60 replies to this topic

[DrHat]

Sly J, on 01 November 2011 - 03:28 AM, said:

I'd urge you to reconsider. I mean, think about it. Piranha Games spent two years trying to secure a stable environment in which to develop this game. That fact alone means that the developers are already fanatically devoted to the franchise. Based on everything that's happened, I get the feeling that Piranha Games is determined to make a new Mechwarrior game come **** or high water, and for me, that's a very comforting thought. I find it hard to believe that such a dedicated group would fall prey to the money grubbing tactics that a F2P model can encourage.

That being said, you have every right to be skeptical. In fact, given how much we all care about this franchise and the direction it's now headed in, it's almost our duty to be skeptical. It's our job to view every decision Piranha Games makes from here on out with a cynical eye, and it's their job to prove to us that they know what they're doing.

We may have differing opinions on this right now, but as they reveal more about this game over the coming year, we may very well find ourselves in the same boat.

I admire your positive outlook on this, and believe me I genuinely wish the best for the franchise. I don't want it to fail, not even when they are doing something I would clearly be against in a lot of different ways.

I also thank you for the, even if indirectly, show of solidarity in trying to call me to a reconsideration. It shows a regard for my feelings on the matter, which is a rare thing to find, much less on the Internet.
The world needs more people with an attitude like yours sir

[DrHat]

aegis kleais™, on 01 November 2011 - 03:36 AM, said:

AAA titles don't fall out of the heavens. It's not the developer's fault that there were no interested publishers to pick up the title as a SP/Co-Op/MP edition and go with it. So PGI + IGP scaled things back to what they felt was doable.

I would be sad to think that was the impression that I had given about my mode of thinking. I recognize the limitation, but it does not follow that I should like whatever comes of that limitation due to circumstance. The argument "They worked so hard for this!" simply isn't valid - There are tons of people out there who put plenty of work into various projects, but never made it or had people who didn't like it en masse.

[DrHat]

john clavell, on 01 November 2011 - 03:24 AM, said:

Single-Player games only give so much entertainment. Would you play Tabletop Battletech on your own? It's kinda boring right? Way more fun when there is other people to pit yourself against. Same goes for the computer games. People like to interact. And it makes better business sense.

I think this comparison only really works if the tabletop battletech had pieces that moved by itself, and had dialogue and various stories that were there without needing other people to participate. The point being, singleplayer mechwarrior can entertain you to the extent that it has things for you to interact with towards a goal or purpose.
Multiplayer is certainly a great aspect, but I'm not sure it should be the selling point...but maybe I watched too much Zero Punctuation. o_o

[Shadoe Ryder]

I am as cynical as the next person about F2P. But the F2P model is still evolving. There are a ton of F2P games that are pay 2 win. But that is actually starting to become a bit better with the big F2P titles. and hey its Mechwarrior.. i WILL always carry hope for a mechwarrior project

Way to early to tell how this one is going to go.

[DrHat]

PC Gamer said:

How many players will be involved in these engagements? Is it just going to be lance on lance combat, or Mech company combat? How many people per team?

BE: The final numbers we’re not announcing just yet. We are going to support multiple lances per session on at least two teams. So yes, there will be multiple lances and multiple team combat.

You name at least two combat modes here, Conquest and Versus. Am I correct in assuming that Versus is a deathmatch, and can you get into Conquest a bit?

BE: Yeah, Versus covers team deathmatch, deathmatch, one-on-one, and any type of head to head with no objectives other than to kill the enemy.

There are some of my intial fears of the MMO aspect confirmed, that you will be locked into teams and games modes by definition. There is no open field, world and planets where there would be indicators of sovereignty. Its locked into sessions of at least two teams. I know.."at least" means there might be room for more..but this is all predefined for you. Your team is predefined, your starting location is predefined, the amount of people involved is predefined, the goal is predefined and so on.
There is no "fighting for your own reasons" or doing small runs into enemy territory while they're out for lunch etc..There is no freedom, only arranged fights.

