55 replies to this topic

[martian]

Akamia Terizen, on 19 August 2022 - 10:49 PM, said:

I would adore a game that's basically the EVE Online or Elite: Dangerous of the BattleTech franchise, though. Maybe that would give me everything I actually want out of the franchise, or almost everything anyway. I doubt a game like that could exist under the MechWarrior brand specifically, though.

Oh well. A guy can dream.

BattleTech/MechWarrior is too niche IP for that to happen.

[Nightbird]

martian, on 19 August 2022 - 11:17 PM, said:

BattleTech/MechWarrior is too niche IP for that to happen.

Not at all, a mid to largish dev would love to get a hold of a rich, detailed IP instead of developing it entirely from scratch like star citizen. The problem is the IP holders for BT/MW are fragmented thus you either can't buy it or it is grossly overpriced, and if you license it and make it a big success the IP owners benefit, not you the game dev, as the value of the IP goes up and the dev either gets charged more to continue using it... or gets their license not renewed.

It's a lose-lose for a competent game dev to license it - a dev confident in creating a major success - and only devs that want to benefit from the existing base but not confident in growing it would be willing to work on such an IP.

[martian]

Nightbird, on 19 August 2022 - 11:55 PM, said:

Not at all, a mid to largish dev would love to get a hold of a rich, detailed IP instead of developing it entirely from scratch like star citizen. The problem is the IP holders for BT/MW are fragmented thus you either can't buy it or it is grossly overpriced, and if you license it and make it a big success the IP owners benefit, not you the game dev, as the value of the IP goes up and the dev either gets charged more to continue using it... or gets their license not renewed.

It's a lose-lose for a competent game dev to license it - a dev confident in creating a major success - and only devs that want to benefit from the existing base but not confident in growing it would be willing to work on such an IP.

They heyday of BattleTech/MechWarrior was years ago.

As for the electronic rights ownership, MIcrosoft owns it and only licences it. Thus, it's only a licence or nothing.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 19 August 2022 - 11:55 PM, said:

Not at all, a mid to largish dev would love to get a hold of a rich, detailed IP instead of developing it entirely from scratch like star citizen. The problem is the IP holders for BT/MW are fragmented thus you either can't buy it or it is grossly overpriced, and if you license it and make it a big success the IP owners benefit, not you the game dev, as the value of the IP goes up and the dev either gets charged more to continue using it... or gets their license not renewed.

It's a lose-lose for a competent game dev to license it - a dev confident in creating a major success - and only devs that want to benefit from the existing base but not confident in growing it would be willing to work on such an IP.

I'd argue there is a hidden downside with purchasing over creating new IPs. Fanbase loyalty, it can be a dangerous thing as if you change to much to appeal to grow the IP you can also kill the initial base. For Battletech that's less of a problem since the community is rather small, but the bigger the IP the more you have to lose with your core fanbase by making changes to appeal to new crowds.

Hell, we have already seen this twice just with the Battletech community with Jihad/DA and Mechassault. How many Battletech fans keep wishing for a game before the Jihad/DA even though every Mechwarrior, Mechcommander, and the latest Battletech video game have all been set in that time period. All the people who have been playing this have been wanting nostalgia hits rather than wanting to see the game grow and change or even accepting really the latest timelines/eras.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 August 2022 - 09:54 AM.

[Nightbird]

martian, on 20 August 2022 - 08:42 AM, said:

They heyday of BattleTech/MechWarrior was years ago.

As for the electronic rights ownership, MIcrosoft owns it and only licences it. Thus, it's only a licence or nothing.

Do you really not remember the unseen mechs?

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 August 2022 - 09:50 AM, said:

I'd argue there is a hidden downside with purchasing over creating new IPs. Fanbase loyalty, it can be a dangerous thing as if you change to much to appeal to grow the IP you can also kill the initial base. For Battletech that's less of a problem since the community is rather small, but the bigger the IP the more you have to lose with your core fanbase by making changes to appeal to new crowds.

Hell, we have already seen this twice just with the Battletech community with Jihad/DA and Mechassault. How many Battletech fans keep wishing for a game before the Jihad/DA even though every Mechwarrior, Mechcommander, and the latest Battletech video game have all been set in that time period. All the people who have been playing this have been wanting nostalgia hits rather than wanting to see the game grow and change or even accepting really the latest timelines/eras.

It's all possible if you have a budget. Check out the tank/war ship games that have "tiers" for different eras. You don't need to limit yourself to one.

