Buckminster, on 11 December 2012 - 02:06 PM, said:
I didn't mean to imply that Tolkein was one of the QQ'ers. If anything, he seems to be one of the few reasonable chaps here.
But I find that I'll play for a half hour or so, and be fairly happy with the game - win some, lose some; kill some and die some. And then I'll browse the forums at lunch and think I'm not playing the same game that some of these posters are playing.
I tell myself that this is a combination of my not fully understanding their inspiration (I never played any of the Mechwarrior games, I left when clan tech hit TT) and the difficulty in coding. I've done enough programming to know it's a major PITA. I also work under the theory that the developer team is a group of 20-30 people, so internal playtesting isn't going to catch everything - sometimes they will get it wrong, and sometimes you just need someone from the outside to say "hey, that's dumb". I'm sure the initial Artemis changes seemed dangerous but not too OP, until the beta testers started making 8 man LRM boat groups. The same with ECM (I remember one of the Devs talking about it on the K2 and how broken it was - *shudder*).
I don't envy the developers. Battletech is an iconic franchise, and everyone has their idea of how it "should be". Some people think that ECM should be that powerful. Some people think Artemis should be that powerful. Some people think that we should only have tier 1 tech. And the people on the dev team are a sampling of some of those people - you probably wouldn't sign on to make MWO if you didn't love Battletech. And I figure some of the people that signed on are the very same people that thought there wasn't enough ECM in the game. It's our job to keep them in check, but not with demands for refunds every time we don't like something.
I do not envy the dev's their task, and worry that they are biting off a very very big piece of work with this game.
I played tabletop through clan and into a little bit of maximum tech but generally didn't like it. I have done enough coding to know that there are probably practical considerations guiding things towards or away from certain solutions.
I remember back in 2001 there was a game called Multiplayer Battletech 3025 (MPBT:3025). It died in development but took some very hard line approaches to certain issues, that the brave devs of this game are trying to handle with role warfare.
1) Mech customization - there was none. You could only buy stock variants of mechs, and only certain variants of each. This obviously makes the lives of the devs easier since you have only certain combinations to worry about, and it was easier on the players since you didn't have to futz around in a bewildering mechlab. I love customization but it alone probably doubles the workload of the devs, both in up front mechlab implementation and in back end balancing issues like we are seeing now.
2) Mech tech level - there was only old tech, and only that that was available readily in 3025. No endo steel, no ferro fibrous, no double heatsinks, no case, no ER anything, no ultra anything, no pulse anything, no streak anything. Since balance complexity rises quickly with each system added, it's easy to see why keeping it simple can lead to a more intuitive game for players and a much easier balance job for devs.
3) Weapons acted almost exactly as they did on tabletop. A successful launch with the LRM meant you were going to hit the enemy. Were they OP? Far from it since they didn't do too much damage. There were even rear mounted weapons on some mechs - I think it was a 70 ton grasshopper that I killed in a centurion (maybe?) that had a rear mounted medium laser. He had blown both of my legs off (which does not kill you), and my teammate drew him into my firing arc
4) Mech tonnage classes - the entire game was about taking and holding worlds for your side. When you were on the periphery of a territory you could only drop in light mechs. Mediums and lights were allowed on internal territorial worlds, while heavies were allowed on district capitals. Only homeworlds and planets one jump away from homeworlds were able to support assault mechs. This meant that assault mechs were the gods of the battlefield but could only be fielded in very specific engagements, and likewise light mechs were always needed for control of the borders. You had to know how to use each and every class of mech.
5) Teamwork was required - It was 4v4 lances, so every single player on your team was critical. This was back in the day before voice chat on the internet was common, so 3 of my friends and I would set up a telephone conference call to coordinate, and loved setting up ambushes. I would hide behind a building in my tiny urbanmech (AC20, 35 tons I think, only moved at 30kph) and wait for my teammates to draw out the enemy lance. Once I could see a back or two, I would prove the worth of the trashcan. Unfortunately due to role warfare making lights exclusively fast scouts, this sort of paradigm changing mech can't live in MWO.
6) Economy - there was no tragedy of the commons due to reload and rearm expenses (the tragedy being that the individual is better served by minimizing their repair bills rather than by maximizing their effectiveness). Your house covered your expenses and if you helped your house take a planet everyone in the house benefited from the higher economic output.
I'm sure time and whiskey are making me idealize MPBT3025 (graphics were of course fugley by comparison) but thinking back to it reminds me of exactly how much the devs of this game are trying to get done, and I worry that they have made many choices that will make their job even harder.
Edited by Tolkien, 11 December 2012 - 02:34 PM.
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