What you have there is the beginnings of a Themepark MMO where ultimately you will have no influence on how you play the game . I freely admit that I have a bias against themepark styled games, which should be very apparent. I also admit that as a way of making a game there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a themepark game - its pretty apparent that such games can be awesome and have been several times through history. Its just not for me.

"So if you think you're so clever, how'd they go about not going themepark then mr. smartypants" - Frankly I don't know..That is my greatest failing. Its my eternal struggle of wanting to find solutions to what I consider morphing and unpredictable recipe of a good game. If I knew the answer, I wouldn't have to have 2 jobs in the gaming industry (my own indie company for what im trying to do, and working for a well established company to make money)...However I think a lot can be learned from the principles of EVE Online, Planetside and Ultima Online..I just haven't done it comprehensibly yet.

Edited by DrHat, 01 November 2011 - 07:28 AM.

[Sesambrot]

DrHat, on 01 November 2011 - 05:30 AM, said:

Large well written and worthwhile post that has been edited out so I can reply without destroying the forum..sorry

I think I see where you're coming from!
At first, sry to put it so bluntly, but I don't give a **** about that "NO!! Mechwarrior is now Pay 2 Win " thread!
In my eyes it's not much more than someone histerically crying out, because his birthdaypresent doesn't look like a pony, completely disregarding the fact that the box is big enough for two ponies!
Actually it's in the FAQ, and a Dev have stated it in that thread as well:

Bryan Ekman, on 31 October 2011 - 01:51 PM, said:

This is a great and very important thread. Rest assured we will address this in a future blog/announcement. I think people will actually be very happy with e F2P model we have developed.

In fact yes, there is still the possibility of it turning out badly, but I don't like making assumptions with that little bit of information we currently have.

However, your concerns about necessary gameplay changes are valid, but I think we need to differentiate a bit more.
Let's look at the examples from my last post, World of Tanks (WoT), Team Fortress 2 (TF2), and Firefall:

WoT:
As suggested before, this is, in my eyes, the very paradigm of a working F2P. It is still not perfect, and there are probably a couple of ways it could be improved, but it does a very good job.
About the gameplay though, it's gameplay is very unique, and you can tell that it has been designed for the purpose of being used with high pings and whatever comes with the game being a F2P-MMO-FPS. Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not an expert on this subject, but that's the impression I get from playing it.
There are some other, more important flaws though. Due to the way they handle ammo and repairs, namely having to buy that with ingame curency(not the one you need to purchase with real money), it naturally gets more and more expensive to buy ammo or repair your tank after being destroyed. While that makes sense on paper it's, what destroyes tha game for me later on. One missed shot means you just wasted ~1000 bucks, and considering repairs after the battle you are unlikely to make any profit. This leads to the gameplay turning out very static in the higher tiers, basically because everyone is too afraid to move, because they fear of losing!
Even in a situation where a team is outnumbered 2 on 1, people are to affraid to attack, and the round would end in a draw, because time ran out... That's just ridiculous, and IMO is to blame on bad balance. I know this is only partially related to it being a F2P, but the ammo/repair system certainly has it's roots in the game being an MMO.

TF2
Tbh, I havent played TF2 even a while before it became F2P, I didn't really get the idea anyways. Even tho I had stopped playing it, I felt like Valve was cheating everyone who bought the game before it became F2P, but that's not the point. I can't imagine that TF2 drastically changed it's gameplay and balance once it became a F2P. they could not have kept up the fast paced gameplay that's the core of TF2. In the end it's not really an MMO but an FPS tho.

Firefall
This one isn't released yet, but if you have a look at their trailers, and especially gameplayvideos, you'll see that the gameplay is still pretty much that of a common shooter, with some extra elements. Still this game is considered to be a MMO, even an open world on.
Now I have no idea how they are going to handle it, it's just as much of a mistery as how Mechwarrior:Online turns out.

