149 replies to this topic

[Mole]

I'd probably come back eventually if it hadn't been for Russ lying to the players and then turning around and taking Epic's bribe money. I probably would have bought MW5 when it came out too so long as the reviews didn't say it was hot garbage. I might also have come back one day too if Russ hadn't made what basically amounts to and End of Life announcement for MWO and discontinued any kind of meaningful development for the game, including new 'mechs. But now I'm pissed off enough at PGI to totally boycott anything with their name on it and MWO will most likely never receive any more meaningful updates or new content. Which means I feel no motivation to come back and play MWO nor will I be volunteering any more money to PGI either in the form of MWO microtransactions or the purchase of MW5. It's over for me unless after MW5 comes out they turn their development resources back on to MWO and start up the new content again, which is possible but I seriously doubt it.

[Koniving]

DaZur, on 21 October 2019 - 03:58 PM, said:

No disagreement. The Battlefield universe and in specific the Mechwarrior/Battlemech aspect of it is rift with aspects to include the board-game mechanics that render the IP as an absolute bear to attempt to create a balanced/equitable arena shooter... even more so as an eSport venue.

MWO as an arena shooter was doomed from day they brought in the Clans because of it... A certain level of balanced/equity could have been achieved with just IS but the inclusion of Clan tech just created a spaghetti monster of balance entanglement that just cannot be resolved by fudging numbers and quirking others...

It's probably more possible to do than one thinks. However, any game that has come close has used the board game as a guideline and loose bits of lore to work with. An ac/5 is an ac/5, but in battletech there are over 30 ac/5s and they are all different. So too are the Clan tech. Where I believe they have ****** up is not realizing an ac/5 isnt an ac/5 instantly but over time. Likewise medium lasers shouldn't instantly be a medium laser, missiles shouldn't fire faster than machine guns (but definitely should travel much faster, much higher for the IS, and in both cases track worse without the additional tools, without the requirement to hold a lock for their flight time). There's plenty that could have been done. But PGI went the route of less lore more war.
Beyond sarna they probably have seen nothing of the lore. Our key balance person for years played 2 hours in a small skirmish of basic rules. Russ himself admits his brother gave him the books and that they are in the garage, with a picture showing they have never been opened as they are still in the store bought cellophane. And the only one that ever knew anything about the source material, Bryan Eckman, hasn't been involved with mwo for a long time since he's been on mw5. Solaris vii which was the perfect embodiment of E-sports has nothing to do with Solaris VII found in the game. Only 1vs1 and 2vs2. No free for all? No king of the hill? Most arenas had other objectives to make a spectacle and draw the entertainment out. Sludge pits to slow mechs down. Mountain sides that crumble. Arenas with randomly placed landmines. Caves that go on forever as in the board game every time you get to the edge you add another board to it so that the fight is as much of a race as a fight. Arenas where walls and obstacles appear that could cut you off or raise you half a kilometer into the air. Factories with functioning elevators and swinging cranes and blast doors, mazes filled with traps that don't always trigger on the first person to stumble upon them.

And what we have is a 30 second fight that's over the instant one player sees the other.

[Prototelis]

Joshua McEvedy, on 23 October 2019 - 10:13 AM, said:

No lore, no war.

Plenty of war without lore.

Every game in the series has made changes to suit the medium.

Even the turn based game throws most of the board game numbers out the window.

[YueFei]

Prototelis, on 23 October 2019 - 12:48 PM, said:

Plenty of war without lore.

Every game in the series has made changes to suit the medium.

Even the turn based game throws most of the board game numbers out the window.

I think you're mixing the lore with board game. Those are two very different things.
The creators of Battletech outright state that the board game is just an abstraction anyway, and that the "reality" of the setting is in the lore.

The lore is very much at the heart of the setting and describes why they're even at war with each other in the first place. And the lore is fairly flexible in that it doesn't rigidly define the performance of the technology and weapons, so there's lots of room for interpretation to create a game based on it (whether that's the board game, the HBS game, realtime shooter like MWO, etc).

But MWO was never going to become a true MMO where the larger strategic factors could come into play.

