261 replies to this topic

[PraetorGix]

Regarding UI, can we please have the DPS of our builds shown? Also, it's sometimes helpful to know the base quirks of a chassis, so base quirks should be displayed in a different color to those from the skill tree.

[NiceDad]

I'm waiting for the next MC sales.

[Kurt the Merc]

I love the idea of a customizable pilots tied to the skill trees. It would reduce skill grind while adding monetization of pilot appearance.

[_fader]

Hi there,

here are few my ideas about future updates:

1. Restrict the disconnected info only to player team (whats the point to reconnect when light rushes toward your position as soon as they see the info...)

2. Let us choose the load out and camouflage for mech when in the lobby waiting for drop. When in lobby we could have a drop down list with preset loadout and camouflage that we create in mech lab.

This is it for now

Have fun
Fader

[MasterBLB]

I've quit MWO entirely in 2016, due to a stream of bad decisions. A final nails were:
1) ghost heat.
it simply sucks, and removes fun from the game.

2) constant messing up and nerfing weapons.
Mainly clan weapons, lasers in particular. Just after introduction they were perfectly balanced - definitely stronger than IS counterparts, but with noticeable longer, and significant burn time so you had to take it into account.

3) removing mechs masteries(those which required you to have 3 variants of a mech), modules and introduction of the skill tree.
I liked to switch builds for a single mech several time during a play session - say first two games I'd play a Stormcrow as an 7xML striker, then I'll rebuild it completely to ex, a LRM boat. All it required these good old times was to change equipment and modules, now I'd have to bother reapplying points in the skill tree - if it's even possible.

[Kieryzmah]

youtube.com/watch?v=IcQADTIJxBk

[MeanMachinE]

Skill Tree / Grind Reduction -> I liked the old skill system more (if I remember correctly). I would like, if unlocking the skill nodes would be cheaper or would not require c-bills at all. The whole skill tree could be made better to be honest. With the current skill tree you could also get rid of XP all together and make all XP GXP. There is no need for two XP mechanics, just makes thinks complicated for new players.

Remove Torso Heat Spike Mechanic -> Yes. You could also consider that losing a side torso would be a second wind -mechanic/or add it as an unlockable skill node. This way the mech would basically lose all/most of its heat when a side torso is lost. The logic would be that the side torso that is lost would have hold most of the excess heat which in part would have caused the torso to die off, or something like that. Usually losing a side torso means that half of the weapons are gone and the mech is pretty useless anyway.

Heat Management Values Not Representative of Heat Efficiency -> this would be good. Sometimes single heat sinks seem to work better than double though the stats say otherwise. You could also increase the efficiency of leg heat sinks that are in water.

Simplify Command Wheel -> I think the current wheel works just fine. I have more problems with the map commands. These are seldom used. Also the spam protection time limit could be reduced for the wheel a bit.

Remove Time of Day Change in Matches (FPS hit) -> This has been implemented. Works ok, though some maps should be added back with additional time of day to the rotation, as has been discussed.

UI Performance Pass / Scaling? -> Yes, scaling/agility changes would make twisting more rewarding. The scaling changes in the past made e.g. some light mechs as big as medium mechs and therefore too vulnerable to be used effectively. Assaults also need more maneuverability. What's the use of having lots of armour if you get killed from the CT no matter how you try to twist the torso?

[Alreech]

Kieryzmah, on 06 April 2021 - 12:02 PM, said:

youtube.com/watch?v=IcQADTIJxBk

Yeah, the "you must always mount 10 heat sinks in your mech, even if this punishes using engines below 250 rating" is a stupid rule.
It's a rule that should have been fixed a long time ago in the Battletech Tabletop Wargame, and it's a rule that never should have been used in a Mechwarrior first person shooter game.

And no, PGI won't fix this, because most MWO players defend each stupid rule with "it's the lore".

