25 replies to this topic

[Dramastorm]

MWO is in dire need of a perpetual battleground or open world content in my opinion, lets hear what you think

[Jarl Dane]

I am with ya.

Here is the CW battlefield of my dreams:
I imagine a map maybe 5 times the size of Alpine, with repair and rearm facilities. I see teams dropping into fight there, and as they die not being allowed to return that battlefield for the rest of the day. Across the vast map there are various objectives with the survivors of various drops struggling to take it or hold them.

When the day is over whoever controls the objectives or who has amassed the most points wins the world.

[WARMACHINE760]

will it happen? ... no but i would love to see some sort or open world mode.

[Dramastorm]

OG WARMACHINE, on 14 November 2014 - 12:36 PM, said:

will it happen? ... no but i would love to see some sort or open world mode.

I am honestly surprised that PGI hasnt mentioned anything about this idea already(perhaps I just missed the logs about it) I know that PGI already has thier work cut out with the pvp concept and balancing etc but to me this just sounds like the next logical step towards a true mechwarrior feel.

[Jody Von Jedi]

Like other MMOs, have a space port where you could get out of your drop ship and walk around and interact with other players, buy weapons, accept contracts, or be a spy for the Rebel Alliance. Maybe even visit the Mos Eisley Cantina! (opps sorry, wrong franchise).

Anyway, you get the drift.

[Postumus]

Not happening, but it's a pretty cool idea still. The problem with big open world type content and mechs is that mechs are slow as dirt. Can you imagine driving a Direwolf across 10km of map to get to an objective? I suppose you could just use dropships to skip all the walking, but then why do you need the extraneous terrain outside of wherever you're going to fight?

[Zack Esseth]

Low end machines can hardly run the game as is. Open world would make entry into this game really difficult for players who don't have money to build high end machines. Don't get me wrong, I though this game was going to be more MMO originally. It would be fun.

[Jarl Dane]

Postumus, on 14 November 2014 - 01:59 PM, said:

Not happening, but it's a pretty cool idea still. The problem with big open world type content and mechs is that mechs are slow as dirt. Can you imagine driving a Direwolf across 10km of map to get to an objective? I suppose you could just use dropships to skip all the walking, but then why do you need the extraneous terrain outside of wherever you're going to fight?

Exactly why it would be awesome. It takes time to reach an objective, to get reinforcements, to manuaver your forces. Logistics people have to consider as they navigate the giant battle field.

It allows mutliple engagements to be isolated unless coordinated properly. If your unit is wiped out and you gotta retreat to a location on the map your faction controls, it will be a long dangerous walk before you arrive.
Or maybe your faction has no strong hold and all you can do is swift and isolated strikes against scouting parties and small lances.

[Dramastorm]

Zack Esseth, on 14 November 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:

Low end machines can hardly run the game as is. Open world would make entry into this game really difficult for players who don't have money to build high end machines. Don't get me wrong, I though this game was going to be more MMO originally. It would be fun.

The developement of the map(s) for this would need to be clipped and partitioned well for sure and I agree it would be hard BUT it would work fine with some efficient clipping and finesse. The fine line between average computer and the level of detail that devs want to put in thier game is a decision/troubleshoot allllll thier own.

[Durant Carlyle]

If you're going to add battlefield logistics, remember that there are space logistics as well. It's takes days or weeks to travel between star systems, during which time your 'Mechs aren't available.

MW:O might be there some day, but it's a good three years of development away from today, during which no other features are introduced.

[Dramastorm]

Postumus, on 14 November 2014 - 01:59 PM, said:

Not happening, but it's a pretty cool idea still. The problem with big open world type content and mechs is that mechs are slow as dirt. Can you imagine driving a Direwolf across 10km of map to get to an objective? I suppose you could just use dropships to skip all the walking, but then why do you need the extraneous terrain outside of wherever you're going to fight?

That is probably the easiest thing to overcome out of the hurdles of open world content in my opinion, in fact that is a key factor in many scenarios because perpetual battlegrounds need to be controlled in certain area's to promote action, divert from over camped routes and so forth. Chooseable spawn points throughout the map, some that can be captured/disabled by factions will do more to open up facets of a perpetual battleground and bring more need to fitting the right mechs for the right roles and missions etc

[Telmasa]

It would be interesting...but wildly difficult to implement when you realize we have hundreds of planets to fight over all at once, not just one.


If Mechwarrior all took place on Terra, it would make better sense with this idea.


Maybe, like, 20-40 years into the future, something like this idea could be a reality...and we'd all have to become machine-fed vegetables, because we'd all be doing nothing but playing perpetual Mechwarrior.

Edited by Telmasa, 14 November 2014 - 03:35 PM.

[Kalimaster]

I like the idea.

[Dramastorm]

Telmasa, on 14 November 2014 - 03:34 PM, said:

It would be interesting...but wildly difficult to implement when you realize we have hundreds of planets to fight over all at once, not just one.


