The Cheese, on 24 December 2012 - 03:30 AM, said:
A good, playable game is vastly more important than sticking to some numbers that were designed for an entirely different game type.
You're assuming that a faithful translation into a first-person armored combat simulator in real time from the TT wouuldn't be a good, playable game.
Deadoon, on 24 December 2012 - 03:41 AM, said:
Most people who want the franchise to stay true to lore are over reaching, some of the stuff makes sense in a game but other stuff doesn't at all, such as C3 systems and command consoles.
... and how is it that the C3 systems don't make any sense?
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Oh and here is a thing about overheating mechs, most mech designs do not overheat, even with alpha strikes in tt.
... someone hasn't played a tt game with 3025 mechs.... say, that unknown 'Mech known as the Warhammer, for instance...
Noesis, on 24 December 2012 - 07:08 AM, said:
BT/TT fans do have a voice, the complication is translating a turn based, bird's eye view and multi-mech game into a real time, 1st perspective and singular mech simulation.
Cool.
Now, what's so complicated? Can you actually list anything specific?
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Being a TT fan you'd also be aware to the many layers of functionality yet to be introduced into the game to give some overall understanding to some semblance of complete game play experience, so basing any conclusions on the flavour of an incomplete cake now is a little premature and not a fair or logical premise.
To some extent, yes; but when core things like the hit tables are either mistranslated as being representative of something they aren't and/or are otherwise completely left out of the conversion... valid, constructive criticisms can be made.
It seems MWO has, so far, gone the route of yet another slower fps with more guns, instead of actually simulating the 'Mechs ability to handle it's weapons systems and than having the player ... pilot the 'Mech, which is a shame.
I think it ironic to call a game MechWarrior where there's no simulation of the 'Mechs abilities to handle it's weapons to hit the target that it's pilot is indicating... you know, the translation of the hit-tables into the video game format; which represent the ability of the 'Mech to bring its weapons to bear.
CypherHalo, on 24 December 2012 - 07:43 AM, said:
Blech. I'm really trying to think of a way to be polite here. Look, this game needs to be appeal to a wide audience, if they don't then the game dies and you get no MW game.
Or, say, they could do a good translation of the system into realtime and do what great games have done since games have existed - creat their own playerbase. This sort of thing used to be routine before the beancounters got control over the gaming industry and everyone lost their stones because everthing got SO expensive to implement.
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Also, not every MW fan wants what you want. I would consider myself an MW fan, having played every game since MW2. No, I have never played TT, but there are A LOT of people who have never played or even knew one existed. To demand that this game follow the example of TT, well, I don't get it. That is not the formula for success or for pleasing anyone except the TT p;layers, who once again, are few in number.
... "Not everyone wants what you want" true, to a point, but the name of the game actually has a meaning. There are hard and fast boundaries outside of which a game can't be validly called mechwarrior.
If, as you admit, you've never played the TT game ... how can you validly say that it wouldn't work if translated over? You've admitted that you don't know the game that you're condemning.
Niko Snow, on 24 December 2012 - 07:49 AM, said:
Many at both PGI/IGP are hardcore MW/BT fans coming from almost every form: VG/TT/CCG/Fiction.
(Not quite a cult though: There are also some who consider themselves more casual to the genre/setting)
The way Noesis described it is as a translation is pretty much sound. Sometimes the hardest part of a developers day is when they plug the table-top values and rules into the video game experience and the output is something Lovecraftian in it's balance or fun-levels. Changing these rules always meets with a mixture of response, but we welcome any constructive feedback as long as it's specific enough to work with as well as being something both the community supports and the game data suggests could improve the balance.
Of course things are crazy and alice in wonderland like when you try and take the TT values and plug them into a completely different gaming system, and I'm not talking about the conversion into real time, which is not that hard of a problem to resolve.
For instance, weapons damage values vs armor values are, of necessity, going to be utterly out of whack when the to-hit tables aren't used; you're automatically going to have more weapons fire hitting singular armor panels than the values were designed for... so you have to say, double armor values ... but that destroys certain weapons and throws the balance off, so there's a nearly endless round of tweaks, chasing the white rabbit down the hole...
When all that had to be done was to use the to-hit tables (aka, actually make a 'Mech sim, instead of yet another fps).
Lefty Lucy, on 24 December 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:
I *am* a hardcore BT fan. I have a few companies of pewter minis painted up that proves that. I have Total Warfare pretty well memorized cover-to-cover and I remember "how it used to work" when infernos had a 50% chance to wreck any vehicle they touched, could be fired from SSRM2 launchers, and taking partial cover was a death sentence.
I realize that turning BT into a video game faithfully has a few major obstacles and flaws to successful translation:
1. Weapon balance. Nobody wants to play a game where PPCs, MLs and *maybe* SRMs, LRMs, and AC20s are worth using. The AC2/5 are utter trash in TT, and the AC10 is pretty marginal, usually better replaced by a PPC or LL. As flawed as it is MWO actually has better weapon balance than TT right now.
2. TT has short engagement times. TT *feels* like an epic slugfest because games take a few hours to play 10 turns. However, 10 turns is only 1 minute 40 seconds. That *includes* at least two turns of positioning where both sides get into position to engage. Would *you* enjoy if every MWO match only lasted at most 3 minutes? Doubled armor/internals was implemented partly for this reason and partly because...
3. ... you hit what you aim for in MWO, but hit locations are random in TT. The developers of MWO want to reward player skill, and adding in a "cone of fire" for lasers would feel really silly.
4. TT has the player firing once every 10 seconds. As with most TT mechanics, this is just an abstraction to make for a playable game. Are the mechs *actually* waiting for everyone to move, then waiting for everyone to fire? No, they're moving and firing simultaneously, taking cover, etc. Following a strict TT turn order would make for a turn-based strategy game, not an FPS.
5. Heat mechanics in fiction versus TT. In the fiction even a Locust pilot worries about heat, despite the fact that in TT the locust is completely heat neutral, even with an engine hit. While the developers' lack of math skills is disturbing, I appreciate that they are attempting to make it so that heat is a worry for all mechs, and isn't something you can just design away in mechlab. This does, however, make nearly *any* canon design extremely flawed, so I think this is the place that could use the most tweaking in MOW, balance-wise.
1: You seem to be making the presumption that every weapon has to be "uber" at some facet of battlefied damage; as if all weapons have to be equal.
2: Your timescale is off. One turn = ten seconds. Porting over the armor/damage/damage application system would result in a game where people would spend some time maneuvering, trying to get into a good position, and when combat finally did come, it would resolve pretty quickly; so game times would be more of a factor of the map sizes and setups than anything else. You know ... it would be a thinking man's mech game - moderate stretches of tactical thinking followed by moments of sheerly terrifying combat.
3: Hit locations are not totally random in TT. They are within a range - you can't aim at the moon and shoot yourself in the face, which seems to be what people think when the word "random" is bandied around on these forums. One need not add a nonsensical cone of fire model to simulate the combat capabilities of the BattleMechs in a game about ... the combat capabilites of a BattleMech being "piloted" by the players :
http://mwomercs.com/...different-idea/
4: Heat is the controlling balance for refire rates in TT. If you want a weapon to fire faster, add the mathematically determined amount of extra heat; slower than 10 seconds, vise versa. This is not the boogeyman that it's made out to be.
5: Which locust? Under what rules?
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either that or a higher post count. But I dont talk much on the forums read yes but I dont comment much.
