Stormur Herra, on 15 November 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:
Such a system solves all the game's problems by catering to a tiny niche that eventually sees it just fold.
Honestly though, I don't see the AFK/bot problem as being that major. It's 0-2 people a game. It will go down over time as bans are handed out and as those people get the mech they were saving up for. Overhauling your entire reward system around a small problem is a bad idea.
The problem with your system is that you get a new guy, who totally sucks at the game (as I did on day 1). You've stripped out loss earnings and only hand out performance earnings. I believe on that day I was doing something like 50 damage a game (the first set of trial mechs were also terribad, the new ones... well, if not for exp concerns I'd play the trial Atlas over any of my owned ones even though it's non-ideal). So in this situation, I'd be making 5k-10k under the current performance structure. Assume 6 games an hour. At the end of a 3-4 hour play session, I'd have about 200K-400K to my name. A heavy mech would take a week and a half of constant heavy playing to earn at that point and another week and a half to customize. That would never work even with friends encouraging me to play.
I wish the stats system would be better at breaking down your games because I can't separate my PUG vs. pre-made W/L ratio or my owned mech vs. trial mech earnings so I could throw some real numbers out there. I will say though, my SRM commando with Artemis costs just over 100k in R&R (guess how often I hit the re-arm button that guy).
And in my system the new guy is taught how to best earn money and work towards teamwork. Right now, damage isn't valued in performance bonuses, but just looking at a guy that no one else sees is currently worth 2k (after one person fires an LRM. 2k more for the second person, 2k more for the next....)
Tell me how that is worse than the "Throw money at new players for breathing," please.
And that's 200k-400k in performance based income. You would be winning at least some of those matches, no matter how bad you are. In fact, I would put forth that you would be winning at least 1/3 of your matches, if not half. Using that 6 games per hour, and 2 games won during that time, you'd be raking in 200k per hour (assuming the minimum 10k performance, 70k winning). How does that compare to a normal Trial Mech user today? Well, 60k for losing, how much is for winning? It's gotta be less than 100k, but how much?... Well, let's give them the full, non-trial 100k win. 2 wins, 4 losses, does come out to 440k per hour. Much more, yes, but how much of that is breathing money (360k, at least. 80k comes from winning, he may have learned something)? How much did the newbie learn without any indication of how well he was doing with respect to his team?
So yes, with the exact numbers I've put forward Trial Mech users would get the short end of the stick. But didn't I also say that "Exact Numbers aren't important, Relationships are." So let's make Trial Mech users get about the same for one hour of play in my system as they do now, but we do need to keep Mech prices somewhat similar as well. So let's do this:
Competent Performance Rewards (losing): minimum 20k
Winning Bonus (including Salvage and Performance rewards for winning): 120k.
Brings one hour (6 games of newbie pug play) to 360k, not that bad compared to now, and you're learning how to play!
Now let's take a look at the rest of the economy, and how it would scale:
Peformance Rewards (average loss): 20k~40k (scales)
R&R cost: 20k for cheap mechs ~ 60k for expensive mechs (if you're good and running an expensive mech, but lose, you're putting in about 20k risk. Those running cheap mechs poorly would actually be losing money. They would need to run trial mechs in order to learn the game better).
Winning Rewards: 120k ~ 150k.
How do those quick numbers look? Even if you run your own, expensive mech and do well (contribute to the team and contribute to an increase in winning percentage), you would lose about 20k on a loss (even if you were to do well), but you would be winning more often. 1 win would cover at least 6 losses, so the risk vs reward on those more effective, more expensive mechs to field is more than manageable. A Good player would bring in ~180k for a win (before R&R) and a competent player would bring in ~160K for a win (before R&R)
ah, just one more note what "Niche" does this system cater to? If I were to say it caters anything, it would cater away from those we don't want to support, no?
Mercules, on 15 November 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:
Look... I played Magic the Gathering back in the age of Antes. Basically there was a system where when we played a random card from our deck would be pulled out and placed faced down. Winner got to keep both cards. I eventually made a deck out of Common Cards that I had at least 50+ of and was able to beat even decks filled with uncommon and rares regularly. People stopped playing me because it because obvious that there was no gain to winning and losing meant they were behind.
The system you are proposing is similar. If they win they will make a lot. If they lose though, they will barely be able to repair and be unlikely to get better equipment so they CAN win on a more regular basis. People simply won't do that and the truth of the matter is that in closing the holes in the manner you want to you will likely be encouraging more people to look for other holes because it will become even HARDER for new people to gain money.
They would only be able to "barely" repair if they were running blinged out expensive mechs, then sucked at piloting them. If they are competent pilots, they will win more than enough to cover their losses. If they do not win enough, they need to get better via Trial Mechs, not think of them as "Money supplements"
And your "deck of commons" shouldn't be contributing to the team as much as a deck of "uncommons." The uncommon would be more effective for the team, therefore make more money because he was a credit to the team, therefore the team would be winning more overall.
Edited by ArmyOfWon, 15 November 2012 - 02:26 PM.