84 replies to this topic

[Foureyes]

@Sookie

Unfortunalty, I think you fall outside the targeted consumers for this game.

[Aerowind]

Decoy101x, on December 13 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

TOO GRINDY!_ obviously no one here has played world of tanks and ground all the way to a tier 10 tank.

Er, this game feels WAY more grindy than World of Tanks ever did.  Sure, getting all the way to a high end tank took more time, but you were out of your starter loltraktor (or whatever the non-germans use) pretty quickly.  WoT always had a feeling of progression to it which cut down on the grindy feeling.  Not to mention you could just switch factions to unlock a lot more tanks pretty easily.  Here you spend ten hours to unlock a mech that you're probably going to do worse in than your recruit assault.

[Holem]

tl;dr since this is long. fuzzy bunny it if it's P2W, pay to play or not, it's keeping the new players playing. Right now the barrier is a bit high for new players hence OP's post.

OdinTheWise, on December 13 2012 - 05:17 PM, said:

Seems fine to me, I put in 4-5 matches and I am at 1500 hc. If it is MC we are talking bout then yes.

With or w/o HC booster_

Decoy101x, on December 13 2012 - 08:19 PM, said:

TOO GRINDY!_ obviously no one here has played world of tanks and ground all the way to a tier 10 tank.

You can get from tier 1-5 in 1/2 day. Tier 8-10 takes forever but by then you're hooked. Here, there's not much to get you hooked.

Elix, on December 14 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

Remember, folks. The free to play model asks you to give it one of two things to progress (not win, progress): time or money. Don't want to pay for your mechs, exp, and gear_ Earn it by playing the game. It's play for free, pay for efficiency.

Note that "pay to win" isn't in there; nothing game-affecting requires you to spend Meteor Credits. Countermeasures are a slightly different case, but that's a ten-page thread in its own right. Use the search function to find any one of the numerous threads about that if you want to get into that conversation. Let's not derail this one with a hijack into talking about cm. This is about Hawken Credit accumulation rates.

You are talking about pay to play. Pay to win is that the barrier to advance is so high that you either quit or pay and we're not talking about boosters because Planetside 2, MWO, WoT all use this model and does not feel like this. In the same amount of time in MWO I'd have made enough to try out different equipment and buy a mech all w/o boosters.

I love playing this game and want to succeed and the only way to do that is to try to see it from a non-Vanguard point of view.

[IllBeCj]

This Is A MMO, If You Unlocked All The Items In A Short Amount Of Time You Would Regret It As It Becomes Very Boring After A While, This Is A Good Way To Keep Players Addicted And Wanting To Gain The Best Amount Of Points/Weapons If It Was Below This It Would Surely Ruin The Game...

[Pshaw]

The costs are too high for parts and the gain is a bit too slow. They need to increase the gain and add more parts and customization in order to fuel the microtransactions. Add tiered parts as well if the level cap is 25 add 3 different tiers, gear that unlocks at level per each mech, again at level 15 and again at 25. Make the costs for the higher tier gear higher. Make legs that effect movementspeed at the loss of HP. Add boosters that have higher thrust but use more power. There is so much that could be done to fuel customization related purchases. If you add a ton of different worthwhile parts you'll get plenty of microtransactions even with the gain of hawken points increased. You can make the level 25 parts absurdly expensive and most peole would be ok with it because you'd have a large pool of options to play with besides the 'best of the best' gear.

[begun]

Axton, on December 13 2012 - 08:10 PM, said:

Inushokin, on December 13 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

Suck it up_ The game just went into OB last night... Come on guys, do you really expect to unlock everything 24 hours in_ It's a MMO...

HAH, I laughed!

[MannishBoy]

I agree right now it feels very grindy to me. I've played (and paid for) quite a few F2P games in the past year, and somehow they didn't feel quite this bad. (Tribes, MWO, Blacklight Retribution).

Maybe if you had a rental option like BLR where I could still get my hands on cool stuff before I could completely afford it, I would have better goodwill toward the game. Right now, it just feels like I'm spinning my wheels to get back to the way I had the basic Assault mech set up in the alpha/closed betas.

