129 replies to this topic

[PFC Carsten]

AnTi90d, on 06 February 2017 - 11:24 AM, said:

R&R is a garbage mechanic that doesn't belong in multiplayer games.

Removing all mech XP earned and only awarding global XP would be better.

Not allowing more than 1 trial mech per dropdeck would be even better.

Requiring 3/4 of your dropdeck to be at least Elite would be evennerer betterrererer.

Allowing only full meta according to meta mechs would even be moar bettar.
Allowing only fully mastered and module equipped mechs would be bettar and moar stronk.
Allowing only Legendary Founders into Faction Play would be close to godlike stronkness.


I hope you see where this chain of argument leads to.

[TWIAFU]

AnTi90d, on 06 February 2017 - 11:24 AM, said:

Removing all mech XP earned and only awarding global XP would be better.

Proposed this many times. Without XP gains for mechs, nobody will be leveling mechs in CW and following along with the design of CW to be end game and need highly customized drop decks. Drop decks are not customized if your leveling them!

Won't be grinding xp for speed tweak in CW...

Remove mech XP, change it to LP/GXP.

PFC Carsten, on 06 February 2017 - 02:04 PM, said:

Allowing only full meta according to meta mechs would even be moar bettar.
Allowing only fully mastered and module equipped mechs would be bettar and moar stronk.
Allowing only Legendary Founders into Faction Play would be close to godlike stronkness.


I hope you see where this chain of argument leads to.

A strawman?

[QueenBlade]

And technically, with a repair / refit system the pug stomping will be slowed down or lessen due to their ability to continue in the war effort. The efforts that groups put in too claim a planet will less likely be wasted due to whichever side has more pugs. As it will more likely be that groups will meet up and face each other.

Edited by QueenBlade, 06 February 2017 - 02:29 PM.

[naterist]

Albino Boo, on 06 February 2017 - 02:04 PM, said:

Repair and rearm makes pug stomping more rewarding than playing close match against a team of similar skill. Forgive me for asking, but aren't you against pug stomping?

Ya, its a tough thing to implement. It sounds nice though.

[Davegt27]

To keep things fun you want a short list of hoops you have to jump through to play

So a slider instead of a check box
None, auto, or manual for R&R

You want to "give me the bottom line" on expenses
You also want mostly "things I get" to out weigh "the things I don't get"

For example ammo is free, paid by the faction
Consumables already taken care of it by the game
That leaves pilot performance or DMG done minus DMG taken
Next would be Kills and assists

Just some examples the big idea is to keep things short and simple

Edited by Davegt27, 07 February 2017 - 09:28 AM.

[AnTi90d]

R&R just incentivizes people to hide while PPC/ERLL sniping. They hoard their armor away and contribute nothing to the team. It's a bad idea that motivates people to never help with a push while always hiding behind their team mates and shutting down in the corner when things go bad. Nothing you tweak with R&R makes it good for the game.

[BLOOD WOLF]

like I said, R&R, should be the overall logistics cost of a drop for unit members in FW.

[Carl Vickers]

AnTi90d, on 06 February 2017 - 03:33 PM, said:

R&R just incentivizes people to hide while PPC/ERLL sniping. They hoard their armor away and contribute nothing to the team. It's a bad idea that motivates people to never help with a push while always hiding behind their team mates and shutting down in the corner when things go bad. Nothing you tweak with R&R makes it good for the game.

So much this. Add I dont think it would be fair for the newer players getting rolled by vets. Dont get me wrong, Id like to see R&R in the game but as Anti90d said, it would promote a specific play style over others. Poke warrior online.

[GoatHILL]

New players should not be in CW.

Are you going to be able to win the match poking? CW's goal is to take the planet its about the objective not getting lots of kills.

[Carl Vickers]

GoatHILL, on 06 February 2017 - 04:34 PM, said:

New players should not be in CW.

Are you going to be able to win the match poking? CW's goal is to take the planet its about the objective not getting lots of kills.

Poke 48 mechs to death and then clear objectives.

[justcallme A S H]

Carl Vickers, on 06 February 2017 - 04:55 PM, said:

Poke 48 mechs to death and then clear objectives.

Imagine playing a FPS like a, FPS.


