54 replies to this topic

[Lostdragon]

Quite frankly people need to stop making excuses for why a save loadout option is not in the game. It doesn't matter how hard it is, we are 3 year in and this has been one of the most requested features the whole time. There is no legitimate excuse not to have implemented it yet. I get that it may be technically challenging, but they just need to figure it out and make it happen. That's what those of us who work in the real world do, just get sh*t done.

Edited by Lostdragon, 07 November 2015 - 07:21 AM.

[TexAce]

Would you mind spending 100 MC for saving a loadout? Thats the question you have to ask yourself because in every F2P game you PAY for CONVENIENCE.

[Zordicron]

Xoco, on 07 November 2015 - 07:15 AM, said:

Wow..I'm glad I only have 8 or 9 mechs. Didn't realize how the game handle the inventory. It would be hell to have lots of mechs then, strangely enough.

With Frontiernet and like, I dunno, gotta be getting up to 200 mechs now.... yeah removing a radar derp module and hitting save can take over a minute sometimes. Then I get to go to the mech I want to put it on and do it again.

I know it sounds menial "oh no you have to wait a whole minute!" but c'mon man, picture me, sitting at my desk wanting to get into the action, watching "saving mech loadout" for over a minute..... like they say, a watched pot never boils.... well, that minute of inactivity feels like 10 when you are waiting to get back to shooting robbits and all you are doing is taking a single module off a mech.

[Equalizer]

TexAce, on 07 November 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

Would you mind spending 100 MC for saving a loadout? Thats the question you have to ask yourself because in every F2P game you PAY for CONVENIENCE.

I disagree - in FTP games you pay to lessen the grind or buy premium content, but in order for them to get you do that, the front end is usually designed to be as user friendly and unobtrusive as possible. And while MWO's front end has improved considerably (IMO) in the past few months, PGI still seems to consider convenience features such as tracking modules, saving loadouts, adding (functional) keyboard shortcuts, or optimizing performance as non-essential. That is if they even consider adding those.

Maybe polished front end is less important than fixing other issues like balance, CW, etc., but it piles on those just the same. No wonder many of us are so frustrated and bitter as evidenced by lots of toxic posts in these forums.

[EgoSlayer]

Lostdragon, on 07 November 2015 - 07:20 AM, said:

Quite frankly people need to stop making excuses for why a save loadout option is not in the game. It doesn't matter how hard it is, we are 3 year in and this has been one of the most requested features the whole time. There is no legitimate excuse not to have implemented it yet. I get that it may be technically challenging, but they just need to figure it out and make it happen. That's what those of us who work in the real world do, just get sh*t done.

There is a reason why it isn't implemented, beyond difficulty and technical challenges. Putting in saved load outs takes away the equipment C-bill sink. It's a design decision and it's something Russ said in one of the early town halls that taking that C-bill sink isn't something they were willing to work on at that point. I doubt their stance has changed.

[Lostdragon]

EgoSlayer, on 07 November 2015 - 11:00 AM, said:

There is a reason why it isn't implemented, beyond difficulty and technical challenges. Putting in saved load outs takes away the equipment C-bill sink. It's a design decision and it's something Russ said in one of the early town halls that taking that C-bill sink isn't something they were willing to work on at that point. I doubt their stance has changed.

I said it then and I will say it now, that is a silly position to take. I don't and won't buy multiple variants for any reason and I doubt 99% of the playerbase does or will so it is not cbills sink but a time sink. Not having it makes the game look unpolished and less accessible. That type of thing makes people less likely to stick around and open their wallets.

[Madrummer]

Listen, people, a "save loadout" is NOT that hard. EVERYTHING in this game is server-side. These are just tables we're talking about, here.
Save Loadouts would just be arrays of strings with item identifiers. Your inventory is just an array with strings stating x amount of each. Your currency is a ******' variable and can be checked in one boolean statement. For someone who knows the architecture of the engine's code and knows what to look for, it could be done in, like, a day, plus 2 days of testing, and be implemented in the very next patch. Same with a "show owned" drop-down selection for cockpit items.

[EgoSlayer]

Lostdragon, on 07 November 2015 - 11:28 AM, said:

I said it then and I will say it now, that is a silly position to take. I don't and won't buy multiple variants for any reason and I doubt 99% of the playerbase does or will so it is not cbills sink but a time sink. Not having it makes the game look unpolished and less accessible. That type of thing makes people less likely to stick around and open their wallets.

It's a C-bill sink for equipment, not a mechs. Most players keep dozens of things like most use weapons, and multiples of modules. etc. With saved load outs that inventory becomes largely unnecessary and removes the equipment/module C-Bill sink. This C-bill sink It isn't to drive people to buy more mechs, its to coerce people into buying more equipment and drive the need for C-Bills (i need xxx to complete my build), and by proxy the need to play more to generate the necessary income. And giving players a goal (I need to earn C-bills) is something required to keep a player's interest. One can argue the difficulty of the grind, but the fact is that it's one of MWO's fundamental feedback loops.