Imagine Star Citizen in BT style, jumping to a planet, entering the atmosphere, landing, and rolling out your mechs. All you need is 500 million dollars.

[Akamia Terizen]

As I said, a guy can dream. I seem to be one of the few people who would love to have my ideal BT game set in ilClan era, too. lol

Anyhow... The game's on borrowed time at the moment, but leaning into predatory monetization (arguably more than what is already there; YMMV, but my experience is that the monetization in this game is rather benign) might actually kill it faster than anything else.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 20 August 2022 - 02:13 PM, said:

It's all possible if you have a budget. Check out the tank/war ship games that have "tiers" for different eras. You don't need to limit yourself to one.

Those games also have mobile style mechanics at higher tiers where you effectively have to pay to play. IDK if segmenting the playerbase by era is a good idea especially as balance changes role through impacting them unnecessarily (not that they necessarily care about balance, but they hate when their toys get changed because of other modes if you will). I get that WoT/WT-esque games are popular, but so are plenty of crappy mobile games, that doesn't make it good design. However I do no paying to play certain eras would just be dumb.

Nightbird, on 20 August 2022 - 02:13 PM, said:

Imagine Star Citizen in BT style, jumping to a planet, entering the atmosphere, landing, and rolling out your mechs. All you need is 500 million dollars.

Did that even release yet?

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 20 August 2022 - 07:38 PM.

[Nightbird]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 20 August 2022 - 07:38 PM, said:

Those games also have mobile style mechanics at higher tiers where you effectively have to pay to play. IDK if segmenting the playerbase by era is a good idea especially as balance changes role through impacting them unnecessarily (not that they necessarily care about balance, but they hate when their toys get changed because of other modes if you will). I get that WoT/WT-esque games are popular, but so are plenty of crappy mobile games, that doesn't make it good design. However I do no paying to play certain eras would just be dumb.


Did that even release yet?

The payment scheme aside. it is possible to separate early and later era tech. You don't need to have X year picked for the tech base and force everyone to live with it.

Star Citizen is still in alpha, but when it comes to features and things to do, it is already a far larger game than MWO if you consider FP to be a central promise of this game that was never delivered.

Edited by Nightbird, 20 August 2022 - 09:02 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 20 August 2022 - 09:01 PM, said:

Star Citizen is still in alpha, but when it comes to features and things to do, it is already a far larger game than MWO if you consider FP to be a central promise of this game that was never delivered.

I never really considered FP to be central to this game and tbh I still think for most if not all games it is a fools errand. I'd much have a more robust shooter with options to play with matchmaking, public servers (so if you wanted to have a 24 hour terra therma server you could), and private servers.

Nightbird, on 20 August 2022 - 09:01 PM, said:

The payment scheme aside. it is possible to separate early and later era tech. You don't need to have X year picked for the tech base and force everyone to live with it.

You generally do if unless you want to make balance more complicated. If you don't care about balance outside of your premier era then sure I guess that's fine but that sounds sort of like a throw away feature. TBH I'd rather have short single player campaigns that dig into the historical eras rather than offering them to segregate the player base. Similar to how they have released Turning Point sourcebooks even as time goes on.

[Nightbird]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2022 - 12:03 AM, said:

I never really considered FP to be central to this game and tbh I still think for most if not all games it is a fools errand.

Here's the excerpt from the original MWO announcement: https://mwomercs.com...nline-announced

Band together and form your own Mercenary Corp, invite friends and battle other player-made Merc Corps for prestige and power. Pledge your allegiance to one of the five great houses and fight for control of precious Inner Sphere planets.

You will play a key role in a dynamic and ever-changing universe where player exploits impact the world around you and daily story updates and frequent content additions create epic changes to the Inner Sphere universe and its many inhabitants.

MW5 and Battletech both did well because it allows players to have a career in the BT universe, and MWO originally promised a multiplayer version of it but never delivered.

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2022 - 12:03 AM, said:

You generally do if unless you want to make balance more complicated. If you don't care about balance outside of your premier era then sure I guess that's fine but that sounds sort of like a throw away feature. TBH I'd rather have short single player campaigns that dig into the historical eras rather than offering them to segregate the player base. Similar to how they have released Turning Point sourcebooks even as time goes on.

With today's pop, sure, but during the MWO heyday when dev was actively occurring, we could had the pop to support a pre-clan invasion tech base (without XL, DHS, clan mechs, etc) and a post clan-invasion tech base. Maybe the pop today would have been different.

