97 replies to this topic

[Pinselborste]

People asking about Champion mechs GXP gain read this: 5 % xp gain means also 5 % more GXP since GXP are based on XP gain.


PGI, why are you giving us mechs with a XP bonus when there arent much things to do with it.

if we could unlock things like visual customization like different arms and so on with XP it would make sense, but right now it doesnt help at all.

[White Bear 84]

Byk, on 03 April 2013 - 12:53 PM, said:

I'm confused by this. I don't have high ping at all. I play with 50 ping average every match. Yet the laser HSR did help so I'm hoping the ballistic HSR will help as well.

Probably because a ping of 50 is pretty damn good? Try having a pin of 200-400 and try hit stuff pre HSR lol!!

Michael Costanza, on 03 April 2013 - 05:49 PM, said:

Though Thermal is now appropriately balanced, I still haven't found a use for night vision.

A wall of black at 700m is balanced....

On the subject of champion mechs - why not make NON ecm mechs more attractive to play, thus effectively reducing ECM equiped mechs = less whinging about ECM? Why not apply c-bill bonuses on the non ECM variants? God help us if you make a raven 3L a 'champion' mech.

Edited by White Bear 84, 03 April 2013 - 06:25 PM.

[jackal40]

Gotta emphasize, we want and need info about how CW will work.

Frankly, I'm not all that interested in MWO right now - because there isn't any information on the end game.

Please, clue us in - that is, when you guys figure it out.

[BadKarma7]

OneEyed Jack, on 03 April 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

Guys, this is the Creative Director Update.

This is a monthly post to give is hints what's incoming during the next allready been announced and discussed for this month.

If you want info about bug fixes, that's perfectly understandable, but this is not the post to look for them in.

FTFY

[Kolonel Matt]

I posted a lot of this in the ragefest thread over the weekend, but with CW slowly coming our way, I feel that I need to post it again in a thread meant for constructive feedback on what is to come. I have made some minor adjustments and changes to wording as I wanted it to carry a different tone (less agitation, more suggestion). The more that I think about it, the more I realize that what we know of PGIs idea on how to set up community warfare is off. The following is gonna be a long read, but anything worthwhile for CW won’t be a short write up either.

THE NEW PLAYER

A new player is a lone wolf. They are required to first go through a series of in game tutorials. This would be the ONLY place that 3^rd person view ever fits in, while showing them how a mech moves (don't take this the wrong way, but this game is not mechassault, it's meant to have a different feel to it). Then they get put into the new player queue for 25 matches. This allows the new player to gain their cadet bonus while playing against only new players. It is possible that there will be some new accounts from old players, so make a check box and confirmation for them to skip the tutorial and the mandatory new player queue. Allow them the cadet bonus though as a show of goodwill. They just may be purchasing things in the future that that account as well as others that they may have.

CHOOSE A FACTION

After the new player/Lone Wolf plays their 25 games, they must choose a faction. Notice that I said faction, not house. Right now we have both Davion and Steiner “houses”. However, as of 3041 the military might of those two nations have been combined into the AFFC (It might work to have a sub faction, but they really should not be able to fight each other). Merc corps are to be treated as another faction. It has been suggested that that it is the job of the Merc corps to capture and hold as much territory as possible. This is the exact OPPOSITE of what they do. It is their job to fight for the highest bidder. As such, they are to be treated as a special faction with some unique abilities. Each faction has perks that others do not, but there should be no negative perks. All perks should be listed at the join faction screen. By clearly listing them, a new user would have a better understanding of what benefit they would get for each faction. An example would be each faction has mechs that are known to be favored in their military. Those mechs would be discounted while a player is part of that faction. The perks are only active while part of the faction. An example would be that the Capellan Confederation tends to favor ECM over armor sometimes. Players of that faction would have the ability to mount it on more mechs while a member of that faction. If they leave, they lose the perk. You can change factions, but it cost either c-bills or MC (immigration papers and such).

