190 replies to this topic

[Alaskan Nobody]

Strikeshadow, on 08 November 2014 - 07:27 AM, said:

There is a button for quote at the bottom.

Friend of mine just got Win8.1

Using IE on it - the quote button hasn't been working

[MadLibrarian]

Shar Wolf, on 08 November 2014 - 07:38 PM, said:

Friend of mine just got Win8.1
Using IE on it - the quote button hasn't been working

Not that it's particularly worthwhile, but if you do want to quote someone, you can do it manually. Copy this text and update the "t=" and "qpid=" sections, then paste it in your address bar. You might even be able to copy the link directly from the quote button if it's resolved properly.

http://mwomercs.com/forums/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=reply_post&f=68&t=176988&qpid=3895101

The important bit is: t=176988&qpid=3895101

"t" is topic ID, It's the number right after /topic/ and before the first - and the title, in the topic's url.
"qpid" is the quote's post id. This can be found on the post number on the top right of each post. It's the last number in the url after __p__.

It is a long way around, but it'll work for when you just have to quote someone.
Even better, you could send them to www.getfirefox.com for a major upgrade.

Edited by MadLibrarian, 09 November 2014 - 03:31 PM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

MadLibrarian, on 08 November 2014 - 09:40 PM, said:

Even better, you could send them to www.getfirefox.com for a major upgrade.

PC's owner won't touch the fox with a 35.5 foot pole.

And as far as manually quoting.... at that typing speed (which only seems to hit when using the internet oddly enough) by the time I get it typed out, I'd be lucky to remember what I was saying.

Just won't be typing much on the forum when I use that PC until I can figure out why and FIX it.

[MadLibrarian]

Shar Wolf, on 08 November 2014 - 09:46 PM, said:

PC's owner won't touch the fox with a 35.5 foot pole.

You've probably already tried compatibility mode, if that's still a thing, but if not it's worth a shot.

Maybe Opera or Chrome? They could be installed and forced to never be default. Or even better firefox portable!
http://portableapps....irefox_portable
You can extract it to a flash drive, or even your phone. Just plug it in to the pc, navigate to it's directory, copy it to the pc (for performance), and voila! It won't be the default browser, and you can delete it from the pc when you are done. I wish I had remembered that one first.

[Alaskan Nobody]

MadLibrarian, on 08 November 2014 - 10:15 PM, said:

You've probably already tried compatibility mode, if that's still a thing, but if not it's worth a shot.

I used to have FF installed on a flash drive, and I will probably have to do that again

He is an older guy, and his distrust of the other browsers is one of his biggest faults
(and oh, if we could all say that about ourselves! )
Not usually something that bothers me that much, and not something that hard to work around.
Just a little irritating
(And I mean that "little" bit litterally)

[Cimarb]

MadLibrarian, on 08 November 2014 - 09:40 PM, said:

Even better, you could send them to www.getfirefox.com for a major upgrade.

Go Chrome or go home, imo...

I have to use all of the big three as part of my job, and while Firefox was king for a couple years, it has gotten as bloated as IE used to be. IE has made a lot of improvements, but is still the weird uncle leering at you from the corner: he came with the family, but you definitely do not want to trust him...

[Cimarb]

Shar Wolf, on 08 November 2014 - 09:46 PM, said:

PC's owner won't touch the fox with a 35.5 foot pole.

Btw, I am a diehard PC owner and have used Firefox and Chrome for many years. I especially like Chrome because it syncs all of my devices - so I never have to worry about whether I bring it up on my PC, iPhone, laptop or iPad - and works wonderfully with Chromecast to send anything to my tv with the push of a button! I love technology :-D

[a gaijin]

InnerSphereNews, on 04 November 2014 - 10:00 AM, said:

Spoiler

Transcript :
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!

Feedback to PGI on quirks:
Some things done very right; some very wrong.

I'll try to keep this short and concise.

Structural upgrades to mechs that visually display such (for example Hunchback, Dragon, Thunderbolt, Atlas) was definitely the right choice.

All upgrades to mech yaw speed was a productive choice.

Both Clan and IS weapons ranges need to be pulled back to the Lore range for ALL weapons. Any mods to this in MWO should be via modules only
(And TBH all weapon modules should be thrown out though I doubt that will ever happen).

