85 replies to this topic

[sycocys]

I thought that was supposed to be primarily a single player campaign game? How did it take so long to make if they were only going to do skirmish maps?

[Bishop Steiner]

Imperius, on 25 May 2017 - 05:25 PM, said:

I hope I am jumping the gun. The first delay, I was like ok whatever. The second delay on a developer who prides itself on making deadlines... I'm like I've seen this trend before

I hear you. Trust me, the length of the first delay threw me off, too. And TBH, I really don't like that they dumbed down the heat system ala PGI. So my spidey sense is tingling... but both of us got in it for the PvE, not the PvP...and we get access to tat part June 1, so I don't consider the second delay a big deal... because it is only for the PvP anyhow.

Again... yeah..in total it will probably slow down development having to take PvP into consideration, but between Mitch, Jordan and Mike, I figure if they can't deliver it .... then no one short of a EA/Blizzard?Microsoft level budget can, ya know?

[MechaBattler]

The campaign will probably be longer and more flushed out than the PvP aspect. I fully expect the pvp mode to be about as deep as PGI game modes. They could also do the smart thing and keep PvP balance changes exclusive to the PvP mode. But I wouldn't be surprised to see minimum balance changes. Their bread and butter will be pve content.

[Sjorpha]

There is no reason at all to worry about the quality of BT singleplayer, HBS are extremely good at storytelling/roleplaying and very proud of it, it's their trademark. So I'm 100% the campaign will be good.

I'm not backing specifically because I don't want to be tempted to play the beta, just because not spoiling any part of the campaign/story is important to me.

Now given how experienced HBS are with SP, it's very hard to understand why someone would see it as a problem that they are also making a multiplayer mode. It's purely a bonus for those who like that and you don't have to play it if you don't want to, it will also be a positive testing environment for balancing and improving the AI so it isn't too weak.

Actually the main problem with single player games for me it weak AI. I have never played a game where the AI felt challenging in any other way that purely having more resources, with the exception of chess computers. Increasing difficulty is always just the AI cheating some way, never actually playing better. The first game that can make an AI that can beat me without a resource advantage will probably have me hooked,

Edited by Sjorpha, 26 May 2017 - 12:06 AM.

[Luminis]

Y'all can hate me for saying this, but I wouldn't care about the game half as much of it wasn't for PVP. That's what provides longevity and invective to actually get good at a game, theory craft and get involved with the community.

[Valhallan]

Wut? Multiplayer is what keeps games alive way past their time, only modding can come close to giving the same longevity (but smaller community). That being said since BT is turn based and is installed on your hardware (i.e. not a browser/cloud game) i dunno why they are having connectivity issues, it doesn't exactly have to be "live" on the player-ends as long as the turns are resolved in an timely manner (i.e. just need to be able to send to the other guy what happened, don't have to really be connected the whole time). In a turn based game, play-by-email is still a thing for smaller indie devs, as long as there is an anti-cheat/cheat checking measure it should be alright.

[xengk]

cazidin, on 25 May 2017 - 04:23 PM, said:

At least we'll actually get something from THIS developer, as promised, in under 60, maybe 90 days.

If I remember correctly, game have been delayed twice. Release date been push to somewhere in Summer 2017, instead the original May 2017.
But that was due to engine update that broke the game, so my pitchfork will remain in the barn.

nitra, on 25 May 2017 - 05:21 PM, said:

Hopefully they did not buy some crappy third party netcode layer, and are having trouble getting it to mesh with their game.

so many companies have been burned by bad netcode frameworks it is not funny .

im not sure what has changed in the past decade but it seems like netcode has become a real challenge lately .

The game being turn based, netcode and ping will not be an issue.
Connection drop and packet drop however will be frustrating like what MW:T suffered.

[LordNothing]

how do you have connectivity issues in a turn based game? you could use tcp for everything and make sure that sessions are maintained. its not the throw packets at the internet and hope they get through (aka udp) way most other types of games operate.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 May 2017 - 02:50 AM.

[fat4eyes]

LordNothing, on 26 May 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

how do you have connectivity issues in a turn based game? you could use tcp for everything and make sure that sessions are maintained. its not the throw packets at the internet and hope they get through (aka udp) way most other types of games operate.

Not really sure about the details of the BTech game (though that beta gameplay video they have looks pretty cool) but it could be that the game engine they're using doesn't support TCP for network play. They'd have to write their own networking code in that case and bolt it into their game.

[xengk]

LordNothing, on 26 May 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

how do you have connectivity issues in a turn based game? you could use tcp for everything and make sure that sessions are maintained. its not the throw packets at the internet and hope they get through (aka udp) way most other types of games operate.

MW:T have those problem.
You would randomly disconnect from opponent, or the game doesnt update after opponent end turn.

[LordNothing]

fat4eyes, on 26 May 2017 - 03:06 AM, said:

Not really sure about the details of the BTech game (though that beta gameplay video they have looks pretty cool) but it could be that the game engine they're using doesn't support TCP for network play. They'd have to write their own networking code in that case and bolt it into their game.

theres yer problem. an artifact of rent-an-engine developers. never anyone to run to when you got a game braking problem. did they at least do lan support? this would be a great lan party game if they did.