Although at some point people have enough inventory or enough mechs they don't buy anymore equipment and their C-Bills are not spent anymore and the sink/feedback loop doesn't matter. Saved load-outs make this happen much sooner since the easy of moving/saving/configuring eliminates the need for inventory.

[Lostdragon]

EgoSlayer, on 07 November 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

It's a C-bill sink for equipment, not a mechs. Most players keep dozens of things like most use weapons, and multiples of modules. etc. With saved load outs that inventory becomes largely unnecessary and removes the equipment/module C-Bill sink. This C-bill sink It isn't to drive people to buy more mechs, its to coerce people into buying more equipment and drive the need for C-Bills (i need xxx to complete my build), and by proxy the need to play more to generate the necessary income. And giving players a goal (I need to earn C-bills) is something required to keep a player's interest. One can argue the difficulty of the grind, but the fact is that it's one of MWO's fundamental feedback loops.

Although at some point people have enough inventory or enough mechs they don't buy anymore equipment and their C-Bills are not spent anymore and the sink/feedback loop doesn't matter. Saved load-outs make this happen much sooner since the easy of moving/saving/configuring eliminates the need for inventory.

I think it is silly to try to use it a a cbills sink but if it was "necessary" to get the feature implemented then lock the equipment when it is saved in a loadout. Problem solved, cbills sink for modules and equipment still exists. I would like the feature to NOT be implemented this way, but it would be better than not being able to save loadout at all.

[Bobzilla]

Smurfys could be copied and replace our entire UI.

[wolf74]

[smartbutt]
They do have that, It is called having a 2nd mech of the Same Model. Ta'da Configeration Saved
[/smartbutt]

[Mycrus]

Prosperity Park, on 06 November 2015 - 03:13 PM, said:

Yeah, I like the mechlab. It's fun to tinker, it's fun to build. It's fun to optimize, etc. Fun.

Do you know what's not fun? Having to replicate the same ******* builds over and over again whenever I want to drop in a different loadout. Does PGI honestly expect me to buy duplicates and triplicates of my variants just so I can have different loadouts ready to go? That IS NOT going to happen.

I have been waiting several years for a "Save Loadout" button, and this needs to be in before Steam. It also has to be in before I buy anything else. Sure, tell me to take my money elsewhere of ask if you can have my stuff. I am just sick and tired of wasting so much time in the mechlab.

Free to play games stay alive because free players populate the servers and let paying players fight against someone. I am a paying player, for God's sake, and I am being kept out of the servers because of this wasted time spent replicating my builds.

TL;DR: PGI, please let me spend more time in matches. Let me save my loadouts.

Pgi will not decrease TTK... even yours.

[Shatara]

EgoSlayer, on 07 November 2015 - 12:24 PM, said:

It's a C-bill sink for equipment, not a mechs. Most players keep dozens of things like most use weapons, and multiples of modules. etc. With saved load outs that inventory becomes largely unnecessary and removes the equipment/module C-Bill sink. This C-bill sink It isn't to drive people to buy more mechs, its to coerce people into buying more equipment and drive the need for C-Bills (i need xxx to complete my build), and by proxy the need to play more to generate the necessary income. And giving players a goal (I need to earn C-bills) is something required to keep a player's interest. One can argue the difficulty of the grind, but the fact is that it's one of MWO's fundamental feedback loops.

Although at some point people have enough inventory or enough mechs they don't buy anymore equipment and their C-Bills are not spent anymore and the sink/feedback loop doesn't matter. Saved load-outs make this happen much sooner since the easy of moving/saving/configuring eliminates the need for inventory.

Err, what? How would being able to save configs eliminate the need to have the parts that make them? As far as the server--and by extension the game's economy--is concerned, there is no difference between loading a config from a file and building it by hand. You'd still need the parts, and if you don't have them, you'd have to buy them. The only difference is how long it takes the player to do it.

The only thing it removes is the 'need' to buy multiple chassis and mechbays to hold them, and how many people actually do that (not counting the 'put multiple metamechs in clamwars deck' crowd, since saving wouldn't change that)?

[Pjwned]

Yeah, a loadout feature would make a huge difference to me in actually wanting to play more. I have a decent collection of mechs built up now, but whenever I feel like playing I only end up using 1 or 2 mechs because it's such a pain in the ass hassle to set up all my other mechs, and then inevitably I get bored of playing the same mech so I just stop playing again until I'm inspired to play another new build...rinse & repeat.

Like OP I also realize that I could just buy duplicates of a bunch of equipment and solve the issue that way, but also like OP that is simply not going to happen because I refuse to grind out millions of c-bills to buy duplicates of equipment, so instead I just end up not playing. This has actually been an issue for quite a while now, and while various improvements to the game have made me come back and play more at times, I ultimately end up getting bored and stop playing again and the frustration of not having my mechs easily played when I feel like it is a major reason why.

