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Transcript in Spoiler:
Spoiler
Darren: Hey everyone, this is Darren, also known as Bombadil from No Guts, No Galaxy, and I'd like to welcome you to the Mechwarrior Online Dev Vlog #9. This is our chance to get the know the devs and hear directly from them on the past, present, and future of Mechwarrior Online. In this episode we'll chat with Russ about the upcoming changes to the Inner Sphere quirk system, get some community warfare updates from Paul, and catch a few glimpses at what's going on behind the scenes at PGI.
Let's jump right in with an interview with Russ Bullock, President of Piranha Games. Russ, what did you set out to achieve with the update to the Inner Sphere quirk system?
Russ Bullock: Well, I think it was necessary to to fulfill a couple of goals. Mechwarrior Online is a very ambitious project. I mean we can compare it to past Mechwarrior games as much as we want, whether they were the classic Mechwarrior titles or the online Battletech 3025 product. Mechwarrior Online has a more challenging problem to solve than any past Mechwarrior game. We are set in a year 3049 but we are not limiting the players in a multiplayer setting to one of those factions. We are allowing our players to play the Clan factions, the Inner Sphere factions, and they have to actually fight each other in a competitive way for possession of planets in community warfare. So it's very important in a competitive game, that a team of Inner Sphere mechs can fight a team of Clan mechs, and it can be balanced in a way that is really necessary to support a competitive product.
So that's kind of the highest goal. Of course underneath that we have chassis that, when you're looking at a real-time simulation game like Mechwarrior Online it's very difficult to make things play out like you've experienced in pen and paper. For instance, mechs just look a certain way. So that isn't simulated by dice rolls on pen and paper as to how hard or easy it might be to shoot the center torso. Again, that's a dice roll in pen and paper, but in our game players can put their shots where they want them. So some chassis don't play out in a real-time simulator like they do in a turn based pen and paper type product. We have to take a little extra effort in personalizing these mechs and try to keep the spirit of what it is and applying some quirks, buffs to those aspects of the mechs so that it can overcome some of those challenges it might have as a chassis.
The end goal is that now these mechs have these quirks, we'll see a far greater variety of mechs on the battlefiend because players will feel there is a far greater variety of mechs they can take out and be competitive in a match. That's good for everyone, just having a lot more, different types of mechs in the battlefield. Different strategies, how do you deal with this mech and that mech, and all the things that make Mechwarrior great, they just get enhanced by this system.
So whether you're playing solo queue, the public queue, or you're really going to participate in community warfare, it was really important for the competitiveness of those chassis to have this new quirk system.
Darren: Can you explain how the Tier list works?
Russ Bullock: Well the Tier list was established by basically players that play a lot. They are very familiar with all the chassis and they play in a very competitive way. Now not every player is a comp player, that plays competitively. Some of us play very casually and really enjoy playing in the solo queue. However, the comp players I think are kind of the canary in the mine. They might be the greatest example of min-maxing that some of us don't necessarily play that way, but still, they can sniff out what the weaknesses are and why maybe in situations it's not as competitive as another chassis. So they are quite good at being able to determine exactly what Tiers they belong in. What it means is that Tier 1 says "This is as good as a chassis gets as far as its competitiveness in the game currently. Examples being the Jenner F with the 6 medium lasers, the Ember is a very good one, the Cataphract 3D. So there are a few chassis that for various reasons like hardpoint loadouts just perform best.
And then it's very logical after that. Tier 2, 3, 4 and 5. Mech Tiers 1 and 2 are very competitive of course. 3 is still very, in the right hands, some might argue that some 3s are really 2s as they are still very good mechs. Tier 4 and 5 are mechs that some of us still really enjoy, the look of them, the feel of them, what they represent, but they just have a much harder time being competitive with them. I guess it's as simple as that. It's a ranking system of where the chassis fits in in a competitive sense. So it's not like ...it's a debatable thing. Sometimes someone will feel like a chassis should be up or down, and it's based on play style, but I think it gives us an accurate enough interpretation to put out an initial pass of the quirks.
