21 replies to this topic

[Dorion]

Hey Guys,

Even though I'm a founder, I didn't start playing until a couple weeks ago when the Dire Wolf was released. (Good thing I did, the anniversary specials are awesome). Anyhow, from some reading on the forums I understand at one time the game included ammo and repair costs. Is that true? If so, how extreme were they? I'd be interested to know. Also, why did they end it?

Thanks for the education.

[RussianWolf]

yes, at one point that was in game. The costs were dependent on which parts you had destroyed (standard engines was cheaper to repair than an XL for instance, but it wasn't the cost of a completely new engine in either case). You were also gifted with either 75% or 80% repair and ammo at no costs (R&R was an option you had to click IF you had the cbills for it). They did away with it by reducing the cbill awards such that R&R was "included" so you always had a fresh mech. The reason behind that was some people had a hard time gaining ground while keeping their mech repaired so that they could buy the next mech. So it was seen as a Grind Wall. If you ran really low on cbills and couldn't repair your mech to your desired level, you had to take out the trials which at the time were completely stock mechs.

Edited by RussianWolf, 22 September 2014 - 11:25 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

The game did include R&R for a bit.

It didn't go very well. Things like XL engines, ferrous, and endo were expensive to repair. Also ammo wasn't terribly cheap either.

If you won and lived, everything was fine.
If you lost and lived, you might barely come out or break even.
If you lost and died, you would loose money.

Now, using a hero mech or buying premium time helped, but if you played without those things, you would never make any C-bills. The average W/L is 50%/50%, so it really made it impossible to save money.

They could have made it cheaper to R&R, but that meant winners, who lived, had a hero mech, and premium time would make way too much money while a new player barely scraped by. It came across as very P2W.

So basically they discontinued R&R and cut the C-Bill earnings down to try and establish a descent grind for everyone.

That is where we are now.

[Dorion]

Ahhh Thanks guys. Appreciate the explanation. I played a lot of World of Tanks, so I was very familiar with the concept there. Was very delighted to find none when I migrated my gaming to MWO. I'm wondering if MWO is worried that premium time and hero mech purchases will decline since the its easier for the gamers to make c-bill with no R&R. Don't get me wrong, not trying to make the game more expensive for people. Just wondering about the real financial health of the game in the long run. Again, just wondering out loud (or in print).

[DarthPeanut]

It would be terrible.

New players would have a struggle getting started and quickly lose interest in the game. It would also encourage people to turtle up and camp even more.

Edited by DarthPeanut, 22 September 2014 - 11:30 AM.

[LauLiao]

I remember running a mech with EndoSteel, XL engine, and Artemis LRMs, and even when we won I usually lost money.

[EgoSlayer]

The amount of pay per match has changed a great deal since closed beta, but when R&R was in place it was at it's absolute lowest if you were a solo player and/or average or below skill because a loss and a death was very expensive. Some mechs even a win and a death would nearly wipe out your earnings.
Earnings now are a grind, but nowhere near the low point it was with R&R.

[Elizander]

Dorion, on 22 September 2014 - 11:28 AM, said:

I'm wondering if MWO is worried that premium time and hero mech purchases will decline since the its easier for the gamers to make c-bill with no R&R.

They don't need it that much. They sell mechp0rn.

[Jetfire]

Premium Time and Hero mechs meant you could afford to play, all else took the free ammo and armor 75% refill. Class Warfare. Glad it went the way of the Dodo even if I was basically unaffected in my premium time heros.

[Lefty Lucy]

8-mans who steamrolled PUGs constantly could afford to run good tech, which helped them steamroll PUGs constantly. It was a never-ending cycle of suck.

[RussianWolf]

it wouldn't be quite as bad now, since the Trials are all Champion mechs that are optimized decently. The trials were always ready at 100% regardless of win/loss/death/etc. But now the trials are by far, better mechs.

[Lefty Lucy]

RussianWolf, on 22 September 2014 - 11:49 AM, said:

it wouldn't be quite as bad now, since the Trials are all Champion mechs that are optimized decently. The trials were always ready at 100% regardless of win/loss/death/etc. But now the trials are by far, better mechs.

Yeah, but now we have mech modules, weapon modules, and double efficiencies that give owned mechs a monumental advantage over trials, regardless.

[Redshift2k5]

Repair costs could be pretty high and ammo costs were very high. If you fully repaired and reloaded your mech every match it was possible to run in the red and very easy to barely profit; many players would specifically run cheap mechs, run them without repair at all, just to earn a few c-bills

ammo also gave you 50% of your reload for free/automatically, so people would load twice as much ammo as they wanted and rely on the minimal auto reload to get by.

Now imagine your whole team is comprised of players with minimum reloads and minimum repairs and no upgrades/expensive tech.

It was disproportional to weapon systems and player's wallets. if you were broke you had to run energy weapons, if you had a Catapult A1 and could only use ammo you had to load twice as much and lean on the mimimum reload, and generally you couldn't earn enough c-bills without gaming the system in some way. if you had mechs and mc you didn't need c-bills as much.

[Scratx]

To be fair, the 75% thing became a ridiculous exploit. Just repair your mech and bring more ammo than you actually expect to need by a third. Bang. No need to ever spend a cbill on ammunition ever again.

If anything, that just showed how broken the whole system was as implemented. Besides encouraging actions that were borderline griefing, such as suiciding with unrepaired mechs, etc.

It wasn't pretty. RnR might've worked far better if it forced people to fully rearm and repair and had sane costs for ammunition, especially Artemis and Streaks. As it was, it was painful. Not really a joke to say that one of my best money makers was a K2 Catapult with just lasers, endo-steel chassis (it was actually cheap to repair), standard armor and standard engine. Common denominator? Bloody cheap to repair, no ammo required.

