4 replies to this topic

[Vellron2005]

Hey guys! So I FINALLY got this beast of a game working! After struggling with multiple bugs, some of witch prevented me from even launching the game, its finally up and running, and I gotta tell ya, I've got A LOT to say about it! So I'm gonna break it down into sections, for easier reading..

1) Technical

As I already said, I had issues with running the game, but since those have been resolved, I have only detected one single major bug that remains - if you go into the option menu, change something and hit "apply", you loose control of the menus, as the mouse is clicking about 1/4 of the screen away from where I want it to click. There is also one smaller bug - a console that you spawn next to in the mechbay of your dropship doesn't work, but since all the other ones do, I'm gonna let that slide.. As far as technicalities go, I'm running the game on i7 4770, Gigabyte RTX2060 S OC 8GB, 16GB RAM, and it flies. All settings maxed out, the game purrs like a kitten. It works better than MWO on the same specs!

2) Visuals

I have to say I am quite impressed by how good the game looks. The dropship you can walk around in, FINALLY accurately depicts the scale of things, and the look and feel of it reminds me of Star Citizen, with perhaps a bit less texture quality, but only just. The interior of the dropship has left me hunting for details, as even the floor has water puddles on it. The only thing I found visually lacking in the dropship is the quality of the personnel design. You can't talk to everybody, the pilots you hire are nowhere to be found, and the ones you can talk to don't really talk to "you", rather talking to a space directly in front of them. If you move while they talk, like Ryana for instance, she will keep jabbering on to empty space without even turning her head. Personally, I don't mind. Since this is PGI's first AAA attempt at characters like this, Imma let it slide..

The Biomes however, are a thing of visual beauty. Total eye candy. My favorite so far is the full-on glacial ice biome, with the vulcanic and caustic in 2nd and 3rd place. I have yet to see a fully lunar biome, and a truly alien biome, and there seems to be no underground or full-on urban biomes either. Lots of room for DLCs it seems. The Vulcanic biome is true to Terra Therma - too dark to enjoy the visually stunning scenery.

Weapon effects are also good looking, with the PPC being my favorite, with its distortion filed of 90 meters that always makes me think somebody is shooting at me. I am also discovering ballistics as a thing, especially the burst-fire versions, and they seem fun as hell. All in all, the visuals are GREAT.

Oh, and here's an easter egg for you - your quarters have a little digital clock that displays the actual IRL time the same as your onboard computer clock. So you don't even have to leave the game to know how sleep-deprivated you will be for work tomorrow. :-D

3) Sound

The sound is great in this game, with a few exceptions. The music is good, totally soundtrack-on-cellphone worthy. But the "betty" needs some work. It's voice is kinda drab, and since she sounds off every 2 second during missions, it needs a nicer voice. I think an opportunity was missed here. Multiple male and female betty voices should have been on offer - something I hope a future DLC will rectify. I also hope more pilot voices will also be added. The ones we have are nice, but they get a bit repetitive after you lose a few pilots.. The mech stomp bug is still present. The inside-the-cockpit sound of footsteps does not match the 3PV sound or motion of the legs.

4) Gameplay

Ok, so, as far as gameplay goes, I have somewhat mixed feelings. I love how every mission has a good story explanation of why you are there and what you are doing. Kill the pirate captain. Save a hospital. Demolish a pirate base. That's all great. But the overall impression somewhat dropped for me when I saw those descriptions repeat. If you're not playing the story, the missions get somewhat repetitive, and worse still, the objectives boil down to "kill anything red" and "wreck everything that is standing". Not much different than MWO really, but better presented by a mile. I wish they used the scanning mechanic more often, and friendly NPC units were a bit more common, and they actually did something, like fight. Also, I wish repair bays were more common, especially on defense missions.

The micromanagement is extremely similar to HBS's Battletech, which is a good thing. In fact, MW5:Mercs feels as if Battletech and MWO had a secret lovechild - that turned out stronger than both. I especially love how PGI focused on the important stuff here, so you have to worry about repairing mechs and replacing lost weapons (and looking just how wrecked your favorite giant robot is in the mechbay - I'm sure the pools of water on the floor are the tech's tears over what I did with their baby), but you don't have to re-stock ammo, which replenished automatically.

The financial aspect of it so far has only gotten threatening once for me, and only because I splurged on a new Quickdraw, and left myself nearly bankrupt.. But that was on me. Nothing that the next contract can't fix.

I am left wondering, however, is why on defense missions, are the mechs not hot-dropped from the dropship like in MWO, (or anywhere for that matter), when they clearly have those doors below the mechs in the dropship..

