87 replies to this topic

[Spleenslitta]

Imagine PGI managed to get a perfect energy bar limit and energy regeneration. Just completly perfect.
I think it would be a plain and boring system no matter how perfect it becomes.

Energy Draw is easy to understand but it brings no big changes nor depth of gameplay to the game.
It's like the dev's are not willing to put any true effort into truly making MWO stand out from the crowd of games.
MWO can be fun yes. But do you think MWO has potential to be a better game?

If the answer is - No. It's allready as good as it needs to be - then you should skip the rest of this thread because you would be wasting your time by reading more.
Hey...i'm just being honest here. Honesty should be rewarded...i want my chocolate chip cookie.

If the answer is - Yes. MWO does have potential to be a better game - then read on.


If Energy Draw is perfected or becomes just good enough to satisfy Russ it could become a permanent part of MWO.
A single bar that fluctuates up and down faster than the heat bar - Not exactly groundbreaking.
This mediocrity will last several years or till MWO finally gets shut down.

Let's look at EVE Online for a moment to compare since that is also a niche game.
It has a fairly high learning curve and it was a niche game when it launched in 2003.
But it's been a tremendous success despite being a niche game.
Look at this -

• 2005 MMORPG.com Best Graphics, Best PvP, Favorite Company, and Reader's Choice Best Game^[173]
  
• 2006 MMORPG.com Favorite Graphics, Favorite PvE, Favorite PvP, Favorite Story, and Favorite Game^[174]
  
• 2007 MMORPG.com Best Overall Game of 2007^[175]
  
• 2009 MMORPG.com Game of the Year^[176]
  
• 2010 MMORPG.com Game of the Year^[177]
  
• 2011 MMORPG.com Game of the Year

EVE is over 13 years old and still popular. Game of year 3 years in a row and new content still comes out.




MWO is definitivly a niche game too since there aren't many MMO Robot FPS games out there.
MWO could have a stable and loyal community if PGI just put more effort to make MWO stand out.
But MWO's player population is not exactly stable by any means.
A fair amount of players have lost faith in PGI and that is not a good sign.


Instead PGI goes for this Energy Draw system that is so...lacklustre and oversimplified.
I know simple is often best but PGI's Energy Draw is just plain boring even if perfected.
Another troubling thing is that it seems the amount of players that are dissatisfied with Energy Draw outnumbers the ones that are positive in the PTS feedback forums.
So i'm not exactly alone in my opinion.

Look at these ideas players made in the PTS feedback forum.

What If We Have 3 Bars?

Ammo Reload Capacity... An Improved Approach Favoring Mixed Builds.

There are loads more but i put these two here because they stand out.
They are not mediocre by any means. Especially if you read what the other players talked about.

These ideas can be balanced. All that is needed is filling in the numbers.
To begin with both these ideas had a single glaring flaw in common but eventually this flaw was rooted out or at least shrunk by a lot.
Flaw was that mechs with just one type of weapon hardpoints had a disadvantage.
We managed to handle this flaw by bashing about a dozen heads togheter.
Imagine what a much larger part of the community could do. Especially the players with skills in math.

One thing is for certain - I do not know if it's possible to achieve perfection with these ideas but we would most certainly not be bored with the results no matter what happens.

The first link is based on having three extra bars other than heat.

- Energy for energy weapons
- Guidance Computer for missiles
- Recoil bar for ballistics

Many may worry about having to keep an eye on 3 more bars. But please look at the picture below. Please.



I'm not a smart guy but i managed to somewhat keep an eye on most of these gauges and fly the helicopter.
No i do not have helicopter or airplane license. I do not even have a drivers license.
If i can manage that you guys should be able to keep an eye on 3 bars.
it's from a game called DCS Black Shark.


We managed to get this far by talking over the weekend with only a few people.
For MWO's future....think for a moment about what could happen if a few hundred or even a thousand players helped improve these ideas.
Or come up with their own ideas for that matter.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 22 August 2016 - 11:30 AM.

[Gyrok]

The problem is that energy draw is a waste of development resources on reinventing the ghost heat wheel, when it could be spent on actually fixing things that are broken, like faction warfare, or maybe Assault game mode, or advancing the timeline to add new weapons instead of more mech packs.

