71 replies to this topic

[TheArisen]

Generally speaking most people want or would at least try a PvE story mode but the question remains on how to do it. Something to keep in mind is this needs to be profitable for PGI. So, here are the ideas that I've come across.

1. Campaign packs. A campaign with approximately 10 to 20 missions likely focused on one faction per campaign.

2. Episodic packs. Purchase individual missions. Could be standalone or part of a bigger campaign.

3. Port older game's campaign to MWO. Possibly use players as enemies.

If you have other ideas on how to approach this please share.

There are a few other concerns. First off is PGI has never created a game with a PvE campaign. Secondly PGI already has MWO to work on, would they even have the resources to do a proper PvE campaign?

Possibly they could contract another company or they'd need to hire a sizeable number of people to work on the PvE mode. Obviously there could be some crossover from MWO but they'd need to expand to cover the needs & finish the project.

With these thoughts I ask that you vote in the poll & consider how to implement a story mode & how much you'd be willing to pay assuming a decent or fair quality.
http://mwomercs.com/...pve-story-mode/

Edited by TheArisen, 08 November 2016 - 07:11 PM.

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

MechCon... I have no hopes of PVE until I'm playing PVE. So until it exists it never will exist.

The next focus I see PGI going for is something another successful game company is doing but has nothing to do with battletech or anything the fans have been asking for.

See recent items like:
Supply Caches
Long Tom
Death of the Mini Map
The Tournament

At least if your focus is mech packs and skins you could put fourth a little effort in selling them like shown below. This video is just for a damn skin!



And here is how they advertise a hero!



If you're going to act like a MOBA at least advertise like one.

Or these since it's the only place we might ever get lore!

Edited by DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, 08 November 2016 - 07:33 PM.

[TheArisen]

DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, on 08 November 2016 - 07:33 PM, said:

MechCon... I have no hopes of PVE until I'm playing PVE. So until it exists it never will exist.

The next focus I see PGI going for is something another successful game company is doing but has nothing to do with battletech or anything the fans have been asking for.

See recent items like:
Supply Caches
Long Tom
Death of the Mini Map
The Tournament

At least if your focus is mech packs and skins you could put fourth a little effort in selling them like shown below. This video is just for a damn skin!



And here is how they advertise a hero!



If you're going to act like a MOBA at least advertise like one.

Or these since it's the only place we might ever get lore!

I don't think you can compare PGI to a giant like Blizzard but lets focus on how best to do PVE okay?

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

TheArisen, on 08 November 2016 - 07:48 PM, said:

I don't think you can compare PGI to a giant like Blizzard but lets focus on how best to do PVE okay?

Didn't know Blizzard made Paragon...

[LordKnightFandragon]

Dynamic campaign, basically Faction Wars map for each faction.

Players join given factions, and that is their faction, non of this loyalty ****, swapping back and forth, you pick a faction and stick to it. THe system then follows a sequence of missions based on the "phase" of the planetary invasion the given planet is in. The missions are generated using the existing maps, with randomly generated missions on the given map, based off the "terrain, or geography of the planet.

Players then play PVE missions with up to 8 players per player team to complete the objectives set for them on the mission.

Basically current Faction Wars, just with ALOT more depth, phases, maps, mission types and involvement to it. Not just "shoot the guns" every time...naw....THink Mechcommander 1 normal campaign but in FPS MWO mode....

We start off the invasion with "Scouting phase", basically it would be clearing landing zones with small medium/light forces. Objectives would be "Destroying Guns", killing stragglers, lookouts, communications and prepping the planet for invasion.

2nd phase is Landing Phase. This phase would have the PLayers landing around the planet, this would be primarily defensive/probing operations around the dropship. AI would be assaulting the landing zones, so yeah, defensive. Some will be probing, seek and destroy actions.

3rd Phase is Assault Phase, pretty much alot of heavy combat, destruction of enemy forces, extermination styles, where the players really test their mettle and frankly the hardest of the phases. Base assaults, heavier units, destroying enemy fortifications. THere might also be some more "stealthy missions" for those who Q up with Light mechs, ones where you are to go in and do "Assassination" missions that would lower the chances of "top tier" units appearing in the primary assault waves, or might lower the awareness of enemies in the main assault phases.

