64 replies to this topic

[Meep Meep]

TheCaptainJZ, on 08 September 2023 - 04:24 PM, said:

MWO2 is not going to happen.

It's just not realistic to think it would. It would take years to develop even with reusing assets. They'd need a larger staff to maintain it compared to MW5, a single player title. They know player counts would be low and most players will not fork over the cash they did for MWO because they did that already and there's not this large incoming generation of Battletech fans or anything. It would have to be significantly new and different, not just a reskinned MWO. The social and immersion aspects are probably the linchpins of success and that never really materialized here and I don't think it can without some darn good development and some critical mass number of players. They'd have to shut down MWO for sure and only grant a few things, not a full transfer because they'd have to sell mechs again. I'm doubtful they could find anything else meaningful enough to sell besides mechs and camo for them.

Russ was very skeptical in the interview earlier this year about a potential MWO2 It's obvious he doesn't see much potential in the idea, unless a mass of players can convince him otherwise, and that's not going to happen. Besides, he already said they're developing another Mechwarrior title. It didn't seem like he was talking about a DLC, but did say they'd announce it starting about this time in the year. Probably going to be MW6 but with the Clans this time. MW5 has worked pretty well for them, so of course it makes sense they'd copy the success there. I'm sure it's much less headache to maintain.

But thats the thing 'mwo2' doesn't have to be a brand new game with new mechanics etc etc. It could be a transfer of what we currently have minus some of the less popular things like the faction map but keep things that are popular like tournaments and events and the comp queue just so those who are organized have something to do. Streamline the game with what works and stick it in a new engine. Porting is very much easier than trying to make something up from scratch. Make a better mwo graphics wise with the destructive environments of mw5 and I think that it would be a no brainer exodus of players. Why stick the old engine when you could play on the new? Plus having the pvp game and single player game on the same or similar engine would make sharing future assets a breeze. This game has a pretty loyal base too so I could see some sort of crowdfunding if a concrete plan was laid out. As you said its possible if the players want it and are willing to back it. I'd drop a franklin on a crowd fund just like I did with the founders for the original launch.


edit; This is similar to what I am talking about. The entire game was banged out by basically one guy and some help over a few weeks or months by reusing the farcry engine and assets.



Do this for mwo. Take a new engine and toss what we currently have into it. That solves the migration of players problem because there will no longer be on old mwo just the new mwo. Everyone keeps their stuff etc though I think a stat and psr reset would be in order just so everyone can be properly sorted after years of people gaming the system with config tweaks and outright hax.

Edited by Meep Meep, 08 September 2023 - 04:51 PM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 04:32 PM, said:

But thats the thing 'mwo2' doesn't have to be a brand new game with new mechanics etc etc. It could be a transfer of what we currently have minus some of the less popular things like the faction map but keep things that are popular like tournaments and events and the comp queue just so those who are organized have something to do. Streamline the game with what works and stick it in a new engine. Porting is very much easier than trying to make something up from scratch. Make a better mwo graphics wise with the destructive environments of mw5 and I think that it would be a no brainer exodus of players. Why stick the old engine when you could play on the new? Plus having the pvp game and single player game on the same or similar engine would make sharing future assets a breeze. This game has a pretty loyal base too so I could see some sort of crowdfunding if a concrete plan was laid out. As you said its possible if the players want it and are willing to back it. I'd drop a franklin on a crowd fund just like I did with the founders for the original launch.

I'd love to see this on Unreal too, but I think you're underestimating how much effort that would be. As I understand it, they'd have to create their own netcode again. It's not just a game engine problem. They'd also have to throw more people at maintaining the game but probably can't expect to greatly increase that number. As it is, MWO only makes enough money to support a couple employees. That's unlikely to change unless there's a lot more players paying something. And they're unlikely to do that unless the game is different or bigger than it is today.

[feeWAIVER]

TheCaptainJZ, on 08 September 2023 - 04:24 PM, said:

MWO2 is not going to happen.

It's just not realistic to think it would.

MWO2 is going to happen.

It's just not realistic to think it wouldn't.

Russ was playing it down because he doesn't want a competitor to get any ideas before he can renew the contracts.

[Meep Meep]

TheCaptainJZ, on 08 September 2023 - 04:44 PM, said:

I'd love to see this on Unreal too, but I think you're underestimating how much effort that would be. As I understand it, they'd have to create their own netcode again. It's not just a game engine problem. They'd also have to throw more people at maintaining the game but probably can't expect to greatly increase that number. As it is, MWO only makes enough money to support a couple employees. That's unlikely to change unless there's a lot more players paying something. And they're unlikely to do that unless the game is different or bigger than it is today.

