130 replies to this topic

[Shismar]

As someone said, this is not an economy. It is just a way to provide achievements for playing the game.

And it does that reasonably well. With cadet bonus now it puts a new player into a well equipped custom mech within hours. Too fast for my taste but certainly not too slow. Do I miss R&R cost? Yes, I thought that was a good game mechanic. It added a little more planning to what gear you were driving and only had some minor issues.

As this game will continue to change, there is no knowing if and when some kind of economy will maybe be implemented. I do not see this game turning into a full fledged RPG with trade and crafting though. This would be a completely different gameplay from the direction MWO is going. As it is, the "economy" works and is not too much of a hassle. I can live with that.

Edited by Shismar, 15 January 2013 - 06:01 AM.

[slide]

Ok I've said this before here and elsewhere but

There is NO reason to not take the best mech in your mechbays.

This has various affects but the main one is a team of high end mechs will 90% of the time completely roll lesser mechs including pugs and newbs especially.

If you cant limit there use by making them economically unviable except for special occasions, how do you do it?

If you use drop limits (Ie no this no that blah blah) you fragment the player base into the haves and have nots. At least my way you have a choice and no one gets left out.

My founders Atlas with 2 LRM15 was a good money maker until I put artemis on it. My kd and win ration went up but my bank balance went backwards. That is the sort of compromise I had to make and it forced me to run something else for a while.
Instead of bringing 10 extra tons of ammo I might decide to put 2 LL on instead, makes it less of a boat.

This game is already dangerously close to "pay 2 win" as you can buy anything you want with MC. Do we want to force it to be "pay to keep up" or you get rolled, particularly new people.

And why have cbill rewards at all if the end result after 2 months of play you can just buy anything you want anyhow. CW is supposed to bring planetary bonuses to those who can get a hold of one. Whats the point of making my virtual bank account bigger when its already huge.

And I guarantee this, unless there is a completely seperate game for the clans, you will not see 1 IS mech on the field of battle when the clans come. If we stick with the you can have anything you can afford to buy model with no reason not to take it clan mechs will be the only ones left that will be worth taking. You are going to have to make clan mechs stupidly expensive to run or separate the player base into IS and Clan factions and I am not sure the playerbase can withstand anothr possible division.

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

Crafting. We need crafting. And gathering skills to mine ore from the caves.

[Vassago Rain]

slide, on 15 January 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

Ok I've said this before here and elsewhere but

There is NO reason to not take the best mech in your mechbays.

This has various affects but the main one is a team of high end mechs will 90% of the time completely roll lesser mechs including pugs and newbs especially.

If you cant limit there use by making them economically unviable except for special occasions, how do you do it?

If you use drop limits (Ie no this no that blah blah) you fragment the player base into the haves and have nots. At least my way you have a choice and no one gets left out.

My founders Atlas with 2 LRM15 was a good money maker until I put artemis on it. My kd and win ration went up but my bank balance went backwards. That is the sort of compromise I had to make and it forced me to run something else for a while.
Instead of bringing 10 extra tons of ammo I might decide to put 2 LL on instead, makes it less of a boat.

This game is already dangerously close to "pay 2 win" as you can buy anything you want with MC. Do we want to force it to be "pay to keep up" or you get rolled, particularly new people.

And why have cbill rewards at all if the end result after 2 months of play you can just buy anything you want anyhow. CW is supposed to bring planetary bonuses to those who can get a hold of one. Whats the point of making my virtual bank account bigger when its already huge.

And I guarantee this, unless there is a completely seperate game for the clans, you will not see 1 IS mech on the field of battle when the clans come. If we stick with the you can have anything you can afford to buy model with no reason not to take it clan mechs will be the only ones left that will be worth taking. You are going to have to make clan mechs stupidly expensive to run or separate the player base into IS and Clan factions and I am not sure the playerbase can withstand anothr possible division.

But the devs established early on that they didn't want a system where you'd have to spend hours grinding in a bad mech to take your favorite for a spin.

This was literally one of their pillars.

That you should be able to be in whatever you wanted to be, and it'd be viable.

[Sprouticus]

Ivanzypher, on 15 January 2013 - 05:50 AM, said:

I agree with the OP 100%. Without RnR theres no reason not to drop in my founders Atlas every match. Or **** out all my mechs with every upgrade under the sun. I'm just hoping it's only removed until CW is implemented, so they can do it properly(salvage rights and all that) rather than it being another victim of "dumb it down for the casuals".

I say this as someone who plays most of his matches as a PUG, or with one friend. Occasionally a full group, but even then, our comms is used more for bad jokes and immature remarks rather than tactics. I never had a problem making money under the old system, even my Atlas would break even at worst. If I needed cash I could just use a Centurion/Commando or something cheap for a bit.

