51 replies to this topic

[Red1769]

Funny...I asked a question in ask the Devs 27, whatever the latest one is, asking if the economy and repair/rearm costs will be tweaked further.

My Centurion-AL is pretty economical, even with Endo-Steel on it. FF armor is NOT worth it, hence why I didn't even bother. Until it's made worthwhile, if it ever gets tweaked, the costs for the rewards just doesn't make it viable at all. My max repair cost has been around 48,500 c-bills. With the stock standard engine it already came with, a few more heat sinks, ams + one ton ammo, SRM 6 + one ton ammo, two medium lasers, and a single large laser. Even on a loss I profit, but I've noticed that armor repair is the most expensive, often resulting in half of my total repair and rearm cost, with items being next, ammo, and then the structure being the cheapest to repair (which I personally think is kinda odd considering it's the upgrade).

The trick is making every mech viable to the free player, otherwise it'll turn into pay2win. The most pimped out medium mech isn't even viable to the free player from what I understand and see on the forum. Now, I understand that the Devs need to make money and all, but that's what the camo and hero mechs and bobblehead and additional mechbays and other stuff are for. Premium should never be required, but could be handy to have if you're feeling too cheap to buy the mech outright with MC.

It's just another balancing act. Rewards for both win/loss and then performance (c-bill wise), repair costs for everything, rearm costs for the ammo weapons...PGI has a lot on their plate with just that, not even counting the weapon balancing that I'm sure is one hell of a headache on. Right now, I can't imagine it viable for a free player to run anything more expensive than a catapult or a dragon. A Cataphract maybe. I'm sure if you build an Awesome/Atlas right, it's viable to the free player, but not sure how good it'll be in the field. (Though that doesn't mean I'm not going to attempt to try it with my casual gaming schedule.)

Edited by Red1769, 30 November 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[JPsi]

Red1769, on 30 November 2012 - 02:45 PM, said:

Funny...I asked a question in ask the Devs 27, whatever the latest one is, asking if the economy and repair/rearm costs will be tweaked further.

My Centurion-AL is pretty economical, even with Endo-Steel on it. FF armor is NOT worth it, hence why I didn't even bother. Until it's made worthwhile, if it ever gets tweaked, the costs for the rewards just doesn't make it viable at all. My max repair cost has been around 48,500 c-bills. With the stock standard engine it already came with, a few more heat sinks, ams + one ton ammo, SRM 6 + one ton ammo, two medium lasers, and a single large laser. Even on a loss I profit, but I've noticed that armor repair is the most expensive, often resulting in half of my total repair and rearm cost, with items being next, ammo, and then the structure being the cheapest to repair (which I personally think is kinda odd considering it's the upgrade).

The trick is making every mech viable to the free player, otherwise it'll turn into pay2win. The most pimped out medium mech isn't even viable to the free player from what I understand and see on the forum. Now, I understand that the Devs need to make money and all, but that's what the camo and hero mechs and bobblehead and additional mechbays and other stuff are for. Premium should never be required, but could be handy to have if you're feeling too cheap to buy the mech outright with MC.

It's just another balancing act. Rewards for both win/loss and then performance (c-bill wise), repair costs for everything, rearm costs for the ammo weapons...PGI has a lot on their plate with just that, not even counting the weapon balancing that I'm sure is one hell of a headache on. Right now, I can't imagine it viable for a free player to run anything more expensive than a catapult or a dragon. A Cataphract maybe. I'm sure if you build an Awesome/Atlas right, it's viable to the free player, but not sure how good it'll be in the field. (Though that doesn't mean I'm not going to attempt to try it with my casual gaming schedule.)

Nearly all classes are viable to farm with, It really is just the certain upgrades that aren't viable. An atlas with no FF/artemis/XL engine costs less to run than a Medium with said equipment. I consider myself an average player yet find cataphract more than viable. Ultimately this will be an issue whenever items are balanced on cost. Iff said equipment is viable to farm with all the time, it quickly turns into a "Must Have". Sorta like Endo steel is in the current system.

[Destoroyah]

The problems with the economy really is the upkeep the problem areas being armor especially FF and ammo rearm. Now ammo rearm is normally not that bad but once you start throwing in 4-6+ tons of it almost a requirement for any decent LRM mech those upkeep cost really start to skyrocket with rearm averaging 30k-50k. Artemis is especially bad averaging 80k-100k+ for a missle mech too rearm for the minor bonuses you get over standard launchers.

Besides missle ammo needing a drastic reduction in rearm. I think the best solution is to make active rewards give out more C-bill this way farmers and AFKers will still get poor rewards but actual players will be getting much more. raising damage done earnings is the most important one. currently it is 10 C-bill per point of damage done. Increasing it too 25 points per would go along way. All the other categories could use boosts too. Some new categories would be nice too to help encourage some activities.

Like a marking Category that will give you 10 C-bill for ever time you keep a enemy mech tagged/narced for 3 seconds. Also make it so the tagger gets the damage done added too them as well as the mech firing the missles when they hit categorized as assisted damage for 10-25 C-bill a point. This would encourage good spotters.

Edited by Destoroyah, 30 November 2012 - 11:35 PM.