CREATE A UNIT

All factions have the ability to create a unit. For house units, they get to create a unit and give it a nickname. No unit can take the faction for a name. This means there will never be a unit called the Federated Suns, Clan Wolf, Clan Ghost Bear, etc. This is because no one group should be allowed to control such a large portion of a faction or give the appearance of such. Your suggestion of having the player house units move up through more prestigious commands is a good one. When joining a faction other than mercenary, one does not have to join a unit. You can only be part of one unit at a time. For mercenaries, you have to join a merc corps. Either form your own or join one of the existing ones. Player run units should have at least 4 players (5 for the clans when they show up). Merc units get to name the unit, specify paint and patterns for the unit, and create unit logos that should be prominently featured on the mechs. House units have a prominently shown house logo, and possibly a unit one. House units will eventually be able to directly contest planets. Merc units then may be brought in on contract.

THE MERCENARIES

Mercenary units have several perks just like house units. For one, they are not affiliated with any given nation. They work by first signing on for short term garrison contracts from one of the great houses. These are variable length contracts. When a planet is being attacked, the match maker will start calling in house units to defend as well as merc units with garrison contracts. These contracts have two benefits. One, they provide a method for increasing the rating of the merc unit. A higher rating means better contracts as well as the eventual ability to take contracts without having signed on as a garrison unit. Second, the members of the garrison unit will get a sizeable c-bill deposit at the start and end of their contract, as well as the normal in game rewards that all other players get. They also have the ability to bid on supplemental contracts. If a planet comes up for conquest, contracts will be issued for merc units to bid on and take. These can lead to significant payouts for successful completion and a raise in rating. House units will be involved in all these battles as well. The ratio of house to merc should start evenly and change depending on numbers of players online. Merc units thus have the ability to easily change the faction they are working for without penalty (as long as they are off contract) as well as getting big c-bill bonuses. House units get benefits on mech discounts and special equipment mountings while a member of that house.

BATTLES AND PLANETARY CONQUEST

Each planet that is invadable will need to have a defense rating. This would be based on how big the planet is, what industry is there, what units would typically be on planet, etc. For the sake of argument, this number would be between 1 and 100. This corresponds to the maximum number of battles that are needed to capture the planet. Roughly 70% of the battles need to be won by the invaders to take the planet. If they do not win enough battles, then the defenders hold the planet. At first, all planetary conflict will be initiated by the devs. They will begin to declare a series of planets on the boarders as being in invaded and the games match maker will start funneling units in. It will also begin to issue normal/supplementary contracts for mercenaries that are either free agents at the time or are in garrison. They can then bid on the contracts and earn even more money. For house units, it will begin to automatically bring units in as well as fill in the gaps with mercs that agreed to a contract. Merc units in garrison will only be pulled in to defend worlds that are under assault unless they successfully get a supplementary contract for that planets conquest.

House units that successfully take or defend a planet will increase their prestige. Merc units that complete their contracts will increase their rating. This allows mercs to bid on and take more important contracts. As their rating increases, they will have the increased ability to take normal contracts as free agents rather than to sign on for garrison duty. House units that increase their prestige will eventually be able to declare a planet as in contest without the interaction of the devs. They can then initiate an attack and additional house and merc units will be pulled in to fill out the battle, additional contracts issued for mercs, etc. It is important to note that the system is set up so that the House is advanced and everyone is included without the worry that one unit, be it house or merc, would be able to control large parts of the map to everyone else’s detriment. There would also need to be a way for any unit involved in the attack or defense of a planet to stay as part of that battle until the planet is won or lost.

PUGGING

What of players that don’t want to get super involved in the metagame? Pug dropping will still be doable. Everyone will still be able to solo drop. When solo dropping the match maker will first check to see if there is a need to fill in a slot for a round of planetary conquest or to defend a planet, similar to how it works now for filling in groups. If a player is needed, they get filled in. If not, they enter a general queue for normal pug on pug action. They still get to add to the universe, but it is not in direct way. These matches would still be balanced by ELO, and it would be nice if we started to get a BV based system to help balance hardware. This won’t fix the system outright, but it should start to close the gap on unit weight and configuration.

