223 replies to this topic

[PANZERBUNNY]

Just get it over with and give our mechs a health bar and do away with targeting components so you can get your dream of appealing to a large number of gamers outside the target audience.

These are truly infuriating changes.

[FerretGR]

Col Forbin, on 17 December 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

Not a fan. There are supposed to be consequences for putting the fanciest equipment on your mech. Now upgrades go from being a "tactical decision" to a "power up."

ITT, I mentioned that a multiplier could be included in the bonus calculation based on battle value: ie. a 1.0 multiplier for tech level 1, a 0.8 multiplier for tech level 2, 0.7 for upgrades past a certain threshold. Upgrades go back to being a "tactical decision", expensive stuff costs more to run, but nobody is losing money because they took LRMs and got cored.

[Grits N Gravy]

It's going to be like free cake day at weight watchers.

[PANZERBUNNY]

ya, people will be playing with more XL's and then start complaining they die too fast.

I expect some changes to XL's in the future.

[borisof007]

Ecres, on 17 December 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

This is a horrible idea. The RNR system was great, i'm sorry if your not able to run your Atlas thats pimped out with all the toys and make money.....guess what expensive equipment is expensive to fix. It was a balancing act between what good equipment I could run with while still being able to afford it, which is what it should be now you can just go buy what ever equipment you want because it's going to get magically fixed at no cost. Welcome back the days of broken builds that shouldn't be afordable but now are.

Good equipment comes with its own price besides c-bills. Artemis comes at the cost of 1 additional ton and critical slot for each weapon. Double Heat Sinks take up additional space, as with Endo Steel and FF.

Balancing is MUCH harder to do at an economical level than at the gameplay level. If you're complaining about DDC Atlases running 3 LRM 15's with artemis, then either use cover and only engage in short range, or use/have a teammate use an ECM.

[Adrienne Vorton]

Chacatumbi, on 17 December 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

they getting rid of RR? Thats a wonderful thing... repair costs for running my atlas was preventing me from using it... why use atlas when i can put 3 large lasers on a catapult and grind cbills? I was actually losing cash on some matches with atlas even with 2 kills.

there certainly would be 1000 ways to tweak the costs and mission rewards to a satisfying level...removing RnR seems like a quickshot to me... and the rewards system? i see only kills and damaging really pay out, looks like a promotion for a slugfest.. but we will see...

[FerretGR]

PANZERBUNNY, on 17 December 2012 - 01:42 PM, said:

One of the few things you've managed to work out all the bugs...

They did? I must have missed that.

[borisof007]

Grits N Gravy, on 17 December 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

It's going to be like free cake day at weight watchers.

I lol'd a little

Honestly, XL Engine repair costs weren't ever a deterrent for me to use/not use them. Either the weight, critical slots, or knowing that if my torso goes I'm dead is usually the factors to weigh for me. Then again, I have premium time so my c-bills earnings were pretty good to begin with, that and using founders mechs also help.

I suspect that this new system is just what we need for right now to help out new users. This game needs to grow, and grow fast. They'll be other ways for us veterans to outshine other pilots with the same gear that only took them 1/4 of the time to grind for (it's called playing better than them).

[PANZERBUNNY]

Sure the game needs to grow, but the key is for it not to grow into a pile of tu rd that everyone forgets.

Edited by PANZERBUNNY, 17 December 2012 - 02:03 PM.

[Karyudo ds]

Jelan, on 17 December 2012 - 01:38 PM, said:

yet another stupid decision ffs, the whole point of repair and rearm is you have to make choices about what you are going to field. Tweak it yes, remove it, no

I'd be happy if mechs at least had some generic upkeep cost for their combined gear. Problem to me was that no matter what you took the reward never seemed proportionate to the risk without any meta game. Just grinding matches never made me consider pulling out an expensive mech because all I got was a little bit of CB and XP, which I would get either way. With the whole Community Warfare idea though some sort of check to keep people from stacking all the high tech (beyond crit space) would be nice. I think in that environment RNR would have been nice but right now you pay through the nose (upgrade and RNR) for minor combat effectiveness which I love it from the simulation aspect, but out of context it does feel weird coming from nearly any other game out there. For now at least.

