1107 replies to this topic

[MustrumRidcully]

Tesunie, on 29 March 2013 - 11:56 AM, said:

@Mackman

I don't think you understood the point behind the statement. Some of us didn't think R&R was that bad of an idea. With the current game play, I'll kinda agree with you though I made a lot of points a page back if you wouldn't mind reading that.

It could be that some people are wrong, however.

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The larger idea was that R&R would probably be better in a CW set up, with persistent economy, territory gain and loss, rank, etc. Once more, I presented more on this on my take of things a page back that you could read.

Personally, I had more fun and enjoyment back when R&R was in the game than I do now. But, right now, I feel like something big is coming, soon. I just get the feeling the game is holding its breath at an upcoming large change.

Personally, I kinda hope they give you a few choices on what mech you can pilot in CW at first, and limit what you can upgrade depending upon rank and faction points. If you can understand what I mean, as I don't think I'm being clear right now with this idea...

Repair & Rearm only makes sense if every contract I take as mercenary unit in Community Warfare ensures that it is more than covered for. Otherwise, merc companies can't function and they will cease to exist, it would not be feasible economically and you'd be better off as moisture farmer on some desert world. The worst thing that could happen is that no one wants to hire me in my Atlas (but maybe someone would still be willing to risk hiring someone as bad as me if he only has to insure the loss of a Flea).

MW:O matches are extremely lethal. The matches are rigged to have equally strong foes attack each other. That's everything you'd want to avoid in a real war. But real war doesn't make for a fun game, one-sided battles are either boring or frustrating or both. But such warfare is not economical. That's not the kind of warfare mercs would be likely dealing with (and if the military commanders can help it, they wouldn't either, but they don't always have a choice.)

[Tesunie]

MustrumRidcully, on 29 March 2013 - 01:59 PM, said:

It could be that some people are wrong, however.


Repair & Rearm only makes sense if every contract I take as mercenary unit in Community Warfare ensures that it is more than covered for. Otherwise, merc companies can't function and they will cease to exist, it would not be feasible economically and you'd be better off as moisture farmer on some desert world. The worst thing that could happen is that no one wants to hire me in my Atlas (but maybe someone would still be willing to risk hiring someone as bad as me if he only has to insure the loss of a Flea).

MW:O matches are extremely lethal. The matches are rigged to have equally strong foes attack each other. That's everything you'd want to avoid in a real war. But real war doesn't make for a fun game, one-sided battles are either boring or frustrating or both. But such warfare is not economical. That's not the kind of warfare mercs would be likely dealing with (and if the military commanders can help it, they wouldn't either, but they don't always have a choice.)

Actually, not to interject here, but most merc groups in lore didn't have R&R included and had to bargain a good price, and they fought hard for salvage rights, as they did most of their mech replacement and repairs from salvage. Even modern day mercs don't get health and life insurance from their contractors. Maybe, medical might be covered, but normally mercs brought their own medical personnel. I think the closest comparison to modern day mercs would be for their ammo to be covered by the contractor, which I don't think would happen.

Yes, you should be getting enough money to be covering most of your bills, if not all. However, if you are in an Atlas and fail to do your job, as in can't kill anything, you'd fail as a merc and would probably not find a job. You would honestly probably go bankrupt as a merc at that point and would either have to sell your Atlas to make ends meet and buy a cheaper mech, or you'd stop being a merc.

This is not saying if you are or are not a good player. I'm just saying how being a merc ran in the books, lore and probably in modern day (I'm not one so I wouldn't know). Read Black Thorn, Highlanders Gambit, or even Edge of the Storm (new book). None of them had repairs and ammo covered by their contracts. They had to scrounge salvage to repair, and they had to try finding contracts that would be easy work for good pay.

(Not saying this kind of R&R would be good for the game, nor if it should be in the game. But I say more on this a page back.)

(Edit:)
As far as this game and how it plays, I wonder if anyone read my post one page back... I haven't heard any feed back still. Bishop Steiner takes all the attention...

Edited by Tesunie, 29 March 2013 - 02:34 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Tesunie, on 29 March 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

Actually, not to interject here, but most merc groups in lore didn't have R&R included and had to bargain a good price, and they fought hard for salvage rights, as they did most of their mech replacement and repairs from salvage. Even modern day mercs don't get health and life insurance from their contractors. Maybe, medical might be covered, but normally mercs brought their own medical personnel. I think the closest comparison to modern day mercs would be for their ammo to be covered by the contractor, which I don't think would happen.

