39 replies to this topic

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Hi Thorqemada

Of Course , not each individual has sense and Feeling for Beauty or Good Maps ...the last good Maps im seeing in Battlefield 2

[Nesutizale]

Speaking of google maps...I allways wondered how it would be to take google maps and recreate some areas as battlefields for MWO or MW5.

Most likely they wouldn't be very...gamey. Normaly landscapes or cities aren't build to be enjoable battlegrounds. Sure chockpoints, central areas etc. exist but would they be balanced? Normaly not.
Still it somehow exites me to try it out or at least have maps that are loosely based on real world places.

For example I made a "New York central park" like map for classic Battletech once that worked very well. Basic idea was that you could either walk around the park, using the buildings as cover or you take the short route to fall your enemy in the back but that means you would have to cross over an open central area that makes you an easy target.

We used a system of simultaniouse movement where we would write down movements as long as you don't have a line of sight in the last round. That way you could play with just one map and still have surprising movements. Kinda like getting a radar ping every end of a round of where your enemy is but you don't know where he would be next turn. That way it was realy interesting to scout. Do I put my light at a higher position but risk that everyone else can see him too? Do I place one of my mechs to watch the central area but don't move him this round, just to get an easy shot?

Oh speaking of classic Battletech. I think there was something about not haveing the rights to do it but I would like to have the tabletop maps as maps in MWO / MW5....just for fun and to see them in 3D and not just a flat map

[LordNothing]

MadcatX, on 29 May 2020 - 08:36 PM, said:

Not a member of reddit but decided to look this one up.

616 votes at the time of this post on a forum with 1.9 million members.
16 other posts in the past 24 hours with less then 100 votes considered "hot topic".

Doesn't require much thought.

[EDIT: my own thoughts on the future of MW:O]

I don't see another attempt at an F2P mech simulator title by a game dev studio set in the B-tech universe anytime soon, probably more of the same "Multiplayer tacked onto a Single Player game", not counting MW:LL of course.

i for one could do without another f2p game, ever, in perpetuity. im frequently told that mwo is one of the more fair f2p games out there, and if thats true that only makes things worse. i often use video games to debate the merits/drawbacks of capitalism/socialism. when i compare the classic one time purchase games with f2p games the otp games are always better.

im not really willing to play subscription games either unless there is no up front purchase, there is a trial period, and the subscription rates are consumer friendly. even then i usually dont like those kinds of games.

that said i dont think an otp game is going to work either *points at mw5*

Edited by LordNothing, 05 June 2020 - 02:22 AM.

[VonBruinwald]

Nesutizale, on 04 June 2020 - 11:18 PM, said:

For example I made a "New York central park" like map for classic Battletech once that worked very well. Basic idea was that you could either walk around the park, using the buildings as cover or you take the short route to fall your enemy in the back but that means you would have to cross over an open central area that makes you an easy target.

We used a system of simultaniouse movement where we would write down movements as long as you don't have a line of sight in the last round. That way you could play with just one map and still have surprising movements. Kinda like getting a radar ping every end of a round of where your enemy is but you don't know where he would be next turn. That way it was realy interesting to scout. Do I put my light at a higher position but risk that everyone else can see him too? Do I place one of my mechs to watch the central area but don't move him this round, just to get an easy shot?

Oh speaking of classic Battletech. I think there was something about not haveing the rights to do it but I would like to have the tabletop maps as maps in MWO / MW5....just for fun and to see them in 3D and not just a flat map

Please tell me you know of MegaMek.

Playing double-blind on a central park style map is my favourite set-up.

There's also a couple of MWO maps for it: Get them!

Griffinhawk, on 10 June 2014 - 11:19 PM, said:

Spoiler

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[LordNothing]

i think id rather see ports of mwll maps to mwo.

[VonBruinwald]

LordNothing, on 05 June 2020 - 03:05 AM, said:

i think id rather see ports of mwll maps to mwo.

What's stopping you?

