425 replies to this topic

[Stone Profit]

I think the problem is some people expect to be able to alpha and not use different weapons for different ranges. Trial Mechs are fine, I can get kills without any problem, but it seems that most people who qq about trial mechs only want to click one button over and over and not think about what theyre doing. There was a time when one adapted to the game one was playing, not vice versa, because there would be no one listening to you demand they change it. why do you think you cant return opened software? because people bought games they didn't like and wanted their money back. Be glad you have devs who listen at all. This game is awesome, and I for one have seen very few flaws, especially for an admittedly unfinished or rather not-yet-launched product (and don't give me any of that its not beta if they take money and are open to the public crap. Its beta, get over it or come back later.)

[shabowie]

Stone Profit, on 04 December 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Fixed that for you. And btw, I bet you are one of those who need to l2p.

I'm pretty sure if anyone could challenge you to a duel you would get crapped on and proven dead wrong.

In order for an anecdotal claim like "l2p" or "it works for me" to have much value you have to be able to give it a trial by combat. Fortunately the side saying trials are awful right now can also back up their anecdotes with math. You on the other hand can't.

Edited by shabowie, 04 December 2012 - 02:39 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Stone Profit, on 04 December 2012 - 02:23 AM, said:

Fixed that for you.

No, I am pretty sure the way I wrote it was correct.

Quote

And btw, I bet you are one of those who need to l2p.

I am pretty sure I still have some things to learn, yes. But I found out that learning how to do magic with Excel can be more fun than playing Trial Mechs. Thankfully, I am not forced to stay in Trials, and can just take one of my reasonably optimized Founder mechs.

Edited by MustrumRidcully, 04 December 2012 - 02:27 AM.

[Stone Profit]

MustrumRidcully, on 04 December 2012 - 02:26 AM, said:

No, I am pretty sure the way I wrote it was correct.

I am pretty sure I still have some things to learn, yes. But I found out that learning how to do magic with Excel can be more fun than playing Trial Mechs. Thankfully, I am not forced to stay in Trials, and can just take one of my reasonably optimized Founder mechs.

shabowie, on 04 December 2012 - 02:24 AM, said:

And any noob can buy some mc and fix up their own mech. Trials are for learning to play, not buying a streakapult on day one. Which is probably how you play. Anyone who acts like hes reasonable enough to know he still needs to learn should be reasonable enough to know others are entitled to thier own opinion. So methinks youre being falsely modest.
I'm pretty sure if anyone could challenge you to a duel you would get crapped on and proven dead wrong.

You know what assuming you know anything about my abilities makes you, right? Find me on the battlefield or quit blowing hot air.

[Taizan]

Horrace, on 04 December 2012 - 02:27 AM, said:

If some of you can't see why this might put some new players off the game then I suggest you go play the trial mechs for a few hours, not to report back or anything, just as punishment.

Been there, done that, financed my first 3 mechs with trials. Worked good to gain c-bills, learn the ins and outs and be mindful of heat. Not ideal for new players to mechwarrior or players that think spending 1-2 hours each evening is a grind.

[shabowie]

Stone Profit, on 04 December 2012 - 02:35 AM, said:

You know what assuming you know anything about my abilities makes you, right? Find me on the battlefield or quit blowing hot air.

Find you on the battlefield and you are going to be in a trial mech and your opponent isn't and everyone can see the result? That can't happen right now.

Blowing hot air is all you are doing. You don't have any facts on your side like the math on the trials are demonstrably **** side has.

Edited by shabowie, 04 December 2012 - 03:00 AM.

[Raidyr]

MavRCK, on 04 December 2012 - 12:40 AM, said:

Or you're saying this F2Play game shouldn't have a way to encourage players to buy MC and get a mech to customize, thus supporting the economics of the game?

