Question 1: “In regards to the newest map, HPG manifold, which will technically be the tenth map added to MechWarrior Online. What have you learned about making maps for MWO since first introducing us to Forest Colony back in early closed Beta?
Answer (Dennis de Koening): “Lot’s of stuff. It’s kind of a hard question to answer because a lot of the evolution of maps has been gradual and sporadic. Many different things have been more evolved than learned. We’ve learned new techniques for texture application. A good example is making a 900-story Tourmaline rock to not make it look like a repeating texture and still have a glistening sparkle on it. We’ve learned a lot of techniques on how to make a little go a long way; The easy one there is modulation: Being able to make three chunks of geometry turn into ten different things. Tourmalines are another good example: You can take one of those tourmalines and rotate it sideways, upside-down and every direction. For every tourmaline there’s just as much under the terrain that is showing its different version just next to it, flipped. That helps a lot.
Considering the strengths and weaknesses of the engine during the concept stage means a lot. I could put some fantastic stuff in a concept art that the engine just cannot achieve so obviously I’m not going to be doing those couple of concepts that we just cannot do at this moment, because we haven’t yet figured out how to do it. So, obviously, keeping that in my mind mitigates a lot of problems down the road.
I think we’ve gotten a little better at achieving the scaling queues. Once again, that is still the hardest thing to do, no matter what you do. A really good example there is some of the plants in Forest Colony, like the Bracken, for example. A bracken plant is generally no more than a meter tall but in Forest Colony they are upwards of three meters tall. When we make them actual size they basically turn into noise: It looks like a pixelated carpet. We have to enlarge them in order to get a little of three-dimensional texture on the ground. Obviously this isn’t real but we have to balance it. It’s tough to find those balances but we’re learning better ways of achieving this as we move forward.
Another point is we study the gameplay a lot. Many people have different ways of playing the game. You release a map and the gameplay is almost predictable. A month later it’s completely changed. People just start to learn the map, new techniques, they have strategies built up. We learn from being for it: “How do we make the map instantly adaptable to users?”, making it fun based on they are playing techniques are. We want these maps to be addictive. Getting back to scaling stuff, this is one of the harder things. Generally speaking in most games the camera is only about 2 meters off the ground: The player can only see about 250 meters into the distance, they run at about 120km/h (people run fast!), our ‘mechs are anywhere between 2 and 6 stories tall, they can fly into the air at ridiculous heights. So distances are upwards of 4 kilometers. Players run and turn and twist and everything has got to stream in at the same time so we cannot have too much detail. In a regular game you can have litter and newspapers on the streets. If we do that online it looks like a pixel. You just cant do it. The detail has to start up at around 2 stories and go up to about 6 or 8 stories and then from there fade off. So finding those magic areas where it really counts is an art.
Question 2: “What is the most used Phoenix BattleMech variant, and are there any predictions for the Sabre ‘Mechs? Additionally, are there any other Unseen BattleMechs being considered for MechWarrior Online?”
Answer (Russ Bullock): “Well it looks unsurprisingly like the Shadowhawk was the most popular Phoenix BattleMech. Not by a large margin, but with a mobile Medium BattleMech like that with JumpJets…It looks gorgeous, and it looks like the 2D2 has a slight advantage over the rest of them as far as being the most popular Phoenix BattleMech on the battlefield.
As far as Sabre BattleMechs go, I think the Griffon and Wolverine are both going to be very popular. We get a couple more 55-ton BattleMechs with lots of JumpJets on them, quite mobile. It’s really starting to get the workforce of the battlefield like those Medium BattleMechs the way we want them, and the only difference I can really spot between them that might stand out would be one of the Wolverine variants, I believe it’s the 6R, has a ballistic hardpoint. It’s the only one of all the Griffons and Wolverines that has that. So, I think that will make it stand out. There’s also a 6K Wolverine, which I find interesting since it has the ability to go to a larger engine than any of the others. It can go up to a 375, with speed tweak that means you can get going at 121.5km/h. I built one out with 5 medium lasers, SSRM2s, BAP, AMS, and so I think it’s a really great ECM-hunting Medium BattleMech. That’s my predictions but we’ll see what the players discover.