These are all easily solvable technical hurdles that a new engine would be specifically easy to develop for. The reason nothing new is done with the old engine is that its hopelessly jury rigged on multiple levels trying to wedge in functions it was never designed to do. Thats why we have odd hit registry and physics bugs to this day. I think they did a great job given what they had to work with. Now imagine doing this on an engine that doesn't need to be jury rigged to work and its a straightforward job of writing code to accomplish what functions you want. Game engines have evovled incredibly since the version of cryengine this game uses came out. What was hard work to impliment back then is more or less industry standard now. Thats why you see so many indie devs coming out with massively multiplayer games with huge numbers of players in a given match. writing new net code for this game should be waaay easier than it used to be. Oh and someone managed to mod in a pvp mode into mw5 that was stable and even allowed for ai team mates. It was quickly squashed by updates that made future pvp mods very very hard to do. Why do that?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 04:32 PM, said:

But thats the thing 'mwo2' doesn't have to be a brand new game with new mechanics etc etc. It could be a transfer of what we currently have minus some of the less popular things like the faction map but keep things that are popular like tournaments and events and the comp queue just so those who are organized have something to do. Streamline the game with what works and stick it in a new engine. Porting is very much easier than trying to make something up from scratch.

Porting it over without any significant changes wouldn't be worth it. It isn't going to suddenly attract a new crowd to fork over money because the engine isn't the problem. I also agree with TheCaptainJZ, you are underselling how massive of an effort porting across engines are. It's pretty much rewriting your entire code base in a new language. Copy/pasta isn't going to help you, you might as well rebuild from scratch (minus assets which are easier to port over).

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 September 2023 - 05:33 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 05:30 PM, said:

Porting it over without any significant changes wouldn't be worth it. It isn't going to suddenly attract a new crowd to fork over money because the engine isn't the problem.

What significant changes do you want over what we have now?

[feeWAIVER]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 05:30 PM, said:

Porting it over without any significant changes wouldn't be worth it. It isn't going to suddenly attract a new crowd to fork over money because the engine isn't the problem. I also agree with TheCaptainJZ, you are underselling how massive of an effort porting across engines are. It's pretty much rewriting your entire code base in a new language. Copy/pasta isn't going to help you, you might as well rebuild from scratch (minus assets which are easier to port over).

Better graphics and destructable terrain in pvp would bring a lot of people in.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 05:30 PM, said:

Porting it over without any significant changes wouldn't be worth it. It isn't going to suddenly attract a new crowd to fork over money because the engine isn't the problem. I also agree with TheCaptainJZ, you are underselling how massive of an effort porting across engines are. It's pretty much rewriting your entire code base in a new language. Copy/pasta isn't going to help you, you might as well rebuild from scratch (minus assets which are easier to port over).

Mw5 already exists with all the code for pew pew you could need. It just needs a netcode upgrade for multiplayer which was already modded in then mysteriously squashed. I mean hell even the mechs are the same since they just port over mw5 mechs now for our 'new' mechs. This is not as huge an undertaking as some would have you think.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 05:32 PM, said:

What significant changes do you want over what we have now?

Foundational ones.

• Too many variants, no real thought for each mech on what their "identity" is or how that identity fits into teams
  
• No real cohesion of gameplay mechanics (for example sensors and visual were tied together in MW4 much better)
  
• Stock mechs contribute to the garbage NPE
  
• Customization/Experimentation are the lifeblood of the game, but the fact you have to pay for every piece of equipment and have to pay to switch between upgrades is still as counter-productive as it ever has been. I would trade lower c-bill payouts for removing the need for that. Along with the variants, this contributes to horrendous load times for the game because it has verify every thing down to the medium laser.
  
• The game didn't ignore TT enough, TT is a strategy game so units are not treated as equal and it shows in the build system. IE that is part of the problem with why some weapons are better on smaller mechs vs larger mechs and you can't really fix that without either creating different weapons for each weight class, or fixing the build system so that lights are crapped on for not having enough tonnage to pay ballistic tonnage taxes, or assaults having too little space to really make the most of pure energy loadouts most of the time.
  
• Infinite ammo, this one is weird, but ammo is effectively just a build tax. I'd rather weapons just have bumped up tonnages so you can't create gimmicky builds that might have 3 AC20s but only one ton of ammo, just so you can have infinite ammo. Ultimately you have to ask yourself what does ammo achieve in this game, how does it make the game interesting. And the answer is 90% of the time it doesn't even impact play, just how you build.
  
