9 replies to this topic

[wpmaura]

when your mech dies you need a new one end of story. have it so if you loose all your mechs though you always get a good old locust.

But this is a pipe dream since all the kids paying for exclusive mechs will whine and cry when they loose there uber mech of doom that they paid $20 for.

Anyway thats my thoughts

chance of total of your mech, if your side wins you have a chance to recover it though with what ever salavage you can get.

[Lorebot]

Piranha has said they're not going to make this a pay to win game. You won't be able to buy mechs, weapons, or skills/perks with real world money.

I totally agree that if you aren't having your stuff replaced by your Faction or Merc Corp then what's destroyed in battle should stay destroyed after the battle. Once you play for a while and gain Faction rep they should willingly replace most standard mechs for you and offer you replacements for the more high end mechs and equipment for a modest fee in cbills.

They haven't talked about what's really going to be paid for or what their pricing and marketing plan is so at the moment we just have to wait and see if they stay true to their word that all cash purchases will only be for cosmetic items.

[Alistair Steiner]

Hey, I was playing Neveron years back, in which you could slave for months to finally afford a 'Mech, or purchase with good old cashey-money. Well, a friend decided to buy a medium 'Mech when the best we could afford (in-game) was a Company of Scorpion tanks. I think he paid $15 for the thing. Not only did it horribly imbalance his BV/pop and drain his funds as far as maintenance, but another Empire hit him that night, and the 'Mech was gone the next day. It's going to happen, yes, they should be gone for good, unless the rest of your team manages a victory, then you could re-salvage your own 'Mech (get first dibs on it, or something), so you would have the chance to form that emotional attachment with your machine. But of course, that would assume your machine is salvageable in the first place.

[canned wolf]

Pay to win means real money. In game it certainly should be pay to win. Even with the tweaks to make lighter mechs more competitive, the person with the best equipment is likely to win.

[guardiandashi]

true loss of units is likely to be very rare as that would definately be a stick and they have stated they want carrots and not sticks

[Lorebot]

guardiandashi, on 10 November 2011 - 01:56 PM, said:

true loss of units is likely to be very rare as that would definately be a stick and they have stated they want carrots and not sticks

While this is true, if your mechs are replaced for free by your Faction up to a certain point then the stick doesn't hit so hard and the carrot becomes that much sweeter.

Wanting a specific mech or piece of gear and being able to get it if you work hard for it and then being able to use it to have fun is what carrots are all about. But once you get the item and play with it for a while it loses its luster and you get bored with it. If there's always the risk of you losing the carrot that luster stays a lot longer and you're very unlikely to get bored with it. The stick of losing the carrot will be lessened if you can replace it for less than you originally paid for it.

I've made a couple of posts in various threads about how I'd like to see gear be available in the game and all of it depends upon you actually losing gear when you lose matches. Salvage is important in the Battletech universe and if things aren't lost then there can be no salvage. The balance is in the pricing and making it so that eventually you can get what you want without breaking the bank to get it. Your Faction should supply you with basic gear for free and offer better gear at a price, then as your faction standing increases the prices on that better gear will drop until eventually they're giving you the stuff for free or minimal costs. For instance, your faction may supply you with a light mech for free at the start but offer you a medium mech for 100k cbills and a heavy for 1mil cbills, as your standing increases the cost for that medium mech will drop down to 50k, then later 10k, then 1k, eventually they'll just give it to you for free. At the same time that heavy will go from 1mil to 500k to 100k, to 10k, and perhaps they're never willing to let you have one for free, but they'll ask you for next to nothing for it, say 1k every time you need to replace it. The numbers are all just examples, I haven't looked at actual cbill costs for mechs in ages, but I think that model would make a lot of sense in the long run.

[wolf on the tide]

have they given any consideration to loot drops/salvage ?

especially with regards to continuity?
if i salvage a locust for example, i should not find a PPC, if i salvage an awesome, i shouldn't find a medium laser, or a gauss off an archer

with all carrot, no stick, the game system should implement factors to make things possible, rather than restricting effort.

for example, if i play house Steiner fighting Kurita.
my unit has negotiated say ... 30% salvage rights on any battle we win...but 100% repairs on all our own mechs.
if i lose.. my mech will be "replaced" with an identical mech (basically i get my mech back at the end of the fight)
if i win... theres a 30% chance that i might get 1 or more items of salvage (or cbills in lue of salvage )
..." you want 7 broken medium lasers or 2,000 cbills sonny ? "
if i win BIG ... and i mean that rare "every dog has his day" big win..then maybe...just, JUST maybe. i'll win the 30% salvage rights to that jenner i took out with a single head shot. (steiner didn't make jenners, kurita did)

the big win would work like this.
basic requirements could be ...win salvage roll, only qualify for salvage role if you either solo killed the mech, or in a clan match the guild leader could "nominate" a mechwarrior to recieve it
(ie joe bloggs has been our best scout for 3 months... and he's still driving that crappy 2nd hand locust, he should have the jenner if we win it) AND survived the match (to claim),
AND your team won the match
add others to level the game balance..but a rare feat, not everyday occurance.

the kurita jenner pilot would...
get a replacement mech (basically his mech back)

so , the kurita guy loses nothing but the match.

BUT... theres a tiny chance (solo kill + survive + win match AND THEN only 30% chance salvage rights)
to win a mech you cant buy in your faction.
(or more to the point "salvage rights to" NOT "salvage" ... ie if you win.. you dont get the mech... you get the "right" to buy it off of the IS house you work for... you'd still need to pay big Cbills for it... you dont suddenly get to get it "for free"...no government ever gave stuff away for free)

good luck in trying to get the bits and parts needed to get it running (very expensive to buy on the black market...if at all)
and to constantly keep it in good repair (much higher maintenace costs)

and you know what? if it's THAT hard to get, if its THAT expensive to run, then i want one just for the bragging rights

[Lorebot]

I certainly hope they're only going to allow items that were actually used in the battle able to be salvaged. That only makes sense. If I see PPCs and LRMS after fights where none of those weapons were present I'm gonna get really upset.

