18 replies to this topic

[Razegerogero]

Hey,

I used to play this game quite bit back some years ago, was in a medium-large clan and stuff. Like many others, I quit during the community troubles of late 2013 and early 2014.

Since I mostly stopped following the game, I only recently learned about ditching the publisher and about the faction warring having been introduced. So I decided to hop in and - okay, damn it, the game is gameplay wise just as amazing as it always was. Honestly this game just gets the 'Mech feel so right. It's ridiculously good in that regard.

The UI seems to.. well, uh, I guess it's an improvement? But still, there's just so much very tiny text all around that it feels difficult to grasp what's going on with it. The XP system feels somehow confusing - you have Mech specific XP which you can not use on its own, but you can convert it to Mech SP, which unlocks nodes.. But you can also convert it to GXP if you don't need SP.. Except that you can't, since it costs real money. What? And the GXP is.. only used to converting to SP. Overall the skill tree seems quite reduntant too; It looks like you just unlock the exact same nodes everyone else will unlock on all Mechs. If there's no real choice, why have a tree at all?

It could be simpler, really.

On the note of the conversion of XP to GXP costing real money, I see that some prices have been brought down, but c'mon - this is still ridiculously overpriced. If I paid 50 dollars, I could get: 3 colors (3000 MC), 2 'Mech bays (600 MC), Victor, the lightest Assault hero (6000 MC), convert 10,000 XP to GXP, which is worth 13 SP when you need several times more to master the Mech (400 MC) and get 25 days of Premium time (2000 MC).

That's for the price of a complete game.

I get it that a game with a more niche audience like MW:O has to have high-enough prices to meet the ROI, but I am 100% convinced that having prices this high is actually lowering your income by disicentivizing players from buying MC. If I put 40 dollars to Warframe, I'd get enough platinum to buy 20 Frame slots (400p), 3 whole color palettes (225p), an XP booster for 30 days (200p), and I'd still have enough to trade for some of the best, hardest to grind items there are. And that's not counting the very frequent discounts you get; wait a few weeks and you're gonna get that package at -50% off. Consequently, I've used twice times more money to Warframe than I have used to MW:O despite having played them a roughly equal amount of time. With that investment, I can paint my Frames exactly as I like, I never have to sell Frames or Weapons to make room for new ones and I've been able to cut down the most time-consuming grinds out. I'd like to get some new Mech bays and a nice paint jobs in MW:O too, but at these prices I rather just buy a whole new game.

Anyway, back to the good again!

The maps that have been introduced look and play pretty good. There's also lots of variety between them, which is great - keeps it feelin' fresh. The voting system you've introduced for map and mode selection is really nice. More games should have that! It's great to have a chance to play your favorites now and then even when they differ from the community's favorites. The rework the game modes have gotten is good; I like a lot of the small details you've put into them. Like, on the king of the hill mode (whatever its name was), you can stop capping by damaging the capping mech, which makes it more balanced for long range mechs. Otherwise, a mode like that would be dominated by brawlers only.

In Incursion, it's pretty neat that you actually have to damage the opponent base by more than they damaged your base to win the game, even when all enemy mechs are dead. It means that you can't simply just camp at your own base for the whole duration of the match. These small details really liven the game up and again - when it comes to the core game mechanics, you guys rock!

On the flipside, in regards of variety, I'm seeing very simple, straightforward laserboats dominate game after game. AC/20s and LRMs and PPCs feel pretty underwhelming in comparison.

In summary, I really do like the direction you've been taking. While some things still feel pretty rough, overall the game seems to have been turned out for the better. So I'll be playing a bunch of games for the coming weeks, see how it goes. I haven't yet even tried the faction war thing, and the competitive season system seems interesting too.

Good job with the good stuff & hope this direction sticks!

Edited by Razegerogero, 28 January 2018 - 05:51 AM.

[Ragnar Blackthorne]

As a relatively new player (as well as a relative newbie to the Battletech universe), I'm going to say that I agree with your good points. The core gameplay, much like Warframe, is fun enough to keep me playing for hours on end even when I'm having a run of bad matches.

