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[Pykors]

The new savior and defense kill bonuses due tomorrow got me thinking about match rewards and how they could be used to encourage role warfare.

Currently the rewards all revolve around directly accomplishing objectives - damaging the enemy, collecting resources, capping bases, etc.

But that can miss a lot of the more subtle ways players contribute to a match. I really value the Atlas that tanks heavy enemy fire so his teammates can flank, the mech that uses cover cleverly to get the enemy to waste LRM ammo, and the scout who draws the enemy out of position by making a nuisance of himself. They contribute a lot, but their influence is harder to measure than damage points dealt.

I think I just figured out a useful, and easy to measure, proxy metric, though. At the end of a match sum up the amount of time a player was targeted by each enemy plus the amount of time they spent on a capture point (either capping or preventing an enemy cap). Call that the "time in harm's way". Then divide each player's time in harm's way by the total for their team, and split a bonus among them based on the percentage.

For instance, imagine a 20k C-Bill award per match for time in harm's way. Say an Atlas took up half the attention by soaking damage, a Jenner distracted the enemy for a quarter, and the rest was split evenly. The Atlas would get 10k, the Jenner 5k, and everyone else 625. The other players probably get more of the pure damage type bonuses, but the tactical players are rewarded as well.

How's that sound?