61 replies to this topic

[TheArisen]

I'm a big fan of customization. It really improves immersion for me when I can personalize things. I'm sure they're many players like me who'd like to have more customization options.

This thread is about customizable mech hangers. Being able to have faction banners, techs, vehicles, other mechs, etc. Obviously this wouldn't necessarily be for others but it'd be nice to be able to spice up a part of the game where a lot of time is spent.

We could choose the location of the hanger, desert, mountain, dropship, New Avalon, Luthien, etc.

I'm thinking the cost would be totally dependent on how big and detailed each option is. Changing your hanger location to a desert should cost substantially more than a faction banner.

I was messaging Tina and she said currently Pgi is mainly looking at customizable geometry because it'd be a big project but she'd pass on this idea along with customizable HUd to the art team. This shows that if we show interest in these ideas, they might look at implementing them next.

Here's a link to the customizable HUD thread. http://mwomercs.com/...ponse-included/

Feel free to share any and all ideas of things you'd like to put in your hanger and how much you'd be willing to pay for them.

Edited by TheArisen, 03 September 2015 - 09:28 PM.

[Johnny Z]

This is the one things Star Citizen has done well, among others. (I dont think they did the ships right and left the door open for someone else to do better, hint capital ships and even corvette sized ships and done totally different. ) A variety of hangars to choose from would be amazing.

Edited by Johnny Z, 28 August 2015 - 11:31 PM.

[TheArisen]

I saw a great idea in AW's custom geo. thread. Some/most/Certain options should be attainable through achievements.

[TheArisen]

Johnny Z, on 28 August 2015 - 11:28 PM, said:

This is the one things Star Citizen has done well, among others. (I dont think they did the ships right and left the door open for someone else to do better, hint capital ships and even corvette sized ships and done totally different. ) A variety of hangars to choose from would be amazing.

Ohh nice. I had only been thinking about customizing the basic hanger we have now. I'd enjoy being able to not customize my hanger but where it is, a dropship, various bases (desert, mountain, etc).

[Johnny Z]

I wasnt thinking of that, but thats a great idea to.

[TheArisen]

Johnny Z, on 30 August 2015 - 12:29 PM, said:

I wasnt thinking of that, but thats a great idea to.

Oh, well hey, you still inspired the idea.

[Vellron2005]

I'm also a HUGE fan of cutomisation (most everything I own is customised in some way), so I'd definatelly support mechbay customisation..

My own idea is that they create mechbay / mechselect screens as walk-in features (like the mech switch in the new mech academy).

That way, we could have "ROOMS", not "SCREENS" that we could customise.. and that opens up a whole host of options.. From customisable screens that display stuff, to big-screen displays with user-uploaded pictures, or holiday decorations, or even custom furniture..

Now, add to this the idea od different exteriors... you cound work on your mech in the belly of a dropship, or next to a desert-stuck Mobile Field Base..

And to select the mech you wanna pilot, you could simply walk up to a screen and have the "classic mech select screen", or walk up to a mech and climb into it's cockpit.

Talk about immersive huh?

Edited by Vellron2005, 04 September 2015 - 04:06 AM.

[TheArisen]

You hit the nail on the head again Vellron. Immersion is underrated, but if we feel like we're actually piloting mechs... I'd wager the game would be leaps & bounds better.

[Kalimaster]

This is a wonderful idea.

[CDLord HHGD]

[Alex Morgaine]

I'd say 3 basic hangers (the dropship one we have plus 2 others) for exorbitant cbills, then add in more for 3-800mc. Any more then that and people won't like the cost, but 300 is a hanger so I figure for more basic mc features a good starting cost. Though I'd only suggest this if people could view friend/group mates hangers. Screenshots maybe, but might as well stay on the cbill side (but expensive so most wanting to avoid grind time would probably convert mc anyway) something like that.

[aniviron]

I do like this idea, but for it to really be worth it, we'd have to be able to walk around our hangars. The big items should ideally be visible most of the time in the background of the hangar when you're customizing your mech, but it wouldn't really feel that worth it to me unless I could get up close and admire it.