To me, the biggest problem with the game is that when I saw that "faction play" button, it really sparked my imagination, but the queues for it are a ghost town and researching its history tells me that the mode has been chronically mismanaged for years. This doesn't reduce my enjoyment of the game, by any means, but I see it as wasted potential, which makes me sad. I'd like to hope that the long silence on faction play means they're actually working on big things for it, but I don't have enough history with this developer to know if that's likely.

[JC Daxion]

welcome back

I'll just add that GXP can be used to re-add a skill node that was previously unlocked. Basically GXP can be used for that and to get skill points on any mech. XP is for a single mech. That is the difference in a nutshell.

with champion+Premium time, and especially when double XP is running, you can grind up a lot of GXP for use at a later date which does come in handy for new players or those that ran out of bonus GSP.

Edited by JC Daxion, 28 January 2018 - 07:24 AM.

[Water Bear]

It is true that you don't get much for your money in this game, especially compared to Warframe.

...Also I did not know that cool shot was introduced after this game was released. Man I would be salty if I'd been a founder promised a game without consumables, and then they added them after release. I personally don't use or like consumables, but they've been in this game as long as I have.

[Jonathan8883]

The trick with buying things is to wait for sales, and to take advantage of giveaways.
I have been playing since August. I've spent $25 on two hero mechs, and $30 on two MC bundles. Both MC bundles were bought when they were on sale (bonus MC for $). Excluding the two purchased hero mechs, I have:
2 MC colors (bought at 50% off, 500MC each)
3 C-bill colors (red/blue/forgot the other) at 1M C-bills each
1 +30% c-bill Urbie (loyalty)
1 +30% c-bill Kit Fox (loyalty)
1 +30% c-bill Stormcrow (Halloween Event)
Legend Killer - 60t Rifleman hero (bought with MC when on sale)
Boiler - 90t Supernova (bought with MC when on sale)

Plus a few decals and a mishmash of warhorns.

If, like I do, the big attraction of hero mechs is +30% c-bills, then you could say that I have 7 in total. Two more are coming in March from the Christmas giveaway.

If you pay full retail price, it's more, of course.

[Ensaine]

Water Bear, on 28 January 2018 - 08:16 AM, said:

It is true that you don't get much for your money in this game, especially compared to Warframe.

...Also I did not know that cool shot was introduced after this game was released. Man I would be salty if I'd been a founder promised a game without consumables, and then they added them after release. I personally don't use or like consumables, but they've been in this game as long as I have.

We were very salty, trust me.

[Leone]

Razegerogero, on 28 January 2018 - 05:24 AM, said:

Hey,
'and stuff'

Awesome post, very detailed. I've played some warframe, and honestly, what I like about both games is neither are pay to win. You pay for convenience, if you want. Honestly, when I realized just how much time I'd put into MWO, that's when I put some money in as well. And yeah, I think the prices are high, so I wait for sales. I bought a few packs because I love the game, was ecstatic to see those mechs, and wanted to reward the developers.

Ragnar Blackthorne, on 28 January 2018 - 07:19 AM, said:

To me, the biggest problem with the game is that when I saw that "faction play" button, it really sparked my imagination, but the queues for it are a ghost town and researching its history tells me that the mode has been chronically mismanaged for years. This doesn't reduce my enjoyment of the game, by any means, but I see it as wasted potential, which makes me sad. I'd like to hope that the long silence on faction play means they're actually working on big things for it, but I don't have enough history with this developer to know if that's likely.

That is a shame. And right now, the big project for PGI is the Solaris dueling arena, so we don't expect much change to Community Warfare at this time.

I love CW< it's why I play the game. I'd suggest trying it on the weekends, as dependent on your timezone, your optimal playing time might be in more of a lull. That said, if you don't mind searching in teamspeak, every unit I know of is usually willing to offer a new player a place on a faction play drop if they're not full. It's a simple reason really. If you've taken the time to hop onto teamspeak it speaks to a willingness to work together that one cannot assume if you get matched with random players just queuing up. Also, if you can get twelve together you don't hafta wait to launch, just for an opponent.

Comstar North America: Address: na1.mech-connect.net Password: WordofBlake
I think there's still an EU one as well, but that's the one I use.

