"Champion" Mech coming 19th (April Update)

From: Source

"Champion `Mech - TBA (19th)"

"Champion BattleMechs We’ve decided to add a new style of Hero BattleMech, one that represents the community – the Champion. Similar in nature to the Founder's BattleMechs, a Champion `Mech is based of an existing variant with a special permanent 5% XP boost and lower price point. Our first Champion BattleMech will be revealed on April 12th."

Could this be another new mech? Perhaps a cheaper highlander? Speculation begin!

 

5% XP boost? That is like the Death Star next to the power of The Force, at least when you compare it to 30% C-Bill boost.

 

You have to remember that this will also be at a currently unknown reduced price - perhaps only 50 MC / ton making the heavier mechs more affordable (Highlander @ 50 MC / ton = 4500) as such the lower boost to go along with it as a small incentive? It would probably be better @ 5% C-bill / XP

 

Personally I do not find a 5% XP boost anywhere near as useful as a 30% C-Bill boost. Sure it's cheaper on MC but to me it just doesn't seem likely that the community would ask for a cheaper less useful hero mech that isn't even as marginally better as a hero. I am a staunch critic of the heros we have now, these I find nearly insulting. The hero mechs are hard to justify the ridiculous price tag on and from what I understand with the champion mechs they are just regular mech plus special paint and negligible XP boost. If half of your hero mechs are a waste of money then what will that make these?

 

With the Heavy Metal there was a large cry for cheaper larger toned hero mechs - lots of people even said at a reduced income % bonus - I assume this is the result of that.

 

The only Hero 'mechs I have liked are the Yen-Lo Wang and the Twins. I have bought a couple of the others, the X-5 is passable but I can't really imagine myself spending real money for 'mechs anymore. A minimal XP boost isn't really going to Make much of a difference overall; that individual 'mech might level a little faster but general XP doesn't really have very much use. And the paint jobs aren't really any better then some of the paint pattern/color combinations players have come up with on their own.
I would be more excited by a "Hero 'Mech" that costs twice as many C-Bills or the like to purchase...five times even. Make people work hard to earn a Special Edition 'Bot or paintjob. Just my thoughts on the matter.

Myth.

 

Yes, but it should at least have a CBill bonus. The XP bonus only lasts so long, and I find XP bonuses don't help me level faster, because I level while grinding CBills (and I'm more behind on those). The XP bonus also doesn't matter once you've capped the mech; GXP is so slow that it would only apply in the pool of GXP for that mech.

I'm with untamed. The Hero mechs are largely underwhelming (the Death's Knell, X-5, Flame, and Fang are just reworkings of their non-Hero variants, the Ilya is actually used in competitive play, but the Yen-Lo and the Pretty Baby are very underwhelming...we'll see where Heavy Metal is compared to the other Highlanders once they are released. The big driving force behind getting one of these is 1) another option to level up the chassis and 2) the 30% CBill bonus. Honestly, I think I average more per CBills per match on my Spider-5D than I do my Fang.

 

I don't mind the Hero Mech system because, assuming long term use of the mech you get plenty of benefit out of it in terms of Cbill generation alone.

That being said I don't see a problem with these things. Me personally if I was to buy a hero mech with MC then I would buy a Hero not a champion...

 

It's a good way to test their pricing model. Many people complain that Hero mechs are too expensive so if these Champion Mechs outsell the Hero mechs they might have to re-evaluate the entire MC system or at least that portion related to premium mech content.

 

This is what I am thinking too. See how well a "discounted" hero mech would sell. Get data, etc.

 

Well here is how I break it down.

A Heavy Metal is $37 USD. Thats the cheapest combo of MC packages to buy the mech.

If I get a total of 10 hours in-game time out of this mech I have paid $3.70 an hour for the joy of piloting this mech.

On the other hand, if I take my $37 to Steam I can buy any number (or even number of) games for under $37. Some of which big name titles with all DLC included with money left over that will more than likely bring me at least two to three times as many hours of enjoyment and ultimately have cost me less money per hour to enjoy. At the end of the day I have much more enjoyment and much more to show for my money in the form of an entire game rather than a single item within a single game.

The sad truth about hero mechs is that no matter how many ways you try to slice it they simply are not a value in any way shape or form.

