287 replies to this topic

[Xmith]

XtremWarrior, on 31 May 2016 - 02:03 AM, said:

I think WoT success is also due to the fact that fighting in a tank in Third Person View is more intuitive than the BattleTech rules.
Take the MechLab: creating a good build is a real science and, if you're new and try to learn the game on your own, even the mandatory DHS and Endo taxes are not things you can understand that easily. Then you have to learn to play: hello Heat System (or why-can-i-put-so-many-weapons-on-that-monster-but-still-cannot-fire-them-twice-before-shutting-down)... You get the picture.

BT rules are strange and made from the very start to appeal to a specific niche of players, even among the Robot-fans.

I think a good comparison is the Games Workshop's games: All those made as a direct translation of the tabletop's mechanics are rather niche game, and then you got Dawn of War, with easier mechanics taken from more usual RTS, which was a very huge success in gaming history in general (TotalWar Warhammer will probably be another great game, still due to the fact that it uses the TotalWar usual rules).

Also, the fact that we all know some sort of tanks from our respectives countries, and the history of human wars, create a universal "background" for the game.
MWO by himself conducts no real background for anything, you have to look at the main website to find some - and there's not that much here - or start to search the internet to really know what this whole InnerSphere and the long history behind each faction is all about.

You hit on the head about 3pv.

Another fact to consider, WoT is available on console platforms as well.

So yeah, 3rd person and consoles are the two main reasons.

Despite the boos and cheers, you have to admit that there is no other game like MWO at this moment in time.

[IQcreditscore]

Japan SHOULD be the market for pgi that russia is for wot.

This game has an "end game" style that I and many others wanted in wot for 4+ years. They have devolved their endgame into something that killed it entirely. The activity level in wots clan wars is abysmal now and has driven the majority of the decent playerbase away. Many of us still log on for an hour or so every week but thats it.

There is no mm in wot other than by tank tier. Your founders in this game that are stuck in psa4/5 absolutely crush your soul in wot. You enter a top tier match (say tier 8-10) and you have a platoon of 3 guys who win 43% of the time over their career of 40K+ games. Soloing is difficult as power platooning is the word of the day. You can solo to 60% w/r and above but it's far easier to get 3 52% career players and 65%+ w/r while tooning.

The playerbase is toxic. I was extremely toxic there tbh but so is the entire playerbase.

The forums here are missing some very basic things that help engender some sense of rivalry. No one can tell what unit someone is from. That's pretty easy php right?

The grand endgame in mwo is plagued by a too small pop. Killing the lore garbage and making 2 is factions vs 2 clan factions makes 6 total ques. We can more than populate that. No more 30 minute que times.

Third person is unusable for a few reasons like no minimap etc. , but appeasing the hardcore guys while making the game have a really uncomfortable interface and feel for new players is probably in the top 3 reasons why new players leave. WOT is far more intuitive and easier. Their spotting system is awful compared to mwo but the view in MWO 1st person blows.

The lack of options for switching firing modes is terribad in mwo. Why can't we have something simpler like a button to switch between firing modes 1-2 and 3-4 on the fly for people with 2 button mice.

We have quirks and yet the lab fails to tell us the real heat efficiency of our mech? Things like this really make the game feel unfinished and "beta" or even "alpha".

The MWO designers actually communicating is nice. WOT almost never speaks to it's playerbase in NA except through a set of intermediaries who have no real idea what is going on. Serb from wot has never addressed the playerbase on any level (well maybe once very quickly or something like that).

The "cone of fire" rng a few have spoken about in this thread is the absolute worst thing about wot and every player worth a darn hates it. Also lrms got nothing on one shot indirect rng based artillery from wot.

Our quickplay mm is VERY slow compared with wot. Slow to load and then another minute if someone is "connecting". Wot doesn't care wth is going on with a connection, everyone waits exactly 0 seconds longer if some dude is on dialup. FIX THIS!
WOT has very wide open maps compared with this fatal funnel happy game. Scouting and vision/map control are essential in wot. It takes far more skill and has far more variety of play. Creating maps with funnels at key points with wide areas also open on a balanced map while difficult to design sometimes would benefit this game greatly. Speed in this game for anything heavier than a medium at most is for relatively small flanking moves and not getting left behind. nascarring....lol.
If MWO had the pockets and the will they could write a check to serb and lease the maps....................

