spend a cent on the game.
2) The player who will spend a little bit here and there but may take a few months to reach the cost you may normally associate with a new game.
3) The player who will buy a lot of what the game offers.
4) The player who buys everything the game offers.
On 1 and 2, they lose money or break even. Those players are getting more time out of the game then money they are putting in (this is not a bad or good thing mind you it just "is")
Player 3 is what they are expecting a lot of their playerbase to do. They want to incentivize what is offered and make a profit off of it.
Player 4 is where they make up for players 1 and 2. What Player 4 purchases more than makes up for the lack of purchases on the other two. They don't need a lot of this player but every one of them they get is money in the bank. In an ideal world for them this is what they would want every player to be, but realistically that is not what happens.
So long as they are offering stuff that people will buy on a regular basis they will make a good profit.
This is why you see so many businesses adopting this model.
From a player perspective you simply pay what you feel comfortable paying. If you think an alternate skin, or a pretty color is worth a few bucks, by all means go for it. If you feel it's not worth the price, then don't pay it and don't worry about it.
Delphin Twitch Stream:
i would say exactly how much ive spent already, but lets just say i could have bought more than a few AAA titles. funbucks are the devil!
So far, I've got well beyond my money's worth for getting a Founder's package, with no regrets about it.
i look at this game as a hobby. i hop on vent, chat with the dudes, have a good time and toss some cash at it. it taken over all my other hobbies and eats up a good chunk of my dwindling free time. i dont mind tossing cash at a hobby.
Same here, I typically have one game that has a subscription or microtransactions at a time so I don't mind dropping a bit of cash now and then for silly stuff
Delphin Twitch Stream:
this game is waaaaay cheaper as a hobby than my model trains. by far. even with the entire new pc it prompted me to replace.
It's definitely cheaper than shooting... the amount I've dropped on this game I could easily go through for ammo in a single month.
Also, a minor request: can we phrase the thread title in the form of "[Mechwarrior:Online] <something witty here>" so that I and others can recognize it in the long list of G&T threads? It's much easier to find the thread you want when the game name comes first, and most other threads do this already.
StarCraft II User Name: DeadMenRise
MWO makes it very easy to be somewhere inbetween 2 and 3. I've spent probably $125 on it so far. I don't own any hero mechs or camo patterns. And yet I've gotten great value out of that $125 (in my opinion). Considering how much time I've sunk into this game, that amount of money seem about right.
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
Oh absolutely, those are all just examples. Realistically people don't fall neatly into each category. The overall idea though is that the people who pay more, more than make up for the people who play for free or for very little.
Delphin Twitch Stream:
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
EDIT: Definitely sent in a ticket about that. Never saw that change mentioned, ever, anywhere. Losing 3 million because PGI changed something non-obvious like that after several months of things being done a completely different way is just not cool.
Edit- It does say "possible" so i guess theres that.
Steam and Origin - BillGates91
LoL - BillBotNik
MWO - BillGates
As far as I know it's been like that since the beginning. I never had an AS7-D(F) in my Pilot Lab, just an AS7-D.
Yeah, it's been that way forever. At the very least since launch of open beta. I can't speak for before that.
Steam: stabbitystyle | XBL: S For Stabbity | MWO: stabbitystyle
Ugh, that is super-stupid. Founders were a separate chassis throughout closed beta, and there was no way to know that had changed until I just tonight decided to start skilling up Jenners. I don't even get why they would change that.
If it's necessary to go dig through the forums for that change, that sort of thing is effectively the same thing as no notification at all. Yeah, Founders were entirely separate throughout the closed beta, which was when I actually regularly used the Jenner last.
Dunno why they did the change, I just want my money back. 3.5 million completely lost because of a completely non-obvious in-game change is not fun. There wouldn't even be any way to tell without buying it and finding out the hard way, and why would I ever bother to check and see if they changed the status of Founder mechs from something they were for months?
They did the change before they wiped stats, it was one of the many reasons they did the wipe before the game went OB. So problems like yours are avoided.
Steam and Origin - BillGates91
LoL - BillBotNik
MWO - BillGates