30 replies to this topic

[Ionna Silver]

My vote is on reducing the grind, and making modules and consumables more accessable(aka cheaper). Why? It is still a disheartening experience getting your 2nd or 3rd mech as a new player. Hell, even as a vet, getting a new mech, and new modules can take a long time. It's not a fun experience.
But Ionna, it's free to play! True, but after their 4th mech, everyone needs more mechbays, and mechbays are what? Not free! Even if they don't buy a mech pack, most players will eventually pay, so even with a reduced grind, there is still plenty (and quick) profit to be made.
I'll keep it short. This game needs to feel more rewarding from an aquisition/getting new stuff point of view, and a reduction in grind does not mean less money (especially with modules and consumables).
What do you think needs improving for a Steam launch?

Edited by Ionna Silver, 10 October 2015 - 04:24 PM.

[Mcgral18]

NPE

General weapon Balance, Faction balance, inter-faction balance (God Tier Omni VS potato Omni, or even KCrab/Banshee VS Atlas)

Cbill mechbays? Up to 12(?) you can buy (to master out some mechs, but not ALL mechs) for xMillion Cbills.
CW does offer some, so not essential, but I'd welcome it.


Tutorial was a good start for NPE, but the PaulConomy is just as big a problem for new players.

[Helsbane]

Honestly, the list of things that DON'T require polishing is far, far easier to write down. They are...

Mech art
.....
.....
.....

hmmm..

yeah, that's about it.....

[Kiiyor]

Quality of life stuff for one.

My #1 there is fixing chat.

• At the start of a patch, pressing T or Y to open all or team chat doesn't work. You need to click in the chat window.
  
  • The chat hotkeys should always work.
• The pre-match chat disappears when the match starts. You can lose sentences this way - which sucks if you're actually trying to contribute to a plan.
  
  • Chat windows should be persistent.
• If you're spectating a mech, and they die, the chat window will disappear in the same way when your viewpoint switches to another mech.
  
  • Again, chat windows should be persistent.
• Chat should be scrollable.
  
  • Quality of life thing. If you miss something in chat, or if there's a lot of team chatter, you should be able to take a moment to review. This should probably only happen when you've initiated the chat interface.
• I want to see a global chat window in the mech lab, that remains active while searching for matches. It would be a great thing for Steam release, as experienced players could offer advice to new players quickly and easily, as the forums can be daunting for a new user. You could point them to specific posts or sub forums if they needed more detailed info.
  
  • Knowing some of the playerbase though, this might need to be moderated, which would suck. Maybe forum bans could carry over into global chat.

Edited by Kiiyor, 10 October 2015 - 04:49 PM.

[Milocinia]

The new tutorial is great and should help a lot, as does the PSR system for new players.

A tutorial for mech building and customisation is needed though because this is a massive part of the game.

Then there's the general gameplay balance which we can guarantee that Paul will never complete and if he does it'll be so FUBAR most of us will never play again.

Whilst it seems like it might be a long way off, a Steam release isn't really that far away... in theory.

[pbiggz]

Graphics (This game needs to use the GPU, instead of just being on the CPU, which is a sign of hacky code. Steam players love games that tax their GPUs and they wont stay around if the game doesn't look good and still chugs even on good computers.)
Weapon and Chassis Balance (obviously)
New Player experience (The tutorial was a fantastic start but more is needed).
CW replayability (i.e. phase 3, with 4v4 and logistics)
Group Queue (solos should be allowed to opt into it if they want to in order to boost pop).

[Davers]

pbiggz, on 10 October 2015 - 05:39 PM, said:

Graphics (This game needs to use the GPU, instead of just being on the CPU, which is a sign of hacky code. Steam players love games that tax their GPUs and they wont stay around if the game doesn't look good and still chugs even on good computers.)
Weapon and Chassis Balance (obviously)
New Player experience (The tutorial was a fantastic start but more is needed).
CW replayability (i.e. phase 3, with 4v4 and logistics)
Group Queue (solos should be allowed to opt into it if they want to in order to boost pop).

I dunno, the three top Steam games are Dota 2, TF 2, and CS:GO- are these really CPU pushing games?

