52 replies to this topic

[Papaspud]

we have an event= can't find a match, what a joke. How about make a few new maps?????????

[Brizna]

Solaris is fundamentally flawed, more maps wouldn't fix it. It was actually pretty obvious to anyone who had done one or two 1 vs 1 player run tournaments that 1 vs 1 is nice to have some relaxed fun with friends every few months but that it is immensely dull and uninteresting in the long run, it simply lacks the depth and variation required to stay interesting. Thing is I don't think people who run this game play much of it and are out of touch with reality, so they wasted a huge deal of effort in a doomed game mode and are probably still wondering why Solaris failed so miserably.

[JediPanther]

If you wanted a list of 'biggest wastes' here's a few to get started:
1. Knockdowns added then removed because paul made a great bowing pin
2. IK. Removed...Because coding is too hard.
3. ESCORT...We can't show how horrible we are in that we can't even make a mech go down a path while we try and pre-order our AI filled game.
4. TRANSVERSE.
5. Gold Mech skin at $500 per mech.
6. Ghost heat.
7. REscale the lights into oblivion.
8. Long Tom.
9. Seven divisions for a 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 game mode.
10. Central feature with choke map lanes moba design in an arena shooter.

[Y E O N N E]

Brizna, on 26 January 2019 - 04:02 AM, said:

Solaris is fundamentally flawed, more maps wouldn't fix it. It was actually pretty obvious to anyone who had done one or two 1 vs 1 player run tournaments that 1 vs 1 is nice to have some relaxed fun with friends every few months but that it is immensely dull and uninteresting in the long run, it simply lacks the depth and variation required to stay interesting. Thing is I don't think people who run this game play much of it and are out of touch with reality, so they wasted a huge deal of effort in a doomed game mode and are probably still wondering why Solaris failed so miserably.

They could salvage a lot of the work that went into Solaris 7 by creating an 8v8 or 12v12 "Solaris" mode and expanding on the MM infrastructure to properly allocate 'Mechs by pilot ELO and division to each team.

But no, it won't happen.

[Spheroid]

JediPanther, on 26 January 2019 - 11:34 AM, said:

If you wanted a list of 'biggest wastes' here's a few to get started:

6. Ghost heat.

Not a waste at all. It is in fact the most labor efficient method of dealing with large pinpoint alphas that have been part of first person MechWarrior for over twenty-five years. The only ways of attacking pinpoint is either a cone of fire or random hit tables. Notice that no company in the history of first person BattleTech has gone this route. Do you think that is coincidence?

With a clean slate they could have chosen any fire mechanic they wanted to for MW5 and did not choose the above. I assume you are one of two opinions, either alphas should be unlimited or there should be spread. Please declare where you stand.

Edited by Spheroid, 26 January 2019 - 04:08 PM.

[Alcom Isst]

Brizna, on 26 January 2019 - 04:02 AM, said:

Solaris is fundamentally flawed, more maps wouldn't fix it. It was actually pretty obvious to anyone who had done one or two 1 vs 1 player run tournaments that 1 vs 1 is nice to have some relaxed fun with friends every few months but that it is immensely dull and uninteresting in the long run, it simply lacks the depth and variation required to stay interesting. Thing is I don't think people who run this game play much of it and are out of touch with reality, so they wasted a huge deal of effort in a doomed game mode and are probably still wondering why Solaris failed so miserably.

A majority of Solaris fights where there isn't a fast light/medium involved turn into pure DPS fights, where it's a matter of who has the better build, who fired the first shot, and who has the better aim. There's as much depth and complexity in an entire Solaris match as there is in the first 5 seconds of a typical 1v1 fighter.

Like once you involve faster mechs like Arctic Wolf, Wolfhound, and Assassin (not Piranha, Piranha is cancer), you start to see more complex positioning and conditioning, and occasionally you get some weird mind games with heavier mechs. Such depth is more the exception than the norm though.

[Monkey Lover]

The issue is they gave up on mwo. Solaris hasn't seen a real update from when it started.

The design issues with the gui were never fixed. The launcher issues with 7 buttons was never fixed.

[Jackal Noble]

Pls tell me. How much actual money was spent on this? I'm dying to know.

[adamts01]

Jackal Noble, on 26 January 2019 - 03:03 PM, said:

Pls tell me. How much actual money was spent on this? I'm dying to know.

Since the mode was a failure, as everyone but a few epeen wavers said it would be, any amount of money was a waste.