(Just a warning, there is no match maker. It is suggested to group up in case of opposing teamwork.)

~Leone.

[Mawai]

Water Bear, on 28 January 2018 - 08:16 AM, said:

It is true that you don't get much for your money in this game, especially compared to Warframe.

...Also I did not know that cool shot was introduced after this game was released. Man I would be salty if I'd been a founder promised a game without consumables, and then they added them after release. I personally don't use or like consumables, but they've been in this game as long as I have.

I may be mis-remembering but I don't think PGI ever promised a game without consumables. Also, there are some decisions from that time period that may have been more driven by IGP (the publisher) rather than PGI (the developer). I think the 3PV for example was likely a publisher push since it was supposed to mythically make the game more accessible.

Consumables were supposed to be another revenue stream but it wasn't managed that well. There were some objections but things calmed a bit when the MC consumables were given the same capabilities as the cbill consumables. You still had to grind gxp to unlock the skills for the cbill consumables but it did eliminate the "pay to win" element that folks complained would exist if the two types of consumables didn't provide the same capability.

P.S. To the OP ... your summary is pretty reasonable. The game has made some significant progress over the years ... but I think one of the things that bothers many folks (at least me ) the most is that MWO has always had the potential to be so much more than it is ... the fundamental game play since closed beta has always (in my opinion) done a really good job of capturing the feel of mech combat. However, they have always seemed to struggle to improve on it. In some ways, for example, the graphics are not as good as when the game was in beta since some features were dropped for performance reasons on low end hardware. Faction warfare has been hit or miss but mostly miss in my opinion ... some folks really like it but overall I think it needed more and better design. Game modes similarly need some work since many of them play like skirmish despite having alternate victory conditions. However, overall, in the end, I still think it is a decent game and fun to play.

Edited by Mawai, 28 January 2018 - 11:31 AM.

[TLBFestus]

Getting rid of the publisher, IGP, at the time seemed like it would be solution to many of the problems that PGI claimed IGP forced down our throats. It wasn't. Turns out PGI is more than capable of screwing the player base and the game all by themselves.

You missed out on some interesting developments during your abscence though. A couple of which I touch upon below.

Things that would never be in the game? Pillars of the game? Turns out those were all just suggestions or passing fancies, the pillars were made out of tissue paper, and the phrase "it was our position at the time" became a mantra. It was around the time of 3PV, coolant flushes, and "90 days" that I realized what PGI sold me and what they had in mind were two completely different things and stopped paying for anything.

As far as prices go, I got a tad of optimism when the Marauder pack came out and the prices dropped to something approaching appropriate. What let me mind boggled was that they still insist on selling colors and patterns at excessive prices. Somehow PGI was OK with selling mech packs, but selling larger discounted color packs is beyond them.

Communtiy Warfare, sorry "Faction play" ( If you can't fix something, just repackage the name...) was promised forever, took years longer to appear and was inevitably disappointing for most of us. All it's done is be a draw on development of the rest of the game.

eSports!!! Russsteadfastly maintains allusions of grandeur that MWO will be big in the eSports world, despite the game being niche and basically stagnant in terms of population. He throws money away to the MWO "elite" and tosses trinkets to the vast majority, the backbone of the game in things like;

- small lasers
- lumps of coal
- 1 day premium time
- single heat sinks
- 5MC

all of which cost them nothing to give away after initial development and yet are still mostly useless for the winners. This is the thanks you get for being in the majority. Yes....they've given away mechs too, but they were bought and paid for long before PGI gave them away. The elite...they had to settle for cash, real money. First tournament about $150,000 in cash. 2nd one, about $60,000 which was significantly less than earlier because they had some one time sponsorships to boost the prize pool.

Most of PGIs efforts are going into MW5, a stand alone game these days, and it's being supported by the money players spend on MWO, thus the mediocre at best progress on the game.

Still, the basic game play is enjoyable, and the art is overall excellent and the game keeps staggering along.

[Sunstruck]

If you didnt abandon the game and ACTUALLY PLAYED it, then you would have gotten everything you were whining about plus thousands of extra MC, for FREE from events.

[TLBFestus]

I haven't abandoned Battletech, or MWO. I abandoned the Developers.

