Mechwarrior Online

[Typhon]

That is very worrying... well, if the bar was at a reasonable level.  It's kind of just business as usual with this crew.

What is more disappointing is that they aren't saying, "damn, this just isn't going to work with this matchmaker, we'll have to re-write is... hmmm, maybe will invest in a more flexible way of having players choose their mechs".  One month timeframe says to me they are going to rush/halfass in something that doesn't address any of the major issues, it just (barely) gets the job done with the exact same UI they are using now.

The match-making as defined puts the onus on the player to play the healer (light) or tank (medium) instead of picking a mech that you want to play, or pilot a mech as part of a contract.  I really like the idea of a match having a certain budget (4v4, 8v8, 12v12) and mission objectives and contract payment/bonuses.  Player experience/skill with a certain mech/weight class acts as a factor in determining contract rate.   You know, all the shit they'd need to be in place to have an rich clan vs sphere conflict.  Instead we'll get a dirty bandaid. 

I really really really hope someone buys them out.

[Samprimary]

It's kind of just business as usual with this crew.

pahtc notes world of macwarrior: online

by paul inoyue age 13

- due to implementation problems with the developer post explaining why community warfare is delayed, the developer post explaining why community warfare is delayed has been delayed for quarter 2, 2015 while we shore up some scaling issues

- ghost heat now has a bedsheet on it with holes cut in it for eyes so you can see out of it. this will make it more spooky for players

- pgi now accepts bitcoin and actual irl gold in exchange for gold mechs

- in response to concerns that the flamer is the most uselessest weapon and nobody but the legitimately uninformed and stupid players use it because it does not do anything, we have buffed the weapon with a crit coefficient for exposed left arm internals that gives you a .025% chance to do 22% extra damage on that 'tick' to any flamers present in that arm — to prevent players from abusing this newfound power, heat generation has been increased and weight has been raised by one ton for inner sphere flamers, (or 11GeQ and 10.2 Metric Batchalls per clan flamer)

- due to the success of the gold mech clan invasion packages and having to make rent this month, we are introducing the platinum mech superclan megainvasion packages. superclan mechs are basically Transformers and can turn into lambos and bentleys or like mack trucks if you're into that, we don't judge

- jenners are now submarines that can fire lostech 'torpedos' at mechs in river city's river or the lake on forest colony, and play theme from Jaws. jumpjets allow limited 'flopping' motion on waterless maps

- heavy metal now plays dubstep on kill

- players using Premium time can use the old heatvision mode that basically made you the Predator

- PPC's now fire homing lock-on hyperintelligent energy like in Mech Assault, because seriously what was up with that it like literally made NO sense

- LRM's are slated to have a hotfix this afternoon to make them completely broken and useless, and then a second emergency hotfix is planned on 5/25 to make them godly overpowered for some unforeseen reason. Please adjust your builds appropriately

- ECM is being overhauled to a new system. Players affected by enemy ECM will receive strongly worded SMS text messages to their phone urging them to ignore extant targeting on a particular target.

- matchmaking?

- we are aware of and are looking into the issue where users are spontaneously disconnecting from patch not

[HaemishM]

You know, matchmaking in LOL ranked solo queue was pretty goddamn bad, and it's still better than their shit matchmaking.

Why are you picking your mech BEFORE getting matched up or even knowing what map you are going to play or what team you are going to play on? That one decision right there is the reason this fucking game can't even put in a reasonably balanced matchmaking system.

[Falconeer]

Drama:

the subreddit MWO has been for a long time the place to go for all things MWO out of the official forum. A while ago inner frictions led a big group to create another subreddit, called OutreachHPG. The angriest stayed on r/MWO, the more lenient towards PGI went to OutreachHPG. That's why, for example, Russ Bullock had his AMA on r/OutreachHPG instead of r/MWO last week.

This led to some arguing around until the PGI Community Manager, Niko Snow, posted something along the lines of "r/MWO is a cesspit of angry posters banned from the official forums".

