f13.net

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/meet-mechwarrior-online-piranhas-free-to-play-tactical-mech-sim/

eeeeeeEEEEEEE  :drill:

Call me when there is an actual product to play or whatever.

...and I jizzed in my pants.   :awesome_for_real:


Then I realized that there's no way they could make a Mechwarrior MMO that would live up to what I think it should be.

So it'll be like any other MMOG out there, only with fuckgiant mechs?  :grin:

Everything is better with fuckgiant mechs.

Except Planetside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MQPWE_M_EM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MQPWE_M_EM)  :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Best MW intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at9hxU864Fg&feature=related

Here's the website:
http://mwomercs.com/

There better be some BattleSpace and CityTech elements or fail (as of now they're not planning combined arms).  As much as I love simple mech-fights, there needs to be other stuff to do.  Also, an Inner Sphere economy would be nice.

Wasnt the IP tied up somewhere for a while??  I remember there being some issues with it last year.

"Crow, Timberwolf LF Annhilator for Daishi run.  Wolf Clan PPC drop is NBG only. "

They have plenty of time to f*ck it up

Bah!
You do not know what quality is, freebirth scum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Fvlw--ZYE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5Fvlw--ZYE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL)

That opening was much  cooler back in 1995...

SoundTracks hold up though.



I'm a huge BattleTech/Mechwarrior fan, but until there's something playable, I just can't give a shit. There have been so many 'oh were bringing mechwarrior back!' things over the years now, then it just seems to fizzle out again... meh

All I ask for is MPBT3025 with updated graphics.  If I get that, I'll be happy.

The only part I still like is the systems voice. "Startup sequence... initiated" still triggers good memories when I hear it used as a sample in geeky music.

Damn but the Mechwarrior vision of mecha is clunky. I'd rather have the robotech / shogo model where they're agile.

Agile doesn't work unless you add the proper weight. Shogo was just a FPS with a fancy skin.


If I am walking around in dozens of tons of warmachine, I need to FEEL it.

Just make it WoT with mechs, add a Solaris arena with brackets and watch the money hats float down a river of more money. Why no one has done it yet is insane. I blame wizkids or whoever the fuck picked the bones of FASA.

And that is the problem. Who owns Battletech? You have the Whizkids abomination, but you also have Catalyst Game Labs now marketting "Classic Battletech" which anyone that steps into a battlemech would want to be the universe for. But thats under licence from Whizzkids too so...

However, is it better than a MMOG with tanks? :oh_i_see:

Don't forget the forever battle about the mech designs.

Seriously, no Archer, Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk, Wasp, Valkyrie, Marauder, Longbow, Battlemaster, Shadow Hawk, Wolverine, Thunderbolt, Crusader, Battlemaster, and their clan variants.  I'm sure I missed a few more. 

Warhammer and Archer were two of my personal faves when I was still playing back in the day.

The Battletech mechs were removed from the game world a long time ago.

Do you mean Robotech mechs?   :awesome_for_real:

:uhrr: :why_so_serious:

If they fuck this up I will kill someone!

The moment it was announced as Multiplayer F2P it's fucked for me.

Why? Three words: Pay to Win.

They can bullshit all they want about 'you gotta play, not pay to win' but the moment revenue takes a nosedive, they'll change their tune and start giving away Clan equipment at $4.99 a pop and Avatars at $9.99

It wouldn't be too far from the Mechwarrior lore either, since the House with the richest reserves can afford the best mechs and gear.

It will be too far from the lore if it's the Capellans who have the richest player base.  :awesome_for_real:



The original models were removed but they have redesigned them with Project Pheonix. You will have your Warhammers and I will have my Marauders.


YOur prayers have been answered.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/mechwarrior-online-developers-share-details-explain-how-mwo-evolves-the-series/ (http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/31/mechwarrior-online-developers-share-details-explain-how-mwo-evolves-the-series/)

At least they won't fuck it up if it fizzles and dies before release like most things Mechwarrior of late!

It's not much fun for players to have the first mech leg blown off, then be unable to turn as their opponent runs around the back to blow off the other leg.

