League of MechWarriors: Part 1

Today I want to go into the way-back machine and take you to a simpler time; to a time before Open Betas, bobbleheads, and Christmas canceling. Let’s go all the way back to a month ago. Back then the primary concern was the economy, and much like the American Presidential debates, the arguments surrounding the economy were heated, passionate, and often down right nasty. Well, a few weeks have gone by and things have settled down to what looks to be the implementation PGI will ultimately go for, which gives me a good opportunity to look at it and weigh in on what I find.

When I think of economy in online games I think of auction houses, trade goods, and the sprawling sophisticated economy of EVE. What I do not think of is a linear progression that amounts to an accumulation of goods and finances, unlocking more and more things I can do. The first thing that stands out about MW:O’s economy is that it is next to impossible to LOSE anything. Sure on a particularly nasty match in which you expend most of your reserve of LRMs and get cored in your shiny XL Engine Atlas, it is possible to have to spend more than you make to recover, but that loss is more of a setback then an actual loss. You don’t lose the mech, or the engine, in fact you get most of the armor and armament back, so if worse comes to worse, you could just drop again in the 65% repaired mech and hope for the best. Even barring that, you can always fall back to the trial mechs that are pretty good money makers all things considered.

So this is not an economy of gains and losses, advancements and setbacks. Likewise, due to the nature of the role warfare; it is fairly rare that the mech you are working towards is actually functionally better than the one you are using to earn the CBills to buy it. In all reality, you are not working towards STRONGER mechs, you are working towards DIFFERENT mechs. This, incidentally, is why PGI can claim there is no pay-to-win, because even the lowly trial mechs are built with the same rules as the rest. You are working towards versatility, not power.

Basically, you grind ever onwards, and as you play the game you unlock more things you can play the same games with, with a newish style. There is a tremendously successful game that uses this same model, and serves as an excellent comparison for our “economy”. That game is League of Legends.

For those who do not know, League of Legends  or “LoL” as they call it, is a stand-alone version of the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. LoL is one of the most popular computer games in the world, sporting nearly twice as many game hours last year as World of Warcraft, and it all but coined “MOBA” to describe the game style that MW:O falls under. It also was one of the biggest forerunners of the Free-To-Play model. In LoL (and its derivatives such as SMITE) the player earns points for playing the game. You gain more points for winning, but everyone walks away with something. You may use those points to purchase new champions with new abilities. You can also use real life money to buy special points that can be used to instantly get a new champion, or buy skins that are only available through the premium points. Every two weeks or so, they release a new champion which is usually “balanced” with (although arguably slightly more powerful then) all of the previous champions. Right now I believe LOL has around 100 champions. Players have access to free champions that rotate every week, and may use them until they can purchase champions of their own. Any of this sounding familiar?

So let’s compare the two progression systems to see if MW:O is “balanced” by current industry standards. In LoL a brand new fresh out the box champion typically costs 6300 points. A player receives 75 to 120 points per win, with 150 point bonus for the first win of the day (a mechanic I almost guarantee we will see introduced somehow into MW:O). This means, in order to stay “caught up” a player would have to earn that within a two week time. 150 * 14 = 2100 (points for First Win Of The Day), 6300 – 2100 = 4200 (points needed to be earned, approx. 42 wins), and 42 / 14 = 3. So, a person would have to play, on average, three to five games a night (assuming they are not all wins) in order to earn the champion through gameplay before that champion is no longer “new”.

Likewise let’s assume that PGI stick to their schedule of a new mech every month (optimism). Mechs cost between three million and eleven million CBills. For ease of math, let’s assume the average mech will be seven million CBills. Let’s assume a winning player without premium time makes 100k CBills per match. 7m / 100k = 70 matches, 70 / 30 =  2.33 repeating matches per day. Assuming a few losses, and maybe a few good wins, you could earn a new shiny mech in just about 3 matches a day for the month.

“Oh Pyro!” you may say, “you need to buy at least three variants to unlock the full potential of a mech! That’s three times as much work.” This is one of those assumptions that can be considered a fallacy. The average match length in LoL is about 40 minutes. The average match in MW:O is 10 minutes (or 6 if you operate by “PGI Math™”. So, you can get three times as many matches in MW:O then LoL and still have ten minutes for AFKs, mech reconfigurations, etc.

In the end, your effort in game is roughly equal between the MW:O economy, and LoL, with a slant towards MW:O once planets give us CBills and discounts. This difference can easily be explained away by requiring you to buy different armaments, and the hefty price of XL engines, which are often the value of a whole new mech.

A couple of side notes. First, a new mech is not exactly equivalent of a new champion.  While champions can be built different ways, most champions will not deviate far from their original play style. By contrast, one mech chassis may have several different builds, all which perform and play totally differently. Secondly, in LoL all champions earn points at the same rate, the same is not true for MW:O. An Atlas will likely have much higher bills then a Jenner, and thus make less CBills over time. This will drive players to feel that they may have to run in mechs they don’t enjoy to get through the “grind” faster. However, I am pretty sure I have made clear that in my humble opinion that is a problem with perception, and not necessarily the mechanics.

Tomorrow, I plan on addressing the other half of the economy, MC. (Spoiler alert, it is not quite as balanced as CBIlls are).