476 replies to this topic

[Project_Mercy]

Aegis Kleais™, on 07 March 2012 - 10:51 AM, said:

-snip-

For that Mech to be permanently destroyed and to have COST me money changes the entire game from a form of entertainment to a utility-like bill, where "the more you play, the more you HAVE to pay."

-snip-

If there's one thing I've learned, you cannot FORCE players to be tactical; be this by suggestion or actual financial threat; people will simply stop playing to that point. I'd rather the game penalize the inevitable loss of a Mech in a different way; tactical players will always do better than the gung-ho types. That in and of itself seems to reap us rewards.

A penalty is only a penalty if you take something away. Whether it's a permanent removal, or temporary, it still needs to go away. Otherwise it's like when I was a kid and my parents grounded me to my room but didn't take away my computer or books. I never left my room ANYWAY, so it wasn't really a punishment.

You can't have a compelling game that does only carrot or only stick. If you go only carrot, eventually the people who are good, have piles of carrots, and see no reason to keep playing and you're left with just the bad people; or conversly expect something to buy with their pile of carrots, which just makes things more imbalanced. Only stick, and it just upsets people.

The thing with MW P&P (like the system above), is that it's both carrot and stick. if you lose your mech you get the stick, but the other person salvages the mech, so he gets a carrot, assuming he/she can repair it. The only time you both lose is if you core the mech. Then it's a sad day, and you resolve to be craftier about it next time. Sometimes that may involve forcing the other side to conceed (which would NEVER happen in MW/MPBT) and leave one of their mechs (or the current disabled mechs) as payment. So some days you get carrots, and some days you get sticks. Yes, you may lose your favorite Awesome, but since you picked up a warhammer and a marauder a few days back, it wasn't a huge deal.

And you're correct in that you can't force people to be good. I propose though that there's no reason to do it. Any game worth playing has difficulty. That difficulty means that some people suck at it, or don't want to play. A game that anyone can play, with no risk, is not a game you play that often. It gets boring. How often do you play checkers?

My TT gaming group switched to boardgames a while back instead of minatures/RPGs due to having wives and such. We probably have over a hundred games at this point (there was a time where I owned every FFG boardgame and cardgame). The games that we continue to play, are generally complex, aren't easy to pick up, and are punishing to new players. You can only play games like Ticket To Ride so many times before it's just boring. You bring them out for nights where there's a bunch of new/casual people who showed up. that's about it.

MW:O is never going to be WoW. Trying to do that is just going to result in another Jumpgate:Evolution. What they could do with it though, is make something compelling enough that the people they DO have, will stay for a very long time. For me at least, that involves a balance of carrot and stick.

My concern is, given the above ranting, they've already gone on record (in the "why you should want MW:O to be F2P" thread) as saying "we're going to try to do this with just using the Carrot.", which just doesn't work that well in the long run.

Quote

where "the more you play, the more you HAVE to pay."

Back to this. In my system though, you don't pay anything. Don't lose your mech, and you never have to buy another one It's the exact opposite of what you're talking about. The only reason to be nervous about the cost would be if you (the proverbial you) are a terrible player. And.. why be upset if you have to pay extra because you consume a lot of resources because you're terrible? Who goes to watch a football/baseball game of terrible people? People don't line up to give them money.


I honestly think the tonnage/BV thing is going to be more onerous to people. It means you're fighting against your friends for your Bv/tonnage, instead of fighting against your enemies. (See, I can go back OT!)

Edited by Wraeththix Constantine, 07 March 2012 - 11:21 AM.

[Outlaw2]

Dlardrageth, on 05 March 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:

Problem is that you throw any sliver of realism out of the window righte there. So the invasion force is "mightier" than the defenders for a match for planetary conquest on the (supposedly) galactic map. Maybe just because the defending unit is also fighting elsewhere and has thus overextended itself. But hey, we got too high a BV for thsi matchj, so let's call the invasion off and swap all to Locusts...?

While that may be somewhat exaggerated, that is the core issue here - how is that even remotely realistic any more? And mind me, I'm not talking about a general tonnage/BV limit for the battle, I'm talking about one side not bringing enough to the table. Why should their opponent be punished for them being lazy bums or not caring? I wholeheartedly agree that dynamic and perhaps even somewhat randomized total drop/battle limits add versatility and keep it interesting. I disagree in that I do not care if someone gets wiped off a planet because they cannot be bothere to bring more than 3 people to the fight instead of 12. Inherent "fairness" in a match is a petty joke if one team can force the other to fight with a "stump" setup simply by having no-shows, maybe even on purpose.

Apart from where "fairness" is nothing to concern one with when a planet conquest is at stake. Doesn't fit the lore/background either, we're not talking about medieval jousting or something. So having a global limit for a given battle is fine, but gimping one team because the other doesn't show up in numbers? Seriously?

Im willing to throw out copious amounts of "Realism" out the window for better gameplay and competitive matches. I really could care less about strictly adhering to realism if it gets in the way of the core of what this game is about. Believability is tons better than realism anyway...and people are willing to believe pretty unrealistic and fantastical things.

However, you kind of lost me with the whole 3v12 thing, bringing all locust to call of the PA and the "gimping" stuff. You'll need to better explain all that I suspect a huge misunderstanding is afoot.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 07 March 2012 - 11:43 AM.

[SilentObserver]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 07 March 2012 - 11:20 AM, said:

Back to this. In my system though, you don't pay anything. Don't lose your mech[empasis mine], and you never have to buy another one It's the exact opposite of what you're talking about. The only reason to be nervous about the cost would be if you (the proverbial you) are a terrible player. And.. why be upset if you have to pay extra because you consume a lot of resources because you're terrible? Who goes to watch a football/baseball game of terrible people? People don't line up to give them money.


I honestly think the tonnage/BV thing is going to be more onerous to people. It means you're fighting against your friends for your Bv/tonnage, instead of fighting against your enemies. (See, I can go back OT!)

This has to be one of the vainest things i've read on this forum (and thats saying a lot). If you play alot you will lose your mech. you will get cored. No one is that good. The only way to completely avoid that is to run to the far corner of the map at the beginning of every engagement and hope no one finds you. So permentantly losing mecks will turn into a play more pay more scenario.

The whole BV thing (tonnage is a bad method also) counts on a good matchmaker. Assuming pug games. You and your friends join a group and hit "Find me a game" the match maker takes your groups BV and tries to find both teammates and opponents so that the resulting BV's are roughly equal. a group of 4 should be pretty easy to match up. If your lance is all assaults or clan tech, its possible you will not get a lot of teammates and may be outnumbered when you hit the ground. But the matches will be "fair" in that, the equipment your opponents are using is roughly equal in damage potential as your own.

Not only should this produce fair fights. but it will produce varied drops. Hopefully on the way down you get a brief on your teammates as well as some intel on what the opfor might look like. I think this would keep the game tactically interesting even if its the 12th time that night you've dropped on the same map.

[Aegis Kleais]

Using a BV variant, I'm fine with if by default there is a 10-15% difference in BV between teams. (Also, you know that there will be plenty of people paired up who chose a 4x Assault Clan Mech Lance with others who did likewise) In the event the matchmaker can't match you, it just needs to widen its parameters until it fits you. I don't like where it, by default, instead chooses to start a new game for you.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

The other thing is that there may not be 12 v 12, Garth confirmed asymetric drops the other day. Matchmaking may end up as 10 v 12 etc to "equalise" BV/tonnage. Whatever system they use will need to be fairly quick as most people seem to find a wait of even 5 min to get into a game a long time.

[Ice Dragon]

I think if a bonus was applied to lower drop weights then it would encourage people to use lighter mechs instead of going 100t every time. Experience boost or higher salvage percentage or CBill multipliers for smaller drop weights. If experience works by giving points based on kills and actions a la BF3, then a multiplier per kill applied so that if you are in a Jenner and can take down something bigger, you get a much larger bonus. The devs also said that XP will not be based so much around kills but damage; how much you can contribute. I think if driving around an Atlas will result in small amounts of Cbills/Experience/Salvage (maybe not enough to always cover repairs), it will naturally balance out peoples tendency to want to always bring assaults.
If you think you can win with a centurion why bring a dragon?
http://mwomercs.com/...ge-multipliers/

[Boymonkey]

Whatever they do I just hope it doesn't end up with everyone being in massive mechs, somehow I think they should make the drops have a certain amount of light med heavy mechs.