[Luminis]

LordNothing, on 26 May 2017 - 02:49 AM, said:

how do you have connectivity issues in a turn based game?

Just an assumption, but possibly because you devote the vast majority of your resources to the single player portion of the game?

[LordNothing]

Luminis, on 26 May 2017 - 03:14 AM, said:

Just an assumption, but possibly because you devote the vast majority of your resources to the single player portion of the game?

sure but when you are at the pick an engine stage of the game you usually have this kind of thing fleshed out already.

[Luminis]

LordNothing, on 26 May 2017 - 03:16 AM, said:

sure but when you are at the pick an engine stage of the game you usually have this kind of thing fleshed out already.

Unless, of course, you've made your decision regarding the engine before you decided on whether multiplayer is going to be a thing. Because the multiplayer stretch goal wasn't reached yet.

Edited by Luminis, 26 May 2017 - 03:48 AM.

[LordNothing]

Luminis, on 26 May 2017 - 03:48 AM, said:

Unless, of course, you've made your decision regarding the engine before you decided on whether multiplayer is going to be a thing. Because the multiplayer stretch goal wasn't reached yet.

classic cart before horse shenanigans. will the millineals ever learn, lol.

you can still use udp but then you get a lot of game flow issues. game needs to keep pushing keep alive packets so that the server and through it the other clients know whats going on. or send back an ack packet that says 'got it' (only real difference between udp and tcp is that tcp does this for you, and sends a hash back so the server can error detect). then you got to have all sides have timeout handlers running at both ends so that if there is a network glitch, two disconected clients can re-establish and resume games.

to add further complexity netcode is usually handled in its own thread, because of the need to wait on the network a lot. this lets the game keep up with its render and ui loops while data is not showing up. one of my hobbies is building robots, and i use both udp and tcp, using the former for control and telemetry data and the latter for keep alive signals (like i want the robot to kill its motors if it looses the connection). i do not envy them the task of debugging this mess.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 May 2017 - 03:59 AM.

[Clownwarlord]

Will I get to test the game mechanics on the first of June? Yes (Check)
Will I get to see all the mechs they will have in the game at that time? Yes (Check)
Will I also eventually get to check out multiplayer? Yes (Check)

Yep I win!

[Darian DelFord]

I am a fan of companies having the balls to say....."Yes we wanted it to be this date, however problems arose that would make the game not up to our standards so we must delay to improve the game experience for our customers."

Personally I was not expecting the game to actually be released until Winter 2017. With today's technologies, the amount of time they started this and how far they have come is astonishing.

The real question will be this...... how much of a ghost town do you think MWO will be for the first few months BT is actually released.

[Clownwarlord]

Darian DelFord, on 26 May 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

I am a fan of companies having the balls to say....."Yes we wanted it to be this date, however problems arose that would make the game not up to our standards so we must delay to improve the game experience for our customers."

Personally I was not expecting the game to actually be released until Winter 2017. With today's technologies, the amount of time they started this and how far they have come is astonishing.

The real question will be this...... how much of a ghost town do you think MWO will be for the first few months BT is actually released.

I will still play both, but depends on how June, July, and August go for MWO though. Could be a boon or a bust.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Darian DelFord, on 26 May 2017 - 04:03 AM, said:

The real question will be this...... how much of a ghost town do you think MWO will be for the first few months BT is actually released.

Hard to say.

It seems like there are many cross-over fans between MWO and the new Battletech game, but I still have a feeling that many MWO fans like the game for it's mechanics and a turn based game such as Battletech might not be there "cup-of-tea".

Turn based games seem to have a more niche appeal after all.

As for the OP's statement...

A delay in the Multiplayer portion of the game isn't ruining anything, it is just a portion that isn't ready yet for public consumption. Honestly, I don't think multiplayer ruins anything, it just gives people more options to enjoy a game they love. I can't see much wrong with that.

[Darian DelFord]

MeiSooHaityu, on 26 May 2017 - 04:13 AM, said:

Hard to say.

It seems like there are many cross-over fans between MWO and the new Battletech game, but I still have a feeling that many MWO fans like the game for it's mechanics and a turn based game such as Battletech might not be there "cup-of-tea".

Turn based games seem to have a more niche appeal after all.

As for the OP's statement...

A delay in the Multiplayer portion of the game isn't ruining anything, it is just a portion that isn't ready yet for public consumption. Honestly, I don't think multiplayer ruins anything, it just gives people more options to enjoy a game they love. I can't see much wrong with that.

Yeah, I was actually on Steam the other day trying to find a good strategy turn based game. Divinity early access caught my eye. Tried it out..... really did not like it for a variety of my own reasons..... To me the older turn based strategy games just seem better.

I really really really want a company to come out with a great D&D turn based game... not the monstrosity that was LEgends of Sword coast.

But I digress. I think the first week of June will hit MWO hard....... and I think PGI will realize this, Hopefully this will wake them up to the reality that the customer base is not overly happy with the state of the game. I mean its been over 5 years and seriously what content has really been added