High dependency on Free Rotation?

(YeOldeButtcheek) #1

Over the coarse of me playing, having 450+ hours in-game I have been seeing more and more level 7 - 15 players having in their 3 mercs they play as have Aura, Skyhammer, or 1 - 3 of the current rotation mercs.

Not really disgruntled that people don’t own other mercs but I wish that the variety of players playing could earn non rotation mercs.
But it seems it is depended on way to much, if free rotation didn’t exist at least there would be a need to want to earn more mercs.
Just my opinion, just wish I could see more variety of mercs on the battlefield.

(Lumi) #2

I must disagree with your impressions. Maybe level 1-7 have the starting mercs and or rotation mercs, but 7-15 usually have other mercs.

The issue is as well, that rotations are there to show people how some mercs feel and of course people are going to try them out.

Also, just because someone is playing a merc on rotation doesn’t mean they don’t own that merc.

And although I agree with the premise that more varied mercs on the battlefield would be welcome, I just feel that many people under level 12 or so are not ready to play some of the mercs out there.

Redeye, Phantom, Sparks are just a few example of very specific type of gameplay that needs to be learned over some extended play-time and merc learning cannot be disturbed by lack of knowledge consisting the maps, game mechanics, objectives, etc…

A few days ago I saw a level 6 Skyhammer who was standing next to an ammo cache to get ammo back… Just saying that before wishing for more variety I think we should wish for people to learn how to play the mercs they do own. Then we can think about introducing them to other mercs.

In my humble opinion I even believe that one should unlock the right to buy other mercs, a little like Star Conflict did with ships. Imagine a “merc tree” with 4 branches: medic, engineer, assault and recon. If looking at the medic tree, lets say you would have to play Aura and do X amount of support XP + 100 revives to be able to buy Sawbonez. Then to be able to buy Phoenix, you’d have to do the same with Sawbonez and to unlock Sparks, you would have to do some Phoenix dedicated medic stuff and some X amount of headshots with Vassili and X amount of caombat XP.

You catch my drift. By doing a properly designed tree with the most high skill cap mercs at the end, you would ensure people would be able to work them out. But since we’re kinda set in the current setting and that paying for mercs with real money would also bypass the sytem, it will just stay a though and nothing more.

Anyway, to sum up:
-More varied mercs = good
-More knowledge of the mercs that player own = better

(screamnghedghog) #3

It doesn’t help that mercs are rather expensive. Most player don’t have all the mercs, and this means they are forced to use the free mercs available. Also, even if they do have some mercs they might hate using, and are unable to refund them, meaning they have to earn another 30 or 50k credits. Credits can be earned quickly-ish, but not everyone wants to or can go on every three hours to get the missions. If merc prices were reduced, or money earned increased then there would be more variety to the game.

Then again, by having to play a fair amount of time between buying each merc players actually learn how to play a them properly, thus contributing to their team more. It’s a hard trade-off that I don’t know which would be better. But this is why beta games exists.

(Malkovich) #4

Pricing is fine, 50k really isn’t that hard to get for a F2P game w/ micro-transaction. The issue is alot of new people are dummies and waste their first easy 30-40k credit on Vassili purely because he’s a MLG sniper, instead of investing in an Engi or an actual game changer merc. We can’t help with the short-sighted-ness of people.

(MercifuL) #5

Credits are not that hard to earn let me break it down.

Win your first Objective game of the day=1000 credits
Win your first Stopwatch game of the day=1000 credits
Complete all 3 Missions which average around 1500-2000 credits (these refill after 3hours i think)
12 credits per Minute played, so longer the game more credits, so play stopwatch.

Therefore in a day you can earn heaps of credits depending on how long you play.

(YeOldeButtcheek) #6

Either they buy Vassili or crates.

([SDS]DOA) #7

I’m level 10 and I still rely on the freebies, especially the rotation. The reason being that I want to try mercs before I buy them. Since the rotation lasts 2 weeks, I’ve only been able to try 3 rotations. I want to try more mercs before buying.

(SnakekillerX) #8

Why does everyone need to have the same free merc rotation?
While I know they love to announce it and all, there is really no reason that each player couldn’t have their own set of random mercs on rotation.