Phase 4: Capital Battle. This is a multi phase Urban assault as the players fight to gain control of the planet's Capital City. It starts with alot of heavy action, more or less a continuation of the Assault phase. It ends in a "Capital City" attack where the last of the enemy forces in a defensive operation around the last bastion, then the players win that enough they win the planet.

IT would be designed to take a long *** time to win, not just 15 wins and its done, more like 50 wins per phase with each loss counting down 1 win. yeah....pretty much FW as I envisioned it, but just PVE. Each faction would have its own server running its own PVE invasion campaign.

[jss78]

TheArisen, on 08 November 2016 - 07:09 PM, said:

Generally speaking most people want or would at least try a PvE story mode but the question remains on how to do it. Something to keep in mind is this needs to be profitable for PGI. So, here are the ideas that I've come across.

1. Campaign packs. A campaign with approximately 10 to 20 missions likely focused on one faction per campaign.

2. Episodic packs. Purchase individual missions. Could be standalone or part of a bigger campaign.

3. Port older game's campaign to MWO. Possibly use players as enemies.

If you have other ideas on how to approach this please share.

There are a few other concerns. First off is PGI has never created a game with a PvE campaign. Secondly PGI already has MWO to work on, would they even have the resources to do a proper PvE campaign...[snip]

I agree any of the above seem like a big development effort, and given the general pace of development, I have a hard time believing in them.

But there are a LOT smaller ways of incorporating PvE elements:

1. Co-op missions, humans vs. AI. That is, no campaign, just a one-off mission against AI 'mechs. World of Warships has this game mode, not sure of other games. Now this would be rather uninteresting to old players, as the AI would likely forever be too dumb to pose a challenge -- it's pretty braindead in WoWS, and your win rate tends to be around 95 %. But it'd greatly help new-player retention during the first days and weeks.

2. Some AI assets added to normal human-vs-human games we have now. Maybe AI-controlled combined-arms elements (tanks, infantry, light vehicles) augmenting the human 'mech lances.

Either of those would be a massively smaller development task than a full-fledged single-player/co-op campaign. Essentially all you'd need is a functioning AI algorithm, beyond that all you'd have to do is replace some human players with AI players.

Edited by jss78, 08 November 2016 - 08:08 PM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Quote

1. Co-op missions, humans vs. AI. That is, no campaign, just a one-off mission against AI 'mechs. World of Warships has this game mode, not sure of other games. Now this would be rather uninteresting to old players, as the AI would likely forever be too dumb to pose a challenge -- it's pretty braindead in WoWS, and your win rate tends to be around 95 %. But it'd greatly help new-player retention during the first days and weeks.

War Thunder has PvE Elements , Historical Missions, Campaign ...Star Conflict has open World, with Pve Elements, Coop Missions against Pve ,FP ...Battlestar Galactica has PvE Elements in his Sectors,SWTOR has Pve...Hawken has PvE, Robocraft has PvE ...most MMOS/wargames have all Pve Elements

MWO has today Assets for Pve ...only 2 Dropships ...no Tankmodels, no Jet/AS Fighter Models ..nothing more from the BT universe in 4 Years!!!!!as Mechs ,gazelle and Leopard Dropship

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 08 November 2016 - 09:08 PM.

[Novakaine]

We're wasting our breath.
Sad.
They should be embarrassed.
Wonder what they do and say at developers convention.
Everybody else.


PGI

Edited by Novakaine, 08 November 2016 - 09:21 PM.

