395 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

xengk, on 05 December 2016 - 01:43 AM, said:

IK should also fix alot of pebble stumbling, since the system will now calculate the exact foot fall of the mech instead of proximate using mech CT.
Mech should now able to step on or over small obstacles without getting stuck.

I'm not so sure. That's possible, but it is pretty likely the effect will just be cosmetic.

[C E Dwyer]

slimenator, on 05 December 2016 - 04:20 AM, said:

God!
Is there any chance that MW:O will change from Cry to Unreal Engine?

Because the UI Disaster with this bloody Cry Engine eats up to 15 FPS. And looks horrible. Ok, some Devs can handle it, for example Evolve.

But the first look of MW5 is way nicer than MWO now.

Just my thinking.

MWO looked a lot nicer in early closed beta, they then reduced the quality, for those with PC's that couldn't handle the graphic load

This could also be the case with the new toy

[MovinTarget]

Cathy, on 05 December 2016 - 10:47 AM, said:

MWO looked a lot nicer in early closed beta, they then reduced the quality, for those with PC's that couldn't handle the graphic load

This could also be the case with the new toy

Yup, seeing as MWO is dependent on discreet transactions, it will always be in their best interest to get as many people as possible to be able to play the game (optimizational missteps notwithstanding). So it needs to be as potato friendly as possible while still appearing as gorgeous as possible for those that can afford the gud grafix.

[Ajantise]

The Faceless, on 04 December 2016 - 02:22 PM, said:

Forgive my ignorance but what is Meck IK?

Inverse Kinematics for object skeletons. The force of multiple forces with different power on one joint. The movment of objects in 3D objects work like skeletons with joints and boxes (light, med heavy and assault skeletons), and all the "meat" (objects, and textures) are just for show ;-)

[Grinster]

MovinTarget, on 05 December 2016 - 08:04 AM, said:

Are PGI's implementation choices that much more egregious than any of the other BT games? I have not played them all, but I'me pretty sure MW3, MW4 (and its MekTek) content all had tons of non-lore content and mechanics. I mean, how many people played NHUA games in MW4 and built their mechs to not carry any ammo or additional HS? Did they have non-cannon mechs? Yes. Non-Cannon Weapons? I think so (or were just out of timeline). Cheating was easier if I remember correctly (I think the reticle changed colors when you had an enemy in your crosshairs). I really wonder if the creators of those games had such open forums back in the day, would they have had comparable backlash? I think the biggest problem is that PGI is trying to make FPS fans and Lore fans happy and these groups are not necessarily going to want the same things.

Through the ages, wherever mech nerds gather, there has always been much wailing and gnashing of teeth e.g. -https://groups.googl...N8/Wzm_aBzyv18J

[Void Angel]

Ed Steele, on 03 December 2016 - 09:42 PM, said:

MW5 looks sweet! Everything is scaled correctly and the mechs actually "feel" like massive walking tanks. Please switch MWO to Unreal Engine.

They've been wanting to update the engine for a while now - so it's quite possible (and I hope likely) that the MW5 work can be leveraged to update MWO.

[I_AM_ZUUL]

Ok... my intial reaction to the Skill Tree announcement was to freak out, then people reassured me that i shouldnt be freaking so i calmed down a little. MWO just put out a video about.... WHAT THE ****!!!!!!!!!!! So now it cost 10,000 XP/GXP for each Skill Point, every Mech can have 75 Skill Points, and it cost 50,000 cbills for each Skill Point placement... bringing the grand total of 750,000xp/gxp & 3,750,000 cbills to fully unlock a single mech. but wait.... theres more! they made sure to put a very easy to find button to convert Mech XP to GXP for real money (MC) on the Home screen which makes it all better, right???

the comments are disabled on the video... way to make the game even worse for new players & driving people down to just a very few Meta-Mechs because of the exorbitant cost in grinding and/or real money to spec out each individual mech. as someone who is sitting on millions & millions of mech xp that will be refunded and at least 1 of every module in the game... this is still daunting to me, any new or casual player is going to drop this game like a hot rock.

