544 replies to this topic

[Akillius]

Daeron Katz, on 28 October 2020 - 01:07 PM, said:

I'm very excited about the future of MWO, and I hope you are too!

Been a long time since I was excited about MWO as it keeps getting trashed or ignored since 2017-ish.
That's a blunt and strong opinion of mine but since you replied Daeron I'll switch to constructive ideas for consideration.

1. I didn't log in for almost a year because nothing new and nothing to buy.
Are all my hundreds of mechs maxed, nope but I don't care.
Plenty of ideas on forums like Crusader and other Battlemechs, or adding new maps (crowd source or crowd fund), etc.

2. Players on block list currently get unmuted automatically after re-login.
Keep Muted to fix long standing issue and improve quality of gaming. (ie. Females being harassed! etc.)
Or give us the option somehow to ensure those select few stay muted.

3. Queue times aren't an issue for QP Solo NA cause I'm voting within seconds to 2 minutes.
But the dead air of loading times after voting is a wait time that's just like wow.
Maybe add mahjong/hearts/solitaire that auto loads between matches, or in game global chat, or watch a movie.

4. Every minute queued and waiting in loading screens to drop in a match give CBills & MechXP or GXP, something.

5. Don't change the game to meet the customers you have, change it for the number of customers you want.
Matchmaker needs option to split/join premade teams in Solo QuickPlay.
Match score and PSR needs work, there's literally dozens of ways to fix it mentioned here.

Look at games like No Man's Sky that had tops a hundred players a day in 2016 revive its old game to thousands a day and its even gotten to the point they will now change multiplayer teams from 4 players to 32...
Then look at failures like Galactic Junk League and Dreadnought were they ignored development, stopped adding features and for the past couple years just changed existing settings, graphics, sound files which just killed off those games RIP.

6. Examine the causes of the biggest exoduses.
Modules all CBill return = reneged & partial return
Oh unless bought module after renege announcement and then full CBill return... exodus
Skill tree forcing players to pick 80% of the same garbage and No real specialization... exodus
Fix skill tree, how... I dunno but I'll put some thought into that but will only post if I come up with something different.

7. FP 2017 ... exodus (okay it might've been 2016 its been a long time)
Start by removing the cost to join units cause it quickly killed off the play for fun units.
Remove the must play 20 bahjillion matches before getting faction points requirement.
Every minute queued & waiting in loading screens give Faction points, CBills & MechXP or GXP, etc!
I was so soured on FP after that update I don't know what's current, ie. are Long Toms still in FP....

8. Any opinions on major changes that PGI want's to know should be polled when on logging into game.
Don't listen to the same few loudest on forums/social media, they only play it their way and only have their best interests in mind and very few of that type of player has any concept that other people actually actively play the game differently. Plus in a free to play game the divide gets even bigger.
Those loudest few don't make up the majority of players, they are a pittance since most players can't be halfarsed to log into some forum or social media website for most games they play and this is true for all games since the 1990s and for no other reason but they have only an hour or two to play and don't want to waste it reading a bunch of blah blah / rant rant.

Combine most of the fixes in 1 patch and test it.
Announce that patch like its the greatest thing since sliced bread!
Well that's just some ideas.

[eddieb]

1) Advance the timeline bringing:
New weapons and armor types.
New mechs for sale.

2) Adjust solaris rewards. Rewards are exponentially harder to get in Solaris. Make Solaris rewards linear, like quickplay.

