10 replies to this topic

[TheMagician]

These were the goals they laid out there:

Role Based Warfare - Not a race to the top: Partially met.This remains to be seen. Right now in an 8v8 open-mech style, teams will likely take mostly assaults. Thus, it is a race to the top in essence. While a light can do serious dmg to an assault, assaults are still the most heavily armored, heavily gunned mechs, and the Assault mission type, caters to these mechs and them turtling against any lighter force. But with the other gametypes, bigger maps, and more open maps, things could change a little. However, MechWarrior has always succeeded because of player generated ladders/leagues which limited tonnage or class-type that you could take into a match. It remains to be seen what MWO ends up doing for community warfare.

Get the feeling of being in a mech: Mostly met. So far PGI has done a better job than the other games, due to the added detail in the cockpits. It looks like they have further plans for the control panels, so we'll see what they do. However, with their potential plans to add a 3rd person option, this goal will not be met.

Regular content updates: Partially met. There will be regular content updates, but PGI's schedule has shown that it will be approximately 6-8 months, before we get the level of content that people would have received for a AAA release. PGI is slow at issuing new content, and thus this goal has not been fully met yet.

Close to the spirit of Battletech: Partially met. The main struggle here is that 'stock mechs' are not feasible in any way, because they were not adjusted based on the increased armor. However, the game, when you all have custom mechs, does have a good Battletech feel. Mechs lumber around, others dance. It takes skill and coordination to take down mechs fast (compared to MechWarrior 4, mechs in this game have far more armor damaged before-death, whereas in MW4 you might just have your CT or RT dmg'ed, if you played good teams).

City-combat like never seen before: Not yet implemented. While the city graphics are better, there is nothing done to have city combat be different from what we had in MW4, other than that its even less-city'ish. In MW4 we had taller buildings, and less long open lanes, which meant intense brawling. However, this is partly because there is little trade-off in taking long range weapons on a city map. They work very effectively, if not more so, than brawling weapons. With no destruble environments (where is the glass shattering, or buildings crumbling, bridges collapsing?), we just don't have anything that screams next-gen, other than pretty graphics. While this is okay, it means that PGI did not meet this goal.

Large maps: Not yet implemented. Currently we have FPS-shooter sized maps. These maps are much smaller than we had in past MechWarrior games. They have one in development, but even then, that's just one.

Commander Abilities: Not yet implemented. Few announcements about this recently, other than in PC gamer.

Community Warfare: Not yet implemented. PGI has not been very open about what to expect. According to their last update, it should be here in the next few weeks. But since they haven't made many announcements about it, we can only expect that they've encountered many delays.

Edited by TheMagician, 15 November 2012 - 07:50 AM.

[LogicSol]

Query: why would you expect CW in a few weeks?
They said 3 months after open beta started.

[TheMagician]

LogicSol, on 15 November 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

Query: why would you expect CW in a few weeks?
They said 3 months after open beta started.

They've shifted their open beta date, but this doesn't mean that CW would necessarily be delayed (should be developed by separate people). From their August 17th date, we are now 3 months out. The fact that open beta experienced 2 delays, means that we don't really know where CW is at right now. However, a few weeks out means we are getting into December. There were some notions that we might get it in December, in the closed beta forums.

[Undead Bane]

My variants under your points:

Role Based Warfare - Not a race to the top: Met. I really rarely see any groups, consisting only of assault mechs, both as a PUG and as a team player. For lulz only. Because if just one or 2 lights happen to be against the group of fatlasses, fatlasses will have a bad day. On the contraty, balanced team fights are much more common with meds dominating the battlefield.

Get the feeling of being in a mech: Mostly met. 3rd person... Don't know. If you recall the lore, what mechwarrior saw at the HUD was 360 degrees compressed into 120 degrees FoV. I don't really see, how making 3rd person, say, with FoV calculation from cabin can ruin the immersion.

Regular content updates: Partially met. Agreed, but let's see, what happens after 20th of November. Anyway, fixing netcode and hit detection + making new player experience nice (maybe, AI-supported training missions) are a priority.

Close to the spirit of Battletech: Partially met. Agreed, stock builds must be revised. Must - because stock builds are what new players get from start anyway.

City-combat like never seen before: Not yet implemented. Agreed here too. We could have some nice things like slipping on the pavement (hello, TT), higher buildings, building destruction. But all these tasks are not a priority at all now, I assume, as there are more fundamental game parts on the line (see above). So yeah, TBD here.

Large maps: Not yet implemented. Agreed, but the much smaller maps we have right now are also much better balanced for the mech fights. I'm not sure that they actually should be that balanced, as it eats lots of resources, but that's PGI's choice.

Commander Abilities: Not yet implemented. Agreed.

Community Warfare: Not yet implemented. Agreed here too. But what warms me up a bit is the fact, that we are 2 builds older, than the newerst build tested inside. So when technical issues are conquered, we may actually see content appearing VERY rapidly.

[SpiralRazor]

Undead Bane, on 15 November 2012 - 08:26 AM, said:

My variants under your points:

Role Based Warfare - Not a race to the top: Met. I really rarely see any groups, consisting only of assault mechs, both as a PUG and as a team player. For lulz only. Because if just one or 2 lights happen to be against the group of fatlasses, fatlasses will have a bad day. On the contraty, balanced team fights are much more common with meds dominating the battlefield.

