28 replies to this topic

[Tierloc]

What MWO should have (what I'm looking for) in a Mech video game in 2012. There are a lot of games to compete with for players ($) and a game like this should have these things.


I would like to see a combination of several games. I’ll start with the common areas that BGO and GA have, whether that’s a drop ship or remote station, there should be multiple ones that you can travel between as a pilot. In this mode you would be 3^rd or 1^st person following an actual jockey, you could walk, run around and interact with other players (please no fracking dancing), shop keepers, quest givers etc. This area would be considered home, the lobby, the place you manage all your stuff. And there would be lots of stuff available to you as the pilot from this area.

• Pilot management – If you have skills you should be able to choose them, reset them, create classes or profiles you can switch between. This should be a shop or station type area. You should be able to decide what your pilot has bonuses in at any point by visiting this area. Say your level has 10 points available of 15. You should not be able to buy these, they should unlock as you level in your career. Maybe sell extra profiles so users can switch quick instead of building from scratch.
  
• Pilot Visual Mods - If the pilot char can personalize their cloths with dye, or gear, or what they look like while in the station/ship, there should be places to go to do that.
  
• Quests – The pilot should be given a distinct list of training missions that start them out to train up to a level to play in pvp with other pilots. Simulator to start, learning how the game works and the chassis/weapons work. There should be experience/cbills awarded for completing them. There should be extra, repeatable quests like “kill 10 clanners” or specific chassis, win a number of pvp matches, etc.
  
• PVP – There should be a battle system for instant engagements, different style of PVP missions available from a “Mercenary Contracts” terminal. This would allow the pilot to contract out as a Merc for the automated House services and fight in PVP missions. These would limit pilots to teams of 3, have maximum 10v10 or 16v16 battles. There should be different types, like arena style no teams, single elimination with ranking, contract open with respawn, no respawn and objective games like capture the flag, king of the hill, and mission play (objective taking). Pilots should be able to choose any mech available and the games should be match made with equal classes on both sides.
  
• Galactic Conquest – This menu would show the current planetary cycle (maybe a month or 3 months) and the units involved, scorecard, invites, lance management, inventory etc.
  
• Mech Bay – You should have access to your mech bay here as well. The different chassis available to you would be available here. Adding Upgrades, buy/sell salvage items and customizations could be applied here.
  
• Crafting - If there is a crafting system of some sort, kind of like a mini set of objectives besides learning how to pilot your mechs, then I think the visual mods (skins) for the chassis should be something you have to learn.
  
• Travel – Simply traveling between stations/ships.
  
• Mail – Messaging interface for trading with other pilots and sending communications.
  
• Auction House – Items up for auction by the players.

On top of open PVP, which would be for any player, there should be galactic engagements (planetary) that the merc units can compete in as either houses (empires) or mercenaries (contracters). There should be an extensive list of planets to control by the houses. Battles may be 1 to many to take control depending on what the house has built on it for structures that affect the generated networth attributed to the house. The map/battles available should be planet specific, like controlling high gravity or emp like atmosphere where certain weapons or chassis would be restricted based on each planet. They would be tonnage restricted to what the unit decided to drop with, with a max allowed. The battles should be setup for a date time to engage, negotiated between the attacking party and the defender. There should be comms for these battles and moderators to settle disputes. These drops would be no respawn, and salvage would play a larger roll than the standard PVP merc options.

If there were two sides to be played out (clanner vs is) by players, I would suggest a secondary galactic mode "hard core" where a unit could choose what side and have to play by chassis/weapon restrictions. Only problem with this I see is unless you force entries to even the sides, units may gravitate to one or the other. That way, with both HC and regular, everyone would have a choice to play. Same with PVP. The more open game play, the greater number of rules you can apply to it. I think a seperation between open PVP games, Objective games and Conquest games is necessary when you have a pilot advancing a char through playtime. Why would you handicap the players with only 1 gametype? The replay value (err subscription fee incentives) go out the window.

The merc units would have their own cbills, inventory of drop ships. They could even have their own mech bay with available chassis’ for drops. With a complete roster management for inviting new recruits and organizing lances. You could stock up on certain chassis and build your load out for missions accordingly. A house in the galactic campaign could ally with other houses and pay mercenaries to attack planets, or defend their own engagements. There should be a bid system to facilitate this. On top of the galactic campaign, it would be nice to have either ladder play available to the units or allow a "team of players" to openly challenge another "team of players". Of course those teams wouldn't have to be in the same merc unit but probably so.

Maps should be different sizes to allow for variants of team configurations. They should be fixed with multiple DZ's to choose from for use in the galactic, pvp and ladder games. They should be all types of terrain. It would nice if there was a way to custom edit or create maps.

Individual player stats and merc unit statistics should be available on the website somewhere. Tracking wins/losses, achievements, even accuracy, time played, awards..

