174 replies to this topic

[InnerSphereNews]

Greetings MechWarriors,

It's time again for a look into the coming months of content and additions currently planned for MechWarrior Online. You can check out our previous April Roadmap and Beyond post here.

June sees the release of an all new, dedicated Competitive Mode for ranked play. Pitting organized Teams in Elo-ranked 8v8 Conquest matches, the results of Competitive Play over the coming months will be used for seeding competitive Teams for the Semi-Finals phase of the upcoming MechWarrior Online World Championship Tournament in December.

July fast approaches, and with it a major update in the form of new Technology and Equipment with the release of Civil War, along with a timeline advancement, a new Inner Sphere Map structure, and additional features for Faction Play.

There's much more on the way, so without further delay let's take a look at what's to come for MechWarrior Online in the months of June, July, and beyond.

Patch Date: June 20th

Inner Sphere Resistance Heroes (Store)

Pictured variant: Enforcer ENF-GH

8v8 Competitive Mode

The premier feature of our June patch. Featuring Competitive Leaderboards, Team Registration and Management features, Competitive Play lobbies, detailed statistics and standings, and more, this all-new Competitive Play area will enable players to form Teams for ranked Competitive matches against other Competitive Teams in 8v8 Conquest Matches.

Though Teams will be matched according to Elo rankings, this Competitive Play feature is intended for players and Teams operating at the highest levels of skill and organization. Join the fight if you're up for the challenge, but participation should not be taken lightly!

We'll save the full rundown on this mode for the June Patch Notes, currently slated to arrive on the Friday preceding the patch.

Faction Play Updates

The recently-released Incursion Game Mode has been refitted for Faction Play in this patch, and will be replacing Assault in the Tug of War. This patch also sees the introduction of weighted randomness to the Tug of War bar; a specific Game Mode may still be weighted to a distinct phase in the Tug of War, but matches will now have a random chance of running any of the other Game Modes. You may drop into Siege during the first phase of the Tug of War, for example.

Balance Adjustments

As mentioned in some previous posts and updates, June brings with it an initial phase of Energy weapon adjustments. Full details will be provided with the June Patch Notes, but the focus of this pass is twofold: provide better role definition between the different Energy types, and most importantly, foster a better baseline balance between IS and Clan Energy weapons.

Turret Performance Optimizations

Originally slated for release in May, Turret objects have undergone an optimization pass in the June patch to reduce their performance footprint. This optimization is more likely to assist machines in low-spec territory, and will hopefully lead to some minor performance gains for Game Modes in which Turrets are utilized.

Sound Caching and Performance Optimizations

This patch features improvements to our previous sound caching methods. In addition to eliminating rare issues with delayed sounds, this optimization may assist machines with lower amounts of available memory, particularly within Faction Play matches. This will also address the perceived Jump Jet audio delay introduced with the Skill Tree patch, which was a by-product of the previous caching method.

New Decals and Supply Caches

93 new Decals and 25 new Supply Caches are arriving in this patch. This batch of Decals includes the five remaining timeline-appropriate Clan Decals, an assortment of new Shapes, and a large collection of new Word Decals. These new Words can be easily combined to form distinct combinations like Clan Death Dealer, SRM Boom Stick, Frontline Breaker, etc.

Removal of all Premium Time requirements for Private Lobbies

With the June patch, Premium Time will no longer be required for accessing any aspect of the Private Lobby feature. Tonnage Rules, Match Time, Time of Day, View Mode, and Full Team settings will all be available.

And a special 'Summer Blast' month-long event, to be announced soon!

New Tech and Equipment (Info Page)

Faction Play Timeline Advancement

Civil War 'Mechs (Store)

Balance Adjustments

2017 MWO World Championship Tournament Supporter Pack

Faction Play Updates

Special Event system

War History

and more

Clan Wave 2 & 3 Hero 'Mechs (Store Page)

Additional Clan Wave 2 & 3 C-Bill Variants

Later in August:

MWO World Championship Tournament Build

Semi-Finals

More Faction Play Updates and Improvements, integrating additional suggestions and feedback from Faction Play Roundtables

2017 Annual Rewards Program

Upcoming 'Mechs

Clan IIC Hero 'Mechs (Store)

Civil War: Escalation (Store)

Mech_Con 2017 and the 2017 MechWarrior Online World Championship Finals

New Maps

'Mech IK

A major unannounced feature (look for more information in coming months)

And more....

[UnseenFury]

Developers, please, all we need is a MWLL Conquest gamemode on a huge Battletech-feel maps with 7 flags, 3 respawn points per side, 4 mech drops per player and 1000 tickets.

That would make a unique and diverse gameplay each round! Not the same nascar circle each round over and over that we have now! Please!

[FireStoat]

Thanks for a review of all the new things in store for the game for the near future.

Edited by FireStoat, 02 June 2017 - 06:31 PM.

[Jettrik Ryflix]

Removal of Premium Time requirements from private matches? Did not see that coming. Sweet!

[Felbombling]

New maps delayed until September, at the earliest? Good grief... when was the last map introduced, anyway? I cannot even remember, beyond that 1v1 arena injected after Mech Con.

[Fobhopper]

Felbombling, on 02 June 2017 - 06:41 PM, said:

New maps delayed until September, at the earliest? Good grief... when was the last map introduced, anyway? I cannot even remember, beyond that 1v1 arena injected after Mech Con.

