132 replies to this topic

[Ken Fury]

SixStringSamurai, on 26 March 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

In closed beta they didnt explode and more then 10 HP. The changes happened in open.

Well I mastered them again in Open Beta and didn't have any issues.

[fil5000]

Damage transfer happens at a rate of 50% as well, so even if, somehow, the gauss rifle is the absolute LAST thing to die in the arm of a mech, the most damage that's going to transfer to the side torso from the gauss rifle exploding is ten points. If you die from that then your side torso was probably near death anyway.

[Alex Wolfe]

So, having a chance to make an actually good, useful trial for the newbies... we end up with the worst heavy mech (Dragon), which is made SLOW on top of it, so that it can't really make use of the only dubious strength the Dragon has. And it has a bomb in its giant arm.

Ha ha, oh wow.

"At least it's not stock".

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 26 March 2013 - 01:21 PM.

[Postumus]

Garth Erlam, on 26 March 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Given the replies, it doesn't seem too popular an idea (and it's a lot of work to gather replies, make a list, and have people vote.) We'll see though.

Garth, for the love of god keep doing this. Have at least one trial mech per month be a good, custom, viable mech. Hell, If it's too much work to collect suggestions and votes, just take an office poll, or pick someone to choose a loadout, or do it by fiat. The point is, you will be showing new players what taking the time to buy and customize their own mech will do for them right off the bat, and they won't have to be stuck with an unplayable stock mech.

Its too bad that people are complaining about the outcome, but the idea is genius. Keep it up. Or just fix SHS so that all stock mechs are viable, and save yourself a bajillion hours of work.

[Alex Wolfe]

Garth Erlam, on 26 March 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Given the replies, it doesn't seem too popular an idea (and it's a lot of work to gather replies, make a list, and have people vote.) We'll see though.

The idea is decent, but execution needs a little work.

Most of the mechs that we were allowed to vote for are, from a gameplay and not fluff standpoint, bad. Mixed missiles A1, mechs with AC5 mounted period, slow Dragon. Unoptimized configs whose only purpose seems to be being farmed by people with actual mechlabbed mechs.

It's certainly an upgrade from utterly horrid, single heat sink and coolant-less stock mechs, but it's still a bad mech. Its only two saving graces are that it won't cook itself in a few shots, and will yield a good profit if legged.

If we're forced to choose between a few joke/troll/simply unoptimized configs... is it so surprising people with more of a gamer streak aren't happy?

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 26 March 2013 - 01:37 PM.

[Ken Fury]

Garth don't listen to people with more than 1k posts. Thanks.

[Nalin]

You should just take the top 4 entries each month and put them into a list. Assuming the contests go heavy -> assault -> light -> medium in the future, each month would look like this:

April: 1st heavy
May: 2nd heavy - 1st assault
June: 3rd heavy - 2nd assault - 1st light
July: 4th heavy - 3rd assault - 2nd light - 1st medium

And now we are back to the heavy contest. They would only need to do 1 contest each month, and after 4 months, we would have an entire rotation of community designed trial mechs.

[Michael Costanza]

The voting was so close, you should've just taken both mechs.

[Butane9000]

This isn't a very "good" build. New players would have been better off with the 4X which has more combat options even though it's slower.

I just can't understand the rationale behind choosing this one.

[fil5000]

Butane9000, on 26 March 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

This isn't a very "good" build. New players would have been better off with the 4X which has more combat options even though it's slower.

I just can't understand the rationale behind choosing this one.

Butane9000, on 26 March 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

This isn't a very "good" build. New players would have been better off with the 4X which has more combat options even though it's slower.

I just can't understand the rationale behind choosing this one.

How do you reckon it had more "combat options"? It has a pair of arguably the most suboptimal gun in the game (in that the AC/10s not so bad it's worthless, it's just outclassed by everything else), it had three weapon types and it was really slow. I didn't mind it especially but I can't understand why you'd think that it was better for a new player than the dragon.

Also I agree with the sentiment that the vote was so close PGI should find a way to make use of both configs.

[Dagorel]

Phorashi, on 26 March 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

Hooray! I won! I'm the best robot builder ever! Thanks to everyone that voted for me especially the Kerensky's and my clutch mates from the far country. Now for some celebratory suet!

SQUAWK!!!

Phorashi, on 26 March 2013 - 11:11 AM, said:

Hooray! I won! I'm the best robot builder ever! Thanks to everyone that voted for me especially the Kerensky's and my clutch mates from the far country. Now for some celebratory suet!

SQUAWK!!!

Great Job!

[Random Incarnate]

Not a big fan of the 5N build - but after looking at it for a while - it's solid. Personally voted for the 4X, and I'd love to see that thrown in for May's heavy. No point wasting a good build and punishing newbies by going back to a stock variant.

[Wellington van de Graaff]

It's nice to see a good mech becoming a trial. I used the exact same design to level my 5N and had a lot of fun in it, which is a pretty important factor in choosing a trial mech.