[TexAce]

Quick Commands
New Pilot Skill Tree

[kuritakun]

dont forget the community has to change too, during games we get frustrated berate and degrade players some of which are still new to the game, i experienced this when i was new and im still seeing this now on newbie players, we need to change too, we need to be a newbie friendly community.

besides that:
-more achievements (think of something fun like lose 1 leg and 1 arm, survive and win 10x lol)
- rework skill tree and make it more extensive (its like they just put it there just for the heck of it)

Edited by kuritakun, 10 October 2015 - 05:59 PM.

[lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol]

Technically nothing.

PGI has all it needs to keep the company afloat with the current player base it has now. The game functions, and people still play it regardless of any issues they may present here or elsewhere.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd feel better if PGI thought otherwise or not. Because if PGI did say "We have a lot of things to fix before Steam Release" then I'd feel like I was a rube who just stuck around playing a beta state game until they finally decided to make the game right for the "REAL" important people.

First impressions are important, after all... well, maybe not for us..?

[SnafuSnafu]

Optimization!

This game on low to high mid-range systems runs like absolute crap with huge dips in performance even with high end systems and even enthusiast class builds..

For example, I have an i5 6600k OCed at 4.5 ghz with a GTX 970 G1 OCed to kingdom come and my performance will at times dip below 50 fps.

Though this game is Cry Engine it doesn't look anywhere close to any of the Crysis games, of which I never go below 70 fps even with ultra res texture mods. MWO's textures and models are quite frankly not up to snuff in comparison, thus with this I can only conclude that PGI's grasp of this game's engine is fairly limited, and the 3rd party UI performance leech that this game uses/used only further confirms that theory.

Thus, I understand why I wouldn't just yet release this game on steam If I wanted this game to be mildly successful in that market.

If they 'steamed' this game tomrrow expect 'this game runs like $#^%' comments as it quite frankly does with almost half of steam's base only having 2 CPU cores at 2.5 - 3.2 ghz and with 33 percent only having 1024 gb of video ram (only 2% with modern 4 gb).

Source:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
.

Edited by SnafuSnafu, 10 October 2015 - 06:19 PM.

[Bloody]

Helsbane, on 10 October 2015 - 04:48 PM, said:

Honestly, the list of things that DON'T require polishing is far, far easier to write down. They are...

Mech art
.....
.....
.....

hmmm..

yeah, that's about it.....

Actually the Mech art needs to be revisited as well due to the artistic need to place low hard points on mechs etc so yeah best add that to the list as well.

lets start from the top
1. the management needs to change first off. Bullock and co. are incredibly bad in communicating, planning, designing etc etc. They are just you know, minimum viable product devs and pretty much that is the limit of their ability.If you want a better product for Steam, then they first off must be shifted.

2. The engine needs to be reworked. Even consoles nowadays have more processing power and so the downgraded graphics was well, designed to obsolete consoles, remember visual effects are a huge thing to the Steam PC crowd, if it looks like a PS2 game, you are fubar.

3. the newbie player experienced needs to be completely tweaked, new players should not be facing optimised FSR, ARtic Cs TimberWolfs etc etc especially with their unmodded trial mechs, they will have 0 chance in actually contributing and will quit faster than you can say P2Win. There needs to be a tiers to gradually introduce players into the game likely with Mech value / Cbill value (?) with the unlimited tiers for the older and established players.

4. The whole Inner Sphere and Clan needs to be scrubbed clean and weapon quirks removed. All tech should be available to all mechs, If you want to load up Clan XL, Endo , FF with CLan weapons on your Crab then go for it, your mech value will then shoot up and you will be placed facing equally optimised Clan, IS mechs all loaded with Clan tech. If you want to run your original specs then you will be facing on equal terms mechs with the same level of tech and gear. IS tech was never meant to be equal to clan tech.

5. Piloting trees need to be completely scrubbed and reworked with each chassis should be redone ala MMO style with 3 different trees with limited points allocated so you can concentrate on Attack, Defense, Utility. This will encourage multiple chassis specialized as the player sees fit. An Atlas with all defensive piloting tree should be much beefier, tankier than one with the Attack tree at the expense of a much faster shooting, cooler weapon running Attack tree Atlas. Pick your poison and live with it.

