265 replies to this topic

[Gyric]

Lucifer Black, on 01 April 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

[...]My main problem with the fundamentalist lore disciples is that, if they get get their way, we're going to end up with a game that will be about as much fun as malaria and less interesting.
[...]
What do you think?

why would you think that? piranha chose the very beginning of clan invasion, because it is a time with very many changes to the so-saying "old IS-routine" before 3049.
the fact that the given lore prescribes certain events to happen doesn't mean that the developers and designers would not have enough space to put in an amount of previously unwritten events - bigger or minor ones - where we gamers are getting involved.
the battle of xyz, where you have to free the princess from the evil clown and stuff, you know what i mean...

imho a definite, more or less strict accordance to the canon would be desirable.

Edited by Gyric, 16 April 2012 - 09:14 AM.

[JadeTimberwolf]

There is much in the Lore that should not be messed with but that should not limit the players experience, maybe allow for lore to be changable most dates of battles or take overs. maybe even dates of mech releases to better improve player experiences.

[SilvaDraconis]

A galaxy of inhabitants, houses, units, people (canon) with a history and standards vs a few hundred thousand, maybe low millions, of players. Should our efforts affect local environments sure, should we be more effecting on the galaxy than all those other non-pc inhabitants. Maybe not.

I honestly don't want the next expansion based on Panda Republic's claim to some planets, which may or may not still exist by the time plot and code gets released. I'd much rather it be based on the actions of a House or Clan action which is part of a greater plot engagement to keep my interest and provide missions or goals. IE canon drives plot. Players react to plot.

[TeaL3af]

Paladin1, on 16 April 2012 - 09:03 AM, said:

Although I'm firmly in the "Lore is Law" camp, the only reason that I'm in that camp is due to the fact that if you're not following the canon, then you're not following Battletech. Take, for example, the idea of taking minor worlds instead of major worlds. While that sounds like a good idea, in that it would allow the players to influence the game directly, what happens when a player group takes a minor world that just so happens to produce a part needed for a certain type of `Mech?

For example, taking your idea of only capital worlds being unconquerable, what if a player group takes Hesperus II in the Lyran Commonwealth? Under your idea, it should be able to happen, but by doing so you've just reduced the LCAF's available `Mech designs by something like 40%. Do you really want to explain to other players why it's fair that they can't get an AS7-D Atlas as a Lyran because you were allowed to conquer their biggest manufacturing facility? A feat, I might add, that even all five regiments of Wolf's Dragoons couldn't manage, even with all their support assets, yet you expect me to believe that your single company of 12 `Mechs can do it?

The scale and the sheer interconnectedness of the Battletech Universe is what makes me so solidly against letting players have much in the way of a hand in changing canon events. Your 12 `Mechs are NOT going to change much, if anything, no matter how good you are in the cockpit. The BTU is just too large for your unit to have an impact upon.

1# No one said we should be able to take an entire planet with 12 mechs. Hundreds of players attacking the planet for a week, maybe.

2# I'm pretty sure the game could adapt to a change like loss of manufacturing capability, even if you abstract it. The devs already mentioned holding planets would net each faction certain bonuses, just give each planet a certain value in Production, Research etc. So if you lose a factory world, your faction produces mechs more slowly or something. It may not be 100% possible in-canon but I'm pretty sure if a faction lost the only world that could produce a component they would try to start producing it somewhere else.

Edited by TeaL3af, 16 April 2012 - 10:59 AM.

[Iovenn Clay]

My personal believe is that it could be quite a fun ride to see where it takes us when we leave the loreroad.

On the other hand just imagine 1.5 billion chinese people playing the Confederation. There are not enough Germans and French Davions to hold up to them.

Also can someome tell me who besides total suicidal people will play the Rasalhaguians when you already know that you precious and pretty new realm will be crushed soon?

Just a few thoughts for the road.

[Stormwolf]

How many people who voted are actually familiar with the lore pertaining to the current era?

I'm personally thinking that many are not familiar with the events as described in the Blood of Kerensky trilogy and related sourcebooks. The current era is significant in shaping the events that happen up until the Dark Age era nearly 90 years beyond the current MWO start date.

Do people even realise what the significance of the St. Ives Compact or Skye Rebellion and the territories they are bordering? A number of worlds can change hands, but it should not be possible to conquer all territories surrounding a house capital unless it makes sense storywise.

Wolcott is going to be owned by the Draconis Combine to strike at targets within Smoke Jaguar territory. It is far more important that the Draconis Combine got four Clan omnimechs and a number of battlearmors during this battle. These are important storywise because those machines would later be studied for the development of their own omni's and BA's.

Throwing this out for a dynamic map is a utter and complete waste.

Edited by Stormwolf, 16 April 2012 - 11:17 AM.

