152 replies to this topic

[James The Fox Dixon]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 03:35 AM, said:

No.

The richer you are, and the more pimped out mech you can build, the more money you get?

The rich earn more and the poor earn less as a base starting point regardless of how well you did? Then you combine that with higher rewards for things that are easily abusable?

The problem with using lore/TT as a model for payment is that lore isn't balanced all that well in the first place. Another thing is that more than half the things the payment method you are using is balanced around isn't even in the game yet or may never even be in the game.

Additionally the current rewards are balanced according to game play, and is NOT TT values like you stated. Also, this isn't TT. It's a good place to start, like they did, but they have changed and adapted it to fit the game play.

From a game play perspective, while we currently have some afk guys every few matches, your suggestion will increase that by having extremely expensive mechs afk or sabotaging the game by abusing the rewards system to get as much money as possible before dieing. Ultimately throwing matches to farm c-bils and making it even worse experience for new players.

So there you have lore (missing more than half the elements), TT(not TT values in the first place) and game play reasons why no, this will not be better than the current system and that the current system just needs a bit more refinement.

Lastly your immediate dismissal of any post you don't agree with (Including my own I predict) with 'nothing to add' 'no lore/TT based reasons' 'don't care about your opinions/feelings' and generally trying to dictate what is and is not allowed to be said in 'your' thread is amusing but ultimately transparent.

Have a nice day

I'll ignore your post because you ignored what I wrote in the original post. If you had read it you would see that the rewards are based upon what a person does in the match.

[ForceUser]

James The Fox Dixon, on 15 November 2012 - 03:38 AM, said:

I'll ignore your post because you ignored what I wrote in the original post. If you had read it you would see that the rewards are based upon what a person does in the match.

Quote

your suggestion will increase that by having extremely expensive mechs afk or sabotaging the game by abusing the rewards system to get as much money as possible before dieing.

[Firion Corodix]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 03:50 AM, said:

You really didn't read his first post, did you? If you had then you'd have seen that AFKing would give you 10k for a win or 5k for a loss, even with the modifier of 3.5 that's at most 35k for every afk'd match. So how does his proposed reward system encourage afk'ing if people who afk earn more in the current system than in his proposed system?

[Weiland]

Holy ****, ForceUser. You really are ******* ignorant, ain'tcha, buddy?

I would have personally tweaked the numbers a little bit, but the concept is sound. Your attitude, however, causes me to believe that you yourself might be less fortuitous. As I read it, players that contribute nothing at all would earn precisely zip (unless their team carries them for a win, which would net ten or twenty thousand). It would actually penalize players for being intentionally useless.

[James The Fox Dixon]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 03:50 AM, said:

You didn't read the first post because in it you would see that just sitting there afk would earn a maximum of 35k compared to actively participating in the match. You lack in reading comprehension.

[ForceUser]

hmm checks his post.

Nope I definately bolded this part: 'abusing the rewards system'

Must be going mad 0.o

In addition, how do you tell if someone afk? Mech hasn't moved? Easy, move mech a little bit. Mech hasn't fired any weapons? Easy shoot weapons. Mech didn't score any damage? I often see pugs that are so bad they can't hit a building and die pretty fast. Should they be marked as afk just because the enemy team was good and managed to snipe him with gauss cats? What about suicide rushing?

What would you suggest be the criteria for AFK? Since it's in your proposal please define.

Edited by ForceUser, 15 November 2012 - 04:30 AM.

[James The Fox Dixon]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 04:26 AM, said:

hmm checks his post.

Nope I definately bolded this part: 'abusing the rewards system'

Must be going mad 0.o

In addition, how do you tell if someone afk? Mech hasen't moved? Easy, move mech a little bit. Mech hasn't fired any weapons? Easy shoot weapons. Mech didn't score any damage? I often see pugs that are so bad they can't hit a building and die pretty fast. Should they be marked as afk just because the enemy team was good and managed to snipe him with gauss cats? What about suicide rushing?

What would you suggest be the criteria for AFK? Since it's in your proposal please define.

You definitely didn't read the first post of the thread. You are looking at only your posts and you admit to it. Learn 2 read.

If they afk and don't do anything they get a max of 35k. If they zombie rush to die then they earn whatever they would have gotten from kill assists. However, if they are in a trial mech this does not apply to them since the max you can get in a trial mech is 85k for a win and 65k for a loss. Logic fail! Stop altering the thread by moving goal posts and stick to what is presented in the first post. If it isn't based upon lore then it HAS NO PLACE HERE.

