22 replies to this topic

[Spectre1019]

Hello all, I'm brand new here, just played my first MWO match today. I haven't played MechWarrior since MW4 Mercs lol. Real excited to finally have a gaming pc that I can use to play this. I just had some questions about the game:

1. The PC I'm using is a pc i just built for engineering school. I built it specifically to learn how to do Solidworks for school. It just so happens I can game on this thing too. Basically, I have an i7 8700k CPU, a GTX 1070ti GPU, 32 GB of RAM. This game plays pretty smooth so far on all max settings. Is there anything i need to upgrade to get better performance or am i good?

2. For anybody who played MW4 heavily back in the day: in MW4 Mercs I remember being able to hit a key on my keyboard that made screen shots, and those screen shots were automatically saved into a folder. I made lots of wall paper over the years doing that. Can i do that with MWO, or am i going to have to do the old "Hit print screen, minimize game, paste into paint, save file"?

3. Back when i played MW4 Mercs heavily, I competed in the MechWarrior Leagues. It was the most awesome gaming experience ever. Unfortunately, today, due to me going to school on top of working full time, I don't have the time to invest in practice sessions for league gaming, so I wouldn't be any good to anybody if i were to clan up. I honestly only have time to be a casual player right now. ...but...I don't want to pug it out if i don't have to. Is it possible for me to hang out with different teams over team speak so I'm not getting pugged to death?

4. Anybody have any specific gaming mouse to reccomend? I've been googling and I'm looking for the heaviest gaming mouse out there. I had one 10 years ago where you actually put metal weights into it and it really improved my performance as a mech pilot.

[Tesunie]

Spectre666, on 13 February 2019 - 05:21 PM, said:

Hello all, I'm brand new here, just played my first MWO match today. I haven't played MechWarrior since MW4 Mercs lol. Real excited to finally have a gaming pc that I can use to play this. I just had some questions about the game:

1. The PC I'm using is a pc i just built for engineering school. I built it specifically to learn how to do Solidworks for school. It just so happens I can game on this thing too. Basically, I have an i7 8700k CPU, a GTX 1070ti GPU, 32 GB of RAM. This game plays pretty smooth so far on all max settings. Is there anything i need to upgrade to get better performance or am i good?

2. For anybody who played MW4 heavily back in the day: in MW4 Mercs I remember being able to hit a key on my keyboard that made screen shots, and those screen shots were automatically saved into a folder. I made lots of wall paper over the years doing that. Can i do that with MWO, or am i going to have to do the old "Hit print screen, minimize game, paste into paint, save file"?

3. Back when i played MW4 Mercs heavily, I competed in the MechWarrior Leagues. It was the most awesome gaming experience ever. Unfortunately, today, due to me going to school on top of working full time, I don't have the time to invest in practice sessions for league gaming, so I wouldn't be any good to anybody if i were to clan up. I honestly only have time to be a casual player right now. ...but...I don't want to pug it out if i don't have to. Is it possible for me to hang out with different teams over team speak so I'm not getting pugged to death?

4. Anybody have any specific gaming mouse to reccomend? I've been googling and I'm looking for the heaviest gaming mouse out there. I had one 10 years ago where you actually put metal weights into it and it really improved my performance as a mech pilot.

1. I'm not a techie person (but I'm not completely useless), but if it's playing smooth at top settings, I'd say you are good on specs.

2. Depending upon if you are using the base Portal or the Steam client version will depend upon what keys take screenshots. If you are on the stand alone portal, hitting Print Screen will save an image in a folder on your system (not exiting program and pasting it needed). Where the folder it saves these screens to is a bit of a different story. I had to do a search for "screenshots" and find the folder that way personally. If you are on Steam, they use a different key... which I don't know what one it is. (You should be able to customize some of this if desired.)

3. You can join many different TS or even Discord channels. There are also many Units that are very casual with their game play. Some don't even require joining the unit to utilize their chat server. If you are social enough, people will be willing to invite you to their groups. I've got several friends I play with outside my unit, and I regularly play with my Unit.

4. I just use a standard mouse... so I feel vastly unqualified to answer this question... Sorry.

Edited by Tesunie, 13 February 2019 - 05:33 PM.

[Mister Maf]

Hello and welcome. I still get a MW4M kick every now and then even today, though the game is a ***** to get running on Windows 10.

For your questions —

1. You're jet set, but you should turn particle effects to low so that you aren't blinded by rapid fire autocannons.

2. The second part to Tesunie's answer — the Steam hotkey is F12 if you are using Steam.

3. Not my area of expertise but there are lots of Discord servers floating around.

4. I use the Corsair M65 which I quite like; it's lasted me longer than any other mouse I've had before. I have the big sniper DPI button on the side set up as one of my fire buttons which is an experience satisfyingly reminiscent of using a joystick without actually having to use the game's poor joystick support. The Corsair Sabre is also a good mouse but didn't last as long for me. Stay away from Logitech; the service life of their products have gone a long way downhill since the days of the MX518.