[MechaBattler]

You could always just play your mech to get XP. Complaining about the conversion rate is ridiculous since you get XP by playing. Complaining about colors is reasonable. But to be fair they've also been giving out small quantities of MC for events. I've seen people post that they've got enough to buy a hero on multiple occasions. It's free to play game. It could be much much worse. They could be locking away mechs behind lootbox paywall. Like other free to play games like to do. Instead MWO lootboxes just give out mostly random junk with a smattering of decals.

They really didn't deliver on what they promised for FP. It's sadly the regular game repackaged under faux star map with different objectives and 4 mech respawn. They could create a more immersion FP with clever UI and art design. Sadly UI design seems to be one of PGI's big weaknesses

I can't believe people quit over that stuff in the article. I understand being passionate. But the core of the game is still a lot of fun. And while arty strike spam is still hotly debated. It doesn't change how fun the game is. Honestly I feel like they could do a lot with just some good UI work and out of combat management elements. But that's probably a bridge too far at this point.

Edited by MechaBattler, 28 January 2018 - 10:04 PM.

[sharknoise]

I believe that the point of expensive colors, cockpit items, hero mechs is to make players care for giveaways during events. For example, PGI used MC, mech bays and other rewards to lure people into Faction Play even though many hate this mode. Still many players did faction play events like a chore because of the illusion that MC is something valuable, worth relatively much in dollars. Events are also used to keep the general daily player count from dropping. If hero mechs, warhorns, colors etc were cheaper, no one would care much about event rewards.

Edited by sharknoise, 28 January 2018 - 10:20 PM.

[PocketYoda]

I know the money sinks in this game have gone ********..

sharknoise, on 28 January 2018 - 10:12 PM, said:

I believe that the point of expensive colors, cockpit items, hero mechs is to make players care for giveaways during events. For example, PGI used MC, mech bays and other rewards to lure people into Faction Play even though many hate this mode. Still many players did faction play events like a chore because of the illusion that MC is something valuable, worth relatively much in dollars. Events are also used to keep the general daily player count from dropping. If hero mechs, warhorns, colors etc were cheaper, no one would care much about event rewards.

What that actually does is make very few buy them...

Edited by Samial, 29 January 2018 - 02:48 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

You lost your like at more games should have map voting.

Map voting has made the game very stale. The same four or five maps in rotation, knowing where all the best points to be are, the frustration of watching the same people walk into the same kill boxes, and die time and time again.

It just compounds the sheep mentality of most human beings, and means people have to move out their comfort zone less and actually try to think.

[Razegerogero]

Sunstruck, on 28 January 2018 - 05:38 PM, said:

If you didnt abandon the game and ACTUALLY PLAYED it, then you would have gotten everything you were whining about plus thousands of extra MC, for FREE from events.

I've zero responsibility in playing any game, yet alone play any game for hundreds - or thousands - of hours. I think it's an error of cost design to aim for players who play for thousands of hours, since those are going to be the minority.

Mawai, on 28 January 2018 - 11:24 AM, said:

I may be mis-remembering but I don't think PGI ever promised a game without consumables. Also, there are some decisions from that time period that may have been more driven by IGP (the publisher) rather than PGI (the developer). I think the 3PV for example was likely a publisher push since it was supposed to mythically make the game more accessible.

They did promise that real money can't buy anything that affects the gameplay that credits can't buy. But the MC-only consumables were strictly better than the credits-only consumables when they were introduced. They also promised no 3rd person viewpoint.

It turned out that none of that had any real gameplay impact in the end, but the damage to their reputation was already done by pulling back promises that some players hung very passionately to. Made extra bad by the lead designers and developers modifying their own posts in retrospect to make it seem like they never promised anything. But I get it, I really do. I'm a software developer myself and sometimes you promise something, thinking with the knowledge you have then that it's sure to be so. Yet software, particularly software aimed to general audiences, has ever-changing demands and often stuff we thought of as sure is not really all so certain.

MechaBattler, on 28 January 2018 - 10:03 PM, said:

You could always just play your mech to get XP. Complaining about the conversion rate is ridiculous since you get XP by playing.