I sort of like your idea Wolf, but I'd like to stipulate that only the winning team should ever get salvage. Losers don't get to comb the battlefields for wreckage, Winners do that while the Losers are off licking their wounds. As for 'loot drops' I'm not sure how that would work and honestly I'd rather see loot passed out according to who damaged what, meaning if you didn't get any hits on a target then you can't get any salvage from it. I know that sort of sucks for mechs in support roles so there would have to be some sort of balance on that end of things, maybe make 'spotting' a target for someone count as an attack for salvage.

Perhaps the players could bid on salvage after the battle using credits earned during the fight, better performance means more credits to use to bid for salvage. Make it all closed bidding so there aren't 'bid wars', after the battle just show a screen that lists all the salvageable mechs (meaning a mech that's got usable parts on it, not necessarily a mech that can be repaired and anything that's totally scrap wont show up) and everyone bids on what they want all at once. Then the person with the highest bid on each mech gets whatever is left of it. If you end up not winning anything or you just don't want any of it, then your credits can be converted to cbills. This would keep the long time players from being able to just buy everything after a match because they'll inevitably have the deepest pockets, but there could be perks or something for long time players to get to know what's actually salvageable on the mechs before bidding while newer players or players that never picked up that perk or hired a tech crew with the skill would bid blind. Perhaps the perk or skill could be tiered and at lower levels you'd get a list of %chance at what's salvageable and at higher levels it would tell you exactly what's left to win. That way a long time player that really wants a specific mech would be able to know before bidding if the chasis is salvageable or not, and if it's not and he doesn't need any of the gear off the mech then he's probably better off bidding on other things or just converting to cbills. If a mech doesn't get bid on by any of the players that had salvage rights to it then it should be opened up for everyone to make a bid for it.Tied bids would go to the player that had the greater overall performance score, ties for performance should be a random roll. I think that would be much more fitting for the Battletech universe.

Cross faction repairs costing more would be a pretty nasty stick to get hit with on a regular basis and I'd hate to see that in the game. Myomer bundles and armor are pretty much universal anyhow and those are the most commonly damaged parts of a mech so it makes some small bit of sense that repair prices shouldn't change just because your riding a cross faction mech. Knowing that you could lose it and not be able to get another one without some hefty expenses on the black market, a player trade, or having your team win so you can go salvage your own wreck would be a good enough reason in my book to not want to go out in a cross faction mech... knowing that even if I don't get shot to bits I'm gonna pay more just for repairs would ensure that I'd never go out in it.

Edited by Lorebot, 12 November 2011 - 09:04 PM.

[GreyGriffin]

The mindset of permanent loss is simply too costly and impractical. It creates a culture of haves and have-nots, and discourages players from actually playing the game. Even Eve Online, the most brutal virtual economy in the world, has insurance you can purchase that will largely cover the cost of a lost ship.

Furthermore, it discourages action-oriented play. In fact, it discourages play at all. Why ever use an Atlas if a lucky headcap costs you a month's savings? Why not instantly surrender when faced with opponents who appear to have a material advantage? By making losing too costly, you alienate the 50% of players in any given instance that are not winners.

I know everyone keeps bringing this game up, but World of Tanks has a decent model. If you lose, you still get a modest sum. If your tank is destroyed, it is usually enough to repair and rearm your tank, plus a few bucks extra. Unless you lose a heinously expensive tank in a low tier match, you are always at least scraping your way to the next machine in your sights.

The idea of forcing players to move backwards just for losing a match where the win condition is "blow up the other guy" is just patently ridiculous, and no persistent world game can ever hope to sustain itself that way.

[Lorebot]

GreyGriffin, on 13 November 2011 - 12:40 AM, said:

The mindset of permanent loss is simply too costly and impractical. It creates a culture of haves and have-nots, and discourages players from actually playing the game. Even Eve Online, the most brutal virtual economy in the world, has insurance you can purchase that will largely cover the cost of a lost ship.

Furthermore, it discourages action-oriented play. In fact, it discourages play at all. Why ever use an Atlas if a lucky headcap costs you a month's savings? Why not instantly surrender when faced with opponents who appear to have a material advantage? By making losing too costly, you alienate the 50% of players in any given instance that are not winners.

I know everyone keeps bringing this game up, but World of Tanks has a decent model. If you lose, you still get a modest sum. If your tank is destroyed, it is usually enough to repair and rearm your tank, plus a few bucks extra. Unless you lose a heinously expensive tank in a low tier match, you are always at least scraping your way to the next machine in your sights.

The idea of forcing players to move backwards just for losing a match where the win condition is "blow up the other guy" is just patently ridiculous, and no persistent world game can ever hope to sustain itself that way.

I'm not sure if you've read any of my posts, but as much as I advocate a permanent loss game model I also advocate ways to offset that loss.

Mainly I want our Faction to pay for replacement mechs, ammo, and repairs once you reach a certain amount of faction standing. The more faction standing you have the more expensive the mechs they're willing to replace for you. They'll supply you with basic stuff at the beginning and more advanced stuff later on, but everything is always available through the regular market. If you use something they're not willing to replace for you then you lose it and you need to go buy a new one.

But all of this discussion may be mute at this point. I have a really good idea of what I want from the game and there seem to be a fair amount of people that agree with me, but in the end it's up to the devs to make the game and if they decide on something else then that's how it'll be.