146 replies to this topic

[Y E O N N E]

Akillius, on 02 November 2020 - 08:37 PM, said:

- Return ALL Skill Points spent (AVOID another Full Return CBill for Modules *RENEGE* Exodus)
Reduce "Skill Tree nodes" from 239 faux-"options" to 84 solid upgrades to choose from.
Let players place up to 32 skill points per mech. (or maybe change it to 30?)
And remove "tree" structure and rename nodes to Upgrades like these 84 upgrades and values:

~SNIP~

Every other suggestion will take too much time to code-implement and MWO needs something to increase interest asap.

This is all probably more than what PGI is willing to invest at the moment, but the Skill Tree in its current form should be ditched entirely. A list of straight upgrades you can just tack onto your 'Mech, with the only persistent cost being opportunity cost, is poor and leaves newer players with un-mastered 'Mechs out to dry. Even I don't play un-mastered 'Mechs much because they are not fun compared to the ones I've already sunk so much time into getting in shape.

I would much rather the skill tree adopt a Perks vs. Drawbacks system. Every 'Mech has a point cap and every skill has a cost that counts against that cap. Skills are sorted into Perks, which provide a positive enhancement and count toward the cap, and Drawbacks, which provide a detrimental enhancement and deduct away from the cap. The point cap is intentionally not big enough to add on more than one major or a couple minor Perks; to get more, you need to apply detriments to deduct from the cost.

Example:

Let's say my point cap is 3. I want to go ham on laser range enhancement, using the below skills:

Enhanced Optics I (+5% Laser Range) = +2
Enhanced Optics II (+10% Laser Range) = +3

That's 5 points. I will need to throw on a Drawback to make this work:

Substandard Capacitors (+7% Laser Duration) = -2

Subtracting 2 from my previous 5, I can now fit my two desired enhancements.

There would also be a limit to the number of skills you can apply; this is one of two options for spending your XP. You can either buy a skill, or you can level-up the skill slot cap: Fresh (1 Skill), Basic (4 Skills), Elite (7 skills) Mastery (10 skills). The point cap and slot cap on each 'Mech can even be tuned for balance purposes.

The UI would be an uncluttered three-column drag-and-drop affair with Drawbacks on the left, Perks on the right, and Applied Skills in the center. Professional-grade rendering follows:



Anyway, one can hope. Meh.

Edited by Miss Greene, 02 November 2020 - 09:27 PM.

[evil kerensky]

im in the process of watching the first circuit podcast, and i wanna through in my vote for nods to the lore. i know you mentioned it, and id love to see that. in no way should it effect the game, but if theres planetary descriptions, titles like "wolfs dragoon" that pull directly from lore, stuff like that, id love it

top unit in each faction could get access to a title from that factions leader, like the top marik team in fw could get the "captain general" title. each loyalty rank could award in lore unit camos, like a 10th lyran gaurd camo. stuff like that.

by no means should you change the actual gameplay, but theres plenty of other things you can use to represent the lore in the game.


also, map idea, hesperus 2 factory map. underground map with corridors and large hallways would be cool.

[martian]

InnerSphereNews, on 02 November 2020 - 05:12 PM, said:

You can hear all of this in greater detail on the podcasts below:

Dear Community Manager, there are three points that I would like to make:

1) Instead of all that talk in those podcasts, what about sitting down to your PC and writing some coherent text?

I think that the majority of the MWO players would appreciate it more.

2) I am interested in the official PGI's approach to various problems, but I am really not interested in the talk of various random internet guys.

We (the MWO players) need to know what Russ Bullock and PGI think, not what some random MWO players say (should I want to hear that, I have hundreds of various Youtube and Twitch videos to choose from).

3) Could you post from your actual forum account please, so that your posts are easy to find?

Thank you very much.

[Surn]

I am posted an elevator pitch on a subscription service to allow PGI the financial planning to make all the fixes the users want.

http://www.twitch.tv/surn/v/790143985

This pitch is followed by detailed videos explaining it more in depth.