And the lore is just what was written in books without any consideration of realistic economics.
If mercs just barely make money, they won't exist. There is little point in risking your life like that if you're not getting some serious money out of it it. And it's not like a player is trapped in the life of his merc pilot. He can just stop playing he finds advancement lacking, this is not like in real life where getting a job can be quite difficult, especially if your only qualification so far has been shooting people dead and you pobably suffer from posttraumatic stress.

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Yes, you should be getting enough money to be covering most of your bills, if not all. However, if you are in an Atlas and fail to do your job, as in can't kill anything, you'd fail as a merc and would probably not find a job. You would honestly probably go bankrupt as a merc at that point and would either have to sell your Atlas to make ends meet and buy a cheaper mech, or you'd stop being a merc.

But stopping as a merc means for PGI that the player stops playing. So that cannot happen, they can't allow that. They didn't allow that, they had trial mechs even R&R. But trials suck. Playing them isn't fun. So people farm with them, not playing to win or to fight, but to get some C-Bills. Which ruins everyone elses gameplay.

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This is not saying if you or are not a good player. I'm just saying how being a merc ran in the books, lore and probably in modern day (I'm not one so I wouldn't know). Read Black Thorn, Highlanders Gambit, or even Edge of the Storm (new book). None of them had repairs and ammo covered by their contracts. They had to scrounge salvage to repair, and they had to try finding contracts that would be easy work for good pay.


(Edit:)
As far as this game and how it plays, I wonder if anyone read my post one page back... I haven't heard any feed back still. Bishop Steiner takes all the attention...

I researched the topic only very cursory, but:
Modern mercs are incredibly expensive. At least the ones used by the US. They cost much more than a soldier in the samem capacity costs. They are used not because they are cheap. They are used, among other things, because their deaths don't make the statistics and they aren't publicly reported.
Modern mercenaries also generally don't bring their own heavy tanks and attack planes.

But I think a big aspect of mercenaries in real life is that they don't take suicidal contracts like we get in a PvP game. "You expect me to send 2 lights, 1 Medium, 3 Heavies and 1 Assault against their 2 lights, 1 medium, 3 heavies, and 1 assault? Pay me another Assault and 2 Mediums, and they probably run, with no shot exchanged, and your precious germanium facility safe and sound. And you won't have to pay for any repairs on our mechs!"

[AndyHill]

There are a few negative things to R&R:

1) It's negative reinforcement; the stick, not the carrot. It punishes you for driving your pimped out favorite build instead of encouraging you to drive something cheaper.

2) The punishment happens after the fact, which is too late to affect the outcome of a match. So if someone does bring his pimped out 'mech into the fight, having to pay through the nose for a scratch on his Dire Wolf made by the medium laser on your stock Mackie won't change the fact that your Mackie is now completely in ruins and your team lost.

3) Most importantly, one of the things completely out of whack in MWO is the group system. 4 people in a group is far, far too many when it's only 8 vs 8 on the battlefield. With notable R & R costs only the best 4-man deathsquads could afford to run the most pimped out builds they would put to good use stomping the ever more frustrated pugs in their economy builds even more than they do now.

[FupDup]

AndyHill, on 29 March 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

1) It's negative reinforcement; the stick, not the carrot. It punishes you for driving your pimped out favorite build instead of encouraging you to drive something cheaper.

Sorry to be OCD and massively derail this thread, but the meaning of "negative reinforcement" is a lot different than what is stereotyped. I'm in a psychology class are here is how the breakdown of reinforcement and punishment works in behaviorism:


Reinforcement: Done to encourage a specific behavior
Positive Reinforcement: Give them something good (i.e. a cookie)
Negative Reinforcement: Take away something bad (i.e. Advil removes your headache, making you want to take more in the future)

Punishment: Done to discourage a specific behavior
Positive Punishment: Give them something bad (i.e. a spanking)
Negative Punishment: Take away something good (i.e. a parent taking away a kid's cell phone privileges)



TL;DR: RnR is actually by definition Negative Punishment (it takes away something the player likes, in this case C-Bills, in order to discourage the behavior of driving their favorite mech), not Negative Reinforcement.




Back on topic (lol): I agree that RnR doesn't make a whole lot of sense in a game like this, even more so when it lacks balance and a meta.

Edited by FupDup, 29 March 2013 - 03:09 PM.

[Tesunie]

MustrumRidcully, on 29 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

And the lore is just what was written in books without any consideration of realistic economics.
If mercs just barely make money, they won't exist. There is little point in risking your life like that if you're not getting some serious money out of it it. And it's not like a player is trapped in the life of his merc pilot. He can just stop playing he finds advancement lacking, this is not like in real life where getting a job can be quite difficult, especially if your only qualification so far has been shooting people dead and you pobably suffer from posttraumatic stress.

