18 replies to this topic

[Dawnstealer]

This is something I've been saying for a while, but I'm not sure if I'm the only one out there that thinks this way. A couple weeks ago, someone pointed out that the MWO "Clock" (here: http://www.mwomercs.com/clock) was claiming it was November 3048, game-time.

There was, of course, an uproar, with people wanting refunds (of course), and claiming time-machine arguments and whatever else. It was later stated it was a typo, and it was adjusted back up to 3050. I think I was the only one saying "Good" when I saw 3048.

Why? Well, the timeline for Battletech, tabletop wise, kicked in around 3025. Later supplements went back and filled in the gaps of the early years, but the initial game started in 3025 and then leaped forward a bit from there, jumping to 3050 in what I seem to remember as being about five years of real-time.

The most interesting historical events in the Battletech universe are the fall of the Star League (2785) and the invasion by the Clans (3050).

The Star League, which unites all of human space, dissolves into civil war and the Secession Wars begin (Alexandr Kerensky takes the majority of his military out of the Inner Sphere, bound for deep space with all that glorious tech).

By 3025, the Inner Sphere looks like this:



Then there's centuries of war between the great houses. Of course interesting stuff happens in there, but if you're planning a real-time game, you don't really want to have a plan for 300 years of real-time game play. Just a thought.

Which brings us to 3050.

That military force that Kerensky brought with him to deep space? Well, in 3050 it comes back with a vengeance, blowing through the upper part of the inner sphere. It's a huge, world-shattering event.

Here, these five houses have been duking it out, the formation of the Federated Commonwealth unofficially formed in 3028 seemed to point to a new superpower, joining houses Steiner and Davion.

In 3039, the new superpower slams its way through the other three houses (Liao, Marik, Kurita) to form a joined nation. The FRR carves its way out of both Kurita and Steiner.

So that's the history. By 3048, the Inner Sphere looks like this:



So here you have the Inner Sphere as it appears before the Clans attack. In my opinion, when Community Warfare is implemented, whenever that is, this is what the map should look like.

The problem is, if it's actually November of 3050 (or likely much later, as it looks like CW is a few months off), the Inner Sphere now looks like this:



THAT is what the Clans do in one year. At this point in the timeline, the Clan invasion has been stalled thanks to their leader being killed. Granted, there are some big battles after this. Two years later, by 3052, the map looks like this, with more Clans joining the fray:



So interesting, but for me, the REAL fun stuff happens right there in 3049-3050, not post 3050. THAT is the game I want to play. Maybe a few months of fighting other big Houses, then dealing with the clan invasion. Dealing with the aftermath just doesn't sound as interesting to me.

Anyone with me?

Edited by Dawnstealer, 12 November 2013 - 01:04 PM.

[GroovYChickeN]

PGI has already said that the 1:1 game time clock thing is out the window. The only thing they are doing as far as time line goes is what tech is available. Kind of....

Edited by GroovYChickeN, 12 November 2013 - 11:33 AM.

[Dawnstealer]

Which I get, but I guess this is my argument for, once CW starts, whenever that is, that they set the clock at 3049 (or 3048 if it's mid- or late-next year). Give us a year or at least 6+ months of fighting other houses before the Clans invade.

Edited by Dawnstealer, 12 November 2013 - 11:38 AM.

[Devillin]

Yeah, when I saw the original time clock for this game, I thought the Clans would have been integrated into the game by about now. Especially since Nov. of 3050 is when they really make their presence known in the Inner Sphere, and not just knocking off the Periphery States. But when it took the devs until a few months ago to even implement 12v12 combat, I knew that they were going to need to reset the game clock to 3048/49. That would give them a solid year to implement community warfare before they would even have to really bother with the Clans.

But truth be told, as the game is now, it would almost be better for everyone if they took the game clock even further back, to 3039. That way we could have a logical technology and society base for how things are in the game now. You'd still have all of the factions that you have in the game now, you'd have the War of '39 backdrop for warfare between the Houses, and it would make sense that not everyone has the newest technology (both stuff that hasn't been implemented in game yet, and that new players start out with 3025 technology). And with CW coming in fits and starts, it makes a certain amount of sense because in universe, Comstar was screwing with everyone's communications. An aspect of CW not working right? Blame it on Comstar.

Only when they have CW completely implemented and all the bugs worked out, then update the game clock to 3049 so that all of the players can completely enjoy the experience of having the Clans invade. Cause I think the one thing that would **** players off more than everything else would be to have the Clan Invasion play out piecemeal with poorly implemented features, and the basic functions of the game haven't even been worked out yet.

