31 replies to this topic

[Felbombling]

Hello once again, fellow MechWarriors. As PGI has a one patch month coming up here in January, and we also have had an influx of new Steam players, I took the opportunity to approach the game as a new player and decided to play with a note pad beside me, so that I could jot down some thoughts as they came to me. As I played and navigated through the Mech Lab, I asked myself, “What would a newer player think of the game?” Here, in no particular order, are the thoughts that jumped to mind as ways that PGI could streamline things further, fix some immersion breakers and generally make life in game more enjoyable. Agree, disagree… add to my list… discuss.

*** Adding to the listing as things come to me. ***

General

• Gameplay tips on the loading screen scroll too quickly. Maybe I’m a slow reader, but I’ve seen these things scroll by so fast as to not allow for a complete reading of the tip, let alone absorbing of the information provided. It seems inconsistent, too. Sometimes it will scroll by at a good three second clip, other times it seems the next one pops up within one second of the previous tip. This is ok for a one sentence tip, I’d guess, but for something longer it is almost a waste of time. Slow the tips down to maybe two for the loading screen. This will give the newer players a chance to read and absorb the information provided.
  
• The game could really use an in-game clock. Maybe it could be a new use for those screens in cockpit, or a new version of mounted/standing/hanging cockpit items? Lots of options for that, I’d say. Hey, PGI, you could monetise this!
  
• World of Tanks has a system where you can prioritize your tanks by marking one or more as ‘favourite’, which amounts to hiding non favourite tanks via a drop down menu selection. I think this could work for MechWarrior: Online, as well, lessening the clutter in the Select Mech screen.
  
• Update stats in the Mech hangar on mouse-over when skills that affect heat efficiency, speed or other factors have been purchased. Just bought Speed Tweak? Update the Mech mouse-over to match the speed increase.
  
• Instant button to get us from a Mech in the Mech Lab to the corresponding spend Mech XP panel for that same Mech. As it is now, it is a three step process to get from point A to point B, without so much as a highlight on the Pilot Skill Tree main page with all the different Mechs listed. This would be a great benefit for newer players as they have to hunt for the correct chassis as it stands now.
  
• Separate the Inner Sphere and Clan weapon modules, for the love of… good grief!
  
• There should be an easier option to upgrade an a la carte bundle to the parent bundle. It is possible, but you have to contact support and they’ll get you to purchase equivalent value in other bundles and packages in the gift store. C’mon, PGI, make it easier to take my money!
  
• If you get a bundle injected into your account, have the injected items screen indicate the availability of faction camouflage/colour selections as well as premium time injections. You’ll save your support staff time by not having to help out newer players who may immediately think they got shafted of some of their items.

Mech Lab



PGI, I think you’ve been concerned with time to kill in the game, which you have stated is perhaps too low. If that is the case, here are two pretty minor changes you can make that essentially eliminate two of the tools in the min-maxer toolbox. Miner change, but any little bit would help.

• Signature Weapon Hardpoints that give weapon quirks to weapons mounted in them, but not elsewhere in the Mech chassis with similar hard-points. This would hopefully eliminate situations where the Hellbringer or future Warhammer may have their arms stripped of weapons and armour for migration of weapons originally mounted there into the torsos and their higher weapon hard-points.
  
• Match arm, leg and side torso armour values automatically. This is a minor change, but it will prevent stripping of an empty arm for half to one and a half extra tons that can be thrown into heat sinks or another weapon. As a side benefit, it will make working on armour in the Mech Lab slightly easier and/or faster.

In Game

• How long has this been going on… invisible terrain hit boxes blocking fire. You’ve even got, after years of development, these problems creeping into newer maps and props. This is so frustrating and immersion breaking, I cannot begin to tell you. You can shoot between the wheels of railcars in a game like World of tanks, but you’ll hit invisible geometry on the top of a building in MechWarrior: Online.
  
• Perhaps it is time to do away with Alpha Striking altogether. Every weapon in every group can only fire by itself, but on a quick .25 second delay. Longer face time with the enemy, but damage would be spread out from a single pixel for big weapon groups like we have now. The Medium Pulse Laser boats, anyone?