[Rear Admiral]

Like the salvage thread, some of you are extrapolating and wishing for things that simply arent going to be there.

There are thousands of planets in tht BT universe, and only a handful of them had major engagements on them. but there was still war/invasions going on on hundreds of other worlds that you never hear about. The devs already stated that tukayyid/luthien/etc arent going to be playable by us, they are going to be background events that drive the story and shifting tides of war forward. But we still take part in every war/invasion on the smaller planets where the 'lore' isnt specific.

There is absolutely no reason to disregard teh lore at all while still providing the overall experience of fighting SMALL SCALE battles in mechs.

i am perpetually confused why this and other similar arguments are always all or nothing to most of you. "LORE WILL RUIN THE GAME" or, "NOT STICKING TO LORE WILL RUING THE GAME." Jeez, people lighten up. This is one of those rare occurences where I think everybody will be happy. Want to stomp around and destroy your enemy and not worry one iota about the lore? That is being catered too. Want to join a house and fight for Victor Davion? You are being taken care of too, my friend.

At the end of the day, the lore is indeed what makes all the MW and BT games come to life and ignoring it completely would be akin to playing NFL football and ignoring the illustrious history the game has and its effects on the modern game. But I think the devs have made it pretty clear that other than a few minor worlds that nobody really gives a crap about changing hands, the lore and backstory will remain in the background and drive the story forward, which will drive the game forward. With no lore, where would the clans come from? With no lore, how would we know that we all at heart want to fight for FRR and drink and drive our mechs into combat?

the lore is essential, but it isnt going to intrude on our specific, individual battles against one another. It will be there, and the timeline will be adhered to, but when you're the last surving mech on your team and those 3 jenners are trying to encircle you, is the lore really gonna help you out?

Both sides of this argument are making mountains out of molehills, and as usual, the reality of the game will be somewhere between what the doomsayers of both side say is going to happen.


have a nice day

[Stone Profit]

Jack Gammel, on 15 April 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

I'm a history major, so you know...

But Battletech has an established lore. It exists whether people like it or not, and that lore has been around longer than some of the people of this forum have been alive. I doubt that not knowing Battletech fluff will hurt someone's gaming experience since the point of the game is giant fighting robots and there is a vast amount of grey room for MWO players to battle it out, win impressive battles, survive crushing defeats, and win honor and glory (and credits) from their respective factions without having a major effect on the universe itself, but maintaining the lore is a nod to the game's legacy and will help fans actually recognize it as Battletech.

But I would laugh if MWO established itself as an alternative reality where player actions changed future events. It would ******* hardcore battletech players, and I can just imagine the shenanigans which would follow.

As a history major, are you interested in the Civil War?(American). Theres a book in whivh Morgan Kell of the Kell Hounds and Jaime Wolf of Wolfs Dragoons fight a simulated battle of Gettysburg with mechs, quite fascinating imo.

[BerryChunks]

TeaL3af, on 16 April 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

1# No one said we should be able to take an entire planet with 12 mechs. Hundreds of players attacking the planet for a week, maybe.

2# I'm pretty sure the game could adapt to a change like loss of manufacturing capability, even if you abstract it. The devs already mentioned holding planets would net each faction certain bonuses, just give each planet a certain value in Production, Research etc. So if you lose a factory world, your faction produces mechs more slowly or something. It may not be 100% possible in-canon but I'm pretty sure if a faction lost the only world that could produce a component they would try to start producing it somewhere else.

the only problem with number 2 is that it doesn't really matter.

due to the fact that your mechs can never be destroyed, there is an infinite growth economy in place. It may be slow or curbed by C$ sinks, but it's still infinite growth, because you can't lose more than you make, and you can't take from others for yourself. Therefore the game will eventually reach full saturation at some point, at which time the mfg limitations become immaterial.

[UncleKulikov]

woodstock, on 01 April 2012 - 03:33 AM, said:

Too much hangs on the lore for us to mess with it. Mech releases, tech, political manoeuvring.

Also I don't want corps growing to the point where they eclipse the great houses. Ala BOB in EvE.

Finally I don't want the devs to have to crowbar changes in to drag the timeline back on track... or do world resets.

So I am more than happy for the world to stay on target. Lore should be the law.

For us to play out our game in the grey areas between and around the bright and shiny major events.

This is how it will have to be. And I'm okay with that.

[Paladin1]

TeaL3af, on 16 April 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

1# No one said we should be able to take an entire planet with 12 mechs. Hundreds of players attacking the planet for a week, maybe.

Try hundreds of players attacking non-stop for months on end, not just weeks. Outside of the Clan Invasion, no battle for a world in the BT Universe ever took place over anything less than two weeks and even those were instances where one side was incredibly out numbered. I still don't think you've got a good grip on the shear scale or magnitude of the events you're wanting to take place.

