61 replies to this topic

[Paladin1]

I like the idea of persistence, but only as long as you don't completely lose the `Mech. If you lose a leg or get the gyro shot out, no big deal but if you lose the CT completely, you need to start looking for a new ride.

Maybe you could have a secondary design saved or something, but there needs to be some kind of serious consequences for getting your *** shot off.

[Applejack]

I believe the missions shouldn't very often include a priority on destroying your opponents, only attaining an objective. From this POV, I'd be OK if when my 'Mech blew up, it was gone.

[TheForce]

How do you decide who gets to start with a heavy and who gets to start with a light? What if I want to pilot a medium and get stuck in an assault? What if I always wanted to be a scout, I get my light mech, but find out I really don't like it?

How about letting players create multiple characters and choosing the weight class of mech each character pilots? When it comes joining a lance to play games, put a tonnage cap on the lance, then decide which mech you're going to take into battle based on what other players are driving?

[armitage]

theforce, on 01 November 2011 - 05:25 PM, said:

How do you decide who gets to start with a heavy and who gets to start with a light? What if I want to pilot a medium and get stuck in an assault? What if I always wanted to be a scout, I get my light mech, but find out I really don't like it?

How about letting players create multiple characters and choosing the weight class of mech each character pilots? When it comes joining a lance to play games, put a tonnage cap on the lance, then decide which mech you're going to take into battle based on what other players are driving?

Being that its F2P I plan on doing this anyways,wether i have to make multiple accounts of its allowed on a single account. I want to be able to explore all my favorite mechs of every weight class to its full potential.

[Michael Fury]

Start out as a member of a house unit. When you earn enough money(And xp) you advance to buying your first mech, and putting yourself out there on the market for the mercs to hire.

Once in a Merc force, money goes to the Merc CEO. They pay out repairs to mechs. If too many of the Merc company loose mechs, then they don't have the money to buy new ones. If it gets bad enough, the disposessed head back to the house units to make their money.

To use an EVE analogy since I'm seeing SOO many references to it, The house units are the lvl 4 missions, and the Merc companies are the 0.0/lowsec/WH space corps/alliance's.

Folks may move between house units and Merc units throughout their career, just like people move too and from 0.0, from corp to corp.

This would allow some "PVE" in that you could see House units vs House units, where the penalties are lowered, in that if you loose your mech in HvH combat, your regiment replaces it for you. You just earn your "pay" which will allow you to earn enough to buy a new mech.

Hell, we could even see a Solaris option, where you go and fight in the games and win prize money towards new mechs.

[Helmer]

Very much along the lines of what I was thinking, and well written Michael Fury

Thumbs up to you sir.

[DoubleD]

UncleKulikov, on 01 November 2011 - 02:53 PM, said:

I want persistent battlemechs. It builds that attachment, and Battlemechs are expensive as ****. They shouldn't just be disposable tin cans you wear out on to the field; you should be able to name them and things like that.

To make a familiar mech more valuable, you could have 2 ratings for characters:
Overall experience, which makes them better at all mechs
and
Mech specific experience, which improves your abilities in a specific mech the more you use it.

Retrofitting would reduce that experience (slightly), since you need to learn the new configurations and the like, and each configuration would have it's own experience level. So if you swap out your PPC for a SRM, it would take a bit for you to get the hang of the new weapon. But if you traded it for a Large laser, the negative impact would be smaller for the reduced difference in weapons.

Damage should take time to repair, depending on the severity. Mechs would be repaired and rearmed for free, but take time. Paying can speed it up, but it still takes time to get a mech back into combat.

In terms of ejecting, it should be to prevent you from dying rather than saving your mech. If you eject, it really should be only if the mech is almost completely destroyed (in the tabletop, pilots could die when ejecting). It should have a benefit, but preserve the character's experience instead of the mech's integrity.

This sounds pretty close to what I would like.

[AJC]

It needs to be a balance of not totally punishing you for dying but not being a slap on the wrist for dying.


that said without more solid info on how things will be going about we can only speculate really.

