118 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

I'm going to show both my biased opinion and my clear disconnect with "fun" with the following opinion:

I've said from day-1 of discovering MW:O and this forum that PGI was making a mistake making all classes available to everyone and anyone if they had enough time (to grind) or enough money.

Everyone should have started out with 1 free medium mech of choice... Player could choose to sell it and buy a light mech or commence grinding for a heavy. Access to assaults should have been awarded based on some metric of commitment, experience and attained skill...

As it stands, there is no meaning or context... a new player can sign-up, open their wallet and within minutes be sitting in top-tier Clan mech with zero experience... It's death-match with mechs and no meaning... MW:O is a soulless shell.

Part of the problem is the "grind" is tied with currency in exclusion.... Which become tedious and boring to all but the most ardent players. The "grind" should have been tied with currency AND experience and that experience tied with access to higher-tiered tech.

In short... Grinding needed and still needs something more palpable than just "money". XP? XP is a shell-game... It just unlocks crap that most is debatable as to it's actual intrinsic value... boring.

For us Grognards... there is no journey. We are supposed to earn our way to glory, reap reward and through experience gain access to grander tech and loftier titles.... Instead we have little to look forward to than grinding toward the next piece of content.

CW? Smoke & mirrors...

No matter what lip-stick PGI puts on the pig we call Community Warfare... she's still a porker. CW is still nothing more than a candy-coating slathered over our present launch-kill-rinse-repeat prospects...

Oh, for sure planets will exchange hands... the tech lost and exchanged... Joseph might even get to rescue the Archon... but at the end of the day we're still battling in mechs few of us truly deserve and many of us have no right to be piloting.

We should have had to prove ourselves worthy and earned these mechs. Instead were handed the cow because we wanted milk...

But...but... but DaZur... What about our access to "fun"?!

Oh, I'm not saying we should not have access to all the content of MW:O... We should have been able to grind or buy whatever we wanted and bring it to Solaris.

But on the battlefield and in CW... We should have rank and we should only be able to bring the tech we earned and have the requisite skill to pilot and we should look at assaults and their pilots with reverence... Not laugh at them with contempt.

Yup... I know I'm on an island and delusional.

Edited by DaZur, 29 October 2014 - 10:22 AM.

[3rdworld]

I just don't think giving worse players worse mechs is a great idea.

[Revis Volek]

SO this is an obvious troll....or affirming your last statement.

DaZur, on 29 October 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

We should have had to prove ourselves worthy and earned these mechs. Instead were handed the cow because we wanted milk...

Please explain to me how you think i am not worthy of piloting the mechs i grinded for. Outside the clan mechs which i bought with RL money that i work HARD for by running my own business.

Would a 1v1 Suffice?....cuz im down to show how "Worthy" i am. More so then some of you im sure.....

Edited by DarthRevis, 29 October 2014 - 10:25 AM.

[DaZur]

3rdworld, on 29 October 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

I just don't think giving worse players worse mechs is a great idea.

There's two games 3W... Solaris where you con play what ever you want and the wonderful BT space opera where ones rank and experience actually mean something.

For all intent and purpose we are playing Solaris right now minus the cheering crowds and over-priced beer and peanuts...

I'm pining for that "other" game we all thought we were going to get.

[Joseph Mallan]

3rdworld, on 29 October 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

I just don't think giving worse players worse mechs is a great idea.

I'd have been out of here (I think) If I had to have started in a Hunchback in Closed Beta. I was Terribad in an Atlas a Hunch would have been worse I think.

DarthRevis, on 29 October 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

SO this is an obvious troll....or affirming your last statement.



Please explain to me how you think i am not worthy of piloting the mechs i grinded for. Outside the clan mechs which i bought with RL money that i work HARD for by running my own business.

Would a 1v1 Suffice?....cuz im down to show how "Worthy" i am. More so then some of you im sure.....

You Grinded for them. Not bought them with cash like Many of my now sold Mechs are/were. If I read DaZ post right you earned your Mechs the old fashion way and rate them.

[Mechteric]

As a F2P game they kinda have to allow for those who want to pay for the shortcut (free time isn't something many people have a lot of, and that should be accepted). At any rate I don't think you're on the right track for the problem with new players. IMO a proper set of Training modules which then guide you to your first free mech should highlight the different mech class differences so it can help drive the narrative that its not only the big assault mechs that are worth going for.

