Destroyed value is put into a pool and divided to all mercs according to playtime and wp i believe. That's why you didn't get millions of isk.

Again, the payout system is not designed to care for our expenses. It evaluates the damage done, the outcome and ones general contribution towards that outcome. How expensive this contribution has been for any merc is only ones own problem.

Sounds harsh. Is harsh. Works as intended.

But you forget our employers are up in space organizing planetary take overs. They aren't going to go through each soldier and inspect the level of their usual gear. Nor should they care as they are concerned with what results you achieve, not how you were equipped when you did it.

However I agree the pay should account for performance more.

Something along the lines of totalPay = basePay + destroyedGear * yourWP / totalTeamWP for the victors perhaps?

also, be thankful proto is as powerful as it is
in EVE, the more expensive ships often make you MORE vulnerable, since people KNOW you're using expensive stuff and want to make you cry.

also in eve there's very rarely a clear-cut "better" ship, since they occupy different classes and it's difficult for a frigate to take on a battleship, and the battleship's guns cannot really track a fast moving frigate ect.

You need to somehow scale payouts to reflect the "quality" of each soldier to some degree.

Think of it this way. If you have a mercenary with a BB gun and a burlap sack for armor and another with state of the art equipment would you pay them the same exact rate for their services?

The way things stand now I believe that every single player on a specific team gets the same exact payout at the end of a match based on the total losses suffered by the enemy. This is how in one match you can AFK and get 180K and in another fight to your best and still make 180K.

You're never going to see the system improve though to the point where prototype armor becomes anything less than a pain to lose because it would mean more work for the developers.

Once people are playing well enough and are able to play regularly in prototype gear what are they going to strive for next? The developers would need to provide another tier for them to aim for next to keep the game interesting. Instead they provide a system where playing in high tier gear is unprofitable meaning it always stays just out of reach for most players providing a goal most people will always strive for and never meet.

Do you have a link to the explanation of payout?

I'm seriously about to jam my head through some Sheetrock if I read one more post that talks about playing with what you can afford.

I died 5 times in the match that made me start this thread. But I dropped an orbital after getting overrun on A at Manus Peak that took out a squad of Pro Hic dudes in proto gear.

You'd think you'd be able to break even. Hell maybe eve lose a bit.

As landwar posted above he had a 38.0 KDR and lost 100K.

It feels like I'm in the Twilight Zone if you people can't see something wrong with that.

First to your suggestion:
Why would a contractor care what someone brings to the field? He needs a certain job done and is happy for everything that get's destroyed on top of that. After the battle he looks through the available metrics to discern who did a better job and pays that one more. If doing the better job cost him millions more than what the job pays then this particular merc simply did a miscalculation. So a merc's "quality" is just his contribution, not his expenses.

I'm about to start.

14-5, #2 on the board. Took out a squad of protos with an orbital.

Received a payout of 212,000 ISK. I could AFK in the the MCC and get 180,000.

A loss of about 400,000 ISK.

The alternative is to run around in BPOs and grind 15 hours a week to save money to play a few matches in my good stuff. Then cross my fingers that I get hit detection with my MD.

I'm done grinding. I can't afford to play the game on a regular basis at this rate.

Come up with a system that pays more for people that want to risk their proto gear.

Don't take this the wrong way but OP is a moron, proto gear isn't supposed to be cheap it's not something you should be running around with on a daily basis it's something you should only be using when the battle is really important like say a PC match where the outcome could effect your entire corporation. You shouldn't be fielding proto gear in every match the fact that it's expensive also serves to keep Proto gear out of say your average skirmish so noobs don't get utterly crushed without having any chance.

The point is that I shouldn't have to play 15 hours to cap out if I have to wear gear that isn't fun.

I think they could do some simple things like make Merc battles team deploy with bigger payouts. Nix FW because its just a skirmish that pops up every 5 minutes that might allow me to get two squads from my team in.

^this would change the game in my opinion. Pub matches would be more safe for loners and newbros.

It would allow you to cap out quicker, train more, earn more isk, and have more fun.

I hope everyone can tell that I fully understand the dynamics here. I even understand where most of you are coming from.

I just think its not a recipe for success.

How many dudes in EVE in the upper 90% SP of EVE are mining 15 hours a day in a Venture in order to finance 5 - 10 fleet ops per week? If you can answer that then I'll shut up.

Except even in this game that ISN'T how it works.

Payouts are practically, if not entirely, uniform across all players on a given team.

