121 replies to this topic

[Kristov Kerensky]

Yeonne, there are visual notifications of the rewards for doing things which include how many cbills and how much xp they grant, right bottom of the target area on the HUD, pop up every time you do anything which has a specific reward, like Scouting, Flanking, UAV targeting, UAV directed damage, etc.

And sorry, but no medics or engineers, lets not turn this into BF in exoskeletons, aka CoD:AW, I already own that, I don't like playing it online for anything but Zombies with my son in law and grandson.

[Soy]

Kristov Kerensky, on 25 June 2015 - 07:45 PM, said:

And sorry, but no medics or engineers, lets not turn this into BF in exoskeletons, aka CoD:AW, I already own that, I don't like playing it online for anything but Zombies with my son in law and grandson.

BUT I WANT TO BE A REPAIR TRUCK

[Kristov Kerensky]

Soy, on 25 June 2015 - 07:52 PM, said:

BUT I WANT TO BE A REPAIR TRUCK

Doesn't Disney have a Cars game where you can be Mater? I just googled it, the answer is yes... http://games.disney....l_carsvideogame

There you go, you can be a repair truck! I'll get back to driving around a 65 ton death machine if you don't mind now

[Soy]

[Kristov Kerensky]

Funny thing, me and an Aussie friend of mine just discussed having repair bays on the field for Defenders in CW. We're both computer people, hardware and software, so we know the actual work that would be needed, and while it's not difficult, it wouldn't be easy. He thinks it would be worth it due to that fact, and I would tend to agree with him except 1 small issue.

The repair bay would need to be destructible, otherwise abuse. As soon as you make it destructible, you alter tactics. Problem is, you only alter tactics in a very minor way. You change the standard Attack tactic from opening gates, blowing gens, blowing objective to opening gate, blowing repair bay, blowing gens, blowing objective. It's a very minor tactical change and it won't serve any purpose to add the repair bay because it will be the first target, so it won't get any use. Why bother wasting time on something that won't be able to be used? We didn't touch on the lore/canon issues AT ALL, because we're looking at game play/balance/fun issues, that's it.

For PvE content, it's a good idea, but PvP, no, we've had them before in MW titles, they were always the first target, so this isn't supposition as to how they'll change tactics, we've been there, done that, it's a known.

That's part of the draw of MWO for me personally, no respawn, no refit, no reload. I drop, I have X ammo, that's it, so I better have back ups. I have only so much armor/internal structure, my health, and there's no healing, so I really have to watch my damage intake. I don't have the freedom and luxury of knowing I can just respawn, head back to where I was killed and take out the guy I tore up before he killed me. It's a do or die game, mistakes suck and remove you from the game, so you need to be on the ball.

Most nights I'm just playing to have fun, but even so, I'm still AWARE of this aspect so I tend to play with a little more respect than I would if I could just respawn because I was stupid, I like that.

[Y E O N N E]

Kristov Kerensky, on 25 June 2015 - 07:45 PM, said:

Yeonne, there are visual notifications of the rewards for doing things which include how many cbills and how much xp they grant, right bottom of the target area on the HUD, pop up every time you do anything which has a specific reward, like Scouting, Flanking, UAV targeting, UAV directed damage, etc.

I said make them more visible and keep a running total. The notifications are not in-your-face enough and there's no way to check your total performance until the end of the match.

I am neither dense nor unobservant. I play this game almost exclusively and way more than I would consider healthy. Anything I don't know about playing MWO sits with judging what action to take during a match and not in any sort of technical information and, believe me, I am my own worst critic about my match performances. So, please, peruse what I am writing instead of skimming through it. I am being quite explicit.

Quote

And sorry, but no medics or engineers, lets not turn this into BF in exoskeletons, aka CoD:AW, I already own that, I don't like playing it online for anything but Zombies with my son in law and grandson.

I'm not interested in Call of Duty, I'm interested in a MechWarrior game that more accurately represents how BTech battles are described. MWO as it is...is not that. Not at all. If you added 'Mechs into Planetside 2, you'd already have a much closer approximation to a BattleTech-style battlefield. Besides, the combat elements wouldn't even be remotely comparable, and I shouldn't have to tell you why.

[Hotthedd]

In BattleTech, repairs take hours or even days. There could be no in-match repairing without completely breaking the lore part of the BT universe.

[Lugh]

Yeonne Greene, on 25 June 2015 - 06:54 PM, said:

Adding a C-bill/XP/score counter somewhere on the HUD with more visible pop-up numbers and animations would be more arcadey, but also provide players an indicator of performance and something of a motivator. Furthermore, it would increase awareness of what pays what amount, how often it can be attained, and all sorts of economic meta-game information.