[Nesutizale]

LordNothing, on 05 June 2020 - 02:16 AM, said:

i for one could do without another f2p game, ever, in perpetuity. im frequently told that mwo is one of the more fair f2p games out there, and if thats true that only makes things worse. i often use video games to debate the merits/drawbacks of capitalism/socialism. when i compare the classic one time purchase games with f2p games the otp games are always better.

im not really willing to play subscription games either unless there is no up front purchase, there is a trial period, and the subscription rates are consumer friendly. even then i usually dont like those kinds of games.

that said i dont think an otp game is going to work either *points at mw5*

From the f2p titles I know there are all degres of fair and unfair versions out there.
MWO is indeed pretty tame. Sure they need to make money with it but that is okay.

F2P and subscriptions have their place in my opinion. For games that are aimed to last longer like MMOs or MOBA games its a pretty good way to have a constanst stream of income to finance new stuff and keep the servers running.

The biggest point is how they handle things. For example World of Warships. To my experiance and that of others I meet and played with its so that if you want to play the highest Tier you need premium time to still make money and around Tier 5 the grind gets so terrible that you also are tempted to invest ... very tempted.
This practice can be good and bad. When the grind or upkeep is more like MWO then its okay, you will get to the point of haveing everything you need at some point and still have mechs you haven't bought or leveled but don't feel like you are getting punished. World of Warships...you kinda need to be a masochist (my personal experiance others say otherwise but then I see most of them buying premium time constantly and ask myself if they have any self control or understanding of whats happening )

Then we have the play with FOMO, fear of mission out, that some people are very receptive for. IIRC games like Fortnite make use of this by creating a community where you can't play with the "Cool kids" when you don't own at least a certain skin of the season. That is a terrible practice if you ask me.

Then there are subs or F2P where I never or paid very little to get a satsifing experiance. Games like that would be Warframe, Destiny 2 or League of Legends and the one I hate and love...StarTrek Online.
Warframe and Destiny 2 I didn't spend any money on. LoL I bought one or two skins because I liked them so much and StarTrek Online I paid because I wanted to game to continue existing...still it was only around 15-35€ a year. The game is faulty to no end. You think MWO is bad? Play that.

Oh and I forgot StarWars the old Republic. I bought a starter kit for the "prefered" status...think it was around 5€ and once again for one of the expansion with 15€ I think it was?
But then I would have payed more for that one as I found it was a realy good one with a good story and characters and cutscenes.

Anyway I think its less that the F2P, sub systems are bad or good. I belive they can actualy be better for some cases then one time payments. Its how much the developers want or need to milk the community that is the real problem.

VonBruinwald, on 05 June 2020 - 02:45 AM, said:

Please tell me you know of MegaMek.
Playing double-blind on a central park style map is my favourite set-up.
There's also a couple of MWO maps for it: Get them!

I haven't played MegaMek, also I have taken a look quite some time ago. Missed a "feature" we used to do with the real maps...writing down the names of the people we killed on that hex..... and the next time that map went on the table it was allways "Do you remember the last time we played that map? I killed you there with my AC20 !" "Yes but look over here, I got you twice on the same hex, beat that !"
Oh that where fun times. The banter even before the game even started

As for double blind...I think the official rules for that came out after I introduced the "blip" system to my group. The main differance is that you play with everyone on the same map while, as far as I remeber double blind, uses two identical maps and a game master to coordinate thing.

Actualy digged up the map or at least the half that I found
https://ibb.co/TKYcNSc

Here you can see some names written down. Mh concidering the number of dead people we should have avoided the spot more but it seams we didn't
https://ibb.co/LgR8JZh
And just because I found it...my costum version of the Steiner Colluseum Map with sliding walls.
https://ibb.co/9Wn6wQk

VonBruinwald, on 05 June 2020 - 03:09 AM, said:

What's stopping you?

No support for costum made maps by PGI? At least not that I know of any.

