88 replies to this topic

[Glaucon]

If you shoot outside or inside of your weapon's optimal range you should have to wait a few sec for the targeting system to converge your weapons for perfect hit. (except missiles of course).

This would make mixed ranged loadouts better imho. And whaka-mole playstyle would be harder as well.

[Nightmare1]

Salvag3, on 24 January 2016 - 07:57 PM, said:

So I have been thinking about this a lot, does this even feel like Battletech anymore ? And does this hurt the game. I would like to get feed back on what others think and share my thoughts.

After thinking about it For a while I have come to the conclusion that no it lacks a Battletech feel. And I believe it's because some core aspects of Battletech lore and table top have just been over looked/ignored.

1) Gunnery is just to easy. In the novels and the modifiers when you play table top it's just hard to put your weapons on target with anything close to the success that you see in this game. And I know you can't do "hard" the same way random dice rolls with modifiers can do it or random hit locations, but I really think that weapon sway, recoil and a rethinking of the how hot boxes were made could have allowed for a much more rewarding and emersive Gunnery system.

2) Piloting or lack of. This one I'm honestly not sure I have a good suggestion on how to improve it besides some sort of pop up that would flash when you needed to make a piloting check ( like a quick combo of buttons that would need to be pressed, kinda like calling in a pod in Helldivers ). But a lack of effects from doing things that would in the lore be a very hard thing to pull off such as hard turns at 150kph weaving though a city or landing from a jump facing perpendicular to the junk direction or sticking a landing from a fall with out the Aid of JJs. I just don't feel like there's really a aspect of piloting skill to be found in this game for most mechs. It's more Battllfield awareness and overall placement of your mech in the fight than the dog fight like feeling that think the combat on he table top or novels inspired.

3) The Technology. The amount of 1 to 1 balance with the clan vs IS weapon system, and even more so with the Giant Bandaid the quirk system really is. It's just so immersion breaking for me, with the current state of weapons and quirks I don't really feel like the clan mechs have a "superior tech" feeling to them. And some mechs just don't make any sense at all the way that the same weapons work when used on them.
But that being said I don't expect a game to be fun if the clans weapons were as OP as they were when they were first released in TT but I honestly don't know how the flavor of clan tech will ever be there because PGI has made it clear that asymmetric fights will never happen and that's prolly the only thing that would allow the clans to fight with outright better tech as per lore.

4) Role warfare (with the exception of the new map)with the lack of meaningful electronic warfare items and the absurdity of some of the ones we have ( points finger at ECM ) is just lacking. It's a bit silly to me that the number one tactic for a victory regardless of game mode or map, is to form one big ball and smash into the enemy. It's painful to admit that most other styles of play are going to be a huge disadvantage trying something else vs a team that's death balling.

5) Lack of truly viable mechs/weapons. At tier 2 and now even more so in tier 1, my options for taking non meta builds into combat and expecting for anything to happen other than my mech getting shot out from under me is zero. And that's sad. It ties into for me how cool a battle value system would have been with a asymmetric battles. So many mechs and weapons would be viable in a system like that. You might end up with a entire company of trial mechs with tier 5 pilots fighting a stars worth of tier 2 high value clan mechs.

All that being said, I enjoy the game for what it is ( The only online Battletechish game out here right now ) and I also know some of me is talking out of my *** because I have never helped to build a video game. And clearly I enjoy the game enough to keep playing and toss a bit of money PGI's way from time to time. I was really just putting this out there to say how I felt and see what others think.

Thx for reading.

TL:DR - This is MechWarrior.

BT was a fun book series and a nice board game, but it can't translate into an actionable, real-time FPS style sim. Get over it.

[MischiefSC]

Salvag3, on 25 January 2016 - 12:21 AM, said:

I also think that my idea that one it would not be limited to a fixed number like 8-12 every time is being over looked, that it would take a dynamic matchmaking system that could match a huge mix of game mode and objective based mission types.

And that in the case of fighting on the side of the more powerful clan mechs, it wouldn't feel like you were more powerful so to speek because you would round a corner and be looking at 3 mechs or fighting on all sides, yes ton for ton you would be better but you would never get that fight.

If I have to die 3 times for every 1 of yours, it's not balanced and I'm going to pick the mech that goes down under the pile of enemy bodies. So is almost everyone else.

For your idea to work the majority of playesr across all skill and performance levels need to play IS almost exclusively. There has to be way more IS players at the same skill level for that system to work. You can't just make a group of 12 and give them 4/4 pilot/gunnery; you have to find the actual players.

What you'll have instead is the majority of experienced players will be in Clan mechs, butchering hordes of newbies in IS mechs. That's going to be fun for everyone, right?

Almost universally the people asking for this are Clan players because they want to be the guy in the Clan mech mowing down hordes of IS mechs and AI and enemies of whatever sort before being subdued. Do you understand how incredibly selfish and arrogant a game design that is?

If you want to be awesome and feared.... get really good at the game. There are players in this game who can absolutely handle 2 or in some instances even 3 average players. What you're asking is for us the design the game so that people who play Clans can pretend they are that good because game balance is broken in their favor. Saying 'no it's fair because you'll get to die repeatedly until you beat me' is just absurd. That is, effectively, the balance system you're asking for. You get to be totally OP, the rest of us get to die repeatedly trying to defeat you.

That is never going to happen. Ever. Because it is a terrible, terrible game idea. It was even terrible in tabletop battletech.

The people who designed the game recognize it was a bad design idea; so much so they spent the time, money, resources and risk to rebuild the entire gameworld to start over with 1 to 1 balance. Why? Because the idea you want us to implement turned out to be an abject failure when the majority of people were unwilling to be the punching bag for the minority and the silly Mary Sue 'We're better in every way with better technology in every way but we lose because plot armor LOL' concept behind the Clans didn't actually work in any game environment without.... plot armor.

[Khobai]

Quote

no one I knew in TT played with Clan tech because the RNG damage was so high that the game became more about rolling dice than moving around the board

MWO has the same problem now. all the long range weapons have made maneuvering around the map way less important.

they seriously need to curbstomp long range weapons in MWO.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

no. Battletech had lore.

/thread

Nightmare1, on 25 January 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

TL:DR - This is MechWarrior.

BT was a fun book series and a nice board game, but it can't translate into an actionable, real-time FPS style sim. Get over it.

I and many will when PGI agree with you and remove "a battletech game" from the title.

[Nightmare1]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 25 January 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

no. Battletech had lore.

/thread



I and many will when PGI agree with you and remove "a battletech game" from the title.

I reconciled it by thinking of it as the "BT Universe" kind of like how you've got the "Star Wars Universe."

You can label something with "Star Wars" but it's not really Star Wars, you know what I mean? It's just included in the Universe.

Similarly, I look at MWO and the MW series as BT games in the sense that they utilize the same Universe, even though they aren't BT in terms of dynamics and such.

It keeps me sane.

[Chuck Jager]

Try playing PVP ww2 air combat games.

The most remembered planes in WW2 performed very well in very necessary roles dictated by a huge numbers of parameters including the choice of how and when to engage with the loadout completely dictated.

In PVP games the number of players is essential, so aspects of flight (lore) need to be simplified. Both teams start with random players with random planes (mechs) based on individual choice. The maps are usually symmetric and in flight games players tend to gravitate to low altitude when most exceptional flight lore planes worked best at higher or mixed altitude.

So in the end different planes become more or less OP and the online game battles never look or feel like historical battles after the fact.

Just take the good with the bad, and let the online games add new look and feel to the experience instead of competing with it. I have had to do this with PVP flight sims and the Star Wars universe.

I will say it has been easier learning and playing MWO, because I am not confined to preconceived notions of how to play the game.

[Scyther]

Well, it's a good game, and it's an enjoyable game, and it may be the only way to do BT as an MMO without having the resources of a major gaming company behind it.

I don't really get a 'Battletech' feel from it however. It simulates unit-sized mech combat in a decent fashion I guess, which is one (significant) aspect of BTech, but misses out on most of what I associate with 'Battletech gaming'.

Meaning lore, storyline, mission or goal-based play (other than 'grind more C-Bills to buy ridiculously overpriced modules'), or even travel and, in some previous titles, trade.

A lot of the 'lore' of the game could simply be cut-and-pasted from many sources; they don't even have in-game descriptions of anything. Some storyline or mission orientation could be added, although TBH PGI doesn't seem to have the resources or skillset (game design or development) to do that.