[Dlardrageth]

=Outlaw=, on 07 March 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

[...]
However, you kind of lost me with the whole 3v12 thing, bringing all locust to call of the PA and the "gimping" stuff. You'll need to better explain all that I suspect a huge misunderstanding is afoot.

Okay, let's try this again.

There can be a global cap on drop weight. As one parameter. Say the battle for the fictional planet of Beerhome is upcoming. Matchmaking (arbitrarily perhaps) decides on an available drop weight of 800 tons at max. Due to available dropship capacity or whatever. So according to that you could field a team composed of a total of 800 tons of Mechs in total. Balancing would call for the defending, planetside team to field up to 800 tons as well. So far the theory.

Now for the actual match lineup. As a second parameter. The attacking team, the "Mighty Bumpkins Company" get a line-up together that compromises 12 Mechs of 795 tons total weight. Now the defending team, let's call them the "Epic Yokels Company", has people doing stuff, being lazy or doesn't feel like really fighting today. So they field 3 Mechs, an Atlas, a Crusader and a Panther. For a total of 200 tons weight.

What now? Do you tell MBC to cut down their size/weight to only 200 tons because their opponents are lazy bums and cannot be bothered to field a proper team? In the name of "balance"? Thus penalizing the MBC unit for the EYC unit being scrubs? Or do you shrug and tell EYC that they obviously didn't want that planet anyway and have them fight the 795 ton company with three Mechs and 200 tons only, because it was their call to field so little and thus they have to suffer the consequences?

Mind me, could as well go by BV or whatever instead of mere tonnage, just an example here. The matter is, do you really need to penalize units in "conquest" mode by cutting down their team, when their enemy is obviously not willing/able to field a proper team? And thus the one solely responsible. All in the name of "balance", when this can be easily be exploited by one team?

And this is not about a random match or training match, this is about objective warfare, planetary conquest, aka battles that affect the strategic level. So if I get the news my unit won't be on for planetary defence except myself, I just hop into a Locust and force the attackers to drop with a single 20-ton Mech only as well? Where is that fair, realistic or even merely fun any more? One side can dictate the other the size of the battle by simply not showing up in numbers?

If that is going to happen, welcome to "Mech Griefing Online"! Hey, let' s schedule a couple of battles where I show up with only a Wasp or Locust, because I can. Watch me being a major ***hole forcing the other team to fight with only one 20-ton Mech because that would be "balanced". I can see that being popular with... a select few people... but the wider playerbase?

So the global cap, parameter one I called it above, for the battle of Beerhome would be fine. The second one not so much. Way too easy to exploit. And penalizing one team for the other team's issues is hardly viable.

[Siilk]

Well, this worked well for Clans, I cannot see why it cannot work for you as well. Sure, defenders could choose to field only a single Locust, so? The battle for this planet would be a duel in lights, I see no problem here. Then again, when aforementioned light-fielding duel-loving team would try conquering planets on their own turn, they would meet your defence, fielding 1000 tons of guns blazing assaults, and this time not having enough people or mechs to match would be their problem. Besides, I'm sure your "duel me in my locust" scenario would be a rare event as I hardly know a player, dedicated enough to participate in clan warfare yet unwilling to participate in battles, so there wouldn't be a lack of pilots.

[Dracos de Diabolis]

I voting "by the ton" because in the end, the results with show in the skill of the pilots and the teamwork with your lance. its no holds barred fighting. Bring the best mech you can and fight for as long as you can, what else can you ask. that way you "cant" get the whiners crying about woulda' shoulda'coulda's yaknow.

Just my 2 C-bills

Dracos de Diabolis

[Dracos de Diabolis]

ok how a tonnage/teir system, so much tonnage per said teir, say teir 1 is a max tonnage of 250 per lance, teir 2 would be 500, etc etc.

just a thought,

[Outlaw2]

Dlardrageth, on 12 March 2012 - 05:49 AM, said:

Okay, let's try this again.

There can be a global cap on drop weight. As one parameter. Say the battle for the fictional planet of Beerhome is upcoming. Matchmaking (arbitrarily perhaps) decides on an available drop weight of 800 tons at max. Due to available dropship capacity or whatever. So according to that you could field a team composed of a total of 800 tons of Mechs in total. Balancing would call for the defending, planetside team to field up to 800 tons as well. So far the theory.