Isn't this already there with the 2000cb notice for scouting, the 1500 cb notice for flanking the 800cb bonus for brawling etc?

Hotthedd, on 26 June 2015 - 06:10 AM, said:

In BattleTech, repairs take hours or even days. There could be no in-match repairing without completely breaking the lore part of the BT universe.

Odd how the BT 7 week process to upgrade an engine from STD to XL in a mech is in NO WAY REPRESENTED(you could compress it to be shorter and add 'pilot skills' for mechanical tinkering speed ups) in the game at all, and is totally lore breaking but that's ok right?

[Abisha]

and where is your data that 1 population have dropped?

i can state one million people have walk the moon, now you prove it's not.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Yeonne Greene, on 26 June 2015 - 06:05 AM, said:

I said make them more visible and keep a running total. The notifications are not in-your-face enough and there's no way to check your total performance until the end of the match.

I am neither dense nor unobservant. I play this game almost exclusively and way more than I would consider healthy. Anything I don't know about playing MWO sits with judging what action to take during a match and not in any sort of technical information and, believe me, I am my own worst critic about my match performances. So, please, peruse what I am writing instead of skimming through it. I am being quite explicit.



I'm not interested in Call of Duty, I'm interested in a MechWarrior game that more accurately represents how BTech battles are described. MWO as it is...is not that. Not at all. If you added 'Mechs into Planetside 2, you'd already have a much closer approximation to a BattleTech-style battlefield. Besides, the combat elements wouldn't even be remotely comparable, and I shouldn't have to tell you why.

I don't find them difficult to see or notice, but I'm also not tunnel visioned in on my target reticule as most people are, so I don't see how they are not easily visible and noticed, and making them more visible than right in the middle of your targeting area? If they aren't seeing it now, they won't see it unless you make it bright flashing colors that take up a huge chunk of the screen.

You want an approximation of the BTech combat experience yet you ask for classes like medic and engineer, things that don't exist in the BTech combat experience at all? Now I'm confused...

If you want mixed arms combat, that's not something we'll be seeing in MWO, and I'm ok with that, since when you actually get into that in BTech, Mechs rather suck compared to all the OTHER things you can bring to the field. Just look at MW:LL, they really did do a great job of presenting that, and Mechs were NOT the big bad mothers on the field, just like in BTech with mixed arms.

[Rear Admiral Tier 6]

Poptarting was effective because the other weapon systems than PPC:s and AC:s had really horrendous hitregistration,mainly the SRM:s,they were useless.

Now that the Gauss + PPC desync is in force and jump jet heat in place,i would scale back the jump jet thrust nerf,reduce fall damage 50 % and keep the long recharge time on jj:s.

[Hotthedd]

Lugh, on 26 June 2015 - 08:11 AM, said:

Odd how the BT 7 week process to upgrade an engine from STD to XL in a mech is in NO WAY REPRESENTED(you could compress it to be shorter and add 'pilot skills' for mechanical tinkering speed ups) in the game at all, and is totally lore breaking but that's ok right?

I would be totally cool with that. I would also be good with travelling 2 weeks or more to get to the planet I'm battling on and back. (Of course we would have to have multiple PILOTS on our account instead of 'mechs)

But since logistics are not an exciting way to play first person shooters, I can live with the system MW:O has for that.

In-match repairs are another thing entirely. If we go down that arcade-y road, we might as well have power-ups and the like.

[xXBagheeraXx]

cSand, on 23 June 2015 - 03:27 PM, said:

So, I played a bunch of games with you last night Soy, both winning and losing but the one deciding factor in all those 4 or 5 matches was the comp guys in smoke jaguar or whatever they were from

basically, 5 or 6 huge meta builds, bunch of dual gauss and laser vomit etc, and they mopped the floor each time. I got hit with 4 gauss at one time and blew up instantly (my QKD cannot take that much to the back torso, lol). My fault, I ran into the fray and then tried to run out when I see what a mistake I made But if you make a mistake like that they are gonna capitalize instantly


The same guys, back when poptarting was a thing, would have used that current meta to mop the floor.


And when the current one is nerfed, they will move to the next one because that is the nature of that type of player. Go for the easiest, most efficient builds so you can win as much as possible. Not my thing, but a valid way to do things nonetheless.

So this happens, and people cry about being mopped by these kinda guys, cause let's face it, this is why people complain, because they got killed. So they get killed by whoever using the current trendy weapons, they see the builds being used and the weapons, they want it to be nerfed. So PGI eventually listens and nerfs the gear.

