49 replies to this topic

[Andrewlik]

I used to play World of Tanks for a long time, (Heck, search my username on google and you can find some of my old forum posts) but eventually quit because it felt overly monetized, pay to win, and balance was out the window.

I recently (like january) started playing MWO coming from MW5 coming from HBS BT, and I find that MWO does do alot of things better than WoT (at least for me):

1. Monetization
I don't feel like I'm being gouged for money at every corner. I don't feel like I "need" to spend money in order to "Afford" to play the mechs I want - this, tied into the fact there is no "tech tree" means I can far more easily play the mech I want to play
Cosmetics are a bit overpriced, but otherwise, MWO's monetization feels fair.

2. Balance and customization

(Almost surely thanks to The Cauldron), MWO's meta feels far more varied, with alot more builds that are "viable" than WOT.
I mean, the difference between "meme" and "meta" is far smaller in MWO than in WOT.
WOT ranked meta has devolved into the same ~6 or so fast heavies and mediums with impenetrable turrets and 1 light that just makes other lights obsolete.
In MWO, I'm seeing alot of variety, even between mechs of the same chassis and variant.
With MWO, there is such good customization that on some mechs (such as my previous Catapult K2) I can't decide on whats the best build because so many feel viable, where as with WOT there is rarely more than 1 way to play a tank.

What do you guys think? For me, in all aspects (outside of graphics), MWO does what WOT did for me but better in all regards.
It just lacks the content creation community WOT had - Quickybaby, World of Lols, I haven't really found an exact equivalent for MWO.

Edited by Andrewlik, 27 October 2021 - 11:40 AM.

[pbiggz]

monetization in the old days was, shall we say, aggressive. They absolutely were not the worst offenders in the halcyon days of the mid 20-teens f2p craze, but 500 dollar gold mech packs are hard to ignore.

since the game is basically being kept alive by volunteers and determined whales, and PGI has alternative income sources now, I think we're seeing more measured microtransactions and more freebies. IDK if that will cost PGI more in the long run but it certainly feels better than it used to.

[GARION26]

I played WoT as well for a number of years (and think at low levels it's a ton of fun) on and off.
I agree MWO is a better fit for what I want out of a computer game.

[Felbombling]

Years ago, I wrote a post on this very subject. After twenty-five games in MechWarrior: Online, with the cadet bonus in effect, you can afford to buy yourself an Assault Mech and kit it out to your desires. After twenty-five game in world of tanks, you might have moved past tier two into a tier three tank along the same tech tree chain. Given there are ten tiers to the World of Tanks tech trees, with multiple nations and vehicle types to invest time and energy into, there is little comparison between the two games.

What PGI does really well is treat the player-base to goodies of all kinds, be it free Mechs, content sales, or fun events like the current ones running before Halloween. Good incentives to play and toss them a few bucks every once in awhile.

[w0qj]

There is premium Gold Ammo in WoT!

I wish there is Gold gauss ammo in MWO for +3% DPS! (just kidding).

The MWO community as a whole had rejected aggressive pricing/monetisation;
witness what happened many years ago with the US$500 Gold Khan Mech Fiasco.
And that was the moment back then when I decided to quit MWO for many years.
Back since summer'2020, and loving this MWO game!

MWO is one of the flattest free-to-play game around.
If you are *really* set on playing just *one* mech in MWO:

a) Just grind for this mech with virtual CBills
b ) Outfit your mech with equipment bought with virtual CBills
c) Just level up 91 Skill Points to max out your mech
d) Congrats, you have just "maxed out" your MWO game!!
e) Notice that no real world money was used

Voila! Your free mech in your free-to-play MWO does the exact DPS damage as a Premium player would!
MWO is one of the flattest free-to-play game around!

Edited by w0qj, 27 October 2021 - 04:02 PM.

[CFC Conky]

MWO has Hero mechs that must be purchased with real $ or MC which can take a long time to accumulate. That said, Hero mechs aren't always the best variants of a particular chassis so MWO is less P2W than many other games.

Good hunting,
CFC Conky

[LordNothing]

population is the biggest issue that mwo has. i find it mostly due to lack of advertising. ive seen wot ads everywhere on tv, youtube, ad banners everywhere. ive yet to see one advert for mwo.

