402 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

Roland, on 02 January 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

But it's like they never even checked out any of that stuff, which is just weird.

Chronojam, on 02 January 2014 - 01:49 PM, said:

As you said, it's like they never even checked out any of that stuff, which is just weird.

Was it their position at the time that they couldn't find this stuff in older games? It is just weird.

[xhrit]

Roland, on 02 January 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

Now, in reality, the raven wasn't a powerhouse when it came to combat... We had some excellent raven pilots who killed their share of heavier mechs all the time, but the POINT of the raven wasn't to kill mechs.

In those games, the point of the raven was to provide sensors and intel on the enemy unit.

This is exactly how I use my raven. I have personally never scored more then 6 kills in a raven. But I would like to think I helped the other mechs in my lance score their 8+ kills.

Roland, on 02 January 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

However, the point remains that for many folks, the notion of "role warfare" means more than simply "any mech can kill any other mech". Don't get me wrong, the fact that light mechs can seriously challenge an assault mech is definitely a GOOD thing... but it's not really a complete implementation of "role warfare". But then again, I don't think Russ really understood what role warfare was, since he seemed to think that it didn't exist in prior mechwarrior titles, when it most definitely did.

It existed, but not really in pugs. Puretech was for gentleman. Everyone else ran a poptart alphaboat. Which is funnily enough pretty much the opposite of MWO, where you are far more likely to find puretech in a pug then in a premade.

Roland, on 02 January 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

Back in MW4, we had matches that lasted an hour.... Yeah, seriously, an HOUR of constant maneuvering all over the place, engaging, disengaging, and re-engaging.

I am sure matches would last hours here if there was no time limit. It is debatable if that would be a good thing or not. I would be open to having custom timelimit in custom matchs or CW assaults, but not something I think should be in a public que. I did not play MW4 much, but there were fights that went on for the weeks in MUX; that was on open world style community warfare type campaign maps tho. The instanced matches in the sims and arenas were far more popular, and those maps were much smaller and for the most part had fairly short time limits.

Edited by xhrit, 02 January 2014 - 04:58 PM.

[Roland]

Deathlike, on 02 January 2014 - 02:05 PM, said:

Was it their position at the time that they couldn't find this stuff in older games? It is just weird.

Honestly, like I said, I had assumed that they were well aware of the old NR planetary leagues, since their original description for CW seemed to be very similar to what we had done in those leagues.

If you look at a lot of the top players in MWO, you'll find that many of them are actually the players from those same MW4 leagues. I think that most of the folks from back in the day just assumed that CW was going to basically be what we had in those leagues in terms of fighting over planets and economics, but polished beyond what we did.

But that's what has so many old player so incredibly disillusioned at this point.. because we have LESS in MWO then we had back in MW4, despite the fact that all of the CW stuff in MW4 was developed by a few guys in their spare time, using 1990's era technology on the web.

Go look at NBT... we had the entire IS and clanspace modeled, every single planet. Units had their own warchests and military equipment... we had a functional economy where you'd buy and maintain your garrisons.. we had numerous different types of military operations that could be launched on enemy holdings, from scouting parties to guerilla raids, to planetary assaults... We had dropships, where you had to move your forces around through space to get your forces to where they needed to be for various assaults. We had mercenary contracts, and pirates, etc.

And it was all done by like two guys, in php, with absolutely NO outside funding. A whole simulation of the struggles in the Inner Sphere, that only used one game type (Team Deathmatch).

It looks like it's mostly gone now, since the league was retired, but you can see what was once there in the description of the starmap.

Quote

NBT-HARDCORE DYNAMIC STARMAP

“The galaxy at your fingertips.” Fully zoomable, it is auto-updated, showing all current planet owners, battles, and factories. The Unit Leader version (accessed through your admin pages) allows viewing of current ‘Mech, Jumpship and Charge Station placements. Each has a Detail Window available that shows further information on the planets within a 60 lightyear radius. The map is best viewed in 1024x768 or higher. Programmed by Suthendale and Phoenix Creation.

[KarbonKopy]

That would have been so cool to have them take the field at random to attack both teams!

