Rewards changing behaviour?

Was wondering about peoples experiences so far with the new reward system.

I'm seeing a lot more cautious behaviour on the lines of.. "if I die fast I get almost no rewards". I actually had to lead several times in my medium while assaults just stood back and waited for someone else to draw fire or locate targets. The location I get as encourages roles but the damage shyness?

Definitely some good signs about changed tactics but people mainly going for raw damage or backstabbing.

I do worry what rewards will be like not in hero mechs etc.

 

There are things that I love and hate about the new system. A lot of it is highly random, it seems...I've had absolutely incredible games already in my new SCR-D (800+ damage, 4-5 kills) where I get less exp and cbills than I've gotten in games with under 300 damage, since in the latter game I had a lot more scouting/flanking/hit and run bonuses. I had one game with about 650 damage and a few kills, and I didn't even break 700 exp...on a win. I wasn't playing poorly, I just didn't have the luck to get various bonuses. One of my roommates commented that he was having a lot of trouble getting any rewards on his lights, but I actually noticed far higher prevalence of rewards when I hopped into my IS lights than in any other mech (got a lot of scouting/flanker bonuses that way).

I'm not sure how I feel about it overall though. I'm glad that there are finally bonuses for support activities like scouting around, but I hate that so much of it is dependent on complete luck to actually get the bonus

 

seems that the overall rewards are lower than before, c-bill-wise. It looks awesome if you get some random bonus every 3 seconds but most games are meh in regards to actual earnings. When I'm playing my lights I can't really "play to get rich". I react and make fast decisions and the bonuses are a result of that, I'm not making conscious decisions that lead to better rewards. Saying that I have to admit that I feel a bit offended by this new system.

I mean come on, a mech module costs 6 million c-bills, and look at those XL engine prices... please tell me this isn't going where I think it is.

 

It is a stealth nerf on earnings.

 

more like random on old reward system no way I'd earn so much with this kill/assists/comp. destr.

 

show me something similar in a commando

 

I'd say random too...I just spent a round on River City sniping with ERLLs, got a shit ton of Flanking bonuses, but didn't even do 300 damage by the end. Only got 1 kill, but about 9 assists. Got more Cbills and Exp than the round before, where I got 4 kills and 7 assists, but did almost all my damage from the front. In fact, I got about double the credit that way.

It's just...I don't know, I wouldn't say bad, but it's definitely not good either. And, judging from my roommate's experience (he's still very new), it is very punishing to new players. On that basis, I'm iffy about the whole thing.

 

1/ Rewards never affected my way to play and never will they.
2/ I never really paid attention to my c-bill income.

1+2= I couldn't care less

(and tbh these behaviours of earning optimisation leave me pretty dubious - a polite way to say I disapprove)

 

For players who are playing to help their team win - the rewards won't really affect behavior. The strategies that help you win a match haven't changed and so if you play to win your behavior won't change. The C-bill and experience rewards have shifted a little but don't really affect gameplay. The criteria for certain rewards are pretty complex and in the heat of the battle I'm not worried about fulfilling reward criteria - I'm worried about getting an opening to put some LPL into a side torso or quickly getting to a cap point.

Now if the question is on Conquest does the increased cap speed affect behavior then I'd say yes. Even on small maps having a group of 2-3 lights circulating and capping points is way more effective than it has been in achieving victory. Plus, an early points lead can be quickly overcome. It'll be interesting to see if they further tweak the cap speed because it seems really fast right now.

Lost a game last night 750 to 748 because three stupid assaults sat on one cap point instead of moving to cap other close points (Mining map). We had a numerical advantage (and less damaged mechs) but they refused to move out and so the other team quickly recapped our points and nosed us out for the win. I, of course, died early as is my MO so could only watch helplessly as these bozos failed tactics 101.

 

Doesn't the bonus reward for capping only go to the first capper though now?

I'm unsure see why you'd play anything slow on conquest anymore with the new bonus system and changed conquest rewards.

I disabled conquest last night as was training in slower mechs after a series of cap wins/losses which gave me awful c-bills.

 

I disabled conquest too.
I used to play Conquest exclusively but I must admit it's only because it was a "better Skirmish". Now it's a proper Conquest and I don't see the point of dropping in giant overpowered robots if it's to walk from point to point and collect resources.

Another thing: I think the cap speed should be adjusted on each map differently, to reflect how large and complex it might be. The current cap speed might be ok on River City, but on Terra Therma it's totally inappropriate.

 

Yeah I have to say conquest on Alpine Peaks is superb, but I'm not a fan on the other maps as its only purpose seemed to be to persuade people to make mistakes and split up. Alpine as a contrast had 4 points that encouraged fighting and were relatively close together.

 

haha even THIS discussion lead to the inevitable conclusion that the reason for Conquest being so unpopular is the sub-optimal map design

Nah really, I'm sure PGI will tweak the rewards within the next weeks to compensate things. This is basically a public test run and there's no better way of doing it and I'm find with that

I just hope tere are some improvements to come because some people I regularly play with are seriously disappointed as they earn next to nothing most of the time. It's a bummer and people WILL quit the game over this, it's a very emotional subject apparently

 

The more I play with the new rewards, the more I get annoyed by them. Just had my best ever round with SCR, 910 damage, but only assists with no kills.

I got under 1k exp, even though I was tearing the other side up nonstop...mainly because all that damage was from the front of the enemies. It just doesn't make sense to me that you can do better in a match, but get fewer rewards for it. Granted, I had fun, but I need the cbills and exp just now

 

The most popular reason seamed to be "you earn less c-bills in conquest", I've heard it so many times.

As for map design, I think it actually made some maps better. Alpine for example : no more boring H10 rush, Conquest made the whole lower area playable. Not to mention Terra Therma: in Conquest there is salvation possible even without the control of the center, you're not forced to rush in. And River City! Assault is Awful on this map, but Conquest made it much more fluid.
Well, that was the "old" Conquest I'm talking about.

 

Interesting perspective as I hated Conquest on Terra Therma as whichever side ended up outnumbered 2 lances vs 1 at the first point lost 98/100 games. The only salvation was if the surviving mediums to assaults could mire down the enemy company long enough then the lights had a slim chance of winning a cap war.

Cap seems (to me) semi pointless on River City but like you I always felt that Assault was terrible on that map as its so small so theres very little room to fight w/o being shot by the enemy turrets. The designers obviously never tried playing it in a Locust!

 

I'm seeing a lot more idiot rushes and less LRM rain. Though I am also seeing some more intelligent grouping and brawling as well. It will take some time for things to settle down with all the changes that have been made.

 

In fairness apparently this is what all the data being gathered fed into over the last while. They were recruiting people on Twitter yesterday to monitor their rewards and have them published which was an intriguing twist. Seemed to get plenty of takers.

Realistically, if we don't amend our behaviour I suspect we'll get bad rewards even when performing decently and that winning will be even more critical. Not that desperate a fan but I'm reserving judgement until I see how the rewards play out. It has a potential there just needs to be set to where it feels like its rewarding acting in role rather than penalising you for not doing it.

EG: It seems better to hose someone down damage wise now than kill them with precision. My dual gauss, 2 LPL, 4 ERML Direwolf may need to be relegated in preference to a UAC/ML build as apparently raw damage is rewarded not accuracy.....