I want the option to pick all the mechs.. IE I do not want a garage where I can only hold 3 of them. Pilots don't have garages, houses would though (so would merc units) so I think the actual relationship between the pilot and his chassis should be through mercenary contracts for the simulated houses. You should be able to choose what you want in open play, but the house will decide the contract/reward for completing the tasks in that chassis. Any salvage returned would generate experience and cbills from the house a reward. At least that's the relationship I think open PVP should play, I would like the interface and engagement process to be very smooth. You should not be able to use crafting enhancements or purchased items in open play on chassis you don't control, not unlike a simulator. Those should be reserved for the galactic campaigns.

You should also be able to save configurations for the chassis.

Open matches by game type (there could even be a "tactical ops" choice that randomizes the gametypes in that room/server) should pair players by weight so teams have equal tonnage (or close anyway).


I'll probably dream up some more stuff later.

[Demi-Precentor Konev]

I'm... really not sure where this is coming from. Quests? Auction house? Crafting?

Did the devs release some sort of statement about this game being a WoW-style game? I thought it was going to be more in the round-based combat, MechWarrior style?

[Tierloc]

lahyenne, on 02 December 2011 - 02:02 PM, said:

round-based combat

I sincerely hope that was sarcasm.

[Atlas3060]

lahyenne, on 02 December 2011 - 02:02 PM, said:

I'm... really not sure where this is coming from. Quests? Auction house? Crafting?

Did the devs release some sort of statement about this game being a WoW-style game? I thought it was going to be more in the round-based combat, MechWarrior style?

I think these are more personal expectations than anything else.

[KnowBuddy]

Yeah, i'm thinking many people these days have some strange idea that MMO is the same thing as MMORPG... There's the MMO overlap, obviously... but to quote Inigo Montoya - "I do not think it means what you think it means."

It's highly unlikely (from what we've heard so far) that in MWO you will be able to interact with the world using any kind of avatar other than the current 'Mech you're piloting. Any other activities are likely to be limited to menu or map interfaces.

That's not to say that some of the items the OP touched on might be implemented in some fashion eventually. But also keep in mind that this will be an F2P game so it will likely not be too overambitious in terms of extra features included at launch.

[Halfinax]

I don't want to see a MMORPG type environment. It wouldn't fit within what the devs seem to have in mind. Menus, and battle. Plain simple. No quest givers, or 3d store fronts I have to navigate with my MechWarrior. Just leave that stuff out. I don't play MMORPGs because I don't like all the tedium they entail. I do like Online Combat though. Whether it's fps, or sim, or something else, but leave all that time sink MMORPG stuff out.

[CoffiNail]

The closest to crafting I can see is your merc units technicians 'crafting' your mechs new config...

Tierloc, on 02 December 2011 - 11:37 AM, said:

• Quests – The pilot should be given a distinct list of training missions that start them out to train up to a level to play in pvp with other pilots. Simulator to start, learning how the game works and the chassis/weapons work. There should be experience/cbills awarded for completing them. There should be extra, repeatable quests like “kill 10 clanners” or specific chassis, win a number of pvp matches, etc

Also I do not think the Clansmen are going to be your level 1 boars.

Edited by CoffiNail, 02 December 2011 - 02:18 PM.

[Gorthaur]

CoffiNail, on 02 December 2011 - 02:17 PM, said:

The closest to crafting I can see is your merc units technicians 'crafting' your mechs new config...

i wouldn't mind being able to gather/buy the materials to build an AC 20 so in the end it ends up being slightly cheaper than buying it off the market (if your skill is good enough).

edit: this is assuming your unit has access to a mech or weapon factory at the time. IE, you are doing contract work on hesperus II and you are on good terms with defiance. now, if you have the materials you can "craft" weapons.

Edited by Gorthaur, 02 December 2011 - 02:28 PM.

[Tierloc]

Global Agenda is free to play, and handles the player "home" between gameplay very well. It has multiple avenues of pvp for the player and provides access to them with more than an MW4 or WoT menu. Battlestar Galactica Online is also free to play and handles the "home" area when not piloting a ship well.

[Halfinax]

Global Agenda wasn't developed as a free to play game though. It has those time sink elements of a subscription based MMO, and battlestar galactica is more an MMORPG than an online simulator as seems to be the case with MWO. I really hope they avoid those types of time sinks. This should be a game where you can hop in for a few matches blow stuff up, and then go do something else. I don't want time sinks where I have to grind crafting skills, and travel to hill and dale to get what I need. A simple menu based interface for mechlab and account management, and a lobby before battle starts. Then action. Done. No silly time sink stuff.

[Rhinehart]

This game will not be a full on MMORPG. That being said It might one day lead to a full out Mechwarrior MMORPG and I would love to see it!

But I actually think it might be better to start this way. Get all the mechanics of the combat engine, chassis and weapons sorted out first and get a feel for what that will involve.

Then if someone wants to evolve it further they can spin off an MMORPG for all of us who would like to truly immerse ourselves in the Battletech universe and also have this Multiplayer sim for those who just want to blow stuff up in Mechs. Everybody wins.