Edited by Devillin, 12 November 2013 - 12:03 PM.

[Dawnstealer]

I would think they would just make it so that you have at least six months or so of dealing with other Houses before dealing with the insane tech the Clans bring to bear. I think CW will be rolling out in the next 4-5 months, so it's not that far off, then another 4-6 months to work the bugs out.

If they start the clock at the very beginning of that, 3048 works. That way, it'll be solidly 3049 by the time the game's in working order and the Periphery will start feeling the heat from the Clans.

I think going back to 3039 might be a bit far. I mean, people were crying rivers over it being 3048 instead of 3050 - could you imagine the uproar if we bounced back a full decade? I think a lot of players are just hanging around until the Clans are available to the community, then they're going to jump sides.

[Sephlock]

We should start when the Master first makes his move...

[Devillin]

Dawnstealer, on 12 November 2013 - 11:29 AM, said:

The problem is, if it's actually November of 3050 (or likely much later, as it looks like CW is a few months off), the Inner Sphere now looks like this:

That's actually the map from 3067.

http://sarna.s3.amaz...t/maps_3064.jpg

[Dawnstealer]

Devillin, on 12 November 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

That's actually the map from 3067.

http://sarna.s3.amaz...t/maps_3064.jpg

Good catch - should have known with the little "Wolf bite" out of Steiner. Fixing.

[Devillin]

Dawnstealer, on 12 November 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

Good catch - should have known with the little "Wolf bite" out of Steiner. Fixing.

Yeah. I was looking at that going, "There's something not right there." For me it was the area around Terra/Chaos March.

[focuspark]

Devillin, on 12 November 2013 - 12:55 PM, said:

That's actually the map from 3067.

http://sarna.s3.amaz...t/maps_3064.jpg

Who hell the did the colorization on that map? Why aren't Wolf's two territories the same color? And yet the two less relevant territories at the bottom are the same color? :-/

<on-topic>

No need. Not everyone in the Inner Sphere was fighting the clans. Many were still fighting among themselves still.

[Dawnstealer]

focuspark, on 12 November 2013 - 02:47 PM, said:

Who hell the did the colorization on that map? Why aren't Wolf's two territories the same color? And yet the two less relevant territories at the bottom are the same color? :-/

<on-topic>

No need. Not everyone in the Inner Sphere was fighting the clans. Many were still fighting among themselves still.

True, but there's at least some unity of purpose when the Clans arrive. It's kind of an "us against them, but I really don't like you still"-mentality.

I guess one thing, with this being a community, I'm seriously doubting Marik and Liao players are going to do what their canon counterparts did and cash in on the war machine. Steiner in particular is going to have a rough go when the Clans come.

[Captain Stiffy]

I'm sick as **** of the "date" thing. It was one dumb idea one dev had and they won't ever be able to keep up with it.

Let's call it 3500 instead and then they can develop whatever they want without having to wait for a fanboi clock.

[Dawnstealer]

I'd be game for that, too - just stating that whenever they open up CW, that's 3050. Which is actually option #2 in the poll.

I do like the idea of a real-time game. And it will be real interesting to see how the houses will all react to the clan invasion. Kurita and Steiner get hit hard, but that's nothing compared to the FRR, which basically ceases to exist. But what will Marik and Liao and Davion do? If I were Marik players, you're damn right I'd make a hard push towards Hesperus II and get the Atlas production lines.

[OznerpaG]

i'm not sure what PGI had in mind for CW, but i had a simple idea for how it could play out:

IS vs clan matches, the entire campaign lasts 2 real months, start at march 3050 and ends at april 3052 when the battle of Tukayyid is scheduled to start (1 year passes per real month).

on the main IS map that shows the invasion status, the planets would fall on as scheduled over the 3 real months and a higher IS match win% would slow the advance historically while a higher Clan match win% would accelerate the historical schedule.

see how far the clans can get compared to historically, then end off with a "Battle of Tukayyid Week" where the IS and Clans battle it out for the final Trial of Possession - side with the highest win% in that week wins the Battle of Tukayyid

at the end of Tukayyid, the winning side is declared (Clan or IS), and a ranking order of all the factions is listed (the winning faction may not be on the winning side if the other 'allies' didn't do so well)

every week there would be a report stating how far ahead/behind each side is - maybe rewards can be given to the best performing faction.

there should actually be 2 campaigns running simultaneously - since everyone can own Clan and IS mechs all your IS battles would count in 1 campaign, while all your Clan battles would count in the 2nd campaign so you'r not fighting for yourself and against yourself. PGI would assign all players to 1 campaign or the other by how many match minutes they played over the last 2 months - hopefully this will make sure both campaigns have lots of active players on both sides and make everything fair

this would mean though that every player needs to pick 2 factions - 1 IS, and 1 Clan

once the 2 month campaigns are over, a new 2 month campaign would start, and so forth

Edited by JagdFlanker, 27 July 2014 - 07:57 AM.

