49 replies to this topic

[Watchit]

I've noticed there have been quite a few matches where a player will intentionally overheat and kill themselves, disconnect, repeat. In order to make C-bills as fast as possible. Now this is definitely a problem coming into open beta and sets a bad example for new players.

In order to prevent this from happening, I suggest something similar to what the devs implemented when players did something similar by running out of bounds. Perhaps we could have it so players who suicide within the first minute of a match, or if they suicide while doing 0 damage receive no money. Even if something like that were to happen by accident, and not intentionally, they wouldn't have done anything to deserve a reward for that anyway since they did literally nothing but die.

Another measure could be to track players records for signs of using this tactic, it shouldn't be too hard, and in fact I think the devs might already be doing this. Therefore players who use this loophole could be contacted and warned upon use, and upon continued usage punished.

Any other suggestions? Thoughts? Criticism?

[Hayashi]

I believe they are already tracking users who exploit this. Exploiting suicide bugs has always been something devs have been watching for ever since the Trial mechs came out.

[Watchit]

Ah that's good. I suspected as much. I just happened to see a resurgence in suicides, so I was a little worried.

[Hayashi]

The resurgence is because of the Open Beta account resets, as well as opening the floodgates to new players who don't seem to read rules before clicking 'Launch'. But the developers take suicide farming very seriously. Or the exploitation of any loopholes, for that matter.

[Deathpiggy]

You'd be treating the symptom, not the disease. You'll see this sort of behavior because there's no incentive to win. Why go through the match when you'll make nearly as much just blowing yourself up?

Even if you stop the intentional overheating, you'll just see people zombie rushing in trial mechs, getting themselves blown up as fast as possible to make C-bills.

The core issue is that the reward system punishes team play and rewards playing at the cost of your team.

[Watchit]

good point, which is where the warning and punishment for suiciders comes in, which I suppose is already in place. The first part, reducing rewards for obviously suicidal behavior, would just be there to make it harder and deter people from doing it.

As for people throwing themselves at the enemy. Perhaps an increase in rewards from damage, spotting, etc... and a decrease in rewards for losing. just a nudge so that overall payment for losing is the same for a full play through, but weighted against people who kill themselves by throwing themselves at the enemy team. It might also deter lone wolves from running off and getting killed without team back up.

Edited by Watchit, 29 October 2012 - 10:12 PM.

[Deathpiggy]

Watchit, on 29 October 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

good point, which is where the warning and punishment for suiciders comes in, which I suppose is already in place. The first part, reducing rewards for obviously suicidal behavior, would just be there to make it harder and deter people from doing it.

As for people throwing themselves at the enemy. Perhaps an increase in rewards from damage, spotting, etc... and a decrease in rewards for losing. just a nudge so that overall payment for losing is the same for a full play through, but weighted against people who kill themselves by throwing themselves at the enemy team. It might also deter lone wolves from running off and getting killed without team back up.

Ah, but you forget that there's a punitive rewards system. Now you get less reward for losing, but your costs for losing remain the same. This pushes people more and more towards exploits in trial mechs.

At the end of the day, repair costs need to go, and rewards need to be based solely on performance. If you don't play, you don't get C-bills. A loss where you get a pitiful reward still feels miserable. It still feels like you've lost time, if nothing else.

Now suddenly people have to play matches to get new toys, but people aren't pushed to abandon the team and suicide rush to do it.

[Hayashi]

Problem with not having repair costs is that it would eliminate the balancing factor for more powerful, expensive equipment - without it, the rich only get richer, to the point they'll have too many C Bills and nothing to use them on. If rewards were to be brought down so that C Bills aren't inflated to worthlessness, then it would take too long to acquire new equipment, turning off the grind-hating crowd.

Also, increasing performance based C Bill rewards as a fraction of the same overall reward average has a drawback of punishing poorer players relative to the current system. Newer, less skilled players would achieve less objectives regardless of what the objectives are: if the reward for simply participating is too low, it would take too long for them to be able to start customising their Mechs. If the learning curve is too steep, they won't stay in the game.

It's a delicate balance between default reward and performance based reward, between acquisition costs and repair costs, and between costs and rewards, and people differ as to their views on whether the balance is right or slightly off-kilter.

I would suppose most people can agree on having a greater diversity of objectives that can earn XP/C Bills though. What other team-play objectives are there? Perhaps...

• Attacking an enemy which is targeting an ally with low armour in the cockpit/CT/ST(for XL only) locations to give a 'defensive fire' bonus? Perhaps 20 XP & 3000 C Bills every time you help a teammate this way? [Awarded only once per enemy distracted, so you only get 24,000 if you distract every member of their team from attacking one damaged teammate]
  
• Moving into your cap zone to stop an enemy/enemies from capping your base to give a 'base defense' bonus? Perhaps a flat rate of 50 xp/5,000 C Bills per enemy? [Awarded only once per enemy, so you only get 40,000 if their whole team caps your base]
  
• Giving a C Bill/XP bonus for absorbing enemy damage? (This will increase the more armour you have, since you can thus absorb more damage. However, this is constant regardless of how expensive the equipment you have is mounted - so people who tank with XL engines will never earn enough from this to offset repair costs). How about... 500 C Bills & 0.33 xp per damage point?