It would've been nice if they could've pulled off something like:
1.) Instanced arena-based PvP (quickplay).
2.) Open world warfare ("attempted" with faction play but it was still instanced).

Much harder to pull off (2), but some games have managed to do it. However, most of those games are subscription-based.

[Burning2nd]

https://gfycat.com/tastyfrankcub

https://gfycat.com/s...mbleballoonfish

Edited by Burning2nd, 23 October 2019 - 02:08 PM.

[Prototelis]

YueFei, on 23 October 2019 - 01:40 PM, said:

I think you're mixing the lore with board game. \

THe board game is literally the top level of canon.

Either way, future games could do without callbacks to most of the book-lore. Those books are terrible.

[Mystere]

Prototelis, on 22 October 2019 - 08:25 PM, said:

Because that would be absolute cancer.

Could you imagine randomly dying with open structure because lolololololololololololol invisible dice? Eff that.

Even HBSBT ignores a lot of this.

Oh, look! The military science of ballistics is based on dice rolls!

Edited by Mystere, 23 October 2019 - 04:31 PM.

[Mystere]

InfinityBall, on 23 October 2019 - 12:01 PM, said:

I'm not sure, but I still have nearly half my founder's MC and half the premium time. I don't know how it ended up like that

Ditto!

[Mystere]

YueFei, on 23 October 2019 - 01:40 PM, said:

The creators of Battletech outright state that the board game is just an abstraction anyway ...

Be careful! Many do not know what that word means.

[Prototelis]

Certainly not the people that treat board game mechanics like the series bible.

[YueFei]

Prototelis, on 23 October 2019 - 02:07 PM, said:

THe board game is literally the top level of canon.

Either way, future games could do without callbacks to most of the book-lore. Those books are terrible.

I'll take the word of the creators of Battletech over yours as to what is highest canon. As I said, they explicitly stated that the board game is an abstraction.

Besides the novels there's also the TROs. For example, there's some good explanations in there that rationalizes some glaring inconsistencies between Mechs and Tanks, for example. In all the Mechwarrior games, Tanks are always so much weaker than Mechs, dying in one or two hits, but in the Lore they're actually more heavily armored than Mechs (which makes sense, less surface area, better sloping of armor facings). Mechs can beat Tanks, but Tanks can also kill Mechs. It's situational, and depends on each side trying to play to their strengths.

There's also the whole setting to consider. For example, while you could theoretically have a game consisting solely of a Warcraft-themed arena battle mode with no connection to any of the lore or background setting, and it might even be a fun game, that's not really a game featuring War in the Warcraft setting.

In a way, World of Warcraft pulled off both of the things I mentioned previously. They had instanced Arena PvP, which became the eSports aspect of it, with 5v5 / 3v3 / 2v2. At the same time they also had the open world where you could have massive interactions and large group battles. Now sure, their Open World PvP wasn't as hardcore as, say, something like Dark Ages of Camelot, in that you couldn't really take your foe's core territories away from them, but you can see that the potential is there to have a game that has both engaging arena-type PvP combat and an Open World setting for larger-scale conflict.

Edited by YueFei, 23 October 2019 - 05:47 PM.

[Corvus Antaka]

quickplay being part of factionplay, proper CW...

[QuePan]

right now i dont trust the management at PGI , but if i see active development into the game to improve the MM so that one sided stomps are a lower percentage then now , newier more interesting game maps amd modes , and my wishlist a More open warfare Faction battle map something inclined to Plantetside or Living legends , instead of arena mode with obj locked sides with locked mech decks. something more fluid , (thats just a dream want) if i see Results of a actual development to improve the game i would consider it ,
now would i preorder anything ?? NO NEVER AGAIN , i will buy things as they are released not before from this company EVER , Russ nailed that coffin closed

[thievingmagpi]

1) community balance changes.

2) maps.

3) rethink skill maze. I'd be fine with booting the whole thing but that might be a bit much, even a minor tweak. Say 50 pts max or readjusting the paths to make them more sensible.

Edited by thievingmagpi, 24 October 2019 - 10:24 AM.

[Falconer Cyrus]

Gakuseinozen, on 21 October 2019 - 02:49 PM, said:

To those of you that no longer play: what would bring you back?
Assuming that once MW5 launches, PGI re-allocates development resources back to MWO... what could they do to get you to play again?

New maps?
New mechs?
New game modes?
Faction play improvements?
Re-balancing?
etc

Massive bug fix will be enough.
UI redesign will be greatly appreciated.
Faction War missions should be special (as they were).

Edited by Falconer Cyrus, 24 October 2019 - 11:07 AM.

[Falconer Cyrus]

Vellron2005, on 21 October 2019 - 11:33 PM, said:

3) Procedurally generated maps

There is a way to do this quite easyly!
Semigenerated maps like it was done in "XCOM : UFO defence" (1994).

[Tesunie]

Prototelis, on 21 October 2019 - 03:03 PM, said:

Less lore, more war.

I wish to state, after reading up to page two before deciding to respond (don't know if it's been mentioned), but I feel that we need lore within this game to maintain the feeling that it's "Battletech", and not, say "Gundam" or some other mecha styled game.

HOWEVER, this also does not mean direct compliance to TT rules and numbers in a strict sense. TT if a turn based, grid and model, game with results determined by dice rolls. Not every rule will apply directly into a simulation, first person shooter styled game. However, it should be used and looked at as a guide.

This means that, for a gross example, a medium lasers should deal more damage and have longer range than a small laser while also producing more heat. In return, it should cause less damage, have less range and produce less heat than a large laser. This doesn't mean that a medium laser "must" deal 5 damage and 3 heat, a small laser 3 damage and 2 heat, and a large laser 8 damage and 9(?) heat. These exact TT values can be subject to change to better balance the game as a whole, while retaining the lore aspect of the weapons themselves.

There is a middle ground that can be shared between "less lore" and "following lore concepts". As mentioned already, without any form of lore, we might as well not call this game Mechwarrior and it might as well have no association with the Battletech universe, because it wouldn't at that point. Some aspects of lore should be adhered to, while others can be bent, adjusted or even ignored for the sake of game balance. Which portions of what aspects of lore fall into which category is the bigger question (and well outside the scope of this thread and post).

FRAGTAST1C, on 21 October 2019 - 07:09 PM, said:

What part of Clan tech caused issues in MWO? I'm really curious.

What part? That is some laundry list there my friend... To name a few:
- Forced heavy quirks for IS mechs to be on a level field by a "per mech" basis.
- Forced many changes from "TT specific" weapon stats. (CERMLs and CERLLs use to rule the game.)
- If we went purely by lore, UACs that never jam would have been broken, when compared to IS UACs.
- DHS that cost fewer crit slots, meaning more can be boated (still a minor problem).
- CXL engine which act like lighter IS LFEs (which upon Clan release, IS did not have their LFEs)... meanwhile IS XL engines still result in death with the loss of a single side torso. (Was more balanced back before the Clans and their tech,)
- LRMs with "no minimum range", which could have effectively replaced SRMs and out performed IS LRMs completely (if not for PGI placing a reduced damage "soft" minimum range).
- Almost all Clan weapons taking less crit space AND having fewer crits occupied.

For proof of many of these imbalances and their impact on the game upon their release... you could have easily looked (at that time) at the (new) Community Warfare maps... where the Clans spilled into the IS taking planet after planet, right on down to surrounding Terra and even engaging with the lower houses several times before map resets. (We also had roaming large merc squads who determined which faction a large population of players ended up in, which didn't help the map play either...)

When the Clans first dropped, they caused a rather large imbalance into this game. Between nerfs, balance passes and quirks, many of these initial imbalances have been addressed and are "better" now than they use to be.

