9 replies to this topic

[Guffrus]

Title says it all hopefully.


Obviously (hopefully?) the scores are just god awful anyway but for there to be no reward for causing heat damage from flamers is absurd.

This is in the same vein as my previous post regarding NARC which was apparantly totally misunderstood by the community and derailed by hate speech.

I just think it is patently obvious that if you have contributed something through an action that you should be rewarded for that, many actions are rewarded so it is a glaring omission to not get recognition for heat damage and non damage narc information.

Someone, quite ignorantly I thought made the case that as location information given by narc was similar to having a target lock that neither should be rewarded when quite obviously both should be, perhaps this would not only rightly give credit where due to the benefit of having a narc on an enemy even if they are not taking fire of any kind but would also perhaps encourage people to always maintain a lock and more so (the hope being) discourage people people from diliberately not locking targets through fear that they might 'get kill stolen by their allies' (an utterly disgraceful attitude imo, but sadly one held by a signifancant (though minority) percentage of players.

While I am on the subject I would like to draw attention to the idea that tanking damage (but far more importantly ATTENTION) should yeild large bonuses also.

Damage is most easily dealt to mechs who are not shooting back at you and the chief reason (nascar not witholding) they might not be shooting back is if they are shooting at (and potentially missing) an ally.

Drawing fire is dangerous and not for the weak hearted, it is arguably the boldest and most noble action that can be performed in this game and thus should carry the largest reward.


Guffrus

[Uzi Foo]

Rewarded for heating someone up to 99% of their Mac heat? You're not really causing any heat damage it's all self inflicted.

Edited by Uzi Foo, 09 April 2019 - 07:55 AM.

[HammerMaster]

[Xiphias]

Guffrus, on 09 April 2019 - 07:43 AM, said:

Damage is most easily dealt to mechs who are not shooting back at you and the chief reason (nascar not witholding) they might not be shooting back is if they are shooting at (and potentially missing) an ally.

Drawing fire is dangerous and not for the weak hearted, it is arguably the boldest and most noble action that can be performed in this game and thus should carry the largest reward.

Drawing damage isn't inherently a good thing. Tanking is strategically taking damage to gain an advantage, taking damage without benefit isn't noble or brave, it's foolish and bad. Context is important.

Consider, the short ranged brawler who runs straight at the enemy firing line and gets burned down. His team doesn't support, he just dies with minimal damage done and puts the team down one mech. In contrast, consider the more clever brawler who sneaks behind the enemy team without taking fire and then engages. Which one is better? Obviously the second case.

If the entire team is brawlers and pushes as a group then taking damage would qualify as tanking (ideally players rotating when possible to spread this out). That said, you can't really quantify something like that automatically.

Another instance of tanking would be to use a dead side to take damage so that you can continue firing/advancing on a target (i.e. spreading damage). The closest thing I think we can get to a metric for this with current stats is % health at death (e.g. 10% health and dying is better than 50% health and dying). It's still a fairly flawed system that punishes some builds/mechs worse than others (e.g. XL engines).

Staying alive longer is almost always more beneficial to your team than taking lots of damage. The whole point of tanking is to spread damage to stay alive longer and to keep your team alive longer. Teams win by having more mechs alive, if you're consistently taking a lot of damage without dealing significant amounts of return damage it means that you are probably doing something incorrectly.

Implementing a reward for damage taken would do two things 1) it would encourage players to run out and suicide to farm cbills quickly 2) disproportionately reward heavier mechs because they can take more damage which would hurt the already lowest scoring light weight class.

Also, rewarding damage completely ignores fire that is drawn without causing damage (the best way to draw fire). Guess which weight class is best at doing this? That's right, light mechs who would get no reward for taking significant risk and having significant impact.

tl;dr
The impact of damage taken is too context dependent to be a good reward metric and making it one would penalize lighter mechs are reward reckless and detrimental game play.

[Verilligo]

Guffrus, on 09 April 2019 - 07:43 AM, said:

Obviously (hopefully?) the scores are just god awful anyway but for there to be no reward for causing heat damage from flamers is absurd.

The reward is less return fire from the flamed mech and potentially a shutdown, leaving them vulnerable to focused attack. That's plenty reward enough, unless you're piloting some sort of mech that ONLY has flamers, in which case you're doing it wrong and need to go back to the drawing board.

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Someone, quite ignorantly I thought made the case that as location information given by narc was similar to having a target lock that neither should be rewarded when quite obviously both should be, perhaps this would not only rightly give credit where due to the benefit of having a narc on an enemy even if they are not taking fire of any kind but would also perhaps encourage people to always maintain a lock and more so (the hope being) discourage people people from diliberately not locking targets through fear that they might 'get kill stolen by their allies' (an utterly disgraceful attitude imo, but sadly one held by a signifancant (though minority) percentage of players.

A significant minority? That's an oxymoron. You're conjuring up phantoms, I really doubt there's a large number of people that don't lock their targets because they don't want to have their kill stolen. More often it's simple ineptitude or forgetfulness. But people that Narc already get rewarded, Narc Kill is a thing and it's worth a reasonable amount. Regardless, your number one priority in any match is destroying all of the enemies. To do that, you need to do damage. If you bring a Narc, that needs to be purely as an addition to the rest of your armament with the intent of being a force multiplier to the team's damage while ALSO contributing your own. To do otherwise is either foolish, or because you're in some sort of organized group with a plan.

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While I am on the subject I would like to draw attention to the idea that tanking damage (but far more importantly ATTENTION) should yeild large bonuses also.

Damage is most easily dealt to mechs who are not shooting back at you and the chief reason (nascar not witholding) they might not be shooting back is if they are shooting at (and potentially missing) an ally.

