97 replies to this topic

[Dragorath]

If someone is retreating they should get a penalty, like not be able to play for 5 minutes or loose a lot of house points or so, so far the commander don't allow them to leave.
It's a tricky question though, if there is a good point of quitting, cost of repair etc, when it is a controled retret ok, but if your Mech is fine and you just want to leave the battle, because it's not going quite fine and you don't want to risk some damage or you don't like the members of your party for several reasons, you shall get a fine for leaving!

[Aegis Kleais]

Wait a minute, you guys want to PENALIZE a retreat?

A retreat is the best tactical course of action you can take when it has been deemed that victory is not possible. Sense of honor aside, it saves your armor and ammo. It also saves the pilot (though I'm sure retreating in game would be a 1way act and the pilot would just be "removed from play". Fighting to the death against overwhelming odds (again, honor aside) is a tactical waste of resources.

If you add an option for surrender (at a set cost), then the company commander would have to accept/deny the request.

As for penalties of a disconnect, the game can tell when a player issues a command to exit/disconnect. Not sure if it can capture whether the OS performed a termination of the MWO.exe process, but disconnects can legitimately occur at no fault of the player, so it's a touchy subject.

[wwiiogre]

Retreat should always be an option same as ejecting. as for the cost to the individual pilot that would actually depend on whether he was in a house a merc unit or a lone wolf. A lone wolf should have no cost, unless of course his contract was with a house or merc unit then He would lose loyalty points and the people he played with might not want his selfish self on their team next time. As a merc, if a merc player retreats without permission from a battle it will be dealt with internally by the merc corps. As for the House Faction player, I would assume they will get negative loyalty points and less experience. So as far as I can tell the game appears to already have a way to handle this situation. And in a game where it costs to repair and rearm your mech and you own your own mech it seems very logical that the pilot should and would have the ability to pull out whenever they want. Disconnect, pull the plug, eject, retreat, whatever you want to call it.

It is already in the game, just making an actual place where you can run to instead of hitting eject means you stay on the board longer and you actually have to move your mech to a spot on the map. More immersion, more chance of being ambushed. Don't see a problem with it.

chris

[Felix Dante]

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 08:10 AM, said:

Wait a minute, you guys want to PENALIZE a retreat?

A retreat is the best tactical course of action you can take when it has been deemed that victory is not possible. Sense of honor aside, it saves your armor and ammo. It also saves the pilot (though I'm sure retreating in game would be a 1way act and the pilot would just be "removed from play". Fighting to the death against overwhelming odds (again, honor aside) is a tactical waste of resources.

If you add an option for surrender (at a set cost), then the company commander would have to accept/deny the request.

As for penalties of a disconnect, the game can tell when a player issues a command to exit/disconnect. Not sure if it can capture whether the OS performed a termination of the MWO.exe process, but disconnects can legitimately occur at no fault of the player, so it's a touchy subject.

Agreed. There should always be a cost associated with battle, and if pulling out of a fight to save your mech from further damage helps (repair costs) then you should be able to do so.

Period. Remember, the developers have said that you can't be guaranteed that you will have enough money to fully repair your mech every time. You could be fighting a battle or two with previous damage.

Therefore pulling out of a fight, even at a small loss to save more money in the end, makes sense sometimes.

[Aegis Kleais]

Felix Dante, on 06 April 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

Agreed. There should always be a cost associated with battle, and if pulling out of a fight to save your mech from further damage helps (repair costs) then you should be able to do so.

Period. Remember, the developers have said that you can't be guaranteed that you will have enough money to fully repair your mech every time. You could be fighting a battle or two with previous damage.

Therefore pulling out of a fight, even at a small loss to save more money in the end, makes sense sometimes.

If there's a penalty for being tactically smart enough to pull out of a fight, I'd rather them remove the option to retreat/surrender entirely. Period. You should never get penalized for making a good tactical decision.

[Rhinehart]

I like the option to retreat, but implementation could be very tricky. I can see ways the option might be abused or exploited, but also remember this.


