134 replies to this topic

[Tekadept]

jozkhan, on 30 May 2013 - 07:02 AM, said:

hy is letting the player base know how things are 'not appropriate'?

It's Beta?? LOL

[Dawnstealer]

Dude42, on 30 May 2013 - 06:36 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...ng-a-game-drop/

ohhhhh kay...

What am I looking at?

[jozkhan]

well just to gather some data I've started a poll in metagame forum (seems appropriate) with regard to who knows about this and linked this thread

[Koniving]

Dawnstealer, on 30 May 2013 - 07:09 AM, said:

ohhhhh kay...

What am I looking at?

Someone who takes 17.9 seconds to load a map that takes the average 2 year old computer 6 seconds or less.

Edit: And is being kicked out when he's receiving data for having the map readily loaded...when he's still loading.

Edited by Koniving, 30 May 2013 - 07:14 AM.

[80Bit]

I would consider myself one of the more active members of the community. I wrote 80Bit's MC and C-Bill Guide (which I will now need to heavily edit). I was around when this change was evidently "announced", and like many people, we did not take that announcement to mean you are forfeiting salvage and/or resource bonuses if you DC, if that DC happens after death. I'm not an *****, I read every command post, every patch note, and even specifically scoured the forums for information to write my C-Bill guide. If I was unaware of this game play fact, I am confident the majority of the community is as well.

Unlike some people, I don't have many issues with the way PGI has been making the game. I think the pace of content is great, I think balance changes are being done in a reasonable manner, etc.

But this evidently age old but poorly communicated change is pretty chafing. I have played over a thousand matches since this change, happily relying on my "gamer common sense", and previous PGI statements, to tell me I can safly disconnect from a match when I die, so I can continue to, you know, PLAY.


This policy is a bad one, and not the correct way to fight DC farming.


1) This is an non-intuitive feature.

It is highly untypical to cause players to lose out on rewards for this in a single life muti-player game. Gamers have no reason to expect this as it goes against the overwhelming standard in online games. As others have stated, if you are going to lose rewards for disconnecting after you are dead, it should be explicitly stated in the disconnect message. Since there is no out of match reward screen, a player, new or otherwise, can not be reasonably expected to know they are lowering their rewards by disconnecting.

2) It is a punitive feature.

This feature hurts active players more than it does farming ones. My standard tactic in conquest matches is to aggressively cap with a light mech to get my team a large C-Bill lead. This prevents me from getting a lot of damage/kills/assists, but helps my team win the match on points. I am often killed half way through the match, and since I would like to PLAY the game, I DC and start another match. For me, I am harshly penalized for my significant effort in the match.

Compare that to a farmer who loads into an Assault match in a light mech, runs into the enemy spawn, tags them all with a laser, and gets killed. He is going to earn more from his "personal" bonuses an 2 minutes of play than I will for 7 minutes of helping my team win the conquest match.

3) It's bad game design.

Any feature of a game that forces players to not play it in order to maximize their gains is a bad one. And that is exactly what this feature does. Imagine if after every Battlefield 3 match, you had to watch a 1-5 minute cutsceen of combat or have your XP for the match cut by 25%. People would riot. How is this any different than that?




TLDR; Poorly thought out feature, should be changed.

Edited by 80Bit, 30 May 2013 - 07:30 AM.

[Tekadept]

80Bit, on 30 May 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

and like many people, we did not take that announcement to mean you are forfeiting salvage and/or resource bonuses if you DC, if that DC happens after death.

We didnt take it to mean that as it clearly said you would still get match rewards as per below.

Quitting/Disconnecting Early - While Still Alive You will only receive rewards up to the point of disconnection.

NOTE: If you are dead, you will receive earned rewards, plus match rewards

[80Bit]

Tekadept, on 30 May 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

We didnt take it to mean that as it clearly said you would still get match rewards as per below.

Quitting/Disconnecting Early - While Still Alive You will only receive rewards up to the point of disconnection.

NOTE: If you are dead, you will receive earned rewards, plus match rewards

Where is this information from? This was like November wasn't it?

Edited by 80Bit, 30 May 2013 - 07:37 AM.

[jozkhan]

Niko states on the first page of this thread you have to observe the match to the end to get the match rewards, he was called on it and asked to re-clarify and he maintains this

[Tekadept]

80Bit, on 30 May 2013 - 07:36 AM, said:

Where is this information from? This was like November wasn't it?

Yep late october, Command chair on Farming... Sure it was a while ago, but its quite a big change, you would think there would be an update on it...

Kinda like Ok your crossing a minefield.. this is the safe path.. then a few months later you cross the same minefield they move the mines nd dont tell you, you walk along. BOOM.. oh sorry, you should hae checked with us to see if we moved them. It was a beta minefield.

[Middcore]

So I feel like there's some misunderstanding going on here...

If you disconnect while still alive - you miss out on rewards for anything that happens after you disconnect.'

