277 replies to this topic

[Rhaythe]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2014 - 11:02 AM, said:

If MW was near as shallow learning curve as Hawken, that might almost have worked, too, lol.  (Ditto Titanfall, where you have a very good tutorial, even if the game itself is just not my style)

Tell me about it. Give me Notepad, some Lua scripting, and two weeks. They have the turrets implemented. It would not be hard to script up a generic tutorial that involved blasting those thigns to get to an objective.

[Rhaythe]

COMPUTER: "Nav point alpha - reached."

SARGE: "Okay, you've reached Nav alpha. Good job. If you hit your R key, you'll notice a turret in the distance. Don't worry, you're out of its range. It can't hit you. Now, your mech is equipped with Long Range Missles. Hover your targetting reticle over that turret until you hear the lock on tone. Then... let'em have it!!"

COMPUTER: BLEEEEEP

*whoosh whoosh whoosh*

SARGE: "Not bad, kid. Move to Nav Beta. We have a couple more of these things to take care of..."

[meteorol]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

Hint... it didn't work because you put an easily exploitable 75% repair and rearm mechanics into the game, and gamers are going to exploit whatever you let them exploit. Remove that, balance rewards vs risk a little more, and you had yet another great balancer to keep people from running maxtech every match....

I liked how the matches were played back in CB with R&R enabled, but to be honest, when balancing the game through costs and earnings, there is a huge elephant in the room:
Premium time and hero mechs.
A player using both gets a 80% CBill bonus. Using something a paying player can get a flat-out 80% bonus on to balance the game asks for trouble. This is dancing really close to the fire, and IMO part of the reason PGI took it out of the game.

80% difference in income is huge. Finding the right balance for R&R costs with a difference of up to 80% depending on how much you pay won't be a cakewalk. Having the reputation of a P2W game is really nothing any F2P game wants to have. Balancing stuff over costs and earning while selling premium time, hero mechs and Cbills can really get you into hot water.

[Dymlos2003]

Rhaythe, on 09 May 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

COMPUTER: "Nav point alpha - reached."

SARGE: "Okay, you've reached Nav alpha. Good job. If you hit your R key, you'll notice a turret in the distance. Don't worry, you're out of its range. It can't hit you. Now, your mech is equipped with Long Range Missles. Hover your targetting reticle over that turret until you hear the lock on tone. Then... let'em have it!!"

COMPUTER: BLEEEEEP

*whoosh whoosh whoosh*

SARGE: "Not bad, kid. Move to Nav Beta. We have a couple more of these things to take care of..."

Change Sarge to Dead Eye

[Creovex]

Barantor, on 09 May 2014 - 09:48 AM, said:

It was and it ended up leading to the splatcats which is why srm spread was nerfed.

One group of them isn't so bad, 6 srm6s before ghost heat and that grouping was devastating.

Awww... I miss early beta

[Rhaythe]

Dymlos2003, on 09 May 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

Change Sarge to Dead Eye

Ah, you read it in his voice, too. Excellent. Mechwarrior 2: Mercs player, detected.

[Bishop Steiner]

meteorol, on 09 May 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

I liked how the matches were played back in CB with R&R enabled, but to be honest, when balancing the game through costs and earnings, there is a huge elephant in the room:
Premium time and hero mechs.
A player using both gets a 80% CBill bonus. Using something a paying player can get a flat-out 80% bonus on to balance the game asks for trouble. This is dancing really close to the fire, and IMO part of the reason PGI took it out of the game.

80% difference in income is huge. Finding the right balance for R&R costs with a difference of up to 80% depending on how much you pay won't be a cakewalk. Having the reputation of a P2W game is really nothing any F2P game wants to have. Balancing stuff over costs and earning while selling premium time, hero mechs and Cbills can really get you into hot water.

would have been simple enough to simply reduce the rewards for heros. Founders I think were fine, since it was a special reward for 4 chassis, for the guys that made MWo actually possible (and it ain't like any of the 4 are considered premiere chassis by now).

Especially when one was earning millions per match, a 30% boost was overkill. But it's telling, IMO, that as a person who ran an XL Centy AH (back when nobody liked Centys period), I was sitting at nearly a Billion Cbills before each wipe. Heck, Wispy had filled his Mechbay with like 20 AWS-8Qs, because with their old shiny skin, he liked how they looked.

The biggest myth was that you couldn't make money in RnR era CB. The only way you ran into that was by being the guy who felt he had to run maxtech, every match. And Cost was actually a very good balancer, because very few people minmaxxed every mech during that era. And yet, unless you ran an XL that got popped or a ALRM boat, you should just about never have lost money.

