67 replies to this topic

[Flaming oblivion]

About 10 years work at their pace up to date.

[Y E O N N E]

1. Ranked and Unranked queues - it's very discouraging for a new player to be scrutinized before she's had any considerable practice at all. Unranked allows you to try new things without getting penalized if the idea turns out to be a bad one.

2. Better balance - I'm very glad PGI is working on this, I just fear they may be coming at it from a bad angle. The variables PGI chose to judge 'Mechs on, their weights, and their responses to the results didn't really make much sense during the last PTS. I feel they are focusing too much on trying to create specializations instead of making every chassis roughly equal and letting player-built load-outs create the specializations. What's the point of a 'Mech Lab if they are going to over-emphasize very specific builds?

3. Better optimization - the game runs poorly for the visual quality it provides. I don't know if they have sub-par map portals, excessive geometry, or what, but something is really wrong with the game. CryEngine 3 should not be running this poorly, especially on some of the machines I and others have running it.

4. Better trial 'Mechs - they are still terrible. Did they not have a poll awhile back on what to put on the (C) 'Mechs? Has that been implemented yet? Also, refresh the Trial palette more frequently. I would suggest bi-weekly, but once a month would be acceptable.

5. Reworked modules - they shouldn't be no-brainers, they should offer benefits and draw-backs. The problem in their previous iteration is that they didn't offer any significant benefit, not that they also asked for a penalty. You can spread the penalties out across multiple stats to make it less severe in one direction, even. It's sort of bull that a veteran player will have a 743 meter ERLL and a new player will have a 675 meter one, and the veteran isn't having to make any sort of game-play sacrifice to have that.

[TheArisen]

To answer #5, yes they need to get to phase 3 of CW before steam. To be fair, one of the biggest problems is long ques. That comes about due toto a lack of players that are interested in this game mode.

They need to get players invested in CW. Why should we care if the clans take the entire map?

Another thing would be improving Clan vs IS balance. Personally, I'd like to advance the timeline and reduce the technology gap between IS & Clan. Currently, quirks are the only thing that allows the IS to compete.

[MechWarrior3671771]

Chat is annoyingly stupid.

I was typing to help a New Player a few days back, realized the launch timer was going to jump from 40 to 9 and then cut me off anyway, so I didn't bother. New Player died a brutal horrible death. No more New Player.

So I felt bad for New Player, and typed "Don't worry, you just need to - " and then chat cut me off again.

Chat is annoyingly stupid. And now New Player thinks MWO is annoyingly stupid.

Fix chat.

Edited by Fenrisulvyn, 05 October 2015 - 04:14 AM.

[Speedy Plysitkos]

chat - also fix history when you die.

i want to see details often, what happend during time I died but it all dissapear in .....

[MechWarrior3671771]

Once you fix chat, remove the blank monitors.

Its obvious by now that you aren't going to fix them, so just remove them already so they stop blocking our view.

[Grayson Sortek]

I agree with pretty much everything listed so far... But I will add that they REALLY need to think about having some kind of objective based cooperative scenarios. I've given up on getting them to give us a fully fleshed out campaign, but there needs to be a shallow end of the pool. New players need to go up against AI that they can scale so that they can learn the ropes.

I've tried to get my friends to join me, but they haven't been a Mechwarrior since DOS, so they have a bit of a learning curve ahead of them. Add to that all the hungry vets who want to eat the little nooblets up and you have a brick wall that they don't want to keep slamming their heads against. I've tried to teach them, I've even bought them premium time in addition to my own so that we can do private matches... but it just isn't the same. If we had cooperative scenarios to play through together then I could teach them what I know while having them go up against weaker AI opponents. Hell you don't even need to make it cooperative, take the tutorial a few steps further.

Everything needs to be improved about this game, but specifically for a Steam release? Accommodate new players and make it easier for them to figure things out. Otherwise you are going to get a bunch of people who try it and make the vets happy for a brief period of time because their tier ranking, elo, or whatever will go up... Then those little yummy nooblets will get tired of it, leave, and then add their thoughts about the horrible experience to the steam reviews. THAT right there is something PGI wants to avoid if they want to actually expand their consumer base.

[Alistair Winter]

Lots of things. Realistically, the biggest thing they need to do is to work on NPE and help new players understand the stuff that we all take for granted because we've survived a trial by fire lasting several years.

For example, new players should get a very visible, elaborate and concise explanation of the difference between public matches and CW. A lot of players are just wandering into CW without a clue, like wild deer roaming into a slaughterhouse.

And maybe fix the forums so I don't have to wait 5 minutes to write a post or like somebody else's post. Seems like that would be a good thing to do before a hundred thousand new players visit the forum.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 05 October 2015 - 04:54 AM.

[Prof RJ Gumby]

1. Weapon/mech balance. Ac2s Lbxes, srms, machineguns and flamers should be at least mediocry effective. Choosing a vindicator or trebuchet as your first mech cannot mean death sentence.
Also making major changes like that (they must come one day) after having an influx of players is a bad idea.

2. Cockpit monitors - because it's unfinishness right in front of everyone's eyes. Ammo/heatsinks already work, but for some unknown reason, only on some mechs and/or in some matches. So there is a code for that and it can't be that hard to make all mechs have them. Making the kill counter work shouldn't be a problem too. Add to this monitors with heat info, weapon info, bap/ecm info, and we're done. Even unanimated monitors would do, just don't have them all saying one senseless phrase.
Plus an option to turn them off if they actually affect performance in any way.

3. 4x4 mode for CW to make it look not so bare bones.

4. Chat fix. Nuff said.

5. Skill tree. At least remove arm speed and convergence ones.

EDIT: tons of other things could be done to make this game better. These 5 are those I see as potentially ruining the first impression (read: first few hours into the game), or causing frustration (making an mg mech and dying all the time).

Edited by Prof RJ Gumby, 05 October 2015 - 05:06 AM.

[Naduk]

TLBFestus, on 04 October 2015 - 04:30 PM, said:

GIVE NEW PLAYERS A FREE MECH AT THE END OF THEIR CADET PERIOD.

This will allow them to spend money fixing it up, "making it theirs", and give them some form of investment in the game. I believe that this will motivate them to progress, and possibly even drop some cash into the game sooner

this but take it further
new players should be informed that they will earn the cadet bonus and they will be issued a mech when they are promoted
give them a free mech, let them pick anything but a hero, use this moment to teach them how to use mech bays, where to get more of them and why they will need them, this should be presented as if part of the tutorial

create a tutorial / guide to the mech lab , its pretty intuitive at the moment for us vets, but for a new player its a daunting thing
after they choose their free mech is the perfect time to kick off this mech lab tutorial

next, when they have filled all 4 of the starter mechbays , activate a achievement "ready for war"
award the player a free mech bay for their troubles and perhaps remind them where they can find more (store, competitions, CW, mechpacks) (use a voice over to do it, nobody wants to read bullshark text popups)

[lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]

XX Sulla XX, on 04 October 2015 - 12:09 PM, said:

Just thinking what else does PGI need before the Steam release.

1. Tutorial - The new one seems to be good enough and they can add more later.

2. Better balance - They seem to be attempting this. We should have a new balance test soon.

3. Servers for different parts of the world. - In place. (Yes always room to get better.)

4. Ramp up server capacity. I would think they would do this close to when they go on Steam to save money.

5. Making CW work better. Is this something that needs done before Steam release?

7. Better group match making. Seems to be something they are working on now.

These seem to be the basics and they seem to be trying to get all of these things in order in the near future.

I'm sure the mainstream public in Steam will be as forgiving as the current population is with the game, so if it releases anytime in October without all of the above issues addressed, all PGI would need to do is have a statement saying certain aspects of the game are still in beta, and they'll be getting to it "soon."

[keith]

they really should get rid of the 3 mech req to master a chassis. this way if a person choose to spend X amount of mc on a mech, they get their 7-15$ value of said mech, instead of having to buy 2 more to make it the best...

[Lightfoot]

Better LRMs especially CLRMs which stream instead of fire in clumps. The maps all force direct-fire and LRMs are not good enough for direct-fire combat. PGI could just reverse the January 2015 nerf or change that made them useless, especially in CW. LRMs should be good enough to base a tactic off of. They aren't.

CW needs a new gametype that is more relevant to standard gameplay than the orbital cannon maze and spawn-camp set-up of current CW. I think the strangeness of it is why so few are involved in CW. I could suggest "Capture the Mech Factory", where both teams have the same objective on a neutral map.

Get these two things done and MWO is ready.

Edited by Lightfoot, 05 October 2015 - 05:36 AM.

[STEF_]

PGI needs to fix income for newcomers.

It takes centuries to buy and elite at least 4 different chassis, cw-wise, or at least let to elite a mech without needing 3 to unlock basic.

[patataman]

Nothing really different to add to the list, the game needs to be polished, remove the biggest bugs or incomplete features.

