154 replies to this topic

[xe N on]

MechaBattler, on 17 May 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

Let's also not forget that right now 12v12 is what the game is capable of. If you want to give the IS more numbers in the form of bots. I really doubt they can make it work without killing the frames in game.

A good game design starts with a good engine. The cryengine is a good engine, but not for massive multiplayer online games. There are plenty of game engines however that support better netcode and are specifically designed for large player numbers.

And bots that hanging on pebbles or are useless are ... bad in 2015. Just look at quake 3 arena. This game was released 1999!!! Yes, You could win again bots on difficult nightmare ... however, it was not easy. These bots where quite good at aim even with ballistic weapons having travel time and never get stucked anywhere. Again, 1999.

Edited by xe N on, 17 May 2015 - 08:22 AM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Thor and his almighty Nerf hammer!

By the thinking of all things being balanced Mjolnir would be as powerful as

and vice versa

Edited by Joseph Mallan, 17 May 2015 - 08:24 AM.

[Yokaiko]

Vlaitor, on 17 May 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

Even right now the Clans are always superiors to IS if you go tons to tons.
If you want to balance things out.
CW: 12is vs 10clans.
QuickMatch: 4 Clans 240 tons max per team.

They can't do that because they won't spit the pug queue into clan and IS either, if they did they wouldn't be able to start games.

....and god help the puggies wait more than two minutes, that is why the 3/3/3/3 has release valves, even with all IS it was taking upwards of 10 minutes to start a game.

[Vlaitor]

xe N on, on 17 May 2015 - 08:20 AM, said:

A good game design starts with a good engine. The cryengine is a good engine, but not for massive multiplayer online games. There are plenty of game engines however that support better netcode and are specifically designed for large player numbers.

And bots hanging on pebbles or are useless are ... bad in 2015. Just look at quake 3 arena. This game was released 1999!!! You could handle bots on difficult nightmare ... however, these bots where quite good at aim and never get stucked anywhere. Again, 1999.

Map designs in Quake 3 are very simple when it comes to terrain variation. I remember very well the bots going in predefined vectors in the map. Not a great feeling.

[xe N on]

Joseph Mallan, on 17 May 2015 - 08:21 AM, said:

Thor and his almighty Nerf hammer!

Thors hammer is much higher developed than clan tech.

It need to be nerfed this was:

Edited by xe N on, 17 May 2015 - 08:28 AM.

[Vlaitor]

Yokaiko, on 17 May 2015 - 08:21 AM, said:

They can't do that because they won't spit the pug queue into clan and IS either, if they did they wouldn't be able to start games.

....and god help the puggies wait more than two minutes, that is why the 3/3/3/3 has release valves, even with all IS it was taking upwards of 10 minutes to start a game.

It would be a good solution if the playerbase was larger. Impacting the game balance with lore isn't.
Publication on Steam, Starter Packs, more Events and more advertising would certainly give a good boost in the player count.

[ArchAngelWC]

highly doubt we would need bots....remember MPBT3025....imagine if the Clans had invaded
Would the IS really need more pilots

[xe N on]

Vlaitor, on 17 May 2015 - 08:22 AM, said:

Map designs in Quake 3 are very simple when it comes to terrain variation. I remember very well the bots going in predefined vectors in the map. Not a great feeling.

Yes, the bots had pathways. But that is nothing bad imho.

And for more open maps take Quake Wars Enemy territory.

Edited by xe N on, 17 May 2015 - 08:27 AM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Arch, there's 1 tiny little problem with your proposals, well a lot more than that, but 1 that really cuts to the quick of things.

A by the books BattleTech based first person shooter game has NEVER been successful enough to be worthwhile.

Kesmai's MPBT 3025 on GEnie, MPBT Solaris, EA's MPBT 3025, not a single one was a commercial success, not even close to being a commercial success. EA's game never even got out of closed beta, the numbers of potential customers was so bad that they couldn't even cover the cost of the development when they closed it down.

And not a single one of those BTech games had mixed IS and Clan to deal with, they were purely 3025 and older Inner Sphere Tech, nothing else. No imbalances to deal with, and yet, they just couldn't get enough of a playerbase on any of them to make a commercially successful venture of them.

