259 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

Did you miss out on the Town Hall Meeting?
No worries, it's now on YouTube!





WHEN: Thursday September 10th, 5 PM PST / 8 PM EST / 1 AM UTC

WHERE: http://www.twitch.tv/ngngtv

It's time for another Town Hall meeting with Russ Bullock, President of Piranha Games!
Topics on the live stream will include Mech Re-Balance, CW Phase 3, Group Queues and other exciting news!

If you have questions regarding the topics, post them in this thread and we'll get to as many as we can!
See you there!

[Gas Guzzler]

Awesome looking forward to it!

Questions:

What are some of the new/different types of quirks that we will see in this pass? There have been hints of sensor quirks, maybe even jump jet quirks. Can you discuss some of them?

Any thoughts on the CGL redesigns of the "unseen" mechs?

The Comstar intercepts are kind of a cool idea. Do you think this could be expanded to encourage conflicts between two factions for an extended period of time (more than one day). For instance, give extra rewards for Kurita-Davion conflicts for a week, or something of that sort.

Will we see IS mechs with MASC any time soon?

Any thoughts about new game modes like the previously mentioned attack/defend game mode, or maybe a convoy escort game mode?

Wasn't the Pinpoint skill going to be replaced with something about making equipment harder to destroy or something? Any chance we will see that update in the future?

Any new weapons in the works?

Thanks for any of these that you are able to address!

Edited by Gas Guzzler, 09 September 2015 - 06:39 PM.

[Void2258]

When will be seeing the rework on the skill trees and the removal of the 3 variant requirement?

When will we be able to add friends and report players from the post game lobby instead of having to write down or memorize names with exact capitalization?

Will we ever get the option to display our ammo as number of shots (based on grouping) as opposed to raw number of ammo type in game?

When will we be able to turn on and off our premium time, and turn it on for shorter periods than 1 month?

Will we get quirks/modifications to the lightest mechs to make more builds viable (primarily by relaxing the 10 HS requirement or quirking lights to carry more ammo/ton)?

Will we see some ballistic weapons between Machine Guns and AC/2s in weight?

Will we see changes to match launching so that we can more meaningfully plan in pregame?

Will we gain the ability to have multiple decks for CW, to know about the map we are launching into so we can effectively plan team compositions, and to see any information about our mechs in CW mode (to help in setting up our decks)

Will we be seeing HUD improvements to make firing angles and terrain obstruction more clear?

Will we be seeing the removal of the arm reticule indicator for mechs without arm-mounted weaponry?

Will we get a way to see quirks while in loadout view?

Will we get a way to see total ammo on a mech (broken down by type) in the mechlab?

Will we be seeing more meaningful internal quirks, such as extra/differently arranged usable slots, reduced slots occupied by advanced technologies, reduced weight/slots for certain weapons (possibly on a location basis), etc?

When will we see a pause, or at least a slowdown, in Mech releases so the game itself can be improved?

When will the game move away from being pay-to-win because of consumables?

Edited by Void2258, 10 September 2015 - 10:36 AM.

[aniviron]

Any updates on the changes that were mentioned about Assault mode in the older town halls? An asymmetric, objective based play mode sounded like it was in the cards, which sounded fantastic. If that's still in the works, when will we see it?

[Sereglach]

As a question for the Town Hall, I cordially ask, again, when will the Flamer receive its reengineering? Once this is done can we expect Flamer based mechs (Blackjack 1X, the entire Firestarter line, and a few others) to receive Flamer based quirks? Is this part of the massive mech rebalancing?

I am aware through the NGNG podcast with Paul Inouye (in February) that the Flamer was getting visual adjustments to prevent "flamer blindness" before the reengineering was completed. If there's no timetable on the complete reengineering, can we get an update on how the visual improvement is coming along? Thank you.

EDIT: Well, now, 4th post on the 1st page. If the question is ignored, again, especially with game balance being a concern and major discussion topic, I will admittedly be a bit upset and have much of my faith diminished, since this has been a bit of a major issue (having a weapon system be fundamentally unusable in the game is a major issue) that's been brought up by many a person for years now.

EDIT 2 (Post-ish Town Hall): Ok, question got answered. That restored some faith. Thank you, sirs, sincerely and seriously. Now, please, I'm begging . . . I WANT to spend LOTS of money on this game, but I can't bring myself to do it because Flamers haven't been touched, yet (seriously, I want to put Hot Rod on ALL of my mechs . . . that's a LOT of pattern purchases). So, PLEASE knock them out for the major rebalancing.

Please, I'm seriously begging here. Everyone has their little personal baby in this game . . . every hardcore Battletech fan has some chassis or weapon system that they just love. For me it's Firestarters and Flamers. I got Firestarters, and I thank you for that. Now I just need my Flamers. Battletech just doesn't feel right without them.