Edited by StaggerCheck, 13 January 2016 - 08:13 AM.

[Troutmonkey]

Agree with everything except your points on the mech Lab. What would be nice there instead would be "Max Armour" buttons which automatically assign all remaining armour points for that location to either the front or back. Likewise a strip armour per location button would be good too

[Hillslam]

PvE

[Malleus011]

I rather like the idea of 'signature hardpoints' that support the main guns iconic to the build.

[KodiakGW]

One simple request. Make "Pinpoint" something else that actually does something. Here is a thought: Make it 2.5% range increase on all weapons. "Fast Fire" is 5% cooldown for all weapons - 6000XP. So 2.5% for 3000XP. It would match percentage to XP, and not be game breaking.

[cSand]

Hillslam, on 11 January 2016 - 07:16 PM, said:

PvE

"lol hanging fruit"

Anyways, 1 no brainer that always amazes me is that we still can't choose which hardpoint to place weapons on.

[White Bear 84]

StaggerCheck, on 11 January 2016 - 06:18 PM, said:

General

• World of Tanks has a system where you can prioritize your tanks by marking one or more as ‘favourite’, which amounts to hiding non favourite tanks via a drop down menu selection. I think this could work for MechWarrior: Online, as well, lessening the clutter in the Select Mech screen.

- We used to have one, then for some weird reason it was taken away. Would welcome back with open arms

• Instant button to get us from a Mech in the Mech Lab to the corresponding spend Mech XP panel for that same Mech. As it is now, it is a three step process to get from point A to point B

The disparity between mechbay and skills is annoying to say the list. Definite improvement that makes 100% sense


Mech Lab

• Signature Weapon Hardpoints that give weapon quirks to weapons mounted in them, but not elsewhere in the Mech chassis with similar hard-points. This would hopefully eliminate situations where the Hellbringer or future Warhammer may have their arms stripped of weapons and armour for migration of weapons originally mounted there into the torsos and their higher weapon hard-points.

Kinda cool idea, variation on the initial quirks that were added to mechs (of course from memory people complained that this made mechs too generic and focused on specific builds so if you can mitigate that backlash no reason why not...)

In Game

• How long has this been going on… invisible terrain hit boxes blocking fire.

The worst is terra therma caldera entrances, shot at a visible mech across the edge.. ..nope, 25m out and you are shooting an invisible barrier. Kill denied. I am inspired a bit to do some testing to find some nice little nuggets for this.

Edited by White Bear 84, 11 January 2016 - 08:34 PM.

[Khobai]

Quote

One simple request. Make "Pinpoint" something else that actually does something. Here is a thought: Make it 2.5% range increase on all weapons. "Fast Fire" is 5% cooldown for all weapons - 6000XP. So 2.5% for 3000XP. It would match percentage to XP, and not be game breaking.

yeah IS mechs dont need even more range

id rather see pinpoint become a hill climbing skill

since assaults cant even walk up ramps properly

[His Holiness Pope Buster]

1) The ability to do the following:
- Strip all modules
- Strip all mech modules
- Strip all weapon modules
- Strip all consumable modules
From:
- All mechs
- All IS mechs
- All IS mechs from a particular weight class
- All Clan mechs
- All Clan mechs from a particular weight class

2) The ability to prebuild multiple drop decks for CW

3) Jelly sausage {LT-MOB-25} pit item that wiggles when my mech walks.

[Bishop Steiner]

k

[John Archer]

I would like to see the CB price of modules go dooooowwwwwnnn....

6 million C Bills for a Capture Accelerator?? Seriously??

