354 replies to this topic

[Master Maniac]

Sudden Reversal, on 06 April 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Your missing the point. There are ways to wrought the system regardless of R&R not matter the number so using it a reason to refute it is futile.

I am not boiling R&R down to a 'stupid broken thing' however, I believe implemented properly it adds way more to this game. In actuality, in my case it gave me more reason to play smart in game as there was a real cost for not performing at peak and maintaining concentration and having some restraint when the situation demanded it.

Now if the phone rings or the cooking needs attention there is zero negative consequences (for me) to my just walking away from the PC. It's only your game play that is impacted. With R&R it is a different story.

By the by, I never used the 75% ammo refill and always auto repaired and rearmed. I also ran whatever build I wanted regardless and more often than not was sporting an XL engine. Sure, dying cost me...meant I had to play smarter. It also meant that I had a better load out than many equivalent mechs I was facing because they didn't want to take the risk.

R&R added depth and that can only be a good thing. Detractors just want a simpler game for the lowest common denominator.

And I could argue that pro-R&R individuals just want an easy pay-2-win solution, too. No, you people simply refuse to come to terms with the facts, those being:

A) This is not a game that allows complex planning or strategy ahead of combat, or large maps with smaller, randomly segregated zones and random entry points. This is an arena-styled game with solid, fun-to-play MechWarrior combat...in its current stage. This may or may not change, but the game is no worse for it. When it works, and the HUD isn't scrambling all over my screen, I have a grand old time with the game, I really do. But what this means is the risk and reward aspect is as someone described earlier: entirely based on your mech loadout, your approach to the combat, your skill level, and a little bit of luck. And that's EXACTLY what it needs to be. When we have enough of a tactical investment in the game to say with confidence that getting killed is entirely based on a player's tactical failures, then we can talk R&R.

B ) There's already a punishment for losing: disappointment, wait time, crappy rewards equaling slower progression. You can take your grind-tacular nonsense in a game like WoW if you really need your fix. It's bad enough already trying to grind up to better gear and experiment with different loadouts, and that's with losing causing you to miss out on 100,000 c-bills that you would have gotten otherwise. I consider my time precious. I have plenty of experience grinding. It's called a job. Get one and see what I'm talking about.

C) There are ways to provide an incentive for playing well and staying alive that don't involve punishing players for having a bad match or a spot of ill fortune.

Edited by Master Maniac, 06 April 2013 - 03:15 PM.

[Tank]

I hope R&R removal was temporary. It's part of the skill in this game to avoid the damage when possible.

[Quxudica]

Sybreed, on 06 April 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

It gave people a reason to judge if they really wanted to fully upgrade a mech with endo, XL engines and the like, because with these upgrades R&R went through the roof and you could lose 2/3 of your earnings even with a win.

This gave a new purpose to cheap but viable mechs like my CN9-A who had ordinary equipment but with whom I had a pretty decent win%, he was my moneymaker.

Also, R&R prevented people from boating expensive things like Gauss and rearming LRMs cost craploads of C-Bills, which meant less LRM boats, less heavy weapon sniping.

Yeah, it wasn't perfectly implemented, but it was a nice balancing tool. A bit like cRPG mod for Mount And Blade. You could use cheap gear to gain some money and once you had enough, you could use your best gear and be able to afford repairs.

All in all, it made for a more balanced game...

RnR added nothing to the game while actively making it worse, MWO is better without it.

[Master Maniac]

Yeah, I also noticed that bit about R&R meaning "less heavy weapon sniping." Who are you to complain about the strategies people use? It seems to boil down to people being unable to cope with certain strategies and therefore wanting to make anything better than medium lasers extremely hard to acquire so that they can effectively suck less without all the effort of practice.

[Henree]

Master Maniac, on 06 April 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

Yeah, I also noticed that bit about R&R meaning "less heavy weapon sniping." Who are you to complain about the strategies people use? It seems to boil down to people being unable to cope with certain strategies and therefore wanting to make anything better than medium lasers extremely hard to acquire so that they can effectively suck less without all the effort of practice.

be good with less than top tier weapon boats.

[NocturnalBeast]

I miss it, because it gave an element of realism to the game and make Trial Mechs relevant.

Edited by Edward Steiner, 06 April 2013 - 03:37 PM.

[torgian]

I initially missed R&R myself, but to be honest I haven't been missing it lately. I think that it should make a return once we have community warfare up and (hopefully) possibly have salvage to think about in the future.