[PraetorGix]

Alreech, on 07 April 2021 - 07:28 AM, said:

Yeah, the "you must always mount 10 heat sinks in your mech, even if this punishes using engines below 250 rating" is a stupid rule.
It's a rule that should have been fixed a long time ago in the Battletech Tabletop Wargame, and it's a rule that never should have been used in a Mechwarrior first person shooter game.

And no, PGI won't fix this, because most MWO players defend each stupid rule with "it's the lore".

Well, it's the lore. So, no.

[Ialdabaoth]

Of course, regarding the Skill Trees, this is probably the most straightforward improvement possible:

Edited by Ialdabaoth, 10 April 2021 - 05:41 PM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Quote

Simplify Command Wheel -> I think the current wheel works just fine. I have more problems with the map commands. These are seldom used. Also the spam protection time limit could be reduced for the wheel a bit.

never use the wheel, against the Command Wheel in Battlefield 2 its a pain in the A**...terrible UI is a great talent by PGI

[Kurt the Merc]

Could the Skill Tree be tied to a pool of customizable, monitizable, pilots instead of each chassis

also, just my 2 cents... a reduction of nodes seems like a dumbing down, whatever is decided for skills. Please reduce grind not the depth of customization.

[Lanzman]

Just organize the nodes better, so that you can (for example) select range extension without having to select unrelated nodes to get to them all.

[Big-G]

Please, I'm seriously asking for the ability to sell off unused Mech Bays... I'm sitting with 20 MB's that I'm not going to be using anytime soon... I need to sell it to fund my other "addiction"...


LOL

[Nyte Kitsune]

My Suggestion for 2021.. Is the same suggestion its always been every other year.....

No charge on Gauss Rifles..... You know, Like they were originally, and how they are now in MW5. I know you changed them because of the "Pop Tarters", Hey... Guess what?, People still Pop Tart, Except now they use all other weapons to do it.. Brilliant eh? So what was the point? Right, there was none, because all you did is make the weapon less viable and forced players to use other weapons to do the same thing.

Honestly I found Pop Tarters to be easier targets to kill as they were constantly revealing their location making it easier to flank and kill them, but hey, maybe I was just stupid for not standing around waiting for them to kill me like everyone else.

[Zordicron]

I don't know if you guys are still monitoring these or not but I am posting this here vs the general forums as it is more for the dev team then the public really.

I was just reading the Solaris 7 rewards removal stuff and reflecting on this game. I have been here since beta. I watched the game go through it's struggles and growth, and decline. The Solaris comments from players made me think on this.

I think the Solaris game mode was a good idea put in at a terrible time. When the focus changed to it, at that instant, faction play was in dire straights. Players took the new Solaris mode as a sign saying "FP is on hold" and players left.

I am not sure why the direction of the game was turned so hard towards comp play, or why the fraction of the player base that wanted Solaris 1v1 play was given the nod over the majority.

Was it Business? Did the allure of the spectacle of watching world tourny's in other FPS games and the money being thrown around look like a meal ticket? Was there an evaluation of who the biggest whales were and what they wanted to play?

Was it personal? Were the streamers, comp players, whoever the most friendly and optomistic about the game and easier to deal with?

In the end, be it personal or business driven: looking back now after a few years should easily show that the comp aspect of the game is not what draws players to it, the game has certainly not thrived with the focus on Solaris 7.


What I want to post here is very long, obviously, so I hope you can read through it, coming from a player that handed you a lot of money over many years and wants to see this game bounce back.

I think, at the end of the day: The dev team needs to go back to the roots of this game when it had it's highest player counts and most support about direction and evaluate what was great and what was bad.

In my eyes, just based on personal observations about how many and who was around, this was right after the clans dropped in, but before 12v12. Let's go look at a few key points.

Early game: 8v8, no clans. This time had the most hype, the Phoenix mechs had the community doing fist pumps and making memes and showering praise. This, despite limited maps, wierd weapon balance, and some other issues. It was in a place good enough to make players clamor for more chassis, and yes, CLANS.