King Arthur IV, on 17 December 2012 - 01:39 PM, said:

now, he who does not have ff armor or xl engine will suffer.

XL's still splode when you side goes and ferro still only grants you some weight in favor of losing space you'd need to use that weight. Both can be great and now, very affordable but like before not HUGE advantages. Now you can stack ferro, endo, DHS, and an XL on a mech with no downsides except one... no room for weapons.

I love the concept of RNR, the only issue I had beyond the upgrade side-grades upkeep costs was the fact that no matter how smart you play sometimes you're just unlucky. Even knowing the risk/reward for these side-grades sometimes you spend all your ammo and get torn to shreds and left with a huge bill anyway. Of course they could have tweaked the pricing too. Battletech is a great starting point for this stuff but the pace of an online game like this means we hit the grinder much much more often. A mech being out of commission or in need of repair for weeks works great in the fiction but we have to be back to playing in seconds and with people intolerant of damaged goods. Which would be better if the match making could factor in mech condition.

Edited by Karyudo ds, 17 December 2012 - 02:07 PM.

[FerretGR]

SicksGunz, on 17 December 2012 - 01:30 PM, said:

Not only do I like R/R costs, I think they should be a lot higher, especially for assault mechs and XL engines. This game needs to be more, not less immersive. It needs to do a better job of making the pilot feel like a mercenary in a persistent universe, not just roll from match to match.

Yes, in fact, we should have to work as an asTech for a year or so, before being promoted to Tech with a merc corp. Maybe a year or two in the corp will salvage a mech or lose a pilot and I'll be chosen to fill in. Or maybe I shouldn't get to play at all unless my great-grandfather passed down a 100-year old account? We need more realism!

I should take a shiny new mech out on the battlefield, get it cored, and lose it. That's realism... repairs are for p.ussies. Or lose the match and our entire team should lose their mechs as salvage to the other team. Bet you'll see a lot of upgraded tech on the field if that 12 million c-bill mech has a 50/50 shot of coming back. Hey, if I get headshot, I should have my account deleted... I mean, the pilot is dead, realism, right?

I'm glad you're not in charge.

Edited by FerretGR, 17 December 2012 - 02:09 PM.

[Mercules]

Karyudo ds, on 17 December 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:

with no downsides except one... no room for weapons.

When I have 4-5 hardpoints and use 1 Crit Slot weapons.... that isn't really an issue.

[PANZERBUNNY]

Of course sometimes you're unlucky.

These modern days of full reward no risk gaming is tepid disgusting swampy BS and we all know it.

You play with expensive tech, you risk a large repair bill. Sometimes you can pull your mech out of the fire, sometimes your opponent gets a crit and you go down.

Playing this game should never be an easy no risk endeavour, but they are steering it towards MechAssault Online.

Absolute fail.

Are you sure that MicroSoft doesn't have a say in how the game is developed? Maybe Sony and MS have teamed up behind the scenes with all their game destroying power to see it sink.

Discuss.

Edited by PANZERBUNNY, 17 December 2012 - 02:11 PM.

[FerretGR]

It doesn't have to be full reward. Think about the scaling system I mentioned based on battle value. It meets the (IMHO silly) "expensive stuff should be expensive to run" condition.

Edited by FerretGR, 17 December 2012 - 02:13 PM.

[Buehgler]

So I have been playing since shortly after the open beta began. I must say that while I understand and appreciate the economic model to bias the game toward certain styles, I have never felt that what I have seen thus far in MW:O (as much as I have experienced it) really did much to encourage this. Specifically I have found the c-bill and exp reward process far too biased toward specific events (kills, caps, spots, etc.) and not rewarding enough of the activities that lead to winning (damage done, components destroyed, time spent capping, killing mechs in/near your base). I have been playing multiplyer online games for quite a while (go look up something called netrek), and have seen many debates over reward systems. In my experience simple rewards for doing things that matter are almost always the best solution to avoid "farming," "gaming," "scumming," whatever.