... or at least that is how I played the Mechwarrior games.

I would have agreed before I played World of Tanks.

Now I can see that it's all about the implementation. Does paying give you an advantage in WoT? Yes, slightly. However that advantage is minor and easily dwarfed by player & team skill. Most of the advantage that paying gives you in WoT is that you get XP and credits faster, which just allows you to enter higher-tier battles faster, where you're pitted against higher-tier tanks at the same time as being in one yourself.

It's not pay to win, it's pay to exhaust the content faster. I'm not sure that's an advantage really.

In what bizzarro universe would a dev. want their userbase to exhaust content faster?

'Cause they are paying to do it? I like money, personally.

The ones selling pixels for 1$?

Do you mean Macross/Dougram/Crusher Joe mecha?  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, those guys.

Everyone knows it was Robotech first.

One of my friends was an artist at FASA at the time.  He told me Harmony Gold was totally gnashing their teeth at them .

I have a love/hate relationship with Harmony Gold.

On one hand they did bring mecha to the masses outside of Japan.

On the other hand, they brought mecha to the masses outside of Japan.

Yeah but they did license everything to Palladium which allowed me to rp playing a Veritech pilot.  :D

(http://i.imgur.com/1JBor.gif)

Robotech wasnt/isnt even the same goddamned genre.  It was anime space opera with mech transformers flying through space.  Battletech isnt/wasnt even close to being that.

We weren't saying they were the same, we were commenting on Battletech ripping off mech designs from other stuff, specifically Robotech/Macross.

Just one of their many sins.  :why_so_serious:

Aww I loved Palladium games.  Their system wasn't perfect but they had some awesome games. 

Kevin Siembieda, however is completely insane. Great for making game concepts, not so much for the execution part.

This is an understatement along the lines of "sure, that Manson guy was a little wacky."

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/dungeons-and-dragons/rifts-canada-siembieda.php?page=5

Battletech has moved beyond ripping off other mechs for decades with hit or miss (more misses) results.

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/2/2b/YuHuang.jpg)

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/1/1a/3055u_Wraith.jpg)

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/b/bb/Barghest.jpg)

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/d/d2/Chrysaor.jpg)

I see a Transformer and Battle Beast rip-off there... soo.. yeah; unoriginal company is still unoriginal.

Don't even get me started.  There was some supplimental book for Robotech where Seibeda basically says "characters who do things which would obvioulsy kill them are dead, regardless of what the rules say" in regards to players shooting themselves in the head or sawllowing grenades to show how tough they are, and shrugging it off because it doesn't even break their SDC.  That was kind of the end of Palladium for me, because once players found that clause, entire game sessions devolved in to what would "obviously" kill someone (a dispute I thought the rules were intended to solve, but this is a game system in which a cop can grab his standard sidearm, a six shot 9mm revolver which does 1d6 per shot, and start blasting an old lady, who posesses something like 25 SDC + 12 HP, empty all six revolver rounds into her at point blank and it's still mathematically impossible to kill her without rolling a critical strike, so WTF do I know about realism in this world anyway).

That's because the old lady was actually a DBee in disguise.  :drill:

And oh, holy shit, I'd forgotten how funny those SA Rifts reviews were.

Certainly not from what little we know about the team making it thus far:

Piranha Games. (http://www.piranha-games.com/Games.html)

They've released four games so far.  Need for Speed Shift, the only arguably good game on this list was a co-production with Black Box.  They also released the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen game, the PSP version of Need for Speed Undercover, and a Bass Fishing game that only 4 magazines/websites even bothered to review.

The two names they've mentioned thus far, Bryan Ekman and Russ Bullock both worked on the same games together which are as follows:


Is there any reason to think that the guys who brought us NRA Gun Club (http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/gunclub/review.html) are going to be able to produce a Mechwarrior MMO that isn't complete shit if it somehow manages to actually launch?

They're still writing new articles.  They did Battletech not too long ago.