• Missiles feel awful and really need a complete rework
  
• A monetization scheme that doesn't solely rely on skirting P2W constantly (Legends have been pushing the boundary hardcore compared to heroes of the past) and doesn't feel scummy
  
• Better maps, seriously, the only really good one left is Mining Collective. A lot of the redesigns have made maps worse than their original designs (Caustic, Canyon, etc)
  
• Game modes that put objectives over pew pewing other players (assault, incursion, escort, etc). If people want a PvPvE fine, but probably best to keep that separate for people who want to play PvP. Objectives in PvP are just meant to force engagements, I just wish some maps were designed more with that in mind (specifically domination).
  
• etc, etc, there is a lot of core issues in this game and this is not meant as an exhaustive list

feeWAIVER, on 08 September 2023 - 05:35 PM, said:

Better graphics and destructable terrain in pvp would bring a lot of people in.

Maybe for a minute before people realize that's doesn't really impact any of the game's problems. It's a sugar high at best, much like melee in MW5.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 September 2023 - 06:06 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 05:45 PM, said:

Mw5 already exists with all the code for pew pew you could need. It just needs a netcode upgrade for multiplayer which was already modded in then mysteriously squashed. I mean hell even the mechs are the same since they just port over mw5 mechs now for our 'new' mechs. This is not as huge an undertaking as some would have you think.

MW5 isn't a port though, which is more what I'm arguing about. Could they port over MWO to MW5? Maybe, but MW5 also plays different, so its not like they copy/pastad code. I mean walking impacts your aim, JJs feel somehow worse, there is no charge-up mechanic afaik which makes me very sad so its not like they could copy pasta everything over. And yes that stuff does matter to people, just look at how much effort Valve is putting into CS:GO 2 which is doing exactly what we are talking about (and I doubt it is just a "port").

Honestly at that point it makes more sense for them to just add multiplayer to MW5 and make it completely separate.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 September 2023 - 06:00 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 05:58 PM, said:

MW5 isn't a port though, which is more what I'm arguing about. Could they port over MWO to MW5? Maybe, but MW5 also plays different, so its not like they copy/pastad code. I mean walking impacts your aim, JJs feel somehow worse, there is no charge-up mechanic afaik which makes me very sad so its not like they could copy pasta everything over. And yes that stuff does matter to people, just look at how much effort Valve is putting into CS:GO 2 which is doing exactly what we are talking about (and I doubt it is just a "port").

Honestly at that point it makes more sense for them to just add multiplayer to MW5 and make it completely separate.

All of that is modifiable though. Of course its going to take more than just a copy paste but the point is that its not going to take much more than a copy paste and rework of existing code to tweak to to be inline with a pvp game and not a pve game.

Balance is just text files after all.

As to the previous post you made listing out your changes yeah sure if the effort was being made to port the game over to a new engine then it would make sense to improve the aspects that were lacking in the original game due to engine limitations. There is much they wanted to do with this game but the engine simply wouldn't allow it. A new engine would solve all those issues especially with a crowd funding element to get the public to help brainstorm.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 06:05 PM, said:

All of that is modifiable though. Of course its going to take more than just a copy paste but the point is that its not going to take much more than a copy paste and rework of existing code to tweak to to be inline with a pvp game and not a pve game.

That wholly depends on whether the code was built with that expansion in mind or not, and I doubt it was judging from the MW5 editor. Then there is the fact you also have to untangle it from the MWO source code. Shouldn't be crazy, but I still feel like you undersell the endeavor.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 06:51 PM, said:

That wholly depends on whether the code was built with that expansion in mind or not, and I doubt it was judging from the MW5 editor. Then there is the fact you also have to untangle it from the MWO source code. Shouldn't be crazy, but I still feel like you undersell the endeavor.

If modders could make a stable pvp lobby and match out of mw5 with the limited access they have what do you think someone with full access to the editor and source code could do?

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 07:30 PM, said:

If modders could make a stable pvp lobby and match out of mw5 with the limited access they have what do you think someone with full access to the editor and source code could do?

Again, I'm not saying it isn't possible, I'm just saying you are underestimating the effort.