I could have Fletcher, Phoenix and Sparks on rotation… while a friend of mine could have Proxy, Arty and Red Eye on rotation. We would both be able to try out free mercs, but at least games wouldn’t be flooded with the same mercs.

If they did not want to lose the free merc rotation hype, they could just place people into different categories which would randomize each time a new merc rotation line up comes out.

Line-up A (Arty, Sparks, Phantom)
Line-up B (Fletcher, Nader, Sawbonez)
Line-up C (Proxy, Phoenix, Fragger)

Again, it would still give everyone a chance to have 3 free mercs on rotation, but the mercs in game would be more varied.

(cornJester) #9

[quote=“MercifuL;84390”]Credits are not that hard to earn let me break it down.

Win your first Objective game of the day=1000 credits
Win your first Stopwatch game of the day=1000 credits
Complete all 3 Missions which average around 1500-2000 credits (these refill after 3hours i think)
12 credits per Minute played, so longer the game more credits, so play stopwatch.

Therefore in a day you can earn heaps of credits depending on how long you play.[/quote]

This is incorrect information. Your first win is just that, your first win. It counts for ALL game modes. There is no win your first objective and stopwatch bonuses, whichever comes first. Meaning you can earn a maximum of 1500 credits on the bonuses.

(YeOldeButtcheek) #10

[quote=“SnakekillerX;84466”]Why does everyone need to have the same free merc rotation?
While I know they love to announce it and all, there is really no reason that each player couldn’t have their own set of random mercs on rotation.

I could have Fletcher, Phoenix and Sparks on rotation… while a friend of mine could have Proxy, Arty and Red Eye on rotation. We would both be able to try out free mercs, but at least games wouldn’t be flooded with the same mercs.

If they did not want to lose the free merc rotation hype, they could just place people into different categories which would randomize each time a new merc rotation line up comes out.

Line-up A (Arty, Sparks, Phantom)
Line-up B (Fletcher, Nader, Sawbonez)
Line-up C (Proxy, Phoenix, Fragger)

Again, it would still give everyone a chance to have 3 free mercs on rotation, but the mercs in game would be more varied.[/quote]

As much as I like the idea, people would be disappointed because they got the rotation they didn’t want. Unless the player could choose instead of it being random.

(SnakekillerX) #11

While true, there is still nothing guaranteeing you’ll like the option you are given now.
There is no real difference in that regard as you would have never known what the regular line up would have been either.

Oh… also, this should probably only be an option past level 5 or something, so people don’t just make a bunch of random steam accounts in attempts to get a random line up they like. Though I’m not positive what the best solution would be for levels 1-4 (as they would then be stuck with only 2 mercs).

They could make it so you have 3 mercs to start with, but again that would just cause the game to be filled with more players using that 3rd free starter merc. Over-all it might still work.

Its one of those things in which trying to fix something, ends up in having to change a lot of other things.

(Lumi) #12

@SnakekillerX and @Ye_Olde_Buttcheeks

The line-up categories could be fine if you’d have a perfect distribution among players of those line ups and if exactly the same amount of players of each line-up would play.

But the most likely outcome, is that people stop playing, more people join the game and then you have people playing in certain regions and not others. Which increases the chances of filling up servers with more players of one specific line-up than a nice mixture of all. And this would mean that you’d still get the overpopulation of rotation mercs, but instead of the three from the current sytem you’d have them all roaming around in different games.

As flawed as the current system is, you can expect which mercs are going to be overrepresented and you can counter that. Also, rotations are a means for the developers to get additional data on how people play the rotation mercs. Mixing it up would remove that purpose. Then again, I disagree with them using rotations to gather more data on mercs, as most people playing those mercs have no clue how to play them and they generate biases.

(MarsRover) #13

Everything that mixes up rotation mercs is a change for the better. Individual rotation seems like the best compromise between merc diversity, implementation cost and player inconvenience.

That’s the worst way to gather data. You have people playing mercs they’re not skilled with in a environment that is completely changes every rotation. I would hope that SD completely disregards data from when the merc is on free rotation. Same with weapons that merc uses etc.