Drawing fire is dangerous and not for the weak hearted, it is arguably the boldest and most noble action that can be performed in this game and thus should carry the largest reward.

The way you put this makes me think you're trying to apply MMORPG logic to a FPS. You cannot do this. There are no tank classes in MWO. There is no healer. There is nothing NOBLE about drawing fire, it is simply a fact of life in the pursuit of a win. You expose with your team so that no single person gets focused out and reduces the overall firepower your team can bring to bear. Unless you're establishing firing lines or power positions to poke from, this game is more blitzkrieg and less tip of the spear. In that way, taking damage is already rewarded... by helping secure a victory.

[thievingmagpi]

it's also really annoying when you rip off an opponent's ST only to have the dumb torso heat spike kill them. I did that. Give me credit for aiming well.

PGI gonna PGI

[Guffrus]

So, i feel like you have misunderstood what i have tried to say to you, this doesnt surprise me frankly because i dont think some of you have any interest in understanding what is being said to you.

Yes there is a difference between just taking damage and taking damage while the person deal that damage is being fired upon and yes light mechs dodge fire and I am suggesting that they are rewarded for drawing that fire, which i thought i had made clear when i stated that shots miss and also by describing this as 'drawing attention' you can also be usefully drawing attention by poking from a rock or some other sneaky light shenanigans.

Obviously the implementation of this could be done well or badly and the points made in this thread need to be taken into account when doing so but the main point I am trying to make is surely valid?

That any action which is beneficial in any way should be reflected and rewarded in the scoreboard.

When i say heat damage i am not talking about core damage due to overheating i am talking about raising the heat level of a mech reducing its ability to return fire, you have used your flamer to damage their heat bar, you or your team mate can then attack them less risk and return fire, it is a significant contribution which is currently not rewarded at all, infact by its omission it punishes people who take flamers because they could have used that tonnage and game play time and focus for shooting other weapons.


Guffrus

[Guffrus]

Oh and a significant minority is an amount of people which is not a majority ie less than 50% but none the less a significant number, 1 percent of 10000 people is 100 people, thats a significant amount of people, a hundred infact, if you tried to fit 100 people in your car you would be having problems.

An insignificant number would be 1 in an entire community for example, its happening but its doesnt matter because its just one guy.

You think i am making it up? Seasoned players can frequently be seen failing to lock targets and some of the lrm haters speak of kill steals and other people getting free damage and such like.

So no, I am not conjuring phantoms and nor am i talking about instances where there is a lack of ability.


I also agree entirely with thievingmagpi when he claims that causing someone to die to overheat, whether that is side torso heat spikes or flamers followed by an override death should credit the attacker with a kill and furthermore this should not be treated as a suicide.

Frankly I would like to see a bonus for an override suicide which resulted in a kill shot against the last enemy standing, what a stylish way to finish a match, epecially a close one.

Please learn English and thinking.

Guffrus

[Xiphias]

Guffrus, on 09 April 2019 - 04:46 PM, said:

So, i feel like you have misunderstood what i have tried to say to you, this doesnt surprise me frankly because i dont think some of you have any interest in understanding what is being said to you.

We're talking past each other it appears. As you're also getting hung up on examples and not getting my main point.

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That any action which is beneficial in any way should be reflected and rewarded in the scoreboard.

In a perfect world I would agree with you, however in practice PGI needs quantitative metrics from which to derive score.

You suggest that a mech drawing attention be rewarded, how exactly do you suggest implementing this? This isn't something that you can just hand wave away, measuring damage taken is simple and something that PGI could do (it would be a bad thing, but PGI could do it). Measuring attention drawn is nearly impossible to quantify and even if possible to implement isn't something that PGI should waste technical development resources on.

Winning has significantly higher rewards. Things that contribute to winning will result in better payouts on average. Trying to individually attribute every contributing factor is a fools errand that would result in endless development time being wasted on trying to get more and more accurate models. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement in the rewards and what is tracked, but at the same time practical concerns need to be considered as well and that means easily quantified metrics.

[Verilligo]

Guffrus, on 09 April 2019 - 04:57 PM, said:

Please learn English and thinking.

There's something ironic about being told to learn English by someone that uses poor grammar and forgets how to use apostrophes in their reply post. Nevertheless, I will admit that "significant minority" is, in fact, a proper term. It feels clumsy, but that's a problem shared across the English language.

I still stand by my responses, though. Yes, there are some people that do not lock a target in order to avoid having their kill stolen, just like there are people in the world that actually believe the Earth is flat. You are talking about a sample size of about a hundred. But you should never assume sinister intent when it is much, MUCH more likely that someone is simply momentarily inept... or already knows where to shoot and wants to stay aware of when another threat might come back into view.

I also still stand by heat damage being meaningless, unless it contributes to a kill or impedes a mech from fighting, in which case the reward is a dead or impaired mech. You argue that heat damage itself should be rewarded or else someone should have brought along something in place of flamers... and yes. You are correct, they should have. Sometimes you will do things that are utterly pointless and it will not be your fault that they were pointless. If your team followed up on the heat damage you applied and gained an advantage because of it, then it was not pointless to have done so. If they do not follow up, then what you did meant nothing, despite it probably having been smart to do. That's life.

I don't have a problem with rewarding overheat deaths as kills to players, but with a caveat. You cannot kill a player with heat. Flamers can ONLY raise heat to a certain level and impair cooling rate. So technically, what should be done is reward the kill to the player that did the most damage to the target, rather than necessarily the one that brought their heat up.

As for drawing fire... I think Xiphias did a better job than I could of explaining the complexity involved.