Or maybe it's the steepness of the curve to getting stuff. Maybe full mechs are priced about right, but the items that you need for those mechs seem twice as expensive as I'd feel is fun to earn. If I buy a mech, then have to spend 7 more hours worth of credits to be able to afford things to make it operate the way I want it to, it's not enticing me to buy the thing in the first place, and I might just stick with what I've got longer.

I haven't bought enough stuff to know, but if you buy stuff for one mech and it's compatible with another, can you use it on something else if you unequip it on the original mech_ Say I buy a turret, I could unequip it from one, and use it on another. That also would make me less likely to avoid buying something if I thought it had value once I'd gotten bored with a particular type of mech. This applies to both money based transactions and earned currency transactions.

I know it's still fairly early, so I'm not leaving in a huff. But my first impressions on the carrot and stick mechanics here aren't as good as I had when I was playing in earlier phases.

Edited by MannishBoy, December 14 2012 - 02:23 PM.

[Chaosagent92]

NeverWas, on December 14 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

take league of legends as an example, you need an average of 45 games to unlock 1 champion without spending money on boosters.

and an average game spans about 30 minutes, that's 20+ hours of game play for 1 champion. (and i'm being extremely linen with the game count)

there are currently 102 champions in the pool, excluding some stat improvements we called 'runes' which cost additional in game points.

some says the company will fail because the game is such a grind fest, today the highest live stream viewer they have is 25k, 100k if there's a tournament.

hawken being grindy _ think again.

P/s: an average point one game will get you is 120 points, +150 for one game if you have the daily bonus, one champion costs you 6300 points, go figures.

Yet, in LoL, not all champions are priced at 6300. that's only newer champions. The cheapest champions out there are 450IP which you can get in about 5 matches or so.  Plus, League is way different as higher priced champs aren't more powerful then say 450 champs.

[andythebomb]

And in League of legends you can buy permanent rune upgrades for as little as 100 and they have a large rotation of free characters every month so you always have an opertunity to get somthing small to help you progress.

Now if the internals were global and I could take what I purchase for one mech to another then the price would be ok. But were paying for each internal for each mech... I vote we go back to the prices during the closed better where internals were around 1500 and mechs were 9000.

[General_Apathy]

The grind is fine, FTP means grind to death to get anywhere. Don't like it_ find another game or open your wallet. On second thought stick around, the more whinging noobs I get to shoot the better.

[JKiro]

I wanted to see exactly how long it will take me to unlock mechs and items :

I played for exactly 50 minutes in team deathmatch, without any pause, that's 4 games in total. I won all of them, and I have a x2 Hawken credits boost.

I earned 822 credits in 50 minutes, so that's 986 credits par hour.


Now let's say I want to buy a mech and an offensive item.

A mech costs 6410 credits, it will take me 6h30 to earn that much.

An offensive item costs 3845, I'll have to play 4 hours to buy it.

In total I need to play 10 hours and a half to buy a mech with an offensive item (which you must have if you want to be able to fight against players who already have this item...). And that's WITH A BOOST! Without the boost it would take 21 HOURS to unlock a mech and 1 offensive item!



(then if you use 2 countermeasures every hour, each of these items costing 107 credits, the mech will take 9 hours to unlock and an offensive item 5h30 = 14h30 in total WITH a boost. And 29 hours without a boost.)

Edited by JKiro, December 14 2012 - 04:31 PM.

[Leaf]

Chaosagent92, on December 14 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

NeverWas, on December 14 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

take league of legends as an example, you need an average of 45 games to unlock 1 champion without spending money on boosters.

and an average game spans about 30 minutes, that's 20+ hours of game play for 1 champion. (and i'm being extremely linen with the game count)

there are currently 102 champions in the pool, excluding some stat improvements we called 'runes' which cost additional in game points.

some says the company will fail because the game is such a grind fest, today the highest live stream viewer they have is 25k, 100k if there's a tournament.

hawken being grindy _ think again.

