44 replies to this topic

[Speedy Plysitkos]

The video review is approx 1 hr long. (video isnt mine tho)
I agree with 90%.



What do you think about that ?

Edited by Speedy Plysitkos, 29 May 2021 - 02:09 PM.

[Antares102]

I would say that this is no longer true with Cauldron changes coming every month now.
The stagnation has been broken. Also with MW5 released we can hope for some more attention back to MWO from PGI. It was (still) true in Feb however so I agree to that.

Edited by Antares102, 29 May 2021 - 01:28 PM.

[justcallme A S H]

A video from Feb and we are in June basically...

The difference between has seen a few solid changes with more to come.

Linking that video would seem rather, clueless.

[Valdarion Silarius]

In terms of true content like new mechs, new maps, new weapon systems, etc then yes.

In terms of balance changes, map redesigns, mech rescaling and planned requirkening then no.

[Nightbird]

From the viewpoint that FP was supposed to be the main content of MWO, QP initially envisioned as a training grounds, then yes. From any other viewpoint, no.

[MechB Kotare]

I totally agree about the music. Sci fi ambients and battle war drums were a lot more fitting than rock and metal music.

Edit: Actually, he also makes good point about 12 v 12 and map designs. That is MW experience breaking when you have 24 battlemechs circling around one spot like a bunch of r******...

To my knowledge however, 8v8 is going to be reimplemented and maps redesigned soo.. yeah...

Edited by MechB Kotare, 29 May 2021 - 02:52 PM.

[Brizna]

Not to demean Cauldron who is doing a great job improving balance and viability and fun of a lot of weapons. But they are unable to address some other faults in MWO, like map design, game mode lacklustreness...

Still I agree a lot with the video, not wholly but he's got points.

[Xeno Phalcon]

I watched the whole damn video, I hope your happy - im not getting that 59 minutes and change back. The title is misleading, which makes it more obvious some of the responses here are from people that did not sacrifice their hour of existence as I did so I will give a verbose TLDR (Or too long didnt watch I suppose):

first 15 minutes are praising all that is MWO.

After that its complaints about the music, valid - iv had the music off for uh......many years now.... I forgot there was music...

Then its on to sound design, weapons and bitchin betty feedback are all weak and get swallowed up easily becoming nothing but white noise. (Valid I suppose? lasers are nice, autocannons sound derpy for sure, and betty is annoying.)

12v12 reduces player 'agency' and going back to 8v8 would be better - little on the fence here, on one hand I get what hes saying - in 12 v 12 you mean less and your probably not going to be able to turn around a 8 vs 12 battle. Personally I prefer large fights over small ones, battlefield lit up with twenty four war machines hurling futuristic death at each other is a blast, literally and figuratively.

The overall gameplay has not changed sense closed beta, where death balls form up around specific 'hills' on the map then devolve into nascar. Having played sense closed beta myself, I feel I am at least somewhat qualified to agree with this one.

Quality of life, and wish upon a star features such as melee, combined arms, in-match repair and rearm, mech crouching/balance (properly) and features like changing the HUD color, changing betty or weapon sound effects with optional 'packs'. Lot of this unfortunately will never happen simply because its outside the scope of PGI's coding capabilities even when they were actively developing MWO and not 'cauldron crunching numbers' I mean - we all know how collision turned out. Though a HUD color option would be nice, and relatively easy....I think....

The new skill system is a jumbled mess and I don't like it, go back to the old node system. I get where hes coming from here, the current skill system is just a mess in some areas, forcing you to spend a obnoxious amount of time playing skill pachinko just to reach all the ammo nodes or UAC jam nodes or speed tweak. But on the other foot, I remember the old systems - with the original skill system requiring us to buy and skill up multiple mechs just to fully unlock the module slot on one (thus 'encouraging' us to grind up more mechs just to perfect one, was disgusting) followed by paul's early weapon module slot system which had values like the nodes we have now, but you could only get like....two of them and they cost millions of cbills. I got a week long temp ban for my 'honesty' about those things at the time, heh so far as lesser of three evils goes the current one is 'better than the alternative'.

