484 replies to this topic

[pbiggz]

OZHomerOZ, on 26 December 2020 - 08:46 PM, said:

Give people who want to play with their friends their own queue that they can share with EMP, Goons and other friends groups.

Us soloes want you and your friends to have fun in your own queue

We soloes would like a queue without groups

I've only been back for a little and I have literally never seen more close matches (8-12 to 11-12), yet groups seem to be the latest boogeyman. Groups arent why you lose. Taking double ac2 blackjacks into a match is why you lose. I haven't seen groups drastically overperform, I've seen solos put out triple the damage and triple the kills that groups of 3 and 4 players are managing. I do not want to be put into a penalty box because i have more than 4 but less than 7 friends online and its entirely unreasonable and unfair for you to demand that "players you don't like" should just get put in a different queue, because essentially that's what you are demanding.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Rearmament costs

This was removed for a reason, it was a stupid tax then and would be a stupid tax now.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Allowing mechs to crouch (if applicable to certain mech)

What does this even add to the game? MW4 had it and no one really used it because it locked you into position.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Flashlights attachment equipment. May or may not occupy an energy hardpoint. When a button is pressed, you will turn on your mech's flashlight. I'm getting sick of night/heat vision because you are not able to see far away if at all sometimes. They have their pros and cons. At least with an equipable flashlight, you can turn it on and a smaller area in front of you will be illuminated but you can still see the whole environment naturally. The drawback is that enemies can obviously see you running around with a floodlight on your mech.

Again, this was in MW4, no one used it. If you don't like Night Vision maybe adjust your gamma? This game handles vision really poorly regardless.

[pbiggz]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 27 December 2020 - 12:35 PM, said:

Again, this was in MW4, no one used it. If you don't like Night Vision maybe adjust your gamma? This game handles vision really poorly regardless.

If it accompanied improved day night cycles, better heat and night vision, etc etc (making the ugly parts look nicer) I'd argue it would be a pretty flavourful addition.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

pbiggz, on 27 December 2020 - 12:37 PM, said:

If it accompanied improved day night cycles, better heat and night vision, etc etc (making the ugly parts look nicer) I'd argue it would be a pretty flavourful addition.

If night vision and heat vision were improved then it would be even less useful. It doesn't add flavor if no one uses it.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 27 December 2020 - 12:50 PM.

[Vlad Ward]

Repair/Rearm was a loss tax and made the game less fun.

Knockdowns were funny for a hot minute when Dragons could troll everyone but are ultimately not fun.

Hey, what about adding Mech Selection to the Dropship Lobby (the screen 24 players load into) with a team tonnage min/max limit?

Folks seem to treat groups like boogeymen. Giving PUG teams the ability to coordinate mechs for 60-90 seconds before a match (Ready button would still work as intended) eliminates the biggest tangible advantage groups have over PUGs.

[3RoyalStar1]

It would be awesome to have 50v50

Or a last man standing thin

Single player
So many ideas

[Vlad Ward]

Hey, how about independent PSRs for each 'Mech class?

I've been playing Assaults and Heavies regularly since Closed Beta, but I'm terrible with Lights. If I need to break out my Wolfhound for an event, it would be nice to play against opponents who are more my speed (get it? ).

[MW Waldorf Statler]

many ideas 100% unrealistic for MWO and PGI ...its not a A Company and MWO her first real Game in 17 Years and the Company lost all technical Know How for the MWO Engine..

and now with the 7EG only give Money for Profit ..more like a Game sharholder Borg Collectice...assimilating Studios with Know How and Licenses and closed her when no Profit in fast Time

so IK for Legs/Feets and Knock Down not comes back and no great Features in Technical Sense ...The MWO Engine since 3 Years a Riddle for the Devs like the Enigma Machine and nothing can help .

Quote

Superchargers:[color=#CCCCCC] An idea of how it could function would be something similar to 'Over Boost' in Armored Core![/color]

• Turbo boost horizontally and as you are boosting your fuel decreases.
  
• You stop when you release the button or your fuel is empty.
  
• Has a long cooldown time. Can risk blowing up your mech, possibly.
  
• Perhaps a mech would require jump jets to use it?

Separation Targeting System:[color=#959595] Allows you to aim different arms/weapons separately. A new button hotkey can be created which when pressed will stop the reticle where it currently is dead in its tracks, and literally split or copy a new reticle which you can then control. When you press the hotkey again / or release it (if it is toggled or held), your view will then reset itself and both reticles will then combine into one.[/color]








[color=#959595]This is already possible in-game but only works with torso as one reticle and both arms as another by using the 'Free Look' key to stop your torso reticle while still being able to freely move your arms reticle.[/color]

We need to work on implementing...

