395 replies to this topic

[Napoleon_Blownapart]

most of our problems are from being built on an unsupported free to use older cryengine (game was never listed on their site).MWO teased switching engines last year that could support DX12 and havent heard squat since but we have players that underperform using DX11 and are still playing in DX9, in 2016......

[NocturnalBeast]

Roach, on 14 December 2016 - 02:33 AM, said:

Ok this is getting really confusing now!
Until February there is plenty of time to work out a working skill system. Leaving some quirks but remove most of them and introducing a new skill tree... Only I think that this is getting overcomplicated?

It is unnecessarily complicated because Mechs in Battletech are not meant to be "balanced", there are Mechs that are old and outdated as well a new and technologically advanced. Also, some Mechs were not designed as well as others either and quality / workmanship varied amongst manufacturers, just like the war machines of today.

[Floydpr]

If Mechwarrior online not support VR this game is dead for me. Thay said that they will work with Virtual Reality but I don't see nothing about this. Now I know that they not have plans on 2017 for VR I don't going to support them any more.

Edited by Floydpr, 21 December 2016 - 08:04 PM.

[Aramuside]

Floydpr, on 21 December 2016 - 08:03 PM, said:

If Mechwarrior online not support VR this game is dead for me. Thay said that they will work with Virtual Reality but I don't see nothing about this. Now I know that they not have plans on 2017 for VR I don't going to support them any more.

Fascinating... glad you shared that random post.

[Kijiro Bugboy]

Ed Steele, on 16 December 2016 - 04:15 PM, said:

It is unnecessarily complicated because Mechs in Battletech are not meant to be "balanced", there are Mechs that are old and outdated as well a new and technologically advanced. Also, some Mechs were not designed as well as others either and quality / workmanship varied amongst manufacturers, just like the war machines of today.

I'm not claiming that you're against the idea of balance, but in a competitive multiplayer game like MechWarrior Online it is much more important than realism or adherence to lore. This is by far the best-balanced game in the series.

I myself am a long-time BattleTech fan (if a decade counts as long-time, anyhow), so I know how it feels to see a series taken in a direction you don't completely agree with. But if you ask me, PGI has done an outstanding job thus far of implementing MechWarrior into a multiplayer competitive setting, while still keeping it a MechWarrior game. While how good of a job they've actually done is completely subjective, I feel that all too often the Pilot Tier 1 old-timer fanboys forget what this video game is meant to be at its core.

I don't mean to attack or insult any group of players; that is not my goal. I apologize if anything in this post came out that way.

[Johnny Z]

Looking forward to whats new in 2017 also. Happy New Year to the people building this game.

[Apollo777]

So with new skill system we really don't need to buy x3 of chassis?
Because I like to get some mechs from this Holliday sale, but i'm not sure to get x3 from a chassis to mastery one of them or just buy the one that i want to master/keep it?!

[Dee Eight]

IF you need elite/mastered mechs before the skilltree change, you'll need to still follow the rule of 3. If you can wait until the change occurs before playing the mechs, then you can just discount purchase them now. I have heavies I bought during the heavy event sale back in august I still haven't skilled out. When the 20% discount on mastery bundles sale happened this summer I similarly bought a couple bundles and haven't finished mastering those mechs. I just bought three zeus today because I lacked 80 ton mechs in my garage to use when doing drop deck math. Not counting them, I still have 72 other mechs to skill up. I think I can buy this hero or that champion and wait to use them.

[Whiskey Dharma]

I can see an upside to longer leveling times for individual mechs.

As it stands now, I can max out a mech in 40 or so matches, not including matches played in alt variants. So even though I love playing (for example) my MAD-3R, it’s only accumulating XP that’s useless until I spend $. And even then, the GXP is of no use to the mech it was earned on. Essentially, the game currently nudges me to start a new variant or chassis, because it offers no way to continue developing the -3R.

Under the new system, I can still play and improve my mech of choice over a longer career, without feeling like I’m wasting my time, or that I should be playing something else. So, yay.

But I could see how this change would be frustrating to players looking for a more egalitarian game, where a player can quickly and easily master a mech and be on equal footing with established vets (outside of skill, of course).