It'd also help a lot to reinforce the scale of the game, which has a tendency to get lost a lot of the time. The coolest part of the new tutorial is when you get out of your old mech and into a new one, you can see a human next to a mech, and are at human size next to these behemoths. It really drove home the sense of scale and was just an all-around cool feeling. I'd like to be able to customize my hangar so that when I was doing mechlab work I could stare up at my mechs and be dwarfed by the size, or look an Atlas in the eye from a catwalk and see how massive it is.

The mech hangar is fully modeled, if you look closely you can see that it's the same geometry from one of the trailers early on, the one where the atlas drops out of the dropship.

[TheArisen]

aniviron, on 04 September 2015 - 11:21 PM, said:

I do like this idea, but for it to really be worth it, we'd have to be able to walk around our hangars. The big items should ideally be visible most of the time in the background of the hangar when you're customizing your mech, but it wouldn't really feel that worth it to me unless I could get up close and admire it.

It'd also help a lot to reinforce the scale of the game, which has a tendency to get lost a lot of the time. The coolest part of the new tutorial is when you get out of your old mech and into a new one, you can see a human next to a mech, and are at human size next to these behemoths. It really drove home the sense of scale and was just an all-around cool feeling. I'd like to be able to customize my hangar so that when I was doing mechlab work I could stare up at my mechs and be dwarfed by the size, or look an Atlas in the eye from a catwalk and see how massive it is.

The mech hangar is fully modeled, if you look closely you can see that it's the same geometry from one of the trailers early on, the one where the atlas drops out of the dropship.

Maybe they could make the mech hanger more like the tutorial. +1 for immersion. I'm unsure of how easy or difficult it'd be to implement though.

[Peter2k]

my idea on this was something like this (actually a year ago or so)

you would get an underground hangar for free, with a handful of spots you can put your most favorite mechs in
you can walk up to your mech, start customizing it, get in, and walk around and outside with it

you can expand through:
- MC
- prices in tournaments n such
- bundles from pre order bonus
- C-bills?

you could customize your hangar for instance with
- house flags
- flags where you can put your unit tag on
- mechanics walking around
- material/color used (rusty, gunmetal, ceramic, concrete, ...)
- have crap lying around (lots of player seem to want empty beer cans in their mechs )
- a "golf cart" to drive around, for those with 100+ mechs
- ...



a private alcove overlooking your mechs where you can:
- display cockpit items
- campaign ribbons
- flags of houses/unit
- trophies
- customize your character (skills, looks?)
- open the mechbay customization for all mechs
- store front
- in game news ticker? ; CW MAP with conflicts highlighted?
- ingame messages (or at least a light flashing to show you got messages)
- mp3 (or whatever format they can make work) player that plays files from a folder on your drive
- aquarium/ whatever you want as pet (well we have a hamster and a pug already)

above ground you can walk around a map, try out your builds, shoot targets

you have 2 dropships
one brings you to the online part of the game, the other to PvE content (down the line, could include training grounds and tutorial maps)

you can expand your base above ground
- walls
- defenses
- customize dropships
- having it look like a station, mercenary base, forward base of operations, ...
- change the map itself (like desert, harbor, more trees,...)

you can invite friends, or play solo defending your base against waves of mechs, tanks etc...


its extensive
but it could be quite a cash cow, hardly pay to win and can be build and expanded on as you need
like with cockpit items, you can build new gadgets and things over time
just leave the room open in the map and you can add those features for sale later

[Vellron2005]

In essance, this is the sort of stuff we want, but customziable:

1)
http://www.google.hr...CFUEEGgod_wEEkg


2)
http://www.google.hr...CFQUwGgodVK0GaA

(pictures are from a videogame called X-COM Enemy Unknown)

Now, Imagine the globe from picture 1) is the CW map (possibly live if dooable)

And the rooms from picture 2) represent the mech bay, shop, black market, faction / unit headquarters, Mechi-pedia (Like UFOpedia in the game the pictures are from) and stuff like that.. not necessarily spread like an ant colony, but you understand what I'm aiming at..

Every room would be walk-in, in realistic scale.

The added room's I'v listed here are some of the advanced features that we still need..

1) Black market - a place where a player can buy cross-faction mechs, like IS players buying clan mechs and vice-versa, or Davion players buying non-davion mechs and equipment. This means every planet has some value, and depending on the planets your factions control, not every mech and every equipment is available to you, except through the black market (at a greater price)

2) Faction / unit headquarter - a simple room for contacting your unit members, seeing new commstar intercepts, reading headlines and news from the front lines, and with a display case for throphies, medals and achievements - which would be graphic - not just textual.. so that achievement you got for completing 25 training drops would be sitting in a display case.

