220 replies to this topic

[Vapor Trail]

The downfall of R&R was ultimately the exploitation of the system. It simply penalized those who dropped with shot-up crap with no weapons less than those who were actually trying to play the game.

However:
Without R&R, there is absolutely no reason not to take the absolute best equipment, as long as it doesn't impact your effectiveness too much. All the advanced tech is supposed to be expensive and hard to replace. But without the disincentive of possibly having to replace the tech, the tech is all anyone uses.

For example, Single and Double Heat sinks. A Double heat sink (using standard costs) is three times as expensive as a Single, and is three times as likely to be destroyed on a per-unit basis.This means a totally destroyed mech, for a given amount of cooling, would pay 50% more if they had Doubles, than they would if they had Singles to replace their heat sinks. That extra cost is an incentive to take singles if at all possible.

Instead of outright R&R... how about a bonus multiplier on "destroyed all mechs" win, and base the multiplier on how much high level tech both you and your team dropped with (less high-tech leads to a better modifier), the level of tech difference between the two teams (having yours lower than the enemy's leads to a better modifier), and the level of damage both you, and your team took.

The point to this is to keep losing a fight at the same output financially, regardless of tech taken, while offering the possibility of having a pretty good payday for a win if you and your team can pull off a win using lower tech levels. The reason this bonus is placed on a "destroyed all mechs" win ONLY, is to limit the profitability of cap-race tactics in Assault... in which there would be extremely low damage levels.

[oldradagast]

No.

Repair and Rearm has no purpose in the game.

It punishes people for playing the game, which is simply illogical, and it heavily biases the game towards cheap, light mechs and energy weapons that require no ammo. I want to be able to chose whatever mech I want, not be stuck playing something I don't want to play just because anything else ends up costing me in-game money every time I play it. The trial mechs are generally unplayble trash, and I quite frankly don't have the reflexes (or the stomach) to do nothing but race around at 150 kph in a Raven 3L since that's cheap and would be about the only thing worth playing if R&R was brought back.

Repair and Rearm is even less logical when one considers how easily you can be punished for team mistakes. Why should people who PUG be stuck with repair bills every time their team does something stupid and gets them all killed? And why should we bring back a mechanic that discouraged PUG's, which is how all new players start?

Finally, Repair and Rearm warped the game. You had people overstuffing their mechs to get the free 75% repair and rearm, people playing without armor because it's cheaper, etc.

I just can't see any reason to bring it back. It's not fun, it punishes people for playing, and particularly brutalizes newer players, encouraged exploitation of the game system... I guess it's "realistic" if a game full of walking tanks that drop on random planets in 8 on 8 randomized matches can be called "realistic," but that's not a good enough reason.

Edited by oldradagast, 18 April 2013 - 01:05 PM.

[Davers]

Fut, on 18 April 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

Rules for repairs and replacements are in Strategic Operations. It doesn't have anything about costs, other than time it takes to repair/replace something. Prices of given components are in the books that have construction rules: TechManual, Tactical Operations and Strategic Operations.



True.
But what do you hear all the time?
"THE BOOK WAS BETTER!"

But for every group of players who actually run campaigns and use R&R there are far many more players who just get together and play a match. Plus in R&R systems players usually controlling a large enough stable of mechs that leaving a few out for repairs doesn't prevent them from playing their next match.

Und3rSc0re, on 18 April 2013 - 11:44 AM, said:

World of tanks has a successful repair rearm system why cant mwo have it?

WoT has a tier system. MWO doesn't. If you need to grind for money to repair your high tier tank, you can drop into a lower tier and make guaranteed money against tanks that are similar to yours. In MWO you would drop in a trial mech or a low-tech mech and be faced against fully upgraded mechs.


Any R&R system would have to address the following:
-Not subject to in game exploits such as AFK farming and choosing no to repair/rearm(which was the number one reason they got rid of it in the first place)
-Not punish bad players, solo droppers, or new players (Lots of people buy games and never beat them or play them at 'Impossible' difficulty. All that matters is they enjoy playing.)
-Not overly reward team players, Hero mechs, or premium time users.

But as the Devs said, R&R was just an additional tax that only served to slow down new players from getting 'into the game'.

