261 replies to this topic

[Jake Sorren]

Honestly, if we were "given" our 'mechs as if we were part of a military force, then yes, you only get the stock for military issued things. (when's the last time you saw an Abrams with 4 machine guns instead of a cannon?)

However, we are buying our own 'mech which kinda makes us like the people you've heard/read about in the Solaris arena. Some of those 'mechs are HEAVILY modified.

I will concede the point that we're going to lose the whole uniqueness of the custom fits, but people tend to connect with the 'mech jocks in Solaris than with the mechwarriors in a garrison force.

So, unless we're going to all be forced into standard military units, we're gonna have customization and we're going to demand it with the sound of ERPPCs and AC/20s!

[DocBach]

Supremacist, on 10 June 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Let this be the final post in a horrible thread

[ CASH ]
Wrong, never has any customization program ever charged you for the actual change you want to make, its always cost you to simply purchase those other items and the change itself is free.
So there IS a cost to using the mechlab

Think of it like this - you buy a new cd player for your car at an audio center. They not only charge you for the actual piece of equipment, but they also charge you for installation and labor. If you pull a small laser for the energy hardpoint to stick a PPC in, there would be quite a bit of labor required to make it work - meaning it should be pretty expensive to do.

In the BattleTech games that this is based on, its an incredibly complicated, time consuming and expensive venture modifying a 'Mech, and some people (myself included) believe that should be reflected in the game to help mitigate the cheesy and munch factor. Some of us have been playing this game universe for more than 20 years now and are very particular how we would like to see MechWarrior Online stay faithful to the subject matter its based from.

[HollowBassman]

I spend as much time(or more)playing in the mechlab of games as I do on the battlefield. Customizing and creating things is what I like to do. I would more likely spend money on a game that consisted of only the mechlab than I would on a mech-combat game with a severely limited one.

On a somewhat related note: I went to a car show today and enjoyed seeing the work and imagination that went into all the cars there. I also went to a grocery store parking lot filled with cars. The latter was not enjoyable.

[Unit 05]

Under No circumstances, never, EVER should you limit the customization of your mech, EVER, for mechwarrior. You do this. Alot of people will pack up their **** and leave, including me.

But why should we not? well what makes up mechwarrior itself? What is it that sets it apart form other mech games? Its the fact that it was one of the first games out there that you can customize and change the loadouts in your mech. Allowing to use different tactics and styles of play within the same mech, while keeping the gameplay actually fun.

I have played the mechwarrior series throughout the years and one of the most challanging aspect in the game is the fact that you will never know what loadout your enemy may have until you reach eachother, and what you may have to do to fight him. An also really good part on the the developers of mechwarrior throughout their seiries is that learning the battletech universe rewards you ingame. As die-hard fans can actually use the fluff and backround and apply in their games for some extra fun.

To just standardize the game and remove options Is never a good idea, ever. Where the hell did you find that idea that people would want to remove options and purposely limit the game is a good idea?

What you are suggesting someone sounds like world of tanks. and trust me, playing that, has no room or need to be in this game, Ever. it would ruin it hard.

To limit the mechlab, is to limit the game. Peroid

Edited by Unit 05, 10 June 2012 - 01:37 PM.

[Squigles]

Supremacist, on 10 June 2012 - 01:23 PM, said:

Let this be the final post in a horrible thread

[ CASH ]
Wrong, never has any customization program ever charged you for the actual change you want to make, its always cost you to simply purchase those other items and the change itself is free.

Squigles, on 10 June 2012 - 12:35 PM, said:

Saliddry, on 10 June 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

every mechwarrior titel had free mech design and i want it here too

LIES!!!! =)

Mechwarrior 2:Mercs (arguably) one of the best titles in the series, had considerable refit costs.

To be specific, the charges were for the materials, in addition to the labor which amounted to 50K C-bills per critical location that had something added to it, removed from it, or changed to something else.

So yes, mechlab refit costs have existed in Mechwarrior before. Infact, it can be said that 50% of mechwarrior games that have had an economy and customization have had customization costs.

MW1: Economy but no customization.

MW2 and expansion: no economy, had customization

MW2:Mercs: Economy and customization, charged for refits

MW3 and Expansion: No economy, had customization.

