21 replies to this topic

[Savage Wolf]

There is only two factors that determine rewards for a match: Time spent and whether you win or lose.

There are so many problems with trying to meassure each individual players performance and rewarding as such. It's currently not working as intended and even skews people's playstyle to play for rewards, not for winning. And not to mention all the efforts that can play into a victory that cannot concievable be tracked and thus rewarded.

Except if it's just about winning. If you do good, you win more and are thus rewarded. It doesn't matter how you accomplish this, be it tanking, squirrel'ing or whatever tactics was used. Gone are trying to inflate damage to get rewards or stripping DC's for components. Just win! Like you are supposed to in a game.

[El Bandito]

I just wish "Salvage" actually meant something interesting, rather than flat C-Bills.

[Shifty McSwift]

Nah there's plenty of ways to reward good play that are relatively simple, the devs have added quite a number of decent rewards, though the actual numbers of those rewards might be low or off in ways, they are (very slowly) adding good rewards, as in rewards that encourage "good" play. No reason to strip that away.

Relying too much on rewarding the win creates problems in players that did well but lost, adding to frustrations there, and gauging reward by game time length encourages things like map hiding (powering down afk in a corner), and griefing/abuse through messing with those timers in game.

[Savage Wolf]

El Bandito, on 05 July 2017 - 04:50 AM, said:

I just wish "Salvage" actually meant something interesting, rather than flat C-Bills.

Salvage is an interesting concept in single player games and maybe in all out mmos, but not in online multiplayer. So I look forward to that in MW5 where it also makes sense to have bigger mechs be more powerful because it brings progression. So we must be careful we don't bring our single player experiences and hope to see them in multiplayer. It's a different beast.

[PhoenixFire55]

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 03:06 AM, said:

Except if it's just about winning. If you do good, you win more and are thus rewarded. It doesn't matter how you accomplish this, be it tanking, squirrel'ing or whatever tactics was used. Gone are trying to inflate damage to get rewards or stripping DC's for components. Just win! Like you are supposed to in a game.

Every coin has two sides ... yeah, sure, winning matters, but the problem is imagine a team with 6 amazing players and 6 utter potatoes. Lets say potatoes potatoed and died doing nothing at all, the rest of their team performed a miracle and won the match. Are you suggesting potatoes are supposed to get the same reward as the guys who carried them? ... Don't know about you, but I do see a problem with that approach.

[Savage Wolf]

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 04:55 AM, said:

Nah there's plenty of ways to reward good play that are relatively simple, the devs have added quite a number of decent rewards, though the actual numbers of those rewards might be low or off in ways, they are (very slowly) adding good rewards, as in rewards that encourage "good" play. No reason to strip that away.

Relying too much on rewarding the win creates problems in players that did well but lost, adding to frustrations there, and gauging reward by game time length encourages things like map hiding (powering down afk in a corner), and griefing/abuse through messing with those timers in game.

Could you give some examples. I'm sure there are some few good ones, but my experience is that either it's things we'd do anyway (like damage) or directly distracting from winning. People play more to get rewards than to win and if there are only few ways that gets both then gameplay gets more stale and samey.

Freeing people from cathering to rewards frees them up for more variety of gameplay and creativity. Good players are still rewarded for playing well because they win more. And while some of the good players are rewarded now even when they lose, so does the guy just farming rewards with no regards to winning. And a lot of good players are not being rewarded for doing good tactics if they do not measure as damage and kills. Even if they win.

Time exploits could be a problem, but I was thinking with diminishing returns. Not enough to warrent exploiting, but still giving enough rewards to justify a more time consuming tactic. Exploiters are also easily reported and easy to investigate.

And really the fact that you can drag out a game is really a problem with the game modes anyway, but that's a whole new can of worms. There should always be a way to force an opponent to fight in a game mode.

[KodiakGW]

No. As soon as they fix matchmaker so I don't have 4-8 teammates that can't even get the 100 match score, then they can start to base it on wins.