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 08 November 2016 - 09:06 PM, said:

War Thunder has PvE Elements , Historical Missions, Campaign ...Star Conflict has open World, with Pve Elements, Coop Missions against Pve ,FP ...Battlestar Galactica has PvE Elements in his Sectors,SWTOR has Pve...Hawken has PvE, Robocraft has PvE ...most MMOS/wargames have all Pve Elements

MWO has today Assets for Pve ...only 2 Dropships ...no Tankmodels, no Jet/AS Fighter Models ..nothing more from the BT universe in 4 Years!!!!!as Mechs ,gazelle and Leopard Dropship

My point exactly and I've asked for PVE for 4 years and watched announcement after announcement not be PVE.

[a gaijin]

The easiest way to do a single player campaign is to port all missions from MW2 into MWO and replace all enemy "A.I." mechs with us online players.

Giving us who are playing the A.I. mechs a reward (XP+C Bills+MC) for participation would be great incentive to do well if we met some minimum criterion such as "do at least 20% damage to the protagonist's armor" or "destroy at least 40% of the convoy moving between Nav Alpha and Nav Gamma."


Actually just porting the entire MW2 series over to MWO and replacing A.I. with living players would make me completely glad that PGI is the developer running MWO.

Edit: whoops my comment here is a redundant one that is just echoing one of the things the OP posted. My mistake.
I just saw "how to do PVE" as the subject title and (as usual) got (over)excited and just started typing what I always type for a suggestion.
Because since I heard about the Founder's program I have always hoped for something like being able to do MW2 or MW2-like missions and story in a new engine. So... I really like the subject matter of this thread

Edited by Star Commander Horse, 08 November 2016 - 09:43 PM.

[CK16]

I would love if they remastered old Mechwarrior campaigns. I would love once we get sone future mechs to reply the MW4 mercs missions and Solaris there!

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

Star Commander Horse, on 08 November 2016 - 09:36 PM, said:

The easiest way to do a single player campaign is to port all missions from MW2 into MWO and replace all enemy "A.I." mechs with us online players.

Giving us who are playing the A.I. mechs a reward (XP+C Bills+MC) for participation would be great incentive to do well if we met some minimum criterion such as "do at least 20% damage to the protagonist's armor" or "destroy at least 40% of the convoy moving between Nav Alpha and Nav Gamma."


Actually just porting the entire MW2 series over to MWO and replacing A.I. with living players would make me completely glad that PGI is the developer running MWO.

Edit: whoops my comment here is a redundant one that is just echoing one of the things the OP posted. My mistake.
I just saw "how to do PVE" as the subject title and (as usual) got (over)excited and just started typing what I always type for a suggestion.
Because since I heard about the Founder's program I have always hoped for something like being able to do MW2 or MW2-like missions and story in a new engine. So... I really like the subject matter of this thread

Worst idea ever! That's why pvp sucks is because of its players. I'll even go as far as saying that normal AI is better than the average potato in MWO. Also you need population for that which is why CW failed. AI is the only way to go and I want a offline PVE experience so when pvp is finally dead I still can play stompy robots.

[JediPanther]

I'm bored to death of mwo. Even an announcement of Solaris won't get me to do much. I've been taking the mechs and putting them into different game engines and trying to reverse engineer them to try and rebuild them into the elder scrolls. When they first announced the mech academy they told us that it would be a constant test bed of ai and other things to eventually add pve or co-op. Once you get the few extra million c-bills out of it there really is not much use for it. Doesn't even teach you how to do simple stuff like avoid missiles or counter ecm.

[TheArisen]

Star Commander Horse, on 08 November 2016 - 09:36 PM, said:

The easiest way to do a single player campaign is to port all missions from MW2 into MWO and replace all enemy "A.I." mechs with us online players.

Giving us who are playing the A.I. mechs a reward (XP+C Bills+MC) for participation would be great incentive to do well if we met some minimum criterion such as "do at least 20% damage to the protagonist's armor" or "destroy at least 40% of the convoy moving between Nav Alpha and Nav Gamma."


Actually just porting the entire MW2 series over to MWO and replacing A.I. with living players would make me completely glad that PGI is the developer running MWO.