[NocturnalBeast]

I_AM_ZUUL, on 05 December 2016 - 12:25 PM, said:

Ok... my intial reaction to the Skill Tree announcement was to freak out, then people reassured me that i shouldnt be freaking so i calmed down a little. MWO just put out a video about.... WHAT THE ****!!!!!!!!!!! So now it cost 10,000 XP/GXP for each Skill Point, every Mech can have 75 Skill Points, and it cost 50,000 cbills for each Skill Point placement... bringing the grand total of 750,000xp/gxp & 3,750,000 cbills to fully unlock a single mech. but wait.... theres more! they made sure to put a very easy to find button to convert Mech XP to GXP for real money (MC) on the Home screen which makes it all better, right???

the comments are disabled on the video... way to make the game even worse for new players & driving people down to just a very few Meta-Mechs because of the exorbitant cost in grinding and/or real money to spec out each individual mech. as someone who is sitting on millions & millions of mech xp that will be refunded and at least 1 of every module in the game... this is still daunting to me, any new or casual player is going to drop this game like a hot rock.

I disagree, having something to work for gives the game more longevity. And the game is far from difficult for new players. Check out my What Mech Challenge or Order of the Black Phoenix Challenge / Event and see what you can do in this game with a brand new account.

[smokefield]

its like reliving the hype from 6 years ago. and all of that blowned up in a field of smoke.

and we all know that history has a ironic way of repeating itself.

Edited by smokefield, 05 December 2016 - 12:38 PM.

[Arkhangel]

smokefield, on 05 December 2016 - 12:38 PM, said:

its like reliving the hype from 6 years ago. and all of that blowned up in a field of smoke.

and we all know that history has a ironic way of repeating itself.

only if you don't learn from it bear in mind they had IGP back then, and Harmony Gold were being dickholes as well. a lot's changed since.

[NocturnalBeast]

Arkhangel, on 05 December 2016 - 01:23 PM, said:

only if you don't learn from it bear in mind they had IGP back then, and Harmony Gold were being dickholes as well. a lot's changed since.

Not to mention they now have the creative cooperation of one of the co-fathers of BATTLETECH.

[MovinTarget]

smokefield, on 05 December 2016 - 12:38 PM, said:

field of smoke

I see what you did there

Kind of like if *I* said this Roadmap is a bit of a moving target, eh?

[Lizardman from Hollywood]

All I care about is when I can get that skin for my shadow hawk.

[Ebins]

TL;DR I disapprove of the removal of the individual factions

I think I can speak for a lot of us here by saying that the removal of the individual factions will be rather disheartening. At least, I hope I can say that. Most of us who have chosen a particular faction have done so for a very good reason. Either through friendships, roleplay adherence, or a combination of both have we come to favor our particular one. Through this, we understood that there were vast differences between them on even a regional level (IS vs Clan). We enjoyed our differences, enjoyed the extra friendly competition, and enjoyed our chosen identities. To lose this will mean to lose part of our enjoyment of this game.

Yes, I understand the "practicality" of this reasoning, but it feels like a band-aid to a severed limb. Find out why the player count is down and address those issues instead of upsetting part of what still remains.

Yet I do see steps towards this in the upcoming patch and more distant plans. I love the idea of the skill tree revamp, enjoy that you can now quick play faction wise (could it be what I think it is?) and am happy to see a general map reset (if not in the way that should be done). It seems about time that the Inner Sphere be taught yet another lesson...

I just really wish you wouldn't remove the individual factions themselves.

[Jack Shayu Walker]

radiv, on 05 December 2016 - 06:34 AM, said:

First of all they are struggelig with making 1 game at a time. So no they cant hire a bunch of people and it will be okay. If they could do that they would make mwo great a long time ago.
And then is the other thing. How are they funding this new crew? So they got people playing a multiplayer game funding a singleplayergame. Lots of people dont care for beating a stupid ai, so its really a bad deal for them to support this game now.

