5
Reddit cliff notes here: https://www.reddit.c...tes_thing_june/
My own cliff notes below.
Feel free to reply to this thread to help me bump it. I imagine the mods won't sticky it
Cliff notes:
- About Frozen City: Twice as big, maybe a little bigger. The core of the map is still there, the dropship is still there, the tunnel is still there. A lot of new areas have been added in the lower area of the map, where Theta used to be. New textures from Polar Highland have been applied. Apparently, it looks very much the same as the original. Daeron / Bombadil says it doesn’t really feel much bigger at all.
- Some talk about the Phoenix Hawk. Russ asks Daeron and Phil what they think of the new mech. They like it, which is handy.
- They talk about the Butterbee. They're explaining that the old Catapults will not receive hardpoint inflation, but they've tried to balance the Butterbee via quirks so it doesn't obsolete other Catapults. The boxes don't change size based on how many missiles are inside, unlike Mauler missile boxes. NARC will be mounted underneat the missile box.
- They talk about rescale. Russ says you can’t judge the increase or decrease of any single mech individually, you have to consider how all the mech sizes relate to each other after the rescale. Russ goes on about the thought process behind Awesome remodelling, Grasshopper remoddeling, etc. Will be in the June patch, but Russ warns there may be issues.
- The June patch will have quirk adjustments, there may be further quirk adjustments in July patch.
- Alex Iglesias was the guy who pushed for the TBR and MDD leg change / stance change The TBR was actually already pretty crouched when running, but was standing quite tall. So now TBR and MDD will be shorter when standing still, but will effectively be almost the same height when moving.
- Command Wheel. Some discussion about what kind of impact it will have on the game. No real information.
- Minimap: As we already knew, minimap will now display the ENTIRE map. Not just a small area of the map, closest to your mech. You will now be able to tell whether a mech on the minimap is a light, medium, heavy or assault. They’re not just all doritos. Doritos are replaced with diamonds with different symbols. Mechs stood close to each other will stack on the minimap to form a special symbol. Russ warns us that we won’t have a lot of fidelity, so it will be hard to tell what’s going on around you in a brawl. In other words, no ability to zoom in and out of the mini-map (lostech. RIP Mechwarrior 2).You won’t be able to tell what direction mechs are facing, because dorito arrowheads will be replaced by floating diamonds. Russ says that he’s open to changing the minimap. He says it’s likely that zooming ability will come in the future, possibly even in August.
- “Information warfare is not gone forever.” Information warfare and new skill trees may use the new command wheel and minimap functionality.
- Russ explains why they’re not using Public Test Server more. He says it’s a matter of getting the right number of players, the right type of players. They’re planning to use PTS in the future for Assault mode 2.0 and Energy draw.
- Leaderboards for Quickplay. Light, medium, heavy, assault and “overall”. Will be in June patch, with added functionality in July patch. Will be reset every month. Winners every month. Prize every month. Sean Lang asks about group queue vs solo queue, Russ isn’t quite sure, but believes there will be separate leaderboards for group queue and solo queue. Russ leaves it to the players to min-max all the way, if there are leaderboards for group queue.
- Faction play: Ceasefire reduced to 5 minutes. From now, auto-wins are determined automatically and you get the rewards instantly. You don’t actually have to drop on the map without opponents and destroy turrets and objectives. Auto-wins are handled in the UI.
- Forest Colony change: Russ explains this is the beginning of what we will see in map redesign. Forest Colony mountain pass will be a lot more open. Major changes coming to Viridian Bog and Terra Therma, both in terms of layout, polish, collisions, etc.
- FIRST BIO-BREAK
- Decals are coming July 19th. Russ now calls them decals instead of deckles (Discuss). Unit decals will not be available in first patch, will come later. First we get faction decals, etc. Basic and Premium decals. Once you buy a decal, it will be unlocked. No one-shot option. Not sure if there will be C-bill decals.You won’t be able to place decals on joints.
- In July patch, everyone will have 2 drop decks per game mode in FW. You can buy additional drop decks.
- Supply cache. No new information, just repeating what we know.
- Standard variants of the Loyalty mechs will be available through gift store in July and eventually available for MC and C-bills.
- In July and August, Viridian Bog, Terra Therma and Crimson Strait will probably be updated, polished.
- In July patch, we will probably be able to save load-outs in MechLab. Engineers are also working on a solution that will signficantly reduce load-times and save-time in MechLab for people with lots and lots of mechs.
- In July, Inverse Kinematics are coming back. The mech’s feet will now reflect the angle of the ground the mech is standing on. Lostech no more.