[WM Jeri]

StandingCow, on 27 December 2013 - 05:48 AM, said:

How anybody could not approve of mint's post is.. mind boggling. We all thought the introduction of clan mechs would be something epic, not JUST a sale...and I actually think that if PGI had their way they might have done something like this, maybe?

IMO, based on everything I have heard.. IGP is really hurting any chance this game had of being awesome, all in the name of monetizing.

I know totally agree and Mint's idea would have had a very nominal cost! I mean programming in the mechs basically they already play the dev salaries and word of mouth can be the worst or the best advertising out there!

It really was a missed opportunity but as others have said they still have the potential to redeem themselves and do something along the lines of what Mint suggested.

[Nekki Basara]

While you are correct that would defeat the purpose of community warfare.

[Gyrok]

So...about those clans...?

Yeah...

...

?!

[Deathlike]

Roland, on 02 January 2014 - 02:45 PM, said:

Honestly, like I said, I had assumed that they were well aware of the old NR planetary leagues, since their original description for CW seemed to be very similar to what we had done in those leagues.

If you look at a lot of the top players in MWO, you'll find that many of them are actually the players from those same MW4 leagues. I think that most of the folks from back in the day just assumed that CW was going to basically be what we had in those leagues in terms of fighting over planets and economics, but polished beyond what we did.

But that's what has so many old player so incredibly disillusioned at this point.. because we have LESS in MWO then we had back in MW4, despite the fact that all of the CW stuff in MW4 was developed by a few guys in their spare time, using 1990's era technology on the web.

Go look at NBT... we had the entire IS and clanspace modeled, every single planet. Units had their own warchests and military equipment... we had a functional economy where you'd buy and maintain your garrisons.. we had numerous different types of military operations that could be launched on enemy holdings, from scouting parties to guerilla raids, to planetary assaults... We had dropships, where you had to move your forces around through space to get your forces to where they needed to be for various assaults. We had mercenary contracts, and pirates, etc.

And it was all done by like two guys, in php, with absolutely NO outside funding. A whole simulation of the struggles in the Inner Sphere, that only used one game type (Team Deathmatch).

It looks like it's mostly gone now, since the league was retired, but you can see what was once there in the description of the starmap.

I wasn't involved in NBT, but some people may remember me from a slightly earlier time in a different league (that went essentially defunct for one reason or another). I have a pretty good idea that people can accomplish a "close enough" CW in their spare time. I completely believe you.

The thing is that I'm woefully disappointed that people that are paid to do this aren't even doing anything about it. So many CW aspects could have been tested in beta with free feedback, and w/o the beta tag, everyone will be equally suffering the effects of... whatever/whenever they decide to put out. It is completely mindboggling.

[Fut]

xhrit, on 02 January 2014 - 01:40 PM, said:

That is exactly what role warfare is, as defined by PGI in their dev videos. Any other notions as to what Role Warfare was supposed to be are extraneous.

Not quite.
According to an older Dev Post, there should have been 4 separate Roles in this game: Scout, Defender, Assault, & Command.

Quote

Role Warfare is a term used for applying in-game mechanics and features, which assist a player in optimizing the game for their style of gameplay.

There are 4 basic types of gameplay roles in any team based game. These are the common roles found in military conflicts between two or more forces, and are similar to a chess game in terms of how they play out on the battlefield. The four roles are:

Scouting – Gathering information as a reconnaissance/stealth unit that gets relayed back to the rest of the friendly force.
Defense – The defender holds the ground gained by the offensive forces and protects those in need.
Assault – The assault role is for the tactical forward units whose primary role is to seek and destroy.
Command – The command role is split into two different levels, lance and company. Lance command falls to those in charge of up to 3 other players and assist in coordinated attacks on key targets. The company commander utilizes the 2 other lance commanders and all information being relayed back to him to make global calls on the battlefield.

Dev Blog 3 - Role Warfare

Currently we have 1 Role - Assault - and that sort of does everything. Regardless of what Mech you're in, what load-out you have, what modules you use, your only role on the team is to seek and destroy. Is it not?

So tell me again how Role Warfare is "Spot On" as you put it...

Edited by Fut, 03 January 2014 - 06:50 AM.

