Mechwarrior Online

[Falconeer]

That would be amazing, for real. Love the concept. Unfortunately, it is really too late for my timezone especially on a weekday. :(

[satael]

That would be amazing, for real. Love the concept. Unfortunately, it is really too late for my timezone especially on a weekday. :(

Same here 

[Hoax]

Stock (t1) mech lessons:
-Stalkers are very good.
-RVN-4X is very very good.
-Locusts can be quite good if piloted by the right person.
-Hunchbacks are all solid.
-LRM's are mostly awful if you are under a lance per side and really don't get great until its close to 8v8.
-SRM's thanks to ammo #'s are quite good but they also will probably kill you.
-Low leg armor is usually a bad mech, in bigger matches you might be ok but 4v4 and under mechs with bad weak spots especially legs will get chewed up.
-Flamers can be good. There is a BJ stock that comes with flamers which is an absolute terror versus some stock configs. Terror.
-Some of the Awesomes have like infinity back armor, which can be used at stock mech TTK pace to do crazy amounts of tanking, its hilarious.
-ECM can be kind of broken. In all likelyhood it needs to be treated as +10 tons or something for team balance.
-MG's are great because 0 heat.

Its quite fun.

The guys I play with on Wednesday also run something on Saturday I believe, you can find threads for all this type of stuff here:
http://mwomercs.com/forums/forum/273-community-run-events/

This is them on Saturday, but again its US night so not great for euro TZ:
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/158427-stock-saturday/

This one is euro-TZ but I hear the ruleset is fairly rigid and complex compared to the try to balance teams and get in drops style that we use on Wednesday. If it works it could be fun?
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/169180-succession-wars-sunday-aka-stock-mech-sundays/

[Sir T]

Sounds fantastic

[satael]

Event Type: Challenge.
Event Begins: Friday, September 5th, 2014 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 5PM UTC.
Event Ends: Tuesday, September 9th, 2014 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 5PM UTC.

Prizes:
Tier 1 (200 Points): 3-days of Premium Time.
Tier 2 (550 Points): 1 Free Mechbay.
Tier 3 (950 Points): 6 million C-Bills.

Scoring:
Points are only awarded while playing in a Group of 4.
Kill: 1 Point.
Assist: 2 Points.
Spot Bonus: 2 Points.
TAG Assist: 2 Points.
NARC Assist: 2 Points.
Victory: 4 Points.

[Ironwood]

No.

[Lantyssa]

I'd get 10-20 points per match under that scoring, but I doubt I'll be able to get 20 matches of four people.

Why does PGI hate its players?

[Hoax]

Just use the pick up group voips? MWO has some I believe. Back before ghost heat there was a Comstar one that was easy and painless to use to find group drops.

I know my house (FWL) has a vent server that has pick up groups going all the time even when there isn't an event/challenge thing so that is certainly an option.

Can't speak to other factions but honestly you all should be in Marik anyways because space baltic democracy and purple mechs is about a thousand times cooler than the huge zerg (davion), the slightly smaller zerg of space aryans that pretends its not a zerg (steiner), space weaboos (kurita) or being on the same team as goons aka space crazies/commies (liao) or the special snowflake faction (FRR). Its about a million times cooler than being a clanner. Especially Clan Wolf, what a disgusting bunch that is.

[Falconeer]

Russ Bullock on how to fix the balance mess that are the Clans.

Hello MechWarrior’s,

In light of the upcoming clan weapon changes today...

This is a long awaited update on PGI's latest feelings and plans as it pertains to Clan balance. I expect it to be a very lengthy post so please bear with me as we work through the entire logic of our balance decisions and plans.

First off, let's all go back to the initial clan announcement and postings of how the technology would work. We were very clear from the very start that we were determined to not make the same mistake of past MechWarrior games in establishing the Clan mech’s as the "end game". In other words we weren't making a second game but that these Clan mech’s needed to fit and exist within MWO. We let players know how the engines, armor and Omni pods would work as well as a general description of how the weapons would play. This was going to create a unique feel to the clans but hopefully very balanced with IS mech’s.