Was some other small bits in there but iv forgotten them......probably wasnt important anyways.....probably. (OH YEAH one of the things he did like, was weapon balance - which has been one of the cauldron focal points soooo call that one a win even if this video was before they did any changes?)

Edited by Xeno Phalcon, 29 May 2021 - 04:34 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

MWO is online and healthy 9 years after the start of closed beta, and has active patching. That’s a win. We have a new map designer, and now that the MW5 folks aren’t as busy, perhaps we’ll get new mechs again. (Cough, cough... Crusader)

Good enough for me to still be here and occasionally spend some cash.

[crazytimes]

I am willing to forgive the absolute lack of anything other than "form ball of mechs and run in circles" on the basis of the game is casual and legitimately free to play. There is nothing behind paywalls, and the grind to credits is very quick and easy.

That said... the reason they give away everything in events now is to try and maintain a playerbase sufficient that some people may actually pay for things, but realistically there is no need to every buy a thing. The trade off is they don't put anything into development, so the game hasn't changed much in a long time.

Keeps me moderately interested. When it doesn't... I've got nothing invested in this and there are plenty of other games out there.

[Wildstreak]

I forget where but there was a topic in the past few months started with this video already.

Edited by Wildstreak, 29 May 2021 - 05:28 PM.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Wildstreak, on 29 May 2021 - 05:28 PM, said:

I forget where but there was a topic in the past few months started with this video already.

https://mwomercs.com...review-youtube/

[Monkey Lover]

Cauldron changes fell like low hanging fruit that were minimum changes they could do. Only the map update feels like they really did anything. That took years of what feels like double talk to happen.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 29 May 2021 - 05:47 PM.

[Bowelhacker]

There are only ever so many things the Cauldron has the authority or ability to do, so low hanging fruit is what we might have to be content with for a while.

[LordNothing]

feel like i did this before.

cauldron has done a lot to bring back players, but without other sources of novelty i have a hard time believing that it is enough to keep the game afloat in the long term. at some point pgi is going to want to develop their next game, and that game is likely not going to be a mechwarrior game, but we will get the same levels of stagnation we had while pgi was working on mw5. so by the time the cauldron has fixed most of the glaring balance issues, its going to go back on the shelf.

[Speedy Plysitkos]

Ah , sorry I returned back in April, so didnt know its was already here in another thread. (even I could expect that, ye).

I know you guys believe in bright mwo future, but the guy make there some huge points regarding not only balancing weapons, but bout the main core problems of the game which persist over the years. Im also i bit sceptical about this could be solved within a year +- without enough additional resources from PGI.

Anyway, thx for the opinions.

[MechB Kotare]

Lockheed_, on 29 May 2021 - 03:53 PM, said:

you got a source for that? all I heard is that it was under consideration.

Yeah. Its in the 2021 roadmap, planned in 4th quarter of the 2021 year. (New features/game modes). Somewhere else i read, that 12v12 is to become FP exclusive mode, but cant find original post, so that may be a speculation.

InnerSphereNews, on 29 January 2021 - 06:29 PM, said:

.
.
.
















QUARTER 4 - NEW FEATURES + CONTINUED IMPROVEMENTS



New Player Experience

• Update Trial ‘Mechs and Loadouts (batch 4)
  
• Skilled Trials Mechs

Quality of Life

• Improve UI Heat Management Values Representation of Heat Efficiency
  
• Investigate Simplify Command Wheel
  
• Investigate UI Performance Pass / Scaling

Release New Map

• New Quickplay Map - Community driven design

‘Mechs

• New 'Mech Variants - Release 2 new Mech Variant of existing Chassis
  
• Possible New Mech Chassis
  
• Revisit and asses Mech Changes for the year

Weapons and Equipment

• Weapon and Equipment Changes Pass 4
  
• End of Year Weapon assessment

New Features / Game Modes

• Possibly New Event Queue
  
• Possibly Advance the Timeline
  
• Solution for Faction Play
  
• Solution for Solaris
  
• Match Maker Improvements based on new modes etc.
  