[Space Captain Zor]

One thing that makes this topic hard to theorize on is that we don't know what differences the devs have in mind for House membership gameplay vs mercenary corp gameplay. Are they the same? Is one PVE and the other PVP? Are they each a combination of both?

For theory's sake, lets say:
House membership = core pve gameplay, general (open) pvp (ie. you're sent on military-commanded missions). That being the case, I would think most of the Mechs you'd fight in should be issued to you. Thus, if you dump one in combat, your House military will issue you a new one. If we are allowed to make modifications to these Mechs, then I'd expect a death penalty on the cost of repairing or replacing those modifications depending on how badly each system was damaged. Maybe a dice roll to randomly pick parts that can be repaired versus completely lost? I think any such Mech should be open for customizing certain aspects like nose art, and naming, but color schemes should remain canon to House military units.

Again, for the sake of theory:
Let's then say you join a Mercenary Unit. Maybe this will be the core (ranked?) PVP gameplay? Would a single Mechwarrior character have the option to join a MU or House? Both at the same time? Strictly one or the other? Is there a path to switch between them?

Meanwhile, back to Merceary Mechs... If I were to guess that this would be your PVP machine, I think this is where all the fabulous customization would come in. I also think it should be the most lucrative gameplay because of that. The stakes are high, the rewards are high, and if you are taken down in battle, perhaps your loss should equate to the risk? Those that PVP with Merc units may have an easier avenue to the funds needed to readily replace those Mechs lost in high-stakes battles.

[Tyra]

theforce, on 01 November 2011 - 05:25 PM, said:

How do you decide who gets to start with a heavy and who gets to start with a light? What if I want to pilot a medium and get stuck in an assault? What if I always wanted to be a scout, I get my light mech, but find out I really don't like it?

How about letting players create multiple characters and choosing the weight class of mech each character pilots? When it comes joining a lance to play games, put a tonnage cap on the lance, then decide which mech you're going to take into battle based on what other players are driving?

^^^^^ This.

[Dymlos2003]

helmer, on 01 November 2011 - 04:35 PM, said:

It's a free to play game , so I am sure they are working on micro transactions.

Limiting the number of missions/contracts you can run in a 24hour period , the types of contracts , how quickly your mechs get repaired , wether or not you have the ability to configure your mech , etc etc ..

That being said I'd love to see a deep salvaging system as well as a robust mission/contract system.

Persistent damage would be nice . Losing most of your cash on a highly configed mech might relegate you to boring Patrol or Garrison missions for the military for awhile ....

The limiting of playing time is a facebook game thing not a F2P design...

[Dmitri Valenov]

DrHat, on 01 November 2011 - 02:11 PM, said:

My opinion: Your mech asplodez, your mech is gone..simple as that. Then depending on which side wins, they get to salvage the remains of the mech wreck, but you should never get the mech back.

This guy has it right. If you get blasted to pieces you should have to buy a new 'Mech. Period.

[frostfly]

Pirates of the burning sea got it right imo. You could build or buy any number of ships (max of 3 acutally as ships I beleive) but if you lost all your ships you got a "fallback" ship. something about right for your level, but a bit weaker then a player built ship of the same type. Good enough to run a few quests or do some trading but not a frontline combat machine.

When you get shot outta your mech the winning team gets to salvage it. and hopefully that means the repairs system and salvage system will be fairly details. Yes I think you should have to stock enough repair parts when you are running missions. If you don't have the armor to patch the holes you better hope you can get some salvage.

[Necropolis]

Heres the thing, if everyone never really truly loses their mechs, then there is no reason to have a market for mechs. Everyone will eventually home in on whichever is best, and to make matters worse..everyone will eventually have everything they could possibly need in terms of mechs and equipment and money..result? A stale game that won't last very long.

The point is, I agree with the people who said that there is a low-end mech that you can utilize if you lose your mech, but by george if you lose your mech, its lost! gone! kaput! destroyed! Time to haul your pretty behind to the mech market and shop for a new hull. Maybe though, if you're lucky and your team wins the overall fight, you get to salvage the remains of your mech and perhaps get a few armor plates back, some guns, some ammo and so forth..but the effin' mech is destroyed, end of story.

