8 replies to this topic

[Phashe]

Sorry if it was already suggested... In brief... Reward XP and c-bills in inverse proportion to the size of the mech. For example: a Locust doing 100 damage gets twice the XP and C-bills as an atlas doing 100 damage. Sliding scale in between. Or something to that effect.

I do not ever play lights, but I do not have to play them to know the grind stinks with anything under 50 tons. IMHO. There are exceptions, I get that, no need to post how wonderful you are in your 3L... A friend just quit MWO because he was a light pilot in previous games and TT, but the grind sucked in MWO (stinks for all in current economy, but I feel for the smaller chassis).

I have seen no signs PGI has ANY plans to encourage playing lighter iron after all this time, and always posts about a defecit in light players, so that is my suggestion. :-)

Edited by Phashe, 15 July 2014 - 07:19 AM.

[Lefty Lucy]

I'd make so much bank in my Jenner.

That being said, I rather enjoy being one of the rare light pilots these days. A DWF pilot was just complaining at the end of a game that we *won* that we didn't do well enough. I had 4 kills, he had zero. It was hilarious.

[Rhaythe]

Lights definitely need to be incentivized. They're still perfectly valid mechs and offer good support, but you're right in that the game offers no incentive for you to do so. Some ideas I know that have been proposed:

*) Add a percentage of spotting damage to the spotter's damage (after all, that damage would not have been done without the spotter risking himself)

*) Allow multiple TAG/NARC bonuses to stack

*) Increase counter-ECM bonuses

*) Reduce the area of effect on the DDC's ECM (to encourage more lights to run it)

I do also like your damage scaling idea based on mech class.

[Zerberus]

Simply incentivize whatever class is under 15 or 20% in the queues with a 15-20% c-bill and 5-10% xp bonus for solo players, problem solved. as soon as the population normalizes and all classes are between 20 and 30%, bonuses stop.

One could also do the inverse and have --15-20% cbills and -5-10% XP for a heavily overpopulated class, But I´m MUCH less a fan of that idea... Honey toast is usually better than a whip.

[Jman5]

cbill incentives wont work unless they put them on the main screen. When you hide the cbill rewards on the second page it means 99% of players wont even notice because they don't click it.

Honestly, the only way you're going to incentivize lights/mediums is if you create unique skills/abilities for each weight group.

[Fut]

Jman5, on 15 July 2014 - 07:46 AM, said:

Honestly, the only way you're going to incentivize lights/mediums is if you create unique skills/abilities for each weight group.

Agreed. A bonus to Cbill/Xp earning won't work very well.
People who don't particularly enjoy Lighter Mechs will be greedy enough to use them if there's a bonus, but then they'll complain about how much the chassis "suck". The forums will be flooded with more useless threads regarding Light/Mediums.

[Phashe]

All good points. But when you play a light (or medium) as it is needed to be played by your team, you get penalized by low xp & cbills. That does need fixed or buffed.

[Malleus011]

Give medium 'mechs a genuine battlefield role only they can fill.

Give light 'mechs a genuine battlefield role only they can fill.

Then players will play them without matchmaker chicanery.

There are dozens of suggestions on these boards about how to make Role Warfare incentivize playing the lesser played weight classes.

[Voivode]

A better idea might be to give a 10% cbill/XP bonus for running the chassis that is least represented in matches.

i.e. if it's 23% lights | 17% mediums | 34% heavies | 26% assaults then you get a the bonus for dropping in a medium.

Sort of like WoW does for healers / tanks when the queue population gets low for those roles.