165 replies to this topic

[p4r4g0n]

Good in principle, questionable in implementation.

Correct me if I am wrong but it appears from the limited sample of matches I played in my existing fully mastered mechs that the upper limit for rewards has been raised and apparently quite significantly. If so, this implies that the lower limit has also been lowered significantly in order to maintain the "average" and this seems to be borne out by my experience while grinding out the Centurion AH.

In addition to this, the reward system is quite complicated and steepens the learning curve even further for new players.

If my observations are correct, I predict a drop in new player retention and possible decrease in existing player numbers as this revamp has simultaneously made it even more difficult to grind c-bills and level mechs for certain categories of players.

I strongly urge that you draw a sample of players from various Elo levels and compare their individual rewards pre and post the revamp rather than using just global averages and the overall economy to evaluate the impact of the reward system revamp. The former will give you an insight into the experience of the individual players while the latter approach does not which ultimately is what is important here.

Meanwhile, I note that the c-bill rewards are being adjusted upwards based on the recent hot-fix announcement but there was no mention of any adjustment to the xp rewards.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 22 October 2014 - 03:35 PM.

[Alexander Schmidt]

Hey Folks,

I have added an update to the original post in this thread.

[Jetfire]

Alexander Schmidt, on 22 October 2014 - 05:05 PM, said:

Hey Folks,

I have added an update to the original post in this thread.

Sounds good. I would add some sort of bonus for absorbing damage and a multiplier to that bonus for surviving the match. This has been mentioned in some threads and would encourage torso twisting and seeking cover when practical but discourage outright hiding when full armored. Too many heavies and assaults tend to sit in the back row for fear of scratching their paint and let the lights and mediums spend all their armor before they wade into battle and finish off the wounded.

[Thor 33]

Wow. Just played my first game in 'rewards' 2. I play skirmish because I don't like playing with lites who don't want to fight-my team got stomped, lost 5-12. I did ~350 damage, 1 kill, 3 assists. Got 144 xp, 41,000cb. ??? I came back after months away to find your making the game worse. I'm trying to save CB for the ryoken release, but I won't do it now. My average CB pull was 90K+. You need to improve this!!! Reward's for kills and assists need drastic bumps.

[YUyahoo]

Paul Inouye, on 21 October 2014 - 05:10 PM, said:

Please leave any feedback you may have regarding Alex's post on the new Reward 2.0 system here.

Spoiler

<p>Greetings,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I would like to take a moment and update you on the new Rewards 2.0 system. As this feature added so many new rewards, it was necessary to rebalance the amount of C-Bills being rewarded and keeping the game economy in check. As you can imagine it is a pretty exciting moment when a feature like this goes live for the first time, and to see what is actually happening as data flows in from games being played.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I am very pleased to tell you that, after a first gathering of data, the reward economy stayed stable. We are currently looking at fluctuations between 5% to 10% compared to what it was before. What we have found is, the economy is still intact and the new rewards are functioning very well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>However, many of you have reported varying numbers to what you have recieved before. This is due to the new system being more targeted to role-warfare. What this translates to, is that the more specific actions based on your role on the battlefield, that you perform, results in higher earnings than before. In order to balance out the new C-Bill rewards, we had to reassess the current reward structure which resulted in some of the older rewards being reduced in C-Bill amounts.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For example, losses and assists were slightly reduced in the amount of C-Bills you would have earned, but the reduced C-Bills were reapplied to the more role specific rewards. The outcome that you should see is a bigger difference between bad rounds and good rounds that went really well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even though the data gathered so far gives us a good overview over what is happening, it is not enough to come to a final conclusion. We would like to gather more data over 2 to 3 days in order to be sure the numbers we have are accurate.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You should expect a fix to tighten up the economy if there are any issues found in the new data we collect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
<p>Alex</p>

---

[color=red]Update:[/color]

Hello Folks,

With more numbers coming in and considering the feedback on the forums, we will be releasing a hotfix for the Rewards 2.0 system on Thursday. Initially it was our intention to have a bigger difference in between a good and a bad match. As it turned out now, the low end does not reward a sufficient enough amount of C-Bills. Therefore the hotfix contains an increase of the Loss reward and an increase of the C-Bills given for Assists.

Some formation rewards, like Lance Formation and Protect Proximity, were increased as well. These are specifically helpful to receive C-Bills based on positioning.

