140 replies to this topic

[GaussDragon]

Where was the Nova Cat in the list of clan mechs?

[Mr Smiles]

GaussDragon, on 02 December 2011 - 04:18 PM, said:

Where was the Nova Cat in the list of clan mechs?

Wasn't fielded until ~3052, I only listed 'Mechs available during the invasion.

[Nitehawk]

Kyll Long, on 29 November 2011 - 04:25 PM, said:

I'd also be interested in some results of added questions regarding the strategic options and aspects people would like to see. Well presented though

I also concure with Kyll Long, in regards to questions on the inclusion of strategic options questions, plus those involving House structures/framework.

Otherwise, a well done presentation....

[Alistair Steiner]

Kevin Kirov, on 30 November 2011 - 08:33 PM, said:

Joe McWarrior is a pretty awesome guy, maybe he could be the unoffical logo, like VaultBoy from Fallout

^This. I fully support this.

Mr. Smiles, on 02 December 2011 - 10:45 AM, said:

I did joke about getting a "Captain Morgan Kell's Spiced Rum" decal, that's not really why I did all this.

In reference to the rest of your post (special hand-outs causing discontent within the forum), I think this, joking though it may be, would be a nice, custom decal for you. No tactical advantage, no real noticeable difference. Though I'd love to be the spotter who zooms in to prepare an artillery strike, only to see that infamous decal on the enemy 'Mech. I'd bow my head in respect, and call in the strike. Of course, it would be even better if you were on my team.

Anyway, point being, this is a great contribution to the game and growing community, and I'm glad the devs are supportive of it.

[GaussDragon]

As I'm pretty sure you pointed out in this survey, there's a BattleTech bias in the data. The people who frequent these forums are typically on what I'd like to label the more 'conservative' end of the spectrum, tending towards BT and canon as opposed to the extreme liberal (arcade) end of things - MechAssault. A funny way I detect this is simply by observing how frequently mechs with clan and IS names are referred to by their clan names instead of their IS names. I'm not kidding, this works.

Anyway, my overriding concern is about how simulation is going to slow down the pacing. As the poll pointed it out - most were in favour of light engagements climaxing in some sort of heavy slugfest which seems fairly confluent for the hate against re spawning, so it suggests (to me) a preference for wave-style combat.

How these preferences will affect the decision of the largest part of the market - the people out there who have either never played BT/MW before or played it some but were more interested in other games. Because the market is flooded with titles and the varied interests of the gamers, the handshake window a game has to hook a new player is incredibly short and from a business-retention standpoint, absolutely critical. Look at how many votes were against making it easy for new players to learn how the play and understand the game. What the hell? A game can be complex, but from a business standpoint, I don't see how it's rational to make it difficult for a new player/customer to learn how to play and understand the game.

Newer players who lack any history with BT and MW aren't going to care nearly as much about canonicity or gameplay that gets bogged-down by adherence to rules from other formats of the greater BT/MW universe. Granted PGI did make it clear that this isn't going to be based on the tabletop game but the point I'm trying to make is that the preferences of conservative gamers may slow down the gameplay to an unreasonable degree. I know it's early and almost all of us, so far, have little idea as to how the gameplay will be paced. But what worries me the most is how much or how little tolerance new players will have for long periods of waiting between gameplay - I.E., overly punitive wait times for respawn, mech shutdowns due to overheating and travel time from spawn to battle area. I'm all in favour of complexities that make the game more interesting than just point and shoot, but they have to be implemented in clever ways, and not just sticking to canon that wasn't made with a whole lot of playability in mind for an F2P computer game that arrived two and a half decades after it was initially conceived.

[Odin]

Mr. Smiles you did us all a great favor with this work and your time, Danke! Awesome.

[Tweaks]

Mr. Smiles, I'm not about to start a heated debate with you (and don't want to either), but I spotted this contradiction in your analysis:

Quote

I created a survey to gather as many opinions on the up-and-coming MechWarrior Online as I could. This presentation is the result of that polling, and represents the grand will and desires of the MechWarrior Online community as a whole.

You state this, yet further down you admit that...

Quote

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, these statistics are skewed by the survey being in English only. Perhaps next time, I should seek out some people who speak foreign languages and ask them to assist me in creating translations into common foreign languages, especially German and Russian. It would still skew the survey towards those three languages, but biased three ways is better than biased one.