Also, matchmaker really should have separate player Elo buckets, but maybe thats another subject, or maybe its related, I dunno.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 29 October 2014 - 10:35 AM.

[DaZur]

DarthRevis, on 29 October 2014 - 10:25 AM, said:

SO this is an obvious troll....or affirming your last statement.

Please explain to me how you think i am not worthy of piloting the mechs i grinded for. Outside the clan mechs which i bought with RL money that i work HARD for by running my own business.

Would a 1v1 Suffice?....cuz im down to show how "Worthy" i am. More so then some of you im sure.....

Good lord... calm your ego for a second.

Think of Mechwarrior 1... We started in a lowly Jenner (Or was it a Locust?)... we battled, we took contract and we earned out way to loftier tech. As we progressed we earned access to better tech and with that tech cam title and exclusion.

Same thing with my day-dreaming here...

Never said you were not worthy... I'm sure you are fine pilot (A little sensitive if anything) but if we were playing out our space-opera premise... Did you earn the mech your piloting? do you have title? Are you a scourge across the BT universe?

MW:O is soulless as it stands right now... Why? When any Tom, Richard or Harry can field an Atlas or a Dashi without earning it on the battlefield... It's value is diminished and the accomplishment of piloting it is lost.

Yes, I'm asking for role-playing... and a sense of ownership and responsibility and acknowledgement of skill and dedication.

Bring that purchased Atlas or Dashi to Solaris and battle it out without care or consequence. But when you drop into CW and participate in the space-opera... You should be piloting what you earned the right to pilot.

Edited by DaZur, 29 October 2014 - 10:46 AM.

[3rdworld]

DaZur, on 29 October 2014 - 10:26 AM, said:

There's two games 3W... Solaris where you con play what ever you want and the wonderful BT space opera where ones rank and experience actually mean something.

For all intent and purpose we are playing Solaris right now minus the cheering crowds and over-priced beer and peanuts...

I'm pining for that "other" game we all thought we were going to get.

But your CW, you talk about only letting people pilot what they have earned the right to. Now lets say SwK attacks group X. If group X isn't 1 of 2 other units, you are not only going to be out skilled by a large margin, you will now have to fight against us in inferior machines. That seems to be narrowing the skill curve, where anyone on the upper end of the curve is going to be playing at a huge advantage, not only in skill but in mech tech. Not a great idea in my opinion.

There used to be a player ran event a while back when highlanders roamed freely, called Proxis. This added in a dynamic cost mechanic associated with the mechs you used. A team could win economically by destroying a couple of costly machines etc. We ended up quitting because we could take the full highlander team, and generally not lose a mech in the fight. Teams were now at a skill disadvantage and an equipment disadvantage. It turned into teams trying to bum rush us to destroy a single highlander which cost more than all 12 of theirs combined. It is a great idea on paper and fighting apples against apples. But Apples often fight oranges.

I don't think you have a poor idea. But I simply think limiting tech to skill level is a bad idea for the aforementioned reasons. Something to strive towards is a great idea. I am all for it, and I like your idea in general, just not the particulars of the execution.

Joseph Mallan, on 29 October 2014 - 10:28 AM, said:

I'd have been out of here (I think) If I had to have started in a Hunchback in Closed Beta. I was Terribad in an Atlas a Hunch would have been worse I think.

Na CB was hunchback heaven. They were one of the strongest chassis available (until engine caps that is).

Edited by 3rdworld, 29 October 2014 - 10:45 AM.

[Kirkland Langue]

I've been saying for a long time that Players should all have started out at the bottom and the EXP system should have been to level up the Tonnage which a player can pilot. That way PGI could have implemented Repair and Rearm without people going balistics because you could easily scale it so that lights/mediums make money and Assaults lose money (unless they do well).

The availability of every mech to every player is probably the single worst decision which PGI made.

[DaZur]

3rdworld, on 29 October 2014 - 10:40 AM, said:

I don't think you have a poor idea. But I simply think limiting tech to skill level is a bad idea for the aforementioned reasons. Something to strive towards is a great idea. I am all for it, and I like your idea in general, just not the particulars of the execution.

Oh to be sure there would need to be balance metric to suss out... And I'm clearly just spit-balling in a hazy funk.. But you know, ideas spring eternal.

[3rdworld]

DaZur, on 29 October 2014 - 10:49 AM, said:

[/size]
Oh to be sure there would need to be balance metric to suss out... And I'm clearly just spit-balling in a hazy funk.. But you know, ideas spring eternal.