By the way...regardless of what happens with power draw...unless the rest of the game changes, you will still be asking each other if you want to buy a mech pack in another year.

It is a waste of resources. My advice is to spend a week fixing GH that we have now, add a little UI component and call it a day.

Edited by Gyrok, 22 August 2016 - 10:37 AM.

[Alienized]

power draw will just be a worse ghost heat totally screwing up mixed builds and mechs that depend on them or alpha strikes at close range.

theres no way balancing power draw for all weapon systems equally as ghost heat does it.

[Spleenslitta]

Gyrok, on 22 August 2016 - 10:36 AM, said:

The problem is that energy draw is a waste of development resources on reinventing the ghost heat wheel, when it could be spent on actually fixing things that are broken, like faction warfare, or maybe Assault game mode, or advancing the timeline to add new weapons instead of more mech packs.

By the way...regardless of what happens with power draw...unless the rest of the game changes, you will still be asking each other if you want to buy a mech pack in another year.

It is a waste of resources. My advice is to spend a week fixing GH that we have now, add a little UI component and call it a day.

Yup. It is just a second version of Ghost Heat.
I stopped thinking about mech packs long ago.
Fixing GH would be a solution but unfortunatly there is one thing that i think of when i think of GH and ED.
That is mediocrity. They are both patchwork solutions that doesn't do anything to make MWO stand out from the crowd.

Both GH and ED are just....plain boring and lacklustre even if they are perfected to the point that they shine.

[xe N on]

Energy draw tries to balance the core aspect of MWO: balance. Currently, we have none.

Balance problems in MWO are:
- mech classes e.g. medium vs. heavy
- IS vs. Clan
- mobility vs. armor
- weapon hardpoints
- weapon balance to each other

You can design fancy game modes and lore based faction play. But it always comes down to the basics. And in this basics MWO is already failing.

So, energy draw can used to solve at least some of the above mentioned problems.

Edited by xe N on, 22 August 2016 - 11:04 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

xe N on, on 22 August 2016 - 11:01 AM, said:

Energy draw tries to balance the core aspect of MWO: balance. Currently, we have none.

Balance problems in MWO are:
- mech classes e.g. medium vs. heavy
- IS vs. Clan
- mobility vs. armor
- weapon hardpoints
- weapon balance to each other

You can design fancy game modes and lore based faction play. But it always comes down to the basics. And in this basics MWO is already failing.

So, energy draw can used to solve at least some of the above mentioned problems.

Yes. MWO has a huge amount of problems. But it's like i've stated in my textwall post at the start of the thread.
Imagine what happens if Energy Draw is perfected....
Even if Energy Draw is perfected can it make MWO stand out from among the crowd of games?
It's just a bar that fluctuates up and down. A patchwork solution at best.

The two ideas i put links to may be harder to balance but in the end their potential when perfected is much higher.
They stand out.

Edited by Spleenslitta, 22 August 2016 - 11:07 AM.

[JC Daxion]

Spleenslitta, on 22 August 2016 - 10:33 AM, said:

• 2005 MMORPG.com Best Graphics, Best PvP, Favorite Company, and Reader's Choice Best Game^[173]
  
• 2006 MMORPG.com Favorite Graphics, Favorite PvE, Favorite PvP, Favorite Story, and Favorite Game^[174]
  
• 2007 MMORPG.com Best Overall Game of 2007^[175]
  
• 2009 MMORPG.com Game of the Year^[176]
  
• 2010 MMORPG.com Game of the Year^[177]
  
• 2011 MMORPG.com Game of the Year

EVE is over 13 years old and still popular. Game of year 3 years in a row and new content still comes out.

And yet some how i never found the need to go troll the EVE forums and complain that the game doesn't have first person MMO style planetary exploration...


Something i wanted since day one.. Something the game still does not have.. So i quietly sit and wait for star citizen, verse trolling forums how a game is not what i want..


Even would of been my perfect game.. maybe they could of added mech combat too, to help control worlds too! but i digress..


and yea, so far i am liking **, and while it needs polish, it really has a lot of potential. though i do hope they add more function to command wheel as well.. and do another balance pass after this ** system is in place..

Gyrok, on 22 August 2016 - 10:36 AM, said:

By the way...regardless of what happens with power draw...unless the rest of the game changes, you will still be asking each other if you want to buy a mech pack in another year.

