112 replies to this topic

[Xetelian]

The XP is sooooo low

[Lasertron3000]

As a real newb to the game, the grind pre patch was pretty bad. Saying that, I managed to grind out 25,000,000 credits over the last few weeks playing the trial mechs. Was really looking forward to getting my first "owned" mech today. I was waiting for a Stormcrow. First matches today in the trial mechs I noticed what I consider a very large change in the amount of earnings. I was planning on getting some more slots and maybe a hero, but this feels a little "shady" to me. It's as if they are afraid I might could actually buy a mech without spending any money. I won't believe for a minute that this was accidental. I hope you guys fix the earnings, but at this time the grind way too much.

[Xarian]

Ultimatum X, on 21 October 2014 - 07:05 PM, said:

Xarian, I just saw this on Twitter.

Might be worth volunteering.

I'm not going to be playing any more in the near future, so I'd be a bad candidate... otherwise I would volunteer. I'll ask some friends though.

[Rebas Kradd]

The existing C-bill rewards were nerfed in order to prevent players from earning more net C-bills than they were before.

[spectralthundr]

Scratx, on 21 October 2014 - 06:29 PM, said:

I agree the low-end is too low at the moment, by the looks of it. Mechs cost millions, if a newbie keeps seeing rewards in the 30-50k region, I don't give good odds of staying.

And then you add in the costs of weapon systems and modules, want a Radar Dep? Well that's 6 million cbills alone. That Russ made a post saying he thinks the rewards are too high makes me want to know what the hell he's smoking and why isn't he sharing it. Puff puff pass.

Making the game more of a grind isn't going to encourage people to spend money. I don't know why PGI continually goes that route. It's not realistic. You have a niche product and a niche base, stop trying to chase away that niche base by making flat out bad design decisions.

Edited by spectralthundr, 21 October 2014 - 07:18 PM.

[MischiefSC]

Farming is the problem with having high rewards on a loss. I'm fine with minimal rewards on a loss; so long as the win rewards make up for it.

You should be lucky to break even on a win if you are spending consumables - that's the whole point. If blowing a UAV and an air strike in every single match is how you play.... well, you're going to lose money and should lose money. That's the point of consumables. There shouldn't be 24 arty/airstrikes per match.

[Xarian]

MischiefSC, on 21 October 2014 - 07:19 PM, said:

Farming is the problem with having high rewards on a loss. I'm fine with minimal rewards on a loss; so long as the win rewards make up for it.

You should be lucky to break even on a win if you are spending consumables - that's the whole point. If blowing a UAV and an air strike in every single match is how you play.... well, you're going to lose money and should lose money. That's the point of consumables. There shouldn't be 24 arty/airstrikes per match.

If you aren't using consumables, you aren't trying your hardest to win: that's a simple fact. You are making the choice to conserve C-Bills instead of helping your team be more effective. It's a sad truth, but it is truth.

As far as "farming" goes - yeah, it's a serious problem if people are just suicide-diving, exiting, and jumping in a new mech in order to jam out their C-Bills as quickly as possible. I consider this an exploit, however, and I feel that this could be addressed without punishing the people who are doing their best to win but still want to be able to afford double heat sinks and mechs.

By killing the rewards like this, you're also basically telling new players that they aren't allowed to use consumables unless they purchase (consumables or C-Bills) with MC, which really does make the game pay-to-win.

Edited by Xarian, 21 October 2014 - 07:26 PM.

[NovaFury]

Maybe I'm insane or something, but given the prevalence of clan laser-vomit builds, I've become addicted to coolshots because they win fights. These mechs run hot, and the ability to shoot your lasers a second time is very often the defining difference between winning and losing when you and an enemy mech engage one another. Of course, I have boosted 9-by-9s, so I may be biased.

UAVs meanwhile give vital information to your whole team and call down the LRM wind of devastation upon those foolish enough to get too close to you. Consumables help you win, it's the simple truth.

Edited by NovaFury, 21 October 2014 - 07:44 PM.