What's frustrating is that it was a very, very small crowd who liked 1v1s, and they already had an outlet for that through private matches. Yes, those took memberships, but all the more reason to keep it like that. Forget all the ridiculous buckets within another bucket, private matches also removed all the fuss ohf match making and mech/loadout hassle.

[Bud Crue]

Jackal Noble, on 26 January 2019 - 03:03 PM, said:

Pls tell me. How much actual money was spent on this? I'm dying to know.

Oooo...lets give it a shot:

So Russ said that a map in this game cost PGI $250K each. We got how many maps with Solaris? Lets see...Cave, Colosseum, the forest one, the factory, the Ice one...and I think one more, but for the life of me I can't remember. So anyway, lets call it 6 maps at 200K each (they are small so lets give a discount). That right there, is $1.2 Million just in maps.

The little intro animations must have been another couple hundred grand right (those lil spiders on Caves don't animate themselves); and of course the GUI where we get to select sponsors, and which tier we want to play must have cost serious cash in programing time...let's say 4 people dedicated for a year at 75K each, for another $300K. So were up to $1.7 mil. Duncan Fisher voice overs probably cost them another 50K. Chris's dedication to balancing the divisions (which is just awesome given all the diversity) must cost some portion of his salary, so lets add another 50K. Which gets us to $1.8 million.

Add another 200K for all the folks putting together events, seasons and rewards, the folks they hired to actually take the time to reprogram how flamers work and redo the functionality of consumables, redo the website to add "Solaris 7" to all aspects of the game, and all the rest, and we get to a clean $2 million bucks for a mode that as embodied, no one asked for and few play.

If only they had blown 2 million bucks* on paying a statistician who understood how to deal with outliers and maybe hiring a couple of comp guys to give them advice regarding balance and game play mechanics.





*What's sad is that i am being conservative. They probably spent a hell of a lot more.

[crazytimes]

1v1 is not really my thing. Judging by the difficulty in finding matches for events... it is not really anybodies thing, except for a very small crowd with super optimised mechs for solaris.

That crowd inspired me to never touch solaris again, even for events.

[HammerMaster]

It would have been better served by less division buckets and a better SPECTATOR involvement.

[Koniving]

Brizna, on 26 January 2019 - 04:02 AM, said:

Solaris is fundamentally flawed, more maps wouldn't fix it. It was actually pretty obvious to anyone who had done one or two 1 vs 1 player run tournaments that 1 vs 1 is nice to have some relaxed fun with friends every few months but that it is immensely dull and uninteresting in the long run, it simply lacks the depth and variation required to stay interesting. Thing is I don't think people who run this game play much of it and are out of touch with reality, so they wasted a huge deal of effort in a doomed game mode and are probably still wondering why Solaris failed so miserably.

I have an idea (edit: as to one of the reasons it was fundamentally flawed) which I shared pretty early on.
Note that the Solaris VII we have...sounds nothing like this.

Spoiler

Koniving, on 14 April 2018 - 04:06 PM, said:

So I went through 5 different Solaris VII books.
Sadly most of Solaris VII... isn't the arena battles, but the stuff that happens in between them. Encounters in malls. Dealing with tourists. Gangs hired by companies to get rid of players outside of the arena. Petty rivalries between established hotshots and aspiring upstarts that manage to beat them. Bar fights, claims of rigged matches, sabotaged equipment, traps laid out in the Arena...

Now admittedly, some of the Arena stuff is pretty cool. Moving walls. Obstacles that raise and vanish. Holographic distractions deployed by the arena contestants. Combined arms combat between vehicles, infantry and mechs on occasion (typically unless the match is specifically about infantry, the only boots on the ground will be pilots leaving their machines and attacks on their person while the referee is paid to "look away" or be distracted. That's of course not including the fact that camera men are on the ground with cameras filming the action by RUNNING IN BETWEEN THE MECHS... (there's pages of artwork depicting this, including a Marauder kick with two camera men getting in close to film the devastating hit).

There's an underwater arena.

There's the Mud Pit, where any attempt to run tends to lead to mechs falling over. Vibrabombs are set in the muck and hidden, so that traversing the pit is dangerous. No obstacles, just open places to fire. Big wide open fields. This isn't a big issue considering how infrequently one can fire. But between the muck are a few water pools, standing in one doesn't allow for much better movement, but doing so could allow a mech to cool somewhat faster, allowing them to use their weapons more frequently.