First by who's definition are they struggling to develop 1 game at a time? They are developing a game just fine, what they're struggling to do is please their divided customer base. Personally I love MWO, it's my favorite game that I own. I would be disappointed if development stopped, but I could live with what we have now for the rest of time if they just kept the servers up.

First-and-a-half, that's a non-sequitur, your second sentence does nto follow from the argument you've made in your first. If PGI team 1 is composed of Allen, Brick, Joey and Steve, and they have developed MWO very poorly, that says next to nothing about how the new hires on team 2: Marty, Jim, and Spok, and Duke will preform when they are tasked to create MW5.

Now if PGI divides team 1 to make up team 2 then you should be concerned about progress on MWO slowing down, and if team 2 has members that have previously been a part of team 1 but both teams are brought up to full strength, you might see some marginal negative impact from their performance. However, PGI has not given us any details about how these teams are made up.

To me it stands to reason that both teams will be nearly at full strength by the time MW5 is in full development, and if this is the case you're going to have a fair amount of fresh blood somewhere working on each of the projects, and that will encourage things to change, whether for better or worse.

Second, I think you vastly under-estimate how many battletech fans want to see another single player game. I can see your argument making more sense for the crowd of players where this is their first Mechwarrior game, but the old guard seems largely pleased with the MW5 decision to me.

Oh and don't worry, I've spent $1500+ on this game, and I'd be happy to work my whale booty a little more if it means I could support the development of MW5 a little more to make up for the few players who will now stop spending money because of MW5.

[SovietArmada]

Oh man custom skill tree, can't wait. But I also see how some mechs will just become meta kings with that degree of control .

Still, I have always wanted to give my HBK-4H the old agility quirks it had, and there will be room for weapon and heat works as well. Can't wait.

[MovinTarget]

Ebins, on 05 December 2016 - 02:45 PM, said:

TL;DR I disapprove of the removal of the individual factions

I think I can speak for a lot of us here by saying that the removal of the individual factions will be rather disheartening. At least, I hope I can say that. Most of us who have chosen a particular faction have done so for a very good reason. Either through friendships, roleplay adherence, or a combination of both have we come to favor our particular one. Through this, we understood that there were vast differences between them on even a regional level (IS vs Clan). We enjoyed our differences, enjoyed the extra friendly competition, and enjoyed our chosen identities. To lose this will mean to lose part of our enjoyment of this game.

Yes, I understand the "practicality" of this reasoning, but it feels like a band-aid to a severed limb. Find out why the player count is down and address those issues instead of upsetting part of what still remains.

Yet I do see steps towards this in the upcoming patch and more distant plans. I love the idea of the skill tree revamp, enjoy that you can now quick play faction wise (could it be what I think it is?) and am happy to see a general map reset (if not in the way that should be done). It seems about time that the Inner Sphere be taught yet another lesson...

I just really wish you wouldn't remove the individual factions themselves.

Yes, most of the time there will be just 2 buckets, but there will be events that allow classic rivalries to be relived. The only thing that might kill these event would be people not showing up to rep their faction. If i understand correctly it will probably play out like the little faction event they had a year or so ago where there was some flavor and incentive added for factions to achieve a particular goal against one another.

TL;DR
No factions were harmed in the announcement of this roadmap.