At this time then, there was a robust focus on more chassis design and release, but also on weapon balance and to a lesser extent, new maps.

Clans drop: MORE CHASSIS, MORE WEAPONS. Players fist pumped again, memed even harder, and started to look for more maps and started citing issues with existing ones as the new array of weapons and speedy clan chassis was highlighting problems. Weapon balance was ongoing, and had sucked up tons of dev time to this point.

At this time then, there was extreme focus on weapons and balance, with a robust continuation of chassis release and a newfound focus on maps.

And then the bomb dropped.

HSR. Host State Rewind, maybe it was because a new hire finally cracked the code, maybe it was known what would happen, but in the end every single "balance" adjustment so much time was spent on was worthless. Suddenly, things that were missing for no reason, lasers that were only reading one blip out of their "pulses" during duration were counting ALL of them, suddenly everything was more accurate, more deadly, and mechs became more fragile on an order of magnitude overnight. Lasers that were laughed at as dmg spreading newb weapons were now meta because they actually registered and they were indeed easier to aim at pinpoint by their nature. Clans were of course blamed as they had the most powerful versions, but it was the underlying mechanics that enabled it.

And then it got compounded.

The new suddenly fragile mechs were now being tossed into a match with 12 enemies instead of 8.

I can tell you, 100% honestly and without hesitation, the game was changed in an extreme way for the worse and has never recovered.

Its is hard to explain how and why without making this a 30 page report on it, but in short mid range fighting was erased and mechs were forced to either play super long range poke builds or face smashing brawl builds, because the only way not to get evaporated off the map by focus fire was to either be out of range, or hide in the trenches until you could give the enemy a knuckle sandwich.

Mistakes in positioning were punished instantly by devestating firepower from 12 enemies that had weapons balanced in a time when they would artificially miss because there was no HSR.

Chassis that had been able to thrive in the past were deemed worthless in this new era.


So, at this time then, there was a feverish need to "balance" things, new chassis continued to come out because those were the players sticking around and paying the bills, and map generation slowed.

This went for a time, and it was decided a new game mode to end all game modes would be built to completely change the basic "quick play" MWO into an actual Battletech game. A worthy mode indeed, and a challenge in both scope and time/resources!

Faction Play should have worked.
It came too late. It was designed with such a huge player base number in mind, it couldn't live up to it. it had flaws in it, concessions to premade teams and comp play, built in that allowed for some deplorable behavior that was left unchecked because player numbers and income were bleeding.
And so, after so much time and energy went into the mode and maps and design, it was abandoned in despair and the Solaris 7 project came about. As above, for whatever the reason business or personal, this was the new MWO.




What can we see from this history, what can we learn and apply? It is time to go back to the roots, solidify the purpose of the game, bring players and income back.
This means focus on quick play, to the general public, not the comp teams.
It means going back to 8v8.
It means a revamp of monetization and progression in the game.
It means if things are left alone and "tweaked" the game will fold.


To this end, I make these suggestions to allow new players and old alike to get back into the cockpit.

1. The skill tree.
This is why I came to this particular section. The current skill tree does nothing to help new players as it is a grind fest. It does nothing to give old players something to gain, once a mech is built there is no reason to revisit. It does nothing to aid second string chassis. it does, presumably, little to aid income for the dev team.
It is superior to the reality warping power of the original tree/XP system.

