73 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

A strong PVP Mechwarrior title needs two things. First, you must be able to play it solo without being at a disadvantage. Second, there must be a strong reason for team play and units.

MWO's players started drifting away when the newness of the game wore off and when faction play fell apart. To even dream about that EVE Online or WoW kind of longevity, missions, factions, and different game styles all have to work... that means functional scouting, scenarios OTHER than "Kill everything" or "Capture the flag", and a REASON to be on a team.

They worked out melee and PVE enemies like tanks and choppers in MW5, that's all great. START there, add PVP, and then focus on things for everyone to DO in the game other than shoot things. Without that it won't have staying power.

[SolCrusher]

My only ask would be real support for flight sticks, throttles, and pedals!

[kalashnikity]

ScrapIron Prime, on 12 February 2024 - 05:21 PM, said:

A strong PVP Mechwarrior title needs two things. First, you must be able to play it solo without being at a disadvantage. Second, there must be a strong reason for team play and units.

MWO's players started drifting away when the newness of the game wore off and when faction play fell apart. To even dream about that EVE Online or WoW kind of longevity, missions, factions, and different game styles all have to work... that means functional scouting, scenarios OTHER than "Kill everything" or "Capture the flag", and a REASON to be on a team.

They worked out melee and PVE enemies like tanks and choppers in MW5, that's all great. START there, add PVP, and then focus on things for everyone to DO in the game other than shoot things. Without that it won't have staying power.

^^^

Ideas like this have been posted many time, I know they have, because I posted them several times over the years.

Shooter arena maps are not the only future of this game.

We need world PVP size maps.

YEs, World of Warcraft style Massive Multiplayer Online PVP.

And add some NPCs and AI MOBs, to fill in the maps.

Add in some real time drop ships to move between worlds.

Epic.

Stop Thinking Small.

[CanadianCyrus]

I would like to see a Points system considered for the overall game. Not copied 1:1 from BT but a system that allows you to spend your point cap on mechs ---> their builds ---> then additives. Assault mechs costing more points and it scaling down the lower in tonnage you go, you can theoretically bring more than 1 mech per QP match depending on your point spread.

Then there's builds, maybe to open up build/weapon restrictions, ghost heat is removed in favor of ever scaling points cost the more you stack certain weapon types. You can bring that quad UAC10 KDK3 with no ghost heat, however a build like that will incure a huge points cost and will likely be all that you can bring into the match with no bonuses.

Then there's additives, bringing an Omnimech? spend some points to bring in a group of Elementals on your mech at match start. Running a light? Bring in your own Artillery that follows your commands (can be tracked down and killed by opfor) and they fire on your tagged/narc'd target, or actual recharging air strikes that requires the opfor to shoot down your air fighters to remove them. Brought more than 1 mech? Spend points to spawn your 2nd mech inside a building closer to the action to get the jump on the action. Or spend points on certain skill packages, want close range knife fighter light? Knife fighter perk gives cooldown and bonus armor perks, etc. Want better scouting/info, then scouting package gives a slow lock over time as long as you have their dorito selected (again speed increased by lowered distance and TAG/Narc) allowing your artillery to (eventually) fire without needing to hold TAG, with maybe further narc quirks that we see on Raven,etc. Stuff like that.

The points allowing you to bring 1 decked out build with proven firepower in MWO, or a handful of mechs or a mech specialized in various forms of combat. Obviously balancing the points system will be a huge undertaking, but allowing this much variety with what you can bring into a QP game would be an interesting take and might in turn make balancing from an individual mech basis much easier when an overall points system is considered.

ALSO, please allow mechs to raise their arms to fire over obstacles, some mechs would look weird doing it and maybe only allow a little bit of raised arm (looking at you Warhammer), but most mechs with humanoid type arms should be able to straighten their arms to shoot.

Edited by CanadianCyrus, 12 February 2024 - 06:02 PM.

[Void Angel]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 12 February 2024 - 04:57 PM, said:

I mean you can say that taking planets is somehow different from what EvE has, but having played in a 3rd party planetary league that functioned much like people envisioned for FW, it very much was about spreadsheets. Figuring out what planets you needed to garrison and what with, investing in "industry" to increase your income from the planets you held, producing mechs and buying factories to produce more, building jumpships. Doing raids in-place of scrims for friendly low risk fun, doing bigger raids to prepare for the big planetary assaults that allowed you to take planets from people. Even for TT/Megamek people have tried to accomplish a way to do that without locking people out of units and entirely different issues arise (some units attract worse players that anchor factions for example).

Now there might not be real world money on the line, but part of me actually doubts that a mechwarrior that went that route wouldn't eventually succumb to that sort of scheme just given the kind of people that EvE attracted anyway (I mean the promises of CW is what attracted Word of Lowtax back during Closed Beta for this game).