Also, I never once went into battle without full ammo/repairs. Guess I'm just not a douche.

Here is the root issue. Some people feel like the only reason to play a game is the metagame aspect. Which to me says they don't actually like PLAYING THE GAME. I have 21 mechs, about half of them mastered out. I use all of the mechs I own (although not all of the variants of each mech) all the time. Currently I'm leveling stalkers, but I still drop in my 1X, Hunchie, Atlas, Raven, et al because I just like dropping in different mechs.

If RnR is the only thing keeping you from using high end equipment etc all the time, it means there is a flaw in game balance. And I think we can all agree that certain equipment is flawed. But PGI is working on it. I respect their efforts, and their past success in addressing the deficiencies. I would prefer they move a bit faster on stuff like weapons balance and ECM, but I understand that they want to make sure they dont have unintended consequences for such actions.

[XWorldEaterX]

Taizan, on 15 January 2013 - 05:58 AM, said:

Because imo forcing players to have to play with a weaker "Moneymaker" mechs that they may not prefer is counterproductive in the long run. There could be other mechanics in place ofc, but limiting it through with R&R was in fact not the right approach and only creates an unnecessary disparity between players.

I see the current economic system as an interim solution to get rid of R & R and allow more freedom for the devs and players alike.

This.

It's already really tough for pugs bringing their best to defeat 4 man drops. Now imagine if half your team was bringing in moneymaker builds.

I see far to many 8-0 matches and can't even imagine what it was like with R&R + 8 man pug stomping.

[Vassago Rain]

XWorldEaterX, on 15 January 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

This.

It's already really tough for pugs bringing their best to defeat 4 man drops. Now imagine if half your team was bringing in moneymaker builds.

I see far to many 8-0 matches and can't even imagine what it was like with R&R + 8 man pug stomping.

It was so bad, I crusaded for the system to be changed, and created gigantic threads. Eventually, they did change it.

[Yokaiko]

Sprouticus, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

Shockingly, I agree with Vassago.


There are a LOT of reasons why RnR was removed. I have covered them literally half a dozen times, but here is the super short verison why your economic model wont work:


If you have a large disparity between min and max rewards, users at the edge of the Bell curve (very high and very low) will break the economic model. For instance if the reward is 100k for a loss and 500k for a win, people who have a super high win % will be able to afford to drop with any mech they like. And people with a very low win % will be forced into effectively stock mechs. This will give those players a serious advantage/disadvantage. We actually had this system in September and early october and the system WAS broken. I was making 300k per match winning 90% of the time and non founder/premium players were making 50k winning 50% of the time or less.

That would have been less of an issue IF they manged to balance the mechanics so the stock mechs are at least moderately viable. However, if you have a high win percentage, and can afford to ride the pimpness, so what? I remember I had staight momeny grinding mechs, standard engine, low ammo, outputs etc. etc. I also had pimped out mechs that I would pull out for grins, and because I liked the rush of *gasp* a loss meaning something.

I actually got a thrill out of jumping because a K2 just whacked my ever so expensive XL engined mech.

Sprouticus, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

Additionally, taking off RnR after bonuses was making the Founders, Premium and Hero bonuses roughly 1.5x to 2x the shown percentage. This was due to the bonus being applied before RnR.

Again, PGI fails at calculators, its ceasing to surprise me anymore.

Sprouticus, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

If you had a great matchmaking system, and you changed RnR to be linear, you might be able to address these issues. But we don't and we won't for a long time. Unles syou think phase 3 will work perfectly right out of the box. Even then, I dont see where it brings value to the game.

Phase three is going to be just as hosed.

Sprouticus, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

In short, balancing the game on economics is just plain stupid. It adds no value. I do agree that there needs to be some limitaitons for certain equipment, but that should be internal to the game. ECM needs balance. But as you remember, engine sizing needed balance too, and they have addressed that fairly well. With the current engine system engine size is a balancing factor (compare the Cat-1X to 4X) for making mechs unique. Along with other attributes.

Balancing by economics is supposed to be in the game, its ALWAYS been in the game. If you do well, you get paid, if you don't you are disinherited and get to drive crappy house mechs. There is a LOT they can/could have done using economic balancing.

If you don't think that it works look at Eve, they attempted economic balancing, the players just worked harder to get ships that are the literally thousands of dollars worth of in-game currency, of fleet of Tier 3 cruisers that cost about $30 a pop at plex prices and you DON'T get to keep them when you lose them, that ship is gone forever.