Of course, having a good Matchmaker and game mode design would have been important as well. MWO is actually very well done IMO, in art, graphics, hit reg, and only horribly designed game modes and MM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 21 August 2022 - 01:03 AM, said:

Here's the excerpt from the original MWO announcement: https://mwomercs.com...nline-announced

Band together and form your own Mercenary Corp, invite friends and battle other player-made Merc Corps for prestige and power. Pledge your allegiance to one of the five great houses and fight for control of precious Inner Sphere planets.

You will play a key role in a dynamic and ever-changing universe where player exploits impact the world around you and daily story updates and frequent content additions create epic changes to the Inner Sphere universe and its many inhabitants.

MW5 and Battletech both did well because it allows players to have a career in the BT universe, and MWO originally promised a multiplayer version of it but never delivered.

Oh I remember what this was announced with, but this game went years without FP and I think it would've been fine without it. The problem has just been without FP what's the endgame, how do you keep people in the game loop. For most games that aren't loot shooters like Destiny or have some other perspective, its really just eSports or new shinies. That and the thing that I think MWO has consistently struggled with, how do you build on the core combat? I've said this since the beginning but MWO's additions to the game are normally just nostalgia trips. The first thought is never "what role is missing from the game" or anything like that, it is "what are people wanting to pay money for" and we figure out the rest later. That lack of forethought is also what helps lend itself to the power creep we've seen over the years. Where suddenly the lack of hardpoints gets overcome and other mechs get left in the dust because PGI refuses to actually adjust hardpoints (ignoring the dynamic geometry piece, which I still feel like is more of an excuse than an actual reason).

Nightbird, on 21 August 2022 - 01:03 AM, said:

With today's pop, sure, but during the MWO heyday when dev was actively occurring, we could had the pop to support a pre-clan invasion tech base (without XL, DHS, clan mechs, etc) and a post clan-invasion tech base. Maybe the pop today would have been different.

Of course, having a good Matchmaker and game mode design would have been important as well. MWO is actually very well done IMO, in art, graphics, hit reg, and only horribly designed game modes and MM.

So the question is, when it came down to merging because of low population, which one gets the axe? Because IMO it wouldn't have encouraged higher population and by separating the playerbase it may have been just as likely to see population dip sooner because again, you split the playerbase so there is less for both to match.

I'd also disagree with everything but the art about MWO being well done, hit reg is definitely more decent than predecessors, but it's not near as robust as Overwatch is when it comes to projectiles. At least they got the core gameplay of Mechwarrior there, that's really the only reason I'm here, in misguided hope that they will fix their mistakes.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 21 August 2022 - 10:47 AM.

[Alstren]

Tyman4, on 19 August 2022 - 05:55 PM, said:

Like I said, more destructive to the "player base" than what? The astounding lack of players already in here? I'm in T3 and I regularly match with the same people day to day and I've only been reinstalled for like a week. What exactly are they missing out on? They cannot grow the game of playerbase to anything like it was 10 years ago by maintaining the same game. Especially with the unfixable or design components that aren't worth the time and money to fix. They need to move on to a new game. MWO2 or something.

I don't have to pay 1000$ for that. I can just drop in an assault, because the heat scalling is completely borked up. Shoutout, who remembers the 9 ppc direwolf!

Yes, I know, the rendering is an issue with the engine. They need to just move on.

Lol, nice to know idiots can diagnose my computer from across the world without even seeing anything. No dipstick, it's an upgraded computer in every component to what I used to run MWO on stably for WEEKS at a time. This is 100% due to the steam rework and patches. I literally never used to have this issue, and that was nearly a decade ago.

OMG...the forums never change. Ghost heat was stupid when it was launched and is still stupid today. Instead of punishing people for what appears to be a perfectly legitimate use of their hardpoints and tonnage, give them a reason not to so this. Easiest is to remove the insane weapon convergence (which again has been a problem from day 1.

Yeah, and no one would fly a P-51 into a modern combat zone. Duh. Why you think the table top has like 2-3 IS mechs per clan mech. A perfect chance to pit respawning IS mechs vs repairing clanners. Theres about 1000 ways people have posted to try and balance IS vs Clan without just nerfing clan or buffing IS. They just ignored them. This decision seriously degrades the actual immersion in Clan vs IS and a major part of the tone and feel of the games.

