6 replies to this topic

[Ahab Saline]

Well, I've had two days off to try this game, and I can't do it anymore. I had heard of MW:5 some years back, but thought it had been cancelled. About a month ago, I found out MWO existed and is what MW:5 kind of morphed into. So, for a few weeks I read up on it and read a lot of the forums, played around with the smurfy mechlab, etc, and finally got around to downloading it last week. Spent two days going through various training, and in retrospect I should have known something was wrong then. During the piloting test, I passed through the green smoke at 1:31 remaining four times before it would register any better than 1:29.15, but I chalked that up to bad server lag.
Starting the day before yesterday, I had a big chunk of off time to play, so I started playing for real. The game mechanic was worse than I thought, but not so bad as to put me off of playing one of my favorite franchises. Using mostly the Orion-IIC I got through the cadet period, and since my favorite was always a Daishi, and I always ran them AC-20 heavy (even waaay back when I had played the TT, using the custom rules), I got a Prime variant for the 30% cAC jam reduction and about two cUAC-20s.
And then the game promptly lost its mind.
Immediately, it began a periodic crash where it would open and close (as if hitting alt-tab) MWO, creating a seizure inducing flicker that can not be stopped in any way except for a cold reboot. A variation on this happened on a recovery from the normal flickering-crash, but on the log-in screen. This variant occasionally had 5-10 second pauses so after about an hour I manged to get task manager up. According to that, MWO was pulling 5+ gigs of ram on the log-in screen, and for some reason 40% of my hard drive space was taken up to create a 100% full hard drive. After rebooting from that, everything appeared normal... But the normal flicker-crash happened about 4 more times after that.
The servers began to randomly drop me, but only in game. I left the mechlab open for some time and nothing seemed to happen so long as I wasn't playing.
In game, things started to go very, very wonky. Twice, once with a Marauder and once with a Hunchback-IIC, I managed to file in behind them as they were backing up, and began pouring rapid fire AC-20 rounds into their rear torsos. In both cases I spent over a ton of ammunition (about 15 seconds) drilling into their backs to get the Marauder from red to dead, and the Hunch from a yellow torso armor to orange, moon walking behind them at a steady pace about 30-50 meters away. The Hunch wasn't lagging because he went on to fight once his buddies came up behind and killed me with (one) PPC shot to the back. In fact, I've been "one hit" killed probably better than 10 times. For example, an Arctic Cheeta hit me completely fresh (28 CRT armor+ internal)in the CRT with a cSRM-2 and cERML, and my favorite was a IS 'mech I didn't immediately recognize, as my death report read "Small Laster, CRT hit, Medium Laser CRT hit, Impact, Engine Critical Hit." If I follow, he hit me with an alpha while running into me, and it got through my armor and scored an engine crit. My damage would be right on for some matches, and in others hilariously off. If I recall, one match had me at 1 kill, 3 assists, 2 components, and 12 damage dealt. Granted, I felt like crap and couldn't stop wondering why so many rounds were doing so little damage at such close range (often close enough to see all 4 rounds of each shot go into the enemy and the sparking animation), but sometimes it worked to my advantage, too. A Kit Fox ran up to me and I heard him run into my legs and pulled the trigger. Between my arms, I can't hit them, so a lot of them do that, but this time a single shot insta-gibbed the little guy, but I still think the damage readout was 88? 12, 19, and 88 repeated a lot with the ACs, regardless if I was blowing Bushwacker arms off or getting a noobie cry for help shot off at a Locust before it ate me right at the beginning. I had read on the forms ammo explosions weren't all that common, but they became such an issue for me I stopped running my ACs because the one slot of in either torso would go up constantly.