That said, I would think the best structure for MW:O rewards would primarily focus on damage done. For example, assigning a mech a value (e.g. fixed number based on weight class, something based on total cost, or based on DPS rating), then dividing that value by the total damage done to the mech in game and rewarding the players that did that damage in a manner that is proportional to the damage they did. I believe this will actually encourage people to fight to win. You can easily include small bonuses for component destruction and kill shots, but the whole "kill assist" is worth X c-bills no matter how much damage you do problem should be resolved. It might even make sense to scale rewards (or proportions of rewards) based on the "value" of the mech doing the damage so that people would be rewarded for hitting above their class.

personally, I like the cap "option", but again the reward structure is broken. Players should get a reward for the time they are in the cap region. They should also probably get a smaller reward for being "near" the cap region while thier team is making capture progress, since they are hopefully protecting against returning defenders or the like. But again, make the reward proportional to the actual "damage inflicted" on the enemy (in this case capturing the base) rather than rewarding just showing up for 1 sec the same as being there for 1 min.

As for the whole issue of R&R costs, I think the existing system is broken, and I suspect the new system will be broken in different ways. The current system can heavily penalize new players that do not do their research about the game economics early on, and that probably limits the growth of the player base significantly. However this new system is probably going to encourage everyone to buy the best/fanciest tech ASAP so they can get mroe kills/assists and get more c-bills/bigger mechs/tech quickly. This will probably reduce the variety of mechs on the field, which I do not think is a good thing. In my opinion, repair costs make sense, they encourage people to use economically sensible builds. However rearm costs really just penalize the use of ammunition based weapons. If those weapons were really all "better" than energy weapons, then paying (c-bills) for ammunition is just a form of "pay-to-win". Of course it is not that simple, but I suspect removing ammunition costs (since so few bother to pay for it anyway) and keeping some form of repair costs would be the best solution. However repair costs need to be managed, they are clearly a punishment aimed at discouraging bad behavior, and as has already been mentioned punishment based schemes are far inferior to reward based schemes at teaching people what good behavior is in this type of setting.

[Ken Fury]

ManDaisy, on 17 December 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

I am kinda worried that the devs have scrapped repairs all together. Repair cost are what kept stupid people from running in and dying. Now that its gone I anticipate a lot of dumber players and suicide tactics.

Actually stupid people do stupid things no matter what you try to fix.

[PANZERBUNNY]

Role warfare means that not everyone is out to deal massive amounts of damage. ie. Scouts.

It would seem they are moving away from the Role Warfare concept.

[FerretGR]

PANZERBUNNY, on 17 December 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

Role warfare means that not everyone is out to deal massive amounts of damage. ie. Scouts.

I agree that this is a definite concern. Scouting tasks need to be better rewarded... the challenge is in figuring out how to do so.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Adrienne Vorton, on 17 December 2012 - 01:59 PM, said:

there certainly would be 1000 ways to tweak the costs and mission rewards to a satisfying level...removing RnR seems like a quickshot to me... and the rewards system? i see only kills and damaging really pay out, looks like a promotion for a slugfest.. but we will see...

removing R&R is them trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Anyone NOT worried about the number of people spending money in this game yet?

[Vassago Rain]

Here, let me explain how to implement an economy that works.

You add an actual economy, and not silly costs that punish big mechs for no reason, when said big mechs are already punished by the initial cost and hardpoints.

PANZERBUNNY, on 17 December 2012 - 02:09 PM, said:

Of course sometimes you're unlucky.

These modern days of full reward no risk gaming is tepid disgusting swampy BS and we all know it.

You play with expensive tech, you risk a large repair bill. Sometimes you can pull your mech out of the fire, sometimes your opponent gets a crit and you go down.

Playing this game should never be an easy no risk endeavour, but they are steering it towards MechAssault Online.

Absolute fail.

Are you sure that MicroSoft doesn't have a say in how the game is developed? Maybe Sony and MS have teamed up behind the scenes with all their game destroying power to see it sink.

Discuss.

I want to play giant robots fighting, and not excel sheets 2012.
Guess which concept brings in the more players.

PANZERBUNNY, on 17 December 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

Role warfare means that not everyone is out to deal massive amounts of damage. ie. Scouts.

It would seem they are moving away from the Role Warfare concept.

Oh, wow, this again. What role warfare? What scouts? You mean the lagshielded lights that take more damage to kill than atlases, and have FAR superior firepower, or similar?