12 replies to this topic

[Redmace]

Imagine for a moment, this little daydream I have about playing MWO.

You log into the game, There's a patch! It completes. The home screen comes up with its usual advertisements and a few interesting news items, and low and behold actual patch notes ON the home screen!. You peruse it for a few minutes and decide that its time to play.

You click the New Mech Bay and your stable of boxes appears below just like usual. Across the top there is even still the same list of choices to change your load out add modules etc. But what catches your eye is that instead of a static picture of your mech in the center of the home screen of the mech bay,there is now a new social interface!

Three large buttons are on the side, with your friends list taking up the majority of the real estate of the screen. The buttons are something familiar to you from hundreds of other online games. The first button says, Quick Match. You put your mouse over it, and lo and behold a tooltip comes up saying "Instantly drops you and your chosen Mech into a random que" you notice a selector box next to it allowing you to choose what map type you would like.
Okay, you think. Just like the old launch button.

The next button causes your eyebrows to raise. It says, "Find a Team" You mouse over it and it says, "Connects you to the Mechbay lounge where you can join up with other Mechwarriors and participate in team play"

The third button gets your pulse racing. "Community Warfare", you put your mouse over it and it says. "Participate in the ebb and flow of an ever changing battlefield where your victories or failures sway the outcome of the war! (Coming Soon)"
You swallow that little bit of disappointment and shrug knowing it will come, after all its still beta.

You decide to check out the new Mechwarrior Lounge.
You click it, and the center window is replaced by a nice graphic of a bar as a header, with a button saying Friends list. You make a note to check on that later. Below it is a listing of chat rooms. Startled you notice it is very similar to the layout of the player made Team Speak server that you have been using. There are general topic channels, help channels, and several dropships and clan affiliated rooms. You notice a looking for group channel.

That's what you want!

You drop into the channel, and see others there, with chat flowing in text. You notice each Mechwarriors name also has a series of icons next to it. You mouse over their icons, unfamiliar with them. You notice that the first icon designates a role. Brawler, Scout, LRM, Sniping etc. The second icon designates a weight class, Assault, Heavy, Medium..etc. The third designates clan affiliation or lone wolf status. There is also an icon for preferred match type. Assault, Conquest, Any, etc.
You notice a bar on the left that has already selected two of these icons for you based on the mech you have chosen and your listed affiliation. There is a selection for the map type, you choose "Any" to keep your options open. The mech you have selected currently you prefer to play as an LRM boat, so you select that icon.

Seconds after you select your role you hear a ping sound, and a window pops up saying "Abbroxis would like you to join Dropship 4 for a match!" And a button that says Yes and No Thank You. You select yes, and notice you are moved into that room. A new button appears. It is currently bright red and says Not Ready. You are familiar with this concept! You click the ready button, and say brief hello's in the room, check their icons for role and notice that Abbroxis has a new icon that says, "Lance Leader"

Some chatter happens as the rest of your team forms. You notice that you can right mouse folks and add them to your friends list as either Clan, friend or acquaintance You also see an option to click and pull up their current mechs build! You notice that even as you navigate around your interface, the button still stays green, and the dropship chat stays persistently visible in a small section of the center window.
"Okay, lets do this!", Abbroxis says, and a familiar searching for match screen comes up.
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Still with me? Great. This was just my long winded way of sharing what I would like to see, and to drive home my point that a better social interface would greatly improve the game.

Thanks for reading.

[Mojosan]

Oh my GOD THIS! PLEASE THIS!

This would be so cool.

[wickwire]

This would be - awesome.

[Szaesse]

I am totally with you on this. The social side of this game would really make things incredible.

[Adrienne Vorton]

looks like it fits my imagination for the most part well written too

[Volume]

And then you join a game with disconnects, crashes, yellow screen, no minimap, 150kph lag shield streak/ecm ravens, and...it's actually a bit more tolerable because at least you have some people to share the experience with, heh.

Edit: I forgot to mention alt-f4 to avoid deaths, and people suiciding at the beginning of the match. Yep.

Edited by Volume, 07 January 2013 - 01:08 AM.

[grayson marik]

Nice one! Now imagine an other Channel , where the team you just joined is also listened with the droplayout visible on top.
Now an other Lanceleader can just klick the "Challenge this group" button with his team and a droplayout close to your teams layout and poff you are suddenly even able to do trainings 5v5 or 6v6 with your clanmates...

Edited by grayson marik, 07 January 2013 - 04:52 AM.

[Sh4nk0h0l1c]

OMG, there would be room for trainings, funwars, gentleman agreements etc...

It also would make it easier for new players to find join groups, make friends...

And it would definetly stop the PUGstomping...

Yes I thinks thats the way/direction to go!

Nice written, thanks to the OP

[StraferX]

Well written and thought out plan, seems like this Would be a normal progression as this is how it works in so many other games.
The element of competitive fun and satisfactory ability to make at least a few choices about your game play is so 1992. When I started playing MWO in mid November I was truely suprised that in this stage of 0pen beta how much was left unfinished and un implemented and how weaksauce the game is and worse with the new patch. For the Love of Pete put this guy on the Pay role to help keep Pgi on track and give us a couple more maps to play with.

[Mojosan]

I was thinking about this post most of the day. Why arent they doing something like this? And where the heck is the dev team? Has anyone heard from them lately? Just curious cause updates seem to be farther and farther apart, containing less and less real content. Anyone know what their plan is? Do they have one? Why are they so secretive about it?

[wickwire]

The Lounge/bar setting could have FragRadio playing
http://fragradio.co.uk/
this is used on Team Fortress 2 occasionally

[vitek r]

Something like this is WAYYYYY beyond the intent and ability of these devs. I don't mean that in a mean way, but its just the truth.

[MaddMaxx]

No need to get to Select the Map. bad bad bad bad bad Otherwise, Cool Beans.