13 replies to this topic

[Marikhen]

I'm just curious because I can't see the sense in this, and it's been irritating me for months now. There aren't any obvious gameplay or balance reasons, and the "realism" thing goes out the window when you consider that your pilot, sometimes your dead pilot if the cockpit gets shot out, is magically transported alive and healthy to the mechlab area along with the mech that is simultaneously down wherever it was just blown up at.

So is there any good reason for this?

[Cloves]

Marikhen, on 30 May 2018 - 02:27 PM, said:

I'm just curious because I can't see the sense in this, and it's been irritating me for months now. There aren't any obvious gameplay or balance reasons, and the "realism" thing goes out the window when you consider that your pilot, sometimes your dead pilot if the cockpit gets shot out, is magically transported alive and healthy to the mechlab area along with the mech that is simultaneously down wherever it was just blown up at.

So is there any good reason for this?

It’s to prevent abuse. They want to disincentivize match grinding and encourage engaged play. You can learn a ton by spectating, I strongly recommend it for your first thousand matches or so. You can also try out the trials you have not spent much time in or soon, should have another mech of your own to alternate with. But I still spectate till the end with most of my matches and am always learning new builds, new ways to use the maps, and battle flow patterns. Make sure you find a good player at first, maybe later on in your career, find a bad player and talk them through their difficulties or spot for that LRM boat. Keep in mind you earn more money if your team wins and per enemy that you shot actually dies, so root for team blue.

[BTGbullseye]

Also, voice comms while spectating helps. It's an extra pair of eyes looking at the locked mech, able to tell people what parts have no armor left so they can focus them down faster, and not have to pull their attention away from their aiming.

[Marikhen]

Cloves, on 30 May 2018 - 02:44 PM, said:

It’s to prevent abuse. They want to disincentivize match grinding and encourage engaged play.

I'm not sure how it does that when you aren't forced to spectate until the match ends, even to the point of forcing you back into spectator mode if you Alt+F4 the client and restart it, and you're free to quit and pick a different mech.

I understand the benefits of sticking around and spectating, but I don't see that locking your mech to a specific match does any good for that, especially when you're running something that nobody else on your team is so you can't pick up (m)any pointers for using your mech that you can't pick up by playing another game.

[DodgerH2O]

It's to sell mechbays/mechs. Everything else is a side-effect.

[Tesunie]

Marikhen, on 30 May 2018 - 02:27 PM, said:

I'm just curious because I can't see the sense in this, and it's been irritating me for months now. There aren't any obvious gameplay or balance reasons, and the "realism" thing goes out the window when you consider that your pilot, sometimes your dead pilot if the cockpit gets shot out, is magically transported alive and healthy to the mechlab area along with the mech that is simultaneously down wherever it was just blown up at.

So is there any good reason for this?

There was a reason, which still slightly persists. Before we had team kill, team damage and disconnection penalties in the game, some players thought it would be funny to disconnect on matches "just because". It would earn them C-bills and experience to log into a match, disconnect and then drop with the same mech into yet another match. Over and over and over and over... I think you get the point.

Back before even that, if you disconnected before your mech was killed, whomever killed you got no credit for said kill and the death/kill did not impact anyones K/D ratios.

So originally, it was to prevent disconnection farming, and honestly still is. Otherwise, you'd see a lot of players suicide charging the enemy, deal a couple of points of damage, disconnect (rather they are dead or not), and then drop with the same mech again for more C-bills and experience just for sitting in a match. If they could do that before they died with the same mech, then they could "beat the penalty" for their early disconnect, and rake up a lot of disconnect match rewards...


So in short, yes. it still serves a purpose as an anti-troll/anti-exploit mechanic.

[Tesunie]

DodgerH2O, on 30 May 2018 - 07:24 PM, said:

It's to sell mechbays/mechs. Everything else is a side-effect.

Did that tin foil hat come built in, or was it an upgraded feature? (I joke.)

I mean, your account is old enough that you should remember the days of ghost mechs sitting in your matches, dragging your team down (hopefully the enemy team had an equal amount of them) and just being an overall pain, and yet as they reaped massive rewards because they did it in so many matches so quickly...