The additional videos touch on not just the what but proposals of how to accomplish this at a very reasonable cost.

The basic idea is to trade PGI data that will help players progress for a subscription that includes some bonuses. Nothing affects gameplay beyond user training and information. The game engine is not coded against.

These are server level automated reports on battles, player progress, mechs used, etc. The reports are delivered to you Dropbox or other cloud account file transfer folder automatically. This enables them to work on mobile and desktop platforms

Edited by Surn, 02 November 2020 - 09:41 PM.

[byter75]

The6thMessenger, on 02 November 2020 - 09:02 PM, said:

But that is the thing. I know it's a podcast, but those unscripted heart-to-heart isn't what we are interested in. That is not to say that "don't do a podcast", not at all, but if you're ( Daeron and other CMs ) presenting something to the community, we shouldn't have to sift through 2 hours worth of content just to get the what the Community Manager has to say. Not everyone as the time and/or patience to get through those, I'd rather listen to something educational like audio-book on how to speak spanish.

We just go back to the seemingly like "meetings to schedule meetings".

You (and plenty other people I'm sure) might not be interested in (our) podcasts (and that's totally fine). Though if Daeron is taking part in podcasts and there is an audience for them, I don't see the harm in sharing them.
I actually do agree with your sentiment (about the endless meetings and talk), it was actually something I brought up in the podcast (a fair bit). Where we probably differ is whether people "have" to sit through these 2-3 hours worth of podcast.
These endless meetings (like our own rambly podcast) are going to stuffer from a poor signal to noise ratio and with how things typically go around here there's not even that much signal you really have to delineate.

(I think Martian hits the nail on the head. We are just some random mwo players, our podcast is not exactly the place where people should offically "...hear all of this in greater detail".)

Edited by byter75, 02 November 2020 - 10:05 PM.

[The6thMessenger]

byter75, on 02 November 2020 - 09:43 PM, said:

You (and plenty other people I'm sure) might not be interested in (our) podcasts (and that's totally fine). Though if Daeron is taking part in podcasts and there is an audience for them, I don't see the harm in sharing them.

Sure, by all means, for the guys that are actually interested. More power to them!

But that shouldn't have been his only line of communication, sure right now there's a bit of an outline, but how many other "Beard-Updates" (should have been Beard-Cast) have been, and we have to rely on others for the TL;DR? Why do we have to watch your podcast for "greater detail" just to uncover something like the Meeting Cows?

Okay, sure, there's tl;dr that comes into the forums time to time. But could have been done from the start. Even Ash had a short-form of the 3-hr discussion of twitch in the form of an official document.

[Y E O N N E]

Surn, on 02 November 2020 - 09:38 PM, said:

I am posted an elevator pitch on a subscription service to allow PGI the financial planning to make all the fixes the users want.

http://www.twitch.tv/surn/v/790143985

This pitch is followed by detailed videos explaining it more in depth.

The additional videos touch on not just the what but proposals of how to accomplish this at a very reasonable cost.

The basic idea is to trade PGI data that will help players progress for a subscription that includes some bonuses. Nothing affects gameplay beyond user training and information. The game engine is not coded against.

These are server level automated reports on battles, player progress, mechs used, etc. The reports are delivered to you Dropbox or other cloud account file transfer folder automatically. This enables them to work on mobile and desktop platforms

I'm not paying for this redundant functionality and I doubt a significant number of people will.

[-P U R E-]

Surn, on 02 November 2020 - 09:38 PM, said:

I am posted an elevator pitch on a subscription service to allow PGI the financial planning to make all the fixes the users want.

http://www.twitch.tv/surn/v/790143985

This pitch is followed by detailed videos explaining it more in depth.

The additional videos touch on not just the what but proposals of how to accomplish this at a very reasonable cost.

The basic idea is to trade PGI data that will help players progress for a subscription that includes some bonuses. Nothing affects gameplay beyond user training and information. The game engine is not coded against.