Paul, asking here because of what's involved. Timetable of possibilities, please? Not demanding exacts . . . just rough estimates. Is it possible for the rebalancing?

Edited by Sereglach, 10 September 2015 - 05:47 PM.

[TercieI]

Resistance III? Unseen pack?

[Narcissistic Martyr]

1. Terra Therma is one of the most widely despised maps in the game due to the volcano bottleneck in the middle of the map. The rest of the map is great IMO. So, to prevent the volcano from being everyone's first and last stop, would you be willing to consider making the volcano on Terra Therma much much hotter. Perhaps to the point that walking through the middle would cause slower mechs to overheat and shut down making it impractical to bring the main strike force through the center but allow a flanking force of fast lights and mediums to outmaneuver the main body of the enemy's teams.

2. How are the negotiations with the scum suckers at Harmony Gold going for the rights to bring the rest of the unseen coming. Also, if you release a Phoenix 2 pack with these mechs will I be able to purchase the bounty hunter's paint job for my Marauder?

3. Flamers... they're useless. Have you considered changing them from a continuous stream of flame to a sudden burst of plasma that does splash damage kind of like a clan ERPPC and disables a heat sink for a short amount of time?

I only suggest this because PGI has said that you don't want it to be able to shut down mechs and you don't want it to blind people. So to fulfill those requests the flamer must become a damage dealing weapon and must have a relatively short duration. Since the IS flamer weighs 1 ton it must be viable alternative to the much longer ranged IS medium laser. So a combination of front loaded damage spread over a couple of sections and a reduction in the enemy's ability to cool themselves seems to me to be a good way to make them useful, at least for fast mechs who can boom and zoom.

4. A lot of the player base is wondering why PGI decided to ship the cheetah which was obviously going to be a fantastic light mech (clan energy weapons, clan xl, and ECM) with such large quirks. Would you be willing to talk about how you guys decided that it needed say 15 point leg structure quirks when none of its IS competitors (jenner, spider, and firestarter, [Ravens don't count because they still have hit boxes larger than their legs]). Even more confusing is that while all the other quirks were removed the 15 point leg structure quirks remained. So, I'd like to understand why PGI thinks the quirks were essential to make the cheeto equal to its IS opponents. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I don't understand.

5. Humanoid light mechs often have hit reg issues when they're released (*cough* Firestarter/Spider *cough*). Would PGI be willing to put the wolfhound and Jenner IIC on the test server before they are released to gather real world data on this before they get put on the main server?

6. Could you describe your overall long term strategy for creating a good dynamic balance between IS and Clan tech.

Currently clan tech is mostly flat out superior and the only IS mechs that are on the same playing field as the clan mechs have to have fairly significant quirks and even then they aren't in the same league as the Timbie, Storm Crow, and Dire Wolf.

7. Any hints on what sorts of changes the Sept 22 balance patch is going to bring?

8. PGI has occasionally mentioned a time skip as a possibility (to 3058 for operation bulldog/task force serpent I imagine). I'm sure most IS pilots would love to have ER lasers, UAC20, XPulse lasers, the bushwacker, etc. The clanners would love heavy lasers and ATM as well I'm sure. So, what would you say the likelihood of a time skip in 2016 is?

9. Are you guys ever going to remove the convergence skill from the skill tree? I mean you gave us instant convergence very early in open beta or late in closed beta and that doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should take 2 years to implement...

Edited by Narcissistic Martyr, 09 September 2015 - 05:42 PM.

[Night Thastus]

What is the status on Phase III of Community Warfare?

What is the status of PVE (Player versus Enemies) game-modes?

When will the ability to choose weapon hardpoint placement become reality?

ETA on the PTS of the balance pass? Some of us are very excited!

Any future considerations to changing the heat system? (2.0 dissipation double heatsinks, 30 heat-cap, no ghost heat?)

Could being able to raise the arms of a battlemech become possible in the future?

When are we going to see our skill tiers?

Could we get a better flamer sometime? It's very weak as it stands. Perhaps more heat to the enemy? Perhaps removing the exponential heat it generates over time?

Could we get better AC/2's as well? Right now they generate the same heat as an AC/5 for far less damage, and fire faster, generating more heat.

Could we get an MG buff to 0.9 or 1.0 DPS? Right now, they're also quite poor.

Will we ever see the pin-point skill in the elite tree get replaced? It doesn't do anything at all, and is just an XP sink at the moment. Looks very silly.

Finally: ECM in the lore was just meant to counter BAP, TAG, ARTEMIS, and NARC. It wasn't able to stop the ability of getting a lock on the enemy 'Mech. Instead of nerfing to 90m, what about that?

Edited by Night Thastus, 09 September 2015 - 08:05 PM.

[LordLosh]

• Why are al le carte purchasers no longer getting the same rewards and benefits they used to get when purchasing mechs? IE cockpit items, colors etc. Wave 1 and 2 I purchased al le carte and got all the goodies, now i get nothing even though i spend more then a pack?
  
• decals ETA?
  
• why don't you or will you create your own hard point variants of mechs to bring more substance to the game. IE resistance pack 3 all laser boats minus mauler, boring..........
  
• can we try small amounts of MC rewards for capturing or holding planets in clan wars?

Edited by LordLosh, 09 September 2015 - 04:22 PM.

[Sazabi Steppenwulfe]

when dekkels (or decals as the IS surats would say)?

[Smokeyhavoc]

What's going on with the unseen with the new developments over at Catalyst Game Labs? Are the chances better that we will see them in the game soon?

[Kanajashi]

A few questions here, mostly summarized from my what I would change videos: https://www.youtube....3qV9dytvUHBgMCo

• For group queues, what is the next steps for improving match making? There was your "State of matchmaking in MWO" post which discussed the pressures on the matchmaker and put forward the ideas of limiting groups to 4 or using the 1/1/1/1 method to help release that pressure. What are your current thoughts on this and when would we see any changes?

• With the mech re-balance is there any plans to revisit heat scale? I'm not saying get rid of it, we need some system in order to limit high alphas. But currently there are a couple loop holes that are defining the meta game, mainly the fact that mixing weapon groups can allow someone to escape all the penalties while still firing a very large alpha strike. An example of this would be the combos of C-ERML/C-LPL and PPC/Ballistics. Would it be possible that the penalties for mixing weapon groups could be factored into a universal system that could adapt to any combination of weapons?

• With the showing of basic mech AI within the Mech Academy public test, are there any plans for inclusion of a more advanced version as AI opponents to do battle against? and if so are there any concrete plans or time-frames for it? I believe a co-op vs AI mode would be a huge improvement for the game. I have several IRL friends that I have shown the game to but are uninterested unless there was some kind of low pressure co-op vs AI mode that they can cut their teeth on before being thrown into the unforgiving group queue. Would also give a really cool option for uncontested defenses in CW.

• Is the re-balance also going to look at specific under performing weapons such as flamers and AC2s? In the example of the AC2, of all the ballistics it has the lowest damage per second but the second highest heat per second. Because of this high heat it requires more tonnage in total when accounting for heat sinks than an AC5 with the same ammo load all while having less DPS. I believe that a drop to 0.5 heat per shot and an increase to 100 shots per ton would bring it back in line with the other ballistics. It would also free up the support tons of heat sinks and a little bit on the ammo, allowing the weapon to be fitted on a larger variety of builds.

• Is there any plans to look into the 10 heat sink minimum on lighter mechs that have a max engine rating lower than 250? This is a fairly small problem but it is holding back a few chassis such as this locust: http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=106& l=e9913903cce4c2279861c2a4c21d5d491a53d853. Currently this build is impossible as this locust only 7 of the 10 required heat sinks equipped, however it simply doesn't need anymore heat sinks as it is sitting at 78% heat efficiency. Changing this rule would simply add a couple tons of wiggle room to the smallest of mechs. It would only affect the Locust, Commando, Urbanmech and some of the Blackjacks and Vindicators. The added wiggle room of 1-3 tons for these chassis would allow for some build diversity and bring them up to compete with the heavier counterparts within their weight class.

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions

Edited by Kanajashi, 09 September 2015 - 10:40 PM.

[Boyka]

• With dropship introduction we lose any geographical reference at match start, if before you could recognize your drop spot and think for some plan, now it's impossible until your mech land and you open the map. Can you change the minimap in the waiting phase with a detailed version with bases, cap points and lances position? (see image below) So basically we can take advantage from the waiting time for make a plan instead of doing nothing.

• When the Mech Lab Camo Spec section will be revisited with improvements like an expanded color palette instead of a scrolling bars?

• Any chance to see AC2 cooldown module?

• Conquest mode despite the name have a 90% or more of wins by kill rather than by cap, any idea to change the current mechanics? Like more capping time, different mech class capping rate (lights cap faster than other classes and assault cap slowly), increased rewards based on time spent capping points, neutral defensive turrets activated by capping, etc..

• Any news about ECM changes?

• Need some ramp in River City in G4-G5, the dock area with the boat, if you have no Jump Jet your only way to escape this area is a long way by sea circumnavigating the boat.

Edited by Boyka, 09 September 2015 - 06:25 PM.

[nehebkau]

Will we get the privilege of seeing another mass banning any time soon?