MW2-4 were all Clan based, IS Tech was added to later titles and it was freely mixed with Clan Tech, and ALL of them were primarily Single player games with a multiplayer addon, balance wasn't even looked at until MW4, which concluded that setting hardpoints was the path to balance. And that was the ONLY balance tool that was used on any of the MW titles to date, hardpoints, which failed totally. The MW2-4 titles were not about multiplayer, they were not about the IS vs the Clans, they were single player games where you got to either be Clan or be IS with Clan toys at your disposal. And MW2 was the best selling and most played of the lot, in case you forgot, wonder why...

BattleTech itself was balanced nicely until the Clans were added, and even the creators have stated publically, that was a massive mistake. There is no balance between Clans and IS, a Star can take a Company, usually without a single loss, baring extremely lucky rolls, something those of us who played BattleTech remember all to vividly. Even the lore for the Invasion shows time and again that the IS couldn't face the Clans in a straight fight, they had to play dirty and cheat, even the heros in the novels had to do this, from Phelan Kell all the way to ComStar at Tukayyid, there were no clean straight up fights, it was always dirty pool and cheating for the IS to win the engagement, and lots and lots of Stackpoling, because the IS did NOT have a chance in hell against the Clans without plot devices.

There is no way to have the BattleTech canon Clans vs the Inner Sphere and make it commercially viable, much less successful, it simply isn't possible. I wish it was, I don't mind fighting as IS against the Clans using TT values, but I'm rather odd that way, like some others here. We ARE a very small minority however, and history has shown repeatedly that we're not enough of a market to be commercially viable, so, we aren't going to get what we want.

PGI was aware of this years ago, that's why they said from the getgo, the Clans will have better tech but they will not be the auto-win faction, they will be balanced against the IS so that no one HAS to be Clan in order to be able to win, which is the only possible way to make a commercially viable, much less successful, BTech based PvP game.

MWO is a commercial venture, if you can't view it that way, then you need to stop making suggestions and deal with it, because unless this venture makes a profit, it will cease to exist. I'd LOVE to have purely TT values across the board for everything, IS and Clan, and I know EXACTLY how those work out in actual play. I also know that that would spell the death of MWO within 3 months, 6 at the most. I don't always agree with PGI's vision, I think they've made some serious CharlieFranks, but they ARE trying to make this game commercially viable and that is their overriding design plan, it has to make money. The more people this game appeals to, the more money it can make, the longer it can stay operational, the more time they have to do things like Solaris, PvE, and so on.

So please people, stop with the bs that will kill this video game, try to think as a businessperson, WHAT can they do to make the game fun to more people, so it can make more money?

[Yokaiko]

Vlaitor, on 17 May 2015 - 08:24 AM, said:

It would be a good solution if the playerbase was larger. Impacting the game balance with lore isn't.
Publication on Steam, Starter Packs, more Events and more advertising would certainly give a good boost in the player count.

Unlikely, PGI has been steady pissing off pretty much everyone for years, so on Reddit, SA, and Steam the game already has a crap reputation. Factor in that steam gamers tend to be the cheapest mofos out there and even the few that dip thier toes will get over it REAL fast when they experience the Paulconomy and look at mech/premium prices.

This game has quite literally survived DESPITE PGI instead of because of them.

[KuroNyra]

Torgun, on 17 May 2015 - 08:13 AM, said:

We're talking about some percentages here and there and you can't neglect the cost of clans though as it costs a lot to get all variants with hardwired XL engines. But if you're going to put clans being twice as good as IS mechs? Sure as heck no one but the most obsessed roleplayers are going to play for IS.

And the ones who prefer there IS mech, and the ones that simply like to use the underdogs. Why do you think people like to play the Locust or the Urbanmech?


Here, we could have a system with 10 vs 12, Clans with there Advantage, IS with there own (more number, even a renforcement during the battle.) + The Zellbrigen forced for the Clanners.

They select a target and have to focus on it, if they attack another player, it is considered a low move and result in penalty for there result regardless of if they win or loose the battles.


There's lot of things we could try to make it more Battletech-like and not just FPS-like.
But I suppose it's easier for you to cry against Clans mech and having your IS mech overquircked right?

[Yokaiko]

They can't do IS vs Clan in the pub queue, and I'm willing to bet that they know that if they split the queue that way they can't launch a game. Same reason they added release vavles to 3/3/3/3 the first time they tried it queue times were over 10 minutes and everyone screamed.