[Lord of MEGALICHIKA]

I'm just thinking what if Quick Game can be made into some kind of mini campaign .... if it's not too hard to implement technically
Imagine like this:
1. In the opening screen,we have a starmap ( just like Faction Play )
2. In the starmap we can see which planets have war / conflict
3. In a planet which have war/conflict ,we can choose FP or QP
4. If we choose QP, then we can choose all mini campaign available there on the planet
5. Maybe there are 3 types of minicampaign : short ( the best of 3 mission ), medium ( best of 5 mission ) and long ( best of 7 mission )
6.After we choose which QP / mini campaign we want to play,we can choose our faction ( if player number of each faction is unbalance / differ to great , then the game will use auto allegiance )
7.We cannot switch allegiance once campaign start,although after it's finished,we can choose other campaign and faction again. ( in this "QP with mission", it's as if we are irregular small time Mercenary which fight for money and reward, not about faction loyalty )
8. Play campaign mission as normal QP
9. After all missions in campaign are finished,all player who finished the campaign will get his/her campaign reward
10. Each mini campaign has different campaign reward ( maybe CBill and GSP point ),according to the length of the campaign ( short, medium, long ),and whether faction that the player choose win/ lose ( winner get bigger reward ) , reward which all player can get after completing all the mini campaign missions.So players get 2 kind of reward : Mission / QP reward and campaign reward
11. Players then can choose other mini campaign in different planet and choose different faction
11. Rinse and repeat
12. Maybe Cadet MechWarrior are restricted to short campaign ( less stomped / bloodied with faster campaign reward )

I think QP will be much more interesting if it has more purpose / reward ( especially for new player )

I'm sorry for grammar / typo error, English is not my main language

Edited by Lord of MEGALICHIKA, 29 October 2020 - 10:37 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

I'd like to add an extra, important note here while Daeron's still looking at stuff:

Currently, Streak SRMs lose lock on a target if your 'mech touches that target, even if the reticle is within the appropriate arc of the target's center. This is kind of absurd, a huge weakness of the weapon system right now. Please look into that.

[DAEDALOS513]

HOW BOUT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE.. FIX THE DAMNED CRASHING..

AND REMOVE THE PENALTY THAT HAPPENS BECAUSE OF CRASHES.. GETTING SICK OF IT

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 30 October 2020 - 03:38 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

Quickdraw Crobat, on 30 October 2020 - 03:08 PM, said:

I'd like to add an extra, important note here while Daeron's still looking at stuff:

Currently, Streak SRMs lose lock on a target if your 'mech touches that target, even if the reticle is within the appropriate arc of the target's center. This is kind of absurd, a huge weakness of the weapon system right now. Please look into that.

Yep.. people are exploiting this and streaks already have enough weaknesses as it is..

[Shaman GW]

Looking forward to the future of MWO

As far as faction play, I would like to see an option for team tonnage. The restrictions to this one would be that there would be so many light slots, medium, heavy and assault. For example a team of 8 would have 1 light, 2 medium, 3 heavy, and 2 assault. This way each player would pick 4 mechs in that weight category. This would allow people who like to specialize in a particular mech class to do so without having to play weight categories they are not as good at.

[Mr D One]

Well Katz, actually logged in to see how your going. So your the chosen one. Worked out well for Anakin eventually.

I'm playing 2 great multiplayer games at the moment. Star Wars : Squadrons and Wreckfest.

Lifting some inspiration from those fantastic games, you could try these idea injections.

Keep Solaris, but add a grand melee mode, It works so well in Wreckfest.

Bots or AI option for the lower tier players or players like myself that can't be bothered talking to idiots on coms, lag shields, etc, for faction and quick play modes. This works superbly in Squadrons and Wreckfest. They can earn rewards but at a slower pace rather then player vs player games.

An actual competitive mode that has both teams using the same mechs, the same load outs, the same quirks, so rather then the better meta wins, it comes down to better team play and tactics. By having the meta equal you soon will have a team more reflective of Battletech tactics, rather then the highest dps.

Ignoring all of these ideas the last one I have is for PGI to sell the MWO property to EA or THQ Nordic, or Epic Games. If PGI continues to do nothing with the MWO property, then it will simply become the new Harmony Gold.

Good Luck. I sincerely hope you can resurrect MWO from a Minimum Viable Product to an actual game.

Edited by Mr D One, 30 October 2020 - 11:50 PM.