Now for the actual match lineup. As a second parameter. The attacking team, the "Mighty Bumpkins Company" get a line-up together that compromises 12 Mechs of 795 tons total weight. Now the defending team, let's call them the "Epic Yokels Company", has people doing stuff, being lazy or doesn't feel like really fighting today. So they field 3 Mechs, an Atlas, a Crusader and a Panther. For a total of 200 tons weight.

What now? Do you tell MBC to cut down their size/weight to only 200 tons because their opponents are lazy bums and cannot be bothered to field a proper team? In the name of "balance"? Thus penalizing the MBC unit for the EYC unit being scrubs? Or do you shrug and tell EYC that they obviously didn't want that planet anyway and have them fight the 795 ton company with three Mechs and 200 tons only, because it was their call to field so little and thus they have to suffer the consequences?

Mind me, could as well go by BV or whatever instead of mere tonnage, just an example here. The matter is, do you really need to penalize units in "conquest" mode by cutting down their team, when their enemy is obviously not willing/able to field a proper team? And thus the one solely responsible. All in the name of "balance", when this can be easily be exploited by one team?

And this is not about a random match or training match, this is about objective warfare, planetary conquest, aka battles that affect the strategic level. So if I get the news my unit won't be on for planetary defence except myself, I just hop into a Locust and force the attackers to drop with a single 20-ton Mech only as well? Where is that fair, realistic or even merely fun any more? One side can dictate the other the size of the battle by simply not showing up in numbers?

If that is going to happen, welcome to "Mech Griefing Online"! Hey, let' s schedule a couple of battles where I show up with only a Wasp or Locust, because I can. Watch me being a major ***hole forcing the other team to fight with only one 20-ton Mech because that would be "balanced". I can see that being popular with... a select few people... but the wider playerbase?

So the global cap, parameter one I called it above, for the battle of Beerhome would be fine. The second one not so much. Way too easy to exploit. And penalizing one team for the other team's issues is hardly viable.

Im not sure why you thought I was advocating punishing the team that brought mechs up to the cap (whether tonnage or BV). If one team comes way under ton/BV cap then that is there own damn fault. The point is that there is a cap so its not just a top-of-the-line assault/heavt-fest 100% of the time in competitive matches.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 12 March 2012 - 04:11 PM.

[Victor Morson]

=Outlaw=, on 12 March 2012 - 04:08 PM, said:

Im not sure why you thought I was advocating punishing the team that brought mechs up to the cap (whether tonnage or BV). If one team comes way under ton/BV of the cap that is there own damn fault. The point is that there is a cap so its not just a top-of-the-line assault/heavt-fest 100% of the time in competitive matches.

As a side note, I think it'd be pretty neat if the Clans were rewarded in-game for coming in under the other team's weight/BV to reflect bidding as an actual in-game system. If you drop light and win, for example, they could get an XP boost to everyone on the team. It's always been a fluff thing, but MWO presents a unique opportunity to reward it as an actual gameplay system.

[Belisarius1]

I'm actually not convinced BV is better. I feel like however you price things, whether by BV,weight,number of hula girls, you're going to end up with 'Mechs that are strong for their cost and over-used, and 'Mechs which are weak for their cost and under-used. This is rampant in BV-based CBT, and is why you see lots of standard engine 'Mechs and lots of pulse cheese; because neither is properly adjusted for in BV.

I feel like if 'Mechs are going to be over- and under- powered whatever you do, you may as well make the defining metric arbitrary, like weight. BV is dangerous because it puts you in a situation where humans are making subjective judgements on how much a 'Mech is worth, and those judgements will be constantly changing so there's no consistency. Your favourite 'Mech might fit one day and not the next. That's confusing for both old hands and new.

A functioning Mech lab (if it's in the game) also plays havoc with BV. You end up having to price a chassis by taking into account both the most powerful config it can take, as well as all the other common ones. That requires extensive game knowledge at the highest level, and is highly subjective. I'll use an NBT example for Outlaw; to price the grizzly, you're going to be thinking mostly in terms of its sniper config, and you're going to price it very high because that thing is scary. But if I'm in a city map and it turns out all I have left on planet is a grizzly, the sniper config doesn't fit my game plan and so I slap HLLs and a UAC20 on it and have it tag along with my brawler team. Do I then pay for the sniper config even though the brawler grizzly is a much less optimised 'Mech?