[Nekki Basara]

It can be argued that Information Warfare is the Scouting sub-pillar, which means they kind of have half of Role Warfare working!

I am stretching here.

[Roland]

Way back in the day, the "role warfare" stuff included different modules that you could fit to your mechs, to enable various stuff that was specific to various roles. Those 4 roles each had what were effectively separate "trees" that had different modules for them.

All that stuff kind of got thrown out the window though at some point... I know that at least for the assault role, they had described things like various charging and melee attacks, which all became moot when they disabled collisions.

[Fut]

Nekki Basara, on 03 January 2014 - 07:02 AM, said:

It can be argued that Information Warfare is the Scouting sub-pillar, which means they kind of have half of Role Warfare working!

I am stretching here.

Definitely a stretch with this one, but I've got to agree with you - There is a touch of Role Warfare in the game, but it's nowhere near what it should/could be, and not what the Devs originally claimed it would be.

It's really too bad that the Devs didn't make Info-War all that it could have been, eh?

Roland, on 03 January 2014 - 07:06 AM, said:

Way back in the day, the "role warfare" stuff included different modules that you could fit to your mechs, to enable various stuff that was specific to various roles. Those 4 roles each had what were effectively separate "trees" that had different modules for them.

All that stuff kind of got thrown out the window though at some point... I know that at least for the assault role, they had described things like various charging and melee attacks, which all became moot when they disabled collisions.

It's really too bad that they threw all that awesome stuff out. It's almost like they took the lazy way out of all of this; Plan a really big and extravagant game, then trim it back and back until it's "minimally viable" (ie. It works, and people can fight each other in bigass robots).

This game is still fun, but it could have been amazing.

Edited by Fut, 03 January 2014 - 08:31 AM.

[Nekki Basara]

But things were going so well for a bit there!

[GODzillaGSPB]

Destined, on 03 January 2014 - 09:00 AM, said:

You guys are terrible, stop being terrible.

I hope you mean those who bicker in their own personal disputes, because the critique...it does not come from the vast emptiness of space you know?

[Chronojam]

Always so considerate, honeybear~

[fil5000]

This exchange is going to trigger someone's diabetes.

[xhrit]

Roland, on 03 January 2014 - 07:06 AM, said:

Way back in the day, the "role warfare" stuff included different modules that you could fit to your mechs, to enable various stuff that was specific to various roles. Those 4 roles each had what were effectively separate "trees" that had different modules for them.

All that stuff kind of got thrown out the window though at some point...

As far as I know, they are still planning on putting more stuff in the game. For instance, role specific modules are planned to be added via the player level overhaul.

Fut, on 03 January 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

It's really too bad that they threw all that awesome stuff out. It's almost like they took the lazy way out of all of this; Plan a really big and extravagant game, then trim it back and back until it's "minimally viable" (ie. It works, and people can fight each other in bigass robots).

This game is still fun, but it could have been amazing.

I agree the game is fun, but it could still be amazing if we give them time. Make it work, then make it work right. That is not the lazy way, that is the most effective way to create software. If you interpret this phrase in terms of business needs, not coding standards this means :

1. Meet the minimum requirements for the business to call project a success. (Make it work.)
2. Add all the bells and whistles to make the program less prone to error and more feature rich. (Make it right.)

Phase 2 is where this game will transcend fun and become amazing.

Perfection must be reached by degrees; she requires the slow hand of time. - Voltaire

Edited by xhrit, 03 January 2014 - 03:26 PM.

[and zero]

mint frog, on 18 December 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

This was an account of what could have been. It was written with bittersweet memories of long nights where mumble was packed with lances and eight-mans, eager to play a game that we were all excited to see succeed. Everyone makes mistakes, but only some people have the maturity and internal strength to turn those mistakes into lessons. Take pride in what you do, because if you don't, someone will come along and show everyone they can do it better.

So sad

[Fuerchtegott]

Somehow I have the feeling the lost opportunity was in the communications department.

[fil5000]

Fuerchtegott, on 07 January 2014 - 04:28 AM, said:

[color=#A4A4A4]| system : TI-30X II S | memory : 5 | display : 11/10+2 |[/color]

That is a seriously sweet rig.