"The typical short range slug fest in the pit usually lasts only a matter of minutes. Arena staff use heavy cranes to remove mechs from the pit after matches." Combat lasting MINUTES, in open area, obstacle free, firing free for alls against 1 to 1 and 2 to 2 combat in which the mechs are FORCED to walk and navigate around land mines. Mechs cannot jump, all movement costs twice their normal MP in the mud (though water at a depth of 0 costs normal MP).

o.O;
So that outta tell you how dragged out the fights can be. Distance across the Mud Pitt is only 200 meters from end to end.


A Xolara battlemap called "King of the Mountain" requires that mechs physically climb walls King Kong style. Upon falling, they have to get back up and climb again. Attacking the unit climbing is not permitted until they plant two feet upon the same level you're on. Up to 6 Vibrabombs are buried in random locations before each match. The number can be anything from 1 to 6.

Mechs can choose to fight on a given level or climb to the next one, each level has progressively less room to manuever and is progressively narrow, restricting the ability to dodge with each progressive height. If a mech is climbing to a higher level, a pilot is allowed to attack it to prevent the climb. (You attack those going above you and above you if you can see them (which it goes out of its way to say unless they're on the edge, you generally can't) but you cannot attack those from below you until they climb to your level and not until they get up).

Hell this one's probably the coolest one so far. Pilots start out in a 12 meter deep (depth 2) moat, so most mechs are underwater before they climb to the first level. This slows their approach and gives an edge to lighter mechs. Once heavier mechs are up on the ridges, though, they're the ones with the advantages especially on higher levels as they can throw their weight around physically to sling smaller mechs down the cliffs. Mechs that are damaged or caught off balance usually slide down multiple ridges.

There are some other cool ones like Hartford Gardens which is basically a corner checking maze. Place is subject to a lawsuit after a stray missile killed 2 spectators and injured another 5. But nothing particularly unique here.

(Edit: I missed something pretty neat about Hartford Gardens)
Matches here are generally "Cat and Mouse," as the Solaris VII book describes it. It has both Vibra bombs (as apparently all arenas do) as well as hidden single shot "weapon silos" that pop out and shoot any mechs nearby. These traps are often discovered too late to matter. Their placement is random, though it seems like sometimes their locations can be leaked to players to help rig matches.

There's a quicksand pit, placed at random. It is 6 meters deep, and can trap a unit for 2.5 seconds, which extends each time they fail a piloting roll for making their way out. It isn't deep enough to swallow a mech, but it can really impede someone. The quicksand pit isn't made obvious as a hologram hides its location until it is entered.
(End Edit)

In general they are all death matches with a twist, however. First one to remain on top of King of the Mountain for 30 seconds (12 turns) without being thrown off is declared the winner OR the last one standing is declared the winner. So there's our first start.
Arena specific game modes, each different according to the map.
For the most part though each map seems to provide some "modifiers" or as Unreal Tournament would call them, "Mutators.." Basically a 'twist' to the basic combat formula that changes something up. Lower than normal gravity. King of the Mountain. Mud Pits. Corner-checking mazes. Dynamically changing environments. You know, ACTUAL cool **** that makes death match fun.

Interesting battles that are not so much one on one matches, but challenges against both the opponents AND the environment AND "fan flare" (things thrown in to make it fun for the fans, sometimes by the fans...in our case the spectators).

Edited by Koniving, 26 January 2019 - 03:46 PM.

[HammerMaster]

Koniving, on 26 January 2019 - 03:44 PM, said:

I have an idea (edit: as to one of the reasons it was fundamentally flawed) which I shared pretty early on.
Note that the Solaris VII we have...sounds nothing like this.

Spoiler

Interesting battles that are not so much one on one matches, but challenges against both the opponents AND the environment AND "fan flare" (things thrown in to make it fun for the fans, sometimes by the fans...in our case the spectators).

Holy crap source material not read again as PGI ignored it. Made their own. It works how well? Typical!

[LordNothing]

when i thought solaris i thought we would get free for all like we had in mw4 or living legends. 1v1/2v2 isnt exactly what i wanted.

i think what i would have done instead is to roll a much more robust custom game system with a lobby browser. then take all the lesser played modes and move them to that. find/create the match you want to play and join up. and when i mean robust i really mean robust. like give players control of everything, like match time, tonnage restrictions, whether or not to use a drop deck, or if you want infinite respawns, number of players (even asymmetrical games like stars vs lances), make all maps/modes available. like if you want to do a 1 life skirmish on boreal vault you could. and let players vote with their lobby settings and what games they want to join.