They know they can't, so that is why events like the one running now are based on match score. Just glad they upped it to 100, so maybe those players will either get their act together and try to do better, or just stop playing. I'd rather spend more time finding a good game then get games like the ones I saw recently.

Edit: Wanted to add that I wish they staggered the rewards for how well you did. 100 match you get one grab bag, 250 match you get two, 500+ you get three.

Edited by KodiakGW, 05 July 2017 - 05:25 AM.

[Shifty McSwift]

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 05:10 AM, said:

Could you give some examples. I'm sure there are some few good ones, but my experience is that either it's things we'd do anyway (like damage) or directly distracting from winning. People play more to get rewards than to win and if there are only few ways that gets both then gameplay gets more stale and samey.

Freeing people from cathering to rewards frees them up for more variety of gameplay and creativity. Good players are still rewarded for playing well because they win more. And while some of the good players are rewarded now even when they lose, so does the guy just farming rewards with no regards to winning. And a lot of good players are not being rewarded for doing good tactics if they do not measure as damage and kills. Even if they win.

Time exploits could be a problem, but I was thinking with diminishing returns. Not enough to warrent exploiting, but still giving enough rewards to justify a more time consuming tactic. Exploiters are also easily reported and easy to investigate.

And really the fact that you can drag out a game is really a problem with the game modes anyway, but that's a whole new can of worms. There should always be a way to force an opponent to fight in a game mode.

Lance bonus; Encourages supporting the mechs in/near your weight class and sticking together (granted this isn't optimal for all circumstances, but it rewards people who are able to and do this well).

AMS Support bonuses; Rewarding the idea of protecting teammates with your AMS is a just a good idea in general.

Scouting bonus; Rewards spotting and using sensors, not just firing at every moving target you see, rewards some very good aspects of lighter mechs, and inversely can reward more solo oriented scouts who won't be getting lance bonuses etc.

Support weapons; TAG and Narc rewards, encouraging their usage outside of just for specific build boosting.

Kill assist bonuses; Rewards putting damage down damage on many targets and surviving long enough to do so, though this should really have a threshold to avoid someone just lightly tagging as many mechs as he can with a long burn laser for extra cbills.

[Savage Wolf]

PhoenixFire55, on 05 July 2017 - 04:59 AM, said:

Every coin has two sides ... yeah, sure, winning matters, but the problem is imagine a team with 6 amazing players and 6 utter potatoes. Lets say potatoes potatoed and died doing nothing at all, the rest of their team performed a miracle and won the match. Are you suggesting potatoes are supposed to get the same reward as the guys who carried them? ... Don't know about you, but I do see a problem with that approach.

But you are fine with the opposite? There are great tactics in this game that gets no rewards. Tanking, being a squirrel. Those players can also carry a team and is given few rewards if any, even if they win. Either way you lose some. Either is imperfect.

So yes, the potato can be carried, but it heightens his rank he'll be more and more of a burden and will lose more then effectively lower his rank. It evens out.

But changing it would change the focus from getting rewards to getting wins which I believe will inspire much better and varied gameplay. That's the real winner here. Not how many people get their just rewards, although I still believe it will also slightly improve that. But you are free to play the way you want to to gain victory and not have to concern yourself with whether you get rewarded enough to get that sweet new mech. Just play.

KodiakGW, on 05 July 2017 - 05:13 AM, said:

No. As soon as they fix matchmaker so I don't have 4-8 teammates that can't even get the 100 match score, then they can start to base it on wins.

They know they can't, so that is why events like the one running now are based on match score. Just glad they upped it to 100, so maybe those players will either get their act together and try to do better, or just stop playing. I'd rather spend more time finding a good game then get games like the ones I saw recently.

But the ranking is currently built on the same logic as the flawed rewards system. Of course matchmaking should also be based on winning or losing. I hate being the squirrel that pulls half a team away and ensures victory just to see the matchmaker keeping my ranking still because it did not measure my contribution.

[El Bandito]

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 04:58 AM, said:

Salvage is an interesting concept in single player games and maybe in all out mmos, but not in online multiplayer. So I look forward to that in MW5 where it also makes sense to have bigger mechs be more powerful because it brings progression. So we must be careful we don't bring our single player experiences and hope to see them in multiplayer. It's a different beast.