Three times I had the blue diamond and mini-map icons for an allied player disappear, which led to friendly fire issues.
With the AC-go-boom issues, I decided that MWO isn't the game for me. My favorite Battletech gun is the AC-20, and the Clan version is horrid in this game, and the DWF is my favorite 'mech, and its rendition is pretty terrible too. Not crying over it, but I'm not going to play a game where my favorite elements are terrible, although the DWF getting stuck on pebbles and shooting sideways was hilarious (though the team mates who got shot, one of which lost an arm for being too close to my side during a badly aimed shot at the ground to try and hit an approaching enemy, might not think so), but I played around with different builds just to see what was what. I went to 5 cLPL, and after the first few games my fire groups would randomly change after I had saved them in the Mechlab. After a few more, regardless of how the groups were set up, either mouse button would produce between 1-5 lasers randomly. During this run, I caught another Dire Wolf coming out of the side tunnel entrance on Crimson Strait. We were both fresh. We exchanged one volley, and then somehow, I shot down into the left side of his hood/head with 2 cLPLs, and somehow not only stripped his right leg of armor, but outright legged him. The hit and animation played correctly where the lasers struck. No one else was in the city or tunnel... it was my shot that did it.
I played about 5 more games, with the in game buildings getting more poorly rendered each pass, with even the lasers eventually becoming like chains of long colored diamond shapes rather than looking like beams. I recall the buildings in the upper town of Crimson Strait flickering in and out of something like a wire frame. The laser and building changes made it feel almost like MW2, what was pretty neat, but I am sure it wasn't intended.
The last thing I tried was 2cUAC5s and 2cUAC10s. The first match I didn't realize all of my weapon groups had been erased, which led to a funny string of unintended alpha strikes, and in the second match when, despite the groups having been re-set and showing as correct, all four guns would continuously shoot when I held down either mouse button. A surprisingly fun game of shoot-shoot-shut down (AC 10 ghost heat hurts).
I tried running another game, it renders fine. Checked out my hardware, also fine. My average ping was about 29, except in the wee hours and things went mostly to Oceanic Server, where it was about 300. These 300 ping games were also the most trouble-free (I scared myself by coring a kdk-3 at about 150 meters with 2 double shots from the 2 AC 20s, as I had been thinking it took about 12 shots to get through an assault's mid during these runs). I asked some of the nicer players I ran into if they hard heard of various elements of what I was experiencing, but they hadn't. I tried searching for them, and did find mention of a window-related bug that reminded me of my first issue in 2013? Didn't read to much into it, though.
Like I said, with no real cAC to speak of and a DWF that is a walking wall that can't aim or shoot over its own knees instead of the yin to the Atlas yang that it is supposed to be (among other reasons (see: futility in a 2 button mouse when combined with 16 hard points, 50 tons of space, ghost heat, and about 12 non-number buttons already governed by the left hand, look under passage "illusion of choice") I have no intention of further playing this game. I can't imagine this is a legitimate bug in the engine, and I'd guess my DL is just insanely corrupted, but since I am on my way out I figured I'd throw it up here in case anyone else is having one or all of these issues.