Good mercs make lots of money. Bad mercs go bankrupt from making poor contracts, not performing to their contracts, or by all dieing out. Don't forget that smaller merc units would be fighting against others in a lowest bid system. whoever can get the job done the cheapest, gets the job.

Do recall, CW isn't in the game yet, so any kind of economic presence isn't here right now. So we aren't mercs, but random warriors in a glorified Solaris arena, getting paid as much to fight as we are anything else. Winniners get a larger pot, but the losers somehow still get paid too and never have to repair their mechs (which didn't happen on Solaris, as pilots still needed to win enough to fix their mechs, but they could also yield and give up the match before they took too much damage or cost).

MustrumRidcully, on 29 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

But stopping as a merc means for PGI that the player stops playing. So that cannot happen, they can't allow that. They didn't allow that, they had trial mechs even R&R. But trials suck. Playing them isn't fun. So people farm with them, not playing to win or to fight, but to get some C-Bills. Which ruins everyone elses gameplay.

I edited my post, I think you missed it. I realized how my post sounded and it wasn't right. I also, as I have said before, went over my thoughts a lot more in depth for the game side of this one page back.

Trials when fought against other mechs with SHS don't do too bad. Once you start taking trials against other mechs with endo, DHS, XL engines, yes. They quickly get out classed. However, we all have at least 4 mech bays. You could have one in your prime time upgraded ride, and another of the same thing with as few upgrades as needed. Then, when you need money, you could play the cheaper one that shouldn't run too far off from the upgraded one. Then, play the upgraded one when running with groups, have lots of c-bills, or just when the mood strikes. Once more though, I went over this in more depth one page back...

MustrumRidcully, on 29 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

I researched the topic only very cursory, but:
Modern mercs are incredibly expensive. At least the ones used by the US. They cost much more than a soldier in the samem capacity costs. They are used not because they are cheap. They are used, among other things, because their deaths don't make the statistics and they aren't publicly reported.
Modern mercenaries also generally don't bring their own heavy tanks and attack planes.

Sorry, I didn't research it. Sounds lucrative enough I guess. However, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. This isn't the real world (though I don't mind comparing ideas from real world to BT world), so some things will be off. I'm just going by what I've read in the novels and lore of the game. Weather it is true to reality, I wouldn't know. However, in the games current state, we have no economy nor persistent state. It's all just one unrelated match after another. So, for now, no one has to worry about this. I agree with other people though, if once more anyone read my post a page back, that R&R really doesn't have a place in the current state of the game. I do hope that they make CW and what we have now as two separate game modes. That way, I can play more true to lore in CW, and just go all out stompy goodness in free play mode (what I'm terming what we have now).

MustrumRidcully, on 29 March 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

But I think a big aspect of mercenaries in real life is that they don't take suicidal contracts like we get in a PvP game. "You expect me to send 2 lights, 1 Medium, 3 Heavies and 1 Assault against their 2 lights, 1 medium, 3 heavies, and 1 assault? Pay me another Assault and 2 Mediums, and they probably run, with no shot exchanged, and your precious germanium facility safe and sound. And you won't have to pay for any repairs on our mechs!"

Depends upon your contract. If you have a garrison duty contract on what looks to be a safe world, and then house Liao drops down suddenly, you are being paid to protect that planet. You had better protect it, with whatever you have with you, or with your lives if needed (the money will be sent to your next of kin, thanks for your service), or if you run away, don't expect to get any more contracts except from people who don't care about your units rep of cowardice, or who don't know.

Only the clans tried to balance forces out. IS just kinda, went at it with everything you had, unless maybe you where a Drac and had issued a challenge to another Drac who cared about his honor (or felt it was needed to protect his honor), maybe...

[Tesunie]

AndyHill, on 29 March 2013 - 02:51 PM, said:

There are a few negative things to R&R:

1) It's negative reinforcement; the stick, not the carrot. It punishes you for driving your pimped out favorite build instead of encouraging you to drive something cheaper.

2) The punishment happens after the fact, which is too late to affect the outcome of a match. So if someone does bring his pimped out 'mech into the fight, having to pay through the nose for a scratch on his Dire Wolf made by the medium laser on your stock Mackie won't change the fact that your Mackie is now completely in ruins and your team lost.

3) Most importantly, one of the things completely out of whack in MWO is the group system. 4 people in a group is far, far too many when it's only 8 vs 8 on the battlefield. With notable R & R costs only the best 4-man deathsquads could afford to run the most pimped out builds they would put to good use stomping the ever more frustrated pugs in their economy builds even more than they do now.