You're reading an unneccessary level of complexity into our hypothetical system. They could just make people sign up for a team and turn them loose; battles act as die rolls in matches, until a tug-of-war contest is won. There's a lot of stuff that we could envision that's not necessary: garrisons, drop decks, repair and rearm, the whole "kill/defend the generator" motif of Faction Warfare maps, deployment limitations and tonnage costs for more rewards... Some or all of it might be cool, but none of it is probably essential. Heck, you could either simulate the campaign with random target worlds, or let players decide in some way - the mechanical possibilities are endless, and while some of them are bad ideas, all of them are optional.

What we need out of the overgame is for it to be fun - even when you're losing - and to feel epic, like you said. Everything else is just framing. A board game design philosophy seems like a perfect fit for that.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Void Angel, on 12 February 2024 - 07:33 PM, said:

You're reading an unneccessary level of complexity into our hypothetical system. They could just make people sign up for a team and turn them loose; battles act as die rolls in matches, until a tug-of-war contest is won.

That feels very shallow, I mean it's fun for events but it isn't something that you will continually care about. Honestly it reminds of Alliance Battles from Guild Wars which was exactly that, a tug of war. Without something at stake, I don't think anyone will honestly care just like they didn't in the latter half of CW/FW/FP/whatever you want to call it.

For events like an event queue for a weekend, sounds great (again, I think the event queue was one of their best ideas), but something seasonal? Naw.

I guess I wouldn't be against them at least exploring, I just think they will find that it is just a resource sink to thread the needle.

Edited by Quicksilver Aberration, 12 February 2024 - 08:31 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Quicksilver Aberration, on 12 February 2024 - 10:55 AM, said:

This just seems like the invasion game modes with extra steps.

Sure. It's based off a game mode from another game and was only meant as a very rough outline. But a future mw pvp game is going to need something more than just static arena skirmish/ctf combat even if that might also be an option in the new game. No reason not to have at least some maps be pure pvp and not objective based. I think that might work out quite well. Kinda like how we used to have incursion mode but hopefully way better thought out and implemented.

[w0qj]

Founder with wallet open for MWO2

(I actually prefer to play more PvE, and a bit of PvP)

[Meep Meep]

I'd totally drop $100 on a crowd fund for the future mw pvp game if they ran it right and I think many more would too. Be right there to help open beta test like before.

[1453 R]

The reality is that as much as people around here find it fashionable to dump on Piranha day in and day out... they're the ones that've spent ten years teaching themselves how to make a MechWarrior game. Any other studio would be starting from scratch and we'd have to go through the whole painful learning curve of "how do we make the robits work?" all over again. Could another studio stick the landing? Sure. But they could also biff hard, whereas this studio has already painfully learned many of the ways to buff and can sidestep them. That experience isn't worth nothing, however much people like to meme on the company.

[Goedmaker]

I think long term their best option would be to release a MWO 2 in the same way as Counter Strike 2, where you have a big engine overhaul with some bugs and mechanics fixed up. Then you have a lot more room to expand content in the mechlab, faction play or other gamemodes, maps, community content, etc.

You really have to find a way to migrate most or all of MWO players' content into MWO 2 if you want to keep player confidence in the game. When they announced the skin carryover for CS2 the skin prices and purchases shot up because of that, and you don't want people hesitant to spend money because they feel their investment might not last. Even if it's not 1-to-1, at least giving players equivalent content or currency to continue where they left off from MWO would be enough.

My ideal sequel for MWO would be in a modern engine like MW5 with most/all of the MWO mechs, skins, and other player content carried over. So we could get new things like mech melee, mechlab improvements like MWO has been doing recently (with sensors, shields, gyros), and hopefully a few QOL changes like ditching the skill tree in favor of more mechlab customization, keeping the 10 engine heatsinks in the lighter engines, and possibly reworking ghost heat and weapon hardpoint system. With the new engine you could maybe have larger scale faction play matches with combined arms and more players which would be a lot of fun.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

I gonna say the same thing I said on discord about this very thing. Going the route of CS2 would be a terrible idea. The difference between the two is that CSGO was its player base was steadily growing when they probably started working on CS2. This game has a stagnant player base. Doing a complete migration to a new engine would be a waste of time because it isn't going to change much. Just because MW5 exists doesn't mean it will take significantly less time either because there's plenty in MWO that just isn't in MW5, the feel of mechs are also not quite the same.

Then there's the monetization scheme of MWO which has been rough from the start but definitely shows it's age these days. The game just shouldn't have been F2P, going the route of Valve games would be smart, where you only go F2P once your player growth stagnates a year or so after all the initial sales dry up.

[The Mech behind you]

I don't know if anyone already wrote something like this, but that MW-PvP game might also be like an online-pvp extention to a future MW6. An online pvp mode where MW6 might be the core game, and it builds up on that.

[Samziel]

An6ryMan69, on 12 February 2024 - 10:53 AM, said:

If it's going to be more than a small, niche game MWO 2 need to be like other full budget, full priced products.

- Public release is a finished product that does not need (not even close) monthly patches, or perk and quirk adjustments (don't even think about it).

Most "full budget" PVP games have monthly patches like we do now.

An6ryMan69, on 12 February 2024 - 10:53 AM, said:

- Public release is free from interference from any manner of interference by subgroups of players.

