232 replies to this topic

[New Day]

CarpetShark, on 02 December 2013 - 01:51 PM, said:

In other words, if you want a single Atlas on your team, the other 11 players must average 35 tons each? Every 50 ton mech (maximum) after the Atlas must be balanced by a Locust?

This is going to be really, really ugly.

What that's very easy to change, it's only a variable in a XML file. Just like LPL heat...

Edited by NamesAreStupid, 02 December 2013 - 01:56 PM.

[Jman5]

Quote

A match CB bonus starts at [10%] and goes down to [0%] at a rate of [1%] every [6] seconds. If both teams manage to ready up quickly, each player will receive a match CB bonus on any earnings they may receive.

Interesting, but I'm worried that this will create a lot of angry players when that one guy forgets to ready up at the start. 10% can be over 15,000 cbills on a good match and players will probably verbally harass that guy who screws them out of the reward.

Perhaps the readying bonus should be limited to individual players/premades. So if you're in a 4-man and you all ready up on time, you get 10% bonus, but that random pug who was watching cat videos instead of readying wont get his bonus.

I just don't like the idea of allowing one guy to screw up a big reward for the entire game. It's going to cause a lot of unnecessary grief.

Kanatta Jing, on 02 December 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

"Each team tonnage total must fall between [240] and [480] tons."

240/12 is 20 and 480/12 is 40. 40 tons is a little light.

I think it's 240 - 480 out of 8 mechs not 12.

Edited by Jman5, 02 December 2013 - 02:11 PM.

[Homeless Bill]

Quote

Now that the match is locked in, players can begin to organize and plan for the battle. The first order of business will be meeting the tonnage restrictions. Each team tonnage total must fall between [240] and [480] tons. Players can bring up to [8] BattleMechs with them to battle. For the purposes of lore, these are transported in a DropShip. Selecting a `Mech readies the `Mech and adds it to your teams total tonnage. The team’s tonnage will be displayed at the top of the team’s player list, showing each person’s `Mech and weight. The number will show total weight and the amount above or below the min/max tonnage limits. Players are encouraged to quickly organize through a match bonus mechanism. A match CB bonus starts at [10%] and goes down to [0%] at a rate of [1%] every [6] seconds. If both teams manage to ready up quickly, each player will receive a match CB bonus on any earnings they may receive.

This is going to be terrible. Tonnage limits are great, but trusting the players to sort it out in a civil manner while money counts down? It's just going to be a matter of the nicer people slowly giving in and switching 'mechs, while the stubborn ******** get to do exactly what they want.

And what about players like this?

Quote

I'm worried too. Currently all I have is HGN and STKs. What's an assualt pilot to do. I think there must be some calculations going on in the back end that takes into account which mechs you have readied, then puts you in appropriate matches.

He only owns assaults, so he essentially HAS to get one of the big, cheesy, desirable slots? Every match he's in, he gets to pilot an assault? Come on.

I'm not going to just run mediums so everyone else can do what they want. But it sure feels like that's what I'll have to do most of the time.

I strongly encourage figuring out some other method to determine who gets to run what. And solving the issue of certain people only owning certain classes of 'mechs. Lots of us would rather run huge, powerful cheese than mediums. Giving "assault pilots" a free pass will be super unfair.

This system relies on personal initiative, self sacrifice, and the goodness of mankind to work. We're not all Canadians, you know.

Edit: I'll be doing a larger write-up of my proposal probably next week, but the gist is this:

• Each tonnage has an associated reward multiplier that varies based on matchmaker demand. Example: everyone is playing assaults and heavies; their reward multiplier is dropped to 90%, while mediums get a boost to 110%.
  
• Players pick a tonnage and make a dropship for that weight. Example: a player picks 85 tons and fills a dropship with Stalkers and Battlemasters.
  
• Each weight also has an associated estimated wait time. If the matchmaker doesn't need anything around 90 tons, not only will you get less money, but you'll also probably have to wait a couple minutes for matches.

Though it has its own drawbacks, the advantages far outweigh:

• Everything about ready time will be better because it's not a matter of playing math and negotiating tonnage - it's just about picking which of your five 60-tonners is best suited to the map you're dropping on. There's no confusion, no forced social interaction for those that don't want it, and no animosity.
  
• Everyone gets to play exactly what they want. Want to play your cheesy Highlander and only your Cheesy Highlander? Go for it.
  
• It wastes far less time. Have you ever been in a 12-man in teamspeak? It takes for ******* ever to get them set up, and they're on coordinated teams, often with designated 'mechs. People like to fiddle and waste time and think too much. This reduces that choice to "which 35-ton 'mech is best for this map?" - something that could feasibly be chosen quickly.
  
