14 replies to this topic

[l3rokenWing]

Hey, I've spent the night playing around in Community Warfare and have been left with generally positive impressions. There are issues of course, but nothing I haven't seen listed in the forums already (dropship spawn vulnerability, disconnects, difficulty finding matches, frame rate drops, ect) but aside from that I only saw one non-bug I wanted to comment on:

In testing earnings I noticed that founder/hero mechs included in your drop decks are contributing a quarter of their c-bill bonus to your earnings (7.5%) instead of a full 30%. I can understand why as your score is an aggregate of your performance with all of your mechs. Out of curiosity I created a drop deck with four mechs with 30% c-bill earnings bonuses, centurion-ah, atlas-s, firestarter ember, jenner-d(founders). Sure enough I got the full 30% earning bonus at the end of the match.

I just wanted to voice that this is an issue for the community warfare arena. While CW may not be 100% 12 man try-hards, it certainly seems feels like a more competitive scene. The stakes are higher, the time investment is higher, the wait between matches is longer, and most importantly the strategy and team coordination on the field needs to be at it's best to succeed- especially on the attack. I certainly take a CW match more seriously than the average public game, and my consideration of what goes into my drop deck reflects that. I'm not going to bring the mechs I'm grinding through basic skills. I want to bring the best I have to offer to the match and go in hoping my teammates have as well.

Sadly the new emergence of community warfare doesn't change the fact that for most players, MWO is a big grind fest, and C-bill earnings have been a hot topic for a long time. I think the reduction of a mech's c-bill boost presents a problem simply because it encourages bringing as many hero/founder mechs as possible in order to retain that 30% boost. If people choose to do this, it would be incredibly limiting to the builds they could bring onto the battlefield and it would mechanically reward them for it.

I initially guessed that including one hero/founder would be enough to retain the 30% bonus to the end of the match, and considered this fine as I could easily shape the rest of what I dropped around which ever one I chose without compromising my effectiveness on the field or my contribution to my team. I love the variety in this game, I specifically set out to elite a chassis in every weight class and have since mastered at least two different chassis and their sub-variants. Having a game mode that encourages you to bring different kinds and weights of mechs into the same match is my dream come true. Don't allow a mechanic to exist that would promote players to hinder their effectiveness or hamper the variety of what they can bring into battle just because they want to see a larger gain in earnings at the end.

I propose that the earning's bonus from the mechs not stack by having more than one present in your drop queue. Preferably you would allow us to retain the full 30% from including one founder/hero into our drop decks, but frankly I wouldn't mind if it stayed at 7.5% no matter what happened or didn't exist at all. C-bill earnings have never come at a good enough rate for the quantity of c-bill sinks that exist in mwo's economy. Hell, the cost of weapon modules and engines already punish you for diversifying your playstyle. Don't give players a reason to stick to the same 4 mechs in Community Warfare as well.

[Applejack]

agreed

[MrJeffers]

If true, it seems like a short cut on calculating the earnings to simplify things. But the 30% bonus from one mech shouldn't be applied to the whole match, it should only apply to the items earned using that mech. I haven't seen my rewards except once (crash to desktop on every closing screen now), and it was a 450K match but I didn't see the mech bonus. But with only 3 of 4 Prime (I) mechs it which would mean 22.5% bonus, or about 367K. Using one hero mech and getting a 30% bonus on the whole match would have made it a 477K match.

Looking at it the other way, 367k divided by the 4 mechs = 91.75 c-bill match score for each averaged. A 30% bonus on 97.75 is 119.275. Times 3 is 357,825 plus the 91.75 for the non-hero bonus mech is....449,575. So, in reality each hero mech did get its full 30% bonus for it's contribution. 7.5% is just a short cut to figure it out as an average.
It doesn't quite work out though if you have a mixed deck and only played the heros, or did much better in the heros than the non-bonus mechs.

Edited by MrJeffers, 12 December 2014 - 01:39 AM.

[l3rokenWing]

My concern isn't really for the actual cbill result MrJeffers. I don't think Pirhana games has done anything wrong in calculating each mech's performance individually and thus restricting the bonus to it's portion of the whole. It's more the psychological effect of a player seeing a lower return than they would expect and trying to do all that they can to increase their earnings. I will admit that upon realizing stacking 4 hero/founder mechs into my drop deck got me a 30% boost overall, my gut response was "why the hell would I drop any other combination?". I would just like to see the game mechanically encourage players to forget the grind and focus on the contest for territory, the expansion and defense of their house/clan, and building their dropdeck around the success and support of their team.

I just feel that having stacking or individual bonuses to each mech in the 4 mech drop is a mistake. At the same time, I agree that a 30% bonus on Cw games that often reward much higher c-bills than public games may be too high. Bringing one hero mech and getting a 30% boost to the entire games performance (easily a shift between 50-100k) maybe too much. Maybe finding a flat bonus percentage for including at least one hero/founder would be preferable. Say 15-20%?