[LordNothing]

VonBruinwald, on 05 June 2020 - 03:09 AM, said:

What's stopping you?

likely the same thing thats stopping pgi, lack of knowlege of cryengine3.

theres also the matter of me not having the map sources, but i can port over a dozen half finished quake maps and one nice map with bad collision and it wont vis. thats what i get for using qoole.

Edited by LordNothing, 05 June 2020 - 05:15 PM.

[LordNothing]

Nesutizale, on 05 June 2020 - 12:35 PM, said:

From the f2p titles I know there are all degres of fair and unfair versions out there.
MWO is indeed pretty tame. Sure they need to make money with it but that is okay.

F2P and subscriptions have their place in my opinion. For games that are aimed to last longer like MMOs or MOBA games its a pretty good way to have a constanst stream of income to finance new stuff and keep the servers running.

The biggest point is how they handle things. For example World of Warships. To my experiance and that of others I meet and played with its so that if you want to play the highest Tier you need premium time to still make money and around Tier 5 the grind gets so terrible that you also are tempted to invest ... very tempted.
This practice can be good and bad. When the grind or upkeep is more like MWO then its okay, you will get to the point of haveing everything you need at some point and still have mechs you haven't bought or leveled but don't feel like you are getting punished. World of Warships...you kinda need to be a masochist (my personal experiance others say otherwise but then I see most of them buying premium time constantly and ask myself if they have any self control or understanding of whats happening )

Then we have the play with FOMO, fear of mission out, that some people are very receptive for. IIRC games like Fortnite make use of this by creating a community where you can't play with the "Cool kids" when you don't own at least a certain skin of the season. That is a terrible practice if you ask me.

Then there are subs or F2P where I never or paid very little to get a satsifing experiance. Games like that would be Warframe, Destiny 2 or League of Legends and the one I hate and love...StarTrek Online.
Warframe and Destiny 2 I didn't spend any money on. LoL I bought one or two skins because I liked them so much and StarTrek Online I paid because I wanted to game to continue existing...still it was only around 15-35€ a year. The game is faulty to no end. You think MWO is bad? Play that.

Oh and I forgot StarWars the old Republic. I bought a starter kit for the "prefered" status...think it was around 5€ and once again for one of the expansion with 15€ I think it was?
But then I would have payed more for that one as I found it was a realy good one with a good story and characters and cutscenes.

Anyway I think its less that the F2P, sub systems are bad or good. I belive they can actualy be better for some cases then one time payments. Its how much the developers want or need to milk the community that is the real problem.

the model has its merits but it also has its drawbacks. unfortunately no utopia is realistic (even the old timey otp games had gone to hell with all the exclusive bonus content and microtransactions). people who make f2p games have time and time again come up short. no matter how many whales you have you simply can not generate enough funds to make up for the hordes of players who havent dropped a dime. games were just better when everyone pays.

i was kind of curios about star trek online. of course i never bothered checking it out and i think its too eol at this point to pick up. thats the problem with f2p nobody talks about, gamedeath. i got a story about that.

