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Talk Of Carrots Is Pointless If You Ingnore Stick


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#1 Spheroid

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 12:27 PM

I am enjoying these ongoing discussions about incentivizing behavior changes but they all seem to revolve around voluntary bonuses while seeming to neglect the possibility of change through punishment.

They are not mutually exclusive. Whether training a human or an animal the best regimen is one that combines both negative and positive reinforcement. Right now we have numerous proposals to affect income in the manner that charitable contributions reduce tax liability, but we lack the other approach, that of fees or fines to shape behavior as an inescapable burden that cannot be shirked.

This game lacks sufficient c-bill sinks. For the long term player with a myriad of mechs it is trivial to accumulate the c-bills in one month to purchase the game's only ongoing new content, new mechs.

The only other thing people voluntarily spend c-bills on are consumables. If one relies solely on consumables as a method of wealth drawdown it may take a good long while to arrive at state of c-bill poverty where incentives must be followed to have enough to buy new content. If all my matches went to zero c-bills it would still take 416 matches to bring 70 million down to 20 million(an amount generally sufficient to purchase at least one variant of a new mech) with a three consumable use per match.

To what degree do you feel players are set in their ways regarding consumables? Its not usual for two or more to be used during a match. Even using four costs only 160k. Because the average earnings for FP vastly exceed this cost they are an unreliable method for behavior shaping.

I do have ideas for more c-bill sinks but many are not appropriate for the gamemode given the current state of the game. For instance if factions mattered and had favored equipment you would have a long term incentive to purchase numerous duplicate mechs to offset the loss of income through using non-favored or rival equipment. Incentives must be paired with perpetual grind or they cannot be used to influence behavior.

A two sided conflict is boring. If each of the thirteen factions had fronts which could contract and expand and if these front had variable payouts depending on their area you would create natural economic reasons to rotate factions. Within this rotation there would be the incentive to buy that faction's favored equipment in search of the linear optimization solution solving for income given the constraints of equipment, team skill and territory.

The player experience is thus a bounded bubble with a vast number of potential solutions and those valid combinations requiring collectively many hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay. This is my proposal for perpetual grind a mechanism that is absent currently.

Edited by Spheroid, 10 December 2018 - 12:40 PM.


#2 Grus

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 01:20 PM

Tldr: we make too much money and we need a longer grind.

Um.. i dissagree on both. If i wanted a new mech it would take 2-3 days to earn the cbills in order to buy it. I still have to suffer the gind in QP to earn sp in order to make the mech optimal. ( some are easier tp lvl than others granted)

I think its just fine in that aspect.

However, something to spend cbills on FOR THE UNIT wouldbe nice. (Kinda like WoT clan war bases)



#3 Johnathan Tanner

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 02:11 PM

View PostSpheroid, on 10 December 2018 - 12:27 PM, said:

I am enjoying these ongoing discussions about incentivizing behavior changes but they all seem to revolve around voluntary bonuses while seeming to neglect the possibility of change through punishment.

They are not mutually exclusive. Whether training a human or an animal the best regimen is one that combines both negative and positive reinforcement. Right now we have numerous proposals to affect income in the manner that charitable contributions reduce tax liability, but we lack the other approach, that of fees or fines to shape behavior as an inescapable burden that cannot be shirked.

You must be joking.... Have you learned nothing from the history of this game? The unit tax was a disaster that only hurt new units and players with this games already whack *** grind. Established units didn't give a **** cuz they had more money to burn then they ever could.

Remember the lobby killing joke that was planet reinforcement? All it took was one large old unit to have control of the tag and they would add 3 extra hours to the planet flip, They could do that all day everyday and not care about the money. And guess what happened? for the cost of 15 millon cbills a unit could basically kill a front for drops. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT COULD HAPPEN.....

Small new units and players cannot compete with the old guard financially at this point in the games life cycle. The only way you could make it meaningful to 4+ year players (Who at this point tend to stick together, I know 4 mans that have 10 billion cbills between them) is to make the fees and taxes sky high. Which will not shape any behavior except to piss off said players driving more people from the game.

#4 Bloodwitch

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 02:20 PM

I'm not in a unit, i do have way to much c-bills on my main account. Last i checked, i banked 125 millions before the mech i was about to buy was released (fafnirs). A c-bill sink is much welcome, i don't have use for all the c-bills i earned.

Additionally, before the c-bill release of the next mechs i want to buy (warhammer IIC) i will likely have 300 million banked (from currently 80 millions).

Edited by Kunato Developments, 10 December 2018 - 02:30 PM.


#5 K O Z A K

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 02:32 PM

All cbill sinks do is hurt newer players. Veterans don't give a ****. They are sitting on piles of cbills and many have like a year of premium time. Plus they have more than enough mechs to basically never have to buy another and still have the ability to run all playstyles on all maps/modes. But new players have huge cbill requirements.

#6 Grus

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 04:15 PM

View PostHazeclaw, on 10 December 2018 - 02:32 PM, said:

All cbill sinks do is hurt newer players. Veterans don't give a ****. They are sitting on piles of cbills and many have like a year of premium time. Plus they have more than enough mechs to basically never have to buy another and still have the ability to run all playstyles on all maps/modes. But new players have huge cbill requirements.


