118 replies to this topic

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Are we playing a 'Mech simulator here or Unreal Tournament?
Easy answer, imo.
You die, you're dead.

[MaddMaxx]

Instant action mode = Yes (re-spawn until your fingers bleed)

Campaign mode = Yes, but only to balance Teams. Team 1 can fill 2 full Lances. Team 2 can only muster 1 Full and +1 in second Lance. Team 2 gets 3 re-spawns of same weight class of Mech. Both Teams have 8 possible deaths to end the game.

Persistence mode = NO (we fight and die for our crew. Don't want to be a Lobby blobby, then stay the hell alive and help your Team mates.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 23 November 2011 - 10:16 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Alizabeth Aijou, on 23 November 2011 - 10:06 AM, said:

Are we playing a 'Mech simulator here or Unreal Tournament?
Easy answer, imo.
You die, you're dead.

Yes I get that. I feel the same way about No Heat Unlimited Ammo.

But I know, from MW4, that thousands of players like NHUA, even though it ruins the game in my eyes.

Would I want to take that away from them? No, just seperate them from me.

Same with Respawn leagues. The tactics that are involved in a 60 minute respawn game involve things like fatigue and trechery, and flanking, and of course the load out is different. Some of the most fun times in my life with life long friends come from these tourneys. It's all sim, the only difference is that you can overcome a losing score, much like a sport.

The tactics that are involved in a planetary league are of course different, much more empahsis on survivability than mobility, but was also restricted. You were usually either All in (high speed close range) or All out (long range sniping). Respawn allowed for mixes of both to become viable.

I played, and loved both. I want to do both and wouldn't take it away because its not my preference.

[TheRulesLawyer]

Phades, on 22 November 2011 - 09:33 PM, said:

Have fun waiting for your other squad mates that you regularly play with.

This. In one spawn games you tend to end up with a lot of downtime if you play with friends. I like to get a group on vent and play games in the evening. No respawn you die you end up waiting. The devs have estimated 20min matches. You potentially want to wait 20 min plus the matchmaking and load in time between games if you die quickly?

I understand wanting one spawn only, but it only really works for very short rounds.

[MaddMaxx]

TheRulesLawyer, on 23 November 2011 - 11:58 AM, said:

You potentially want to wait 20 min plus the matchmaking and load in time between games if you die quickly?

This assume immediate contact and weapons fire from the enemy or vise versa along with almost no staying power for whatever your driving.
I understand the not wanting to wait 19.5 minutes but if your Lance drops and you die in less than a minute? You have done something horribly wrong or the whole thing was FUBAR from the get go.

Let's try and keep it semi real on this point at least... perhaps?

[Kumakichi]

If every game DOES effects the outcome of the Inner Sphere like the dev's mentioned then I wouldn't like to see respawns. It would take away from strategy and tactics and make the action less fun.

If there were open games that DIDN"T have any effect on the IS then sure respawns make sense.

[BlindProphet]

First to the person who mentioned there should be a player rep system and that will stop griefers...you've obviously never run into griefers before. Its not like they couldn't get all their friends to downvote you every day till you reach the point where your rep will never really recover.

Second...Respawning. It has its good and bad points. Good...I get to keep playing. Bad...at times it can seem unrealistic/lead to unrealistic things. There are ways to ballance the bad though. Respawn timers, placement of spawns, a wave system, ect. The bad can be mostly mitigated out.

Played WoT for a long while and the everyone gets a single tank with no respawns was ok...but it led to a lot of booring waiting even though I could hop out and hop in another tank. If I wanted to play with that tank, I had to wait...upwards of 14 mins at times depending on how unlucky I was. That is not something I want to experiance in this game.

Competitive, persistant mode? Sure one mech per person for the game is good. But in standard "I'm just playing for fun/to level up/to earn c-bills" I don't want to be waiting...and waiting...and waiting because something went wrong, or I was the first to go down, or anything along those lines.