[B0oN]

Works as intended ™ .

Welcome, new player .

Harden .
FAST .
or

These are not the mechs you´re looking for .

[Rogue Jedi]

Mechwarrior 5 is coming, in 2018, unfortunately there was a problem with finding funding for a single player battletech game, but now PGI are planning to publish one themselves next year.

I am sorry you are having so much trouble with MWO, and while I have very occaisionaly experianced some of the issues you mention (like semi transparent scenery) they tended to be right at the start of the match and only last a few seconds when they have happened.

the death report screen only reports which weapon types hit you, not the quantity, so it could be 12 small lasers and 6 srm2 ^{(or on an ACH 5 and 2, which would be insuffiscent to kill a Dire unless it critted some ammo)} killing you and it would only show small laser and srm2

the firing between 1 and 5 lasers at random sounds like you may have been hitting backspace, which changes a weapon group from alpha fire ^{(all at once)} to chain fire ^{(1 gun at a time)}

if you had posted in new player help with your concerns we probably could have helped resolve them, I am sorry that you have decided this game is not for you

[Ahab Saline]

Wasn't a backspace issue. I know about Alpha and chain-fire, and am a veteran of every MW game but this and LL, (as well as having played the TT) and am familiar with the concepts. The weapon issue turns out to have been a tertiary problem that was a result of my trying to get the game to do what I wanted it to do instead of accepting some things just aren't good. With two cUAC-20s in a weapon group set to chain-fire, they don't cycle through their ultra shots. Hitting the button a second time always resulted in both guns "double-tapping" simultaneously and generating silly ghost heat rather than having them chain-fire the double taps, so I had downloaded a firing macro and set it up to fix this... Again, two button mouse, arthritis and nerve damage in hands, and as much as I hate macros it seemed the only way to get the guns to work as they are intended to work (or at least as I reasoned out how they are intended to work, maybe not so much PGI).
The macro was interacting in some way with the game when I changed weapons, despite updating the macro settings with each change. If I turn it off the "random fire" and weapon group juggling seems to go away. I never thought of trying it because the macro (logically) can not reassign weapon groups in the game, which was the first of the two issues to come up.
As for the rest of the issues, before I uninstall I am going to log on and do a series of runs to try and figure out the rest of them. I'd love to know what is processed locally and what isn't, as the more I thought about it the more and more that seemed to logically explain most of my issues. If the effect animations are processed locally, I could be getting visual and sound indicators of hits when I am missing if the game is causing massive ram spikes (which the flickering bug seems to suggest) when combined with a different ping... as my higher ping games seemed to have fewer issues. I'm not a computer wizard, but it seems plausible. As far as the scenery going wire frame, I did some looking around and one of the facets of this that I didn't mention is how only the taller buildings were doing it (the smaller, lower to the ground "sheds" got blurry textures but never went hollow) and when they were wire-frame it looked as though their skins/textures were folded inwards towards a central point, leaving them mostly hollow frames with a Picasso-like rendition of their normal exterior surface folded like origami into the middle of the hollow frame. It turns out apparently some files are sometimes stored that way because it is efficient and if it is displaying such in-game there is usually a graphics issue at heart (if I understood what I read properly, the reasoning and math behind it is a little above my pay-grade).
I'll be popping in and out for the next little bit until I figure out what is so messed up, because now I have the itch to know "why" rather than to enjoy a MW game. Sorry if you wind up in my PUGs in advance. I'll either come to some sort of conclusion or melt my motherboard trying, as I have never heard my cooling fan labor like it does when the game is crashing. Anyone who knows anything, please feel free to chime in, as I am really set on figuring this out. It bugged me all day today and I might as well scratch the itch rather than ignore it and obsess when I should be getting real-world things done. This is also, again, not an attempt at crying because I lose, I know full well I am getting stomped because I suck, or a shot at PGI. Personally, I think PGI has done alright with MWO, despite the community hate. No one has tried to do a balanced multiplayer MW game. LL looks like Planetside reskinned as MW, and in MW4 assaults beat everything, period. I even like the idea of ghost heat (*ducks rotten vegetable pelting*) and think if it had been an incremental tax on boating rather than the exponential increase after x number of weapons (or, simply, used to deter instead of prohibit) it could have become a core mechanic like the hardpoint system (which was only introduced in the MW franchise to stop silly things like kneecap lasers allowed by the hollow-body mechanic). I want to figure out what on my end is causing these issues, like shooting someone fresh in CT for 26 damage and legging them when they have a minimal 42 hit points from structure in said leg.

[Ahab Saline]

The problem seems to be around my connection. Tried it at a friend's house and my own. The game bugs out if anything gets onto the internet or disconnects from the internet, such as logging onto facebook on a cell phone or turning off a PS3 that was online when I logged on. The game also bugs if I run it for too long. If I play 3-5 QP scenarios, it seems to work fine. More than that and it begins to degrade, and after 10 my damage tanks, friendlies start to not be on minimap or marked as allies, etc. If I log out for a few minutes, then log back in, it works fine for a time, and then begins to degrade again. I tried to get it to totally break down again, but I'm bored to tears and tired of matches where allies crowd around me in the open, causing me to be LRM'd to death or casually wandering into my line of fire and then complaining about how I'm just standing there not shooting, to say nothing of drilling enemies with PPCs to do a grand total of 41 damage while an ally I hit during the bugging of his marker with 3 apparently was dealt 351. Amusingly enough, 10-15 minutes after I log out a window pops up that says "MechWarrior has stopped working" and asked me to send in a brief report of what I was doing when the game crashed.

[SnagaDance]

Those are some serious connection issues you're having. Have you done a traceback to see how your signal is connected to the mechwarrior servers?

Some providers (so I've read on the forum) can rout their customers all the way through Europe and back even though they're an American player trying to connect with PGI's servers in Canada! (apparently it saves them money)
Contacting the provider and telling them to stop and just give you decent routing service seems to help.

Of course you should not try to connect to mechwarrior serverds that you have a bad ping connection to (I'm in Europe and I've disabled the Asian one, way too high ping for me though the North American one is fine) but I assume you already know that.

I'm not too knowledgeable on the computer side of things either but you could try for help in the Hardware and Accessories forum: https://mwomercs.com...re-accessories/

Those guys are really knowledgeable (point out that you're not overly tech savvy or they'll bombard you with more tech speak than an LRM100 Stalker).

[Davegt27]

When I first started with MWO I had a 100% disconnect rate on crimson straight

Yep only on that map when I found the stats page turns out I had a 50/50 win rate on that map

Contact support or do a search
I had a long list of things support told me to do
I posted the list several times

GLHF