I do not think that particular subreddit (r/mwo) can be defined as a base for our fans or customers any longer...

Rather, since the change of management, and the resulting diaspora of our active Reddit fans towards r/OutreachHPG and other Subreddits. r/mwo has essentially become an echo-chamber for those who have been banned from our services for repeated abusive behavior.

Here's the whole, long post.

Obviously, a lot of people took that very badly and as a result, after among other things an ultimatum by the admin of r/MWO, Niko Snow issued an apology. Which I can't even read because my brain can't stop twitching for all those "it's" "it's" instead of "its" in the first few lines. What the actual fuck Mr. Community Manager?

Indeed, r/mwo had around 4000 subscribers...While many have changed hubs with the change of it's moderation team and the removal it's moderation standards, in past months: Many others remain, and some have been painted as the targets of my messages in this thread. I'd like to take a moment to add an additional apology to those people: Whether they are an impassioned pilot who has never been intentionally abusive towards a staff member or another player, or whether they are a casual who has just stumbled into the crossfire.

To those people I would like to clarify where my frustrations lie...it is with individuals.

... and so on for another two thousand lines. Anyway, boring.

In the meantime, they have released the #4 Video Log but I haven't had time to watch it yet so here it is. I'll update with the usual amount of vapor-info when I'm done with it. Apparently they talk about the mysterious warhorns, Clan weapons and the unique Clan modules.





EDIT (stuff that is in the video):

- Warhorns are cockpit items that play various sounds when you kill someone, like the Heavy Metal Highlander but with an additional visual representation in the cockpit.
- Bonus Clan modules are: faster rate of AMS, increased range and duration of NARC, reduced fall damage, increased movement speed when legged, and finally a defensive target-decay accelerator.
- Clan Weapons: ACs will be firing bursts, LRMs will be firing streams, lasers will have longer duration. Clan LBX won't be able to switch ammo ("due to inherited problems with out weapon system...") so it'll switch mode of firing.
- Autocannon nerfs incoming, for all models (AC5, AC10, AC20), mostly shortening their range.
- Possible nerf to artillery.
- Increasing fall damage on bigger 'mechs (preparing for DFA?)
- and finally Russ Bullocks takes 6 minutes of video to tell us that the matchmaker is broken and they have no idea how to implement 3/3/3/3 or weight limitations ("Because of how the matchmaker has been written").  



P.S: If you watch until the end you can see a couple of teases. The concept and modeling of a Leopard class dropship, and a dev playing around with a motion tracking device which lets him look around the cockpit by moving his head.

[Falconeer]

Official post by Paul about the incoming weapon and balance changes.

Weapon Changes

It's been a while since the last round of weapon tuning has happened. Two things were the root of this.

First off, the tournament was in progress and we cannot change gameplay variables while it's going on. This doesn't mean investigation and updates were not made during this time. June 3rd is about to have quite a few weapons tweaked.

The second reason is that there were some major potential fixes for SRMs. While this has been improved, it has not been fixed completely. The engineering team is still working diligently on finding out the root cause and even as I write this, there are investigations into some other possible causes.

That being said, here are the next weapon numbers and why they were done.

