42 replies to this topic

[Bhael Fire]

Players should be making roughly the same amount of money in 12 vs. 12 as they did in 8 vs 8. Right now, most players are receiving WAY less than they were before. The devs say they needed to adjust the earnings because with 4 additional enemy mechs on the field, kill assists were racking up too much money. I agree that's an issue, but their solution was...curiously strange — Especially considering that it only seems to have decreased the average player's earnings rather than keep them normalized to what they are used to in 8 vs 8 matches.

With just a simple revision of some definitions of the bonus conditions, as well as C-Bill bonus adjustments and additions, match rewards can be equitable without nerfing the entire economy like like they currently have.

NOTE: This is just a focus on the combat aspect of the reward system in Assault matches. It's not taking into account the bonuses awarded for scouting, target assistance, and other support-role tasks.

Assault Rewards

Kill = This is awarded to the player that inflicted the most damage on an enemy mech before it was destroyed. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats (goodbye kill steals) and gets 5,000 C-Bills for being a badass.

Kill Assist = This is awarded to any player that contributes a certain percentage of the damage that destroys a mech (as it is now). The player gets credit for an assist on their stats and gets 2,500 C-Bills. That's a maximum bonus of 30,000 C-Bills per match for 12 assists.


Bonus Rewards

Killing Shot = This bonus is awarded to the player that fires the shot that takes the enemy mech down. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats, but only gets 2,500 C-BIlls. If the player is also the player that inflicted the most damage on the mech, they get the Kill bonus as well (7,500 C-Bills).

A simple adjustment like that would level out the rewards, without having to nerf the entire match reward system. This would also completely neutralize the issue of kill stealing, by allowing players to potentially share a kill.

Head Shot = Player destroys the mech by destroying the internal structure of its head. They receive the Killing Shot bonus, plus 2,500 C-Bills (5,000 C-Bills total). If they happen to be the player that caused the most damage to the mech, they also get the Kill bonus for a total of 10,000 C-Bills.

Edited by Bhael Fire, 09 August 2013 - 12:38 PM.

[Zylo]

Bhael Fire, on 07 August 2013 - 08:42 PM, said:

Assault Rewards

Kill = This is awarded to the player that inflicted the most damage on an enemy mech before it was destroyed. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats (goodbye kill steals) and gets 5,000 C-Bills for being a badass.

Wouldn't this just encourage players to do 51%+ damage to as many enemies as possible and let other players finish them up knowing they could drop back to avoid being killed while others helped out their K/D ratio?

[DocBach]

Zylo, on 07 August 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

Wouldn't this just encourage players to do 51%+ damage to as many enemies as possible and let other players finish them up knowing they could drop back to avoid being killed while others helped out their K/D ratio?

would that be worse than players hanging back until they can ice pick a kill with a single shot?

[Bhael Fire]

Zylo, on 07 August 2013 - 08:47 PM, said:

Wouldn't this just encourage players to do 51%+ damage to as many enemies as possible and let other players finish them up knowing they could drop back to avoid being killed while others helped out their K/D ratio?

Yes. That's the point. Everyone that contributes, wins.

Those that hang back, lose.

[Zylo]

DocBach, on 07 August 2013 - 08:49 PM, said:

would that be worse than players hanging back until they can ice pick a kill with a single shot?

How many players really do that these days when rewards are better with higher total damage? If their alpha damage is high enough it's not a serious problem if they still do most of the damage. If they just get the last 5% they are hurting their C-bill gains.

Bhael Fire, on 07 August 2013 - 08:52 PM, said:

Yes. That's the point. Everyone that contributes, wins.

Those that hang back, lose.

Yeah, that's probably going to cause some problems when no one wants to finish off those 49% health mechs because the rewards are better if they get 51%+ damage into another mech. Eventually once all mechs are at least 51% damaged and all the kill credits have been claimed then players would start finishing off the 49% or lower health mechs. I know I wouldn't bother shooting a 49% hp mech and get no kill credit when I could do 51%+ damage to other mechs and secure the kill credits and greater rewards and I know I'm not the only player who would do this.

Edited by Zylo, 07 August 2013 - 08:56 PM.

[Elizander]

They can just keep the rewards the same as before and add diminishing returns to account for the extra 4 enemies you can pewpew.

Edited by Elizander, 07 August 2013 - 08:57 PM.

[Jagdhund]

That's not going to work. There are many ways to kill a mech without doing much damage, and too many variables. Headshots, legging, shooting torso in a lightly armored back, not to mention XL engine death.

Just give more money. Shouldn't even be on par per game since the games now may last longer. Needs more rewards for fighting 12 mechs instead of 8.

[Bhael Fire]

Zylo, on 07 August 2013 - 08:55 PM, said:

Yeah, that's probably going to cause some problems when no one wants to finish off those 49% health mechs because the rewards are better if they get 51%+ damage into another mech. Eventually once all mechs are at least 51% damaged and all the kill credits have been claimed then players would start finishing off the 49% or lower health mechs. I know I wouldn't bother shooting a 49% hp mech and get no kill credit when I could do 51%+ damage to other mechs and secure the kill credits and greater rewards and I know I'm not the only player who would do this.