Now the point of this all is that you probably wouldn't want to do it exactly like WoT, of TF2, and there's too few information to get an idea of how good the Firefall-Solution is. I think that going the WoT-way is and never was an option for the Devs anyways, as that system does not entirely fit a Mechwarrior game, and considering all the info that is out there, this franchise is something that they themselves love. In fact I trust them to find a good solution to it. If I'm not mistaken those very same guys that are in charge of this game right now also worked on the previous mechgames, so they probably know what they're doing and I think if they come up with something that satisfies them, it can't be all that bad.
Now to the original point, I think there should be a way to make it work properly. probably a mix of the way WoT and TF2 handle it.
There are certainly some aspects of the WoT-way that I wouldn't want to see in a MW game ever, not even in this one.

As I said before, the lack of SP, and the concerns that come with this game being a F2P are one thing, and I think we agree on those anyways, but gameplay is something completely different, and considering that the developers seem to care very much for the franchise, and are willing to bring the "Mechwarrior"-feel back to everyone out there, I like to have faith in them to come up with a solution, that will work properly for a true Mechwarrior game.

In my eyes, and I think many others will agree, there is no point in abandoning hope already, just because of the way it has turned out with the game being F2P.
I for one can only do so much, I can't change your experience with that kind of game, and I know myself that there are many examples where an attempt like this has gone horribly wrong, but with the recent trend about F2Ps, that seems to be going into the right direction, I believe that the team behind Mechwarrior:Online will come up with a solution that won't let down the ones of us that hope for a proper new mechsim.

Sheesh! yet another huge post...
who's actually going to read all this?!? xD


EDIT:
I suspect you might already be responding to this huge wall of text, but considering your last post, I feel like I have to add something.
It is actually quite obvious that this is going to be a "Themepark MMO" as you called it, and sure there are probably other way's to do it, given the examples you mentioned. The problem is that an open world is hardly feasable with PvP-FPS playstyle, because you'll have a huge problem with ping/lag. What you actually want to see is something that has not been accomplished by any FPS-Multiplayer yet. Stuff like this actually works well with MMORPGs or Singleplayer for that matter, and I can feel the hunger for a new Mechwarrior SP-experience just as well as you do, but for now this game is going to be Multiplayer-only, and therefore is probably not going to work much different than any other multiplayer FPS. After all, that Themepark-gameplay you're descirbing is no different from the multiplayer of games like CoD or BF3, the only difference is that the server might be chosen for you.

Edited by sesambrot, 01 November 2011 - 08:01 AM.

[DrHat]

sesambrot, on 01 November 2011 - 07:28 AM, said:

RIPOSTE editing of enormously large post full of goodies that I simply must respond to! :3

First I would like to preface my response with just saying 2 things. First of all you were indeed correct that I was already responding to your post, even before you added the last part. Problem was that it was "go home from work" time (yes I wrote all this nonsense while at work..it was a slow day and I doubt anyone would mind my passion for educational video game correspondence, since I work for a game company) so I decided to put it off until I got home (which I am now).
Secondly, whos going to read your post? Well I did! Goodness me that is a rather large post you have there, may I please spend a long time responding to it thoroughly! (that is not an innuendo btw!! )

Okay so here we go:

"Pay 2 win"
The first thing I want to get out of the way is this "NO!! Mechwarrior is now Pay 2 Win " thread. People have referred to this thread a few times as if that were part of my critique and I suppose I can only blame myself for not making my point clear about this. The clarification of my stance on that topic is this:

I don't, as such, care about the topic "Mechwarrior is now Pay 2 Win", I never did. All it meant to me was the connection. The connection being that I saw it, and it made me think "That probably means this game will be F2P", and its the "F2P" I care about. Since I only care about the "F2P" aspect, I went in research on the forum and found that indeed there was to be "F2P" which is where one my complaints resides.. I hope that makes it clear now.

"WoT"
Now onto your game examples, WoT being the first - which is where I have to start out by confessing that I have never ever played World of Tanks. I got urged a lot by friends to give it a go, but I just never got around to it. I will however, for the sake of argument, grant you that WoT uses a really good micro transactions model and that it is highly successful, in fact I would be surprised if this wasn't the case.
I've watched people play WoT, and I've read about it..and so I could easily imagine several systems that would work for a game like this, but thats just it though. The system it uses and other F2P models that might work for it, do so because its WoT..In my view you can't apply the same logic nor ideas to Mechwarrior - I mean sure it could be argued that all a mech is, is a glorified bipedal tank and so therefor it isn't that much of a stretch..You could I suppose and you wouldn't be wrong in doing so, but it would in the very least seem, to me anyway, like not giving Mechwarrior its proper credit or doing it proper justice.

