33 replies to this topic

[Halfinax]

@technoviking Yeah, you have the gist. My suggestion was in terms of "ladder" or "persistent world" matches. I don't really care how the 1 off matches that have no bearing on the metagame are played. Naturally all of this is speculative on my part, blah blah blah, etc.. I just think it would be a nice way to find a balance that has the potential to draw more players, and even make more hardcore fans out of people.

Hell, I started off in sims as a very arcade level of switch guy back in the early '90s and today I'm a full switch nutter, Hell I was introduced to BT through MW3 and back then I didn't give two hoots about all the lore of the universe etc. I just wanted giant robots blasting each other to bits, and today I'm an avid fan of the TT game, and fairly immersed in the lore. I want others to follow that. If I had had my first experience with sims being full switch or most switch back in the day I may not be the fan and full switch player I am now. Same goes for BT/MW if I had been forced into all the lore just to play a game rather than easing into it at my discretion I likely wouldn't be chatting on these forums today.

Glad to see this topic slowly gaining some momentum....If there is stuff you guys think would help/needs to be clarified in the OP PM me and I'll see what I can do.

Edited by Halfinax, 05 December 2011 - 09:37 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Haeso, on 05 December 2011 - 09:34 AM, said:

They absolutely do if the the universe is persistent, the scale and scope of individual battles is not the only thing that matters. The game doesn't need open worlds to have one unifying map of the inner sphere people are fighting over.

None unless they're playing in a totally separate universe that does not impact the war for the Inner Sphere. A la simulator battles.

I think that "World changing battles" will be scheduled. The battle of Twycross will exist, for a week, maybe. But this game is 24-7. I can't imagine that the 1000's of daily battles that will occur (Lets say a minimum, small amount of 25,000 players playing world wide at any given time) will impact the universe. There must be some other way. I guess, that a WoW like "You earned 1000 victory points for DC, DC will win this planet at 500,000 points!" could be in there, but that would be terrible and unbattletechy. When I play with my friends drunk at 2am on Saturday, do I really have to sweat that its going to make me lose Misery for my House?

Edit: More importantly, do you want 12 year old griefers losing games on purpose to punish their ex-friend in that faction for being a douchebag over a girl in thier middle school?

Edited by Technoviking, 05 December 2011 - 09:44 AM.

[Haeso]

Technoviking, on 05 December 2011 - 09:41 AM, said:

I think that "World changing battles" will be scheduled. The battle of Twycross will exist, for a week, maybe. But this game is 24-7. I can't imagine that the 1000's of daily battles that will occur (Lets say a minimum, small amount of 25,000 players playing world wide at any given time) will impact the universe. There must be some other way. I guess, that a WoW like "You earned 1000 victory points for DC, DC will win this planet at 500,000 points!" could be in there, but that would be terrible and unbattletechy. When I play with my friends drunk at 2am on Saturday, do I really have to sweat that its going to make me lose Misery for my House?

It's almost certainly going to be a world map that is constantly fought over with many, many iterations of the same battles rather than a stylized campaign.

Whether you think that's "Unbattletechy" I'd say it's worse to be fighting pointless battles for no reason. People do not fight for the sake of fighting in battletech, it's too damn expensive. If you just want to have fun, go play in a sim pod, if you want to fight for your house or for your wallet, head to the battlefield.

[CeeKay Boques]

Well, there will have to be some sort of split then. Because some of the most fun "Hey lets all grab Uziels and DFA everyone!" games are awesome. "Or, "I dunno, It's a Loki that goes 106ph with nothing but flares, har har!" But those won't happen if everything MEANS something. Believe me, I personally will take this game to a silly hardcore level, a third of which will take place in my head, third on the field, and a third with my unit. But because I take it seriously, at some point we're just going to want to ***** around.

So there you have "Ranked Server" and "Unranked Server" is I guess what that (d)evolves into... So the Tier becomes "For real" or "Not For real"

This expands for me into another topic "Do I want PGI to control all the official battles, or can we have private leagues, and how do the two work".

[Nik Van Rhijn]

This has come up in a number of threads and the majority of 2 levels. "Hardcore" battles for territory (or whatever) on the metamap. "Non ranked" , "Solaris" or "fun" matches which have no lasting effect. A fair number would like Solaris style ranking matches as well even if only quarterly or whatever. I think PGI will control everything. Maybe the Solaris "ladders" will have an entry fee (C-bills or $)?

[Silent]

In a perfect world where these persistent worlds could remain balanced it'd probably be great. However, everyone knows that over time one of these worlds would top out and become the most active and popular world to play. This would either force players to migrate over to the more active world, quit, or deal with a dwindling player population that enjoys the unpopular realism settings.

In this community I am sure that could swing both ways. While I am all for more simulation I wouldn't want to force someone that likes to play arcade to get all spergy with me, especially if the game gave the option of playing in a persistent world that favored arcade play. Just like I wouldn't want to be forced to play arcade and abandon my spergy simulation.

I'd rather the developers keep everyone on the same page and just try and make the game not too arcadey and not too DCS: A-10C.