6. Modules and quirks should be completely redone with players able to purchase them at a fair rate. Radar Derp for example at 6 million Cbill ( which of course funnily enough smacks of player gouging at the price of 4000 Merc credits ) is so amazingly good in comparison to the other modules it is stupidly ridiculous.

7 The queue needs to be redone and then PVE and CW needs to be reworked. PLayers should be encouraged by rewards, achievements which unlock real bonuses to their mechs. A grind is encouraged as well as this means all players can eventually get what they want.

Edited by Bloody, 10 October 2015 - 06:26 PM.

[LT. HARDCASE]

$$$$$ earnings. Even with every other issue magically fixed, the Steam community will not stand for such a ridiculous grind.

100k a match = 450 matches for 3 Timber Wolves. Come on, son.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

Polish? Nothing.

Things to do just off the top of my head:
Completely redo the HUD from scratch, getting all of the piloted mech info onto the in game screens, and optimize the code so it doesn't hog as much resources. Stop catering to potatoe machines and Increase the minimum specs if need be.... if people want to play games without buying a gaming PC or adequate equipment that's their descision.

Remove all weapon quirks, institute a policy of a restricted set of weapons placement into hardpoints to FORCE players to use each specific chassis for the role they assign to it. Want to snipe? Take a mech that's designed to snipe. Want to brawl, take a mech that's designed to brawl. Want to survive more than one shot, take a mech that's designed to survive being fired on.

Revisit every single weapon in the game and re-assign weights, damage, heats, cooldowns, etc... to further re-enforce the above point.

Completely redesign ECM from the ground up so that it counters narc, tag, and artemis while doing nothing else.

Completely rebuild whatever code they need to so that hits from all weapons always register damage in full.

Increase player C-bill earnings drastically, so that premium time actually becomes worth spending money on every month.

Re-write the code for engines, acceleration, deceleration, torso twist speed, arm twist speed, and top speed so that each chassis has fixed values for everything except top speed, which is decided by engine size.

Re-design Ferro Fibrous so that it is a way to give up tonnage and gain a significant increase in armor.

Reduce structure on all mechs by at least 50%, while at the same time drastically increasing armor on the mechs that aren't gifted with the all powerful benefits of small hit boxes, speed, and maneuverability.

Fire 75% of their "art" team and hire actual coders and engineers so that the game can actually improve before we all die of old age. I'd actually buy mechs every 6 months if the game to use them in wasn't so astoundingly mediocre.

Completely rewrite the pilot skill trees so that they're an in game way to unlock and use different weapons, rather than being just another way to lower TTK. (Maybe any untrained weapon only does 50% damage....new players would start with no training...and get to experiece an exaggeratedly long TTK...which is ******* brilliant now that i've typed it out) Want to use an AC20 to full effect? Train in it.

Restrict new players to only playing with new players to re-enforce the above. If someone is caught
using an alt account to explicitly farm new players, perma ban them for being tool bags.

Redesign game modes and maps so that mechs that aren't slotted into combat roles actually have something to do... and reward them the same for doing their job as you do the combat mechs for fighting and killing.

*Space Reserved For Further Ideas*

Edited by The Atlas Overlord, 10 October 2015 - 07:40 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

The user interface
Graphical bugs (objects / mechs flickering turning invisible)
In game text chat
Lots of minor bugs that have been in the game since open beta (random command)

[TexAce]

Bloody, on 10 October 2015 - 06:07 PM, said:

Actually the Mech art needs to be revisited as well due to the artistic need to place low hard points on mechs etc so yeah best add that to the list as well.

lets start from the top
1. the management needs to change first off. Bullock and co. are incredibly bad in communicating, planning, designing etc etc. They are just you know, minimum viable product devs and pretty much that is the limit of their ability.If you want a better product for Steam, then they first off must be shifted.

2. The engine needs to be reworked. Even consoles nowadays have more processing power and so the downgraded graphics was well, designed to obsolete consoles, remember visual effects are a huge thing to the Steam PC crowd, if it looks like a PS2 game, you are fubar.