Side note: One of the main values of the WoT model that you talk about is your repeated references to damaged/destroyed tanks needing repairs which is another one of my complaint with such models and how they *tend* to turn out. Now I don't mind having to repair *damage* as opposed to repair something thats *destroyed, no..here is my problem: The concept of not really losing anything that you can't repair your way out of - Look the very least you can do to someone who lost in a fight, is make him feel the full impact of his loss by taking his vehicle (in whichever form it exists in) away from him and leaving the wrecked remains to be pillaged and salvaged by the winner..otherwise you aren't really losing, and the winner doesn't really win.
Now this may sound awfully "hardcore" to you and like I'm not taking into consideration the more..easy going crowd...if we can call them that. However that would be missing the point, because if you destroy vehicles you create the need for new vehicles to be built, and then, if you're smart enough you leave vehicle building/production to the players (no static/npc market) voila! you have a market that people will engage and develop in. If you have a market, you have people who trade, and once people start trading all you have to do is add more stuff that have real implications or use in the world they inhabit, buying and selling for the same reasons they'd do vehicles..voila, you have an extensive market for an extensive world, serving extensive needs over extensive distances - The world grows, and so do needs and you're on your way upwards..

Before anyone rushes in on that, yes I know that this is something many casual players couldn't give a toss about by and large, but the only problem about that is presentation. How you sell it, and another thing..erhh...hmm..actually I'm going off on the deep end here, so I'll just stop that train of thought with saying that I think when combat is the main dish of a game, it should do it properly and not..uhm..."kitty"foot around it. If you get what I mean by that.


Briefly, firefall, never heard of it..will look it up later I guess.

Finally
Now onto the final point of an open world not being feasible - Well actually it is, but you'd have to do a few tricks to do it, which is one of my points about doing an MMO. You can load different areas, maps and/or planets by introducing an element in the world that would necessitate having to leave one area and enter another. Something that could easily be found and done, I believe, in the usage of dropships, planetary hangars, tradehubs/cities and/or bases and so forth. Sure it would not be *true* open world, but it would be a close approximation and would allow anyone to, as it were, 'drop in' on you..maybe even by accident cause they had to go that way anyway. Of course is another one of those where I don't have all the answers, but its definitely something where I have multiple ideas and don't see why there wouldn't be a solution to it.
Any way, don't think I don't know that I can't change this game..thats how my original post started, accepting that this was how things were and since I was/am in great disapproval, my only recourse is to let mechwarrior go and move on. I know that some people will enjoy this game, however I am also pretty confident that the game will be a dime a dozen unless it does something extraordinarily innovative and new with the basic models it has chosen.

I hope that clears up a few things and satisfies your remarkable post sir o7

Edited by DrHat, 01 November 2011 - 10:19 AM.

[Necropolis]

I think more attention should be given to this thread. Its extremely interesting imho.

[DrHat]

Shadoe Ryder, on 01 November 2011 - 06:30 AM, said:

I am as cynical as the next person about F2P. But the F2P model is still evolving. There are a ton of F2P games that are pay 2 win. But that is actually starting to become a bit better with the big F2P titles. and hey its Mechwarrior.. i WILL always carry hope for a mechwarrior project

Way to early to tell how this one is going to go.

I disagree in the sense that to a certain degree you can tell a few things about a game by simply knowing what platform it will use (pc exclusive, console exclusive, cross platform), what genre it has (FPS, RTS etc), sub genre (MMO, SP/MP, MP etc), what model it will use (Single purchase, monthly subscription, F2P etc.) ..and so forth, it all adds up to a great amount of things you can attribute to a game, simply because it comes from the various values I've mentioned, as they are usually innate..or..typical depending on which it is.