[ArchAngelWC]

Vlaitor, on 17 May 2015 - 08:24 AM, said:

It would be a good solution if the playerbase was larger. Impacting the game balance with lore isn't.
Publication on Steam, Starter Packs, more Events and more advertising would certainly give a good boost in the player count.

Part of my arguement is if they started Battletech'ing it up...instead of Big Stompy Roboting....a lot of people would come back...a lot of people might actually get into the game (cause for those of you who didnt get screwed...MechCommander 2 inhibited the trust of many BT gamers or more aptly being flat out told by microsoft unless we bought their broken game they would not patch the multiplayer to be playable which was really the only reason people were going to buy it)

[Vlaitor]

Yokaiko, on 17 May 2015 - 08:26 AM, said:

Unlikely, PGI has been steady pissing off pretty much everyone for years, so on Reddit, SA, and Steam the game already has a crap reputation. Factor in that steam gamers tend to be the cheapest mofos out there and even the few that dip thier toes will get over it REAL fast when they experience the Paulconomy and look at mech/premium prices.

This game has quite literally survived DESPITE PGI instead of because of them.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be too bad. Let's not forget, WoT is selling single models for 30-40$, so is war thunder, so are some CS:GO skins. I think 16 mechs for 80$ isn't too bad compared to other F2P arcade/simulator. In fact, even if the game has a bad reputation, it's still a good boost in advertising.

[Knight Magus]

Triordinant, on 17 May 2015 - 06:42 AM, said:

Don't forget the second part of BT canon: Clan technological superiority is balanced by Inner Sphere numerical superiority. A Clan Star (5 'mechs) with original unnerfed 'mechs would be met by an IS Company (12 'mechs) in battle.

More Like 3 Lances vs 2 stars - unless you decided to run all 3025 is mechs.

[Kristov Kerensky]

KuroNyra, on 17 May 2015 - 08:27 AM, said:

And the ones who prefer there IS mech, and the ones that simply like to use the underdogs. Why do you think people like to play the Locust or the Urbanmech?


Here, we could have a system with 10 vs 12, Clans with there Advantage, IS with there own (more number, even a renforcement during the battle.) + The Zellbrigen forced for the Clanners.

They select a target and have to focus on it, if they attack another player, it is considered a low move and result in penalty for there result regardless of if they win or loose the battles.


There's lot of things we could try to make it more Battletech-like and not just FPS-like.
But I suppose it's easier for you to cry against Clans mech and having your IS mech overquircked right?

If you FORCE someone to play a specific way by hitting them with negatives and they still WIN playing their own way, guess what is going to happen. That's right, they will ignore the forced bs and play their own way because winning means more.

Even the Clans in the lore stopped using their own rules of engagement against the IS within the first year of the Invasion, you MIGHT want to remember that the next time you bring those up.

[ArchAngelWC]

Kristov Kerensky, on 17 May 2015 - 08:26 AM, said:

Arch, there's 1 tiny little problem with your proposals, well a lot more than that, but 1 that really cuts to the quick of things.

A by the books BattleTech based first person shooter game has NEVER been successful enough to be worthwhile.

Kesmai's MPBT 3025 on GEnie, MPBT Solaris, EA's MPBT 3025, not a single one was a commercial success, not even close to being a commercial success. EA's game never even got out of closed beta, the numbers of potential customers was so bad that they couldn't even cover the cost of the development when they closed it down.

And not a single one of those BTech games had mixed IS and Clan to deal with, they were purely 3025 and older Inner Sphere Tech, nothing else. No imbalances to deal with, and yet, they just couldn't get enough of a playerbase on any of them to make a commercially successful venture of them.

MW2-4 were all Clan based, IS Tech was added to later titles and it was freely mixed with Clan Tech, and ALL of them were primarily Single player games with a multiplayer addon, balance wasn't even looked at until MW4, which concluded that setting hardpoints was the path to balance. And that was the ONLY balance tool that was used on any of the MW titles to date, hardpoints, which failed totally. The MW2-4 titles were not about multiplayer, they were not about the IS vs the Clans, they were single player games where you got to either be Clan or be IS with Clan toys at your disposal. And MW2 was the best selling and most played of the lot, in case you forgot, wonder why...