At this time, there’s no other Unseen Mechs that we’re looking to make. It’s mostly due to legal restrictions. Most people know the story by now but there are generally three categories: There’s Crusher Joe which is really just the Locust. There’s the Dougram category which the majority of the Phoenix BattleMechs were, and there’s only a couple more in there that maybe have the maybe some potential. And then, of course, the rest are the Macross-driven Harmony Gold Mechs and those are really off-limits, even with the extreme redesigns that we’ve done that are already provided on the Phoenix BattleMechs, still there’s too much of a risk there. There just isn’t the relationship in place to make that happen. At this point in time I think we are done with the Unseen BattleMechs, but we are just grateful that we could bring back some of those classics and finally have them in a MechWarrior product again. As you guys can see there’s lots of great BattleMechs coming down the pipe especially with the Clans upcoming, so we have got plenty to do.
Question 3: “What are some of the unique challenges of introducing Skirmish to MWO and how have you addressed these challenges?”
Answer (Paul Inouye): When it comes to adding skirmish mode to MWO, it wasn’t a big task. Obviously, it’s just Assault mode with the bases removed. It’s something that the Community has been asking for, but at the same time we wanted to make sure that we covered all our bases in terms of how the gameplay is going to fall out. There were two key issues that we had to take a look at: The first one was last man standing with the other team being destroyed except for one last guy. That last guy starts running around, shutting down in a corner, trying to hide, trying to stay alive. That’s not the kind of gameplay we want to see happen in Skirmish mode so we’re going to be monitoring the gameplay and results of Skirmish mode. We will be talking with the Community and taking in feedback as it comes in through the ticket system of players reported for this kind of behavior. We’ll have to make fixes at that point.
The second issue that we had to take a look into was scoring. This game mode is pretty much a Team Deathmatch and that kind of gameplay normally has a respawn system behind it. Now, we have a max score for a team being 12, that’s destroying the other team. There can be some little odd edge cases where the score doesn’t make sense in the win condition, but we’ve been addressing that and we’ve actually updated the rule set for Skirmish, and you’ll see that in the next two releases in terms of rules being displayed on screen as you load into the match.
Question 4: “Including Skirmish and the upcoming Attack/Defend Mode, will all of the game modes be featured in Community Warfare? While on the topic of Community Warfare, are there any updates or information you can share?”
Answer (Paul Inouye): When it comes to Skirmish and Attack/Defend, it’s like I mentioned in the more recent Command Chair Project Update, that they are the first step toward our end goal and the addition of the resources associated with those game modes are slowly coming online. You might have heard rumors about a turret system that we are working on; We are looking to bring in actual bases rather than using resource collectors so you will have something that you are going to actually have to assault in order to take-over.
We’re going to possibly combine these game modes into a “rush” style of mentality, where it’s playing segments of a map one at a time. So, you attack one section, if you succeed you move on to the next section. One of the issues we’re going to have with that situation is respawns and that’s another system we are going to look at, whether it be a respawn system or whether it be the infamous Dropship mode that everyone’s being hearing about. We’ll be making more detailed information releases based on that pretty soon because it’s currently on the design hot seat. We’ll let you know as soon as we get that ironed out.
Community Warfare update: The backend infrastructure has been redesigned and work has begun on this restructuring. We have a lot more data that we have to track for the persistent metagame. Things like who owns what planet, state of the universe, faction gameplay, all that kind of stuff.
To support the way matches are going to be kicking off we have to create a new lobby system which you’ve heard of from Bryan. That includes a matchmaker re-write that has been designed and been reviewed by Engineering. It’s currently waiting on progress with UI 2.0 to be able to implement the new screens.
UI 2.0 and the needs for matchmaking (to support new matchmaking and Community Warfare): That’s been designed. Prep-work has been scheduled. We’re planning on it to be arriving with the Launch modules which Bryan outlined in the Command Chair on the forums. The majority of the team is working on Community Warfare or Community Warfare related assets, it’s a hard drive for us both and we are going to try hard to get it into your hands as soon as possible. Other than that, we will have to update you as we progress and I’ll personally be tracking down the stages where I can update you on a more frequent basis.
Question 5: “Moving on to the subject of UI 2.0, how is it progressing and will there be more playtests in the near future? How much of an impact are the playtests and community feedback going to have on the design and functionality of UI 2.0?.”
Answer (Sean Cove): UI 2.0 is progressing really well right now. We got a lot of the features from UI 1.5 currently in the build and we got the new addition of the store which is a really cool aspect of the new UI. It’s all coming together, we’re in the last stretch of doing a bunch of bug fixes and getting it all nice and solid and preparing for launch.
