34 replies to this topic

[CocoaJin]

RnR(repair and rearm) has the potential for too much downside and excessivly punishing the new and the low C-bill valued player. But RnR needs to be a feature in CW to help provide a viable means of Attrition.

I'd like to see RnR costs thrust back upon the Faction's, but Factions need to have limited resources for financing the RnR for players in the faction. Combat loses(mech, not necessarily match), affects on logistics(to come), connections to supply links, should all influence how quickly a faction's ability to pay for RnR is depleted for an area. In doing so, we would ideally see combat loses eventually impair the ability for players to wage war at max efficiency due to decreased drop tonnage limits, increased re-spawn times to the possible worst case scenerios of not being able to initiate attacks or calls to defense.

The faction resources can be managed as a greater faction resource account(Clan/IS) or sub-factions with each IS house and Clan tribe having rid resources managed and affected separately.

One important feature will be minimizing griefing/wasting resources...maybe personal tonnage restrictions or increased re spawn times based on excessivly poor performance. Like being AFK too much, sucicide dashes out of bounds or into the enemy, etc

Edited by CocoaJin, 17 November 2014 - 12:05 PM.

[CocoaJin]

No thoughts?

Edited by CocoaJin, 17 November 2014 - 10:14 AM.

[Mystere]

The usual suspects in the RnR "debate" have been exhausted by two recent skirmishes. You'll hear from them soon enough once they have recovered.

[Brody319]

No. Considering CW is a group drop system that also allows single players. This means that unless you drop 12 people, you will always have people who you cannot communicate with. This means that some teams will be blatantly inferior to others. If you get 4 groups of 3, vs a 12 man group, that 12 man group will probably win, since they are all communicating. Also bad luck happens. So you are essentially punishing people for doing bad, even if its not their fault in the slightest.

[Fut]

Brody319, on 17 November 2014 - 10:22 AM, said:

No. Considering CW is a group drop system that also allows single players. This means that unless you drop 12 people, you will always have people who you cannot communicate with. This means that some teams will be blatantly inferior to others. If you get 4 groups of 3, vs a 12 man group, that 12 man group will probably win, since they are all communicating. Also bad luck happens. So you are essentially punishing people for doing bad, even if its not their fault in the slightest.

Ugh. Stop being a baby. CW is the Hardcore mode for MWO - people should be punished for performing poorly.
This is war, dammit!

[SI The Joker]

Unfortunately attrition is something you will probably not see in this implementation of CW.

Re-arm, restock, resource limitations - none of that is going to matter in the slightest bit - at least from what I've read/understood. There have been 'words' to the contrary but that's all they are - words.

Right now CW will consist of you doing the following (Someone correct me if I'm wrong here):

- picking a side (this applies to mercs too)
- picking a planet to fight on from the planetary map
- *POOF* arrive on planet instantly to do battle (Nevermind those pesky jump lanes or time to travel)
- play a 4 mech respawn match and hope that you win... something
- That 'something' being maybe a discount on an a weapon and/or mech. Yay.

If there is no "end" to the war, no "winning" of the war... I'm still not sure why there should even be a community warfare from PGI in the first place. I get where you're going with this OP and trust me I support it but in my opinion the path that PGI has chosen for CW will not support such things.

[Prezimonto]

I'd love if RnR only applied to non-stock configurations in CW and the rest comes out of unit coffers before going to individuals.

This way, in CW, stock configs are always free (your faction picks up the tab), and custom mechs are covered by your unit first, helping spread costs around.

Of course, I'm always most in favor of RnR being taken entirely out of the mech lab and placed into the actual gameplay, as I suggest here:

http://mwomercs.com/...tyle-game-mode/

[Brody319]

SI The Joker, on 17 November 2014 - 10:29 AM, said:

Unfortunately attrition is something you will probably not see in this implementation of CW.

Re-arm, restock, resource limitations - none of that is going to matter in the slightest bit - at least from what I've read/understood. There have been 'words' to the contrary but that's all they are - words.

Right now CW will consist of you doing the following (Someone correct me if I'm wrong here):

- picking a side (this applies to mercs too)
- picking a planet to fight on from the planetary map
- *POOF* arrive on planet instantly to do battle (Nevermind those pesky jump lanes or time to travel)
- play a 4 mech respawn match and hope that you win... something
- That 'something' being maybe a discount on an a weapon and/or mech. Yay.

If there is no "end" to the war, no "winning" of the war... I'm still not sure why there should even be a community warfare from PGI in the first place. I get where you're going with this OP and trust me I support it but in my opinion the path that PGI has chosen for CW will not support such things.