1. I can see and agree with that. In the current state of the game, yeah. But we are also talking about the old R&R system. What if we had complete freedom to change it as we willed to make it in a way we think could help make the cheaper stuff more preferred over the more expensive stuff. Would you still say it's bad and not do it? Or would penalize someone who has a build that should give them better chances of doing what you are suppose to do, and if you fail...

2. Punishment isn't for bringing the expensive mech in, it's for not preforming well enough in said high performance mech. It's also like you punish a kid after they do something wrong, not before hand. If you want to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar (not preforming well enough in a high quality mech), then you should expect your wrist to be smacked (have a repair bill to fix your mech). It does encourage you to drive a cheaper mech, even if you find out after the fact. It would also be like touching a hot pan. After you burn your hands a couple times, you'll learn to use an oven mitt to pick up the hot pan.
Am I saying this was perfect? The R&R system could have used more changes, to make it less penalizing to field "optimized" mechs. However, your "optimized" mech should normally out preform other mechs with less tech in it. Should you be charged massively more than you made? No. But could you expect to leave a match with no revenue when you walked in, and got your head blown off in the first shot of the match? I wouldn't be expecting any pay for doing essentially nothing. Thus, the repair cost shouldn't be too much more than you make. (Cost of individual items would and should probably have been looked at, and the scaling of the cost to repaired adjusted to make it more reasonable. Read my post from... oh... one page ago and understand more of what I mean.)

Also, a Mackie brushing a Dire Wolf shouldn't incur that much of a loss. The Mackie would probably have a larger repair bill than you, as you only have to replace some armor, and he has to repair an engine...

3. I can see this, which is one of the reasons I can agree that R&R kinda didn't fit with the current system. However, do recall that this isn't the end game. We still have CW coming out, whatever that is going to be. Consider what we are playing now testing the mechanics of the mech part of the game.

As for the 4 man teams pug stomping groups back in R&R... to be honest I didn't see it happen so much. I saw it happen far more after R&R was removed. Maybe I was lucky? Maybe not. I did see a lot of duct taped mechs standing still and not doing anything though (farmers). Thus, one page back, I mentioned that rewards should probably be more based on actions than just a victory, and then a multiplier on action rewards, making victory more rewarding, but defeat will still give a good accounting of itself. It would also reward people doing actions, even if they get damaged. Would have to come up with a way to reward people even if they died early and did 0 damage (freak accident), but not rewards suiciders, or DCers. That's one of the hard parts.


I'd have to end with, my post a page back describes what I mean in far more depth than I stated here. You bring up good points, which is why R&R needed some balancing, fixing and tweaking. I think R&R had some merit to it, but it needed some adjustment. In the current setup of the game, it really needed some looking after, or as was done, removal.


(Edit: Make that 2 pages back...)

Edited by Tesunie, 29 March 2013 - 03:46 PM.

[John Norad]

Just wanna play, on 28 March 2013 - 06:35 PM, said:

wouldn't that kind of system get abused by certain set-ups?? i mean, dual guasses vs, what, trials??? people would start using stuff that affected their rating the least to help them play against inferior mechs, and then hot and heavy weapons like pulses would get an even bigger disadvantage, because it has to have doubles, and use other methods to save weight

how would they rate the mechs, anyway? seems like a pretty hard thing to do

also, things like 6 ppcs stalker with std hs and no weigh savings upgrades would be able to go against some poor new guy in a trial

You're making a lot of (bad) assumptions. That's all I can say.
Or maybe also this: 1. Gauss Rifles are and should be quite combat value heavy to begin with 2. A Gauss mech with DHS is still more efficient in most cases than a Gauss mech without (secondary weaponry). 3. A mech with DHs is generally always more efficient than one without.

[Joseph Mallan]

Protection, on 28 March 2013 - 10:36 PM, said:

Hey guys, just want to say...

Congratulations on 54 pages. What a threadnaught.

Actually it is a record. I expected it to have been moved or locked a couple days ago. Interesting to see it still rolling along.

[Just wanna play]

there are records for the longest forum????

[Bishop Steiner]

For Gen Dis maybe.

We got threads in Fan Art that make this look Lilliputian.

[FupDup]

Just wanna play, on 29 March 2013 - 06:33 PM, said:

there are records for the longest forum????

I think that the original Coolant feedback thread (the one before PGI redesigned it) got to over 1,000 pages (I have bad memory).

[Bishop Steiner]

Original 3rd Person View Poll got stupid huge too.

Though this may take the record for longest forum topic with least constructive feedback, since 99% of it is elite ls nerd raging, and poo slinging back and forth.

Could probably fit every actually useful post on 1 page, lol.