[Sesambrot]

Let's see if I have enough ideas for yet another wall of text! lol

About that P2W thing: Well it seems I got that wrong, but that "renting" idea was brought up in that very thread, and it's just completely baseless! On top of that, F2P = P2W which is actually the very essence of the topic's header, is nothing but prejudice.

However, your response clears up some things actually. What I still don't really get is why you are so quick with dismissing the idea of this game. I do agree this is probably not exactly the game we have been waiting for, but that doesn't mean it cannot give us the feeling we've been looking for!
This is just me, but Mechwarrior has meant piloting huge robot-like warmachines, that give you chills by merely looking at them. Unless they take the MA-approach, I don't think they can ruin that.
Regarding WoT, considering that it's gameplay was designed actually for an arcade-like game, it's fairly obvious that it wouldn't work for this game considering they're going more into the sim-direction. Hell, even the upgrade-system and techtree wouldn't work well for a mechwarrior game, but I think the basic concept could be used anyways.

The point is, I really doubt that gameplay-wise it is going to be much different from the multiplayer mode of previous mechwarrior games, and I don't see what might be wrong with that.

I get your idea of giving battles a deeper sense and maybe even a purpose, but I can't see that working anywhere else than in SP, or an MMORPG. It simply doesn't go well with a FPS/SIM. I can't imagine a lone mech walking down the countryside until he stumbles across an enemy player, that sounds way too much like an MMORPG. Battles involving Mechs are are supposed to be organized in a way. Those Warmachines are supposed to be part of a strike force. Especially, you can't really expect the player to do that. Something like that does work for an MMORPG like WoW, because every player can act on their own to defend a certain area/town and there is no limitation to the number of players in that area/town. However, for an FPS ping and lag are much more critical than they are for an MMORPG, simply because of the way hitdetection needs to be taken into account.

I think there's two issues here:

1. The term "MMO".
It actually means nothing but "Massive Multiplayer Online", but doesn't say about how those masses are going to be handled. Of course everyone has in mind games like WoW, or whatever, but that is misleading in this case! WoT does it in a way which is likely to happen for MWO as well, yet it's still considered an MMO as the combatants for each battle are drawn from a massive pool of online players. If you think about it, an MMO in the classical sense (like WoW) is not a good idea for mechwarrior, and will probably never be.

2. Taking the risk of wildly assuming things:
But especially what you are asking for, regarding your Themepark-MMO-argument, is to give some meaning to battles, and all the salvage/trading/...-ideas you bring up are actually good ones, but wouldn't work that well in a MP-environment. It seems to me that your ideas contain FPS, RTS and RPG elements and try to combine them. It would work for singleplayer as you could easily handle it seperately like MW4 did, but for MP, you'd somehow have to "marry" them. Not saying this is impossible, but you would be trying to invent a whole new kind of game, which sounds unreasonable.


What all this comes down to for me, and pretty much is the reason why I'm still trying to argue with you, is that it won't get in my head, how you can be so quick about dismissing the game as a whole, and even saying things like:

DrHat, on 01 November 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

..., my only recourse is to let mechwarrior go and move on.

You're just being overly pessimistic there! You don't even know what the game is going to be like yet, but the mere fact that it's going to be F2P and the concerns that come with it, already ruin the game for you. There's a distinct difference between voicing concerns and expecting the worst, and you already seem to be expecting the worst fr some reason.
Excuse me for being so blunt, I simply can't get that into my head!

The other thing I don't get is how you reach the following conclusion:

DrHat, on 01 November 2011 - 10:14 AM, said:

I know that some people will enjoy this game, however I am also pretty confident that the game will be a dime a dozen unless it does something extraordinarily innovative and new with the basic models it has chosen.

When has a mechwarrior game ever been a dime a dozen? And the game is not only defined by the way it's being distributed/sold. Even if it inherits the style of a F2P, doesn't make it a bad game just yet, and the MMO aspect of it has been proven to work with WoT, no matter if they just copy their ideas, or invent something new, there actually is proof that it can work. As long as the game itself will also inherit the spirit and feeling from the previous mechwarrior games it is going to be a great game anyways! At this point all there is to do is to have some faith in the developers being able to deliver a great game in the fashion they see fit.

