345 replies to this topic

[Vassago Rain]

DeaconW, on 20 May 2013 - 05:58 PM, said:

No, I and others simply appreciate a game that has depth. You are apparently not afflicted with that particular desire. I find the challenge of keeping a mech stable operating stimulating. According to the lore, these are machines no one can actually build anymore...you have to repair and piece them together. Salvage is a huge part of it because sometimes you have to use salvage to repair and rearm your mech. There is risk and there is reward in choosing what to outfit your mech with depending on the mission. But I digress...the game I am describing is not MWO...hopefully when community warfare gets here it will get closer.

Well, you obviously don't know anything about the lore, because in 3050, mechs are made on quite the large scale in factories all over the galaxy, and the houses have actual mechwarrior armies.

Even back in REAL MEN'S BATTLETECH DAYS OF 3025, most of the big assault mechs were produced in small quantities all over the place. Atlases, especially.

[Apoc1138]

blinkin, on 20 May 2013 - 10:16 PM, said:

so pilots just get to destroy these ancient machines they pilot without repercussions? i wish i could have found the exact word, but a while back i found a specific term within mechwarrior lore that was used for pilots who had destroyed or in some other way lost a mech and survived in shame. most spent their whole lives working to build enough money to buy a new mech (even a crappy light mech).

even the clans aren't going to just allow a pilot to continuously dump their money down the drain.

ooh ooh, I know, lets make the game even more realistic and have it so that every time you get cockpit-shot your character gets completely wiped, account locked and you have to make a new one

Edited by Apoc1138, 21 May 2013 - 01:57 AM.

[blinkin]

Vassago Rain, on 21 May 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

You do realize that battlemechs, especially the assault mechs from the star league era, are pretty much indestructible, and will survive being forgotten inside a barn for 300 years no problem, yes?

They're like AK-47s.

The whole setting is built around this.

being forgotten in a barn != being blown to scrap

i don't think i have seen anyone argue having to do repairs for the rust your mechs collect in the bays. as far as i can tell mechs tend to get beat up in any game, lore, or published fiction that has them. at some point someone needs to fork out money for the repairs. even if you are in a clan your superiors will probly get pissed and do something at some point if you blow up 5 atlai in a row.

if the assault mechs in this game rarely took any damage your argument would have some merit, but i have personally blown the side torsos off of several assault mechs.

Apoc1138, on 21 May 2013 - 01:56 AM, said:

ooh ooh, I know, lets make the game even more realistic and have it so that every time you get cockpit-shot your character gets completely wiped, account locked and you have to make a new one

oh oh! how about we abandon all of this realism crap like ammo, or I KNOW we could just give the mechs one big health bar instead of all of this complicated hit zone stuff. heat is complicated too so lets just get rid of that. you know what would be really fun? we could have small round objects that a pilot throws out like a grenade and then a mech pops out of it and you order it to fight the other mechs!

it does not require special skills to be condescending d-bag. so how about we act like adults and argue the real issue instead of some we todd ed slippery slope BS.

[Vassago Rain]

blinkin, on 21 May 2013 - 02:27 AM, said:

being forgotten in a barn != being blown to scrap

i don't think i have seen anyone argue having to do repairs for the rust your mechs collect in the bays. as far as i can tell mechs tend to get beat up in any game, lore, or published fiction that has them. at some point someone needs to fork out money for the repairs. even if you are in a clan your superiors will probly get pissed and do something at some point if you blow up 5 atlai in a row.

if the assault mechs in this game rarely took any damage your argument would have some merit, but i have personally blown the side torsos off of several assault mechs.

oh oh! how about we abandon all of this realism crap like ammo, or I KNOW we could just give the mechs one big health bar instead of all of this complicated hit zone stuff. heat is complicated too so lets just get rid of that. you know what would be really fun? we could have small round objects that a pilot throws out like a grenade and then a mech pops out of it and you order it to fight the other mechs!

it does not require special skills to be condescending d-bag. so how about we act like adults and argue the real issue instead of some we todd ed slippery slope BS.

Uh-hu. That's not what I said.

Not a single person in here knows even the first thing about the setting.

Please take your dreams of punishing repair costs and go back to EVE. Warthunder is also a really good game if you love torturing yourself.

