92 replies to this topic

[Captain Hat]

Couple of points:

Kyil, either you've completely misread Red Beard's intent earlier in the thread or I have. Up until you accused him of being a hateful wossname, I only ever got the impression he was joshing about with you. Now, I don't blame you for getting het up 'cause I know you love Btech and you feel pretty strongly about it, but it might be a good idea for you to take a step back and consider if you might have misread the situation a little before you assign to malice that which can be adequately explained by miscommunication.

Second, in other online games ragequitting is considered the height of bad manners, but similarly disconnecting is unavoidable for some people. The Ares Conventions, as proposed in this thread, offer us a way out that suits both ends and could limit or remove the negative effect of ragequitting at the same time as mitigating the consequences for a disconnect.

Introducing a "surrender" mechanic to the game that allows you to withdraw from battle with your honour- and your Battlemech- intact does actually make sense. It's an option that allows people who would otherwise "ragequit" to escape an unwinnable situation at the same time as reducing the consequences of genuine disconnects and offering advanced tactical options for unit-on-unit combat.

The way I would implement it is thus:

If you find yourself in an unwinnable situation, you will have the option of surrendering. This is an automatic feature that shuts down your 'mech and removes it from the battlefield. When you surrender, instead of being destroyed, your 'mech is "captured" by the enemy (note: This won't affect salvage, by the way- this is just the in-universe justification of the game mechanic I'm describing, not an Actual Thing That Happens. This is all behind-the-scenes). After the game finishes, you can repair and ransom your 'mech back off the enemy for significantly less C-Bills than it would have cost you to repair it from crippled in Mechbay. The major difference is that instead of all of the money "going to your mechanic" (i.e. disappearing into the ether), the "ransom" money is divided equally among the opposing team, which means they mind a lot less if you surrender than they would if you ragequit in a normal game.

If you disconnect with this mechanic in place, and cannot reconnect within, say, two or three minutes, you will automatically count as having surrendered rather than having your 'mech destroyed- it will thus cost you less to get it back up and running than if it had been destroyed through the absence of the pilot, and you will keep any rewards you earned during the course of the game.

You can even play with the mechanics so that if your team wins, you pay no ransom, just the (relatively light) repair bill. This, especially, would make effective scouting a good way to make lots of credits: You can find the enemy positions at relatively low risk, and picking the right moment to surrender can mean that your team gets enough intel to win the game and you will then pay virtually nothing to patch up for your next game. It also encourages good teamplay, because if you can corner enemy 'mechs individually and force them to surrender one by one, your own team's rewards will be enormous- while if you allow your team to become fragmented, you may find that your lance's pilots will surrender rather that fight when they know they will lose.

Edited by Captain Hat, 08 December 2011 - 08:05 AM.

[Kyll Long]

Actually I think youre referring to Kay. I know all these K first names can be confusing I merely stated he was being negative. Which he kinda agreed with Though we actually do see eye to eye on several key points.

Captain Hat, on 08 December 2011 - 08:04 AM, said:

Couple of points:

Kyil, either you've completely misread Red Beard's intent earlier in the thread or I have. Up until you accused him of being a hateful wossname, I only ever got the impression he was joshing about with you. Now, I don't blame you for getting het up 'cause I know you love Btech and you feel pretty strongly about it, but it might be a good idea for you to take a step back and consider if you might have misread the situation a little before you assign to malice that which can be adequately explained by miscommunication.

Second, in other online games ragequitting is considered the height of bad manners, but similarly disconnecting is unavoidable for some people. The Ares Conventions, as proposed in this thread, offer us a way out that suits both ends and could limit or remove the negative effect of ragequitting at the same time as mitigating the consequences for a disconnect.

Introducing a "surrender" mechanic to the game that allows you to withdraw from battle with your honour- and your Battlemech- intact does actually make sense. It's an option that allows people who would otherwise "ragequit" to escape an unwinnable situation at the same time as redusing the consequences of genuine disconnects and offering advanced tactical options for unit-on-unit combat.