If you disconnect after dying - you get full rewards.

So this discourages people from immediately disconnecting at the start of a match to farm.

This would actually make sense.

But...am I hearing you get no rewards for what happens after you disconnect even if you only disconnect after fighting and dying? So if I die five minutes into a match, I get nothing for anything that happens in the match after? No assist rewards when my teammates kill 'mechs I damaged? No payout for the match win/loss etc.?

Because that would be jacked up.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

I didn't know this either. Lame.

Might curb the dc farmers, but will also cause more people to "grief" games by telling the other team where the last mech or mechs are so they can get the end of round rewards without waiting.

This can be done better.

[Dawnstealer]

Koniving, on 30 May 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Someone who takes 17.9 seconds to load a map that takes the average 2 year old computer 6 seconds or less.

Edit: And is being kicked out when he's receiving data for having the map readily loaded...when he's still loading.

Gotcha. I mean...come on: if you're using AOL and dialup, you probably shouldn't be playing online-based games, anyways. Not a lot of sympathy there.

[Koniving]

Dawnstealer, on 30 May 2013 - 07:56 AM, said:

Gotcha. I mean...come on: if you're using AOL and dialup, you probably shouldn't be playing online-based games, anyways. Not a lot of sympathy there.

More of a slow processor and/or ram issue, where his connection is fast but his computer can't keep up.

[LordBraxton]

Niko Snow, on 29 May 2013 - 07:46 PM, said:

You will only receive rewards obtained before you disconnected. To earn match rewards, you must observe the match.

wow this is a horrible change you just lost 1 paying customer

[jozkhan]

The thing that sticks in my craw is that I was under the impression it was just fine to DC after death so 'thinking I was being efficient' I would sometimes forego seeing what happens after I died to get right on with the next game, sure sometimes I was invested in it and would stick around to see who won but often times a I would tell myself, hey get onto the next game ur wasting time and money here.

Now it turns out all that time I was losing cbills because nobody had made a clear statement about how this works...

[Sug]

80Bit, on 30 May 2013 - 07:24 AM, said:

This feature hurts active players more than it does farming ones. My standard tactic in conquest matches is to aggressively cap with a light mech to get my team a large C-Bill lead. This prevents me from getting a lot of damage/kills/assists, but helps my team win the match on points. I am often killed half way through the match, and since I would like to PLAY the game, I DC and start another match. For me, I am harshly penalized for my significant effort in the match.

Personally I would rather have the lights on my team scouting, spotting, harrasing LRM boats, finishing off damage Assaults, killing other light mechs, etc....

Sorry but there's not really a huge benefit to capping in Conquest. You get 35k for 750 resources. It's almost never 0 - 750 though, at most you'll earn like 10k over the other team. Factor in that you get 25k for a win or a loss and yeah... I'd rather have my lights playing the game.

Rizzelbizzeg, on 30 May 2013 - 07:47 AM, said:

Might curb the dc farmers, but will also cause more people to "grief" games by telling the other team where the last mech or mechs are so they can get the end of round rewards without waiting.

After almost 3k games I've seen that happen maybe once. When you're the last mech standing vs 5+ enemy mechs ffs just rush into them and die gloriously. You're not gonna win.

[Sug]

LordBraxton, on 30 May 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

wow this is a horrible change you just lost 1 paying customer

You lose 25k from dcing. Would you rather sit there for another 7 mintues for 25k or go start another match and earn more money?

[Koniving]

LordBraxton, on 30 May 2013 - 08:26 AM, said:

wow this is a horrible change you just lost 1 paying customer

Basically you miss out on salvage, resource rewards according to testing done by Cy and my little group. Unknown about capture and capture assists, but you do apparently earn kills, kill assists (so long as they happen before you leave), damage dealt, and team kill deductions even if you leave early.

[Sug]

Is this K-town?

[Othello]

Niko Snow, on 29 May 2013 - 11:56 PM, said:

Please note that the change occurred before we started putting extra work into our more recent patch notes and hot fix details in the wake of period where the devs were killing off a much more sizeable pool of both bugs and scheduled content. ^It was also announced in advance to the community.
...(trimmed)...

Niko Snow, on 30 May 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

Jettisoning as this has derailed quite a bit into an argument over a fictional 'ninja patch' that never actually occurred.
Once again, to re-iterate, this change occured in Closed Beta and was announced in advance to the community here in October 2012: http://mwomercs.com/.../66088-farming/ This is not a new change.

Niko:

Right now, there is a bit of confusion between the common community knowledge and the actual reward payout system. One clear statement as to how the system actually behaves can straighten this out. The major only change to game economy was in open beta December 2012 when we got rid of the repair & rearm system.

It is kind of hard to understand the time & virtual game currency trade off without knowing what specific match reward is forfeited upon disconnecting after losing your battlemech in battle.

Also, the metagame forum is a better place for discussion of this topic.

Edited by Othello, 30 May 2013 - 08:46 AM.