To date info seems to support the idea that battles are fought to retain or conquer planets and their resources. If retreating means you are conceding a planet to an enemy that will likely carry a pretty hefty penalty in loyalty points earned. Then again, if a unit can earn loyalty points based on damage suffered even if they do end up losing a fight it might under certain conditions be more beneficial to stick in until the bitter end.

We're really going to need more info about the mechanics of exactly how the combat plays out before this can be judged either way. It's definitely an issue worth raising however.

[Kanatta Jing]

Well... Suppose the commander has an retreat button that goes green after about 15-30 minutes in the field.

When they use it, they call down a drop ship onto the map onto a series of preset viable landing spots.

The drop ship can be destroyed and sticks around for 5 minutes.

It can allow up to 4 mechs to retreat from the field without suffering further damage. Unless it is destroyed before lift off.

[eZZip]

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

You should never get penalized for making a good tactical decision.

In any game where the state of things is persistent between games, retreat could be a viable feature of the game. In a game like MWO where there are matches that are independent of each other, having retreat from the game benefitting players would only encourage super-cautious, campy behaviours. Games are little fun when everybody wants to hide behind a bush because moving in is suicidal, and it will be even worse if you decide that people who try to go on the offensive will be penalized further for it; good games have a mix of both offensive and defensive play, and offensive play is usually the one that needs encouraging.

The best kind of retreat in most games is running away and finding a better position or regrouping (I assumed this is not what you meant because it will obviously be available outside of arena-style matches).

[Aegis Kleais]

eZZip, on 06 April 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

In any game where the state of things is persistent between games, retreat could be a viable feature of the game. In a game like MWO where there are matches that are independent of each other, having retreat from the game benefitting players would only encourage super-cautious, campy behaviours. Games are little fun when everybody wants to hide behind a bush because moving in is suicidal, and it will be even worse if you decide that people who try to go on the offensive will be penalized further for it; good games have a mix of both offensive and defensive play, and offensive play is usually the one that needs encouraging.

The best kind of retreat in most games is running away and finding a better position or regrouping (I assumed this is not what you meant because it will obviously be available outside of arena-style matches).

How is retreating benefiting the player? You've lost the game one way or the other. You're just attempting to minimize personal losses at that point. I don't see how you can correlate the option to retreat with it promoting camping behavior. I have no desire to camp (a stationary target is a dead target), and retreating is the last thing on my mind unless I knew odds were overwhelming. Some players will choose to fight to the death, others won't.

The "best kind of retreat" you're talking about is "Falling Back", where you pull out of an engagement, regroup and plan a new form of attack.

How about there being 2 points on any map that are used for retreating. That way, the enemy can choose to camp those locations to cut off a retreat of the enemy.

[eZZip]

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

How is retreating benefiting the player? You've lost the game one way or the other.

Just as you've said, you don't win the game by retreating, but you save yourself some cash.

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

I don't see how you can correlate the option to retreat with it promoting camping behavior.

If you play offensively, you are more likely to die because people playing defensively usually have an advantage of some sort (e.g., terrain, cover, ability to choose the initial range for the engagement), and the corollary is that you are also more likely to lose more cash. By playing defensively (often involving camping), you have all those advantages and your enemy is disadvantaged instead. Additionally, offensive play usually requires more intelligence, skill, and a situational advantage to be successful, and once attacking, it is more difficult to get away without dying compared to a defender (who can run away before the engagement and is more likely to be covered by teammates). By penalizing death more than a retreat, you are encouraging people to try to do things that are likely to result in their individual survival and success, which is generally defensive play.

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

I have no desire to camp (a stationary target is a dead target)

True, but there is nothing preventing you, if you are camping, from moving after you've opened fire on an enemy.

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

The "best kind of retreat" you're talking about is "Falling Back", where you pull out of an engagement, regroup and plan a new form of attack.

Just to clarify, when I said it was the best kind of retreat, I meant it was the best for gameplay reasons, not that it would be necessarily better in other ways.

Aegis Kleais™, on 06 April 2012 - 02:57 PM, said:

How about there being 2 points on any map that are used for retreating. That way, the enemy can choose to camp those locations to cut off a retreat of the enemy.