[Crashking]

Rogue Jedi, on 04 December 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

and they are constantly working in MWO
there is a simple test to prove this
put 1 (or more) Medium lasers on a Mech
fire 1 laser, note the heat level at the end of its burn time, now after letting your Mech cool fire 2, and take note of the heat level, if the heatsinks only activate after the burn finishes you should be at exactly double the heat level you were after firing one

did you notice how at the end of the burn time from firing 2 your Mech is at more than double the heat level was is after firing 1, that is because the heatsinks have started removing heat as soon as the weapon starts generating it, but your Mech does not (unless you have put on a crazy number of heatsinks) have enough dissipation to completely sink the heat of firing 2 ML in the beam duration

Daggett, on 04 December 2016 - 03:53 PM, said:

I don't get what you mean. Heatsinks do work constantly right now, you can verify it in testing grounds. Just put 6 c-splas in chainfire and hold down the trigger. With 10 DHS your heat will rise constantly while firing. But the more DHS you put into your mech, the less heat will be applied, up to the point where your dissipation exeeds the generation which allows you to chainfire all day long. That's exactly what you want: When you are too hot, you only stop firing the weapons which would generate more heat than you can dissipate. But you never have to entirely stop firing.

okay since neither of you believes me, I guess I just have to draw you a roadmap and yes this can be done in testing grounds. It doesn't exactly matter the mech you use but some decent ones to prove my example are Victor 9s or 9b, Zeus 6s or 9s2. Now when I did this AC5 heat was only 1 point each instead of the now 1.5 but basically you take a mech that has 2 ballistic slots and fill it in with 2 AC5's the rest can be lasers or missiles ect. Point being here is fill the lasers out with like mediums so they are nice and light and you can stick in a boat load of heat sinks. Now go to testing grounds... doesn't matter the map exactly but a hotter one will heat you up faster and cool off slower.. and vice versa for a cold map. Once in map Fire off stuff until you get your heat warning near 80% or you can even go a bit higher. Then just keep chain firing off the AC5.. you will overheat even though your heat sinks should be dissipating the heat you have built up. You can build this up on SMURFY and adjust the weapons to see that it shows you should have a much higher cooling efficiency running, by just using the 2 AC5 but in reality in game you don't lose heat until you stop firing all weapons.

now depending on the mech you use and its quirks there might be some delay In there where the AC5 aren't going off and you will see a slight heat decrease but it is possible to have the mech shut down from just firing off the AC5. For reference the mech I have built uses 17 double heat sinks - 10 defaults, 3 extra in engine and 4 in side torsos. If heat sinks were working constantly the mech should cool off by using less weapons and still allowing you to fire some. You can look at various builds on SMURFY and see your heat capacity; it is possible to push some up to as high as 100 or better. This is part of the overall problem with the game, the other is the lack of fixed heat scale which is what balances all mechs IS & Clan alike. The fixed heat scale will increase the TTK (which was one goal PGI was looking at), end need for ghost heat and deal with their huge alpha strike problem.

They took a system that worked and broke it.

With the new update to skill tree and removal off all quirks I can't wait to see how badly IS mechs will preform verse the clanners

LET's GET IT RIGHT and REALLY BALANCE THE GAME!

I can deal with how they have the weapons producing heat when fired and needing time to cool off though this is contrary to rules of tabletop, which only have heat build up for exceeding your heat sink capacity. I wonder how the co-founder looks at what PGI has produced here compared to what they made originally as well as what type of input he might have had.

Edited by Crashking, 05 December 2016 - 05:41 PM.

[MovinTarget]

Crashking, on 05 December 2016 - 05:35 PM, said:

okay since neither of you believes me, I guess I just have to draw you a roadmap and yes this can be done in testing grounds. It doesn't exactly matter the mech you use but some decent ones to prove my example are Victor 9s or 9b, Zeus 6s or 9s2. Now when I did this AC5 heat was only 1 point each instead of the now 1.5 but basically you take a mech that has 2 ballistic slots and fill it in with 2 AC5's the rest can be lasers or missiles ect. Point being here is fill the lasers out with like mediums so they are nice and light and you can stick in a boat load of heat sinks. Now go to testing grounds... doesn't matter the map exactly but a hotter one will heat you up faster and cool off slower.. and vice versa for a cold map. Once in map Fire off stuff until you get your heat warning near 80% or you can even go a bit higher. Then just keep chain firing off the AC5.. you will overheat even though your heat sinks should be dissipating the heat you have built up. You can build this up on SMURFY and adjust the weapons to see that it shows you should have a much higher cooling efficiency running, by just using the 2 AC5 but in reality in game you don't lose heat until you stop firing all weapons.