You should also remember the R&R feature and how many people abused that too...

[DodgerH2O]

Tesunie, on 30 May 2018 - 07:49 PM, said:

Did that tin foil hat come built in, or was it an upgraded feature? (I joke.)

I mean, your account is old enough that you should remember the days of ghost mechs sitting in your matches, dragging your team down (hopefully the enemy team had an equal amount of them) and just being an overall pain, and yet as they reaped massive rewards because they did it in so many matches so quickly...

You should also remember the R&R feature and how many people abused that too...

It's more my cynicism than tinfoil hattery And yes I remember the early strategy you describe, but I suspect even when it was first implemented the mech locking was to increase revenue more than to punish AFK farming. A welcome side effect, but a side-effect nonetheless IMO.

Edited by DodgerH2O, 30 May 2018 - 08:04 PM.

[Tesunie]

DodgerH2O, on 30 May 2018 - 08:03 PM, said:

It's more my cynicism than tinfoil hattery And yes I remember the early strategy you describe, but I suspect even when it was first implemented the mech locking was to increase revenue more than to punish AFK farming. A welcome side effect, but a side-effect nonetheless IMO.

Though the two do kind of have an interaction, I feel it's interaction goes more so the other way. They implemented the mech locked to a match to stop AFK farming, and that in turn helped encourage mechbay sales. However, considering I have around 100 mech bays with mechs right now, and no possible way to disconnect from an ended match and play them all (and I sit in matches till the end anyway), I think most people on average will purchase more mech bays just to have more mechs to play for different styles of play. Some of it is also for nostalgia sake too...


And sorry. I couldn't help myself. I know my joke was poor...


Just as a side note: Once you leave a match, you stop earning any additional possible assists from that match that could incur from your teammates killing enemies you've damaged. So, by leaving a match early, you actually might be walking away and leaving possible earnings on the table.

[IllCaesar]

Everybody has made good points but there's an important reason that wasn't around at launch that has been introduced into the game since then...

Its so that you don't just Direstar, die, leave, and then immediately jump into the next match.

Direstars and Jagerbombers could be easily abused that way.

[Tesunie]

IllCaesar, on 30 May 2018 - 09:51 PM, said:

Everybody has made good points but there's an important reason that wasn't around at launch that has been introduced into the game since then...

Its so that you don't just Direstar, die, leave, and then immediately jump into the next match.

Direstars and Jagerbombers could be easily abused that way.

And the Giga-laser Direwolf, the Hex PPC Stalker (now possible to do it with HPPCs), etc. Shoot once, kill a target, die from overheat, repeat.

[BTGbullseye]

Tesunie, on 31 May 2018 - 06:01 AM, said:

the Hex PPC Stalker (now possible to do it with HPPCs), etc. Shoot once, kill a target, die from overheat, repeat.

That's only 90 damage. Most assaults won't even have internal damage from the suicide...

[Tesunie]

BTGbullseye, on 31 May 2018 - 09:07 AM, said:

That's only 90 damage. Most assaults won't even have internal damage from the suicide...

But anything that isn't an assault? Do consider, these are people who tend not to be worried about even trades, but about abusing the system to gain the most benefits per second. These players are more than happy to throw away an 85 ton mech to kill a 50 ton mech, or deal just the 90 damage to an Assault mech, melt and then jump into the next match to get another single shot off again as soon as possible...

It's about the possibility of abuse and how that abuse can negatively impact normal game play functions. In this case, it's about abusing a suicide mech to reap more rewards while hindering everyone else's game play. Just as disconnecting was an issue before hand, and we all know a single disconnect in a match can determine the whole match...

[FallGuy0815]

Apart from all of the above: Final C-Bill/XP Bonus can only be calculated at the end of every match. You might not necessarily need the mech in a consistent state to do so, but as no one of us knows the underlying code it might be not so easy evaluatiing one match when the mech in question is already fighting in the next one.

Not having to watch the whole match if i die too early in an obvious stomp is fine imho. If it is an undecided match when i go down i usually watch through it anyway to see different mechs/builds/tactics