53 replies to this topic

[MischiefSC]

I thought the sky was falling too.

Actually it was just a Locust with stealth armor spotting for a couple LRM boats on Caustic.

We killed the spotter, pushed to the crater, got ahead on kills then rolled up and smashed the boats.

If we had stayed in the back crying we would have lost. Instead we realized that things ebb and flow and we pushed ahead.

I suspect there's a lesson in there somewhere.

[Anjian]

So far right now, MWO has like 700 Steam players online, this is at the moment of post.






As for War Thunder,






This probably reflects the size of its NA base, although not all NA players go through Steam. International players including its biggest player bases at Europe and Russia go to Gaijin's site directly. Its China player base has their own servers.


Not sure I like attack helicopters inside the game. I just prefer playing WW2 period and still waiting for its naval battles.

Edited by Anjian, 19 September 2018 - 06:03 PM.

[Anjian]

Acersecomic, on 19 September 2018 - 05:15 PM, said:

Battletech is turnbased, which I hate the most after MOBA's and Toxicity combined, MekTek if you mean MW4 stuff that's ooooold old, stubby controls. LivingLegends while very ambitious is just too big, it's like Polar on steroids, though much more interesting than Polar.
The thing is, PGI should be professionals, and the base of MWO is right. The problem is, PGI kept it at that base and never build upon it.

PGI never understood how dramatically the gaming market has changed within half a decade or so.

[Mystere]

JRcam4643, on 19 September 2018 - 04:37 PM, said:

That's sounds interesting, can you explain the "integrated troop movement" part?

It's somewhere here.

[UnofficialOperator]

Bombast, on 19 September 2018 - 04:28 AM, said:

Considering the nature of the patch, I have expectations.

Its the final countdown. Just checked steamcharts and its sad.

Circling the drain.

[JRcam4643]

Mystere, on 19 September 2018 - 06:20 PM, said:

It's somewhere here.

Thats good, this is what i would like to see but these idea wouldn't change the battles.


A possible faction overhaul. It would give faction play a tabletop element. Instead of just winning battles until you reach a certain threshold to take planets I think it would be more interesting to have each player awarded points for performance in each battle, track match score. These points would be spent on assets that could be allocated to conflict zones. What are the assets? That could be a number of different answers some very simple and some very complicated. If you wanted to leave it very simple you could just say who ever has most points at the end of that phase wins. I don't think that would do it justice but it would be the logical first step and even in that state I think it would be a lot better than current faction play.

Here is a list of assets I would like to see: All mechs and variants, ammunition, basic supplies, artillery, aircraft and combat vehicles. Each of these items would have a value attached to it. So lets say you use points to allocate mechs to a planet. using this idea each mech would need a certain amount of basic supplies and ammunition, per hour I'm thinking, and if you don't have enough supplies mechs would get a penalty. Each planet should have a certain type of terrain and that terrain would affect different mechs in different ways. For example fast mechs and jump jet mechs would get bonuses on planets with rough terrain while a Direwolf should get a hefty bonus on flat long range terrain. And certain mech variants would provide bonuses to other mechs depending on loadout, NARC mechs would bonus mechs/vehicles with missiles.

All assets would be combined on a planet from all players who choose to put anything there. At the end of any invasion phase who ever has most points after calculating bonuses and penalties would win. For most interesting outcome Clans and Houses should be allowed to individually choose which faction they want to attack. Once a target faction is selected players would be allowed to assign there war assets to any planet that is on the border of the two sides and if a unit contributes as many or more assets/points then all other friendly units combined they get their tag placed on the planet in a win.

This might sound chaotic and thats the point. If you give players the ability to go many directions it will allow unit and player coordination to shine. NOTE: This would have no effect on in battle game play. This would only be something you do on the star map. Something that would be essential for this is a option in unit management that gives Unit COs the option to restrict the allocation of points to themselves and approved officers.

[BumbaCLot]

JRcam4643, on 19 September 2018 - 07:01 PM, said:

Thats good, this is what i would like to see but these idea wouldn't change the battles.


A possible faction overhaul. It would give faction play a tabletop element. Instead of just winning battles until you reach a certain threshold to take planets I think it would be more interesting to have each player awarded points for performance in each battle, track match score. These points would be spent on assets that could be allocated to conflict zones. What are the assets? That could be a number of different answers some very simple and some very complicated. If you wanted to leave it very simple you could just say who ever has most points at the end of that phase wins. I don't think that would do it justice but it would be the logical first step and even in that state I think it would be a lot better than current faction play.