It simply does not follow that because you can lose your mech completely, that it seizes to be a game or fun..part of fun is taking risks and reaping the worthwhile and great benefits of a risk that went well, but also feeling the downs of risks turned sour...its all part of the experience and it all adds up to fun, and never mind all that..it also means there would be a need for people building mechs...people transporting building parts/material..people harvesting these things and so on...it all adds to the cycle and makes for a greater, more expanded and thorough experience - Don't be so narrow minded as to regard this whole thing as fighting, and nothing else, because such a thing won't last imho.

Edited by Necropolis, 01 November 2011 - 11:30 PM.

[Raj]

World of Tanks has a decent take on this and from the look of the posts It's worth explaining.

When you start fresh in WoT you get a light tank free. With that light tank you build up your funds and choose a tech tree to put experience into (i.e. you expend experience to learn how to operate heavy tanks or tank destoryers). The first tier of matchmaking is all light tanks and you can get a kill in even the freebie, unmodified tank. After a battle you need to repair and resupply your ammo (though I believe ammo is free for the starter tank). Your tank always persists, though you can't use if after a bad battle unless you expend funds to fix it.

Now with MWO I would like to see this system expanded. We know from the dev interview that you can win parts as salvage after a battle, it would be nice if winning meant the cost of repairs and resupply were reduced or perhaps you could sell that enemy arm, or weapon to buy something you want. Maybe you could just hang onto the parts and build a new mech piecemeal. There's lots of possibilities but customization is the fun bit (and the moneymaker for a f2p game anyway).

Edited by raj, 01 November 2011 - 11:31 PM.

[Woodstock]

Generally speaking I'm an advocate for 'Die mech die' Zero tolerance steep learning curves etc etc.

However the Battletech IP is VERY heavily grounded in the concept of salvaging junked mechs.

So my suggestion is this. To the Victor goes the spoils.

If your mech is killed during a fight, but your team goes on to win the fight, then you can salvage your mech. But if your side loses, then the Enemy gets to salvage your mech.

This would make people work as a team and really think long term. Ie I can sacrifice myself now to gain a victory in the long run. But would also stop people just charging the enemy and being idiots.

The down side to this is the possibility that it might encourage camping ... which though a decent real world tactic ...is not so fun in the game environment.

To counter this there would need to be strong mission objectives in every battle that prevent camping as a viable tactic.

Woodstock (Rik)

[Skoll]

I think there should be a persistent damage module that would cost C-bills to repair, but not so much actual time unless it'd be no more than a half hour so you don't have to wait to get back into the game.

As for salvage, I personally think that salvage should only be available if a battle is a complete rout, as to not make everyone Dispossessed simply for being on the losing side. It's a complex issue though and I'm sure there will be a consistent and balanced approach to it.

[Zachary]

Perhaps, after a match, the team that wins is able to salvage first, but is only able to salvage a certain amount. (Isn't this the way it was in Mechwarrior 3?) Then, after they have chosen their salvage, the losers can salvage whatevers left over.

I also think that damage should be persistant. Repairs should be paid for, as well as refits. If you don't want to pay for repairs, feel free to drop into a match with your one armed Atlas. Mechs should also be lost when destroyed, whereas pilot death would cause loss of experience. (Ejecting saving experience, of course.)

It'd mean that there is no point you have nothing to spend money on, but also mean that you'll have to work together, and perhaps pick your fights carefully. But you know, this is just my opinion.

[Quick]

Most peoples comments are spot on.

While total loss sounds good to some, it would be very bad for the game. Imagine spending a week grinding out a new assault mech + loadout only to lose it to an LRM salvo you never saw coming in your first battle. No faster way then to have mass player quits. Remember, we need the casuals around to give us people to pew pew at. They wont if they lose the stuff we keep blowing up.

I could see retention of your chassis and a portion to all (depending on damage suffered) of your equipment/weapons/armor lost.

[flessar]

Kill mails!