• Melee (And I'll tell you exactly how to make it work from a gameplay perspective, you just have to code it)
  
  • A punch must be 'Wound Up' and the player will do this by holding the corresponding fire key.
    
  • When the punch has been appropriately wound, the player will then release the 'Wind Up' to punch.
    
  • Punches that are not wound up either do little to no damage or simply can't be done at all.
    
  • A mech must have a 'Hand Actuator' to punch or use a melee weapon.

unrealistic to 100% Rollerblade moves..its not Front Mission or Gundam,Amored Core or Titanfall-its Battletech ...its kidding like to seeing the NCC Enterprise in a Star Wars Game .

Handholded shields useless in BT ...what has a Shild for a Weight 1 or 2 t ? thats 1 to t Ammo or 1 Heatsink or 2 t Armor...its like the Handholded (Melee)weapons ...the weakest point by this Construction is the Hand and the Fingers...and Meleeweapons Dead Weight for a 12m Tall Warmachine against Aerospace Fighters and VTOLs.
Good solution was the Large Laser from the Tomahakt builded as MeleeWeapon and integreted in the lower Arm.
unrealistic -seeing Knockdown/IK Melee -gave it by Mektek mode in MW4 and was useless,and give big Problems with Hitzones,Animations,and Collisions System in the MWO Engine

unrealistic Aimbot for seperate Hitzones -for Casual Autowin?

Quote

[color=#CCCCCC]Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 07:23 PM, said:[/color]<p class="blockquote" style="margin: 0px; padding: 10px; font-size: 12px; border-left: 2px solid rgb(119, 119, 119); border-right: 2px solid rgb(119, 119, 119); border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(119, 119, 119); border-radius: 0px 0px 5px 5px; background: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: rgb(149, 149, 149); font-family: HelveticaNeue-Light, "Helvetica Neue Light", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;">

• Allowing mechs to crouch (if applicable to certain mech)

[color=#959595]What does this even add to the game? MW4 had it and no one really used it because it locked you into position.[/color]

Quote

[color=#CCCCCC]Chameleon Light Polarization Shield[/color]

unrealistic -seeing Problems with Performance and Hitzones and a Star league Tech=Lostech or to a very later Timeline

No crouching in each MW Title...only by MW2/3 a Mech thats lost a Leg falling to ground and can now firing immobilized his Weapons

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 28 December 2020 - 10:44 AM.

[Alreech]

Vlad Ward, on 27 December 2020 - 04:29 PM, said:

Repair/Rearm was a loss tax and made the game less fun.

It was a stupid Idea in a game without "Give up/Retreat" option to cut the loss.
It may work in a game mode with respawns and the option to give up (retreat) to keep the matches short.

It may work in an Endgame content game mode as C-Bill sink to remove cash from rich players (Unit Coffers in Faction Play?). But at the moment MWO is mainly solo quickplay, so that's not important anymore.

Quote

Knockdowns were funny for a hot minute when Dragons could troll everyone but are ultimately not fun.

Knockdowns by random enemy & friendly collisions were a stupid idea too.

Knockdowns after critical hits to gyro & hips would have been a good idea to use Mechpilots with Piloting Skills and skill checks as XP-grinding mechanism...

Quote

Folks seem to treat groups like boogeymen. Giving PUG teams the ability to coordinate mechs for 60-90 seconds before a match (Ready button would still work as intended) eliminates the biggest tangible advantage groups have over PUGs.

Sarcasm:
no way, the solo quickplay players don't want coordinated teams. They want 11 meatshield to use.
Proof for that: competetive Solo Quickplay without meatshields but fair matchmaking (Solaris) isn't very popular.
/sarcasm:

12 random players who just meet can't organise themselves into 3 lances (4 Mechs of compatible speed & loadouts) and agree to 3 Lance Leaders in 90 seconds.
So 60-90 second in the pre-match lobby isn't enough to coordinate a team - if not most of the coordination is done before the players entering matchmaking.

The short aviable way to coordinate before entering matchmaking is the existing group function.
In a group the players can coordinate what Mechs to use (coordinating roles) and can agree to a Group Leader.

