197 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Lugh, on 25 April 2016 - 12:12 PM, said:

clay pigeon PULL. FIRE. Dead. Next.

Poptart shot down.

Leaping Jenner shot out of the sky with arm-aiming.

Edited by Koniving, 25 April 2016 - 12:39 PM.

[Scout Derek]

GAGONMYlOCK, on 25 April 2016 - 12:11 PM, said:

Jump jet fuel capacity....HELLO PGI!!! Highlander could use that.

I know right? give it a Quirk like that! or maybe a module?

I would love the ammo quirk for ammo based mechs. To tone down some quirks already for some mechs that are quirked well because of such a limitation.

[Johnny Z]

Bud Crue, on 25 April 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

For the most part, I believe that the average steam player willing to give MWO a shot is not some old BT or MW fan. If they were they would have likely been aware of MWO and already have been playing it well before the steam release.
Thus, the steam player is mostly going to be a casual game player who saw the trailer or heard of the big stompy robot game and wanted to give it a go. Unfortunately, MWO lacks a lot of features that a casual gamer is going to take for granted. A few:

-There is is no leveling in MWO...no new features/skills associated with discernible personal accomplishments, that every other game out there has. The skills tree is mech specific -not player specific- so it does not feel like leveling in the traditional sense. FP ranks are similar, there are rewards sure, but nothing that reflects on the player.
- There is no end game. A battle, is a QP battle, is a FP battle, etc. There is no goal or achievement to be sought.
- There is no background theme or narrative. If you buy my casual player assumption above, such a player is largely ignorant of BT "lore". With that in mind, other than the brief descriptions of the factions what is there via in game content that even suggests any sort of flavor or aspects of the universe that MWO takes place in? There isn't any. The game has so little flavor in it that for the unfamiliar MWO could be occuring in the star wars or halo universes for all we know. This is killer. Even the worst games at least have a background story that is told in the game. Where is it told in MWO?

I could go on, but just looking at the three things above, it comes down to: if I wasn't a BT fan there is no way I would be bothering with this game. Thus, it isn't surprising to me that people, who are presumably unfamiliar with BT, are not interested in it either.

You have a point. The great factions and their leaders and their character and fun things like Solaris and really cool rewards for capping planets and a whole bunch of stuff like that isn't in game yet. Things that would bring a battletech movie type atmosphere to the game.

This is a super important part and at least some of it can be brought to players via text.

Have to wait and see if this is added eventually. I hope it is added, seriously. But this is why players that know some of the story and some of the character and atmosphere of battletech are still around.

I was just lucky a neighbour down the street had every role playing/board game ever made. Battletech was maybe the most interesting of them to me.

Edited by Johnny Z, 25 April 2016 - 01:25 PM.

[Podex]

Remillard, on 25 April 2016 - 11:48 AM, said:

Procedurally generated maps would be a fantastic achievement. And it's definitely non-trivial, but I don't know that it necessarily would involve downloading maps every time. If I were going to attempt something like that, with minimal client-side setup, it'd have to involve interchangeable hex tile sets (not necessarily all 1 hex, could have some city core multi hex blocks with flexible suburb hexes, or a mountain range that took up 4), a way of laying these out and smoothing the interstitials between. The art department would probably hate me, but it would definitely be a challenge to find a way to create elevation modifiable boundaries, some rules on generating dropship starting locations, and away we go.

Might be a total disaster but it's doable I believe. Just a non-trivial pursuit. But it would be a glorious addition to fixed asset maps. Always felt the biggest detriment to the new X-Com game was the lack of procedurally generated maps. Nothing like alien hunting when you really didn't know what was out there in the black.

Exactly! I can see a lot of people getting stuck in places, but if PGI could pull off something like this, they would truly be breaking new ground. That alone would get articles about them and draw new players.

[TheLuc]

the reasons are many, big first is the deathmatch only aspect and a few others,

Big Stompy Robots. Very few actually likes Mecha in general and once its split with the sub-genres it,s even smaller groups. Additions of Tanks, Aerofighters and why not the VTOLs ( helicopters ) BattleTech may focus on Big Stompy but there is more to the franchise. Mechwarrior4 Mercenaries did feature those, why not have them and get players from WoT or War Thunder or any players that prefer something else than Mechs.