Here is a list of assets I would like to see: All mechs and variants, ammunition, basic supplies, artillery, aircraft and combat vehicles. Each of these items would have a value attached to it. So lets say you use points to allocate mechs to a planet. using this idea each mech would need a certain amount of basic supplies and ammunition, per hour I'm thinking, and if you don't have enough supplies mechs would get a penalty. Each planet should have a certain type of terrain and that terrain would affect different mechs in different ways. For example fast mechs and jump jet mechs would get bonuses on planets with rough terrain while a Direwolf should get a hefty bonus on flat long range terrain. And certain mech variants would provide bonuses to other mechs depending on loadout, NARC mechs would bonus mechs/vehicles with missiles.

All assets would be combined on a planet from all players who choose to put anything there. At the end of any invasion phase who ever has most points after calculating bonuses and penalties would win. For most interesting outcome Clans and Houses should be allowed to individually choose which faction they want to attack. Once a target faction is selected players would be allowed to assign there war assets to any planet that is on the border of the two sides and if a unit contributes as many or more assets/points then all other friendly units combined they get their tag placed on the planet in a win.

This might sound chaotic and thats the point. If you give players the ability to go many directions it will allow unit and player coordination to shine. NOTE: This would have no effect on in battle game play. This would only be something you do on the star map. Something that would be essential for this is a option in unit management that gives Unit COs the option to restrict the allocation of points to themselves and approved officers.

Mystere doesn't even play FP, so I may read your post in greater depth as you have 30 matches on the board.

[JRcam4643]

BumbaCLot, on 20 September 2018 - 02:05 PM, said:

Mystere doesn't even play FP, so I may read your post in greater depth as you have 30 matches on the board.

That's part of the point. Faction play needs to be more interesting than it is. Right now the invasion battles are basically all you have in faction play and if you don't enjoy that there's nothing else to hold your attention. If you add the ideas I put up there I think a lot more people would be willing to put up the blandish battles so they get points to use on the strategic level.

A big plus that would also keep more people interested is freeing up all planets as conflict zones. It would allow players to use there imagination to make their story attack where ever that takes them. Another good thing about these ideas is I think it would be easier to do than change maps or making new ones.

And if some of us don't play in faction war that has nothing to do with if the ideas are good or bad. The reason we're putting the ideas out there is hope that it gets changed in a way that makes it feel worth while to us.

[Dragonporn]

Anjian, on 19 September 2018 - 06:01 PM, said:

So far right now, MWO has like 700 Steam players online, this is at the moment of post.






As for War Thunder,






This probably reflects the size of its NA base, although not all NA players go through Steam. International players including its biggest player bases at Europe and Russia go to Gaijin's site directly. Its China player base has their own servers.


Not sure I like attack helicopters inside the game. I just prefer playing WW2 period and still waiting for its naval battles.

That simply highlights the fact, which has been beaten to death by now, that MWO is niche game. It is obvious that game based on WW2, or modern warfare would have bigger following, but there is particular niche of players (like me f.e.) who isn't interested in it, and prefer futuristic/fantastic stuff.

As for games, I honestly don't understand how War thunder or World of Tanks manage to maintain such giant playerbases. From what I know they handle F2P model quite poorly, and communities are beyond toxic, while F2P model is handled in MWO rather fairly, and community is simply amazing in comparison, no sarcasm.

[Anjian]

FW was doomed to a start. Right in the beginning, there were too many factions for the player base size. When Chromehounds where at the peak, they have over 300,000 players, and spread only across three factions. Even that didn't last once the game had the usual life cycle attrition, and I moved to playing just team deathmatches just to get a PvP game. Even the Planetside games only had three factions. I think I remember it was Nexon's Shattered Galaxy that I first played faction wars, sort of like a Starcraft with faction wars, that game I remembered had only four factions.

The second mistake was that the games are too long.

The sooner the game is done, the faster the players are released back into the matchmaking queue. If a player decides to quit the game, his deck should be freed and not forced to keep dropping into the map as fodder for the enemy team. The player should be released back into the matchmaking queue. Teams should not be allowed to farm a lost team, once all defeated team has left, victory should be announced and the match ended, so all the players are released back into the queue.

Incursion should have been FW's game mode from the start, not Invasion.

