18 replies to this topic

[Matthew Pryde]

Hey, legitimate question here. Now honestly, I could simply be just out of the loop here. I've been trying to come back and play for a little while now, but there's so much unplayability at the moment that it's hard to keep my interest (Although, I very much want it too. Love, love, LOVE the concept of the game, this is by no means a negative post), but I have a couple questions I was wondering if a few people more dedicated to grinding in a Sim game can help me out with.

• Is the purpose of this game just TDM?- I remember hearing about other game mechanics, planetary conquest and missions to do... not happening? Not in the works? Or delayed? Will there be PVE or SOMETHING to do? Because going to the same areas and shooting over and over on the same tired 4 maps is a bit old. I realize the game is not "released" but this game... it's released. It's not Beta if its fully functioning and accepting payment. That's literally against everything that that word stands for.
  
• Missiles? Do you want them in the game or not? First it was SRMs are worthless and fire randomly like the confetti effect when you die in Halo Reach, then it was LRMs are the cats meow and seek out anything ever. Now it's like they're negligible expensive damage deals that are far less accurate than simple point and click lasers that require no skill to use. So thus everyone and their brother runs around with lasers, or another direct fire weapon. It certainly is easier. Also, SRMS, they are now nearly pinpoint. Like shotguns but more accurate.
  
• Sim... or not a sim? The swing keeps going back and forth. Like I'm seeing that we have to pay for the mech, and honestly, there's a bunch of things that remind me of old Battletech Merc campaigns that really make me smile, but for the most part it seems like we're keeping the WORST parts of the sim, while taking out the ones that we like the most. Like the threat of 3rd person, the increasingly easy to aim direct fire weapons, and the increasing ineffectiveness of lighter mechs when compared to the more weight capable assaults. Not to mention that much of my party, a very large base of players to this game, many that purchased a founder's pack, no longer play due to the fact that they just can't stomach the grinding element of the game, and are holding onto their cash to buy their favorite clan omni when it comes out (Since most mechs are over $10 (Lolnope) that's all they will be buying)

So, I guess what I'm asking is... is this working as intended? Or are these issues to be addressed. If these are all issues, then cool, and I'll be happy to patiently wait and keep leveling my Catapult here and then until it's time to get my beloved Mad Dog back. Or since this is some kind of beta still, if there's a bug report option to file, I humbly submit the above bugs that are entirely detrimental to gameplay, and will seek out the proper channel and format to do so. However, if this IS the game working as intended, I think that this venture of a game known as Mechwarrior Online will be very shortly lived, and that, I dearly hope, is not true.

~Sincerely,
Matthew Pryde, concerned citizen of Clan Space, the good parts, not the crap Clan Wolf parts that look like a trailer park after a tornado, you know... because we shot it.

[jakucha]

It doesn't have nearly as much content as they've mentioned it will have. To answer your first question, community warfare isn't in yet which will mean different modes and all that capturing stuff. I also don't consider this Mechwarrior title very much of a sim because it's not really complicated enough, but it's still fun.

[Matthew Pryde]

Oh I'm aware we're not at the community warfare portion of the game. But I'm curious to know what the intended direction is. Like will it be something new or once again will it rely upon the hard work and determination of fans and mod crews to make something more of the game like in previous mechwarrrior titles, or will this game, since its an FTP model, be updated or made to be more than essentially an instant action free trial.

[Vermaxx]

They're coming out with community warfare, which is this all-in-wonder magic bullet fix for everything wrong or lacking in MWO.

Needless to say, the information we have gotten on it has been...sparse.

Supposedly everything you want, other than pve, will be in CW. This is not a mod title, this is a retail product. It will not support private mod work.

Now all we have to do is sit back and see if the game ever MAKES IT to CW or not.