Obviously we can do a complete reassessment once those new quirks have had a couple weeks to soak in.
Darren: How do you choose which mechs get which quirks?
Russ Bullock: Well, the Tier system of course determines how many quirks a mech gets. Tier 5 getting 5. And because Jump Jets and ECM add so much use to a product that if they had one of those items we removed a quirk. And that's how we're doing it, at least for this initial pass. So after that we separated mechs out into Brawler, Skirmisher and Support. And it's just what you think it means; Brawler is the closest range, Skirmisher is the medium range, and Support is primarily long range weapons. And so once we had a mech in a Tier and applied a category to it that made the most sense. For instance if we saw a mech with hardpoints that really lean towards long range weapons (LRMs, AC2 and further), then of course that mech would be categorized as Support. So the defaults were played out to AC20s and SRMs it would go into the Brawler category.
So, once we had them in a Tier, we had them in a category and the number of quirks they could have, then it was quite easy to apply the number of quirks it got within the category it was listed. A lot of people have asked us why we made the decisions we did, on how we categorized mechs. For instance some mechs follow logic as though we stuck to the stock loadout. If you look at the Awesome 8Q and we gave it PPC quirks. Which really makes sense from a stock perspective. But then you look at another mech and you'll see that we really didn't follow the stock loadout at all.
One example might be the stock loadout we gave the Dragon 5N(C), which uses a gauss rifle and 2 regular large lasers. Although we knew that some of the stock loadouts, or even many of the stock loadouts in our game whether champion mechs or the original stock loadouts would be not in sync with the quirks the mech had, we felt it was most important to look at the mech from the perspective of its hardpoints in relation to the rest of its variants, and try to figure out what would make the mech most competitive rather than look at what quirks make the most sense for its most stock loadout.
Sometimes the stock loadout worked..synced up very well with the quirks we thought it should have, but in other cases, when we look at the Dragons for instance, the Dragon 5N has 3 ballistic hardpoints, whereas the 1N only has a single ballistic hardpoint. So even though the champion 5N had a gauss rifle, it made a lot more sense to allow the players to make the best use of the hardpoints, and that would be the way we could move it up from Tier 5 the furthest. So in that case we decided to focus on the AC2 for the 5N and the gauss for the 1N, and there's many examples among all the mechs like that. The Centurions which come with LRM on stock loadouts was not in our opinion the best way to become competitive with a Centurion. Sure there are players that do very well with those LRM loadouts, but with the type of mech the Centurion is, it's much more of a Brawler and Skirmisher based on its mobility, profile and weapon hardpoints. So there is a lot of brawler and skirmisher weapon type of quirks rather than Support based like LRMs, which line up with its stock loadouts. So there are many examples we can go through, but that is some of the logic we used when creating these quirks.
Darren: Will there be more changes or additions to the quirk system in the future?
Russ Bullock: Absolutely. I think this initial pass was really just that. It's the initial full pass, and I think it was important for us to create a ruleset and divide the mechs into Tiers and into categories to allow us to put this huge undertaking of significant quirks into all the mechs and all the chassis. I think moving forward we'd like to do another pass on movement, mobility, torso twisting and all those other types of quirks. We've got access to more and more types than even when we began this pass. So I'd like to continue down this path to even start to personalize each chassis even more than we have currently.
And then of course the Clan mech, they are going to require a quirk pass as well, so we're definitely excited and looking forward to working on that. And I think we'll be able to move along much quicker now that we've done a significant amount of work both on the engineering side to create all the various types of quirks that we have, the game, mech editing tools we created to help this process and get this initial wave plugged in. I think it will allow us to iterate on these quirks much quicker in the future, so I think this is not only just the initial pass. I just think this quirk system is a main part of the mech building process, and Mechwarrior Online from this moment forward.