This actually doesn't hurt the powergamer meta crowd, in fact it isn't as much to do with the weapons as it is the fact that when 5 or 6 organized players focus 1 guy, that guy is dead no matter what the weapons are.

So in reality, whining and complaining for nerfs, as we can see here with the prime example of the jumpjet nerfs, doesn't stop people from getting their asses handed to them by power gamers. It just hurts every normal (see - the majority) player, because their gear gets worse.


Would it have made the game more popular allowing poptarting... hmm maybe. But looking at the bigger picutre... the trend of nerfing the gear really doesn't stop the meta crowd from mopping up - the manner of the mopping up just changes but the end result is the same.

It just overall makes the gear crappier for everyone. And if anything it's certainly not helping the game, IMO

You have just perfectly stated what is wrong/going on with every mmo game to date....Have my like sir. I will probably link this from now on.

[Jonathan Paine]

Pop-tarting was one of the dumbest things to be allowed in this game and completely ruined the sense of lumbering around in double digits tons of mechanized death. Nerfing jumpjets and PPCs was an almost as dumb way to limit pop-tarting.

Why I play less? Put hundreds of hours into CW and played it to death - now I am playing less while I wait for play modes to evolve and something to be done for Clan vs IS balancing.

[Y E O N N E]

Kristov Kerensky, on 26 June 2015 - 09:01 AM, said:

I don't find them difficult to see or notice, but I'm also not tunnel visioned in on my target reticule as most people are, so I don't see how they are not easily visible and noticed, and making them more visible than right in the middle of your targeting area? If they aren't seeing it now, they won't see it unless you make it bright flashing colors that take up a huge chunk of the screen.

If our conversations are anything to go by, neither you nor I make good examples of the type of player the game is failing to satisfy. And that's your problem: you are using yourself as a measuring stick, which seems logical because you work with what you know, but I know from people who make games for a living and from my own experiences learning to make games (once upon a time, before switching into engineering) that most players actually do need bright, flashing colors that grab attention. They also need little counters that tell them they are making progress, tiny blips that convey the notion of "GOOD JOB, JOHNNY!" and then point to an ever-increasing number telling them how awesome they are. They like earning rewards simply for playing, too, not just for playing well. This concept is the key behind Modern Warfare'a success and the success of its descendants, and everybody has learned from it except MWO. Even Red Orchestra, which was a rather hardcore WWII class-based shooter, has turned toward pandering to what we might consider the "lowest common denominator" to a much greater extent.

You may not like it, but you are very likely an outlier. I wouldn't like it, either, but I am also an outlier. It has been my experience that franchises hordes of people find fun (Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, Zelda), I find extremely dull. What I want and what games need to be greatly successful are very rarely the same thing.

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You want an approximation of the BTech combat experience yet you ask for classes like medic and engineer, things that don't exist in the BTech combat experience at all? Now I'm confused...

What is described is not necessarily everything that goes on. Field mechanics, logistics support units, medics for infantry, and special forces are implicit in any mechanized war zone.

Adding a few things that aren't in BTech is preferable to lacking almost everything that is, anyway. See our previous private conversation for the motivation. Beyond that, sometimes you have to add things to make a game. You think we had HUDs in WWII as shown in most any shooter set during that time? No, sir, we did not. You think the US Army ever adopted the XM8 as its standard-issue combat arm? Never.

Quote

If you want mixed arms combat, that's not something we'll be seeing in MWO, and I'm ok with that, since when you actually get into that in BTech, Mechs rather suck compared to all the OTHER things you can bring to the field. Just look at MW:LL, they really did do a great job of presenting that, and Mechs were NOT the big bad mothers on the field, just like in BTech with mixed arms.

I don't see anything wrong with 'Mechs not being the end-all, be-all.

Mixed arms is awesome, and yes I do want that, but I would be satisfied with game-modes more complex game modes. Beach-heads to establish and points to capture that provide your team with new locations to drop to (read: respawn at) and more resources to pull from when choosing which machine to drop in next. Maps and teams large enough so the most skilled can't skew the out-come on their own and massing of 'Mechs isn't necessary to win. Artillery pieces that provide support when smoke is popped but need to be protected or you lose the ability to call in strikes. Things like that.

How about an escort game-mode, where we have to defend a convoy over a set distance, with limited, periodic, and asymmetrical reinforcement? Or something as simple as capture-the-flag? Since PGI is considering PvE, how about a horde mode?

None of that necessitates combined arms, but it does highlight the differences between weight classes, making those differences much more useful.