Overall, the longer mech leveling times could promote the purchase of premium time, and perhaps discourage players from buying an endless number of new mechs. That, in turn, could normalize cash flow to PGI and make them less dependent on releasing new mechs every few months to stay in the black. Or, who knows - maybe the people inclined to get premium time already have it, and the lack of mech sales will hurt them.

[Aramuside]

Whiskey Dharma, on 28 December 2016 - 02:42 PM, said:

I can see an upside to longer leveling times for individual mechs.

As it stands now, I can max out a mech in 40 or so matches, not including matches played in alt variants. So even though I love playing (for example) my MAD-3R, it’s only accumulating XP that’s useless until I spend $. And even then, the GXP is of no use to the mech it was earned on. Essentially, the game currently nudges me to start a new variant or chassis, because it offers no way to continue developing the -3R.

Under the new system, I can still play and improve my mech of choice over a longer career, without feeling like I’m wasting my time, or that I should be playing something else. So, yay.

But I could see how this change would be frustrating to players looking for a more egalitarian game, where a player can quickly and easily master a mech and be on equal footing with established vets (outside of skill, of course).

Overall, the longer mech leveling times could promote the purchase of premium time, and perhaps discourage players from buying an endless number of new mechs. That, in turn, could normalize cash flow to PGI and make them less dependent on releasing new mechs every few months to stay in the black. Or, who knows - maybe the people inclined to get premium time already have it, and the lack of mech sales will hurt them.

I get your point but if it does take roughly the same time as at present I'm not sure it will pan out like that. I like to max EVERY mech and am steadily collecting them all so the mechbay cost has never been such an issue. The big changes are more likely to be (IMO) that most people will pick the only good versions so never be in weaker mechs whereas collectors like me will be stat building fodder.

The other change is that PGI HAVE to counter the loss of most of their revenue, aka mechbays from non pack buyers, in some way - will the MC cost to change quirk builds really do that?

For me the danger more is in how they gate the quirks. For example, atm EVERY non LRM mech I have mounts Radar Dep while levelling (Possibly not ECM carriers as an edge case). At the moment its a non brainer as the GXP and module cost is already paid. What happens if that's now far down the tree and costs too much to get? Then suddenly LRM's get far more useful and scouting in my usual lights gets lethal again in anything non ECM based. Neither are particularly good outcomes for me. Balance is going to be utterly turned on its head with the new quirks unless they're really clever. For good or bad!

[MovinTarget]

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge lurms!!!"

-Patches O'Houlihan

[Tarl Cabot]

The actual OP needs to be placed in the Command Chair. Why has it not been added there?

[Void Angel]

Ed Steele, on 16 December 2016 - 04:15 PM, said:

It is unnecessarily complicated because Mechs in Battletech are not meant to be "balanced", there are Mechs that are old and outdated as well a new and technologically advanced. Also, some Mechs were not designed as well as others either and quality / workmanship varied amongst manufacturers, just like the war machines of today.

Lore fluff and power creep obsolescence in tabletop has nothing to do with what he's talking about, or about balance in this game. Conflating tabletop mechanics and supporting fiction with an actual question about how this game's skill system is going to work can only add confusion.

[Void Angel]

Willothius, on 13 December 2016 - 11:40 AM, said:

Someone did say they (PGI) confirmed that not ALL quirks are going away... Not sure what that means though..

Ed Steele, on 13 December 2016 - 06:09 PM, said:

They said that the Mechs that needed the quirks the worst would keep the most necessary quirks and your skills would add bonuses on top of those quirks.

Roach, on 14 December 2016 - 02:33 AM, said:

Ok this is getting really confusing now!
Until February there is plenty of time to work out a working skill system. Leaving some quirks but remove most of them and introducing a new skill tree... Only I think that this is getting overcomplicated?

It's not complicated at all in practice, based on what's been described. They're rolling most quirks into the skill system (Comstar help us all when the Clans can self-quirk their builds,) and handling the problem of underperforming 'mechs with some base quirks and increased bonuses in the skill tree.

So if a PPC-oriented Inner Sphere 'mech needs quirks to be competitive, they might give it small baseline quirks to PPC velocity and give each skill point in that weapon system more of a bonus than other 'mechs. We'll be able to see all of this easily on the 'mech's loadout and skill tree, so it won't be confusing at all.