MW4: Again, no real economy (can't attest to the expansion, think it was a barter system of some sort), had customization.

MW4 Mercs: Had an economy and customization, no charges for refitting.

So, as a % of mechwarrior games that fall into the mold of MWO (Economy and customization), fully half of them charged for refits.

Again, that's about the only part of the OP's idea that I'm in favor of, the rest can go hang. Free refit's just rub me the wrong way in this setting.

[DocBach]

HollowBassman, on 10 June 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

On a somewhat related note: I went to a car show today and enjoyed seeing the work and imagination that went into all the cars there. I also went to a grocery store parking lot filled with cars. The latter was not enjoyable.

But how much money and time went into each of those highly customized cars? Customization in MWO should be the same - you want a highly customized 'Mech, your going to need a lot of time and in game money to get it.

[phelancracken]

If your talking about in game currency, that's probably better accepted. Now if your talking about real money, that just might be a rub.

[GrizzlyViking]

No limiting of the Mech Lab or anything else is warranted based on random speculative observations of how things may or may not work. Yet another baseless post with no real supporting evidence of an actual problem.

[Daneiel]

I gree with Frostiken and i will add something that also must be added - THE LOCK of the mech after modification for some time - what i mean if you change your AC/20 with Gauss Rifle the mech will be locked for 4 days and you will not able to play with it until that time pass , but if you change medium laser with medium pulse laser the lock will be only few minutes .That will limit the modifications and will make the people to play with one config for long period of time combined with modification HUGE price will limit modifications of the kind - AS7-D to be more like AS7-K , before you start flaming just think about that - AS7-D cost is 9,626,000 C-bills , AS7-K cost is 22,474,000 C-Bills with current mech lab you can done that only with 1-2 million c-bills .

Edited by daneiel varna, 10 June 2012 - 01:44 PM.

[Harvey Batchall Kerensky at Law]

Op has a horrible idea. Thanks for the input, but I for one am glad you're a forum poster and have nothing to do with the development.

[phelancracken]

Specualtion at this point. We don't know how the Mechlab is going to work when MWO goes live. Until it goes live, who knows how it's going to work for sure. They could have several methods they are beta testing on and when it's just about time to launch, devs will work in the one that they want to be in the game. That's sneaky and keeps secrecy up for the game.

[Dalen]

Very good points made in the first post, but keep in mind the game is structured for people to exercise their own individual diversity. The key is moderation with slow in depth development within the structure laid out in Battletech/Mechwarrior systems. I personally would hesitate to react or comment on any game content until it was released.

[Unit 05]

daneiel varna, on 10 June 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

I gree with Frostiken and i will add something that also must be added - THE LOCK of the mech after modification for some time - what i mean if you change your AC/20 with Gauss Rifle the mech will be locked for 4 days and you will not able to play with it until that time pass , but if you change medium laser with medium pulse laser the lock will be only few minutes .That will limit the modifications and will make the people to play with one config for long period of time combined with modification HUGE price will limit modifications of the kind - AS7-D to be more like AS7-K , before you start flaming just think about that - AS7-D cost is 9,626,000 C-bills , AS7-K cost is 22,474,000 C-Bills with current mech lab you can done that only with 1-2 million c-bills .

So let me get this straight, you want to Implement something so when someone crawls their way to a large mech, grinds the cash to get the weapons and what not, you want them to then have to grind again to Mount it, then. you are not allowed to play the mech, for 4 days, after you grinded all of that, even though you were the one who customized it yourself.

Authors of mechwarrior online, Please. PLEASE do not listen to people like this. they will ruin your game.

Edited by Unit 05, 10 June 2012 - 01:51 PM.

[Shootanoob]

To add my point of view:


Cash & Fees;
If there would be a refit-fee, then it should not be overly much. For me, I could completely do without that fee, even if I'm not really planning to Mechlab a lot.

Hardpoints / Critslots:
I do not think that a limitation in form of hardpoints is really necessary - as long as there are available critslots, it should be possible to add something of your liking to that specific zone of the Mech.