[blinkin]

MustrumRidcully, on 21 May 2013 - 12:38 AM, said:

Well, if our military leaders don't want us to lose our mechs all the time, maybe they shouldn't put us into meat grinders where the opposition is usually about equally strong.

Computer Game PvP is inherently different from real war. In real war, you want to avoid combat and only fight when and where you are strong. That's something computer game stuff like match-making and game balance intentionally try to avoid.

The fluff behind Battletech often conflicts with this - fact is, mechs are easily and often cored both in Battletech and in MW:O games.

ok now we are getting some where. this is a fairly sober assessment of the issue.

my issue is that i think that this can be brought closer to real war without sacrificing the necessary balance. i want this to be more of a simulator than it is. a key component of that is the upkeep of the equipment. to me the current system feels like having a flight simulator where you are never required to take off or land.

i enjoyed having a few mechs in my bays that actually made me ask the question: is it worth it this time?

i had my 11,000,000 cbill catapult that demanded at least a couple kills or i would be punished. i also had my jenner that didn't require me to be as serious and i could just goof off and come out ok. most of all i liked the fact that i could go out onto the field and see something besides hordes of assault mechs.

now i just poke my head in every once in a while after a new patch to see how things have changed. repair and rearm was part of what made this game fun for me and it was a major reason why i was interested enough to buy a founders pack and try the closed beta. the game just feels very hollow now and i never get sucked in and find that feeling of being a warrior fighting in a giant machine any more, since RR was stripped away i am always aware that i am staring at a computer screen and punching keys on a keyboard.

[Apoc1138]

blinkin, on 21 May 2013 - 02:27 AM, said:

oh oh! how about we abandon all of this realism crap like ammo, or I KNOW we could just give the mechs one big health bar instead of all of this complicated hit zone stuff. heat is complicated too so lets just get rid of that. you know what would be really fun? we could have small round objects that a pilot throws out like a grenade and then a mech pops out of it and you order it to fight the other mechs!

it does not require special skills to be condescending d-bag. so how about we act like adults and argue the real issue instead of some we todd ed slippery slope BS.

I am arguing the real issue... I'm not sure what "we todd ed slippery slope" means?
You are saying RnR because realism, I'm saying no to realism for realism's sake, what makes the most sense from a gameplay point of view for everyone involved

RnR punishes new players needlessly and makes the game inaccessible to players of a more casual bent
that doesn't mean turn it in to COD, it means soften the edges while retaining the core

I was fine with RnR as I always made good bank, however I can understand how newer players, or players who want to only play a few hours a week, would be put off by having a situation where they could actually play for an hour and have achieved nothing

and yes, I do reserve the right to post sarcastic responses to blatantly wonky lines of thinking

we are going to be getting a risk / reward setup in CW with merc corps fighting for and having to defend territories, so lets see how that pans out

Edited by Apoc1138, 21 May 2013 - 02:53 AM.

[blinkin]

Vassago Rain, on 21 May 2013 - 02:30 AM, said:

Uh-hu. That's not what I said.

Not a single person in here knows even the first thing about the setting.

Please take your dreams of punishing repair costs and go back to EVE. Warthunder is also a really good game if you love torturing yourself.

where was i wrong?

Vassago Rain, on 21 May 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

You do realize that battlemechs, especially the assault mechs from the star league era, are pretty much indestructible, and will survive being forgotten inside a barn for 300 years no problem, yes?

They're like AK-47s.

The whole setting is built around this.

you said they never break, i am saying that i have personally watched them break.

[Sudden Reversal]

[Apoc1138]

blinkin, on 21 May 2013 - 02:53 AM, said:

where was i wrong?

you said they never break, i am saying that i have personally watched them break.

you've seen a battlemech break?
you know, those big stompy robots that don't actually exist?

[Thorqemada]

Apoc1138, on 21 May 2013 - 01:56 AM, said:

ooh ooh, I know, lets make the game even more realistic and have it so that every time you get cockpit-shot your character gets completely wiped, account locked and you have to make a new one

In a RPG game where you create a Pilot-Avatar this would work and could be fun.

Edited by Thorqemada, 21 May 2013 - 03:01 AM.