The absolute level of customization available in this game while a huge plus is a handicap for new players. I was ok with it as I was somewhat battletech familiar, but someone picking this up as a stompy robot game without a clue? God help them. WOT has very little customization available, but each tank generally has a role it can fill. There are tanks though that are far more useless than any mech in mwo. Go look up amx40 (only good for wn8 stat farming due to being so awful very few can do much of anything in it).

Their api is mostly open. While this is a good thing for some, for most it is a negative. Imagine if every time you were lit up a color code said "lrm the hell out of this guy he is a good player" . Pretty much the equivalent happens in wot except their lrm's are usually one and done indirect fire artillery pieces. If any kind of modding is allowed (which it isn't here really) than an open stats api is a bad thing.

WOT has a tremendous amount of mods available. While a very few give an unfair advantage (banned in the NA server but nor europe or rus servers lol), most are very user friendly and improve the interface. Want a different crosshair? Want your garage interface changed? Mostly things like that. Changing voices or gun sounds. It's a can of worms and many people blame "hacks" when they lose, when in reality the advantage of even the "cheat" mods in wot give very little advantage. A slight player skill advantage difference and those mods usually aren't enough.

Their promises are long forgotten in wot. MWO has tried to appease the lore guys while making a game that appeals to the masses. In translating something from a tt game into a modified fps some things dont translate well. They honestly should have tried to create a game that appealed to the masses more and lore guys less. If this game had wot's population with a dynamic endgame like it has now it would survive longer than diablo2. The lore guys would mostly bite their tongues if they had a truly playable game with a dynamic constant war with over a million participants every day.

Wot is dead though. The numbers are there as nothing better has come by yet. I just got tired earlier than most of the old timers in wot.

Edited by FLINTCOIN, 31 May 2016 - 04:40 PM.

[dervishx5]

I think many of the WoT guys have moved on to warthunder or world of warships

[oldradagast]

Also, the grind is HORRIBLE in MWO compared to World of Tanks / World of Warships.

- In those games, the grind starts easy and eventually gets insane, but by the point the grind is insane, you're at a nice middle tier and can, in theory, play there forever and be happy with the game. You don't NEED a tier 10 tank or ship.

- In contrast, in MWO, the grind starts bad and stays bad and you do need an effectively "tier 10" mech - one with full upgrades to compete - since tier 1 mechs (stock junk) and tier 10 ones (fully loaded and customized) are tossed in the same matches.

- In WoT and WoWS, the costs for what you need are obvious since every ship or tank has a straightforward upgrade path with relatively few choices. Admittedly, the lack of choices can be dull at times, though Captain skills somewhat make up for that.

- in MWO, you have full customization, but you get clobbered with hidden costs. You need Double Heatsinks, and Endo... and a decent engine.. and more weapons.. and modules.. and you get the idea. Oh, and then you need THREE mechs to be able to fully level one - more hidden costs.

- Finally, the payout on a loss in MWO is absolutely laughably bad unless you happened to do insanely well; really, the values are so low on a loss it's almost insulting. In WoT and WoWS you get less for a loss, but unless you're at high tiers where the repair costs are insane, it doesn't hurt as much.

Edited by oldradagast, 31 May 2016 - 04:48 PM.

[LordKnightFandragon]

oldradagast, on 31 May 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

While everyone is entitled to an opinion, certain facts need to be set straight after this post, IMHO. WoWS is a good game for what it is, and while that may not be for everyone (which is fine) certain things said here are just not correct:

- No battleship ever has been one-shot by anything in the game. That is literally impossible. It IS possible for a ship to suffer major damage if a huge number of citadel hits are scored against it, or a huge number of torpedo hits, but for that to happen to a battleship is extremely rare and usually requires a massive amount of bad luck and failure to understand the game (such as sailing into a wall of torpedoes or failing to angle armor against attacks.)