Darren: Next we'll take a quick look at the new Inner Sphere Resistance Collection, which includes the Panther light battlemech, the Enforcer medium battlemech, the Grasshopper heavy battlemech, and the Zeus assault battlemech. Also included is the bonus King Crab assault battlemech for those who purchase either the Resistance Collection Wrath pack, the Clan Invasion Masakari collection, or the Clan Invasion Wave 2 Man 'o War collection before December 16th.
The Resistance Collection also includes various rewards, such as badges, titles, faction packs, and premium time. For more details head over to http://www.mwomercs.com.
And finally, Paul, lead designer of Piranha games, gives us an updated look into the development of Community Warfare.
Paul Inouye: So, the next community warfare update. First thing I'd like to talk about is the opt-in feature of community warfare. This is the fact that you are clicking the Faction button at the top of the screen; that is you accepting the terms that you are going to be going into this role-playing, hard core mode of the Inner Sphere vs the Clans, the interior House conflicts that are going on between the Houses. There are also fights going on between the Clans, and this is your opportunity to say "yes, I want to be a part of that!"
On Day 1 you are going to be selecting a factions as soon as you click on the faction tab. It's going to bring up a series of screens that show you all the factions. It's going to give you some lore background. It'll give you a more informative method of choosing which House or which Clan you want to align with. From that point on you'll be given a set of contracts with those factions, whether it will be with a House or Clan, and those contracts have different terms. What I mean by terms just is the amount of time you'll be locked with that faction. If you accept a contract with House Davion, it could be a one month contract, a two month contract, a four month contract, you can take a one month contract and at the end of one month it will be up to you if you want to continue with House Davion, or if you want to switch to a different faction. Keep in mind that those numbers are up for tuning. We'll be watching what's going on, and taking feedback as the feature starts playing out, and we'll adjust as needed.
One of the things we can actually intertwine with what I just mentioned about faction selection is that you will be able to switch factions. This includes switching from the Inner Sphere to the Clan. The primary reason for this is we don't want to lock players in too long unless they are that die hard House loyalist or Clan loyalist, where they just have to be part of House Kurita for example for their entire experience in community warfare. That option is there, but everyone else will be able to switch. We just don't want people to be switching willy-nilly. We want people to make a conscious decision when they do that.
When it comes to interfaction combat what we're going to be dealing with is the conflicts that are happening between the Houses and between the Clans. Now that means the fighting that has been going on between House Davion and Kurita, Between Steiner and Marik, those are the inter faction conflicts that we are talking about. The other side, on the Clan side, you have Jade Falcon versus Wolf, and we have Ghost Bear and Smoke Jaguar going at it. And all players who partake in community warfare will be able to partake in those conflicts.
When it comes to taking over a planet, planets are going to be divided into what we call zones right now. That is just a placeholder name. On each planet for example, there will be 11 zones. That means in order to take over that planet, you have to capture 6 of those 11 zones. That is what an individual match is; fighting over a zone. Now, when a zone changes hands, for example if House Steiner is invading House Marik, and they are fighting over a planet that is on their border, if House Steiner takes over 6 of those zones, at the end of that flip period, which we currently have set for 24 hours, that planet will end up in House Steiner territory. Now, if House Marik defends 6 out of those 11 zones, House Marik will retain that planet and House Steiner will basically have to try attacking again.
When it comes to planetary conquest game modes, the first one we are coming out the door with that we talk about is called Invasion. That is the code name for it right now. Invasion is on an assymetric map; there is a set of objectives that are halfway through that map that have to be completed by the attackers in order to proceed into the defending territory. Inside the defending territory is a base that if the attackers are able to destroy that base, that is when they are going to win that match. Now something that is going to be happening during this game mode are a set of reinforcements that are going to be brought in through dropships. Now this is the infamous Dropship mode you've been hearing about and waiting for, which allows you to bring up to four different mechs into the match. And as you basically get your mech blown up, you'll be able to drop in with another mech of your choice from the pack of four you created before.
