247 replies to this topic

[IraqiWalker]

[Repasy Cooper]

Juodas Varnas, on 02 July 2015 - 11:09 PM, said:

Oh come on.
That's like saying TT is atrocious, because apart from the very hit or miss (mostly miss) artstyle, it wasn't THAT bad,
I wasn't the biggest fan of the double-blind turns, but i still bloody liked it.

I know it's stupid, but i'm really hoping that someone who bought the game's assets is secretly working on it or at least someone decides to make a new one from scratch. Without IGP (because i'm pretty sure that's what killed it and PGI was smart to break off from them before they went belly-up)

Tell me with a straight face, that you wouldn't want a Battletech TT, fully 3D game!

I would LOVE a 3D TT game! But it can't be MWT... I'd say their biggest mistake was using the Unity engine, but they made a lot of bad choices, from limiting themselves to 4 mechs per team, artstyle (which is a BIG problem when all you really have to offer compared to MegaMek is graphics), the flippin stoopid collectible cards system, and a small handfull of tiny as f maps.

Also, TT Battletech is kind of atrocious. I really hate myself for saying it, as I've spent years trying to get into it.. but about 95% of the people I've played MegaMek with online are the SCUM OF THE EARTH. The Battletech universe is expansive, immersive, and a lot of fun to nerd out in, but gameplay is a yawn. It's not too difficult to see why most people (most nerds & geeks for that matter) have not even heard of Battletech, or maybe they encountered it and decided after one 2 1/2 hour game that it's not worth their time.

There's so much more you could do with a Battletech game than just copy & paste TT BT onto the internet. I would much rather see a 4X Strategy spin-off, a la Civilization. I find the BT history to be so much more interesting than TT gameplay, so it would be awesome to play out your own history, molding the future of your favourite faction, either in single-player or online multiplayer.

[Juodas Varnas]

Repasy, on 09 July 2015 - 08:30 AM, said:

I would LOVE a 3D TT game! But it can't be MWT... I'd say their biggest mistake was using the Unity engine, but they made a lot of bad choices, from limiting themselves to 4 mechs per team, artstyle (which is a BIG problem when all you really have to offer compared to MegaMek is graphics), the flippin stoopid collectible cards system, and a small handfull of tiny as f maps.

I wouldn't say Unity in itself was a mistake. There are a lot of good games with Unity as the engine, like Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2 (both being isometric games, hence decent examples for MW:T, in my opinion), the mistake was trying to make it a browser-based game, instead of downloadable standalone game.
4 mechs per team (1 lance), would've been a nice start. A foundation for the game with gamemodes that have more mechs (even combined arms) added later down the line.
The Artstyle, well, i won't argue. It was kind of daft (especially LRM design, but seeing how MW:O handles dynamic missile hardpoints, i'd almost prefer the MW:T approach, hahaha), but they did have some nice designs ,like the Dragon and Jagermech, for example, but for the most part, yes. The artstyle was pretty bad.
Cards, well... They could've presented them in some different way, but i liked the idea. There were a lot of different manufacturers, each had unique weapon models (and particles for PPCs and Lasers), all with small bonuses, that added a nice bit of flavor. It wasn't a bad idea, in my opinion, just represented poorly. They shouldn't have pretended that they're cards, and maybe dropped the whole random-pack aspect, which was kind of iffy.
Maps. Yes. There weren't that many and on some you could see and shoot the enemy on the first turn, which was bad and took away a lot of tactics involved.

I'd also add, i wasn't a big fan of the Double-blind turns, which lead to a lot of mishaps, like mechs walking through each other, mechs getting destroyed and then still walking before exploding, etc.

However, i do think that Battletech would still make a decent game (maybe not necessarily F2P). And i'm really hoping that, maybe some day, we'll see it happen. Even if it's Mechwarrior: Tactics, under a different developer (and hopefully, artist), which is highly unlikely, but hope dies last.

[Repasy Cooper]

Juodas Varnas, on 09 July 2015 - 08:46 AM, said:

I wouldn't say Unity in itself was a mistake. There are a lot of good games with Unity as the engine, like Pillars of Eternity or Wasteland 2 (both being isometric games, hence decent examples for MW:T, in my opinion), the mistake was trying to make it a browser-based game, instead of downloadable standalone game.
4 mechs per team (1 lance), would've been a nice start. A foundation for the game with gamemodes that have more mechs (even combined arms) added later down the line.
The Artstyle, well, i won't argue. It was kind of daft (especially LRM design, but seeing how MW:O handles dynamic missile hardpoints, i'd almost prefer the MW:T approach, hahaha), but they did have some nice designs ,like the Dragon and Jagermech, for example, but for the most part, yes. The artstyle was pretty bad.
Cards, well... They could've presented them in some different way, but i liked the idea. There were a lot of different manufacturers, each had unique weapon models (and particles for PPCs and Lasers), all with small bonuses, that added a nice bit of flavor. It wasn't a bad idea, in my opinion, just represented poorly. They shouldn't have pretended that they're cards, and maybe dropped the whole random-pack aspect, which was kind of iffy.
Maps. Yes. There weren't that many and on some you could see and shoot the enemy on the first turn, which was bad and took away a lot of tactics involved.

I'd also add, i wasn't a big fan of the Double-blind turns, which lead to a lot of mishaps, like mechs walking through each other, mechs getting destroyed and then still walking before exploding, etc.

However, i do think that Battletech would still make a decent game (maybe not necessarily F2P). And i'm really hoping that, maybe some day, we'll see it happen. Even if it's Mechwarrior: Tactics, under a different developer (and hopefully, artist), which is highly unlikely, but hope dies last.

I suppose my biggest beef with the cards system was the static pilot name/stats/perks/everything. I would have at least expected gunnery & piloting to be upgradeable. And I would have preferred to give my pilots their own names. It was clear after a while that they never once had that idea in mind, and the underlying code structure probably would prevent them from making that change without ripping up all the hardwood, so to speak. The other stuff I could have lived with.

Again, MegaMek has pretty much everything we need to play Battletech online. The only things that are missing are 3D rendered graphics, a strong game engine, and simpler UI. The makers of MWT blatantly ignored everything that MegaMek had to offer and started from scratch. I wouldn't call that lazy per se, but total dismissal of a nearly complete resource is rather arrogant in my eyes. :/

In any case, I do hope somebody can do this right in the future. But if they attempted to continue off from the MWT project I would turn my head and walk away. That project deserves to be scrapped.