MONITIZATION

As most of you should be able to see, the big push with this is to try to get everyone involved in the all aspects of CW. The more people participating, the more likely they would be to pay for content. Right now we have big stompy robots with no real goal. Once the goal based system is in place, that should be the entire focus of the game. The big draw in here is the persistent universe and how players interact with it. The system outlined above tries to make the game as immersive as possible, while not allowing one player group to shut out others by individually holding planets. With more than just the few largest player units being massively involved, there is a much greater incentive to make purchases for the game.

Much of what can be done is already being done. But we can make improvements. The new paint system and the ability to purchase mechs with MC work well. I might argue that the mechs are a bit pricey, but your constant sales for mechs alleviate this to a degree. Likewise, as more modules come in the XP to GXP becomes more important. Your pricing here is decent, but the occasional double conversions are nice.

On the Issue of premium time and accounts, I think we need to make a few changes. The effect of premium time is great, 50% c-bill and XP bonus. Don’t change that. The pricing structure can be improved. Consider the analogy of prepaid cellphones and contract phones. A prepaid phone usually will cost a bit more on a minute to minute comparison with a contract phone, but will have greater flexibility as a user will be able to pay for only what they need. A contract phone would give more minutes but would have the downside of having the possibility of minutes go to waste. A similar approach can be done here. Allow for a monthly subscription for say, $14.99 a month that will give an entire month of premium access. Allow this subscription to be reoccurring so that it can be set up and continued until cancellation. This is by far the easiest way to set it up. For other users that play infrequently, you will find them hesitant to buy premium time right now as most of the time is wasted. For them, allow them to purchase time for a set number of matches, rather than time. For those players, they will get the benefit of using exactly what they need in time without fear of it being wasted if they get called away due to school/work/family obligations. It should be priced reasonably, but point the more frequent players towards the subscription. This becomes a constant revenue stream for you. There does need to be a system in place to detect crashed games so that they are not debited if they drop out due to crashing.

Earlier I mentioned a MC charge for changing factions (with a c-bill alternative). That is a new thing that you can add. Consider this like immigration. It costs money to move from one country to another. Also, it prevents gaming the system. That way I cannot go from faction to faction buying things for cheap until I have what I want. The c-bill cost of this needs to be high enough so that any perk is canceled out. As far as consumables go, they are ok to have as a MC purchase, but the MC and c-bill equivalent needs to be EXACTLY the same. The c-bill one needs to be priced so that anyone can use them and not have to grind away forever. Your initial prices look ok, but drop the whole module upgrade thing. If it takes 2 slots for one and 1 for the other, that is a HUGE advantage once it comes to adding more stuff.

Some of us also wouldn't mind buying real world items. Hats, shirts, etc. HATS.

OTHER FEATURES

Other important features include private matches that have no consequence to the metagame. This is in case two groups from one faction want to fight a dual. It could also be possible for units of different factions to arrange a private match that would take place over a contested planet. It would be even better if each unit would get a sub forum section as well as a unit page that lists who is in charge of the unit, who is in the unit, what its affiliation is, its combat record, etc. Make all of CW one integrated experience. We are also in need of a unified in game voice experience. I know you guys said you are working on it, just wanted to throw that out there.

So that's the idea. Get everyone involved, make it easier for them to want to spend money. Don’t let any one unit actually “own” planets as you will find only the largest ones will end up controlling everything. A similar situation happened in WoT and it ruined the game for a lot of people. The main idea here is to make sure everyone can be as involved as possible so that even when solo dropping they feel like they are contributing to the community, thus a bit more likely to possibly buy some MC, and to ensure that no player controlled faction should ever have direct control of a planet as it drastically increases the possibility that a few units will shut out all the rest.

[Irvine]

Actually found NV to be usefull in RNC...great job

[LordDante]

Peiper, on 03 April 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

We were all hoping for an update on:

Community Warfare - how it works, what it might cost, how many people could be in a merc. core, etc..

