221 replies to this topic

[TheCas]

a map bigger then alpine....oh lord

[Scarlett Avignon]

Kalley, on 04 March 2013 - 12:29 PM, said:

a map bigger then alpine....oh lord

I wouldn't worry. If they work it like Alpine, you'll only get it 1 out of 50 matches.

[Stone Profit]

M4NTiC0R3X, on 04 March 2013 - 12:25 PM, said:

I'm really hoping they don't make artillery strikes, air strikes and coolant flush an ' overpowered ' or ' seemingly required ' thing.

(though overpowered or required isn't the right word choice, similar to how ECM or other flavors of the month are not OP unless you don't know how to handle)

It's going to be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

An end to intelligent players "clustering". I however cannot wait for pugs to start lobbing arty and air strikes into the middle of mixed fried/foe groups and watching the QQ. One more reason not to pug!

[Texas Merc]

I dont know about you guys but I'll be hiding in the caves.


/me waves.

[Agent of Change]

Stone Profit, on 04 March 2013 - 12:32 PM, said:

An end to intelligent players "clustering". I however cannot wait for pugs to start lobbing arty and air strikes into the middle of mixed fried/foe groups and watching the QQ. One more reason not to pug!

You needed more reasons?

But yeah the problem with indirect area affect weaponry is that most people are either dumb or malicious. I can picture a Friendly Fire or "danger close" fail safe being implemented and watching more and different QQ.

[jay35]

InnerSphereNews, on 04 March 2013 - 11:45 AM, said:

Testing Grounds

This offline game mode allows player to launch into a random map and test out there currently selected BattleMechs.

Still with the random maps nonsense. That's a shame. But hey, since we still can't choose the right mech or loadout for a given climate/terrain in the game, why bother putting that ability in sandbox mode either, right? Terrible.

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Consumables

An extension to the module system is being introduced on March 19th. Players will now be able to equip a variety of consumable module items. Upon release players will have access to Coolant Flush, Air Strikes, and Artillery Strikes. These new items will be available for C-Bill and MC purchase.

Interesting. Will wait to see how the costs run and how it plays out. Am expecting artillery and airstrike spam at the beginning of matches and on cap points that are being capped, completely ruining the experience for everyone not in a Light mech that can dash out of the way. But at least it's not MC-only, right?

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Tourmaline Desert

MechWarrior Online’s largest map yet! This hostile alien world will test the skills of the best MechWarrior pilots. Like Alpine Peaks, players will need to change their overall strategies, focusing on offense and defense, along with bringing in a balanced BattleMech build.

If it doesn't run something other than Conquest or Assault, it's fairly pointless and will only lead to massive amounts of Disconnects by players upon being randomly loaded into it and not wanting to play it, just like we see with Alpine Peaks.
Until you can provide game modes that are appropriate for large maps like these, and ideally the opportunity to select an appropriate mech for the specific map, these giant maps are near pointless to play unless you happen to run a Light mech all the time. (Hint: if you insist on incorporating point captures in your game modes, you need to create actual BASES with functional defenses that buy time to enable friendly troops to return to base to fight off a capture attempt and prevent a solo Light mech from ending the match at least until the final minutes of the match).
Alternately, add a Map Size filter next to the Game Type filter so players can filter out Large maps if they don't want to play on them. This would improve everyone's experience because there'd be significantly less start-of-round disconnects and that means fewer imbalanced teams due to disconnects for those who actually want to play the map.

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Expanded User Statistics

For now, these stats are only viewable by individual players. In future updates players will be able to see other player’s stats and leaderboards.

Only acceptable if the user can control whether or not their personal stats are publicly visible (a la Steam Profiles).

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MechLab UI Improvements

Further refinements to buying and selling `Mechs, readying `Mechs, and a visualization of hardpoints, weapons, and critical space directly on the `Mech itself, will make their appearance March 5th. These additions make a huge improvement to understanding the state of your BattleMech, along with helping understand the differences between variants when making a purchasing decision.