[Matthew Pryde]

See that last bit, that's what troubles me. The "Will it make it" bit. I want the game to make it, but as it stands right now... there's not even a tiny chance of that occurring. You'd have to rely on having a constant turnover of new players entering, purchasing a $15 dollar mech when they get frustrated of using a trial mech, playing a few more rounds, then leaving. Rinse, repeat. I'm not trying to rag on the game but it is literally (and with a correct use of that term) what is occurring. That is very much an unsustainable game product model and it leaves me with very large concerns for the future of this game, which I very badly want to succeed.

I don't know if anyone knows this, but this title didn't even get a mention on Gamasutra, which is the in-industry constant blog on the business of video games, it's pretty much a bible of "how am I doing?" If they don't think it's worth investing in, they won't mention it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/
Mechwarrior Online's release has no mention. The last time they spoke was an interview with JW where he talked about the title and they went "eh... not sure if want."

I just want this to be another Mechwarrior 3, not another Nanovore

Here's pulling for you PGI, I wish you all the best broskys.

Also, a decent cautionary tale
http://www.gamasutra...hp#.UKV3BuOe9V9

Edited by Matthew Pryde, 16 November 2012 - 10:58 AM.

[Khavi Vetali]

The game will continually be updated, even after release. That is how f2p titles work, and how the devs have stated MWO will function.

The next game type, conquest, has been stated to be in late November or early December, along with the next map, Desert. The desert map has been stated to be 1.5x larger than Caustic Valley.

Balance in a game such as this is ongoing. LRM's are being further tuned, along with many other weapons. They aren't going to nerf something into the ground and just leave it there. It is better to think of the balance cycle as a pendulum, one that eventually comes to rest at a single, balanced point.

The best way to keep abreast of upcoming changes and patches is to read the Developer's Corner section of the forums, the Command Chair in particular. Here are some links, Into The Lab (Patch Trajectory), User Interface, Weapon Balancing, and Matchmaking.

Edit: And really, couldn't give a **** what Gamasutra says about MWO. Use your own experiences to make value judgements.

Edited by Khavi Vetali, 16 November 2012 - 11:24 AM.

[Kdogg788]

Point and click lasers that take no skill to use? Say what? It takes less skill than spotting a red marker and waiting till you get lock while standing in place 800 meters away?

-k

[Matthew Pryde]

Khavi Vetali, on 16 November 2012 - 11:21 AM, said:

The game will continually be updated, even after release. That is how f2p titles work, and how the devs have stated MWO will function.

The next game type, conquest, has been stated to be in late November or early December, along with the next map, Desert. The desert map has been stated to be 1.5x larger than Caustic Valley.

Balance in a game such as this is ongoing. LRM's are being further tuned, along with many other weapons. They aren't going to nerf something into the ground and just leave it there. It is better to think of the balance cycle as a pendulum, one that eventually comes to rest at a single, balanced point.

The best way to keep abreast of upcoming changes and patches is to read the Developer's Corner section of the forums, the Command Chair in particular. Here are some links, Into The Lab (Patch Trajectory), User Interface, Weapon Balancing, and Matchmaking.

Edit: And really, couldn't give a **** what Gamasutra says about MWO. Use your own experiences to make value judgements.

I understand how game design works, and as a lead game developer... I'd say I'm pretty decent at it. My concern is about how horribly unsustainable the current game model is, which is high player buy in, low player received benefit, with a rapid falloff curve towards game retirement. Thank you for the links, and I appreciate you taking the time to locate them. But as it stands there's just not enough base content to the game to make it worthwhile yet. I am very curious to see how the game intends to evolve towards having more substance. As it stands, it's the world's most expensive free demo of what I can honestly say may be one of the best giant mecha games to ever grace modern video game-dom.