As a "vet" i can not confirm said pile of money. I only have a little over 10mil in my coffers.

#7 Johnathan Tanner

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 04:20 PM

You ain't no vet grus. I don't remember you from phase 1. When did arc 7 become a thing anyway? I have no memory of them before the end of phase 3.

#8 K O Z A K

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 05:09 PM

View PostGrus, on 10 December 2018 - 04:15 PM, said:

As a "vet" i can not confirm said pile of money. I only have a little over 10mil in my coffers.


not sure what to tell you bud, I know lots of veterans are sitting on hundreds of millions, many on billions of cbills

I use all 4 consumables on all mechs I drop, don't have premium time, and buy all the cbill mechs I think are good (which I guess aren't that many overall) and my cbills still slowly grow. The only real problem is skill points after the historical stuff ran out, which funnily enough make me want to play new mechs less, and make me buy less mechs, and as such make me sink less cbills.

You don't need every mech in the game, most of them suck, lol

#9 Shanrak

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 05:20 PM

As someone who started relatively recently(7 months) I can confirm the cbill grind early on is very harsh already. If it wasn't for the ample events and me owning the TSP and getting tons of cbills that way I'd be pretty broke. And I only purchase mechs/bays when they are 50% off.

Now I'm at the point where I'm mostly mech bay limited (sitting on 150m), but that first few months were very lean. Sold most of the equipment I didn't use to outfit my mechs.

#10 Nightbird

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 05:33 PM

Making c-bills easier to earn mainly benefit newbies. Veterans don't need it and don't benefit.

Creating more c-bill sinks hurts newbies, since they can't afford whatever gameplay advantage those sinks provide.

Edited by Nightbird, 10 December 2018 - 05:33 PM.


#11 slide

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 05:34 PM

At this point in time grind is absolutely useless to me and absolutely no motivation to play at all. The only thing worth a damn to me is the LP gain in faction, not because i need the rewards but because I want to be able to say I reached Rank 20. The 50m Cbills it gives is pocket change frankly.

The OP is also forgetting one important difference between RL and a game. RL has consequences you can't escape. This (or any other game) is voluntary. If you don't like something you can leave with no repercussions, particularly so if you have never invested any money into the game.

To get people to play there is only carrot. Sticks will only bite the developer in the ***.

#12 Johnathan Tanner

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 06:56 PM

View Postslide, on 10 December 2018 - 05:34 PM, said:

because I want to be able to say I reached Rank 20.

Ah to be young again... Wait until your 3rd rank 20. Then all you think about is what the hell do I do with 15 gazelle dropships.....

#13 slide

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 07:37 PM

View PostJohnathan Tanner, on 10 December 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Ah to be young again... Wait until your 3rd rank 20. Then all you think about is what the hell do I do with 15 gazelle dropships.....


I know right. So many trinkets, not enough cockpits.

Frankly I've given up hope of ever getting there, there are simply too few matches in the OC timezone anymore to even bother with the attempt. I console my self with the thought that I have enough LP across various factions to at least have done it once and getting well on for a second one. But never got a full tree.

#14 C H E E K I E Z

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Posted 10 December 2018 - 09:55 PM

as someone who has over a billion cbills, on my main account, they are basically useless to me

#15 Alexandra Hekmatyar

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 06:15 AM

View PostJohnathan Tanner, on 10 December 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Ah to be young again... Wait until your 3rd rank 20. Then all you think about is what the hell do I do with 15 gazelle dropships.....


Never bother to change allegiance myself unless it's forced to play FP. :P

#16 Grus

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 07:05 AM

View PostC H E E K I E Z, on 10 December 2018 - 09:55 PM, said:

as someone who has over a billion cbills, on my main account, they are basically useless to me


Wwweeeeelllll once we can xfer cbills to other players ill take some off your hands and put them to use...

#17 Hal Greaves

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 07:11 AM

i like being spacerich

i can mostly buy whatever mech i wanna use when i feel like it, once they are out

#18 Kinski Orlawisch

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 07:21 AM

View PostGrus, on 10 December 2018 - 01:20 PM, said:



However, something to spend cbills on FOR THE UNIT wouldbe nice. (Kinda like WoT clan war bases)


Yes..Give us a base to upgrade.....or


make Bolt Ons for C Bills....make it real expensive...

#19 November Juliet

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 07:38 AM

I laugh at cbill nerfs. I don’t even play that much and I have a billion chills easy on 1 account and probably half that on the other. Once you have 4 rock solid Cw decks cbills are luxury items for fast building the newest fad

#20 Grus

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Posted 11 December 2018 - 09:44 AM

Every time we talkabout the stick, this comes to mind. https://goo.gl/images/pvEdyk

There needs to be some long distance thing to acheve. Im hateing myself for useing this as a comparison, but...

WoW raid armor. Not only does it look cool but it makes to harder to kill and helps you hit harder. But the big this is you have to work for it. Rng aside you have to do the time and put in the effort to earn it.

Not saying we need epic warlock armor for the Timberwolf.. but something not buyable, only earnable, would be nice.





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