The point of that complaint was that it just makes the UI and the system seem more complex and confusing than it is. The conversion thing with MC also feels more like a trap than anything else. Sure, I don't have to convert anything.

MechaBattler, on 28 January 2018 - 10:03 PM, said:

But to be fair they've also been giving out small quantities of MC for events.

I wasn't aware of this at the time of writing the post! Giving out free MC is pretty cool - it never happened back when I played.

MechaBattler, on 28 January 2018 - 10:03 PM, said:

It's free to play game. It could be much much worse. They could be locking away mechs behind lootbox paywall. Like other free to play games like to do. Instead MWO lootboxes just give out mostly random junk with a smattering of decals.

Well, it's even still my sincere belief that if MC was cheaper, more people would buy it. Right now you might have an internal debate: "do I get a few colors, a few bays and a Hero or.. Do I just buy Civilization VI?" In the F2P model, what you really want is for your customers to buy something small several times over. MW:O prices itself completely differently from the traditional F2P model, opting instead to have very costly options meant to cover the game's development price per-player in a single buy. This is the worse model, IMO.

sharknoise, on 28 January 2018 - 10:12 PM, said:

I believe that the point of expensive colors, cockpit items, hero mechs is to make players care for giveaways during events. For example, PGI used MC, mech bays and other rewards to lure people into Faction Play even though many hate this mode. Still many players did faction play events like a chore because of the illusion that MC is something valuable, worth relatively much in dollars. Events are also used to keep the general daily player count from dropping. If hero mechs, warhorns, colors etc were cheaper, no one would care much about event rewards.

That's a good point, though even then.. I still think more players would buy MC if it cost less in dollars.

Cathy, on 29 January 2018 - 03:22 AM, said:

Map voting has made the game very stale. The same four or five maps in rotation, knowing where all the best points to be are, the frustration of watching the same people walk into the same kill boxes, and die time and time again.

But that wasn't my point. My point was exactly that this kind of a map voting system makes every map at least occasionally played. Your multiplier will increase by enough that eventually, you'll have enough voting power to basically force the choice.

Cathy, on 29 January 2018 - 03:22 AM, said:

It just compounds the sheep mentality of most human beings, and means people have to move out their comfort zone less and actually try to think.

Isn't it more difficult to out-think others in something they are already familiar with? Honestly I don't see much of a problem in certain maps being played much more than others. Competitive games in particular have traditionally limited the pools to allow intimiate familiarization of the maps. And it works, by making the game be more competitive instead of making the match more luck-based by hinging it on which team has more players who are not aware of the nuances of the particular map.

Edited by Razegerogero, 29 January 2018 - 03:59 AM.

[Vxheous]

Razegerogero, on 29 January 2018 - 03:45 AM, said:

They did promise that real money can't buy anything that affects the gameplay that credits can't buy. But the MC-only consumables are strictly better than the credits-only consumables.

C-bill consumables function exactly the same as MC-only consumables. Even pre-skill tree, as long as you put GXP into the various c-bill consumables, they functioned the same.

[Razegerogero]

Vxheous, on 29 January 2018 - 03:55 AM, said:

C-bill consumables function exactly the same as MC-only consumables. Even pre-skill tree, as long as you put GXP into the various c-bill consumables, they functioned the same.

Oh yeah, damn, wrong tense. Was just checking that from the store. Seems that.. Everything's now Advanced <something> and the MC-only, Priotity-ones have been removed.

That's very cool. :thumbup:

[MechaBattler]

If you're patient and wait for sales. You can get a lot of stuff at a lower price. Sometimes they have bonus MC sales. At least once or twice in the year, usually holidays, they put some colors on sale. Camos also go on sale. Even the one shot ones. Premium time also goes on sale. Mechbays as well. Recently we had a sale on XP to GXP conversion. It's not something a new player would be as aware of. But you can play the game pretty frugal if you're willing to grind most things and only pay when it's on sale.

Say you want premium time. You can buy a basic mech pack (Which sometimes go on sale) and it comes with 30 days of premium time for $5 more than you'd be paying to get the MC you need. You won't get the 500 leftover MC. But it still seems like a fine deal to me.