187 replies to this topic

[Jody Von Jedi]

Let's face it, Space Sims is where all the development is at the moment. We can thank Star Trek, Star Wars, Farscape, Firefly and Battalestar Galactica for it. The people developing the games and operating these businesses grew up watching these movies and TV series (well maybe not Farscape or Firefly).

IMHO, Space Sims and true FPS (ala CoD, Halo, etc) will always rule the video game empire.

[Heffay]

Marack Drock, on 21 November 2014 - 09:21 AM, said:

Maybe I am being over dramatic but tell me: What is great about this game?

The game play and the graphics. Both are spot on perfect.

Never has being a pilot in a giant stompy space robot from the future felt so *real*.

[Heffay]

Marack Drock, on 21 November 2014 - 09:38 AM, said:

The graphics are outdated, and the gameplay is more repetitive than playing League of Legends.

CryEngine 3 does not make it feel real. Seriously this game and its constant sepia tones are so mind grading it makes me angry. Nothing in real life looks like that crappy sepia tone. Look outside. Does it look like Caustic Valley in the desert? I saw better graphics in Fallout 3..... in 2006. This games graphics are 8 years old. They are do not make me feel like I am piloting a mech, and they do not deliver the original feel of MW games.

Huh, interesting opinion. I wonder why League of Legends does so well...

[990Dreams]

I am hoping to get a bit more C++ experience and do a complete overhaul of MC2. If the source for MW4 ever comes out under an open license I'll go at that too.

[StompingOnTanks]

You know, at one point I wanted to make a Battletech video game that was literally the TT translated into a third person shooter, with things like weapon accuracy and chance to fall over when hit being dictated by the skills of your pilot. It would have a RPG-style leveling system where more battles make your pilot better and increase your character's ability to put weapons on target, avoid overheats and ammo explosions, not fall over when climbing rough slopes or performing melee, etc. So, more or less a Battletech shooter with RPG elements.

Battles would be based on BT lore, with players re-enacting famous events in the BT timeline using faction specific mechs. You could launch into a battle, and you'd only have access to that faction's mechs, but you could pick any one you want and launch. All builds would have to be stock to keep it competitive.

Of course, you could have custom or random matches with customized mechs and randomly assigned teams fighting in whatever you want to bring along, going head to head in straight up deathmatches or free for alls, but that wouldn't be the point of the game.

But I have no programming or modelling skills, so it'll never get made.. Unless somebody wants to start a fan-made passion project with me, which I certainly have the free time for. But I wouldn't be able to do any of the actual work. Best I can do is concept art and maybe direct the project.

[Vanguard319]

StompingOnTanks, on 05 November 2014 - 07:04 PM, said:

It's obvious MWO is the winner of the MMO Mech Wars (thank GOD), but what I'm interested in is now that MWO has set the standard, what games will rise to compete with it?

Titanfall was CoD with mechs, which CoD obviously gobbled up eventually; Hawken was fun, but sadly too P2W for it's own good; we have Heavy Gear Assault upcoming which should be very interesting but we don't know if it'll catch on yet.

But since MWO was the most walking-tank style of mech game out of these four, and apparently so far has been the most successful, it's only natural that other companies will try to break into the genre with their own walking-tank style mech games, which will be very interesting to see since there aren't enough of those lately. Perhaps... Something like Chromehounds Online?

Considering previous Mechwarrior games had a bit more in content, I can't help thinking that if MW:O set the standard, then it also dumbed it down significantly.

just my 2 cents.

[StompingOnTanks]

Vanguard319, on 21 November 2014 - 07:37 PM, said:

Considering previous Mechwarrior games had a bit more in content, I can't help thinking that if MW:O set the standard, then it also dumbed it down significantly.

just my 2 cents.

If you ask me the standard for video games content has been gradually declining for years now. Nowadays most games are all about the multiplayer aspect and flashy presentation / graphics. (Call of Duty and Battlefield for example.)

[Vanguard319]

StompingOnTanks, on 21 November 2014 - 07:57 PM, said:

If you ask me the standard for video games content has been gradually declining for years now. Nowadays most games are all about the multiplayer aspect and flashy presentation / graphics. (Call of Duty and Battlefield for example.)

I know right? Where did we get this idea that less is more? Even worse, when did players decide it was acceptable? If Games like Star Citizen has shown us anything, it's that players are getting sick of the dumbing down, and that there is still a market for games with a rewarding grind and a not so shallow learning curve(note that I say rewarding, not punishing.)

[StompingOnTanks]

Vanguard319, on 21 November 2014 - 08:40 PM, said:

I know right? Where did we get this idea that less is more? Even worse, when did players decide it was acceptable? If Games like Star Citizen has shown us anything, it's that players are getting sick of the dumbing down, and that there is still a market for games with a rewarding grind and a not so shallow learning curve(note that I say rewarding, not punishing.)

1.) Gaming became popular. Now everybody wants to do it, so people who have no time or talent want to buy games that are "easy" with no learning curve and big reward signs in your face every 5 minutes. The game developers cater to that by making simpler games.

