Posted 11 November 2015 - 09:18 PM
OP has sorta got an idea about seperate views on what people want, but it is worded bad and doesn;t capture the essence of what people rage about on "both" sides.
About lore:
Thats what mechwarrior is. If we ignore it all, then might as well rename the game. It's what brough tpeople here, it's what keeps some here. The tabletop rules have some issues. They can be addressed. PGI has addressed them, BADLY, and in some cases have ignored the issues. This leaves lore hounds rageing, and even non-lore people are left wanting something but then both sides can;t agree for obvious reasons. Usally, both sides have some bit of good idea but largely are misguided due to bias or misunderstanding.
About twitch:
look, MWO is a FPS. but it's supposed to be mechwarrior. Twitch plus MW don;t go together. PGI has pushed them together. SO here we are again, with players raging. here is where the "two" sides end up arguing about how to fix it, etc. here's the thing:
lore guys, tabletop has some big issues. Yo can;t just look at 10 second rules and transpose them. you can;t just take the timeline to 3075 and say "mix tech for all then!". Some one will get ticked off about not having a 3025 game mode then, or whatever. BUT: you are also right, the game has gotten too fast, to much firepower, to much ganks and gank squads.
Twitch FPS guys, mechwarior is not a twitch game. it never was. it has more in common with sim games then about any other "shooter" I can think of going back to commodore 64 PC's without actually being called a sim. You can;t ignore the lore guys, there's 3 decades of history that created the entire premise of the game. That means there's 3 decades of mechwarriors out there that want MWO to be mechwarrior!
And above all else, to anyone:
MWO will NEVER be successful if it tries to blend in with other games, if it tries to copy some other games success, if it ends up too far away from sim and too close to boom, headshot. YOU DON;T MAKE A NICHE FOR A GAME BY COPYING EXISTING GAMES. YOU DON;T CREATE A GROWING POPULATION AND A LONG LASTING PRFITABLE PRODUCT BY RECREATING SOME ONE ELSE'S. This is a lesson MMO dev teams learned over the course of ten years as publishers pushed them to copy WoW over and over. And all those copycats spent big money, launched to a dissapointing start, and fizzled. WHY WOULD ANYONE LEAVE AN EXISTING FPS GAME TO COME TO THIS ONE IF IT THE SAME AS THE ONE THEY ARE ALREADY INVESTED IN? They won;t, and if they do, they won;t stay.
MWO MUST become a battletech game, must become unique, and get back true to it's roots as mechwarior will do that. Only then will you see people coming here, because nobody else has what MWO would have, and staying here because there isn;t anywhere else to get it.
This is what lore guys rage about, the foundation for that unique game IS ALREADY THERE FOR 30 YEARS. PGI has just botched it by basically moving in the wrong direction as they made changes to the tabletop rules(changes that were required mind you) and pushed the battletech basic structure away from the goal, and into the realm of something that OTHER GAMES DO BETTER. thats why we have struggled for years now. We are trying to copy World of tanks, world of warplanes, world of warships, various twitch FPS games, and of course much of it derived from some dream of being an esport and consulting with a very select, very vocal minority of the playerbase.
The answers are there, right there, in the source material. Heatscale(I push on this a lot lately) is allowing mega alphas with little penalty. Because the firepower is so massive, players have responded with more and more speed, because you can;t get caught in the open in a slow mech or you get pasted. Biigger engines mean mechs move/twist/turn faster and faster, because engine size is coupled to those traits.
I don;t want to limit peoples ability to customize mechs. i don;t even want to force them into reduction of firepower. I want to reduce alphastrike power. More trigger pulls for the same firepower. It spreads dmg out, it makes TTK go up, without slowing the pace of battle down(more trigger pulls more often). When TTK goes up, moving fast like a ninja becomes less important because youy can take a few shots, and besides, you might actually want to run a heavy weapon with better range or less heat because DPS gains some favor when you can;t just alphastrike everything all the time. Bigger guns means less tonnage available and a choice between DHS, engine size, and guns actually shows up.
The easiest to use weapons in the game are also the most effective, the lightest, and have the least downsides right now. Thats wrong. There have been lots of suggestions on how to fix it. But it isn;t even the weapons, its the more basic rules the weapons haveto follow. heatscale, hardpoints, convergence. PGI says convergence is out the window. You can;t mess with hardpoints without essentially swiinging a nerfhammer or breaking the source material more then they have. that leaves heatscale, which just happens to be switching some numbers in a spread sheet and putting it on PTS to tweak. It fits lore, it brings MWO back to the sim area and away from cray cray twitch esports, it leaves all the flexability in loadouts etc alone, leaves firepower alone, and reduces alphas and increaees TTK. All that, while putting more trigger pulls more often into the game, and raising the skill ceiling for those that can aim well enough to land more shots on one mech section.
This got really long. Lore guys: you need to loosen the grip on the 10 second turn sourcebooks. FPS guys: MWO will fade into the background if you try to keep pushing it into a game that other games already have and do better. MWO needs to be Battletech, needs to move away from boom headshot and back to more DPS, needs to move away from twitch and more to sim, needs to slow down. It needs to be Mechwarrior, and create a unique position for itself to draw people to and grow and thrive.
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Khobai, on 11 November 2015 - 08:59 PM, said:
