65 replies to this topic

[Shoklar]

Look, it's really not that hard to have the unseen appear...all it takes is licensing the designs from the creators. It's just business. A pittance of money would allow the mechs to appear in the game. HG and other companies own the designs...fine. All the want is money. Macross, and all the lesser known things that the original designs were drawn from aren't making ANY money these days...so the designs could be licensed for very little money.

Battletech's problem has always been that they refused to come to a monetary arrangement with the companies that own the rights to these mechs. This isn't socialism (thank God)...people do actually own the designs. But if you give them a tiny bit of money, then you can use the designs. I really don't understand what's so difficult to comprehend about this. They're only unseen because people have refused to make a deal to use them. This game will have plenty of income to make such an arrangement. So to quote Captian Picard..."Make it so."

Or at the very minimum, give us the reseen versions...though I expect you'd have to come to an arrangement with the Project Phoenix folks for that as well.

/thread

[Black Rock Shooter]

Shoklar, on 14 July 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

Macross, and all the lesser known things that the original designs were drawn from aren't making ANY money these days...so the designs could be licensed for very little money.
/thread

This is not true. In the US, there's been no activity mostly thanks to Harmony Gold, but in the rest of the world, these 'Mech designs are making boatloads of cash thanks to Chogokin remastering, Revoltech revivals, Bandai's Robot Damashii line, and Yamato Corp's super-expensive but high quality models. Plamo (plastic model) companies are also reviving their classic mecha lines, which prove popular in the Asian market (twice the US market in purchasing power and four times its population).

Yamato company makes all the UN-Spacy-side Macross Unseens

http://eng.yamato-to...ist.php?cid=115

Kaiyodo's Revoltech line contains two Dougram Unseens - Dougram itself and Soltic - with plans to add more (once they're done with tittilating anime chicks), several versions of the VF-1 Valkyrie, a Regult, and there were plans for a Glaug that got sidetracked when they started doing tittilation.

http://www.kaiyodo.c...guchi_2009.html

There are many more smaller companies releasing plastic and resin kits or finished models of Unseens. Bottomline is, outside the US these mecha are well known and still very much alive for their original fans, and many still make it to the various giant robot games that are a constant feature of Japan's gaming landscape. The Warhammer is a cool BattleMech, but just as a lot of Unseen fans in the US would hate to see it changed, gazillions more mecha otaku will take insult at the horrendous nerfing of their beloved Destroid Tomahawk. For that matter, how can a normal-sized human fit into the Glaug officer's pod cockpit anyway?

I do love the Unseen designs just as much as anyone here. The difference is that I already got to play them in other games. Let the Unseens stay Unseen, MWO can do so much more with the rest of the franchise's IP.

Just give me my Timber Wolf, dangnabbit!

[Potato0707]

Tezkat, on 13 July 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

Back when BattleTech (or for that matter, its predecessor Battledroids) was just a game for mecha fanboys, the mech designs were all blatant ripoffs of popular giant robot anime designs. For instance, the popular Warhammer mech, seen in the reboot teaser trailer, was initially a carbon copy of the Tomahawk/Excalibur Destroid from Macross/Robotech. Long story short, FASA got sued and couldn't display images of them anymore, even though by that point these mechs had become an iconic part of early gameplay and canon history/fiction. So they're quite popular, but including them is often more trouble than they're worth...

That said, Unseen are pretty much just like unlicensed guest characters? Battletech's version of Star Wars in Soul Calibur? or Snake in Super Smash Brothers?
I thought it meant something else, that's a relief

[Sighard Aglachad]

Shoklar, on 14 July 2012 - 10:36 PM, said:

Look, it's really not that hard to have the unseen appear...all it takes is licensing the designs from the creators. It's just business. A pittance of money would allow the mechs to appear in the game. HG and other companies own the designs...fine. All the want is money. Macross, and all the lesser known things that the original designs were drawn from aren't making ANY money these days...so the designs could be licensed for very little money.

Battletech's problem has always been that they refused to come to a monetary arrangement with the companies that own the rights to these mechs. This isn't socialism (thank God)...people do actually own the designs. But if you give them a tiny bit of money, then you can use the designs. I really don't understand what's so difficult to comprehend about this. They're only unseen because people have refused to make a deal to use them. This game will have plenty of income to make such an arrangement.

Were you actually privy to the internal discussions between HG and the Battletech franchise or are you just speculating out loud and pretending it's common knowledge? Exactly how much money did they want for the designs? In the process, define "very little money" please. How little were/are they willing to offer? If they are simply waiting until they've made enough money with MWO to purchase the licenses that could be good, but it could also mean that HG will demand even more.

[Shalmyan Moonsong]

Keep in mind HG would offer these designs to many people, they let Microsoft use some of them in MechWarrior 4, HG feels like FASA OWES THEM. Microsoft could afford the cost, and it was nothing to them, becuase it is f-ing Microsoft. A small time deveoloper like FASA, Wizkids, Piranha, they are going to charge out the nose becuase of the bad blood and the 20 years of legal battles, anything Mechwarrior or Batletech, becuase they feel they have been slighted, Harmony Gold is going to charge a lot for, becuase they feel like they need to re-coup legal fees, that the courts have not awarded them.

We saw some of the unseen in Mechwarior 4, we have no clue how much they charged Microsoft to use those designs, but what we do know is it is Microsoft and it does not matter how much it costed them, Microsoft wanted the Longbow, they got the Longbow, becuase there was NO BUDGET for that game, Microsoft said make it.... here is the blank check.

Companies not named Microsoft can't do that, you also can not go to Studio Nue, and say let us have the designs not Harmony Gold, becuase they have an establised contract with Harmony Gold, and someone mentioned Harmony Gold Bankruptcy back in the 80's, you do understand there are many types of Bankrupcy right? Harmony Gold did file for chapter 13 bankrupcy restrucreing in the 80's which made it so debtors could not come after them, untill they worked out a court approved plan to pay back debtors, they exited that bankrupcy in the late 80's maybe even early 90's, and made some bank off the digitally remastered Laserdisk version of Robotech, and later even more bank on the DVD releases,

[Damion Sparhawk]

Shalmyan Moonsong, on 15 July 2012 - 12:08 AM, said:

Keep in mind HG would offer these designs to many people, they let Microsoft use some of them in MechWarrior 4, HG feels like FASA OWES THEM. Microsoft could afford the cost, and it was nothing to them, becuase it is f-ing Microsoft. A small time deveoloper like FASA, Wizkids, Piranha, they are going to charge out the nose becuase of the bad blood and the 20 years of legal battles, anything Mechwarrior or Batletech, becuase they feel they have been slighted, Harmony Gold is going to charge a lot for, becuase they feel like they need to re-coup legal fees, that the courts have not awarded them.

We saw some of the unseen in Mechwarior 4, we have no clue how much they charged Microsoft to use those designs, but what we do know is it is Microsoft and it does not matter how much it costed them, Microsoft wanted the Longbow, they got the Longbow, becuase there was NO BUDGET for that game, Microsoft said make it.... here is the blank check.

Companies not named Microsoft can't do that, you also can not go to Studio Nue, and say let us have the designs not Harmony Gold, becuase they have an establised contract with Harmony Gold, and someone mentioned Harmony Gold Bankruptcy back in the 80's, you do understand there are many types of Bankrupcy right? Harmony Gold did file for chapter 13 bankrupcy restrucreing in the 80's which made it so debtors could not come after them, untill they worked out a court approved plan to pay back debtors, they exited that bankrupcy in the late 80's maybe even early 90's, and made some bank off the digitally remastered Laserdisk version of Robotech, and later even more bank on the DVD releases,

bad blood between companies is just a good way of saying greedy people in charge, for one thing, when BT was made HG wasn't even in the picture, the miniatures were purchased, supposedly with the rights to use them, by TCI, and because that company went defunct between the time of selling them to FASA and HG buying the license for RT there has been no way to validate whether or not TCI had the right to sell the license to FASA in the first place, however the court case was never completed and was settled out of court. So effectively, HG is just living in their world of douchery and refusing to drop a matter that is not only decades old and never been truly settled, but should probably never even been brought up in the first place (apparently HG licensed the use of the RT models for use in the silly exosquad series, which, in my mind should completely invalidate their ability to cry foul over BT images, different robots being different, of course )