BattleTech itself was balanced nicely until the Clans were added, and even the creators have stated publically, that was a massive mistake. There is no balance between Clans and IS, a Star can take a Company, usually without a single loss, baring extremely lucky rolls, something those of us who played BattleTech remember all to vividly. Even the lore for the Invasion shows time and again that the IS couldn't face the Clans in a straight fight, they had to play dirty and cheat, even the heros in the novels had to do this, from Phelan Kell all the way to ComStar at Tukayyid, there were no clean straight up fights, it was always dirty pool and cheating for the IS to win the engagement, and lots and lots of Stackpoling, because the IS did NOT have a chance in hell against the Clans without plot devices.

There is no way to have the BattleTech canon Clans vs the Inner Sphere and make it commercially viable, much less successful, it simply isn't possible. I wish it was, I don't mind fighting as IS against the Clans using TT values, but I'm rather odd that way, like some others here. We ARE a very small minority however, and history has shown repeatedly that we're not enough of a market to be commercially viable, so, we aren't going to get what we want.

PGI was aware of this years ago, that's why they said from the getgo, the Clans will have better tech but they will not be the auto-win faction, they will be balanced against the IS so that no one HAS to be Clan in order to be able to win, which is the only possible way to make a commercially viable, much less successful, BTech based PvP game.

MWO is a commercial venture, if you can't view it that way, then you need to stop making suggestions and deal with it, because unless this venture makes a profit, it will cease to exist. I'd LOVE to have purely TT values across the board for everything, IS and Clan, and I know EXACTLY how those work out in actual play. I also know that that would spell the death of MWO within 3 months, 6 at the most. I don't always agree with PGI's vision, I think they've made some serious CharlieFranks, but they ARE trying to make this game commercially viable and that is their overriding design plan, it has to make money. The more people this game appeals to, the more money it can make, the longer it can stay operational, the more time they have to do things like Solaris, PvE, and so on.

So please people, stop with the bs that will kill this video game, try to think as a businessperson, WHAT can they do to make the game fun to more people, so it can make more money?

MPBT3025 didnt die because EA decided they couldnt make money...it died because MS
MS also killed Mechcommander with MechCommander 2 (and the decision by the lead MS rep to basically tell the Head League Admin (me) that all of us could fk ourselves the game was broken buy it or dont get patches...once it was dumped by MS tho...instantly fixed and had massive additions depending on mod(s)

MW3/4 were pretty cool particularly if you were in the right league

Now thank god for NBT4's rebuild and additions to MW4 cause that sustained a lot of us for many many years..
for Me I also had Neveron...which made a fortune and would still be around if the Admins were not greedy and lazy at the same time....

The game can be commercially viable and successful and Battletech...it has existed and it could be this game lol

They just need to have the balls to actually go down that road...and us as a community go with them...(or get back on the bus if that is the case)

Futhermore...I think if you hit the Steam release going "The Starleague has fallen....300 years of war is about to commence" and let people look at what type of stuff Kurita tends to use, Davion, Steiner, Marik, etc etc etc and then go there...and play together in the same pool with every member of their house to jockey for position pre-cycle start/elect leaders yada yada and then it really hits the fan for another few months or longer depending on what we as the present community figure out is most feasible/fun (lets face it...playing 1 campaign for 5 years...while immersive..is going to boring as fk for long stretchs...but if we compress the woot into say 4 months...well that is 4 months of concentraited woot)

Also..you saw where I said I've played every online BT game since 1996...
and only 1 time....ever
have the Clans even gotten without a faint glimmer of hope of a snowballs chance in hell of taking Terra

I hate to say this....but we computer gamers are not genetically engineered warriors decending from mystical bloodlines who may or may not use stimulants to enhance damn near everything

Edited by ArchAngelWC, 17 May 2015 - 08:51 AM.

[Black Arachne]

PGI failed to balance Clans and Inner Sphere for several reasons, many of which is because they ignored core rules and let's not forget the terrible heat system, ghost heat, poorly implemented critical hits, and Quirks (which are now a problem).

[Joseph Mallan]

Black Arachne, on 17 May 2015 - 08:46 AM, said:

PGI failed to balance Clans and Inner Sphere for several reasons, many of which is because they ignored core rules and let's not forget the terrible heat system, ghost heat, poorly implemented critical hits, and Quirks (which are now a problem).

To be fair, if PGI followed more of the Core rules Clans would be completely mopping up the Inner Sphere.

[Lexx]