Rhent, on 04 August 2014 - 07:53 AM, said:
There already was a Mechwarrior game that had Houses, Star Maps and the ability to direct your forces to conquer your enemy territory, it was called Multi-Player Battletech back in 1994 and it worked very well. All combat should have a reason. When you get an email asking everyone to log in at 2:30am to do a push into the enemies heartland, it was fun as hell doing it. And it kept people playing.
That system was a product of the handicaps of that hardware generation.
You are still talking about a system based around mech-on-mech combat in Team Solaris. You simply had a 'meta' that gave more rhyme and reason to the matches.
But it was still a very limited system and would be considered a band-aid for a true 'online' gaming experience in what is already considered an insult to the term 'online gaming' within today's standards.
Quote
Pointless battles for grins does nothing. Its the same game but now with grindable CW points, Yippie! I can get a slightly better module that increases weapon damage etc. And yes, that is my prediction on what CW will give us, slightly better modules based on our CW House rank. Eff that.
Think Command&Conquer: Renegade meets ARMA 3 in the BattleTech universe.
That is what MWO coulda-shoulda-woulda been, and you could have had a game where any player of any skill level who could figure out how to function with the game's controls could contribute to the team without the team feeling 'let down' or 'frustrated' with the 'noob.'
The 'deathmatch' environment places far too much emphasis on the competitive 'ruin other people' drive. While there is a place for that - there is literally no role for a 'casual' player within the grand scheme of the game. Even in 'directed deathmatch' games - there's really little/no point for scouts. You know how many enemies there are, and the only real reason to use a scout is because one chooses to fight quickly and nimbly.
Which means the idea that 'scout' mechs are 'scout' mechs simply can't be applied. Mechs like the locust are a 'for teh lulz' mech that can never have any realized purpose in 'serious' gameplay. A casual player could never interact with competitive players in a game that focuses on matched team battles. Not without pissing everyone off because the only way to 'succeed' is to destroy the enemy.
Only rarely are there gratifying gameplay moments in this model. You are basically playing to -not- lose. You are not playing to accomplish any kind of objective (even within the 'directed deathmatch') you are simply playing because you don't want to lose. There are a few times where there are some pretty epic battles between the last few players that are worth watching and have both teams holding their breath (so people can leave the game feeling like the trip into the match was worth it) - but even if you were to append a 'territory' system to the game, you would still be 'dropping' to 'not lose' as part of a 'territory grind.'
It would be a little more engaging if there were guild/corps systems in place that allowed a little more interesting interaction (a simple 'spreadsheet' browser based game called AstroEmpires, years ago, proved that you could have very complicated political environments arise all on their own with simple guild systems and little more) - but games like this are difficult to set up to support such 'open ended' guild interactions (since there isn't a 'strategic' component to the player's game with serial-deathmatch).
The best way to go about things is to have a persistent set of maps/servers where players join wars in progress that give an actual sense of both strategic and tactical success/failure. You allow players to organize their own lances/stars, and you have 'trial mechs' for the different factions equate to 'free' mechs that players get to ride around in. Perhaps you could mix things up a bit by allowing people to operate vehicles and even command infantry squads (that would require some AI programming that might not be all that great of an idea... and it also might require some artistic liberty with how infantry would work to give a sense of relevance for the individual player).
Working from a base like ARMA 3 - it's entirely plausible to have a game cover that scope. The main limitation would be the server-side ability to host concurrent player connections. I would argue that with the scale of terrain we are talking (hundreds of square kilometers, easily) and the variation of styles - a server network supporting over 500 connections per instanced map would be advisable.
It could be done, RealVirtuality4 can theoretically support over 255 concurrent connections ... though you are looking at some pretty insane virtual machine setups to be able to run that....... but, again, if you only plan to have 10-20 instances of maps running at any given time - then it is doable on a modest budget and servers can be rented for special events or to tithe the game over until more hardware can be purchased (if the game expands).
2
