25 replies to this topic

[ByteHacker]

Many of you probably remember the time when we had repair and rearm. It was glitchy and somewhat broken, but it did to some extend stop people from doing PPC+Gauss Pop tarting.

My suggestion is that we bring back R&R not just as a balancing factor but also as an immersion factor.

Here's how it could work.

• The number of players buying and fielding a weapon sets the demand graph
  
• The developers could set a "Supply" limit which will affect equilibrium prices
  
• Developers could set some "Flash news" like "High Powered Capacitors are low in supplies due to a civil war on Capella, causing sky rocketing prices for PPCs and Gauss Rifles"
  
• Another one could be "Due to new trade agreements between Aldis Industries and Ceres Metal Industries, there has been a large surplus of Short Range Missile Packs.
  
• ALL mechs will receive the standard 75% Free R&R, But the mech cannot drop till it is fully repaired

Normal market Graph




Market Graph with Supply Shortage


Market Graph with Demand Shortage


Other Possible Features.

• Mech Salvage and refitting. A player has a chance to salvage a piece of equipment from destroyed components or mechs that he downs. Lets say our player scores a headshot on the enemy mech, The CT and everything else is left intact, so our player has a slim chance to salvage the undamaged components like the Engine or a laser that was untouched.
  
• Pilot insurance. Mechwarriors can choose to forgo all salvaged components, and pay a small fee of 20000 C-Bills. in return, the insurance will compensate you 75% the value of components that were destroyed

Pilot Insurance Case Study


In this case study, the pilot has suffered a devastating loss resulting the in the destruction of his right and centre torso, we look into how the pilot insurance can help less daring Mechwarriors who don't particularly fancy the idea of high risk high reward.






I sincerely believe that this could potentially create a dynamic balance that could ease the "Balance tension" between the devs and the community. Nerfs need not wait 2-4 weeks to come, a simple change in demand and supply will steer the market in a way that will discourage certain build but still leave the option to be fielded if the pilot was desperate enough.

Please offer your feedback .

[Alistair Winter]

At this point, the economy has run rampant for so long that I think using C-bills as balancing is a bad move. And yeah, I'm aware PGI still pretends C-bills are part of balance, but we all know it's just a grind tax.

If this sort of market mechanic had been enforced since the game's inception, it would have been ok. But by now, people have hoarded hundreds of millions of C-bills, and the price of gauss rifles is irrelevant. I can just wait until CW comes along and people will fight over a factory planet to get a 10% discount on large lasers, but that's another story.

Either the economy would have to be restarted to make repair and rearm relevant, or the economy would have to be redesigned to make hoarding impossible. Neither of these things will happen. Unfortunately, we're stuck with the status quo, as PGI believes this will create the most revenue.

EDIT: To be clear, I think your idea is inappropriate because it punishes the wrong group of players. Veteran players with cookie cutter poptart builds will be entirely unaffected.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 10 July 2014 - 09:09 PM.

[ByteHacker]

Alistair Winter, on 10 July 2014 - 09:06 PM, said:

EDIT: To be clear, I think your idea is inappropriate because it punishes the wrong group of players. Veteran players with cookie cutter poptart builds will be entirely unaffected.

That is a good point. There will be problems initially with veteran players having an immensely high amount of c-bills. My take on it is that it would be a slow war of attrition. Sure the Vets would be dominating on the field in the beginning, but after about 3 months or so, most would start to realise that their c-bill accounts are dwindling. This has a certain psychological effect on the player. -100,000 c-bills per match isn't that much to a C-millionare. but after around 100 matches, that would be a whole 10 million c-bills lost. eventually, the stock pile of 100 million c-bills will slowly decay.

[627]

You can't balance the gameplay with R&R no matter how you implement it. R&R is a metagame. This has nothing to do with the actual combat and it shouldn't.

All you'll see is that veteran or "richer" players just pay for whatever they need to field "their" build, especially if you go to higher elo tiers or tournaments.
Look at Airstrikes, taking two is 80k cbills, a big part of your earnings in a match and no one hesitates to push that button.

All you'll do with it is punishing smaller and free players who have to grind for every med laser and who will effectively kicked out of the run-an-XL-Mech club.

[meteorol]

Premium time, hero mechs, MC packs.

80% flat bonus on your balacing tool. You can't use something to balance that paying players can have unlimited access to by just openig their wallet. It will throw this game deep into the p2w discussion and do more harm than it will help.

It was somewhat nice when it was in the game, but with the current way of just paying MC for Cbills it will set this game on fire.

[Vassago Rain]

No.

I already killed this once. When there's CW, and if it's not just filling faction bars on a java map, and if we're all still playing by then, I'll consider reading OPs about RnR.

Until then, please stop.

[FupDup]

1. Buy Champion Cicada for MC
2. Sell said Champion Cicada for C-Bills
3. ???
4. Infinite money! Dosh!

[Zerberus]

All this does is gimp the newbies and F2P players that already have to grind endlessly into flying cheap loadouts while empowering the players that have millions of c-bills and /or premium time into being able to play whatever they want.

That`s not balance, that`s borderline P2W, in fact almost to the point of P2P if you have a cool mech that you really want to drive but can`t afford to so you`re forced to fly something cheap that you suck in for 5-10 matches until you can afford to pilot your own mech again.