[Apoc1138]

Thorqemada, on 21 May 2013 - 02:58 AM, said:

In a RPG game where you create a Pilot this would work and could be fun.

they do this, or a version of it, in EVE, and it is absolutely no fun whatsoever

also, no, if I spend real money on mechs / paint / whatever, I absolutely would not accept losing all of this every time I died in game

[MustrumRidcully]

blinkin, on 21 May 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

ok now we are getting some where. this is a fairly sober assessment of the issue.

my issue is that i think that this can be brought closer to real war without sacrificing the necessary balance. i want this to be more of a simulator than it is. a key component of that is the upkeep of the equipment. to me the current system feels like having a flight simulator where you are never required to take off or land.

i enjoyed having a few mechs in my bays that actually made me ask the question: is it worth it this time?

i had my 11,000,000 cbill catapult that demanded at least a couple kills or i would be punished. i also had my jenner that didn't require me to be as serious and i could just goof off and come out ok. most of all i liked the fact that i could go out onto the field and see something besides hordes of assault mechs.

now i just poke my head in every once in a while after a new patch to see how things have changed. repair and rearm was part of what made this game fun for me and it was a major reason why i was interested enough to buy a founders pack and try the closed beta. the game just feels very hollow now and i never get sucked in and find that feeling of being a warrior fighting in a giant machine any more, since RR was stripped away i am always aware that i am staring at a computer screen and punching keys on a keyboard.

I can somewhat get why you migh consider it "hollow", but R&R brings to many issues.

One fundamental problem for this in MW:O is that Premium accounts and Hero mechs increase the amount of money you earn.

How can you balance your R&R cost now? Premium subscribers will always be less affected, the question seems to be whether you make the game unfun for F2P, or R&R meaningless?

Any "balanced" implementation of R&R will make it a pure fluff thing, basically increase the current rewards by 50 % but demand that 50 % back in repair costs.

The old R&R system was almost there - if we had the Elo match-maker back then, I suppose losing money even on F2P accounts might have been avoidable overall. But even that betrayed problems with the premiums - R&R cost was subtracted after the match rewards had already been increased by premium accounts. That means a F2P migh earn 50.000 C-Bills and pay 40,000 in C-Bills and make 10,000 C-Bills as pure winnings, but the Premium player would have, for the same effort, 75.000 C-Bills, pay 40,000 C-Bills, and get 35,000 C-Bills as reward. The advertised 50 % bonus is now suddenly effectively a 250 % bonus.

Of course, that's something you could change - make the repair cost part of the match reward system. But then you lose any control about repairs, you can't decide whether you prefer to pay for the repairs or wait for better times. That breaks immersion right away.


If I had an idea how to make R&R balanced, non-game-breaking and fun, I would probably support it. But I am not seeing it.

(I am tempted to actually try writing some kind of mini-game or app devoted to being a mechwarrior mercenary that focuses entirely on getting contracts, building mechs in the mech bay, and providing maintance, where you hire pilots and mechanics... But trying to mix such a system with a big stompy robot fighting game can be problematic - it might simply be baggage many players don't even care about.)

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 21 May 2013 - 04:22 AM.

[LordBraxton]

blinkin, on 20 May 2013 - 10:16 PM, said:

so pilots just get to destroy these ancient machines they pilot without repercussions? i wish i could have found the exact word, but a while back i found a specific term within mechwarrior lore that was used for pilots who had destroyed or in some other way lost a mech and survived in shame. most spent their whole lives working to build enough money to buy a new mech (even a crappy light mech).

even the clans aren't going to just allow a pilot to continuously dump their money down the drain.

there are 3 scenarios here

1- The term you are looking for is dispossessed. However as new mechs are supplied to a unit the dispossessed come up for re-assignment, they still don't pay for their repairs.

2- more likely your pilot is dead, as 6ppcs just cored you, but we can't delete your account.

3- The likeliest scenario is they take the remains of your mech back to base, and slap a bunch of spare\salvage parts into it to get it running again. The house still picks up the repair bill.