2.) Gaming became big budget. Games are like hollywood movies now; they cost millions to make, they require hundreds of people, and instead of originality, inventiveness and creativity in games making you successful, it is now "Go Big or Go Home". If you don't have a huge budget, a huge dev team, and huge marketing, your chances of competing with the big boys like Call of Duty are slim to none. And in an industry where games now cost millions to make, you need to compete with the big boys or you don't turn a profit. There ARE indie developers out there making small fun games on small budgets, but that's on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. There is no middle ground anymore.

3.) Because games are now big-budget deals, game devs don't make games anymore. Businessmen do. The guy who actually has an understanding of game design and programming and all that jazz isn't in charge of the project in the majority of cases, it's the guy in the suit who counts the $$$. As a result, creativity and originality are stifled in favor of what the business men think will make big $$$ - which is, follow a formula, make a game using that formula, make it easy for everybody to play so as many people buy it as possible, profit.

Edited by StompingOnTanks, 21 November 2014 - 09:28 PM.

[xengk]

PC gaming is also competing for player's time and attention against other distraction, like social media, TV series, mobile game, etc. These media offer small chuck of entertainment at their fingertip, compare to having to sit down to hours long session on a PC.

With time being a commodity, people want to be entertain using the least amount of time possible. So they gravitate toward game's that rewards them as so as possible, not to mention it gave them a sense of achievement that might be lacking in daily life.

I used to work for Online game publishing, and was part of the problem too.
Favouring content that feed player's ego and generate revenue stream, over creative long term content. Because the company need to make profit to stay in business.
Publisher are a double edge sword, on one hand we take the marketing and operation of the game out of the developer's hand so they can focus on making the game. On the other, we sometime bully developer into accepting our demand with sales number and contract terms.
Personally I am glad that more developer are ditching publisher as the middle man and going self publish.

[AWOL 01]

So is there anything we can do about this problem? There has to be enough talent in the MWO community to make a new mech game. The way I see it, the more mech games that are out there that are actually good, the more attention the genre will get, which could bring more people to MWO. Plus it would be good for this game to have some competition to keep things going. Just an idea.

[luxebo]

Guys, MCO is still alive, they released ver 424 today!

http://www.moddb.com...mander-omnitech

Magic has been busy by himself, finished the MW2 Mercs remake campaign.

Wolfman-x is still pretty alive with Wolfman a single man doing things thus far.

[Heffay]

AWOL 01, on 23 November 2014 - 01:14 PM, said:

So is there anything we can do about this problem? There has to be enough talent in the MWO community to make a new mech game. The way I see it, the more mech games that are out there that are actually good, the more attention the genre will get, which could bring more people to MWO. Plus it would be good for this game to have some competition to keep things going. Just an idea.

There are 2 fan based giant stompy robot games that I know of. One run by Pada Vinson called Project Zulu, which seems to have died. The other run by elimp, which seems to have died as well.

There is Heavy Metal Assault, which is in Alpha and making progress. And there is some Steam early release game that... I'm not sure what the status is, but the dev (single guy with some outsourcing so far who posts occasionally on r/mwo) that is slowly making progress.

Hawken is dead (I think the studio shut down, but the game is still "running"), Titanfall seems to be on the way out, and that about sums it up for the Mech genre games.

MWO won the mech wars.

[StompingOnTanks]

What I want to know is where have all the Hawken and Titanfall players gone? Are they playing MWO now or are they off playing CoD and Madden or something?

[Heffay]

StompingOnTanks, on 23 November 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

What I want to know is where have all the Hawken and Titanfall players gone? Are they playing MWO now or are they off playing CoD and Madden or something?

Well, they probably don't go to just one place. Just like people who play MWO are most likely not playing just MWO. The time they spent playing Hawken and Titanfall is probably split up among other games, including a good chunk coming back to MWO, because... you know... mechs.

[luxebo]

StompingOnTanks, on 23 November 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

What I want to know is where have all the Hawken and Titanfall players gone? Are they playing MWO now or are they off playing CoD and Madden or something?

Hawken never had such a huge player base, and Titanfall players probably did go to CoD.

Edit: And yeah a lot of people from Hawken also played MWO.

Edited by luxebo, 23 November 2014 - 07:36 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

StompingOnTanks, on 23 November 2014 - 02:54 PM, said:

What I want to know is where have all the Hawken and Titanfall players gone? Are they playing MWO now or are they off playing CoD and Madden or something?

Titanfall and hawken were mayflowers. They simply died, and the players went on to the next bi-yearly soldier dude shooter. Franchises like heavy gear, mechwarrior, and armored core have established fanbases who expect X from the next installment, even if it's years between the games.

[Hans Von Lohman]

Well, there is Project Hon, a Korean game about anime robots clashing, and it appears you have both little infantry robots that triple change between quad-rotor drones, motorcycles, and typical infantryman robot, as well as bigger robots.

Seems to also be a lot of grappling hook action as well, both infantry and big bots use them

[xengk]

Full trailer is up.

Skip to 5:05 for the trailer and 6:30 for gameplay footage.




****** brix at 18:25

Edited by xengk, 02 December 2014 - 07:53 AM.

[Sybreed]

Dark Horizons looks interesting, and Heavy Gear Assault is getting better and better every patch... but I can't tell you more.