1 reply to this topic

[Kaiser Thermidor]

Disclaimer: You've been warned by the title. If you come in here and offer nothing constructive, instead choosing to post something that amounts to "tl;dr, heard this all before" or something otherwise similarly pointless, all you will be doing is confirming that you are a twit that likes to clutter threads.

Further, I am aware that several of the issues I want to address have been brought up by others, possibly for a long time. That I am still bringing up those same issues is as important as the issue itself.

The rest of this post will be addressed to Piranha Games, Inc. Reply if you like, add your two cents, but I'm likely not going to check back on it so avoid addressing anything to me personally.

First and foremost: Communication.
As a multiplayer-only game, MWO in its current incarnation lacks something absolutely vital: a useful and effective method of communication between teammates. The community has done something to remedy this with the ‘public’ Teamspeak servers, but this is not their job nor should it be. When MechWarrior Online was first announced, there was a lot of talk about teamwork, about scouts having a big role in spotting and intel, about information being a big part in either taking home a stack of C-bills or spending that stack in the mechshop on repairs.

But when those scouts only have text to send back intel to the *team*- not their lance, not their pre-made, their TEAM- what good is it, that lofty ideal of making a game where it was whoever had the best teamwork, not whoever had the biggest mechs and the best aim, that would take home a win?

Including C3 “support” seemed like it was a step in the right direction, but using a third-party VOIP solution not integrated with the game, and then burying it in the options menu with a tiny tick box was not the way to go about it. As far as I know, it is still non-functional within the game today, despite being there since I first tried it back in July.
The lack of communication, specifically voice communication, ties into another area that desperately needs addressing: the social part of multiplayer.

When there is only text chat in a very action-heavy game, there is little to no actual social interaction. Most times people don’t even talk, because there is either no time, or no incentive. Sometimes, one person will bark opening orders at the team, and that’ll be it. For the rest of the match, silence (as it were, with only text chat). Other times, maybe someone will be silly and say “hello!” or such, maybe trying to inject a sense of community- even a feeling of this is actually a multiplayer game- but otherwise, the game feels strangely solitary for having 16 players slugging it out in futuristic warmachines.

When you feel alone it is hard to invest in the game, much less the community that may or may not be there. Not everyone is going to read the forums- just look at how many people don’t even read the flipping patch notes. Even fewer are going to participate in the forums. So it needs to be in the game. When there is no social interaction, people have little reason to keep coming back to an online game- as it were, I might as well be playing the single player of MechWarrior 3.

The more people feel like this, the more it is going to kill the game. Obvious truth, yes. Necessary to be said, I hope not.

A good way to forcefully inject some community into this game would be pre/post-match lobbies. Setting a team tonnage limit or having slots for weight classes might be a way to ensure we aren’t getting 8 Assaults versus a mishmash of mediums and heavies, but no matter how it is done, people need to have some way of connecting with people other than on the business end of a PPC.

Having a real social platform to stand on in this game would go a very long way into one of the points that is possibly most pertinent to the business side of PGI: new players.

There is no tutorial for this game. Why?
People learn so much more efficiently when they are shown and mimic the instruction in the same lesson. It’s very much a step in the right direction to divide up the videos into specific topics, but for a game as complex as MechWarrior, there needs to be some kind of in-game tutorial that not only explains how to move and shoot and manage heat, but also explains what does what, and explains the mechlab and how MC works. Were I a new player, I’d have no clue a LB-X 10/AC was a shotgun, for example.
Yes, I understand this is open beta and mostly only veteran mechjocks are going to express a lot of interest, but that doesn’t mean a whole slew of other people- people willing to throw money at this game- aren’t going to want to try it out, too. I don’t know what it is with small studios and their dislike of interactive tutorials (I am guessing it is a technical/time investment hurdle, which is understandable), but please do not go the way of EYE: Divine Cybermancy or Natural Selection 2 and expect a slew of videos to be sufficient teaching material. Especially in the case of NS2, I can personally attest that it is but a shadow of its former self, and I would attribute at least some of that to the high barrier to entry that was “drop people in a match, they’ll figure it out.” Less an issue with them, since you pay full up front, but with the Free to Play plan PGI has, it will be lethal if you don’t make the game accessible.

Am I preaching to the choir? I hope so. Truly I do. I expect I am, but I'm going to say it anyway, for my own self-satisfaction.

Other issues I would like to see addressed are the mechlab, which is still somewhat buggy, and the social tab which needs to be brought very much into the foreground rather than a small, difficult-to-navigate tab buried in the corner. Hopefully that will come naturally with the introduction of a viable social aspect to this game.

Of course, introducing a greater variety of mechs, weapons, maps and equipment is always desirable and would make the current playerbase happy, but that won’t help in the long run. Solidify the basis of the game as a viable multiplayer platform, and the rest is just icing. Why am I saying these things to a developer, I’m sure you’re wondering. Frankly, because I see none of it being addressed. I am not expecting Piranha to lay out their design plans for MWO, nor do I assume to be privy to Piranha’s thoughts on whatever matter I’ve mentioned here, but with no rumors or announcements of any of these things forthcoming, nor evidence of them being addressed immediately, I have to assume that the fact of the matter is that Piranha either does not prioritize the aforementioned, does not care, or is unaware of them. For the sake of my sanity, and my love of this game and the studio producing it, I am going to assume the former.

Regardless, this is my judgment and opinion: I am calling it as I see it, nothing more and nothing less. Take it or leave it, but read this knowing I am doing this with helpful intentions, as flawed or otherwise imperfect as my words or my intention may be.

[Willie Sauerland]

Yes, there are many things which need to be fixed. There are publicly available team speak servers (see my sig below) where you can meet up with many of the other players who are PUGging. You could even form up into a premade with the people you meet there - and be called over-powered to boot. I have heard C3 is functional in a limited form though nobody is using it. I'm not sure exactly how functional it truly is so I will have to test this some more. Of course, a dev commenting on this would be useful.

As for the rest, I can't agree more.

Also, I hope the rant helped you get these things off your chest. Of course, these are all very well known issues and of course - tl;dr.