But yeah if there is a R&R cost, I think that'll drive people away or markedly change the way people play.
Say to turn the tide of battle, you need to push into enemy lines... If that means if you are the first 1/2 mechs in, you'll cop a heavy cost for doing no DMG (and thus, not earn). In actual fact you almost become penalised for it, for playing a team role.

That doesn't seem overtly logical to me.

[AnimeFreak40K]

I find it...amusing that people want to throw up barriers of entry into CW... somehow thinking that will make things better.

I can only assume that these people have very short memories or weren't around the last time it happened.

You want people to stop being bad? Then leave them alone. Let them have their fun. They will either realize that they are not ready for FW and leave (they may or may not come back after this) or they won't. They either will get better or they won't. Complaining about it and throwing up barriers of entry won't solve anything but reduce the pool of players that will be playing FW at any given time.

Because of the low population in MWO in general, but FW in specific, you have a choice: You can either get matches in a reasonably quick and timely manner *OR* you can have reasonably balanced matches where all players do "well". One or the other. Period. Full stop. End of story.

Look, I don't care what you personally think or what you personally want or what you believe would help things along. The cold, hard facts are very clear, and have been become clearer over the almost 4 years of playing this game: the majority of the people would much rather get matches in a quick and timely manner.

This has been shown repeatedly, with each and every time to have any sort of deviation of quality over quantity promptly blowing up in the face of PGI and the playerbase.

[50 50]

QueenBlade, on 06 February 2017 - 02:04 PM, said:

50 50, you're only thinking 1 drop. Start thinking multiple drops. Think 4+ hour worth of drops on a planet. Suddenly the importance of keeping your mechs working becomes an issue when you are low on cbills.
As for the retreat, you have the eject mechanic. Currently the game rewards players with 'salvage bonus' for when they destroy an enemy mech, which is based upon the % of hp left when the enemy is destroyed. That same mechanic can be used to determine the repair cost as it accurately determines how much of your mech was left.

While there are players out there with huge c-bill fortunes amassed and there is a potential need to have a c-bill sink in the game, I think implementing repair and rearm with a c-bill cost would be a detrimental move to the mode. If you are a bit poor on funds and had a bad drop in Faction Play that costs you millions to recover from, it would create a flow on effect of removing players from the mode and sending them back to Quick Play, which reduces population, increases wait times and puts up the question: "Why drop in Faction Play when you can lose all your money?"
This effect would be lessened with using Unit Coffers and would provide us with another use for the coffers, but it has the same problems and hits smaller units harder.

For a c-bill sink, a logistics cost to commit a drop deck to a battle has a better approach and as an upfront cost, sets expectations better and is more visible.

For repairs and re-arm I would suggest using resource points and keeping it really simple. At least to begin with.
I will agree with you that repairs and rearm becomes relevant when thinking of fighting over multiple engagements or a prolonged engagement. Faction Play could move in one of two directions at this point.

Option 1 - Keep the stages
Existing setup, but we commit a single drop deck to all stages and measure attrition across them...... I actually started writing up the process in more detail but it got away from me a little so I'll put it in another post.

EDIT: Ok, got more time to write now but I'll try and keep it short here.

The existing setup using stages has a variety of limitations and really misses some great opportunities but if we want a cheap and quick update we could do this:

1. We make our progression through the stages individual. Your team wins. You go to the next stage. You don't and you either play the same stage or go back one stage. Get to invasion stage, win, get a 'success pip' for your faction to be tallied against the other faction at the end of the attack phase. Start the process again at the first stage.
2. When you commit your drop deck, it's for as many stages as you can manage. A mech gets destroyed/lost in one stage, it's not available for the next one. This creates attrition.
3. Use our match scores as an accumulated resource stored on our drop decks. Mechs cost a certain number of points to repair/rearm. Keep it as a simple, click the button, target the mech in the deck and mark it as 'under repair'. It will be available for the next battle.

There are several natural advantages to this but there are several disadvantages as well and I think we could have a better system overall for Faction Play.


Option 2 - Prolonged engagement
This means combining the modes into one bigger battle and having it all work dynamically.... once again, too much detail, saved for another post.