Many of my House Steiner/FedCom friends are already in established units together. Will they still be able to fight together on a front, or will this 'earn your way into a famous house unit' go against the fact that so many people are already IN house units together, much the same way mercs are in units together. Just because you're in a house unit, doesn't mean you don't want to get as full an experience within the CW than a merc unit! They are loyal to a house for roleplay reasons the same way we mercs fight for our chosen employers.

We want to know how contracts will be bid on for us merc corps, and we want to know how dedicated players/units can affect the direction a house moves in CW. We want to chance the face of the inner sphere for our faction, but HOW will we be able to do this, and to what extent?

Will we be able to stop the clans cold in their tracks before the Battle of Tukayyid? Or can one clan carve out a larger chunk of the inner sphere than their historical conterparts? (we MUST be able to alter the borders of the inner sphere or WHAT'S THE POINT of CW otherwise?

We want to know what the benefits are for fighting for a particular unit?

Will the planets merc corps be fighting for be intermingled with the 'fronts' the houses will be fighting on? Or will they be on different borders and we'll never interact with our houses/employers?

Will Mercs fight House units EVER? Will we be able to fight BESIDE our employers units?

___________________

LOBBIES? How will they work and do we have an ETA on them? I've got a lot of guys playing in my unit that are sick of dropping in the same stale maps with their cheese builds, mentally challenged pugs, suspected aim-botters, and base cappers. At least with lobbies, we could make the game more interesting with house rules and goals...

___________________

Collisions? Where are they? How can you bring out a 90 ton jumper that can ride on top of a raven instead of smushing it? Getting sick of walking into another mech only to hit my triggers and the guns go off right after I teleport THROUGH my opponent. (and please keep the 'learn to play' comments to yourself, trolls.)

___________________

DX11???
I bought a new computer for this game with a great set of specs and high end graphics card that's being ABUSED every time I run this game.

__________________



___________________

[Chemie]

Wow. A mech (we really don't need anymore), air/art strikes which were promsied last patch and.....

and nothing. April seems to bring no new CONTENT.

How about game modes? Maps?

Should we expect another 5 month wait for a new map?

If this is the pace per month, I am very worried.

Edited by Chemie, 04 April 2013 - 12:44 PM.

[Curccu]

DirectX 11 was mentioned in post but no estimated release time or anything useful.

[Iacov]

nothing about possibility to color hero mechs
announcing champion mechs without any specifics (and if it's just a "heroized" standard variant...why not offer a "heroize-kit" to that we can upgrade our favourite mechs on demand?)

where are the supposed "phranken-style" camos per month?

[Jetfire]

Curccu, on 04 April 2013 - 05:30 AM, said:

DirectX 11 was mentioned in post but no estimated release time or anything useful.

Yeah, I have yet to hear anything more specific than, "It is in testing" since November. They keep mentioning it is coming soon, but I would like to know what month they are on target for or if they are just saying, in by launch, ie Sept.

[TELEFORCE]

When I first saw the item about the Champion 'mech, I was thinking of the actual Champion 60 ton battlemech We'll have to see if Champion 'mechs are a better value than Hero 'mechs. I do like my c-bill bonus on my YLW.

I'm really looking forward to the HSR implementation. Light 'mechs will really eat my PPCs and AC/20s now

Edited by TELEFORCE, 04 April 2013 - 06:27 AM.

[Wildstreak]

Like the BattleGrid improvements, just would like to know if a Company Commander is also the Lance Commander of his Lance or can there be one of each in the same Lance.

I do not get the purpose of the Champion Mech.

Looking forward to 12 vs 12 but there will need to be changes to Matchmaker in addition to existing ELO, right now ELO without equal tonnge requirements is sometimes mucked up.

[ceeon]

German Translation at Forum or Link at Signature

[Arguss10]

Implementing Hsr for ballistics will be like a xmas present for me ,as living in Australia you already have a high ping and delay.

[Noob Weapons]

Godswrath, on 03 April 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

Ok im confused as to what you people really want...the hero mechs already give a 30% cbill bonus but no xp bonus....this champion mech will give 5% xp bonus and no cbill bonus but much cheaper than hero mech......