A kill shot is worth an extra 2,500 c-bills. Lots of players would be trying to gobble up those rewards..especially if some Rambo muthafucka is going around reducing all the enemy mechs down to 49% health.

[Purlana]

How do you know that you took off 51% of their health? Fights are usually not 1v1 you know...

And besides most mechs die before reaching 50%, learn to core CT.

Edited by Purlana, 07 August 2013 - 09:27 PM.

[DaisuSaikoro Nagasawa]

Bhael Fire, on 07 August 2013 - 08:42 PM, said:

Players should be making roughly the same amount of money in 12 vs. 12 as they did in 8 vs 8. Right now, most players are receiving WAY less than they were before. The devs say they needed to adjust the earnings because with 4 additional enemy mechs on the field, kill assists were racking up too much money. I agree that's an issue, but their solution was...curiously strange — Especially considering that it only seems to have decreased the average player's earnings rather than keep them normalized to what they are used to in 8 vs 8 matches.

With just a simple revision of some definitions of the bonus conditions, as well as C-Bill bonus adjustments and additions, match rewards can be equitable without nerfing the entire economy like like they currently have.

Assault Rewards

Kill = This is awarded to the player that inflicted the most damage on an enemy mech before it was destroyed. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats (goodbye kill steals) and gets 5,000 C-Bills for being a badass.

Kill Assist = This is awarded to any player that contributes at least 25% of the damage that destroys a mech. The player gets credit for an assist on their stats and gets 2,500 C-Bills.

Killing Shot = This bonus is awarded to the player that fires the shot that takes the enemy mech down. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats, but only gets 2,500 C-BIlls. If the player is also the player that inflicted the most damage on the mech, they get the Kill bonus as well (7,500 C-Bills).

A simple adjustment like that would level out the rewards, without having to nerf the entire match reward system. This would also completely neutralize the issue of kill stealing, by allowing players to potentially share a kill.

I don't think I'm making much less.

[Zylo]

Bhael Fire, on 07 August 2013 - 09:22 PM, said:

A kill shot is worth an extra 2,500 c-bills. Lots of players would be trying to gobble up those rewards..especially if some Rambo muthafucka is going around reducing all the enemy mechs down to 49% health.

It's still an all around bad idea. Kill credits are fine as they are. If kill credits are damage based then that will just encourage even more players to only run assault mechs as anything lighter would not often end up scoring kills. The last thing this game needs is another reason to run more assault mechs.

[Zylo]

Purlana, on 07 August 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

How do you know that you took off 51% of their health? Fights are usually not 1v1 you know...

I suspect more players would be shooting at targets that were not yet damaged at the start to have a better chance of securing kill credits due to damage done. Players would be less likely to focus fire at the match start and would instead try to get that 51%+ in on a target that was not yet engaged. It wouldn't be 1 on 1 so much as it would be everyone shooting at different targets to try to "claim" their kill.

Light mechs would be totally useless other than base capping under a system that gave the kills to those who score 51%+ damage on a target. If light pilots almost never scored kills how many players would run lights?

Edited by Zylo, 07 August 2013 - 09:37 PM.

[Bhael Fire]

Zylo, why are you trying so hard to resist this idea? Is this a Brony thing?

[Zylo]

Bhael Fire, on 07 August 2013 - 09:36 PM, said:

Zylo, why are you trying so hard to resist this idea? Is this a Brony thing?

I don't like ideas that will result in more problems than they attempt to fix.

[Bayamon]

In theory this would be fine and is actualy the way some games handle who gets the kill.

If i beat an enemy to within an inch of his life (say 95% damage) and someone else just tosses a pebble at him, i should well get credited with the Kill....but then again there are arguments against just that.

But lets look at MWO here.
What constitutes 51% damage ? The number you see on friendlies/yourself for example is super inacurate and not representative of your actual "health".

Say you drop the CT Internals of an enemy, who runs an XL engine, to just 1 hitpoint all by yourself and then you have to get away for whatever reason.
A teammate takes over and starts pounding, probably because hes not using "R" to target, the LT and also drops that to 1 hitpoint.
Then yet another teammate shows up and melts the enemies cockpit in one hit.

Who gets the kill ?

If you start looking at who did the most damage to the component that ultimately lead to the enemies death, youre also looking at the server having to run a LOT of extra calculations just to determine a kill(assist) bonus.

Everything has to be kept as minimal as possible to guarantee a smooth experience for everyone... remember, one server hosts a lot of matches simultaneously and even those little things will stack up across all games and start dragging it down.

I bet PGI even thought about making the kill assist bonus only apply if you did a minimum of X% damage(instead of the "tagging" we have now) but even this will result in a lot of extra calculations across all matches which theyd rather keep to a minimum to reduce stress on the server.

[Roadbuster]

I see no problem with this. Percentage could be tweaked.

You don't know if you dealt the the most damage to a mech. So you shoot it as much as you can, like you do now.
You also won't just turn around and go away if you're brawling with another mech, simply because he won't let you.
You still get the CB for dealt damage and assist.

