30 replies to this topic

[Willard Phule]

Roadbeer, on 25 December 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

The very second that the first planet was decided to be a W/L, MWO deviated from the canon timeline, thus creating an "alternate Universe"

At this point, major events can happen, but are not necessarily going to happen. This goes from everything to major, deciding, lore battles to the release years of specific equipment.

I suggest everyone get use to that.

The two biggest things that come to mind, with regard to PGI re-writing everything, are:

1 - The fourth succession war never happened. The Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns never combined to become the Federated Commonwealth. Lots of the things in the Inner Sphere that were supposed to happen prior to the Clan invasion never came to pass.

2 - The Clans are allowed to fight amongst themselves during the invasion. The Ilkhan, supreme war leader of the Clans, should never have allowed that. It's wasteful and takes away from the push toward Terra. That might be the problem right there....I'm wondering if PGI understands the point of the invasion in the first place.

[Alexander Steel]

MAybe in this timeline the Ilkhan has warden sympathies and is letting the clans fight each other to give the IS a better chance. Sort of like how Kerensky brought in reinforcements for Jade Falcon and Smoke Jags that he knew hated them.

Just looking at the map, I like to think the 4th succession war happened, but sometime after it the Davion/Steiner Alliance fell apart. Or maybe Melissa never existed in this universe so the FedCom never was formed, but they two sides were at least friendly enough with each other to work enough together that most of how the 4th succession war and war of 3039 happened as expected.

Really the only difference in the map between Lore 3048 and MWO 3048 is no St. Ives, and Davion/Steiner are separate forces.

[Tyrnea Smurf]

Its frankly impossible to follow the exact timeline of the lore of the Clan Invasion in a open ended PVP mmo game.

A closed single player game designed from the ground up could do it, but a open ended mmo? No sorry.

PGI could try to direct events down certain paths to achieve a general flavor of the Clan Invasion, but depending on how heavy handed they try that approach would be fraught with pitfalls.

This games player base screams bloody murder at every perceived change, adjustment, quirk, tweak, shift, and update.

This is OP, no that is OP. This is broken, no that is broken. Endless mindless chatter.

With that as a background, can you see PGI locking in the most sought after feature of the game, the Community Warfare system to a predeterminded wedge of worlds that the IS portion of the playerbase frankly CAN NOT WIN ON because the lore says so.

Then after that, locking in the other 80% worlds away that the Clan portion of the player base CAN NOT WIN ON because the lore says so.

That House Liao in this timeline in the lore will never be anything other than a rump state, and that House Liao players can either not take part, or if you stretch the lore a bit, can only play on their Kapteyn Accords allies worlds in House Kurita.

That House Marik players also don't have much to do at this point of the timeline as their borders don't change, and that would by the Lore wouldn't have a whole lot to do, or if you stretch the lore a bit, can only play on their Kapteyn Accords allies worlds in House Kurita.

Because that's what the lore is.

Or we can play out a PVP fairly open contest for control of the Inner Sphere, set to the story background of the Clan Invasion.

[Willard Phule]

Alexander Steel, on 26 December 2014 - 07:23 AM, said:

MAybe in this timeline the Ilkhan has warden sympathies and is letting the clans fight each other to give the IS a better chance. Sort of like how Kerensky brought in reinforcements for Jade Falcon and Smoke Jags that he knew hated them.

Just looking at the map, I like to think the 4th succession war happened, but sometime after it the Davion/Steiner Alliance fell apart. Or maybe Melissa never existed in this universe so the FedCom never was formed, but they two sides were at least friendly enough with each other to work enough together that most of how the 4th succession war and war of 3039 happened as expected.

Really the only difference in the map between Lore 3048 and MWO 3048 is no St. Ives, and Davion/Steiner are separate forces.

The Ilkhan, Ulric Kerensky, WAS a warden....that was the irony. In fact, he stopped the Clans from doing exactly what we're doing right now. I could understand a "any available Clan" queue for solo players to help out but what we've got going on now goes against both the warden and crusader philosophies. The Clans abhor waste. Ghost Bears fighting Wolves over a world that's already been taken and should have been garrisoned (and possibly fighting IS "guerilla" units) is not only wasteful, it's stupid. The only reason they're doing it is because PGI is allowing that "contract" to exist.

And no St. Ives means No Kai Allard-Liao and no Yen-Lo-Wang.

There are all sorts of examples of things that existed since the beginning which simply implied that something was going to happen that has now been ignored.

I can't emphasize the importance of the Gray Death Memory Core or the union of the Lyran Commonwealth and the Federated Suns.

The first, the memory core, is what gives IS mechs access to gauss rifles, ERLLs, Streaks and double heatsinks. Try playing an IS mech without those.

The second shuffled forces between both houses, released mercenary units from their contracts and started technology exchanges between them.

But, it's all good. At least we have a game, right? The game has problems that are far larger than storyline crap. The HSR is borked, CW has potential but needs some serious fixes to how the queue operates if it's going to work....all sorts of stuff.

[Alexander Steel]

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The Ilkhan, Ulric Kerensky, WAS a warden....that was the irony.

He was the 2n Ilkhan in charge of the invasion.

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The Clans abhor waste. Ghost Bears fighting Wolves over a world that's already been taken and should have been garrisoned (and possibly fighting IS "guerilla" units) is not only wasteful, it's stupid.

