29 replies to this topic

[mikelat]

I really need to ask since it hasn't been changed much as far as I can tell from closed beta 1. If this discussion is going on elsewhere forgive me.

Is the amount of hawken credits earned going to change before release_

You don't get a heck of a lot, its rather disheartening when you see yourself getting thousands of experience points but an abysmal amount of hawken credits.

The other thing is it appears to be completely based upon time in game (your individual ability doesn't seem to have much impact on it), so for a full match you'd get lets say you get on average 100 hawken points per match. Let's also say you're an average gamer, interested enough to play hawken for an hour a day. That'd probably equate to probably about 300 hawken points per day. New mechs cost 9200, so given this information, it would take you 30 days (or, 30 hours) to unlock a new mech. By just using hawken points.

It just screams "you have to pay money to have fun". Don't get me wrong I have a fulltime job, I'm more than happy to sink 30 bucks into games I enjoy (I already have, actually). But I'm looking to recommend this game, and for your average gamer its not something I can recommend.

In my opinion if it takes longer than 10 hours to unlock a new mech, you made it take too long. It is currently tripe that. After an hour or two of solid play you should be able to afford a new upgrade for your mech as well.

You guys have a fantastic game here, and I would hate to see it flop over something as stupid as too much grinding.

If my math is off or anything is incorrect, please let me know, as I'm planning to very soon create some video content for the game and give my opinion on this (I want to have all the facts first)

Edited by mikelat, November 22 2012 - 01:15 PM.

[Nymphs]

I understand how you feel. Although I play a lot longer than an hour a day, I still feel that you should still earn more credits. It should only take a small amount of matches to be able to purchase an upgrade. However, I don't agree on it being too short of a time. I would say three or four matches would be fair.

I would assume Meteor makes the Mechs for sale expensive for a reason. I would imagine that they would be making most of their money off of their mechs and cosmetics, and that's why Hawken points don't apply to cosmetics. Although this is pure speculation, I can somewhat understand why it'd take so long to buy a new mech off of Hawken points alone.

Still, internals should take so long to obtain as they already do, especially for the average gamer.

[DarkPulse]

The simple fact of the matter: The game is free to play, but the devs have a natural interest in strongly incentivizing Meteor Points as opposed to Hawken Points.

Ergo, you will either pay real money for your immediate unlocks, or you will "pay with time" as it were to get stuff through Hawken Points.

[mikelat]

DarkPulse, on November 23 2012 - 09:10 AM, said:

The simple fact of the matter: The game is free to play, but the devs have a natural interest in strongly incentivizing Meteor Points as opposed to Hawken Points.

Ergo, you will either pay real money for your immediate unlocks, or you will "pay with time" as it were to get stuff through Hawken Points.

If this is how they're going to go about doing that then this game is already doomed.

You have to throw a reward at the player once in a while. I can take some successful examples of Free2Play games, like TF2, LoL, or Mechwarrior Online, where either you'll get some items right off the bat and there are TONS of customization options, but in neither game do you necessarily feel "compelled" to pay. Mechwarrior online specifically, has the lighter battlemechs as being much cheaper (you can afford them after a few hours of solid play) versus the heavier mechs take a lot more time... but one of the best things about that game is customization. You get to pick weapons, heatsinks, armor strength, all that jazz. In hawken we get 3 internals, 2 items and thats it... and most of the time it's pretty dead obvious what you're getting depending upon what class you're playing so there's not much room for "builds" or "playstyles".

A free 2 play game that's simular to what hawken appears to be doing is Tribes Ascend. They a handful of items for each class that you have to grind pretty hard for, but even Tribes Ascend has some alternative playstyles and builds (Hawken doesn't really). Anyways tribes ascend is basically failing because of lack of gamer interest as they go in, play the game, unlock nothing, get beat easily by people who have things unlocked, spend no money on the game. It's gotten to the point where even the devs are focusing on other projects and seem to consider it a lost cause.

We've only got less than a month until the general public gets to try this game, and first impressions are everything. If there first impression is "I'm not going to unlock anything in reasonable amount of time because they want me to pay for this game" they'll say fuzzy bunny it and play one of the many other free 2 play games out there.

Edited by mikelat, November 23 2012 - 09:39 AM.

[DarkPulse]

mikelat, on November 23 2012 - 09:37 AM, said:

If this is how they're going to go about doing that then this game is already doomed.

No, this is how the "freemium" model works. You either pay real money and support the game financially, or else you don't pay real money, but then it takes you longer to get things.