[Tiamat of the Sea]

Mr D One, on 30 October 2020 - 11:49 PM, said:

Ignoring all of these ideas the last one I have is for PGI to sell the MWO property to EA or THQ Nordic, or Epic Games. If PGI continues to do nothing with the MWO property, then it will simply become the new Harmony Gold.

....dunno where you've been, but EA is known for killing properties and studios (among other things), so I'd recommend strongly against that one. Epic Games is a bit iffy at best.

Edited by Quickdraw Crobat, 31 October 2020 - 10:34 AM.

[Judge Redeemer]

[Kamikaze Viking]

Mr D One, on 30 October 2020 - 11:49 PM, said:

I'm playing 2 great multiplayer games at the moment. Star Wars : Squadrons and Wreckfest.

Ahaha! I knew I knew that name! Some epic races the other night.

What I would take from Wreckfest is the tournament daily/weekly challenges.

And that the career mode creates a set of challenges that scale up and teach you the game as you unlock and upgrade you first few cars. Something similar could be really good for helping the NPE outside of the tutorial. In wreckfest these are PvE, hence ideally in MWO this would require AI bots placed on normal maps. But I'm sure that Matt might be able to think of a way to incorporate something like this using the existing events system in live matches if expanding the AI/training grounds is unfeasible (as I would expect it to be *at this time*).

Eg "Cadet's first campaign" event. where certain challenges can be done straight away, and others require a minimum level to begin (eg Easy A, B, C, Challeges with trials, But must have a full skilled hellbringer to begin Challenge D) such that the Cadet campaigns are sets of 5+ challenges "easy, Medium, hard, Pro" etc

These challenges should force you to play each class of mech, and specific weapon types that help to train your hand eye co-ordination & positioning knowledge. Best if specific locked 'trial' mechs are designed with consideration for the design of these lower level challenges. Mid level challenges teach more advanced things including skill tree by requiring minimum skilled out levels for the mech (eg specific trees to fit the weapons loadout, eg Laservomit), Hard challenges start to work on harder to use weapons systems, and Pro Might attempt to teach people how to poptart.

Completing each set of challeges should give rewards that help with later challenges. Eg a mech, GSP, Mech bays etc.

Edited by Kamikaze Viking, 31 October 2020 - 04:18 PM.

[crazytimes]

Doesn't matter what you do. Keep throwing brand new cadets into tier 1 matches against pre-made 4 manners and the playerbase will never increase. Until that is fixed, there is no point at all in putting effort into anything else. Playerbase can only get smaller as it stands.

[dr3dnought]

My perspective:
I've been playing since mid-2017, although with long breaks since March 2019. I've played around 4000 quick play matches, the vast majority solo while grinding skill points. I came out of retirement for the halloween event and to try soup queue and the new PSR system. Lights are my most used class and I'm in the OC region.

I've listened to the NGNG podcasts with Russ/Matt, Navid, mdmzero, nuttyrat, two 'beard updates' as well as the community stream/podcast with Ash etc.

My suggestions:
Revert the side-torso destruction penalty for LFE and C-XL. Good intention, bad implementation. Maybe look at a much milder penalty in the (distant) future.

Skill Tree: Current grind is far too harsh. Remove the c-bill cost and halve the XP cost (or halve the number of nodes). Refund players 45,000 c-bills and 400 GXP per node already unlocked.

Quick play goes to 8v8 with solos and duos only. Speeds up matchmaking and improved framerate performance. While I don't have much personal experience with 8v8, having heard the arguments on both sides I think it should improve match quality as well. Larger groups can still do faction play.

Buff agility (accel/decel, torso twist/speed/pitch) pretty much across the board. When in doubt, buff.

New player experience: Cadets should start in Tier 4/5. Trial mechs/builds need to be updated and given a full skill tree.

Prices across the board (MC mechs, mech packs, cosmetics) should be half of what they are. Premium time should be a 100% boost rather than 50%. Themed packs and high-value bundles is a great idea.