Edit: If you live in the US, the M65 is on sale on Amazon right now.

Edited by Mister Maf, 13 February 2019 - 06:25 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

1. Similar rig to mine. That said mine is heavily overclocked and makes a noticeable difference. Don't run all in-game settings on max however, lots of them are largely big hits to performance for no real in-game improvement. Shadows and one other you want at MAX (I can't check right now) and the others medium is more than ample. You should pick up easily 20-40FPS from that.

[Maddermax]

As an aside about 2, since you have an NVIDIA card, you can enable Shadow Play if you want to record your games/get instant replays. Obviously, if you're using the steam client, just F12 for screen shots, but it's nice to be able to instant replay/record a game on occasion.

Edited by Maddermax, 13 February 2019 - 09:44 PM.

[Ruccus]

With regards to the mouse question, I've liked Logitech's offerings over the years; I've used the Logitech MX510, MX518, G600, G5, and G500s and have loved them all (though the G600 a bit less so just because of the weirdness of the many thumb buttons; very useful if you need the extra buttons though).

Currently the Logitech G502 looks to be a nice gaming mouse, though it's been updated over the years so there are a few different versions you might find for purchase. The G502 Proteus Core was the first and has a 12,000dpi optical sensor, G502 Proteus Spectrum added RGB lighting to the Core, and G502 Hero added a 16,000dpi sensor to the Spectrum.

My G500s is a laser mouse with up to 8,200dpi sensitivity and it still works well (which was the only reason I didn't buy a G502 during the Christmas sales), so I doubt the different sensors in the Core/Spectrum and Hero are worth fussing over if you like the reviews and find one on sale over the other.

[Horseman]

Spectre666, on 13 February 2019 - 05:21 PM, said:

1. The PC I'm using is a pc i just built for engineering school. I built it specifically to learn how to do Solidworks for school. It just so happens I can game on this thing too. Basically, I have an i7 8700k CPU, a GTX 1070ti GPU, 32 GB of RAM. This game plays pretty smooth so far on all max settings. Is there anything i need to upgrade to get better performance or am i good?

One thing I would advise if you don't have it already... SSD. The difference in load times is substantial.

Quote

2. For anybody who played MW4 heavily back in the day: in MW4 Mercs I remember being able to hit a key on my keyboard that made screen shots, and those screen shots were automatically saved into a folder. I made lots of wall paper over the years doing that. Can i do that with MWO, or am i going to have to do the old "Hit print screen, minimize game, paste into paint, save file"?

You can do that with MWO, just need to locate your screenshot directory.

Quote

3. Back when i played MW4 Mercs heavily, I competed in the MechWarrior Leagues. It was the most awesome gaming experience ever. Unfortunately, today, due to me going to school on top of working full time, I don't have the time to invest in practice sessions for league gaming, so I wouldn't be any good to anybody if i were to clan up. I honestly only have time to be a casual player right now. ...but...I don't want to pug it out if i don't have to. Is it possible for me to hang out with different teams over team speak so I'm not getting pugged to death?

Sure, there are groups using TS and Discord for that sort of thing. In Faction Play, many groups welcome pilots who are willing to cooperate with them in this fashion - your addition to the drop means one less slot for Pug Lotto.

Edited by Horseman, 14 February 2019 - 07:11 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The screenshot directory is under C:\users\<youruser>\Saved Games\Screenshots or something like that. Not at home right now so I can't verify the path, but it is under "Saved Games" under your user profile. It's an odd place since no one else uses that folder. Only thing I've ever seen down there is Windows 7 chess games.

[Mighty Spike]

turn Anti aliasing down to post aa. That helps a lot

[Tesunie]

TheCaptainJZ, on 14 February 2019 - 08:55 AM, said:

The screenshot directory is under C:\users\<youruser>\Saved Games\Screenshots or something like that. Not at home right now so I can't verify the path, but it is under "Saved Games" under your user profile. It's an odd place since no one else uses that folder. Only thing I've ever seen down there is Windows 7 chess games.

I believe mine was like C;\users\<name>\aps\apdata\common\Piranhagames\Screenshots or something along those lines. Got tired of having to look for "hidden" folders (the folder was hidden by default unless you searched for it), so I unhid it. When I did that, it locked my Discord up somehow, making my Discord program "read only", sending it into a perpetual loop of "updating". Don't ask... I didn't change the "read only" setting for any folders, only it's status as hidden...

PS: This is with Windows 10 (piece of garbage). My Windows 8 saved it as you directed.

Edited by Tesunie, 14 February 2019 - 09:17 AM.

[Horseman]

It's C:\Users\<name>\Saved Games\MechWarrior Online\ScreenShots

[TheCaptainJZ]

Even using the Steam version, when I press Print Screen on the keyboard, it put them in that folder.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

steam uses F12 by default and has it's own screenshot folder.