I propose: simplify the tree, and make it an infinite gain through increasingly expensive node purchases.
Break the tree into several linear lines. Make nodes unlock though XP. Make the first nodes inexpensive, to let players feel they are gaining something in their new mech. make a middle section somewhat pricey, so players that want to push a chassis further have something to gain to master it. Make the last section of nodes infinite, but make them expensive, increasingly so. Take the first infinite node, make it cost 10% on top of the last mastery node. And so on and so forth.
Players can then pick what they want to shore up first, and know that they can shore them all up given enough time invested in the chassis.
Time, OR MONEY
Allow purchase of XP. Whales will sink money into their favorite mech to get an edge. It will take crazy money to gain a signficant edge, but let them. If someone wants to dump $3000 into one mech chassis to get a 10% edge on their foes, so be it. If they want to drop $30,000 onto a chassis to achieve god mode, so be it. Some players will complain, perdiodic complaints about the god mode player will arise, but in the end if you guys make the game as fun as it was before the 12v12 hit it won;t matter, the less then 1% of players with broken mechs will not have an extreme effect on things anyway.
Just put caps on things for Solrais, the comp tourny, and FP. .

For brevity(lol, look at this monster) I won;t break into the actual tree categories or values.

2. Engines cost way to much.
Mechlab is one of the best parts of mechwarrior. Tweaks to a build are what make the game go round. It costs STUPID c-bills to buy an engine. I have been playing forever and have this giant pile of stuff, but I still cringe if I need to go buy a new one. FYI, I have never once spent MC to get c-bills to buy equipment. It feels like a waste, and I can't imagine a lot of players are any different in this aspect.

3. 8v8
This is for a host of reasons. Reduction in firepower on the field, improved matchmaker pairing- tonnage and skill tier- lower wait times. Maps are sized for this better.
Leave 12v12(or even 16v16) to FP.

4. Drop dmg values across the board. People want to shoot lots of weapons. Let them. But recently, power creep is allowing for 60+ alphas. Drop dmg values on everything by 1. See the result of TTK, adjust again if needed. Doesn't need to be a sledgehammer change.

5. limit team size to 4.
The team oriented players nerdrage every time anything about teams vs solo is brougth up, or team size. In the end, if they have 5 players, they can make a 2 man and a 3 man and go play. The "Priority target: Gamma!" team aplha strikes make the game worse, period.
This can be game-wide. FP can be made up of 3, or even 4, premade teams of four. it dilutes the power level of their practiced coordination, which may sound painful on it's face but is what is needed to keep the game from drowning. New players need to have a chance.

Speaking of FP, as an aside, using the 4 man team model above: make drop decks require one of each weight class. End result, a 16v16 FP match would be each team made up of 4 individual small teams, each with an even spread of tonnage classes. Limit comunication between the 4 man teams to in game text. This may seem to go against the grain a bit, but:
One of the underlying balance issues forever with MWO has been the power of a coordinated group vs pug players.
There needs to be some level of allowance for coordination, but it should stay at the LANCE LEVEL. If it doesn't pug players shun every mode but quick play and complain and quit even there.
Advertise it in a positive manner! "Form a LANCE with your friends to take on he opposing forces!" Don;t just present it as the "rules of teams" and a set of limitations. make the change, pull off the bandaid, and present it in the future as a feature.


I have to stop here as i am sure this is some mongoloid post by now. I hope you made it to the end! If you are interested in my thoughts on details of any of this stuff, inquire, PM, whatever.

[DEVVAROW]

Add more spawn points, space them closer together and have them randomize in close pairs, with say, 10 spawn points on normal sized maps and 20 spawn points on the bigger maps.

Remove waiting times between matches by allowing players to select several mechs, before clicking on quickplay... so they stay in battle queues until they leave quickplay. So, if you die in quickplay, then you just get dropped into one of your other mechs you chose, before you clicked quickplay, in the next battle, putting you in the real dropping queue when you choose to not spectate after dying, or if the match ends. skipping the loading of the lobby and then clicking on quickplay, again.