Darren: And that concludes the MWO Dev Vlog #9. Be sure to stay tuned for future vlogs, including more information on the development of Mechwarrior Online, community spotlights, and the exciting future of the MWO competitive scene. And on behalf of Piranha Games and No Guts, No Galaxy, thank you for watching! And until next time, MechWarriors!
Let's jump right in with an interview with Russ Bullock, President of Piranha Games. Russ, what did you set out to achieve with the update to the Inner Sphere quirk system?
Russ Bullock: Well, I think it was necessary to to fulfill a couple of goals. Mechwarrior Online is a very ambitious project. I mean we can compare it to past Mechwarrior games as much as we want, whether they were the classic Mechwarrior titles or the online Battletech 3025 product. Mechwarrior Online has a more challenging problem to solve than any past Mechwarrior game. We are set in a year 3049 but we are not limiting the players in a multiplayer setting to one of those factions. We are allowing our players to play the Clan factions, the Inner Sphere factions, and they have to actually fight each other in a competitive way for possession of planets in community warfare. So it's very important in a competitive game, that a team of Inner Sphere mechs can fight a team of Clan mechs, and it can be balanced in a way that is really necessary to support a competitive product.
So that's kind of the highest goal. Of course underneath that we have chassis that, when you're looking at a real-time simulation game like Mechwarrior Online it's very difficult to make things play out like you've experienced in pen and paper. For instance, mechs just look a certain way. So that isn't simulated by dice rolls on pen and paper as to how hard or easy it might be to shoot the center torso. Again, that's a dice roll in pen and paper, but in our game players can put their shots where they want them. So some chassis don't play out in a real-time simulator like they do in a turn based pen and paper type product. We have to take a little extra effort in personalizing these mechs and try to keep the spirit of what it is and applying some quirks, buffs to those aspects of the mechs so that it can overcome some of those challenges it might have as a chassis.
The end goal is that now these mechs have these quirks, we'll see a far greater variety of mechs on the battlefiend because players will feel there is a far greater variety of mechs they can take out and be competitive in a match. That's good for everyone, just having a lot more, different types of mechs in the battlefield. Different strategies, how do you deal with this mech and that mech, and all the things that make Mechwarrior great, they just get enhanced by this system.
So whether you're playing solo queue, the public queue, or you're really going to participate in community warfare, it was really important for the competitiveness of those chassis to have this new quirk system.
Darren: Can you explain how the Tier list works?
Russ Bullock: Well the Tier list was established by basically players that play a lot. They are very familiar with all the chassis and they play in a very competitive way. Now not every player is a comp player, that plays competitively. Some of us play very casually and really enjoy playing in the solo queue. However, the comp players I think are kind of the canary in the mine. They might be the greatest example of min-maxing that some of us don't necessarily play that way, but still, they can sniff out what the weaknesses are and why maybe in situations it's not as competitive as another chassis. So they are quite good at being able to determine exactly what Tiers they belong in. What it means is that Tier 1 says "This is as good as a chassis gets as far as its competitiveness in the game currently. Examples being the Jenner F with the 6 medium lasers, the Ember is a very good one, the Cataphract 3D. So there are a few chassis that for various reasons like hardpoint loadouts just perform best.
And then it's very logical after that. Tier 2, 3, 4 and 5. Mech Tiers 1 and 2 are very competitive of course. 3 is still very, in the right hands, some might argue that some 3s are really 2s as they are still very good mechs. Tier 4 and 5 are mechs that some of us still really enjoy, the look of them, the feel of them, what they represent, but they just have a much harder time being competitive with them. I guess it's as simple as that. It's a ranking system of where the chassis fits in in a competitive sense. So it's not like ...it's a debatable thing. Sometimes someone will feel like a chassis should be up or down, and it's based on play style, but I think it gives us an accurate enough interpretation to put out an initial pass of the quirks.
Obviously we can do a complete reassessment once those new quirks have had a couple weeks to soak in.
Darren: How do you choose which mechs get which quirks?