now depending on the mech you use and its quirks there might be some delay In there where the AC5 aren't going off and you will see a slight heat decrease but it is possible to have the mech shut down from just firing off the AC5. For reference the mech I have built uses 17 double heat sinks - 10 defaults, 3 extra in engine and 4 in side torsos. If heat sinks were working constantly the mech should cool off by using less weapons and still allowing you to fire some. You can look at various builds on SMURFY and see your heat capacity; it is possible to push some up to as high as 100 or better. This is part of the overall problem with the game, the other is the lack of fixed heat scale which is what balances all mechs IS & Clan alike. The fixed heat scale will increase the TTK (which was one goal PGI was looking at), end need for ghost heat and deal with their huge alpha strike problem.

They took a system that worked and broke it.

With the new update to skill tree and removal off all quirks I can't wait to see how badly IS mechs will preform verse the clanners

LET's GET IT RIGHT and REALLY BALANCE THE GAME!

I can deal with how they have the weapons producing heat when fired and needing time to cool off though this is contrary to rules of tabletop, which only have heat build up for exceeding your heat sink capacity. I wonder how the co-founder looks at what PGI has produced here compared to what they made originally as well as what type of input he might have had.

I'm sorry, but all arguments demanding a real time FPS adhere to turn-based rules (where each "turn" comprises ~10 seconds - which in MWO is an eternity) must cite copious examples of prior MW games that followed strict adherence to BT rules, concepts, and game mechanics...

Why? because not a single dang game was ever able to truly emulate BT TT... and still be a good FPS. I think that's why they are called MECHWARRIOR games and not BATTLETECH games.

So your argument can be "I don't understand why HS behave the way they do" or you can assert "I don't think HS work properly in MWO"

But you can't use TT rules to justify how they should work, because if we made HS work like they were envisioned in BT, then weapons would need to fire as they did in BT, then movement needs to be handled the way they were in BT and... Next thing you know this would be a turn-based game... not a Mechwarrior FPS game.

Like every other MW title, there had to be compromise in order to bring the BT universe to a FPS...


Hey lets make it true to lore so the clans would be so technologically superior the only hope the IS has is to force clan players to play/act like clanners in BT and force them to bid on invasion rights and make them duel when challenged and fight all honorably unless they wanna go dezgra...


...yeah... you seeing why they (nor any designer prior) has ever gone full BT in their MW title?

Edited by MovinTarget, 05 December 2016 - 06:15 PM.

[Crashking]

Krucilatoz, on 04 December 2016 - 09:20 PM, said:

As a software engineer, i can relate why PGI build MW5. This may be their scenario :

1. Create MW5, using unreal engine, and port all 'Mech models, textures, weapon mechanics, etc into unreal -- THATS A HELL LOT OF WORK
2. Sell MW5, hope they gain profit and new playerbase from this
3. If plan no 2 success, remake the MWO (maybe as MWO2) using Unreal engine. Note that mech model,textures,weapons already implemented, PGI next task is to reimplement MWO into new MWO2 game. This, if things goes smoothly, may be in late 2018 or early 2019.

Lets just show our support in constructive ways.

Remember, those game developer is also humans, just like you.

So what you are saying is since they are human we should just expect mistakes and let them take our cash for not fulfilling the goals they set forth as being expectations in MWO? They should be able to use the monies paid in under MWO to go out and make a whole new game that they plan to sell us. MWO has enough problems without them splitting their focus as a way to try for more $$$. At the rate I see the industry going, I just might have to head to the library for some books and other entertainment instead.