Not-So-Low-Hanging Fruit:
Rework streaks. I know I am biased as a light-main, but objectively, there is no other weapon that is a no-aim one-shot against an entire class, negating the only advantages of said class (namely speed and small size), while being more-or-less useless against every other class.

I'd be interested in a battlepass with premium time and lots of rewards.

New content: As many high quality maps, game modes, mechs and cosmetics as you can make.

[evil kerensky]

what id like to see, now i know whats on the table.

things i think should be easy

mechpacks that let you pick your mechs, like any 3 mechs for a standerd pack, and any 5 mechs for an ultimate pack. im open to a price hike if you choose a hero. for your pack. getting all of the same chassis is unnessacery now. let people pick random varients from any chassis they want. if you want to sell a 60-70 dollar pack, do the same thing, but have it unlock all the patterns and skill points for it too.

increase mobility (shortest bullet, but i think its the most important)

buff everything so that theyre useful without skill tree (ex: srm spread, isml dps, is lpls... etc, bring back old metas)

buff lppc's and lgauss, theyve never been worthwhile

loosen gauss/ppc gh from being able to fire 2 at a time to 3 at a time (2 gauss/2ppc is still a bit excessive)

remove isxl st destruction = death. give it a bigger heat spike than clan xls if need be. this imbalance will always make balancing between qp and fw difficult, its easier to just remove it so that the IS doesnt have as much to complain about tech-wise. also removes one of the biggest downsides to possible IS omnimechs.

bring down the size of hgauss and lbx20's by 1 slot

take the veagles jj quirks off it and give it to a more deserving mech (maybe bring sean back for another quirkening, whats the worst that can happen? it livened up the game at the very least)

stop putting assaults in the same lance as light mechs. theyre just going to get left behind to be wolfpacked. lump em all in together again.

raise the ac20 ghost heat by 1. firing 2 hgauss is ok, but not ac20s? that isnt logical. uac 20s keep the same. an 80 point double tap would be rediculous.

pie in the sky hopes

redesign alpine. theres spots on the mountains around the out of bounds part of the map were people can go, and the only way to get them down is excessive strikes. it also needs some covered approaches for taking down the gate generators

kill the "leghumping light mechs" meta. theres nothing more annoying than a pirahni running int an annis crotch and unloading on its legs in a qp, and the anni cant do anything to stop it once its started. maybe by drastically increase collision damage. an anni should be able to step on a pirahna. i realize thats not possible, so why not just increase the collision damage so theres some downside to the strategy. any other solution to the leghumping light meta im willing to back, this just seems the easiest from my perspective.

put more cover on polar highland and caustic. i realize theres cover, but most of it isnt tall enough or at a steep enough angle to defend from lrm indirect fire arcs, which are pretty steep. maybe deepen some of those valleys,

360 sensor range

[Commander Harrison]

I would just like to say that I am very happy to hear that MWO has a new future and with that hopefully we get more updates and perhaps even a revival of sorts.

I have been playing since Year 2 and my 7 year old son has recently joined me on the battlefield as well. We will continue to play as a family and continue to support this games with the little purchases we can make from time to time; just as a small thank you for giving a dad and his son something to play and be passionate about together.

To facilitate the above, it would be nice if you bring back the Steam Packs beyond just the Solaris7 (which we have already purchased). Those were really superb value for new players; who hopefully start coming in. I know I would love to buy one of those packs for my son's account. 100%.

Good luck guys. And may the force be with you.

Edited by Commander Harrison, 01 November 2020 - 12:43 AM.

[Alreech]

crazytimes, on 31 October 2020 - 08:40 PM, said:

Doesn't matter what you do. Keep throwing brand new cadets into tier 1 matches against pre-made 4 manners and the playerbase will never increase. Until that is fixed, there is no point at all in putting effort into anything else. Playerbase can only get smaller as it stands.

