104 replies to this topic

[MeiSooHaityu]

Depth is good, but it also needs to be fun and make you want to play. R&R did neither of those things for the vast majority of players. Therefore it was a big fail.

[Tristan Winter]

I just want to say: while R&R was fundamentally flawed in MWO, PGI tried a single approach, got a lot of angry feedback and then rejected it forever.

It would have taken a lot of work to make it work, sure. But they basically came to a crossroad where they needed to invest more time and effort to make MWO an immersive experience, or they had to go more towards the arena shooter. They chose the latter. Maybe wisely, in retrospect. Because we know now that PGI originally bit over far more than they could chew, and CW didn't come 90 days after release, after all.

Still. To say that R&R doesn't work for MWO because its original incarnation was flawed is just silly talk. A well-developed CW with R&R would have been awesome. That MW2:Mercs experience. But at least we may get that for the future PVE campaign, when / if that is delivered.

[MrFerrous]

I can understand how this could make the grind unbearable for a new player. but i think we miss out on alot of the out of game strategy when we don't have to worry about what we are doing in this Match affecting the next one. Sure , I don't want them to mess with my c bills but what if....

What if it cost you time, locking out mech that have been destroyed for long enough to make it hurt a bit. you could even go to the exstent of attaching certain repair time to certain components that are supposed to be rare or OP "I don't care if you take down the mech, make sure you hit that clan ----insert bad @$$ weapon here--- so we don't see it again tonight". Balance the game with the economy of time makes fare more since to me then quarking the tar of out everything. But if that to complex you could simplify it. just take the mech at the percentage that it was damaged when it left the match and allow it to recover 1% per minute until it is ready to use again. This would make people change up more, make it harder to spam, and would make CW power decking a challenge for all but the wealthiest of players.

I think Brawling should pay the best (to keep the swarms of LRMs and ERL aways) and by doing this you could balance great pay outs for brawlers with high costs in time to repaire.

[Dinochrome]

Hailz all:

The cost to repair and re-arm concept in MWO was a failed attempt because the game is coded based on a modified Solaris combat model.
This statement is based on public battles, not CW, CW is in its early stages and is an entirely different concept which I am not sure they can pull off. I suspect they are trying to develop a truncated EVE Online with CW.

Currently we drop, fight a battle, win or lose and are rewarded with various monetary awards. Re-arm/ repair is handled automatically. Not a lot of depth, i.e. immersive game play. In a public online match that is acceptable.

I know no one wants to hear any MechWarrior history, but when Battletech/ MechWarrior became a computer game versus a board game, board game players immediately developed a way to use the computer game to resolve the actual battles. All background details, funding mech puchases, repairs, support costs etc were supported OUTSIDE the game. They developed software/ website front ends which contained all the Lore and accounting details. The game itself was used only to resolve the battles. Thus was born NBT, NBT Battletech, MMLL etc.

Which leads us to this, Players devoted incredible time and energy to maintain and support those websites. 90% of that effort was to support all the background. PGI developed the current model to support basic online public play styles. You will have to wait for CW to develope if you want to deal with the gory details of mech support.

[Curccu]

nimdabew, on 31 March 2016 - 10:49 AM, said:

Two posts above, did anyone notice that centurion tanking like a bauce? Where is that game? Where are my mechs that take a beating and still continue to fight? The game now feels like counter strike: get shot three times and you die :/

Hitreg got better + bigger alphas = faster death.

[Davers]

MrFerrous, on 31 March 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

I can understand how this could make the grind unbearable for a new player. but i think we miss out on alot of the out of game strategy when we don't have to worry about what we are doing in this Match affecting the next one. Sure , I don't want them to mess with my c bills but what if....

What if it cost you time, locking out mech that have been destroyed for long enough to make it hurt a bit. you could even go to the exstent of attaching certain repair time to certain components that are supposed to be rare or OP "I don't care if you take down the mech, make sure you hit that clan ----insert bad @$$ weapon here--- so we don't see it again tonight". Balance the game with the economy of time makes fare more since to me then quarking the tar of out everything. But if that to complex you could simplify it. just take the mech at the percentage that it was damaged when it left the match and allow it to recover 1% per minute until it is ready to use again. This would make people change up more, make it harder to spam, and would make CW power decking a challenge for all but the wealthiest of players.