I want repair in the game because it gave people are reason to use cheaper equipment. If I am a new player and I want to bank C-bills to buy the mech I really want, then give me a cheapo mech where repair and rearm are minimal so I can maximize my gain. They used to have this. But people wanted to only drop their top tech atlas and drive it directly into 6 enemies without any repercussion. Again, give life to the actual mech stable you have.

Are you seriously going to bring a mouse and keyboard to a tank fight? a jet fight? Again, missing the point. Mechwarrior has never been and should never be fortnight.

The cockpit used to be one of the funnest things about old mechwarrior. Did you ever get to try one of those Pod cockpits they set up? It's like a driving chair for Forza. Honestly, I think they should go all out on VR with it. It would make an awesome simulator.

Sorry, no I meant VTOLs, tanks, infantry, elementals, aerospace fighters...all the rest of the combined arms of battletech.

[Nightbird]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 21 August 2022 - 10:33 AM, said:

So the question is, when it came down to merging because of low population, which one gets the axe? Because IMO it wouldn't have encouraged higher population and by separating the playerbase it may have been just as likely to see population dip sooner because again, you split the playerbase so there is less for both to match.

I would check out Crossout. Vehicles in that game has a Power Score, which is pretty similar to BT Battle Value. Matches are only made with others within a small range and AI is added as fodder when there isn't enough human players.

You may think, Crossout can do this because its player base is 4x larger than MWO, but with all the PS divisions, there are like 7 to 10 divisions that happen dynamically, so during low pop hours in the morning the games are launched with 4vs4 + bots. If MWO had similar AI development, then even today we could support two tech bases. (course it's impossible due to no software engineers but the argument I'm making is you can make it work and not sacrifice the early tech base part of the IP)

Lastly, Crossout's IP is basically vehicles with guns, Mad Max style. Compared with BT, they have nothing special yet they've polished their pvp and pve modes so much more, which results in a higher pop and more successful game.

Edited by Nightbird, 21 August 2022 - 07:18 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Nightbird, on 21 August 2022 - 06:54 PM, said:

I would check out Crossout. Vehicles in that game has a Power Score, which is pretty similar to BT Battle Value. Matches are only made with others within a small range and AI is added as fodder when there isn't enough human players.

You may think, Crossout can do this because its player base is 4x larger than MWO, but with all the PS divisions, there are like 7 to 10 divisions that happen dynamically, so during low pop hours in the morning the games are launched with 4vs4 + bots. If MWO had similar AI development, then even today we could support two tech bases. (course it's impossible due to no software engineers but the argument I'm making is you can make it work and not sacrifice the early tech base part of the IP)

If AI is involved, I guess that isn't terrible however I would still say especially if you are resource constrained, to focus on the main game and polish that up before you start looking at additional modes like that.

I'm not necessarily against adding modes for that, in fact I've thought it would be cool to have an approach to that just for the game's lifetime rather than specific eras (so if you wanted to go play in a private match with the Highlander, Phract, Shadow Hawk poptart era, you could, as an example). However the game's focus should definitely be on the main era/mode, especially if you are trying to drive into eSports like most arena shooters honestly should try to be driving at, even Mechwarrior.

Nightbird, on 21 August 2022 - 06:54 PM, said:

Lastly, Crossout's IP is basically vehicles with guns, Mad Max style. Compared with BT, they have nothing special yet they've polished their pvp and pve modes so much more, which results in a higher pop and more successful game.

You'll get no disagreement from me on this part. Polish in MWO is just severely lacking I would say in MWO and MW5. I'd say polish and just a scattershot approach really bit PGI early and unless you are ready to invest in correcting that trajectory you will end up with what you have now, a stale game not going anywhere. The UI is still kinda clunky and has trouble handling information overload or sometimes misleading information (heat management metric still isn't useful), the NPE is still bad because stock mechs are still a thing, there isn't discounts on old content like there imo should be (TF2 still in my mind did this the best), etc.

[PocketYoda]

martian, on 17 August 2022 - 06:04 AM, said:

Wut?

It was a joke.. kinda.. I still think it would be fun.

The issue with MWO is solely the developers. They aren't that interested. Too busy with their fingers in other pots..

Edited by Nomad Tech, 22 August 2022 - 05:32 PM.

[martian]

Nomad Tech, on 22 August 2022 - 05:30 PM, said:

It was a joke.. kinda.. I still think it would be fun.

The issue with MWO is solely the developers. They aren't that interested. Too busy with their fingers in other pots..

There are not many developers left in the PGI's MWO team.