The only things you will HAVE to pay for are purely cosmetic items. And realistically speaking, the time spent on leveling is not going to be too bad. But if you don't want to spend money to unlock mechs, items, etc. then you're going to pay with a little bit of time to do so.

mikelat, on November 23 2012 - 09:37 AM, said:

You have to throw a reward at the player once in a while. I can take some successful examples of Free2Play games, like TF2, LoL, or Mechwarrior Online, where either you'll get some items right off the bat and there are TONS of customization options, but in neither game do you necessarily feel "compelled" to pay. Mechwarrior online specifically, has the lighter battlemechs as being much cheaper (you can afford them after a few hours of solid play) versus the heavier mechs take a lot more time... but one of the best things about that game is customization. You get to pick weapons, heatsinks, armor strength, all that jazz. In hawken we get 3 internals, 2 items and thats it... and most of the time it's pretty dead obvious what you're getting depending upon what class you're playing so there's not much room for "builds" or "playstyles".

TF2 wasn't free to play for awhile. It is now but really the only things you ever buy are cosmetics - so that doesn't quite count as a freemium game. (I count it more as a vanity thing.)

LoL, never played it, but IIRC, the devs said they are highly influenced by its model.

MWO... that sounds exactly like how this is, so again, how is this any sort of issue_

mikelat, on November 23 2012 - 09:37 AM, said:

A free 2 play game that's simular to what hawken appears to be doing is Tribes Ascend. They a handful of items for each class that you have to grind pretty hard for, but even Tribes Ascend has some alternative playstyles and builds (Hawken doesn't really). Anyways tribes ascend is basically failing because of lack of gamer interest as they go in, play the game, unlock nothing, get beat easily by people who have things unlocked, spend no money on the game. It's gotten to the point where even the devs are focusing on other projects and seem to consider it a lost cause.

Tribes Ascend is also Freemium, though actually from what I heard, buying into the game actually buys you guns that are superior - which makes it more like "Pay2Win." That and it didn't exactly succeed after a quick start since apparently the devs massacred the game between closed beta and launch.

mikelat, on November 23 2012 - 09:37 AM, said:

We've only got less than a month until the general public gets to try this game, and first impressions are everything. If there first impression is "I'm not going to unlock anything in reasonable amount of time because they want me to pay for this game" they'll say fuzzy bunny it and play one of the many other free 2 play games out there.

...Except that you will unlock things in a reasonable amount of time. Current costs for a mech are 1050 MP or 9200 HP. Items/Internals go for 125 MP or 1550 HP. This means, assuming roughly 250 HP a match, ~6 matches for an item/internal and ~37 matches for a mech. It's a decent amount of time, but not atrocious. Players can also buy HP and XP doublers, as well, which cuts the time down quite a bit.

Regardless, they are still tweaking costs and no doubt will do so a bit more after open beta. Pricing is one of the hardest things to get down right, but they eventually will.

[mikelat]

I think you're missing the point. If somebody wants to try this game without paying money to see if this is a game they would enjoy, it will take them at least 24 hours of solid playing to unlock anything noticible (internals make no real noticible difference, they just VERY SLIGHTLY buff your mech but it certainly doesn't make a difference). Getting somebody invested in a free 2 play game is verrrryyy important as those are the people who build a community around a game and bring additional people in. People will spend money when they are invested in a F2P game and they don't get invested if they feel right off the bat that it's forced.

Mechwarrior Online works differently in the fact that certain mechs are cheaper (all hawken mechs are same price) and there's lots of customization for engines, weapon types, armor types, upgrades with different advantages/drawbacks, and so on. However every couple of matches you feel like you got a lot of Cbills out of it and you can change your mech build the way you want to.. you don't feel "compelled" to spend money but there's so many options that you might in order to get an extra mechbay or a new mech faster. In Hawken there's a lot of copy and paste going on like 4 mechs with that same TDW launcher, and a lot of overlap between the chasis. It's simply not enough variety to keep a new player interested.

I am hoping they will change it for open beta. As I've said I'm a fan of this game, its just hard to get other people into the game when it requires over 24 hours of time invested to start having fun with new mechs if you don't have money or don't wish to pay right away.

Edited by mikelat, November 23 2012 - 12:27 PM.

[Dracoslayer16]

The HC gain has actually been doubled recently and is actually quite a bit faster than most other F2P games.  LoL and other game would often take days if not weeks to unlock a single thing where Hawken you could unlock a new mech in only a few dozen matches.  And new gear for the mech in less than a dozen.  Pretty reasonable in my opinion for getting free stuff.

[Titzilla]

You also have to consider that it's likely they will provide a) free trial mechs, enough hawken points at the start to buy a full mech, or c) get rid of the purchasing system and use a rental system for mechs (possibly a combination of the two). There are a number of ways for them to balance this and I do believe that the devs have already taken these things into consideration. But yes, I agree that right now the HP gain feels very slow. I've leveled my infiltrator up to level 20 and I just have enough HP to buy another mech.