For sure. Something where when you loaded into a match people when (oh ****, he has an X) is a great idea. Like wearing a title that meant (I am a total bad ass). Instead of what we have now: LoL he paid $500 for a robot!

[TLBFestus]

It's a nice dream, but that's all it is.

No way in HeII they are going to tell all the players now that "Sorry, you can't use your big mechs until you grind your way up to them now".

I suppose you could grandfather in all the existing player base somehow, but that would just lead to a very unbalanced situation.

[DaZur]

3rdworld, on 29 October 2014 - 10:54 AM, said:

For sure. Something where when you loaded into a match people went (oh ****, he has an X) is a great idea. Like wearing a title that meant (I am a total bad ass). Instead of what we have now: LoL he paid $500 for a robot!

Exactly...

[Danghen Woolf]

DaZur,

I agree with you that pilots should have some sort of metric to determine the class they can play. I have never liked the three mech grind for efficiencies and I think it would be nice to see a more general XP pool. I would keep a mech XP pool as well but it would be more refined to a chassis. So it would be an overall HBK pool, or LCT pool, or AS7 pool. As a pilot increases in XP they shoul have the option to unlock access to heavier classes or unlock abilities for classes that are unlocked. Sort of similar to the additional rules in TT of specializations for pilots for weapons and classes.

[DaZur]

TLBFestus, on 29 October 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

It's a nice dream, but that's all it is.

Sadly... I know this. But we can dream...

And who knows, Maybe a persistent game-mode one "elects" to participate could spring from it.?

[3rdworld]

DaZur, on 29 October 2014 - 10:56 AM, said:

Exactly...

What about unlocking variants that were literally the exact same as the other variants, but had killer names and paint schemes? So if you unlocked the atlas "primarch", you would get a D-DC with a unique name and unique paint scheme. So people that came into the game would see you had that mech, and would immediately know that you are damn good with it.


Sort of like if a hero and a champion mech had a baby, and only people good enough could unlock it.

With something like that you could start a skill curve, like the easiest is unlock A, then unlocking B is a bit harder, than someone in X you know is a beast.

Edited by 3rdworld, 29 October 2014 - 11:06 AM.

[Votanin FleshRender]

Gotta admit it's disheartening when the 3 Dire Wolves on your team combine for 300 damage, or less. Assaults averaging under 100 was something I saw with painful regularity during the tournament. And also, I'm not so sure bigger is always better...

That said, hiding bigger mechs behind a "skill" wall isn't going to help the already terrible player retention level. When I was new, playing the bigger trial mechs, esp the STK, were the ONLY mechs I had ANY amount of success in. If I hadn't been allowed to play them, I'm dead certain I would have quit if I was forced to stick with the mediums and lights that I was terrible with. (Well, for lights change that "was" to a "still am").

[Pendraco]

I get what your saying, But I like the way it is. Truly good pilots ARE feared on the battlefield, regaurdless of the Mech they are driving.

[Xtrekker]

MWO is poorly designed and poorly planned, clearly never planned past the 6 month mark. It is concept patch upon patch that unfortunately cannot be changed because the precedent has been set and real money has been spent. There is no way PGI is going to implement any kind of change that involves rethinking the system beyond things we haven't seen or background balance/cost edits.

What NEEDS to happen, in my humble opinion, is a ground-zero reboot. I'd call it "MechWarrior Online: Redemption" because it's appropriate.

Then give current MWO players the opportunity to port their account to the new game, with a translated sum of MC, subscription time, in-game credits (c-bills), and XP/GXP waiting for you to begin anew.

MWO is a corpse, and we're merely the flies. They can poke their dev sticks at it all they like -- it ain't movin'.

[Blakkstar]

DaZur, on 29 October 2014 - 10:18 AM, said:

But on the battlefield and in CW... We should have rank and we should only be able to bring the tech we earned and have the requisite skill to pilot and we should look at assaults and their pilots with reverence... Not laugh at them with contempt.

Yup... I know I'm on an island and delusional.

So what's your actual solution? It's easy to complain, but a bit more difficult to come up with a viable alternative that works within the confines of the working game model and economy.

I'm not sure what "earned" means either. Kai Allard Liao, arguably the best Mechwarrior in Battletech lore, pilots a Centurion. Diana Pryde switched from a Warhark to a Nova. Atlases and Banshees are favored by the incompetent Steiner social officer corps. The weight class of a mech doesn't really have any bearing on the skill of the pilot.