[fat4eyes]

To weigh in on the other side, I just earned 186k cbills in a Raven 3L doing less than 300 dmg. And no premium either. It's nice to see scouts rewarded at last.

[MischiefSC]

Xarian, on 21 October 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

If you aren't using consumables, you aren't trying your hardest to win: that's a simple fact. You are making the choice to conserve C-Bills instead of helping your team be more effective. It's a sad truth, but it is truth.

As far as "farming" goes - yeah, it's a serious problem if people are just suicide-diving, exiting, and jumping in a new mech in order to jam out their C-Bills as quickly as possible. I consider this an exploit, however, and I feel that this could be addressed without punishing the people who are doing their best to win but still want to be able to afford double heat sinks and mechs.

By killing the rewards like this, you're also basically telling new players that they aren't allowed to use consumables unless they purchase (consumables or C-Bills) with MC, which really does make the game pay-to-win.

So your attitude is that everyone should constantly spam arty/airstrikes and that's how the game should be balanced, to support that?

I don't agree with that. Arty/airstrike/UAV should be something you do to secure a win or as a last ditch effort or in serious competitive matches. It should be uncommon - not 24 per match and as expected as DHS for any mech/build.

The payout needs to be higher, I'm on board with that. I'd be fine with consumables getting a commensurate increase in cost as well however. They should be uncommon; 1 match in 5 or even 1 in 10 should be worth dropping arty/airstrike/UAV. Coolshot stay cheap? Sure. It's 1 extra alpha on a hot mech.

Arty/airstrike/UAV? should be a significant financial outlay.

[Xtrekker]

I'm sure they could come up with new rewards that encourage proper use of consumables.

[Xarian]

MischiefSC, on 21 October 2014 - 09:22 PM, said:

So your attitude is that everyone should constantly spam arty/airstrikes and that's how the game should be balanced, to support that?

I don't agree with that. Arty/airstrike/UAV should be something you do to secure a win or as a last ditch effort or in serious competitive matches. It should be uncommon - not 24 per match and as expected as DHS for any mech/build.

The payout needs to be higher, I'm on board with that. I'd be fine with consumables getting a commensurate increase in cost as well however. They should be uncommon; 1 match in 5 or even 1 in 10 should be worth dropping arty/airstrike/UAV. Coolshot stay cheap? Sure. It's 1 extra alpha on a hot mech.

Arty/airstrike/UAV? should be a significant financial outlay.

I'm not happy with UAV/Artillery spamming either! But currently, with the game the way it is, it increases your chance to win a match - and if you're trying to win, then you should be doing everything you can to help your team win the match. If you aren't using all the (legal) tools at your disposal, then you're just kinda screwing around. That's fun sometimes, but you don't expect to win when you're using a 9x Flamer Hunchback.

Imagine a situation where the enemy team is clustered up on a hill. Nobody is moving, and they all have ER Large Lasers and AMS - by acting together, they can laser anyone on your team to death as soon as they step out into their range. How do you beat that? Well, you drop Artillery on their heads over and over until they move or the artillery kills them.

Gameplay is balanced around in-match performance. Out-of-match considerations, like C-Bills, cannot be used to balance in-game behavior. You cannot simply make an overpowered mech cost more C-Bills, for example, because that doesn't change its behavior at all.

Imagine that you have two players: they are exact twins, using the same mech, and they have exactly the same level of skill. Their chance to beat each other is exactly 50%.
Player 1 has a ton of C-Bills because he only owns one mech and never spends his C-Bills on anything.
Player 2 has no C-Bills at all because he bought all the mechs in the game.

Player 1 can afford to use artillery/UAVs every game, while Player 2 cannot. Does Player 1 deserve to win the game because he has more C-Bills? Most people would argue no. In essence: how you perform in-match should only use in-match factors. These factors are things like weapon damage and fire rate, ammunition carried, maximum modules carried, etc.

