84 replies to this topic

[oldradagast]

So, World of Warships entered open Beta this week. While for many on this forum, battlemechs were the giant war machines that they were into while young, for me it was naval warships, particularly those of WW2. Not that I don't like battlmechs, of course, but you get the idea.

This thread isn't meant as a comparison between the two game companies, player base, or so forth, nor do I mean it to bash PGI, but a few things became painfully apparent when I started playing an Open Beta of this competitor's online game.

1) Performance: My machine is decent for gaming, though it is 2.5 years old. And yet, I can run WoWS - in Open Beta - at nearly the highest settings across the board and still get 50+ to 60+ frames per second. Meanwhile, my same machine with nearly everything set to the lowest settings is only pulling a bit over 40 fps - sometimes worse - in MWO.

There's probably a pile of technical reasons, though I'm left to wonder how many of them are truly insurmountable... Clearly, it's not that my machine is "potato" that can't run the latest games. No - the problem is in MWO.

2) Flavor for your universe: When I hover over a ship in WoWS while in port on in the tech tree, it gives me a nice little historical summary of the vessel and its class. Why can't we have that in MWO for the mechs? The information is available, and Battletech has many years of lore behind it. It would do something to add some character and depth to the mechs and make them more than just a pile of hardpoints and hitboxes that people complain about.

3) Where am I? When you start on a map in WoWS, your location and that of your team is clearly shown. Meanwhile, in MWO, we get nothing but the map itself. It makes it hard to plan strategies when you have no clue where you are until the match begins.

I'm sure other things will come to mind, but I couldn't help but notice these things... particularly in a game that's in Open Beta vs. a game that has technically been released for 1.5 years.

Edited by oldradagast, 03 July 2015 - 06:46 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Understand that this isn't a blanket excuse, however:

While the ships in WoWS are very pretty and detailed, you're sailing them on dynamically rendered ocean. The "terrain" is limited at best, and the warships don't interact with it at all. . Rendering pretty warships on an ocean is a lot easier than a bunch of mechs in close in complex terrain geography.

MWO has to deal with many, many more draw calls.

Edited by Wintersdark, 03 July 2015 - 06:54 PM.

[El Bandito]

Even for a game where the combatants do not get close as much, Warships has collision. PGI pls.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 July 2015 - 06:59 PM.

[Kiiyor]

Wintersdark, on 03 July 2015 - 06:54 PM, said:

Understand that this isn't a blanket excuse, however:

While the ships in WoWS are very pretty and detailed, you're sailing them on dynamically rendered ocean. The "terrain" is limited at best, and the warships don't interact with it at all. . Rendering pretty warships on an ocean is a lot easier than a bunch of mechs in close in complex terrain geography.

MWO has to deal with many, many more draw calls.

And movement calls. Elevation changes, acceleration/deceleration changes, weapon impacts on different levels of terrain, not to mention updating every single component of a mechs skeleton... it all has to be fed through the game servers.

While our version of the cryengine is starting to show it's age, it's hard to compare it to most online shooters because there are vastly different design philosophies in all of them. I saw someone on reddit last night lamenting that we weren't running ... source I think? Like titanfall. Most modern shooters are fairly claustrophobic as far as design goes, so that you can achieve a greater level of detail for what IS rendered, right in front of you.

MWO is far more open, as to get the sense of scale required for a BT game, you need to tower over most things, which sucks for rendering efficiency.

We probably would see some performance gains with newer game engines, but it won't be nearly as dramatic as most people think.

[Bishop Steiner]

El Bandito, on 03 July 2015 - 06:58 PM, said:

Even for a game where the combatants do not get close as much, Warships has collision. PGI pls.

El Bandito, on 03 July 2015 - 06:58 PM, said:

Even for a game where the combatants do not get close as much, Warships has collision. PGI pls.

and I am sure they need complex rigging and animation for their collisions, too, amirite?

[El Bandito]

Bishop Steiner, on 03 July 2015 - 07:12 PM, said:

and I am sure they need complex rigging and animation for their collisions, too, amirite?

MWO does not have to make any complex rigging and animations for collisions, BTW. Collisions is just that, you stop in your tracks; not to magically warp to another dimension for 2 seconds before dropping back to reality.

Now knockdowns are different story.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 July 2015 - 07:23 PM.

