374 replies to this topic

[Darth Hotz]

Vellron2005, on 29 January 2018 - 12:12 AM, said:

Well, you can't overstate just how stale the gameplay is...

Right now, this game revolves around "the next mech pack".. and it can be so much more..

What needs to be done?

Well, the ideas are many.. so here's a few of my own:

1) Make a meaningful FP/CW game mode.. make the planets count for something, make the factions distinctive instead of just giving the new ones absurd financial bonuses that make year-long loyalist say "flack this, the money is a lot better if I go merc"

2) Make a balancing pass, playtest it, community test it, and then STOP CHANGING THINGS! Constant buffs/nerfs/fidgeting with balance does not mean you guys are "keeping development active".. it means you're fixing what ain't broken for the sake of appearances.

3) Make the game equally enjoyable in all aspects, regardless if the player is in a big unit or not. Right now, it's seal clubbing galore, toxicity, and it's driving players away.

4) Pay more attention to quality - stop embarrassing yourself by releasing mechs with broken animations, broken hitboxes, being late on announcements, broken events, and non-existent communication with the player base.

5) Start communicating with he player base.. That means roadmaps, vlogs, townhalls, posts, general in-game presence, and customer care.. here's an example how the big boys are doing it. You all know Cris Roberts, CEO of Roberts space industries, the makers of Star Citizen, right? Well, that game is still in alpha, and there's a bug that prevents your launcher from running the game.. I have that bug.. So I just happen to come across a fun in-game clip on 9gag, and I post a question about the bug below it.. and lo and behold.. somebody answers me "We are working on patches, it will be fixed". Guess who messaged me? Cris bloody Roberts himself. On 9gag. 9GAG. The CEO. The BIG Cahnuna! 9GAG. That's some customer care right there! (And you can't tell me it's cose' they have more money)

6) For God's sake.. make MAPS.. like 25 new maps are needed at the minimum. (Since y'all' don't wanna make procedurally generated random maps) The game is stale A.F. So tired of the same scenery all the time. And no, Rubellite is not the way to go. Extremely hot or cold maps should be the exception, not the norm.. Most planets worth fighting for are temperate earth-like worlds. So stop making brawler junkyards.

7) Make a better decal system. The current one is just ridiculously basic and ineffective.

Where can I sign?

[Burke IV]

OZHomerOZ, on 29 January 2018 - 03:38 AM, said:

You could choose the moar ammo skill, which I think is clever.
Edit: Or choose mobility and get in his back .

So now your choices are forcing my choices or i cant compete?

Edited by Burke IV, 29 January 2018 - 03:42 AM.

[Jiang Wei]

One big reason why the game is stale is because not enough map variety. Just another thing that will not change.

[General Solo]

Burke IV, on 29 January 2018 - 03:42 AM, said:

So now your choices are forcing my choices or i cant compete?

How? you have your skill tree and I have mine. We each have a skill tree each.
You can pick every skill I can, so what advantage do I have that to you cannot attain as well.
Apart from the choices we make. I thinks that's excellent.

Also I could say exactly the same thing
"NO, its now your choices that are forcing my choices or i cant compete?"

But that won't solve anything, will it.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 29 January 2018 - 04:06 AM.

[0Jiggs0]

Sigmar Sich, on 28 January 2018 - 10:44 PM, said:

At first, only tier1 is availeble. (idea behind this progression - some skills will be more desireble than others, however you design skill tree. So need to invest at least something to lower tiers is to avoid ability to cherry-pick all desired skills, creating some sort of trade-offs).

At the same time, we cannot really abandon % system, it would require individual calculation and balancing for each mech. Which is ineffective waste of development time even by my standards, and i'm not lazy worker.

So how we make % system work?
I think the answer is really simple - same way as Survival tree now works for weight classes, when lighter mechs with smaller base parameter, get bigger % bonuses.

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 11:02 PM, said:

You need a Perk/Drawback system.

I replied to a similar thread about the skill tree not long ago, and proposed the addition of nodes that apply small, fixed-value bonuses as alternatives to percentage bonuses (+10 meters to Range instead of +1%, for example). The idea being to allow weapons and mechs with low starting values to benefit equally from the skill tree. I believe this could be adapted to Sigmar's concept.