If you weight BV by individual weapons, you're on an even slipperier slope because you have to deal with emergent properties. A gauss on a predominantly dps dire wolf is worth much less than the same weapon on the same 'Mech when it completes an alpha config. An extra 5kph is the elixir of life itself to a scout shadowcat, and really not worth much at all to my aforementioned grizzly. You really can't solve that stuff algorithmically, but you also can't have an army of brilliant players go through and individually price every single config under the sun.

Not sure... I just feel like it's a losing battle. You get good weight-class distributions by setting a variable max tonnage for each drop. It's simple and it does work. Sure, the 700 tonners are 6 dires and a kit fox, but they don't get rolled all the time.

Edited by Belisarius†, 12 March 2012 - 06:05 PM.

[docmorningstar]

Wraeththix Constantine, on 06 March 2012 - 09:10 PM, said:

Yeah. I've been playing Battletech CG games since MPBT, the GEnie game. I racked up a $150 phone bill one month, my parents almost killed me. Out of all of them, the best BT game, and honestly probably the best online MP game I've ever played, was the later 302X MUX's. You created your char via Mechwarrior rules (the P&P game, not the CG game), including if you bought edge (lives) or not. Your faction got a fixed number of mechs, and it was up to your faction captain to assign mechs to people. The only way to get more mechs was to wait for supplies from HQ (which were rare, and generally crappy), gain them through salvage, or try to steal them from neighboring systems. Same with supplies to fix those mechs. Regularly, you rolled with what you had because.. it was that or tanks (man, I had to use a pegasus for a whole month once). I remember one WHM-6D (and ONLY one) that was passed between factions.. I don't know how many times, till someone finally cored it. There was actually a WAKE for the damn mech. And if you died in that game you died. You could log in as a ghost for like 30 minutes to get your affairs in order, then your char was deleted, you had to start from scratch again. And getting XP in the Mechwarrior system was HARD.

I bring this up only because, this was the best gaming I've ever had, ever. I honestly thing it's unfortunate that so few people are willing to make games like this anymore.

I'm not ripping on MW:O here. From what I've read from the dev posts and output, they're doing a lot more right than wrong. I'm looking forward to MW:O, but personally I just wish someone would man up and make a game with some bite to it again. Doing SOMETHING to limit drops, be it tonnage, slots, of BV, would be better than just "lolz, drop what ya'll want, it's fine!"

At least there's no respawn on the same map yet (as far as I can tell?).

oooh yeah

My gaming group used to run TT campaigns kind of like this. We had as much economy as we could handle on our own. (ie factories only produced so many mechs of such-and-such type). It was fun in that some battles would turn into 'jeez, we are so screwed, how can I salvage what is left of my force'. I loved the 'risk' involved in losing a mech. I mean, crap, getting your only AWS-8Q cored? ARGH.

[SnowDragon]

I voted tonnage. Sure 800 tonnes means 8 assaults per landing, but how are they gonna see? Where's the long range support? I think well formed teams will cut down on the assault spam, simply because it won't work.

[docmorningstar]

SnowDragon, on 14 March 2012 - 06:06 AM, said:

I voted tonnage. Sure 800 tonnes means 8 assaults per landing, but how are they gonna see? Where's the long range support? I think well formed teams will cut down on the assault spam, simply because it won't work.

Disagree, respectfully.

'Quick' heavies can cruise at 5/8 pretty easy, and an 800 ton limit would give you an average tonnage of 65. 65 +/-5 are one of the sweet spots for great mechs. There are a *bunch* of good big meds and fast heavies that can fill the scout role 'no problem' . Sure, they aren't *quite* as fast as a dedicated light scout, but they can more than easily dispatch any light they encounter. That makes them 'superior'.

The other thing a tonnage based systems doesn't take into account is how much better certain variants or chassis are. Example: Hunchback P vs Hunchback N. The 4P has a butt-load of MLs and the HS to use them. The 4N has .... an AC5... tonnage is the same, but the BV2.0 is 15% higher for the hunchie P. As it should be.