• It doesn't require babysitting. You know people are going to go AFK. They do with the current ready screen. What makes you think they won't be holding up matches after this goes live? With a tonnage-based dropship, the first 'mech in (or one you designate) is simply the default choice, and if you care to swap it, you can, but if not, you aren't required to show up to vote and choose 'mechs to make the process work.

You can argue all you want that it will unfairly penalize assault pilots, but what does that tell you? It's pretty clear that assaults are the best class in the game by their very nature, and I don't believe that playing an assault every round should be treated like playing a medium every round. If you want the premium seats, you better be willing to wait in line.

At the end of the day, someone is necessarily going to get shafted with tonnage balancing. Will it be a reasonable penalty for assault pilots, or will it be an outlandish {Dezgra} fight before every round that every single player has to suffer through?

Edited by Homeless Bill, 03 December 2013 - 02:21 AM.

[Khanahar]

Happy about parts of this... (Davions and Steiners being on the same team, as implied, alleviates one of my primary fears about CW).

But it sounds like it'll take forever. Surely 2x60+seconds must be in error? Surely I'm mistaken that it might take 2 minutes of staring at the screen to get a match. Surely the lesson of the Ready screen we all hate isn't to make it take 8x as long.

Edit:
Also, shouldn't the bonus for readying up be for a single team, not dependent on both? And shouldn't the timer be like 15 seconds, with an automated system taking over and bumping players down to 'mechs in their ready list (or trials if need be?)

Edited by Khanahar, 02 December 2013 - 02:10 PM.

[aniviron]

Look, I know you're all freaking out about the tonnage numbers, but in the post that came before this one:

Note: Any numbers or words found with [ ] are for demonstration only and subject to change.

So maybe focus on what the post is about instead of talking about max tonnage.

[New Day]

Khanahar, on 02 December 2013 - 02:08 PM, said:

Also, shouldn't the bonus for readying up be for a single team, not dependent on both? And shouldn't the timer be like 15 seconds, with an automated system taking over and bumping players down to 'mechs in their ready list (or trials if need be?)

And for when even the trials are over tonnage we have the:
'Special Needs Locust'

That will teach you not to ready up.

[Reno Blade]

As I read it:

- Voting/Shuffle is for 2 maps. If you shuffle, the two maps will change to two other random maps.
So you can vote on one of the maps, or re-shuffle to get two other options, if you don't like the options. (See call of duty Modern Warfare for reference)

- Tonnage limits would make sense with 8v8 (min 30tons - max 60tons).
For 12v12 it would then be min 360tons - max 720tons.

- If your team does not meet the min/max limits, you need to change mechs.
A lot of chat will go off for people asking others to switch around.
As you need to ready up 2 -8 mechs (depending on owned Dropship bays) there should be enough people who have something lighter/heavier to change.

No idea about ELO with 8 mechs

Edited by Reno Blade, 02 December 2013 - 02:20 PM.

[Heffay]

My guess is that the queue times for assaults will get rather large in public matches. That would encourage assault pilots to get out of their plodders and into something a bit more svelte.

They should have an unlimited timer, queue times for your class, and the option to drop out of the queue. The problem will sort itself out that way. If you want a 20 minute wait to run your Atlas, so be it.

[fil5000]

Jman5, on 02 December 2013 - 02:05 PM, said:

I think it's 240 - 480 out of 8 mechs not 12.

On what are you basing that?


Also: The original tonnage limits they talked about seemed to make more sense - in that you wouldn't be restricted as a single player but that in groups of two and up you would start to see them, with the matchmaker ensuring that if 24 people dropped solo in assault mechs, they'd find themselves spread across matches to balance the restrictions placed on the group drops, leading to a 12 man team that would be within the upper and lower bounds. I am guessing this has proved trickier so the 240-480 hard limits are what we get instead. If it were a 600 or 660 limit I'd understand it more (as that's equivalent to everyone bringing a 50 or 55 tonner), but at 480 the heaviest thing you can bring is a cicada without your teammates having to agree to bring something smaller. If one person brings an atlas then the heaviest everyone else can bring becomes a Spider... it'd be interesting to see what company compositions people come up with in that environment, but it'll be a practical nightmare as everyone types in all caps that everyone else needs to get in a locust because them and their buddy only have highlanders.

[Corvus Antaka]

my only real concern is people not being prompt (ie afk, newbies, etc) and the time to launch matches taking forever, otherwise this all sounds great.

[Chemie]

480 tons for 12 players is 40 tons on average?

What happens when the timer runs out and everyone still has their Atlas selected?

Nice to see another CB nerf by adding even more time between games.

[Heffay]

Chemie, on 02 December 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

480 tons for 12 players is 40 tons on average?

What happens when the timer runs out and everyone still has their Atlas selected?

Nice to see another CB nerf by adding even more time between games.