It is not BattleTech logical for any weapons to have a range beyond their "max range."

The game goes for weapon fire rates: keep them within the guidelines set forth by the TROs the same for all mechs as set forth by their tech tree.
A weapon that fires faster "just because it is mounted on a certain mech" is not the same weapon that is on all the other mechs even though it is supposed to be. Please fix.

I do not recall ever having read any BattleTech book that gave certain mechs a faster weapon recharge rate or fire rate. Therefore those buffs should be removed from game (and again, those modules should be pulled from MWO as well).

*Certain mechs that are basically built around one a specific weapon system, a system in which they are famous for, should have some sort of buff related to this system; so for those mech quirks PGI implemented that was a big step in the right direction.
However granting weapons quirks to as many mechs that received them was a step in the wrong direction.

*The Awesome is a very good example. Since this mech is built around PPCs, it makes Battletech sense that it can fire these weapons without overheating as fast as other mechs.
Less heat production from PPCs and quicker PPC heat dissipation were smart choices for quirks for Awesomes, from a BattleTech logic standpoint.

Overall PGI is doing a good job of making MWO and enjoyable succession in the MechWarrior series and looking forward to future content

[Edited to add line-out comment(s) and the very last sentence]

Edited by HeroForHire, 11 November 2014 - 03:02 PM.

[HimseIf]

Swamp is looking good (did anyone else see what looks like giant dead bugs in the swamp?)

[Colby Boucher]

HimseIf, on 09 November 2014 - 10:53 PM, said:

Swamp is looking good (did anyone else see what looks like giant dead bugs in the swamp?)

looked like giant crab legs to me... Which, honestly, is a little too goofy IMO

[Volkodav]

Colby Boucher, on 10 November 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

looked like giant crab legs to me... Which, honestly, is a little too goofy IMO

Dead reptile will be better!

[Strikeshadow]

HeroForHire, on 09 November 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

Feedback to PGI on quirks:
Some things done very right; some very wrong.

I'll try to keep this short and concise.

Structural upgrades to mechs that visually display such (for example Hunchback, Dragon, Thunderbolt, Atlas) was definitely the right choice.

All upgrades to mech yaw speed was a productive choice.

Both Clan and IS weapons ranges need to be pulled back to the Lore range for ALL weapons. Any mods to this in MWO should be via modules only
(And TBH all weapon modules should be thrown out though I doubt that will ever happen).

It is not BattleTech logical for any weapons to have a range beyond their "max range."

The game goes for weapon fire rates: keep them within the guidelines set forth by the TROs.
I do not recall ever having read any BattleTech book that gave certain mechs a faster weapon recharge rate or fire rate. Therefore those buffs should be removed from game (and again, those modules should be pulled from MWO as well).

*Certain mechs that are basically built around one a specific weapon system, a system in which they are famous for, should have some sort of buff related to this system; so for those mech quirks PGI implemented that was a big step in the right direction.
However granting weapons quirks to as many mechs that received them was a step in the wrong direction.

*The Awesome is a very good example. Since this mech is built around PPCs, it makes Battletech sense that it can fire these weapons without overheating as fast as other mechs.
Less heat production from PPCs and quicker PPC heat dissipation were smart choices for quirks for Awesomes, from a BattleTech logic standpoint.

I agree, most of the modules should just be automatic or upgrades on certain mechs. They shouldn't require hardpoint slots or tonnage either. I also like the idea of buffs to certain mechs regarding their special weapons.

Edited by Strikeshadow, 10 November 2014 - 09:02 AM.

[Willard Phule]

HeroForHire, on 09 November 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

Structural upgrades to mechs that visually display such (for example Hunchback, Dragon, Thunderbolt, Atlas) was definitely the right choice.

Should have been there since the beginning. In fact, there are some of the "original" mechs in the game that are still waiting for a visual pass....if not a complete overhauling of how they operate mechanically. Such as the Stalker's missile bays. But, yeah, it's kinda cool to see some of the mechs working the way they're supposed to in the 'lab.

HeroForHire, on 09 November 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

Both Clan and IS weapons ranges need to be pulled back to the Lore range for ALL weapons. Any mods to this in MWO should be via modules only
(And TBH all weapon modules should be thrown out though I doubt that will ever happen).