[Dorque]

Matthew Pryde, on 16 November 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

• Sim... or not a sim? The swing keeps going back and forth. Like I'm seeing that we have to pay for the mech, and honestly, there's a bunch of things that remind me of old Battletech Merc campaigns that really make me smile, but for the most part it seems like we're keeping the WORST parts of the sim, while taking out the ones that we like the most. Like the threat of 3rd person, the increasingly easy to aim direct fire weapons, and the increasing ineffectiveness of lighter mechs when compared to the more weight capable assaults. Not to mention that much of my party, a very large base of players to this game, many that purchased a founder's pack, no longer play due to the fact that they just can't stomach the grinding element of the game, and are holding onto their cash to buy their favorite clan omni when it comes out (Since most mechs are over $10 (Lolnope) that's all they will be buying)

Increasing ineffectiveness of lighter Mechs?

I think you will be rapidly disillusioned on that. Unless I'm misreading this (if so, bear with me, I'm on almost no sleep). Lights are probably the strongest class of Mechs right now.

[Black Ivan]

Light Mechs are actually the strongest Mechs in the game.


I don't actually see this game making much progress forward.

[Matthew Pryde]

Dorque, on 17 November 2012 - 01:38 AM, said:

Increasing ineffectiveness of lighter Mechs?

I think you will be rapidly disillusioned on that. Unless I'm misreading this (if so, bear with me, I'm on almost no sleep). Lights are probably the strongest class of Mechs right now.

Perhaps just not in the 20 or so matches I've played recently. I've found them by far the easiest to exterminate with the 4 Medium lasers mounted on my catapult. Whereas my entire collection of 1080LRMs will barely make a dent in anyone, often resulting in me getting frustrated and just running up and destroying people with the lasers. This somehow seems counter-intuitive to me. But in all fairness, I could be looking at the game from a biased perspective, since most players seem to have a worse internet connection than I do, as I have not experienced latency issues with this game. Perhaps the fabled "Lag armor" is what provides the light mechs their buff and I am not experiencing this.

[Gabrielpendragon]

I role with 1200 missiles in a hunchback totting two lrm 20s, other then when i get a mech killing me at close range, i tend to walk away with three kills and easily clear the 200 damage mark even in bad games. Learn to play if you have issues with missiles. Make sure the lock is maintained till they hit the target, if you switch targets, or lose the lock they will not hit the target unless it doesn't move. Thats the same thing as just missing. Lights are squishy, if you hit them well they die. The issue is people can't hit them. I watch tons of people not able to hit a target. Even if you can't knock them down you can still block their path and slow them down, often dealing a couple points of damage in the process. Lasers make it really easy to find out what kinda lag armor they might have, strafe across them from behind till it lights up as red for a hit, this can be confirmed by watching their doll flash. To minimize this even more try and shoot them when they are walking in straight lines to and away from you, shoot less when they are moving across your aim. These are all simple concepts for playing any shooter online, and have been in mech warrior for as long as i've seen it played...

Close down other applications while playing, don't be browsing or listening to music or anything like that, it just eats your bandwidth, if your rolling a 200+ latency, the issue is with you not other people.

Stop trying to shoot light mechs with missiles, they can run faster then your missiles travel half the time. Save your missiles for slower and bigger mechs. There is a reason there is an atlas with two ams hard points.

Team death match? More like Capture the Flag...What do you expect the game to be? This is a war based game in giant stompy robots. What kinda game modes are you wanting to be in the game? How many different ways can you package a team based war simulator game? Only two things I can think of are already in the works, Community warfare and 12v12 games, maybe they will look into a 4v4 too.

Weapon balances are also coming down the tube, though there isn't much more they can do to balance them. Other systems are needing balanced first. Heat comes to mind, netcode also comes to mind, also matchmaker and trial mech experience. Barring random oddities, yes i do think the game is working as intended. I am personally pretty happy with the game as a whole, sure the memory leaks, and mechlab glitches are a pain, but I also know they are being worked on.

Been waiting for this line? oh yes i know you have. This game is still in beta. Love the feedback, but I am still seeing lots of issues in learn 2 play, learn to work as a team and learn to be patient.