3. the newbie player experienced needs to be completely tweaked, new players should not be facing optimised FSR, ARtic Cs TimberWolfs etc etc especially with their unmodded trial mechs, they will have 0 chance in actually contributing and will quit faster than you can say P2Win. There needs to be a tiers to gradually introduce players into the game likely with Mech value / Cbill value (?) with the unlimited tiers for the older and established players.

4. The whole Inner Sphere and Clan needs to be scrubbed clean and weapon quirks removed. All tech should be available to all mechs, If you want to load up Clan XL, Endo , FF with CLan weapons on your Crab then go for it, your mech value will then shoot up and you will be placed facing equally optimised Clan, IS mechs all loaded with Clan tech. If you want to run your original specs then you will be facing on equal terms mechs with the same level of tech and gear. IS tech was never meant to be equal to clan tech.

5. Piloting trees need to be completely scrubbed and reworked with each chassis should be redone ala MMO style with 3 different trees with limited points allocated so you can concentrate on Attack, Defense, Utility. This will encourage multiple chassis specialized as the player sees fit. An Atlas with all defensive piloting tree should be much beefier, tankier than one with the Attack tree at the expense of a much faster shooting, cooler weapon running Attack tree Atlas. Pick your poison and live with it.

6. Modules and quirks should be completely redone with players able to purchase them at a fair rate. Radar Derp for example at 6 million Cbill ( which of course funnily enough smacks of player gouging at the price of 4000 Merc credits ) is so amazingly good in comparison to the other modules it is stupidly ridiculous.

7 The queue needs to be redone and then PVE and CW needs to be reworked. PLayers should be encouraged by rewards, achievements which unlock real bonuses to their mechs. A grind is encouraged as well as this means all players can eventually get what they want.

I really don't want the MWO you want.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

TexAce, on 10 October 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I really don't want the MWO you want.

This is probably what you're looking for.

http://www.titanfall.com/

[Talorien]

The amount of starting CBills needs to be roughly doubled.

The 5 million from the new tutorial is a good start.

Example: my friend started playing and made a bad choice for first mech (King Crab).

He didn't come back because there's no easy way to correct this. He would have to grind in either trial mechs or the KC he didn't like.

[Cyborne Elemental]

1. Hitreg.

2. Clan vs IS balance

3. Weapon balance. Lbx, CAC, MG's, Flamers, SRM's, that stuff.

4. Maps

5. Squash bugs.

6. Sort out quirks.

7. Rescale Mechs

8. Optimizations (fps smoothness ect)

9. Fix map spawns on trouble maps (Tourmaline, Frozen City) where Assaults get stuck out in the open only to get wrecked in the first 10 seconds of a game.

10. Cbill rewards for NARC, and other teamwork associated bonuses need to give more, and Cbill payment needs to be normalized so you don't get the shaft with 70,000 after dealing 700 damage + 2 kills ect, that should never be that poor, even in a loss.

Edited by Mister D, 10 October 2015 - 07:16 PM.

[Johnny Z]

- I would say Pilot character creation, 3d mech bay and pilot quarters. Maybe some other out of mech game play. To round out the quite 1 dimensional gameplay.

- Intro and story and other atmosphere additions on top of pilot quarters and mech bay exploration.

- Maybe even a trade system. Some players will spend hours trying to make tons of creds buying and selling. Some wont even consider a game without a trade system for those reasons. (This has to have some tutorial just to let the player know its there. They may have no idea other wise.)

- Some kind of quest on the various maps to add to the exporation aspect of the game. Similar to the tutorial. But in story, like survey planet so and so for what ever faction or a merc boss for freelancers. This would add to the newbie experience and make the most out of the realistate Mechwarrior does have.

Even a treasure quest for lostech or even loot(randomize the loot and have a cockpit item, 5 mc, creds etc or mech bay deed to start?) of any sort to start with, marker on the battlegrid for players to search for, wouldnt be out of the question. The Battletech theme is future knights and cyberpunk and all that anyway.

These could be on a mission terminal in the player quarters or even mechbay to start then npc's later.

Lots of work to be done in all other areas I realize, but those areas already show promise.

This isnt feature creep, its feature complete. lol

Edited by Johnny Z, 10 October 2015 - 07:40 PM.