InnerSphereNews, on 07 March 2012 - 11:03 AM, said:
Ok, first of all, AWESOME! It's almost as perfect as can be.
Things I really liked. No,
loved:
* General HUD looks and style. Great design, clean and simple.
* Ammo explosions from cook-off and damage. I'm a huge fan of all sorts of internal damage, so this is very good news for me to hear. I just hope people would have at least some freedom in choosing the location for ammo storage, or else it would be a bit too easy to know where to shoot to score an ammo explosion.
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BTW, while we are at it, I have a question: in TT, pilots have a chance to prevent an overheat-induced ammo explosion(gameplay-wise a saving throw is made). How this situation would be treated in MWO? Would a player have to react to a warning of sort and initiate a fire extinguishing system to deal with ammo bay fire(or maybe jettison ammo to, at least, save the mech from explosion)? Or maybe there would be a random chance of ammo exploding, depending on the heat level? Or is it purely "reach heat level X, your ammo explodes, period" and there would be no chance to prevent this, rather than keeping mech heat below some pre-determined level?
Personally, I'd prefer the first scenario(active response to the warning) as it's always a good when there are no "random chance" involved and player action can make a difference.
* Arm-torso aim separation and general idea of how aiming works. It is such an awesome idea to make it like that, words can't even start to describe how awesome it is(only something like
that probably can)! It's like MW3 control style met MW2 control style and they have a beautiful child.
* Convergence being non-instant. Great way to negate pinpoint accuracy of mech weapons without introducing of cone of fire or similar random-based gameplay elements.
* Cockpit monitors displaying
real relevant info!!!!!! Simply awesome! Ahem... Sorry, can't help myself here. I was waiting for this to happen for at least 10 years and now you're making it happen. You, sirs, have my eternal gratitude.
Now some minor things, that prevents all this from being completely perfect.
* No rear torso damage indicator in the damage readouts. Would there be no separate hitboxes for rear torso? I really hope it's not an intentional design decision but rather a lacking on the HUD part or just me missing something. Otherwise, it would be a really bad idea.
* It would be very useful to have weapon range indicators in weapon list, as described
here.
* 3rd level of target lock, specifically the "overall health display" part. I know, it seems like a prejudice but think this part is a bit too arcade. Mech is too complex to be evaluated like that. How less "health" a mech has if everything is undamaged, except for one severed leg? Or with cockpit trashed almost completely? Or only having moderate internal damage from overheating? Instead of such health bar, which not only would hardly be accurate in describing mech state but also would really ruin the mood, I'd rather had a simplified armour-only readout, i.e. per-section damage reported only in terms of "undamaged-damaged-gone" with no internals info whatsoever. Or, if this would seem too much for 3rd lvl, no damage info at all, till the 4th lvl lock. I really don't think this would be a problem, as I'm pretty sure we'll be able to know a lot about mech state simply by looking at it. With cryengine3 being itself, I expect weapons leaving distinguishable scars on the mech surface.
That's pretty much it. Everything else is done really, really great, bringing MWO very close to being
the best BT mech combat sim.