And in game coordination works best by using the Lance Leader function.
Even will all lance members in the same VOIP Channel and all understanding the same language an in game Icon on the battlegrid with voice messages is better than using VOIP.
If not all players of the lance are in the VOIP or understand the same language it't the only way to coordinate the lance.
So one player per lance has to use this function to coordinate his lance.
This function don't work if the group is bigger than the 4 player lance, so groups should be limited to 4 players.

And that's the problem: you can't improve coordination without forcing players to drop in Lance size unites and without forcing / awarding one player to act as Lance Leader.
Awarding could be done by giving out bonus match score to the acting leader depending on his Lances match performance.
Also Lance performance should be mentioned in the end screen, like "most kills: Beta Lance", "most objectives captured:...", "most survivors;..."

Even with fixed goup sizes and awarding Lance Leaders PGI would have to do a lot of UI changes to improve coordination:

• All lance leaders have to see that orders other Lance Leaders have placed on the Battlegrid: different icon colors for each lance
  
• Lance information area in Score board with stuff like "speed of the lance", total firepower at Long/Medium/Short range & tonnage, also icons for stuff like AMS, ECM, TAG, NARC,... so other players know that Lances abilites
  
• Lance role names from a drop down list for a lance leader to choose (like "Attack Lance" for brawlers or "Artillery Lance" for LRM Mechs, depending on speed, firepower & tonnage of the lance) so other players know those lance role
  
• Call signs for each Lance Member like Alpha 1, Alpha 2,... to adress lance members in VOIP without using their "kwel 1337 pilot namez"
  
• Voice messages to inform the Lance Members who is the Leader, especially if the acting leader get killed (like "Lance Leader down..." followed by "Alpha 2, you are now the leader")

Also PGI would have to change the VOIP to reduce confusion / improve coordination:

• VOIP should be aviable in the group screen before & between the matches
  
• In the match each lance should have their own channel in the team channel with the option to whisper to all channel users by using a key.

MWO uses Teamspeak as VOIP solution, and thats all possible with it.

Edited by Alreech, 28 December 2020 - 05:16 AM.

[Alreech]

3RoyalStar1, on 27 December 2020 - 05:53 PM, said:

It would be awesome to have 50v50

12 vs. 12 Quickplay is now an uncoordinated mess, mostly played on small maps like HPG or Canyon Network because those small maps work best for uncoordinated teams.
How would increasing the match size to 50 vs 50 improve the match quality on small maps?

Quote

Or a last man standing thin

12 vs 12 quickplay is basically last Mech standing, with the benefit of having team mates to use as meat shield.

Quote

Single player
So many ideas

Mechwarrior 5 is single player, how do you like it?

Mechwarrior 5 has also some features that could be used in a MWO style multiplayer game:
Destructable Buildings
AI Tanks & Infantery as AI defenders for control points
AI VTOLs to drop Tanks & Infantery after capturing control points
AI Units like Tanks, VTOLs could be used as reinforcements and controlled by a Force Commander with orders ("Move to" / "Attack" / "Defend" / "Patrol between" / "Scout" / ...)

Many features from this 10 pages wish thread could be done by using Mechwarrior 5 as foundation for a MWO reboot.

Edited by Alreech, 28 December 2020 - 05:05 AM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

when a MW5 Multiplayer , so with a lobbysystem like mW4 or Battlefield 2/3 ,all others brings new unbalanced Matches with seal Clubbing like Battlefield V, CoD Warzone, Star WarsBattlefront2 or Robocraft..the random lobbyless Matches was one of the most terrible Ideas from the Modern Gamesindustry

[Vlad Ward]

Alreech, on 28 December 2020 - 04:40 AM, said:

12 random players who just meet can't organise themselves into 3 lances (4 Mechs of compatible speed & loadouts) and agree to 3 Lance Leaders in 90 seconds.
So 60-90 second in the pre-match lobby isn't enough to coordinate a team - if not most of the coordination is done before the players entering matchmaking.

The short aviable way to coordinate before entering matchmaking is the existing group function.
In a group the players can coordinate what Mechs to use (coordinating roles) and can agree to a Group Leader.


...

To be honest friend a lot of what you just described is more roleplaying than gameplay. Your typical online game does not require teams to organize into discrete command structures. MWO implemented these "Lance Command" and "Company Command" features at the community's behest because the fan base here is baked from 80's Tabletop Roleplayers, but they're not particularly useful in PUG QP.

When picking up random folks to play with, you really don't need more than "Hey is anyone spotting for LRMs?", "Hey, do we have enough fast Mechs?", or "What's everyone's optimal range look like?"