- No Quad mechs coming. Russ hates them. Calls them Circus mechs. Sorry, Juodas.
- They can’t increase server tick rate. Servers are top notch, already set on max. I have no idea what that means. Maybe you do.
- Assault game mode 2.0 set for August, maybe later. They just started testing it on Polar Highlands, first map. There’s a capture point surrounded by destructible walls, turrets, a UAV tower, an ECM tower, an airfield tower. All towers have O-gens connected. Public test coming in July. A lot of testing will be required to determine the location and set-up of bases. Russ says there’s a certain chance the whole game mode may in fact be scrapped if it fails completely, but it also has the potential to be the best game mode for MWO QP.
- A new asymmetrical game mode is being worked on, with the Union class dropship, possibly. Far in the future, no ETA.
- Energy draw in August. No new information, really. If you exceed the alpha limit, you get excess heat. Russ explains this is to get rid of huge alphas and also boating. Check out this thread for more info: http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/230555-power-draw-what-we-know-how-it-will-work/
- Russ argues that players should appreciate MWO because he predicts that the next company to pick up the Mechwarrior franchise will give us another MechAssault. In other words, we are not likely to see anyone else pick up the Mechwarrior franchise and stay true to the complex nature of the game.
- Russ explains that they’ve overcome some technical difficulties that will allow them to add a lot more features to the heat scale. For example, mechs can slow down when they reach 90% heat.
- Russ & NGNG ask the guys in chat if they have any questions. None of the questions were approved (~15 people asking about Skill trees, to no avail) so they take another bio-break.
- SECOND BIO BREAK
- Retro-fit skins. Full skin functionality. Hero mechs can use any camo pattern. By the end of the year, all mechs should have this. Russ also talks about possibilities for custom skins, such as for particular variants, etc.
- Cheat detection. Russ says they banned a bunch of people before today’s Town Hall. Not a huge number. He says he won’t name & shame them (yet). They’re watching the tournament. The number of cheaters in the tournament was smaller than expected.
- Mech-Con. No new information, really. There may be a playable version of the new Battletech strategy PC game.
- Faction Play. Trying to reduce the number of buckets to reduce wait time. Basically trying to narrow it down to Clans vs IS. Russ is willing to have a roundtable conversation with 8-10 of the most significant unit leaders. Russ says FP is still not settled in to the point where they’re just going to tweak it. He’s not entirely happy with it, so significant changes are still necessary.
- Stock mode option will be available for private matches. August / September, maybe. Private lobbies will have Stock Mode button and a Quirkless button. So you can potentially play a stock Locust without any quirks, for example. Whatever your build is, the game will drop you in a stock build, if the option is checked.
- Russ & NGNG once again checks if the people in chat have any questions.
- Skill trees. PGI is starting to work on it. Russ explains that it’ll be a game changer. Multiple times deeper. “It’ll be huge”. Combined with quirks, information warfare, etc. No ETA. Those who come to MechCon will be “rewarded with a major update”.
- Phil asks about the in-game Chat. Russ says an update is coming this summer. New design, scrolling functionality. Chat will be visible while you’re doing stuff in MechLab, etc.
- They’re working on a way to end the Module Hunt mini-game.
- No update on the new game engine. It could potentially take a full year if they go through with it.
- Russ says he’d like the game to be around for 10 more years. (He also mentioned this kind of long-term perspective in the previous Town Hall)
- Phil asks about Solaris. Russ would like Solaris to have Replay system. He’d like a Solaris feature where you could potentially have 10,000 players spectating a match through their client, with Replay system. Due to technical challenges, Solaris is some ways off.
- Russ says we’re not too far off from a timeline jump. Mad Cat Mk 2 may be announced in a few months. Russ says he doesn’t really care about the year, it’s more about what kind of technology those mechs have.
- Russ is open to updating the HUD with customization options. They’re not focused on it right now. Maybe work on it later this year.
- Russ explains that VR games need to be built from bottom-up. You can’t just add VR compatibility to MWO, because it’ll mess with the HUD, etc. You need constant 90 FPS to have VR and Russ is worried not enough players can run the game that smoothly.
- Russ confirms they’re working on AI & PVE right now. They may have an announcement about this at Mech-Con.
PS: Vote Isengrim to sit on the promised FP council. Ask your local PGI employee about how you can help Isengrim today.
Spoiler
Edited by Alistair Winter, 18 June 2016 - 02:05 AM.
needless to say I'm not staying up until 2 am.