You AFK in the ship and you make 200k, you fight your ass off and lose 100K in equipment you make 200k.

As long as the rest of your team is at least messing around and killing people it's more profitable to afk in a starter fit than to actually play this game.

As long as you're trying to make an argument in in-game terms then you're entirely leaving out the mercenary's point of view here. In a real situation the mercenary's involved wouldn't put up with this crap. They're putting their own funds on the line and getting paid as much as the guy sitting in the corner spending the entire battle using his rifle to scratch his ass. At that point any mercenary that values his money is going to either slack off like everyone else so they get their same payout for doing the same work or they take their services elsewhere.

I run pub matches in a 30k Adv medium frame suit, do perfectly fine in it, have fun, kill protos, and always make a profit.

If pubstomping in a proto suit isn't working out for you, maybe you should change what you're doing?

I hope everyone can tell that I fully understand the dynamics here. I even understand where most of you are coming from.

I just think its not a recipe for success.

How many dudes in EVE in the upper 90% SP of EVE are mining 15 hours a week in a Venture in order to finance 5 - 10 fleet ops per week? If you can answer that then I'll shut up.

None but most of those people only log in to change skills. The people who have reached that tier have been at EVE since beta and have most likely done everything the game has to offer. Further more your comparison is inaccurate. Grinding for proto gear is more akin to a solo miner mining 15 hours a day in a venture to save for a Mackinaw. Funny thing is once he has it, he'll likely get ganked before he can turn a profit. The same idea carries over to proto gear. To solve this problem the miner will settle for the less efficient but significantly cheaper Retriever, and though he might lose it as well he'll have a much better chance at actually making isk. Apply this to dust and you to can make money. You can have your profit or you can have your proto gear, but you can't (or rarely can) have both.

None but most of those people only log in to change skills. The people who have reached that tier have been at EVE since beta and have most likely done everything the game has to offer. Further more your comparison is inaccurate. Grinding for proto gear is more akin to a solo miner mining 15 hours a day in a venture to save for a Mackinaw. Funny thing is once he has it, he'll likely get ganked before he can turn a profit. The same idea carries over to proto gear. To solve this problem the miner will settle for the less efficient but significantly cheaper Retriever, and though he might lose it as well he'll have a much better chance at actually making isk. Apply this to dust and you to can make money. You can have your profit or you can have your proto gear, but you can't (or rarely can) have both.

Several people have already explained why the system works that way, there's no reason to explain it again. Maybe you should read the thread. I suggested an alternative that works perfectly fine for pub matches, and you get pissy about it.

Payouts are divided among your entire team, so even if you killed an entire proto squad, as long as you lost several proto suits you are going to take a loss. If you can run proto suits in pub matches all day without a care in the world for monetary losses, than ISK ultimately means nothing and the whole risk vs. reward system falls apart. And just to clarify, winning a pointless pub match isn't part of the reward side of the equation, because it accomplishes exactly nothing.

I shouldn't have been so harsh. I apologize, no excuse for it.

It's just crazy that we should have to grind in basic to medium gear in order to cap out and save up for 3 or 4 matches. If you are lucky enough to be a 5%er who has participated in PC battles you can turn a profit in proto gear if you die 5 times.

Are you happy with the system?

I proposed a system that lets you team deploy into Merc battles (not this FW crap)with bigger payouts. This clears the pub matches for newbs and allows serious players to battle consistently against teams of players.

I believe it is also calculated on equipment destroyed and repaired as most of my matches I spend more time repairing than destroying stuff.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

5% of the player base participates in PC battles. 254 districts = 508 teams x 16 players = 8,128 players.

Every district isn't attacked each day and many of the battles are made up of players participating in 3 or four battles per day.

If that's what 95% of the player base is saving up for then I'm not sure this is sustainable. Can a person really look at that and envision success when they look at the bigger picture here?

The disagreement is still that some posters don't expect to constantly use proto gear as they see proto as something you pay the money for when/because the situation demands it, and not because it's the best.

I understand STD => ADV => PRO not as a progression like with traditionall progression systems where you expect to go towards the best stuff and stay there, but as the ability to cope with increasingly difficult situations, should i need to.

That's why i don't see the need for new gamemodes that pay, say, twice the ISK for no good reason. We need more things like PC, where using proto is paid by the advantages of keeping districts, so that using proto is a worthwile investment.

Until that i view proto as not worth the price in most cases and i am perfectly fine with it.