As it turns out I still have plenty to say lol!

EDIT:
Man, this really took ages lots of thoughts I wanna write down and the feeling that I forgot half of them while writing!
Anyways, I'm going to play some Painkiller now, as I wanted to do about an hour ago
I'll cya around I guess! ^^

Edited by sesambrot, 01 November 2011 - 01:21 PM.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Dr Hat,

You sir are no cynic. From my perspective your simply a little surprised and sad.

Cynicism would be born on far more venomous airs than that which you have written. Your measure here is quaint and teaming with hands searching in the dark for answers.

A cynic performs no such searching, to be a cynic, one must rightly so or not, feel that the answers are his, or at least perceive them as such. Cynics are after all , madly self assured, though the reverse need not be true.

I will not discredit the value of your perspective, or the assessment of concerns. Your yellow-brick-road of there to here has been measured by so many, and in so many ways, that there's practically a solemness to the tone of that which you have written. Not what I would call a once hopeful desire turned and soured to a vengeful, hateful, spiteful need to wrench the guts from ones traitorous love. Just a kind of Country Western Song of lost loves, dead horses, dogs that ran off, and divorce where the wife leaves with the one's own lawyer, drown thoroughly at the bottom of a beer mug or shot glass.

I would be conciliatory, but frankly my own cynicism sours me to such human and humane behaviors.

This is a beautiful game. The developers work, the artists are phenomenal.

Its the "falsities" in the advertising and business model presentation than sucks, for reasons stated in countless post!

And your'e a moderator... LOL, be assured its is only with great restraint I don't really take a measure.

Being banned from the good parts that I enjoy is not worth my skewed insane opinion be plastered here. Of course posting to the boards, with anything other than flame rage complaints or wanting inane resolutions for why "the banner doesn't wave when my mech walks.", will get you at best ignored by anyone who might matter.

My suggestion, make no suggestions, ask for nothing, set no expectations, and then don't be disappointed.

Happy Holidays,
P.S. there's no SANTA CLAUS!

Vex

Edited by Vexgrave Lars, 06 December 2012 - 10:40 PM.

[Critical Fumble]

Why did you resurrect a thread from early November, LAST year? This was written before hardly anyone had even touched the game, and probably before the OP was made a mod.

[Secundus]

Seems to me that Dr. Hat's fears were realized, with a creamy glazing of bugs and price gouging drizzled on top.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Cause only a cynical ******* *********** **********, ******** ***-*********** ********, would do that.

Edited by Vexgrave Lars, 06 December 2012 - 10:51 PM.

[Kaijin]

Critical Fumble, on 06 December 2012 - 10:45 PM, said:

Why did you resurrect a thread from early November, LAST year? This was written before hardly anyone had even touched the game, and probably before the OP was made a mod.

Mods don't say such things, ergo DrHat was not a Mod then. Sad, that the game is turning out exactly as he'd feared it would, and now that he's a Mod he cannot point to this old post and say 'I told you so.' But others can.

[Alexandrix]

Wow,impressive thread necro sir. *golf clap*

[Mr Mantis]

You're a cynic

[Secundus]

Mr Mantis, on 06 December 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

You're a cynic

By now we should call him a realist.

[anonymous175]

holy threadcromancy hatman. er larsman.

[Obadiah333]

See, like a lot of us, we wanted mechwarrior 5. Not MWO. But we have to settle for what we can get. As far as the Free 2 play model goes, it's absolutely the last resort money grab for games that have lost their player base. To start out with that model, wow. Very dissappointing.

Look at EQ2, Vanguard, LoTR online, etc. All were subscription base models in the beginning. In their prime, they had a reasonable sized player base with subscriptions. As time went on and players left, realms merged and money dwindled, they switched to F2P to get what dregs of money the could drag out of their players, any players. This game is starting off there, already on it's last leg. Sad. I would have much preferred MW 5. I'll do my best to like MWO.