Following are the changes made:

• Assist: From 2500 CB to 3500 CB / 20 XP to 40 XP
  
• Component Destruction: 10 XP to 15 XP
  
• Loss: 10000 CB to 20000 CB
  
• Capture Pulse: 25 CB to 100 CB
  
• Lance Formation: 60 CB to 120 CB
  
• Protected Medium: 65 CB to 100 CB
  
• Protected Light: 65 CB to 100 CB
  
• Protect Proximity: 55 CB to 90 CB

Furthermore we are planning to use the Rewards 2.0 system as a basis for future additions. Please feel free to leave suggestions for other rewards here in the forum.

There are some other bugs that cought our attention:

• Tag Damage can only be granted if the target is hit by LRMs.
  
• The Flanking award is not given for an attack with LRMs.
  
• Scout reward only registers on fully gathered target information.

Last but not least, we are planning to make changes to the way the Assist reward works. Currently, and since it's initial implementation, the C-Bills are divided by the number of players achieving an assist reward for one target. Here is an example: if three players are dealing damage to the same target, the C-Bill Assist reward is then divided by 3. XP does not scale and is received independently.


For one of the future patches we plan to abandon the reward sharing and introduce a damage threshold to the Assist reward.Once this or a higher number of damage is dealt to a target, a C-Bill reward will be given independently.

Cheers,
Alex

Well hopefully this will balance out the cbill disparity of rewards 2.0, but what about exps? That's where people are taking the biggest hit. Even with premium time I'm getting 62-350 exps per match (win or loss) vs 280-2200 in the old system (this includes PT but doesn't include 1st win of the day bonus). Are exps going to be adjusted as well?

[Karkland]

Alexander Schmidt, on 22 October 2014 - 05:05 PM, said:

Hey Folks,

I have added an update to the original post in this thread.

Hmm. I'll admit my earnings tonight were better than last night, but that was partially due to making the most of some of these bugs. While the increases to 'vanilla' assist and loss are welcome, still wary of the new results. I suppose I'll see how things are soon enough.

[Nick Makiaveli]

Kirkland Langue, on 22 October 2014 - 10:30 AM, said:

The game has no economy to begin with, so the most basic reward system is all you should have gone with. Something to vaguely represent how long it takes to acquire a new mech. Instead you guys developed a complex reward system which is far from clear how to go about getting rewards.

Complex? The rewards have been on the forums, there is even a stickied thread for short questions and answers.

As to economy and new mechs, umm they can see what people earn, cross-reference with matches played, age of account etc etc to determine how long it takes to earn a mech on average for new players, old players, high/low Elo etc.

Maybe read more?

Jman5, on 22 October 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

I'm leaving them out because they are independent rewards from kills/assists. You will get a hit and run bonus regardless of whether you got an assist or kill shot. What I'm doing is comparing two common scenarios where all things are equal except who got that last point of damage.

Think of it this way:

Assist: 2500
kill most damage: 5000
hit and run: 2000
total: 9,500

Killing blow: 4000
kill most damage: 5000
solo kill: 10000
brawling: 4500
component destruction: 2300
hit and run: 2000
Total: 27800

Difference: 18,300 The amount you get is 2000 cbills higher, but there is still a 18,300 cbill difference.

There is no reason "brawling" should be dependent on kill shot. If you did most of the work (kill most damage), you should get it. There is no reason 1 point of damage should reward 6300 (killshot+component destruction) vs assist's 2500.

What I am proposing still rewards the guy who does the leg work of bringing down a mech. It just reduces the effect of kill steals on players.

With regards to brawler award, even if you exclude that you're still talking a 14,000 cbill difference for 1 tick of damage.

I see what you are getting at, but it's based on perfect scenarios and edge cases. How often will it happen that I do 45 damage to the mech and you do 46 and get the kill? Often enough to worry about?

Sure there will be douchebags trying to kill steal, but that's going to happen no matter what. Why? Because some people care about Cbills, some about XP, others (Blake only knows why) their KDR. So tweaking the Cbills won't really help that much.

Besides those who want Cbills and have a clue know that you just run Conquest with a light, cap as much as possible and if you die, launch in another mech, trial if nothing else. So again, not going to affect them much.

Oh and as we saw today, they tweaked it. Just like they said they might when they first announced it. Based on the data they saw...not our feedback. They have access to actual data, whereas we have access to anecdotes and theorycrafting.

A sebaceous cyst, on 22 October 2014 - 02:21 PM, said:

Hard to take you seriously after that match the other day.

[trashk]

So let me get this straight: tag was actually useful outside of LRMing and gave a bonus for its use out side of LRMing, would have been a great hard counter to ECM that you got MONEY FOR USING WITHOUT LERMING, and you are taking it away? You guys need to seriously RETHINK this.


