22 replies to this topic

[Exsavio]

Hi all,

I have been infrequently checking up on this fantastic initiative for the last few months. Being a long time player of the BT franchise since being introduced to the TT and RPG, I thought the writing was on the wall when MechAssault was released – however this has renewed my faith.

From watching/reading the interviews; the distinction between the pilot and the mech seems one that PGI is very keen to develop. Nothing would drive this home more if there were ‘out-of-mech’ game mechanics or experiences to be had. My favorite incarnation of the franchise on PC has always been the original Mechwarrior; that allowed the player to travel the Inner Sphere, buy & sell mechs and parts (with supply and demand differing by location and affecting price) and to negotiate the terms of their contracts. I usually got so caught up on this the overarching plot fell by the wayside

Are any of these sort of elements included in MW:O – either for its initial release or down the track?

From what I can gather from this site and forum (including New Players Start Here and trawling through pages of forum posts, lastly i cannot find a suitable search term) and as it is to be expected – the focus has been on what happens when you’re inside a mech. I get the impression the gameplay experience would be 90% in battle and 10% is in the mech-lab; which I tend to relate to BF3 gameplay experience; but I wouldn’t consider BF3 an MMO.

[pursang]

If you've read the New Players Start Here thread, then you know as much as the rest of us. Anything else you may hear is just rumor and speculation.

[Exsavio]

Fair enough; if there are any existing discussions about these aspects in the forums I'd be keen to see other people's input and feedback.

[Hayashi]

There'd be stats on your gameplay as well, and presumably if your winning ratios are good, House players might get to play in certain Canon elite units. There'd be choosing of contracts for mercs and lone wolves, and choosing of specific battles for all players. There'd be the time you spend chatting with friends. These would all be part of metagame gameplay. But the focus will undeniably be on what happens in the 'Mech, because that's what we're all here for.

Oh yes, not to forget. The first part of metagame gameplay has already been released, and even asking about it, you've already started playing.

[Motionless]

You can not get outside of your mech.

If you do get to 'travel' and do anything it will all be thru a some UI.

Quote

I get the impression the gameplay experience would be 90% in battle and 10% is in the mech-lab; which I tend to relate to BF3 gameplay experience; but I wouldn’t consider BF3 an MMO.

That's probably accurate, but you could certainly spend more time in the mechlab if you wanted.

I wouldn't consider it an MMO either. Were you under the impression that MWO was an MMO?

[Werewolf Fetladral]

Anyone else notice that everytime Hayashi post... Motionless follows suit. I suggest that the host body suffers from multiple personality disorder.......... I wonder if the host is Paul?

[Motionless]

Werewolf Fetladral, on 29 April 2012 - 11:08 PM, said:

Anyone else notice that everytime Hayashi post... Motionless follows suit. I suggest that the host body suffers from multiple personality disorder.......... I wonder if the host is Paul?

I just like his Marisa signature.

[Hayashi]

Motionless, on 29 April 2012 - 11:01 PM, said:

Were you under the impression that MWO was an MMO?

Certainly not an MMORPG, but it's an MMOS - Massively Multiplayer Online Simulator. There's also MMOR(acing) and other such subgenres around, but they take up a tiny portion of the overall MMO market, which is driven by MMORPGs.

Werewolf Fetladral, on 29 April 2012 - 11:08 PM, said:

I wonder if the host is Paul?

Highly tempted to say "they're on to us", but it goes too close to the line of pretending to a dev, which is against forum rules, so I can't crack that joke.

*Waits for Motionless to post*

[Motionless]

Hayashi, on 29 April 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

Certainly not an MMORPG, but it's an MMOS - Massively Multiplayer Online Simulator. There's also MMOR(acing) and other such subgenres around, but they take up a tiny portion of the overall MMO market, which is driven by MMORPGs.

Generally you don't consider games an MMO unless massive amounts of players can actually all participate together directly, we may have an indirect way to 'play with eachother' thru effecting the persistent universe we'll all be in. You can fit 32 players into a single TF2 server and it's not an MMO, and it's not an MMO just because there are lots of people who play TF2 in general.

MWO's Team Deathmatch game mode is 12v12, so 24 players together. Not exactly 'massive.' Hopefully the fanbase becomes massive, but the game itself doesn't fit what most people would call an MMO.

Edited by Motionless, 29 April 2012 - 11:28 PM.

[Exsavio]

Motionless, on 29 April 2012 - 11:01 PM, said:

I wouldn't consider it an MMO either. Were you under the impression that MWO was an MMO?

Yes I was; from the external sites reporting on MW:O they refer to it as an MMO. Like Hayashi states, these come in many forms and are driven by MMORPG's. But your right in that it's not really stated anywhere officially that I can find. Here's hoping for a Battletech MMO one day which goes beyond just the mechwarrior experience

[Woodstock]

Well ... The devs have labelled the game as a simulator. So I doubt very much that there will be much more than the mech lab.

One thing I think would be good is if they introduce some kind of 'War room' Where we can plan battle tactics. A room that everyone within a company can see. Basically a detailed map that we can draw on/Ping to show where units should move to.

Rik

[Thorn Hallis]

I guess we can chat outside of the simulation.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

There will always be the shop where they can painlessly relieve us of (more than my wife would like) money

[MaddMaxx]

woodstock, on 29 April 2012 - 11:29 PM, said:

Well ... The devs have labelled the game as a simulator. So I doubt very much that there will be much more than the mech lab.