While typically the mere mention of RIFTS let alone a full discussion of the stupidity of SDC vs MDC is more than enough to rekindle my fanboy love of Erin Tarn, there's more pertinent info.  Namely, you can now register and save your pilot name

http://mwomercs.com/

I went ahead and signed up as Qormic

His partner, Eric Wujcik, gave a lecture at a gaming con in Ann Arbor I went to back when I was 17-18.  That depressingly makes it about 20 years ago.  Seemed like a hell of a nice guy.   Was really sad to hear about his passing.

Honestly, those games do read like the DNA for just this title. Military shooters? Check. Giant robots? Check. Wild west? Check.

And they're mostly shit, too. Perfect for F2P MMOs.

Developer Q&A 1 – The Reboot of MechWarrior®

 
Participants:

Bryan Ekman – Creative Director – Head of design and vision.
Dennis DeKoning – Art Director – Head of art.
Matt Craig – Technical Director – Head of engineering.
Matt Newman – Producer – Project planning and management.
Paul Inouye – Lead Designer – Game systems and presentation.
David Bradley – Game Designer – Overseeing Mech combat and BattleTech® rules.

What are you doing to get the sense of scale right for piloting a giant BattleMech?


[DENNIS] Right from the beginning, the importance of accurately representing the scale of the ‘Mechs was evident.  Depending on the world assets alone for size comparison was not enough; the ‘Mechs had to be able to stand alone and still be convincing in their scale.  Adding a variety of smaller, ancillary objects achieved this goal as long as they were recognizable and therefore bases for comparison against the overall bulk. I.e. Ladder rungs, hatches, tie-down cleats etc. provided they were to the appropriate scale and appeared to be usable to a human.  Another way was through the use of appropriate texture scale such as scratches, gouges, paint patterns and details too small to justify geometry.


I assume that game play will be in the form of some type of match system. If so, how long would you estimate a typical match would last?

[PAUL] Right now we’re thinking a normal match with objectives would take approximately 20 minutes.  But please keep in mind, this number might change through gameplay testing.

What is your definition of tactical advantage; can you provide examples? Is there an end game (themepark) or is it open ended (sandbox)?

[PAUL] A tactical advantage gives a player more information than his/her opponent.  This can also relate to the strict numbers game, in which the calculated odds of winning are skewed to one side of the 50/50 chance of success.  When dealing with tactical advantage in MWO, we look at it from both perspectives.  The first is that we want to make sure that teamwork will provide a tactical advantage, as it should.  A team that works efficiently with each other should have a higher chance of success compared to a bunch of players doing their own thing.  The second perspective is where we want to make sure that players do not have a statistical, tactical advantage where their chance of winning is increased by bad tuning/balancing.

[MATT N] If I can see you before you see me that is a tactical advantage.

Can players start a Merc Corp that is already canon? Or will you protect canon faction/unit names? I.e. I want to start the Eridian Light Horse Merc Corp, I’m the first to register the Merc Corp’s name so is it mine or will I be able to join the Waco Rangers and interact in it like I would a House unit?

[PAUL] Merc Corp names are registered names.  Once it’s taken, it’s gone.  As for canon protected faction/unit names, we will be locking out some of the key players in the BT timeline.

At this point, how often would you guys like to introduce new content/store items/features/etc. per year?

[PAUL] A bi-weekly release schedule would be ideal.  I’ve played numerous on-line games where content stagnated and it became very frustrating waiting for promised items and not having them show up.  We’ll be working with our art team and content teams to make sure we get items and maps out in a timely manner.  Content is the longest game development process so we’ll be working diligently to get you the stuff as soon as possible.

[MATT N] I would like to introduce new items all the time.  New Content takes the longest but it would be great to have weekly patches.

Are we going to see new elements to the cockpit, such as the 360 degree squeezed into 180 degrees view bar mentioned so many times in the novels?

[DAVID]  The most prominent new addition to the cockpit will be elements dedicated to managing your InfoTech.  Some of these, like different vision modes, have been seen before in other ‘Mech games.  Others, such as data and images from your UAVs and remote sensors will be brand new to MechWarrior® Online™.