[Aedensin]

Black Ivan, on 17 November 2012 - 01:42 AM, said:

Light Mechs are actually the strongest Mechs in the game.


I don't actually see this game making much progress forward.

Two points I'd like to make.

1. Lag shield which will go poof during optimization.

2. Mech tripping, it was temporarily removed for some fine tuning. When it comes back, heavies and assaults will LOL at the rolling Jenners.

[Vassago Rain]

Vermaxx, on 16 November 2012 - 10:40 AM, said:

They're coming out with community warfare, which is this all-in-wonder magic bullet fix for everything wrong or lacking in MWO.

Needless to say, the information we have gotten on it has been...sparse.

Supposedly everything you want, other than pve, will be in CW. This is not a mod title, this is a retail product. It will not support private mod work.

Now all we have to do is sit back and see if the game ever MAKES IT to CW or not.

I love you.

[Lokust Davion]

This game will be a direct copy of World of Tanks, only with Mechs instead of Tanks. You will participate in battles using the same map over and over and over again just like WoT. It will have 3rd person view just like WoT. However, it would not have gold ammo unlike WoT.

[Grabes]

Pretty much the nail on the head lokust. better just to play it now the way it is before it's completely all downhill.

[Reoh]

New game mode conquest is due, probably next patch (20th).

I agree SRM's aren't very useful near their max range, but close up they're still devastating. I haven't tried Artemis with them yet but that may help.

Sim. 3rd person was blown out of proportion, it was only going to be a new player helper that doesn't mean permanent. What they really need is a good Tutorial though and I don't mean videos. Lights aren't that bad. I pilot a Jenny sometimes and do quite well, get a couple working together and they're brutal. Imagine swimming through a river filled with piranhas.

[Matthew Pryde]

Well, none of us are making this game anyway, I suppose the ultimate conclusion is simply "We shall see."

[aspect]

I think the game will be very good and very sustainable come sometime next year. I just hope that's fast enough...it's a dicey business doing real-time content addition, as you have to be careful that the vast majority of your playerbase doesn't exhaust what's available before you can release more. I used to play WoW and even though I was on there many, many times more than I play MWO, I never really caught up with the content delivery even though I started not long after launch. There was a bit of an awkward slow period once but generally blizzard kept pace with the users. SWTOR was the opposite...I played it less than I played WoW, but I still managed to easily finish 95% of the content that was available to me, did lots of PvP, etc before anything substantially new was added. Eventually I got tired of it and moved on even though I *loved* that game.

HOWEVER, I do feel that the MWO model is completely different than a character-based MMO, so these kinds of extrapolations are of limited value. "We shall see", indeed!

Edit: forgot to mention that the viability of the game is also entirely based on what the cost is to keep the game running. Keep in mind that persistent MMO's are way, WAY more expensive to run on a per-user basis. That's not to say that MWO doesn't have a server cost associated with it, but basically we are talking about the same kind of hosting that developers have been packaging with retail games with NO constant income from microtransactions or monthly fees for like 20 years. Consider battle.net for Warcraft/Starcraft, or bungie.net for Myth...neither company was particularly large when they were operating those services, and also keep in mind that the actual developer gets a small fraction of each initial retail sale after you remove the retail markup, publishing and distributing costs, etc. PGI has to give IGP a cut (I would assume), but I estimate they are getting at least 10x more of the total game income in order to keep the lights on and pay their license fees than blizzard ever got from people buying warcraft 2 in stores (and blizzard kept battle.net running for a very long time with no additional user funding).

It's likely that almost all of PGI's non-overhead costs are to do with development and testing, and those costs increase the faster they try to push out new features. I think the key to making the content per dollar relationship a good one is efficient, successful management and of course none of us who do not work at PGI are equipped to comment on how well that's being done. As such, I really hope that they keep a steady, sustainable development rate going and avoid burning out their talented staff by succumbing to all the forum complaining that we are seeing...

Edited by aspect, 17 November 2012 - 10:54 AM.