[Boneripper]

Dead is dead. Play smarter and you'll live longer. If there are respawns make sure the area can't be targeted. That way you don't have alpha strikes on you as you pop up. That way you can wait for team mates that have died so you can head out as reinforcements to the battle/campaign etc...

[BlindProphet]

Boneripper, on 23 November 2011 - 01:14 PM, said:

Dead is dead. Play smarter and you'll live longer. If there are respawns make sure the area can't be targeted. That way you don't have alpha strikes on you as you pop up. That way you can wait for team mates that have died so you can head out as reinforcements to the battle/campaign etc...

Bolded the silly in your post.

I've played enough games, logged tons of time playing the table top, to know that that can help, but never ever stops unlucky crap from happening. Playing smart gets you so far. Someone has to die first. And ontop of that unlucky things WILL happen to you. Its the nature of playing a game. People in just random, normal, level up battles, shouldn't be penalized by having to wait around forever because they got unlucky.

Competitive battles (merc company vs merc company for territory) yeah dead is dead. Different gameplay there. But standard pub battles...yeah waiting...not as fun as people make it out to be.

Other than that I agree with your other points

[TheRulesLawyer]

MaddMaxx, on 23 November 2011 - 12:46 PM, said:

This assume immediate contact and weapons fire from the enemy or vise versa along with almost no staying power for whatever your driving.
I understand the not wanting to wait 19.5 minutes but if your Lance drops and you die in less than a minute? You have done something horribly wrong or the whole thing was FUBAR from the get go.

Let's try and keep it semi real on this point at least... perhaps?

Sure this means you might suck. Sometimes its just bad luck. However think about it as the newbie coming in 6 months after launch and facing mostly people who have been playing for awhile. More often than not they will probably be dieing on the early side. Sitting around twiddling your thumbs that long isn't fun. Lets say its a more reasonable 10 minutes in. You still have a good 12-13 minutes to wait before you are playing again more than likely. Still not fun.

Point is that one death works okay on 5 minute rounds (still annoying if you die early) or if you're just playing by yourself and can switch battles. It doesn't work so well with playing as a group. WoT has shorter battles than MWO is estimating now. Its really hard to keep a group together. One person dies and they get bored of waiting and wander off on the net, go watch tv, or start playing another game. Its like trying to get a platoon together for every single match. It pretty much sucks as a group experience.

Group experiences are something worth taking into consideration when planning this stuff even if you don't have any friends that play.

[CobraFive]

If there's no respawns these matches need to be quick, or, you need to be able to jump right into another.

I don't mind either system. They can both be done right. Battlefield has plenty of room for squad tactics and wide strategy, as well as respawns. And WoT is an example of how to do it right without respawns, fairly quick matches (Typically in the order of 5-10 min at the longest, with a hard cap at 15min), and the ability to jump into another match if you die. I prefer the battlefield system of limited respawns per team, but I think either is fun.

Losing your mech on death is a bad idea universally. This isn't like eve, with PvE, a world to explore, and things to do besides fighting. And I certainly don't want this game to be my job, like that one tries to be. If you lost your mech on death you'd either have to make so much money even on a loss that you can buy a new one right away, or, mechs would have to be so cheap that the cost is trivial anyway, which is a pretty pointless system (more annoyance then any kind of decision making). Otherwise no-one would be able to play the game. Plus you lose all your customization? Not cool at all. Saying "Well don't die" or "Play smarter" is a pretty poor defense since there are always people as good or better then you, and expecting a player to play perfect games without dieing many many matches in a row is plan silly.

[CeeKay Boques]

Will they allow outside leagues? How many different game modes will there be? We're kind of talking as if we're picking the game mode, for the one, singular type of match play. I miss bidding on a match. Will that even be possible if all the settings are set by the Dev?

[ManDaisy]

Holy hell I would love bidding on a match you should suggest this.

[Fiachdubh]

Boo respawn!