Any more ideas?

[Deathpiggy]

Why balance on cost? Why is some equipment more powerful than others? Should gauss be a more viable option than small lasers? There are already tradeoffs on gear. What needs to be offered is new toys. As long as there are new mechs, new maps, and the occasional new weapon, people'll keep playing. Got a bunch of c-bills? Well, guess what, there's a shiny new Atlas variant in the pipes. Or hey, here's the Maurauder, and then the Mauler...

[Watchit]

I'll have to agree with Hayashi, repairs are very important to the game, and have always been a part of battletech/mechwarrior.

I still think rewards for kills/spotting/etc.. are a little too low though.

[Hayashi]

Because if the rich can only get much richer and have enough of an equipment advantage to dominate people in poorer setups/trial Mechs, it presents an incredibly high barrier to entry that screws up the new player experience.

It'd be like playing an RPG attempting to duel a level 80 player as a level 25. Repeatedly.

If everything was balanced to oblivion such that no equipment is stronger than any other equipment such that the above doesn't apply, then there would be no incentive to upgrade, and no diversity in gameplay. But again, if no balancing was done, everyone would be using the same max powered set, which again eliminates diversity in gameplay from the other direction.

Few things come without a tradeoff.

[Deathpiggy]

Watchit, on 29 October 2012 - 10:37 PM, said:

I'll have to agree with Hayashi, repairs are very important to the game, and have always been a part of battletech/mechwarrior.

I still think rewards for kills/spotting/etc.. are a little too low though.

At the end of the day, the game has to be profitable. It's not Mechwarrior 5. It's not Mechcommander 3. So, what you need to ask yourself is, do you want it to be World of Tanks, or League of Legends?

[Hayashi]

I want it to be MechWarrior Online - Release Edition.

[Deathpiggy]

Hayashi, on 29 October 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

Because if the rich can only get much richer and have enough of an equipment advantage to dominate people in poorer setups/trial Mechs, it presents an incredibly high barrier to entry that screws up the new player experience.

It'd be like playing an RPG attempting to duel a level 80 player as a level 25. Repeatedly.

If everything was balanced to oblivion such that no equipment is stronger than any other equipment such that the above doesn't apply, then there would be no incentive to upgrade, and no diversity in gameplay. But again, if no balancing was done, everyone would be using the same max powered set, which again eliminates diversity in gameplay from the other direction.

Few things come without a tradeoff.

This is what matchmaking is for. Don't match newbies against people who've earned a massive pile of C-bills.

Also, even if all gear is equal, there's always diversity. No one's going to play the same Gausscat forever. After a while, they'll get bored, and wonder what tearing around in a Cicada's like. And then they'll try strapping 6 AC2's on Jaegermech and setting them to chainfire. And then they'll move on to experiment with the next new toy that's been dropped.

Even if all equipment is good, it's not all going to work for the same playstyle. If flamers are good, are you going to strap them on something slow? Would you try to fit an ER PPC onto a Commando?

And lets not forget that there's a huge list of weaponry that can still be added in to spice things up here and there. MRMs, rocket pods, snub-nosed PPCs, Ultra AC20s, Rotary Autocannons, alternate missile ammo, Plasma Cannons, light Gauss...

[GanjiBubbles]

Hayashi, on 29 October 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

Problem with not having repair costs is that it would eliminate the balancing factor for more powerful, expensive equipment - without it, the rich only get richer, to the point they'll have too many C Bills and nothing to use them on. If rewards were to be brought down so that C Bills aren't inflated to worthlessness, then it would take too long to acquire new equipment, turning off the grind-hating crowd.

Also, increasing performance based C Bill rewards as a fraction of the same overall reward average has a drawback of punishing poorer players relative to the current system. Newer, less skilled players would achieve less objectives regardless of what the objectives are: if the reward for simply participating is too low, it would take too long for them to be able to start customising their Mechs. If the learning curve is too steep, they won't stay in the game.

It's a delicate balance between default reward and performance based reward, between acquisition costs and repair costs, and between costs and rewards, and people differ as to their views on whether the balance is right or slightly off-kilter.

I would suppose most people can agree on having a greater diversity of objectives that can earn XP/C Bills though. What other team-play objectives are there? Perhaps...

• Attacking an enemy which is targeting an ally with low armour in the cockpit/CT/ST(for XL only) locations to give a 'defensive fire' bonus? Perhaps 20 XP & 3000 C Bills every time you help a teammate this way? [Awarded only once per enemy distracted, so you only get 24,000 if you distract every member of their team from attacking one damaged teammate]
  
• Moving into your cap zone to stop an enemy/enemies from capping your base to give a 'base defense' bonus? Perhaps a flat rate of 50 xp/5,000 C Bills per enemy? [Awarded only once per enemy, so you only get 40,000 if their whole team caps your base]
  
• Giving a C Bill/XP bonus for absorbing enemy damage? (This will increase the more armour you have, since you can thus absorb more damage. However, this is constant regardless of how expensive the equipment you have is mounted - so people who tank with XL engines will never earn enough from this to offset repair costs). How about... 500 C Bills & 0.33 xp per damage point?