Hopefully this includes:

• The long-awaited ability to re-order the mechs in the mechbay (and pushing all empty bays to the end of the list)
  
• A way to view them in more than just a single row so those with many mechs can see more of them at one time instead of having to scroll scroll scroll
  
• The ability to rename mechs (it was mentioned this is coming in a March patch, iirc)
  
• Have the little mech portrait reflect the custom color scheme / camo the mech is painted, just like the Hero mech portraits appear to

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Community Events



After a hugely successful Be A Hero Challenge weekend, we’ve decided to add more events to our March schedule. Expect to see a variety of different challenges inspired by the community’s feedback! Also coming in March, Design a Trial Mech challenge. Players will be able to design a Heavy Trial Mech build based off one of the existing heavy `Mech chassis. The wining loadout, will be made available for uses as a Trial Mech throughout the month of April.

Fairly pointless build contest because with random maps the only effective builds are highly restricted to a handful of generic builds that can work passably well on all maps. You're going to end up with 10,000 people submitting the same half a dozen builds. (A slight exaggeration to make a point.)
If we had a proper MechWarrior multiplayer interface that allowed us to choose the mech, loadout, and camo most appropriate for each map, we'd see much more diversity in mech builds, as more specialized builds become viable for specific environments or terrain that presently can't be risked because 90+% of the time you land on some other random and completely different environment or terrain where it won't work well. tl;dr: You don't offer a game that promotes diversity in builds or interesting builds, so such a contest is of limited value at this time.

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Performance

On March 5th Host State Rewind (HSR) goes live. This new system allows players with high latency pings to fire and hit more reliably using Lasers, Machine Guns, and Flamers. Often referred to as the lag shield effect, HSR will significantly improve the reliability and accuracy of weapon hit detection, making certain BattleMechs much easier to hit. We anticipate overall damage will increase, resulting in some possible upcoming weapon balancing changes if needed.

Considering all the warping and jerking backwards that happens already with the current netcode, either this is already live and hurting user experience, or when this new code goes live it will either make the experience drastically worse or drastically better, depending on your ping.
Basically, the entire concept reads like an attempt to artificially tilt things toward high-ping players. Instead of improving infrastructure and providing geographic regoinal servers so that a majority of the playerbase has good or great pings to game servers, you're going about this in a way that will likely create a worse experience for the player the better their ping is, because they will frequently be yanked back a few seconds in time and declared dead after the fact, unable to respond to what happened, because some other player with a high ping shot behind them but the server interpolates that as a kill out of "fairness".
That's a horrible user experience for the person it happens to, which will likely be an increasing amount of players with this change. Hopefully this anticipated outcome is proven wrong, but given the way the current netcode misbehaves at times already, it's not very encouraging to hear it will be further tilted in favor of HPBs.
If it actually makes it smoother, and doesn't yank you back in time to contradict what you saw with what some higher-ping player saw, then great. If it fixes the current experience where that happens sometimes, great!

Edited by jay35, 04 March 2013 - 01:28 PM.

[BLUPRNT]

OOOHH new toys to play with, I can't wait.

[Wintersdark]

I'm really looking forward to coolant flush, with a caveat.

I'm REALLY hoping "Consumable" means you buy the module once, and can only use it a certain number of times in a match (Once? Twice?)

On the other hand, I'm deeply nervous about fully consumable modules - as in, you buy it, and it's completely gone once you use it. Not because of P2W concerns (they can be bought via c-bills) but rather because they'd become something that greatly widens the gap between more and less skilled players but not because of skill directly: More successful players earn more c-bills and can thus afford more modules. Load up a 6PPC Stalker with consumable coolant flushes, see enormous success, buy more flushes.

Now, if they are just modules you buy and can only use a set number of times per match, that's another kettle of kumquats entirely.

[Assiah]

Coolant Flush? Really?

How about you fix the heat scale as opposed to introducing a crutch that people can rent.

Mark my words, consumables will take this game down the road to P2W. Bad move PGI.

[Stone Profit]

Agent of Change, on 04 March 2013 - 12:35 PM, said:

You needed more reasons?

But yeah the problem with indirect area affect weaponry is that most people are either dumb or malicious. I can picture a Friendly Fire or "danger close" fail safe being implemented and watching more and different QQ.

Oh no I needed no more reasons. If no one is on my groups TS server for more than 2 or 3 matches I go play a different game. Pugging sucks donkey dong.