Quote

2# I'm pretty sure the game could adapt to a change like loss of manufacturing capability, even if you abstract it. The devs already mentioned holding planets would net each faction certain bonuses, just give each planet a certain value in Production, Research etc. So if you lose a factory world, your faction produces mechs more slowly or something. It may not be 100% possible in-canon but I'm pretty sure if a faction lost the only world that could produce a component they would try to start producing it somewhere else.

See, here's where your entire argument breaks down. If the Houses could have just started producing missing components anywhere when a valuable piece of equipment or structure went missing, THEY WOULD HAVE NEVER HAD THE TECHNOLOGY REGRESSION OF THE SUCCESSION WARS!

`Mech factories cannot just be rebuilt in another location, otherwise you'd see massive armies like you did during the height of the Star League era. Everything that works a certain way in canon works that way for a reason, you cannot just go changing bits and pieces of it because you want it to work that way without addressing the underlying reasons that led to the status quo being the status quo in the first place.

For example, do you want more lostech to pick from? Explain how it's in existence even after ComStar explicitly went after not only the manufacturing centers, but the engineers who understood how to build it during the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Succession Wars. Even with the discovery of the Grey Deth Memory core in 3028, lostech is still hard to come by and pricy, and even that's only available because ComStar bungled their attempt at destroying the Memory Core, along with the NAIS and the scientists who were studying it, during the 4th Succession War.

I can continue on, but I hope you get my point by now. The canon was established a certain way so as to explain why things are they way they are, not to keep people from having fun. Don't monkey around with the canon, you can easily break the game's immersion and after waiting for over a decade for this one, I don't want to take risks with anything that could mess up the game.

[RedDragon]

BerryChunks, on 16 April 2012 - 12:19 PM, said:

the only problem with number 2 is that it doesn't really matter.

due to the fact that your mechs can never be destroyed, there is an infinite growth economy in place. It may be slow or curbed by C$ sinks, but it's still infinite growth, because you can't lose more than you make, and you can't take from others for yourself. Therefore the game will eventually reach full saturation at some point, at which time the mfg limitations become immaterial.

I don't think this is how it will work. The player's mechs will most likely have nothing to do with the mechs that are moved on the interstellar map. Your unit may have 100 mechs that can attack a planet, even if it only has 4 players with one mech each. So if a faction loses a factory and can't produce any more mechs, the players may not be able to mount further assaults (although they still have all their mechs to chose from). At least that's the most logical way and that's also how EBTL for example handled it.

[Jack Gammel]

Stone Profit, on 16 April 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

As a history major, are you interested in the Civil War?(American). Theres a book in whivh Morgan Kell of the Kell Hounds and Jaime Wolf of Wolfs Dragoons fight a simulated battle of Gettysburg with mechs, quite fascinating imo.

My particular area of focus is European Colonialism, but of course I've studied the Civil War as well (I live in America right?). I was not aware that there was such a book. Sounds like it could be fun. I am a little curious about how one might go about realistically simulating 19th century warfare with giant fighting robots though.

[Tannhauser Gate]

Pretty sure there is no reason to fear that we will somehow be locked into fighting only canon battles with the results already determined by lore.. like Battletech Groundhog Day (movie).

Imo, canon will be the backdrop for our own personal or unit battles. Timeline will determine the factions, mechs, planet ownership, weapons and equipment but our battles will be contemporary with lore but not part of it or limited by it. Nor will our battles change it. I expect time will move 1:1 until PGI is ready to introduce the next chapter then it will jump ahead to the next big event in some way.

Edited by LakeDaemon, 16 April 2012 - 01:09 PM.

[Alphadeadone]

Question first: Are we able to personally take part in any of the big campaigns directly? Are we personally going to see any of the big names in the BT universe that ain't already taken but some other PC and makes us feel like we a fighting next to some one of the BT lore?

As it stands I see that we are only going to be a be drop in what is a VERY big universe. Wars on each planet are going to be fought on such a large scale and plus with the size of the IS boaders I see our little fights having not much to do.

I also don't see how see have to worry about any form a EvE like corp. The matchs have a max size so we won't have to worry about Blobing (my army is bigger than yours).

[MaddMaxx]

It seems reasonable that if we look at the current IS Map, the division is faction orientated and borders are well defined. What are the chances that every Planet owned, by every Faction in the game, would even have a garrison, no matter how small, of BattleMechs on it? Very small would be my guess.

So we can fight on and over these planets, move into whole regions of a factions turf without those battle ever moving a Border line. It is similar to the current local skirmish wars on Earth. Fights are on going constantly with faction coming and going and yet not one map border gets changed.

When the Borders do get changed, it is usually due to the Political changes within the larger entity, think the USSR. Same would go here, but in this case the FRR in invaded by the Clans, and anything else is rather small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

It does in fact seem, in this case, we ALL can indeed have our Cake and Eat it too.