The way I would implement it is thus:

If you find yourself in an unwinnable situation, you will have the option of surrendering. This is an automatic feature that shuts down your 'mech and removes it from the battlefield. When you surrender, instead of being destroyed, your 'mech is "captured" by the enemy (note: This won't affect salvage, by the way- this is just the in-universe justification of the game mechanic I'm describing, not an Actual Thing That Happens. This is all behind-the-scenes). After the game finishes, you can repair and ransom your 'mech back off the enemy for significantly less C-Bills than it would have cost you to repair it from crippled in Mechbay. The major difference is that instead of all of the money "going to your mechanic" (i.e. disappearing into the ether), the "ransom" money is divided equally among the opposing team, which means they mind a lot less if you surrender than they would if you ragequit in a normal game.

If you disconnect with this mechanic in place, and cannot reconnect within, say, two or three minutes, you will automatically count as having surrendered rather than having your 'mech destroyed- it will thus cost you less to get it back up and running than if it had been destroyed through the absence of the pilot, and you will keep any rewards you earned during the course of the game.

You can even play with the mechanics so that if your team wins, you pay no ransom, just the (relatively light) repair bill. This, especially, would make effective scouting a good way to make lots of credits: You can find the enemy positions at relatively low risk, and picking the right moment to surrender can mean that your team gets enough intel to win the game and you will then pay virtually nothing to patch up for your next game. It also encourages good teamplay, because if you can corner enemy 'mechs individually and force them to surrender one by one, your own team's rewards will be enormous- while if you allow your team to become fragmented, you may find that your lance's pilots will surrender rather that fight when they know they will lose.

[Captain Hat]

Whoops! You're absolutely right, it was Kay I had meant to address. Sorry dude.

[Haeso]

I'm all for a ransom option, but only if the winners choose to do it, not automatically available. And there must be the option to surrender unless they plan to have no death penalty so it's not an issue (Which is a bigger issue.)

Captain Hat, on 08 December 2011 - 08:04 AM, said:

I only ever got the impression he was joshing about with you.

You haven't seen enough of his posts then lol, he's antagonistic in almost all of them, and when he's not it's usually something frivolous rather than adding to a discussion.

[Red Beard]

Somebody is barking up the wrong tree...

[Captain Hat]

I don't see it as being productive if it's a "winner's choice" thing though. Fact is, most players won't role-play, so they'll most likely just be a **** about it a lot of the time and then the whole mechanic ends up making for just plain frustration and people won't just ragequit the battle, they'll ragequit the game, and that's bad for everybody.

The most consistent mistake I see on these forums is people who assume others are like them- either that other people are honourable, or that other people will roleplay, or that other people will enjoy extremely complex logistical macguffins in the "back end" of the game, or that people won't abuse MechLab for some reason even though in every previous incarnation of the MechWarrior series they have done exactly that, and so on. I, personally, would love to see people behaving honourably, role playing et cetera, but at the same time I recognise that for most players it's not going to happen. You have to keep the salvage mechanic- if there is one- entirely separate from the surrender mechanic or the surrender mechanic loses its effect as an ameliorating factor to the negative effects of both random disconnects and ragequitting, which will both happen.

I think that confusion between what works on the tabletop and what will work on the computer is what annoys RB a lot of the time too, though personally I've not seen him cross the lines that on any other board would be considered normal banter. I don't know what it is with specialist boards online, perhaps it's a tighter sense of community or just that everyone feels more sensitive to others when the others in question share interests with them, but they tend to be at the same time more polite and more thin-skinned than most online communities I've seen. I have been trying to stay as polite as I can on here, but I get the distinct impression that if I behaved here as I do normally on the Internet people would pretty much flat out hate me already- and I'm generally a well-respected member of the online communities I frequent.

Attempting to apply too much of the tabletop to the PC has the potential to be this game's greatest downfall. You have to recognise when a mechanic can be practically implemented and when it cannot. In this case, a partial implementation is the best solution. I would love to see a gaming community big enough to support a game that basically requires you to role play to get along, which would definitely benefit from everything being player-controlled, ransom being optional on the capturer's part et cetera, but in the real world it just isn't practical, and will lead to people being decidedly un-neighbourly to each other for no good reason.