I also want to emphasize that since a little while ago you can actually take equipment off of a mech that is currently locked in a game, so even if you take your 1 advanced zoom module into a game you can now take it off of that mech and put it on another mech if you end up dying and want to move on to another match with another mech that needs the advanced zoom module. This didn't used to be the case for a long time, but now your equipment is available to put on other mechs whenever you want and this makes a saved loadout feature even more useful than it would have been a while ago, and I wholeheartedly urge PGI to implement this.

As a side note the other major issue that makes me not want to play nearly as much is all the mech tree grinding that's required when I feel like playing a new chassis/variant, but that's a different topic with different solutions.

[Xoco]

Eldagore, on 07 November 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

With Frontiernet and like, I dunno, gotta be getting up to 200 mechs now.... yeah removing a radar derp module and hitting save can take over a minute sometimes. Then I get to go to the mech I want to put it on and do it again.

I know it sounds menial "oh no you have to wait a whole minute!" but c'mon man, picture me, sitting at my desk wanting to get into the action, watching "saving mech loadout" for over a minute..... like they say, a watched pot never boils.... well, that minute of inactivity feels like 10 when you are waiting to get back to shooting robbits and all you are doing is taking a single module off a mech.

Actually I'm with you here. I do live pretty damn far away from the server, so wait time is a real issue. Granted with my 9 mechs it is only 3 or 4 seconds, but that is already starting to annoy me. I would really hate to sit through a minute of save screen.

[xImmortalx]

Madrummer, on 07 November 2015 - 11:47 AM, said:

Listen, people, a "save loadout" is NOT that hard. EVERYTHING in this game is server-side. These are just tables we're talking about, here.
Save Loadouts would just be arrays of strings with item identifiers. Your inventory is just an array with strings stating x amount of each. Your currency is a ******' variable and can be checked in one boolean statement. For someone who knows the architecture of the engine's code and knows what to look for, it could be done in, like, a day, plus 2 days of testing, and be implemented in the very next patch. Same with a "show owned" drop-down selection for cockpit items.

First off, you're greatly oversimplifying the way loadouts currently work. I'm not familiar with the game codebase at all but it's safe to assume that, in addition to what you mentioned, they at the very least have code in place to prevent invalid (hacked) loadouts and to ensure that each loadout is identical to when it was saved (identical item location). This adds up to a lot more data than "strings and item identifiers". Then there is armor allocation which requires 11 bits of info (HP at each location on the mech). Then you have camos and colors, cockpit items and modules. I can only imagine how much of a pain in the rear quirks were to implement.

Second off, how do you treat upgrades? Are they chassis-specific or loadout-specific? Do you just throw out loadouts that are built using different sets of upgrades than the ones currently equipped? Or you do make people pay tons of cash to switch between loadouts made using different sets of upgrades? Or do you find a way for a user to own every possible upgrade/downgrade for any given chassis?

Thirdly, how exactly do you implement the loadout system? The easy way would be to use the current chassis system and just treat duplicate chassis as loadouts but lots of users have dupes on purpose and might not want to part with them. You would at the very least have to disable purchasing of duplicates and then run a script on the database beforehand that pays users back for their dupes before converting them to loadouts. And I'm sure even then there would be complaints. The hard (and right) way would be to do away with the chassis = config mechanism entirely and separate the data structure into chassis info (type identifier, owner identifier) and loadout so that multiple loadouts can be assigned to a single chassis. This can be problematic both in the quantity of data (current quantity of data * average number of loadouts per chassis) and possible speed penalties when fetching/saving + validating data, not to mention the programming effort involved in rewriting a core system of the game and the massive testing required to validate said rewrite.

I don't know your background or your occupation but this is not nearly as simple as you make it sound. Treating it as trivial when it isn't anything resembling that is at the very least inconsiderate and only shows your ignorance of the field you're so casually passing judgement on.

You and others like you act like spoiled brats who think that they don't get the things they want from their parents because said parents (a.k.a. the developers) are mean and not because there are objective facts which you may not be aware of that don't allow then to give you what you want at the moment.

It's no wonder PGI barely reads these forums. If I was on that team and someone talked about my work the way you do I'd want to smack you upside the head too.

[Necromantion]

How about this while the're at it?
http://mwomercs.com/...h-config-saves/

[Lugh]

Dingo Red, on 06 November 2015 - 03:29 PM, said:

Definitely something PGI should look into since it's a convenience feature that would save a lot of hassle.



Ah, yeah, no. Saving would probably require a decent amount of work in order to store the data of multiple loadouts. Never assume that just because it's a simple button press on the front end, it's going to be easy to develop.

Sure because adding a button is hard for UI designers, and having that button save the .xml profile information for Loadout1, loudout2 and loadout3 is SOOOO mind bogglingly difficult... right ??

[Necromantion]

Lugh, on 09 November 2015 - 06:18 AM, said:

Sure because adding a button is hard for UI designers, and having that button save the .xml profile information for Loadout1, loudout2 and loadout3 is SOOOO mind bogglingly difficult... right ??

By now its pretty clear the dev team is competing in the special olympics of game development no?

[TheStrider]

I've been saving my load outs for 3 years now.

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab

Yeh... There are many other features I'd rather them work on first.