9 replies to this topic

[Meatball]

One thing that's escaped many online game models is the concept of fighting over and holding territory. Dark Age of Camelot, Planetside and WWII Online tried it without much success. Eve Online did it somewhat well, but I think that any Battletech MMO will fail to build a great community without a good system in place to handle this.

You'll always get people who want to just jump in, "drive a big robot and blow some stuff up", but if you want a die hard community that will come back, month after month, you need to have the game set up so that joining a faction means something more than a different paint jobs and chat channels.

There needs to be battles over planets, or even locations on planets for resources, factories, etc. Read any Battletech novel and just about all of them revolve around epic battles across planets. If a faction wins a battle, they should have access to those resources/factories until someone else kicks them out. What's the point of a 'Universe at war' if the planets all reset once a week to defaults or there's no realistic rewards/consequences for attacking/defending locations? If that's the case, you'll see the player base drop off drastically after the initial few months rush into the game from long time BT fans.

Mekwars was a stab by some folks to do something along these lines using the Megmek client and it might be worth looking into.

So the big problem with this rears it's head when one faction has a lot more players than another and just swamps them. Well, a fix is that each location has a set amount of defenders and attackers that are allowed. If there's not enough players to fill out the slots on either side, then an AI handles the remaining units. If there's too many people only, then oh well, only the set amount of slots can be played by players, and everyone else has to wait for the next battle.

This has two benefits. First, it stops any one side from just swamping other side due to imbalances in faction populations. Second, it will have an indirect effect of balancing populations out across the factions, since if you're in a faction you always have to wait to get into battles, you're going to be looking to move to another faction pretty quick.

You could easily have a great crossover Real Time Strategy (RTS) and First Person Shooter (FPS) hit on your hands if you do this right.

Edited by Meatball, 01 November 2011 - 10:33 AM.

[Hallstatt]

Meatball, on 01 November 2011 - 10:32 AM, said:

So the big problem with this rears it's head when one faction has a lot more players than another and just swamps them. Well, a fix is that each location has a set amount of defenders and attackers that are allowed. If there's not enough players to fill out the slots on either side, then an AI handles the remaining units. If there's too many people only, then oh well, only the set amount of slots can be played by players, and everyone else has to wait for the next battle.

This has two benefits. First, it stops any one side from just swamping other side due to imbalances in faction populations. Second, it will have an indirect effect of balancing populations out across the factions, since if you're in a faction you always have to wait to get into battles, you're going to be looking to move to another faction pretty quick.

I aggree. Maybe the AI won't pilot only 'Mechs but we could also see some tanks and choppers, both to the attacking and defending armies. One way is to reduce each area that only one or two Lances can attack/defend. This could be because of resources produced in the area.

Let's say location A can be defended for 2 Lances (of 4 'Mechs each) because it only generates resource to mantain 2 Lances. But it also can only be attacked by 2 Lances, because the surrounding terrain has some anti-air blockade that makes impossible the droping of a large army.
Location B can be defended by 3 Lances (and can only be attacked by 2 Lances), but if you attack and conquer location C you cut B's resources, limiting it to the "standard" 2 DefLances.
Location D can only be attacked by 1 Lance if your Faction does not control location E. If you control E, you can attack D with 2 Lances.

There's plenty of room for making each territory unique and important to control.

[Meatball]

Exactly. I'll send the devs my copy of the original "Objective Raids" if they'd like it

Edited by Meatball, 01 November 2011 - 10:54 AM.

[SquareSphere]

It'll depend, if they players to drive story events and such, then I could see them including things like this. Otherwise it's going to be in the hands of 3rd party planetary leagues like all the iterations before (*cough* lead to fragmenting the player base *cough*)

[KuruptU4Fun]

The best game to actually implement a territorial war strategy was Chromehounds on the Xbox 360. That was quite successful in it's own right, though it would reset after a few weeks. I think you'd really need to seperate a PvP server and a storyline server in order to effectively implement that though.

[frostfly]

Meatball, on 01 November 2011 - 10:32 AM, said:

One thing that's escaped many online game models is the concept of fighting over and holding territory. Dark Age of Camelot, Planetside and WWII Online tried it without much success. Eve Online did it somewhat well, but I think that any Battletech MMO will fail to build a great community without a good system in place to handle this.
.

Putting Dark Age of camelot on this list is silly. The game was MASSIVELY successful for the time it was released. One of the first large MMOs. yes it wasn't as successful as WoW, but what is? It was one of the big boys of the market before WoW came along and remained in the top 10 for several years. DAoC servers are still online a decade after release. It's still the best PvP MMO ever made.

[Kumakichi]

Conquest of planets and territories is very desirable. MPBT3025 had it to where you could conquer territories and watch it on there map. Territories being defined by conquered planets. Several MW4 leagues had planets with industry, mech factories and resources. If that could be married into MWO it would really add to the immersion.

Judging by the ISN postings and the bits of info the dev's have given so far they seem to be thinking in this direction.

[UncleKulikov]

A RISK kind of game mode would be sweet. AI should control backup mechs, VTOLs, vehicles and turrets to ensure the total BV of all factions is equal, however deploying those assets is where things get interesting and dicey.

[Kudzu]

Meatball, on 01 November 2011 - 10:32 AM, said:

One thing that's escaped many online game models is the concept of fighting over and holding territory. Dark Age of Camelot, Planetside and WWII Online tried it without much success. Eve Online did it somewhat well, but I think that any Battletech MMO will fail to build a great community without a good system in place to handle this.

You'll always get people who want to just jump in, "drive a big robot and blow some stuff up", but if you want a die hard community that will come back, month after month, you need to have the game set up so that joining a faction means something more than a different paint jobs and chat channels.

There needs to be battles over planets, or even locations on planets for resources, factories, etc. Read any Battletech novel and just about all of them revolve around epic battles across planets. If a faction wins a battle, they should have access to those resources/factories until someone else kicks them out. What's the point of a 'Universe at war' if the planets all reset once a week to defaults or there's no realistic rewards/consequences for attacking/defending locations? If that's the case, you'll see the player base drop off drastically after the initial few months rush into the game from long time BT fans.

http://mwomercs.com/game
Read the last line of the community warfare section and rejoice.

[Creel]

Yeah, this "suggestion" has been stated as one of the core tenets of the game.

Devs mention that there 'will also be some deathmatch modes" as an afterthought when talking about gameplay.