Russ Bullock: Well, the Tier system of course determines how many quirks a mech gets. Tier 5 getting 5. And because Jump Jets and ECM add so much use to a product that if they had one of those items we removed a quirk. And that's how we're doing it, at least for this initial pass. So after that we separated mechs out into Brawler, Skirmisher and Support. And it's just what you think it means; Brawler is the closest range, Skirmisher is the medium range, and Support is primarily long range weapons. And so once we had a mech in a Tier and applied a category to it that made the most sense. For instance if we saw a mech with hardpoints that really lean towards long range weapons (LRMs, AC2 and further), then of course that mech would be categorized as Support. So the defaults were played out to AC20s and SRMs it would go into the Brawler category.
So, once we had them in a Tier, we had them in a category and the number of quirks they could have, then it was quite easy to apply the number of quirks it got within the category it was listed. A lot of people have asked us why we made the decisions we did, on how we categorized mechs. For instance some mechs follow logic as though we stuck to the stock loadout. If you look at the Awesome 8Q and we gave it PPC quirks. Which really makes sense from a stock perspective. But then you look at another mech and you'll see that we really didn't follow the stock loadout at all.
One example might be the stock loadout we gave the Dragon 5N(C), which uses a gauss rifle and 2 regular large lasers. Although we knew that some of the stock loadouts, or even many of the stock loadouts in our game whether champion mechs or the original stock loadouts would be not in sync with the quirks the mech had, we felt it was most important to look at the mech from the perspective of its hardpoints in relation to the rest of its variants, and try to figure out what would make the mech most competitive rather than look at what quirks make the most sense for its most stock loadout.
Sometimes the stock loadout worked..synced up very well with the quirks we thought it should have, but in other cases, when we look at the Dragons for instance, the Dragon 5N has 3 ballistic hardpoints, whereas the 1N only has a single ballistic hardpoint. So even though the champion 5N had a gauss rifle, it made a lot more sense to allow the players to make the best use of the hardpoints, and that would be the way we could move it up from Tier 5 the furthest. So in that case we decided to focus on the AC2 for the 5N and the gauss for the 1N, and there's many examples among all the mechs like that. The Centurions which come with LRM on stock loadouts was not in our opinion the best way to become competitive with a Centurion. Sure there are players that do very well with those LRM loadouts, but with the type of mech the Centurion is, it's much more of a Brawler and Skirmisher based on its mobility, profile and weapon hardpoints. So there is a lot of brawler and skirmisher weapon type of quirks rather than Support based like LRMs, which line up with its stock loadouts. So there are many examples we can go through, but that is some of the logic we used when creating these quirks.
Darren: Will there be more changes or additions to the quirk system in the future?
Russ Bullock: Absolutely. I think this initial pass was really just that. It's the initial full pass, and I think it was important for us to create a ruleset and divide the mechs into Tiers and into categories to allow us to put this huge undertaking of significant quirks into all the mechs and all the chassis. I think moving forward we'd like to do another pass on movement, mobility, torso twisting and all those other types of quirks. We've got access to more and more types than even when we began this pass. So I'd like to continue down this path to even start to personalize each chassis even more than we have currently.
And then of course the Clan mech, they are going to require a quirk pass as well, so we're definitely excited and looking forward to working on that. And I think we'll be able to move along much quicker now that we've done a significant amount of work both on the engineering side to create all the various types of quirks that we have, the game, mech editing tools we created to help this process and get this initial wave plugged in. I think it will allow us to iterate on these quirks much quicker in the future, so I think this is not only just the initial pass. I just think this quirk system is a main part of the mech building process, and Mechwarrior Online from this moment forward.
Darren: Next we'll take a quick look at the new Inner Sphere Resistance Collection, which includes the Panther light battlemech, the Enforcer medium battlemech, the Grasshopper heavy battlemech, and the Zeus assault battlemech. Also included is the bonus King Crab assault battlemech for those who purchase either the Resistance Collection Wrath pack, the Clan Invasion Masakari collection, or the Clan Invasion Wave 2 Man 'o War collection before December 16th.