(CCP115) #14

Cos until you buy all the mercs, the free rotation is literally the ONLY way to try a merc out. I’m level 12, and I always play free rotation mercs. As I play the game more, and I learn new things, new mercs appeal to me. Bushwacker seemed to be the coolest guy ever, but I still don’t understand why everyone loves him. I haven’t even played Phantom ever, so I can’t wait to try him out in the free rotation.

(DMaster2) #15

Nah, only low levels don’t onw mercs. I have almost all mercs (still miss 4), but yesterday for example my team was Vassili/Nader/Skyhammer. Why? Vassili is my main, then Nader and Skyhammer because of the missions. That doesn’t mean i don’t own mercs just because my team is basic/free rotation, on the contrary.

(CCP115) #16

A few questions.

Firstly, what level are you? Of course low levels are gonna use Skyhammer, they’re still trying out new mercs. And with the relatively long 2 week rotation, you could wait a very long time before your merc of interest comes along.

And secondly, how much money have you thrown at this game? I haven’t spent a cent, and I never will on mercs, doesn’t seem very worth to me. If you spend money on the game, then you are paying to speed it up.

(Lumi) #17

[quote=“MarsRover;84523”]

That’s the worst way to gather data. You have people playing mercs they’re not skilled with in a environment that is completely changes every rotation. I would hope that SD completely disregards data from when the merc is on free rotation. Same with weapons that merc uses etc.[/quote]

Agreed, I’d hope they would be smart enough to remove it from the stats.

[quote=“CCP115;84537”]A few questions.

Firstly, what level are you? Of course low levels are gonna use Skyhammer, they’re still trying out new mercs. And with the relatively long 2 week rotation, you could wait a very long time before your merc of interest comes along.

And secondly, how much money have you thrown at this game? I haven’t spent a cent, and I never will on mercs, doesn’t seem very worth to me. If you spend money on the game, then you are paying to speed it up.[/quote]

I haven’t spent a dime on this game and am also just missing 4 mercs and I’m level 19.

Two weeks is a long rotation time, but you have to make a free to play in such a way that it also generates cash. People like me won’t mind the two weeks and will patiently wait, or just spend their first 50k in something they assume will be great.

Others will find two weeks too long and will spend real money for it. It’s just how psychology works in this “has” and “has not” unbalanced way of creating the game. And I understand that as a Free to play they use this. It makes sense. Luckily with this particular free to play I never felt like someone had paid to win.

(DMaster2) #18

A few questions.

  1. Firstly, what level are you? Of course low levels are gonna use Skyhammer, they’re still trying out new mercs. And with the relatively long 2 week rotation, you could wait a very long time before your merc of interest comes along.

  2. And secondly, how much money have you thrown at this game? I haven’t spent a cent, and I never will on mercs, doesn’t seem very worth to me. If you spend money on the game, then you are paying to speed it up.[/quote]

  3. I’m level 12.

  4. Zero euros (EU player). Farming credits is a bit boring but doable. You get new missions every 3 hours (unless you get the refill bug). Of the 4 mercs i miss 2 of them costs only 30k (proxy and arty), so i plan to have them all in a couple of months (with new mercs being prio).

(BlazinFox) #19

[quote=“cornJester;84470”][quote=“MercifuL;84390”]Credits are not that hard to earn let me break it down.

Win your first Objective game of the day=1000 credits
Win your first Stopwatch game of the day=1000 credits
Complete all 3 Missions which average around 1500-2000 credits (these refill after 3hours i think)
12 credits per Minute played, so longer the game more credits, so play stopwatch.

Therefore in a day you can earn heaps of credits depending on how long you play.[/quote]

This is incorrect information. Your first win is just that, your first win. It counts for ALL game modes. There is no win your first objective and stopwatch bonuses, whichever comes first. Meaning you can earn a maximum of 1500 credits on the bonuses.[/quote]

It doesn’t count for all game modes. I’ve even done this before. That is if they haven’t changed it.

(MarsRover) #20

You get 500 for the first game in each mode, including Execution on previous test weekends. And 500 for first win, regardless of mode.