[Prophet of Entropy]

the problem with the economy is it doesnt really reward player preformance.

shouldnt matter if yo win or lose, but how well you do.

5-6 kills +3-2 assists with more damage done then the rest of your team combined should get you 4-600k+prem/founders.

its simple atm preformance means very little. make 270k with prem and founders get a 150k rep/rearm bill, makes some build hardly worth using.

[Orkhepaj]

what economy?

[Secundus]

Making 10k on a loss in my Atlas despite getting a few kills and doing more damage than anyone on either team seems like crap to me. I'm running a standard engine, 1 gauss rifle (30 slugs), 2 LL, 2 ML, and 2 SSRMs (200 missiles) and no other upgrades. When I win and live I make around 60-80k, when I win and die I make around 50-70k.

I'm not really that impressed since I seem to lose 2 of every 3 games. Nearly two hours tonight and I netted 400k. That was my first time playing vids in a couple nights and it's enough of a turn off that I think gonna spend my spare vid time playing one of the few games I picked up on steam sales last week,l at least until they have a new game mode going because playing this over and over again on the same maps in the same game mode and barely progressing is stupid.

[Orkhepaj]

Secundus, on 01 December 2012 - 12:44 AM, said:

Making 10k on a loss in my Atlas despite getting a few kills and doing more damage than anyone on either team seems like crap to me. I'm running a standard engine, 1 gauss rifle (30 slugs), 2 LL, 2 ML, and 2 SSRMs (200 missiles) and no other upgrades. When I win and live I make around 60-80k, when I win and die I make around 50-70k.

I'm not really that impressed since I seem to lose 2 of every 3 games. Nearly two hours tonight and I netted 400k. That was my first time playing vids in a couple nights and it's enough of a turn off that I think gonna spend my spare vid time playing one of the few games I picked up on steam sales last week,l at least until they have a new game mode going because playing this over and over again on the same maps in the same game mode and barely progressing is stupid.

dont repair/rearm , it saves you a lot

[Secundus]

Orkhepaj, on 01 December 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

dont repair/rearm , it saves you a lot

Not a solution in my opinion, why would I want to play in a damaged and poorly armed mech?

Anyway, this is why PGI was foolish to have closed beta with only founders testing the economy with premium and founders bonuses. A proper beta would have had us forced to play trial mechs, play without bonuses, etc. to properly balance the economy. Economy changes were wildly all over the place and I don't think we even tested this version of the economy for a month before they went live.

Edited by Secundus, 01 December 2012 - 12:58 AM.

[CrashieJ]

I do agree we need a tweak with the economy. but the thing is, it seems like something is MISSING, not THINNED. We're supposed to be fighting over planets with various factions getting bonuses for their victories and conquests.

maybe later when people start placing a few planets under their belt, we'll see less complaining from players once their payroll increases substantially




on another note let's get an eccentric explanation about High-cost builds from my friend Duncan Fisher:

Duncan Fisher here,

I get a lot of questions, well most of them being more whining then questioning. One reads, "Dear Duncan Fisher, I pilot a Atlas and my expenses cost over 190,000 cbills per match, while my payment is only 139,000 cbills per match... how can I solve this problem?" well my friend, the answer is, not only are you stupid, you don't understand how mechs are built. Assault mechs are big and expensive... because they are big, and well expensive. On top of that the Atlas is a stiener mech, and steiner mechs are not built to be profitable, they are built for victory, victory at the expense of uh... expenses... You just put over 12 million cbills into a walking planetoid fortress, prepare to pay for its upkeep. a scratch on an atlas's paintjob can cost more than a mercenary's yearly salary after successfully completing a suicide mission without dying. Either pilot a more profitable mech and recoup your loss, or sit there, look pretty and run away at the sight of an enemy mech with no weapons and heatsinks... engine, armor, structure, cockpit, and pilot.

[Orkhepaj]

Duncan Fisher seems to be an *******. He doesnt adress that the atlas pilot wants to play a game after all.

[Sifright]

Quad Ace, on 30 November 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

Financial Management is just as much a part of BT as accurate laser fire. Want to make bunches of money? Play a cheap mech. Want to play a badass mech? Don't expect to make huge profits. Endo and DHS are cheap to run; FF, Artemis, and XL aren't.

Don't assume that the economy is metagame, it's not. Is it perfectly tuned? No, but it's not too far off. Swap your FF for DHS and you'll see your profits go up.

Your first suggestion is rediculous.

Your second suggestion is at least a possibility, but I think it's a knee jerk reaction. How about pay the losing team for kills, assists, and damage the same way the winning team gets paid. All of a sudden people have an incentive to play well even if they lose, and those who do are at least turning a profit (albeit smaller).

Buwhahahaha, because financial management has ever really been a big part of the MECHWARRIOR series of games.

This isn't battletech. This is mechwarrior.

If your going to pull your ridiculous ideas about cash fine.

Lets get ACTUAL salvage then. Until thats implemented your ideas are trash,

[Darwins Dog]

It seems to me that this is exactly the reason that PGI went to open beta. They needed data about the economy from people who weren't getting founders/premium bonuses. Now that it's coming in, things will get better.