First off... AutoCannons. All AutoCannons have had their fall off range reduced in the same manner as the AC/2. Instead of having triple the max range, all AutoCannons are now double. This is going to bring AutoCannons into brawling ranges and also slightly affect the PPC/AC combination at long range.
AC/5 and UAC/5 have had their max range reduced from 1700m to 1240m
AC/10 has had its max range reduced from 1350m to 900m
AC/20 has had its max range reduced from 810m to 540m
SRMs are next. While investigating further fixes within this weapon system, we realized that the spread on all SRMs were set to 6 meters. This means the spread on an SRM/2 is just as wide as an SRM/6. This has been updated to make bit more sense and naturally increases the viability of all SRM systems.
SRM/2 has had its spread reduced from 6.0m to 4.8m
SRM/4 has had its spread reduced from 6.0m to 5.2m
SRM/6 has had its spread reduced from 6.0m to 5.7m
ALL SRMs have also recieved a 0.15 damage increase. This is to help average out DPS when missiles hit and miss due to Host State Rewind issues.
SRMs damage increased from 2.0 per missile to 2.15 per missile.
It was also found out by the community that the impulse on the SRM/4 was out of line with the other SRM systems. These have all been reduced to the SRM/4 value.
SRM/2 has had its impulse (screen shake) reduced from 0.192 to 0.11
SRM/4 has no changes made to impulse.
SRM/6 has had its impulse (screen shake) reduced from 0.192 to 0.11
Laser systems are next. To make the Small Lasers (SL and SPL) a little more viable in the brawl area, they have had their ranges increased slightly. The small lasers are now able to engage just outside the minimum range on a PPC.
Small Laser has had its range increased to 100m up from 90m and its maximum range increased from 180m to 200m.
Small Pulse Laser has had its range increased to 100m up from 90m and its maximum range increased from 180m to 200m.
The Medium Pulse laser was also investigated and to bring it in line with the ML and taking into the account the doubling of tonnage, the base heat generated has been reduced slightly and the range has been increased slightly.
Medium Pulse Laser has had its range increased from 200m to 220m and its max range increased from 400 to 440m.
Medium Pulse Laser has had its heat reduced from 5.0 to 4.6
Last on this list is Air Strike and Artillery Strike. The intention of these has always been an area denile system for getting enemies to not camp in a single spot. It is working but the amount of damage is still a bit high and even noted in the current tournament as being a little over powered. The following changes have been made:
Air Strikes have had the spacing between shells increased by 20%. This is around 8-9 meters.
Artillery Strikes have had their area of effect increased from 60m to 75m (spacing out the shells more).
Both Air Strikes and Artillery Strikes have had their base damage reduced from 40/shell to 35/shell.
Just a FYI, we are constantly monitoring weapon usage and will continue to make balance changes when we can and where we can.

[Lightstalker]

Are these changes meant to adjust actual in-game imbalances, or to induce players into spending more through mechs and weapon systems they may have been neglecting by creating a different set of imbalances?

I'd say they are swinging the pendulum back and forth between extremes, but I wouldn't be so quick with these guys to assume any part of the system was a fixed pivot.

[Falconeer]

If anything these fixes won't really change much, they are very mild across the board. The one thing I'd really love to see nerfed is jump sniping, the crosshair should be shaking the whole time, not just while climbing. Anyway, weapon balance for the IS weapons could be close to decent with this last tuning pass, but the shit will majorly hit the fan in exactly two weeks, with the new Clan weapons.

EDIT: Russ Bullock tweeted about some upcoming changes to Jump Jets: heavier 'mechs will generate more heat while jumping (having to use more thrust, realistically) and will take more damage when landing from a jump.


In other news some fans released a teaser for a Mechwarrior cartoon, called Mechwarrior Revival, and while it has none of the *necessary* 80s feeling, I enjoyed it more than I would have thought after the first 10 seconds. Give it a look.

[Falconeer]

 

[Falconeer]

Last update for the night.

Tournament Quarter Finals going live on Twitch right now.

http://www.twitch.tv/igp

[MahrinSkel]

 

Having been the guy wielding the nerfbat, I can understand what he is trying to say: Once you have internalized the dynamics of gameplay, you gain far more from fiddling around, "What if we tighten up the graphics on level 3?" in a test environment, and from metrics drawn from the live environment results, than from actually being an active player (which tends to lead to "pet class" problems, as developers see the problems with their preferred style of play more clearly and tend to favor it, even if only with more attention).  But that's a really bad way to answer it.  He *literally* just said that he's too busy to come down from his ivory tower and actually play the game the way the players do.

--Dave

[Pennilenko]

He *literally* just said that he's too busy to come down from his ivory tower and actually play the game the way the players do.

So um, he went to the Ghostcrawler school of game design?