The other problem, of course, is this: if you're in a random battle, say eight on eight (two lances a side), and one enemy 'mech surrenders. which of the winning side's members does the captured 'mech now belong to? Who decides whether or not to ransom it back?

It just doesn't work. Seling the mech back automatically and dividing the spoils between the victors is the fairest, simplest, least aggravating way to do it AND it makes the most sense in terms of mitigating the effect on a player if his internet randomly craps out and on the opponent if the player ragequits. It's about striking a balance.

[Captain Hat]

The long and the short of it is this: Other people are not like you, and while you should definitely feel free to feel good about that- you're less of a **** than most people- you should always bear that in mind when you try to write effective game mechanics. You need to write your mechanics so that they take into account the vast majority of the people who are complete dicks, and deliberately aim to frustrate their dickery.

[Haeso]

I'm not suggesting it's a **** move to not sell it back. You're making a few too many assumptions.

The point would be, if you choose to give it back rather than buy it yourself or sell it amongst yourselves, however it's handled - giving it back to that person gives the players who choose to do so, more total than it would be to just, say scrap it and split it between themselves for what it sold at otherwise.

So you have the option to earn more, in exchange for helping out your enemy. Then you have to decide which is better for you, do you want the extra cash? Or do you want to make sure that guy can't bring his atlas to the next match.

I don't think it's a **** move at all, I think it's a calculation. And believe me, I'm well aware of designing a game based on the psychology of gamers, I do it for a living. Subtly making players play the way you want them to is an unappreciated art in the developer world, it's so very important. And that's why you offer an increased reward for ransoming it back rather than just keeping it for yourself after buying out the shares of your compatriots. If it's a fixed thing that automatically happens where you can buy back a 'Mech you've lost 100% of the time - 'Mech loss is just an illusion anyway, and it would be pointless heh.

Edited by Haeso, 08 December 2011 - 09:16 AM.

[Captain Hat]

Thing is, YOU might not think it's a **** move- but you're again assuming that others will see it the same way, and I'm telling you right now- they won't. People get attached to their things, even their virtual things.

In addition, it will introduce a greater delay before a player can get back into the action with that 'mech, which may be the only 'mech the player owns or likes, and it will severely punish players who disconnect through no fault of their own.

And of course the 'mech loss is an illusion otherwise, that is kind of the point- if you make such things permanent, people will lose patience and stop playing. They don't in EVE because the economy works differently, but honestly it would be completely impractical to try and make the MWO economy work that way.

In fact, with the way factions and merc companies will work in MWO, I'm not even sure we have any good analogue for the way the economy's going to work in MWO yet. Plying your trade as a mercenary is entirely different, economically, to enlisting as a MechWarrior in a House military.

[Red Beard]

As always, my patience has paid dividends. I have waited, and Captain Hat has brought his uncanny, artistic use of the English language to bear on the truth. I could have struggled with my thoughts for a day just to crap out HALF of what you did in a few minutes, and it still would not have had the impact that your words did. I would follow this man into battle ANY day.

Sorry, but I have used up all of my likes for the day. I'll come back to it tomorrow.

[Haeso]

Captain Hat, on 08 December 2011 - 09:24 AM, said:

Thing is, YOU might not think it's a **** move- but you're again assuming that others will see it the same way, and I'm telling you right now- they won't. People get attached to their things, even their virtual things.

And some people might think it's a **** move to not roll over and die. It's a competitive game, my suggestion to them would be to get over it. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. And if you get too attached to your 'Mech, you need to stop risking it - because war is risky, it's dangerous, not safe and cushy with all sorts of safety nets. If you just want to play 'for fun' I imagine there will be the option for that. Solaris, simulators, etc. Conquest should have some measure of realism, and magically teleporting 'Mechs that are never destroyed and can never be lost, is almost as far from real as one can get.

And you know it's funny, because I'm someone who will get attached to my 'Mechs, I will keep a list of those that last me a dozen or more battles, I'll name them and maybe after a certain point unless space is limited - I might even retire it. But I'm prepared to lose anything I bring to the field, especially given such a system will never create a circumstance where I can't play the game at all. They'd never do that, and I'd never advocate that.

