1
The Backstory
I did, but my friend introduced me to MechWarrior 3 back in the first years of the 21st century, and I fell in love with it. He didn’t follow the story (he once said to me “you read the books, I’ll shoot stuff”), but I was enraptured. Who were these “Smoke Jaguars?” Why were we fighting them? Why is this thing called a Bushwacker? Why are those little, turtle-looking ‘Mechs killing me so bad? The list goes on.
Then Pirate’s Moon. My friend and I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning goofing around with Instant Action. As I mentioned in a post somewhere on this forum, I remember playing as an Elemental (because, holy ****, you could play as an Elemental) and trying out those new “heavy lasers.” Could only fit a micro on the thing, and firing it killed me instantly. So I was strolling down the middle of one of those drenches, with the water so murky, you could only see about 200 meters in front of you. We didn’t know if the water would cool us enough to stop an insta-death, but we weren’t too concerned. It was a lone Elemental against whatever the AI wanted to throw at us. We weren’t looking for a high score, we just wanted to try out the smallest thing on the roster. And suddenly out of the gloom appeared the mascot for all things BattleMech: the 75-ton Mad Cat (I’m an IS player, so…). We both freaked out, and I shot my laser at it in reflex. The ‘Mech shuddered, and I saw a gout of flame and debris shoot from the cockpit. I’d one-shotted a 75-ton Clan war machine in a suit of power armor with one laser. I was already hooked, but this…
I’m unsure as to when, but I managed to find a copy of MW4 not long after, and shared the 2-disc game with my friend, using that nice feature of only needing one disc if you do a full download in order to play it. Live-action opening, with actors in the cutscenes. I was blown away. While my friend began making scale-model ‘Mechs out of his K’Nex, I started tracking down the novels (the first one I found was EndGame. Boy, did I love that cover art) and reading them religiously. I can accurately say that my high school years were defined by my reading of the BattleTech novels.
One day, my class went to the mall in our state’s capitol city (yes, thrilling), and my friend and I dropped in the local GameStop (or EB Games, whatever it was at the time) to kill time. Then I saw it: MechWarrior 4: Black Knight. My jaw dropped. This was long before I realized you could find anything on the internet, so I knew nothing about it. I studied the little technical manual for the entire ride back home.
So what’s the point, dude?
Fast-forward back to my original point, my friend and I stayed up the entire night when we were house-sitting for my aunt. We’d recently gotten MechAssault, and that brought back memories of MechWarrior. We knew that the franchise needed to go online (for more than the first MA was offering), and in a community-based way. Our ideas were very similar to what I saw (or at least thought implied) in the Dev Blog 0.
Persistent Universe: Truthfully, we had no idea what this meant. But in our heads, you weren’t just fighting on randomly-generated maps for the heck of it, nor were you fighting in AI-populated maps for the sake of a scripted campaign. The two would be interwoven, in which you would fight (alongside your buddies) to take a piece of land, perhaps a planet, and hold it against your enemies. Then you would advance, conquering (or being conquered) as you go.
Substantial Customization: This has been in the mouths of a lot of fans. We wanted more than just the MechLab. We wanted paint schemes, insignias, entire merc companies, along with the DropShips and JumpShips necessary to run such a venture.
Pay as Preferred: We had an idea. Since most warriors would go from wherever they were to wherever the battle was, they would need a ride. Maybe veteran players would have their merc corp up and running, with a slew of DropShips and JumpShips at the ready. All of this would be bought with in-game currency that you could earn in battle, or pay real $$ to get a bit faster. Anyway, as a successful businessman (er, businessperson), you would offer new pilots a ride on your shiny DropShip for a nominal fee, which you would control (to a certain degree, to keep things realistic), so that other such mercs would have the chance to offer lower prices as competition.
1:1 Days: Covered well in “Persistent Universe,” you wouldn’t have random maps, with some being “night maps” and others being “day maps.” You would have a server time (as a standard, with variations for planets, not to mention weather) to designate the lighting/civilian activity on whatever rock you set your DropShip down on. This also included DropShip/JumpShip travel time, but I’m not sure how that could be well-implemented without scaring off casual players.
Out-of-Battle Interaction: Another thing I noticed on the boards. We could have “Hub Worlds,” which would be major planets that were not readily contested, where members of a faction could walk their pilots around in a city-like area, hitting up bars, holo-vid theaters, sporting events (Solaris, baby), as well as various stores for pointless, but sought-after cosmetic items for the player, their ‘Mech/regiment/merc corp/DropShip/etc. Plus, it would help with socializing outside of the forum, in a more immersive environment.
EDIT:Sliding Scale of Weapons: Okay, not sure how else to describe this. I mentioned it somewhere on the forums, but I just now remembered it again. Basically, there shouldn't be (for the sake of example) an IS Autocannon 5 and a Clan Autocannon 5. There should be DOZENS of variants from the different in-universe manufacturers. Maybe manufacturer A's ACs could run cooler, while B's has a slightly stronger punch, while C's is more reliable, and D's is a bit lighter. All of these would be slight, however, no one being universally better, and each one is offset by a small penalty in another category. However, there could be "top-of-the-line" manufacturers where maybe their damage and range would be higher than any regular manufacturer's, and with only a slight penalty in the other categories, with the only "real" penalty being a significant difference in price. A "top-of-the-line" AC 5 would cost nearly triple what a "standard grade" one would cost. This would, of course, mean that losing such a weapon in battle would be even more of a setback than normal. And to make the Clans not be game-breakers (as SO many threads have complained about), just give them a "top of the line manufacturer" tag, but making it MUCH more expensive, and of course, the heat issue. AND since most Clans aren't exactly setting up shop for us IS pilots, we'd have to salvage it, and it would be hard to maintain due to the tech differences in IS and Clan stuff. But even then, the advantages would be slight. Think "Balanced" versus "chipped" weapons in Mount&Blade, if you've played it. The differences in damage are only a few points, but the price difference is astronomical.
At the moment, that’s all I can remember, though it’s been years, so some posts may remind me of stuff we had running. I know with all the other suggestion threads, this may be pointless, but having lost contact with my friend who brought me into the universe, I need to express all of this somewhere. I guess another reason would be that after the MA games, it felt like Micro$oft was just saying "This is what you're getting. Take it or leave it." That pretty much made any ideas I had pointless, but then this happened. Took me a week to get my mind un-scrambled and this put on paper. Heck, I stayed up last night writing it out on Word so I could edit later. Anyway, this is what I have. Hope it's not considered redundant or unnecessary, as it's my history with MechWarrior, as well as my hope for its future.
Edited by Alistair Steiner, 09 November 2011 - 11:51 AM.