Is there going to be more playtests? Most likely they are going to happen in the New Year, we still haven’t quite scheduled them yet. But there will probably be at least one more before launch.
We really appreciate your feedback from the playtest that we get from all you guys. Paul and I actually review all the feedback that the CSR team compiles for us. We use it to determine if there are any friction points or places we can improve on the UI. With that, we will identify things that we actually do want to change and can begin scheduling it and identifying the work. Most likely that work will not be in for launch but probably will happen in the few patches after. Also a public test is scheduled for the New Year so keep an eye out for any changes that may have sneaked into that.
Question 6: “We’ve heard it briefly mentioned but what can you tell us about the upcoming Achievement system?”
Answer (Paul Inouye): The achievement system uses tracked gameplay data to reward players with things like CBills, XP, Items, Titles. The types of achievements include data driven events, faction driven event, role events and a combination of the above.
Data driven events are things like get 5 kills in a match. Faction driven events would be things like kill 5 Davion players. (If I was a Kurita player I’d be tracking that one very heavily.) Role driven events are things like rewarding players who do things, for example a scout: Someone who does targeting for LRMs 3 or 4 times in a match might get an achievement, a new title, maybe even some C-Bills.
Then there’s combining the above into what we call nested achievements. Things like kill 5 players that just happen to be Davion and get the kill shot using an AC/20. That means you’re a brawler, you’re a Kurita player, and you’ve killed 5 players off and you’ll receive a special combination mode for that.
Garth has been placed in charge of writing these things up, and I’ve seen the stuff that he’s been writing up and he’s doing a great job. He can update you further in an upcoming Ask The Devs.
Question 7: “Will Clan Mechs change the game?”
Answer (Paul Inouye): Clan BattleMechs, will they change the game? Not in the way that you think or that you’ve seen in the past. We’ve stated numerous times that our goal was to get rid of the arms race from getting from Inner Sphere Mechs to Clans and just never looking back. You guys have been playing for the last two years with some of your favourite Mechs in the game and we don’t want to see that just get obliterated just because Clan Mechs have entered the game.
Basically we want to make sure that Clan Technology maintains it’s flavor and it’s field in lore. But we don’t want it to dominate player’s builds or what Mechs are brought to the battlefield. That being said, it’s going to be a bit of an impact: We’re going to be playing around with balance quite a bit. Some things will just make sense; some things will kind of not make sense, but we’ll see, that’s going to be up you. (I do follow feedback, contrary to what some people may believe and I do take into account some of the things players have been saying.)
A massive write-up for all of this stuff has been done and it’s going to be coming to the Command Chair very soon. By massive, I mean it’s quite detailed and it’s been written by myself and David Bradley. It’s been vetted by the entire design team, Bryan and Russ. So expect to see that coming very soon.
Question 8: “Historically there are Clan BattleMechs that include the OmniMech modularity system. Can you tell us if and how that will be translated into MechWarrior Online?”
Answer (David Bradley): The biggest thing that you’ll see is how we handle the hard points of the OmniMechs. On a standard BattleMech, you buy the Mech and the hardpoints are all fixed. If an arm has two energy hardpoints, that’s all it will ever have. On an OmniMech, you can buy the OmniMech in a configuration similar to a Variant and it will come with a set of hardpoints, but you’ll be able to start to change those around. For example, if the right arm of the Mad Cat A has two energy hardpoints, and you don’t like that, you can swap it out with the right arm of the Mad Cat B which has one energy hardpoint and one missile hardpoint. You’ll be able to do this for every location except for the Center Torso. The Center Torso is fixed to allow purposes such as XP and Efficiencies and to identify the Mech in that manner. In order to balance out all of this customization, there’s going to be some restrictions in place and these will be taken from Tabletop BattleTech rules. For example, every OmniMech is going to be based on a basic configuration with elements that cannot change on any configuration no matter how you customize it, like the Engine Type (STD/XL) along with Engine Rating cannot change or the type of internal structure, the type of armor. These sorts of things are going to be fixed and players will have to build around them.
In addition we are looking at incorporating elements unique to MWO into the OmniMech system. Right now, we’re looking at incorporating quirks into each part to incentivize what might be perceived to be a lesser value part. For example, if one right arm has three energy hardpoints and a similar right arm has one energy hardpoint, we can balance that out by giving incentive to take the one energy hardpoint by either giving it a few buffs or by giving the three energy hardpoint version a few nerfs.
Editors Note: Dictated but not read