Quote

In addition, it will introduce a greater delay before a player can get back into the action with that 'mech, which may be the only 'mech the player owns or likes, and it will severely punish players who disconnect through no fault of their own.

If it's the only 'Mech they own, the game has failed. Any such salvage system as presented has advocated the use of Loaner 'Mechs so that the game is always available for play. Plus the assumption that you always lose money isn't necessarily true.

Quote

And of course the 'mech loss is an illusion otherwise, that is kind of the point- if you make such things permanent, people will lose patience and stop playing. They don't in EVE because the economy works differently, but honestly it would be completely impractical to try and make the MWO economy work that way.

Yes, in EVE the economy works poorly. By requiring either piracy extortion or mining 0.0 which isn't fun by any measure of the word. However in MWO, the economy is purely based around the combat. Which means you would be balancing the sink against the combat, rather than EVE where you're supposed to make money doing PvE/controlling territory and lose it by fighting other players/building bigger ships to fight other players with.

An exact adaptation won't work, and it doesn't need to work because that's not what is being suggested.

Quote

In fact, with the way factions and merc companies will work in MWO, I'm not even sure we have any good analogue for the way the economy's going to work in MWO yet. Plying your trade as a mercenary is entirely different, economically, to enlisting as a MechWarrior in a House military.

I doubt the difference will actually be that large. There's two options I can see, your ranking in the house determines what is available to you, perhaps when you lose something a cooldown on when you can use it again, and it's all paid for by the house, but you earn very little of your own money, or it works exactly the same when it comes to 'Mechs and the differences come from elsewhere.

Edited by Haeso, 08 December 2011 - 10:17 AM.

[VYCanis]

Really, i think we are seriously overthinking this.

at the end of the day, this is still a game. Having to deal with the red tape of negotiations and ransom and relying on the pure kindness of strangers over the Internet, after EVERY game? Not prudent

Not only that but you also have to deal with players that don't want to give up on the same team as those that do. Some came in with cheap mechs and don't give a crap about being blown up. Some came in with their shiniest clan salvage and are loathe to lose it.

Having to deal with excessive surrender legalese after every fight not only introduces excess tedium, but also sets the stage for a lot of bad blood and drama within teams. I want to play with my friends, not potentially lose em. its bad enough the arguments that spring up in D&D over who gets heals or who steals what, do we really need to make players start hating each other because so and so initiated the surrender that caused someone to lose their prize custom?

Games and missions should be easy to set up and easy to leave. Any consequences after a mission should be limited to the overall metagame (borders changing) and stuff you can take care of on your own time if you are so inclined. (managing salvage and repairs)
Dealing with surrenders and ransom is just way overboard and is better of staying within the realm of someone's TT
campaign.

Additionally, i don't want to feel chained to my desk as soon as a game starts. This should not be srs bsnss. If i have to go leave my comp, i should be able to with minimum hassle and minimal consequences. I don't want to potentially lose my mech or have some stranger take it off my hands because i needed to go use the bathroom.

Edited by VYCanis, 08 December 2011 - 02:07 PM.

[Haeso]

It's not red tape or negotiations, you're the one overthinking that one heh. It's one binary decision you have no control over. Either they give you the option of buying it back or not.

There's no reason surrender needs to be a team option rather than simply walking off the field.

There's nothing excessive. There doesn't even need to be communication, this would be streamlined, not some clunky out of game mechanic. One of the victor's purchases the 'Mech and offers to sell it back at increased price to what he could get for it from the NPC/standard price, but less than what it would cost to buy new. Or none of them buy out the others shares, and it defaults to being sold and split, and you have the option of buying it back. Fairly simple.

I don't agree that there for any reason needs to be limits on what happens after a game. Besides, just treat leaving early if you insist on having it as an option that's catered to, lose out on the option to buy-back, or buy a 'Mech that was lost, they'll still get their share if someone else buys it out or it gets split directly into c-bills. Not a big loss at all.