These are server level automated reports on battles, player progress, mechs used, etc. The reports are delivered to you Dropbox or other cloud account file transfer folder automatically. This enables them to work on mobile and desktop platforms

It is normal feature in most online games like WOT, WAR THUNDER, WOWS or DOTA.
Noone will pay for that.

EDIT: Give me camos or cosmetics with 30% - 50% c-bill or XP bonus. I will buy it.

Edited by puresense, 02 November 2020 - 11:00 PM.

[D U N E]

I don't see any market for something that is given for free in many other games. Alongside the fact that:
1. Not many people would pay for this.
2. The people who would want this would be competitive, which there are few.
3. Even if it was made and sold, it would be worth very little - I'd maybe value something like this at 0.5$, the information is usually widely accessible, and the mapstrat recording - might pay for it once and cancel next day after I had made personal recordings then forget it exists.

It doesn't solve core issues of MWO like player retention, interesting new players (how does it look to a new player if they need to pay for generally accessible information?) - Overall, just give players the data and eventually they will handle it.

[Windscape]

Surn, on 02 November 2020 - 09:38 PM, said:

I am posted an elevator pitch on a subscription service to allow PGI the financial planning to make all the fixes the users want.

http://www.twitch.tv/surn/v/790143985

This pitch is followed by detailed videos explaining it more in depth.

The additional videos touch on not just the what but proposals of how to accomplish this at a very reasonable cost.

The basic idea is to trade PGI data that will help players progress for a subscription that includes some bonuses. Nothing affects gameplay beyond user training and information. The game engine is not coded against.

These are server level automated reports on battles, player progress, mechs used, etc. The reports are delivered to you Dropbox or other cloud account file transfer folder automatically. This enables them to work on mobile and desktop platforms

I'm sorry, but nobody is going to pay for this service. There are much better monetization options for PGI to consider first. As a free service it could be accepted, perhaps.

[Kurbeks]

How about license sounds from MS. And add Windows XP shutdown Warhorn. Now that would sell.

[Vercors]

Voice of Kerensky, on 02 November 2020 - 09:21 PM, said:

no settings for calculating the players tier, no settings for a matchmaker will be effective as long as there is a combined queue of solo and group players in quick play.

I agree , I made a proposition here:

https://mwomercs.com...players-option/

Hope it can help ! Thanks for your works.

Edited by Vercors, 02 November 2020 - 11:48 PM.

[Tenchuu]

puresense, on 02 November 2020 - 10:41 PM, said:

It is normal feature in most online games like WOT, WAR THUNDER, WOWS or DOTA.
Noone will pay for that.

EDIT: Give me camos or cosmetics with 30% - 50% c-bill or XP bonus. I will buy it.

THIS. This is how World of Warships runs things. You can do missions to get flags and paint schemes, they're temporary, or you can buy them, but they actually DO something. It's not much, it's a 4% bonus in something and +50% experience, but it's enough to A) give you a reason to make your mechs look fun might give you that little edge C) is available to all. They also have six or seven different sets of mission paths going on simultaneously. The prizes are sometimes lore items, sometimes cbills, sometimes paint schemes or flags. Also look at how they present what they're doing. All the information about events and things in MWO pops up in a tiny window and takes me to an external site. World of Warships drops you on a full loading screen of news. Why am I reading about Solaris 7 when I log into the website? Why does the website look so dated? Different parts look newer, others older, there is no continuity or excitement to it. The really alarming thing is the site looks very dead to a new player. It looks old, it doesn't look inviting, and it's not taking you to any new content right off the bat. Honestly if it hadn't been for the Steam integration I don't know when I would have come back.

Edited by Tenchuu, 02 November 2020 - 11:58 PM.

[Tenchuu]

And one huge thing that I honestly (though I have not looked at the engine) do not think would be difficult: When I queue up for a game, let me choose one from each class! Let me choose one light, one medium, one heavy, one assault. Then when I get dropped into a game it drops me in as the category that needs the most mechs. This feels like an incredibly simple way to take care of balance issues as well, since I assume most people would be OK with picking out four mechs, so you'd always at least have the right spread of tonnages. I'm constantly trying to set myself in the least popular mech class at that second as I queue currently. Just take that misery away and give us more consistent gaming and a bit of a surprise each game with which of our chosen mechs we get.