P/s: an average point one game will get you is 120 points, +150 for one game if you have the daily bonus, one champion costs you 6300 points, go figures.

Yet, in LoL, not all champions are priced at 6300. that's only newer champions. The cheapest champions out there are 450IP which you can get in about 5 matches or so.  Plus, League is way different as higher priced champs aren't more powerful then say 450 champs.

This is funny, despite LoL being the most sucessfull f2p it's the worst business model to follow.
There are a lot of  f2p games that launched in these last years with this same awful and grindy system and all of them are in the same situation were only the most fanatics continue to play past the first month or so, no matter how very good(tribes ascend) or kinda good(blacklight) the game is.
It's WoW all over again, dozens of games tried to copy the sucess and all of them have failed.
I wish more devs could go the way of dota2/tf2, Exclusive/rare cosmetics are one way to go, there has to be other ways to make money from the game.
Innovation on the business side is a must for the game to thrive.

[Bratwurst]

We didn't even get starter credits....

[Elix]

Bratwurst, on December 14 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

We didn't even get starter credits....

That was only in Closed Beta, since nobody could buy MC, to try out different mechs and balance without having to grind throughout the entire test session. Everyone starts at 0 in Open Beta (unless you purchased a Vanguard Initiative bundle). That was the plan all along.

[Bratwurst]

Elix, on December 14 2012 - 10:51 PM, said:

Bratwurst, on December 14 2012 - 10:48 PM, said:

We didn't even get starter credits....

That was only in Closed Beta, since nobody could buy MC, to try out different mechs and balance without having to grind throughout the entire test session. Everyone starts at 0 in Open Beta (unless you purchased a Vanguard Initiative bundle). That was the plan all along.

I meant in-game cash

[Elix]

Still, everyone starts at 0 Hawken/Meteor Credits in Open Beta (unless you purchased the VI bundle, and then you have some MC).

[RespawningJesus]

Leaf, on December 14 2012 - 04:37 PM, said:

Chaosagent92, on December 14 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

NeverWas, on December 14 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

take league of legends as an example, you need an average of 45 games to unlock 1 champion without spending money on boosters.

and an average game spans about 30 minutes, that's 20+ hours of game play for 1 champion. (and i'm being extremely linen with the game count)

there are currently 102 champions in the pool, excluding some stat improvements we called 'runes' which cost additional in game points.

some says the company will fail because the game is such a grind fest, today the highest live stream viewer they have is 25k, 100k if there's a tournament.

hawken being grindy _ think again.

P/s: an average point one game will get you is 120 points, +150 for one game if you have the daily bonus, one champion costs you 6300 points, go figures.

Yet, in LoL, not all champions are priced at 6300. that's only newer champions. The cheapest champions out there are 450IP which you can get in about 5 matches or so.  Plus, League is way different as higher priced champs aren't more powerful then say 450 champs.

[font=play, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]This is funny, despite LoL being the most sucessfull f2p it's the worst business model to follow.[/font]
[font=play, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]There are a lot of  f2p games that launched in these last years with this same awful and grindy system and all of them are in the same situation were only the most fanatics continue to play past the first month or so, no matter how very good(tribes ascend) or kinda good(blacklight) the game is.[/font]
[font=play, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]It's WoW all over again, dozens of games tried to copy the sucess and all of them have failed.[/font]
[font=play, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]I wish more devs could go the way of dota2/tf2, Exclusive/rare cosmetics are one way to go, there has to be other ways to make money from the game.[/font]
[font=play, helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Innovation on the business side is a must for the game to thrive.[/font]

YES!  Someone understands how I feel towards the basic free to play model.  

Now then, a few ideas to help get players more hooked in this game: create daily/weekly/monthly challenges so that players have a goal to reach.  Right now, it is just "shoot each other with the same old stuff," and that gets boring fast.  Why should players complete these challenges_  Oh yeah, because they'll give a small credits reward for every challenge completed.  Which could help ease the grind a bit, and have players make progress for once.  Oh, you could also give a small credits reward for just logging in.  People love earning stuff for almost nothing.