Edited by LordNothing, 26 January 2019 - 05:19 PM.

[Dee Eight]

Y E O N N E, on 26 January 2019 - 11:48 AM, said:

They could salvage a lot of the work that went into Solaris 7 by creating an 8v8 or 12v12 "Solaris" mode and expanding on the MM infrastructure to properly allocate 'Mechs by pilot ELO and division to each team.

But no, it won't happen.

No.. what Solaris should have been, based on the Solaris that was in MW3... was a free for all with five or six on the field at the same time.

[FupDup]

Dee Eight, on 26 January 2019 - 05:20 PM, said:

No.. what Solaris should have been, based on the Solaris that was in MW3... was a free for all with five or six on the field at the same time.

MW3 didn't have a Solaris or FF mode.

[thievingmagpi]

i was real drunk last night and actually had a blast in solaris, but there were lots of people dropping and matches were relatively fast.

more proof that

1) solaris should be an event that happens maybe a few days per month

2) mwo is better when drunk

Edited by thievingmagpi, 26 January 2019 - 08:05 PM.

[Koniving]

HammerMaster, on 26 January 2019 - 03:56 PM, said:

Holy crap source material not read again as PGI ignored it. Made their own. It works how well? Typical!

Sarcasm aside, if some of this was done anything like the Solaris 7 maps as described, they'd have to make a number of game modes... and King of the Hill wouldn't be all that satisfying without knockdowns. One of the map typically has turrets hiding in the floors and walls. The mudpit... nobody could move well at all with no walls...that wouldn't be fun in MWO as unlike over there, we can fire everything at once with incredible accuracy...as opposed to how Solaris solved it.

Spoiler

(MWO could have done it though; your guns shoot straight, not converging. Still have the random chance, though considering that an ER PPC generates 60 heat [with your heatsinks cooling the full amount of your heatsink value in 2.5 seconds instead of 10 [4x faster], still with a 30 heat threshold to overheat... or basically 15, but only 1/4th of your heatsink power, and 30 threshold... it'd be really hard to laser vomit even with the cheesiest builds).

Steiner's pretty interesting though, the walls will move, creating pillars, full walls, orchestrating mazes that change every 10 to 20 seconds, potentially lifting mechs in the air or sending them dropping to potentially their death [if moving too fast, raised up and you 'run off', or you're raised up and the kinetic energy of being hit knocks you over]. But again... this would require MWO to have physics while you're mech's alive...not just when you're dead (twin AC/20s hit so hard that a if a mech dies with a lot of overkill damage they can be sent flying short distances... so why not when alive?)

Though the coolest concept of all is Davion's map. It renders solid holograms and can recreate weather conditions, too. It can recreate any of the other maps as well as other things. Basically, you could set it to be the "random" map... And then the Colosseum would 'materialize' like VR coming to reality, or a slower buildup of the Star Trek holodeck. ...while not cheap to create the effect for I'm sure, just imagine if they only went the cheap route...and had it "create" MW2 style maps. Could've been a neat little place to experiment with "map generation". Given the lore, we wouldn't expect perfect maps and there'd be no memorizing the layout.

Anyway... Such is just how it goes.

[JediPanther]

Spheroid, on 26 January 2019 - 12:07 PM, said:

Not a waste at all. It is in fact the most labor efficient method of dealing with large pinpoint alphas that have been part of first person MechWarrior for over twenty-five years. The only ways of attacking pinpoint is either a cone of fire or random hit tables. Notice that no company in the history of first person BattleTech has gone this route. Do you think that is coincidence?

With a clean slate they could have chosen any fire mechanic they wanted to for MW5 and did not choose the above. I assume you are one of two opinions, either alphas should be unlimited or there should be spread. Please declare where you stand.

I'd rather alphas be spread. Power creep is going to happen in the game no matter what but at least with spread damage you wouldn't hear of the double-tripile damage complaints of insta-gibed from a full ct to dead or instantly loosing part of your mech. that was why in cb with streaks went for nothing but the ct or when the K2's dual ac 20 or the A1's srm 6s builds were so bad and the pinnacle of highest alpha. Now you look at an alpha of 40 like nothing.