But if the game is going to stay the way it is, with no salvage rights incorporated into the game, then I think R&R would not really be missed.

[Diablobo]

Using the economy to fix balance issues is a bad idea. The games in which the mechanics are adjusted instead of economics are better games. I think you'll find that everyone agrees whether they realize it or not.

[Tezcatli]

I would say bring it back. But at much reduced effect. Like ammo and repair should be less. Actually what would make it interesting if your faction affiliation affected your ammo and repair. Like near free with a House. And a small percentage as merc, slightly higher as lone wolf. But they should make it so special equipment is a little more costly, not full price, but enough that they might regret using it a little.

Just not the way it was before.

[Infernus1986]

Edward Steiner, on 06 April 2013 - 03:37 PM, said:

I miss it, because it gave an element of realism to the game and make Trial Mechs relevant.

yea by dropping all 4 of them in game and quitting to pay for my ALRM ammo

[Methuselah Honeysuckle]

Right now I would welcome some form of R&R. The game's basically deathmatch even with the base capping. I don't know what's going to change with CW or if PGI is doing something to balance matchmaking like adding BV. All this time I've just been doing self imposed restrictions to make the game interesting, but it's getting tempting to just fully upgrade my mechs to squeeze in all the best, but I know I'd get bored with that eventually.

[xhrit]

I did no not like R&R for balancing, i I rather enjoyed the immersion. What I would like to see are different "contract options" with different payouts.

Basic contract - no R&R, mission payout only.
A clause contract - 1/2 salvage, mission payout+rearm costs.
B clause contract - 1/2 salvage, mission payout+repair costs.
Advanced contract - full R&R, full salvage, full mission payout.

The old N64 game Star Wars Episode I:Racer did something like this, where you could chose different wagering styles on each match, with options like "winner takes all" or "123 split".

[Wintersdark]

Sudden Reversal, on 06 April 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

Your missing the point. There are ways to wrought the system regardless of R&R not matter the number so using it a reason to refute it is futile.

The fewer ways to abuse the system the better. Currently, you may have one person just splashing lasers everywhere and dying; in your R&R world you still have someone doing that, but now you've got another person on your team in a zombie and a further one who didn't bother fully rearming.

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I am not boiling R&R down to a 'stupid broken thing' however, I believe implemented properly it adds way more to this game. In actuality, in my case it gave me more reason to play smart in game as there was a real cost for not performing at peak and maintaining concentration and having some restraint when the situation demanded it.

Did you read my post at all?

Re: Implemented properly.

It's a fine thing to say that. In a perfect world, I'd love that game too. But this isn't a perfect world. We don't have a proper implementation. Creating one takes designers/man hours to design the system, QA staff/man hours to test it, potential game breaking bugs to find, and balancing onward to tune it because things like this never, ever work well out of the box.

Punishing players is, generally speaking, a bad approach. One of several reasons is that new players are always going to be worse at the game, and as such are punished more. They then earn less money, and have a harder time improving. Gameplay is frustrating and slow. Better players know how to work the system and lose less money (even when losing matches) so they earn vastly more cbills faster. Because this is a PvP game, this makes the gulf between the good players and the poor players bigger and bigger.

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Now if the phone rings or the cooking needs attention there is zero negative consequences (for me) to my just walking away from the PC. It's only your game play that is impacted. With R&R it is a different story.

Why should there be negative consequences? If you're an adult - particularly one with a family, not some young guy out on his own - there will be things that require your attention, and negative in-game consequences will not change that. this will not prevent people from having to walk away from the game from time to time, it'll just make it suck more.

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By the by, I never used the 75% ammo refill and always auto repaired and rearmed. I also ran whatever build I wanted regardless and more often than not was sporting an XL engine. Sure, dying cost me...meant I had to play smarter. It also meant that I had a better load out than many equivalent mechs I was facing because they didn't want to take the risk.

You always used the 75% ammo refill. Whether or not you had auto-rearm on, you got 75% for free and paid for the rest. But that said, it doesn't matter if you did or didn't in the slightest. I am in no way arguing you want R&R because you want to abuse it.

On the contrary, as I said before, I understand why you want it, and I agree with all those feelings. To be clear: I'd love to have a great R&R implementation in the game. It just won't happen.

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R&R added depth and that can only be a good thing. Detractors just want a simpler game for the lowest common denominator.

Well, that's a gross generalization.