People want new mechs.. People constantly ask for new mechs.. They have a dedicated artist and animator to make new mechs.. Adding new mechs does NOT take away dev time from engine coders/moddes or even map makers..

Mechs have been released at about the rate of 12 a year since i have been playing... now they jsut do it monthly to smooth the persons work load.. Why a few people have an issue with this is beyond me.

Edited by JC Daxion, 22 August 2016 - 11:13 AM.

[Gas Guzzler]

xe N on, on 22 August 2016 - 11:01 AM, said:

Energy draw tries to balance the core aspect of MWO: balance. Currently, we have none.

This is false, there is pretty solid weapon balance right now, save for a handful of underperformers, most of which can be simply "tweaked" to be useful.

Mech balance is "okay" at this point, with some outliers on both ends of the spectrum... but Energy Draw isn't going to fix any of that, it can't. If anything it is likely to leave things worse than what is on the live servers now, but I will wait to see what direction they with PTS round 2 before I make any definitive statements like that.

[Alienized]

xe N on, on 22 August 2016 - 11:01 AM, said:

Energy draw tries to balance the core aspect of MWO: balance. Currently, we have none.

Balance problems in MWO are:
- mech classes e.g. medium vs. heavy
- IS vs. Clan
- mobility vs. armor
- weapon hardpoints
- weapon balance to each other

You can design fancy game modes and lore based faction play. But it always comes down to the basics. And in this basics MWO is already failing.

So, energy draw can used to solve at least some of the above mentioned problems.

we actually have a balance right now.
a pretty solid one. you see brawlers, mixed builds, snipers, lrm's, literally everything.

heck even a brawling victor is working well if one gets used to play it.

power draw will only improve boating and make it impossible to even use a ac20 and 2 srm6 because thats already 45 damage. whats so good about that?
it kills the last rest of brawling that we can currently do

[C E Dwyer]

If its perfect, then we'll enjoy the game more, if it isn't we'll still play the game.

Really its a win win situation for P.G.I because no matter how bad things get, while the servers might contract back to N.A there will still be enough people to keep the lights on.

[Mechteric]

Having 3 new bars is really not a good idea. Not because of balance issues, that part may be fine, the problem is that it starts to overcomplicate the UI in a way that would be detrimental to the experience.

Edited by CapperDeluxe, 22 August 2016 - 11:12 AM.

[Darth Hotz]

Gyrok, on 22 August 2016 - 10:36 AM, said:

The problem is that energy draw is a waste of development resources on reinventing the ghost heat wheel, when it could be spent on actually fixing things that are broken, like faction warfare, or maybe Assault game mode, or advancing the timeline to add new weapons instead of more mech packs.

By the way...regardless of what happens with power draw...unless the rest of the game changes, you will still be asking each other if you want to buy a mech pack in another year.

It is a waste of resources. My advice is to spend a week fixing GH that we have now, add a little UI component and call it a day.

This is the very first time ever I agree with everything Gyrok said.

I really see this as an ongoing problem with PGI. The very limited resources they have and how they use them. The crowd cries for content just as Gyrok wrote, but we get decals, new textures, a new minimap, a rescale, and now a new heat system.

I have serious doubts that reinventing a core system like the heat system will work out, to many things are related to it and to many things need to be considered to really make it work better than the ghost heat system. I mean, they wanted to change a little thing like the minimap and it ended in desaster and a community uproar.

Dont get me wrong. Ghost heat is not perfect, but it is a system thats at least working because over the years there was a lot of tweaking left and right to make it work. If it is about increasing TTK, there are better options. Increase armor, lower weapon damage or adjusting the perfect pinpoint convergence would be easy fixes. It might also help to stop releasing mechs that are able to put out enormous damage like the KDK 3.

Also a thing came to my mind. Imagine you have a friend that stopped playing MWO and you tell him:

a) Hey, they now implanted new textures, decals, a new minimap, a rescale and new heat system.

b) Hey, they now implanted new game modes and maps in pug play, they even have a solaris mode now, they gave faction play a complete overhaul with support lines so you need strategical decisions what planet should be attacked, they also changed the FP maps and got rid of the bottlenecks, got rid of longtom and even reworked the scout mode and made a time jump and brought all new kinds of weapons in the game and finally they even got the balance right now.