Even those will likely get abbreviated much further once people are used to it. League of Legends players don't even bother to type out the word "bottom" any more.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Alreech, on 28 December 2020 - 04:56 AM, said:

AI Tanks & Infantery as AI defenders for control points
AI VTOLs to drop Tanks & Infantery after capturing control points
AI Units like Tanks, VTOLs could be used as reinforcements and controlled by a Force Commander with orders ("Move to" / "Attack" / "Defend" / "Patrol between" / "Scout" / ...)

None of these are good ideas for a multiplayer game. If you want that single player feeling, stay in single player.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 December 2020 - 08:57 AM, said:

None of these are good ideas for a multiplayer game. If you want that single player feeling, stay in single player.

and why its give in Many Multiplayer Games as PvE or Coop from Warframe, War Thunder, Star Conflict the (dead from P2W) Battlestar galactica Online, and many other Games ?!

[Quicksilver Aberration]

MW Waldorf Statler, on 28 December 2020 - 10:18 AM, said:

and why its give in Many Multiplayer Games as PvE or Coop from Warframe, War Thunder, Star Conflict the (dead from P2W) Battlestar galactica Online, and many other Games ?!

This game is only PvP, bringing up PvE or Co-Op is dumb. This isn't Gambit from Destiny 2 either. I'm not sure why you bring up crappy games outside of Warframe either.

[Smutty]

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Rearmament costs
  
• Knockdowns

Absolutely not

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Bring back the cockpit monitors which were actually useful and told you how much ammo you had, how many heatsinks you had left, what items were destroyed, other useful information and etc.

Actually yes. Being able to figure out which of your heatsinks/equipment got nuked would be nice for knowing how to roll damage. Heatsink/gear monitors would be great, but why stop there? Why not a whole new UI element to bring up in battle which gives you a complete readout of your Mech's current status so you can plan?

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Melee (And I'll tell you exactly how to make it work from a gameplay perspective, you just have to code it)
  
  • A punch must be 'Wound Up' and the player will do this by holding the corresponding fire key.
    
  • When the punch has been appropriately wound, the player will then release the 'Wind Up' to punch.
    
  • Punches that are not wound up either do little to no damage or simply can't be done at all.
    
  • A mech must have a 'Hand Actuator' to punch or use a melee weapon.

lolno. Melee in this engine in this game would be a travesty. PGI know it, most community members know it, you ought to know it by now too. If MWO were to get magically upgraded into an engine more conducive to that sort of thing, then maybe it could happen, but for now, there's no use in discussing melee. The game has far larger problems to attend to first.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

What is listed from this point on is not necessarily a priority. Some of these ideas may or may not be lore/timeline appropriate.

• Allowing mechs to extend/raise their arms (if applicable to certain mech)
  
• Allowing mechs to crouch (if applicable to certain mech)

But why tho. Why go through all the animation trouble and hitbox troubleshooting just for your Fatlas to be able to what, lift its Medium Pulses over a bit of soft cover? I don't think PGI is in any hurry to waste money after the Solaris debacle and all that work sounds like it'll bear no fruit.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

Equipment

• Superchargers: An idea of how it could function would be something similar to 'Over Boost' in Armored Core!
  
  • Turbo boost horizontally and as you are boosting your fuel decreases.
    
  • You stop when you release the button or your fuel is empty.
    
  • Has a long cooldown time. Can risk blowing up your mech, possibly.
    
  • Perhaps a mech would require jump jets to use it?
• Shields held in the hands of a mech or attached somewhere to the body for added protection.
  
• Flashlights attachment equipment. May or may not occupy an energy hardpoint. When a button is pressed, you will turn on your mech's flashlight. I'm getting sick of night/heat vision because you are not able to see far away if at all sometimes. They have their pros and cons. At least with an equipable flashlight, you can turn it on and a smaller area in front of you will be illuminated but you can still see the whole environment naturally. The drawback is that enemies can obviously see you running around with a floodlight on your mech.

Superchargers are something that I've wanted for a while, and as of yet I still don't see any particular reason why they don't exist. MASC for non-MASC Mechs, or even more speed for MASC Mechs. I definitely wouldn't make it AC-style boosting though. That sounds like a whole can of worms waiting to be opened.

Shields might be fine but require a lot of work better spent elsewhere. Plus I'm not exactly sure how you'd get them to function properly without relegating them to "slab on arm," as Battletech shields are supposed to be dynamic. Either way, it's beyond low priority.