[Domenoth]

Regarding Mech balancing:

Will Ferro-Fibrous be getting any additional benefits to help it compete with Endo? Right now it's really absolutely no contest which one you take.

Right now, especially with laser vomit, people side-step ghost heat in ways that seem like exploitation. For example, Dire Wolves can equip 2 large lasers, 6 medium lasers, and 2 gauss rifles and fire all of them at once with no penalty. Any tweaks to ghost heat (or something else) planned to address edge cases like this?

Edited by Domenoth, 09 September 2015 - 04:33 PM.

[Orkdung]

Will we ever see Unit Logos on the mechs?
This was talked and talked about (I wont use the word promised) years ago.

.

[BigZach]

Could you put in daily (or near daily) mission objectives into the game so that there is more incentive to play every day than the 2x XP bonus for the first win of the day?

I'm sure the community could come up with numerous suggestions for this if you created a thread for it.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

More than anything, I want details about the upcoming re-balance ... what is the goal? what are you trying to achieve?
(if we understand this a bit better, we may be able to provide you more constructive feedback, once we have more details)

Others ... restricting the group queue ... if you do make the group queue 2-4-man groups only, and limited weight classes per group, then what problems are you really trying to solve?
(If it's faster match making, I think that problem is isolated to only a few. If it is better matches, then we need another option for large groups ... we know the matches are imbalanced right now, and keep playing ... CW needs to get better faster in order to provide a good alternative.)

[Iqfish]

Questions for the President:

- What are the details of the upcoming balance change? What are the goals you are hoping to achieve?

- Are you looking into possibilities of changing weapon stats too to make systems like the AC/2 or the Flamers more viable?

- What is planned exactly for CW Phase 3?

- What are your plans to breathe new life into CW? It was advertised as the core feature of MWO, to be effective in CW you have to have two full 12-man groups dedicated to holding a planet.

- Which features / improvements need to be done before you can release the game to Steam?

- What is the plan for higher resolution textures? Matthew Craig and Karl Berg talked about this and the problem was client size. WarThunder for example offers a "High Quality Textures Client" which is considerably larger but looks way better. Higher resolution textures for Mechs and Terrain would drastically improve MWO's looks, since bumpmaps would benefit from the higher resolution too.

- Will we ever be abled to change the controller settings for the free cam tool? Right now it is too sensitive to be abled to use it for anything else than livestreaming matches from above. Filming is not really possible with it.

- How is the new gamemode progressing?

- What is the status of the decal system? It was said that it was "almost done" a year ago.

- Are there plans to work more AI into the game?

Edited by Iqfish, 10 September 2015 - 04:37 AM.

[YUyahoo]

Alright another town hall, another round of questions (made it on the first page this time, hopefully at least one gets asked this time):

With the potential Steam launch coming soon are there any plans to expand support (both billing and for technical issues) for MWO from Mon-Fri 9:00am-5:00pm Vancouver time to 24/7? As the player base expands (we are all hoping the game will grow, specially after Steam launch) more and more people will be experiencing issues outside of a typical work week's hours and I can say from my own experiences it is extremely frustrating to have to wait a day (or at worst a weekend) to get a response on any kind of technical issue (or a report of abuse) just because the issue didn't happen during typical work hours.

These new 24 hour CW events are a great idea and it is nice to see even something minor like this being done for CW. Would it be possible to also equally reward the defenders for a successful defense as well as the attackers for (re)taking the planet that is being fought over? This will help give the defenders motivation to show up, ensure both sides are present and (hopefully) reduce the number of ghost drops (I participated in the 9/4/2015 "intercepts" and it was far far greater than "less than 1%", more like 3 out of every 5 games).

On the subject of CW, when will we be seeing the 4v4/scout missions mode introduced? Are there any plans for other modes such as 8v8(perhaps using public que maps) or larger games than 12v12? Also are there any plans to introduce some kind of match making utility to CW to prevent 12 random single players from several factions to continuously drop against large groups (9+) from the same unit (which as so many have pointed out basically results in the large group stomping/farming the solo/small group teams)? Perhaps some kind of match making tool could be written to match group sizes vs group sizes (so that a 9+ group would drop against another 9+ group and teams of mostly solo players would drop against teams of mostly solo players), this would make for more even and more enjoyable games for both large groups and small groups/solo players (and hopefully draw more people back to CW).

The new River City and Forrest Colony maps look great, thank you for the revamps they are terrific...what is the schedule for the rest of the maps to be redone? Also for Assault mode on the new Forrest Colony now that the map is so huge, why are the bases so close together? Any chance they could be moved a little further apart to make better use of the now much larger map?

Edited by YUyahoo, 09 September 2015 - 05:58 PM.