And by banning 4 player groups from the game PGI will lose players who want to play in a group. So dammed if they do, dammed if they don't

Edited by Alreech, 01 November 2020 - 08:14 AM.

[The6thMessenger]

crazytimes, on 31 October 2020 - 08:40 PM, said:

Doesn't matter what you do. Keep throwing brand new cadets into tier 1 matches against pre-made 4 manners and the playerbase will never increase. Until that is fixed, there is no point at all in putting effort into anything else. Playerbase can only get smaller as it stands.

I don't think any PSR would fix that. We have low player base, inevitably we will match cadets with T1 just to make a match happen.

[Mr D One]

Tiamat Cordia, on 31 October 2020 - 10:13 AM, said:

....dunno where you've been, but EA is known for killing properties and studios (among other things), so I'd recommend strongly against that one. Epic Games is a bit iffy at best.

I don't know who you are or where you have been, and I really do not care. If you played Squadrons, it is proof that EA can get it right and release a complete game. You should do yourself a favour and give it a go.

As for Epic being a bit iffy, well I would cite the IGP Gold Skin mechs as the first ever overpriced cosmetic item only, for a free to play model game. AceKilljoy and Darkmenace have ridiculed the idea of taunts and dancing emotes on mechs, but I would have all of you look at the useless cosmetic items you put on your battlemech console.

It's the same type of thing.

Sell the MWO property to Square Enix, or Microsoft or whomever you like, it simply can not be in a worse place then it is currently, can it?

[Alreech]

Star Wars Squadrons is a bad example for Mechwarrior Online.

1: it's 5 vs 5, while MWO is 12 vs 12.
2: Players are forced to grouped up before the game and can cheat by coordinating before the match starts
3: it's much more restriced in it's units. All the things you can done is to sidegrade your fighter, upgrading X-Wing to A-Wing Speed & Y-Wing tankiness isn't possible
4: it enforces Faction separation. You can't fly a X Wing if you want to play Imperium
5: it uses respawns

How would that work in MWO?
1. Restricting group sizes to 4?
2. Forcing players to group up before the match?
3: restricting the mechlab so you can't replace a Machine Gun with a Gaus Rifle or a SRM-2 with a MRM 40?
4: Forcing all players in the same group to use the same tech (Clan or IS, possible in MWO by Dropdecks)?
5: using dropdecks for limited respawns?

Edited by Alreech, 01 November 2020 - 06:54 AM.

[Reno Blade]

My background:

I started MWO in the beta and played all Mechwarriors since MW2.
Lately I’ve hardly played MWO since i got MW5 and a lot of other games (mostly loot shooters lately. From Destiny2, Warframe, Fallout76).

As I am only playing as PUG, my main game is QP while I would love to play more FP for the meta game experience.
Because I have nearly all mechs and tons of banked premium time (that is not useful if not playing often), I have no real reason to play or pay (xp, mechs, skills, …)

Overall my gaming experience is ok, but I feel like I’m getting rusty if I don’t play every day and like to have slower, but longer battles, which I think can be only done with less damage output (why i always liked the idea of heatscale and energy draw)


Player experience:
Goal = Fun in the game and motivation to play/grind

• New player start in Tier5 (possibly increase tier numbers from 5 tiers to more, if needed)
  
• Trial or non-skilled mechs get -0.5 Tiers vs skilled mechs
  
• Increase Mech’s first-game-victory bonus to first-4 going down from +200%, +150%, +100%, +50%
  
• UI improvements out of the game should at least allow chatting while waiting for games
  
• Skill tree should provide at least double the bonus possible now, but have less notes (less steps to unlock a specific path, maybe less time in general) so you can really focus down on one aspect into sky-high if you sacrifice all other parts (e.g. go up to 50% cd reduction, if 100% oft he skill is in cd)
  
• Increase skill power by 0.1% by each victory past the maxium skilltree level with some top x% (maybe 10%)

Gameplay changes:
Goal = Interesting game play on top of deathmatch

• Artillery and Airstrikes are real Tank/Planes that can be damaged and killed and called again for reinforcements (e.g. one artillery needs to be called into the map, which is then available to be used for the current consumable, but enemies can find and kill them standing somewhere. Same with air fighters, but they are harder to target because of the height and speed)
  
• Change Incursion mode to 1 base only.
  