Its obvious you can't please everyone from your comments.....

So perhaps if they created a mech that was say only 1000 MC and gave out 5% bonus to cbills that would be cool to you guys?
Or does it have to be a hero/champion whatever mech that has 50% bonus to cbills and 50% bonus to XP and only cost 300 MC ...yeah that sounds like a GREAT idea........

.......**walks away disgusted**

Because an xp boost is 100% pointless after you've played the chassis a few times.

Example: I have an illya muromets, that is mastered out, with all the xp bonuses and all, and I now have a total of 90k xp in reserve on it.

What am I going to do with that xp? The only answer is to spend real money to convert it to GXP, which I would rather not do. So, in the end, all the xp is going to waste.

So, lets say I buy a champion mech. Woo, I get 5% xp for my first 50 matches.. Now what? I have 5% xp accruing that I am unable to spend.. That MC I spent means nothing, because I could have gotten essentially the same mech from cbills without the useless 5% bonus.

That is why people are asking for a c-bill increase instead, because xp becomes pointless very quickly.

So, unless they add in a new use for the xp (being able to convert it at a much lower rate to GXP without spending MC or something similar) then 5% xp bonus means really nothing.

[Noob Weapons]

Thontor, on 08 April 2013 - 04:43 AM, said:

If you don't plan on spending MC to convert XP I would go as far as to say, a Champion mech would not be for you. The XP conversion is one of the greatest bargains in the game IMO. For The amount of time you can save by not waiting for GXP to accumulate normally is great value per MC. Especially if you wait for the double conversion rate sale and do It in bulk.

Don't forget even if you don't convert that extra XP, you are still earning 5% more GXP:

I do think the 5% number seems a little low... But that's another issue.

(been a while since I've looked at the topic sorry)

But why would I buy a mech with MC for a 5% bonus that I would also have to pay to convert when I have all these mech that are already mastered, each with more than 50K xp to convert right now? If a sale goes up again on converting xp I can instantly have 200k GXP without the new champion mech.

5% is such a small number that even if they released say a champion centurion, I can play about 10 matches in a regular mech, accrue 10k xp on it, and convert it to GXP anyways. If I owned the champion, that 10k then becomes 10.5k xp.. which is essentially no difference at all.

TLDR: C-bills make a difference in that anything you earn with c-bills can be spent on new mech when they arrive, which is why I would prefer a small c-bill bonus to a small xp bonus. whereas with xp, once the mech is finished I have no further use for the xp bonus.



Now, on a (slightly) different subject..

InnerSphereNews, on 03 April 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

Champion BattleMechs

We’ve decided to add a new style of Hero BattleMech, one that represents the community – the Champion. Similar in nature to the Founder's BattleMechs, a Champion `Mech is based of an existing variant with a special permanent 5% XP boost and lower price point. Our first Champion BattleMech will be revealed on April 12th.

Wondering if this was a mistype, or if the information is coming a bit late. I'm still wondering if the 5% is all GXP, or if they have changed their mind about the xp bonus. Also curious as to what the champion will look like.

Edited by Noob Weapons, 12 April 2013 - 02:31 PM.

[Noob Weapons]

Thontor, on 12 April 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

Don't forget that 5% more XP is also 5% more GXP, since GXP earned is a direct percentage of XP earned.

So in the long run, if you play the Champion mech enough, you will be getting more GXP per MC out of it than you would if you straight up converted XP to GXP with MC.

Indeed, but at that point it becomes 5% of 5%. Meaning if I use the champion, I get 5.25% gxp instead of 5%.

In the end the number is so low it seems silly...

If they however released a mech that gave 10% gxp, then I would be all for it. Even 8% would be pretty nice. But assuming the variant isn't a great one (they usually avoid putting the mech that are really good as pay only to avoid the P2W crowd) Then I can win more often with a better mech, and thereby get more GXP anyways.

[EvangelionUnit]

so what is the first champion mech ?

[Strucker]

InnerSphereNews, on 03 April 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

Our first Champion BattleMech will be revealed on April 12th.

LIES ALL LIES