Get the feeling of being in a mech: Mostly met. 3rd person... Don't know. If you recall the lore, what mechwarrior saw at the HUD was 360 degrees compressed into 120 degrees FoV. I don't really see, how making 3rd person, say, with FoV calculation from cabin can ruin the immersion.

Regular content updates: Partially met. Agreed, but let's see, what happens after 20th of November. Anyway, fixing netcode and hit detection + making new player experience nice (maybe, AI-supported training missions) are a priority.

Close to the spirit of Battletech: Partially met. Agreed, stock builds must be revised. Must - because stock builds are what new players get from start anyway.

City-combat like never seen before: Not yet implemented. Agreed here too. We could have some nice things like slipping on the pavement (hello, TT), higher buildings, building destruction. But all these tasks are not a priority at all now, I assume, as there are more fundamental game parts on the line (see above). So yeah, TBD here.

Large maps: Not yet implemented. Agreed, but the much smaller maps we have right now are also much better balanced for the mech fights. I'm not sure that they actually should be that balanced, as it eats lots of resources, but that's PGI's choice.

Commander Abilities: Not yet implemented. Agreed.

Community Warfare: Not yet implemented. Agreed here too. But what warms me up a bit is the fact, that we are 2 builds older, than the newerst build tested inside. So when technical issues are conquered, we may actually see content appearing VERY rapidly.

One build actually. They are one build ahead, which means when they push out an update, they are already working on the next.. They are most certainly not 2 ahead, unless there was a massive sea change since the last time i talked with the software engineers on the old beta TS>

[LogicSol]

TheMagician, on 15 November 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

They've shifted their open beta date, but this doesn't mean that CW would necessarily be delayed (should be developed by separate people). From their August 17th date, we are now 3 months out. The fact that open beta experienced 2 delays, means that we don't really know where CW is at right now. However, a few weeks out means we are getting into December. There were some notions that we might get it in December, in the closed beta forums.

While this is a valid line of reasoning, it is not a wise one.
Short of any type of confirmation, when given a timeframe that uses a particular milestone as it's point of reference, it's best to continue to use that milestone regardless of any changes to the milestone's date.

Thus I'm expecting February at the earliest (3 months from OB start), though I'd certainly love to see it in December.

[Sandpit]

LogicSol, on 15 November 2012 - 08:01 AM, said:

Query: why would you expect CW in a few weeks?
They said 3 months after open beta started.

Garth Erlam, on 14 November 2012 - 01:09 PM, said:

Hey guys, here are your questions and answers!

Q: Number 1: have you an exactly date when new game modes will implemented in this game, something like Team DM or rush? [xDevineWarriorx]
A: I believe the new game mode arrives late this month, early next month. [Garth]

Thanks for your questions everyone, we hope you got some answers

Cheers,
The MechWarrior Online Team

That's where I think people are assuming CW. It doesn't explicitly say CW though so I think most are working off of assumption. Just wanted to help clarify where I think people are understanding why we would get CW in a few weeks

[Oderint dum Metuant]

I don't feel they have achieved any goals, Milestones yes, on the way to meet those goals yes.


Role Based Warfare

No, there really are no real roles for example light mechs, typically serve as scouts, well to the competitive and skilled that is not the case here.
Lights spend the first 20 seconds of the game scouting, after that they are pack hunters/Headhunters, A good Jenner can deal twice the damage across the game and be more deadly than an Atlas

Mediums offer very little, over good light pilots. Mediums at the moment are pretty much role-less.

Heavies are in a slightly better position, except for the Dragon which is poor at just about everything it does. The catapults are solid designs that can fill many a role.

Assaults, in general seem poor mostly because most new/bad players gravitate to them. The Awesome has hitbox geometry issues that make it bad and unable to play its intended role

Get the feeling of being in a mech

This one is probably their most successful, no complaints here, Except 3rd Person would totally ruin what they have done, and make a vast amount of coding and artwork pointless.

Regular Content Updates

Hit and miss, a lot of delays, broken patches, Massive Q&A issues and i would struggle to call most of the patches "Content" updates, most have them have been bug and counter bug fixes, which is to be expected.

Close to Btech

50/50 Once Trial mechs are seperated from custom games this will be good.

City Combat like never before

What? aside from Cry Engine 3 graphical updates, city combat is the same as previous titles.

Large maps and commander abilities

Maps are tiny, look pretty but far too small for combat, these need serious work in terms of their size.
Commander abilities...what commander abilities? Map waypoints are not abilities and further work has dried up and not been mentioned.

Community Warfare

Giving them the benefit of the doubt here, but given the speed of implementation and Q&A so far, i don't expect a meaningful CW implementation that actually works anytime in the next 6-12 months. ( be very glad if i am later proved very wrong here)

Edited by DV McKenna, 15 November 2012 - 11:33 AM.

[LogicSol]

Sandpit, on 15 November 2012 - 10:56 AM, said:

That's where I think people are assuming CW. It doesn't explicitly say CW though so I think most are working off of assumption. Just wanted to help clarify where I think people are understanding why we would get CW in a few weeks

Yea I'm pretty sure that is referring to the conquest gamemode. Community Warfare is huge, and will likely get a bit more of a mention than "new game mode".

[Sandpit]

Me too, I just think some are assuming that's the new game mode

[LogicSol]

Sandpit, on 15 November 2012 - 11:44 AM, said:

Me too, I just think some are assuming that's the new game mode

agreed.