[Malavai Fletcher]

I didn't mind respawn,it was a good way to tweak a new config,but for proper playtime it was first person no respawn all the way,as for having to wait if you die early on,well,make sure you play better next game.

[VEDRFOLNIR]

Well, I'm just speculating here but...

If a lance vs. lance battle is being set up, then the ability to respawn could be controlled when the encounter is created via a 'respawn (Y/N)?' toggle. This way, the decision to allow/disallow respawning is left to the folks who set up the encounter.

Skill development might be affected by this choice: no respawning means larger skillpoint rewards, while allowing respawning reduces EoE skillpoint rewards.

Alternatively, allowing respawns will leave your 'mech with a certain percentage of in-game damage that you'll have to repair, and that percentage will increase depending on the number of times you respawn.

The exception to this would be large server-events set up by the developers. For example, the Battle of Twycross or the Battle for Luthien would be non-spawning with hefty rewards, both in skill and equipment if you survive. For these epic-scale battles, I can definitely see someone getting shot out from under their 'mech - so the possibility to come back into the campaign as backup/reinforcements should be allowed. Such epic campaigns should be potentially draining, resources-wise, to merc groups who are involved.

I can certainly see how this sort of thing can quickly become really complicated, but I'd like there to be some way of having a Mechwarrior sit back and think 'Boy, I need to be careful here 'cause failure will really cost me' instead of 'Who cares if I die! I'll just come right back!'

[Phades]

Bloody, on 22 November 2011 - 10:13 PM, said:

no such thing as griefing in a pvp game. You are there to kill them and they are there to kill you. Your choices are kill them, get killed and lost everything or avoid them.

Clearly you haven't played many FPS games in PUGS. There is griefing in any instance where friendly fire is enabled and even in those where it is not, it can still occur through other means denying your ability to play the game.

Man, the more I read these forums, the more I come to the realization that people don't know what they want and don't have a wide breadth of experience when it comes to gaming.

Edited by Phades, 24 November 2011 - 09:20 PM.

[kevin roshak]

The only way i see them to be viable is if you survive the destruction of your first mech (Based on actual damage taken and luck and such), and the devs put in a reserve unit, say a Lance/Star or so of extra battlemechs your MercCo selects to be in reserve and when you eject you can choose one and be put at your LZ after a few minutes or so and go from there. Otherwise no

[Garviel]

Change the re-spawn rules depending on the match type.

Some with, some without; let the players decide which one is most fun.

[MaddMaxx]

TheRulesLawyer, on 23 November 2011 - 01:32 PM, said:

Sure this means you might suck. Sometimes its just bad luck. However think about it as the newbie coming in 6 months after launch and facing mostly people who have been playing for awhile. More often than not they will probably be dieing on the early side. Sitting around twiddling your thumbs that long isn't fun. Lets say its a more reasonable 10 minutes in. You still have a good 12-13 minutes to wait before you are playing again more than likely. Still not fun.

Point is that one death works okay on 5 minute rounds (still annoying if you die early) or if you're just playing by yourself and can switch battles. It doesn't work so well with playing as a group. WoT has shorter battles than MWO is estimating now. Its really hard to keep a group together. One person dies and they get bored of waiting and wander off on the net, go watch tv, or start playing another game. Its like trying to get a platoon together for every single match. It pretty much sucks as a group experience.

Group experiences are something worth taking into consideration when planning this stuff even if you don't have any friends that play.

And those folks would be better served to play in the re-spawn mode games to get a general feel. I would have to look back but I was thinking about Team vs Team via planetary persistent mode types. You would be a Team member and sure someone has to die, it always seemed best to allow that to be a member of the other team. Actually "ALL" of the other Teams players.

I have mentioned before but Game Modes is key. Especially for the new folks that come along. Beside even I like a little Shoot-em up, Die, Re-Spawn action every now and again. Helps prevent FF later on that day some times.