Suicides to start with Heavy Mechs

[NateThomas1979]

I was thinking about it today, and I realized that suicides need to hurt more than they do. Even though it's a beta, I tested it today with the server I play in, and yes, you can continually suicide, then give a teammate your money. I'm not sure what it would take to get this fixed, but I would definitely say that this is not a good thing. Potentially one side could start the game with a negative score, but with 5-10 Atlas Primes.

A possible fix.

Should you suicide, you should start with 3k. Sure, you could still do the same thing, but it's not worth it to do that with the -points being assigned accordingly. As well, it would take a much longer time to get someone a heavy mech. BA's are powerful enough that you could still do damage and help your team.

If anyone else has good suggestions that'd be cool.

[Seraph]

I was thinking about it today, and I realized that suicides need to hurt more than they do. Even though it's a beta, I tested it today with the server I play in, and yes, you can continually suicide, then give a teammate your money. I'm not sure what it would take to get this fixed, but I would definitely say that this is not a good thing. Potentially one side could start the game with a negative score, but with 5-10 Atlas Primes.

A possible fix.

Should you suicide, you should start with 3k. Sure, you could still do the same thing, but it's not worth it to do that with the -points being assigned accordingly. As well, it would take a much longer time to get someone a heavy mech. BA's are powerful enough that you could still do damage and help your team.

If anyone else has good suggestions that'd be cool.

We had a system like that in place but it didn't work. Being killed by a turret counts as suicide, running into a mountain and dieing counts as a suicide etc. etc.

As long as we don't have a good way to distinguish between real suicides and just bad luck we decided to turn it off.

Cheers,
Seraph

[(TLL)Sky_walker]

I have an idea: Count time since last suicide - if it's less than... let's say 1min than you'll get half of a credits you did last time.
Problem solved.
All in all not many people get bad luck twice in 60 seconds.

(time can be adjusted to reflect the gameplay ofq.)

[NateThomas1979]

Well that stinks Seraph as I see this as a serious issue of people doing it and using the stupid logic "It's a game mechanic so it's not cheating."

Hmm.

Could you perhaps do something like sky_walker said, or once we get the base camping down, perhaps a check to see if you died in a buy zone. If you suicided in a buy zone you get less money?

[Stahlseele]

I was thinking about it today, and I realized that suicides need to hurt more than they do. Even though it's a beta, I tested it today with the server I play in, and yes, you can continually suicide, then give a teammate your money. I'm not sure what it would take to get this fixed, but I would definitely say that this is not a good thing. Potentially one side could start the game with a negative score, but with 5-10 Atlas Primes.

A possible fix.

Should you suicide, you should start with 3k. Sure, you could still do the same thing, but it's not worth it to do that with the -points being assigned accordingly. As well, it would take a much longer time to get someone a heavy mech. BA's are powerful enough that you could still do damage and help your team.

If anyone else has good suggestions that'd be cool.

We had a system like that in place but it didn't work. Being killed by a turret counts as suicide, running into a mountain and dieing counts as a suicide etc. etc.

As long as we don't have a good way to distinguish between real suicides and just bad luck we decided to turn it off.

Cheers,
Seraph

No way to check if the suicide was caused by the press of the suicide button? O.o

[KingLeerUK]

No way to check if the suicide was caused by the press of the suicide button? O.o

Well, Crysis counts a death as... a death.  I have no doubt we could insert some code into the HUD that would track the use of the suicide button, but it was not addressed prior to BETA 1 and as evidenced here really needs to be.

The dev team is aware of this possible exploit, and for the moment all we can do it ask that players NOT abuse it.

One of the ideas I had come up with was to initiate a timer after the death of a player (regardless of how).  Upon respawn, the player would only be able to C-Bill transfer 50% of their spawn C-Bills away.  The timer would then count down over a 2 minute period, at which time the C-Bill transfer "lock" for the remaining 50% would be released and the player could send the rest of their money away.  If the player died within the 2 minute lock period, upon respawn they would only be able to transfer 25% of their C-Bills and the C-Bill "lock" on the remaining 75% would be extended to 5 minutes.

The challenge would be in communicating this to the player, but it would put a serious hinderance on suicide cash farming.