Wouldn't have been that difficult if salvage was given form as a token for a part of a mech that we have to collect all of them. Just like skin shards of LoL. Rare ones can even include parts from a Hero mech.

[Savage Wolf]

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

Lance bonus; Encourages supporting the mechs in/near your weight class and sticking together (granted this isn't optimal for all circumstances, but it rewards people who are able to and do this well).

Agreed, yet as you mention there are problems.

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

AMS Support bonuses; Rewarding the idea of protecting teammates with your AMS is a just a good idea in general.

Agreed.

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

Scouting bonus; Rewards spotting and using sensors, not just firing at every moving target you see, rewards some very good aspects of lighter mechs, and inversely can reward more solo oriented scouts who won't be getting lance bonuses etc.

Somewhat agree. It's good that scouts are rewarded, but not be much to my experience. But then again, if it's rewarded too much it gets farmed with no benefit for the team. So I'd say it's problematic in the currect system.

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

Support weapons; TAG and Narc rewards, encouraging their usage outside of just for specific build boosting.

Agreed.

Shifty McSwift, on 05 July 2017 - 05:17 AM, said:

Kill assist bonuses; Rewards putting damage down damage on many targets and surviving long enough to do so, though this should really have a threshold to avoid someone just lightly tagging as many mechs as he can with a long burn laser for extra cbills.

Also often favours low effieciency. LRMers are often rewarded substantially for spreading damage like the wind. Granted that damage makes them easier to pick off by others so it should be rewarded, but you cannot balance that with the efficient damage of support snipers like ERL lights that do not damage nearly as much, but only because they only damage CT and give others the ability to finish them.

El Bandito, on 05 July 2017 - 05:29 AM, said:

Wouldn't have been that difficult if salvage was given form as a token for a part of a mech that we have to collect all of them. Just like skin shards of LoL. Rare ones can even include parts from a Hero mech.

True, that could be an interesting way to introduce salvage without skewing gameplay. Good suggestion.

[PhoenixFire55]

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 05:22 AM, said:

But you are fine with the opposite? There are great tactics in this game that gets no rewards. Tanking, being a squirrel. Those players can also carry a team and is given few rewards if any, even if they win. Either way you lose some. Either is imperfect.

There are no "tactics" in solo queue, even in group queue there are hardly more than a dozen groups that actually do use tactics apart from "lets form a giant deathball and shoot baddies". The so called "great" tactics you mentioned aren't actually even valid to begin with, unless of course you are playing against a bunch of potatoes.

So lets just say that I'm way more fine with this "opposite".

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 05:22 AM, said:

So yes, the potato can be carried, but it heightens his rank he'll be more and more of a burden and will lose more then effectively lower his rank. It evens out.

But we aren't talking about his rank, are we? ... We are talking about game rewards, and in your scenario a potatoe earns just as much on average as an average player does. More importantly, said potatoe is actively making all other players around him earn less, because of his badness.

All in all it is pretty simple. Better players would advocate for more individual based rewards, while worse players would do the opposite. Most of the crowd is average tho, so for most people it doesn't change anything.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 05:22 AM, said:

But changing it would change the focus from getting rewards to getting wins which I believe will inspire much better and varied gameplay.

It won't. People already know that they earn more if they win. The thing is, nearly everyone you see in PUGs considers himself important for his team success, thus he'll do everything to maximize his living time and his output, while in reality, hardly more than 5-10% of player population are actually above the level of being irrelevant (or worse). Changing rewards doesn't address that in the slightest, everyone would still think that he is essential to bring home the win.

[Savage Wolf]

PhoenixFire55, on 05 July 2017 - 05:40 AM, said:

There are no "tactics" in solo queue, even in group queue there are hardly more than a dozen groups that actually do use tactics apart from "lets form a giant deathball and shoot baddies". The so called "great" tactics you mentioned aren't actually even valid to begin with, unless of course you are playing against a bunch of potatoes.