Also to clear up some misconceptions, the AC/10 is the worst weapon in its category (aside from the LB/10X) on every single metric.

Edited by Wellington van de Graaff, 26 March 2013 - 03:51 PM.

[Mal]

Garth Erlam, on 26 March 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Given the replies, it doesn't seem too popular an idea (and it's a lot of work to gather replies, make a list, and have people vote.) We'll see though.

I'd like to chime in and suggest doing this for other weight classes as well. I realize it's a lot of work, and that some folks are never happy, but I think this was a cool way for PGI to involve the community in part of the game.

[Xenois Shalashaska]

16 double heatsinks. This mech has XL 300. Considering trial mechs dont get the pilot skill tree. The mech wont over heat and will have good acceleration. but hell those side torso are only 40armour points. People better learn to shoot on the move

[Watchit]

April shall be month of the Dragon! I doubt many players will take a stock variant mech over this one.

[GearBoxClock]

Xenois Shalashaska, on 26 March 2013 - 05:14 PM, said:

16 double heatsinks. This mech has XL 300. Considering trial mechs dont get the pilot skill tree. The mech wont over heat and will have good acceleration. but hell those side torso are only 40armour points. People better learn to shoot on the move

It's also REALLY fr*cken hard to hit the Dragon's side torsos, because of how fr*ggin huge the center torso is. An XL on a Dragon is practically mandatory and has very few downsides compared to other 'mechs.

Definitely gonna try this out. The Jagermech has tempted me to go heavy with the promise of a quad-AC/2 build but a Dragon that is actually good probably the better choice.

[PUNISHER68]

ROFL! Be sure to bring your AC/40 Cats/Jagers for some supreme one shoters.

[Atheus]

This is by far the best mech to put a newbie in. The simplicity and power of the weapons systems plus the excellent speed make piloting the mech as easy as it gets. I have personally piloted this mech configuration to mastery in the past, and it's very easy to top the charts no matter what kind of team you drop with/against. I hope it gets a badass paint job to help it stand out from the crappy trial mechs it will be sitting next to.

Here's my feedback on the event in general, though. Many have suggested doing a poll of some sort every month, and the response you've given is that it's too complicated and time consuming. I don't want a poll every month. I really don't care if the community is involved or not, but what does need to happen is that you need to get whoever it is that you have designing stock variants, and tell them that instead of designing mechs for tabletop, design them for MWO.

I don't need to explain how different these games are, but I would like to know why the mech market doesn't seem to understand it. Please update all stock variants to work in the MWO environment. Even if you don't add DHS to every mech design, add enough heat sinks to make them able to endure more than 8 seconds of hostile contact before overheating. Let's start like this:

1. Starting immediately, every month, design 4 trial mechs that are NOT stock, but optimized to be as effective as possible in MWO. The whole point of a "Trial" mech is that you can get a feel for how it would perform if you owned it, right? Do it yourself, on your own time. We don't need input in this process.

2. After that policy is in place, sit down with every stock variant, and apply the same process to it with perhaps a little less rigor on the min/maxing - balancing the mech's weapons against their heat while maintaining the general type of weaponry as much as possible. Not every mech needs to be upgraded to DHS in its stock variant, but every mech should be reasonably effective in THIS mechwarrior universe, where weapons fire more frequently than the tabletop universe that the designs came from.

With these 2 simple steps, you accomplish many important things!

• Most importantly: A significantly improved new player experience.
  
• Stock mech designs become usable right off the bat no matter what level of understanding the player has, letting them enjoy the game more as they learn the ins and outs of mech design.
  
• Trial mechs become useful to veterans in addition to new players.
  
• Trial loadouts become examples that can help educate players struggling to understand the value and proper implementation of certain upgrades.
  
• Eliminates the duality between the MWO combat environment, and the BT mech market. We only need one universe for this game.

Edit: I feel I should clarify the above Step 2 a bit. Although I said not every stock variant needed to come with DHS, nearly all of them should. The only mechs that perhaps would not are ones that DHS present less than a 10% upgrade to its general effectiveness. These cases will be extremely rare as you can see in this threadnaught, but suffice it to say with just about all mechs, DHS involve far more than a 10% boost. Just remember the mech market should represent mechs targeted at the intended buyers, which is us. If the mech's stock variant is barely playable, the market is doing it very, very wrong.


That said, the limits of max engine size will need some thought as to what the right policy would be, as I am certain this will add all sorts of variety to stock engine sizes. That's not to say the currently available mechs don't have significant arbitrary size limit deviations as it is, though.

Edited by Atheus, 26 March 2013 - 08:02 PM.

[QuantumButler]

Garth Erlam, on 26 March 2013 - 10:33 AM, said:

Given the replies, it doesn't seem too popular an idea (and it's a lot of work to gather replies, make a list, and have people vote.) We'll see though.

Nonsense,. even us negative Nancy's in Kong thought this contest was a good idea, you should mos def hold more of them.