 

That.
I've seen people comparing the pricing of hero mechs to World of Tanks - apparenty there are tanks there that cost around 50$. I don't find it a good enough argument for asking nearly 40 bucks for an item in a game. Take League of Legends for example - the most expensive skins cost around 13$, and most if the others go for below 5$. Furthermore there are two sales a week so you have an option to buy 12 items a week for half price. I haven't seen Riot complaining about their income.

I've gotten myself a Flame, Fang and the Death's Knell our of my founder package. Of all my friends playing MWO, only two have purchased hero mechs - the price tag is just too steep.

 

IGPGI seems to be under the false impression that when you create a non-existent virtual item and create a false demand this does not do a good job of increasing the value of the item. The prudent course of action is balancing your price to better liquidate an infinite supply of product. It costs IGPGI a negligible amount to create these hero mechs. Sure there are costs involved since their are specialist involved in the creation process, however, they are only representative of a small amount of the price of each. Where most of your hero mech money is going is IGP who as I understand it seems to have some sort of major dependency that requires a lot of money. Could be bills, could be smack, could be South American donkey pr0n but who knows? I would put my bet on bills.

At any rate $37 is ludicrous. $5 for a Death Smell? Still a little high but better. $10 for a wang? You're going to make gigolos jealous but only because thats a better value. $15 for a Flame? Still a bit high but going in a better direction than it is now. That would put a Heavy Metal at $20. $17 cheaper, still a decent penny but much more of a value than nearly twice that. So IGPGI needs to sell twice as many to make the same amount of money. Not an issue since at nearly half the price I am pretty confident in saying that they would sell twice as many or more. I would buy a Heavy Metal for $20. I am frugal so would gripe about price regardless but $20 doesn't make my rectum hurt as bad as the thought of nearly twice that.

Sure champions are an option but considering they will be the price that hero mechs should be now and with a bonus that, at least in my opinion, isn't worth paying for they fail to be even remotely close to a value. If anything they strike me as a larger waste of money than the hero mechs now.

Moral of the story is until Russ Bullock and Bryan Eckman rediscover reality and quit trying to milk the Mechwarrior name for every penny it's worth (which they seem to be under the erroneous impression that EA and Blizzard have sustainable business models with this approach) then we are going to be presented with laughable pricing. I, for one, am not gracing MWO with another penny. I have already given them more than I would pay for a full featured AND STABLE big production title for more bugs and less game.

I will keep playing the game, I do love it, but I am not going to allow that love for the game to let me be taken advantage of by a couple of money hungry upstarts that want to be game devs with poor business models when they grow up.

 

But they wont be - read the post - they have said Champion mechs are going to be cheaper than hero mechs, not the same price.

Secondly - you seem to be under the assumption that hero mechs are just getting price points out of the blue and not following a pricing pattern. Currently the formula for hero mechs cost is:

Hc = tonnage * 75mc

Its not like they are just saying "oh the highlander is going to be $30 because why the hell not" - no its priced that way using the same formula for all the hero mechs.

Secondly - you are comparing a full playable character to a skin in LoL - when you should be comparing it to a hero + skin. The most expensive heros right now are 975 RP and skins are another 975 RP (though there are 35$ skins @ 3250 RP and 20$ skins at 1820 but no one seems to remember that...) meaning that most champions + skin in LoL is going to run you a median of 1950 RP - meaning 20$. Also with LoL you are getting milked for you premium time but that's another argument (25$ / month for premium time ONLY for IP - throw on another 10$ for XP for a total of 35$ for the month).

When the Champion mech comes out - perhaps then you can compare it to LoL's Heros only - average hero cost again being a required 10$ payment for in game currency.

In conclusion - I still don't get the comparison to LoL - it should be more like WoT - War Thunder - etc for the simple fact that in LoL your heros are static - there is no weight involved or what can be equipped or anything like that - once you buy the hero he will be the same forever and there is no difference between heros for what they can equip because of weight or anything. While in MWO each mech has a tonnage which is static but every mech has a different tonnage which must be taken into account. Until Mechs don't weigh anything and MWO becomes a MOBA - then LoL pricing is not a fair assessment of MWO's pricing - meanwhile WoT does have a tier ranking for tanks which have different allowances for what can be equipped, and their costs increase as the tiers go up. Due to this WoT is most likely one of the better things to compare to MWO at the moment - and its very clear on one thing - the higher tier tank you want - the more you will have to pay with the Löwe still costing 50$.