All this will do is reintroduce DC farming and dropping in unrepaired mechs, giving us the same FUBARed experience that we had in CB shortly before open beta, the same experience that caused hundreds to leave and not look back to this day. For ex. my former unit that I played in for the better part of a decade still refuses to even reinstall, all 23 of them, because R+R was so pervasive that they still fully expect a new P2W mechanic to be introduced at anytime and they don`t play P2W games. So instead they play MW:LL, which they "know" will "always" be free.

Edited by Zerberus, 10 July 2014 - 11:03 PM.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Sorry but this concept has been beaten to death over how it will not impact the targeted audience and will instead further disenfranchise new and more casual players. Driving those players away is bad for the game's overall retention and will likely be one decision PGI does not make because it will have a noticeable effect on bottom line.

[Kiiyor]

I'd like to see repair and rearm drop after CW. It would be great to see factions get discounts on certain repairs/etc. I like your idea, but at the moment, the players with bajillions of cbills will have an even wider advantage over newbies.

Also, didn't the devs state (once upon a time) that they were looking into having equipment produced by different manufacturers? I think repair and rearm would make more sense in that context.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

My only addition is we need Community Warfare first; but R&R as a piece of CW, yup we sure could use that as further immersion.

[maniacos]

I still don't get why poptarting is such a problem that it needs so much debates, even diagrams and harsh changes in gameplay aspects.
Honestly, why don't you just sit the poptarts out? Or organize your faster mechs to stir the tard cluster up so that you can actually get them eventually?

poptarting is possible because JJ and therefore people will do it. Everything that has been suggested or implemented to deal with poptarts is nothing more than cosmetics to a (non existing) problem and every solution has more or less negatively affected non-poptarts more than the proclaimed proplem itself.

And furthermore, what game could we have if PGI put as much effort into maps, matchmaker, CW, new mechs... as they put into the dance around the balancing of poptarts?

[ktKAPS]

Great idea but the entire match would turn into long range sniping battles where everyone would be hiding as they don't want to take damage as they can't afford to repair their mech.

If you think people crying foul now and saying it is P2W I could only imagine after something like this would get implemented as new players would severely be gimped along with other people who don't have have a lot of c-bills.

As stated I love the idea but I think it would drive off new players and other players who truly don't understand how mech combat works and simply want to treat it like any other first person shooter as they simply die and they can't afford the repair costs or simply never get ahead.

[Mechteric]

It didn't work before, it won't work now, especially now that CBill earnings are fairly low for the most part. No need to make the grind worse, its already at a point where it probably should be for PGI to incentivize money purchases.

[ztac]

Don't give PGI more ideas on how to take even more C-Bills off the players!

Also when players have stockpiles of weapons it will only hurt new players.

[Bobzilla]

There are big problems with this. 'Better' players can afford 'Better' equipment, meaning new players get stuck in a rut.

Also the frequency of use of something has nothing to do with it's effectiveness in many cases. ML lasers and MGs are used more for convience than effectiveness. I'd bet MGs (usually mulitples used) would end up costing more than a gauss rifle.

[Davers]

ByteHacker, on 10 July 2014 - 09:19 PM, said:

That is a good point. There will be problems initially with veteran players having an immensely high amount of c-bills. My take on it is that it would be a slow war of attrition. Sure the Vets would be dominating on the field in the beginning, but after about 3 months or so, most would start to realise that their c-bill accounts are dwindling. This has a certain psychological effect on the player. -100,000 c-bills per match isn't that much to a C-millionare. but after around 100 matches, that would be a whole 10 million c-bills lost. eventually, the stock pile of 100 million c-bills will slowly decay.

If the veteran's stockpiles of millions of Cbills will be dwindling, then how can new players ever make a cent?

[Shlkt]

R&R ultimately failed for several reasons, all of which are still relevant:

1) Players who buy mech X want to play mech X, without worrying about whether they can afford to lose it
2) R&R incentivized cowardice. Some players would hide as soon as the battle started to turn against them, for fear of having to pay repair costs
3) Without an ongoing struggle of some sort (i.e. community warfare) costs have no meaning besides grinding.

Even if CW is finally implemented I don't think C-Bill cost adjustments would make for interesting gameplay; most of us already own our 'mechs and equipment anyway. I'd rather see in-game adjustments to equipment performance based on galaxy wide events.

Example: Marik loses control of a PPC factory; due to shortage of replacements and spare parts, their PPCs do 20% less damage until another source of parts can be acquired. Enemy PPCs would still function at full strength. These sorts of adjustments would have to be restricted to CW games, of course.

If you wanted to go the C-bill route then you'd have to simulate an additional, CW-only bank accounts. Your pilot might own mech X, but you couldn't use it in a CW game until it was purchased with CW-bills or whatever. If it gets destroyed then you have to buy it again with CW-bills before dropping with it in a CW Game. The CW-bill cost could then be adjusted according to the current state of the galaxy and your faction. The whole system would probably be too complicated for most players' tastes, which is why I think the previous system would work better.

Edited by Shlkt, 11 July 2014 - 09:33 AM.

[Mechteric]

Shlkt, on 11 July 2014 - 09:32 AM, said:

2) R&R incentivized cowardice. Some players would hide as soon as the battle started to turn against them, for fear of having to pay repair costs

Even worse, many players would just not pay the repair/rearm costs, take the free 75% and go into the next battle damaged because otherwise their paycheck would suffer even more.

[CyclonerM]

Seriously?!

EVERY F2P game has Repair & Rearm because it makes sense both for game and immersion purposes.. Why no one to my knowdledge has ever complained?!