I think its too late to dig out of the grave now, and there is too much ego to admit or reverse the mistakes.

[Anjian]

Dragonporn, on 20 September 2018 - 05:31 PM, said:

That simply highlights the fact, which has been beaten to death by now, that MWO is niche game. It is obvious that game based on WW2, or modern warfare would have bigger following, but there is particular niche of players (like me f.e.) who isn't interested in it, and prefer futuristic/fantastic stuff.

As for games, I honestly don't understand how War thunder or World of Tanks manage to maintain such giant playerbases. From what I know they handle F2P model quite poorly, and communities are beyond toxic, while F2P model is handled in MWO rather fairly, and community is simply amazing in comparison, no sarcasm.

War Thunder isn't that toxic or players just ignore you and each other. Even if you scream from the chat, no one will ever hear you, as the chat window is also too small and you likely don't understand Russian. The converse to that is that a quiet team may not be motivated to win at all, just get their kills and rewards for the game.

F2P model in MWO is broken and is the worst for one reason --- Prepay. It may sound like fair to you but it does not encourage quality development since the developer is throwing resources to finish the product in time, and does not have any obligation and accountability to deliver a quality product, after all, because they are already paid for. Prepay does not encourage development of other game features, and everything broken and stagnant on MWO can be singularly explained because of prepay. You only need to see the results what prepay brought to another game --- Star Citizen --- which still has neither game, nor road map or schedule with specific dates, even though its entire fleet has been sold.

This in contrast to these other wargames where they do not promise a strict release date, nor prepay these goods, so they allow as much time for play testing the content for bugs and balance. World of Warships have ships that are pretested for months.

Which by the way, I would hold WoWs probably as an model for an F2P game, besides Warframe. They are managed differently and by a different department in Wargaming than World of Tanks. Do note that much of the content in WoWs are free but grinded, which is the proper model for F2P, and not sold. Both WoWs and Warframe have steadily growing player bases over time.

On mobile, the fact that War Robots have greater revenue and is ranked higher, often in the top five of the action category in Apple and Google Play Store, over wargames, even over World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships Blitz, illustrate that mech games have the potential to break past niche and enter mainstream numbers. We are talking about a mech game that has already amassed over 190 million US dollars in revenue.

As a genre, mechs have much greater exposure to gamers over war machines thank to anime, and not surprisingly many gamers are also anime watchers. Just count recently how many war movies are there recently --- even Wargaming tries to take advantage of every very few war movies made by doing licensing deals like the Fury movie with Brad Pitt or schedule a Dunkirk event in line with the movie's launch. Wargaming even tries collaborating with any anime that had some kind of war theme, like Arpeggio of Blue Steel. They understand that anime brings in games and work very hard at that. I won't be surprised if I hear a WoWs anime in the future.

This does not help Battletech, which lacks a popular media vehicle right now. While Gundam is the most famous, due to the diversity of mechs in anime, anime basically creates a mental presence for mechs but not for a particular franchise, just mecha in general. Within fans of the mech genre, there are far more people that are not exposed to Battletech, or never even heard of it. We are talking of mech interested players in Japan, Korea, and all over Asia, as well as Latin America, the Middle East, much of Eastern and Western Europe. Every time I enter a match in War Robots, and now even Battle of Titans, I see Japanese names, Korean names, Chinese names, Russian names, Thai names, Indian names, Vietnamese names. Even if Battle of Titans is a Russian game, it looks like every player I meet is Chinese or Japanese given their name tags. I don't see the same multicultural phenomenon in MWO.

In addition to that, a game like War Robots throws a significant amount of its earnings --- it makes a huge bundle thanks to P2W --- into advertising, web advertising, mobile advertising, Google and Facebook advertising, even sponsoring YouTube videos. WR has an active YouTube community that the company itself collaborates with. What does PGI do in social media, especially in YouTube for comparison? I should also add that both Wargaming and War Thunder also makes massive use of YouTube and Twitch, actively collaborating with Twitches and YouTubers to great effect.

Gaming world has changed greatly within less than a decade or so. IMO Battletech needs and is ripe for quality mobile game that can expose the franchise to the millions that never heard of it. Mobile games are still ruled by independents and not by huge established gaming franchises either, so this is the platform for new breakouts. Even a turn based game is good --- strategy and tactics games are thriving in mobile even more than action games.