As a side note, the introduction of the Clans had a massive impact on the typical playing style and mech builds from what was "meta" before hand.
- Average mech speeds increased by 20KPH, easily. Were a 60-70 KPH Hunchback and a 50 KPH Atlas were more of "the norm", after the Clan release, 81 KPH became the normal cursing speed, and IS mechs struggled to keep up at the time.
- Average mech Alpha damage increased. 40 damage previously before the Clan introduction was considered "a massive alpha", with twin AC20s being viewed as "powerful" and Quad (to even Hex) PPCs being considered near game breaking. After the Clans... well... Alphas within 70-80 are almost the normal now, with some even hitting the hundreds without too much issues.
- Average mech engagement ranges have increased with the introduction of the clans. Previously, mid range was 400ish m, now that's far closer to 600m. Without quirks, Clan mechs were originally able to heavily damage mechs up to (if not even outside) 1000m. Massed ERLLs on the proper maps would kill un-quirked IS mechs before they could even effectively engage.
- As a side effect of the Clan introduction, IS mechs got quirks. Some initial quirks (though sometimes fun) became problematic. The twin ERPPC Thunderbolt ended up having a quirked meta run for a while, out ranging even the clans. It took some time for IS quirks (where were heavily needed due to the Clan's introduction, were as before very few mechs would have liked quirks, such as the Hunchback would have liked, but did not "need", extra health on it's weapon hunch) to level out into more reasonable dynamics.
- The above point also lead to IS mechs often swinging wildly in loadouts based upon what quirks they had just received for "the flavor of the month". Often times, at the early stages of the Clans, this lead to massively swinging "acceptable" builds and chassis/variants needed to even fight "on an even playing ground" with the Clans, as well as "Flavor of the month" mechs, builds and loadouts...

So, yes. The Clan introduction has a HUGE impact upon the game. If the game was left in Succession War era tech, with IS vs IS, a lot of the game would have most likely remained more balanced. The game was, respectfully, on average more balanced before the introduction of the Clans. XL or not to XL was a choice often based upon desire and expected survival times (which I recall being a lot longer).

HOWEVER, in retrospect, without "new tech" and "new weapons", this game also likely would have become stale a lot sooner and would have excluded those BT fans who enjoyed the Clans and wanted nothing to do with IS "stuff". So on notation to the actual life and freshness of the game itself, the Clans did create a lot of hype and excitement. So their introduction into the game was not completely bad for the game as a whole, but did have a major impact on the elements of the game itself (many of those impacts could arguably have been pointed out to have been negative).

[Suko]

Gakuseinozen, on 21 October 2019 - 02:49 PM, said:

To those of you that no longer play: what would bring you back?
Assuming that once MW5 launches, PGI re-allocates development resources back to MWO... what could they do to get you to play again?

New maps?
New mechs?
New game modes?
Faction play improvements?
Re-balancing?
etc

I haven't played in about 2 years, but hop back onto the forums about every 2 months to check on this.

The only thing that would bring me back is if there was a way for me and my two buddies to play in a game mode where we weren't just getting fed as cannon fodder to the large 10+ man teams. This is why we all stopped playing (about 2.5 years back). At that time 2-mans were forced into the Group Q (which seems logical on the surface), but the game would put us and 3 other 2 and 3 man groups against an organized 10man + 2 man group and....well, you know what happens. My buddy and I have (had) skill in this game, but 2 people cannot carry a 12 man team.

At this point, I may come back to check things out if 2 mans could opt to choose the quickplay queue instead of just the team queue. And to be honest, they'd need to reduce prices by 75% for me to ever buy something for MWO again. The last thing I bought was the MadCat Mk2 and I regret it so much. I maybe used it for 2 hours of gameplay before abandoning MWO and the amount I paid for that thing could've bought me a full-on AAA game at BestBuy.

[Prototelis]

I didn't say no lore.

I specifically said less lore, more war.

[Tesunie]

Prototelis, on 24 October 2019 - 02:34 PM, said:

I didn't say no lore.

I specifically said less lore, more war.

The residing question is: How much less lore? What lore should be "removed", and for what reasons?

It's not a matter of lore or no lore, but what lore and how much lore. We need lore in this game, but there are some portions of lore we can really grasp onto and improve this game, and other pieces "need not apply" due to reasons related to balance and just a different gaming system altogether.