Edit: whoops my comment here is a redundant one that is just echoing one of the things the OP posted. My mistake.
I just saw "how to do PVE" as the subject title and (as usual) got (over)excited and just started typing what I always type for a suggestion.
Because since I heard about the Founder's program I have always hoped for something like being able to do MW2 or MW2-like missions and story in a new engine. So... I really like the subject matter of this thread

My main issue with this is I'd like to be able to play through the campaign even after the servers go dark & Pgi moves on.

[Johnny Z]

TheArisen, on 08 November 2016 - 07:48 PM, said:

I don't think you can compare PGI to a giant like Blizzard but lets focus on how best to do PVE okay?

A comparison is exactly where to start.

The kings of PVE at this moment are FF XV, Mass Effect Andromeda, Fallout 4 (because VR is on the way)

MechWarrior Online and Mass Effect are very similar games, always have been. Mass Effect will go for using missions in an interesting epic way. Looks like they may have some kind of settlement system like Fallout 4 has, which is almost completely irrelevant to this game unless planetary defense gets really interesting.

Missions/quests/co-op/horde mod/base defense have all been asked for on this forum since closed beta in one form or another.

Cyberpunk 2077 may be another level of awesome but no one knows a thing about it.

Titanfall 1 had interesting story mode missions worked into multiplayer but some had trouble finding matches to complete the story.

Titanfall 2 has atmosphere issues.

If it were up to me the start of a story would be a quest to rescue a smokin hot engineer chic to repair my mech. and stays on board the player dropship if there was one. Maybe some part of it is replayable like the planet she is rescued from remains hostile.(like how Luke and Han rescued the Princess, an age old story, and the Princess was smoking hot to, hottest Star Wars girl to date although Princess Amadala was really cool and atmosphereic.)

Another story would be like how it seems Battletech is going to do it with an intro to an awesome dropship and the npc's on board.

I have a guess how Cyberpunk 2077 is going to do it and it could be really awesome. I also have a guess what Bethesdas new title may be but I could be entirely wrong.

What ever PVE ends up being its a sure bet they have been looking at all the market has offered and went from there to making something for Mecharrior Online.

Edited by Johnny Z, 08 November 2016 - 11:57 PM.

[Johnny Z]

DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, on 08 November 2016 - 09:54 PM, said:

Worst idea ever! That's why pvp sucks is because of its players. I'll even go as far as saying that normal AI is better than the average potato in MWO. Also you need population for that which is why CW failed. AI is the only way to go and I want a offline PVE experience so when pvp is finally dead I still can play stompy robots.

Your right. PVE should be a completely fresh addition, with a coop option. PVP is where its at for any online game though and PVE could serve to equip the player better to do pvp.

The more meaningfull the PVE and PVP are the better it is.

Edited by Johnny Z, 08 November 2016 - 11:37 PM.

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

Johnny Z, on 08 November 2016 - 11:19 PM, said:

A comparison is exactly where to start.

The kings of PVE at this moment are FF XV, Mass Effect Andromeda, Fallout 4 (because VR is on the way)

MechWarrior Online and Mass Effect are very similar games, always have been. Mass Effect will go for using missions in an interesting epic way. Looks like they may have some kind of settlement system like Fallout 4 has, which is almost completely irrelevant to this game unless planetary defense gets really interesting.

Missions/quests/co-op/horde mod/base defense have all been asked for on this forum since closed beta in one form or another.

Cyberpunk 2077 may be another level of awesome but no one knows a thing about it.

Titanfall 1 had interesting story mode missions worked into multiplayer but some had trouble finding matches to complete the story.

Titanfall 2 has atmosphere issues.

If it were up to me the start of a story would be a quest to rescue a smokin hot engineer chic to repair my mech. and stays on board the player dropship if there was one. Maybe some part of it is replayable like the planet she is rescued from remains hostile.

Another story would be like how it seems Battletech is going to do it with an intro to an awesome dropship and the npc's on board.

I have a guess how Cyberpunk 2077 is going to do it and it could be really awesome. I also have a guess what Bethesdas new title may be but I could be entirely wrong.

What ever PVE ends up being its a sure bet they have been looking at all the market has offered and went from there to making something for Mecharrior Online.

