2041

They’ve been doing things right the past 6 weeks, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt:
-continuing story line in the announcements indicate they have interest in their own game, and perhaps a taste of the CW plotlines they’ll have
-weekend events are definitely drawing in more players
-now that the clan bottleneck is through its obvious that they’ve thrown resources (belatedly) to getting new maps out - new one this month, next one the month or so after
-they have the tools out now for independent leagues in MWO using the Corp interface
-they’ve haven’t gone with any desperation P2W features (yet). Its still $$$ for early access to content, for the most part.

2042

I have a feeling this might be the business model for their new game.

I’d consider clans extremely P2W and it looks like they will be nerfing them more before the strongest Clan mechs come out for CBills.

I read a comment that they are considering Steam now where in the past they had zero interest in Steam. That seems to be the last ditch effort for failing F2P games (Hawken, Tribes Ascend, etc).

2043

The big news that Russ revealed last night, perhaps unwittingly, was that the Clan Mech Packs only generated 75% as much revenue as the Founders’ packs.

This seems like a really bad sign.

People paid more for the game before they actually ever played it, than they were willing to fork over to PGI after actually knowing what they were gonna get.

And really, the clans should have been a magical money making machine, given how many Battletech fans are clan fanatics.

2044

Clan pack was right after Phoenix - I skipped it just because of new mech fatigue. I already had a bunch of mechs to level up, and didn’t want to spend the $$$ to get the better clan mechs. I think the same was true for a lot of people…

2045

I would have been quite surprised if the clan packs had earned MORE than founders because there is a significant clan/anti-clan split in the playerbase. I know quite a few players who did not buy clan packs simply because they had no intention of ever playing a clan mech.

The clan mechs were only ever going to appeal to a subset of the player base. The founders packs appealed to everyone.

2046

I’m not sure, it means they made a good amount of money (4 million?)? Yet the clan packages were much more expensive up to $240, not to count gold mechs. I believe the original founders only went up to $120.

2047

This is true, but like I said, they were selling founders packs to people who have never even seen the game before… They were sold purely on faith.

The clan packs were sold to people who knew exactly what they were getting, and had already been playing the game. That seems like it should have been an easier sale.

2048

I certainly think they overestimated how much people would be willing to pay for the clan mechs. I got both the founders and phoenix packs but just couldn’t justify the money they were asking for the clan packs, partly because it came so hot on the heels of the phoenix ones.

2049

Maybe but mainly I think their pricing model just copies world of tanks, which Russ pretty much admitted at length that they were imitating in many respects but especially business model. I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than that.

You think it’s a coincidence that when they buckled and offered ala carte packages that they offered the 3 variants of 1 chassis for $55, exactly the price that world of tanks was selling a single tier 8 premium tank? Or that their MC costs, and what you can buy for MC map almost perfectly to World of Tanks circa 2012?

These guys aren’t business wunderkinds they are just developers copying a proven model.

2050

They were clearly too greedy. I barely played the game thanks to their business model and the grind for the “free” players.

It was more grindy and greedy than the Tribes Ascend model, and the Tribes Ascend model was iffy enough, it wasn’t until they did Smite that Hirez found a “fair” F2P model.

2051

Well they have another clan package coming soon for $120 it seems. Not to mention their new SC clone - https://transversegame.com/store/

2052

Can transverse do anything but tank hard? I watched the trailer and it was like a low rent mish mash of every single sci fi property and game you can think of.

Why didn’t they just make Aerotech?

2053

Weren’t there only like two dozen or so different kinds of ships in Aerotech (including both fighters and dropships)? There’s hardly enough room to make money if you can only monetize that many different models.

EDIT: (and yes, in case anyone was wondering, that was sarcasm)

2054

The key difference I think is that Wagaming has fleshed out, for good or ill, most of the promise of their game, while PGI has really left MWO sort of under-inflated. WoT has a large number of maps, which are constantly reworked (sometimes with unhappy results, sometimes for the better), a huge number of tanks in multiple relatively well-defined lines, a system of regular weekly specials that focus people on playing the whole spectrum of tanks, a very easy to understand if of course very much less complicated garage/lab/store system, and a fully functional if often wonky Clan Wars community war system. And, and this is not to be underestimated, WoT has a hugely successful mod scene, so much so that most players with any pretense of skill use a spectrum of mods that tweak the information delivery systems of the game and make it much, much more possible to perform effectively and understand what’s going on.

In fact, WoT, for all that I bitch about it (and there are a lot of things to complain about, from the way Wargaming sets things up to reward terrible players so they keep buying tanks, to the plethora of hidden soft stats and obscured mechanics that drive people batty), delivers a pretty solid game experience. It’s far easier to get a basic grip on what’s going on than in MWO, if just as hard to figure out what really works, and the overall game dynamics are a lot more accessible I think. MWO is tackling a more complex system I think in full-on Battletech, but they aren’t doing that great a job with it.