3) Mechipedia - A room with a large interactive holo-display with an AI that listed topics, such as ALL THE FRIGGIN battletech lore up to the current year. That way, a player could familiarise oneself with the history, the lore, and the exact specifications of every mech, weapon, and technology in the game. You could read about how Battlemechs came to be, why Alexander Kerensky led the 800 out of the Innersphere, and how a small pulse laser works. Only current tech info and histoy would be available.

Another great example of what I'm aiming at is the flight deck of the Battlecruiser in Starcraft 2..

3)
http://www.google.hr...AhUEVhoKHbSRC98

4)
http://www.google.hr...CFYJ_Ggod-CgKgg

In picture 4) (for those of you who have not played) there is a old-school arcade maschine that ACTUALLY LETS YOU PLAY a sub-game space-shooter called "Lost viking" which is a throw back to Blizzard's first game, the lost vikings..

That's the kind of immersion that makes a game "great" and drives sale up the wazoo...

PGI.. learn this.

Edited by Vellron2005, 08 September 2015 - 04:01 AM.

[Vellron2005]

I just wanted to add this fact..

WHY do we want the stuff I posted here? And WHY do we think its totaly doable?

Because BattleTech is such a RICH, huge setting with lots of history, lore, distinctive characters and technologies.. it would be a shame not to do it justice so that younger players who have not played MechWarrior2: Mercenaries can experiance the wonder and sence of aww as they gear-up and hit the powerup button on that 100 ton monstrosity of walking carnage we call an Atlas.

I know all of this can and could be done, We've seen it done in the example game pictures I posted, and in a whole host of other games 10, 15, or 20 years old.

If PGI really wants to make this game be top-of-the-line, and make it stand out from World of Tanks and similar games, they better make this happen, or your players will simply move on.

Edited by Vellron2005, 07 September 2015 - 03:30 AM.

[TheArisen]

It's true, a common complaint I've see is "MWO doesn't make me feel like I'm a mechwarrior in an intergalactic struggle". Obviously I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of it.

Pgi could really take this game to the next level with improved immersion.

[Vellron2005]

I believe many of the idea's myself and others have posted are quite dooable.. I see no reason why we have to have a two-dimensional tab-like interface when the Dev's have now quite mastered what they can do with a powerfull tool like Cryengine3..

It would be no different than making a map with "spare chunks", scaling it properly like they did in the Training Academy switching mechs part, and then sell the "spare chunks" for MC and cbills, and insert them as needed into the "map". (depending on what you install / buy).

And it would do MEGA-HEADSHOT-UBER-POWERUP for immersion..

The only thing that would take some extra work would be the Mechipedia room, but most of that data is widely available on BTwikipedia, and they can re-format that and use it..

Then, only the graphics artists would have to add 1/2 wireframe-mesh / 1/2 texture pictures to go with the descriptions of everything.. but we would even understand those would take time and would be happy even with a mostly textual mechipedia..

[TheArisen]

Vellron2005, on 08 September 2015 - 04:13 AM, said:

I believe many of the idea's myself and others have posted are quite dooable.. I see no reason why we have to have a two-dimensional tab-like interface when the Dev's have now quite mastered what they can do with a powerfull tool like Cryengine3..

It would be no different than making a map with "spare chunks", scaling it properly like they did in the Training Academy switching mechs part, and then sell the "spare chunks" for MC and cbills, and insert them as needed into the "map". (depending on what you install / buy).

And it would do MEGA-HEADSHOT-UBER-POWERUP for immersion..

The only thing that would take some extra work would be the Mechipedia room, but most of that data is widely available on BTwikipedia, and they can re-format that and use it..

Then, only the graphics artists would have to add 1/2 wireframe-mesh / 1/2 texture pictures to go with the descriptions of everything.. but we would even understand those would take time and would be happy even with a mostly textual mechipedia..

That sounds great, we could get the "feel" of being mechwarriors.

[TheArisen]

Hey guys, let's try to get Russ to talk about customization in the town hall tomorrow!