- As for the gun accuracy, with practice you can get your shots to generally land on target. If I can do it - and I'm no video game god - anyone with practice can do it. Yes, if you're sniping at very long range with guns with high dispersion, you will hit rarely, but that is user error, not the game's fault. Also, inaccuracy is part of the game's simulation of naval combat of that era; it would be unrealistic and silly if shells flew with near perfect accuracy. The hit rate of even a mediocre player in World of Warships is much higher than comparable hit rates of the actual weapons simulated.

https://en.wikipedia...ttle_of_Jutland

Those hit rates are laughable (no nation even got to 5% in the Battle of Jutland) and far lower than in WoWS. Obviously, they made the hit rates higher to keep the game moving and interesting, but it is important to understand the genre before complaining about low hit rates. Complaining about inaccurate guns in a WW1 and WW2 naval simulator is not unlike complaining that our mechs can't fly or shoot missiles hundreds of miles away; the genre may not be for you, and that's fine, but it still must be internally consistent.

I like big *** warships and gave it a go just because it was a naval game, as ive never played one before, but just didnt like what I experienced.....probably mostly my own disdain for WG....

also, 80% of your health in 1 shot, I pretty much consider that a one shot, for all intents and purposes. I watched like one of BaronvonGamez videos or something where him and another Iowa or something, were sparring off at long range, the other ship pretty much exploded, full health, or damn near full health to dead instantly.

I had alot of the same stuff happen to me even in T2 vs the little T2 AI ships. I would just hammer away, HE, AP, into the, well, side of the hull, but I didnt think those ships were well armored. AP didnt seem to do much, HE didnt either, so I was honestly at a loss as to what to even fire at them. Occasionally I would score a high damaging hit off the sides of the ships hull.

Perhaps I might go back and give the game another go, learn it a little more and see what happens....

Edited by LordKnightFandragon, 31 May 2016 - 05:00 PM.

[oldradagast]

LordKnightFandragon, on 31 May 2016 - 04:56 PM, said:

I like big *** warships and gave it a go just because it was a naval game, as ive never played one before, but just didnt like what I experienced.....probably mostly my own disdain for WG....

That's cool - I didn't post what I did to pick a fight, but I didn't want people to be discouraged from playing the game. That being said, WoWS is a very different game from what many people expect in a PvP game: ships are slow and sluggish compared to the avatars or vehicles in most games, and shots are inaccurate; but that's the nature of the type of game - WW1 and WW2 naval combat.

As I said, to each their own; there are plenty of games out there that I'm not into - DoTA being one example - that are popular, so it's cool.

Edited by oldradagast, 31 May 2016 - 05:00 PM.

[GrimRiver]

I've always loved tanks(still do), any game that had a tank I would be the first one in it.

In BF3 I killed just about everything in the tanks, foot troops, jeeps, other tanks, helicopters and jets.

Got called a hacker countless times on that game because I kept sniping all the jets and copters all the time, samething on BF1943 too.

I played WoT, it's ok but I liked War Thunder better.

But what I love more then tanks is bipedal tanks with the speed to match their weight, it's the reason why I could never truly get into armored core or Hawken.

[Ted Wayz]

World of Tanks is one of the best, if not the best, at monetizing its player base. Multiply that by a large player base and you can afford ads.

Why do they have a large player base? Because the game appeals to a multi national player base, not just a North America centric player base.

But they also have these things called decals and camouflage and six game modes. They even have clan wars. Any of these sound familiar?

Mostly what WoT does MWO could do if they were dedicated to a good product. Not just a minimally viable product that milks a single source of revenue.

[Anjian]

Lack of a vibrant YouTube population is also another drag on MWO. Wargaming's games, and War Thunder as well, have strong vigorous YouTubers. PGI should not have jumped into the esports scene, they should have tried to make MWO much more YouTube viewing presentable. If watching the game in YouTube is enjoyable, it will naturally look the same way on esports. Every YouTube video is a marketing plus for the game.

Edited by Anjian, 31 May 2016 - 06:30 PM.

[Deathlike]

The simple answer is this:

One game has put a lot of effort into their product (even if you don't like the result).

The other game has put barely enough to call itself a game (even if you like franchise).

Figure out which is which.

[BetterDeadThanRed]

WOT is easier, u need to move, aim and shoot the only 1 weapon you have.