[MATT C] While we are very conscious of the games canon we are equally conscious of drawing from the canon the aspects that are fun when translated into a game. Say we were testing out having a 360 degree view and it made the game less fun during play testing I think it is safe to say we would cut it, at the current stage of development we are still trying out new ideas relating to the cockpit design so you never know what may end up in the game at launch.
One of the beautiful things with the F2P model that we’re growing to love as developers is that unlike a boxed product where our options to make changes based on consumer feedback are severely limited, with this model if the community demands a feature enough post launch then there is every possibility and intention that that can happen. As excited as we are to see the game upon launch we are just as excited to see what the game will look like a year from launch.

[MATT N] How about Hula girls? You like Hula girls right?

Is this game going to have lots of servers like a WoW or are you hoping for a single persistent server world like EVE Online?


[MATT C] Each game spawns its own dedicated server, these are not persistent like WoW, as mentioned that would take us into MMO territory. There is persistent game world information, i.e. match results are communicated to affect the balance of power in the Inner Sphere, who owns what planet etc. but there is no true persistent world, more of a persistent meta-game.

[MATT N] Lots of Servers Lots and Lots of servers

How much attention is being given to audio fidelity and is there a particular MW game you will be drawing sound effects from?

[MATT C] We are very focused on giving MWO the best audio fidelity within the project constraints; we don’t plan to pull sound effects from any particular game.  As with most aspects of the game we are drawing from the best that has gone before and then adding our own Piranha twist.

[PAUL] I’ll add that we firmly believe that nothing will kill the gameplay experience faster than bad game audio.  We will be generating all new audio content for MWO.  Remastering old sound from previous MechWarrior® titles would not do MWO justice and it wouldn’t be too appealing to you the player either.

[MATT N] What was that? I can’t hear you over the sound of my Hunchback’s AC-20!

Do you guys have any idea if you will be hitting any Cons next year with early versions of the game? I need to know so I can figure out which to go to (Please say PAX)

[PAUL] If Bryan pays, I’ll go to whatever cons he mentions in his reply.

[BRYAN] Future announcements will reveal our marketing plans.  We are going to be a key trade shows next year.

With the release timeframe you have, are you planning on releasing a fairly compact but well developed game and adding lots of content in the months following that?

[PAUL] Herein lays the beauty of the F2P model.  We will be releasing the compact but well developed game that we want players to experience with the ability to expand on the core presentation to give you the AAA quality title that we want to share with the awesome community that has been waiting for so long.  Our use of agile project development and listening to community feedback allows us to steer and correct our designs and implementation as needed.

[MATT N] In my mind Quality has always trumped Quantity. Especially when you can continually add content and respond to what the users want with updates.

How long has the game been in development? how far along is development? (is more of the game on paper or code currently)

 [PAUL] The game has been in development for a short period of time following a fairly lengthy pre-production cycle.  That being said, our internal engineering team is burning through code faster than words can describe.  There’s a passion driving them to make the best MechWarrior® game for the players and fans around the world.

[MATT C] The key goal with the release schedule is, to release a solid chunk of core gameplay and content that reflect the pillars that have already been described.  Beyond that, we’ll be very anxious to see how it is received by the community.

[MATT N] 2762.5 , Not Alpha Yet, We don’t use paper.

Do you have plans to support head tracking, such as the popular-in-the-sim-community TrackIR 5.0? In previous FAQ's, you have stated that it will be possible to destroy certain buildings in urban areas. What other types of destructible terrain are you planning on implementing?

[MATT C] Stay tuned for future announcements regarding technology partners.  We’re not at a stage currently to discuss everything with regards to destructibility in the game. Just know that we want to blow everything up as much as you do!

Will the MechWarrior® (that is, the player's avatar within the 'Mech) be subject to any particular effects during missions (e.g. injury resulting from hits to the BattleMech's head, falling, ammo explosions (injury as the result of an electric shock from feedback through the neurohelmet), and/or prolonged extreme overheating of the 'Mech)?


[PAUL] We are continuing to investigate what we will be able to do, but it’s a fine line between providing detail and obscuring gameplay and HUD information.