Light mechs were never meant to be the ones to destroy half of the enemy team. They are scouts and harassers. And I don't think they deserve credit for stealing kills by just rushing in and firing the coring shot. Blame K/D ratio.
If they deal enough damage to a target they should and would get the kill anyway.

Will this mean more players use assault mechs? Probably yes. But why?
Because of the kills? Replace K/D ratio with W/L ratio.
Because of the rewards? Increase rewards for other things than dealt damage and kills.

I think it would be worth a try.

[Roadbuster]

Bayamon, on 07 August 2013 - 09:57 PM, said:

But lets look at MWO here.
What constitutes 51% damage ? The number you see on friendlies/yourself for example is super inacurate and not representative of your actual "health".

Say you drop the CT Internals of an enemy, who runs an XL engine, to just 1 hitpoint all by yourself and then you have to get away for whatever reason.
A teammate takes over and starts pounding, probably because hes not using "R" to target, the LT and also drops that to 1 hitpoint.
Then yet another teammate shows up and melts the enemies cockpit in one hit.

Who gets the kill ?

What is everyone tossing around these 51%? The OP never said a word about that and it doesn't have anything to do with the % health you see next to a mechname.
It's just about who dealt the most damage.

In your example either you or the teammate who shot the LT would get the kill, depending on who dealt the most damage.
Assuming you only hit CT and your teammate only hit LT, you would get the kill because CT takes more damage to destroy.

If you fight and destroy an opponent, you will get the kill.
If you fight a mech and suddenly 4 teammates show up and finish it off, each dealing a fraction of your damage, you get the kill.


More interesting is the question what would happen to teamkills?
If an opponent almost cores your teammate and he runs into your fire and dies, will the opponent get the kill or will you get a teamkill?

[Zylo]

Roadbuster, on 07 August 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

I see no problem with this. Percentage could be tweaked.

You don't know if you dealt the the most damage to a mech. So you shoot it as much as you can, like you do now.

This isn't true in the case of mechs that have not yet engaged. A player sitting back a bit won't have any reason to move in and engage the mech at 49% when another undamaged mech is available as another target.

The player in this example is going to get the most credit by engaging the undamaged enemy (likely taking shots from a distance) and could easily do 51% damage.

I have no problems increasing the assist rewards based on damage done but kill credit based on damage done is the wrong way to do it. Headshots are a great example of why the most damage done doesn't deserve kill credit.

No one is going to want to pilot anything less than assaults under this proposed system. That is worse for game balance than players "killstealing".

[Khobai]

Quote

Kill = This is awarded to the player that inflicted the most damage on an enemy mech before it was destroyed. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats (goodbye kill steals) and gets 5,000 C-Bills for being a badass.

Kill Assist = This is awarded to any player that contributes at least 25% of the damage that destroys a mech. The player gets credit for an assist on their stats and gets 2,500 C-Bills.

Killing Shot = This bonus is awarded to the player that fires the shot that takes the enemy mech down. The player gets credit for the kill on their stats, but only gets 2,500 C-BIlls. If the player is also the player that inflicted the most damage on the mech, they get the Kill bonus as well (7,500 C-Bills).

Why are you rewarding the killshot at all? I frequently do 95% of the work killing a mech and some nub will run in front of me and steal the kill. He should not get anything for that.

The way it should work is everyone who damaged the mech should get credit for the kill based on the percentage of damage they did to the mech. So if I did 95% of the damage I should get 0.95 kills. And the nub that stole my kill and did 5% of the damage should get 0.05 kills. The cash reward for killing the mech should be split the same way. If I did 95% of the damage I should get 95% of the cash reward. So if its a 7500 reward for killing an enemy mech, and I did 95% of the damage, I should get 7125.

That is how you properly reward players for kills. No more kill stealing. No more suicide spiders tagging everything on the enemy team with a machine gun to wrack up assists.

And to prevent padding of damage scores, damage should also be weighted based on location... because hitting an enemy mech in the center torso should be worth way more than hitting it in the arm. Because center torso damage destroys a mech and arm damage does not.

Edited by Khobai, 07 August 2013 - 10:58 PM.

[Zylo]

Roadbuster, on 07 August 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

What is everyone tossing around these 51%? The OP never said a word about that and it doesn't have anything to do with the % health you see next to a mechname.
It's just about who dealt the most damage.

Yes, let's encourage players to do as much damage over as many components as possible, as long as it's more than any other player they get the kill. This would actually discourage teamwork because if your teammates are shooting at 1 location you might have a chance to do more damage by shooting other locations, it does the opposite of encouraging focus fire.

As for the 51% I'm talking about doing enough damage so that no one else can claim kill credit no matter how much damage they try to do. It doesn't need to be exact.

In the case of a mech with only the CT almost cored (no damage to any other components) if I know a teammate did all that damage I could easily decide to "killsteal" by taking off both arms, 1 leg, getting both side torso sections down to red internals and then killing by headshot.

Why would I give the kill to someone else by shooting that CT?

Edited by Zylo, 07 August 2013 - 10:53 PM.