• 8v8 and 12v12 modes
  
• Separate Solo / Group Queues (could happen sooner if Population is high enough)
  
• Private Lobby Updates (More Options, Maps, Host Assignment, More Spectators)

Social

• Regular Dev Vlogs - TWICE A MONTH
  
• Road Map Update
  
• Monthly Email Campaign

Events and Freebies

• More events Dailies/Weeklies/Streamers
  
• Monthly Missions for a Free Mech - OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER
  
• Annual Customer Rewards Program

Intel Gathering (Community Feedback)

• Year in Review

Expect a Devlog early next week with more details on the upcoming February and March patches.





We look forward to your feedback,


The MechWarrior Online Team

</p>

Edited by MechB Kotare, 30 May 2021 - 02:25 AM.

[Khobai]

what the game desperately needs is better gamemodes, better maps, and a better matchmaker.

all of the gamemodes feel like beta test gamemodes still. they dont feel polished at all and arnt particularly fun. And a lot of the maps still dont work for 12v12 because they were designed for 8v8.


on the mech balance side of things the game needs better role warfare. mechs need to be divided up into specific roles with their own skill trees so each mech is unique and different rather than just being a better or worse version of another mech. Also Lights and mediums need more things to do that matter that heavies and assaults cant do better. Damage shouldnt be the only meaningful way to help your team. Getting rid of skirmish in favor of an improved version of Conquest would be a good start. Skirmish is part of the problem.

and barring being able to make every mech roughly equal they should implement some kindve battlevalue system that makes worse mechs worth less points than better mechs for matchmaking purposes.

Edited by Khobai, 30 May 2021 - 02:36 AM.

[Wildstreak]

LordNothing, on 29 May 2021 - 08:16 PM, said:

at some point pgi is going to want to develop their next game, and that game is likely not going to be a mechwarrior game, but we will get the same levels of stagnation we had while pgi was working on mw5.

Not if I have anything to say about it.

With the way I test things and now owning MW5, I plan on, "Starting ****," that may lead to people either wanting changes to MWO or MWO2 but that is a big discussion.

I actually feel stimulated enough to try recording videos again of MW5 this time more for discussion than sharing gameplay. I watched videos of MW5 when I did not own it, some in MWO may still not own it but might be interested in at least seeing things not shown so far by other content creators for their own opinions. I admit I also want to see MW5 improve along with using it to either fix MWO or replace it with MWO2 something I said before.

What I did yesterday with a Heavy Rifle and a Hunchback-4H was interesting enough alone, I have not gotten into so many other things.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Xeno Phalcon, on 29 May 2021 - 04:31 PM, said:

I watched the whole damn video, I hope your happy - im not getting that 59 minutes and change back. The title is misleading, which makes it more obvious some of the responses here are from people that did not sacrifice their hour of existence as I did so I will give a verbose TLDR (Or too long didnt watch I suppose):

first 15 minutes are praising all that is MWO.

After that its complaints about the music, valid - iv had the music off for uh......many years now.... I forgot there was music...

Then its on to sound design, weapons and bitchin betty feedback are all weak and get swallowed up easily becoming nothing but white noise. (Valid I suppose? lasers are nice, autocannons sound derpy for sure, and betty is annoying.)

12v12 reduces player 'agency' and going back to 8v8 would be better - little on the fence here, on one hand I get what hes saying - in 12 v 12 you mean less and your probably not going to be able to turn around a 8 vs 12 battle. Personally I prefer large fights over small ones, battlefield lit up with twenty four war machines hurling futuristic death at each other is a blast, literally and figuratively.

The overall gameplay has not changed sense closed beta, where death balls form up around specific 'hills' on the map then devolve into nascar. Having played sense closed beta myself, I feel I am at least somewhat qualified to agree with this one.