The Resistance Collection also includes various rewards, such as badges, titles, faction packs, and premium time. For more details head over to http://www.mwomercs.com.
And finally, Paul, lead designer of Piranha games, gives us an updated look into the development of Community Warfare.
Paul Inouye: So, the next community warfare update. First thing I'd like to talk about is the opt-in feature of community warfare. This is the fact that you are clicking the Faction button at the top of the screen; that is you accepting the terms that you are going to be going into this role-playing, hard core mode of the Inner Sphere vs the Clans, the interior House conflicts that are going on between the Houses. There are also fights going on between the Clans, and this is your opportunity to say "yes, I want to be a part of that!"
On Day 1 you are going to be selecting a factions as soon as you click on the faction tab. It's going to bring up a series of screens that show you all the factions. It's going to give you some lore background. It'll give you a more informative method of choosing which House or which Clan you want to align with. From that point on you'll be given a set of contracts with those factions, whether it will be with a House or Clan, and those contracts have different terms. What I mean by terms just is the amount of time you'll be locked with that faction. If you accept a contract with House Davion, it could be a one month contract, a two month contract, a four month contract, you can take a one month contract and at the end of one month it will be up to you if you want to continue with House Davion, or if you want to switch to a different faction. Keep in mind that those numbers are up for tuning. We'll be watching what's going on, and taking feedback as the feature starts playing out, and we'll adjust as needed.
One of the things we can actually intertwine with what I just mentioned about faction selection is that you will be able to switch factions. This includes switching from the Inner Sphere to the Clan. The primary reason for this is we don't want to lock players in too long unless they are that die hard House loyalist or Clan loyalist, where they just have to be part of House Kurita for example for their entire experience in community warfare. That option is there, but everyone else will be able to switch. We just don't want people to be switching willy-nilly. We want people to make a conscious decision when they do that.
When it comes to interfaction combat what we're going to be dealing with is the conflicts that are happening between the Houses and between the Clans. Now that means the fighting that has been going on between House Davion and Kurita, Between Steiner and Marik, those are the inter faction conflicts that we are talking about. The other side, on the Clan side, you have Jade Falcon versus Wolf, and we have Ghost Bear and Smoke Jaguar going at it. And all players who partake in community warfare will be able to partake in those conflicts.
When it comes to taking over a planet, planets are going to be divided into what we call zones right now. That is just a placeholder name. On each planet for example, there will be 11 zones. That means in order to take over that planet, you have to capture 6 of those 11 zones. That is what an individual match is; fighting over a zone. Now, when a zone changes hands, for example if House Steiner is invading House Marik, and they are fighting over a planet that is on their border, if House Steiner takes over 6 of those zones, at the end of that flip period, which we currently have set for 24 hours, that planet will end up in House Steiner territory. Now, if House Marik defends 6 out of those 11 zones, House Marik will retain that planet and House Steiner will basically have to try attacking again.
When it comes to planetary conquest game modes, the first one we are coming out the door with that we talk about is called Invasion. That is the code name for it right now. Invasion is on an assymetric map; there is a set of objectives that are halfway through that map that have to be completed by the attackers in order to proceed into the defending territory. Inside the defending territory is a base that if the attackers are able to destroy that base, that is when they are going to win that match. Now something that is going to be happening during this game mode are a set of reinforcements that are going to be brought in through dropships. Now this is the infamous Dropship mode you've been hearing about and waiting for, which allows you to bring up to four different mechs into the match. And as you basically get your mech blown up, you'll be able to drop in with another mech of your choice from the pack of four you created before.
Darren: And that concludes the MWO Dev Vlog #9. Be sure to stay tuned for future vlogs, including more information on the development of Mechwarrior Online, community spotlights, and the exciting future of the MWO competitive scene. And on behalf of Piranha Games and No Guts, No Galaxy, thank you for watching! And until next time, MechWarriors!