[DAVID] The MechWarrior® won’t actually take any sort of damage or be at risk of dying separately from the ‘Mech itself.  However, we hope to have some visual effects like the ones that you’ve mentioned.

[MATT N] If you get shot with an AC-20 in the head the hula girl has real Hula girl Physics™!

Will you have PvE elements on MechWarrior Online?

[PAUL] I may or may not pass out depending on Bryan’s answer to this.

[BRYAN] Not at launch.  We're looking at ways to incorporate PVE post launch and withing the framwork of the MWO concept.

What difficulties have you had transferring the mechanics from the tabletop game to a PC game, and what mechanics have you had to change or modify? Since this is a reboot, will history change in-game or do you mean reboot in the same way as a movie franchise is rebooted?

[MATT N] Hey you said REBOOT! You win a prize! Someone knows how to get their questions answered! Good job!

[PAUL] Challenging question and I’ll try my best to answer.  There’s been a common misconception amongst the community that I’d like to clear up.  While MechWarrior® Online™ does refer to BattleTech® for historical and canon reference, it does not mean that it’s a direct port of the table top rules to a videogame.  The table top rules are laid out to make sense for a turn based strategy game.  Some of those rules just don’t apply when dealing with a real time game environment.  Core rules such as munitions accuracy, heat management and movement speed will have to be tuned for real time gameplay and will differ in varying degrees from the table top rules.  How far they differ will come out of gameplay testing and tuning and at this point I cannot comment further on how that progress is going.  It is an exciting time in the studio right now and I don’t want to release information too soon and have it change on you, the community, later.  I am quite vulnerable to pitchforks and torches.

[DAVID]  While there hasn’t been anything that I would call a great difficulty, the thing that we always have to keep in mind is that we want to capture all of the flavour of the tabletop game but need to be aware of when a direct translation of a tabletop system won’t work for a real time computer game.  Though I would say that the biggest impasse we’ve come across is melee combat; that’s a system we don’t want to tackle until we know we can do it right.

I know the original trailer had a Warhammer in it, so will the reboot have the un-seen, re-seen or will the 12 not be seen at all?

[MATT N] I remember that trailer and I don’t think there was a Warhammer in there... I think it was an Urban Mech. Man I love those trash cans.

[PAUL] And you guys think I should be medicated?!?

Do you have plans in rebooting the series to take it past MWO like books or movies? Has there been anything that has been added or removed from the series to make the reboot more appetizing to newcomers? Are there any fears that you have about rebooting the franchise?


[PAUL] There will always be some fear when dealing with such a large franchise that has a huge and loyal fan base.  We are all fans of the franchise and want to put out the best game we can and we also look to you, the community, to help us achieve that.  The passion that has been demonstrated throughout the community really drives home the importance of our decisions here in the studio and we hope you can bear with us as we detail design and implementation to make the final feature set rock solid.  As for any changes made for newcomers, I think the level of accessibility (controls and training) will be the determining factor of keeping them interested.  I’ve been working with the design team to make sure we address anything that my turn a newcomer away on their first day.

[MATT N] No comment. And we have NO FEAR! We are MechWarriors®!

[BRYAN] The MW rights are scattered across the known universe.  The chances are low that anything we do here in MWO will translate into other mediums.

In regards to the Unseen, does this mean we will see the Marauder, Archer, and the rest of the 'Unseens'? Will they be the original formats, the 'Reseens' or will they be Alex's own variations on these iconic ‘Mechs?

[MATT N] If we are going to make any Mech, it is going to go through Alex’s treatment.

Reboot can mean many things to many people, from changing the entire storyline, system, and everything else to just making small changes here and there to some of the ‘Mechs weapons, etc. My question is this, what specifically, does “Reboot” mean to you and the creators of this game? What do you plan on rebooting as a whole? The entire game world from the ground up? Cosmetic changes to most of the units? What direction do you plan on taking when rebooting MW entirely?

[MATT N] For me it means, the ‘Mechs get a visual overhaul and the gameplay is tweaked to mitigate: always knowing where the enemy is, the arms race, circle strafing and legging being too viable.