Now I have no clue if there was plans to increase population but I really think is needed, not everyone is keen on PVP and that aspect hurts the game. I try to get more players involved but already the fact there is no PVE, coop, missions or a kind of campaign draw them away.

I didn't even try any of the new features of FP as my Pals are a mix and match in the Mech hangar and since Mechs are faction locked ( if you have an IS contract you are stuck with IS Mechs ) I feel that at least as a Freelancer or Merc group, a bit of more flexibility would have been nice. It could work as using Clan tech in a IS drop reduce maximum tonnage available by a big margin. Yeah I'm now stuck with Clan Mechs in my hangar. The player cant play what he likes with his pals.. its a bummer.

The fact there is now a recruitment cost will tend to just get the best players the Units can have, leaving out the learning players or just the casual ones, this may reduce the population of the game which is already really low.

About Unit size, already a 100 players Unit for the game was a silly decision from the start, should have been set at company level ( 12 players as in the lore ) for real big groups nothing prevents to break up in smaller cells as example Mech Company 01 or CM01, CM02 and so on.

So that was my little letter regarding the game in general.

[MauttyKoray]

Malachy Karrde, on 23 April 2016 - 10:04 PM, said:

Well thought out post. I've always thought that weapons in mwo do too much damage. Mechs in the books were tough. Mechs in the previous games were tough. It should take a minute or two of pounding on someone to take them down. Maps are too big, and being able to alpha someone down in one or two shots is just ridiculous.

The way the game plays out in the videos reminds me of the system Russ had teased 1-2 town halls back to replace ghost heat which would penalize the player for firing too many weapons too quickly (obviously the bigger the weapon the more 'value' it would draw on the scale and thus not as heavily punish things like small lasers on bigger mechs, meanwhile things like large lasers would draw even more on a small mech than a large one.

Scaling proportion and all that you know?

[carl kerensky]

Um Im willing to go back to playing the early closed beta because thats where MWO actually played beastly. Mech armored combat feel at its finest. Now it plays like..well a twitchy FPS. There a dime a dozen. Imagine MWO playing like Mechwarrior 2.
I would be in heaven.

[Aresye]

Koniving, on 25 April 2016 - 12:37 PM, said:

Poptart shot down.

Leaping Jenner shot out of the sky with arm-aiming.

[NocturnalBeast]

Odanan, on 25 April 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

That's the game I'm playing.

Dude... Were do I start?

This is a harsh game, yes. It takes real skill to master - skill that the player should probably be training for many years before MWO.

If your small mistakes are getting you killed, do better decisions.

If you are dying too fast, be smarter.

If your team is hiding in cover, waiting to get butchered, join a decent unit. Top tier play is a lot more dynamic.

This is no casual game and not meant to be in the list of the most popular games around. And that's mostly the fault of the players, not the game itself. There are lots of more forgiving and easy games out there, that depend more of random, money or simply time invested in the game instead of true skill.

MechWarrior Online is just not the type of game that holds the interest of low attention span twitch-shooter kiddies, so of course, they will bail quickly, especially if the game takes longer than five seconds to learn to play. I am sure there are Steam users who will stick with MWO as well, but as I have said many many times, PGI should focus on their core audience, the older BATTLETECH / Mechwarrior fans.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Yeah, cuz the game actually SUCKS. Unless your idea of fun is load up on lasers, put them all in one group, walk around in a big blob and melt each other in 2 seconds, then sure....great game.

If your idea of fun is marauding around in big stompy robots, having nice, long, drawn out, combat scenes where each side fights back and forth, free room to move, split up into little groups and actually engage the brain and do more then laser vomit around corners, until a light mech 2 shots you up the *** with 24t of SPL, then yeah, this game sucks ***. My idea of fun is not the current way this game plays.

I so wish this game would move more towards playing how MW3 and 4 played out. MW3 was pretty fun in the little instant actions I played, when I got the game to work. Despite it using normal mech armor values and stuff, mechs felt fairly tough. Game was fun. I want this game to be a sorta FPS version of Mechcommander, over a Call of Duty, fullalphastrikeeverythingyousee 5 minute death fest.......got in the other day and lasted all of like 2 minutes when I made the mistake of thinking I could do more then follow the herd, I went off to cap a point, then engaged a Arctic Cheeter who moved like the Flash, all bullshitty and way to damn fast for a battlemech, then I lost him, since Lights are so fast, they practically teleport, he then showed up a bit later and put 2 in my back, down I went.....