I think Brawling should pay the best (to keep the swarms of LRMs and ERL aways) and by doing this you could balance great pay outs for brawlers with high costs in time to repaire.

How is longer wait times to play the mech you want to play more fun? How is preventing another player from playing a mech he may have bought for real money "all night" fun? Why are you designing a system that hurts newer players with less mechs more than veterans?

[meteorol]

Removing R&R was the best decision PGI ever made (considering gameplay).

[CDLord HHGD]

Removing R&R dumbed down the game and removed just one more link to Mechwarrior. We're almost to Generic Battle Bots GO! levels....

[Davers]

cdlord, on 31 March 2016 - 12:50 PM, said:

Removing R&R dumbed down the game and removed just one more link to Mechwarrior. We're almost to Generic Battle Bots GO! levels....

How did it dumb down the game? All it did was limit what equipment solo/F2P players could use. If Joe M was here he would tell you R&R didn't affect him and all he ran was LRM Atlases. So, heaviest mech in the game with a complete ammo dependant loadout wasn't bothered by R&R- so what was the point of it? To punish medium and light mechs with XL engines? To make sure that people with Hero mechs and PT can run better equipment than people without? To screw over new players who only have one or two mechs?

I guess Clan players would find R&R extremely fun with their lack of engine and upgrade choices! Hey, let's make the Summoner even worse than the Timberwolf with only having super expensive FF!

It's like people forget that R&R didn't limit what you could buy in previous MW or MC games. They act like they had to do all the missions in a light mech because they couldn't afford anything better. All R&R did was slow down your ability to buy stuff in the beginning. It was a way to gate content and give players a sense of advancement in a solo campaign, not to actually provide balance.

MWO's R&R punished good play and made getting cored fast preferable to spreading damage. It used completely arbitrary numbers that in no way reflected the reality of the game (AC5 is cheap and LB-X10 is expensive, FF costs more than Endo, etc). It just doesn't make sense in MWO.

[FupDup]

Davers, on 31 March 2016 - 02:15 PM, said:

How did it dumb down the game? All it did was limit what equipment solo/F2P players could use. If Joe M was here he would tell you R&R didn't affect him and all he ran was LRM Atlases. So, heaviest mech in the game with a complete ammo dependant loadout wasn't bothered by R&R- so what was the point of it? To punish medium and light mechs with XL engines? To make sure that people with Hero mechs and PT can run better equipment than people without? To screw over new players who only have one or two mechs?

I guess Clan players would find R&R extremely fun with their lack of engine and upgrade choices! Hey, let's make the Summoner even worse than the Timberwolf with only having super expensive FF!

It's like people forget that R&R didn't limit what you could buy in previous MW or MC games. They act like they had to do all the missions in a light mech because they couldn't afford anything better. All R&R did was slow down your ability to buy stuff in the beginning. It was a way to gate content and give players a sense of advancement in a solo campaign, not to actually provide balance.

MWO's R&R punished good play and made getting cored fast preferable to spreading damage. It used completely arbitrary numbers that in no way reflected the reality of the game (AC5 is cheap and LB-X10 is expensive, FF costs more than Endo, etc). It just doesn't make sense in MWO.

Speaking of previous MW games, in MW4 singleplayer my strategy was to rely on lights until Solaris opened up, then I grinded through all of the gazillion Solaris matches to make absurd amounts of bank. Then I bought 3 lances of heavy/assault mechs and used them for the rest of the game.

The wealth got to the point where I would literally purchase Adders for the single purpose of stripping their ERPPCs and then selling them back, just to stock up on ERPPCs for my assault lances. Even with a net financial loss I could just laugh at the costs and do it all day. MW4's market refilled its supply when you sold mechs to it, so basically I would never run out of Adders to buy any time I needed more ERPPCs.

Basically, costs only matter in the early game. When you get into the big leagues end-game, costs are absolutely meaningless.

Edited by FupDup, 31 March 2016 - 02:57 PM.