You have a wonderful use case for role diversity and a specific reward for bringing a tag for a non dedicated LRM boat team. DO NOT CHANGE THIS BACK. IT IS NOT A BUG, IT IS HOW IT IS MEANT TO BE.

Edited by trashk, 22 October 2014 - 10:45 PM.

[Kmieciu]

Paul Inouye, on 21 October 2014 - 05:10 PM, said:

There are some other bugs that cought our attention:

• Tag Damage can only be granted if the target is hit by LRMs.

TAG damage and kills contributed to about 25% of earnings. On a good game, I managed to get 40 000+ just for tagging. If you take that away, that would lead to a 30-35% less earnings compared to the previous system.

A sebaceous cyst, on 22 October 2014 - 02:21 PM, said:

Here are the results:
game 1: loss 103 exps 26000ish cbills
game 2: loss 114 exps 32000ish cbills
game 3: loss 155 exps 29000ish cbills
game 4: win 746 exps 70000ish cbills (1st win of the day, exps were double)
game 5: win 293 exps 63000ish cbills
game 6: win 251 exps 58000ish cbills
game 7: loss 200 exps 64000ish cbills
game 8: loss 42exps 19000ish cbills
game 9: loss 66exps 23000ish cbills
game 10: win 281exps 49000ish bills

I think it would be in PGI's best interest to give players more C-Bills. Cadet bonus barely allows you to buy 1 mech. New players have no money to try out new loadouts, which is the most enjoyable aspect of MWO. If a new players makes a mistake and purchases a sub-optimal mech, weapon or equipment (which is not hard to do given current game balance), he is pretty much done for.

I know a pilot who purchased a Dragon for their first mech, because it looked cool. He added Ferro-fibrous and some high heat weapons. He got no money left to even buy DHS. He got no money to remove the FF and add Endo. He ended up creating a new account because the grind in a was unbearable, especially while using a junk mech.

Less C-Bills leads to less mechbays and cammos purchased by real money IMHO. Discounts and challenges made me buy 19 mechbays. I even bought cammos for the first time ever. When I see PGI is generous I act generous.

On the other hand, when I feel my earnings are being reduced, I don't feel the urge to spend $$$ anymore. You give me less c-bills, I give you less $$$. It's that simple.

Edited by Kmieciu, 22 October 2014 - 11:26 PM.

[PACoFist]

Might be a bit off-topic:
But since you are tracking all these things for the new reward system, how about adding some associated achievements?

[Duran Vancor]

Stormcrow Prime, 6 ERML 1 ERLL

Somehow since I got my Stormcrows I do 100% better than before, but earn 50%-100% less. I knew it was a earning nerf, but it is way worse than I thought.

[buckX]

I spent last night pugging, and it was extremely beneficial to my C-Bill account. I know some folks have been decrying low rewards, but whether it was Reward 2.0, or driving a Stormcrow rather than a Jenner, last night was pretty darn profitable. As others have experienced, I had both my highest (220k without premium) and lowest (25k) payouts in a single evening. It sounds like the lower end of that is already being worked on, but as much as I love getting huge payouts for awesome winning games, and even decent payouts for high performance losing games (somehow managed 170k in a loss with 3 kills and 575 damage), I do think the rubric could use adjustment. My payout for bringing tag to the fight is pretty absurd. Now perhaps "TAG Death" is superceding regular kill payouts, and shouldn't be fully counted as money from tag, but I've had "TAG Death" + "TAG Damage" break 60k before, which was fully a third of my winnings that match. On the other hand, I got legged toward the end of one match, and escorted an atlas for a solid 3 minutes, which netted me 1,000 C-Bills. That's not enough to influence my behavior. Double that isn't enough to influence my behavior. I would suggest increasing the range that Lance formation applies to, since it's very easy to string out a bit while operating as a lance, and massively increasing its benefits, along with all the other formation benefits. Shift money away from things that depend on loadout, like TAG or Narc, because the numbers are so large, I feel like bringing TAG is now just a requirement of farming money. Certainly no other ton in my mech pays out so well.

Edit: You guys listed "Tag Damage can only be granted if the target is hit by LRMs." as a bug, which I thought was awesome, but now I'm seeing people complaining about that being a restrictive change. The way that reads, the bug was that Tag Damage wasn't counting for non-LRM damage, and now it will. If that's the case, cool. If it's the other way, I have to agree with the commenters. Clearly at a minimum, it should be counting for streaks as well. Beyond that, it's still helping people get target info more quickly, and painting a dorito on an ECMed target, which sure concentrates some hate. If all the bugs listed are in fact not the bugs, but the behavior you intend to change too, I find the whole list pretty questionable. LRM in the back is in the back, just as much as anything else is. I'll definitely flank an atlas to start streaming flat trajectory LRMs from 200m, and I'd call that a legitimate flank. A light getting full target info is perhaps due additional payout, but getting the dorito on the board is the important part for situational awareness and missile locks.