• Change Assault to use a Union Dropship as base that can be shot down?
  
• Change Escort to have a large convoi with the path being visible to the defenders only, where each surviving transport/tank gives additional bonus rewards
  
• Implement some part of the InformationWarfare PTS3 from years ago (e.g. radar range, sensor profile, ecm)
  
• For asymmetrical gameplay, add AI tanks that support the assault/defense and acts as easy farmable targets

Balancing:
Goal = longer battles by longer living combatants

• Increase Armor and structur by 50% overall
  
• Reduce heat dissipation by 50%, but all heat generation is spread over 2-5 seconds (this is like energy draw light)
  
• Reduce cooldown of small weapons to make them „gap-fillers“ for the large weapons, e.g. medium laser 50% cooldown, while the overall large weapons cooldown is increased a bitt o spread out the „large damage burst“ further
  
• Morph pulse lasers to very tiny cooldown spam weapon
  
• Move some weapon quirks to the hardpoint to give each hardpoint a specific bonus, e.g. arm weapons could gain better cooldown and heat while torso weapons are more steady, so they get better range in general (just an example).

Metagame:
Goal = Immersion into the BattleTech and MechWarrior universe and the Factions

• Show the IS Map with pulsing planets and number/bar on top, to indicate the warzones
  
• Morph „events“ into „daily missions“ and „campaigns“ with increasing bonus, the longer you stick with some faction
  
• Give „loot“ to victors, boosted by the amount of salvage in the game plus the resources from game modes like conquest (e.g. random weapons + random extra xp/sp/gxp like in the loot-bag events) -> this should also be enough to „lessen the grind“ in general on top of current cbill outcome of a match
  
• Weekly/monthly summary view „Inner Sphere News Network“ (see Elite Dangerous)

Solaris 7:
Goal = Get more out of the games and make it interesting

• Make all games best of 3 or 5, so you have more games and less waiting. Where the outcome of each game increases (to prevent forfeit or dc)
  
• Show a board of the current leaders and current games in progress
  
• Bet certain things like CB, SP, Loot and other stuff that goes to the victor (with x% increase by your standing with the sponsors)
  
• Possibly add all challengers into the same „room“ where the top ranker in the room and anyone can challenge someone ranked higher and everyone can see (even spectators) who is currently challenging someone

Faction Warfare:
Goal = Feel your fame increasing and being part of the faction

• Add secondary objectives (e.g. conquer loot crates, escort artillery team, destroy airfield)
  
• Scouting games give much more xp, while the longer modes give more salvage
  
• Morph the Game to a „constant warzone“ where players are constantly dropping as reinfocements and the games just continue for 1h straight, but you get your final battle-outcome later on (as battle report) in addition to what you get after your 4 mechs are out.
  
• Change the faction standing to provide additional „daily income“ (when logged in) per rank and specific cosmetics, maybe even
  
• Provide additional „privileges“ per rank ingame, e.g. request additional artillery/air reinforcement requests if your rank is high enough (+bonus for lance/company commanders)
  
• Mark all mechs and weapons with Faction icons that give additional bonus if used while playing FP (e.g. playing Awesome with PPCs as Kurita give both Mech and Weapon bonus points for faction fame)
  
• Each ranked players per faction gets a certain bounty that increases as long as the player survives in/out of the match/warzone, this is increased by faction rank. Each kill of such a player gives additional bounty outcome at the end of a battle

Edited by Reno Blade, 01 November 2020 - 07:33 AM.