[Xetelian]

I might give WoWS a try, what are the deals like over there? How much for a average premium ship?

Knockdowns NO Collisions Yes.

[Peter2k]

Well at least he's right on some Lore flavor

While Sarna is a wiki, having an intern copy and paste a few descriptions of mechs, houses, weapons ... might actually add something to the game

Funny thing
Players offered to do it themselves about 2 years ago


Hmm
I might also like to know where I start on the map in the beginning of the match

[Karamarka]

Funny you mention WoWS

I remember World of Tanks vs War Thunder, in War Thunder it looks 10x better than Word of Tanks but World of Tanks has like half the FPS.

Same problem here really. Just really bad optimization currently.

[Bishop Steiner]

Peter2k, on 03 July 2015 - 07:45 PM, said:

Well at least he's right on some Lore flavor

While Sarna is a wiki, having an intern copy and paste a few descriptions of mechs, houses, weapons ... might actually add something to the game

Funny thing
Players offered to do it themselves about 2 years ago


Hmm
I might also like to know where I start on the map in the beginning of the match

that's a mighty fine Siggy, sir!

[Peter2k]

Bishop Steiner, on 03 July 2015 - 08:42 PM, said:

that's a mighty fine Siggy, sir!

Thx man

Still fine tuning
Just too much working

Thx again for the trash can

[Hit the Deck]

What the other posters said.

Also, when you long for "thinking man's shooter", you probably want to check this game.

[Wintersdark]

El Bandito, on 03 July 2015 - 07:18 PM, said:

MWO does not have to make any complex rigging and animations for collisions, BTW. Collisions is just that, you stop in your tracks; not to magically warp to another dimension for 2 seconds before dropping back to reality.

Now knockdowns are different story.

wait, we do have collisions like that. . I know, because I've been killed by people running into my back and pinning me in incoming fire.

I've had my Direwolf stopped because a guy in a Firestarter ran right into me.

I've jumped my Urbanmech on top of numerous Direwolves, King Crabs and Warhawks.

We do have basic collision in the game now. They're basic, and if you keep pushing you'll eventually push past most other mechs, but we do have them. You certainly can't magically walk through other mechs.

And while it Is limited,in that you can push past mechs and size isn't relevant, I think that's a feature, not a bug. So teams don't get all tangled up in each other when newer players stumble about, and to account for minor lag based discrepancies in appearance of position.

[FupDup]

Wintersdark, on 03 July 2015 - 10:01 PM, said:

wait, we do have collisions like that. . I know, because I've been killed by people running into my back and pinning me in incoming fire.

I've had my Direwolf stopped because a guy in a Firestarter ran right into me.

I've jumped my Urbanmech on top of numerous Direwolves, King Crabs and Warhawks.

We do have basic collision in the game now. They're basic, and if you keep pushing you'll eventually push past most other mechs, but we do have them. You certainly can't magically walk through other mechs.

And while it Is limited,in that you can push past mechs and size isn't relevant, I think that's a feature, not a bug. So teams don't get all tangled up in each other when newer players stumble about, and to account for minor lag based discrepancies in appearance of position.

I've literally been killed by a friendly Highlander jumping onto my head. I was red CT internals before he hopped on.

We really do have DFA after all!

[El Bandito]

Wintersdark, on 03 July 2015 - 10:01 PM, said:

wait, we do have collisions like that. . I know, because I've been killed by people running into my back and pinning me in incoming fire.

I've had my Direwolf stopped because a guy in a Firestarter ran right into me.

I've jumped my Urbanmech on top of numerous Direwolves, King Crabs and Warhawks.

We do have basic collision in the game now. They're basic, and if you keep pushing you'll eventually push past most other mechs, but we do have them. You certainly can't magically walk through other mechs.

And while it Is limited,in that you can push past mechs and size isn't relevant, I think that's a feature, not a bug. So teams don't get all tangled up in each other when newer players stumble about, and to account for minor lag based discrepancies in appearance of position.

And that's ****** up. Being able to go through mechs and getting warped in the process takes away from immersive experience. Current "collision" mechanic is a sad parody of what we had before, and could have in the future. It took just a few douchebags bowling Paul to make PGI take out collision, where knockdown was at fault. I want the old collision back.