There is also one thing that I consider a HUGE missed opportunity. We have to talk to people in this game. WHY oh WHY did you not let us rolaplay with them? Why are our player's (Commander Mason's) responses automatic? A simple multiple choice conversation would have worked alot better. And maybe the possibility of a fling with Ryana? Or some other NPC? It would have added a whole other dimension to the game, which I'm sure many would appreciate.

Another beef I have with the overall gameplay is the fact that enemies spawn from what feels like out of thin air. I can't tell you how many times I've walked through an area, cleared it of hostiles, and then suddenly, oh look, 10 more tanks and a mech at my back, that can't have been there without me spotting them from a kilometer away.. It hurts immersion. It hurts common sense.

Overall though, the game is simply fun. Literally tons of fun. The whole package just works, and has me glued to the screen for hours upon hours. The action is highly addictive, and I found myself rationalizing to myself about why I'm not sleeping and playing instead.

5) A.I.

Now I know alot of people on these forums have said that the A.I. sucks, is rudimentary, and needs work. I for one disagree for the most part. Enemy A.I. is just fine. I've seen mechs actually protect their "good leg", and the swarms of tanks and VTOLs can be very dangerous if you ignore them too long.

The friendly A.I. however - that needs work. For instance, on a defense mission, it turns out my own lancemates are a bigger threat to the base than the enemy! Every 2 seconds I'm like "dude, stop walking through the thing that needs to remain intact! STOP IT, you're wasting our money!"
it pisses me off how much of the base my own team ends up destroying. Overall - more than the enemy. Like, I get it if we're there to level the place.. but when we're protecting it, can you please have the lancemates be careful about the structures?

Also.. The first lancemate that joined me of his own volition - god that guy sucked. Ended up dying the very next mission, and taking his cicada with him. *******. I fixed the cicada. I spaced him along with the trash from my dropship. (wish I could have done it for real).

Also, I've noticed most of the friendly NPC mechs don't really do anything. They just stand there really. I've not seen a single one of them fight. And during that mission where you get to field-repair your mech for the first time, I really needed him to move and shoot. Oh well. (same guy who died on the very first drop after joining me - guess he was useless from the start).

So overall, the A.I. could use a bit more work, but on the friendly side of things.

Special thanks to PGI for:

1) Attention to visual detail such as puddles on the mechbay floor, beautiful glacial ice, acurate damage visualization of owned mechs in the mech bay... I can go on and on about this..
2) Attention to fluff and lore as in giving a brief history lesson in lore for every mech and weapon in the game - along with visual representations of every weapon and item. I love that. That's what's been sorely missing in MWO.
3) Procedural map generation - hell yeah, mega replay value!
4) The turn-and-deploy animation in the dropship - that gives me the shivers. It's just awesome and hella immersive.
5) Overall immersion levels - finally you listened to the community and done it right!
6) Thanks for the level of "OMG I'm such a badass" feel we get when we level entire facilities and tear down buildings, stomp on tanks, and erase VTOLs..
7) The fact that when a VTOL is destroyed, it crashes to the ground, and actually keeps burning for a while. Nice immersion there as well.


PGI, you still need to work on:

1) Friendly Lancemate A.I. - please prevent them from stomping through the buildings they are supposed to protect.
2) Add more mission types, with a bit more diverse objectives that don't require to kill anything that moves, or that has other win conditions. Escort comes to mind.
3) Add more sounds for the betty, with different voices (male and female). Also more sounds for lancemates.
4) Add a roleplay aspect to the game. In-ship politics, romances, or simply letting us get to know our lancemates and NPCs more.
5) Obviously, fix the can't-click-buttons after applying options settings bug. And other bugs.
6) Fix the enemies spawning out of thin air just a few hundred meters away or as in some cases of VTOLS, directly overhead.
7) Dropship customization, different dropships - make it happen. I wanna put trophies in my room and wanna own a Union dropship. Make it happen please!

Conclusion:

This game has it's issues, and it could use a bit more polishing, but as Supreme Leader Thor of the Asgard once said to the representatives of Stargate command - it has "Great potential".

Its hella fun to play, and you can finally immerse yourself in the Mechwarrior/Battletech setting fully, and can loose countless hours playing this game.

I fully expect this game to be successful and live to have multiple DLCs.

I want to play the Clan Invasion as both Clanner loyalist and I.S. Merc. Make it happen PGI!