[BumbaCLot]

Anjian, on 20 September 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

FW was doomed to a start. Right in the beginning, there were too many factions for the player base size. When Chromehounds where at the peak, they have over 300,000 players, and spread only across three factions. Even that didn't last once the game had the usual life cycle attrition, and I moved to playing just team deathmatches just to get a PvP game. Even the Planetside games only had three factions. I think I remember it was Nexon's Shattered Galaxy that I first played faction wars, sort of like a Starcraft with faction wars, that game I remembered had only four factions.

The second mistake was that the games are too long.

The sooner the game is done, the faster the players are released back into the matchmaking queue. If a player decides to quit the game, his deck should be freed and not forced to keep dropping into the map as fodder for the enemy team. The player should be released back into the matchmaking queue. Teams should not be allowed to farm a lost team, once all defeated team has left, victory should be announced and the match ended, so all the players are released back into the queue.

Incursion should have been FW's game mode from the start, not Invasion.

I think its too late to dig out of the grave now, and there is too much ego to admit or reverse the mistakes.

Disagree on every post. I guess taking a 5 year break and coming back gives me fresh eyes and I can enjoy and play the game. Incursion is awful, quitters are awful. Teamwork is OP. I play in 12 mans, win in 12 mans, and lose in 12 mans. Are you playing QP, GP, or just on the forums?

FP is literally the most fun to be had in MWO. Case closed.

[Anjian]

BumbaCLot, on 20 September 2018 - 10:37 PM, said:

Disagree on every post. I guess taking a 5 year break and coming back gives me fresh eyes and I can enjoy and play the game. Incursion is awful, quitters are awful. Teamwork is OP. I play in 12 mans, win in 12 mans, and lose in 12 mans. Are you playing QP, GP, or just on the forums?

FP is literally the most fun to be had in MWO. Case closed.

QP once in a while and the forums now. Before I was heavy in FP 1 and 2.

FP is both the most fun I have had in MWO and yet also the most frustration in MWO to watch. I mean watch because being Clan in FP 1 and 2, you win most of the time, and you don't feel frustrated when you win. But I feel frustrated watching as these matches unfold because you know a lot of players on the other team are not going to come back to the mode, if not the game at all. You know when you are in a kind of game that isn't going to grow its player base but lose them, and in the end, you are left with a sickening feeling in the gut.

I disagree that Incursion is awful, its a decent attempt to add objectives in the game. I honestly think it would be better than Invasion, the latter which is trying to attempt to cash in to the MOBA craze by adding some kind of MOBA feel to it that didn't align with the Battletech theme.

Faster player return to the matchmaking queue is essential to a successful game because long waiting times are proven cancerous to a game. This is the reason why many large online PvP games watch and monitor the waiting times of matchmaking queues.

Edited by Anjian, 21 September 2018 - 02:30 AM.

[BumbaCLot]

Anjian, on 21 September 2018 - 02:10 AM, said:

QP once in a while and the forums now. Before I was heavy in FP 1 and 2.

FP is both the most fun I have had in MWO and yet also the most frustration in MWO to watch. I mean watch because being Clan in FP 1 and 2, you win most of the time, and you don't feel frustrated when you win. But I feel frustrated watching as these matches unfold because you know a lot of players on the other team are not going to come back to the mode, if not the game at all. You know when you are in a kind of game that isn't going to grow its player base but lose them, and in the end, you are left with a sickening feeling in the gut.

I disagree that Incursion is awful, its a decent attempt to add objectives in the game. I honestly think it would be better than Invasion, the latter which is trying to attempt to cash in to the MOBA craze by adding some kind of MOBA feel to it that didn't align with the Battletech theme.

Faster player return to the matchmaking queue is essential to a successful game because long waiting times are proven cancerous to a game. This is the reason why many large online PvP games watch and monitor the waiting times of matchmaking queues.

Sorry I can't understand people who hang out on forums for a game they don't play.
I left for 5 years and couldn't imagine coming here unless I was active again.
I play FP for 3-4 hours a night for the past 6 weeks.
It's fine.

[Anjian]

BumbaCLot, on 21 September 2018 - 02:39 AM, said:

Sorry I can't understand people who hang out on forums for a game they don't play.
I left for 5 years and couldn't imagine coming here unless I was active again.
I play FP for 3-4 hours a night for the past 6 weeks.
It's fine.

LOL. The last time I played this game was four days ago. Currently doing a major event for another game, RPG this time around.