[Sir T]

Played a few of rounds again today. Was really gratified to find that they have FINALLY added an option to remove that "plunkplunk" sound from the interface. Its in audio and its a tic box next to "frontend sounds"

Unfortunately, that just nakes the other flaws of the interface far more annoying. Gamers, huh?  

Gameplay is still fairly solid, but the latency issues involving lights reared its ugly head again (lights are basicly too fast for the code to keep up with so you can shoot a light dead center and nothing happens as in actuality you are shooting in a completly different direction to the direction you think you are shooting in) So I got a bit frustrated. Core gameplay is still fun as kech tholugh.

[Falconeer]

They are resetting/realigning the timeline, back to 3049 so the Clan Invasion will be in tune with the lore when Community Warfare will hit.
This is good news because I have been missing the Battletech lore like crazy. As much as I love stompy robots, Battletech/Mechwarrior ARE the lore and it's criminal to skip it. Without it, you are left with ugly, improbable designs. This game would be so much better if we had in-client lore, flags, banners, history, and so on. But knowing PGI, this won't happen until 2029. Hell, this thing doesn't even have your stats in-client, it needs to launch an external browser.

They are also allowing players to join one of the first 4 Clan factions.

Rolling Back to 3049 and Why.

Greetings MechWarriors,

We will be rolling back the timeline to 3049 for a few reasons, with the biggest of them being Community Warfare. If we stay at our current timeline of 3051: We end up well beyond the Third Wave of the Clan invasion the Free Rasalhague Republic is in dire straits, and later this year would see the completion of the Fourth Wave. This is not the essence of Community Warfare as we intended to have had when the Clan vs Inner Sphere fighting broke out in MWO.

This rollback has some inconsistencies involved with it. For example, the “S” variants of some of the Clan ‘Mechs are not available until 3050+. However, 3050+ is when they become widely used throughout the conflict zone, not necessarily when they were created. Players can think of it this way… having access to the “S” variants is sort of like having access to the advanced prototypes of these ‘Mechs. We will have to bear this inconsistency for now as the Clan Packs are being released before Community Warfare.

That being said, rolling back to 3049 puts us in a position where the Clans start taking planets in the Periphery around August. When we launch Community Warfare later this year, players will be able to partake in the Periphery conflict and then move into the First Wave of Operation Revival, where the Clans really start to push into the Inner Sphere itself. This is the true feeling of the Clan Invasion that we wanted from the initial conception of the game and originally suggested a 1-to-1 timeline.

When Community Warfare is ready, the Clans will only occupy a small number of planets. This is where players will have the ability to follow a recreation of the Clan Invasion by forcing their way down into FRR territory and harassing House Steiner and House Kurita along the way. However, if the Inner Sphere players are organized, they can even change the course of BattleTech history and try to stop the Clans in their tracks.

Regarding the 3 additional clans that join the invasion in Wave 4 (Clan Nova Cat and Clan Steel Viper) and just after Wave 5 (Clan Diamond Shark), we are planning on pulling them into the conflict closer to their reveal dates next year (i.e. as soon as possible).

We hope you understand our desire to re-align the timeline to really help bring the impact of what Community Warfare will mean in MWO. We would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the impact of this timeline change and you can provide it here in the feedback thread.

[Sir T]

Heh, the only reason the clans got as far as they did is because the Inner Sphere had no idea who the hell they were and were not ready for them. When they released the clan books people read through them and basically said "uh, is that it?" They had to pretty much invent Clan Diamond Shark as a specialized jumpships clan with all the jumpships needed to carry their sorry asses. When the clans paused for 6 months and then got going again I think they managed to take a total of 3 planets in a year (and they were actually losing a few battles as well, such as the Grey Death Legion kicking Clan arse on Pandora). Hell, the FRR was basically invented in the story to give the clans a weak enemy to push right through deep into the inner sphere.

Basically, the clans would be crushed by an Innersphere lining up to fight them. Unfortunately, that wont be reflected in game terms as everyone and their mother will be driving their shiney gold omnimechs so in game the Clans will outnumber the Inner sphere, at least for a while.