Any more ideas?

ok i like these ideas alot but i have one major issue. i have not suicide'd intentionally but i will say its a damn good idea when you look at how unbalanced the matches are, if were gonna worry about getting anything balanced atm i would think it needs to be the teams because whats the point of playing when you have NO chance at beating the other team... if you look at the kill/death ratio of all your players you will notice that founders are doing MUUCCHH better than your average joe because the game matches founders with founders and noobs with noobs.... i have SS to prove just how unbalanced things are... ive basically given up for the next few days cause ive won like 2 matches all night because of this issue... that's more than enough C-bills People have missed out on just for the sake of team balancing..

[Hroothvitnir]

The rewards for performance are a little on the low side it seems to me.
Far better than when you were in a trial and you just simply got an ammount regardless of what you did, much much better now but still not a perfect system.
I would like to see the win loss reward ammonts be a bit less but the bonus ammounts higher, especially damage. When I manage to do 300 damage in a trial light I want to be rewarded for such, not get enough to buy a small sandwich. Spot rewards should be much higher as that encourages teamwork, possibly give duration bonuses. And try and get a base defense reward system going too.

Edited by Hroothvitnir, 29 October 2012 - 11:03 PM.

[GanjiBubbles]

as far as the TK, im not quite sure how that happened lol i was locked on and firing with LRM around 800m away and it just said i killed a teammate...

[MustrumRidcully]

Hayashi, on 29 October 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

Problem with not having repair costs is that it would eliminate the balancing factor for more powerful, expensive equipment - without it, the rich only get richer, to the point they'll have too many C Bills and nothing to use them on. If rewards were to be brought down so that C Bills aren't inflated to worthlessness, then it would take too long to acquire new equipment, turning off the grind-hating crowd.

Don't use C-Bills as balancing factor then. Use it for the match-maker if you can't find another way to balance items.

A small start for a MW:O battle value system:
(still assuming its just part of the job - the first match maker decision is equal team size, the second equal number of mechs per weight class):
Battle Value = Mech Tonnage
Battle Value Modifiers:
- Double Heat Sinks: 15 %
- Endo Steel: 10 %
- EF: 5 %

And balance the weapons against each other. It can be done. The math behind weapons isn't that complicated to get a good baseline that you then can tweak based on feedback and factors you didn't account for the first time.

The current balance is of course not there yet.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 29 October 2012 - 11:23 PM.

[Bloody]

if you are a lone pug player who wants to play a Lone Wolf, then you have few options playing against premades. Maybe if match making was put in and the games were fun to play players would be encouraged to actually play ?

[costi]

Hayashi, on 29 October 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

Problem with not having repair costs is that it would eliminate the balancing factor for more powerful, expensive equipment - without it, the rich only get richer, to the point they'll have too many C Bills and nothing to use them on. If rewards were to be brought down so that C Bills aren't inflated to worthlessness, then it would take too long to acquire new equipment, turning off the grind-hating crowd.

Also, increasing performance based C Bill rewards as a fraction of the same overall reward average has a drawback of punishing poorer players relative to the current system. Newer, less skilled players would achieve less objectives regardless of what the objectives are: if the reward for simply participating is too low, it would take too long for them to be able to start customising their Mechs. If the learning curve is too steep, they won't stay in the game.

It's a delicate balance between default reward and performance based reward, between acquisition costs and repair costs, and between costs and rewards, and people differ as to their views on whether the balance is right or slightly off-kilter.

I would suppose most people can agree on having a greater diversity of objectives that can earn XP/C Bills though. What other team-play objectives are there? Perhaps...

• Attacking an enemy which is targeting an ally with low armour in the cockpit/CT/ST(for XL only) locations to give a 'defensive fire' bonus? Perhaps 20 XP & 3000 C Bills every time you help a teammate this way? [Awarded only once per enemy distracted, so you only get 24,000 if you distract every member of their team from attacking one damaged teammate]
  
• Moving into your cap zone to stop an enemy/enemies from capping your base to give a 'base defense' bonus? Perhaps a flat rate of 50 xp/5,000 C Bills per enemy? [Awarded only once per enemy, so you only get 40,000 if their whole team caps your base]
  
• Giving a C Bill/XP bonus for absorbing enemy damage? (This will increase the more armour you have, since you can thus absorb more damage. However, this is constant regardless of how expensive the equipment you have is mounted - so people who tank with XL engines will never earn enough from this to offset repair costs). How about... 500 C Bills & 0.33 xp per damage point?

Any more ideas?

I like these a lot, especially the lack of base defence bonus is a glaring omission from the current system. It takes effort and risk to double back and run to the base, so it should be rewarded.
The armor one also sounds good, gives a reason to "take one for the team".
The first one sounds a bit complicated, and doesn't take into account some unusual designs (for example: it is better to shoot the cannon arm off of a YLW than try to core it).

Edited by costi, 30 October 2012 - 02:22 AM.