- Fix the 'autodetect: no signal' monitors. This is incomplete since forever, and we veterans got used to it, but any new player is going to notice.
- Collisions. I'm not talking about knockdowns ( that would be nice, but i don't see it happening soon ), but the teleporting has to go. Another thing we grow used to see, but far from acceptable.
- Chat overhaul.
- CW phase 3
- Skill trees
- New game modes and maps ( this is not really a requeriment for the steam release, but needed for player retention )

[Cabbage Merchant]

Yeonne Greene, on 04 October 2015 - 05:43 PM, said:

1. Ranked and Unranked queues - it's very discouraging for a new player to be scrutinized before she's had any considerable practice at all. Unranked allows you to try new things without getting penalized if the idea turns out to be a bad one.

2. Better balance - I'm very glad PGI is working on this, I just fear they may be coming at it from a bad angle. The variables PGI chose to judge 'Mechs on, their weights, and their responses to the results didn't really make much sense during the last PTS. I feel they are focusing too much on trying to create specializations instead of making every chassis roughly equal and letting player-built load-outs create the specializations. What's the point of a 'Mech Lab if they are going to over-emphasize very specific builds?

3. Better optimization - the game runs poorly for the visual quality it provides. I don't know if they have sub-par map portals, excessive geometry, or what, but something is really wrong with the game. CryEngine 3 should not be running this poorly, especially on some of the machines I and others have running it.

4. Better trial 'Mechs - they are still terrible. Did they not have a poll awhile back on what to put on the (C) 'Mechs? Has that been implemented yet? Also, refresh the Trial palette more frequently. I would suggest bi-weekly, but once a month would be acceptable.

5. Reworked modules - they shouldn't be no-brainers, they should offer benefits and draw-backs. The problem in their previous iteration is that they didn't offer any significant benefit, not that they also asked for a penalty. You can spread the penalties out across multiple stats to make it less severe in one direction, even. It's sort of bull that a veteran player will have a 743 meter ERLL and a new player will have a 675 meter one, and the veteran isn't having to make any sort of game-play sacrifice to have that.

#1 would have been amazing when I was starting out.

[Johnny Z]

Player/pilot character creation. Even if its basic to start. Better basic than none at all.

Choose Faction, even if its freelancer/lonewolf etc.

The rest is good enough for Steam with the way the industry is these days. The industry being for the most part half done games or clones.

So glad Fallout 4 is on the way. Its like the entire industry said to Fallout 4 " Here, take it all, its yours." Im one of the guys that isnt getting Fallout 4 until the construction kit is out(dont like talking to the ghoul characters in the Fallout series so the construction kit lets me make them humans). They are delaying the construction kit release for "reasons". Those reasons I can think of is having mercy on the rest of the industry or they were paid off lol. So I have to avoid watching the 800+ videos and commercials on Game Spot and YouTube on the Fallout 4 story somehow.


I still think Mechwarrior Online is on the way to being the best online game out there. Straight up. In fact only 3 games I can think of have the potential to match and even surpass the Fallout series, Cyberpunk 2077, Mass Effect 4, Mechwarrior Online. Theres a couple other games that could do it possibly.

Edited by Johnny Z, 05 October 2015 - 07:01 AM.

[GRiPSViGiL]

A clue.

[Vellron2005]

The biggest thing that MWO and PGI need before steam release is a much much better CW and overall game immersion.

Right now, CW is a very poorly populated game mode.

What it needs to be is "Main game feature mode".

Most of the game needs to revolve around conquering planets and recieving actual value for every individual planet, unit and faction.

The game mode itself needs to be much more developed, polished, balanced and non-repetitive. It needs realistic, immersive objectives for planetary conquest, trade, inter-faction politics, and much more variety in CW game modes. Attack/Counter attack/Defence is simply not enough. We need game modes with realistic objectives that do not all revolve around "go there, destroy that" mechanics like o-gens and omega.

We want to escort convoys, defend fleeing civilians, attack military instalations, assasinate vip targets, secure beacheads, raid other factions, scout enemy positions and stuff like that.

We want all of this "warfare" to influence not just the Inner Sphere map, but to have ramifications on each individual player, unit and faction.

We want to be able to wage galactic warfare in giant stompy robots,with battles that decide the fate of bilions of the galaxy's inhabitance, and not have it reduced to a repetitive deathmatch it is now.

Edited by Vellron2005, 05 October 2015 - 01:48 PM.

[Elizander]

• Badges
  
• Steam Wallpaper
  
• Steam Emoticons
  
• Newbie Friendly Steam Packages
  
• Proper message to communicate what this game is to the Steam Crowd with the proper balance of hype and what they are actually getting.
  
• Tutorial on how to build mechs
  
• Tutorial on how to use XP/GXP
  
• Tutorial on how to use Omnipods
  
• Tutorial to explain the difference between Clan and IS mechs.
  
• Tutorial on Community Warfare
  
• And make Community Warfare worth going to, even if it's just a minor rewards tweak.