Edited by James The Fox Dixon, 15 November 2012 - 04:34 AM.

[Weiland]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 04:26 AM, said:

hmm checks his post.

Nope I definately bolded this part: 'abusing the rewards system'

Must be going mad 0.o

In addition, how do you tell if someone afk? Mech hasn't moved? Easy, move mech a little bit. Mech hasn't fired any weapons? Easy shoot weapons. Mech didn't score any damage? I often see pugs that are so bad they can't hit a building and die pretty fast. Should they be marked as afk just because the enemy team was good and managed to snipe him with gauss cats? What about suicide rushing?

What would you suggest be the criteria for AFK? Since it's in your proposal please define.

You're totally missing it. I think it may be intentional, as most of the people on this forum tend to argue conveniently in order to somehow be "right." The problem here is that you have to actually, you know, be right.

Whether the mech is labeled AFK is moot. The system is designed to reward based on participation in matches. An AFK obviously has no participation - no capture assists, no damage, no assists, no spots, no kills, nadda. This would be readily apparent if you weren't trying to vehemently shoot down the OP's thread. Because you're a troll, I'd imagine.

It is apparent - read: appears readily - to me that the amount of reward you earn is entirely based on your competence in the match. The more you do, the more you earn. This was all detailed, in clear common speak, in the OP. The only thing I would argue are the numbers, maybe with a few additions and tweaks. Fundamentally, it's a solid position, and if you're going to ignore fundamental aspects of the post in order to continue arguing, plain and simple, you're a moron.

I have respect for the Ponies in general, but you're making a pretty big mockery of the recruitment process for your clan. I'm beginning to wonder if they'll rake in just anyone these days.

[ForceUser]

Ok so I see what I'm trying to convey regarding AFK is not coming across. Since I'm not a troll and wish to make clear the problems with the proposal I'll approach this from a different angle if that's ok?

Take suicide rushing. This is actively encouraged in this model. You suicide rush the enemy and shoot as many of them as possible. Thus you abuse the assist reward system by both getting spot assists and kill assists although you contributed *extremely little*. You make more money faster by passively? sabotaging your team.

The reason why the above is not as prevalent atm. is because the assist rewards is not that big. It's big enough that most feel it's worth it to be fine with assist and not kill stealing but actually winning a match is a much better base reward.

Edited by ForceUser, 15 November 2012 - 04:47 AM.

[Weiland]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 04:40 AM, said:

I wasn't even talking about trial mechs mate

WHAT DO YOU DEFINE AS AFK?

Is it doing nothing?
solution: pres w for a few seconds

Is it not firing any weapons?
solution: left click a couple times

Is it Not hitting the enemy?
Problem: newer players can be just that bad or enemy team can be that good that they can take out that slas hunchback p that's rushing them before he hits anyone.
solution: disregarding the above problem all you have to do it suicide rush the enemy and shoot as many of them as possible. Thus you abuse the assist reward system and sidestep AFK problem. You make more money faster by actively sabotaging your team.

The reason why the above is not as prevalent atm. is because the assist rewards is not that big. It's big enough that some feel it's worth it but actually winning a match is a much better base reward even though I didn't do *that* much in a game.

Are you this stupid.

Are you.

Really.

This stupid.

it's a merit-based system. How can you be so effing dense to miss that?

Jesus Christ.

[James The Fox Dixon]

It's obvious that Force User is attempting to derail the thread by trolling. Until he can form a coherent response based upon lore then we don't feed the troll.

[Taizan]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 04:40 AM, said:

I wasn't even talking about trial mechs mate

WHAT DO YOU DEFINE AS AFK?

Is it doing nothing?
solution: pres w for a few seconds

Is it not firing any weapons?
solution: left click a couple times

Is it Not hitting the enemy?

Well we do not know how much data gathered in a match for any kind of evaluation like the OP is looking at. Still detecting an AFK (Away from keyboard player) is not really that difficult, you just check at the end of match:
- How far did he walk?
- How many targets did he acquire?
- How many (different) weapons did he use?
- Did he write in chat?
- Did he assist anyone on the same team?

If these values are 0 or close to 0, then you could flag him as being AFK, because technically he is not doing anything.

This whole topic is based on the assumption that detailed statistics are available for evaluation, so imho its ok to theorize that AFK playing can be detected correctly as well.

[ForceUser]

I edited my previous post, apologies for the confusion.

That said you still have the core issue of the more expensive a mech you bring to the fight the more money you make. This means you can multiply the abusing even more.