Sprouticus, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

RnR on a meta scale as part of CW might add value, It would make CW drops means something (on top of winning planets, resources, etc). But for straight up pug drops it is a terrible idea.

Pugs need to harden the **** up, this game has been getting dulled down since I started in late June. At this rate I'll be pleasantly surprised to see it make it to CW actually getting released.

[Vassago Rain]

Yokaiko, on 15 January 2013 - 06:12 AM, said:

Words.

Balancing by cost is bad, and doesn't work. We've even 'tested' this, and it was a disaster.

Get over yourself.

[MustrumRidcully]

The current economy does a lot more against AFK and suicide farmers than the Repair & Rearm system did. So it would be very important that any re-introduction of R&R makes ensures that the reasons why AFK and suicide farming existed with R&R are gone.

The best way is probably to make sure that the rewards for winning and fighting (and not cap rushing) exceed the rewards for "non-desired" behavior like AFK and suicide farming or cap rushing. Important here is also to not just consider the end-match reward, but the rewards over time. If I can suicide farm in 1 minute for 20,000 C-Bills and play a regular match in 10 minutes and make 50,000, you still earn more money suiciding and switching to your next mech...

On top of that, I'd suggest making it also "fair" for all mechs so that people don't feel the need to just run one optimized category of mechs. (In the old system, R&R was not that expensive for lights, but very unlucrative when using assaults.)

If you can manage that, get on with the R&R system. If you can't, better stay off it.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 15 January 2013 - 06:19 AM.

[Aym]

slide, on 12 January 2013 - 03:46 AM, said:

TL;DR if you can't read it all, go read something else.

Disclaimer- some, all or none of what I am about to say could be included in Community Warfare. I just hope it is.

Just so you know I have been a member of this forum since November 2011 and been playing since Mid June 2012 in both closed and open Beta. In fact I have been playing since before the Founders Pack went on sale and was a very early adopter of the founders pack because I saw potential in the game. I am well aware that there are at least 3 sides to any argument on these forums.

In that time I have seen no economy, the get rich quick economy where you got a million cbills just for playing and the economy where you can go broke quick if you ran xl engines.

At the moment with the current rewards sysytem anyone, given enough time, can get all the mechs they want and have Cbills to burn. There is absolutely no reason to not run the best equipment you can afford to buy. This widens the gap between the players that have played the most and the new player thus scaring them off even more. It is the single biggest reason why we see so many Raven 3L and Atlas DDC's as there is no penalty for running ECM or high tech expensive equipment. We need a money sink that will cost players money if they run High End fully custom mechs. PGI said we would have this but as with a lot of things it seems to have disappeared, at least from view, to appease the FPS twitch crowd.

As I see it at the moment we have 2 major issues with the game balance (netcode, hitbox, other game mechanic issues aside).

1. Proliferation of high tech equipment leading to cheese build of the month depending weapon balances.

2. AFK/suicide/bot farmers ruining the game play experience for everyone, especially pugs.

I believe we can use the economy to limit both of theses problems.

The rewards system needs to be revamped a little and we retain the cadet system. We need to keep the current rewards system for damage etc, but change the win/loss rewards. If you are killed or damaged you need to be awarded an amount on a per chassis and amount damaged basis that will restore your mech to 100% health and ammo in it's STOCK configuration + 10%-15% to allow for minor mods like extra ammo and armour (this also needs a restore default/save loadout button in mechlab). So much like a trial mech you cannot lose money if you are killed or damaged in a stock or near stock mech. You can also make a little on top, as now, for participating, even if you lose. If you run an Assault with 2700 LRM's and Artemis with an XL engine it is going to cost you money.

Bring back Repair and Rearm in full. None of this nanny welfare state 75% repair rubbish that encourages people to not repair and rearm because it's cheaper to drop with only 75% ammo. Also you must be lock out mechs that are not at 100% from dropping into game.

"Bullfrog" you say "I'll go broke with those rules". No you won't because at a bare minimum you will have enough to repair and rearm to stock, what you won't be able to do is infinitely run cheese build of the week with all the expensive goodies, without going broke. It will force people to find more cost effective builds, rather than the best build. Which should lead to more variety on the battlefield.

"How does this stop AFKer's etc?" If the above happens and you do nothing in game, your profit from the game will be very low to non existant. What we now have to do is introduce a per drop maintenance fee based on weight class. Any tiny profit the AFKer has made will be eaten up by the fee thus making it a waste of time to not participate. (ie light fee 10k, medium 20k, heavy 30k, assault 40k) It will also make assaults, and heavys more expensive to run thus tilting the field to lights and the work horse medium builds which is as it should be, not all heavy and assaults all the time.