[FatYak]

El Bandito, on 03 July 2015 - 10:15 PM, said:

And that's ****** up. Being able to go through mechs and getting warped in the process takes away from immersive experience. Current "collision" mechanic is a sad parody of what we had before, and could have in the future. It took just a few douchebags bowling Paul to make PGI take out collision, where knockdown was at fault. I want the old collision back.

I'm personally dreading the introduction of collisions as a high pinger. As it is now, running fast mechs is at times an exercise in frustration. Its bad enough that someone walking past you or moving past a building, the server decides they clipped you or you clipped them or the building and you start rubber banding back and forth on the pot, unable to escape while someone cores you out, or the target you were shooting at in the back warps though you and you end up in front of him so he shreds you, or when evading an enemy mech you duck behind cover only for the server to decide you clipped it so you warp back out in the open with you mech wedged up against the obstacle to get blown to pieces

Its bad enough as it is, i don't want them to screw it up even more

Edited by FatYak, 03 July 2015 - 10:32 PM.

[El Bandito]

FatYak, on 03 July 2015 - 10:30 PM, said:

I'm personally dreading the introduction of collisions as a high pinger. As it is now, running fast mechs is at times an exercise in frustration. Its bad enough that someone walking past you or moving past a building, the server decides they clipped you or you clipped them or the building and you start rubber banding back and forth on the pot, unable to escape while someone cores you out, or the target you were shooting at in the back warps though you and you end up in front of him so he shreds you, or when evading an enemy mech you duck behind cover only for the server to decide you clipped it so you warp back out in the open with you mech wedged up against the obstacle to get blown to pieces

Its bad enough as it is, i don't want them to screw it up even more

I played in Closed Beta as a high pinger. The old collision mechanic did not bother me. As for the Oceanics, they are getting their own server, anyway.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 July 2015 - 10:38 PM.

[FatYak]

El Bandito, on 03 July 2015 - 10:38 PM, said:

I played in Closed Beta as a high pinger. The old collision mechanic did not bother me. As for the Oceanics, they are getting their own server, anyway.

I dont think we have the p[ayerbase for that server. Besides, CW and group drops are likely to remain on the NA server, so we still miss out on a proper functioning game

[Grey Ghost]

oldradagast, on 03 July 2015 - 06:45 PM, said:

3) Where am I? When you start on a map in WoWS, your location and that of your team is clearly shown. Meanwhile, in MWO, we get nothing but the map itself. It makes it hard to plan strategies when you have no clue where you are until the match begins.

That has bothered me ever since they spread out the spawns from each other.

[oldradagast]

While there may be technical reasons for the lower FPS performance, still...

WoWS has islands, moving clouds, etc. It has planes, so there's elevation difference, and it has to handle shots hitting terrain at different elevations. It's not like the whole thing is a big, flat, empty ocean. I get that MWO has more draw calls, but there still seems to be questionable optimization when the same machine can run WoWS at max settings with upper 50's to over 60 FPS while being stuck running MWO on nearly all bottom settings and still never even reaching 50 fps and sometimes falling under 40.

Perhaps somebody in World of Tanks, which has similar terrain complexity, can compare it's optimization to MWO on the same computer?

Another one crossed my mind: New Player Experience.

In WoWS, you CANNOT even launch a game against other opponents until you play a few games against (rather decent) AI ships as part of a co-op team. This forces the player to gain some basic sense of what is going on before diving into the lion's den of challenging other humans.

Meanwhile, MWO has... a tutorial that shows you how to walk.

They already have the assets to fix this in game:

1) Start with the walking tutorial, but guide the user along a path through a map. Mention jump-jets, too, and then have them shoot a target a bunch of times at the end to finish that tutorial.

2) Tutorial 2: Kill all the turrets (the basic medium lasers ones) without dying.

3) Tutorial 3: Kill a mix of medium laser turrets and LRM turrets without dying.

Obviously, the tutorials with have instructions in them, but you get the idea. The user would at least have some idea of weapon types and ranges, damage output, heat, rolling damage, etc. before entering their first real match.

A lot of what I said here isn't news to anyone, but still - PGI should be concerned that a game that is currently sitting at version 0.4.0 in Open Beta has features in it that they have not yet added 1.5 years after release.

Edited by oldradagast, 04 July 2015 - 06:08 AM.