Edited by MaddMaxx, 16 April 2012 - 01:32 PM.

[El Loco]

Stone Profit, on 16 April 2012 - 11:38 AM, said:

As a history major, are you interested in the Civil War?(American). Theres a book in whivh Morgan Kell of the Kell Hounds and Jaime Wolf of Wolfs Dragoons fight a simulated battle of Gettysburg with mechs, quite fascinating imo.

Actually, it's Jaime Wolf and Grayson Death Carlyle re-enacting the battle of Gettysburg... but don't ask me which book it is. It's post-invasion, the Legion holds Glengarry. But I agree, re-enacting historic scenarios with modern or fictional weapons is interesting...

[Xyph3r]

TeaL3af, on 16 April 2012 - 10:58 AM, said:

1# No one said we should be able to take an entire planet with 12 mechs.

right! 12 Mechs, pfff... child´s Play!
i bid 1 Assault Star and 1 point of Elementals! xD

[HeIIequin]

I am reminded of this one of the Dawn of War rts campaign, where each faction has to fight for control of this 1 planet (split up into about 14? or so zones), and you fight for control each each zone on the planet, slowly destroying the HQ capitols of each faction until you stand victorious over all. It was still fun, even if I didn't get to have my Tau take over the whole galaxy for the Greater Good.

I feel as if it might be better for PGI (if it were to ever give players free reign) to make up a story about some small chunk of the galaxy is really important, and how each and every faction was trying to take control of these x number of worlds (I don't know... 20?, 40?, 100???), with dozens or even scores of battle sites on each planet. Then factions could fight it out to conquer that small portion of the galaxy. Yeah probably no precident in canon for every house to be fighting in 1 spot like that, but it's the only way I can see the free reign thing working to any extent without becoming "How will this ever work?".

I'm no canon nut/encyclopedia, but from what I can tell, in canon these houses & clans have been fighting for centuries, and there's been no 'winner'. Just a lot of back and forth and back and forth. I doubt several thousand mechwarriors (and not even politicians at that, just pilots) could really accomplish anything in a few months, or even years even in a time accelerated video game. *Serious question* Does anyone have any remote idea on the math for this? How many battles would need to be fought? How many mechs/jets/drophsips/tanks/infantry/pilots would be needed? Total # of casualties? Will MW:O ever have the numbers to come even remotely close to that (my gut tells me no)?

I mean, I guess what it boils down to is that people, even if it's not them personally, but the total combined efforts of all their peers, want to do something other than conquer 'Backwater Planet X'. They want to turn back the clans, conquer a rival house or do some important thing different than canon. I totally get where they're coming from, and agree that having that in addition to the standard MWO battles would make it even more fun. Problem is you'd have to deal with the TON of fallout from those changed events, which would lead to more changed events, and more, and more, etc. I just don't see it being 'We turned back the clans, we won!' since some other invasion would come and something even worse would end up happening to the IS. Hell, maybe some people really do want that, where everything is random and who knows what will happen? It's just that... good luck trying to balance THAT game. It would be a mess, and I don't think that kind of game would be able to retain it's playerbase to a profitable extent. That game would be better suited to some type of turn based Galactic Civilization meets Sins of a Solar Empire [Edit: I since take it there's already some sort of mod program people have used to track IS conquest already?]. It even sounds fun, except that it would never comes anywhere close to the depth that canon has provided already, and it just wouldn't be MW:O either.

[Edit:] I also want to give props to the OP Lucifer for a good thread. Sure it might be filled with some flames and heated arguments, but I take that as a sign of it being a (mostly) good thread worth talking about.

Edited by HeIIequin, 16 April 2012 - 05:37 PM.

[Famous]

From further reading of the last five pages my first instinct is to try and make a reconciliation post, but the more I think about it the more firmly I find myself in the Lore is Law camp (since apparently there is no middle ground).

I have two issues with the "players should drive the storyline" line of thinking:
1. You start as a line grunt, advancing to a faction rank where you could command enough forces to change a major point in the plot would take years of in game time passing.
2. We have canon examples of what happens to a merc company that ****** off the wrong person in a faction. Arguably one of the best funded, equipped and run merc units (Wolf's Dragoons) were nearly wiped out by the Combine.

It all comes down to this- you are not playing the bright shining star of the BTU, you are the line grunt. The guy who takes a Gauss round to the face to protect an NPC. You build a large merc corp and try to form your own little kingdom, well one of the big 5 disapprove of your nonsense and decide it's time for that to stop. You and all of your friends are now the targets of a nation with resources that dwarf yours.

We know that no player, no matter how good or how large their Merc Corp, will be changing the storyline so why fight it? Accept that you will be able to redraw some of the map and take pride in controlling your corner of the Periphery and when you start thinking that you can take on a Great House remember what happened to the Dragoons