5 replies to this topic

[Stormie]

So I was thinking the other night about why you never see some mechs, and what could be done about it assuming you were to avoid changing the properties of the mechs themselves.

The only I could think of manipulating was the in game reward (C-Bills, EXP).

What I came up with was having a reward multiplier for each game played that is specific to the mech used. This multiplier would be set according to how many times a chassis was dropped with by the whole playerbase over a reference period (id imagine week, fortnight or month depending on how much work it was to update). those multipliers would then apply for the following reference period.
In my head the most dropped chassis would accumulate 50% of the C-Bills and EXP it would normally, and the least dropped chassis would accrue 150% of the usual (current)

As an example of this I say we had a much simpler MWO with only 3 mechs - a TBR-S, a COM-1B and a ZEU-9S
Given current usage of these the TimberWolf would be the most used mech, the Zeus second and the Commando the least used.
under this system in the next period the TimberWolf would accrue 50% of the usual C-Bills and Experience, The Zeus would be unaffected, and the Commando would accrue 150% earnings.
Under these conditions assume more people used the Zeus than the TimberWolf, but both are still used more than the Commando so in the next period COM = 150%, TBR = 100%, ZEU = 50%

Obviously with the much larger bank of mechs to fit on the continuum between 50% - 150% the changes would unlikely be so extreme as in that example.

At the start of every period, Id imagine a news item would be posted showing what each mech/variants new modifier was.

Obviously a system like this would work with, not in place of actual mech/weapon balancing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would an in game currency change affect which mech you played?
How much penalty/extra reward would it take to see you change your choice?
How could the above system be improved?
Would that be impossible to implement/prohibitively hard to maintain (I'm not a programmer)?

[Troutmonkey]

I wouldn't say no to underused chassis getting some sort of bonus, but I would say no to any kind of cbill nerf, even to crazy meta mechs.

Many newbies run meta-mechs because they're recommended, and don't have the ability to buy a bunch of different mechs based on the flavour of the week.

There's also the problem of trying to balance gameplay with economy, which really doesn't work when the rich players keep running meta-mechs and crushing players trying to grind out cbills on terrible mechs trying to score a bonus.

Lastly a system like this would negate premium time and hero mechs.

[Sjorpha]

i think it would just serve as an excuse to not balance the actual game.

Also many players no longer care about cbills since they already have enough mechs, they play for the win and this change would not affect them.

You have to balance mechs around their actual strength in relation to winning matches, no way wriggle out of that.

Edited by Sjorpha, 04 November 2015 - 06:40 PM.

[El Bandito]

You'll take away my C-Bills from my BLR-3S' cold dead hands!

Oh wait, technically it is not alive, but you get the point.

[Lyoto Machida]

Not the first time it's been proposed and probably won't be the last. You'd have to be careful will c-bill nerfs in relation to hero mechs and whatnot. I always thought it would be a good incentive to help bring more chassis diversity onto the battlefield but it doesn't address one variant or mech being weaker than another. Then again, I'm not sure every variant/chassis can really be equal anyways so I'd at least like to see something like this in place (so long as it doesn't give the devs an excuse to ignore future tweaking to balance).

[StraferX]

Sjorpha, on 04 November 2015 - 06:39 PM, said:

You have to balance mechs around their actual strength in relation to winning matches, no way wriggle out of that.

Sounds like role warfare and a real skill tree could truely balance this game, No? These would let me chose what I wanted my mech to perform well at IE: skirmisher, Brawler, Scout, LRM, sniper, suppressive flamethrowing harasser. Oh the opportunities and yes the algorithm would be complex for MM to properly work but it can't be any worse than now.