Kjudoon, on 28 July 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:
What you call "playing the game" is a misnomer. Playing the game without taking damage, you are rewarded with the full payout. Playing the game and dying or becoming extremely damaged ads a C-Bill value to your bad choices or bad play or just plain bad luck. It's when you win and salvage is possible you can really thrive or use it to make up for your losses. Not all gameplay styles are equal, good or smart. It's time to start acknowledging that.
This is not "punishment" this is the causality of choice and circumstance.
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is a punishment, or more accurately negative reinforcement, for brand new players that don't yet have good skills, or good parts, or both. You are not effecting the veteran established players that are running the LRM boats or dual PPC/Gauss, or dual PPC/(U)AC/5 builds in any significant way. Make my net income zero after a match with these builds you seek to deter, or even a loss if I really derp a match.
I don't care. New players can't make that statement, can't effectively compete with inferior equipment, don't get to choose their circumstance, and wouldn't be able to afford the equipment to make better build choices. Limit the time availability post match, whatever, I'll just buy more mechs and mech bays to circumvent the timers.
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I see it correcting lots of gameplay issues. I've mentioned them 3 times before. Maybe our definition of 'fix' and 'issue' aren't matching.
It doesn't make PPC/Gauss/AC combos any less effective in combat. It doesn't stop the players with the C-Bills (Or willing to use real money transactions) from playing the "expensive" builds you are looking to deter in the first place. They make no changes to the mechanics that make these builds so clearly the most effective min-maxed builds.
Making things more expensive via R&R doesn't solve any problems, it creates problems. So no, it doesn't really fix any gameplay issues, gives PGI a potential additional revenue stream at the cost of shifting toward "pay to win" when Community Warfare hits, and drives players away.
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Then your argument is invalid. If all repair costs were 50k, you'd be right.
The costs of the repairs are irrelevant. The net effect of R&R is that it just lowers the per match earnings which is the point I was making. There are much simpler ways to do this (If it was even needed) without R&R. As I pointed out further in my post, the costs of getting started with the game past trial mechs was so bad for new players that PGI implemented the cadet bonus just to give starting players a leg up on getting to customization and the real "fun" of MW:O. Your changes make the new player experience even worse which I will vehemently oppose.
Even scaling the costs based on mech build doesn't matter. I don't care how much it costs for R&R, up to the point I just stop playing entirely because it becomes stupidly expensive to play due to bad R&R mechanics getting in the way of the game.
How about we keep the R&R concept scrapped and just address the real core gameplay issues of weapon balance, heat mechanics, and a real solution for point point high alpha damage instead? Make balanced BattleTech tabletop type builds the best builds to take into combat and that's what you'll see in the game.
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But since bad players may have to replace their mech or repair 75% of it for 250k, it's a big deal.
Yes, charging a new player 250k when you earn maybe 75k-100k for a bad match would be a big deal. You would drive all new player traffic away when they can't pilot the shiny new mech they just purchased with their cadet bonus because they are still learning the game and have consistently bad performance because they are still learning.
Sure, you can throw in real money to get past the "pay wall" quicker, although if you want a good case study in what this looks like for new players, go look at the backlash over EA's Dungeon Keeper for mobile and the dig speed rates.
This is why I said you would have to prop up R&R with a percentage of free repairs to prevent players from going in the hole with a bad match and a "worst case scenario" of zero net gain after repairs if you truly had a dismal match performance.
For me, I'd still continue to run LRM boats and pin point damage meta builds because I can afford to do so. Again, what's the point of R&R when it doesn't stop the min-max builds and just burdens the new and unskilled player?
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this assumes massively careless implementation. With a computer, maybe you can only get salvage from mechs you assisted on, and even then whole parts are rare, and you're only getting money from the scrap value. Regardless, this goes to the whole dynamic economy of supply and scarcity. Every piece of equipment in the system lowers the price. Every piece of equipment outside the system (by purchase or destruction) raises the price. With constant warfare, the need will outstrip the supply even with salvage. Them's the entropic breaks, boys.
No problem, myself and any other "whales" still playing MW:O at that point will circumvent your economy (If it is even required) and use real money transactions to purchase any weapons/equipment/ammo replacements we need regardless of the C-Bill price. The high skilled players and/or the ones with fat wallets with the top end equipment will eventually drive up the price high enough that you would damn near have to pay real money to get competitive mechs onto the field. If you limit the numbers available, the top end players buy up all the available stock, leaving nothing left for anyone else.
That's great for PGI and the players with the means to get parts, sucks for players that don't want to or are unable to invest that much on the game (i.e. everyone else). I suspect the active player count would be dramatically crushed by that point. That's your free market economy entropic breaks you wanted, though.
Sandslice, on 28 July 2014 - 11:25 AM, said:
like I said, the only thing I was going for was a basic non-economic R&R system, in order to try to blunt OP's dismissal of economy-based objections. It's not a refined idea, and I actually want to explore it further (and maybe address P2W, if there's any chance of it being a non-Sisyphean task.)
There in lies the problems with negative reinforcement money sinks. Economy based penalties cause problems because it would be a "pay wall" to be circumvented with RMT reeking of P2W. The only other option besides economy is time which is a game quitting irritant for players: "What do you mean I can't play this new mech I just bought again for 10 minutes unless I pay a bunch of C-Bills or MC for better techs?" (Again, see EA Dungeon Keeper)
Neither option hurts established players that can afford C-Bill penalties, or for the later case buy and outfit multiple carbon copy mechs to circumvent timers.
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