[Devillin]

JagdFlanker, on 27 July 2014 - 07:54 AM, said:

IS vs clan matches, the entire campaign lasts 2 real months, start at march 3050 and ends at april 3052 when the battle of Tukayyid is scheduled to start (1 year passes per real month).

on the main IS map that shows the invasion status, the planets would fall on as scheduled over the 3 real months and a higher IS match win% would slow the advance historically while a higher Clan match win% would accelerate the historical schedule.

I much more prefer the idea of a dynamic map. What the players do, win or lose, determine what the map looks like. The Clans would actually have to invade and fight for their starting planets, which would actually give the FRR a chance, especially if they can get enough Lone Wolves and Merc Companies in the "area" to help repel the invasions.

Heck, I'd love to see the Clan players duke it out to see who the leaders of their factions are going to be, then those *players* can decide where their Invasion Corridor is going to be and what planets they are going to attack. So instead of coming in at the FRR, The Wolf Players could decide that they want to invade in-between the Marik and Steiner border instead. Or the Hell's Horses could decide to invade in Liao Space. I'd make a limiting factor be that a Clan has to have at least 200+ players to be considered a non-storyline Invading Clan though.

Then from there, you can continue to have those canon events occur that still makes sense. The biggest factor in doing something like this would be that the developers would need to keep an eye on what is going on, and write new events, or adjust the original events, to reflect what is actually going on in the game.

In essence, this game would become an alternate reality of the original Battletech Timeline.

Edited by Devillin, 16 September 2014 - 02:34 AM.

[Demon Horde]

people calling for clock to reset to before 3050 are jsut being trolling a--holes. fact is if clock did reset that far back you'd have to take away all the clan mechs that people PAID FOR. if clock thing ever starts up again it's going to be set to NO earlier than 3050 .. get over it . it's just a game.

[MarineTech]

Demon Horde, on 17 September 2014 - 08:23 AM, said:

people calling for clock to reset to before 3050 are jsut being trolling a--holes. fact is if clock did reset that far back you'd have to take away all the clan mechs that people PAID FOR. if clock thing ever starts up again it's going to be set to NO earlier than 3050 .. get over it . it's just a game.

Umnmmmmm.

Just to point out, we did drop back to 3049 a few months ago.

Edited by MarineTech, 18 September 2014 - 11:58 AM.

[Devillin]

Demon Horde, on 17 September 2014 - 08:23 AM, said:

people calling for clock to reset to before 3050 are jsut being trolling a--holes. fact is if clock did reset that far back you'd have to take away all the clan mechs that people PAID FOR. if clock thing ever starts up again it's going to be set to NO earlier than 3050 .. get over it . it's just a game.

You do realize that the Clans existed before 3049, right? They were founded in 2815. Unless your bigger concern was about the Omnimechs, which were introduced in the 2870's. So how would resetting the clock 2 - 3 years affect technologies and concepts that existed in the game universe for almost 200 years?

That, and the game time already was reset. The bigger question is how resetting the clock and map could effect changes in CW and open up new possibilities for the future.

Edited by Devillin, 18 September 2014 - 12:20 PM.

[Lightfoot]

Only if the time advances faster than 1 to 1. Being realistic even the best MMO games only last about 8 years. MWO might beat that if it continues to grow in fun features like destructible buildings (realism is missing), pilot ejections, core breach destruction (random), as well as CW's clans and merc units. Heck MWO doesn't even have a Hrothgar model, even as a prop!!!

If time goes back to 3048 some of the Mechs will be removed others won't be available until 2018 and 3058 will be in 2024. So once the ball gets rolling the years would need to go by like 2 to1 if we go back to 3048. I don't see the need really since CW is coming out this year. It's good enough.

City of Heroes was the best MMO ever, even if it would be dated by today's standards and some Korean company who's name I can't remember bought it and cancelled it after a few years even though it had a huge fan base and was making monthly revenues that turned profits each month. They dropped it to clear server space they said. None of these MMO games do massive PvE as good as City of Heroes. Those big team PvE missions were crazy. But after 8 years it was cancelled for no good reason.