The survey also had a bit of bias since it only appealed to die-hard MechWarrior fans, and only ones who are registered on those forums, computer savvy, and so on. The number of forums accessed, as well as the number of friends redirected to this survey, help offset these problems, though not by enough to make the results as unbiased as they could hopefully have been.

How can you state that it represents the MechWarrior Online community as a whole, when you recognize the survey was skewed by those factors? It can't be both at the same time.

Edited by Tweaks, 03 December 2011 - 02:31 PM.

[CaveMan]

GaussDragon, on 03 December 2011 - 08:04 AM, said:

Look at how many votes were against making it easy for new players to learn how the play and understand the game.

Not everyone who isn't a 25-year BattleTech fan is going to come here expecting a twitchy Halo-type fratboy game. In fact, the ones who are? ***** them. They can learn to enjoy this setting for what it is, or they can go back to playing Medal of Duty: Modern Battlefield 27. Doesn't make a difference because they'll probably only play this game for a month either way and something else will come along.

This game needs to attract long-term players if it's going to thrive. People who stay, spend money, and fall in love with the franchise. It has to be more than just the flavor of the month, and that means it needs to be rich, detailed and complex. Worth investing time in to learn the ropes.

There are tons of people out there who would jump at the chance to plug into a gritty, realistic mech simulator. In fact I know quite a lot of them in real life: people who aren't BattleTech fans, didnt play every MechWarrior title, know the names of maybe one or two 'Mechs from that one time they played MechAssault on a friend's xbox, and are [b]excited as hell[/i] about the idea of MWO as a sim game because it promises to be detailed, serious, tactical and still packed with giant robot goodness.

[Joachim Viltry]

Huzzah! Caveman just nailed it. Unfortunately i am out of 'likes' for the day...

[GaussDragon]

CaveMan, on 03 December 2011 - 02:43 PM, said:

Not everyone who isn't a 25-year BattleTech fan is going to come here expecting a twitchy Halo-type fratboy game. In fact, the ones who are? ***** them. They can learn to enjoy this setting for what it is, or they can go back to playing Medal of Duty: Modern Battlefield 27.

I could've set my watch to the eventuality of this hyperbolic reply coming up. I'm not trying to say we need it to be like MechAssault at all.

Quote

This game needs to attract long-term players if it's going to thrive. People who stay, spend money, and fall in love with the franchise. It has to be more than just the flavor of the month, and that means it needs to be rich, detailed and complex. Worth investing time in to learn the ropes.

Again, I said it wasn't against complexity at all, I'm all for it. If you look at the response of PGI in FAQ about tabletop, and by no leap of logic, hardcore simulation rules, they know that they don't port as easily to a computer game that from a more broadly objective standpoint, they may not be considered fun - "Some mechanics in the tabletop version of the game do not translate well into a videogame and we are coming up with our own rule sets that mitigate these differences in an intuitive and fun manner"

Quote

There are tons of people out there who would jump at the chance to plug into a gritty, realistic mech simulator. In fact I know quite a lot of them in real life: people who aren't BattleTech fans, didnt play every MechWarrior title, know the names of maybe one or two 'Mechs from that one time they played MechAssault on a friend's xbox, and are [b]excited as hell[/i] about the idea of MWO as a sim game because it promises to be detailed, serious, tactical and still packed with giant robot goodness.

I think we can all agree here, MechAssault is not something anyone here wants. I used it to explain a spectrum as a whole, rather than a desired end-point. However, I agree with PGI that there are some simulator elements that are only appealing to the 'purists' so to speak that IMHO, do not translate as well into a game. This debate is an on-going one in the politics of MechWarrior, and based on my observation over the years, the purists/conservatives have an element of entitlement that seems to elicit paroxysms of puritanical rage (how's my hyperbole doing? See what I did there?) every time someone suggests some modifications that create a better flow of combat that doesn't necessarily conform to canon. This is a business, and I'm willing to bet it isn't trying to serve a niche market. I could be wrong, but I'm going to go with 'no'.

We all love MechWarrior, but there are some philosophical differences that have been on-going for quite some time and for better or worse, they come as a package deal with this IP. I'm not sure how much PGI knew about it going into it.

Edited by GaussDragon, 03 December 2011 - 03:43 PM.

