With the latest weekend event my friends on the Comstar TS Australian channel had a very small Private Lobby challenge. We only manage to get 2v2 and 1v1 duels but they were fun. I must say I think it was the most fun I could have with MW:O at the moment and did stay up well past my bedtime What made it fun was having a theme behind each duel, here were some of the best: -The first mech you bought in MW:O -The mech with the highest total damage -The mech with the best KDR -Favourite mech in each weight class I just wish that private lobbys could be created without premium time, the fact that you don't get cbills or XP should be enough punishment. It brings a whole new world of options to MW:O. If you could create a lobby without premium time I would expect that people would start creating their own lobby themes and then, we need a lobby browser; people would start to play MW:O in a totally different way. The most interesting thing about duels is that pilot still has a part in the end result but the mech and the build has a huge impact on the result. It This is a lot less visible playing in the solo queue. I was thinking about tweeting this to Russ because if we had private lobbys without premium time and a lobby browser MW:O would be only limited by the imagination of the players, instead of us waiting for Community Warefare non-Beta to arrive.
Good luck!! Russ will need to check with Bryan and find a way to monotize it before he will even consider it. Then they will have to run it past their secret test group who are most clan players. They will be told there is no real way to monotize it successful or the dollars cost average isnt beneficial enough. The fact of the matter is this. MWO will invest the time and money in to anything that will buy them more time to make more money. Anything short of that will get a pin put in it.
That is clearly an aim for PGI, that is what they are in business to do. It would be an indirect way to increase revenue, I would make it so that the Private Lobby was only for owned mechs (i.e. no trial mechs). The way to make money from it is to make people want to play MWO, then they want to buy mechbays, mech packs and premium time so they can level mechs faster. Thinking about it more, if PGI don't want to open up Private Lobbies to non-Premium Time, at least have a browser for Private Lobbies would be an improvement. Then people with Premium Time could set up a Lobby and then advertise it in the Lobby browser.
Right, I understand PGI is a business and that their direct aim is to make money. That is kinda the point to my post; they are not going to invest development cycles in a project which may increase revenue. Perhaps only indirectly at that. They don't have a few million dollars in a kitty allowing them to float operations while they use venture capital to expand the game. Every single step forward PGI makes needs to bring them money so that they can take the next step, and the next. Why do you think we have 12 billion mechs with hero variants and packages etc. etc. with only a few strides forward in the development of the game itself. Revenue stream. By all means, tweet your suggestions to Russ. I'm not suggesting otherwise. I'm just saying don't expect it to become a reality unless they can find a way to directly profit from it.
How "buying private lobbies" like how in some games you can buy private servers. Makes sense for all parties. You pay for the lobby rent but anyone can play if you invite/allow them, depending on settings.
Thing is, allowing non-premium time users to create private lobbies is not something that requires (any measurable amount of) development time. The feature is already there and unless it's implemented in some hardcore moronic way, removing the restriction should be nothing. I very seriously doubt anyone out there got premium time because it allows one to create private lobbies, so it's not like the publisher would lose money on this. It's more a matter of principle, really. Are they willing to spend five seconds asking Steve the intern to do this when it doesn't get them money? Knowing them, probably not.
Oh, but some do. I'm pretty sure all those comp players with several hundreds of millions of unused cbills do not have premium for the money boost. But in my opinion PGI's main goal there is not necessary to generate revenues from paid premium time, but most likely to limit losses from servers not running at their full capacity.