[Horseman]

Aidan Crenshaw, on 14 February 2019 - 11:39 PM, said:

steam uses F12 by default and has it's own screenshot folder.

Yes, but that requires Steam's overlay. Which a. impacts performance and b. can be accidentally triggered a bit too easily.

Edited by Horseman, 15 February 2019 - 02:23 AM.

[Spectre1019]

Wow i didn't know you can download/install MWO from Steam. I just downloaded the game from this website. It's been 5 years since i had a gaming computer. I actually beta tested this game in open beta but had to sell my pc at the time due to a layoff and had to pay some bills. Didn't get to build another PC until recently.

As for the advice on hard drives, SSDs, etc, I have a 500GB M.2 nvme drive that I have my OS(Windows 7 pro 64 bit) installed, and I have a 5TB HDD that I have my games stored on(MWO, Elder Scrolls Online and Star Trek Online, then eventually MW5 and Doom Eternal). I'd put those on my m.2 drive but I plan on getting the student version of SolidWorks from school this fall and I don't know how much storage space that program will need so I'm dedicating the M.2 drive to just the OS and SolidWorks.

What do you mean that my loading will be faster if I use SSD tech? I thought the speed of loading things was based on my internet speed since it's MWO is an "online game". What exactly will be faster? And if what you're saying is true, can I just transfer MWO from my HDD to my M.2, or am I going to have to uninstall the game, and download/reinstall it all over again to get it on my M.2 drive?


As far as the gaming mouse: I'm looking for something real heavy. I can't stand these gaming mice that are light as a feather. It messes up my accuracy haha.

Edited by Spectre666, 15 February 2019 - 08:52 AM.

[Tesunie]

Spectre666, on 15 February 2019 - 08:51 AM, said:

What do you mean that my loading will be faster if I use SSD tech? I thought the speed of loading things was based on my internet speed since it's MWO is an "online game". What exactly will be faster? And if what you're saying is true, can I just transfer MWO from my HDD to my M.2, or am I going to have to uninstall the game, and download/reinstall it all over again to get it on my M.2 drive?

He's talking about internal computer loading times and processing times. SSDs tend to have faster processing/loading/"Moving the data around" speeds, making them on average faster performers. But, they do also have their weaknesses as well compared to the older HDD drives, which may be slower but tend to (in my opinion) be able to take more overall abuse as well as are easier to recover data from when "things go belly up".

Personally, SSDs have not exactly been proven "solid" (pardon the pun) to me yet, as my girlfriend's has numerous problems with a Laptop with such a drive giving difficulties. (It wasn't an issue with the SSD that cause the problems, the integrated powersupply/motherboard was the problem, but then we couldn't recover her data (without spending a lot of money it seemed) because it was an SSD.)

Right now, my store bought gaming computer operates in a similar state as yours. An SSD for it's operating system, and an HDD for it's primary source of storage space.

[Mister Maf]

Load time doesn't really matter in this game since it's multiplayer; you'll always be waiting on somebody. A new PC with a new HDD will load it perfectly fine.

As for mice, both the aforementioned Corsair M65 and Sabre are pretty hefty. My Sabre has three weights screwed into the bottom. Some Logitech mice have a similar feature, but again, I strongly advise against them. Besides the MX518 I've never had a Logitech mouse that's lasted me longer than a year and a half, and I went through a good half a dozen; the only reason I kept getting them was because I had 2 year replacement plans on them from Best Buy. My M65 has lasted me about 3 years or so now.

[TheCaptainJZ]

The game download many GBs of data which get loaded when you open the game and between matches. An SSD is nice, but not essential.

[Horseman]

Spectre666, on 15 February 2019 - 08:51 AM, said:

I thought the speed of loading things was based on my internet speed since it's MWO is an "online game".

No. When you install MWO or another game, the installed data includes all of the game's assets precisely to avoid having to transfer several dozen gigabytes every time you launch the game.

Mister Maf, on 15 February 2019 - 09:12 AM, said:

Load time doesn't really matter in this game since it's multiplayer; you'll always be waiting on somebody. A new PC with a new HDD will load it perfectly fine.

Arguably there's a bit of an advantage to joining the match when it's still in the lobby vs loading in 10-20 seconds after the launch.

[Tesunie]

Horseman, on 15 February 2019 - 01:22 PM, said:

Arguably there's a bit of an advantage to joining the match when it's still in the lobby vs loading in 10-20 seconds after the launch.

I think 10-20 second after launch is not an average. My older computer (HDD) loaded in anywhere from 30-10 seconds before the match launched. Occasionally I'd get a match where I'd launch as it was starting, but I'm gonna blame connection issue on that seen as it wasn't an average occurrence.

But yes, my new computer (which uses SSD for it's main drive, and I accidentally loaded MW:O on it) loads me into matches with a lot more time. Normally, I'm one of the first ones loaded into lobby now. I think it should be said that more than just my hard drive type changed here, so it's probably a conglomerate of several different factors.