[LordNothing]

His Holiness Pope Buster, on 11 January 2016 - 09:32 PM, said:

1) The ability to do the following:
- Strip all modules
- Strip all mech modules
- Strip all weapon modules
- Strip all consumable modules
From:
- All mechs
- All IS mechs
- All IS mechs from a particular weight class
- All Clan mechs
- All Clan mechs from a particular weight class

2) The ability to prebuild multiple drop decks for CW

3) Jelly sausage {LT-MOB-25} pit item that wiggles when my mech walks.

i wouldn't mind something like this. in fact i think everything you own should be shown in your inventory whether it be loaded onto a mech or sitting in your warehouse. for weapons, modules, and equipment show separate columns for total owned, equipped and available items. if you mouse over an item, you should get a list of what mechs they are on (possibly with quick links into the mech lab so you can quickly recover those items). for awhile i kept track of everything with spread sheets, at least until my collection became so big it became impossible to keep my spreadsheets up to date.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 January 2016 - 05:25 AM.

[Felbombling]

Bishop Steiner, on 11 January 2016 - 09:37 PM, said:

k

The secret behind Bishop Steiner's 32,697 post count.

Edited by StaggerCheck, 12 January 2016 - 06:09 AM.

[Mead]

I would love to be able to find a particular module without having to look at every mech I own. And no, I won't "just buy another module". It makes no sense to basically abandon those things to the surplus pile.

At the very least the list could say which mech it's in instead of that vague "installed in some other chassis" message.

[Widowmaker1981]

i would love 'oneshot' modules - like a (much) cheaper Radar derp i could buy for a mech for say 1 milliion that is destroyed if its removed. Saving mechs takes minutes at this point with 170 mechs, swapping modules has become so annoying ive embarked on a project to buy all modules for all mechs i use (50+) so i never need to swap them. Its a dumb amount of Cbills needed.

Favourite mechs option would be awesome, or the inverse (sh!tmech) option. I want to hide mechs ill never play again so i don't have to see them, but i don't want to sell them in case of requirks.

Savable drops decks for CW. 50 seconds isn't a lot of time to choose your deck for the map - imagine if you could have say 15 slots that you could name and save, then choose from a dropdown 'Boreal Attack', 'Hellbore Attack', etc.

I don't like your idea for making quirks only apply to the hardpoint intended, because the actual effect it will have (in most cases) is to make people not use those mechs, not run them as intended as you hope. Make the TDR-9S quirks only apply to the low slung right arm and not the torso mounts? Instant useless mech.

[Felbombling]

Widowmaker1981, on 12 January 2016 - 07:31 AM, said:

I don't like your idea for making quirks only apply to the hardpoint intended, because the actual effect it will have (in most cases) is to make people not use those mechs, not run them as intended as you hope. Make the TDR-9S quirks only apply to the low slung right arm and not the torso mounts? Instant useless mech.

For every TDR-9S situation, I can point to a TDR-5SS or similar where every energy hard-point suddenly benefits from Medium Pulse Laser quirks, and voila... you have a Medium Pulse Laser boat instead of a Mech armed with Medium Lasers and a PPC. Just wait for all the bare-arm Warhammers next week, and you'll see why signature hard-points wouldn't be so bad for the game in general.

[TheArisen]

Khobai, on 11 January 2016 - 08:35 PM, said:

yeah IS mechs dont need even more range

id rather see pinpoint become a hill climbing skill

since assaults cant even walk up ramps properly

This, the fact pinpoint hasn't been replaced by now is painful.

Other "low hanging fruit".
- Ability to "pass" group lead to another
- Ability to select the exact location a weapon goes on a mech
- Let us save multiple dropdecks for CW that we can switch to while waiting for a match/before a drop.
- Ability to send "mail" in game. Messages that can be read once the recipient logs on.

[Euklides]

Here is another older post rehearsing what you have said and got other things in there as well:
http://mwomercs.com/...ts/page__st__20

It is good that these threads continue to pop up to hopefully remind and perhaps make the devs notice.

[Bishop Steiner]

StaggerCheck, on 12 January 2016 - 06:09 AM, said:

The secret behind Bishop Steiner's 32,697 post count.

maybe

But I guess I'll add one:

The fact that Noob Crutches like Arms-Lock are still in the game, to be abused by and make ridiculous pinpoint aiming even easier, is pretty mystifying... until of course you mention it, and all the "Skill" players start crying because "need crutch".

Happy?

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 12 January 2016 - 09:55 AM.

[Felbombling]

Bishop Steiner, on 12 January 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

Happy?

y