The existing skill tree already has a sort of "tier" system, in that obtaining additional desired nodes requires further investment of other nodes leading further down the tree. What if the return on that investment scaled as the later nodes were obtained, and applied penalties as the bonuses increased?

The early nodes at the top of the tree could provide the small, fixed values as I described, which would be useful for mechs and weapons that normally receive little benefit from percentage bonuses. Proceeding further down the tree would allow access to the more powerful percentage-increasing nodes, with the most potent nodes at the bottom of the tree. The more powerful nodes would also incur increasing penalties to their antagonistic parameters, creating diminishing returns. Maxing out Heat Gen for a laser-vomit build would reduce the heat significantly, but at the cost of the range, cooldown, and possibly duration of those weapons as well. Specialized skill tree setups would need equally specialized builds to compensate, inherently creating weaknesses for themselves in pursuit of their specialization. The specialist builds would remain powerful in their niche, but with notable drawbacks which make them vulnerable.

Edited by 0Jiggs0, 29 January 2018 - 04:31 AM.

[Hit the Deck]

Don't forget when you are proposing a new system to replace/improve the skill tree, it should also realistically be able to become a money sink.

You can argue that PGI should be able to put the money sink somehwere else like customizable geo (coming to Solaris) but then they would be less inclined to consider your idea.

[Imperius]

Leone, on 28 January 2018 - 05:34 PM, said:

I do. I mean, it's weird. Usually I dislike the escort modes in games. I know I did in previous Mechwarrior titles. That said in this one, I enjoy it. It's nice to actually have one mode in quickplay that'll get my team to actually move and coordinate.

I mean, they don't always, but for me, Escort's been better'n other modes for quickplay. Which, to be fair, I don't do much.


Not to mention letting the players vote on trial builds? Yeah, that really helped.


Okay, sure, fine. One question... Why are you still here? Actually curious by the way, not trying to troll you. But if you've already walked, why didn't you get far?

~Leone.

I haven’t played since the event for the free stuff and that was only one match and I quit.

Reason I’m still here would be because the amount of money I’ve put into mwo. Not to be confused with I enjoy playing or still do. More like check an update or current drama.

Edited by Imperius, 29 January 2018 - 05:04 AM.

[sycocys]

Burke IV, on 29 January 2018 - 03:37 AM, said:

Mostly agree, but... fiddling with the electrics is one thing but i still dont see why anybody should be able to spawn extra armour.

If you nerf mobility in exchange for a buff elsewhere, engines cost weight. My first reaction is that its dodgy ground to be on. Could be wrong.

Part of problem really is that at least half if not more of the buff tree should also be allocated towards tonnage and crit slots - like you say things like armor should take up tonnage rather than outright destroy mobility, but there's also got to be a threshold where you are overloading your base design specs and causing a detriment to another system as well to gain ground in a particular area.

This is how you create roles in this game, you can't do it if its a buff only system. You also can't balance the game if you have a massive imbalance with a buff-only system straight from the get go - there's just no way it is ever going to be feasible to approach any sense of balance so long as the current style of system is in place.

Hit the Deck, on 29 January 2018 - 04:59 AM, said:

You can argue that PGI should be able to put the money sink somehwere else like customizable geo (coming to Solaris) but then they would be less inclined to consider your idea.

A zero sum system doesn't remove the money sink, in all likelihood it actually increases the amount players will put into it at least marginally because they will now be able to actually specialize their roles. Additionally to that, there won't be the power discrepancy between new players (or new mechs with vet players) and fully skilled mechs, it completely levels the playing field for everyone - most importantly it won't be driving away new players because they are at an immediate and huge disadvantage regardless of their skill level.

Edited by sycocys, 29 January 2018 - 06:37 AM.

[Sjorpha]

Burke IV, on 29 January 2018 - 03:42 AM, said:

So now your choices are forcing my choices or i cant compete?

Any game in existence will "force" you to choose competitive moves if you want to compete, the higher the level of competition the more "forced" you get to make the best move, such as choosing the best skill tree layout or whatever.

Obviously you're not forced to BE super competitive, there is no real need for a decent player to go full minmax in yoloqueue or faction play because the environment isn't that competitive and a lot of things work fine.