This doesn't even take into account what happens when the clams show up....

Something that I would *love* to see is tonnage AND BV AND economic limitations. (I of course refer to the meta-game here)

something along the line:

'We need a heavy mech company to defend the mech works on Robinson. We can spare 800 tons of lift capacity to deliver your unit, however, we can only authorize XXXX cbills worth of supply requisition costs' (this is a tonnage / cost trade off) - this is a flat rate mission where the unit gets paid $$$ no matter performance; success gives more loyalty point, failure gives much less.

'We are raiding a Cappellan front line supply depot; we need to keep our force size deniable, so we can only authorize 10,000 BV worth of forces' This gives you unlimited tonnage to play with, but you need to fiddle your BV to make it work.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

I like your ideas Doc

[Outlaw2]

Belisarius†, on 12 March 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

I'm actually not convinced BV is better. I feel like however you price things, whether by BV,weight,number of hula girls, you're going to end up with 'Mechs that are strong for their cost and over-used, and 'Mechs which are weak for their cost and under-used. This is rampant in BV-based CBT, and is why you see lots of standard engine 'Mechs and lots of pulse cheese; because neither is properly adjusted for in BV.

I feel like if 'Mechs are going to be over- and under- powered whatever you do, you may as well make the defining metric arbitrary, like weight. BV is dangerous because it puts you in a situation where humans are making subjective judgements on how much a 'Mech is worth, and those judgements will be constantly changing so there's no consistency. Your favourite 'Mech might fit one day and not the next. That's confusing for both old hands and new.

A functioning Mech lab (if it's in the game) also plays havoc with BV. You end up having to price a chassis by taking into account both the most powerful config it can take, as well as all the other common ones. That requires extensive game knowledge at the highest level, and is highly subjective. I'll use an NBT example for Outlaw; to price the grizzly, you're going to be thinking mostly in terms of its sniper config, and you're going to price it very high because that thing is scary. But if I'm in a city map and it turns out all I have left on planet is a grizzly, the sniper config doesn't fit my game plan and so I slap HLLs and a UAC20 on it and have it tag along with my brawler team. Do I then pay for the sniper config even though the brawler grizzly is a much less optimised 'Mech?

If you weight BV by individual weapons, you're on an even slipperier slope because you have to deal with emergent properties. A gauss on a predominantly dps dire wolf is worth much less than the same weapon on the same 'Mech when it completes an alpha config. An extra 5kph is the elixir of life itself to a scout shadowcat, and really not worth much at all to my aforementioned grizzly. You really can't solve that stuff algorithmically, but you also can't have an army of brilliant players go through and individually price every single config under the sun.

Not sure... I just feel like it's a losing battle. You get good weight-class distributions by setting a variable max tonnage for each drop. It's simple and it does work. Sure, the 700 tonners are 6 dires and a kit fox, but they don't get rolled all the time.

With a full functioning mechlab, BV pricing does become exponentially harder. For awhile it looked more like they were going to have a rather limited mechlab. Now the opposite looks more likely.

However, it doesn't look like they will go with BV or any type of hard value restriction, but rather "make it desirable and ideal for players to put together a well-balanced lance/company." That comes from the recent Q/A. I wish them the best of luck with this, since it might be harder to do than a BV system. I still don't see any advantage of taking a cheaper mech in a match going this route....other than lower repair/upkeep costs outside the match. But like I've been saying earlier, in competitive matches outside costs will be damned. You will take the best of the best. I fear this will lead to competitive matches being restricted to a narrow segment of the games' content. This always turns out to be the case in games, but theres no need to design it into the game. The cynical side of me thinks this is the point, and as a hard core player you will be pushed to spend significantly more money in order to acquire and maintain the top end stuff compared to the average, casual player....even at the cost of limited gameplay diversity. This of course mimics WoT P2W economics, and I seriously hope I'm wrong about this.

Edited by =Outlaw=, 14 March 2012 - 10:09 AM.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

Unfortunately I got the same take as you did Outlaw. I'm only an average pilot so if costs become prohibitive I'll go play something else - there's going to be a lot of choice out there. I have very little interest in assault team deathmatch. It's not my idea of long term fun. Maybe after a year or so it will be worth it.