Pht, on 12 March 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:
MW is not a shooter genre.
It is a simulation genre - simulating what it would be like to pilot a BattleMech from the BTUniverse in combat in that universe.
You're asking for a game that doesn't simulate the 'Mech's ability to handle the weapons mounted to it; which is a huge part of Mech combat in the BTUniverse.
The state of a mech "handling the weapons mounted to it" is, by definition, shooting. The act of "simulating the experience of piloting a battlemech" is 99% shooting. The Mechwarrior franchise does exist in an odd juxtaposition of shooter and simulator, since both shooting and simulation occurs.
However, let's identify which one of those is tangential, and which one of them is essential, with a relatively simple thought experiment:
What if Mechwarrior games didn't 'simulate' and were instead pure shooters? What sort of game would this be? It would be a game with robots shooting at each other, probably without a heat gauge and very little HUD & cockpit modeling. This would basically be Quake with robots.
What if Mechwarrior games didn't involve 'shooting' in the slightest, but were instead pure simulators? This would be a game about following convoys around in stompy robots, filing paperwork, performing administrative duties for a lance or company, and possibly interacting with the mechanics that maintain the mechs. This would basically be Microsoft Flight Simulator, except with robots.
Now, of those two, which would be closer to the actual experience the Mechwarrior franchise delivers? Clearly the shooter. This is even supported by the lore; combat is the objective of battlemechs. Thus, we can definitively quantify that the Mechwarrior franchise is a shooter, but with secondary simulator mechanics also present.
Most importantly, as I touched briefly upon earlier, the act of simulating the experience of a Mechwarrior and the act of shooting is fundamentally the same thing. The simple fact is, Mechwarriors shoot things. I understand that yes, technically it's the battlemech doing the math to aim and such. However, suggesting that the Mechwarrior is not directly and intricately involved in the act of shooting, in EVERY way that could possibly matter, is fundamentally identical to claiming that people never walk; that is performed by the legs, and it is merely the muscles responding to a series of electrochemical signals that perform the walking.
Claiming that the Mechwarrior experience is not a shooter, but merely a simulator of combat coincidentally involving buttloads of shooting...seems just a bit hypocritical, As mentioned above, the idea really doesn't stand on its own under any real scrutiny. Even if you could somehow draw a clear distinction between the two, and somehow separate the shooting from the Mechwarrior simulation, it's an unnecessary exercise in nitpicking.
What really surprised me though, is that you seem to want justification and reasons behind why we should attempt to make the game better?
Isn't this analogous to asking why one should design a computer processor to process things? Or why a cheese grater should grate cheese?
Regardless, I'll entertain the notion. I side with Aristotle in his theorem of "That which is unique to something is that which defines it". This gives us a definitive measuring stick to define what games and game design truly are. A game is 'good' when it does all the things well which are unique to them being games.
Games are balanced. Games are engaging. Games are challenging (at least to some minor extent). And, games are fun. (At least, they are supposed to be - games that fail at these are bad games.)
Engaging, I believe, is the angle you approach game design from, given your heavily simulator-centric view of the Mechwarrior franchise. There isn't anything truly 'wrong' with this, but I believe it is incredibly idealistic and naive to believe that game balance will simply 'fall into place' all on its own, once we get the engagement right. Simply put, conditions exist in PvP games where one player can derive engagement, and by proxy, deprive another player of theirs. This is an imbalance of engagement.
I approach game design primarily through balancing. I believe that a game starts with balanced mechanics as a foundation - granted, engagement is important and all, but I believe it is much more important to have balance in a game. The lack of balance can destroy engagement, but a surplus of engagement cannot destroy balance.
We cannot simply analyze each mechanic from TT on its own, determine if it would fit well within MWO, and then expect them to fit together in any meaningful way. Take even one piece out of the puzzle, and the shapes of all the other pieces change. This is what happens when game mechanics interact with one another in deep, complex, and engaging ways, and TT has lots of that going on.
I never said we should not use TT. I said that I advocate fierce deviation from TT, in order to create a better (more engaging, more balanced, more fun, etc.) game. Technically, this means that if we do not accomplish the objective of creating a better game in our deviations from TT, then I do not support them.
If you are wondering specifically what changes I would make to MWO to make it more balanced, and rectify TT's imbalances, I would first go about balancing target profile size, transversal velocity acceleration, and tonnage. This way, firepower and maneuverability would be equal in utility on the battlefield, eliminating the TT and Mechwarrior franchise imbalance (intentional or unintentional) of larger vs smaller chassis.
After that, I would recalculate weapon values in terms of damage per heat, DPS per ton, alpha per ton, DPS per critical, alpha per critical, and DPS per heat stable tonnage. This way, 1 ton of weapons = 1 ton of weapons in absolute battlefield utility, with the statistical deviations within the weapons allowing players to customize their loadout to their playstyle as intricately as they want. No permutation would be overpowered or underpowered.
http://mwomercs.com/...20#entry1477020
Then, I would resolve pinpoint aiming at speed and remove perfect convergence, which would more accurately and interestingly simulate the behavior of weapons on the battlefield, and introduce an interesting risk/reward scenario to the battlefield - stay mobile and deal with mildly irritating inaccuracy, or slow down for more precise fire.
http://mwomercs.com/...nd-convergence/
Finally, I would remove double armor so that all players fear all other players, and cannot establish safety in groups. I would redesign ECM to negate bonuses to LRM accuracy from TAG and NARC, and jam only indirect-fire LRM's. I would remove the imbalanced state of LRM's (OP when unjammed, useless when jammed) by proxy, making it such that LRM performance is, under most circumstances, unaffected by ECM, and balanced well alongside every other weapon in the game when used with line of sight to the target.
Ultimately, these changes that I suggest are, surprisingly, quite minor. It requires a little bit of mechanical redesign to fix TT's imbalances, and some heavy-duty screwing around in the spreadsheets to redesign weapons to work well with mechanics that have nothing to do with dice, but none of this would alter the core engagement of a battletech shooter/simulator. In fact, it would amplify and expound upon the engagement already there, in new and spectacular ways.
Imagine a singularity of game balance, where the player is not artificially constrained in combat effectiveness, just because they pick the 'wrong' loadout. Or if a player decides that they like the appearance of a mech but hate the playstyle that comes pre-assigned to it via narrowly constrained roles. Imagine a game where a spreadsheet or a google search for a build can never make you a more powerful gamer.
This game could be ours. This could finally be the game that the Battletech universe has deserved for so many years. In the not-too-distant-future, Aleksandr Kerensky could be just as iconic and well-known as the Master Chief.
Edited by Xandralkus, 13 March 2013 - 12:20 AM.
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