[PAUL] For me it’s the opportunity to bring the franchise up to date in both graphical and gameplay capabilities.  Yes, the various incarnations of MechWarrior® were fun and a lot of nostalgia comes with it.  One of the fun tasks of being a designer on this project is the ability to keep that sense of nostalgia while bringing forth modern gaming features.  Leveling, skill trees, persistence, economy tracking and stat tracking are just some of the features that we all love and would love to see in MechWarrior® Online™.  It’s really a chance to add features, to a game that we’re all familiar with, that really round out the experience as a whole.  As a systems designer, I look forward to the challenge of keeping the core experience of MechWarrior®, mixing in some new game mechanics and give you MechWarrior® Online™.

From the DevBlog on the reboot, what do you mean by: “Solve some of the long standing gameplay issues from previous MechWarrior® games?”

[PAUL] For me it’s the open expanses of flat terrain that evolved into circle strafing madness.  While it will still be part of the game, our new environments will allow us to curtail that type of gameplay while opening up new avenues of exploration and Information Warfare bringing every class of ‘Mech to the front lines of combat.  Yes you will be able to form a team of all assault class ‘Mechs, but you’re going to end up as fodder to a co-ordinated team of mixed class ‘Mechs and an orchestrating commander.

Beyond being online and persistent; how will MWO bring the MW concept forward, or will it be more of the same simply updated? Second will the game be more sim-like than previous titles that show barren cockpits and play like driving tanks in FPS games?

[PAUL] We used to throw around a tag line here at Piranha.  “This is not your father’s MechWarrior®”.  There are so many aspects of gameplay that are being added to MechWarrior® Online™ that the game will feel different in a very good way.  Our ability to feedback information to a player has evolved drastically since the last MechWarrior® title.  This includes updated HUD displays, cockpit displays and if you have the toys, force feedback and more!  Our cockpit is not barren.  We are implementing new technologies to allow you to look at various instrument panels and get tactical information by doing so.  Combat between ‘Mechs shouldn’t be just spotting an enemy and shooting.  Logistics and battlefield awareness should play a role as well considering you’re piloting a massive powerhouse into combat.

Is there any particular aspect of the combat which you felt needed to be radically revised and/or updated?

[DAVID]  The greatest challenge when it comes to combat would be properly implementing melee combat.  As a result, this is something that we’re going to put on hold until we know we can do it right.  As for more traditional aspects of MechWarrior® combat, we want to make sure that there exists a proper balance to the different weight classes of ‘Mechs, so that they each have their own distinct uses, and encourage good team play when used together.

[PAUL] To touch on David’s comment, we are also bringing in the ability to skill up your pilot.  Your pilot is the actual avatar sitting in the cockpit.  The dude or dudette that you’re viewing the world through.  This brings a whole new level of pilot awareness to the battlefield and you’ll be hard pressed to see why it wasn’t included before.  You will be able to fine tune your pilot’s skills into one of the various roles we have planned for MechWarrior® Online™.  This includes scouting and commanding for your team mates.

How much influence is the forum and its participants having on your decisions, if any?

[MATT N] The Forum creates great catalysts for Discussion on how we implement the planned features and sometimes inspire unplanned features.

[DAVID]  We do check in on the forums from time to time.  There are a lot of interesting ideas that come out of the debates on there, and we do keep some of those considerations in mind.

[PAUL] I frequent the forums on a semi-daily basis.  A lot of the conversations have a lot of thought put into the suggestions and opinions and I find that the conversations provide us with a lot of insight into our target audience and what you the gamer is going to expect in our final product.  There are a lot of great ideas that are simply out of our scope for this project but it’s good to know that we are not far off base when looking at our current feature set and what the community is asking for.  I do however have a deep burning hatred for all things “My Little Pony”.

What do you consider the fundamental core of the BattleTech® Universe that you feel can't be touched during a reboot? What do you feel needs to be changed the most?

