Horseman, on 23 September 2021 - 12:37 PM, said:
If scaling the mode back and cutting out features counts as "very little". In some ways, FP was worse off after the "Year of Faction Play" than before it.
Oh, is THAT when that happened? I thought that happened the next year. I remember all that, I just never associated it with the PR stunt.
Horseman, on 23 September 2021 - 12:37 PM, said:
Restricting them with little to no explanation. Not everyone is a lore buff like you, and we get new players who have ZERO knowledge of the BT/MW franchise - down to the point of being unable to tell apart IS and Clan mechs.
See, I've only become a "lore buff" since playing MWO, and needing some sort of story to justify its existence. Prior to this, the story built into the various games was sufficient (and very interesting). I was bored with what little content was included in MWO after a month or so, and started learning the background to try and keep this lame pile-o-dung even mildly interesting, since newer computers can't play any of the actually GOOD Mechwarrior games. This is why the single biggest source of excitement in this game was going to be the real-time progression (so it was going to take 10 actual years to get from the Clan Invasion to the Refusal War, and it would literally have been 2030-2032 (depending if MWO started in 3047 or 3049) by the time the game got to the FedCom Civil War. That would have been AMAZING, would have given them the opportunity to include daily news bulletins covering all the major events from all the books as they happened, as well as slowly rolling out new tech as it hit the market, making it available in limited amounts at first, until in-game production could be scaled up, making the item available for more and more people. This would also have negated the need to balance old and new tech, because old tech would naturally be replaced by newer and better tech.
Also, there's an entire splash screen intro and beginner's tutorial for brand new accounts (which I, too, had forgotten about, until I started a 2nd account at the start of COVID). That is exactly the place to explain all of the beginner's mechanics of how faction-picking and trial 'mechs work, etc. There's absolutely no reason to drop anyone in blind and expect them to just "figure it out", any more than we already do.
The reason I don't play Halo, and never even gave it a chance? Because I saw my brother-in-law's nephews playing against each other, 1v1, with some sort of infinite respawn, and it looked like the dumbest thing in the world. One would kill the other, who would respawn and kill the first, and back and forth it went, because when one would respawn, they'd be fresh against their damaged opponent. There was no objective, no progression, no story, no
point. If that's what people see when they come into MWO, then it's no wonder we can't retain players. We need to introduce them to the Lore, and let them feel like they're part of the greater universe as a whole, in order to keep them interested past a couple months of pointless repetition.
Horseman, on 23 September 2021 - 12:37 PM, said:
To every mech in their mostly non-viable stock loadouts.
So firstly, I play all my 'mechs in a TT configuration (all the stock builds that made it into MWO as well as some that didn't, but for the sake of this example, should have). I was climbing the tiers until the Cauldron's weapon "balance" pass, so stock builds are viable with TT equipment values, and we should return to something a bit closer to those.
Secondly, the fact that stock builds took such a big hit after the balance proves that it went too far in promoting Comp builds and punishing creative experimentation (or being broke after buying a 'mech and being forced to run it as-is for a couple matches to earn reconfig money).
Thirdly, familiarization with stock loadouts by playing one or two matches in that configuration will give players an appreciation for what certain 'mechs were famous for. Stalkers were famous for LRMs, high firepower AND OVERHEATING.
Yes, that's part of their fame, for better or for worse.
Ultimately: stock builds were NOT "mostly non-viable" until the Cauldron started messing about with the numbers. They worked quite well if you had a mouse with enough buttons and gave it more than a half-a-chance. Some stock builds (especially the Clan ones) are actually a lot of fun! And I've been getting better with my 100% stock free Atlas-D, since I won it in that event. I can actually do semi-decently if I wait to brawl until I've run out of LRM ammo, first.
Horseman, on 23 September 2021 - 12:37 PM, said:
Lower arm actuators only matter for omnimechs and are blocked by certain weapon selections. Hand actuators don't matter even for omnimechs.
Go play one match in each Clan Trial 'mech, and you'll see what I mean. I'm well aware of the weapon-type restrictions, but those don't apply in these cases. Lower Arm Actuators provide arms with lateral movement, and hand actuators compound that lateral movement. It's all additive. If an Arm does 5 degrees, then a Hand does 5, and the other arm and hand do another 5 degrees each, for a total of 20 degrees of extra movement side-to-side (or whatever the actual numbers are). The Stormcrow trial 'mech has one dead arm, another arm with a slew of lasers, and torso LRMs, but no actuators, which locks the arms straight forward, and completely negates their purpose in the build by not being able to track a target and assist with target locks. The Warhawk-C also has a Lower Arm Actuator on the Pulse Laser arm, which was not included in the trial build, and would help make the 'mech more accurate since ALL of its weapons are arm-mounted.
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