I am not trying to diss PGI - they are a smaller game developer that took a gamble on a much-loved IP that everyone else was ignoring, and they gave me my first BT-based game to play in years. So, hurrah for that!

Other than that, I'm just gonna say they have a pretty good Mech combat simulator, with room to be much more, if they could just get past their 'must sell the next mech-pack to survive' hurdle and take the game in a more progressive direction.

[Mystere]

Johnny Z, on 25 January 2016 - 03:54 AM, said:

Your wrong but you did bring up an important point. Battletech is about 31st century knights/samurai. Always was. Its about individual pilot skills/experience and armament. The push for what ever some mean by a team game has only come from some MechWarrior Online players.

When ever a team of players drops on the same side that's a team game. So its really an irrelevant call from some players other than some frustration that some players are playing how ever they want in stead of being forced to play like some others want them to.

Anyway its all about individual experience in the end. That MechWarrior Online keeps in mind its about 31st century armoured combat is a good thing.

This is a new game coming out that knows. https://youtu.be/buFBQAoA2YM

I sure hope you don't have the impression that knights and samurai only fought via single combat.

[Mystere]

oldradagast, on 25 January 2016 - 04:57 AM, said:

- As for Clan tech vs. IS tech, what works in table top will not work here. In table top, both sides usually have multiple mechs to control, and Clans had fewer mechs. They gave up on the fewer mech idea a while ago, and nobody wants to play cannon fodder. You can't just toss in "scrap" IS mechs against "boss" Clan mechs and hope the IS pilots enjoy dying pointlessly in the hopes that a bunch of them together may take down a single Clan mech. That's no fun at all for the IS pilots - nobody wants to play "red shirts" or cannon fodder. In table top, nobody cares if the pilot of the Locust that dies turn 2 was having fun or not because it was just one mech of several controlled by one player. Here, where everyone gets 1 mech per match, that actually matters.

Don't forget that in CW you do control 4 Mechs, just not all at the same time.

Also, 10v12 is hardly saying one side is cannon fodder. That's just hyperbole.

Finally, what's so wrong about an asymmetric version of CW's "Attack/Defend" in which the available formations, tonnage allocations, and number of reinforcements are all ultimately determined by some criteria like distance to a capital or major planet? Imaginative game modes are what CW sorely lacks. Everything is just a 12-on-12 arena.

Edited by Mystere, 25 January 2016 - 03:57 PM.

[Mystere]

grendeldog, on 25 January 2016 - 06:25 AM, said:

The question you should be asking yourself is whether this feels like a Mechwarrior game. It didn't purport to be Battletech Online, it is Mechwarrior Online. Other Mechwarrior games should be the point of comparison.

The question still is: Does MWO feel like BattleTech?

And I still maintain that a Clan company(!!!) made up of 3 Clan lances(!!!) does not feel like BattleTech to me. I don't really understand why people insist on disputing such an answer.

[MischiefSC]

Mystere, on 25 January 2016 - 03:49 PM, said:

The question still is: Does MWO feel like BattleTech?

And I still maintain that a Clan company(!!!) made up of 3 Clan lances(!!!) does not feel like BattleTech to me. I don't really understand why people insist on disputing such an answer.

Nobody is disputing your feelings. That's how you feel. How can I dispute it?

I'm saying that your feelings should not rank higher than functional game balance. You seem to disagree and want your feelings to be the bar to which game balance is set and to operate under the assumption that everyone would, if given absolutely no choice, just feel like you do about it.

Hence why these discussions even happen. Some people want their feelings to be the bar for game balance instead of actual mechanical game balance to be the bar for balance. Fortunately no game that was ever taken seriously ever used the 'everyone should feel like I feel' approach to game balance seriously.

[Zibmo]

Mystere, on 24 January 2016 - 08:30 PM, said:

The most compelling flavor of BT 3050 is the inherent asymmetry. We do not have that.

Clans were the absolute worst thing ever introduced into that universe. The introduction of Clans, particularly the stupidity of assuming that in a few hundred years, a group of pilots could find homes in the universe, create a genetic breeding program of that scope and sophistication, build the smelters, casting facilities, electronics factories and yet still have a Kindergarten caste system is ludicrous. In particular that they were able to do all of that and expand upon lostech all the while fighting in vicious ritualized combat with one another. Ridiculous. In addition to the fact that the only thing that remained of the 3025 and 3050 versions was Victor and Katherine in a family feud.

