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My background: I'm not a die-hard battletech fan, my only experience of it was been Mechcommander. Fantastic game. I loved the "thinking mans RTS" aspect of choosing mechs and loadouts, and that's carried over well into MWO (but as a "thinking mans FPS"). I like being able to tinker with my mech and then give its loadout a go against other mechs to see how it stacks up. I'm not in the games industry, but I do work on cloud hosted software, so I can empathise with the challenges you have. It always seems easy to do "this one little thing", and it is also easy to forget the value of the backend infrastructure and employee time as they're "invisible" when you play (and the "free to play" model only encourages that).
Overall summary: its a fun game, I've played a lot and intend to continue. The changes you make have all been broadly heading in the right direction, I'd just ask for more variety in missions (less "let's have a massive brawl for 5 minutes") and improvements on small niggles, such as making it much easier to (re)configure and save mech builds.
Payment/your business model.
I have bought the Sarah Jenner, a $30 MC pack a while ago and I paid $50 in the black Friday sale as I figured I ought to chip in a bit more. I pay because I want to contribute a “normal” game price amount as I have been playing for a couple of years. I didn't go higher on payment bands because there wasn't a steep enough "curve" to justify buying a bigger lump of MC in one go, and its more than I’m used to paying for games. The Karma Coin sale was appealing, though I felt hard done by that I was ineligible by not being in the US. I want my Catapult A1(C)!
Also, it would be good to have some flexibility in the "freebie" it gives because I have already mastered 3 hunchbacks, so again there's almost a disincentive to spend more; $50 for a free catapult is more appealing than $100 for a free bunch of hunchbacks I already have. Now I’ve got my MCs…I’m not really sure what to do with them. Mechs are so expensive that you get almost nothing for your money. I missed the premium time sales around the new year, so I guess I’ll wait until the next premium time sale and buy then.In short, prices are higher than I’m used to, it’s too easy to miss sales (the only time I think stuff is worth buying) and I’m limited on what I feel provides value for money on what I’m spending on. It does feel like payment is biased towards milking a minority of players, and I don’t really want to be tarred with the “rich idiot” brush J
I'd ideally like some kind of recurring credit card payment. $5 or $10 per month, gets you premium time, and access to any mech. You'd pay for weapons etc still, but get to keep the mechs you master. Maybe you'd lose some "tithe" from your winnings (e.g. 50%) to represent gradually paying for the mech. Get to try out new chassis, play about with loadouts, level them up (skills). Spend long enough in a mech (master it) and its paid off- yours permanently even if you go back to being a freeloader.
This is similar to how I’d use premium time- boost my winnings over a long time (e.g. 6 months) so I feel like I’m getting value from my money, and use it to try out new mechs bought with my winnings. I think it’d still take a bit too long to accumulate cash, but it’d be an improvement over the current rate.
Mech buying/config annoyances
Why can't I buy a stripped mech chassis (for less money)? Its annoying having to buy loads of useless stuff and then immediately sell it for a 50% loss. Example: I'd prefer to have bought the D centurion variant, but I don't need another XL300 engine, but buying the mech and selling the engine straight away would lose me a couple of million spacebux.
Mech upgrades (e.g. endosteel, FF armour) are also not factored into the sale price, so selling ends up being a <50% return. Paying to downgrade the upgrades is also annoying. I can see why it is realistic, but it doesn't lend itself to fun gameplay; tweaking mech loadouts is a fun aspect of the game. Being penalised for trying the wrong thing out is not fun. Example: I upgraded my cent-AH with artemis and FF armour. After playing about with builds I realised I needed the extra slots for just a leeeeetle bit more ammo, and now have to downgrade one or other upgrade to make just a couple of slots of space. Sure its my fault, but the important thing is its not enjoyable
. I had a similar problem on my Jag-A; I'd like to play rounds with/without Artemis to compare how I do, but I face a hefty bill for each switch.It is very difficult to modify mechs- the number of clicks is insane. Like many others, I use Smurfy to figure out what I want to do because it is so much quicker and easier to use, and then I (painfully) replicate my chosen build in the MWO interface. Finding modules (which mech did I leave it on?) is another related problem. Key requirements are:
1. Be able to easily create a mech config
2. Be able to easily save/load/edit configs
3. Don’t prevent me going into a mission with a component just because it is on another mech that’s not in a mission. E.g. if I have one AC20 but 2 mechs are set to use it, it doesn’t matter unless I try to actually play a round in 2 mechs at the same time (e.g. I quit a round and my mech is still in it)- don’t make me keep going to remove it from another mech to free it up.
Gameplay
Map start points could vary randomly to prevent the same routes being taken each game.
Also, setting up the maps to make single lance combat initially a focus would be good. Currently standard procedure is to group up into a 12 man ball and then fight. Maps which made each game effectively 3 independent 4v4 matches initially, followed by the remaining mechs from each of the 3 victorious lances fighting it out would add variety. It should even out the “stomps”; even if one lance v lance fight is very one sided, the other 2 shouldn’t be, so the later stage of the match is still roughly even.
I'm sure its difficult, but randomly generating maps would be great way to keep things varied. This might not be fully random, it could be a case of building "tiles" of map sections which can be rearranged. Something a bit like the carcasonne game.
I find the fun part of the matches when there are a lot of damaged mechs (including mine) as anything could happen in each engagement. I also like the idea of stock matches as it isn’t all about “meta” builds, instead you’re forced to try new thing s and make the best of it you can. To build on this, I’d suggest a match type where you got a randomly chosen/generated mech and loadout, maybe even already damaged/ammo reduced to represent a captured or battleworn mech? If all players in the match had the same it would add a great deal of variety to each round.
Spreading out damage; pinpoint damage is a well known problem. I can accept a gauss round going to one location, but stopping multiple weapons converging exactly is key. Running about with one big hole in otherwise intact armour from a brief confrontation is annoying. Running around with hardly any armour anywhere after multiple engagements is entertaining. The goal should be that generally your armour wears off at a similar rate across the mech/torso, and player skill only biases it a bit towards certain areas, not completely. I agree that having one "pool" of armour isn't great either, so its a balance. Having "fuzzy" borders between sections of armour might be a way to do this; a shot thats in the fuzzy area between centre and side torso would spread its damage across both areas' armour. If I run a Jag with 2 AC10s and fire simultaneously, I could accept the 2 shots land separately on my target, space out by the width my guns are apart- in effect I'd probably have to fire one at a time with a slight twist in between to align the 2 lines of fire. Similarly for my hunchie with 6 med lasers in the hunch- I'd expect my shots to land in 6 places on my target (even if all beams are in parallel)- and probably some are on one armour section, others another, spreading damage.
I like the idea of repair and rearm costs (provided cbill rewards are enough to cover it!), but I know this is unpopular. As an alternative, what about it being time based- the more damaged your mech the longer until you can pilot it again (to represent it being repaired)? It would make people use a greater variety of mechs.
Mechcommander had a strategically important system of repair bays in the match (armour and ammo only, not broken weapons/structure). It was a high priority target for the other team to take out/capture, adding to the variety in matches. It would have interesting effects on ammo dependent weapons- whether to risk trading off more ammo for less dependency on repair bays or not. There was also a concept of capturing turrets and gate controls, which led to more tactical options about luring enemies into traps (crushing them in a gate as you captured it, capturing a field of turrets just as the enemy is in the middle of it). I’d like to see that.
Hope that’s useful feedback. The game’s very enjoyable, looking forward to what you deliver in 2015.