[chefboyardie]

CB2 was very generous with HP.  I would hope that when the game hit open that the earn rate would be somewhere between CB2 and what we have now.

[cubicDevourer]

Hey mike. Love your videos. I agree with what you said. I've been playing the game a fair amount and I've only amassed around 1000 HP. I'm fairly average at the game, going even most of the time though it hardly seems to make a difference in my overall HP. It really does feel like Tribes to me, the only difference being that I actually have fun with this game... Until I get bored and want to play a different mech. If I didn't have my MP reset to 4800 twice, I'd be stuck with assault and rocketeer for quite some time.

If a new player sees the pitiful amount of HP earned in a single match and how expensive mechs are, they're most likely going to quit after a few days of play if not sooner or maybe buy a boost. Maybe. Now, while the rate of in-game currency earned in Hawken is somewhat identical to League of Legends, there are things like first win to up that rate by a nice amount, netting the player an extra 150 in-game currency (IP) per day. IP is also earned when new players complete the tutorial.

Like you said how MWO has cheaper classes to buy, so does LoL. There are also cheaper characters to strive with prices like 450, 1350 and 3150. Tribes too in fact. Of course, there like 100+ characters in LoL so the same proooobably doesn't apply here, but the point I'm trying to make is that is what keeps new players in LoL around. They see they get enough IP for a character after JUST the tutorial and they're like "Oh! Sweet!" and now they already have a another character on their roster.

There are also 10 characters a week that are free in LoL, offering a lot more diversity than just 1 mech a week. In that week, a person can earn enough IP to unlock one of those free characters to use. Same thing the week after. For Hawken_ No fuzzy bunny way I can make 9200 HP in a week unless I play like I have been (borderline religiously) or buy an HP boost. Even then, like you said, it would still take around 15 or so hours of total play which most new players will not want to do. Then you have internals and items and that's even more.

Then there's sales and whatnot which Hawken will have, yes, but that's just spending less money that you have to spend unless you're willing to grind like a madman. So yes, I agree the the amount of HP earned needs to be increased. Maybe not tripled, but definitely closer to double what it is now. Alternatively, certain mechs can be made less expensive than others. I don't know whether or not if that's the best option, but it's certainly an option. I don't want to see this game fail because of it's monetization. I really don't.

Edited by cubicDevourer, November 23 2012 - 05:34 PM.

[DarkPulse]

I find it amusing that people in this thread are calling 20-25 hours of play "a grind."

Have you people never played a Korean MMO_

[cubicDevourer]

Have you wondered why Korean MMOs aren't popular in the F2P crowd_ Have you wondered why Tribes: Ascend is losing players_ Because no one wants to grind. The only Korean MMO to gain the any meaningful notoriety was Maplestory and that's only because it WAS a grindfest and the butt of many jokes because of it, and no one was playing because, again, it WAS a grindfest. That's why they've revamped their leveling. To attract new players with the shiny "It's not a grindfest anymore!" sign.

And really. You're saying Hawken isn't a grindfest compared to Korean MMOs. Many, MANY things aren't a grindfest compared to Korean MMOs. Whatever a "grind" may be by your standards, it's not the same standard as most people's. Especially casual players, who Hawken needs to attract in order to have a sizable player base.

Edited by cubicDevourer, November 24 2012 - 03:26 AM.

[KaszaWspraju]

Mu online

But you have to admit that without boster, buy mech and equipment it, it will take a little time.

[DarkPulse]

cubicDevourer, on November 24 2012 - 03:14 AM, said:

And really. You're saying Hawken isn't a grindfest compared to Korean MMOs. Many, MANY things aren't a grindfest compared to Korean MMOs. Whatever a "grind" may be by your standards, it's not the same standard as most people's.

That goes both ways, though.

Put simply, the game costs money to make, support, set up servers for, and so on. The devs are basically doing favors and running the game at a theoretical loss by using a freemium model.

They shore that up by incentivizing, but not requiring, money to buy things. After all, a player who never buys things is, technically, not supporting the game and essentially a freeloader. Therefore, they will have to pay with time - but the devs will not stop that from being a viable player choice.

However, they shouldn't make it just easy, either. Put it this way, if you got 500 HP for a good match, would you ever really buy your mechs_ No (unless you're extremely impatient), because you can have one within about 18-19 matches or so. At perhaps 15-30 minutes per match, you're looking at 276-552 minutes to buy a mech. That's 4.6 hours on the low end, and 9.2 hours on the high end. That's nothing.