Surrender can be as simple as choosing you're done with this fight and walking off the field, it doesn't need to be a complex vote system. Though it could use both if people wanted.

If you're just playing for fun, don't play in conquest mode? And if it's something important enough to pull you away from conquest mode and you can't wait 10~ minutes to finish a match, does it really bloody well matter you lost a 'Mech? If something can't wait a few minutes, it's probably far more important than a video game. Or you could simply walk off the field before going AFK. And if it's so important you can't even take a few seconds to aim towards the edge of the map, then the game definitely doesn't matter at that point.

Edited by Haeso, 08 December 2011 - 02:57 PM.

[VYCanis]

Or the easier option is simply not having players have to risk losing their mechs for the average game.

repair costs, equipemnt, all that jazz, let that count for something, but mechs are always yours

if you leave early, your mech is in whatever condition when you left and you forfeit any rewards for the fight.

there, simple. Leaving a game by intent or accident just costs you rewards, no more, no less. Nothing that can't be recouped in a fight or two. I honestly don't want to roll the dice each and every mission over whether or not i lose my favorite ride nor rely on the kindess of the person that whupped me.

besides, computers crash
connections fail
power goes out
babies crap their diapers
emergencies happen
people need to get food
real life in general happens

and for all that, no, i don't want to lose a mech that i may have invested who knows how much time in

Edited by VYCanis, 08 December 2011 - 03:31 PM.

[Red Beard]

What this guy said^^^

[Haeso]

Easier than easy, is not 'easier' it's 'dumber'. If this were some complex convoluted system that detracted from the game, sure, but it would literally take a few seconds and that's it.

But the 'Mechs aren't always yours, if you lose it and the battle, it's gone. How on earth could you retrieve a 'Mech from a battlefield your enemies control?

Obviously.

That's all leaving by intent or accident (Assuming you disappear before getting killed from a d/c etc.) would do in this system. Nobody is suggesting you lose your 'mech for losing the match, only if you lost the match and your 'Mech.

It's not about 'relying', it's about an additional option. You should not be relying on the kindness of strangers or enemies. At least not any more than you should be relying on magical teleporting battlemechs that can never be destroyed. Though I imagine those would be pretty reliable. (And stupid)

[VYCanis]

Haeso, on 08 December 2011 - 03:36 PM, said:

Easier than easy, is not 'easier' it's 'dumber'. If this were some complex convoluted system that detracted from the game, sure, but it would literally take a few seconds and that's it.

But the 'Mechs aren't always yours, if you lose it and the battle, it's gone. How on earth could you retrieve a 'Mech from a battlefield your enemies control?

Obviously.

That's all leaving by intent or accident (Assuming you disappear before getting killed from a d/c etc.) would do in this system. Nobody is suggesting you lose your 'mech for losing the match, only if you lost the match and your 'Mech.

It's not about 'relying', it's about an additional option. You should not be relying on the kindness of strangers or enemies. At least not any more than you should be relying on magical teleporting battlemechs that can never be destroyed. Though I imagine those would be pretty reliable. (And stupid)

magical or otherwise, its a game first and foremost. Games require abstractions.
For example you don't play RISK and worry about the individual logistics of feeding an army that covers a continent.
A game like this will require abstractions that encourage people to be playing as much as possible. Fighting as much as possible.
The probably means stuff like players not having to wait 2 weeks just to reach another star system. Or hanging around on guard duty doing a whole lot of nothing.

And risking losing your mech only if it got blown up and your team lost? Do you have any idea how often that happens? I just finished an hour of MWLL, i must've been blown up well over 10 times and lost about half the games, and my score was somewhere in the middle of my team most of the time. I know MWO won't be like MWLL, but considering the game is gonna be PVP, no matter how its balanced, players are going to blast each other dead no matter what, and only 1 side will win a match. If you introduce mech loss and taking into that system, mechs are going to be swapping hands or getting perma destroyed so often that no sane person would even bother customizing anything because 1 bad game means it's history.