Did the numbers need tuning? Absolutely, I think I said that. But the concept was sound, it was the execution that was flawed.

[Rhaythe]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

The biggest myth was that you couldn't make money in RnR era CB.   The only way you ran into that was by being the guy who felt he had to run maxtech, every match.  And Cost was actually a very good balancer, because very few people minmaxxed every mech during that era.  And yet, unless you ran an XL that got popped or a ALRM boat, you should just about never have lost money.

Not to mention there was the inherent penalty of running off like an idiot and getting yourself dismantled with R&R. Death had meaning.

[Trauglodyte]

Hell, I mis the fact that it used to rain on Forrest Colony. Now, it is just drab and boring with a lot of arch humping. But, things to point out:

- the Awesome acting all out of balance after he had his torso shaved off
- the wonderful PPC graphics
- I miss the blue thermal (give me a module, I'll take it, or give me the option to change it like cockpit glass)
- the old graphics were beautiful but I understand them going; still miss them, though
- Atlas glowing eyes (miss those too)
- the general overlay was REALLY nice but took up too much on screen graphics space

I like where our game is currently. It isn't as pretty but I'll take more people playing vs. less. But, there is a lot from Beta that I'd really like to have back in the game.

[L Y N X]

I would like to hear what happened to the support dev team on UI 2.0 that were supposedly said to continue to work on UI2.0 and improve it? I suspect that all resources w/i PGI walls are so consumed modelling Clan Mechs that no work is being accomplished on UI or CW.

[Agent of Change]

Rhaythe, on 09 May 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

Not to mention there was the inherent penalty of running off like an idiot and getting yourself dismantled with R&R. Death had meaning.

Yup, and it made a good way to discourage people from bad behaviour, D/C? Twink build? Being a ****? prepared to be cored but only once we've stripped both arms a leg and your ST's if you aren't running an XL.

I genuinely miss R&R, yeah it's implementation was inept, but it could have been fixed and having something was better than the nothing we ended up with.

[Rhaythe]

7ynx, on 09 May 2014 - 11:20 AM, said:

I would like to hear what happened to the support dev team on UI 2.0 that were supposedly said to continue to work on UI2.0 and improve it?   I suspect that all resources w/i PGI walls are so consumed modelling Clan Mechs that no work is being accomplished on UI or CW.

Programmers do not do art assets. Trust me. I'm a programmer. You don't want me touching Maya or 3D Studio Max.

[Merrick]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

would have been simple enough to simply reduce the rewards for heros. Founders I think were fine, since it was a special reward for 4 chassis, for the guys that made MWo actually possible (and it ain't like any of the 4 are considered premiere chassis by now).

Especially when one was earning millions per match, a 30% boost was overkill. But it's telling, IMO, that as a person who ran an XL Centy AH (back when nobody liked Centys period), I was sitting at nearly a Billion Cbills before each wipe. Heck, Wispy had filled his Mechbay with like 20 AWS-8Qs, because with their old shiny skin, he liked how they looked.

The biggest myth was that you couldn't make money in RnR era CB. The only way you ran into that was by being the guy who felt he had to run maxtech, every match. And Cost was actually a very good balancer, because very few people minmaxxed every mech during that era. And yet, unless you ran an XL that got popped or a ALRM boat, you should just about never have lost money.

Did the numbers need tuning? Absolutely, I think I said that. But the concept was sound, it was the execution that was flawed.

I have always been an Atlas pilot, even back then, and if i could make over 100,000,000 cbills back then driving the biggest target on the battlefield, anyone should have been able too

[Chemie]

Barantor, on 09 May 2014 - 09:48 AM, said:

It was and it ended up leading to the splatcats which is why srm spread was nerfed.

One group of them isn't so bad, 6 srm6s before ghost heat and that grouping was devastating.

You sound like Paul. Splat cats were powerful and a good counter to poptarting but could be easily dealt with. Sure, a baddie could let them wander behind them and bust their back but that is not the splatcats fault.,

[Fut]

Rhaythe, on 09 May 2014 - 11:17 AM, said:

Not to mention there was the inherent penalty of running off like an idiot and getting yourself dismantled with R&R. Death had meaning.

That's one of my biggest gripes at the moment... Being destroyed in game has no negative effects at all.
It's what's making new players lazy with learning the game. A kid learns not to touch the stove because it hurts - dying in MWO should hurt a little.

Bring back R&R!

[L Y N X]

Rhaythe, on 09 May 2014 - 11:21 AM, said:

Programmers do not do art assets. Trust me. I'm a programmer. You don't want me touching Maya or 3D Studio Max.

I am also a Software Engineer and not an artist, but I want Artists to do the art, unless they can learn how to program and how to integrate those resources, I'm fairly certain programmers are involved in the integration of said art resources into the code.