Assaults dont feel like assaults, Heavies dont feel like heavies, Mediums are just worse lights and Lights seem to be the best class, both for being absurdly small and being so fast you cant hit them.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Malorish, on 23 April 2016 - 09:45 PM, said:

Mostly we sit under cover, come out for a split second, alpha strike the living crap out of some poor noob who made a tiny positioning mistake, duck back under cover, rinse and repeat. Oh sure, towards the end of matches there's a rush once one side has the numbers. And we all can recount that 10% of the time that a real brawl decides the game (rather than being a mopping up action).

But this game is nowhere to be found in Alpha Strike Warrior. Our mechs do far too much damage, from far too great a range, in far too bursty a window.

So people get tired of building brawlers, only to get wiped out before they even reach weapons range. They get tired of being obliterated when they make small mistakes in positioning or cover.

YES, and that "small positioning mistake" is moving at all....

I drive assault mechs. In my mind, the Assault mech, well, Assaults. Hes supposed to be big, tanky, fearsome. In this game, if you even THINK of moving, your ******* dead in seconds. Its actually stupid as **** how fast we die. No amount of twisting saves the mech. I have twisted in circles back and forth, all around. All it ends up being is one person unloading endless laser bursts into 1 mech, while the other guy stays essentially stun locked, twisting just trying to stay alive long enough to back into cover........

Gameplay here is terrible.

[EurakaLi]

AnTi90d, on 24 April 2016 - 01:25 AM, said:

Steamer, here.. (for now)

Two things that haven't been mentioned that really pissed me off, as a Steamer:

1.) Steam purchase selection is crap. Each of the four packs is really expensive and only gives you one IS and one clan mech with each pack. You can't master a mech, and the assault pack is $60. For that, you could go to the MWO website and get 3 Archers, 3 Marauders and 3 Warhammers.. or six of those and a hero.. (They do have exclusive S mechs in the packs, but still, there should be more stuff in the Steam store.)

2.) You can't purchase MC directly from Steam. Instead, you have to deal with a wonky 3rd party payment system that has a history of technical issues. (Support responds pretty quickly, though, to their credit.)

100% agree... the time of my first MC purchase for archer... took me like 30 min....to figure out there are no option to do it on steam.......and I have money in steam already.....just wtf...it scary me of weather those purchase is working since I have to wait until march....if anything gone wrong I lose my early reward etc....
(let not talk about how failed archer was ....)

[EurakaLi]

Johnny Z, on 24 April 2016 - 07:45 PM, said:

The first part of this is right in one way and everyone knows it. The new player experience sucks and has always sucked.

That's not really negative because up until recently development has been focused on a complete meta game I think its called. This faction play is the setting for everything else in the game to take place in and around. I don't think the entire game will be focused on it but rather faction play is the back drop and context for the rest of the game.

So anyway, I guess some day they will focus on the skill tree like everyone has been asking them to do, as well as pilot character creation and improvements to the tutorial. Massive improvements to the tutorial I expect.

I really think this game is not trying to hard to become well known and accessible to new players yet. I really think its in a building/beta phase. I also wish they would hurry up because this framework game with so many missing and half done features looks like it could be really great.

In fact I hope they have been working on some massive features secretly and will have a surprise some day. I could be wrong easily though. (Hint: What is that Brian guy up to? Like what does he do? He must do something. I hope its something awesome. )

yup new player feel sux,9if not I search on this forum amd get my hunchback 4sp as first mech i will quit.....(O GOD image I buy my first mech as low tier mech and have to master then when I am new)

[NocturnalBeast]

LordKnightFandragon, on 25 April 2016 - 04:44 PM, said:

YES, and that "small positioning mistake" is moving at all....

I drive assault mechs. In my mind, the Assault mech, well, Assaults. Hes supposed to be big, tanky, fearsome. In this game, if you even THINK of moving, your ******* dead in seconds. Its actually stupid as **** how fast we die. No amount of twisting saves the mech. I have twisted in circles back and forth, all around. All it ends up being is one person unloading endless laser bursts into 1 mech, while the other guy stays essentially stun locked, twisting just trying to stay alive long enough to back into cover........

Gameplay here is terrible.