They said there is a drop cost to even start a match that EVERYONE must pay or they don't play. I believe it was something like 500K. gotta pay for that food, dropship, and ammo somehow.

[SI The Joker]

Brody319, on 17 November 2014 - 10:35 AM, said:

They said there is a drop cost to even start a match that EVERYONE must pay or they don't play. I believe it was something like 500K. gotta pay for that food, dropship, and ammo somehow.

Can you source that, please? 500k to do what, play a single match? To get involved in CW? Soooo that means that if I want to fight for Kurita, I need to pay them? So I'm operating in the red until I pay back 500k? Seems off.

[verybad]

I'd love to have multiple destroyable assets on each team including rearm/repair buildings defensive buildings, and dropships you could run back onto and switch out your mech for a different one in your armory.. The argument that it "can't happen that quiicly in real life" rings false to me as:

#1 it's not real life it's a game.
#2. Your mechwarrior should already be dead and you should lose all your XP skills every time you get head shotted if this were "real life"
#3 it would add a lot to the strategic side.
#4 because the game is incredibly stagnant.

Perhaps in dropship games you have to use one of your other mechs while the rearm/repair is happening? (maybe take a minute or so of ingame time before it's available again?

Edited by verybad, 17 November 2014 - 10:40 AM.

[Brody319]

SI The Joker, on 17 November 2014 - 10:38 AM, said:

Can you source that, please? 500k to do what, play a single match? To get involved in CW? Soooo that means that if I want to fight for Kurita, I need to pay them? So I'm operating in the red until I pay back 500k? Seems off.

I think one of the Dev long said it. However after the "Townhall" thing, they said they won't have one at start just to see how it goes.

[CocoaJin]

Both sides will likely have roughly the same amount of terribad players. So no one side will be punished...attrition would just be a matter of fact aspect of any battle/regional combat area. Attrition will essentially be some a resource timer for which each side has to work against in the pursuit of their tactical/strategic goals.

We succeed together, we fail together...we'll have to always consider the signifcance of our individual successes and failures on the whole. Ultimately both sides will have to answer for and battle against its own loses. Poor usage of drop tonnage will have consequences...but that also means good use of drop tonnage will provide better Faction combat endurance for a planet or region.

How cool would it be if prolonged engagements for a planet or region resulted in later battles being decided by reduced tonnage drops restricting both teams to only light or medium chassises.

Prezimonto, on 17 November 2014 - 10:32 AM, said:

I'd love if RnR only applied to non-stock configurations in CW and the rest comes out of unit coffers before going to individuals.

This way, in CW, stock configs are always free (your faction picks up the tab), and custom mechs are covered by your unit first, helping spread costs around.

Of course, I'm always most in favor of RnR being taken entirely out of the mech lab and placed into the actual gameplay, as I suggest here:

http://mwomercs.com/...tyle-game-mode/

Since every aspect of a mech has a c-bill value, this ides would be an inherent aspect of my proposal. Not only would tonnage matter, but also builds. But since it's too complicated and restrictive for faction resources to restrict equipment, faction resources would only impact tonnage.

Edited by CocoaJin, 17 November 2014 - 11:00 AM.

[Catalinasgrace]

I guess I'm the odd man out here for the most part... I honestly think that RnR should be harsh, it should cost you and hurt your wallet. I'm not talking about lose a ton of money on a match however you should break even on a losing match. Perhaps people would actually try at that point and stop running full on wild banshee with their hair on fire into a fight alone. There NEEDS to be something on the other side of the coin with this "economy" IMO... All people do now is just play and stock up on C-bills for their next mech or whatever they wish to buy...

I started playing when RnR was in the game and I had ZERO trouble saving up c-bills to buy mechs or weapons... I'm so tired of the crying little girls in the gaming world now days...

**edit**

I also think that a full repair and rearm cost would stop a large portion of the boating on all fronts...

Edited by Catalinasgrace, 17 November 2014 - 12:04 PM.

[CocoaJin]

Catalinasgrace, on 17 November 2014 - 12:02 PM, said:

I guess I'm the odd man out here for the most part... I honestly think that RnR should be harsh, it should cost you and hurt your wallet. I'm not talking about lose a ton of money on a match however you should break even on a losing match. Perhaps people would actually try at that point and stop running full on wild banshee with their hair on fire into a fight alone. There NEEDS to be something on the other side of the coin with this "economy" IMO... All people do now is just play and stock up on C-bills for their next mech or whatever they wish to buy...