[SweetJackal]

Bishop Steiner, on 09 May 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

(Hint... it didn't work because you put an easily exploitable 75% repair and rearm mechanics into the game, and gamers are going to exploit whatever you let them exploit. Remove that, balance rewards vs risk a little more, and you had yet another great balancer to keep people from running maxtech every match.... except of course too many of the UberComp Players feel entitled to run MaxTech with no risk. Imagine had PGI stayed the course..... now instead of using private lobbies to do stock mechs, we would probably see private lobbies with no xp and rewards and no risk, for the High Elo Comp crowd, who simply want to minmax everything..... which would actually have made a lot more bloody sense)

I'm going to have to disagree with you on a massive scale with this.

Normally I wouldn't have had a problem with Repair And Rearm, in a traditional game and business model. Being that, you buy the game and/or paid a subscription fee. The problem with the very basics of Repair And Rearm is that it put an economic counterweight to higher-tech/greater-impact equipment to the point of being able to net a negative income in a Free To Play business model that included CBill boosts.

To put it simply, Premium Players could pay to spend more time, or all their time, in MaxTech Mechs. Most Free Players couldn't, they would have to grind out CBills in LowTech Mechs to be able to afford to field their MaxTech Mechs. Premium Players are matched against Free Players, meaning that Premium Players are paying to spend more time in MaxTech Mechs to face down LowTech Mechs.

(I'm going to ignore the argument that "The best Free Players could use MaxTech and net Positive incomes all the time." All that statement is saying is that the players with the better skills should also get the better numbers in their mechanics to make them even better against their scrub opponents. At which point, is it the skill winning or the better numbers they have been 'blessed' with?)

In essence, Boosts attached to Mechs or Premium Time lessened or removed the Counterweight applied to MaxTech by Repair and Rearm. This meant that Premium Players could pay for the advantage of MaxTech, something that I was against and spelled out in a very long analysis long before R&R was put into the game. Though I think we can guess how much the original Closed Beta Group was listened to when it came to detailed high concept analysis.

R&R also punished attempts to minimize pinpoint damage. If it was in the game today it would cost you more money if you Torso Twisted in the match to spread the damage out as much as possible.

Repair and Rearm could have been done very well but there were many points in design that were flat out pitfalls, things that would create a harmful environment to the game, promote negative behavior from players and punish or tax growth in player skills and PGI managed to nail every last one of them on the head.

It would have required a redesign from the ground up, not just patchwork to fix the abuse. Dropping the entire system was a far easier means of stopping the bleeding as well as a means of holding onto their pride by blaming the players for it not working rather than their own design.

[Rhaythe]

7ynx, on 09 May 2014 - 11:24 AM, said:

I am also a Software Engineer and not an artist, but I want Artists to do the art, unless they can learn how to program and how to integrate those resources, I'm fairly certain programmers are involved in the integration of said art resources into the code.

Eh. In this case, I'd imagine programmers are involved with the quirks system. Beyond that, subclass Mech.h, open it up to Python and XML to set some variables, and be done with it. If heavy coding is involved with adding a new mech chassis, then someone didn't code their interfaces correctly.

Edited by Rhaythe, 09 May 2014 - 11:28 AM.

[WarHippy]

Trauglodyte, on 09 May 2014 - 11:19 AM, said:

Hell, I mis the fact that it used to rain on Forrest Colony. Now, it is just drab and boring with a lot of arch humping. But, things to point out:

- the wonderful PPC graphics
- I miss the blue thermal (give me a module, I'll take it, or give me the option to change it like cockpit glass)
- Atlas glowing eyes (miss those too)

I really miss Predator vision and glowing eyes. I will never forgive them and I will never forget.

[Peter2k]

Just chiming to add:
Yes it used to be so full of potential, didn't it?
Why did graphics come down on very high? On my old comp in closed Beta, I switched settings to low, later I bought a new one, cranked them up to very high and it looked great.
Now it looks on very high like it used to on medium or something.

And people that haven't seen this live are always complaining that they don't understand why us veterans are so worked up for.

It's so simple, it was buggy, but it had so much potential.
Now I played the same game for 2 years now, core combat is still fun, but everything else is still the same.
What did realy change over 2 years? A few more maps, gamemodes that are realy too similar in many matches, and grinding for the next mech.
MM seems to be borked still after so many tries, things seem to get worse that are important to many, while we get a little eye candy here and there, and a load of mechs.
So much potential, WASTED.
Too bad.
I want them to make a product that screams buy me, but now, it's wait and see if I invest ever again.
I bet CW will be not only realy bugged, but also extremely dissappointing. Sigh