[Saobh]

Humm if you had played 4 successive matches with only one with your 30% c-bill mech you would have the same results no ? so why would you be receiving a 30% reward on those 3 other virtual matches ?

If your only focus is getting c-bills do indeed take such Mechs during CW but tbh they may not be the best 4 mix for your drop to help your team get a win ...

[Hades Trooper]

QQ more, i find the c-bills earning is fine,

77 mechs with 74 of them fully equipped with engines and upgrades,

3 mill in bank and 56 modules.

whats this trouble with making cash? oh thats right premium time is just OP

Edited by Hades Trooper, 12 December 2014 - 03:39 AM.

[Mitchell Headington]

Hades Trooper, on 12 December 2014 - 03:38 AM, said:

QQ more, i find the c-bills earning is fine,

77 mechs with 74 of them fully equipped with engines and upgrades,

3 mill in bank and 56 modules.

whats this trouble with making cash? oh thats right premium time is just OP

Willow Tree is a village composed of about 169 people, located in New South Wales, Australia.

Yeah, no wonder you don't have any trouble.

[Mawai]

I think this depends on the player.

I think it makes sense to scale the income ... dividing the total bonus by the number of mechs. Yes ... it does give an incentive to playing cbill bonused variants in CW ... but I don't really see a problem with it. People will usually choose what is fun to play. They will also play what they are good with. If they play bonused mechs a lot in group or pug matches then they are probably good with them. In addition, a lot of the bonus variants are good performers ... so I don't really see any issues.

One thing that isn't visible to other players is modules. I have only ever bought one of each modules so far (with the exception of consumables) ... most of my mechs dropping in CW will not have optimal module choices ... some will have no modules. This might be a greater impact in some cases than which variant of a mech you take.

Even in regular PUG play ... I still drop in unbonused mechs when grinding because they are fun. I have 14 mechs with bonus earnings. 4 clan and 10 IS.

Anyway, I disagree with the OP ... I like the way PGI is doing it now assigning a 7.5% bonus for each bonus mech ... this means that even if you do poorly with that particular mech you still get decent earnings. Giving a 30% bonus to match earnings for having one bonus mech in the drop deck seems excessive.

[Elizander]

Well a 120% bonus would be a good reason to make a hero mech drop deck.

[l3rokenWing]

I feel like none of you read my post, I don't care about the cbill earnings rates in relationship to this issue. I just think it would be nice for the developers to remove a reason to have to stack bonus earnings mechs instead of composing drop decks for effectiveness and fun. No, I don't think every player will just grind with hero mechs. Yes, I do think some percentage of players will look at this mechanic and choose to do so. It's true that there's nothing wrong with the hero varients, but at the end of the day it still feels like the wrong way to handle a composition of multiple mechs vs. single games with one character.

But hey, it's fine either way. All the "QQ more" spirited comments just remind me why I don't participate in the forums more often. Why voice an opinion if no one's gonna read it before responding?

[Gaulwa]

I read your post. I agree, and personally, I do care about C-bill.

That's why I only drop with Premium mech no matter the match. I wish I could play other mechs I enjoy, alas sadly I so badly need C-bills for modules and engines to diversify my gameplay I feel compelled to exclusively play premium.
(And I don't use premium time, simply because I only play a few games per week, and it feels wasteful)

I had hoped the full Premium and Hero bonus would affect the whole dropship. Pick one hero, pick one champion... the other 2 benefits from the full bonus.
Seems fair.

What about the Phoenix loyalty gain (+10%)? And the faction medallion(+2.5%)? How are they calculated?
_{Don't tell me I need to buy 4 medallion of each faction or I'm gonna flip tables.}

Edited by Gaulwa, 08 February 2015 - 09:32 AM.

[KODIAK-AU]

Elizander, on 12 December 2014 - 06:30 AM, said:

Well a 120% bonus would be a good reason to make a hero mech drop deck.

Unfortunately the 30% bonus applies to the individual mech, it does not stack across your entire drop deck.

[Mystere]

Just exempt a full Founder's drop deck from the weight restrictions and I will be happy.

[BourbonFaucet]

Wymodactyl, on 08 February 2015 - 01:09 PM, said:

Unfortunately the 30% bonus applies to the individual mech, it does not stack across your entire drop deck.

The problem is this:

Let's say I take one hero 'mech and 3 normal 'mechs. I drop in the hero 'mech first and don't die for the duration of the match. Now I only get a 7.5% C-Bill bonus on all my earnings because of the way the system works now, even though I earned all those rewards on that 'mech.

For all the cash heroes and special variants cost, we should be getting at least 60% extra C-Bills for taking four of them.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

OP, it sounds like your problem is seeing hero mechs as "ineffective" in CW.

My founders cat, Atlas 7D founders, Pirates Bane, Protector, Muramets, AS7-S{L}, King crab 000{L}, HBK-4G{F} would like to have a word with you.

Edited by Flash Frame, 08 February 2015 - 10:30 PM.