[xEdSteelex]

Void Angel, on 31 December 2016 - 07:18 PM, said:

It's not complicated at all in practice, based on what's been described. They're rolling most quirks into the skill system (Comstar help us all when the Clans can self-quirk their builds,) and handling the problem of underperforming 'mechs with some base quirks and increased bonuses in the skill tree.

So if a PPC-oriented Inner Sphere 'mech needs quirks to be competitive, they might give it small baseline quirks to PPC velocity and give each skill point in that weapon system more of a bonus than other 'mechs. We'll be able to see all of this easily on the 'mech's loadout and skill tree, so it won't be confusing at all.

Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior to IS mechs, the tech has been improved on for about 300 years. Imagine what real Earth tech would be like 300 years ago, we were still fighting with swords and muskets!

[Uncle Totty]

xEdSteelex, on 01 January 2017 - 01:32 AM, said:

Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior to IS mechs, the tech has been improved on for about 300 years. Imagine what real Earth tech would be like 300 years ago, we were still fighting with swords and muskets!

The tech gap was actually not THAT big. It was more along the line of THIS: https://youtu.be/4ziEMlarjiU

(It is still a big gap though.)

Edited by Uncle Totty, 01 January 2017 - 06:52 AM.

[MovinTarget]

xEdSteelex, on 01 January 2017 - 01:32 AM, said:

Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior to IS mechs

Yes, but severely lopsided games don't sell much...

[Wintersdark]

xEdSteelex, on 01 January 2017 - 01:32 AM, said:

Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior to IS mechs, the tech has been improved on for about 300 years. Imagine what real Earth tech would be like 300 years ago, we were still fighting with swords and muskets!

Clan Mechs are not supposed to be superior to IS mechs in MWO. From the start, the stated goal has been to have balanced mechs.

Indeed, the creator of Battletech admitted that having clan mechs be superior was one of the biggest mistakes they made and it caused a lot of problems in Battletech as well.

But however you feel "it's supposed to be", it's simply not a sustainable game design to have one faction simply be objectively better than another. It doesn't work.

[Aramuside]

I still haven't seen a single reason under the new system, after reading 19 pages of this thread, why 90% of mechs will ever be seen. Imagine levelling mist lynxes, vindicators etc with "minimal" skills. Laughable as you won't even be able to chuck modules on there to make them less awful.

Edited by Aramuside, 01 January 2017 - 11:53 AM.

[Void Angel]

xEdSteelex, on 01 January 2017 - 01:32 AM, said:

Clan Mechs are supposed to be superior to IS mechs, the tech has been improved on for about 300 years. Imagine what real Earth tech would be like 300 years ago, we were still fighting with swords and muskets!

BZZZZZZT! Wrong!
Clan 'mechs are supposed to be equivalent in power to the Inner Sphere 'mechs because we are playing Mechwarrior Online.

I realize that the fictional backstory for the Clans has them being technologically superior to the Inner Sphere - and stopped only by a Deus Ex Machina of epic proportions. But that won't fly here, because each pilot is piloting one 'mech at a time. This leads us to one of two destinations: either the Clans must be balanced, or the Inner Sphere must be given greater numbers in every match. A lot of wannabe lore-hounds say, "yeah, do that! 10v12 would totally be balanced with canon Clantech!" Leaving aside the fact that this is patently untrue, it's not a workable solution in the first place:

Giving the Clans canon tech advantage would make them incredible combatants, particularly in the hands of skilled players, who would flock to the Clans because they like to compete - both in teams and as individuals. This is why the Clans have more experienced players than the Inner Sphere as it is. Canon tech imbalance would create a situation where the Clans stride the battlefield like gods among insects, while the Inner Sphere tries to drag them down by sheer numerical superiority. Some players have said they'd enjoy this; I doubt they truly understand what they'd be in for, but in any case they're a tiny minority. For most players, it's fun to play as the Ogre, and it's fun to play as the attacking conventional forces - but it's not fun to play one of the conventional forces against the Ogre.

This has all been hashed out years ago - it's not a live subject, and to keep on making the claim after it's been thoroughly debunked (not to mention empirically wrong given the context) is just willful ignorance.