Exactly. Lets change that. Lets stop reinforcing the same old tactics that get rewarded more than others.

PhoenixFire55, on 05 July 2017 - 05:40 AM, said:

So lets just say that I'm way more fine with this "opposite".

But you didn't address that at all. So why is it okay not to reward a good player, but not okay to reward a bad one? Is it not equally bad?

PhoenixFire55, on 05 July 2017 - 05:40 AM, said:

But we aren't talking about his rank, are we? ... We are talking about game rewards, and in your scenario a potatoe earns just as much on average as an average player does. More importantly, said potatoe is actively making all other players around him earn less, because of his badness.

All in all it is pretty simple. Better players would advocate for more individual based rewards, while worse players would do the opposite. Most of the crowd is average tho, so for most people it doesn't change anything.

Rank and rewards and both measure by the same logic. It does not and should also with this change, meaning your ranking is based on win/loss. So eventually, potatoes would fight potatoes and not burden good players. Instead of currently where everyone eventually become tier 1 if they just play enough and farm rewards.

And I don't think better players advocate more individual rewards because they know what cannot be rewarded this way because it cannot be measured. And also right now we don't know because some of the players currently known as good players could just be very good at farming the current system and so is biased in favor of it. So I'd like to hear arguments and not speculation on a group with no common voice available.

PhoenixFire55, on 05 July 2017 - 05:40 AM, said:

It won't. People already know that they earn more if they win. The thing is, nearly everyone you see in PUGs considers himself important for his team success, thus he'll do everything to maximize his living time and his output, while in reality, hardly more than 5-10% of player population are actually above the level of being irrelevant (or worse). Changing rewards doesn't address that in the slightest, everyone would still think that he is essential to bring home the win.

Yet, I constantly see people ignore objective or ignore the main group if there are rewards to be had. And yes, they maximize staying alive because it brings rewards. That's why it's often hard to make them push despite it being very effective at winning. They stay in the back and not share armor. They are rewarded for playing bad. Not having to worry about rewards might make some of them take risks of it meant winning. Now they rather lose and do good damage.
Worst example was an Assault game where we met half the enemy team, destroyed them and hoped to find the rest of them at their base. But they had sneaked past us and was capping out base. But no problem we were at their base and had more mechs, we could easily out cap them and win.
But winning was not relevant it seems. Only two of us stayed and capped, the rest turned around and headed back despite there being no chance they could make it back in time to stop them. They just hoped for one more kill or more damage. It was so stuck in their brains they didn't even realise they would benefit more from just capping. So we lost. Because winning wasn't important, rewards was.
And that is the type of game play that this current system has produced. And some of these potatoes go to tier 1 because they damage well and the matchmaker likes that. Even when they lose.

[PhoenixFire55]

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

Exactly. Lets change that. Lets stop reinforcing the same old tactics that get rewarded more than others.

If you honestly think that running around the map doing nothing or running into the enemy thus doing nothing is supposed to be rewarded then we don't have anything to talk about. As I've said, there are no tactics in solo queue, none.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

But you didn't address that at all. So why is it okay not to reward a good player, but not okay to reward a bad one? Is it not equally bad?

Same reason why a good worker would get payed more than a bad one? Same reason why a star player is payed more than other players on his team? ... Everyone contributes towards victory, but not in an equal measure, and that should be reflected in rewards.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

Rank and rewards and both measure by the same logic. It does not and should also with this change, meaning your ranking is based on win/loss.

Yes and no.
If ranking was only based on solo queue ...
And if there was no matchmaker involved ... then sure, W/L would have been a proper measure of player skill or rank or whatever. But since neither is true, then neither rank, nor rewards should be based on W/L, because such W/L is in many ways affected not by your individual skill, but rather by the skill of people you are playing with.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

And I don't think better players advocate more individual rewards because they know what cannot be rewarded this way because it cannot be measured.

Everything can be measured. The complexity of such measurement is another matter.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

And also right now we don't know because some of the players currently known as good players could just be very good at farming the current system and so is biased in favor of it.