I've paid $75 for World of Tanks, $30 to Tribes, and $20 for Blacklight Retribution. Divided amongst the games I've spent over $40 for each. I understand that there needs to be some sort of grind in order to coax players out of a few dollars. I sympathize with the fact that not only does more money mean more development, but the people putting in the hours testing, fixing, testing, breaking, testing, fixing again then staying up/getting on early to release it to a bunch of angry people on the internet.

But this is not the way to go about doing it. Nothing about the current grind makes me want to spend money. Two friends of mine who bought founders got a refund because they realized how terrible it was going to be when their premium came out. No one else I talk to can get into the game because it takes hours of grinding in painfully bad mechs against min/maxed optimized ones to get to the one mech they want, and when they get there they have to worry about being profitable enough to maintain their builds, whether it be XL engines or ammo. On top of this is a terrible scoring mechanic that rewards bots and AFKers more than actual participants.

I'm more than willing to pay money for this game if it could be a consistently enjoyable experience. Grinding for the next 7 hours so I can get the Raven I want, then grinding another hour or so for it's equipment, then having to worry about playing well enough to keep it profitable isn't enjoyable. I'm sticking with it because I enjoy the basic mech on mech combat, but the entire new player experience is among the worst I've ever had to sit through.

[Elkarlo]

Redo Energy Weapon Heat before Nerf, and Lower Engine DHS effectivness to 1.5 would do the Stock/Trial Mechs a great favor as they suffered most from the nerf

Edited by Elkarlo, 04 December 2012 - 02:46 AM.

[Liquidx]

Trial mechs should only be used (or forced on a user), when their regular mech cannot be fielded.

IE: get rid of this 75% free auto repair and rearm garbage (seriously, you didn't think this would cause problems PGI?). Boost the rewards per game, increase the repair and rearm costs - give at MOST 20% free repairs. Have any mech under say 80% repair/rearm become unavailable to ready up and launch.

Give new users a couple million cbills to buy a mech off the hop (or save up) - and make the use of trial mechs OPTIONAL for new players.

Trial mechs would then only have to be used when a user has no mech at 80% repair/rearm.
Severely hamper the "grindability" of trial mechs - so that afk'ing or suicide rushing provides no incentive. (ie: reward players for time spent alive, multiplied by damage done to enemy mechs -- find your own ratio for this)

Trials could then be a useful method to keep players playing and working towards a goal, rather than them hating having to spend their first 1-2 weeks in a completely outclassed chassis.

Forcing players to use Trials at level zero only creates resentment among the player base and builds a venomous atmosphere in the community (stupid noobs/trial/afk/suicider/whatever).

Make trial mechs a TOOL..

[Sifright]

Raidyr, on 04 December 2012 - 02:42 AM, said:

I've paid $75 for World of Tanks, $30 to Tribes, and $20 for Blacklight Retribution. Divided amongst the games I've spent over $40 for each. I understand that there needs to be some sort of grind in order to coax players out of a few dollars. I sympathize with the fact that not only does more money mean more development, but the people putting in the hours testing, fixing, testing, breaking, testing, fixing again then staying up/getting on early to release it to a bunch of angry people on the internet.

But this is not the way to go about doing it. Nothing about the current grind makes me want to spend money. Two friends of mine who bought founders got a refund because they realized how terrible it was going to be when their premium came out. No one else I talk to can get into the game because it takes hours of grinding in painfully bad mechs against min/maxed optimized ones to get to the one mech they want, and when they get there they have to worry about being profitable enough to maintain their builds, whether it be XL engines or ammo. On top of this is a terrible scoring mechanic that rewards bots and AFKers more than actual participants.

I'm more than willing to pay money for this game if it could be a consistently enjoyable experience. Grinding for the next 7 hours so I can get the Raven I want, then grinding another hour or so for it's equipment, then having to worry about playing well enough to keep it profitable isn't enjoyable. I'm sticking with it because I enjoy the basic mech on mech combat, but the entire new player experience is among the worst I've ever had to sit through.

Silly you, new players just need to learn to play. Trial mechs are fine. It's beta. There has to be a reason to buy mc!