Now that things have settled in we can see that, yes, we have fulfilled the requirements of how the technology will work as well as attaining that unique feel. However we can also see that the balance between IS and Clans is further apart than we had estimated. So the question has been, how do we plan to address this?

10v12

We have come to the conclusion that, for the foreseeable future, this is NOT a viable option for MWO, here are some of the reasons why:
UI redesign of the pre-game, scoreboard and end of round screen.
New rules for tie breakers surrounding the uneven team sizes
Significant re-factoring of the match maker to develop team sizes that don’t match.
'Mech chassis tonnage balancing will no longer work.
Elo will no longer work with 10 vs 12 team calculations.
These elements alone (not including other edge cases) represent at least several additional weeks, if not months, into refactoring and testing time before they would be ready for deployment. That is time that will directly impact the development and delivery of CW modules 2+.

But perhaps more importantly than that, if we went down this path the overall message to the community is basically “Yes your IS mech’s are weaker, but if you put lots of them together you might win”. This is not what we communicated to the MWO community as to our plans for the Clan mech’s and how they would balance within MWO.

Balancing Plan

At this point we cannot make the statement that we have a picture perfect solution to IS vs Clan balance, but we do have a solid plan of attack. First off just knowing that we are going to exist within a 12v12 environment is one of the major decisions we were waiting to make, and now that it has been decided, we can chip away at the problem.

The first step is to release this latest round of Clan weapon changes this week. We HOPE this is the last Clan weapon nerfs we will have to implement. Not because we feel like this will be enough, (in fact we know that it will not) but in an effort to keep the unique feeling of the clan mech’s strong we will look to other areas to bridge the rest of the gap. Such as the following POTENTIAL changes:

Clan Heat and Movement penalties if a Right or Left torso is destroyed.
Small increase in IS Mech heat efficiency.
Complete IS mech Quirk pass to give more uniqueness and ability when used within their respective roles.
Increase in IS and Clan mech armor and internal structure if time to death decreases too much.

Our plan is to begin this plan of attack on the balance of the game this weekend with the implementation of the latest Clan weapon changes and then continue on with the other items systematically over the course of the next couple of months. With this command chair post shared with the public future updates on this subject should be possible much more frequently to discuss our progress.

[Hoax]

Fuck these shitty devs so much. I can't wait until they go the way of Hi-Rez.

[HaemishM]

Wow, it only took them a few months of pain to realize what everyone said about Clans being too powerful for the last 2-3 years (plus however many odd years since Clans were first introduced in Battletech) was true.

And yet, they still don't have clue one.

[Falconeer]

PGI has announced a new game. Space bullshit something. Big announcement will be made on September 9th. They claim to have separate resources and people working on the two project. I honestly believe this is quite the nail in the coffin for MWO. The game will stay alive for a long while, for sure, and will definitely get its half-assed Community Warfare, but this is clearly the first transparent sign that things are dying down.

Bryan Ekman:

Concerns about where the money goes is absolutely founded, and the short answer is net MWO proceeds after taxes, royalties to Microsoft etc... - go directly into the development of MWO. The speed of development is largely relative to the amount of money coming in from sales. Those sales keep a team of around 35-40 people (we have external contractors) working full time on MWO development and live operations.

Our new game development is funded from a different source and we have been recruiting new talent exclusively for this project. We did move some staff around internally as needed to accommodate two productions, and their will be some shared resources (marketing, customer service, QA).

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Bryan Ekman, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Piranha Games. 14 years ago I founded Piranha Games with my business partner Russ Bullock to build exciting and engaging games that we love to play. Piranha is best known for our latest endeavor — MechWarrior Online, an online free-to-play giant robot combat game. MechWarrior Online's incredibly successful Founder's Program proved that we can work directly with our backers to help build a game for the community.

On Sep 9th, 2014 at 12:00PM PDT we invite you to join us for the reveal of our next project. It's a big one, it's going to be the largest production ever undertaken here at Piranha, and we want YOU to be part of it.

It's epic, it's online, it's sci-fi.