"Good" players aren't the ones who simply earn more c-bills by "farming" the system as you put it tho. I guarantee you that an actual good player still earns more than such "farmer" due to the fact that he is focused on winning the game and actually wins the game instead of blowing empty arms off or farming disconnects or whatever. Make a different system and you'll still see the same good players earning more than a new bunch of more adept "farmers".

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

Yet, I constantly see people ignore objective or ignore the main group if there are rewards to be had.

Objectives like what? ... Because fyi capping resource points and capping enemy base is actually helps enemy team to win, not yours. That is due to poor map design and poor implementation of said objectives. The proper strategy in MWO is to kill most of the enemy that did fight, and then cap while killing the rest of the enemy team that didn't fight and was capping instead. People who understand that aren't playing for objectives, and they are absolutely right to do so.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

And yes, they maximize staying alive because it brings rewards.

And once again, no ... rewards are irrelevant. People who only care about themselves and are trying to stay alive at all costs will keep doing that even if there will be no personal rewards at all. Same way people who are sharing armor and generally trying to help teammates are doing it right now even tho its not rewarded as much. Flip the rewards and nothing will change on that regard.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

That's why it's often hard to make them push despite it being very effective at winning.

Except it isn't. Its not universal. Go ahead and push all you want with a team of 12 mechs with ERLLs against a full SRM/LBX team - you will lose. And since you don't know what loadouts your teammates have, making them push the enemy is a 50-50 gamble at best.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

They stay in the back and not share armor.

And from their perspective you are leroying in and dieing like a noob. And I'm not going to debate who is right, because it depends on each particular match.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

They are rewarded for playing bad.

They are not. If they are just hiding and not shooting then they aren't rewarded at all. Same goes for brawlers. You still need to expose yourself in order to shoot (unless you are a lurmer, but that is a different story). And when your snipers do the opposing team snipers can shoot them back.

The fact that brawlers aren't supposedly getting as much in terms of rewards are on them and nobody else. Obviously on most maps the relative % of time of engagement a sniper mech can shoot the enemy is more, but since the DPS on a brawler mech is much greater than any of your average snipers, they should be able to compensate that engagement time % with better output during the time they can engage. On a good team you will see nearly same damages for brawlers and snipers and thus nearly same rewards.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

But winning was not relevant it seems. Only two of us stayed and capped, the rest turned around and headed back despite there being no chance they could make it back in time to stop them. They just hoped for one more kill or more damage. It was so stuck in their brains they didn't even realise they would benefit more from just capping. So we lost. Because winning wasn't important, rewards was.

For each scenario like that there is five more where people decide to cap when they are needed in a fight and blow a win like that.

Savage Wolf, on 05 July 2017 - 06:08 AM, said:

And that is the type of game play that this current system has produced. And some of these potatoes go to tier 1 because they damage well and the matchmaker likes that. Even when they lose.

What kind of gameplay? ... The kind of gameplay that makes people want to pew pew robots instead of walking around the map standing on cap points? Sorry, but I'd rather take that kind of gameplay then what you seem to suggest.

[Savage Wolf]

Let me try to sum up because otherwise this will be a giant posts and a lot of repeats.

When I suggested tactics, I know they don't always work in all situations and I meant whenever they were the proper tactic at the time. But that wasn't really the point either. It was the preference of tactics based on higher average rewards instead of average wins when performed. Which is usually the passively sitting back and take pot shots to rack up damage approach instead of do or die tactics (which is of course only applied when the odds favor do rather than die).

And why the focus on solo-q when it would affect all the queues? Maybe omit CW as it's less roleplay centric.

I work with tracking user behavior for a living. There are many things you cannot meassure. How do you programmaticly decide the difference between tanking and just being a potato? How do you measure if someone acted as a squirrel or it was simply focus fire from the other team? How do you measure tactics we haven't even thought of yet?
To be able to give people rewards the measurements need to be very precise and not need a coach. And even if some of them could be measured with complex enough algorithms then that's not going to help us if PGI doesn't have the expertise or budget to do them. My alternative is much cheaper and requires little if any maintenance.

And please don't assume I enjoy capping and that is what I wanted in favor of pew pew in a situation where battle wasn't even an option. It was either cap and win or walk and lose. And while this was the worst example I've experienced then it's still common for for players to ignore win conditions because damage pays better.
What we do apart from fighting is based on the gamemodes and is an entirely different subject. But my suggestion even affects Skirmish, a gamemode exclusively about battle.

But in the end you seem to just suggest that it's redundant to change this. That no one would benefit from it. I can assure you there is, I'm not alone even on the forums with these wishes. But they probably don't benefit you and that is fair, not all changes are a benefit to all. But it shouldn't hinder you either unless you under the current system is rewarded too heavily.
Maybe your playstyle fits the current rewards perfectly and see no need for change. Maybe you like this focus on pew pew as you mentioned. Don't worry, I like pew pew too and wouldn't want to diminish that for the world. I just want pew pew with more depth and variety and that is currently punished for some reason.

[PhoenixFire55]

Savage Wolf, on 06 July 2017 - 05:38 AM, said:

... stuff ...

Look, we can debate forever really. The point is, rewards already include both personal oriented rewards and win-oriented rewards. I think that rewards are inadequate, i.e. too small.

What I would suggest is paying the same personal oriented rewards as we are getting now, but double them in case team wins. Thus people will have incentive to both do well themselves and win at the same time, because the better you do yourself, the more you will lose if it doesn't translate into victory.

Either way, paying only personal oriented rewards or paying only win oriented rewards is equally bad for multiple reasons.

[Almond Brown]

El Bandito, on 05 July 2017 - 05:29 AM, said:

Wouldn't have been that difficult if salvage was given form as a token for a part of a mech that we have to collect all of them. Just like skin shards of LoL. Rare ones can even include parts from a Hero mech.

Would parts from Allies count as Tokens too? I can just see it now as Token hunting became a thing, just like Kill stealing is apparently a thing...

Just need one more "Upper Arm Actuator" from an Urbie...

"Hey you! Get away from that Urbie you f'en Potato!" LOL!

[El Bandito]

Almond Brown, on 06 July 2017 - 06:59 AM, said:

Would parts from Allies count as Tokens too? I can just see it now as Token hunting became a thing, just like Kill stealing is apparently a thing...

Just need one more "Upper Arm Actuator" from an Urbie...

"Hey you! Get away from that Urbie you f'en Potato!" LOL!

Salvage doesn't have to be from the mechs you have personally destroyed. They can be taken from the collective defeated mechs and given to each victorious players through randomization--one shard from one part of a random mech, each. Of course, mechs that were cockpitted will give the most amount of parts. So it would be a good idea to try to headshot any Hero mechs you encounter.

Edited by El Bandito, 06 July 2017 - 07:26 AM.

[zeves]

for salvage to be a logical thing you would need a whole new game mode with different progression, and that sadly will never happen, other than that the rewards are fine now. takes no time at all to get enough money for what u want.

[Savage Wolf]

PhoenixFire55, on 06 July 2017 - 06:29 AM, said:

Look, we can debate forever really.

Yeah, I think we can conclude that we do not agree and both has put forth their arguments.

PhoenixFire55, on 06 July 2017 - 06:29 AM, said:

The point is, rewards already include both personal oriented rewards and win-oriented rewards. I think that rewards are inadequate, i.e. too small.

What I would suggest is paying the same personal oriented rewards as we are getting now, but double them in case team wins. Thus people will have incentive to both do well themselves and win at the same time, because the better you do yourself, the more you will lose if it doesn't translate into victory.

Either way, paying only personal oriented rewards or paying only win oriented rewards is equally bad for multiple reasons.

I don't personally think that the size of rewards currently is a problem as such. There are issues such as being punished for bringing consumables for some reason, but that is it's own problem.

But making wins a multiplier instead of a flat bonus as it is now would only further escalate the problems I find with it now. Making the game even more rewards focused, maybe also win focused, but only if you can win with great rewards. That would only further push people to seek rewards before trying to win which again is the wrong way to play.