[Halfinax]

Yeah, too some extent I was assuming a fairly even split of players between tiers 2+3. I knew that Tier 1 as I laid it out would never have a large population, and that 4 would likely have more of a fluctuating transient population. I just never considered that either of the middle two tiers might become so much more popular than the other that it could end up creating a vacuum in it's sister tier. I just mostly saw it as a solution that allowed most to see a level of realism they liked without adding in an exploitable (for this kind of online battle game) realism toggle menu as most sims see.

I hope that the devs can and do come up with a system that is easy enough for new players to figure out without being discouraged, but with enough intricacy to keep the more die hard sim fans happy too. To use a cliche "Easy to learn difficult to master" is most likely and hopefully what we will end up with.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

The one thing that we can be fairly sure of is that it will never satisfy everyone, we just hope it doesn;t dissatisfy too many.

[GaussDragon]

Halfinax, on 06 December 2011 - 07:59 AM, said:

Yeah, too some extent I was assuming a fairly even split of players between tiers 2+3. I knew that Tier 1 as I laid it out would never have a large population, and that 4 would likely have more of a fluctuating transient population. I just never considered that either of the middle two tiers might become so much more popular than the other that it could end up creating a vacuum in it's sister tier. I just mostly saw it as a solution that allowed most to see a level of realism they liked without adding in an exploitable (for this kind of online battle game) realism toggle menu as most sims see.

I hope that the devs can and do come up with a system that is easy enough for new players to figure out without being discouraged, but with enough intricacy to keep the more die hard sim fans happy too. To use a cliche "Easy to learn difficult to master" is most likely and hopefully what we will end up with.

I'd be in favour of a 1 + Anything goes. What I mean is, make the planetary/persistent/territorial matches fixed as in Tier 2 or 3 and all other lobby matches customizable. That way we have consistency in the aspect of the game that matter most, but flexibility for people who just want to blow stuff up.

[GaussDragon]

Silent, on 06 December 2011 - 02:09 AM, said:

In this community I am sure that could swing both ways. While I am all for more simulation I wouldn't want to force someone that likes to play arcade to get all spergy with me, especially if the game gave the option of playing in a persistent world that favored arcade play. Just like I wouldn't want to be forced to play arcade and abandon my spergy simulation.

I'd rather the developers keep everyone on the same page and just try and make the game not too arcadey and not too DCS: A-10C.

THIS. However if one has been following this debate long enough (I'm talking years and years here), many of us are in favour of the status quo, I.E., a tiered system that's a compromise, however alot of the hardcore purists (but by no means all of them!), more often than not, are in favour of it being complete simulation, dragging everyone else kicking and screaming to their version of the game.

This is fundamentally why MekTek lost a lot of good-will, and why a lot us simply don't like them, or at least some of their representatives very much.

Edited by GaussDragon, 06 December 2011 - 09:57 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

GaussDragon, on 06 December 2011 - 09:54 AM, said:

THIS. However if one has been following this debate long enough (I'm talking years and years here), many of us are in favour of the status quo, I.E., a tiered system that's a compromise, however alot of the hardcore purists (but by no means all of them!), more often than not, are in favour of it being complete simulation, dragging everyone else kicking and screaming to their version of the game.

This is fundamentally why MekTek lost a lot of good-will, and why a lot us simply don't like them, or at least some of their representatives very much.

I don't get this. What is the goal, the advancement of the "non Sim" version of the game?

I hand you a mech and a gun.
You say thanks.
I start adding lights and bells and whistles and accurately modeling the mech and gun as best I can.
You frown.

How was YOUR game going to advance? What other direction could it have gone instead? The "No change" direction?

[GaussDragon]

Technoviking, on 06 December 2011 - 10:09 AM, said:

How was YOUR game going to advance? What other direction could it have gone instead? The "No change" direction?

I'm not sure what you're asking here. My post above the one you quoted is how I feel about advancement, in that the progression system (aka the planetary advancement/territorial control dealio) should be more to the simulation end (but not outright sim per se) and that other servers, the non-sim, there is no advancement so much as perhaps gaining XP for blowing up other mechs and it that it allows for more variation in terms of settings. It's basically like all the other MW games before it, you hop in a server, you blow the living hell out of other mechs and you have your fun. That's its purpose.

[CeeKay Boques]

GaussDragon, on 06 December 2011 - 10:33 AM, said:

. It's basically like all the other MW games before it, you hop in a server, you blow the living hell out of other mechs and you have your fun. That's its purpose.

So what I'm hearing is that MechWarrior 4 should have just stayed where it was, and shouldn't have been advanced my MekTek. That makes sense, it sounded like there were two paths that MekTek paks could have taken and you were lamenting that they took the Sim route. I couldn't imagine in my mind what the "other" route was...

[GaussDragon]

Technoviking, on 06 December 2011 - 10:52 AM, said:

So what I'm hearing is that MechWarrior 4 should have just stayed where it was, and shouldn't have been advanced my MekTek. That makes sense, it sounded like there were two paths that MekTek paks could have taken and you were lamenting that they took the Sim route. I couldn't imagine in my mind what the "other" route was...

Content-wise, I was in favour of advancing the game, but balance-wise, they were trying to make an entirely new one out of it. Trying to turn MW4 into sim was trying to make it something it was never intended to be. I'm going to try and leave it at that, otherwise this thread is going to spiral down quickly into old antagonisms.