23 replies to this topic

[Ilfi]

MW5 is an unabashed fanfic, and a bad one at that. Why throw away the brilliant Deshler 3015 idea, let alone the vast selection of options you can find in the archives? It's beyond disappointing. I've read better Sonic the Hedgehog stories on DeviantArt. Not joking.

[FRAGTAST1C]

Prototelis, on 19 December 2019 - 05:00 PM, said:

I'm not giving HBS any accolades here or anywhere; I have been very critical of the game, especially on this forum.

I didn't say it was a better game either; it was a more complete game.

MW5 needed 9 months more development.

You say Battletech was a complete game. It really wasn't. Apart for the campaign, there was literally nothing in the game. If you say MW5 is a grindy rep-amassing game, Battletech wasn't even that 'cause the build options were extremely limited. Every feature was tacky at best and the game ran like crap even on beefy machines while looking worse. At least in MW5, we have the option of actually having fun piloting the mechs. The strategy elements in a turn-based game like BT wasn't even fun. Come on, Proto. You can't seriously defend your initial statement by saying you never said BT was a good game either.

[Sjorpha]

Both Battletech and MW5 was released extremely underdeveloped, but I don't see much reason to compare. Battletech was communicated way better with the player base so it get's less flack for that reason, HBS is just much better at representing themselves than PGI is.

With MW5 it's not just the lack of a properly designed campaign and barebones feature set with almost no lore and world building, it's also things all over the place that are literally not finished yet like the dropship NPCs that just stand there like dolls and other things like that.

I really hope the game isn't considered finished, it's not reasonable to require mods for a game to feel finished. Mods should be an alternative experience of the game, not unofficial patches.

I tried to play it, I really did. There are fun moments but it's just not complete enough yet for me to play through. It's also too easy with no difficulty settings, and even when it's difficult it's difficult only in a "zombie horde" kind of way which is very dull and I don't enjoy it very much. Enemy mechs should be individually scary and hard to beat, that's the point of mechs being the supposed pinnacle of war machines piloted by the best of the best.

IMO single player Mechwarrior games have always been at their finest in well designed story missions, and there is extremely little of that here, so I think some of the best mods will be those that add stories with handcrafted maps and mission chains.

The automatically generated maps and mission types are a cool thing to have but they end up feeling a bit like MWO pug matches without human opponents, with human opponents being the only thing that really justifies that kind of repetition this ends up boring very fast. I'm also a bit disappointed there are so few biomes with no proper big cities or alien worlds.

As it stands now MW5 is a decent proof of concept, I like the economy and travel system and the basics of the combat. It might become a good game later on either through mods of further PGI development.

[Koniving]

Blackstorm, on 18 December 2019 - 10:00 PM, said:

Can we talk about some things please?

There is A LOT of basic in universe stuff missing from this game.
We should not need modders for the lore and polish basics.
Where are the mission ties to the actual lore happenings of the inner sphere? Where are the Comstar news feeds keeping me informed? Where are the ex Wolfs Dragoons, or Kell hounds, Or Northwind Highlander pilots? Where are the Comstar adepts to send my HPGs? Where are the salvage trucks? or VTOLS or anything that reminds me I'm running a merc company and that this Leapord, the OPO, the pilots and a lonely ship marine aren't the sole inhabitants of the world?
MW2Mercs was FAR more immersive in this regard and that game is 20+ years old my dudes. Such missed opportunities!

Now there are some fun elements in this game, don't get me wrong, I am enjoying it despite its many flaws. But that's because I'm an OG early 90s Btech fan. But at times it also feels lazy, under polished and PGI has certainly under utilised the timeline aspect of the game. Instead of a grind for Rep, let me join the 4th succession war. Let me fight 'pirates' that have GREAT gear close to Terra. Ya know. The little things.(I'm rep 8 and 20+ hours in btw)

Harebrained did a fantastic job of immersion PGI could learn from them.

OH AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE FIND A NEW DROPSHIP ARRIVING IN SYSTEM CUT SCENE JESUS CHRIST I'M SO SICK OF IT. *This goes for you too PGI*

That's more than I expected and I'm a lore nut.
The game is largely unfinished... (it's...pretty obvious the moment you move around the dropship to see how the stuff that...isn't happening. There's animations in the game files for crew members doing pull-ups...and nowhere for them to do it. There's animation and scripting for your crew to be on fire...but there's no fire. Ryana literally has a single animation idle number 5.. and the animations Fahad does have, he doesn't really use the better ones.) There's also the civilian/infantry animation files that suggest situations like the raiders attacking the compound in the first few missions would have civilians fleeing from the buildings (possibly even on fire), but things happened.

This said, harebrained schemes' game while having much more of a story to it and doing a little better at decorating the areas of the dropship briefings with people that are at least positioned differently each time, is basically the same thing with just a bit more time spent either opening the books or making **** up. PGI kinda didn't do much time with either of those and it is a bit obvious. They are fundamentally the same thing but with a lack of polish for PGI's version as they spent much more time with level generation and issues with their mechanics.

However, a few of the expectations you listed are pretty unreasonable even from an actual triple A studio with the backing of a publisher given what kind of game this is (don't see any gundam titles doing that sort of stuff, even the really good ones), which PGI is not triple A and does not have support of a publisher. As a lore nut I didn't even expect PGI to do most of that, there's some serious Bioware Mass Effect level **** in those expectations, I'm surprised you didn't include expanding on personal relations with Fahad and Ryana or your hired help to that list.

Don't get me wrong, with animations for doing "pull ups" among those that the non-existing maintenance crew were supposed to do, as well as fixing up tanks, I would expect and prefer to have some really basic "Herpa-derp I'm a crew member welding this staircase from all the times you wear it down running up and down" and "Commander" "Ensign" greetings, "Great work on the last mission" "What mission" "I don't know I say this every time you walk by" exchanges, and Ryana to have more than Idle Animation Number 5 to her repertoire of **** to do given that she is the person that has the most lines in the entire game...

And I would have expected that PGI to reuse some of the old ISNN news flashes from MWO's early days to fluff out the universe a bit, or to have used the writer for their novella series of 8 books leading up to MW5's storyline (which is clearly where all the story writing really went) to have written story beats and news updates about the universe to not only update the player as to what's happening but also perhaps where the hefty warzones are giving the big payouts and hefty repair bills (aka participating in the war) as well as perhaps play news footage mechcommander 2 style giving us information while we're on the dropship (giving us a reason to wanna rush up those stairs to get to the nearest TV).



But... a bunch of what you listed is also.. something not even the most story-heavy MechWarrior games did.

Edited by Koniving, 20 December 2019 - 10:29 AM.