[Meep Meep]

I used to work in QA for CCP and Relic. I think I know my way around a project.. This isn't as huge an undertaking as people think. OF course it won't be as simple as copy pasting code over into a new engine but coding isn't that huge a deal in game creation IF the engine supports their goals. Art assets and the actual world building take up the absolute bulk of funding and time spent. You can bang out an entire game mechanics wise with placeholder graphics in a fairly short time with modern game engines. But filling that game in with the pretties is an entirely different beast. Well the pretties are all pre made just waiting to be injected into an engine that supports online arena combat.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 07:51 PM, said:

This isn't as huge an undertaking as people think. OF course it won't be as simple as copy pasting code over into a new engine but coding isn't that huge a deal in game creation IF the engine supports their goals

I work in coding, and people always underestimate the effort it takes to build not-spaghetti code. Building functionality is easy, writing in such a way that it supports easy additions down the road and doesn't turn in a tangled mess exactly like MWO was is harder.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Kalasa, on 08 September 2023 - 07:53 PM, said:

I work in coding, and people always underestimate the effort it takes to build not-spaghetti code. Building functionality is easy, writing in such a way that it supports easy additions down the road and doesn't turn in a tangled mess exactly like MWO was is harder.

But there would be no need to 'untangle' the code if you are not trying to reuse or expand on the current the engine? It would be a brand new engine without the limitations that made the jury rigging a necessity. They had to cram in their own netcode because the engine didn't support what they did. A new engine would have the core coding to bang out whatever netcode you need without the need for dubious hacks. Currently mw5 supports basically all the same combat mechanics as mwo minus the ability to play vs other players. Again that pvp mod proved that it can be added. So how hard would it be to expand on that via devs with core access? If modders can do it devs can do it. I think you underestimate their creativity. So in the end its going to be down to funding and I think that crowd funding just like they did with the original founders preorders would go a long way to leaping that hurdle.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 08:01 PM, said:

But there would be no need to 'untangle' the code if you are not trying to reuse or expand on the current the engine? It would be a brand new engine without the limitations that made the jury rigging a necessity. They had to cram in their own netcode because the engine didn't support what they did. A new engine would have the core coding to bang out whatever netcode you need without the need for dubious hacks. Currently mw5 supports basically all the same combat mechanics as mwo minus the ability to play vs other players. Again that pvp mod proved that it can be added. So how hard would it be to expand on that via devs with core access? If modders can do it devs can do it. I think you underestimate their creativity. So in the end its going to be down to funding and I think that crowd funding just like they did with the original founders preorders would go a long way to leaping that hurdle.

An engine works no different from a framework in coding except on a much larger scale (it has more in common with an OS in that regard). Unreal has a lot of stuff to make netcode simple built into it, or at least replication across clients/servers, it does not however have a lot of the "business" logic stuff (ie exact game mechanics, weapon behavior, etc, etc). It has a lot of stuff built into to make adding those easier (like the ability system, attributes, etc) but it does not mean just adding charge up or anything like that is magic the engine just supports. Weapons are also managed a bit different from standard FPS as well. From what I can tell, they did not make firing behavior an interface that you can just bring your own implementation to like you technically can with weapon cooldowns (something I've tinkered a bit with to test things out with). All weapons in MW5 are press trigger, fire something for some duration (even if that duration is one frame) and then go on cooldown. There is no charge up (MWO Gauss), there is no wind up (RACs), there is no energy to consume (think lasers but not fire and forget like MWO/MW5). All of that would have to either jammed into the existing weapon code and flex, or an these pieces would have to be teased out to interfaces that can then be backed by different implementations to enable changing behavior like that (which also requires flexing configuration for each weapon since each behavior might have different variables you can use to tune behaviors).

MW5 is not the same as MWO, there are some subtle differences that suggest they skipped some stuff. I wouldn't be shocked if they skipped Gauss charge for example just because its a single player game and there were a lot of people that hated the Gauss charge.

I'm also curious if Unreal's netcode handles latency similar to how HSR and Overwatch's equivalent works by default.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 September 2023 - 08:28 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Never said mw5 was the same. Obviously some core balance and mechanic changes would have to take place and new code specific to a pvp game written but ~again~ they are already starting from a well established code base along with nearly all the art and sound content pre created. Doing the rest is a measure of how much funding you want to toss at it and will it make a return on investment not that its hard to do.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 08 September 2023 - 08:31 PM, said:

Never said mw5 was the same. Obviously some core balance and mechanic changes would have to take place and new code specific to a pvp game written but ~again~ they are already starting from a well established code base along with nearly all the art and sound content pre created. Doing the rest is a measure of how much funding you want to toss at it and will it make a return on investment not that its hard to do.

Having a "well-established" code base doesn't mean anything if it wasn't built with that feature/functionality in mind (see feature creep). And yes, everything is "not hard" if you have endless resources to throw at the problem, but no one does so again, one does not "just" port code over (at least if you want a clean and maintainable code base).

Want to see an example of that, look no further than the mess that is Windows.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 08 September 2023 - 08:42 PM.