[Thorqemada]

One off the worst things a game can do is to drive newcomers, new players away b4 they get catched/hooked into the game - PvP-Games excell at that much to often by design and also by community sometimes.
I think that Mechwarrior can excell in one point most of the PvP-games and that is to offer "balanced" fights with its tonnage rules.
And why not have difficulty settings so people can grow into a less arcade-action-game and more action-simulation-game?
Starting as recruits in regular military units having preset mechs and with the gaining of ranks more options open up to them...the hardest and most complete simulation would be to build up a mercenary unit and it would be a players choice how far he wants to go with the simulation aspect.
Personally i feel the long term succes would come from players that like the game and grow step by step into the more simulation like aspects of the game with the overall player numbers substituted by the short term action gamers.

[Kudzu]

GaussDragon, on 03 December 2011 - 03:33 PM, said:

Again, I said it wasn't against complexity at all, I'm all for it. If you look at the response of PGI in FAQ about tabletop, and by no leap of logic, hardcore simulation rules, they know that they don't port as easily to a computer game that from a more broadly objective standpoint, they may not be considered fun - "Some mechanics in the tabletop version of the game do not translate well into a videogame and we are coming up with our own rule sets that mitigate these differences in an intuitive and fun manner"

The key word in that is some. The issue most of us are having is where to draw the line between what should and should not be translated and how to go about doing it so that it stays true to the setting while still being fun overall.

I think we can all agree that turns and the initiative can be dropped, but beyond that...

Quote

I think we can all agree here, MechAssault is not something anyone here wants.

Except for a few mouth-breathing trolls that are around I would agree.

Quote

I used it to explain a spectrum as a whole, rather than a desired end-point. However, I agree with PGI that there are some simulator elements that are only appealing to the 'purists' so to speak that IMHO, do not translate as well into a game. This debate is an on-going one in the politics of MechWarrior, and based on my observation over the years, the purists/conservatives have an element of entitlement that seems to elicit paroxysms of puritanical rage (how's my hyperbole doing? See what I did there?) every time someone suggests some modifications that create a better flow of combat that doesn't necessarily conform to canon. This is a business, and I'm willing to bet it isn't trying to serve a niche market. I could be wrong, but I'm going to go with 'no'.

Better flow of combat is a relative opinion. The reason many of us purists are so vocal about staying true to the setting is that we've been invested in the BTU for years and have yet to see it done right in the computer games. We've seen so many of the past games fall apart simply because they did such of poor job of translating the TT to a different format.

Quote

We all love MechWarrior, but there are some philosophical differences that have been on-going for quite some time and for better or worse, they come as a package deal with this IP. I'm not sure how much PGI knew about it going into it.

well, if they didn't know before they're certainly learning it now!

[Mr Smiles]

Tweaks, on 03 December 2011 - 02:30 PM, said:

Mr. Smiles, I'm not about to start a heated debate with you (and don't want to either), but I spotted this contradiction in your analysis:

You state this, yet further down you admit that...

How can you state that it represents the MechWarrior Online community as a whole, when you recognize the survey was skewed by those factors? It can't be both at the same time.

Because I didn't write multiple drafts of my analysis is how I typed the introduction, proofread it, went to the demographics, proofread it, went to the hardware, proofread it, and so on. Then I hit "Send." If I found something which I realized needed to be addressed in a previous section, I scrolled up and addressed it, but at no point did I say "Hm. I should rewrite this entire 9-hours-of-typing analysis over again, just to smooth out any issues with consistency in voice or objective."

Admittedly, not the best way to do things, and as a writer I'm normally all about having at least two drafts but, eh, I felt I did well enough on the first time around that any minor problems could either be retroactively edited or someone would just point them out. Or, what usually happens, by the time people get to the bottom of the post, they've forgotten small comments like that that I've made at the top of the post, and don't have a problem

You're right, of course. But I simply put, after working on it from 9:30 AM to 6:30 PM with only bathroom breaks, I was just too lazy to go over it for issues such as that

[CaveMan]

Quote

This debate is an on-going one in the politics of MechWarrior, and based on my observation over the years, the purists/conservatives have an element of entitlement that seems to elicit paroxysms of puritanical rage (how's my hyperbole doing? See what I did there?) every time someone suggests some modifications that create a better flow of combat that doesn't necessarily conform to canon.

It appears you've binned everyone you don't see eye-to-eye with as an intractible purist raging against any deviation from Holy Writ.

The reality is, some of us just don't agree with your idea of 'a better flow of combat'. We want a slower, more methodical game. We want to play chess and not checkers. It has nothing to do with a religious adherence to canon.

[Mr Smiles]

I think you're both wrong!

Actually, I haven't thoroughly read anyone's arguments in this BattleTech/MechWarrior debate, because I find such debates exhausting and silly. I did skim though.