[TruePoindexter]

Davers, on 18 April 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

WoT has a tier system. MWO doesn't. If you need to grind for money to repair your high tier tank, you can drop into a lower tier and make guaranteed money against tanks that are similar to yours. In MWO you would drop in a trial mech or a low-tech mech and be faced against fully upgraded mechs.

This is very important. You can make a "farming" mech right now with low cost items just to grind CBills but you still get thrown into games with people mounting all of the best toys.

[TOGSolid]

Vapor Trail, on 18 April 2013 - 12:42 PM, said:

The point to this is to keep losing a fight at the same output financially, regardless of tech taken, while offering the possibility of having a pretty good payday for a win if you and your team can pull off a win using lower tech levels. The reason this bonus is placed on a "destroyed all mechs" win ONLY, is to limit the profitability of cap-race tactics in Assault... in which there would be extremely low damage levels.

Now this is a fun idea worth discussing. It's got issues and I doubt it'll solve much but at least it's a good idea train to run with. Nobody gets penalized and if you do some ballsy **** in a lower end mech you get rewarded for it. It could easily get exploited, however, by some farmer running one small laser on a jenner with a tiny standard engine and stock equipment.

Quote

TOGSolid has continually posted "Post quality suggestions" with the intention of stating that my suggestions were crap. He doesn't like my ideas, I get it. You don't have to like them, but if you're not going to like them, why not post your own? I don't see anyone here posting anything productive for R&R other than "your suggestions suck, go away. "

Why would I post my own suggestions when I don't want repair and rearm brought in because it won't solve ANY balance problem. I have repeatedly stated why your ideas are bad: They do nothing to solve R&R's old issues and only serve to make things worse by making the penalties even harsher. Instead of evolving your stance to address what I, and others, have said, you've instead done EXACTLY what I said you would do and lashed out like a toddler having a hissy fit.

Edited by TOGSolid, 18 April 2013 - 01:21 PM.

[jay35]

Vapor Trail, on 18 April 2013 - 12:42 PM, said:

Without R&R, there is absolutely no reason not to take the absolute best equipment, as long as it doesn't impact your effectiveness too much.

This is a faulty premise, as there is no "absolute best" setup in MWO. If there was, you'd see everyone in one specific variant with one specific loadout, and that is simply not the case at all.

"Best" in MWO is simply "what I'm most comfortable with" and that's precisely how it should be in a game that provides a mechlab and a variety of chassis to build upon. A diversity of builds and chassis are on the battlefield because each player has different preferences and play style.

Trying to force people to not take what they want to take is simply going to lead to uniformity and that breeds boredom and burnout because people will only ever take whatever one build is the most efficient way to make headway in earnings under a despotic R&R regime. Also, it's a game. At the end of the day, it needs to be fun or most people won't play it. The current economy promotes fun and diversity. R&R by its very nature does just the opposite.

Edited by jay35, 18 April 2013 - 01:15 PM.

[Kraven Kor]

jay35, on 18 April 2013 - 11:03 AM, said:

No.

I do want R&R back.

I don't want it to be like it was. Low tech / no ammo = LOTS of money earned, High Tech / Lots of Ammo = LESS money earned. Never a loss of money.

[Und3rSc0re]

Davers, on 18 April 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

WoT has a tier system. MWO doesn't. If you need to grind for money to repair your high tier tank, you can drop into a lower tier and make guaranteed money against tanks that are similar to yours. In MWO you would drop in a trial mech or a low-tech mech and be faced against fully upgraded mechs.

Not neccessarily, medium mechs should be profitable, light mechs should be a little profitable, heavy mechs make money but not more than mediums, assaults lose a little on a bad loss or make even on a win, if you did good on a win you should make a little money. There are also hero mechs, trial mechs should not be the main money maker, they are just that "trial mechs".

There is no need for a tier system in order to make rr viable. If you do good every game and with salvage you should make more than you should already.

Edit: The trial afk cbill grind with rr can be solved with a proper report system like any other mmo. New players should be given enough to buy a medium or light mech from the get go so they dont have to grind junk trial mechs for cbills.

Edited by Und3rSc0re, 18 April 2013 - 01:19 PM.