[Demi-Precentor Konev]

Tierloc, on 02 December 2011 - 02:09 PM, said:

I sincerely hope that was sarcasm.

Not at all, I think it's very likely this game will play far more similar to MW:LL or WoT than what you've described.

[WMC Gomez]

From what I can gather about what the dev team has said in their statements and the FAQ, i believe this game will be much more like MPBT with elements of RPG. It should be a game that allows you to pilot a mech and have battles but also there could be an element of a RPG later in the game where you can actually raise skills like piloting and gunnery or even walk around as your avatar in teh capital city of what ever planet you happen to be on. In the short term though I would be very happy with making c-bills and making variations of mechs I can pilot.

[Tierloc]

Halfinax, on 02 December 2011 - 03:58 PM, said:

I really hope they avoid those types of time sinks. This should be a game where you can hop in for a few matches blow stuff up, and then go do something else.

I'm not sure how it's a time sink. You can start the game, pick a character and as soon as you join the world enter into a match queue to play a game. The difference is, instead of starting at a match making menu or refreshing a list of servers, you can hold in queue while doing other things. You're not forced to do one or the other.

I guess my point is that you don't actually play what I would call "the game" in these home areas, the game is the PVP/PVE in GA and flying your ship in BGO. BGO doesn't even have common areas, it's just you in the Battlestar when you dock. If you want to use a menu in GA almost everything is accessible through the ESC button at any time instead of running to the shops.

I don't know what else you plan on doing after hopping in a few matches if the only menu system is essentially a comstar window. You're either in a drop or you're not.


Lahyenne "round based" sounds less simulator and more turn based, but maybe I read it wrong.

[metro]

Might I suggest.....OP,

Click on the game tab up top ^^^^

and read up on the basics they have announced, and the topics which they are releasing info on as they are prepared in the Dev Blogs, most but not all of your concerns and wish list are being addressed, slowly but surely.

Edited by Metro, 09 December 2011 - 07:07 AM.

[Tierloc]

The warefare items came out recently, I had been writing this for awhile beforehand, but good info. I'm looking forward to the Q&A for sure.


I think alot of the common topics and themes of many of the suggestion and player input posts scare the crap out of me and several other players I know. Some topics go 10 pages on the simplest and marginal of ideas.. I just wanted a positive position from my side of the table to be put down somewhere. This is what I would expect from a video game in 2012 considering the number of games that already do something similar. Expand and improve, not regress.

[Barantor]

Round style is more about not really having a world to run around in while you wait for matches. There may be a lobby with text chat and a mech bay to look at your personal mechs but everything they have said so far does not insinuate the ability for a pilot avatar to walk around outreach or anything like that.

Think of it like a way more involved form of TF2 with a ton of back end lobby work and a faction map system and you would be closer to what it is than Global Agenda from what we know so far.

[God of War]

Travel, auction, crafting and quests? HELL, NO!!!!!!

Edited by God of War, 09 December 2011 - 07:54 AM.

[Tierloc]

I called it a quest but I don't see challenges like "win 3 pvp matches" or "collect 200k tons of salvage" that would reward the player with a contract bonus of xp/cbills as a problem. Games like COD have acheivements and black ops had actual contracts for weapons and gametypes that encourage players to do more than .. oh I don't know.. say "Play the same assault chassis with the same weapons loadout" times infinity.

You already have to level your player, whatever flavor they provide that in. If you could advance your player skill by acheivements that encouraged diverse gameplay I think it would be better than using one of 5 loadouts for the next 5 years.

[Barantor]

Tierloc, on 09 December 2011 - 08:02 AM, said:

I called it a quest but I don't see challenges like "win 3 pvp matches" or "collect 200k tons of salvage" that would reward the player with a contract bonus of xp/cbills as a problem. Games like COD have acheivements and black ops had actual contracts for weapons and gametypes that encourage players to do more than .. oh I don't know.. say "Play the same assault chassis with the same weapons loadout" times infinity.

You already have to level your player, whatever flavor they provide that in. If you could advance your player skill by acheivements that encouraged diverse gameplay I think it would be better than using one of 5 loadouts for the next 5 years.

I can agree on it so long as we start calling it contracts instead of 'quests', since quests give me a feeling of skipping through a forest as an elf, not sending red lasers beams into the carcass of an enemy mech.

Secondary objectives for drops would be great and a great way to earn c-bills. Maybe one of them is to destroy all the light mechs on the field since command has had trouble with recon units. Maybe another is to take out a comm station so that the enemy can't deploy as fast in the next few matches on that planet. Those kind of things I can definitely get behind and wouldn't be surprised if they are already planned.

As far as loadouts, I hope there are pieces of secondary equipment, different factory models of weapons and a variety of other doo-dads we can outfit our mechs with to be in a constant state of refinement. It would be very bland to find that everyone in an Atlas uses the exact same loadout every time.....