Say I fit a jenner with all the upgrades and fill the legs and arms with expensive ammo. I rush the enemy and stand dead still and fire on as many mechs as I can. The enemy team will go straight for your centre mass, your CT.

You don't lose/use the ammo, you don't lose weapons in the side torsos and you only lose the armor in the ct (IF you even put much there to begin with) and the engine.

So my repair/rearm is tiny and yet I got a huge multiplier and abusing the assist system.

Sounds good to you?

Edited by ForceUser, 15 November 2012 - 04:54 AM.

[James The Fox Dixon]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

I edited my previous post, apologies for the confusion.

That said you still have the core issue of the more expensive a mech you bring to the fight the more money you make. This means you can multiply the abusing even more.

Say I fit a jenner with all the upgrades and fill the legs and arms with expensive ammo. I rush the enemy and stand dead still and fire on as many mechs as I can. The enemy team will go straight for your centre mass, your CT.

You don't lose/use the ammo, you don't lose weapons in the side torsos and you only lose the armor in the ct (IF you even put much there to begin with) and the engine.

So my repair/rearm is tiny and yet I got a huge multiplier and abusing the assist system.

Sounds good to you?

You haven't proven with the system proposed that it is possible to abuse it. There are no numbers in your post based upon the numbers from the original post. Therefore, your questions are invalid and have no merit.

[ForceUser]

Now since you guys are big on numbers lets take the above example and use the OPs numbers

We'll take the match example but remove the kill and only add the 4 spots and 3 kill assists but the match was a loss because one or more guys were doing this (5,000+40,000+30,000)*1.5=112,500 C-Bills.
Now lets say we managae to make a class 'A' mech, (5,000+40,000+30,000)*3= 225,000 C-Bills.

Now here's the thing though, the repair bill isn't 75k It's closer to 20k because the only thing that got damaged was the xl engine (or heck mount a std)

I just made 205k in 3min by not only throwing a match and losing but by abusing your system.

Edited by ForceUser, 15 November 2012 - 05:05 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

James The Fox Dixon, on 15 November 2012 - 01:23 AM, said:

Your first comment has no place in this thread.

You didn't read the original post because the proposed system does reward in game contribution more than showing up. I suggest you read the first post then comment.

One Medic Army, on 15 November 2012 - 01:26 AM, said:

Here's the thing, your suggestion as a basis is that the more expensive your mech is, the higher multiplier is accorded your earnings.
I feel that that would be detrimental to gameplay for reasons outlined above.

I'm not against the other part of your plan, other than it accords significant bonuses to kills/assists, which might lead to kill-stealing on one side (and people caring about kill stealing) and Jenners running around the map hitting every mech with a tag and a small laser once to get a full 8 assists on the other.

I see both your points. But I agree with Medic more. If you buy the BFG, Ferrari Motors and Ablative armor, YOU had better know you can afford to wield it. We don't have MRBC ratings cause we aren't "Mercs" per se. We are Lone Wolves. As such if you don't have the Rep of The Bounty Hunter, you aren't going to get the juicy contracts.

James, You have the start of a good idea, but I think it needs more in game content before it can be implemented properly.

[Firion Corodix]

For the abuse stuff, how about scaling the bonus based on time? What I mean with that is, say you hit somebody a couple of times and also spotted him, then you engage somebody else and don't see the other guy for a minute and then he dies. Due to not having engaged him for 60 seconds you don't get the full kill assist and spotting assist bonus but a smaller amount. The longer the time between last having spotted/hit him the smaller the bonus you get for kill assists and spotting assists.
Then running into the enemy group to spot and hit them all is pretty pointless if you die while doing it, unless your team manages to finish them all off very fast.
Instead of just being time based it could also be time and distance based. So if you remain in close proximity to one of the enemies (and you hit or spotted him earlier) then you get the full bonus even if you haven't engaged him or spotted him for a minute. That way it's a bit more forgiving, it allows you to still engage others without having to worry about that timer.



Or you could have a reward system based on time. Say the longer you stay alive the bigger the rewards will be that you get, up to a certain max. This would require the specified amounts in the OP to be reduced. For example reduce them by 90%, so those that are 10k would become 1k. And then make it so that after having stayed alive for at least 5 minutes you get the original 10k amount for assists (it would not increase beyond this even if you stay alive longer). If the five minutes is too long then it can of course be tweaked. It pretty much comes down to a penalty for dying early. (doesn't stop people from waiting a bit and then rushing into the enemy when they are certain that they have been alive for long enough, but it does slow the rate at which they could do it)



Another thing that could be done is require at least X amount of damage dealt to a target before you are giving a kill assist (assuming that isn't already the case right now, I haven't really payed much attention to that), then rushing into their team to get a ton of kill assists is not going to work, you'd just die to fast. Spotting assists could also require a minimum duration that you'd need to spot the target for before you get the assist.

