73 replies to this topic

[ScrapIron Prime]

TheCaptainJZ, on 14 February 2024 - 10:40 AM, said:

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.

Yeah, don't make it two different games. One system for everyone, carry the "decent trial mechs" idea forward into the new game so players can have a few competitive mechs without needing to be an expert theory-crafter.

And honestly, my wish list for the game includes a mech lab with hard point sizes. Small hardpoints, medium hardpoints, large hardpoints. No more taking the machine guns out of the Warhammer's side torsos and replacing one or both with an AC/20. That cuts a little of the crazy out of the mechlab and preserves a need for having lots of different chassis to choose from.

[v4skunk]

Frost_Byte, on 11 February 2024 - 09:43 PM, said:

While I'm sure everyone is excited at the prospect of a future PvP game(we at PGI are as well), we still have the hurdle of finishing the massive game we're currently working on first! Can't start thinking about the next masterpiece when you haven't finished the current one

We all have dreams on what comes after, but nothing concrete and ready to share yet.

But i'm already throwing money at my monitor but nothing is happening.

[Duke Falcon]

ScrapIron Prime, on 14 February 2024 - 05:28 PM, said:

And honestly, my wish list for the game includes a mech lab with hard point sizes. Small hardpoints, medium hardpoints, large hardpoints. No more taking the machine guns out of the Warhammer's side torsos and replacing one or both with an AC/20. That cuts a little of the crazy out of the mechlab and preserves a need for having lots of different chassis to choose from.

Actually that's a fine idea. It also evaluates why certain weapons are on the arms and not in a side torso where's just not enough space for them. Or use adaptive geometry for hit-boxes: If you put an AC20 in the warhammer's side torso increase that torso accordingly. A single AC20 needs more space than a few MGs. It may ruin the survivability a bit but hey, c'mon! We know this is how it should&would work!

[Magic Pain Glove]

Moadebe , please dont call this MWO 2.0 . There is a reason why Daeron didn't use that name in particular and instead of calling it MWO 2 said " next PvP mechwarrior title" and " MW next". Even in the post you linked. All this is doing is confusing a bunch of people that will result in people having expectations that game will essentially be the same just "updated" and I am almost 100% certain ( confirmed by PGI's own words ) that that will not be the case.

[feeWAIVER]

Magic Pain Glove, on 16 February 2024 - 07:59 AM, said:

Moadebe , please dont call this MWO 2.0 . There is a reason why Daeron didn't use that name in particular and instead of calling it MWO 2 said " next PvP mechwarrior title" and " MW next". Even in the post you linked. All this is doing is confusing a bunch of people that will result in people having expectations that game will essentially be the same just "updated" and I am almost 100% certain ( confirmed by PGI's own words ) that that will not be the case.

Yeah it's gonna gonna be a collectable trading card game.
Instead of tapping lands for mana, you tap heat.

[pbiggz]

feeWAIVER, on 16 February 2024 - 08:59 AM, said:

Yeah it's gonna gonna be a collectable trading card game.
Instead of tapping lands for mana, you tap heat.

I cast Force of Will.

[1453 R]

If I could make one request of an Ideal Perfect Successor to MWO, it would be to treat the tabletop designs/configurations as inspiration rather than Gospel. Many tabletop designs - including almost all Succession Wars-era designs - are almost entirely nonfunctional in a typical MechWarrior game. MW4 solved this by discarding the TT construction rules entirely in favor of their own system inspired by TT, making changes to the systems and weapons as needed to better fit the needs of a real-time combat game, and it was easily the best that MechWarrior's ever been. Piranha/MWO has painfully been learning as much of that lesson as it can, but it's still shackled to the tabletop construction tables and the general shape of the TT stats.

If Jordan Weisman can discard the TT rules and do his own riff on them to make his new game better, so can the next MechWarrior developer. Will 'Mech Dads shriek? yes. It's physically impossible to stop 'Mech Dads from shrieking. if the rules aren't exactly and precisely completely identical to the rules they learned as a teen in 1984, they will shriek. You cannot please 'Mech Dads, they are after an impossible dream. You don't need to go all the way to MechAssault, with giant chainsaws and LAMs you're supposed to take seriously and dudes with assault rifles outshooting BattleMechs, but you can do so much better than just cleaving to the exact format of the TT rules. Make it feel like BattleTech while making it an awesome game, and people will love it.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

1453 R, on 16 February 2024 - 11:07 AM, said:

MW4 solved this by discarding the TT construction rules entirely in favor of their own system inspired by TT, making changes to the systems and weapons as needed to better fit the needs of a real-time combat game, and it was easily the best that MechWarrior's ever been.

The only caveat I would say with learning from MW4 is round/match/battle pacing. Back then match timers were routinely somewhere between 30-60 minutes, and the first 5-10 minutes was often setting up camp in a strong position and trying to scout out the enemy position and then the next phase was just trying to force an engagement (which could take up the rest of the match timer). That's just too long for modern games, and it doesn't have anything to do with people having ADHD and everything to do with 5+ minutes of just walking simulator for the first phase of the map is just too long for it to be enjoyable. Honestly the current 15 minutes is probably too long, matches should probably be under 10 minutes. With the larger maps like Plexus, Polar, Forest, Alpine, etc just being condensed into much smaller maps.