The simplest way to fix this would be to automatically give each team a certain number of Strikes/UAV per match and make them free - they would become purely an in-match consideration. Using the current system, making the consumable modules free would also achieve the same thing, but it wouldn't cut down on the amount of spam.

Basically, people shouldn't be hurting their chances simply because they're too poor to afford a strike every game.

Xtrekker, on 21 October 2014 - 09:42 PM, said:

I'm sure they could come up with new rewards that encourage proper use of consumables.

This is an awesome idea. They already have some minor rewards for UAVs; the rewards for Cool Shot and Artillery/Air Strike are very indirect (they help you do more damage and you get rewards for damage, but nothing specific).

Edited by Xarian, 21 October 2014 - 09:58 PM.

[Dark Jackal]

Koniving, on 21 October 2014 - 06:15 PM, said:

I'll check into this. But so far the general consensus is lots more on wins and even less on defeats.

You bet. The problem is that even if you engage in a match and say do something but lose drastically penalizes players too much. On two occasions tonight I did over 100 damage and lost on those occasions with the end result being a measly 40 xp points and roughly 20k in c-bills. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't get any other XP but some sort of lag appears to happen more often as I play where damage doesn't instantly register as I am used to seeing and start-up/shut-down takes slightly longer than what I remember it especially if you slightly go over and initiate the shutdown sequence. So I figure some background timer isn't registering certain conditions for certain period of time and needs to be tweaked.

This now plays more like "Win-Warrior" because losing is about going as close to zero as possible. I'm struggling to understand the logic of 40xp points for a loss instead of just zero points. If they want to make point about winning and just post a picture of Charlie Sheen, a Bagel, or a Donut.

[Ens]

El Bandito, on 21 October 2014 - 06:14 PM, said:

Wow that is really lower than before, considering the fact you were running a C-Bill mech and dealt over 500 damage. To be fair, you only had 2 assists and that's it.

this

... over 500 damage, only 2 assists with only 1 component destroyed......makes you wonder about aiming

new reward system is actually quite rewarding....if you´re actually doing stuff
on all wins yesterday i made around 40-60k more cbills

[Pr8Dator]

Xarian, on 21 October 2014 - 06:12 PM, said:

Sure, I didn't take all of the screenshots, but here are two. I'll post more from some lancemates who had more damage output than me later.

First, here's a game from Sunday (old) reward system showing the rewards I got after getting killed while scouting in a Spider (Anansi Hero) in the first two minutes of the game (look at the Subtotal reward, I didn't scroll all the way down to show the Premium bonus).



Second, here are two pictures showing a splat Shadowhawk in two different rolls (one by us, one by the other team). Subtotal on the loss not shown, but that 35k includes a Premium bonus (no mech bonus; there's no Hero Shadowhawk):




Finally, here's a screenshot of a Spider 5V after surviving the entire match and TAG scouting like a mofo (but still losing)

It is exactly this kind of pointless laser tagging that this reward system punishes. Running around in a light mech painting kill assists with pultry laser damage that helps nothing for the team should never have been rewarded in the first place.

[Pr8Dator]

El Bandito, on 21 October 2014 - 06:20 PM, said:

This case clearly shows the new reward bias. A victory with 10 assists would have given you +100K reward easily in the old system, even without premium time. Now people really need to deal a lot of damage to make the assist count as bigger reward. Your XP seems fine as you did not deal much damage.

It is still premature to say it, but the new rewards are indeed more role warfare specific. Overall though (when you lump together the wins and losses), we are getting ripped off of our C-Bill rewards. Especially the newbies--whom PGI needs to attract in the first place.

You know what playstyle SPECIFICALLY this reward system punishes? Running around in a light strafing targets with negligible damage just for kill assists and free money. Most often such lights just die early in the game leaving the team crippled. This is exactly the thing this system is punishing and as long as you are not doing that, you should feel rather rewarded under this system.

[Mr Beefy]

MischiefSC, on 21 October 2014 - 09:22 PM, said:

So your attitude is that everyone should constantly spam arty/airstrikes and that's how the game should be balanced, to support that?