"Oh, I'll just run laser boats as they will make more money" The rearm fee needs to have a cost for "laser/energy weapon maintenance" to balance the cost with ammo dependant weapons.

Also ECM,BAP,TAG etc need to have costs (maintenace) associated with them to make it more costly to run with this equipment, thus reducing their use.

"Wow, that's a lot of stick wheres the carrot?" Simple make the reward for winning something worth fighting for. For example if the average profit from a match after normal expences was 100k (less maintenance fees), make the reward for winning something like 500k. It's more incentive to fight and try to win, rather than just grind for minimum wage and save. Even the worst players should be able to luck out a win occasionally thus giving them access to better equipment which they can then afford to run for a while.

Obviously the numbers would need tuning but it should work.

The other thing it would do is give more immersion to the game, something it is currently lacking. Battle tech has always been about surviving in a hostile and expensive universe, something like the above would bring back that role play element that it is lacking ATM. I want something more than giant stompy robots online, PGI have paid a small fortune for the IP to an established franchise, which has a distinct feel. It would be a waste to throw the best part of that away and end up with a generic shooter with robots and the Mechwarrior name.

I also think they need to limit weapon/mech availability (somehow, need to wait for CW most likely) and bring back proper salvage rights, but that is just me I want the whole experience not just parts of it). But that is a whole other argument.

If you got this far, thanks for reading.

Donning Asbestos suit now.

Flame On!

No reason to flame, you're doing a good enough job of that yourself saying RnR removal was for "twitch gamers" as though that is some sort of pejorative, which is wrong on it's face in a couple of ways. Your per-chassis reward to restore it to stock is actually pretty good, I support that as an idea.
However, RnR that balances high powered tech by OUT OF GAME ECONOMICS is wrong on it's face and will lead to Pay-to-win. Furthermore outlandishly different rewards for winning v. losing will further by pay-to-win as winning will allow you to run objectively better tech that can only be sustained by winning (or perhaps even winning with a premium account). That is NOT the way to balance a PvP game.
Kudos for coming up with an idea that gets around RnR inherently being a punishment to certain roles and therefore contrary to Role Warfare, however you're still missing the idea that weapons and gear should be balanced IN match, not by out of match economics that are so heavily affected by paying IRL monies for premium time and/or MC.

[Yokaiko]

Vassago Rain, on 15 January 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

Balancing by cost is bad, and doesn't work. We've even 'tested' this, and it was a disaster.

Get over yourself.

Not till you do.

I said that I LIKED the cost based balancing, it made the game MORE FUN. Period.

You opinion is no more or less valuable than mine killer.

[Vassago Rain]

Yokaiko, on 15 January 2013 - 06:17 AM, said:

Not till you do.

I said that I LIKED the cost based balancing, it made the game MORE FUN. Period.

You opinion is no more or less valuable than mine killer.

My opinion isn't opinion, but fact.
The game was getting ridiculed for being a korean grind simulator. Now we have new players. New players everywhere. But you feel we should return to the korean grind, and the have and have nots of the old system?

I'm glad PGI don't listen to golds anymore, and would rather listen to me.

[Sprouticus]

slide, on 15 January 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

Ok I've said this before here and elsewhere but

There is NO reason to not take the best mech in your mechbays.

This has various affects but the main one is a team of high end mechs will 90% of the time completely roll lesser mechs including pugs and newbs especially.

If you cant limit there use by making them economically unviable except for special occasions, how do you do it?

By balancing INSIDE the game so different types of mechs provide different 'best mechs' depending on team makeup and play style. It is that simple. Hard to implement but simple in concept.



What is the best mech. The heaviest? The one with ECM? The fastest? The one that supports the most boating? Depending on your team and match, and playstyle Each of these is a huge advantage depending on multiple factors.

My LRM boat is amazing if I have a TAG light helping. It is good alone if I can TAG myself. It is aweful on city maps where my TAG can't penetrate ECM bubbles.

My fast 1X is great on open maps or cold maps. It struggles if the enemy can close on me.

My Raven is awesome against many mechs (perhaps too good), but if the other side has a raven and can provide missile support I go down before I can even disengage.

THAT IS HOW YOU BALANCE THIS GAME.


If anyone of these becomes 'the best' all around, it means the gam

[slide]

Vassago Rain, on 15 January 2013 - 05:56 AM, said:

There should never be a reason for you to not drop in a mech you like.

That was one of the earliest things they settled on. Every mech should be viable, and if you like something, you shouldn't have to be in something else before you could be in your favorite.

And every mech in this game is viable now?