Just below you will find a registration form. Filling out this form will register you for our new game and grant you an exclusive in-game item when the finished product goes live. By registering now, you can also name your Pilot – yes that's right, pilot. Ok, no more spoilers…

I look forward to the future, and our journey to the stars.

Sincerely,

Bryan Ekman


Creative Director/Co-Founder
Piranha Games

[satael]

It's a big one, it's going to be the largest production ever undertaken here at Piranha.

I was hoping they'd launch CW in some form before changing to maintenance mode for MWO but I guess they feel like they have gotten all the easy money they are going to get when it comes to MWO (maybe the clan mechs didn't perform as well as they expected) 

[Falconeer]

Oh I don't think that's related, or not the way you think it is. I really believe the Clan 'mechs brought them a huge load of money. But that's probably the last big money they were ever able to make (what else is left iconic enough to outperform the Clan packs?) so they might have moved that money elsewhere though, that's the shitty part.

[Lantyssa]

balance between IS and Clans is further apart than we had estimated

Ahahahahahahahaha hahahahahahahahaha hahahahahaha.

Morons.

At this point they're better off letting ELO sort out this mess (if the system is even working), so that the matches end up most Clan and the top 2% of IS against one another and IS and the bottom few clanners.  Not that I have any faith in the ELO system considering I think it groups players of a similar ELO together but not against one another...

[Ironwood]

Just charge and IS 'Clan-Upgrade' that allows them to use Clan Equipment.

Balance problems solved.

 

[Lantyssa]

I also like how they design around the edge cases.  Instead of "Here is how we want things work, what do we do about these outliers" they're all "We can't do this thing because 1% of games might hit this special instance".

For example, I've never seen a game go to a tie-breaker because someone didn't kill all 'mechs, take a base, or get enough points.  You could, I don't know, add up the structural integrity of the remaining 'mechs and whomever has the largest percentage left wins?  You could call it a draw and award both sides halfway between victory and defeat?  You could offer a choice of playing in strict Clan/IS or mixed field?

They act like it's rocket robot science.

[Falconeer]

One of those games you have to brag about. Mind, every single person who can play the game is in the group queue tonight for the challenges. Still, with a 45 tons non-mastered 'mech, that's quite an amazing game. 7 kills, 700+ damage, last 'mech standing.

[satael]

Wow, that number of kills (with the damage to match it) is pretty insane for a 45-ton mech especially when it's last man standing 

[Falconeer]

From Russ Bullock, on ECM.

Okay how about this, this is what many of you have been waiting for:

Well first a question: Do you think you the community can come to an agreed upon consensus? One in which if the changes are implemented everyone says great job PGI on listening to us now we feel great about ECM and your ability to listen to feedback?

If the answer is Yes then I suggest the following:
You the community decide how your going to present a proposal, nominate a peer that you feel has the best handle on this, put together your own player council whatever you like but present a proposal that your peers vote on. The vote would likely need to be far greater than just 51% in favor. Perhaps something more like 80+%

At that point PGI will analyze the proposal, if we see any technical problems or balance problems that we feel perhaps you didnt see, we will point those items out to you. Then if necessary you can adjust your proposal and put it to a vote again, if successful PGI will again analyze and repeat if necessary until we have a final design solution for implementation.

PGI will then communicate how long it will take to implement with full explanation as to why, and we will patch the changes in upon the agreed upon delivery date. Once complete if this whole process has gone smoothly and civily we will proceed with doing things like this far more frequently or at least for other areas of the product that are controversial.

What do you say?




-----




Yes I do want to keep these conditions in place, I think it is a good starting point. Also yes I do think it will be a good exercise for the community to truly get a sense of the vast amount of opinions within MWO and how difficult it is to listen to ideas and feedback and come up with a solution we think best meets the communities desires.

As to the 80% I am open to discussing the criteria with you. No of course it isn't 80% of entire player base, but it also can't be just the 100 most active people on the forums either which would be incredibly skewed. Units will need to make sure their player bases log into the forums at least to vote. There will need to be a continued dialogue on how we determine that the 80% is truly representative of today's active players.

