10 replies to this topic

[Artifice]

Please note that this suggestion is intended to mesh with the proposed CW plans, not the current state.

Repair and rearm is clearly a tough issue in MWO. Classic Battletech doesn't necessarily involve the complete annihilation of the opposing forces, so the C-bill balance of repairs is thrown out of whack when placed into MWO. Fair enough, but what can be done?

Proposal - Pay or Delay (C-Bills only)
When a match is finished, a repair bill will be generated which may be quite expensive, or not. The player is then given a choice to either pay the repairs and use the mech again immediately, or to get free repairs at the cost of a time delay before those repairs are completed.

Example : Mechwarrior's Atlas is destroyed in battle. The repair bill comes in at a whopping 2 Million C-Bills. They can either pay those C-Bills and ready up right away OR pay no C-Bills and gain a delay counter of perhaps 20 minutes before that Atlas can be readied up.

Example : Mechwarrior survives a battle with little damage. The repair bill is only 40,000, so they elect to pay the cost and ready up immediately. If they instead chose to wait, the delay counter might only be several minutes.

The times given are only a suggestion, but players should reasonably expect to play a single mech in 2-3 matches per hour. It's up to you guys whether Hero Mechs have a reduced repair delay or not, I'd say no.

Why?
This would allow an opt-in C-Bill sink (which you developers seem to like) and/or a higher mech rotation per player. Implemented alongside Community Warfare, this could gently persuade teams to mix up their play styles, rather than forcing them to do so. I think it would add a touch of immersion to the game, especially if you had a bit of animation in the Mechlab showing the wee Techs working on the scorched remains of your pride and joy.

"That's a stupid idea"
I'm not so naive to assume that everyone will jump on this bandwagon with bells on. Maybe it is a stupid idea. I'm only suggesting this because I reckon that it gives the devs an option for reimplementing repairs, a c-bill sink and greater battlefield diversity - all in a reasonably immersive way for players.

In your feedback, please understand that I'm not trying to set numbers for repair costs and time - just the concept of Pay or Delay. I'm flat out against using MC for paid repairs.

[Modo44]

No. There is no way around the fact that half the players lose more than they win on a regular basis. Literally any repair&rearm system penalizes those players. Imagine you just bought your first mech, but being a noobie, you just lost x million Cbills/x minutes of play time with your shiny new toy. Rinse&repeat for most of your play session. How long until you say "**** this game", and leave for good?

Edited by Modo44, 23 October 2013 - 08:58 PM.

[Zanathan]

You will need to adjust C-Bill earnings to ensure it doesn't become an even larger grind.

Also this penalises the new players too much and some sort of mechanism needs to be in place for new players. Veteran players who have a horde of Mechs won't suffer too much from this suggestion.

Although I think there is enough of a money sink in the game and in future ideas such as taxes/levies for merc corps and faction players can add to the sink.

[Artifice]

Modo44, on 23 October 2013 - 08:55 PM, said:

No. There is no way around the fact that half the players lose more than they win on a regular basis. Literally any repair&rearm system penalizes those players. Imagine you just bought your first mech, but being a noobie, you just lost x million Cbills/x minutes of play time with your shiny new toy. Rinse&repeat for most of your play session. How long until you say "**** this game", and leave for good?

Yep. That's why it needs to be in a CW situation (say planetary conquest). Targetting the more advanced players specifically, who should have a few good mechs to switch around. General play, match by match - hells no, agreed.

[Artifice]

Zanathan, on 23 October 2013 - 09:16 PM, said:

You will need to adjust C-Bill earnings to ensure it doesn't become an even larger grind.

Also this penalises the new players too much and some sort of mechanism needs to be in place for new players. Veteran players who have a horde of Mechs won't suffer too much from this suggestion.

Although I think there is enough of a money sink in the game and in future ideas such as taxes/levies for merc corps and faction players can add to the sink.

I'm very interested in seeing the various levies and whatnot. We may end up with a repair levy that the entire participating company shells out for, and no need for my stupid idea. Whatever, I figured I'd throw it out there anyway.

[Corvus Antaka]

I really like this idea. Then we could add engineering teams etc to lower wait times for your mech to cycle.

Question is, how would people with only 1-2 mechs get to play?

[fandre]

IMHO this is a good idea to take the fun out of the game and to add unliked waiting time.

Veteran player with a lot of mechs can look over it but everyone with a small number of mechs will have an increased waiting time. It is still anoying to wait between matches (please press the ready button ...). This will add extra time especially if you have bought a new mech and try to learn to use it or experimenting with it.

What would new players do or casual players? They are thrown out of the game because they do not earn enough money per match to ensure a continued gaming. They can't even buy a new mech in a reasonable timeframe because they have to spend money or time for repair and rearm.

CW will be so expensiv, that only veteran players can effort it. I dont think PGI will implement a game mode, which is unaccessable by a majority of players.

Edited by fandre, 24 October 2013 - 02:02 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

I think we had a suggestion like this already a while back...

If they ever want to reintroduce Repair & Rearm, I really suggest looking at it being a choice between time spend and money spend.

[Karl Streiger]

MustrumRidcully, on 24 October 2013 - 02:08 AM, said:

If they ever want to reintroduce Repair & Rearm, I really suggest looking at it being a choice between time spend and money spend.

Exactly:
the time for atlas (i knew just an example)
2.000.000 c-bills or 20 min time?
I have enough mechs in my hangar (and i have few) that a game with each - will be more as enough to cover 2hrs.

So - a game could gain actually 200.000 at best. When this is your top tier Atlas - and repair is 2.000.000 than you have to wait time for ~ 2hrs minimum - question:
"time in battle?"
"time logged in?"
"real time?"

In case of time in battle - time could be lower
In case of real time - time must be incredible high

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Interesting,

and maybe set up the amount that needs to be paid to the amount of C-Bills the player has earned so that it doesn't unfairly penalize newer players who do not yet have a substantial C-Bill reserve, since this idea is intended to be a money sink.

The length of time can be whatever is most appropriate.

[FinsT]

Artifice,

we need to wait for things more than enough in real life already. Waiting for things to happen in games - was never fun, is never fun, will never be fun. Some things we have to wait even in games, - such as loading times, for example. Inevitable. But it's still no fun. When a couple years ago games with seamless loading appeared, - it was a BIG feature. Exactly because waiting is no fun.

Or take the most recent and MWOish example, - that blasted READY button. Oh so many people - here in forum and in the game, - are very, very unhappy they are to wait for a full minute because someone is not ready, instead of waiting for some 10...30 seconds. We talk people having to wait extra 30...50 seconds, - not that much by itself eh? - but sitll, the amount of trolling, QQing, and even outright hate (what's with legging people and such) - is tremendous.

What you propose will definitely have devastatingly bad effect. Making people wait is one of worse things you could do to solve any in-game problem; very often, it makes much more problems than it ever can fix - and the READY button is an excellent example of this. Intentions behind implementing it were - and still are, - good; but net effect - i.e. how well community recieved the feature? Bleh. Awful.

I have much sympathy for your detailed approach to suggesting features, but this particular one idea is, - sorry to say this, - not good at all, in my opinion. Best of luck with your next one (if there will be)!

Edited by FinsT, 24 October 2013 - 05:33 AM.