[Lurm God]

It’s great you are interacting. Can we get some low hanging fruit now in good faith that is universally accepted like spawn adjustment, cadets not starting in tier 3 etc and maybe a real colourblind overlay. I would understand no further development etc as it’s what was foretold a few years ago. But this lip service then extremely slow feedback loop about a game that hasn’t changed in years is just feeling a bit redundant. So let’s see something even small ASAP and show us we aren’t being trolled harder than the year of faction updates please.

[Vercors]

Tenchuu, on 02 November 2020 - 11:55 PM, said:

Let me choose one light, one medium, one heavy, one assault. Then when I get dropped into a game it drops me in as the category that needs the most mechs.

Nice idea ! selection can be made in order of preference.

Edited by Vercors, 03 November 2020 - 12:16 AM.

[Bistrorider]

Cool update, welcome aboard.

[rascje]

Thank u so much!

[IanDresarie]

So this week is kinda more of an "Here's how I'll communicate" Update. I hope people understand that.
Personally I am quite interested (and shall I say even somewhat excited) for next week, when we'll hopefully get the rough outline of a roadmap/list of priorities.

Kurbeks, on 02 November 2020 - 11:30 PM, said:

How about license sounds from MS. And add Windows XP shutdown Warhorn. Now that would sell.

That would be hilarious. "I shall hold your power button for 5 seconds!"

[Oldbob10025]

The6thMessenger, on 02 November 2020 - 09:56 PM, said:

Sure, by all means, for the guys that are actually interested. More power to them!

But that shouldn't have been his only line of communication, sure right now there's a bit of an outline, but how many other "Beard-Updates" (should have been Beard-Cast) have been, and we have to rely on others for the TL;DR? Why do we have to watch your podcast for "greater detail" just to uncover something like the Meeting Cows?

Okay, sure, there's tl;dr that comes into the forums time to time. But could have been done from the start. Even Ash had a short-form of the 3-hr discussion of twitch in the form of an official document.

Its not his only line of communication, he also goes on NGNG/ & posting "Monday Mechwarrior Update with Daeron" in the forums of EVERYTHING he is doing about PGI and being the community Manager. We are just a bunch of friends posting about Battletech, anime, and other topics with guests from all walks of gaming such as
Hired Steel creator IQFish
NuttyRat
MWLiving Legends
Wolves creator (Pajama Boy)
Blaine Lee Pardoe (Writer of some of the battletech books)
Hosts of the Incoming Podcast
Jon Everist (Composer of HBS Battletech)
Daeron (PGI Community Manager)
Mitch Gigleman (Project Lead for HBS Battletech)

In short were not the end all of PGI we vary in many topics that many enjoy our open script and sometimes it does go over but we try to make it an 1 hour to 1.5 hours but with 4 to 5 guys talking about something we all love it does get long. You mentioned that even ash has a document for his 3 hour long event. Yes when I have time I do that but working 60 hours a week on two jobs, editing for about 20 more for the podcast/ Twitch streaming for four days and also making lore videos on youtube (rendering/uploading at 5mbps) and also any other fires I have to put out in my life I dont have time and we all have our own lives to contend with.

Not saying this is a excuse but part of my life in editing and producing the Podcast that I have little return in anything but the love of trying to bring as much information as I can to people about something I love (Battletech).

If you dont want to watch the podcast thats up to you and only want cliff notes Daeron is updating on Monday with the cliff notes and you can read those as time I know is very sparse with many of us.

I hope that answers some questions you may have and I do hope you come watch or even listen in your car (I travel 1.5 hours to work each day so I have many podcasts to listen to LOL) with podcasts or what not but its not his only line of communication and hes trying to get the word out to as many people as possible so PGI can go forward in doing what they are doing.

Oldbob10025
The First Circuit Podcast