I still have it these days, except now I have it with 2 ER Larges and 2 Larges instead for the 2 Larges, 2 Mediums I used to have. Not sure off-hand what I did to make it so. Might've XL'ed it.

[Ritterzero]

There were also a lot of people who just never repaired their mechs and didn't care about hindering their team. So you would get an Atlas for example which started the match at 80%. These people just cared about grinding money.

[Koniving]

Dorion, on 22 September 2014 - 11:05 AM, said:

Hey Guys,

Even though I'm a founder, I didn't start playing until a couple weeks ago when the Dire Wolf was released. (Good thing I did, the anniversary specials are awesome). Anyhow, from some reading on the forums I understand at one time the game included ammo and repair costs. Is that true? If so, how extreme were they? I'd be interested to know. Also, why did they end it?

Thanks for the education.

Well, the typical Commando of a 1 TAG, 2 LRM-5 + ammo with a modestly sized standard or XL engine cost about 18,000 to 36,000 to repair. The XL engine didn't put much sway against destruction costs because other costs were lighter as a result of a quick death, though the standard engine version of the same build typically made more money; the extra damage however would make the costs about the same either way.

At the time because rewards would repeat, and didn't require actual hits on the enemy only firing with locks, TAG/NARC and spotting rewards would stack and at a given time when the entire team had LRMs you could easily pick up 60,000 in a few seconds of spotting/tagging. Granted you had to get within 450 meters. Casually standing behind an enemy force and tagging them quietly was about the best way to go, fire every now and then to add more cash to the basket.

Most I ever made in one match (with premium time) was 3 million cbills.

The typical Atlas would have costs in the 80,000 range, typically. Those that really got into the fight might be losing about 200,000. XL engine? You could easily be looking at between 4 and 500,000 if you did NOT have CASE installed on both side torsos (or died by CT). Thankfully most people aimed for the cockpits, keeping your costs low. That's counting repairs and rearm at 100% rearm.
Atlases typically made between 180,000 to 400,000 per match. Most I ever earned was 518,000. My repair bill was quite low, the ammo bill was about 100,000 because I had entirely ammo based weaponry.



The kind of combat that was prevalent at the time and for a brief while after. Notice the ARM-aiming? That was the ONLY way to get pinpoint aiming back then, and even then there was delayed convergence. Pinpoint did not exist. Poptarting was virtually useless. And mechs lived for an incredible amount of time.


In this fight, I fight as if we still had repair and rearm. Chain fired lasers and all. But that age passed and I'm just a relic.


Clan mechs would be far harder to run than IS mechs.
-----------
Now, R&R in Battletech is harsh time-wise, but it isn't anywhere near as bad as MWO was in actual costs. I believe the system could have worked with an overhaul -- and most importantly Community Warfare.

As the original design was, it worked great up until the multi-earned rewards stopped. Once all rewards became one time, it became far too expensive. The 80% free ammo created exploits that began the first MASS BOATING OF ALL THE WEAPONS...soon leading to all the boating we have seen ever since.

Scouting died when rewards changed to one time deliveries, and rewards for capturing the base were removed. Everything shifted to kills and damage, must get kills and damage to make any money. Even after R&R got removed, the game has sunken into that mentality ever since.

[Mercules]

You people. R&R wasn't that bad. You could easily make money even not in 8-man groups just PuGging. You couldn't run the most expensive mech out there with tons of ammo that blew up and every upgrade imaginable and lose most of your games and make money and that had people whining to no end.

[Koniving]

Ritterzero, on 22 September 2014 - 12:01 PM, said:

There were also a lot of people who just never repaired their mechs and didn't care about hindering their team. So you would get an Atlas for example which started the match at 80%. These people just cared about grinding money.

I've seen Atlases that start with a leg or arm missing, and still turned the entire tide of the battle as one of the winning units that did the most damage. Sometimes you just can't afford repairs. That's one of the niceties of the system, you'd run your mediums/lights to make plenty of extra money and use that to make up the difference. Unfortunately, some people only wanted to run assaults and it bit them harshly in the wallet.

[Alistair Winter]

The original version of R&R was poorly implemented and so all the players and the Devs collectively agreed that it was impossible to get it right. Which, bless their heart, makes no sense on any level.

I hope we get a new version of R&R with Community Warfare.

#istillbelieve

[Koniving]

Mercules, on 22 September 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

You people. R&R wasn't that bad. You could easily make money even not in 8-man groups just PuGging. You couldn't run the most expensive mech out there with tons of ammo that blew up and every upgrade imaginable and lose most of your games and make money and that had people whining to no end.

Indeed. Back then with and without premium time, I could get a new mech every day. Earn 2 million in this match. Run an Atlas, make about 200,000 profit. Jump in the Jenner, earn about a million and a half, jump in an Awesome die instantly and lose money, jump in a Hunchback and make about 400,000.. Just on and off.

Of course there were times when something would go wrong, and well setbacks do happen. But it was great being able to run a Hunchback at 64.8 kph and take on two Atlases and last a while before dying. Sadly fights like that are the ones that take more than you might have earned.

What people really hated were the matches that ended without a fight at all; it meant big bucks for the winners and nothing at all for the losers (who already spent money on weapon fire and needed some repairs). That's where people REALLY hated R&R. Someone captures a base, and bam, you got nothing. And if you got killed? Time to flip the table!

Though, this quickly taught people that defending the base was VERY important. So leaving one Atlas or Heavy at the base? Very damn good idea!

Edited by Koniving, 22 September 2014 - 12:15 PM.