[DaZur]

The premis of R&R was solid... The implimentation was just sadly lacking. Add to that the intrinsic imbalance the founder/hero mech and its bonuses and weird gaps for exploitation and you ca see how it was destined to fail.

It would be a tough addition to reintroduce without some major revisioning.

Personally I enjoyed the pro/con cost/benefit layer of play mechanic.... What some call uneccessary cautionary I called purposeful tactical play.

[Nightmare1]

To put it bluntly, R&R was a miserable abomination which is why it was removed. Your Mech would need to be repaired at a C-bill cost after every battle and its ammunition reloaded before the next fight. If you couldn't afford to fully complete repairs or to rearm, then you had to venture out to do battle with a damaged or light-loaded Mech. I remember being very frustrated trying to learn the ropes to MWO while my HBK-4G only had about 70% armor and a handful of AC/20 rounds for each battle. Needless to say, I died an awful lot and had a very hard time progressing through the game. I actually quit MWO for a while until R&R was pulled from the game; it was just too frustrating.

The concept itself is a good one, but there's no way to implement it correctly in this game. C-bill earnings are far too low and the game is too complicated for new players to be able to cope with R&R effectively while progressing through the game. Though R&R would satisfy the end-game players who have already made a pile of C-bills and don't particularly care about the rest of the game now, it would destroy new player recruitment and drive a lot of others away.

It is one of my most fervent wishes that PGI never reintroduces R&R. If they do, it may well signal the death knell of this great game.

[Pjwned]

Lugh, on 31 March 2016 - 04:52 AM, said:

Essentially damage to the Mech had to be repaired (which had a cost).

Also ammunition used had to be bought (re-arm) and broken weapons repaired(re-arm).

The complaint was (and it wasn't really legitimate) from Froobs (free players) who felt they could never progress to buying new mechs. This was patently false and anyone with even a modest amount of skill could earn enough to buy a couple few mechs a week which was faster than other similar games (like Warthunder and World of Tanks).

The argument boiled down to what about the poor froobs...

They catered to that outcry, those froobs are LOOOONG gone, and the income you would have earned being a good pilot is gone along with them (because the income in the game got cut in half when they took out repair and rearm). ..

Oh and the end result? You didn't earn new mechs any faster. Clueless FROOBS continue to not do well, not earn fast coin and leave the game before having even a single Chassis mastered.


False statement. The economy WITH repair and rearm was at ~ 2x the earnings it is today.

If you had a clue you could make WAY more money playing under that system than the one today.

The main argument was that it was pay2win.

Because it was.

[Davers]

FupDup, on 31 March 2016 - 02:56 PM, said:

Speaking of previous MW games, in MW4 singleplayer my strategy was to rely on lights until Solaris opened up, then I grinded through all of the gazillion Solaris matches to make absurd amounts of bank. Then I bought 3 lances of heavy/assault mechs and used them for the rest of the game.

The wealth got to the point where I would literally purchase Adders for the single purpose of stripping their ERPPCs and then selling them back, just to stock up on ERPPCs for my assault lances. Even with a net financial loss I could just laugh at the costs and do it all day. MW4's market refilled its supply when you sold mechs to it, so basically I would never run out of Adders to buy any time I needed more ERPPCs.

Basically, costs only matter in the early game. When you get into the big leagues end-game, costs are absolutely meaningless.

Is this the 'immersion of R&R' that everyone talks about?

DaZur, on 31 March 2016 - 02:57 PM, said:

The premis of R&R was solid... The implimentation was just sadly lacking. Add to that the intrinsic imbalance the founder/hero mech and its bonuses and weird gaps for exploitation and you ca see how it was destined to fail.

It would be a tough addition to reintroduce without some major revisioning.

Personally I enjoyed the pro/con cost/benefit layer of play mechanic.... What some call uneccessary cautionary I called purposeful tactical play.

If you were seeing pros/cons and cost/benefits than you were dropping solo. If you were in a group you only saw pros and benefits. I bought and fully kitted 20 or so mechs mechs while running XL engine, ammo dependant Heavy mechs between the launch of Open Beta October 29 2012 and the removal of R&R December 17 2012. Don't tell me R&R served any real purpose.