Also, while 'good games pay out more, bad games pay out less' is a fine strategy for C-Bills, I would be more cautious in having that apply to XP. My most effective matches are in mastered mechs that I don't need xp for anyway, while a fresh mech (and if you put yourself in the shoes of a new player, potentially a fresh mech without optimal loadout) will have a much rougher time, and will have to spend a pretty large amount of time in the unbasiced doldrums as currently implemented.

IMO, you should also probably hold off on the split assist rewards until you can get your final implementation in place. As it stands, it will be counterproductive to, and will completely overwhelm your intended assist buff. 3500/6 is a heck of a lot less than 2500. Given that I would find 1 kill, 6 assists to be a pretty normal result, I would assume that other people are getting 6ish assists, and therefore the average kill has 6ish people assisting it. That change will trivialize assist payout, and highly incentivize holding back to try to killsteal with a full alpha.

Edited by buckX, 23 October 2014 - 06:05 AM.

[Reno Blade]

One solution for balancing new player low rewards and "pro gamer" high incomes might be:

Instead of making Win/Loss a fix amount of CBills, make it a "bonus" that depends on the rest of you income.
- If you got less than 30k, the win or loss bonus will make it possible to gain a certain minimum (like 50k).
- If you got over 200k, the bonus will not be added, to keep the high-games inline.
- If you got more than 30k, but less than 200k, you will get 50% of the win/loss bonus CBills ?

This might sound like good play will be rewarded less, but it's just a way to give a minimum-income and not increase maximum income by the new system by that "little" extra for the win/loss.

[Deathone]

Introduce some rewards for following commands. The whole commander and command system is useless since years. Organized groups use TS, lonewolfs dont use or follow the command system. 'Attack this' .. why should i ?

[Nightmare1]

Now that I've played several matches, I can say without reservation that the new Rewards System is absolutely amazing! I'm earning 20,000-30,000 more C-bills than I previously did, and my grind has sped up considerably. The new, role-specific rewards are terrific, and I've noticed that puggers have started changing their play styles to fit these roles more effectively (Who says economic incentives don't work?). The matches have been considerably better with fewer ROFLStomps too!

Excellent job PGI! You've really outdone yourself this time!

Edited by Nightmare1, 23 October 2014 - 07:04 AM.

[Mr Beefy]

So here we have what could be considered a Noobies/new players/Avg around a years players wet dream for a well played match, and very good team play. No one was raging in the chat, about kill steals. We all was chatting off info that helped the team. My lance split off from each other but that wasn't a bad thing because they were trying to do different rolls that rewarded them and the team for the win.

After all I am in a new strom crow with 5 sm lasers and 2 srm6 for close range support of my heavies and assaults and I did stay with them while part of our team went in the tunnel, me being one of them with the big boys, the other part of the team went around the tunnel same side. This worked very well because we all chatted and pushed ruffly the same time. We came out of the tunnel, in a smart way, not suicide rushing, and hit around 8 of the enemy.... then the rest of our team flanked them and cleaned up the rear causing confusion on the enemy side. The lights went around and help cleaned up the others and also caused confusion with hit and run tactics. This was a very fun game, close one and not just because we got the win.

Here are my earn results.....









Now, some of you "white knights" that are just fine with this kinda pay out for the time and effort put into playing the game is just fine, completely reasonable, and PGI has got the pay scale where it should be for old and new players alike. If you feel this way and are happy with your earnings.... that is awesome. I am glad you are happy about them, enjoy the game than.

However, If You and PGI thinks the lack of earnings in this game are just fine for every player, including veterans and new alike, It would go a very long way to explain why this last weekends event went the way it did in over 80% of my 100+ games played. We have such a low pay out now, that many players could care less about primary objectives, team play if it rewards them less for finding a way to exploit even the best thought out pay reward system. One way or another, they will find a way to farm C-bills and XP/GXP, even if it means blowing the win or playing the game to achieve the primary objectives of the game mode played. You guys that justify this pay out that is 30-50% lower before from back in the day really should not have a problem with it being brought back up. It doesn't reward pilots for bad play/team play, it simply will ease the main goal of C-bill farming and exploiting any pay scale PGI comes up with, no matter how well thought out it is, how complicated that they design it.