[blinkin]

Apoc1138, on 21 May 2013 - 02:50 AM, said:

I am arguing the real issue... I'm not sure what "we todd ed slippery slope" means?
You are saying RnR because realism, I'm saying no to realism for realism's sake, what makes the most sense from a gameplay point of view for everyone involved

RnR punishes new players needlessly and makes the game inaccessible to players of a more casual bent
that doesn't mean turn it in to COD, it means soften the edges while retaining the core

I was fine with RnR as I always made good bank, however I can understand how newer players, or players who want to only play a few hours a week, would be put off by having a situation where they could actually play for an hour and have achieved nothing

and yes, I do reserve the right to post sarcastic responses to blatantly wonky lines of thinking

we are going to be getting a risk / reward setup in CW with merc corps fighting for and having to defend territories, so lets see how that pans out

sorry but i find it detrimental to copy/paste all of the arguments i have ever made since most people tend to avoid reading bricks of text. if you will look closely any post where i am directly arguing the realism is a direct RESPONSE to some other comment about the realism of it.

Apoc1138, on 21 May 2013 - 02:55 AM, said:

you've seen a battlemech break?
you know, those big stompy robots that don't actually exist?

do you intend to attack me EVERY time i come back with a response to these issues?

if you really hate it when anything involving realism is argued, then why don't you go after some of these people?
vv

Vassago Rain, on 21 May 2013 - 01:20 AM, said:

You do realize that battlemechs, especially the assault mechs from the star league era, are pretty much indestructible, and will survive being forgotten inside a barn for 300 years no problem, yes?

They're like AK-47s.

The whole setting is built around this.

LordBraxton, on 21 May 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

there are 3 scenarios here

1- The term you are looking for is dispossessed. However as new mechs are supplied to a unit the dispossessed come up for re-assignment, they still don't pay for their repairs.

2- more likely your pilot is dead, as 6ppcs just cored you, but we can't delete your account.

3- The likeliest scenario is they take the remains of your mech back to base, and slap a bunch of spare\salvage parts into it to get it running again. The house still picks up the repair bill.

@ Apoc1138: if you want to moderate and be the voice of reason, then fine, but don't use that crap as a smoke screen to cover your attempts to disrupt the views you don't like.

LordBraxton, on 21 May 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

there are 3 scenarios here

1- The term you are looking for is dispossessed. However as new mechs are supplied to a unit the dispossessed come up for re-assignment, they still don't pay for their repairs.

2- more likely your pilot is dead, as 6ppcs just cored you, but we can't delete your account.

3- The likeliest scenario is they take the remains of your mech back to base, and slap a bunch of spare\salvage parts into it to get it running again. The house still picks up the repair bill.

and those repairs to that high technology are going to cost money or resources of some kind. without some sort of repercussion pilots are more likely to damage their mech just for that little bit of extra pay, so he works hard to earn that extra 1000 cbills and in the process the mech suffers 10,000 cbills worth of damage and this is a common trend with said pilot. if the pilot isn't paying for it directly then at some point i find it likely that he will be stripped of his mech or some other heinous fate.

also none of us are assigned to our mechs. we earn money, buy, and outfit them. so if we really want to go to a house based system then we also need to take away any individual ability to buy and outfit mechs, because from what i understand most house pilots don't own their mechs. no one... very few would like it but this would be a very easy way to balance the field and get rid of most complaints that appear on the forums. simply have each pilot queue up and then have them drop into a predetermined set of mechs on the map. no more hordes of assault mechs. and just for those morons that skim for soundbites to use in attacks I AM NOT ADVOCATING THIS SORT OF CHANGE.

Edited by blinkin, 21 May 2013 - 11:03 AM.

[Hotthedd]

LordBraxton, on 21 May 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

there are 3 scenarios here

1- The term you are looking for is dispossessed. However as new mechs are supplied to a unit the dispossessed come up for re-assignment, they still don't pay for their repairs.

2- more likely your pilot is dead, as 6ppcs just cored you, but we can't delete your account.

3- The likeliest scenario is they take the remains of your mech back to base, and slap a bunch of spare\salvage parts into it to get it running again. The house still picks up the repair bill.

But they don't pick up the tab for you Cool Shots, Air/Arty strikes, or UAVs. Ammo is a consumable just as much as these things are. How is it ok for one and not the other?