One thing I think would be good is if they introduce some kind of 'War room' Where we can plan battle tactics. A room that everyone within a company can see. Basically a detailed map that we can draw on/Ping to show where units should move to.

Rik

The Merc Corps are expecting something along those lines for sure. A "Situation Room". A place in which to hang the Colors, gather to plan a Contract drop, share a war story or just hang about and be all warrior like...

[Hayashi]

Motionless, on 29 April 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:

Generally you don't consider games an MMO unless massive amounts of players can actually all participate together directly, we may have an indirect way to 'play with eachother' thru effecting the persistent universe we'll all be in. You can fit 32 players into a single TF2 server and it's not an MMO, and it's not an MMO just because there are lots of people who play TF2 in general.

MWO's Team Deathmatch game mode is 12v12, so 24 players together. Not exactly 'massive.' Hopefully the fanbase becomes massive, but the game itself doesn't fit what most people would call an MMO.

The matches itself are just large multiplayer, but I'm not sure whether the metagame component in which we are all involved will qualify the whole thing as MMO. But yeah, generally 24 people isn't enough to qualify. MMOR games have hundreds of drivers. And there's that link someone posted on the forums of a space combat MMO sim where literally every spacecraft is a player.

[Rattlehead NZ]

24 players in a match may not quality as an MMO on it's own. Though if my memory serves me right, somewhere in the dev blogs it was said that the battles that happen impact on the ground taken on the sphere map itself. So while only 24 players in each match, the outcome still is a combined total effort which would still class it as an MMO.

For example:


If this is not what is implemented, then they could easily since they do own and control the servers.

[Exsavio]

Rattlehead NZ, on 30 April 2012 - 07:24 AM, said:

Though if my memory serves me right, somewhere in the dev blogs it was said that the battles that happen impact on the ground taken on the sphere map itself.

Way back in the days of Mechwarrior 2 there was an online league (I can't recall the name of it now) where you signed up with your team, arranged battles for specific times against other teams and then reported the results to a central group of admins who then kept records of who now controlled the planet, their resources, pilots etc. They would update the inner sphere map weekly based on the outcomes.

But that didn't make MW2 an MMO

Don't get me wrong I really love this concept - but honestly; if all we ever see is the inside of a mech; there's no tangibility to the universe itself. The extent of that connection will be limited to the number of maps we stomp over. Even these ISN news updates - which are great from an RP perspective; seem rather superfluous.

Edited by Exsavio, 30 April 2012 - 06:15 PM.

[Orzorn]

Exsavio, on 30 April 2012 - 06:12 PM, said:

Don't get me wrong I really love this concept - but honestly; if all we ever see is the inside of a mech; there's no tangibility to the universe itself. The extent of that connection will be limited to the number of maps we stomp over. Even these ISN news updates - which are great from an RP perspective; seem rather superfluous.

I assume you've played Mechwarrior 2 Mercs? Its lobbies were basically a really really glorified text screen, but they still made you feel like you were there. The mech garage had mechs in the background and noises (at least when you first entered) like pneumatic drivers and nuts and bolts being turned. All the computer terminals gave satisfying beeping noises, and there was the awesome Comstar news terminal that kept you up to date on the latest Inner Sphere news and technology.

I hope that MWO does the same. We saw a bit of the Mechlab in the pictures, and it seems they took a much more graphical approach, which is awesome. I hope the contracts screen, general lobbies, etc all have graphical representations. I'd like to see a bar room in general chat, I want to see a comstar terminal actually open when I check the latest news, and I'd like to see and hear mechs being worked on when I go to the Mechlab.

Additionally, for the news, I hope it isn't just the ISN update blurbs. I'd like to see weekly news with articles, perhaps written by the fans, then approved by the developers. I'm not 100% sure, but I think EVE online does something similar (once again, not sure, but I do know their news actually represents the latest actual happenings within the universe and also mention players by name and player organizations. Its all very organic). This way, we could have tech articles discussing the newest technology releases, the hottest custom mech configurations, the latest battle trends (talking about battlefronts, trends of losing and winning on what fronts, etc), and Solaris battles (when Solaris is added). Some of the articles could be player written, like the articles talking about mech customization, but others of more lore importance would always be developer written, such as articles discussing politics.

I think this could really make the world feel that much more organic, and its something I hope the developers seriously consider.

[Motionless]

Orzorn, on 30 April 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

Additionally, for the news, I hope it isn't just the ISN update blurbs. I'd like to see weekly news with articles, perhaps written by the fans, then approved by the developers. I'm not 100% sure, but I think EVE online does something similar

Last time I played all that news was displayed on a screens in your captains quarters. You could click it to bring up the articles in the IGB. The news didn't come super fast, so it was easy to keep up with, and I enjoyed reading it too.

I think that is a great idea, would just need some of the right people to step up to the plate -- that and getting the dev team to implement the approval process and way of integrating this news somehow into the game. Easier said than done, but a great idea to be sure.

[Exsavio]

Orzorn, on 30 April 2012 - 06:28 PM, said:

We saw a bit of the Mechlab in the pictures, and it seems they took a much more graphical approach

Do you mean the low fidelity prototypes in the Dev Blog 6 - MechLab thread? Or are there some more refined, or even in game images?