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[Letalis13]

Hello PGI. I've lost interest in MWO enough today to be more interested in pointing out some ways to better the game than in actually playing it. Some background on me. White male (deplorable) in mid-30s with 800hrs in MWO and a masters in military studies.

I've been around more than one dying MMO. Folks never seem to listen. Warbirds, Fighter Pilot, Aces High were all enjoyable games with lots of reference material. But they got botched. MWO has a ton of good reference material as well, good core gameplay and similarly strange priorities which will drive it into the dirt. Please don't make the mistake of thinking that only people who are whuny idiots are critical of your product. I'm taking the time because I honestly like the game and want the best for everyone involved, players and devs alike.

Here are a few thoughts in no particular order. It'll take enough time to cover them that I'm not going to waste time collating that which will likely be viewed by most in ADHD.

1. Allow more detailed targeting info for both enemy AND friendly mechs. Component health percentage, current heat level should be displayed when near another mech.

2. Add MAGSCAN. Assuming you're not in an urban environment, magscan should show you the presence of an enemy mech on the other side of a rock. Good alternative to seismic but with better range. (300m vs 200m)

3. Fix heatscan. Yes, it picks up on heat, but only at close ranges. It's the 31st century, you should be able to see the rest of your surroundings. Fix the color gradient so I'm not blind to cold objects when in heatscan.

4. Fix night vision range. It's the 31st century. Just paint the entire scene green/black without limiting view range. Why can't I see much beyond 600m using night mode? ERLL/PPCs at night are substantially limited at night because you can't see the target.

5. STOP making maps (ie. River City) transition from day to night. It's unrealistically fast and that's annoying.

6. Make more maps with daylight. Sure night/heat vision is cool for a while, but after 800 hrs, playing night maps have been an annoyance for quite some time now. Fixing heat/NVG will help...

7. Can we have a few maps with grass? The limited number of maps is terribly small, especially for a game this old. Counter Strike is an example of maps done right. If you are incapable of making new maps at an acceptable rate, let the community do it before it dies.

8. Know your audience. Your audience is white male (deplorables) over the age of 25. Battletech is not mainstream. Once you piss off these guys enough, they're probably not coming back. If you don't have advertising dollars, you need recruitment. Make a better game and get a compelling referral program going. 30 Million C-Bills for every player you refer to the game would be nice. Sure you'd get a bunch of dummy duplicate accounts, but in the meantime at least you've kept the scammer player and received a player uptick thanks to legitimate referrals.

9. When pressing Q, don't overlay all the friendly info on top of itself in an illegible mess. Stack the info on the screen for the love of common sense.

10. Keep the current skill tree concept and upgrade values, but please, scrap the current skill tree presentation. No I don't hate it, but scrap it. It's objectively a pain in the rear and the combo of the two is overly arbitrary and complex. Why should I have to mess with spending C-Bills on AMS to get to node X,Y or Z? Why do I need experience with a mech to make it better through modifications? Create realism where you can. Where you can create realism AND simplicity, it should be a no-brainer. You should be able to apply a certain number of upgrades. Those upgrades should cost C-Bills only. Give a menu with a bunch of rows for cooldown, speed tweak, structure, armor etc. Then let me purchase the 91 upgrades based on specific ability set. If I want to put all my upgrades into heat management, or cooldown, let me put all 91 in there and be stupid. Why? Diminishing returns. Each successive upgrade in a given category gains exponentially less ability boost for exponentially increasing cost. To get the last 10% worth of possible upgrades, you should have to spend at least as much as you spent getting to the 90% upgraded point.

11. Sell all mechs (including early adopter mechs) ala cate. To give a real example. I'm interested in the Vulcan 5T variant. But to get to that I need to spend $20 and get two other variants I don't care about? You lost a sale. Make it possible to buy the 5T for $7 and throw in 10 days of premium time and a color of my choice. It might be a pain to config the website at first, but you will sell moar!! Never limit how people can buy from you if you can help it!

12. Solaris is okay in terms of fun, but it is rather simplistic. Simple concept of max DPS. Simple and repetitive commentary. Few players. Rather arbitrary divisions. Let me save configuration presets to my mechs for Solaris and QP in the mechlab then get rid of 4 divisions if you keep any division separation at all. I want to be able to use any mech in my arsenal for any given match. Don't restrict the players for the sake of balance, especially when it means 0 players in que.