Which statement would create higher chances to make your friend come back?

Edited by Darth Hotz, 22 August 2016 - 11:16 AM.

[Spleenslitta]

JC Daxion, on 22 August 2016 - 11:08 AM, said:

And yet some how i never found the need to go troll the EVE forums and complain that the game doesn't have first person MMO style planetary exploration...

Something i wanted since day one.. Something the game still does not have.. So i quietly sit and wait for star citizen, verse trolling forums how a game is not what i want..


Even would of been my perfect game.. maybe they could of added mech combat too, to help control worlds too! but i digress..

and yea, so far i am liking **, and while it needs polish, it really has a lot of potential. though i do hope they add more function to command wheel as well.. and do another balance pass after this ** system is in place..

My point by bringing up EVE was simple...Compare MWO and EVE as they are both niche games.
MWO could achieve success if it stood out just like EVE despite MWO being a niche game.

ED needs polish but it can never bring MWO any attention all on it's own. ED doesn't help MWO stand out...that is the point of the links in the thread.
Those ideas stand out.

[JC Daxion]

Gas Guzzler, on 22 August 2016 - 11:09 AM, said:

This is false, there is pretty solid weapon balance right now, save for a handful of underperformers, most of which can be simply "tweaked" to be useful.

I dunno, just go look at the latest event.. If mechs were really balances you would see more than 3 mechs in each class.. Heavy cue is the only one that has any sort of balance when it comes to top performers.. Lights and assaults are a total joke.. Mediums are not far behind.

that is not to say other mechs can't be played, but when you are talking the top/best.. it is quite clear they are not balanced

Spleenslitta, on 22 August 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

My point by bringing up EVE was simple...Compare MWO and EVE as they are both niche games.
MWO could achieve success if it stood out just like EVE despite MWO being a niche game.

ED needs polish but it can never bring MWO any attention all on it's own. ED doesn't help MWO stand out...that is the point of the links in the thread.
Those ideas stand out.

Maybe you missed the irony in my post. Was about, Eve is being Nitch, but it is not what i want.. Yet i don't complain about Eve on a daily basis.. I found a game to play that i enjoy


And holding my breath on Star citizen.. But i know i will still be playing MWO cause last i checked SC won't have big robots..

[Bishop Steiner]

I don't mind dealing with hypotheticals, but draw the line at fairy tales

[xe N on]

Gas Guzzler, on 22 August 2016 - 11:09 AM, said:

This is false, there is pretty solid weapon balance right now, save for a handful of underperformers, most of which can be simply "tweaked" to be useful.

Acutually we have: Lasers, ACs/Gauss, SRMs.
I miss: LRMS, PPCs, machine guns, flamers, LBX

Quote

Mech balance is "okay" at this point, with some outliers on both ends of the spectrum.

Mech balance is utterly bad. Otherwise you wouldn't need to quirk the hell out of some mechs. As a dedicated medium pilot I could write a PHD thesis about what's wrong with mech balance ...

[Bud Crue]

I keep trying to draft up a nice, thoughtful post regarding the pros and cons of energy draw, how it compares to ghost heat and the presumed development goals that PGI may or may not have for the game, looking at both systems for perspective.

Then I look at the thread title and get the giggles, because the very idea of it is laughable.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Yet the changes I have read from the people saying energy draw solves nothing, have no better solutions themselves.

[Spleenslitta]

CapperDeluxe, on 22 August 2016 - 11:12 AM, said:

Having 3 new bars is really not a good idea. Not because of balance issues, that part may be fine, the problem is that it starts to overcomplicate the UI in a way that would be detrimental to the experience.

That was something many were worried about in that thread too. But please try looking at it from another angle.
Look at these picture please.


I'm not a smart guy but i managed to somewhat keep an eye on most of these gauges and fly the helicopter.
No i do not have helicopter or airplane license. I do not even have a drivers license.
If i can manage that you should be able to keep an eye on 3 bars...it's from a game called DCS Black Shark.

[Spleenslitta]

BLOOD WOLF, on 22 August 2016 - 11:21 AM, said:

Yet the changes I have read from the people saying energy draw solves nothing, have no better solutions themselves.

You might wanna go over here.

• ENERGY DRAW PUBLIC TEST

Plenty of solutions in all flavors. Advanced to simple ideas.