I don't agree with that. Arty/airstrike/UAV should be something you do to secure a win or as a last ditch effort or in serious competitive matches. It should be uncommon - not 24 per match and as expected as DHS for any mech/build.

The payout needs to be higher, I'm on board with that. I'd be fine with consumables getting a commensurate increase in cost as well however. They should be uncommon; 1 match in 5 or even 1 in 10 should be worth dropping arty/airstrike/UAV. Coolshot stay cheap? Sure. It's 1 extra alpha on a hot mech.

Arty/airstrike/UAV? should be a significant financial outlay.

I don't use them, and never have, not even once. Bump up earnings for win/lose/draw by 30% min. And raise all the consumables the same rate, problem solved.

[MischiefSC]

Xarian, on 21 October 2014 - 09:55 PM, said:

I'm not happy with UAV/Artillery spamming either! But currently, with the game the way it is, it increases your chance to win a match - and if you're trying to win, then you should be doing everything you can to help your team win the match. If you aren't using all the (legal) tools at your disposal, then you're just kinda screwing around. That's fun sometimes, but you don't expect to win when you're using a 9x Flamer Hunchback.

Imagine a situation where the enemy team is clustered up on a hill. Nobody is moving, and they all have ER Large Lasers and AMS - by acting together, they can laser anyone on your team to death as soon as they step out into their range. How do you beat that? Well, you drop Artillery on their heads over and over until they move or the artillery kills them.

Gameplay is balanced around in-match performance. Out-of-match considerations, like C-Bills, cannot be used to balance in-game behavior. You cannot simply make an overpowered mech cost more C-Bills, for example, because that doesn't change its behavior at all.

Imagine that you have two players: they are exact twins, using the same mech, and they have exactly the same level of skill. Their chance to beat each other is exactly 50%.
Player 1 has a ton of C-Bills because he only owns one mech and never spends his C-Bills on anything.
Player 2 has no C-Bills at all because he bought all the mechs in the game.

Player 1 can afford to use artillery/UAVs every game, while Player 2 cannot. Does Player 1 deserve to win the game because he has more C-Bills? Most people would argue no. In essence: how you perform in-match should only use in-match factors. These factors are things like weapon damage and fire rate, ammunition carried, maximum modules carried, etc.

The simplest way to fix this would be to automatically give each team a certain number of Strikes/UAV per match and make them free - they would become purely an in-match consideration. Using the current system, making the consumable modules free would also achieve the same thing, but it wouldn't cut down on the amount of spam.

Basically, people shouldn't be hurting their chances simply because they're too poor to afford a strike every game.

This is an awesome idea. They already have some minor rewards for UAVs; the rewards for Cool Shot and Artillery/Air Strike are very indirect (they help you do more damage and you get rewards for damage, but nothing specific).

Here's the thing though. If you balance game rewards to include the use of consumables you make using consumables a requirement for winning.

If you win more often by using consumables but can't actually afford to do it consistently without literally going broke...

that's about right actually. Consumables should be worth the money they cost - that money should, however, mean something. Even someone with 500mil cbills right now is looking at all the new mechs, modules, etc. and watching that 500 start to dissolve. I know I blew through my ~80 million in terribly short order and now have to care about money again.

Money matters, making consumables cost money but be relevant is a good choice. You want to use them to win? Great! That's what they're there for. Someone who can win consistently without them should be significantly better off. If you use them all the time... you need to be getting poorer.

[Sirius Drake]

Xarian, on 21 October 2014 - 06:28 PM, said:

Yeah the XP reward on the win was OK, but not on the loss.

Clearly damage isn't the major factor in getting XP or C-Bills; look at Xetelian's screencap.

My kill assists: 10
My assist XP: 9

Less than 1 XP per kill assist? How is this reasonable?

On the other hand you did 20 dmg per assist.
Thats not that much.

[Lunatic_Asylum]

If the new changes reward us less sometimes, then it is nothing bad.
It could be a disaster if PGI increased the overall C-Bill gain.