[wanderer]

R&R was basically balanced for premium time and playing to stomp (which meant group games, and the queue system wasn't the solo-safe system it is now meaning seal clubbing was real).

Soloers and F2P's ended up getting double-tapped as a result- an earnings curve that limited even C-bill available options and lower earning rates because they generally took more damage even when winning.

And weapons suffered from having to mount far, far more ammo than TT, meaning keeping them "fully" loaded either meant overloading (to use the 75% free reloads) and having wasted tonnage, or ponying up the C-bills and wondering why your Catapult barely pulled positive earnings after ending the game without a dent on it's armor.

It was a horrible system for quick play. CW could use some kind of logistics system, but R&R as it was can only be an object lesson in uneven handicapping and one of the systems that helped cut into the beta-era player population.

[Kuritaclan]

CapperDeluxe, on 31 March 2016 - 05:27 AM, said:

It was pretty terrible, and only belongs in this game if they decide to have some kind of hardcore mode.

I would switch to it if opportunity would be that without premium time you could make (if you are good) more c-bills.

Lugh, on 31 March 2016 - 04:52 AM, said:

The complaint was (and it wasn't really legitimate) from Froobs (free players) who felt they could never progress to buying new mechs. This was patently false and anyone with even a modest amount of skill could earn enough to buy a couple few mechs a week which was faster than other similar games (like Warthunder and World of Tanks).

F2P Player like myself didn't complain about it. However all over the community were people who complained about. I had a couple of flaws. But instead of fixing them PGI/IGP abandon it.

I now and back then think it was a false decision. Because immersion and content beside stomping robots was and is a problem of the game or better to say the lack of.

[Trauglodyte]

R&R was a great idea - stop me if you've heard this before - that was implemented horribly. It penalized ammo based weapon users in an era when HSR didn't exist which made ammo based weapons even worse. The concept was great because it basically told the player, "Look, if you want to upgrade your mech into this uber expensive beast, you'd better be good enough to use it or it is going to cost you." Unfortunately, as you can tell from a LOT of the topics and responses on this board, nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions. So, losing money because they played poorly didn't sit well with the community. Not all of that was unfounded because, as some have said, there wasn't a "solo queue" only game play so you often went up against premades of 8 all on VOIP. There are so many potato players in this game now, you can imagine how that was back then.

I'd love for it to come back but it would need to be drastically redone to make sense. Would/should work for CW.

[DaZur]

Davers, on 31 March 2016 - 03:22 PM, said:

If you were seeing pros/cons and cost/benefits than you were dropping solo. If you were in a group you only saw pros and benefits. I bought and fully kitted 20 or so mechs mechs while running XL engine, ammo dependant Heavy mechs between the launch of Open Beta October 29 2012 and the removal of R&R December 17 2012. Don't tell me R&R served any real purpose.

If you read carefully you'll note I said it was implemented poorly...

And yes, at that time I was PUGing exclusively. So to be fair to your point my perspective was skewed.

Edited by DaZur, 31 March 2016 - 04:46 PM.

[Pjwned]

Trauglodyte, on 31 March 2016 - 04:37 PM, said:

R&R was a great idea - stop me if you've heard this before - that was implemented horribly. It penalized ammo based weapon users in an era when HSR didn't exist which made ammo based weapons even worse. The concept was great because it basically told the player, "Look, if you want to upgrade your mech into this uber expensive beast, you'd better be good enough to use it or it is going to cost you." Unfortunately, as you can tell from a LOT of the topics and responses on this board, nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions. So, losing money because they played poorly didn't sit well with the community. Not all of that was unfounded because, as some have said, there wasn't a "solo queue" only game play so you often went up against premades of 8 all on VOIP. There are so many potato players in this game now, you can imagine how that was back then.

I'd love for it to come back but it would need to be drastically redone to make sense. Would/should work for CW.

It did not and would not even accomplish anything for the players who simply paid enough real money.

[LORD ORION]

You think PGI/IGP cared that the grind was more brutal? Heh
It was removed, because efficient c-bill farming mechs started to get used in high numbers and builds were posted all over the forums making he game appear completely ********.
Basically the game devoled into a bunch of derpy close range zombie mechs with the best damage output / repair ratios.