It is not BattleTech logical for any weapons to have a range beyond their "max range."

Well....that's kind of right. I remember that in the beginning, there were Short, Medium and Long ranges. Then, at some point, "Extreme" range came into play.

I get what PGI did, at least as far as the ballistics go. A projectile, at least a solid one, loses momentum as it travels. Eventually, it won't have enough energy to hurt anything. Even the missile thing makes sense...noone wants to clean up unexploded ordnance, so they explode after hitting "max range." But energy weapons? Yeah, I don't know.

But you're right about one thing...they need to pull in some of the extended ranges. Until they do that, it's going to continue to be an LRM/Sniper fest in the solo queue.

HeroForHire, on 09 November 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

The same goes for weapon fire rates: keep them within the guidelines set forth by the TROs the same for all mechs as set forth by their tech tree.
A weapon that fires faster "just because it is mounted on a certain mech" is not the same weapon that is on all the other mechs even though it is supposed to be. Please fix.

I do not recall ever having read any BattleTech book that gave certain mechs a faster weapon recharge rate or fire rate. Therefore those buffs should be removed from game (and again, those modules should be pulled from MWO as well).

Actually, check out the "Solaris VII" tabletop rules. MW:O is FAR closer to Solaris VII than it is to BT. In the BT rules, each round lasts 10 seconds and every weapon can be fired once per round. In Solaris rules, each round is chopped into 4 parts (we'll refer to them as "segments").

Each weapon has a different recharge rate. Some take 4 segments (ie, 1 round) some take only 1 (like machineguns). You still pick up heat every time you fire a weapon, so overheating becomes a much bigger issue...like it is here.

Granted, PGI has taken this to an extreme. In the Solaris rules, all LRMs have the same recycle rate, regardless of the number of tubes. Here, LRM5s recharge faster than LRM20s. Technically, if you've got the hardpoints for it, it's better to have four LRM5s than a single LRM20. Sure, there's ghost heat involved, but it's basically an LRM20 with a faster reload rate.

[OliverTwisted]

Overall a good V log. What I didn't like was the statement about taking quirks away from mechs with jump jets. While I see where you are coming from with some mechs to do that with the Summoner would be horrible as having 5 unremovable jj is already a negative as it seriously limits its weapon loadouts, especially because they are present in every variant.

[Mycrus]

vlog10 is out... damn... the swamp map totally breaks immersion... trees and lilies bigger than mechs... **** me...

[cybex]

Thanks for the update! Very nice

[Hawk819]

I'm in love with the Shadow Hawk Hero:

AC/10, 4 Medium Lasers, LRM 5, and SRM 2.

[Dauphni]

Mycrus, on 16 November 2014 - 04:11 AM, said:

vlog10 is out... damn... the swamp map totally breaks immersion... trees and lilies bigger than mechs... **** me...

I know Singapore is almost all city, but surely you've seen trees taller than 15 meters? Also, alien biology, yo.

[Pezzer]

Hawk819, on 16 November 2014 - 10:36 AM, said:

I'm in love with the Shadow Hawk Hero:

AC/10, 4 Medium Lasers, LRM 5, and SRM 2.

Yeah, the new hero ShadowHawk doesn't look bad...
But the LOCUST! Pirate's Bane gets ECM and a plethora of close-quarters weaponry. It's beautiful!

And in regards to it being the first Hero with ECM....wow...

...I really don't care. It isn't pay to win because the Locust honestly isn't a good mech if you're trying to go hardcore meta, and ECM was just recently gimped hard with the BAP buff anyways. Pair that with the fact that this Hero will probably sell for about 5 bucks, and there's no real reason to complain. Want ECM while not paying for anything in-game? Get the arguably superior Raven or Spider. Want to be as small and fast as a Locust tho? Commandos have your back.

EDIT: wanted to throw this out before people start whining about how the 20-ton mech is somehow pay-to-win.

Edited by Pezzer, 16 November 2014 - 11:44 AM.

[Mycrus]

Uite Dauphni, on 16 November 2014 - 11:15 AM, said:

I know Singapore is almost all city, but surely you've seen trees taller than 15 meters? Also, alien biology, yo.

Handwavium™ ftw.