MWO u need to move, aim, shoot a wide variety of weapons, torso twist, manage heat and so on...

WOT batles happens at higher range, and mostly are one hit/burst kill, MWO u need to brawl4life.

obviusly highers skilled players have more stuff to manage than the basic hit and run, but for a newbie, its all they need to worry about.

In MWO u need like 2 months just to figure out how to move properly....

[Barantor]

Anjian, on 31 May 2016 - 06:30 PM, said:

Lack of a vibrant YouTube population is also another drag on MWO. Wargaming's games, and War Thunder as well, have strong vigorous YouTubers. PGI should not have jumped into the esports scene, they should have tried to make MWO much more YouTube viewing presentable. If watching the game in YouTube is enjoyable, it will naturally look the same way on esports. Every YouTube video is a marketing plus for the game.

MWO had a bigger streaming population than it does now but only so many people want to watch the waiting screen and mechlab movements for so long.

When MWO hit steam the amount of people that PGI funded to play their game who were big streamers was a boon. They brought in folks that were not regulars to MWO and had them play it for folks for whom MWO wouldn't be on their radar.

Marketing has never been a good thing with this game though. It had a little boost early on in the beta stages with PC Gamer and Nvidia, but other than the Steam event and some could say the Clan addition (see: gold mech fiasco).

WoT on the other hand has regular commercials on cable television, has a video series by a tank historian, has various formats to play the game on. WoT wins, no contest.

At this point the HyperRPG show "Death from Above" has more hype than MWO does and it is also linked to the 3025 Battletech game that HBS is going to be putting out.

As much as folks poop on the lore stuff, that sort of thing gives folks something to remind them about the game and interact with outside the actual game. It gets them thinking "Oh that story on the Raven was really cool, I should try that mech out in game." The stories with the blueprints do a bit of this, but in the end feel like a runner for a commercial since they are only done for the new sale mech.

I don't feel like anything is going to change though, we'll see how well MWO does in the next few quarters.

[Alan Davion]

LordKnightFandragon, on 31 May 2016 - 04:56 PM, said:

I like big *** warships and gave it a go just because it was a naval game, as ive never played one before, but just didnt like what I experienced.....probably mostly my own disdain for WG....

also, 80% of your health in 1 shot, I pretty much consider that a one shot, for all intents and purposes. I watched like one of BaronvonGamez videos or something where him and another Iowa or something, were sparring off at long range, the other ship pretty much exploded, full health, or damn near full health to dead instantly.

I had alot of the same stuff happen to me even in T2 vs the little T2 AI ships. I would just hammer away, HE, AP, into the, well, side of the hull, but I didnt think those ships were well armored. AP didnt seem to do much, HE didnt either, so I was honestly at a loss as to what to even fire at them. Occasionally I would score a high damaging hit off the sides of the ships hull.

Perhaps I might go back and give the game another go, learn it a little more and see what happens....

A coupe hints for you.

It's a somewhat back and forth triangle system in terms of strengths and weaknesses for the ships...

Battleships are direct threats to Cruisers, Cruisers are direct threats to Destroyers, and Destroyers are direct threats to Battleships. Meanwhile Carriers are threats to everything and vice versa.

With that in mind, Cruisers can be threats to Battleships, but you have to have a ship that can get a good high arc on the BB, fire HE shells and set the blighters on fire. For example the Tier 6 Cleveland and Tier 7 Atlanta have good high arcs and can land their shells, AP or HE on the weaker deck of the Battleship.

If you're tier 2 you only have access to a Cruiser or Destroyer for whatever your preferred nation.

Next thing to keep in mind is armor angling. AP shells will only really penetrate the side armor if you're firing right straight into the ships side. AI Destroyers and other Cruisers are good to test this on. Sometimes you'll get a lucky angled penetration if you're firing enough shells.

For ships with high rates of fire, you'll want to check out the Russian Tier 2 Novik, Tier 3 Bogatyr and Tier 4 Svietlana, then the German Tier 2 Dresden and Tier 3 Kolberg. The Japanese Cruisers I would suggest you avoid, as they have very few guns, but are quick and have good torps. Finally the American Tier 3 St. Louis literally bristles with guns, especially when you upgrade to the Type B hull.

