70 replies to this topic

[ExAstris]

MWO has optimal configurations on optimal mechs. While there may not be a definitive "best of the best", its certainly the case that the majority of mechs are subpar, and many simply are never seen outside the rare pilot who is leveling its pilot trees for the sake of a better variant.

However, I contend that the battlefield is more fun when there is more variety. Playing multiple matches in a row and seeing half the mechs that drop be composed of the same 6 top tier variants of the best chasses is repetitive, unimaginative, and makes for less interesting games.


Thus, I have a few ideas for promoting the use of less popular chasses.




1: Introduce a once/X c-bill reward for a victory for each mech in your hanger. The exact time can be adjusted, but suppose it is just once per rolling month. If your goal is to make more c-bills, this bonus on every chassis will promote their individual use throughout the month instead of the same highest-efficiency mech over and over.

The reward being per-chassis also means that it is more likely to encourage long-term players who know the game well enough to know which mechs suck to go ahead and play them anyways from time to time. This also provides more incentive to buy more mechs as each new chassis slightly increases your overall earning potential (but only by a smidge in the grand scheme of things). And of course, the regular earnings can be reduced by a small percentage to compensate if necessary, but once/month earnings bonuses seems fairly harmless.



2: (Can be implemented separately or not at all) Introduce an additional weight to the matchmaker algorithm based on mech popularity. Call it the 'supply' factor. Mechs that keep getting taken from the shelf the instant they are built are in higher demand, so their 'cost to field' is higher. This makes the super popular mechs more likely to drop against opposing super popular mechs. This will help cut down on matches of DDCs, Highlanders, Victors, and Firestarters going against 7Ks, Awesomes, Dragons, and Cicadas.

While this somewhat helps with variety (if you play something not used much, your teams total drop value will be lower, meaning you're more likely to play against something not used much as well), it also serves as a sort of meta-balance. If you want to drive the Highlander, you're probably going to increase your teams drop value by a large amount, meaning you'll have to contend with something popular as well.

This feature would be especially nice once the weight differences are made stricter again as this would help make mechs of similar weight actually impact their teams total value appropriately. A Raven 3L shouldn't cost a team less to field than a Cicada 3C, etc.

Basically, balance by popularity.




So there are a few ideas to help promote variety. Monetary rewards for winning in unique chasses every so often, and an additional drop-value added to variants based on popularity so that piloting an unpopular machine (especially the ones that are objectively terrible) won't hurt your team nearly as much because you'll "cost" less to drop than popular mechs of similar tonnage.

[Mycrus]

A unicorn reward system.... The rarer the mech the greater the match reward...

[GreyGriffin]

I would definitely prefer fixing the mechanics that makes these top tier 'mechs top tier, such as ghost heat, jump jets, sniper like precision, AC/40, Gauss/30, armor/internal durability versus 'mech size and target profile.

[Alcom Isst]

GreyGriffin, on 23 February 2014 - 03:40 PM, said:

AC/40, Gauss/30

Last I checked AC/40 Jagermechs and Gauss/30 Ilyas weren't top tier at all. The former has terribly short range and wide vulnerable side torsos, the latter has only 21.5 tons to spend on armor, engine, and ammo.

[ExAstris]

GreyGriffin, on 23 February 2014 - 03:40 PM, said:

I would definitely prefer fixing the mechanics that makes these top tier 'mechs top tier, such as ghost heat, jump jets, sniper like precision, AC/40, Gauss/30, armor/internal durability versus 'mech size and target profile.

I would prefer the game be balanced from the ground up as well. But the past year has made it explicitly clear that this is not going to happen, at least not on any acceptable time-table (it took PGI a year to buff machine guns, and they still haven't taken to fixing ECM instead of adding more pseudo-counters).

So, in lieu of the plethora of better more fundamental fixes, this helps illicit the variety and combat we want from the top down instead of the ground up. Much simpler, helps smooth over rough spots, and doesn't rely on PGI acknowledging complicated arguments involving reason, math, and evidence.

[Mcgral18]

Alcom Isst, on 23 February 2014 - 03:49 PM, said:

Last I checked AC/40 Jagermechs and Gauss/30 Ilyas weren't top tier at all. The former has terribly short range and wide vulnerable side torsos, the latter has only 21.5 tons to spend on armor, engine, and ammo.

You're thinking of the Gauss/45, or 3 gauss rifles. A double gauss +ERPPC works well enough when you get used to the charge, plus jets, enough ammo and a 40 pinpoint strike to past 600M. That hurts.

[Khobai]

One easy way to promote variety is to disallow teams to have more than one of each type of mech.

[IceSerpent]

Khobai, on 23 February 2014 - 04:28 PM, said:

One easy way to promote variety is to disallow teams to have more than one of each type of mech.

That would simply result in virtually every team fielding same "top 12" configs.

[Deathlike]

Mycrus, on 23 February 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

A unicorn reward system.... The rarer the mech the greater the match reward...

So, my Jenner-K suddenly gets me richer? Awesome!

Khobai, on 23 February 2014 - 04:28 PM, said:

One easy way to promote variety is to disallow teams to have more than one of each type of mech.

Without thinking too hard about this, but that would actually make the MM's job harder. Just think about this for a moment.