Edited by Firion Corodix, 15 November 2012 - 05:13 AM.

[ForceUser]

Now I can start breaking out the calculator and really work out how badly I can abuse this thing. Lets mount the jenner with a large laser. Now I can run around and poke every enemy mech on the map. If I'm lucky my team kills more than just 3 before we all lose. I can also try and milk spot assists as hard as possible, bot actually engaging at all, switching targets, making life hell for my team's lrm cats etc.

Now, lets say the team won and killed all 8 enemy mechs and I managed to poke 7 of them (common enough) and had 6 spot assists. (10,000+60,000+80,000)*3= 450,000 C-Bills. Heck I'd go so far as to say, poke as many as you can, get a couple kill assists in 3 min as you can then go afk or go stand still in front of a gausscat. I wont be flagged as AFK cos I ran VERY far, hit a LOT of enemies etc.

There's so many holes in this proposal that PGI has already solved with MONTHS of balancing.

[James The Fox Dixon]

ForceUser, on 15 November 2012 - 05:04 AM, said:

Now since you guys are big on numbers lets take the above example and use the OPs numbers

We'll take the match example but remove the kill and only add the 4 spots and 3 kill assists but the match was a loss because one or more guys were doing this (5,000+40,000+30,000)*1.5=112,500 C-Bills.
Now lets say we managae to make a class 'A' mech, (5,000+40,000+30,000)*3= 225,000 C-Bills.

Now here's the thing though, the repair bill isn't 75k It's closer to 20k because the only thing that got damaged was the xl engine (or heck mount a std)

I just made 205k in 3min by not only throwing a match and losing but by abusing your system.

For example 1, If you take in the repair and rearms and subtract it from the win you will see that they would make 92k which is slightly more than what you would have made in a trial mech.

For a B rated mech it would need to be either it's a stock assault or a heavily modified medium or a slightly modified heavy. The repair and rearm bills would go up dramatically so let's just say 90k for the assault, 100k for the medium, and 120k for the heavy. They're net earnings would be 135k for the assault, 125k for the medium, and 110k for the heavy. Still reasonable on earnings.

Once you account for these factors, the earnings are reasonable for a loss. Losing would actually incur a loss of C-Bills, but not as harsh as they are now. Balance is maintained.

[ForceUser]

Firion Corodix, on 15 November 2012 - 05:12 AM, said:

For the abuse stuff, how about scaling the bonus based on time? What I mean with that is, say you hit somebody a couple of times and also spotted him, then you engage somebody else and don't see the other guy for a minute and then he dies. Due to not having engaged him for 60 seconds you don't get the full kill assist and spotting assist bonus but a smaller amount. The longer the time between last having spotted/hit him the smaller the bonus you get for kill assists and spotting assists.
Then running into the enemy group to spot and hit them all is pretty pointless if you die while doing it, unless your team manages to finish them all off very fast.
Instead of just being time based it could also be time and distance based. So if you remain in close proximity to one of the enemies (and you hit or spotted him earlier) then you get the full bonus even if you haven't engaged him or spotted him for a minute. That way it's a bit more forgiving, it allows you to still engage others without having to worry about that timer.



Or you could have a reward system based on time. Say the longer you stay alive the bigger the rewards will be that you get, up to a certain max. This would require the specified amounts in the OP to be reduced. For example reduce them by 90%, so those that are 10k would become 1k. And then make it so that after having stayed alive for at least 5 minutes you get the original 10k amount for assists (it would not increase beyond this even if you stay alive longer). If the five minutes is too long then it can of course be tweaked. It pretty much comes down to a penalty for dying early. (doesn't stop people from waiting a bit and then rushing into the enemy when they are certain that they have been alive for long enough, but it does slow the rate at which they could do it)



Another thing that could be done is require at least X amount of damage dealt to a target before you are giving a kill assist (assuming that isn't already the case right now, I haven't really payed much attention to that), then rushing into their team to get a ton of kill assists is not going to work, you'd just die to fast. Spotting assists could also require a minimum duration that you'd need to spot the target for before you get the assist.

I'm sorry but there are just so many ways that I can a) abuse this and punishes normal play. I can give you a comprehensive list if you want. Each point you make has to many loopholes and closing those holes opens others or overcomplicated the system beyond reason.