one day in the year 2050 im crusing around the old folks space station in my hover mobility scooter. bill comes cruising in on his schooter and yells out "whos up for a lan party" the nurses look back and fourth at each other, theres a lot of hands in the air and shrugging, we ignore them. "sure" i say. so we wheel over to the game room, linda and patty are playing some bejueled clone on an emulated smartphone running on an even smarter phone while bob and jill are stringing antique network cable between antique gaming rigs. patty looks over the holographic display on her smarterphone and says "why dont you guys use emulation, its a lot easier.", linda snarks in "before you throw your back out, you know exoskeletons arent cheap!". ignoring the banter bob says "what we playin'?", jill says "i havent played starcraft in awhile, not since the tourney we had in '37". bob nods in agreement. after 20 minutes of trying to get patty and linda's smarter phones to talk to our ancient hardware, we give up and opt for a blood bath with linda and patty playing winner. several rounds later after me and bill lose to linda and patty, bill says "my apm hasnt been the same since the head transplant.", linda interjects, "stfu noob!", i follow up by, "is that why you only build zerglings? you do know they cant attack air?". linda smirks "ok you pick the game this time". bob chimes in "i got those damn phones on the network, didn't have a driver for ipv7, found a janky driver on github and the thing actually compiled, good thing jill had that old version of gcc". "new version doesnt support c22, c really went to hell with c29, might as well use python at that point." i nod in agreement, "c++ never had this problem". bob returns from the file cabinet with a disc in his hand, plops it down on only computer with a still functioning dvd drive "all right nerds, lets play a real game". patty looks down, "quake 2?" linda snarks "ut was better!" bill chimes in "ut didnt come out till after q3a". "its still better!" suddenly jill sends everyone a file transfer request "found a mod that enables ray tracing and supersamples all the maps, they also added a new weapon that shoots cats for some reason". i lift an eyebrow in amazement "i never heard of any such mod". "it came out last week." "damn girl", linda says as she adjusts her holographic vr goggles. deathmatch ensues. after playing most of the episode 2 maps, bob fires a railgun slug at linda as she jumps for a hyperblaster, "fragged" bill exclaims. linda turns red and leaves the room in a growel that seems to linger. "so its my turn" i say bill nods, "you know there was this game i played for a decade straight back in the singles", "oh!" patty exclaims, in a sound that reminded me of a sound i heard that one time walked in on her and linda (its 2020, you cant write a story without gay stuff in it, be glad it wasnt bob and bill) she was clearly interested. "ever heard of mechwarrior online". "euch, not again" bill utters quietly to himself. bob as if looking back into the haze of time trying to find an old memory "i think i played that one, crappy giant robot sim arena shooter. had an advanced mode called fw or somesuch which was just the same 4 teams killing everyone over and over. i quit after the first day" jill nods "those f2p games were hit or miss, but mostly miss". "i did go back and got into the game though" bob continures, "remember back when we had that fake pandemic back in '20, i think i dropped a thousand games before i got my stimulus, and i was able to finally get doom eternal". "fake my ***" linda interjects as she returns to the game room, bottle of tequila in one hand and a 30 something nurse in the other, "i was sick for a whole week. my gal at the time died, i was going to dump her anyway but not like that". patty backs her up "only reason you think it was fake was you lived in montana". jill breaks it up "not this again, lets just play the damn game". "what game is that?" linda says in an uncharacteristicly snarkless way. "mechwarrior online" bill says in a less than enthusiastic voice. lindas nurse chips in "oh my grandpa used to play that one". "fat chance" says jill, "they got bought up epic in '23 and the whole shebang went bankrupt the crash of '26." "fake crash!" bob exclaims. "damn it bob why you let that long disproven propaganda eat away at your brain" linda snarks back. i figure this has gone on long enouh "we cant play mwo but mwll still works, put the nurse in the raven, we need the c3".

sorry that got out of hand. maybe il come back and fix the punctuation and paragraphs and stuff after ive had some sleep.

[MadcatX]

I agree mostly with LordNothing regarding the one time purchases, especially now with all these games coming out as "games as a service" which have a wonderful track record (looking at you Anthem and Fallout 76). Heck, I remember a time when pre-orders served a practical function beyond "You'll get all this extra stuff but we can't guarantee that the game itself will be good on release".

There are a couple of F2P's out there that I've tinkered around with a bit, mostly League and Path of Exile, which I would consider F2P done right.

I've had the F2P vs Freemium vs OTP vs Subscription debates with friends soooo many times I've realized it's such a subjective matter that there's no point in discussion with the only exception is if a particular F2P/Freemium goes into P2W territory, and even at that people have different thresholds. Way I see it, it's your money, do as you please based on what you value.