13. Useful screens in your mechs. There are several mechs that have the kill panel twice. Then there's the green/red "screensaver" screen. It is not functional. A panel in your mech should display the all-time stats for that mech. Drops, wins, losses, kills, assist, deaths, average damage, cumulative C-Bills. Another idea for a useful screen is the rear-camera. My 2012 Greyhawk RV has a great rear-view camera. A war machine of the 31st century should have one as well. Once the rear CT armor is stripped, the camera feed should cut out due to damage.

14. FP is dead. Bring it back. How? Intelligently merge FP with quickplay. When a player first logs in, give them the choice of allegiance between IS House/Clan/Freelancer/Merc. Once they make that choice, gift them a starter mech of their choice from a pool select mechs that are in keeping with their faction choice. For example, I log in, I choose allegiance to Davion. I should get a choice between Osiris, Enforcer and Jagermech as my starter. Now I name the mech. Next I go to the academy in my mech. (Then I'm auto assigned to a player unit from their faction in the game. Generals within units can check a box that allows new players to auto join their unit) A new player can always leave...this at least gives them a chance of meeting people and learning quicker.

Now for the fighting. All FP will be essentially QP but with mechs retricted to IS/Clan. In group que, the solo player/unit general/lobby leader selects the planet they wish to attack from the faction play map. The selected planet cannot be changed for any player until it is captured or defended. How to capture/defend planets? Campaign Points (CP).Since you've got code for calculating experience points (but we're not tracking experience points anymore remember) you can use that same code to generate CP. That's right, just relabel the thing and give it a different use. Campaign points are automatically applied to conquest or defense of the planet in question. Each planet has a campaign point threshold that must accumulate "on" that planet. Planets have different thresholds and rewards based on their significance. Let's take the Davion planet Chesterton and say it is a low-level planet. Once a total of 500,000 or more campaign points have been accrued on that planet by players of both (or all) sides, the server will calculate which side accumulated the most points. This system would not bode well for factions with fewer players, so a "per player" campaign point average for each player match would be calculated. Once the campaign point (CP) threshold for the planet is met, the owner of the planet will be determined by the side with the highest player campaign point average over all matches applied to the conquest/defense of that planet.
When a planet is successfully captured/defended, the player should get to see a nice little scrolling screen explaining how hard-fought the battle was for their faction. Then you get a little MC reward. Tier 3 planets must have 500,000 CP accrued and give out 5MC to players from the winning side.Tier 2 are 1,000,000 CP threshold and 10MC payout. Tier 3 are 1.5M CP and 15MC payout. Only enemy planets adjacent to owned planets may be attacked.

15. Keep unit stats. Everyone in your unit is constantly killing and being killed in games. Players should be able to see their units' metric in the unit tab along with how their unit is doing relative to other units. The measure of this should be average player CP for players within the unit.

16. There's some strong lore/backstory to the MWO universe. Use. It. Get a writer. Make some scrolling text. You know, the kind that got you involved in the pixelated crap that was Nintendo in the 80s? That's what good writing can do! Use the lore!

17. Get ride of smoke for arty/airstrike. There is often no need for smoke in TODAY's battlefield half the time. JTACs just relay grids and boom. Enemy is done. In the 31st century your mech should just relay coords and the enemy should not see it coming. How to prevent it from becoming OP since everyone could call it in at the same time and the enemy wouldn't see it coming? Only 1 player per team can call in airstrike or arty at a time. Once they do, it triggers a 20 sec cooldown for the entire team, simulating limited supporting assets. Damage from airstrkes should be better against armor and laid down in a line. Damage from arty should be better against exposed structure and laid down in a box pattern centered over the designated grid centerpoint.

18. Change command in-game. First, allow voting for company/lance leader in lobby. In QP/FP normally no one wants to be boss. There's hardly any point. Also, anyone who wants to be can be...and they can spam orders and nobody can stop them. Now they can be replaced by popular vote. When in-game, show rally/defend points on player HUDs/on the map terrain itself, not just the cockpit minimap. Often times designated points are outside what you can view via the cockpit minimap and I don't like taking the time to open the battlegrid.

19. When a player keys the mic, their icon should pulse on the minimap/battlegrid. If someone is talking, I don't want to just know WHO they are like we do now, I want to know WHERE. This will put an end to useless "they're pushing my flank" and "help me over here!" callouts. It would also end this callout: "*Sigh* "Person who is clearly about to die, would you mind telling me what grid you're in?"