Quality of life, and wish upon a star features such as melee, combined arms, in-match repair and rearm, mech crouching/balance (properly) and features like changing the HUD color, changing betty or weapon sound effects with optional 'packs'. Lot of this unfortunately will never happen simply because its outside the scope of PGI's coding capabilities even when they were actively developing MWO and not 'cauldron crunching numbers' I mean - we all know how collision turned out. Though a HUD color option would be nice, and relatively easy....I think....

The new skill system is a jumbled mess and I don't like it, go back to the old node system. I get where hes coming from here, the current skill system is just a mess in some areas, forcing you to spend a obnoxious amount of time playing skill pachinko just to reach all the ammo nodes or UAC jam nodes or speed tweak. But on the other foot, I remember the old systems - with the original skill system requiring us to buy and skill up multiple mechs just to fully unlock the module slot on one (thus 'encouraging' us to grind up more mechs just to perfect one, was disgusting) followed by paul's early weapon module slot system which had values like the nodes we have now, but you could only get like....two of them and they cost millions of cbills. I got a week long temp ban for my 'honesty' about those things at the time, heh so far as lesser of three evils goes the current one is 'better than the alternative'.

Was some other small bits in there but iv forgotten them......probably wasnt important anyways.....probably. (OH YEAH one of the things he did like, was weapon balance - which has been one of the cauldron focal points soooo call that one a win even if this video was before they did any changes?)

Thanks for the summary. I'll reply to the video using your summary.

Music--Doesn't really matter to me. It's repetitive if you're in the front-end for a while for sure.

12v12 vs 8v8. Yeah, I think I had more fun when it was 8v8 but an afk or mismatched team also penalized one side more. The player base has been pretty evenly divided on this topic because there's pros and cons to both and both have a little bit of flavor. If we had the population, I'd say have two queues but that'll never happen. I suppose we could go to 8v8 in QP if 12v12 in FP was more accessible to more players. Suppose group queue would be 8v8 too.

Typical tactics in closed beta was peek and poke and this remained until about the time of 12v12 and clan mechs. What I think contributed to nascar the most is 1. Larger maps where you can circle the enemy out of line of sight but still not have time to back-cap the enemy base. 2. Mechs with increasing hardpoints and higher alphas. 3. Clan mechs outranging IS mechs forcing IS mechs to close the gap because they can't trade shots at range. 4. Flanking is the best strategy so you can shoot the enemy before they can turn and hit you back and nascar is just a perpetual flanking manuever. Flanking is more important because of higher and higher alphas at higher ranges. 5. Before nascar, we had murderball. Murderball means that you bunch up and destroy the enemy with overwhelming force. It's a simple strategy that you don't need to communicate to do. I think this evolved into nascaring. 6. Map design plays a role, but you can nascar on any map where you can move in a circular motion around an area that has a fair amount of cover. Nascar would stop if a map didn't have adequate cover, like classic forest colony where it's a deadly risk to "go water" because of the lack of cover.

QoL improvements--There's always been a lot of those desired. The rest of the stuff listed here is "fluff" not everyone cares about. Inverse Kinematics used to be a big one, but PGI determined it wasn't worth the performance hit as I recall. Melee is too complicated to implement and never work right.

Skill tree--I liked the idea of the new tree over the old. No rule of 3, no need to buy other mechs to fully kit out your own, no give and take with skills. You just had to play the mech more and more until you unlocked everything to make it competitive. Remember, after you finished elite skills, it doubled basic skills but you had to have more than one mech to do that. The original system was a linear progression, and a punishing one at that. Plus, convergence did nothing. The current skill tree is definitely convoluted, but you can never have everything. You have to make a choice over what you want to invest in. Speed? Mobility? Armor? Sensors? Is there a better skill tree solution? Yes. But let's keep the give and take please. I don't want a linear system where you get everything if you only play enough.