Here's my two cents on it from what rage I saw when I skimmed:

Cent #1: 66% of all respondents have played BattleTech. Over 90% (usually closer to 100%) want highly BattleTech-like features in their game. Consider those two statistics for a second. Also consider, in my survey, I never actually prompted people which rules I was taking out of BattleTech and which rules I was making up and which rules I was taking off the forums and which rules were from previous Mechwarriors. And yet, without even having played the "canon" game before, those 33% of respondents who hadn't played the game before? Still wanted those particular features.

Also, go through the statistics and consider. There were many, many rules from the BattleTech canon that the community threw out in the survey. Coolant, engine explosions, legging effects, weapon aiming, life support as a critical hit section, the exact restrictions of the MechLab... the community might mostly like BattleTech rules, but as far as I've discovered from the survey, the community has no hesitations whatsoever about ignoring the "rules" in order to make a better game.

It just so happens that the majority of players who voted on the survey agree, without even having me prompt them that the rules came from BattleTech, that certain rules from BattleTech make for better video gaming.

I just don't think this survey, or this forum, is really quite so divided into BattleTech/MechWarrior camps as some people believe. I think everyone's willing to make reasonable compromise, both BattleTech toward video games and MechWarrior toward canon, when the situation calls for it.

Cent #2: It actually makes a great deal of sense for newbies to get the shaft for MechWarrior Online. At least, not totally get the shaft, but at least support for newbies should get the back-burner. Why? Because MechWarrior Online is free to play. Unlike most games on the market, there is no $60 surcharge for admittance, and PGI doesn't turn a single profit until you decide that MechWarrior Online is a rich enough, long-lived enough game that can spend money in the store and enjoy that expenditure for months.

If PGI wants to turn a regular monthly profit, they need to not attract newbies, like all $60-per-box titles need to do (as each attracted newbie represents another $60 gross income figure), but retain fans. Oh sure, they also need to focus on turning what newbies they get into fans, but all the survey indicates (at least to me) is the general feeling that PGI needs to focus on the fans first, because it's the fans who are going to keep PGI in chips and Capella Cola.

Also, that particular question might have some hefty bias to it, because some MechWarrior games (MechWarrior 4, MechAssault) have been so badly dumbed down that they become impossible for a large portion of the community to enjoy. People fear dumbing down. And to a lot of people, "newbie friendly" means "dumb it down", so, they vote against that option, or at least lower its priority.

Cent #3 (bonus cent!): "Mouth breathing trolls"... "religious adherents"... Guys, I can't claim I don't have a temper or a love of inflammatory comments, but seriously, this is actually valuable discussion to have, let's leave the angry pokes and prods out and avoid alienating any groups, no matter how niche. Shirley, we can discuss our differing opinions with collected heads.

Edited by Mr. Smiles, 03 December 2011 - 09:39 PM.

[Ace Twain]

Mr. Smiles, on 03 December 2011 - 09:36 PM, said:

Shirley

Who's this girl Shirley?

Here's to a good game. That is really what all of us want, specifics aside. No matter which side of the fence you fall on or how far into either field you're standing, if PGI succeeds at making this a fun and engaging experience then they will have a winner, as far as I'm concerned anyways.

[Reggimus]

Tweaks, on 03 December 2011 - 02:30 PM, said:

Mr. Smiles, I'm not about to start a heated debate with you (and don't want to either), but I spotted this contradiction in your analysis:

Every report/stat gathering has a bias, a GOOD report states where this bias is, if it wasn't included then i wouldn't trust it so much.

[SilentWolff]

Smiles,
I wanted to take the time to thank you for all the time you have spent creating this survey and then sharing the results. It must of been very time consuming, but the results we quite worthwhile imo.
There are alot of things that encourage me when I look at the results and I agree with most of it. I hope PGI can use this info to make the game we all are craving. Thanks again man, well done.

Edited by SilentWolff, 04 December 2011 - 12:15 AM.

[Tweaks]

Reggimus, on 03 December 2011 - 11:06 PM, said:

Every report/stat gathering has a bias, a GOOD report states where this bias is, if it wasn't included then i wouldn't trust it so much.

It's not the fact it had a bias that was the problem but the fact that his intro contradicted the statement where he explains that bias. As Mr. Smiles replied though, it was an editing mistake (it was pretty long after all, and not all typed at the same time). I just wanted to make it clear, that's all.

[Wolvers]

Excellent write-up, shame more people didn't take the time to do the survey though