Now, I can't talk about things in Fight Club, but it's very safe to say there will be more mechs in open beta and beyond. (After all, three of them got returned in this beta phase.) If a player wants to spend not a single penny on mechs, and assuming he starts with no HP to buy them at all (Which I seriously doubt), with an estimated 500 HP/game it'll take him between 23-46 hours of play to buy five of them. There's only going to be so many mechs he can buy at one point, though, until they make more for him to buy.

So in short, the devs have to walk a fine line of making it not too much of a grind, but simultaneously incentivizing the quick-unlock option of buying Meteor Points. As I said, you pay with either time or money, but this isn't going to be a ridiculous, 50+ hour grind for a single mech game at all. However, it's not going to be "I can buy every single night!" quick either.

Edited by DarkPulse, November 24 2012 - 03:27 AM.

[cubicDevourer]

500 HP per match is outrageous. I was thinking along the lines of 180, maybe 200, or having some mechs be less expensive than others, or implementing a daily first win bonus. I agree there should be some grind, yes, but not so much as to turn a player off to the game which, in it's current state, Hawken does. Like mike pointed out, for the casual player playing an hour a day every day, it would take them a month, give or take, to unlock a new mech.

If a game is good, I'll spend money on it. I've done so with League of Legends. I've done so with TF2. I've done so with Hawken. I'm sure many people will do the same, but not if they get the first impression that Hawken is going to make it's money by being a grind.

[killyg]

honestly, ever since HP rate was doubled, the speed at which I unlock things feels fine.

in reality, I'd imagine the average gamer would unlock a few mechs with MP, and then get the majority of their upgrades through the 2x boosts, which I've found to be more than adequate.  It feels to me that this kind of gamer is the prime target demographic, and the ones that either buy everything with cash or purchase nothing at all are actually the corner cases.

unfortunately, I think the whole "free to play" scheme is usually overhyped for all the games I've played that's based on this model. Paying nothing is merely one way to get access to all the game content, and nobody ever promised it to be the easy way.  Regardless of how magnanimous a company wants to be to their fans, ultimately they need to make a profit to stay afloat.  I've always viewed F2P games as "deal of the year" kind of games.  I get a fun gaming experience for a VERY attractive price.  On the other hand, having the hard expectation of paying nothing and still having the same experience as fully paid games is a little unreasonable imo.

mikelat, keep in mind these business models require a bit of compromise from both the developers and the player base.  Would you still not recommend this game if you treat it as having a price tag of...say $5-15_  That's similar to how much a quality game costs on XBLA, and people gobble those thing up.  I'd say Hawken far exceeds the quality of those games.

Coming into the game with the right level of expectation does wonders to one's own degree of enjoyment.

[bac9]

I think HC gain in CBT2 and CBT3 is about alright. CBT1 had much slower rate, requiring, by some calculations, about 300 hours to unlock all mechs and ridiculous amounts of time to even get one new internal.

Now I can buy myself nice small things like new internals every day, maintaining sense of achievement and progress, or get enough HC to buy an additional mech within reasonable amount of time. At the same time, I can see myself spending some cash on HC boosters or even buying a nice mech with cash if I'm too busy to get it with regular play in a reasonable amount of time. I'm feeling that there is a nice balance between rewarding the players and incentivising them to support the game with cash, and I'm quite sure that further increases to HC gain are unnecessary.

Edited by bac9, November 24 2012 - 04:06 AM.

[Nukerock]

DarkPulse, on November 24 2012 - 03:26 AM, said:

However, they shouldn't make it just easy, either. Put it this way, if you got 500 HP for a good match, would you ever really buy your mechs_ No (unless you're extremely impatient), because you can have one within about 18-19 matches or so. At perhaps 15-30 minutes per match, you're looking at 276-552 minutes to buy a mech. That's 4.6 hours on the low end, and 9.2 hours on the high end. That's nothing.

500 HP for a match using a booster seems like a good idea, thanks. 10 hours for someone who payed to be able to buy a mech doesn't seem outrageous.

[Zer0Aim]

i think a bit grind is necessary but its a bit too much now.
if they increase the rate of HP from its cureent state up to like 130%-150% more it would be totally fine for me.
(i tooke its current state as 100%)

Edited by Zer0Aim, November 24 2012 - 08:13 AM.

[Etan]

Honestly i thought mechs were really expensive with HP. But now i feel completly different while leveling my bruiser by the time i was lvl 16 i was able to get a new mech. Why should they allow you to play multiple mechs for free. They have a rocketeer f2p right now you start with the assault and im sure they will give enough MP at start to buy ONE mech. This when open hits would means you have atleast 3 options right away and one of them your personal choice. By the time you get your mech to a decent level you can afford a new one. I see no issues with this model.