These two features could have the power to utilize unused and underutilized parts of the game... not just sections of the maps, but actual MWO gameplay that has more flesh to it.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Zordicron, on 11 September 2021 - 07:07 AM, said:

5. limit team size to 4.
The team oriented players nerdrage every time anything about teams vs solo is brougth up, or team size. In the end, if they have 5 players, they can make a 2 man and a 3 man and go play. The "Priority target: Gamma!" team aplha strikes make the game worse, period.
This can be game-wide. FP can be made up of 3, or even 4, premade teams of four. it dilutes the power level of their practiced coordination, which may sound painful on it's face but is what is needed to keep the game from drowning. New players need to have a chance.

Speaking of FP, as an aside, using the 4 man team model above: make drop decks require one of each weight class. End result, a 16v16 FP match would be each team made up of 4 individual small teams, each with an even spread of tonnage classes. Limit comunication between the 4 man teams to in game text. This may seem to go against the grain a bit, but:
One of the underlying balance issues forever with MWO has been the power of a coordinated group vs pug players.
There needs to be some level of allowance for coordination, but it should stay at the LANCE LEVEL. If it doesn't pug players shun every mode but quick play and complain and quit even there.
Advertise it in a positive manner! "Form a LANCE with your friends to take on he opposing forces!" Don;t just present it as the "rules of teams" and a set of limitations. make the change, pull off the bandaid, and present it in the future as a feature.


I have to stop here as i am sure this is some mongoloid post by now. I hope you made it to the end! If you are interested in my thoughts on details of any of this stuff, inquire, PM, whatever.

Nonsense ,thats most only the Strawmen for own Defizites in Teamplay and Tactical Awarness.. thats is a Basic Skill fors each Payer thats plays battelfield or otehr teambased Wargames, thats ist not binded to Team and Communication , a Player with experience in Teamplay see which enemy is the most dangerous Part and so the Good Players fired all to the same Target in the Same Time, when you not have Tunnelview or focused Singleplayer Bubbleview.You come in a Land with a Foreign Language ...the good Baskeltballplayer find his Role in the first match in the new Team ,the bad Player has no idea what her doing.

-When a Player runs in open field, you not must have a coordinated Team for focus Fire
-When ya mate runs in the Tunnel of chrimson and stop by first counterfire and block you Mates , you not must have a coordinated Team
-When a mate Plays as Brawler only and fight and make a Tabledance with a single Enemy in the View from his 11 Mates , you not must have a coordinated Team
When a Mate thinking her is the great Singleplayer Lion and not plays with his Team , so her died as Prey for by the smaller Hyaenas thats plays as Team..the biggest Problem ist most the own narcisst Ego and ignoring of own Fails and to learn other Tactics and not the other Team

Quote

[color=#959595]The "Priority target: Gamma!" team [/color]

when a Stupid Player walks open in Field you not must give the Command "Priority Target Gamma" ..each Player with good tactical Awarness press the button and give him fire or see to which Target the mate next to him fired ,no please Red Team ignored This !! ?Oh well ,please play MW5 against stupid AI thats ignored the own Fails

Bad Time for Mommys Love ,thats never was in a Military Unit,a member in a Sporting Team or worked and played in other teamoriented Realitys and all Times only fights alone as Couch Potato Warrior

Edited by MW Waldorf Statler, 11 November 2021 - 11:11 PM.

[the orc]

Well, that's I nice rant on how stupid players are and that this is a wargame, but...

at the end of the day it is a game and it is supposed to be fun to play. - And I don't have fun playing it currently, because the match making is completely broken.

I might be a noob, but if there is such a thing as player tiers, I would expect that teams of noobs are not matched against teams of pros. But that is, what it looks like when 70%+ of all games end as stomps.

Other reasons also are quite obvious: being outtonned - or outranged on large maps - or outmaneuvered in conquest, etc. - If the match making would just ensure that teams would be a more divers mix of mechs, games would be more even, I believe. But now you can have 8 sniper in one team and if you play a brawler, you quite likely won't fire a single shot in the game (no matter if your team wins or looses).