There are very few instances where the use of the SUICIDE button is justified (falling outside the world due to a bug is the only one I can think of).  I would personally love to see a suicide put a player in a 2-3 minute "timeout" corner, and just as rank preservation is currently implemented see it carry over even if a player disconnected and reconnected to a server to try and circumvent it.

[Stahlseele]

Gah but that sounds much too complicated for me to understand ^^
I'm a hardware-guy, i am not good at tinkering with code and database.
My mind simply does not work like that somehow <.<

Getting Stuck or experiencing other bugs is a good reason for a suicide too.

[NateThomas1979]

My hope is that you have 0 bugs upon completion and can just get rid of the suicide button all together. :-)

I will promise myself not to abuse it. After years of admin'ing servers I tend to look for 'workarounds' in every game I play. Sucks sometimes when you find one. Thankfully it's just a beta and therefore it was found early.

Your workaround sounds much better than my thoughts. Perhaps just a straight up timer upon death of not being able to transfer c-bills? 2min is a long time to wait for people who are trying to work the system. By that time you could just kill a mech and get money easier.

My thoughts is that the trick isn't to ban/fix teh system, but to make it easier to actually play than to try to cheat the system. If you make it easier to kill things for money, cheating becomes less desireable.

As well, most of us beta players are lurking/posting in the forums, a simple post would be sufficient to let people know how transferring c-bills went. Or imo, just let people find out through gameplay on this one.

Thanks again for everything you guys are doing. The beta is the cleanest/most fun I've ever played!

[PHJF]

This sounds like it would require actual teamwork by the offending players, which is something I don't think I've yet encountered in any pub game.

[Masakari]

Just to add, even a single suicide effects the score intensely.

[Stahlseele]

Just to add, even a single suicide effects the score intensely.

But just your own right? O.o
Or the complete Team-Score?
Also, right now, nobody seems to care about the Team-Score at all.
Right now, we are all just having fun blasting each other to pieces ^^
Once the Team-Score actually is getting important, this will probably stop dead in it's tracks.
But until then it's basically good teamplay to ruin your own score to allow other people to get good equipment fast and then bring up the team score . .

[BL4zD]

I think the idea KingLeer proposed is the better of the ones to choose from. Suicide by button isn't the only way to kill oneself to transfer money. If it hinged on the suicide button or just standing in the buy zone, then people would run outside and get themselves killed by the other team repeatedly and save themselves the negative score as a nice bonus.

The only way to prevent rapid death and cbill transfer is the global death timer he proposed.

[Stahlseele]

Well, i often make it up to khan or sa khan and thus start out with 80 to 100k. but i only need 40k for my huit prime or huit a or my partisan prime. and thus i usually have about 40k left over only seconds after respawn . .

[KingLeerUK]

Just to add, even a single suicide effects the score intensely.

I'm pretty sure it's just your own personal score, and right now you can't start any lower than the 20,000 C-Bill tier.

Besides which, the fools that are using this exploit probably don't give a damn about the team or even their own score.  They see a way to exploit the system to get into Assault 'Mechs quickly and all they want is to stomp around and blow stuff up.

The proposed fix needs to account for both the serious team-based player and jackass in-it-for-himself exploiter.  A C-Bill Transfer Timer satisfies both without negatively impinging on valid gameplay.

Well, i often make it up to khan or sa khan and thus start out with 80 to 100k. but i only need 40k for my huit prime or huit a or my partisan prime. and thus i usually have about 40k left over only seconds after respawn . .

And in this case, you could still transfer those C-Bills... in a minute or two.  I know that we are working on enabling C-Bill transfer inside of vehicles, so you won't have to expose yourself unduly to give money to a friend if you are in the thick of combat.

I am trying to be forward thinking here, to include other features that will be coming along soon enough.

[Stahlseele]

Forward thinking is allways nice.
Hmm, wonder what would happen if someone were to try this:
A: "hey, i will keep suiciding and give you my money, and when it's enough for an atlas, you give it back to me!"
B: "Okay!"
A: *dies several times* "OK, this should be enough!"
B: *buys Atlas for himself* "Sucker!"