[Nesutizale]

LordNothing, on 05 June 2020 - 05:33 PM, said:

the model has its merits but it also has its drawbacks. unfortunately no utopia is realistic (even the old timey otp games had gone to hell with all the exclusive bonus content and microtransactions). people who make f2p games have time and time again come up short. no matter how many whales you have you simply can not generate enough funds to make up for the hordes of players who havent dropped a dime. games were just better when everyone pays.

i was kind of curios about star trek online. of course i never bothered checking it out and i think its too eol at this point to pick up. thats the problem with f2p nobody talks about, gamedeath. i got a story about that.

sorry that got out of hand. maybe il come back and fix the punctuation and paragraphs and stuff after ive had some sleep.

Yes some formating would be nice...I stopped reading after the first few lines
Also sorry...wall of text incomming....
TL:DR at the beginning and something about StarTrek Online at the end.

TL:DR
- Methode of payment dosn't equal quality of games. There are examples for both ends of games that work and don't with the same payment methode

- Developers need to give more power to the creative people then analyticers who think they understand something about costumers. ( They don't )

Now for the long explanation

As for "models" of income. There isn't "The" best way to do it, at least from what I see and I don't release games so I have to go by what I hear when a developer lets you peak into what they experiance.

Going from there it seams that "Story games" with a definite beginning and ending sell best with a one time payment.
Everything else is actualy better of with either subscribtions or the F2P model. Yes you see a lot of those games fail but I think they would have failed anyway because they where either bad games to beginn with or where to greedy and had terrible monetization.

Let take Anthem for example and StarTrek Online.
Both started by using a subscribtion model. Both are/where pretty bad and started to die quickly.

Anthem never realy adressed the basic faults in its core and failed hard and I have my doubts that even if it would be for free that people would play it.

StarTrek Online on the other hand realised at least some of the problems, worked on them and changed to a pretty forgiveing F2P model that even allows you to earn ingame "realworld" money.
And no you can't earn real world money, just to make that clear. What you can do is earn "Dilithium" through missions and other gameplay element. Normaly you can only earn Dilithium by dropping real coin into the game.
Sure its a heavy grind, as a more casual player it takes me a realy long time, several month, to earn a noteable amount BUT at least I can and do so while I play anyway.

Anyway back to the point...STO adressed its problems, developed a pretty good F2P model around all its game elements and the result was that also the numbers of players dropped over the years the income was better. So good that the game survived to this day and even more and more content was released.
With that player numbers even increased a little bit again.


Still there will be an end to every game. I highly doubt, no matter how good you are and what you do as a companie, people will get tired of a game at some point. Like me with STO. I feel like have done everything there is to do and only return either for a special event, I like Qs Winter event or the Risa summer event or I will return when I see they have made a new story chapter.
Still I return that is more than I can say for Anthem. I played it during the Beta and later on I had a free month but I think I only played the frist few mission during that month and dropped it after the first week of free play.
If a game is so bad that people don't want to play it for free then you have a problem.

So to me that shows that the payment model isn't the thing that is the problem. The base problem lies much, much deeper in the economie and how big companies are structured and how creative people are treated.

First of so called AAA titles cost an amount of money that is mind boggleing. The bigger the companie, the pricier the game the less risk you can take. You could say that they got to big for their own good.
At that point companies tend to listen to the "experts". Marketing analyticers who say "we can sell this game with that amount to group XYZ".

Problem with that is gamers, no better say customers in general, don't know what they want until they see it. Analysing the market can give you a rough idea where you can go to but its not the holy grail of garantied wins.
I mean "Battle Royal shooters".... no one wanted to do that because of analytics saying we don't know if we can sell it. Then someone made it and it was a hit. Something no one could forsee because there wasn't anything like it on the market.

Other examples of where analytics failed are "Jedi fallen order" and "APEX".
A one time payment game that is just story focused with no multiplayer? Analytics said "No that won't sell, only the SW branding will save the game"....and oh boy where they wrong. Sure the SW branding helped but even if you strip away that you still have a solid game that would still be fun.