Said subgroup of players have balanced the game much better than PGI ever did.

An6ryMan69, on 12 February 2024 - 10:53 AM, said:

- Any additional content or occasional patches that comes out are always compatible with existing product and never downgrades existing product (nerfs).

No. Game should always be adjusted if needed. If a mech is clearly OP, its getting nerfed. Doesnt mean its bad afterwards.

An6ryMan69, on 12 February 2024 - 10:53 AM, said:

-Product is balanced for the general gaming public, most of which are not hardcore gamers and have little patience for steep learning curves, overly technical gameplay, overly competitive gameplay, or only being successful under certain circumstances.

This game is not that hard and the learning curves to reach T1 aint steep. All it requires is to focus on improving and watching some guides. And QP aint competitive to begin with and game is balanced around QP. If you simplify the game you just drive away the dedicated playerbase that has kept the game alive so far.

An6ryMan69, on 12 February 2024 - 10:53 AM, said:

- Game modes that match up solo vs solo, group vs group, and also match up skill levels.

- Map design that works well for all kinds of play; player selectable maps.

- Gameplay taking precedent over lore.

Hey some things I can agree on! Lore should never drive PVP balance. Soup queue is just a symptom of a low playerbase because no one wants to wait for 10 mins each drop.

Edited by Samziel, 13 February 2024 - 08:07 AM.

[feeWAIVER]

What if it's a LOTRO-style tab target MMORPG?

[torsie]

I was thinking about something serious and not just joke and I have one thing that I would probably like most, I have some other complaints but this one would be really cool.

Having some option to join or bring more mechs or some different way of choosing your mechs before match starts.

Something like drop deck and then you choose one mech to play with, or select 4 mechs, 1 from each category, and then it would pick one mech for you, maybe like now, when there is not enough mechs of specific type.

I would like to play more of my mechs, but since I can pick only one, it is easier and more fun for me to just take my most favourite mech and never play all those other ones.

I hope it makes sense.

Edited by torsie, 13 February 2024 - 10:01 AM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Meep Meep, on 13 February 2024 - 04:57 AM, said:

No reason not to have at least some maps be pure pvp and not objective based. I think that might work out quite well. Kinda like how we used to have incursion mode but hopefully way better thought out and implemented.

Any "destroy target" objectives that aren't the enemy team are going to have the same issues both incursion and invasion had (either ignored or rushed). This is why objective game modes in other games are about holding points/zones or pushing an indestructible cart, not to mention respawns.

1453 R, on 13 February 2024 - 05:53 AM, said:

The reality is that as much as people around here find it fashionable to dump on Piranha day in and day out... they're the ones that've spent ten years teaching themselves how to make a MechWarrior game. Any other studio would be starting from scratch and we'd have to go through the whole painful learning curve of "how do we make the robits work?" all over again. Could another studio stick the landing? Sure. But they could also biff hard, whereas this studio has already painfully learned many of the ways to buff and can sidestep them. That experience isn't worth nothing, however much people like to meme on the company.

I don't know about that, the question is whether PGI figured out a vision for what they want Mechwarrior to be and whether they really learned their lesson with MWO. MW5 didn't give me hope for that, here's hoping Clans makes me feel better about them doing a new PvP game.

[Cryorm]

w0qj, on 13 February 2024 - 05:21 AM, said:

Founder with wallet open for MWO2

(I actually prefer to play more PvE, and a bit of PvP)

Imagine this: Faction play, but with only a lance of 4 actual humans, and 12 AI. Per side. Each player gets to command a lance of appropriate composition, such as "1 assault, 1 heavy, 1 medium, 1 light", "2 assault 2 light", "2 heavy, 2 medium" stuff. What would make sense for canon. Make it so that Clans have a command star with two players, in an "Assault, heavy, 1 medium, 2 light" kind of configuration, an attack star with "two assault, one medium, two light" style, and a "three heavy, one medium, one light" style or something. Makes it easier to get games, and if your main mech goes down, just hotswap into a different mech. But no hotswapping while you're alive. Plus, if you aren't that good at the game, you can focus on hunting down the AI teammates for the enemy.

[Gasboy]

It's best not to think of it as MWO 2.0, but as the next PvP Mechwarrior.

[TheCaptainJZ]

I know people here diss on MechAssault but when it comes to a game with wider appeal, that would be the better direction to take as a studio. Wider audience, streamlined gameplay, easier to balance, console friendly, including Switch, or the successor to the Switch. MechAssault was moderately successful I believe and was the most popular game on xbox live until Halo 2 came out. It doesn't hold up as well today, but something in that vein with more depth without going full MWO-depth could be successful.

I know the mechlab is half the game, but maybe they could have a casual mode and a hardcore mode and split the matchmaking that way? But that's really just two different games catering to different audiences.

In any case, I think the next PvP MechWarrior game has to be different enough to justify even producing it. Something that is new and different is what drives sales.

In the end, I wouldn't be surprised if we get MW5: Clans Multiplayer as a DLC. It would make the most sense to build on what they already have.