I'll add to PVE kings a bit.

DOOM 4 (32 Hours of insane death dance demon killing) , MetalGear Sold 5 The Phantom Pain (160hrs of play in the first 3 weeks I had it) , GTA 5, Titanfall 2 (Damn good but short) Call of Duty Infinite Warfare (Surprisingly good for once and non-liner MWO could benefit from its control room (mech hanger)map pick mission option).

Not many if any games are pure pvp, and if they are they aren't very successful.

[Johnny Z]

DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, on 08 November 2016 - 11:40 PM, said:

I'll add to PVE kings a bit.

DOOM 4 (32 Hours of insane death dance demon killing) , MetalGear Sold 5 The Phantom Pain (160hrs of play in the first 3 weeks I had it) , GTA 5, Titanfall 2 (Damn good but short) Call of Duty Infinite Warfare (Surprisingly good for once and non-liner MWO could benefit from its control room (mech hanger)map pick mission option).

Not many if any games are pure pvp, and if they are they aren't very successful.

I don't agree with any of those and some are just bad, but Infinite Warfare is going in the right direction if they didn't mess it up to bad. Infinite Warfare could allow players to choose the other side. Titanfall is just missing something in their story and character.

GTA 5 didn't allow the player to make the characters....

Metal Gear had a couple issues, one of them being a bit wacky. Again player cant make their own character, or customize NPC's.

This is one reason Mass Effect Andromeda is going to be so good. I didn't get any of the Mass Effect DLC's to date but its almost for sure Andromeda's will be worth getting.

I didn't play any of those games only some of Fallout and some of Mass Effect series. Didn't play Witcher 3 either but Cyberpunk 2077 is almost a sure bet.

Edited by Johnny Z, 08 November 2016 - 11:59 PM.

[DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley]

Johnny Z, on 08 November 2016 - 11:45 PM, said:

I don't agree with any of those and some are just bad, but Infinite Warfare is going in the right direction if they didn't mess it up to bad. Infinite Warfare could allow players to choose the other side. Titanfall is just missing something in their story and character.

GTA 5 didn't allow the player to make the characters....

Metal Gear had a couple issues, one of them being a bit wacky. Again player cant make their own character, or customize NPC's.

This is one reason Mass Effect Andromeda is going to be so good. I didn't get any of the Mass Effect DLC's to date but its almost for sure Andromeda's will be worth getting.

I didn't play any of those games only some of Fallout and some of Mass Effect series. Didn't play Witcher 3 either but Cyberpunk 2077 is almost a sure bet.

You're half right. Metal Gear did allow you to make your character and GTA 5 online does too. I subject matter is preference. As for doing single players correctly they were engaging and done well (if you like the subject matter)

Yes I want pilot creation and customization
I want to own my own planet, cruiser, drop ship, and customizable mech hangers in each.
Yes I want to story lines and experiences to go through. DLC lore expansions where you're just a mech pilot watching history unfold in the different timelines.
Ultimately I'd want an open world endgame like GTA 5 that allows private rooms, or even kinda destiny like but with obviously more content
And obviously a new engine since cryengine has all of its programmers working for Chris Roberts.

Only thing missing in Titanfall was you wished it was the BR universe;)

Edited by DiabetesOverlord Wilford Brimley, 09 November 2016 - 12:12 AM.

[Alex Morgaine]

JediPanther, on 08 November 2016 - 10:21 PM, said:

I'm bored to death of mwo. Even an announcement of Solaris won't get me to do much. I've been taking the mechs and putting them into different game engines and trying to reverse engineer them to try and rebuild them into the elder scrolls. When they first announced the mech academy they told us that it would be a constant test bed of ai and other things to eventually add pve or co-op. Once you get the few extra million c-bills out of it there really is not much use for it. Doesn't even teach you how to do simple stuff like avoid missiles or counter ecm.

Ooooooo tell us if you succeed, we wants Mech fun in New Vegas too :3
...
Ok maybe 4 also but it just feels less fallout-y to me and more generic wasteland game.