[Nesutizale]

Lets first get MWO to a presentable state before we start advertising the **** out of it
While I like the changes that are dripping in slowly its biggest problem is the old engine. I know its kinda a beaten horse but it is a problem we can't deny. The CPU bottleneck is a shock for new players and frankly MWO is the slowest running game I have and currently also the oldest. I don't count StarCitizen here as its not done but its a conntender to MWO in FPS with both running similar but one is a game in progress while the other has been out for many years. Only that MWO crashes far less

Beeing the optimist I am...well who am I lying to...I hope that the new Crytech people from (fill in company name here) somehow can improve the engine run more stuff on the GPU.
Else the only way for MWO to improve is an engine change but this will not happenb because money or if some modders take MW5 and build a MW5-Online....what is also very unlikely.

Edited by Nesutizale, 28 October 2021 - 12:57 AM.

[w0qj]

ST:O (Star Trek Online) is one of the few online games older than MWO, and it runs just fine.
Not sure what the game engine for ST:O is though.

BTW, St*r Citiz*n which is still in Alpha stage (!) had a game engine change quite a few years back, part of the reason for the delays back then, as cited by its software developer.

Edited by w0qj, 28 October 2021 - 07:06 AM.

[Nesutizale]

IIRC ST:O uses the companies own handmade engine. They also updated it a few years ago with new effects but the game is running into the same wall as MWO. The more stuff they add the more problems pop up. Still since its their own and they still have people working on it there is at least some progress. Also there are still so many bugs that are there since I played it years ago. Still waiting for the next story contend. Also a game I return to every now and then.

[pbiggz]

w0qj, on 28 October 2021 - 01:01 AM, said:

ST:O (Star Trek Online) is one of the few online games older than MWO, and it runs just fine.
Not sure what the game engine for ST:O is though.

BTW, St*r Citiz*n which is still in Alpha stage (!) had a game engine change quite a few years back, part of the reason for the delays back then, as cited by its software developer.

SC never had an engine change it had a branding change. Amazon Lumberyard is literally cryengine with a different badge on it.

Star Citizen's delays never came out of that, they came out of absolutely staggeringly insane scope creep and an upper management so obsessed with perfection that they kick most of the finished work their designers and artists do back to those departments to "improve" them, so nothing gets done on time.

As for comparing MWO to any other F2P game, the problem is, its not that game. MWO has a very complicated base, built on a very outdated, essentially beta version of CryEngine that no longer gets any support. All the guys who actually knew how to work with the engine quit like a decade ago. Ever wonder why we don't get different gravities or map conditions that effect weapons? PGI doesn't know how to do that with this engine anymore. The people who wrote those parts of it are gone.

Best we can hope for is MW6 having a PVP multiplayer as part of its offering, maybe with proper faction play.

Edited by pbiggz, 28 October 2021 - 05:37 AM.

[KuroNyra]

IF MW6 actually come out.

[pbiggz]

I hear they're working on it but who can say for sure? Not I.

[Pika]

w0qj, on 28 October 2021 - 01:01 AM, said:

ST:O (Star Trek Online) is one of the few online games older than MWO, and it runs just fine.
Not sure what the game engine for ST:O is though.

BTW, St*r Citiz*n which is still in Alpha stage (!) had a game engine change quite a few years back, part of the reason for the delays back then, as cited by its software developer.

SC Dev here (@Gillyburd1/Gill-CIG): No we didn't.

We moved to a forked version of the exact same Cryengine version called Lumberyard, at it's core it is essentially a slightly modified version of our CryEngine base that allows better scaleability. Same one New World just came out on though our (CIGs) version is heavily, heavily modified. The impact on our work and work flow was almost nothing (At least from my point of view where I work)

Changing engine now in MWOs life is... well it's not impossible, but if I were in PGIs boots I'd probably invest into a MWO2 and move over to Unreal using the MW5 game and ground work as a basis for that development. If we HAVE to stay with this engine in MWO, I would suggest more than map tweaks, we need an overhaul of the map visuals. 90% of the issues with MWO's looks is mostly just ugly, flat textures, tbh. Especially on buildings. The Solaris map especially needs a texture pass.

Edited by Pika, 28 October 2021 - 06:26 AM.

[w0qj]

Daeron Katz said in a recent video that when the Clan come out, it would be in the MW6 game.

So MW5 = IS only
So MW6 = Clan (+ IS ?)

But I can't but get the feeling that it's the very same game engine for both MW5 and proposed MW6.