EDIT: If we really want the mode to encompass a lot of items on our wish lists and also address several nagging problems such as spawn camping, limited objectives and wait times we have to move to an open warfare style of game and accept it is a fair bit of work. That is:

1. Combine the modes into one big mode. That means putting all the objectives from all the modes into one map.
2. Change the purpose of holding those objectives. For repairs and rearm, we use the Conquest points to accumulate resource points on our drop decks. The more points controlled the faster we collect points so it creates a continual reason to fight over them.
3. We then spend those points using a repair button and target the damaged or destroyed mechs in our deck. They get a repair timer in addition to just costing X points.

Edited by 50 50, 07 February 2017 - 01:30 AM.

[GoatHILL]

The only people this would effect are players that can not pull 1K dmg per game. Those players need to improve before they start playing CW.

[Stahlherz]

Wanna turn CW into a rich man's sport, like Polo?

[seperate]

MechaBattler, on 06 February 2017 - 12:48 PM, said:

They should have a campaign mode with R&R. But have it be tied to a supply pool. A unit opts to take on a campaign. Every drop eats away at their supply pool based on how many mechs they lost and were damaged. As well as ammo expended. The more expensive equipment they use and the more of it that subsequently gets lost, the more that pool diminishes.

They could have some matches count as supply raids. Both in defending their own supplies and raiding supplies from the enemy. Even if you raid successfully, it won't stop the bleed of supply. You're going to run to ground eventually and end your campaign. You earn as many campaign points as you can. With prizes starting out at c-bill items, then MC, and perhaps a rotating pool of goodies to keep people coming back.

This wouldn't require special modes. It's literally just FP matches assigned a value. For me the most interesting thing would be seeing units having to run cheaper builds to wring out those last points of their supply pool.

that is an awesome idead

[50 50]

As a side note, until we add in features such as repairs/rearm and logistics, we can't bring in some other cool features that can work with them.

This popped up a bit in the discussion about loyalty points. If we could spend points on items such as an NPC tech or three for our mech bay, they could apply a modifier to the cost of repairs/rearm.
OR if we could buy a dropship, it could affect a logistics cost.

So more than just adding in a nice feature, it allows further depth and options to be added down the track.

[Willard Phule]

AnTi90d, on 06 February 2017 - 01:34 PM, said:

...how in the name of Comstar can a player use all four of his mechs.. get 7 kill assists.. and only manage to do 30 damage?..

Lurms, dude. Lurms.

As for the overall concept of repair/rearm....I dig the whole "after a battle, a mech is unavailable for X minutes" thing. That would allow PGI to show the reason why the Omnimech is superior to the Battlemech. There should be no repair time for Omnis as they are designed to be repaired and rearmed in the field.

[QueenBlade]

Something you guys aren't thinking about either.

Clan tech COSTS more. A lot more, especially after a player had made modifications. One balancing factor in the Mechwarrior / Battletech universe that isn't being used by today's balance mechanics.

PGI nerf's a weapon, equipment, mech's quirks, or buffs it. But the price never changes.

It is quite possible to see a slow down in the Clan advance simple due to the fact that Clan tech costs much more than IS tech.

And the timer could be something that reflects off of the cost.

Idea there being that light mechs would repair faster than assault mechs.

Edited by QueenBlade, 07 February 2017 - 03:20 PM.

[AnimeFreak40K]

QueenBlade, on 07 February 2017 - 03:17 PM, said:

Something you guys aren't thinking about either.

Clan tech COSTS more. A lot more, especially after a player had made modifications.

No it doesn't, not really. Clan mechs have a higher up-front cost because they often have equipment such as XL Engines, Endo Steel and/or Ferro-Fibrous...and all have Double Heat Sinks right out the gate. Engiens cost the same (Clan XL engines cost the same as IS XL), several (but not all) weapons cost the same, as does most other equipment.

In short, IS mechs that are equipped the same (or close to) Clan mechs cost about the same. The big difference is that the Clanners pay those costs up front, IS have the option of paying those costs over time.

QueenBlade, on 07 February 2017 - 03:17 PM, said:

One balancing factor in the Mechwarrior / Battletech universe that isn't being used by today's balance mechanics.

Okay, there are a LOT of things that were used as balancing factors in the tabletop game and the setting, and they have not been applied as balancing factors in this game.