[TOGSolid]

Quote

It punishes people for playing the game, which is simply illogical, and it heavily biases the game towards cheap, light mechs and energy weapons that require no ammo.

And good, veteran players will still field top tier mechs and not give a **** about the costs because they know they're going to make money no matter what. I never once thought twice about what I fielded when R&R was last in the game because I always made money.

R&R is an inherently broken system that only serves to punish new and less skilled players. Unless the supporters of R&R can address this objective fact then R&R discussion is pointless.

[Davers]

Every R&R thread always comes down to these points:

1. Bad players should be punished for being bad. Losing the match just isn't enough.
2. Equipment that is rare in lore/novels should be rare in game.
3. Assault mechs should be the sole providence of 'elite' players, everyone else should be in a medium.
4 Forcing players to play mechs that are known to be terrible, or that players don't like, is preferable to letting people just do what they want/have fun doing.

[TOGSolid]

Davers, on 18 April 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

Every R&R thread always comes down to these points:

1. Bad players should be punished for being bad. Losing the match just isn't enough.
2. Equipment that is rare in lore/novels should be rare in game.
3. Assault mechs should be the sole providence of 'elite' players, everyone else should be in a medium.
4 Forcing players to play mechs that are known to be terrible, or that players don't like, is preferable to letting people just do what they want/have fun doing.
5. If you disagree with me then you're some scrub who wants to keep fielding OP builds because R&R will fix everything though I can't tell you how it'll actually do that logically.

Fixed for accuracy.

[TruePoindexter]

Und3rSc0re, on 18 April 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

Not neccessarily, medium mechs should be profitable, light mechs should be a little profitable, heavy mechs make money but not more than mediums, assaults lose a little on a bad loss or make even on a win, if you did good on a win you should make a little money. There are also hero mechs, trial mechs should not be the main money maker, they are just that "trial mechs".

There is no need for a tier system in order to make rr viable. If you do good every game and with salvage you should make more than you should already.

Edit: The trial afk cbill grind with rr can be solved with a proper report system like any other mmo.

That's what we had before and it punished Assault players very harshly. It's important I think to keep in mind that weight classes are kind of like player classes in a typical RPG. It's more of a play style decision.

As an example of how this is a problem look at WoW and the honor system. Healers are very necessary for that game but because of how honor is distributed they simply earn less than their offensive teammates. They literally earn less despite being critically important.

[jay35]

Und3rSc0re, on 18 April 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

Not neccessarily, medium mechs should be profitable, light mechs should be a little profitable, heavy mechs make money but not more than mediums, assaults lose a little on a bad loss or make even on a win, if you did good on a win you should make a little money.

Well that sounds rather prejudicial toward one specific type of battlemech (think character class, as that's really what they're akin to in other games) and inherently biased against all the others. Battlemech classes are designed to compliment one another and work best when a team has a variety of builds and classes on the field working together. Your concept of punishing people for taking 3 of the 4 classes is rather absurd and would only increase the frequency of the scenario where everyone is running the same mech and the game gets very dull very quickly.

I'd say it doesn't matter what mech you take, you should be rewarded for a win and given a concession on a loss that enables you to at least grind reasonably toward better hardware. Your individual performance should also improve the reward or concession so that you have incentive to do your best in every match.

This is apparently in line with PGI's stance on the matter.

Edited by jay35, 18 April 2013 - 01:27 PM.

[Und3rSc0re]

TruePoindexter, on 18 April 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

As an example of how this is a problem look at WoW and the honor system. Healers are very necessary for that game but because of how honor is distributed they simply earn less than their offensive teammates. They literally earn less despite being critically important.

You cant call WoW having pvp because it is balanced around pve.... Besides, if healers made more than their offensive teammates then who would do the damage?

[TruePoindexter]

Und3rSc0re, on 18 April 2013 - 01:25 PM, said:

You cant call WoW having pvp because it is balanced around pve.... Besides, if healers made more than their offensive teammates then who would do the damage?

The point of the analogy is that they should earn roughly the same. Every person in a group contributes to a win. Why should the assault players earn less than the lights?

[Quxudica]

DaPwnageMachine, on 18 April 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

Bring it back in a way that can't be abused.  Rewards are now incentives based on performance instead of just win or loss, so it actually wouldn't be viable to make money by trial suiciding. .