Well considered how well the last few maps went (massive basin with hills on two sides) I am glad they are waiting on pushing out more maps. With the range advantage clan mechs have over IS, as well as better mobility and survivability (superior XL engines) I ******* hope we dont get more open basin's to fight over.

I play both clan and IS, but holy hell am I getting tired of fighting over a hole in the ground in frozen city and grim plexis. If you have long range weapons, its a fun map to shoot back and forth at each other. But if you are boating srm's and ac's bigger than 5, its a miserable map to be on.

Edited by Fobhopper, 02 June 2017 - 06:51 PM.

[BMKA]

Paran01ac, on 02 June 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

Developers, please, all we need is a MWLL Conquest gamemode on a huge Battletech-feel maps with 7 flags, 3 respawn points per side, 4 mech drops per player and 1000 tickets.

That would make a unique and diverse gameplay each round! Not the same nascar circle each round over and over that we have now! Please!

[Xu Shenjian]

Looking forward to the shift in age and all the new toys it brings.

Also, looking forward to the Capellan Xin Sheng campaign and 'Mechs, never thought it'd get to their era but here we are.

Edited by Xu Shenjian, 02 June 2017 - 07:08 PM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Thanks for the look ahead. NIce to see things not getting pushed back.

Warning: This post will be quoted by people saying I should not open my mouth, because things will be pushed back. And when they are not pushed back, the quoters will not be apologetic because they felt their forecasts were justified.

[Peiper]

Wow! Can't wait to see those new maps! Economy! Salvage! Supply lines! Raids! Black Market! Tanks! VTOLs! Infantry! Battle Armor! Smoke rounds! Aerospace! Dynamic Weather! Planetary assets! Woohoo! THANK YOU PGI!

[Tarogato]

Felbombling, on 02 June 2017 - 06:41 PM, said:

New maps delayed until September, at the earliest? Good grief... when was the last map introduced, anyway? I cannot even remember, beyond that 1v1 arena injected after Mech Con.

[Sereglach]

InnerSphereNews, on 02 June 2017 - 05:29 PM, said:

Balance Adjustments
As mentioned in some previous posts and updates, June brings with it an initial phase of Energy weapon adjustments. Full details will be provided with the June Patch Notes, but the focus of this pass is twofold: provide better role definition between the different Energy types, and most importantly, foster a better baseline balance between IS and Clan Energy weapons.

Please don't forget about the poor flamer when doing this energy weapons pass. Remember how just tweaking the numbers created the Flamergeddon, which then resulted in a hastily slapped together and convoluted mechanical patch to create the mess we have now. At the time Russ said that reassessing how the flamer functioned was then a discussion for a different time. Well, that time should be now.

I can only hope that they remove all of the complicated and convoluted weapons mechanics that the Flamer shouldn't have, as it makes it function differently and in a completely unintuitive fashion from every other weapon in the game. Shifting it to flat and fixed numbers brings the mechanics in line with every other weapon system in the game, and allows greater control over the functionality of the weapon. It also allows the weapon the be tuned without creating something like the Flamergeddon debacle of last time. 1.0 DPS, 2.0 Heat DPS, and 1.0 HPS is a good place to start . . . and can easily be tuned from there for better balance.

Edited by Sereglach, 02 June 2017 - 07:33 PM.

[Hemholtz]

Paran01ac, on 02 June 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

Developers, please, all we need is a MWLL Conquest gamemode on a huge Battletech-feel maps with 7 flags, 3 respawn points per side, 4 mech drops per player and 1000 tickets.

Sounds like everyone is going to spread out to all the resource points....

[Chuanhao]

New Maps appreciated, but with all the new weapons coming out, I think the majority of time will be spent min-max-meta those new goodies.

Still no sound on Solaris though. The 1v1 Steiner Map is good, but more will be better, and a main game mode, or even a seasonal championship that will allow 1v1 or even 4v4.

[Nightbird]

Please enable Friendly Fire on Siege gate generators or allow defenders to open gates, thank you

Edited by NlGHTBlRD, 02 June 2017 - 08:25 PM.

[Crockdaddy]

Paran01ac, on 02 June 2017 - 06:09 PM, said:

Developers, please, all we need is a MWLL Conquest gamemode on a huge Battletech-feel maps with 7 flags, 3 respawn points per side, 4 mech drops per player and 1000 tickets.

That would make a unique and diverse gameplay each round! Not the same nascar circle each round over and over that we have now! Please!

I've wanted something like this for a long time. When I play BF 1 in Conquest I dream of the Frostbite Engine with my Atlas smashing through a house to kick a Jenner!

[Big Tin Man]

Tarogato, on 02 June 2017 - 07:31 PM, said:

Love it. Can you make one for IK? I thought it was close to coming back... a year ago.

[orcrist86]

Good, I'm glad to see the next few months bring so much change.

[Katastrophy Kid]

Peiper, on 02 June 2017 - 07:12 PM, said:

Wow! Can't wait to see those new maps! Economy! Salvage! Supply lines! Raids! Black Market! Tanks! VTOLs! Infantry! Battle Armor! Smoke rounds! Aerospace! Dynamic Weather! Planetary assets! Woohoo! THANK YOU PGI!

That's not sarcasm I hear, is it? lol

Regardless the game mode I'd like to see developed is Ultimate Conquest Mode. I wrote about it in the following post:

https://mwomercs.com...9&p=5771185&st=

Edited by Katastrophe Kid, 02 June 2017 - 09:23 PM.

[Mercedes Bertilla]

Thanks for removing the premium time requirement for private matches. I'll be putting more $ into the game because of that decision.