That's an interesting idea, but there would need to be a reason for somebody to kill retreating enemies rather than their other enemies. (If the player's motive is to get easy kills, that is annoying for everybody: on their enemy's side, people will pay more repair bills for little reason, and on their own side, they won't be helping the rest of the team very much.)

[Belisarius1]

Retreating always benefits the player, but not their team.

The later period of any life is a high risk low reward scenario. You have less weapons, less armour, less ammo. Your ability to earn money is greatly reduced while your chances of taking expensive losses are greatly increased. As a result, if retreating is in the game, it's in the individual's best interests to disengage once they've sustained major damage. Smart players will rack up as many points as possible while staying safe, wait for their more stupid teammates to die first, and then - if the situation is grim - leave with their points and a low repair bill.

That's cripplingly detrimental to the teamplay aspect, because it encourages fighting as individuals. In addition, games are won and lost by meatshields and damaged mechs that sacrifice themselves for still-functional teammates, but players do so at great expense to themselves with no real opportunity for gain. The only thing making that possible is the knowledge that if your team loses, you're dead anyway. A retreat option takes that away.

Since this is a team game, individual retreats are a terrible idea. Team retreats would be less of a problem, but I still don't really want them.

Edited by Belisarius†, 06 April 2012 - 03:44 PM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Dev's said with regard to disconnecting that if you're not connected at the end of a match you don't get a payout. How would this apply to a tetreat?

[Victor Morson]

I honestly am not following the abuse logic. If by leaving the battlefield you throw away your mission profits/salvage/you name it, plus possibly take a merc guild reputation hit (for failing your mission via DNF), it's not something you'd want to do the minute you took a few scratches. If your team looks like it has any chance to win, you'd want to stay in there - even the worst players would prefer to remain in the fight.

If you are concerned about players thinking a fight is unwinnable then running for the hills while others want to continue it, that's basically what happens when morale gets shattered. If anything, it's a realistic depiction of it. Amusingly it probably wouldn't be long before someone commander in the back with an assault enacts Russian incentives on them to stay, too.

[wwiiogre]

that is the way I see it as well Victor, Dev's have said punching out early costs you, retreating is breaking morale and the in game costs appear already, why worry about it. I would like to break the other teams morale and not have to waste ammo to win.

chris

[Siilk]

I agree with Victor Morson's suggestions and suggest a merge with this thread, topics are completely identical.

Edited by Siilk, 07 April 2012 - 07:02 AM.

[Victor Morson]

Siilk, on 06 April 2012 - 11:48 PM, said:

I agree with OP and suggest a merge with this thread, topics are completely identical.

Sorry about that Siilk, I didn't think to check for a similar topic in General Discussion. Doh!

[Mason Grimm]

Bumping for a merge

[Mason Grimm]

bumping for merge

[Britbaldie]

Even damaged Mechs have uses, if it deflects an opponent from shooting at a good mech or the damaged mech is used as bait, it has its uses.
Giving the option of bailing out off the battlefield by running off to a drop ship is a bit of a no no in my book.

[Outrider01]

Britbaldie, on 07 April 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

Even damaged Mechs have uses, if it deflects an opponent from shooting at a good mech or the damaged mech is used as bait, it has its uses.
Giving the option of bailing out off the battlefield by running off to a drop ship is a bit of a no no in my book.

Who likes dying for some dude they don't know? Really, it does not benifit you to just go "Well, I am going to play the decoy...*runs left, 10 seconds later* YOU F*CK! WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOOT IT IN THE BACK!" because the other guy is probably looking out for themselves. The only way it would be a good idea to kill yourself off is if the reward justifies it...if it doesn't and you got a huge repair bill even for winning the match then yes its better to just retreat.

TL;DR - Make the reward SIGNFICANT TO WANT TO ACT THE DECOY or the REPAIRS SHOULD BE INSIGNIFICANT to offset the loss. Because if the individual pilot will always suffer, then yeah the individual pilot will always act the part of the individual and look out for themselves.