If this is the best pay that is offered to pilots for their time and effort to keep playing this game, and the continued support of the game. If you do the numbers of this match, IMO a very well played game for a new player coming in, and even just a avg. match for a pilot that has many drops under his belt..... It really starts to show the bigger and real core problem with this F2P model we have now. The way its set up now, when you do the math.... what it takes to buy a single mech with C-bills in this game, the very limited amount of colors for C-bills, all the modules you buy for C-bills to help a pilots game play and the teams for that matter. If you want to gain the max skills on your mech, get the mastery bonus, which is a needed to contribute the most to not only your own advantage, but also your teams, the numbers start to become a over whelming issue for all players alike. I mean.... then lets add the fact that in CW, you will need four mechs to drop, and all the modules for every mech you drop, and the cost of all this??? Seriously, it is a loosing battle for all!

I am not gonna run the numbers of what it will take to purchase three mechs in a given chassis, the modules one needs to help, the XP needed to master those mechs, and the current earnings even with ideal matches like the one I just played to obtain just three mechs for a new or old player alike. The numbers and amount of time are just crazy.... for new and veteran players alike. A 30-50% boost will help everyone in this game, giving the new players a much better chance of wanting to stay in and become the team players we all claim we are looking for. This will line PGI's pockets with money in the long run, and we will have a bigger player base, and a less toxic player base in the mean time. To try and say it would be a neg. to the game is just as crazy as the painful grind we have right now. It is simply counter productive to the bottom line and health of this game. PGI, it might be scary for you guys to think of raising earnings back up for all, you might believe it will bankrupt you and cause a lack of paying players..... I would hope this was IGP's vision and take on it, but time will tell if you get it, or you don't get it.

This could be a chance to fix several core problems with a very low amount of effort and time on your end as developers, and everyone would be extremely happy about it!

I wonder, if this is the low rewards I got from a win, and a well played game with us trying our best at team play, what does the loosing side's earnings look like?

Further more, this doesn't even begin to go into other issues with the current model.... like the very hard fact that everything seems to be staked against us when it comes to the pay rewards in this game. If a player buys a mech or lets say even three, and finds they don't like it after all the time they took to earn it with the current system, They figure, no problem, I will just sell it and reinvest into a mech chassis I can play or like.

New players go to the home screen and inventory for the first time....and whats this? yep, I can sell it back, for 1/3 of the value I paid for it? Oh hell, I have even upgraded it with double heat sinks for $1.5 million.... and that is lost too? Modules are the same way.... we spend all that time grinding for GXP, that are so hard to earn and take forever, even with PT, ok I don't like what this module does for me, I will sell it.... but for a 50% loss given what we pay for it??? Come on guys, we get that the grind needs to be here, all we ask is that it is balanced and a reasonable one if you expect to keep players interested and to get new ones coming in. With the current model, its not gonna happen. Well, maybe it will happen, but IMO, it would be like PGI shooting their one foot off, and then trying to spend days/manpower to design a limb to replace the one they just blew off themselves.

Edited by Mr Beefy, 23 October 2014 - 03:45 PM.

[Hoax415]

This was today, seems like people are quite happy with rewards atm but I must say I was a bit shocked because I can't carry all that much harder in a medium (ran out of ammo eventually) and this is not that much above an average performance win under the old system (120k+).

No special circumstances here, no bonuses of any kind and no TK penalties on cbill side. The XP side is Daily Win bonus.

No complaints, just putting some evidence up that not everyone is just rolling in cash even when they heavily contribute.

Edited by Hoax415, 24 October 2014 - 09:18 AM.

[Alexander MacTaggart]

The other day (before the hotfix) I actually ended a match with a gain of $15,600. I didn't think to take a screenshot, but IIRC I got a spotting bonus for targeting a Dire Wolf and then he immediately cored me out.

I don't feel like any match, even a loss, should pay out that low. The 'floor' for cash income needs to be higher.

[King of the Woad]

I am "distressed". I will give it the rest of the weekend to see if I can get over my dread, but if it continues, enjoy CW without me. and I know several who feel as I do. I, unlike most, was not looking forward to CW. With this as a precursor, I will not participate in it at all. And, since pretty much everything is going to be wrapped up in it, I'll be a no-show in the game I guess.

[PACoFist]

King of the Woad, on 24 October 2014 - 04:25 PM, said:

I am "distressed". I will give it the rest of the weekend to see if I can get over my dread, but if it continues, enjoy CW without me. and I know several who feel as I do. I, unlike most, was not looking forward to CW. With this as a precursor, I will not participate in it at all. And, since pretty much everything is going to be wrapped up in it, I'll be a no-show in the game I guess.

The other game modes will not disappear when we get CW. So you can continue to play the way you like best. What is the problem?