I played MWO for over 4yrs now. Many things i really like, still like, and will always like. Some things i didn't like, still don't like and what i will like after the New Tech Injection -> IDK. What i know is that i really like Gameplay Mechanics of the upcoming Battletech Game (trying out the Beta every night a match). It's still a Beta with missing Features and Bugs. So i want to share my thoughts what i would like to have in the end product especially compared to MWO. Here are some flash thoughts: MWO -> Battletech: Really Cool Mech Arts/Models. Just keep on the good work! A lot of Mech Variants. Army of Robots. WE Events E-Sport Tournaments with the best Players worldwide. Fantastic Stuff to watch how they play Customizable Appearance / Cosmetic Stuff Battletech -> MWO DFA !!! MELEE!!! Hell yeaah Pilots actually have Faces and some Personality. Dude, that's not too difficult to implement. The Map Design really looks good. Coold inject some Inspiritation for the next MWO Maps. So what are your Thoughts?
Mmh very different products to me but then what appeals to me about the Battletech side is the single player campaign. MWO to me is entirely focused on PvP and (imo) does that core well mechanically and appearance wise. Where it loses me is the absolute lack of new maps and the PGI claims of how expensive a new map costs to develop. Battletech SP wise has a huge advantage in that no one really cares about balance and maps should be able to be churned out really easily. Quid pro quo I'm not really much of a fan of the scout/locking mechanics at all. That said its making better use of recon and roles in that area than MWO has after years.
Two very different games. Aiming vs random chance to hit, and turn-based instead of real-time mean that a lot of things wouldn't translate well between games. For example melee works in games where there's just one model and animation to hit, but when you have to take account for all the different components in MWO, I understand that it'll be very difficult to add it in a rather balanced way. BTW, the models in BattleTech and MWO are the same. The best thing BattleTech has over MWO is its clarity. The UI is well designed: it's clear what everything does, buffs/nerfs are clearly visible and the weapons behave in a way you'd expect them to. Everything is just polished so much better in BattleTech (partially due to the fact they haven't had to fix as many old systems). MWO has a slew of band-aid fixes like Ghost Heat, exponential decrease clan LRM damage profiles, the recent 'energy rebalance' that made some pulse lasers deal more, others deal less damage than their normal counterparts with various amounts of heat, the random targeting when using jumpjets or firing a Heavy Gauss (would a normal recoil really be that hard to implement over a spazzing reticle?) is not described anywhere. The 'Mech cheat sheet' is a prime example of the problem with MWO UI. Lot's of spacious elements that give no useful information (why the hell does that diamond show tonnage?), while more important things like quirks and accelerations are hidden tiny numbers between huge, similar looking graphs without an indication if this is above or below tonnage average. This stats screen is a complete mess, not helpful to anyone who wants to know things about the mech. The appeal of MWO over BattleTech is because it's much more immersive and you're not dependent on RNGsus, I just like this kind of methodical/slow FPS more than a turn-based strategy game. The large variety of mechs to collect and build on also helps MWO greatly. Clan mechs are sexy, give a lot of variety of building your mech, and as long as you stay out of competitive, they're not that imbalanced either. Add to that the fact that the locations of weapon hardpoints actually matters adds a different kind of balance to the game, which is in my opinion for the better. It gives mech models more than just a e s t h e t i c as a reason to buy (otherwise I wouldn't own any battlemasters for example ). Then there's also the skill tree for even more variety (though again, PGI UI design team made it very difficult to enjoy). I haven't seen many of the maps in battletech, but I'll trust them that it's difficult to design new maps in MWO, if they're using all the creative effort to give us our mechs. Most of the creative team is also not familiar with landscape design and the way they want to implement these maps makes it even harder to design them, as it has to be balanced from different angles, AND represent an engaging, recognisable planetside area. If they'd make arena-style maps instead of landscape, that would already be much easier to copypaste/rotate and save time. It'll be balanced automatically. Arena-style also gives way for new game modes, which adds to the variety of the map pool. Also, if they shifted all their map design towards FP, and then unlock certain sections of those larger maps as QP battlegrounds, the gap between QP and FP would diminish, and no extra maps need to be designed, just the spawn points. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I just want to emphasize that there are over 50 different battlegrounds in QP alone, if you count the game modes (which you should), and a new map would be nice, but getting some sense on how to do it first, would be nicer.
hard points. in MW4 I hated them. I could not make a poor mans king crab. MW3 I could. at first I hated this. but than I got to thinking. what is the difference between a king crab and an atlas in BT? nothing at all. any thing an atlas can do a king crab can do. any thing a gryphon can do a shadow hawk can do. this hard point stuff made mech unique I began to like this idea and kind of wish FASA would have added this to the game in the beginning.
I just reinstalled MW4, fun that you mention it. It would be interesting to see hardpoints of certain sizes melded with the current slots/component from battletech that's going on. Just implement colored borders to indicate where you can put certain weapons, but leave it free too be occupied by non-weapons such as heatsinks, endosteel as well. Just limiting weapon size (though it'd probably screw over mechs like the Cplt-K2 that use machinegun hardpoints for dual gauss). Maybe for a battletech-related game in the future.