If you read the books you'd know that what you are describing, and endless fighting over parts of world's already held by other clans, genetic material, and bood names themselves describe the clan homeworld's to a T. The only reason in the lore that the clans weren't fighting over each other world's MORE is because they were all racing to get to Terra. However the second they hit a speed bump, the knives came out and they started to carve each other's territory up. In fact one of the reasons the Falcons agreed to accept the defeat on Coventry in 3057 was because Clan Wolf's Khan flat out Told the Jade Falcon Khan that he was planning to massively invade her clan's unprotected border because she had all of her forces tied up fighting the IS.

Ironicly enough Wolf and Steiner were the first Clan/IS truce in the Lore as well. Granted it was a truce founded on the idea that the two leaders wanted to frell the heck out of each other, but the Marik/Steiner truce at the same time was at least partly based on the fact that Old Man "Where is the other half of my face" Marik thought he had a shot at sleeping with Catherine Steiner-Davion. Which.... wasn't going to happen.

Edited by Alexander Steel, 26 December 2014 - 12:47 PM.

[Tristan Winter]

Roadbeer, on 25 December 2014 - 10:05 AM, said:

The very second that the first planet was decided to be a W/L, MWO deviated from the canon timeline, thus creating an "alternate Universe"
At this point, major events can happen, but are not necessarily going to happen. This goes from everything to major, deciding, lore battles to the release years of specific equipment.
I suggest everyone get use to that.

I guess some people misunderstood the purpose of the thread. I'm not complaining that the timeline isn't progressing according to canon. I'm merely asking, as someone who never read the Battletech pulp fiction, how this deviates from the original.

Like someone who just watched the Hobbit movies and is curious about the director's creative choices and how they deviate from the Tolkien original.

It's going to be interesting to see what PGI does. I was expecting them to make future events and mech packs based on canon events, but that may seem a bit silly if the MWO timeline is entirely different from canon. If they don't restart CW after Beta, it's also going to be interesting to see how they move the timeline from 3050 to 3055, for example. Will they reset the map based on lore, or based on CW results from when the game was set in 3050?

[Alexander Steel]

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It's going to be interesting to see what PGI does. I was expecting them to make future events and mech packs based on canon events, but that may seem a bit silly if the MWO timeline is entirely different from canon. If they don't restart CW after Beta, it's also going to be interesting to see how they move the timeline from 3050 to 3055, for example. Will they reset the map based on lore, or based on CW results from when the game was set in 3050?

It sort of goes against the idea that we as players get to change Battletech history if they keep resetting things that we've done at every point in history.

[Jeon Ji Yoon]

Alexander Steel, on 26 December 2014 - 07:23 AM, said:

Or maybe Melissa never existed in this universe so the FedCom never was formed, but they two sides were at least friendly enough with each other to work enough together that most of how the 4th succession war and war of 3039 happened as expected.

FedCom had to have existed (at least for awhile) because the Capellan Confederation is broken in half and Marik/Kurita worlds are taken.

Nicolai Kabrinsky, on 28 December 2014 - 10:21 AM, said:

I guess some people misunderstood the purpose of the thread. I'm not complaining that the timeline isn't progressing according to canon. I'm merely asking, as someone who never read the Battletech pulp fiction, how this deviates from the original.

Like someone who just watched the Hobbit movies and is curious about the director's creative choices and how they deviate from the Tolkien original.

It's going to be interesting to see what PGI does. I was expecting them to make future events and mech packs based on canon events, but that may seem a bit silly if the MWO timeline is entirely different from canon. If they don't restart CW after Beta, it's also going to be interesting to see how they move the timeline from 3050 to 3055, for example. Will they reset the map based on lore, or based on CW results from when the game was set in 3050?

We're going much faster than lore and its bascially because we are playing a game. We need to have a battle a day (at the very least) to keep us entertained and in BT the space travel happens in jumps and requires long periods of recharging the solar batteries of the vehicles. I think each "wave" of the invasion was about 2 months and each wave took a half dozen worlds or so (it fluxed and stuttered at the end). If we're going 1:1 it may not be May, 3050 when the Clans reach Terra.

[Alexander Steel]

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FedCom had to have existed (at least for awhile) because the Capellan Confederation is broken in half and Marik/Kurita worlds are taken.

The FedCom wasn't a thing during the 4th Succession war, they were an alliance of two very powerful nations but didn't become one until afterwards. All that the 4th succession war requires is an alliance between the two, not a full on merger.

[Tristan Winter]

Alexander Steel, on 28 December 2014 - 10:26 AM, said:

It sort of goes against the idea that we as players get to change Battletech history if they keep resetting things that we've done at every point in history.

I sort of agree, but it seems to me like Battletech is only the cosmetic backdrop for this game. There's no real... history. There's no information about important figures, leaders, soldiers, organizations, units or any minor factions. Most of the planets on the galaxy map have no information available at all.

Right now, the MWO "history" begins and ends with flags on a map. It's not like Star Citizen, where you have a team of writers writing short stories and articles to give players an understanding of the setting and recent events. I imagine at least 50% of the people playing this game would have a hard time naming more than 2 or 3 people from the Battletech universe.

So how important is it really that we get to shape history?

[Alexander Steel]

How mad were people when the clan flags didn't look like the ones from the Lore?