[Hikyuu]

I cannot honestly believe I'm hearing this;

from all the math people did and whined about X DHS being less cost effective than SHS

to all the whining that they should be 2.0 and ot 1.4

to all the whining about the repair costs which were the best balancing mechanic to all this whining

to now whining that SHS are useless.

you ******* morons. seriously.

SHS's provide a cheap benefit at minimal structural cost, you want Endo Steel or FF? you're likely not gonna fit all that AND DHS on anything besides a medium/light. the'yre cheaper to buy and when more stuff roles out for MWO, it's going to be more averaged out to see SHS used on big mech builds with tons of large, balisitic weapons, and DHS used on light, faster builds, squeezing out as much Heat as they can for lasers.

Go Die in a fire, i have little time to listen to you morons, and little patience.

[Bishop Steiner]

we noticed.

DeCaf, maybe?

[Kaspirikay]

Hi guys contributing to page count

[Just wanna play]

lol, im starting question why protection made this thread in the first place....

[Atheus]

Hikyuu, on 29 March 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

I cannot honestly believe I'm hearing this;

from all the math people did and whined about X DHS being less cost effective than SHS

to all the whining that they should be 2.0 and ot 1.4

to all the whining about the repair costs which were the best balancing mechanic to all this whining

to now whining that SHS are useless.

you ******* morons. seriously.

SHS's provide a cheap benefit at minimal structural cost, you want Endo Steel or FF? you're likely not gonna fit all that AND DHS on anything besides a medium/light. the'yre cheaper to buy and when more stuff roles out for MWO, it's going to be more averaged out to see SHS used on big mech builds with tons of large, balisitic weapons, and DHS used on light, faster builds, squeezing out as much Heat as they can for lasers.

Go Die in a fire, i have little time to listen to you morons, and little patience.

Thanks for your vitriolic contribution, unreasonable guy who obviously didn't read the thread and has no idea what the present stage of the discussion is.

[Sifright]

Atheus, on 30 March 2013 - 01:43 AM, said:

Thanks for your vitriolic contribution, unreasonable guy who obviously didn't read the thread and has no idea what the present stage of the discussion is.

It's funny because he is also wrong. DHS and endo work best in conjuction with each other on pretty much every mech! especially if the mech chassis lets you jam in an XL on top because then you can go for maximum engine size and fit more sinks!

[MustrumRidcully]

Quote

2. Punishment isn't for bringing the expensive mech in, it's for not preforming well enough in said high performance mech. It's also like you punish a kid after they do something wrong, not before hand. If you want to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar (not preforming well enough in a high quality mech), then you should expect your wrist to be smacked (have a repair bill to fix your mech). It does encourage you to drive a cheaper mech, even if you find out after the fact. It would also be like touching a hot pan. After you burn your hands a couple times, you'll learn to use an oven mitt to pick up the hot pan.

So if you're a weak player, you are forced to drive weak mechs. That sounds like... not fun.
But even better - if you're a good player, you can also drive a better mech.

Quote

Sorry, I didn't research it. Sounds lucrative enough I guess. However, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. This isn't the real world (though I don't mind comparing ideas from real world to BT world), so some things will be off. I'm just going by what I've read in the novels and lore of the game. Weather it is true to reality, I wouldn't know.

The lore of Battletech will however clash with the reality of gaming and gamers.
I doubt mercs are farming C-Bills by suiciding in the lore, but it has something we had happen in the game.

If a system is gameable, it will be gamed. So you need to find ways to ensure that any gameable aspects actually lead to intended outcomes.

For example, if you reward kills and assists, much more than you reward a capture, you will get people shooting each other with maps, rather than cap-rushing.
If you punish people for taking damage, you will get people trying to to avoid taking damage - and one of the best ways to avoid taking damage is not getting into a fight in the first place (cap rush, AFK in a corner), and another good way is to avoid taking damage to all your hit locations - so never torso twist to evade damage, just take it to the core (or the head, even better).


All in All, just forget trying to balance upgrades with Repair & Rearm.

Instead:
1) Rebalance gear so that it's a sidegrade
2) Create a levelling system that incorporates these upgrades and ensure that only player of equal level (equal upgrades) fight each other. And if they don't, buff the side with the weaker gear so it's equivalent to the side with better gear.

The latter is something that most MMORPGs have - Level 50 Players have +10 Swords and fight each other, Level 1 Players have Rusty Swords and fight each other. And there are sometimes range brackes that fight each other but ensure that everyone is pseudo-levelled up to be equals. (Not saying these MMOs actually manage to do this well, however.)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 30 March 2013 - 02:11 AM.