[1453 R]

Oh yeah no, I wasn't talking about MW4 PvP. I never did much of that, only ever played very occasionally with friends. I more meant the way 'Mechs were built/configured/designed. MW4 introduced a bunch of new 'Mechs built ground-up for the game, and its adaptations of classics refreshed the designs and made them relevant on the same level as the new stuff.

Like, let's be real. The Inner Sphere Tech Tax should not be a thing in a competitive multiplayer game like MWO. It should NOT be the case that somebody buying and playing a stock JM6-DD in a match is playing a horribly undergunned, hyper-fragile deathtrap with zero redeeming qualities. The ONLY people who can pick up and play this game are longtime MechWarrior/BattleTech hands or the direct friends of those longtime hands, people who can be directly instructed how to not be stupid. There's no reason Ferro armor should be strictly inferior to Endo structure, no reason for out-of-engine core heat sinks to exist, and the whole STD/XL/LFE/cXL business is a giant obnoxious headache. There's no need for single small weapons like machine guns, small lasers, SRM-2s and the like to be completely useless despite being omnipresent on a huge percentage of 'Mechs.

There's no need for all this. The game can be better than this. The game can be made to actually make gorram sense to someone who isn't a twenty-year 'Mech nerd and still be BattleTech.

That's what I want. For an Ideal MechWarrior Game to dispense with the friffery and meaningless idiosyncracies of the tabletop game and drill down to what's important - giant stompy robots with frickin' lasers and missiles and tank guns blasting each other to bits for the glory/on the say-so of a bunch of hereditary oligarchs with five hundred year old beef.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

To be fair, IS was still disadvantaged in MW4 but it did feel less so because XLs on the IS side weren't absolute traps for mechs with large side torsos and heat dissipation wasn't so lopsided (IS had slightly less dissipation per heat sink in MW4 iirc), among other reasons.

Worth noting that whether due to technical restraints or actual design considerations, weapon, radar, and visual range all worked together cohesively in that game. Something this game eschewed for realism and it felt worse because of it and left us with radar (aka infotech) that just seemed hamfisted into the game because just visuals provided most of the info you really needed.

There is a lot game design-wise things that MW4 had and MWO seemed to just throw to the way side or ignore to try and relive the dreams of MW3 instead, if only to appease the mechdads/lore nerds that disliked/hated MW4 for the reasons you describe.

[Moadebe]

Magic Pain Glove, on 16 February 2024 - 07:59 AM, said:

Moadebe , please dont call this MWO 2.0 . There is a reason why Daeron didn't use that name in particular and instead of calling it MWO 2 said " next PvP mechwarrior title" and " MW next". Even in the post you linked. All this is doing is confusing a bunch of people that will result in people having expectations that game will essentially be the same just "updated" and I am almost 100% certain ( confirmed by PGI's own words ) that that will not be the case.

I see you

[KingCobra]

For all those that loved tabletop TRO gameplay its going to be MechCommander 3 PVP where battles could take hours in fabula's 8v8 tabletop action.

Well now that the beans are spilled I'm going back to play some ARK.

[LordNothing]

im still referring to it as "post clans mechwarrior pvp product", though i sometimes also call it things like "post clans mechwarrior pvp minimally viable product" and sometimes "aint never gonna happen".

[Ttly]

What I wouldn't do for actually functional arms and better mech articulation in general (return of the crouch for once).
Really, just let me move my Summoner arms around so it can shoot above a waist height building for starters on this hypothetical MWO2. So that arm hardpoints are actually a REAL consideration instead of just being a worse ST hardpoint.
I don't really care about melee though as I think it really would just encourage bad plays of humping the enemy vehicle and blocking your teammates from shooting them, but hey, some people would disagree.
Actual benefits for a mech having hands would be nice too, maybe they'd be able to climb better, do objectives better, etc. as lot of these "frills" on MWO are by most practical considerations strictly a downside otherwise (hands=bigger hitbox).
Maybe a TERRAIN HIT INDICATOR for weapons to indicate that some/all your weapons are going to hit a terrain too, that would be very nice.

That aside, how about a point based drop deck instead of tonnage as per post#44? Though I do have to disagree for some points regarding that post.
Tonnage is just a stupidly arbitrary way to balance a deck, an 80t Charger with small lasers (because the player wants to play it with its quirks) shouldn't be worth the same points as an 80t Awesome, it shouldn't even be worth the same amount as a 65t Crusader as it is, it should be balanced around "power level" rather than "tonnage".

The bit regarding hardpoint size at post#61 is rather interesting as well, though I'd have it so that specific hardpoint quirks are a thing rather than limiting what you can stick into them, you should be able to stick PPCs into a Warhammer's STs but you'd be missing out on even more quirks that are exclusive if they've been placed on the arms, etc. encourage people to actually place the guns on less than ideal mounts (because arm hardpoints are almost strictly inferior to ST hardpoints in this game) by making them perform even better on those mounts.

Well that's about it as far as stuff that hasn't already been mentioned that I have in mind, I particularly do strongly agree with 1453 R's rant on page 2 at post#31 and post#36, the 8v8 format with lower time to kill would be an improvement over 12v12 the game has as of now, that lore nerds should take a backseat and deal with the fact that they're playing a video game instead of a tabletop game.

Oh right, also a functional anticheat that isn't intrusive I guess.

Edited by Ttly, 21 February 2024 - 12:19 PM.