[kuma8877]

Jiang Wei, on 29 January 2018 - 03:46 AM, said:

One big reason why the game is stale is because not enough map variety. Just another thing that will not change.

And yet we just got Rubelite, will soon get Solaris City and the 5 Solaris maps for the mode. Things can change and sometimes do. Hyperbole doesn't help much in discussion, especially when it can cloud your vision of what actually HAS been done.

[Hit the Deck]

sycocys, on 29 January 2018 - 06:32 AM, said:

...
A zero sum system doesn't remove the money sink, in all likelihood it actually increases the amount players will put into it at least marginally because they will now be able to actually specialize their roles. Additionally to that, there won't be the power discrepancy between new players (or new mechs with vet players) and fully skilled mechs, it completely levels the playing field for everyone - most importantly it won't be driving away new players because they are at an immediate and huge disadvantage regardless of their skill level.

Then it sounds good!

BTW I'm not criticizing a particular suggestion, it's just that your proposed system should be able to make players spend their time and/or money into it.

A little comment: Flat upgrades, while promoting discrepancy and perhaps contributing to the unfunning to MWO, can make players feel obliged to spend their time into it. A zero sum system on the other hand (like traits in video games which have both positives and negatives), can make players feel less incentivized to try it out and then prefer to just become generalists (not spending any into the system).

Edited by Hit the Deck, 29 January 2018 - 07:17 AM.

[Mcgral18]

Jiang Wei, on 29 January 2018 - 03:20 AM, said:

Everyone posting about issues on this forum are just wasting their effort.

We are well aware


Hence why the video isn't based on the Forums, and Twitter isn't on the Forums

[Burke IV]

Sjorpha, on 29 January 2018 - 06:41 AM, said:

Obviously you're not forced to BE super competitive, there is no real need for a decent player to go full minmax in yoloqueue or faction play because the environment isn't that competitive and a lot of things work fine.

I cant understand anybody that doesnt play to win. If somebody isnt doing their best arnt they letting everybody else down. In fact isnt it TOS you arnt allowed to deliberately not try?

[Sjorpha]

Burke IV, on 29 January 2018 - 07:53 AM, said:

I cant understand anybody that doesnt play to win. If somebody isnt doing their best arnt they letting everybody else down. In fact isnt it TOS you arnt allowed to deliberately not try?

I think most people play to win in a given match, which is psychologically a little different from minmaxing your setup and maximising your every advantage. Look for example at how some of the "competitively" minded units in faction play scoff at gen rushing and thinks it's unworthy to win that way, clearly a failure to be competitive and yet quite easy to understand.

(I suspect the real reason is actually that they don't want anyone else to genrush THEM, since it is the only thing that actually causes them to lose against weaker units. So they are trying to set up this norm that genrushing is shameful so they can be certain of winning more with their superior fightning skills.)

I mean I'm competitively minded when it comes to games and if I experiment it's in the hope of discovering competitive moves, but I think it's small minded to say you don't actually understand casual players that do things for reasons other than winning. I mean it's not that hard to understand concepts like roleplay and being creative for uniqueness sake alone (as supposed to being creative to win), those don't belong in comp play but I think most people at least understand them, if nothing else most competitive people are casual in some activity they like. Perhaps you're not the best cook but enjoy cooking? And so on.

Edited by Sjorpha, 29 January 2018 - 08:08 AM.

[Jiang Wei]

kuma8877, on 29 January 2018 - 06:47 AM, said:

And yet we just got Rubelite, will soon get Solaris City and the 5 Solaris maps for the mode. Things can change and sometimes do. Hyperbole doesn't help much in discussion, especially when it can cloud your vision of what actually HAS been done.

It still isnt enough. They need like 50 more UNIQUE maps. Not a bunch of recycled ones.

Edited by Jiang Wei, 29 January 2018 - 08:16 AM.

[Sigmar Sich]

0Jiggs0, on 29 January 2018 - 04:26 AM, said:

The more powerful nodes would also incur increasing penalties to their antagonistic parameters, creating diminishing returns.

Trade-offs are always good. So far our only trade-off is that we can't invest into every node, only into 38% of them.
This is interesting idea, however it requires careful designing.
But...

Yeonne Greene, on 28 January 2018 - 11:02 PM, said:

You need a Perk/Drawback system.