I wish they had never been introduced into BT, and I especially wish they had never been brought into MWO. Lore be damned. Clanners (lol) just want to have mechs that are so powerful that they can measure their epeens across the dozen or so mechs that their "skills" laid to waste. The only thing that would remain in the game is CW. I'm sure that would make several players happy. Not most. Several.

Seyla - lol, quiaff?

Edited by Zibmo, 25 January 2016 - 06:09 PM.

[Bleary]

Gamuray, on 24 January 2016 - 09:13 PM, said:

I won't say that exact table top values are a good idea, they're not, but we definitely have not had it. Alterations are why laser vomit is so powerful. All Clan lasers have higher damage than they should, most IS lasers do as well (especially the large pulse) and have lower heat for many of them.

TT spent much longer balancing ranges, damages, and heat. MWO should probably try more to stick to those and change the other options more. Reload.. Duration.. Speed.. jam chance.. Those are all things that will affect the usefulness of weapons, as we saw with the gauss rifle reload extension.

Lasers are more unbalanced in TT than they are in MWO. And the core TT weapon values haven't changed in 30 years.

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

This whole TT/lore as a basis for arguments is ridiculous and has to stop.

MWO is not TT.

TT has no place in these discussions.

If you want to talk lore, that's flavor and background, not values.

Be realistic, people.
_______________

(Ok, I see the irony in this statement when discussing a sci-fi/fantasy world such as this; but the point still stands! )

Edited by Brandarr Gunnarson, 25 January 2016 - 06:54 PM.

[Ted Wayz]

They milked the BT loyalist but now they want a twitch FPS with big stompy robots. So no.

At some point if people want to thank the BT loyalist for floating this game. I mean when I hear people say "I spent $200 on this game." I think, "Thank you, but some of us payed much much more on the promise of a BT game."

[Mystere]

Zibmo, on 25 January 2016 - 06:08 PM, said:

Clans were the absolute worst thing ever introduced into that universe. The introduction of Clans, particularly the stupidity of assuming that in a few hundred years, a group of pilots could find homes in the universe, create a genetic breeding program of that scope and sophistication, build the smelters, casting facilities, electronics factories and yet still have a Kindergarten caste system is ludicrous. In particular that they were able to do all of that and expand upon lostech all the while fighting in vicious ritualized combat with one another. Ridiculous. In addition to the fact that the only thing that remained of the 3025 and 3050 versions was Victor and Katherine in a family feud.

I wish they had never been introduced into BT, and I especially wish they had never been brought into MWO. Lore be damned. Clanners (lol) just want to have mechs that are so powerful that they can measure their epeens across the dozen or so mechs that their "skills" laid to waste. The only thing that would remain in the game is CW. I'm sure that would make several players happy. Not most. Several.

Seyla - lol, quiaff?

Wow! So much latent anger for a video game.
<slowly steps away>

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 25 January 2016 - 06:48 PM, said:

MWO is not TT.

TT has no place in these discussions.

as long as its named after TT then it does

Ted Wayz, on 25 January 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

They milked the BT loyalist but now they want a twitch FPS with big stompy robots. So no.

At some point if people want to thank the BT loyalist for floating this game. I mean when I hear people say "I spent $200 on this game." I think, "Thank you, but some of us payed much much more on the promise of a BT game."

this

[Brandarr Gunnarson]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 25 January 2016 - 10:47 PM, said:

as long as its named after TT then it does

This is preposterous.

That's like saying "as long as AIG has 'American' in it's name you have to be talking about America whenever you talk about AIG."

A name is just a name. It doesn't define everything about a particular.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Brandarr Gunnarson, on 25 January 2016 - 11:03 PM, said:

This is preposterous.

That's like saying "as long as AIG has 'American' in it's name you have to be talking about America whenever you talk about AIG."

A name is just a name. It doesn't define everything about a particular.

In this case it does as there is a distinct difference between the Battletech IP and the Mechwarrior one. As everyone keeps pointing out

Hell there even was a difference in RPG. In Mechwarrior you RPed the pilot, with stats an all in Battletech it was more overall troop movements

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 26 January 2016 - 06:53 PM.