47 replies to this topic

[HRR Nighthawk]

Personally i believe Trial mechs should give you nothing. You get to try the mech out for free to see if you like it, but you get zero XP/Cbills/repairs/etc. The whole purpose of "if you run out of money you can earn some this way" can be completely offset by just letting people dip into the negative to make repairs. They'll make it back, or they'll never buy anything again...and apparently aren't playing because it's hard to stay negative. They really took a bad approach on them.

[Lavrenti]

HRR Nighthawk, on 18 November 2012 - 10:56 AM, said:

Personally i believe Trial mechs should give you nothing. You get to try the mech out for free to see if you like it, but you get zero XP/Cbills/repairs/etc

So... you don't earn anything with trial mechs. You can't buy a mech without C-Bills or MC, but you can't get C-Bills without buying a mech. I think the definition of "free to play" is being stretched a little too far, here - you're basically sticking new players right at the bottom until they pony up some cash.

[Asmudius Heng]

I like the direction the OP is heading in but i have only skimmed this thread so apologies if this has been mentioned.

Basically it comes down to using the carrot or the stick - but quite frankly it has to be both.

Lots of carrots are great and i firmly believe more actions need to be rewarded in MWO and it should be more obvious to the newbie player that the game is rewarding them for that action. This is not coddling, this is ingraining behaviours so after a while it becomes a pavlovian response that they also consiously know is good for the win and the team as well.

Defense of the base for instance is the obvious one.

Individual rewards for surviving despite the odds would also be awesome so the guy who deliberatly soaks the damage so his team can fire on overly focused fire enemies gets something for his efforts is a good idea as well.

Carrots are great for people aiming for something and wanting to play the game while still 'gaming' the game. As long as it is not exploitable of course.

The problem is those pesky people who do not care. AFK or suicide rushers in trial mechs for instance. They will take the shortest and quickest path with least offert to grind. The carrot would need to be so HUGE to get these guys to play that it would be exploitable ... because these people naturally exploit and do not care.

I think they are a s s h o l e s but they are there.

These people ONLY repond to the stick. a stick that regular players will never feel becaus they are not exploting.

You need a way to punish and reward to evoke the right behaviours and there are millions of ways to implement this. However i do not really se any being implemented at all ...

[Vlad Ward]

Teralitha, on 18 November 2012 - 12:07 AM, said:

No it does not have a very high skill/reward ceiling. 2000 per kill/assist 2000 per spotting Maximum possible with that alone is 32000 Then you have damage x10 Whats the average amount of damage per game? Ill just say 300. so another 3000 cbill for that. Salvage... Not sure what the maximum is for this... but its more than 35000. But the average salvage is how much? Ill just say 15000 as a guess. So, for a player that gets 8kills/assist, spots every enemy target and get an average salvage bonus = 50000. Now there is also a cap bonus. But you dont get that if you kill everything. So, lets say you kill/assist 7 and get the cap. 14000 kill/assist 16000 spotting 15000 salvage 5000 capping 2500 capping assist 3000 damage Total = 55500 That is aprox the best your gonna get, possibly a bit more salvage though. So maybe as much as 75000 total if you max out salvage too. 75000 + 100000 = 175000 for winning. That is about the maximum you can expect as a free non premium, non founder mech "ACE" player who kills the entire enemy team themselves all headshots. All that work for little reward... Now on the flipside of that scenario... The team that loses to that ACE in retrospect has a very small repair bill because all they lost was a cockpit, and they can disconnect after they die and already be in the next game or even 2 games dying quickly and cheaply getting at least 75000 for each match x2-3 150000-225000 cbills for doing nothing but showing up and dying as fast as possible. Point is... Performance rewards are way too low and unrewarding while dying as quickly and as cheaply as possible is more efficient at makinbg cbills than being an ace pilot. We dont really need MORE rewards... we just need less for losing.... the losing team gets too much free cbills.

You either skimmed the thread I linked or are just in denial. It sounds more like the latter considering you've pretty much ignored everything I've said and gone back to the same old, tired "I can't perform well so MWO obviously doesn't reward performance" argument.

Salvage bonuses can top over 100,000 c-bills on their own, without counting Spotting/Capture/Damage/Kills rewards. And Salvage is team-based, so everyone gets the same Salvage reward for good play rather than shoving it all to the guy with the most damage/kills. (HINT: THIS IS KINDA IMPORTANT)

It's important to have some rewards for losing, otherwise poorly performing players will never make any money at all and will lose the drive to improve. I'm all for learning curves, but there have to be some concessions to players who are new to the genre. It's not like there are dozens of other Mech games coming out every year for people to be familiar with.