APEX....next to no marketing before launch. Every companie would tell you that you need to put at least half of your games budget into marketing to sell. APEX was downloaded in such high numbers that no one could have predicted and why? Because its was a solid game that plays well.
To current analytics that is a slap in the face....a game that sells without massiv marketing just with quality? How dare that works !


StarTrek Online

What does "eol" stand for? "End of line" ?

Well its still there. They even ported it over to consoles last year, I think it was, along with some reworks of game systems and graphic reworks. Also don't aspect to much about the graphics. The game IS old and it looks old. Still I like the exploding ships...ground battles are still terrible IMO.

They still semi regular release new story content and if you never played it there are now, IIRC, 10-12 Episodes that each focus around one specific topic to be played. Some smaller with ~5 missions to bigger ones that have ~10 missions.

Also there are 2 main factions, Federation and Klingons and a token faction, namely the Romulans where you have to decide to either allign with the Federation or the Klingons in the end.
Still Fed, Klingon and Roms have each their unique starting Episode that tells you what happend after the destruction of Romulus and Remus.
Frankly I consider the STO timeline to be more canon to me then whatever JJ and Discovery and Pikard brought to the table.

So if you are a StarTrek fan and you can acept that it has its flaws it can be quite entertaining. I put quite some hours, maybe around 800+, into the game before I put it on the backburner.

[Yozaa]

Nesutizale, on 06 June 2020 - 03:27 AM, said:

Developers need to give more power to the creative people then analyticers who think they understand something about costumers. ( They don't )

Problem is when you let creative people analyse, they are not good at it.
Hire a proper analyst instead

[Nesutizale]

Well from what a google analyst once told me he basicly said "No algorithem or analyst can predict what is the next big thing. We might have a rough to good understanding of what is currently selling well and why but whats next? Rolling a dice can predict it with the same presission."

To me that says: "You want to get a piece of the current pie get an analyst to tell you how to get the biggest piece. Should you want to get a new pie, let the creatives go nuts."

[Chat Boy Killer]

I plan on killing more chat boys.

[Ghost Paladin117]

Glad to see at least a few forum warriors also want to see more. Can argue all day about what specifically but it seems a lot of people would like more mwo than mw5

[Anjian]

Nesutizale, on 04 June 2020 - 11:18 PM, said:

Speaking of google maps...I allways wondered how it would be to take google maps and recreate some areas as battlefields for MWO or MW5.

Most likely they wouldn't be very...gamey. Normaly landscapes or cities aren't build to be enjoable battlegrounds. Sure chockpoints, central areas etc. exist but would they be balanced? Normaly not.
Still it somehow exites me to try it out or at least have maps that are loosely based on real world places.

For example I made a "New York central park" like map for classic Battletech once that worked very well. Basic idea was that you could either walk around the park, using the buildings as cover or you take the short route to fall your enemy in the back but that means you would have to cross over an open central area that makes you an easy target.

Why not. Another robot game did a map out of the city of Shenzhen.



and Rome.




Modifications are made to balance both sides of the map, but even with asymetrical maps, these maps are fun to play and among the most favored.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Future of MWO ...the last thats leaves the Stuff Party in a long line was the super Community Manager Tina 2019...

and like the Years before and the search of Folks with Cry experience, now searching PGI new stuff member

Intermediate Software Engineer - Gameplay Generalist

Engineering
Level Designer II

Design

Producer II

Production

Senior 3D Character Artist

Art

UI/UX Specialist

Design

When PGI finds good Guys , we becomes a MWO 2.0 ? when not ...

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 17 June 2020 - 02:23 AM.

[Nesutizale]

Anjian, on 14 June 2020 - 07:37 AM, said:

Why not. Another robot game did a map out of the city of Shenzhen.

and Rome.

Modifications are made to balance both sides of the map, but even with asymetrical maps, these maps are fun to play and among the most favored.

Shenzen actualy looks interesting. Rome is a bit to "gamey" for me taste.