 

Think I have to call you on this one Zero.

If you get the $49.95 MC pack, you get 12 000MC. $99.95 gets you 25 000

Heavy Metal with a Mechbay costs 7050 MC

That's $29.35 if you have the $49.95 package, $28.29 if you buy it with a $99.95 package. Nearly 20% less than what you stated.

 

Cattra you are missing my entire point. Just because they have a pricing system in place doesn't justify the bloating of their prices. A Hero is at the top of the scale and a regular is at the bottom with champions in the middle. I appreciate your breaking it down but ultimately found it rather condescending as you missed my entire point. The point is that the pricing of this game is very much off when I can buy entire games for the price of one hero mech that is only marginally better than it's regular variant counterpart. For instance this is promoted as a "Free To Play" game however I have spent as much on it as I would have spent on a pay to play game such as WoW or could have bought entire games for the price of one hero mech. There is no value in the MWO pricing and just because there is a scale pricing on tonnage doesn't justify poor pricing as you seem to mistakenly think that it does. Perhaps I should put it in a form I believe you will understand better judging from your post.

(Hc = tonnage * 75mc) = ridiculous price gouging
(Hc = tonnage * 25mc) = reasonable with the rest of the mech prices adjusted. Make less per unit but you have infinite units to sell and will sell more units as the price is more reasonable thus resulting in more money as the consumer feels they are getting more of a value.

Void, your argument also possess little logic as it is based around spending more money to save money. If I believe that $37 is too much to pay to acquire the minimum amount of MC necessary to purchase an item then why would I believe that paying $13 more is a better deal? Yeah I get more MC and would have more left over but ultimately I am having to spend more money to get a better value and that is simply what you refer to as a money pit. No matter how you look at it. Thats just basic economics as you will ultimately end up with a number that equals all of your money.

Ultimately the impression I am getting here is I seem to have fell into a crowd that enjoys blindly throwing money at games without thought of it being a value or not. No wonder game companies (such as EA and Blizzard since IGPGIs model seems to most closely resemble these companies) throw us crap and expect us to pay for it.

 

While this is true, even most pay-to-play games now have microtransactions. I've dumped a lot of money into WoW via server transfers, and don't get me started on how many people buy every collector's edition and get all the real-money cosmetic items. I won't play a game where it's pay-to-win. Nobody gets better equipment by paying in this game, they just get stuff faster. If that's worth the money, people will play it. If not, then people won't. As it is, most games that I buy upfront but are free-to-play, I will end up playing through single player and quitting. This game, I am going to continue to get enjoyment out of the mechs and such that I purchase, so playtime/$ is higher.

ETA: Untamed, I do see your point, though. It's just like restaraunts. I can't eat at fancy joints, because I cannot justify paying $20/plate for something that is $8/plate somewhere else, especially when I prefer the food at the cheaper place.

 

This discussion has continued throughout the day on our teamspeak server and the general opinion is none of us are going to spend any more money on MWO in the foreseeable future, however, there is one redeeming point I would like to bring up. It has been mentioned that if MWO does well it could fund a MW5 which I was unaware this was ever brought up by IGPGI but considering I like the feel of MWO and have no intentions on quitting I would like to see a MW5. That may be the one single driving force behind me giving any more money to MWO.

Skribs I believe your restaurant analogy is very relevant and would also like to add that not only are you getting the same thing for less money you also get better service and crowd of fellow patrons. Lets face it, we don't pay to tolerate some of these fools we get stuck in groups with lol.

 

On a side note; I have started another account with the intension of PUGing without the benefits of being a Founder. (I have done a number of drops with my usual teammates but will be doing it on my own from now on.) I hope that I can glean some helpful hints etc... for newer players as well as some skill in piloting Assault 'mechs.
Anyway, that said I have been using the DRG-5N(C) as my primary Trial 'Mech. It is a fantastic 'mech and if not for the exorbitant cost, I would own one for sure. In fact I'm going to outfit one of my other Dragon's the very same way.

Mythweaver

 

What are the benefits of being a Founder, and how is it better to not have them?