[Brackets indicate placeholder values]

[fil5000]

Heffay, on 02 December 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

[Brackets indicate placeholder values]

Whatever the values actually are, if the decision as to what tonnage of mech you're bringing is left to the start of the match and it subject to all the players in a public game agreeing, it's going to be a nightmare.

[Chemie]

Current ready screen involves 2-5 players never hitting ready. I can only image the mess when everyone is sitting on their Highlander waiting for "the other guy" to take a locust to balance the weight. A ton of typing, whining, and chaos

[CarpetShark]

You want to see hatred in this brave new Mechwarrior: Play a less-than-optimal Atlas. Or be a new Atlas pilot...

Soooo many ways this is going to go terribly, horribly wrong.

[White Bear 84]

Jman5, on 02 December 2013 - 02:05 PM, said:

Interesting, but I'm worried that this will create a lot of angry players when that one guy forgets to ready up at the start. 10% can be over 15,000 cbills on a good match and players will probably verbally harass that guy who screws them out of the reward.

Perhaps the readying bonus should be limited to individual players/premades. So if you're in a 4-man and you all ready up on time, you get 10% bonus, but that random pug who was watching cat videos instead of readying wont get his bonus.

I just don't like the idea of allowing one guy to screw up a big reward for the entire game. It's going to cause a lot of unnecessary grief.

You sir deserve a medal for pointing out the obvious..

I would though be more annoyed about players that do not care about the bonus and deliberately troll the mechanism.

At the end of the day *no offense intended* you just cannot rely on individual pugs to work as a team or follow through on these things. PGI seem to be putting a lot of trust and power in the hands of singular players with this. Bad idea.

[Jman5]

fil5000, on 02 December 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

On what are you basing that?


Also: The original tonnage limits they talked about seemed to make more sense - in that you wouldn't be restricted as a single player but that in groups of two and up you would start to see them, with the matchmaker ensuring that if 24 people dropped solo in assault mechs, they'd find themselves spread across matches to balance the restrictions placed on the group drops, leading to a 12 man team that would be within the upper and lower bounds. I am guessing this has proved trickier so the 240-480 hard limits are what we get instead. If it were a 600 or 660 limit I'd understand it more (as that's equivalent to everyone bringing a 50 or 55 tonner), but at 480 the heaviest thing you can bring is a cicada without your teammates having to agree to bring something smaller. If one person brings an atlas then the heaviest everyone else can bring becomes a Spider... it'd be interesting to see what company compositions people come up with in that environment, but it'll be a practical nightmare as everyone types in all caps that everyone else needs to get in a locust because them and their buddy only have highlanders.

Primarily, it doesn't pass the smell test. 480 tons for 12 players? That's crazy low. It would be almost all lights. You couldn't even field an atlas and 11 jenners with that little tonnage.

60 ton average makes more sense which is what they were talking about before this. Incidentally 480 comes out to 60 ton average for 8 players. I get the feeling that because he kept talking about 8 mechs he was using that number without thinking.

To be perfectly blunt, I just wouldn't be surprised. I really appreciate the info-dump, but Bryan's articles have a tendency to be ambiguous and unintentionally misleading about certain details. They then later have to walk back what was said with subsequent posts.

[Felio]

Quote

Players have three choices during the voting phase, and may only chose to vote for one option. Vote for a match, vote to shuffle the match selection, or abstain from voting.

You forgot to tell us what we are actually voting to shuffle. The map? The game mode? The team members?

Quote

Each team tonnage total must fall between [240] and [480] tons

A 2:1 gap is insane. Absolutely bonkers. Find a way to tighten it or at least make sure one team isn't on the low end and the other is on the high end. They could both be low, both be high, but one vs the other will end in tears.

Edited by Felio, 02 December 2013 - 03:16 PM.

[Odins Fist]

White Bear 84, on 02 December 2013 - 02:40 PM, said:

You sir deserve a medal for pointing out the obvious..

I would though be more annoyed about players that do not care about the bonus and deliberately troll the mechanism.

At the end of the day *no offense intended* you just cannot rely on individual pugs to work as a team or follow through on these things. PGI seem to be putting a lot of trust and power in the hands of singular players with this. Bad idea.

.
I saw that possiblity as well, and almost recoiled in horror at the the thought of the consequences..
Then I saw Jman5 had already pointed out in a very similar fashion as to what I was going to say.
.
He does indeed deserve a "I caught that" Medal..

[soapyfrog]

Do not do this. Public matching should be a fun, no hassle experience. This sounds like a hassle filled [REDACTED].

The current system is fine. Just keep tweaking the matchmaker and let people drop with the mech they want.

Think it through. This is not going to be fun or interesting.

Edited by Destined, 02 December 2013 - 03:57 PM.
word filter evasion