For instance, the Firestarter was on a new rage this month. Had such an idea was implemented, there would probably be some gridlock trying to construct such match parameters. Remember there's only actually 28 mechs in this game, so trying to get 12 of 28 is... very difficult. This is worsen by newbies with limited mechs and mechbay options (trial mechs Stalkers galore).

[Deathlike]

IceSerpent, on 23 February 2014 - 04:39 PM, said:

That would simply result in virtually every team fielding same "top 12" configs.

So...

Atlas
Stalker
Victor
Highlander
Jenner
Raven (3L)
Spider (5D)
Firestarter
Cataphract
Shadowhawk
*insert 2 more middlingly meta-compliant mechs here*

Done.

[Sandpit]

Mycrus, on 23 February 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

A unicorn reward system.... The rarer the mech the greater the match reward...

I've actually suggested a similar idea across the board. Don't just end it with a reward for using that chassis, include dynamic pricing so that the less popular mechs are cheaper to purchase than the popular ones. Same with engines, weapons, modules, etc.
Then as popularity rises on something so does that price. It would help encourage diversity as well as represent a "supply and demand" type economy. The more people buying one item, the more the price increases.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Deathlike, on 23 February 2014 - 04:45 PM, said:

So...

Atlas
Stalker
Victor
Highlander
Jenner
Raven (3L)
Spider (5D)
Firestarter
Cataphract
Shadowhawk
*insert 2 more middlingly meta-compliant mechs here*

Done.

So basically most games I play now?

[luxebo]

Deathlike, on 23 February 2014 - 04:45 PM, said:

Atlas
Stalker
Victor
Highlander
Jenner
Raven (3L)
Spider (5D)
Firestarter
Cataphract
Shadowhawk
Jagermech
Catapult K2

There you go.

[Davers]

Sandpit, on 23 February 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

I've actually suggested a similar idea across the board. Don't just end it with a reward for using that chassis, include dynamic pricing so that the less popular mechs are cheaper to purchase than the popular ones. Same with engines, weapons, modules, etc.
Then as popularity rises on something so does that price. It would help encourage diversity as well as represent a "supply and demand" type economy. The more people buying one item, the more the price increases.

Not sure how that would fit in with CW effecting mech pricing as well.

[Deathlike]

Sandpit, on 23 February 2014 - 04:47 PM, said:

I've actually suggested a similar idea across the board. Don't just end it with a reward for using that chassis, include dynamic pricing so that the less popular mechs are cheaper to purchase than the popular ones. Same with engines, weapons, modules, etc.
Then as popularity rises on something so does that price. It would help encourage diversity as well as represent a "supply and demand" type economy. The more people buying one item, the more the price increases.

Just understand that to some degree, this hurts newbies more than you think. When you're raking in the cash, this becomes inconsequential. When you're starting the game... it is a massively expensive proposition for them. They may not have to be meta compliant, but just acquiring the mechs and the time to get there can be become overbearing if the cost adjustments don't put the value out of whack.

luxebo, on 23 February 2014 - 04:52 PM, said:

There you go.

I forgot about the dakkamech (I'm not in that camp of liking it yet). Essentially, there's practically like 10 or so mechs worth looking at and the rest is... mediocre or complete garbage. That's not what I'd call "balance".

[Sandpit]

Davers, on 23 February 2014 - 04:52 PM, said:

Not sure how that would fit in with CW effecting mech pricing as well.

Well that's where LP could come into play I would imagine. LP for a faction would give you a discounted price the more LP you obtain? That's how I've envisioned it since they announced them and based on what little they have said about them. Want something to gripe about? Gripe about the fact that we have an item that many of us purchased, has been in the game for 7? months now, and STILL serves no function even though it was announced that it would.
THAT'S BS in my opinion and still irritates me to no end.

Deathlike, on 23 February 2014 - 04:54 PM, said:

Just understand that to some degree, this hurts newbies more than you think. When you're raking in the cash, this becomes inconsequential. When you're starting the game... it is a massively expensive proposition for them. They may not have to be meta compliant, but just acquiring the mechs and the time to get there can be become overbearing if the cost adjustments don't put the value out of whack.".

That could easily be taken care of by giving all new players a discounted price for their first chassis (and by discount I mean the base price as opposed to the dynamic pricing unless that mech already has a lower price due to the system I described) and then a discount for the next two variants they purchase of that mech in order to master them. (Not applied to hero mechs though) New players then have the advantage and aren't hindered by it.

[Davers]

Sandpit, on 23 February 2014 - 05:01 PM, said:

Want something to gripe about? Gripe about the fact that we have an item that many of us purchased, has been in the game for 7? months now, and STILL serves no function even though it was announced that it would.
THAT'S BS in my opinion and still irritates me to no end.

Command Console wants a word with you.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Double c-bills on first win with each variant every week would go a long way toward making the free players feel more wanted, and the easier time they'd have with getting more mechs might get them to purchase more mechbays (which I suspect are PGI's primary source of MC spending). Plus any promotion like that tends to draw in players, even if only for a few games during whatever period the promo cools down in. Players are content in any multiplayer f2p game, so more players more often is good for everyone.

[lsp]

Doesn't bother me, no matter what changes are made people are still going run whatever is optimal. No way around it.

[Khobai]

Quote

That would simply result in virtually every team fielding same "top 12" configs.

its an improvement over every team fielding the same "top 3" configs