[Haeso]

Not magical or otherwise - yes it's a game but you can't just go ignoring the suspension of disbelief, giant walking robots is already a hard sell, when you take out core elements of realism it starts to heavily detract from the game, for the same reason that while you don't need super realistic physics, you need to have some sense of physics or the game just feels wrong unless it's designed around that lack of physics.

I know I wasn't suggesting realistic in universe travel times (Or any travel times...) nor was I suggesting 'guard duty' be a mission type. That's reaching pretty far.

Customization could be saved to a variant and replaced with the click of a button assuming the required C-Bills are available. You also assume respawns will be in - furthermore in a game where loss actually matters, players behave differently. If you had to replace each 'Mech you lost in MW:LL and you only got one life, rounds would be a fair bit shorter, and there'd be a lot more positioning and tactics involved. Have you ever played an FPS with a game mode that only gives one life and operates on short 'rounds'? It's sort of like that, between that and a regular deathmatch the way people play is worlds apart even though it's the 'same' game. In MMOs with death penalties rather than 'no respawn' rounds you see an even more cautious and organized type of play, you see groups of people behaving as groups of people should behave rather than committing what amounts to ritual suicide en-mass over and over.

[Captain Hat]

Haeso, couple of points:

1- regarding players only having one 'mech.

Look at any other game with an economy. It is really, really not uncommon for a player in most of these games to sell all of their things to buy the next tier of thing: I know people who, if they thought they could afford it, would probably sell an entire MechBay full of mediums and heavies to buy one Assault 'mech. This does happen in other games: It will probably happen here. Hell, it happens in EVE even, that people will sell everything to buy something slightly better than their best current thing.

2- Look at how many battles you are likely to be fighting.

I know people don't like it when World of Tanks is brought up, but 15-20 minute battle times are roughly what we're expecting in MWO as well so the analogy here is good: I have played over 80 games of WoT in one day before. Probably over 100, as most of them actually finish in less than 10 minutes and I didn't always survive to the end anyway. According to my average stats, I lost my tank something like 80% of the time (I tend to play light and medium tanks, and life for scouts in WoT is short and brutal) and lost the game just under 50% of the time, which means that according to your model, assuming I I realised 50% of the time that I was in an unwinnable situation and managed to surrender, I would have had to rely on the kindness of strangers, at a conservative estimate, at least 15 times during the course of the day, with 15 players in the opposing team each time. That's 225 strangers I would have had to negotiate with or just plain trust not to have the means and the will to take my tanks away from me.

Even if less than 1% of players were feeling dickish that day (and you and I both know the percentage is much higher than that) I would have lost 2 tanks that day, and odds are they would have been the more expensive ones. Except that I probably wouldn't, largely because I would have had to spend more time convincing people not to essentially steal my stuff and less time on the part that's actually fun- i.e. the game itself. If we consider a more realistic (but still low) proportion of about 10%, then I would have lost all fifteen tanks. In one day.

You have to understand that you're not just trusting one guy not to be a **** each time, you're trusting (assuming combat is done according to the Lance system) anywhere from four to sixteen people (more if they have bigger games). A 16-player game would only require 6% of players to want your 'mech for it to be a virtual certainty that surrender would mean 'mech loss.

As a game model, this doesn't work. Having a mechanism in place to reward players for forcing an enemy to surrender is fine- a good idea in fact, because it removes virtually at a stroke the stigma attached to ragequitting- but it should also encourage players to surrender, and reduce the loss incurred by doing so, not increase it.

Yes, war is hell. But that's the point- this isn't war, this is a game about war. Hell is fundamentally not fun, and this at the end of the day should be a fun game to play, regardless of the lines it has to stomp on to do it. An automatic ransom is, relatively, an extremely small line to finagle, and avoids a whole host of other problems that any other system would introduce..

Edited by Captain Hat, 09 December 2011 - 05:37 AM.

[metro]

Kyll Long, on 07 December 2011 - 03:25 AM, said:

There has to be more. If not this will become a flavor of the month. Heck maybe even a flavor of the year. After that people will move on and those of us that love the whole universe will be left where we started. Thats something a lot of us (based on these boards) aren't willing to see.

Amen my brother.