Reincrease the heat on energy weapons massively so that boating actually takes more skill than just having mastered coolrun with +18 double heat sinks.

Gauss boats, SRM boats, and LRM boats?  Make refilling ammo extra expensive to the point where you would actually make it costly to take one just like how it was costly to take an XL engine or an Atlas.

Want more medium mechs?  Make repairing heavy mechs and assault mechs so costly to repair that you would want a light or medium in your mechbay to make money off of.  Introduce a "skill" bonus in cbills earned based on kills that would be greater for lights and mediums while having a smaller bonus or heavies and assaults.  Of course, such a bonus should not be introduced until after collisions are brought back correctly.  Bring skill back to light mechs with collisions.

There you go, instant balance for all weapons that everyone is crying OP about every patch.  I don't bout you guys, but the game was so much more fun and deep when the economy was in place despite it's massive exploit that ruined it.  With the economy gone, I have no interest in this game with nothing to play for and I think a lot of players are feeling hte same way.  I think we're in a much better position now to prevent that trial run suiciding exploit and bring this game back to the way it was supposed to be.

RnR added nothing of value to the game. It created the fad of stripped down light mech and trial mech farming, punished ammo users severely, made the new player experience even worse as they could finally get out of trials only to find they cant afford to run their real mech, caused players to not repair or rearm at all, or to force dc/go hide in a corner instead of helping their team in a pitched battle. It punished people who liked experimenting with new builds, thus reducing varyity in game even further, and granted even larger advantages to people who had simply played longer. It also gave major benefits to pug stomping. The only gameplay effect it had was to encourage people to find ways of avoiding the system. It also promoted the idea that balancing could be done via cbills instead of stats and mechanics, which was an awful awful idea

Bills are not a fun game mechanic. RnR served no purpose other then inflating the grind and dragging out MWOs shallow content pool.

[Vapor Trail]

TOGSolid, on 18 April 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

Now this is a fun idea worth discussing. It's got issues and I doubt it'll solve much but at least it's a good idea train to run with. Nobody gets penalized and if you do some ballsy **** in a lower end mech you get rewarded for it. It could easily get exploited, however, by some farmer running one small laser on a jenner with a tiny standard engine and stock equipment.

Provided his team won and he remained undamaged. Since they're effectively down a mech to start with it gets that much harder. And since the team also benefits from the farmer's presence and loadout, it's not all bad.

Perhaps apply the multiplier to "performance based" bonuses and none on the "win award" bonus. This way the "farmer" has to actually get into the battle to get any benefit... and if he gimps himself too much he loses a lot of his bonus award to getting blown apart. Might even need to drop the "how much damage your team took" modifier for the multiplier.

[Zerberus]

TruePoindexter, on 18 April 2013 - 01:20 PM, said:

That's what we had before and it punished Assault players very harshly. It's important I think to keep in mind that weight classes are kind of like player classes in a typical RPG. It's more of a play style decision.

As an example of how this is a problem look at WoW and the honor system. Healers are very necessary for that game but because of how honor is distributed they simply earn less than their offensive teammates. They literally earn less despite being critically important.

And even if you take PvP out of the game and go for a PvE Raid, the tank is ALWAYS going to have the highest repair costs just be role design. But without him and the healers, everybody dies, pretty fast at that. So why should he be punished even more with even higher repair costs? So that he can run out in the wild with his measly dps and beat on lowly humanoids for hours unassisted, just so he can afford the next raid?

Edited by Zerberus, 18 April 2013 - 01:50 PM.

[Und3rSc0re]

Alright im done with a somewhat debate, if you guys really want equality why dont you just have pgi take out cbills entirely and make everything free, why punish people with jobs and familys with not much time to grind for that expensive clan mech or assault anyway. What about the people that cant aim well we need a rng system for weapons to keep skilled players from playing at a superior level, pgi is so prejudiced. Why cant light players have the firepower of assaults?

/not too serious here

Edited by Und3rSc0re, 18 April 2013 - 01:49 PM.

[Ozric]

Someone is trying to reanimate the fetid corpse of R&R?

Back foul demon, back!