There is hardly anyone in FP, although me being in Asian-Australian time, is a factor to that. Most of the people in my FP buddy list are long gone.


I never took a break for five years, since 2013, and even in periods of low activity, where I would practically spend most of my time in other games, I would at least play a number of games in a week or even in a month to keep touch, brush the flavor off the other games, see what new mechs are up and buy mechs that I like to collect. Sometimes I start up the game just to try and experiment on a new mech configuration. Its called a bad habit.


Oh, and one reason I read the forums, is to discover new mech configurations that can inspire me to experiment and test it out in the game.

Edited by Anjian, 21 September 2018 - 03:25 AM.

[Mystere]

BumbaCLot, on 20 September 2018 - 02:05 PM, said:

Mystere doesn't even play FP, so I may read your post in greater depth as you have 30 matches on the board.

I used to play CW heavily. However, I haven't played much of CW for a while now BECAUSE I AM BORED TO DEATH BY IT, BORED BY ITS LACK OF PURPOSE. If that -- and my post from over 3 years ago-- does not speak volumes about the current state of the game, nothing can. <shrugs>

And choppers, War Thunder just released choppers, comrade.

BumbaCLot, on 20 September 2018 - 10:37 PM, said:

I guess taking a 5 year break …

BumbaCLot, on 21 September 2018 - 02:39 AM, said:

I play FP for 3-4 hours a night for the past 6 weeks.

Five year break? Playing CW for only 6 weeks? You've got more catching up to do. You also missed a whole lot (Ahem! Tactical Nuclear Artillery! Ahem!).

BumbaCLot, on 21 September 2018 - 02:39 AM, said:

Sorry I can't understand people who hang out on forums for a game they don't play.

Here is a hint: the leaderboards are not a reliable way of figuring out if someone posting here is playing or not. Because I can assure you, I have been playing. However, I am leaving it to you to figure that one out.

Edited by Mystere, 21 September 2018 - 04:14 AM.

[Mystere]

Dragonporn, on 20 September 2018 - 05:31 PM, said:

As for games, I honestly don't understand how War thunder or World of Tanks manage to maintain such giant playerbases ...

One word: accessibility. Being available on both PC and consoles helps, tremendously.

[arcana75]

Anjian, on 20 September 2018 - 06:34 PM, said:

On mobile, the fact that War Robots have greater revenue and is ranked higher, often in the top five of the action category in Apple and Google Play Store, over wargames, even over World of Tanks Blitz and World of Warships Blitz, illustrate that mech games have the potential to break past niche and enter mainstream numbers. We are talking about a mech game that has already amassed over 190 million US dollars in revenue.

There's one fundamental diff between WR and MWO: WR can be played on mobile devices. That puts WR heads and shoulders above MWO, which has a much higher barrier to entry. Many gamers today don't even own a computing device that has a clickity thing that makes letters appear on a screen and an oblong thing you hold in your palm that moves a strange thing called a pointer or cursor on a screen.

[BumbaCLot]

Mystere, on 21 September 2018 - 03:38 AM, said:

I used to play CW heavily. However, I haven't played much of CW for a while now BECAUSE I AM BORED TO DEATH BY IT, BORED BY ITS LACK OF PURPOSE. If that -- and my post from over 3 years ago-- does not speak volumes about the current state of the game, nothing can. &lt;shrugs&gt;

And choppers, War Thunder just released choppers, comrade.




[/size]


Five year break? Playing CW for only 6 weeks? You've got more catching up to do. You also missed a whole lot (Ahem! Tactical Nuclear Artillery! Ahem!).


[/size]

Here is a hint: the leaderboards are not a reliable way of figuring out if someone posting here is playing or not. Because I can assure you, I have been playing. However, I am leaving it to you to figure that one out.

You've had a chicken icon for a month, I'm not an idiot.

[BumbaCLot]

arcana75, on 21 September 2018 - 04:34 AM, said:

There's one fundamental diff between WR and MWO: WR can be played on mobile devices. That puts WR heads and shoulders above MWO, which has a much higher barrier to entry. Many gamers today don't even own a computing device that has a clickity thing that makes letters appear on a screen and an oblong thing you hold in your palm that moves a strange thing called a pointer or cursor on a screen.

Time for a real no true Scotsman argument.
Just because I can press two thumbs on a 6" touchscreen doesn't make me a "gamer'.
You really want to even try to equate PC game with 30+ functions with the controls of Candy Crush? Begone.