Get any one of these ships, I'd suggest 2 even, specifically the Russian and German ships. They spit lead like crazy and are good ships to experiment with learning how to aim above/below the ship, as well as leading the target. Because they spit lead like no other you can easily adjust your lead on the fly and you will get to see how the shots interact with the enemy ships as well.

When facing the AI they tend to move very predictably, but they can still be very dangerous. I was one-shotted a couple times in the Dresden and Novik my first couple times out, but once you get used to how the ship moves you can angle your armor better and you'll start becoming dangerous yourself.

The AI payouts are not as bad as you think they are, not unless you do absolutely terribad, but you'll still earn somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10k, which is nothing to sneeze at. Remember that's on a terribad loss. On a loss for a decent game I'm still able to bank about anywhere from 50-100k depending on the ship I was running.

My biggest suggestion, get a Premium ship. Germany and Russia each have a Tier 2 Premium Cruiser available, they are basically the same as the two ships I mentioned earlier, the Dresden and Novik, but you will bank so much more money, even on a loss because they act like you have normal Premium time enabled, and it's permanent.

Also, if you have actual Premium time running, that stacks with the Premium ship.

This will also let you bank their Ship exp into Free exp, granted this costs "Dubloons", WoWs' form of MC, but trust me it is SO worth the cost.

Anyway, this turned into a bigger treatise than I'd planned, but hopefully this should get you started to being more successful at WoWs.

Edited by Alan Davion, 31 May 2016 - 07:34 PM.

[Choppah]

Having put money into both WOT and MWO, I stopped playing WOT after less than a year (even after I achieved a blue WN8 rating, which is top 15% if players) but still occasionally play MWO since it went open beta. Why? I will try to be succinct as possible.

PGI has continually shot themselves in the foot by trying to cater to everyone and ending up with no one as a consumer base, except for BT/MW fans who were already going to play regardless. MWO isn’t anything particular special in any category that would attract more players; it’s not noob friendly enough to attract casuals, not deep enough to attract gamers, and not sim-like enough to attract the dedicated sim crowd. PGI doesn’t understand their current audience and they don’t know how to attract other groups either.

WG does whatever is necessary to make money and figured out early on that a minimally viable product will lead to a minimally viable consumer base. It doesn’t matter how much it may damage balance, (particular gold tank unbalanced you say? “Limited sale of OP gold tank, buy now before we remove it from the store but not the game!”), they will add whatever and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make it work before they give up (example: historical battles). Despite WG’s scummy practices, the much deeper and fleshed out mechanics (albeit mainly in high tier matches) of WOT is a winning combo.

I continue to play MWO not because it is great game that just happened to get lost in a sea of games, but it is an OK mech game that does something different but never really goes anywhere due to lack of content and the outright refusal from the dev team to reevaluate and expand base game mechanics. Plus, as my first F2P game, I’m $200 in the hole. Which is the most I have spent on any game or any series of a games for that matter. Despite all this, WOT is too much grind and blatantly pay to win for my tastes. So I will ride the MWO train intermittently until it reaches the end of the line, wondering if the conductor understands why he can’t go any further. Answer: no one is laying any more tracks so the journey can continue.

[Scratx]

oldradagast, on 31 May 2016 - 03:51 PM, said:

While everyone is entitled to an opinion, certain facts need to be set straight after this post, IMHO. WoWS is a good game for what it is, and while that may not be for everyone (which is fine) certain things said here are just not correct:

- No battleship ever has been one-shot by anything in the game. That is literally impossible. It IS possible for a ship to suffer major damage if a huge number of citadel hits are scored against it, or a huge number of torpedo hits, but for that to happen to a battleship is extremely rare and usually requires a massive amount of bad luck and failure to understand the game (such as sailing into a wall of torpedoes or failing to angle armor against attacks.)

I agree with the rest of the post but your assertion that battleships in WoWs are immune to one-shots is wrong. Hey, folks! REMEMBER THAT TIRPITZ EXAMPLE????

http://imgur.com/a/fhpXh

Enjoy it.