If you want to be somewhat succeful in this game all you have to do is buy an easy mode raven with streaks (whats that about 5000MC). If your pugging you will do very well even if you die. Anybody who brings another mech is doing it mostly because they want to, not because it is viable. If you made it cost 50k to "service the ecm" everytime you dropped with it I'd bet the raven issue would go away, all by itself. (yay bring back jenners)

Was R&R borked before it was removed, probably, but that was due more to the size of the reward and the 75% welfare state we lived in, not because it was inheretly wrong.

@Taizan, can you honestly tell me that there is no disparity between players now?

It would have to be an exceptional player to beat anyone who has been here long enough to accrue a decent bank account and speced up mechs, in a trial mech. I do not beleive matchmaking part 3 will make that much difference and even if it does all we will see is the better players taking the "best mechs" much as we see now with the 5DDC 3Raven teams in 8v8 drops.

[Yokaiko]

Vassago Rain, on 15 January 2013 - 06:20 AM, said:

My opinion isn't opinion, but fact.
The game was getting ridiculed for being a korean grind simulator. Now we have new players. New players everywhere. But you feel we should return to the korean grind, and the have and have nots of the old system?

I'm glad PGI don't listen to golds anymore, and would rather listen to me.

Well the game is getting ridiculed now because it sucks, so pick one.

Right now we have a crappy first person shooter with a longish time to kill, small maps and two modes that are essentially the same thing.

PGI listens to their money guys, and trust me its neither of us. Ego much there?

[DaZur]

+1000 to the OP.

To parallel your premise (which I fully support) I wish to add that aside from the side-effect of proliferation of cheese builds, the absence of R&R has created no repercussion scenarios...

Players rush into battle with no forethought to the consequences because there is no over-riding incentive to:
a.) Not get killed.
b.) Not get their Mech obliterated.
c.) Not **** through their full ammo load.
d.)Not incur an outlandish repair bill.

Essentially the omission of R&R has removed all fear of repercussion... Players play full-tilt without a care on the world. This then leads to mindless matches of players simply throwing their cheesiest builds at each other with no thought of recourse and any premise of battlefield tactics and or true teamwork and collaboration is thrown out the window.

Bring back R&R and you will see players playing "smarter" and matches will be more cerebral and far less "pew-pew".

[Vassago Rain]

DaZur, on 15 January 2013 - 06:29 AM, said:

+1000 to the OP.

To parallel your premise (which I fully support) I wish to add that aside from the side-effect of proliferation of cheese builds, the absence of R&R has created no repercussion scenarios...

Players rush into battle with no forethought to the consequences because there is no over-riding incentive to:
a.) Not get killed.
b.) Not get their Mech obliterated.
c.) Not **** through their full ammo load.
d.)Not incur an outlandish repair bill.

Essentially the omission of R&R has removed all fear of repercussion... Players play full-tilt without a care on the world. This then leads to mindless matches of players simply throwing their cheesiest builds at each other with no thought of recourse and any premise of battlefield tactics and or true teamwork and collaboration is thrown out the window.

Bring back R&R and you will see players playing "smarter" and matches will be more cerebral and far less "pew-pew".

It's done none of this, but made it so you can bring assault mechs.

[Tarman]

Yokaiko, on 15 January 2013 - 06:24 AM, said:

Well the game is getting ridiculed now because it sucks, so pick one.

Right now we have a crappy first person shooter with a longish time to kill, small maps and two modes that are essentially the same thing.

PGI listens to their money guys, and trust me its neither of us. Ego much there?

It's his job to have an ego with its own gravity, he's our troll. And underneath his bridge he's right.

RNR was unfun for new players, especially combined with all the rest of the evil of a new player experience. Much of that has been alleviated, except for the matcher which is still murderous. But at least rookies have a fighting chance to build up some scratch to get better kitted into something they want to drive, instead of the facepunching of days gone by and driving a rustbucket into repeated death because it was cost-efficient.

Quite apart from rookie suffering there simply isn't enough metagame to support an "economy" and have that word mean anything. I thought I would miss RNR but I don't at all. Giant robot fighting is still fun. I'll welcome it back in some form when I sign my first merc contract but until then RNR just gets in the way of the robot Valhalla we currently have for a game.

[Protoculture]

Vassago Rain, on 15 January 2013 - 06:05 AM, said:

But the devs established early on that they didn't want a system where you'd have to spend hours grinding in a bad mech to take your favorite for a spin.

This was literally one of their pillars.

That you should be able to be in whatever you wanted to be, and it'd be viable.

Which is why you have to grind out variants to upgrade the one you want to play. Amirite?