I've had matches where I've gotten near 400,000 c-bills on a win - 275,000 without Premium. Don't tell me there isn't a high skill cap just because Average "I think I'm good at MWO because I do 1500 damage in a match" Joe doesn't know jack about Battletech.

Edit: And, just for reference, Skill Ceilings have absolutely nothing to do with "Average rewards". I don't care that it's probably less than 1% of the game's population that's even remotely capable of or even attempting to hit max salvage (Hint: It's mostly the latter. People just don't even try to get Salvage right now). The fact that it is possible to do so invalidates the assertion that "Performance isn't rewarded". The only thing anyone can possibly say to those who vehemently insist on b'awwwing about it at this point is L2P.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 18 November 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Asmudius Heng, on 18 November 2012 - 02:36 PM, said:

These people ONLY repond to the stick. a stick that regular players will never feel becaus they are not exploting.

You need a way to punish and reward to evoke the right behaviours and there are millions of ways to implement this. However i do not really se any being implemented at all ...

The problem is -the "stick" is not very reliable right now, and to be honest - I don't thin kit ever will. As long as it requires moderator intervention and player reportings to punish suiciders and AFK farmers, it will be too unreliable. Automatic detection of "bad" behaviour either will create a long of false positives or a lot of false negatives, and probably satisfy no one.

So yes, the carot must be made really big. Forget trying to balance the game with economy and repair cost for items. Just have winners get filthy stinking rich - and hten give them a lot of stuff to spend C-Bills on.

For example:
MC buys you new costume sets that you can re-use as you like, but you need to spend a lot of C-Bills to apply them.
Modifiying your Mech costs money and time. Want a new engine installed - that's 50,000 C-Bills just for that. Every weapon or heat sink or ammo change? 5,000 C-Bills per crit slot affected by the change. And it takes time - 10 seconds per crit slot.
You can get in the mech simulator to test your change right now (no opponents, just a shooting range), before you pay for them. But if you want to take them into the field - you pay.
You want it faster? Like now, immediately? Pay 1,000 C-Bills per crit slot to have it done in 1 second per slot. Twice that and it's done insantly.

Repairing your mech may be entirely free - if you are willing to wait for 10 seconds per percentage point of damage. If not - spend 1,000 C-Bills per % to drop down the time to 1 second per percentage point. Twice that and it's repaired instantly.

You want to make a private match? You need to pool your money with the participants and pay for it.

And then put in a direct MC to C-Bill conversion - rich kids can spend their hard-earned cash on all of this if they're mad enough. The poor newbie will have to wait a bit to see his changes come in effect. No one has to pay - but you can, and it's really convenient if you do.

[Keifomofutu]

People who are talking about the carrot or the stick have it wrong. PGI is trying to force players to behave a certain way using the stick but then unintentionally leaving the carrot out there for exactly the wrong behavior. The carrot is the performance system being a joke and the fastest way to make money is matches as quick as possible.

The biggest reward or current carrot comes from matches being over as quick as possible in nonrepaired mechs. Why give the most money for this?

Easy answer of course is to reward players primary from participating in position ingame actions like damage/spotting assisted damage/capping and very little from hitting battle. Unrepaired mechs wouldn't be able to participate like this very well and wouldn't make much money.

Edited by Keifomofutu, 18 November 2012 - 11:55 PM.

[Asmosis]

16k for scout bonus? thats only 8 positive scout rewards.

IF everyone on your team locks your first target, thats 14k right there because you get 2k per person, per target and you can also get scouting bonuses more than once for the same target for the same ally if someone switches.

I dont know if PGI put a cap on max# of scout bonuses, but i've gotten 24k in my gausscat before after our scouts got killed. Also gotten 60k+ salvage rewards too, although i think that was because i legged the DC'd players on their team

Edited by Asmosis, 18 November 2012 - 11:59 PM.

[Asmudius Heng]

MustrumRidcully, on 18 November 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

The problem is -the "stick" is not very reliable right now,

I agree - not stating anythign right or wrong, but if you make the stick big enough and enforcable without hurting the non explouters AND you have a carrot sizable enough then you will get rid of enough of the jerks to call the problem largly solved.

I dont know exactly the method either to be honest but i feel there are not enough carrots out there and the stick is certainly not barbed enough to change behaviour.