I will continue to monitor the thread and situation. I can take some PM's but I encourage you to prove to PGI that you can come to consensus and work together.

A player council deciding real stuff...  

[Hoax]

Couldn't be more obvious proof these guys have no idea what they are doing.

You players need to tell us how to fix the game and you need to all agree that is how to fix it.

But not like those times (3PV, Coolent consumables, ghost heat) that everyone agreed our changes were bad and we did it anyways.

[MahrinSkel]

It's not that far off from the stuff we were doing with Camelot, where we basically took a few dozen of the more levelheaded members of the community and had them tell us what various parts of the game were causing the most heartburn, and offer suggestions.

It worked pretty well, within the scope of what it was trying to do (help us set priorities for what to fix first without just chasing the squeaky wheel du jour on public forums).  But we kept the selection process out of the public eye (mostly it was "this guy seems to know his class and can talk about what's wrong with it without foaming at the mouth").

--Dave

[HaemishM]

It's not that far off from the stuff we were doing with Camelot, where we basically took a few dozen of the more levelheaded members of the community

The bolded part is highly debatable. 

[Falconeer]

More on this later, but the King Crab has been announced. December. 

[Falconeer]

Ok so, new Clan pack is Koshi, Fenris, Loki and Manowar, plus the Mad Dog if you purchase the most expensive pack AND you previously bought the most expensive Clan pack.




Then, they are celebrating 1 year of release with lots of fluffy stuff. Discounts, sales, half-priced GXP, free 'mechs with unique paintjobs. But the bomb, seriously, is the King Crab announcement (not to mention that you get one free if you have spent tons of money on MWO so far).

This week marks our 1 year Anniversary! Piranha Games would like to show our extreme gratitude to all players and supporters who have put their time and money into MechWarrior Online.

Anniversary Weekend
On September 17th 2013 we had our exciting launch event in San Francisco. So to mark this anniversary we're celebrating this weekend with Double XP, Double XP conversion, and Mechbays for 50% off. Also during this Anniversary weekend, when you win 1 match you will earn a Cupcake Cockpit item.

Active Player Reward
Our 1 year Active Player Reward is for any player that has played more than 100 matches since September 17th 2013. Eligible players will receive 2,000,000 C-bills, a Mechbay, and a fun standing Cockpit item.
Players with less than 100 matches still have the potential to earn this reward, as you have until Sept 23rd at 10:00 am PDT to hit the mark! The Active Player Reward will be injected into eligible accounts on September 23rd.

MechWarrior Credits Reward
This reward is for anyone who has ever purchased MechWarrior Credits. Eligible players will receive an exclusive new Centurion variant - the CN9-AH - decked out with a custom paint job, along with a 30% C-bill Bonus and a free Mechbay. This custom CN9-AH variant will only be available through our MechWarrior Credits Reward program and will be injected into eligible accounts on October 21st. You have until Sept 23rd at 10:00 am PDT to earn the MechWarrior Credits Reward. Founders packages that included MechWarrior Credits qualify for this reward. Standard versions of this new variant will be available for C-Bills at a future date to be determined.

Pre-Sale Reward
This reward is for players who have purchased any pre-sale program package. This includes any level of Founders, Phoenix, Clan Invasion Wave1 and 2 packages, or a la carte mechs. Eligible players will receive an exclusive new Atlas variant - the AS7-S - decked out with a custom paint job, along with a 30% C-bill Bonus and a free Mechbay. This custom AS7-S variant will only be available through our Pre-Sale Reward program and will be injected into eligible accounts on October 21st. You have until Sept 23rd at 10:00 am PDT to earn the Pre-Sale Reward. Standard versions of this new variant will be available for C-Bills at a future date to be determined.

Top Tier Reward
This reward is for anyone who purchased a Top Tier Package in any of our pre-order programs. Eligible players will receive an exclusive new King Crab Assault Mech decked out with a custom paint job, along with a 30% C-bill Bonus and a free Mechbay. This custom King Crab variant will only be available through our Top Tier Reward program and will be injected into eligible accounts on December 16th. You have until December 16th at 10:00 am PDT to earn the Top Tier Reward. All Standard variants of this chassis will be available for MC December 16th and C-bills January 20th.