I don't want it done, because the system they had was broken and terrible and added nothing to the game. I just left auto-rearm/repair on too, and it had no impact on my game at all.

I know we won't see it implemented properly, because, and this is the key point:

Building and implementing a system like that, based on wishes and dreams but not hard numbers and actual game design takes a lot of work. It's not a trivial thing. It's not a matter of just throwing together something off the top of your head.

There is a real, very significant cost. It would take months to do, and doing so would delay community warfare by the same amount of time.

Are you seriously arguing that R&R is going to bring enough value to the game for everyone as CW, to make it worth such a delay? Particularly given we don't have full details of CW, and whether or not it will already incorporate something like this anyways, or be compatible with it? If not, you may as well forget about it entirely.

[Vermaxx]

Tank, on 06 April 2013 - 03:13 PM, said:

I hope R&R removal was temporary. It's part of the skill in this game to avoid the damage when possible.

The skill of Battletech and it's children was not avoiding damage. You can't avoid damage. If you're the closest/optimal/only target you are going to take damage. The skill of Battletech and it's children is spreading the damage so you are fully armed as long as possible. And THAT is exactly what r/r punishes - soaking large amounts of damage instead of just getting cored and killed quickly.

We can drop all the elitism right here. You pay more for repairs based on how damaged you are. Good players can walk out of a scuffle shot all to hell and still killing. Bad players have relatively low bills because they are easy targets.

[Vermaxx]

Tezcatli, on 06 April 2013 - 04:12 PM, said:

I would say bring it back. But at much reduced effect. Like ammo and repair should be less. Actually what would make it interesting if your faction affiliation affected your ammo and repair. Like near free with a House. And a small percentage as merc, slightly higher as lone wolf. But they should make it so special equipment is a little more costly, not full price, but enough that they might regret using it a little.

Just not the way it was before.

Who is "they" who should regret using high end equipment more? Apparently not you. Are your friends and teammates in that group? Or just everyone you don't give a -- about? It suggests you are so flush with cash that even the old repair system wouldn't bother you. I know it wouldn't bother me.

I used to short change the repair system even with millions of CB in the bank. I used to short change it because I could, because damaged equipment did NOTHING, and 75% ammo/armor was good enough. I'd pay for internal structure repairs, which was never more than 1000CB in any mech I had. I could have afforded to always repair/rearm and never feel it.

Considering even I refused to do it, and I could AFFORD to do it, I see no reason why a system that HAS NO LOOPHOLES should be put back in just to punish the people who have no premium time and no cushion wealth.

[Henree]

do you really think it has been in every mech game to punish players?

[Pale Jackal]

R&R was ridiculously poorly implemented, and there's no real reason for it to be in the game.

It inherently punishes certain styles of play. You'd have to do a lot of work to make R&R worthwhile.

[Henree]

Pale Jackal, on 06 April 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

R&R was ridiculously poorly implemented, and there's no real reason for it to be in the game.

It inherently punishes certain styles of play. You'd have to do a lot of work to make R&R worthwhile.

it simulates damage and merc corp management, when better implemented it will cause balance and a diverse playing field.
I for one would like to see not only repair costs but damaged equipment having to be re-bought.
At the moment it is an endless spawn fest, it's just impossible to lose.

Maybe we should have infinite in match respawn and infinite ammo modes

Edited by Henri Schoots, 06 April 2013 - 05:13 PM.

[Black Templar]

in it's current state the game plays very tactical already. the removal of R&R caused the gameplay to be faster and "action packed". i like it the way it is.
if they would reintroduce R&R another econmy balance would be needed. to my mind R&R just boils down to clicking a button that rewinds the state of your mech. it doesn't really matter anyway.

taking it one step further into community warfare: wouldn't a mechwarrior that is fighting for a house eventually get his destroyed mech replaced for free anyway?

[John Norad]

FerretGR, on 06 April 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

No. It was a meaningless c-bill sink. It didn't balance anything if you were willing to pay it or game the system. It encouraged bad gameplay. It encouraged c-bill farming via AFKing and suiciding with unrepaired mechs. It was bad for the game and it's removal made zero negative impact aside from the nonsensical immersion argument (money sink /= immersion). In fact, its removal had a dramatic positive impact on build variety in-game. Keep it gone.

All the downsides you are listing were due to sloppy and kinda short-sighted (non exploit-proof) implementation.
Just saying.

And a money sink is never meaningless. Actually it's an integral part of any game economy.