If they’re copying WoT–and you make a good case for that–they seem to have missed a lot of the stuff they should have cribbed.

2055

We covered the maps; the rate of map production between the two games is not very different.

That said I’m a 10,000+ game veteran of both games and when I go back to WoT these days I generally find myself wishing I was playing MWO… WoT gameplay is a great deal more simplistic and shallow and I tire of it quickly now that there is something more sophisticated and challenging to play.

WoT is simpler so much more newbie friendly; you don’t have contend with multiple weapons or weapon mechanics, you don’t to contend with mech construction and optimization. The biggest decisions you ever have to make is top tier gun A or top tier gun B. It’s also got going for it that there are far more casual tank aficionados than Battletech nerds.

These are advantages in the sense of attracting a larger playerbase, but the game is more boring… Appeal to the lowest common denominator sometime requires sacrifices that I don’t think are worth it.

That said MWO has always ignored the new player experience, just throwing c-bills at them and hoping the experienced playerbase educates them before they quit in frustration. They should recognize that their game gas a steeper learning curve and at least add some war thunder style interactive tutorials. It’s a significant failing.

2056

At this point, I think Transverse is going to become a laughing stock of the industry. It’s so low rent that it’s unbelievable. And it’s going up against two titans.

And just EVERYTHING about its presentation, down to the format of the store, is such a ridiculous copy of Star Citizen… And it’s totally ham-handed about it. Every ship they’re selling is basically a cheap knockoff of a star citizen model.

They basically screwed up their F2P model by trying to copy World Of Tanks, but not really quite understanding how things work… And in this case, their attempts to just straight up copy Star Citizen is so overt as to be comical… but once again, they don’t seem to grasp WHY Star Citizen has enjoyed the immense success it has.

I mean, Chris Roberts made a compelling salespitch for his game… and he capitalized on the fact that he made Wing Commander, which tons of us loved. And he’s obviously got a ton of Passion about the game.

PGI has absolutely none of those things. They have no track record of ever developing anything of quality. They obviously do not care at all about the project, short of using it to grab more money.

It looks like they got 40 suckers to pledge money to them, but I’d not be surprised if some large portion of them are just PGI employees. It’s no doubt like when they said that there were only 50 gold madcats left in stock, so hurry up and buy them! Because obviously, they weren’t selling them at all… because $500 for a mech skin is retarded.

Transverse is just so terrible though… it’s a space shooter, where space combat itself is a stretch goal at the $2 million mark.

Not even making that up.

What happens if they don’t reach that stretch goal? You can play but don’t get to actually fight in your ships? Derp?

We covered the maps; the rate of map production between the two games is not very different.

Man, it’s been what, 9 months since they last produced a map in MWO?

2057

Yup apparently IGP insisted all resources get put into getting clan mechs out on schedule so all map production was shelved.

Even with that they are not far behind world of tanks for the same stage in their development.

They basically screwed up their F2P model by trying to copy World Of Tanks

And I contend their model is basically successful, whether you like it or not. Hey if MWO dies in the next 6 months I’ll come back and say, yes, you were right, it was unsustainable… but it seems clear to me that they’ve been able to roll on pretty successfully with this model. They told us their rough operating costs, and we know in the ballpark of what they made off founders, phoenix, clan packs, and just from that alone they have 12-24 months burn time depending where in the ballpark you want to stand.

2058

I’m finding WoT fairly uninspiring too, but I never found MWO that interesting either, but that’s neither here nor there. This does illustrate the point I tried to make earlier, though–whether we like or dislike a game personally doesn’t tell us much about its success.

2059

I don’t understand. Just because WoT is successful with their model, why does SF assume that the same model applied to MWO is successful? Why does SF keep comparing everything with WoT?

2060

Russ is a very slick guy; I was impressed by his talk as someone who has worked in sales before. He threw IGP under the bus a few times and hinted at many other issues. However there’s no proof except his word on this (And he has lied many times in the past). I found some stuff he said very telling. When asked if he would do things differently now that IGP is no longer involved he basically said, “no”. So no grind or pricing changes, etc. When asked about clan mechs and how IGP forced them to do it he has no regrets either. And wait now there’s another clan pack coming and that is PGI’s decision now not IGP’s. He also said if MWO wasn’t doing so well it’d go in maintenance mode where they might only do a few maps or mechs. Isn’t that exactly all they’ve done since release? Honestly the game has changed little since closed beta and not much has been added. I thought it was a good game in 2012 but nothing major has changed or been added since then.

If anything Transverse should show you once and for all who PGI really are. A bunch of mediocre developers who’ve only managed to stay afloat due to the strength of the Battletech IP. The response to Transverse is going so well they completely nuked r/Transverse of all posts. If they have any respect for themselves they’ll realize what a failure it is and refocus on MWO while canceling Transverse. Then they can show us, through actions not words, what they are capable of.