Like in modern armored combat, the best tactic is to move behind cover and only poke enough of your Mech out of cover as necessary to fire on your target before returning back to cover. Optimally, you should only cross large open spaces if absolutely necessary and if you do, you will want to be in a group to reduce the chance of enemy fire being concentrated solely on one Mech. I read a post (I believe on the Mittani), where an actual military tank commander described how combat in MWO is comparable to modern tank warfare (aside from Mechs being illogical high-profile combat vehicles). The biggest problem is that there are only Mechs in MWO, if there was infantry and vehicles as well, focused fire would be less common.

[EurakaLi]

LordKnightFandragon, on 25 April 2016 - 04:44 PM, said:

YES, and that "small positioning mistake" is moving at all....

I drive assault mechs. In my mind, the Assault mech, well, Assaults. Hes supposed to be big, tanky, fearsome. In this game, if you even THINK of moving, your ******* dead in seconds. Its actually stupid as **** how fast we die. No amount of twisting saves the mech. I have twisted in circles back and forth, all around. All it ends up being is one person unloading endless laser bursts into 1 mech, while the other guy stays essentially stun locked, twisting just trying to stay alive long enough to back into cover........

Gameplay here is terrible.

they shiuld remove ability to walk through mech...many light abuse this in game....

[wanderer]

KingCobra, on 25 April 2016 - 08:05 AM, said:

Russ and Brian used to play MechWarrior4Mercinaries with the Mektek MOD on Mektek servers and they played what we called NHUA =(75-100 ton mechs with NO HEAT UNLIMITED AMMO) basically 1-2 shot killing machines them and there cronies buddies would play this game mode over and over and over on mostly cold ice maps.

Now you know why RUSS and Brian wanted MWO to be basically a clone of this game type NHUA and E-sport garbage.

Given the head-desking going on constantly in MWO, this makes sense. Rather than understand the complexity that Battletech (and even Mechwarrior) could engage in, they simply chose to eliminate it.

Witness the result.

[NocturnalBeast]

EurakaLi, on 25 April 2016 - 05:08 PM, said:

they shiuld remove ability to walk through mech...many light abuse this in game....

Yes, unfortunately this situation is the result of knockdowns being removed and collision damage greatly reduced because PGI was not able to get the velocity / damage physics right for the Dragon primarily and because of the endless tears from light pilots. So now we have light Mechs that can stand under a larger mech with impunity and can carelessly run around and crash into anything taking very little damage. I will say though, that the light pilots who stuck with lights when knockdowns were around, were probably some of the best Mechwarriors around.

[Alex Morgaine]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 24 April 2016 - 04:22 AM, said:

You forgot hundreds and hundreds of hours in excel managing and planning your resources. That's the best part of EVE.

That game is the definition of "get meta or get out"

[LordKnightFandragon]

Ed Steele, on 25 April 2016 - 05:07 PM, said:

Like in modern armored combat, the best tactic is to move behind cover and only poke enough of your Mech out of cover as necessary to fire on your target before returning back to cover. Optimally, you should only cross large open spaces if absolutely necessary and if you do, you will want to be in a group to reduce the chance of enemy fire being concentrated solely on one Mech. I read a post (I believe on the Mittani), where an actual military tank commander described how combat in MWO is comparable to modern tank warfare (aside from Mechs being illogical high-profile combat vehicles). The biggest problem is that there are only Mechs in MWO, if there was infantry and vehicles as well, focused fire would be less common.

It would also be nice if the mechs in this game moved like mechs and not super men. Also, if speed was a factor in how well we took corners. The way light mechs zip around, free of any corners and running into stuff. You take a corner at 112kph in a car, you dont turn, you keep right on going in a pretty much straight line, or you outright spin all out of control. A Mech would be no different, it would probably skid right into a building.

But like I said, this game feels more like playing some sorta super hero game whereverything moves to damn fast. It feels like Call of Duty more so then Mechwarrior.

Mechwarrior 4, your mech was very tough, able to have huge 12v12 AI PVE battles, company on company action where you could actually survive a fight. It took command, control, situational awareness and focus fire, but it could be won. Here, you cant last 10 seconds under any kind of barrage and it just ruins the whole experience of being in a battlemech. Our output is insane, and our durability is nill. The AI in the battlegrounds kill my Warhawk inside of 10 shots, I can twist all I want, but ultimately, they **** it with little effort.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Frosty Brand, on 25 April 2016 - 05:25 PM, said:

That game is the definition of "get meta or get out"

But I like spreadsheets...