But yeah resetting to 3049 is a good move I think.

[Lantyssa]

It's only a good move if they're actually ready to launch.

Were they more organized, I'd say they having it working under the hood.  Seeing the results of 3/3/3/3 I'd say it's going to need another reset.

[Falconeer]

Uh oh. Half the community hates the reworked Clan logos so as usual they yelled at

Greetings MechWarriors,

Few things in life evoke as much emotion as artwork. Today, I am not very interested in the debate of the subject of whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as I am in giving you, the customers, what you seek.

The overwhelming message that we are hearing is that the Clan players want to receive the same treatment that the Inner Sphere (IS) factions received with regards to symbolic artwork. That would be defined as taking previous faction logos seen in past games and applying a "mild refresh", instead of the "Heavy Rework" the existing ones have undergone.

I should also point out that I have received at least a few "you better not change it now I love the new one" responses. The caveat is that a part of getting the same treatment as the IS means that we're not going to be able to give the players the option to choose between them. Such a change would require new code functionality to the website as well as needed changes in the game client. In this circumstance, we will have to go with the majority vote.

We are currently recreating the clan logos under the "mild refresh" process used with the IS logos. No, they won't simply be the exact old logos either since there is enough ambiguity on rights ownership of artwork to prevent such from being feasible. Additionally, this way they should fit in perfectly with the existing IS logos. Once this art is complete, Niko will put up a poll and it will be a very simple two choice poll. The "Heavy Rework" set or the "Mild Refresh" set.

Assuming the "Mild Refresh" option is selected, I wanted to explain in more detail why it might take the time it does to enter the game itself: The game client itself goes into lock down on a 2-week testing protocol to achieve approval status before release to live production. As this remains an aesthetic concern, this is not something I would ever consider a hotfix for; The best case scenario is June 17th patch. There is also the Clan cockpit content that has been created which will need to go through some changes, so it's a certainty that this particular content received on June 17th will use the "Heavy Rework" artwork. Changing that content to use the "Mild Refresh" artwork would come sometime after June 17th. date to be decided.

The silver lining is that we can make the switch on the website for use on the forums very quickly and that could likely happen within the same week as the poll. Another bonus I can offer is that we have heard the excellent suggestion of using the "Dagger Star" graphic for use as a general clan tag for those wanting to represent one of the other Clans until they can join the invasion. As to timing of the Dagger Star icon, that may have a dependency with the game client since it’s a new clan faction. I don’t have all the answers on this yet but wanted to let you know that yes we will be adding that as an option in the relatively near future.

Okay so that is the update, we are going to try our hardest to give you the customer what you want. Niko will update us with the poll as soon as we can manage.

Thanks.


Russ Bullock

[Goreschach]

gusy the icons are hardcoded. we cant llet users cahnge them

[Sir T]

I think what he is really saying is that the original precious clan logos are protected artwork that they cant use due to rights issues. So stop getting your panties in a twist, you whiners.

Personally, on my list of issues with the Clans and the game in general the sodding logos are WAAAAAY down on my list. It just shows the religious awe some people have with the clans.

[Lantyssa]

Clanners are seriously crazy.

[Shannow]

Clanners are munchkins. They exist in every game ever played. Battletech is just a bit more blatant about it.

That being said if you are over the age of 25 and love clan munch you need to kick yourself in the head. HARD.

I still want a 3025 tech only option.

[Ironwood]

Not really fair.

[Evildrider]

Clanners are munchkins. They exist in every game ever played. Battletech is just a bit more blatant about it.

That being said if you are over the age of 25 and love clan munch you need to kick yourself in the head. HARD.

I still want a 3025 tech only option.

Clan stuff has been around and dominant in Battletech lore for like 25 years.  It's part of the game whether you think it's OP or not.  The people that are going apeshit about stuff being incorrect are most likely the older players than the younger ones.