Cannot locate that recent video though (just a few weeks ago, from NGNG, which I saw on this General Forum in MWO.

Edited by w0qj, 28 October 2021 - 07:05 AM.

[pbiggz]

w0qj, on 28 October 2021 - 06:25 AM, said:

Daeron Katz said in a recent video that when the Clan come out, it would be in the MW6 game.

So MW5 = IS only
So MW6 = Clan (+ IS ?)

But I can't but get the feeling that it's the very same game engine for both MW5 and proposed MW6.

Cannot locate that recent video though (just a few weeks ago, from NGNG, which I saw on this General Forum in MWO.

I'd also heard that they wanted to build it on a new engine again. Still unreal but ground up.

Again that's just hearsay on my part.

[Pika]

w0qj, on 28 October 2021 - 06:25 AM, said:

Daeron Katz said in a recent video that when the Clan come out, it would be in the MW6 game.

So MW5 = IS only
So MW6 = Clan (+ IS ?)

But I can't but get the feeling that it's the very same game engine for both MW5 and proposed MW6.

Cannot locate that recent video though (just a few weeks ago, from NGNG, which I saw on this General Forum in MWO.

This one, yeah? I am excited for MW6 should it happen. I can imagine it being a reimagining of MW2 and focusing mostly on the clans until the DLCs.

I hope it happens tbh.

Edited by Pika, 28 October 2021 - 06:30 AM.

[w0qj]

I stand corrected

Pika, on 28 October 2021 - 06:22 AM, said:

SC Dev here (@Gillyburd1/Gill-CIG): No we didn't.

We moved to a forked version of the exact same Cryengine version called Lumberyard, at it's core it is essentially a slightly modified version of our CryEngine base that allows better scaleability. Same one New World just came out on though our (CIGs) version is heavily, heavily modified. The impact on our work and work flow was almost nothing (At least from my point of view where I work)

Changing engine now in MWOs life is... well it's not impossible, but if I were in PGIs boots I'd probably invest into a MWO2 and move over to Unreal using the MW5 game and ground work as a basis for that development. If we HAVE to stay with this engine in MWO, I would suggest more than map tweaks, we need an overhaul of the map visuals. 90% of the issues with MWO's looks is mostly just ugly, flat textures, tbh. Especially on buildings. The Solaris map especially needs a texture pass.

[Nesutizale]

Pika, on 28 October 2021 - 06:22 AM, said:

SC Dev here (@Gillyburd1/Gill-CIG): No we didn't.

Are there more SC Devs around here? I remember that Sean Tracy and Dan Tracy are Mechwarrior fans, also I don't know if they ever played MWO but they worked on Living Legends IIRC.

Sean once said that he would like to do an online Mechwarrior title but would go in a different direction to MWO. Man I would love to see what the SC team could come up with when it would focus on a Mechwarrior title.

Quote

Changing engine now in MWOs life is... well it's not impossible, but if I were in PGIs boots I'd probably invest into a MWO2 and move over to Unreal using the MW5 game and ground work as a basis for that development. If we HAVE to stay with this engine in MWO, I would suggest more than map tweaks, we need an overhaul of the map visuals. 90% of the issues with MWO's looks is mostly just ugly, flat textures, tbh. Especially on buildings. The Solaris map especially needs a texture pass.

From what I remember PGI said a change of the engine would bring in two major problems.
First of is how to finance that change. The people who allready play MWO will most likely not pay again to get what they allready had and I tend to agree. Unlooking everything or paying for it to get it back....

Then there is the porting of all the assets and databanks so that every player gets back what he had. I don't know about how problematic that realy is. I mean a lot of the mechs are allready ported to MW5 so its possible.
What I expected to be more problematic is changeing the entire mechlab to MWOs system, working on the interface for MP purposes and most importently getting the multiplayer matches working. Something that isn't present in the current game.

As for updateing the old maps with better graphics....do you think that the game could handle that without blowing up the CPU?
Beside that, I think what MWO realy needs is a clear vision of where the game should go.

Gameplay, Gunplay, Monetarisation, basicly everything would need to be brought up to 2020+ before we can even start talking about what engine to be used or what graphics to update.
MWO needs a person kinda like Chris Roberts with a vision of where things should go...but without the feature creep

[w0qj]

Without the $10k+ package prices...

(For the record, I quit MWO the moment the US$500 Gold Khan packages were announced...)