[Sotanaht]

One game nets between 100 and 140 HC, with little to no variance based on skill.  Shorter games, specifically those joined late, offer substantially less.  HC acquisition is almost exclusively based on time, which is very, very bad in my opinion.  HC should be based on skill, similar to EXP though likely at a different rate.  Add a time bonus at the end, but it should be dwarfed by the potential skill reward.

As it is, with 100-140 credits per game and games lasting about 15 minutes (exactly 15 for DM modes), it takes at least 10 hours to earn a single weapon, or nearly double that for a mech.  Even setting aside my above argument, on a purely time based system it shouldn't take more than 3 hours to earn a weapon, or about 5 for a mech.  That is solid playtime.  To put that together, you are looking at around 60 hours of time to get one single mech bought and outfitted, and that's assuming you never want to change out items in the same slot, it's just too extreme.

Because the system isn't based on skill, I am seeing extreme imbalance between my HC earned and EXP earned.  Since I earn between 1500 and 3000 xp per match on mechs other than the recruit, I seem to be looking to get about 1-1.5 mechs worth of HC in the time it takes me to get to max level on a mech, which is going to mean a LOT of time earning nothing but overflow XP with all my mechs capped and still needing weapons.

One final note, because HC is mostly based on time, it could theoretically be possible to bot, which I expect to be a serious problem for this game in the not too distant future.

Edited by Sotanaht, December 15 2012 - 02:09 AM.

[Bratwurst]

Sotanaht, on December 15 2012 - 02:07 AM, said:

One game nets between 100 and 140 HC, with little to no variance based on skill.  Shorter games, specifically those joined late, offer substantially less.  HC acquisition is almost exclusively based on time, which is very, very bad in my opinion.  HC should be based on skill, similar to EXP though likely at a different rate.  Add a time bonus at the end, but it should be dwarfed by the potential skill reward.

As it is, with 100-140 credits per game and games lasting about 15 minutes (exactly 15 for DM modes), it takes at least 10 hours to earn a single weapon, or nearly double that for a mech.  Even setting aside my above argument, on a purely time based system it shouldn't take more than 3 hours to earn a weapon, or about 5 for a mech.  That is solid playtime.  To put that together, you are looking at around 60 hours of time to get one single mech bought and outfitted, and that's assuming you never want to change out items in the same slot, it's just too extreme.

Because the system isn't based on skill, I am seeing extreme imbalance between my HC earned and EXP earned.  Since I earn between 1500 and 3000 xp per match on mechs other than the recruit, I seem to be looking to get about 1-1.5 mechs worth of HC in the time it takes me to get to max level on a mech, which is going to mean a LOT of time earning nothing but overflow XP with all my mechs capped and still needing weapons.

One final note, because HC is mostly based on time, it could theoretically be possible to bot, which I expect to be a serious problem for this game in the not too distant future.

This is a very valid point you are making, and botting will be a serious problem as this game is based on time and not skill, 5 hours is solid game time, 20 hours just to get a mech, or 10 hours for a weapon is just too much.

[PieCakeAnarchy]

I think the TF2 model should be followed. But while you all keep complaining, relize this. this game is amazing (technical wise) to other mmos. i have not seen many f2ps that are this quality.Not many F2Ps even go with unreal engine....I myself am working on a game using this engine. For now it will be just SP until we make a MP standalone (F2p, following the tf2 system). Plus the game is just in OB, give it time. Instead of jumping on its back about the creds and points and whatnot, give suggestions for gameplay,spot glitches or bad spots in levels that are too campy/bottlenecked so they can improve the experience. Iv been playing maybe 6 hours, just TDM/DM and have about 2k HC...level 11 on my rookie mech. every other F2P iv played takes time to grind up, WOT,Warrock, and several others take a while to rank up. hell at least its not as bad as trying to level up in battlefield 2 eh_ so enjoy the game, help the devs spot problems and give suggestions, not just say *OMGZORS takes toooo longz and i makez no moar credz for new toooooy*.....and im probobly gonna get flamed to well done and crispy for this post