[MW Waldorf Statler]

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[color=#959595]Ok, so, as far as gameplay goes, I have somewhat mixed feelings. I love how every mission has a good story explanation of why you are there and what you are doing. Kill the pirate captain. Save a hospital. Demolish a pirate base. That's all great. But the overall impression somewhat dropped for me when I saw those descriptions repeat. If you're not playing the story, the missions get somewhat repetitive, and worse still, the objectives boil down to "kill anything red" and "wreck everything that is standing". Not much different than MWO really, but better presented by a mile. I wish they used the scanning mechanic more often, and friendly NPC units were a bit more common, and they actually did something, like fight. Also, I wish repair bays were more common, especially on defense missions.[/color]

not with from a AI and with Parameters generated Missions...Missions like yours more handsripted Missions and handplaced scripted Units and Objects .
Logical links between object and mission have to be created, the AI ​​there cannot do that

Quote

[color=#959595]Another beef I have with the overall gameplay is the fact that enemies spawn from what feels like out of thin air. I can't tell you how many times I've walked through an area, cleared it of hostiles, and then suddenly, oh look, 10 more tanks and a mech at my back, that can't have been there without me spotting them from a kilometer away.. It hurts immersion. It hurts common sense.[/color]

Thinks , its a other Part by generated Terrain (like No Mens Sky or ARK )and not all Maps use the Biome modules (seeing when not Map availble)Enemys spawns by procedual generated Terrain from a Unit Pool in a Range Bubble around you , its by MW5 a little small most , ok the Terrainfiles not very big and spawns the reds out of LOS ,the can drop in terrain or impassable Terrain or hung in it(seeing how many trees or pebbles flow over the Ground, or Mates can not move and hungs in terrain )..more spawn near you =less problems with the spawn and Terrain.
logical links between object and mission have to be created, the AI ​​there cannot do that

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 16 December 2019 - 03:26 AM.

[The Amazing Atomic Spaniel]

Vellron2005, on 16 December 2019 - 02:16 AM, said:

The friendly A.I. however - that needs work. For instance, on a defense mission, it turns out my own lancemates are a bigger threat to the base than the enemy! Every 2 seconds I'm like "dude, stop walking through the thing that needs to remain intact! STOP IT, you're wasting our money!"
it pisses me off how much of the base my own team ends up destroying. Overall - more than the enemy. Like, I get it if we're there to level the place.. but when we're protecting it, can you please have the lancemates be careful about the structures?

<snip>

Also.. The first lancemate that joined me of his own volition - god that guy sucked. Ended up dying the very next mission, and taking his cicada with him. *******. I fixed the cicada. I spaced him along with the trash from my dropship. (wish I could have done it for real).

Glad to hear you got it working. It must have been an exasperating experience.

The best tactic in the defence missions is to tell your AI lance to go to some location outside the base (a big flat area or low hill top overlooking the base is ideal). If they have PPCs or Lurms they will take out tanks and VTOLS quite happily without moving into the base. If you can draw the attacking mechs out in front of them it reduces the building damage - although I have had missions where the bad guys arrive from multiple directions and you've got to go in and chase them at that point.

That first pilot has a really high skill ceiling compared to the usual donkeys you can hire! If you keep him alive (= don't put him in a light mech) then he will be really useful.

[Odanan]

The Amazing Atomic Spaniel, on 16 December 2019 - 03:16 AM, said:

That first pilot has a really high skill ceiling compared to the usual donkeys you can hire! If you keep him alive (= don't put him in a light mech) then he will be really useful.

Never put an AI pilot in a light mech.

I let that first mechwarrior to pilot my Centurion. Half-way through the campaign, I must say Lt. Freeman advanced pretty well, and is the best pilot I have.

[Vellron2005]

The Amazing Atomic Spaniel, on 16 December 2019 - 03:16 AM, said:

That first pilot has a really high skill ceiling compared to the usual donkeys you can hire! If you keep him alive (= don't put him in a light mech) then he will be really useful.

I put him in his own Cicada when I only had my Centurion and his own cicada - he died on the first mission. I simply hired new guys and haven't looked back since.

They do alright. Don't really need him.. I just hope I didn't miss some special missions cose' he's dead..

MW Waldorf Statler, on 16 December 2019 - 03:06 AM, said:

logical links between object and mission have to be created, the AI ​​there cannot do that

I know it's all procedural.. I love that.. I'm just saying.. a little more logic would be nice. And you know, I remember this old trick you could do in Heroes of Might and Magic 3.. where you could create a "random", a.k.a. procedurally generated map, and then save it, so you can play it later..

They can easily create "random maps" and then add stories to them after the fact, when they are no longer random. it's ok to mix and match..