If Mechwarrior all took place on Terra, it would make better sense with this idea.


Maybe, like, 20-40 years into the future, something like this idea could be a reality...and we'd all have to become machine-fed vegetables, because we'd all be doing nothing but playing perpetual Mechwarrior.

This sounds more like a promoter than a demoter becauuuuuse...........potential content, additional content, more additional content and yet more content with content to come! For us and PGI this means the future of MWO imo. While instanced match maps can keep coming out, the state of all matches stays the same, 12v12 battle for ??. With the openworld concept these new perpetual maps could have all kinds of different things to aim/battle for rather than just destroy all mech and or take the base

[Tankenka]

The logistics would be staggering, but that said, there's an entire market out there that is left largely untapped... companies all over the world are hell bent on sticking to a single genre as if combinations were the worst thing to happen to them.

The old MechWarrior games had a wide variety of things... let's not forget the table-top RPG that it spawned from ( BattleTech ) ...so it is not unreasonable to expect some kind of open-world content.

Now, I know that it's a lot of work, but let's go with this as a start... basic content equates to ONE major world-scape (complete with a handful of battlegrounds, a couple of which would be permanent ~ like the ongoing battlegrounds in DAoC) for every major house (including the pirates and free space).

Then, develop a random planetoid battle-ground generator... it's real easy to explain why there is nothing left on that planet... perhaps it's inhospitable, perhaps it's a new planet and it's bubbling lava, perhaps it's fauna and flora would simply eat anything staying too long, maybe it's just too darned small - or it's all deep oceans save for a small battle-torn rock. Whatever the reasoning, that leaves open an infinite kind of space... OR... for each major planet (which would have at least one massive city, and a lot of smaller maps etc), there would be four or five battle-ground planets (see previous reasons for size etc).

From there... a new expansion might include the pirates and mercs if they weren't included in the basic setup... or perhaps smaller planets and "guild planets" (hey neat... custom planets that are basically "housing"... nah, that would never fly... note gentle sarcasm... ) playful poking aside... the expansion options are incredible for this game ~ if only they'd go there.

Why not... MWO (as it is), combined with a dash of DAoC, UO, AC, EQ, WoW, SWG, QuakeLive, CoD, SC, LoL/DOTA, etc... I don't mean the worlds, I mean the mechanics and the ideas behind them (UO had an amazing skill system with easily the best housing system I've ever seen in a game - Asheron's Call also had a different but equally incredible skill-system, EQ for raid structures and content expansion handling, WoW for its cross-server PUG and grouping mechanics... Quake for player-made maps and unbelievable latency handling protocols, and so on)...

But I'm getting away with myself here ~ simply, yes... a fantastic idea. I want the world (of course), but I'd settle for an ongoing battle-ground, and a social chill-out space (like a small city) to hang out while between matches or organizing combat events.

[Burktross]

I'd like to see a planetside 2-esque sort of open world.
That'd be nice.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

Assuming PGI could get the netcode working to have upwards of several hundred simultaneous players at once, and assuming PGI could get the servers up and running to keep multiple iterations of this going at the same time, and assuming that PGI could create several maps of sufficient size and detail to be worth bothering with, then this might be fun and interesting.

[kosmos1214]

i would love to see it but i dought we will

[Lily from animove]

Mech The Dane, on 14 November 2014 - 12:16 PM, said:

I am with ya.

Here is the CW battlefield of my dreams:
I imagine a map maybe 5 times the size of Alpine, with repair and rearm facilities. I see teams dropping into fight there, and as they die not being allowed to return that battlefield for the rest of the day. Across the vast map there are various objectives with the survivors of various drops struggling to take it or hold them.

When the day is over whoever controls the objectives or who has amassed the most points wins the world.

the issue is, MW§ like repairs are hardly viable, because then lights would come harras go repair and repeat.
Then more realistic repair wouln't work either, because repair actually takes hours or weeks.

we actually play Mechwarrior and not a RTS game.

and making it more standard RPGMMO like would hadly work yb the shooter component. Servers would horribly melt into a patty of flat molten metal and silicon.

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

Most of the problems with very large map areas is a CryEngine code issue.
- After the spawn location the information can only be correctly calculated out to about 8 km for accurate gameplay.
- Anything beyond that and the engine starts 'fudging' some of the numbers.
(you'll see this in games that show, 'new spawn location saved'. This is not just a gameplay mechanic for the player, but a new start for calculating the current map dynamics.)

So we have a 32bit bottleneck with single precision calculations for the maps. (one other game is 'blowing the limits off' by starting 64bit double precision and expanding the limit to 100's of km's for map size.)
- So we are engine limited to current map sizes unless the code changes.
- But with the number of Mech's we have to have 'Live' for dropship mode, 96 Mech's, there's a lot of number crunching that's needed. How PGI handles this, the map sizes, as well as somewhere around 30 minute games, may be pushing this engine a bit. We'll see.

9erRed

Edited by 9erRed, 17 November 2014 - 07:30 AM.