Time:
That's indeed the major issue for me. I think, there needs to be something which puts the normal Mechs apart from the Omnis. I'd propose the following handling: normal Mechs can only be refitted once a day (cooldown 24 hrs), while Omni-Mechs can choose from a choice of (user)pre-defined sets before every battle whith the user being able to create one new setting per day up to a total of X variants. And yes, I kow the Clans are far away now and IS Omnis even further - so for the time being this suggestion would amount in limiting the change of an Mech Outfit to once every 24 hours.
In Order to prevent pilots from inventing totally useless designes, I'd like to have some sort of simulator-testing where you can tryout an outfit before refitting your Mech that way.

[Grisolm Redd]

As someone relatively new to the BT universe, not having been exposed to many 'Mechs outside of the MW Games (I did a run through MW2-3-4, most of the expansions for those), I can't see the sense of something like this coming to the game. 'Quick swapping' is something that I feel will ultimately help people maintain interest. That being said, putting a PPC where a small laser used to be is kinda silly. While I feel OP's ultimate intent is to maintain immersion, a heavy handed mechanic like forcing wait times for weapon/engine swapping will drive people away.

TL;DR

More pewpew less qewqew

[GrizzlyViking]

Random Speculation Index Rating: 9.9111

[HollowBassman]

DocBach, on 10 June 2012 - 01:37 PM, said:

But how much money and time went into each of those highly customized cars? Customization in MWO should be the same - you want a highly customized 'Mech, your going to need a lot of time and in game money to get it.

I'm fine with spending money and time to create what I want. That is what makes it rewarding when you are finished. It's the idea of having to use stock mechs because someone else would rather not play against custom mechs that I have a problem with.

[PimpChimp]

Interesting post kinda long but, interesting.

I think your ideas regarding limitations and lock outs would not be that bad for the hardcore MW fan but might isolate a large segment of the gaming community by not allowing such open and free customization. Unless I'm way off base most games now days for F2P and P2P are shooting for this kind of open customization as a standard.

The Devs will make money the same way every other F2P game does, real money will buy extra things like custom skins, 2X C-bill rewards for 1 day 1 week ect ect added things like that.

finally i can say for certain that this has not impacted Mech battles as i see it. Every game the Mechs appearing in the battle are different there is no such thing as the best Mech for any given size, they all have there own individual taste. (my house mate is in the open beta so I see it played every day - Looks AWESOME btw, just wish I had a key too)

[Blithering Idiot]

Some of OP's ideas seem logical, I dunno about all of them. Still think you should wait till you've played before deciding on such a radical change

[phelancracken]

daneiel varna, on 10 June 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

I gree with Frostiken and i will add something that also must be added - THE LOCK of the mech after modification for some time - what i mean if you change your AC/20 with Gauss Rifle the mech will be locked for 4 days and you will not able to play with it until that time pass , but if you change medium laser with medium pulse laser the lock will be only few minutes .That will limit the modifications and will make the people to play with one config for long period of time combined with modification HUGE price will limit modifications of the kind - AS7-D to be more like AS7-K , before you start flaming just think about that - AS7-D cost is 9,626,000 C-bills , AS7-K cost is 22,474,000 C-Bills with current mech lab you can done that only with 1-2 million c-bills .

I have to ask this, if the price is that cheap, did the player have ALL the components before hand to do the mod? Plus, there is one big issue here, that's not a customization. It's a REFIT! In several handbooks that are meant for roleplay and such, example, Mechwarrior 3055, upgrading a mech from 3025 tech to 3050-3055 tech of the same basic chassis is a REFIT. If you did that would the said AS7-K be legal in tournament? Yes, it's a canon mech. A refit kit has ALL the parts to upgrade said mech chassis to the new standard. Including the computer programs to tell the gyro how the new config will balance. This isn't customization, it's refitting.

Example of customization, changing a Thunderbolt 7M by exchanging the LRM-15 with an ERPPC. That's customizing. There is no canon design of that mech with that weapons loadout or if armour, or other internals are changed.

Edit:

If changing a 3025 mech to the upgraded 3050 or later mechs specs that isn't customizing. The factories do know how to make the older gyros and equipment work with the new upgraded gear. Customizing is where your adding things that aren't canon to the mech. Clan tech, XL engine when no mech's variants had it, etc, etc. Now that's customization and the techs will have a few issues getting the mech to balance with the new configurations. Can it be done, with the rules of BT TT, yes. It's not easy, but it can be done.

Edited by phelancracken, 10 June 2012 - 02:04 PM.