Heat needs to be a problem. I get plenty of kills in trials. Trials make money and have no repair cost so it's balanced.
trials are fun to play. Trials are supposed to be like npc players. new players are npcs for vets. L2P.

etc etc.

[Stone Profit]

Sifright, on 04 December 2012 - 02:37 AM, said:

hehehehehehehe

I like you, you're cute like the little puppy that growls at an Alsatian.

Yes yes, my opinikn differs so I must be bad at the game. Yawn. Children. And adult s who act like them. No longer funny.

[Sifright]

Stone Profit, on 04 December 2012 - 02:49 AM, said:

Yes yes, my opinikn differs so I must be bad at the game. Yawn. Children. And adult s who act like them. No longer funny.

Given that you think trial mechs are fine, you obviously have no understanding of how to build a mech properly in the current game environment. Even if you are an amazing pilot if you don't understand the system rules a reasonable pilot in an excellently built mech will tear you apart. Even more so when it's a team of well builts mechs working together.

[BigJim]

I played Trials last night to check this out (bear in mind I currently have axp 90-mil C-Bills and 15x mastered mechs).

I used the trial Awsome, Catphract and Hunchie (I have too much pride to run a sub-130 Light).
I got some kills (yay), but agree that they are balanced against other stock builds only.


* With the Cataphract, I used the AC/10 and 2x Med lasers; The other two Meds were left unused all match.

* With the Awesome I used one PPC as grp-1, 2x as Grp-2, and the streaks. The pulse lasers didn't get used at all.

* With the Hunchie, I used the LRMs, and then hid, as I didn't dare get into a shooting-match with the med lasers.


The trials aren't awful; I didn't suck per-se in them, and only overheated when I was willing to (getting that double-PPC alpha vs a shut down target for example).
They do teach heat management and make you actually think before you commit to a shot - which is a good thing, that's truer to TT principals than any other balancing mechanism or quirky little rule that you guys could possibly come up with..

Having DHS and not worrying about heat is a massive liberation, and it didn't strike me fully how "twitch-shooterish" the game becomes with all those upgrades.

However, vs a team of custom mechs and the players who have learned the system is scary, and I didn't let myself get into a brawl with anyone.
The quicker this game gets a Trial vs Trial option, the better for everyone.

Edited by BigJim, 04 December 2012 - 03:01 AM.

[Zwietracht]

Hrhr i wonder how many whiner threads by founders would be around in case trial mechs would be equal to owned custom mechs... its inbelievable what you guys are complaining about & what you are demanding.

[Sifright]

BigJim, on 04 December 2012 - 02:56 AM, said:

The quicker this game gets a Trial vs Trial option, the better for everyone.

All that shows is that trials are terribly gimped against customs which is what every one complaining about it is saying.

notice that in many of those mechs you played you stated you didn't even bother to use some of the weapons. Well even in a very slightly modified version of those mechs players would rip out the unused weapons and put in extra heat sinks. surely that alone is enough of a reason to understand trial mechs are bad.

Having weapons take up crit slots and tonnage that isn't being used when you could use it for more armour, ammo or heat sinks is a huge problem.

Stock mechs just weren't built to deal with the current heat environment. EIther PGI needs to change heatsinks (won't happen) or they need to make their own 'stock' variants that are actually designed around the games current rule system.

Zwietracht, on 04 December 2012 - 02:59 AM, said:

Hrhr i wonder how many whiner threads by founders would be around in case trial mechs would be equal to owned custom mechs... its inbelievable what you guys are complaining about & what you are demanding.

Yea it sure would be terrible for veteran players to fight newbies in mechs that aren't total trash. Goodness why i'm just quaking at the idea of fighting a newbie in a good mech.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Super Mono, on 03 December 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

This is most certainly what they should do. Placing trials in their own matchmaking ghetto only hides the main issue.

It is what they should do. SHS definitely need a buff. But they won't do that. So separate matchmaking is all you're going to get.