Teams in the queue do not generally enforce that disbalance. I know some guys just randomly picking a mech from their arsenal and play together with their friends. - But others build teams of 3 lurm-boats and 1 stealth raven with tag and narc or hunting packs of 4 streak wolves or 4 shadow hawks with triple rac2s, ... none of that neccessarily wins the game, but it often does. By the time the other team realizes, whats going on, half of them are dead and the game is lost. - If this teamwork play is what you want, go to faction play and do it against people, who are prepared for that. Don't hit on the enexpecting players from the solo queue just because it makes it easier for you to pull of a win. - I totally agree that new players need a chance. They will not stay if they are only the punching ball of the more experienced team players. They even will not stay if they just stand aside when 4 guys of their team take out the entire enemy and they have a hard time to keep up.


More surviveability could help. If half of a team has alphas of 60+, peeking once in medium or heavy mech can mean that the game is mostly over for you. And as a result many mechs are played more defensively now, which makes it even more difficult for faster mechs or mechs with less range. If they are the only ones that expose themselves, they are the ones that get shot big time. - This development was kind of foreseeable: In April pretty much all weapons got buffed. Since then only some mechs got new quirks. And most quirks were actually on the offensive side (less heat, faster cooldown, etc.). Mechs now shoot more often, do more damage and all that potentially on longer ranges. Compared to that armor quirk increases were only minimal. As a result mechs are killed faster and a single mistake can end your game. - That makes tonnage disbalances even more annoying, especially if it comes from teamplayers all showing up with their dire wolves.

[Nesutizale]

Matchmaking
If its realy broken is more a question of who is online. From my experiance its that when you are unlucky there are just no people of your skill level online or only very few. So the MM puts in higher tier people to fill up the slots so that finding matches dosn't take forever.
IIRC we had test with changes to the MM that where more strickt and it took forever to find matches.
So the problem is less the MM but the limited population.

Stomps
Haven't had realy bad ones for quite some time. Sure they happen but they are less common then they where before the MM was adjusted and the new Tier system was implemented.
Currently I have, most of the time, matches with similar skilled people with a few exceptions.

Tonnage or mix of mechs
My view on this is that most people tend to be good with a certain class of mech. Some people might be very good with a light mech to the point where they can easly match or outmatch heavier mechs. So kill of the player most of the time outweights the tonnage differance.
That beeing said I can imagne that at the lower tiers this is kinda reversed as people are in general not as good so tonnage might realy make a differance. Still its very hard to quantify I think. Take your PSR/Matchscore and balance teams by that seams to be a better solution.

Groups
You know that there are groups. Either by knowing that this is a posibility or because you see the teams before the match. The only way to not be prepared is to willingly ingnore that. When I see people with the same name tag I know to watch out for them. Same goes when I see people moveing together on the map, mostly seperated from the murderball. Its a pretty good sign that they are grouped. Same with the Raven-LRM combo. You see a lone raven narcing someone, you know its time to seek the next rock or shoot the raven.
Communicate that with your team via chat or VoiP. Thats what its for.

PS: Solo Q only means that you are matched with randoms not that its not a teamgame anymore. You drop in a TEAM of 12 randoms. Dosn't mean that you can't coordinate.
Maybe Solo Q should be renamed to "Random drop" so people don't get the wrong idea of this beeing a Solo game

Peaking and Survivability
Yes we all have the matches that kill you instantly peaking a corner.
Try to avoid corners in anything below assaults. Use a wider arc, seek alternative routes etc.

Not pushing and the fear of damage.
I have seen that behavior in a lot of games, not only MWO and those had more TTK. Still people where not pushing when needed or left teammates behind. I call it the "OMG my paint got a scatch" syndrom.

Happens all the time, you find a way to work around it by moveing off the main group and flank or you are the guy pushing or you call for a push and hope for the best.

In any case, don't trouble yourself with the result...be it you dying in seconds or it beeing successfull. Just take a sip of coffee, watch the match unfold, sometimes you pushing is just the thing that makes people go and win the match, just don't get frustrated.