[Typhon]

Yeah, I have no idea where any of that Shannow posted comes from.  My intro to the Battle Tech world was with Mech Warrior 2, where you played, GASP, the clan.  Thus, my love of all things clan.

[Lantyssa]

Some of us were playing prior to the video games.  Or our first was MW1 where you could play beloved 'mechs such as the Triangle-with-Legs, the Rectangle-with-Stick-Arms, or the Cone-with-Triangle-Gun.

[Shannow]

*mutter mutter bloody young kids mutter mutter*

Ok, I'll give it to you that if that's all you've known then you can legitimately like the Clans.

Most of the people I've known who liked Clan tech were the sort of kid who rocks up to your D&D session with his own 'special character' that had the special +5 long sword of doom and innate ability to make gold fly out its arse...you know the type.

The tech is simply overpowered. 3025/50 tech requires you making sacrifices and trade offs , you know having skill and shit.

[Sir T]

The clans were always very big in America. In Europe they tended to go with Inner Sphere games and the clans really were not that popular.  I still remember the near revolt that happened in America when the Clans started getting their ass kicked. Good times. But yeah, the people I knew who were clanners tended to be the steller munchkins of the gaming groups. The first Btech novel I read was actually a clan novel and it turned me off the game and universe for a few years.

And there was only one Bteck game where you played a Clanner, and there was a grand total of zero Inner sphere mechs in that game. (Though one of the paths in MW4 ended with you joining the clans.)

[MahrinSkel]

My 3025 TR has a Marauder on the cover.  To me, if you wanted powerful, you wanted Lostech.  I'm old, and you kids are on my lawn.

--Dave

[Evildrider]

*mutter mutter bloody young kids mutter mutter*

Ok, I'll give it to you that if that's all you've known then you can legitimately like the Clans.

Most of the people I've known who liked Clan tech were the sort of kid who rocks up to your D&D session with his own 'special character' that had the special +5 long sword of doom and innate ability to make gold fly out its arse...you know the type.

The tech is simply overpowered. 3025/50 tech requires you making sacrifices and trade offs , you know having skill and shit.

Well I'm 40, I don't know if you can call me a young kid, and I've always had grounded GM's and DM's.  So there really wasn't any of that munchkin stuff.  Maybe it's because I didn't play too much out of my groups when I was younger that I didn't run into all the stuff that would make me rage.  In my MW games we legit played the Clan.  Meaning, we stuck to the tactics they used from the books.  The only clan tech our group ever got was from salvage.

I do know the type of which you speak though.  I've been to enough conventions and ran into those kind of people.  All I'm trying to say is not everyone that likes clan stuff is a an asshole or a power gamer.

[Ironwood]

Some of us were playing prior to the video games.  Or our first was MW1 where you could play beloved 'mechs such as the Triangle-with-Legs, the Rectangle-with-Stick-Arms, or the Cone-with-Triangle-Gun.

Yes, but the reason I posted that it's not fair is we're NOT the majority anymore.

Sorry.

[Merusk]

Being old, what a bitch that is.

[Falconeer]

I've played the tabletop since before the Clans even existed (or before they were exported to Italy...) and I really disliked them at first cause they made all my favourite 'mechs look weak. But even more annoying than someone wanting to play Clan 'mechs were those kids wanting to build their own 'mech, which -surprise-was always an over-optimized 100 tons monstruosity. "It's within the rules!"

[Lantyssa]

Yes, but the reason I posted that it's not fair is we're NOT the majority anymore.

Sorry.

Yeah, but the majority are dumb.  And they should feel bad.  Harumph.  <waves dual-wielded canes>

[Ironwood]

Yeah, they don't even UNDERSTAND DFA.

Also, they've never picked up another mechs arm and beat the fucker to death with it.

[Merusk]

You guys sound like WW2 Calvary.   

[Typhon]

I've never played the tabletop and we're talking about a video game - it's up to the very capable development studio to continue their tour de force of balancing weapons, mechs and associated systems.  I'm sure that they have thought through all of this.