Perks were mentioned, but without a form. What if we really get rid off all this skills, and do simple perk/quirk tower


Invest 3 points into lower tier to unlock second one, invest 2 points into 2nd to unlock 3rd. Or just invest all points into first tier.

And this perks would be like this example:
Bulwark
+30% internal structure
+20% armour
-5% to take critical hits
Also drawbacks can be present:
-10% to torso speed
-5% to top speed

And we can have this perks for different roles / weapon types. And make player to be able to invest into only quarter of them.
Also different weight classes can have different and unique perks.

This way we have super easy to read "skill tree", while having all possible bonuses. Also best structure to introduce drawbacks.
Sure, it needs careful design too, to make all perks in same tear equaly desirable, but it is possible.

Edited by Sigmar Sich, 29 January 2018 - 08:25 AM.

[Burke IV]

Sjorpha, on 29 January 2018 - 08:05 AM, said:

I think most people play to win in a given match....

Thats where games like counterstrike did so well. Clans owned their servers and those who couldnt keep up were booted off. It does sound really really harsh but basicly everybody knew why it was done.

Have people all thought about how the tree will work in solaris? Lets imagine you are facing a mech thats loaded its armour and for some reason you didnt want to take lasers. How much ammo are you going to need to get thru all that armour? Will you load your own armour? Or try in vain to get those ammo nodes that dont give you enough anyway?

No, you are going load armour and take lasers arnt you? skill tree.

Edited by Burke IV, 29 January 2018 - 08:26 AM.

[kuma8877]

Jiang Wei, on 29 January 2018 - 08:15 AM, said:

It still isnt enough. They need like 50 more UNIQUE maps. Not a bunch of recycled ones.

While I agree they need more, those 7 maps are not recycled.

[Jiang Wei]

kuma8877, on 29 January 2018 - 08:19 AM, said:

While I agree they need more, those 7 maps are not recycled.

Solaris doesnt interest me enough to start playing again. The horrible balance in the game is what keeps me away. Things they cannot fix without re-writing most of the core game mechanics. Maybe MW5 will be what the franchise needs. MWO is pretty much done for as far as I am concerned.

Edited by Jiang Wei, 29 January 2018 - 08:32 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Sigmar Sich, on 29 January 2018 - 08:16 AM, said:

Trade-offs are always good. So far our only trade-off is that we can't invest into every node, only into 38% of them.
This is interesting idea, however it requires careful designing.
But...


Perks were mentioned, but without a form. What if we really get rid off all this skills, and do simple perk/quirk tower


Invest 3 points into lower tier to unlock second one, invest 2 points into 2nd to unlock 3rd. Or just invest all points into first tier.

And this perks would be like this example:
Bulwark
+30% internal structure
+20% armour
-5% to take critical hits
Also drawbacks can be present:
-10% to torso speed
-5% to top speed

And we can have this perks for different roles / weapon types. And make player to be able to invest into only quarter of them.
Also different weight classes can have different and unique perks.

This way we have super easy to read "skill tree", while having all possible bonuses. Also best structure to introduce drawbacks.
Sure, it needs careful design too, to make all perks in same tear equaly desirable, but it is possible.

You shouldn't need tiers. All you need is a "Threat" limit that expands the more you play that 'Mech.

Let's say I have my shiny new Blackjack 3. Let's also say that every 'Mech starts off with a base threat of 3. I can choose to take PPC Velocity I (+15%) perk that has a cost of +3 threat, or I can take that Hard to Pilot drawback (-10% Turn Rate, -10% Stability) that has a cost of -2 threat and be able to grab the Advanced Jump Jets I (+10% Jump Jet Acceleration) perk with a cost of +2 along with my PPC velocity.

As I play, my threat limit on that BJ-3 can increase by one point at whatever XP milestones we set up to some cap we deem appropriate.

The beauty of this system is that a stock BJ-3 can have a balanced blend of attributes that allow it to perform well across a variety of initial conditions , good for any player new or old. The more experienced players can choose to sacrifice attributes that are less important to what they want to do to gain better performance out of the ones that do matter. It is a proper specialization and not a flat upgrade inherently leaving unlevelled 'Mechs in the dust.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 29 January 2018 - 08:35 AM.