[Khanublikhan]

MustrumRidcully, on 21 May 2013 - 04:19 AM, said:

I can somewhat get why you migh consider it "hollow", but R&R brings to many issues.

...One fundamental problem for this in MW:O is that Premium accounts and Hero mechs increase the amount of money you earn.

How can you balance your R&R cost now? Premium subscribers will always be less affected, the question seems to be whether you make the game unfun for F2P, or R&R meaningless?

Forgive me for selective quoting. I wish to address a particular point.

R&R could be paid for with a unique currency. Salvage Credits. Salvage Credits are not a monetary currency but a barter currency. You call in favours, you wheedle, you connive, in order to manipulate the supply chain to get the parts and repairs you need. Anyone familiar with the old TV series, MASH / Telly Savalas in the film 'Battle of the Bulge'? - where they scrounge and bargain all the time? That.

This currency could be set up to be earnt at the same rate for Free to Play and Founders players. Earnt on matches played / Objectives achieved?

Edited by Khanublikhan, 21 May 2013 - 03:15 PM.

[blinkin]

Khanublikhan, on 21 May 2013 - 03:12 PM, said:

Forgive me for selective quoting. I wish to address a particular point.

R&R could be paid for with a unique currency. Salvage Credits. Salvage Credits are not a monetary currency but a barter currency. You call in favours, you wheedle, you connive, in order to manipulate the supply chain to get the parts and repairs you need. Anyone familiar with the old TV series, MASH / Telly Savalas in the film 'Battle of the Bulge'? - where they scrounge and bargain all the time? That.

This currency could be set up to be earnt at the same rate for Free to Play and Founders players. Earnt on matches played / Objectives achieved?

i would be ok with a system like this.

[Apoc1138]

blinkin, on 21 May 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

do you intend to attack me EVERY time i come back with a response to these issues?

if you really hate it when anything involving realism is argued, then why don't you go after some of these people?

@ Apoc1138: if you want to moderate and be the voice of reason, then fine, but don't use that crap as a smoke screen to cover your attempts to disrupt the views you don't like.

I'm not attacking you, sorry, I don't know where you got this impression from.
You do seem to be the most vocal advocate of RnR in this thread though so I picked up on a couple of your posts and responded to them in a jokey fashion.

I'm not trying to be moderate either, you seem to have one extreme of view point on the subject and in a light hearted attempt to draw attention to the fallacy of some of your arguments I am deliberately posting a light hearted and opposite reaction to you.

Obviously I'm not going to post at people who, although their reasoning is wonky, agree with the basic premise of my point of view - that we tried RnR and it caused more problems generally than it was really worth. The game is better for everyone without RnR. RnR did not make people better players, it also did not make people more cautious players, it just punished people for trying to learn the game.

[Chief 117]

They must return, this game is turning into assault PPC/Gauss fest. With the previous system in place, we would see a LOT more diverse builds.

[MustrumRidcully]

Chief 117, on 22 May 2013 - 02:56 AM, said:

They must return, this game is turning into assault PPC/Gauss fest. With the previous system in place, we would see a LOT more diverse builds.

I challenge this claim. I did not see the diversity change much. I suppose there were more trial mechs around back then, suicide-farming or just people trying to make ahonest buck without being screwed over.

If people really have to care about their R&R upkeep, they will do what they do now for all other stuff - min/max. They pick the cheapest builds to run and still be effective. You might be lucky and not see many PPC/Gauss Assaults. But you see in exchange just a bunch of STD Engine Jenners or HBK-4Ps that use only Medum Lasers.
And that is assuming that AFK Farming and SUicide Trials are not an option in a new R&R system. The latter were extremely toxic - it just takes 1 or 2 out of 8 players to ruin a whole match for everyone that came for the stompy robot fights. And even if you don't have the AFK Farmers and Suiciders, you still have the "Power-Down-In-Corner" people that hide the moment it doesn't look like this fight goes well and will just be a lot of repair cost with very little income.

Diversity is still something else. A fun gameplay dynamic would be something else, too.

And of course, Elo might become totally useless, because if people really switch between cheap-to-run builds and expensive "cheese" builds, then their ELO drops and drops while using the cheap-to-run-builds, and switchingto the expensive and powerful builds suddenly means an extra-boosted success rate.