Flashlights? Why? Just turn up your gamma bruh

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

Ally/Enemy Advanced Information Sensor: Equipping this will allow you to know all about your teammates or enemies. While highlighting friendly or enemy mechs, you can see information such as equipped modules, ammo stockpile, weapon cooldown rates, amount of heatsinks, item detection, and etc. You will be able to see friendly loadouts and limb health.

Separation Targeting System: Allows you to aim different arms/weapons separately. A new button hotkey can be created which when pressed will stop the reticle where it currently is dead in its tracks, and literally split or copy a new reticle which you can then control. When you press the hotkey again / or release it (if it is toggled or held), your view will then reset itself and both reticles will then combine into one.
This is already possible in-game but only works with torso as one reticle and both arms as another by using the 'Free Look' key to stop your torso reticle while still being able to freely move your arms reticle.

No.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

Armors / Signature Systems

• Reflective Armor - Just as heavy as standard armor (if not slightly heavier), takes up more slots. Adds extra protection against lasers.
  
• Reactive Armor - Just as heavy as standard armor (if not slightly heavier), takes up more slots. Adds extra protection against ballistics and/or missiles.
  
• Chameleon Light Polarization Shield
  
• Mimetic Armor
  
• Void Signature Armor

Reflec/Blazer armours would be great and piss off Clan mains, so I'm all for it. Balancing them might be tricky but certainly not impossible given like, an afternoon or two of thought. Probably not very high priority but more armour types would definitely be appreciated.

CLPS would be an absolute headache to deal with. CLPS on any given ECM unit? Have fun never being able to target their STs/arms again. Even without NSS it would create so much of a problem, especially when it costs no tonnage and only needs 6 slots. Bad idea in the game's current state.

Mimetic Armour is for Battle Armour only.

VSS would be an utter nightmare to deal with. Cloaking and stealth in a tidy package that's easier to load than Stealth Armour and more effective? Big no. Don't bring that evil into this house.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Mech racing mode: In the future, some people also find racing mechs instead of cars to be incredibly fun. With all the mayhem that may entail...
  
• PvE mode with various level / mission types such as survival or objective based.

Boring.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

• Customizable robot / Betty voices
  
• Customizable sounds
  
• Customizable HUD
  
• Customizable mech hangar

I know you said these were low priority but damn we're really at the bottom of the ladder right now. Different Betty voices would be nice, reflecting different manufacturers, variants, and designs, but it's so unlikely to happen. Not sure what you want out of customisable sounds either. If you want MW4 sounds, go get the soundpack. They're easy to install.

Custom HUD is take or leave. Custom hangar is whatever. Like who cares dawg, game's about shooting fools, not sitting in the bays.

Jay Sovereign, on 27 December 2020 - 11:23 AM, said:

- It would be great to have new ways to group and sort mechs. For example, tabs for Short / Medium / Long Range, ECM/Stealth, Support, and etc. When you're looking at all the mechs you own in basically one group, it gets overwhelming.

- We really need a way to quickly view mech loadouts without going into the loadout menu for each mech. A player should only have to go into the loadout menu when they want to actually edit the loadout.

- I wish we had at least a few more available characters to nickname mechs.

Yeah okay this is all reasonable. Sorting Mechs is a pain in the *** when you have a few dozen in one class. It only gets worse when you're trying to find which one has a specific engine to repurpose. Being able to get an actual breakdown of your Mech without entering the Mechlab itself would also be a nice QoL change but it doesn't take that long to check anyways.

[Alreech]

Vlad Ward, on 28 December 2020 - 08:25 AM, said:

To be honest friend a lot of what you just described is more roleplaying than gameplay. Your typical online game does not require teams to organize into discrete command structures. MWO implemented these "Lance Command" and "Company Command" features at the community's behest because the fan base here is baked from 80's Tabletop Roleplayers, but they're not particularly useful in PUG QP.

So you never played Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142 (or the other Battlefield titels) ?
PGI made a copy of Battlefields 2 Squads as their "Lance" feature, they even mentioned Battlefield 2 as influence in an early interview.

DICE started with Battlefield 1942 a class based shooter with big teams and learned quickly that coordination doesn't work without tools. Especially if the teams are made up with random players.

Battlefield 2 with it's squads and com rose system (voice messages and icons for orders) was the improved version that fixed a lot of coordination problems.
The whole system works very well for the Battlefield style of games, giving squads of random folks almost the same level of coordination as pre made groups of players with own VOIP.