20. IS players can still take Clan mechs out for a spin in QP matches, but that would be about the only compelling reason to choose QP over FP. Because of merging FP into QP elements, players will automatically be getting mechbays every now and then as they gain faction rank. FP also allows a trickle of MC. QP should be a place to tinker with different builds and have fun on the side, that's about it. This construct will make FP "where it's at." Despite players getting a few mechbays via their FP participation, I recommend making mechbays purchasable via 30M C-Bills. If a player has THAT MANY C-Bills laying around, they have contributed enough to the game by their mere presence for PGI to throw them a bone.

21. Cut MC cost of colors by 25%. Allow purchase of any color or camo pattern for 12M C-Bills. 12M C-Bills is equivalent to roughly 12-15 hrs worth of grinding for a freeloading player. IF they are willing to play 90 matches for a pretty perriwinkle, just keep that player around instead of frustrating them. The players with 50M C-Bills floating around will be happier too.

22. Consider adding separate repair and rearm pads to bases within Incursion mode. Rearmament would take approx 30 sec from empty. Repair rate would be dependent on tonnage to reflect the scale of the repairs taking place. Repair rate would be 1% per total tonnage divided by 10 per second. Thus a 35t Wolfhound would go from 50% health to 100% in 175 seconds (50pts x at rate of 3.5 seconds per point). A 100t King Crab would take 500 seconds (50pts at rate of 10 seconds per point) to do the same thing. Note: Repair pads would not restore lost limbs, just repair whatever armor/structure is present.

23. Make the yellow targeting light brighter and the accompanying chirp more distinct. It is subtle now, I didn't even notice it as a newer player till about 40 hours in. (Lol)

24. This is a tougher one. When toggling the arm lock key, mechs with arms should raise their arms between a firing position and a stowed/movement position. This will allow mechs like the Wolverine/Banchee/Black Knight to fire arm-mouted weapons from shoulder-height. It's just stupid watching 31st Century war machines fire into the side of hills for no reason other than inability to innovate or animate. Mechs that move without placing arms back in the locked/stowed position suffer a 10% speed penalty per arm. Thus, a "stowed" 81kph Enforcer with arms in the fire position would gain better weapon geometry while hill humping, but only move at 64.8 kph.

25. Add a selectable UAV tab to the battlegrid. While a drone is active it should be sending a data feed to all mechs on your side. So long as a UAV is active, friendly players can view a pointable/zoomable video feed from the UAV tab. Being able to actually see enemy mechs and their loadouts would be a big advantage for players who could manage taskloads properly.

26. Get more game modes going! Domination on Grim Plexus is stupid. The F7 side team has a
big advantage. There are a very limited number of combos that are actually good. Here are some easy ideas: "Data Recovery" is a mode that plays very much like domination, but the "domination point" is randomly selected from several possible points. A downed scout mech has some Lostech in it. A dropship is inbound to retrieve the mech. Keep the LZ free of enemy mechs for 60 sec to win.

"Base Defense" plays just like assault, but only one team has a mobile base structure to defend. Base spawns are randomly picked from a preset pool of 5-10 locations per map.

27. In existing assault mode, get rid of the stupid-looking resource platform (which is not a "base") and the stupid-looking laser cordon. Replace it with a command bunker and give it a nearly time-equivalent number of hit points.

28. Make dead mechs collidable for a few seconds and do not allow players to shoot through them. It breaks immersion to be in a Locust and speed through a dead Timbie, then a dead Battlemaster, then a dead Quickdraw...I should have to go around. Make it an object for a couple seconds, only if I am still in contact with it after two seconds should it become a hologram (don't want to get stuck either).

29. Make advanced seismic upgrade show enemy mech weight class on minimap. Good sensors should be able to tell the difference.

30. Add a "crew quarters" tab from main menu. In the crew quarters you can walk around the room, view messages from unit members, see faction play alerts, view your cumulative stats, place standing cockpit items or banners, a little like the old game X-Wing Alliance. This could allow for a whole new class of in game items. Wallpapers, bedsheets etc. That said, there are a whole lot of other things that need attention first.

31. Some folks say they'd like you to "focus on fixing what's wrong and stop putting out new mechs" but I realize new mechs are income and don't necessarily involve the "bugsmasher programmers." The new mechs keep the game interesting - getting a new mech puts a fresh coat of paint and the same basic gameplay. While you're keeping that up, I'd like to see the Watchman in-game. (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Watchman) Knowing your audience implies giving them what they want (with a basis in lore) instead of just doing a fantastic job creating mechs that have no backstory to go with them. Watch Critical Rocket's Roughneck videos to get an idea of enthusiasm...()

Boom. There's an hour gone...