[Zwietracht]

Frankly speaking im just amused by this forum cause opinions change actually on a hourly Basis. Scats are great, no it sucks... Lrm are op, lrm are useless... Trial mechs suck.. and now i just imagine the response of a Community with 500 active posting gyus with 750 opinions. (Just a estimation to make ms Statement clear)..

[BigJim]

Sifright, on 04 December 2012 - 03:02 AM, said:

All that shows is that trials are terribly gimped against customs which is what every one complaining about it is saying.

..And I was using extensive personal experience to back up that claim - But you struggle with things so I won't get upset about trivialities..

Quote

notice that in many of those mechs you played you stated you didn't even bother to use some of the weapons. Well even in a very slightly modified version of those mechs players would rip out the unused weapons and put in extra heat sinks. surely that alone is enough of a reason to understand trial mechs are bad.

That kind of detail is exactly why I stated which weapons I used; Even as I was writing the post, I knew that this kind of info would be important.
Bad? - Well that's too sweeping a statement.

Quote

Having weapons take up crit slots and tonnage that isn't being used when you could use it for more armour, ammo or heat sinks is a huge problem.



Stock mechs just weren't built to deal with the current heat environment. EIther PGI needs to change heatsinks (won't happen) or they need to make their own 'stock' variants that are actually designed around the games current rule system.

You missed the single most important part of my post.

Stock mechs are truer to Tabletop principals than anything you, or anyone else on this forum could possibly think of.

You need to spend that few milliseconds before pressing "fire" to actually consider your shot.
You don't just shoot in this game, nor in BT.
You commit to a shot.
It's always been a tradeoff, and this principal is strong in the stock mechs.
However, as I said, clearly, that all the upgrades make the general game very twitch-shooterish.

Not the heat-system, that is fine, as it makes the game feel like TT should do, but the upgrades that all the enemy mechs use mean that they don't need to adhere to those same principals.

Kinda like playing C&C vs the Zero-Wing spaceship; You're both playing a totally different game.
Neither game is bad, but they're not the same.

Edited by BigJim, 04 December 2012 - 03:17 AM.

[xxx WreckinBallRaj xxx]

Taizan, on 04 December 2012 - 02:41 AM, said:

Been there, done that, financed my first 3 mechs with trials. Worked good to gain c-bills, learn the ins and outs and be mindful of heat. Not ideal for new players to mechwarrior or players that think spending 1-2 hours each evening is a grind.

That's the ironic part. Trial Mechs bring in the bills faster than owned Mechs. I guess that's Piranha's way of compensating you for riding those useless trashcans. "Ya, we know these things do nothing but compensate you and prevent experience gain... so here's extra bills to make up for it". It'd have been more logical for them to just "not" suck and "not" pay more than regular rides.

[Malek Deneith]

Sadly my machine turned out to be too weak to run MWO, so I lack first hand experience with the game, but going by my experience with TT Battletech as well as older Mechwarrior games my guess would be the issue is less with Trial mechs and more with... customs.

Why?

Well, trial mechs are, as far as I understood, as faithful to TT loadouts as the game allows, yes? Here's the thing - stock mech loadouts are flawed, all of them. And intentionally so. They're made flawed so that players have to work around the flaws, learn to ride the heat curve, etc, rather than have perfectly min/maxed weapons of doom alpha strike at each other until one of them falls. It makes the game more interesting, and that was the goal. The result of this is that the moment one side makes a custom mech the other instantly is at disadvantage - even a total noob can customize a mech better than stock loadouts, as long as he has at least basic grasp of the game rules. This is true in tabletop, this was true in old MW games, Mechcommander games, and is most likely true in MWO as well.

I have no illusions so I'm not going to suggest locking away option to customize, since there's no way that is going to fly. About the only solution here I see either to allow customizing Trial mechs or alternatively make two separate game modes - one where only trials and un-touched stock mechs can fight, and other where customs fight customs only.