As an additional thanks to all Founders, the C-bill bonus on all original Founders Mechs will be permanently raised from 25% to 30% starting September 17th.

This week we are also introducing our exciting Clan invasion Wave 2 pre-order program which allows us to offer the Ultimate Clan Reward Program!

Ultimate Clan Reward
This reward is for players who purchased a Masakari Clan Invasion package and the Wave 2 Man-o-War package. Eligible players will receive an exclusive new Invasion Mad Dog Mech with custom Invasion paint job and unique geometry, along with a 30% C-bill Bonus, 2 additional Mad Dog standard variants and 3 Mechbays .The Invasion version of this Mech will only be available through the Ultimate Clan Reward program. This Invasion Mad Dog Mech and the 2 standard variants will be available starting September 23rd for daily 4 pm injection. All Standard variants of this chassis will be available for MC December 16th and C-bills January 20th. Check out our Clan Invasion Wave 2 page for details (coming soon). The Ultimate Clan Reward program will be available for as long as the Clan Invasion Programs remain active.

 

[Lantyssa]

Well, couple of free 'mechs for me even though I haven't spent anything since the Founder's package, so there's that.

[Shannow]

Another Atlas and Centurion.  Still its free.

Anyway to track that 100 matches thing? I think I stopped playing around then.

[Zetleft]

https://mwomercs.com/profile/stats

I know those stats reset at some point, I'm guessing they are going by whats on there now. 

[Falconeer]

Last reset was in March 2014, but they are counting all matches between September 2013 and now, so it's quite impossible to figure out how many games you have played between September 2013 and the reset in March 2014. Sucks.

[Merusk]

Last reset was in March 2014, but they are counting all matches between September 2013 and now, so it's quite impossible to figure out how many games you have played between September 2013 and the reset in March 2014. Sucks.

There's an archived tab. Anyone here has over 100 matches. I know this because I just checked mine.  Stopped playing in May but I still have 200 matches in the archive.

I didn't realize I had a better win/ loss ratio than 50%.   1.11 k:d seems shitty, though.

[Ironwood]

I really like the Loki.  I'm fucked if I'm paying for it tho.

[Hoax]

95kph with tweak Ironwood.

Two torso mounted AC's, pick your favorite flavor anything but 20's will fit Ironwood.

Back that with three torso mounted bestlasersinthegame (CERMLs) Ironwood.

That means you get to use both arms as shields Ironwood.

Zombie mode activated Ironwood.

PS you have all that plus ECM aka Cloak of Skill aka Jesus Box Ironwood.

Don't you want to grab deal Ironwood?

Its so easy to join buy.


 


Played some stock matches last night. Nobody has figured out how to deal with Stalkers yet. Five matches in a row the Stalker was highest damage on winning team and therefore swapped to the other team each time and won again.

I'm having a hard time dealing with how fast SRM2's can fire. I can't seem to get a good rhythm with them and just end up firing it at AC5 speed. K2's are confirmed bad tier. Stock Battlemaster is not bad. MG's are totally decent. Light swarms can be so much more deadly thanks to lower armor values especially on the legs of some mechs. The LRM Locust is very not good.

[Ironwood]

In MechWarrior, they'd call me Sugo.

It'll still come out for CBills down the line.  Just like the 6 kitfoxes/novas that I have.

[Merusk]

Played some stock matches last night. Nobody has figured out how to deal with Stalkers yet. Five matches in a row the Stalker was highest damage on winning team and therefore swapped to the other team each time and won again.

Wait.. Stalkers are dealers of death now? Mine was always strong, even moreso after using Samprimary's "Snowball" build but why are they so much of a problem nowadays?

I might have to redownload to check this out.

[Hoax]

That was playing stock.

Tech 1 stock.

Stalkers are still great in the real game but you would basically never take one over a dakka DWF or a Gauss DWF.

If tonnage mattered Stalkers are good enough that they would have a place because they are amazeballs for 85 tons with those high hardpoints and hitboxes.