[Drake Syn]

Wow, okay, first of all, hi all, first post. Second, it's really shocking to me the number of people who are active on these forums but haven't played/heard of World of Tanks. Consumables don't unbalance the game if they impliment them as WoT has, which is "pay for it, use it once, it's gone. Pay again, have it once. Limited to one item used per mach per category." I really don't think we'll be looking at builds that ignore overheat because they are willing to "pay to win". I think it's being designed as an emergency failsafe sort of thing. The problem ~I~ see with it, is the reason world of tanks actually manages to use consumables properly and not frustrate their fanbase is because of the robust clan war system, and the competitive edge these tools and consumables give them in it.
Without these reasons to back up releasing consumables, it makes it look like a desperate money grab/C-Bill sink, but hey, maybe we should trust the guys at PGI and this is only getting mentioned because they don't want to talk about how close Community Warfare is.

Just my two cents from a different and unvoiced direction.

Edited by Drake Syn, 04 March 2013 - 12:50 PM.

[Xamanes]

All this stuff is fine and dandy, but more importantly where are the clans? it is literally the only thing I and many others wanted this update to say. Seriously Clans now!! it's march 2013 aka March 3050. IS should be getting rammed so hard by some unknown BattleMechs that they wet their pants in confusion. Give me a Timber Wolf and I will give you more money simple as that. I bet I am not the only one to think that either.

[CycKath]

Heavy, heavy month. Trainning grounds good, coolant flush bad.

[Dark Goten]

Assiah, on 04 March 2013 - 12:39 PM, said:

Coolant Flush? Really?

How about you fix the heat scale as opposed to introducing a crutch that people can rent.

Mark my words, consumables will take this game down the road to P2W. Bad move PGI.

Pay to win here we come. Fail PGI Fail, You guys were starting to get peoples hopes back up and then you do this crap. Fix Heat, dont crutch it, and I dont know maybe fix Raven hit boxes... or hit boxes in general. (getting hit in the back and taking front damage is annoying).

Oh and I know STOP LETTING YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY BE YOU ALPHA TESTERS!!! THEY SUCK AT THEIR JOBS!!!

just saying guys just saying... As a fellow game dev I can tell you from experience that your walking down the path of a quick game death again... go back the other way.

[Genewen]

@jay35: Great post, I fully agree with all points made by you, so I'll spare us all repeating them again. I salute you, Sir.

I agree with some others that the cons have to be very carefully balanced. Players with modules already have an advantage over newer players, this should not increase drastically by these new modules.
Also I want to chime in with those that want to know whether "consumable" means something that you have to buy again and again after you use it or if it gets used up over the course of a match and is automatically refilled after the fight.

[Elizander]

I'm hoping coolant flush acts more like a heatsink booster rather than straight out heat zapper. This way you won't be able to bypass the need for heatsinks.

[WolvesX]

Consumables with MC.

Very bad idea.

[Tegiminis]

Elizander, on 04 March 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

I'm hoping coolant flush acts more like a heatsink booster rather than straight out heat zapper. This way you won't be able to bypass the need for heatsinks.

The only implementation of coolant flush I'll accept.

Consumables in general are a terrible idea, IMO. There is already a ton of stuff to buy, we don't need to stack consumables into the mix as well. That's bordering on pay-to-win.

[Dark Goten]

CycKath, on 04 March 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

Heavy, heavy month. Trainning grounds good, coolant flush bad.

T-Grounds, good yet bad... (random map ... really?)
Consumables, VERY BAD... (P2W)
New Mech, Too you long enough (1 mech a month isnt fast enough guys stop being lazy)
Hero Mech, 3L Killer (Hey more P2W Crap... FAIL)
Expanded Stats, Dont Care (ELO dosent work to begin with)
Community Events, Really Guys? (Just Add Community Warfare... and let get your game started)
MechLab UI Improvment, Right... (The improvment would be not using an out of game Flash UI and making it all in game)

[Joe Mallad]

I really hope consumables means that like modules, we buy them but can only use them say once or twice a match. And not that I have to spend MC again and again to get them. Can we pleases get a clarification soon on this. And I thought we was getting the option to RE-COLOR OUR HERO MECH!!!????