What we have now is Counter-Strike with 'Mechs, and it gets especially especially dull when the only game-modes are all the functional equivalent of Demolition.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Yeonne, I even said the only way to make it more noticed is to make huge and flashing bright colors. It still won't be noticed by the majority who complain they get no rewards for doing those things right now when they do. End of game screen also shows these things, how many times you did them, what cbills rewards you got for them and how much xp you for them. People STILL don't notice them. They can go ahead and make the notifications bright colors, want to bet the complaints won't go away?

As for the mixed arms, PvE is on the table now, so we'll have to see what they plan on doing, but it sounds like the non-Mech components will all be AI run. Wonder how the LCD majority will deal with that? Like I said, mix arms in TT really sucks if you are in a Mech. MW:LL has that, you can see exactly how it plays out in a video game setting there. We did it in our TT game, it was not fun, nothing worse than a flight of Aerofighters blowing by and finding all of our Mechs reduced to scrap and we didn't touch a single one of them because no one was packing AC2s. City combat was horrible in a Mech when you've got infantry to deal with, they eat you alive a little bit at a time and you can't retaliate for crap unless you're in a Locust or some other specialized infantry oriented Mech. And rounding a corner to find a couple of anti-Mech tanks, oh man, THAT sucks, you may get 1 of them, but you will be out of the game regardless. And how many of our Mechs can even aim down far enough to deal with the tanks, light combat vehicles and infantry? Huge issue there right off the bat.

CTF would be fun, it's been done before in MW titles, wasn't the most played mode, but it was fun. King of the HIll was fun, objective based modes were fun. Yeah, we need more game types in MWO, we've been saying that all along, sounds like PGi is sorta kinda listening, but we'll see how that pans out, PGI hasn't exactly got a stellar record on that front, I don't personally see it getting much better. Russ has a vision and he tends to put that over everything else regardless of whether or not it's good for the game, so we'll just have to wait and see.

[Gyrok]

Mizeur, on 23 June 2015 - 08:12 PM, said:

We seem to have roughly 30,000 active players and peak at about 5,000 on concurrently based on the stats they've published from events, etc. There are a lot more people who've created accounts than that.

For a CW event, that ran for a week, that was centered around one of the most polarizing and popular events in all of BT Lore...we hit 5k concurrent.

I would bet you for times that are not that event, we are probably closer to 1k concurrent on a friday night, NA prime time.

EDIT: To give you an idea...we will take 2 of the big boys...

An event like that in WoW would have likely pushed a typical 10-15k concurrent up to 30-45k concurrent, and might have hit 10 mil separate account logins over the week.

An even like that in SWTOR would have likely pushed a typical 4-6k concurrent up to 12-15k concurrents, and might have hit 1.5-2mil separate account logins over the week.

MWO hits 5k concurrent and speculates 30k separate account logins for the event.

Edited by Gyrok, 28 June 2015 - 12:17 PM.

[Trev Firestorm]

Kristov Kerensky, on 25 June 2015 - 10:09 PM, said:

~~Repairbays~~

Its really a question of level design then, if you make it destructible but inside a bunker/hanger that is hard to access it becomes a choice (if attackers and defenders are well matched and assuming the gens get spread out again), take the time and risk to knock out the repair bay (which should be balanced to not provide too overpowering an advantage anyway)

[Kristov Kerensky]

Trev Firestorm, on 28 June 2015 - 12:36 PM, said:

Its really a question of level design then, if you make it destructible but inside a bunker/hanger that is hard to access it becomes a choice (if attackers and defenders are well matched and assuming the gens get spread out again), take the time and risk to knock out the repair bay (which should be balanced to not provide too overpowering an advantage anyway)

If it's not an advantage, why have it? If it's an advantage, it's the primary target due to that, and if you make it so hard to destroy that it's a waste of time to try and destroy it, it's too much of an advantage. It's how it works, we've had them before in MW titles, this isn't a new concept, we already know how they effect the tactics and gameplay. For that reason, they are pointless from a development standpoint, there's no reason to waste time and resources creating something that will not actually be of any real use in the game or are an overpowered resource for 1 side only because now you've screwed any balance to hell and back.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Honestly, I've been playing a lot of PS2 lately. Did a server smash on Sunday and created a Vanu alt.

Comparing how much I progressed with a fresh Vanu alt in 6 hours of play compared to what 6 hours in MWO gets you, there's a reason so few stick around.

Not to mention I've solo queued all weekend and it's been bad at best, so far today I've had 4 victories and 17 losses and every loss has had a minimum of an entire lance with sub-100 scores. Which just makes me think that meta isn't the issue, but that the overall quality of this game is D+ at best.