Of course you don't need such tools if you want a game without much team coordination, like the Call of Duty games.
Don't get me wrong, i like CoD.
It's a shooter that puts more focus on players gun & movement skill than on their skill in teamplay, but I don't think that kind of style would work for a Mechwarrior game.
Stuff like Spotting / TAG & indirect LRM fire ect... work IMHO better in a Battlefield style of game play.

Quote

When picking up random folks to play with, you really don't need more than "Hey is anyone spotting for LRMs?", "Hey, do we have enough fast Mechs?", or "What's everyone's optimal range look like?"

And how do you get that information?
By asking anyone during the 90 second pre match phase?

Other games use Icons & UI elements for that.
A "Recon" soldier in Battlefield has a crosshair icon behind his name in a score board.
An LRM Spotter in MWO could have a TAG Icon behind his name in the score board, and his Mechs speed and range/damaged brackets listed.
This would work better than to ask all the 11 players in you team (some of them maybe even not speaking your language) about their speed & loadouts.

Edited by Alreech, 28 December 2020 - 11:48 AM.

[Alreech]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 28 December 2020 - 08:57 AM, said:

None of these are good ideas for a multiplayer game. If you want that single player feeling, stay in single player.

Depends on the style of game you want.
Do you want a simple team deathmatch shooter without objectives like in most CoD games, PUBG or Fortnite?
If yes I agree: that kind of games don't need AI units.

But even those games have sometimes AI units like the drones / helis in CoD or the foot soldiers in Titanfall.
Also don't forget the ARMA series that combine lots of players with AI units.
If you want a game with big maps and a game mode centered about capturing control points adding AI defenders to them makes capturing less boring.
It's also a way to add non-Mech units like Tanks & VTOLs or Infantery to Mechwarrior without bothering the player to play them.

[pbiggz]

Alreech, on 28 December 2020 - 11:32 AM, said:

So you never played Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142 (or the other Battlefield titels) ?
PGI made a copy of Battlefields 2 Squads as their "Lance" feature, they even mentioned Battlefield 2 as influence in an early interview.

DICE started with Battlefield 1942 a class based shooter with big teams and learned quickly that coordination doesn't work without tools. Especially if the teams are made up with random players.

Battlefield 2 with it's squads and com rose system (voice messages and icons for orders) was the improved version that fixed a lot of coordination problems.
The whole system works very well for the Battlefield style of games, giving squads of random folks almost the same level of coordination as pre made groups of players with own VOIP.

Of course you don't need such tools if you want a game without much team coordination, like the Call of Duty games.
Don't get me wrong, i like CoD.
It's a shooter that puts more focus on players gun & movement skill than on their skill in teamplay, but I don't think that kind of style would work for a Mechwarrior game.
Stuff like Spotting / TAG & indirect LRM fire ect... work IMHO better in a Battlefield style of game play.


And how do you get that information?
By asking anyone during the 90 second pre match phase?

Other games use Icons & UI elements for that.
A "Recon" soldier in Battlefield has a crosshair icon behind his name in a score board.
An LRM Spotter in MWO could have a TAG Icon behind his name in the score board, and his Mechs speed and range/damaged brackets listed.
This would work better than to ask all the 11 players in you team (some of them maybe even speaking your language) about their speed & loadouts.

You thinking you have to roleplay a lance commander instead of just getting really good at clicking the bad robots is probably why you think groups are getting rolled. You literally have voice chat. "hold locks for LRMs", "I have a UAV", "Sniper here", "Brawler here", "India left torso open", those are the sorts of calls that actually win you quick play games. Arcane UI widgets that would even further confuse new players in an already notoriously new-player hostile game will NOT win you games. This isn't an RPG and it isn't a simulator, its a shooter, whether you like it or not.

[Forgeling]

Forgeling, on 25 December 2020 - 03:12 PM, said:

In my opinion the ideal implementation of a pilot system for MWO:

First and foremost, move the skill system, as is, onto individual pilots. You still earn GXP the same way but XP is assigned to the currently used pilot instead of the mech itself. A pilot can use any mech they're rated for but just like you can't play with a downed mech, you have to wait for the match to end for the pilot to come home. You use barracks for pilots just like you use mechbays for mechs. A starting player should have 4 barracks to start out. A starting player's first pilot should also have a fully unlocked skill tree so they can practice different styles. Any pilot after the first is less flexible and costs XP every time you change their skills.

For customization I'd say custom body type, chosen at pilot creation; Height, weight, etc. Pilot outfit can be changed in a similar manor to changing a mech's camo. Cockpit items could also be assigned to pilots since it would make sense a pilot would bring that sort of stuff with them.

Additionally custom command wheel voice