I started playing when RnR was in the game and I had ZERO trouble saving up c-bills to buy mechs or weapons... I'm so tired of the crying little girls in the gaming world now days...

**edit**

I also think that a full repair and rearm cost would stop a large portion of the boating on all fronts...

Though I can appreciate your point of view, I also have to consider what I've seen in past games. Player bases don't take direct punishment very well...for various reasons. We can make whatever judgements of character, ability, impending collapse of society, etc, etc...but the truth of the matter is that we need players. So though I approve of consequences for failures, that punishment has to be well thought out, yet still meaningful and significant with respect to in game goals/objectives...but without triggering the reflexive response many gamers have to negative re-enforcements/punishment.

Currency is big source of tension in games, anything that adversely affects your in game pocketbook has a strong potential for triggering undesirable reactions in the player. Losing or performing poorly is often punishment enough, but seeing your c-bill account go down because of it is like throwing salt in the wound...it feels like overkill, it drives players crazy. Instead of having CW matches potentially reduce your c-bill account due to poor performance, I suggest a mechanic that allows us to voluntarily spend c-bills. Allow players to spend Loyalty Points to off-set drop tonnage reductions, increases in re-spawn times, etc due to loses in a faction resources on the planet or in the region.

This way you don't feel like your being doubly punished by losing and having a currency reduction...instead, the faction pockets the consequences of faction failures, but you feel as if you have an outlet providing the option to counter the in-direct punishment of faction failure by improving your situation(ideally not back to 100%) as you see fit. Plus LP is purely a CW reward for your actions and contributions, you earned it and you get to spend it when you say so...no one can't take it from you.

Edited by CocoaJin, 17 November 2014 - 12:42 PM.

[Hoax415]

Explain what about this makes the game more fun?

Here's one of the many problems that I see instantly with what you seem to be going for:
-when does a faction's resource(s) replenish? Imagine how ****** it would feel to finally log on and load up CW and find out your "teammates" had already used up all the faction's resources so now YOUR game is limited for <time>. Not because of anything you did but because of them.

Are you going to fix that by having faction resource creep back slowly every 15 minutes? Can you imagine how bad it would feel to be "camping" the faction resource increase hoping to get a drop before others can use it up?

Sure you can fix that by instead having each unit on a contract be assigned a stipend of resources from their contracting faction (based on how many players they have or some other complex math?) so now at least total strangers can't cut you off.

Please don't say that the resource would rarely/never run out. Because if that's the case this is a massive waste of time. A resource that never runs out is just a waste of time and we can move on from this.

But think about how much complexity you just added to the game to try to get this working and avoid one simple obvious problem. How many things need to be coded and work and all of that so that...

You can prevent people from losing too often? So that you can add meaning by "punishing" bad players?

What about that added fun to CW?

tl;dr where's the fun?

R&R is just a shitton of work for a very ephemeral "benefit" that players tend to be able to imagine but can't actually explain. Yes a video game that works exactly how you imagine the perfectly run irl battletech campaign with tons of automated complexity and deep interlocking systems always sounds amazing in your head. But as you mature as a player you realize that every complex system represents new avenues for abuse, mismanagement, bugs etc. So you really want to avoid taking on things that don't actually make the game more fun.

Edited by Hoax415, 17 November 2014 - 01:15 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

Mystere, on 17 November 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

The usual suspects in the RnR "debate" have been exhausted by two recent skirmishes. You'll hear from them soon enough once they have recovered.

So you're saying, they're repairing and rearming?

[CDLord HHGD]

Rebas Kradd, on 17 November 2014 - 01:11 PM, said:

So you're saying, they're repairing and rearming?

Exactly! And one side is complaining that it's their right to disagree so therefore they shouldn't have to and the other was expecting it because reality.

WOOT for RnR.

[SpeedingBus]

I will find it hilarious if there's any negative earnings from playing CW so no one will play beside the space rich and few hardcore players have fun with long que times!! Honestly the only way to make CW mean anything if there are bonuses for controlling parts of a planet not hurting people c-bill income or anything else negatively affecting the player.

[DEMAX51]

I don't have any problem with a repair and rearm system for players and units, but Faction Attrition is just a terrible idea.

A lot of people will already be drawn to align with the "winning" faction in CW. Why would anyone stay with or sign up with a faction that is not only losing, but has fewer resources to work with on top of it?

[Kirkland Langue]

The entire Economy of MWO is a semi-random distribution of free stuff. I favor the idea of R&R, but only in games where an actual economy exists. In MWO, R&R is just another tool for PGI to nerf C-Bill income across the board.

I say this as someone who once upon a time supported R&R.