[dervishx5]

Scratx, on 31 May 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

I agree with the rest of the post but your assertion that battleships in WoWs are immune to one-shots is wrong. Hey, folks! REMEMBER THAT TIRPITZ EXAMPLE????

http://imgur.com/a/fhpXh

Enjoy it.

Was that just one torpedo impact?

[Scratx]

dervishx5, on 31 May 2016 - 08:07 PM, said:

Was that just one torpedo impact?

Yup. Single torpedo. All I took the whole match other than that were two HE hits that did literally no damage whatsoever.

Edit : For guidance, that was IIRC a full Fubuki spread. You can see two patterns on the left and one on the right. I took the left-most torpedo from the right pattern and it RNG'ed me dead. You can see the other two torps in the screenshots missing me.

Edited by Scratx, 31 May 2016 - 08:12 PM.

[Alan Davion]

Scratx, on 31 May 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

I agree with the rest of the post but your assertion that battleships in WoWs are immune to one-shots is wrong. Hey, folks! REMEMBER THAT TIRPITZ EXAMPLE????

http://imgur.com/a/fhpXh

Enjoy it.

dervishx5, on 31 May 2016 - 08:07 PM, said:

Was that just one torpedo impact?

Scratx, on 31 May 2016 - 08:08 PM, said:

Yup. Single torpedo. All I took the whole match other than that were two HE hits that did literally no damage whatsoever.

That begs the question, why didn't you turn towards the torpedo?

That first picture shows that you had plenty of time to turn into the torps path and you could have avoided it, or at the least taken it on the bow of your ship and only suffered the loss of 1/4 to 1/3 of your health.

From what it looks like you just kept sailing straight on.

I mean I know BBs are slow, but you could probably have dodged that.

[Scratx]

Alan Davion, on 31 May 2016 - 08:15 PM, said:

That begs the question, why didn't you turn towards the torpedo?

That first picture shows that you had plenty of time to turn into the torps path and you could have avoided it, or at the least taken it on the bow of your ship and only suffered the loss of 1/4 to 1/3 of your health.

From what it looks like you just kept sailing straight on.

I mean I know BBs are slow, but you could probably have dodged that.

Actually, I was going too fast and too close already, I was going to take the hit no matter what. I did slightly adjust course to make sure I wouldn't ram a second torp and accepted I was going to take one. Well, I didn't expect insta-death.

In my defense, that Fubuki never showed up on mini-map and I wasn't ignoring threats, I'd just gibbed a Cleveland and suddenly surprise torps. I'd normally just take maybe 15k damage or so, repair flooding and carry on. It's a battleship, it can take multiple torpedo hits if it hasn't been mauled already.

[Carl Vickers]

Speaking for myself, the only thing that keeps me coming back to MWO is the people I play with. Have met many awesome peeps through playing this game.

The lack of content and upgrades to said content are really starting to get me down about this game. While I do understand that they need monies to keep the game running it seems that all we seem to get is new mechs. I lay the blame for this solely at PGI's feet. There were so many things they could have done and monetized early on, like multiple drop decks but never happened and are only now happening. While some might consider this a good thing I think wayyy to late and has cost them a huge portion of their player base.

FW is another example of this. 3 years in and what do we have, choke point warrior online with bells and whistles. Poor map design aside there is sooo much they could have and should have done with FW but didnt. Now all I see is an update to Assault mode which should have been that way to begin with but hey, want to buy another mech pack.

Im starting to look seriously at other games which other than the odd new game for PS3/PC I haven't considered a new game in over 2 years cause this had soo much potential, now unrelised.

Heavy Gear Assault is now on my radar. It is what MWO could have and should have been to begin with. Single player story line, can co-op it as well. Multi player with modes and e-sports arena. Getting better techs to quickly repair your gear. So much more depth than this game. The only area Im not sure of atm is customisation of your gear, whether it is as in depth as MWO is.

There will be some die hards that stay around but I see this game bleeding more and more vets till it is not viable. While some people have said MWO wont be picked up after it dies with PGI I do feel that a developer with belief and the vision to take MWO further can be found. Pity PGI couldnt see what they had in their fingers and make MWO what it should have been.