[PAUL] I don’t think we want to change anything behind the lore of the BattleTech® Universe.  The story lines and rich history of the Great Houses and families that drive them along with the politics and controversy are just something we think is at the heart of every MechWarrior® fan.  You can even see this right now in the MechWarrior® Online™ forums where the various House discussions show how the community can identify themselves with one of the factions involved in the universe.  Another thing we wouldn’t want to change is the elite status of the MechWarrior® themselves.  To say a MechWarrior® is just a pilot/driver of a ‘Mech is like saying that a ‘Mech engineer is just a tinkerer.  As for what would need to be changed the most, I think some of the technology and industrial designs need to be updated to meet today’s understanding of future technologies.

Targeting in the table top game had no group fire, and damage from each weapon was randomly distributed across different areas of the 'Mech. Will you be "rebooting" group fire? PS: Do you like my location?

[GARTH] He says he's on top of the TNT roof with binoculars, I think we should answer that.

[PAUL] I won’t answer squat unless he has a gun.
Okay seriously, the topic of pin-point accuracy/concentrated damage is something we are going to have to watch very carefully.  There’s no real reason why lasers shouldn’t be pin-point accurate and ballistic shot munitions shouldn’t do area damage.  We could go into numerous physics debates discussing how particles (including energy) disseminate over distance but that is not going to be conclusive to balanced gameplay.  As for group fire, there’s nothing really wrong with the model and it provides a means of making a MechWarrior® tactically think about what gets fired and when.  Needless to say, gameplay tuning will drive how we approach targeting and concentrated/area damage.

Have you any plans to add new material to give a unique MWO perspective and enhance the end users experience?

[PAUL] There are two pillars in our design mandate that target this question directly.  The first is Role Warfare where we make sure that players of any play style will find their niche and each niche is a positive supplement to their Lance or Team.  The second is Information Warfare where we bring in our InfoTech systems which help players relay information back and forth between forward scouts and the rest of the team.  This information relay system allows scout and commanders to pass information to assault and defending ‘Mechs.

In rebooting the MechWarrior® game what was the game designers’ rationale for the year 3049 being chosen?

[DAVID]  I think that starting just before the Clan invasion allows us the greatest opportunity to really dive into BattleTech setting.  We get to start with just the Inner Sphere, who are experiencing a surge of newly (re)discovered technology, and their inter-House politics, and then we get to shake things up when the Clans arrive.  Running the game through the Clan Invasion allows the players to experience for themselves what is arguably the best known period in BattleTech history.

[PAUL] We want the player base to be able to experience Inner Sphere tech combat and really to get used to how ‘Mech technology works.  We want players to really get into this game and create builds that they can share with friends and allow the community to share strategies in combat and creating/customizing BattleMechs.  We figured that the exciting time following the Succession Wars just prior to the Clan Invasion would allow us to really create some intense House vs. House tensions.  We also want to introduce other aspects of instability that happened during the introduction and subsequent invasion of the Clans.  Starting the game in 3049 made the most sense as we will be able to front load the experience of MechWarrior® Online™ to the first two years of the game being live.  Who knows what kind of interesting bits and pieces might appear in the game as time progresses?

Is the trailer for the game really in game footage? Because if it is, then the game will be amazing!

[PAUL] The 2009 video teaser is not the trailer for MechWarrior Online.  It was a technology and inspiration piece that we created and yes it was all in-game footage.  DevBlog0 and the FAQ on this site explain in detail the creation of the video and what it was used for.

Jesus, that makes the game sound DOA.

Makes it sound like after much noise and hullaballoo they'll end up making WoT with mechs.

Instanced arenas with 20 minute matches, so much for epic military campaigns... Better have amazing physics, map, objective & combat depth otherwise there's not much going on there. Wonder what the max match size will be? 4v4? Zzzzz

I don't think that would be a bad thing. 

So their idea of "massive" is just translating match victories into some arbitrary non-variable "balance of power?"  Wow, nice design.   :oh_i_see:
Protip:  just take the old mechwarrior and strap on this powerstruggle poop and your game is finished.  It can release tomorrow.

PS2 holds more promise.  iamsad

So is there territory to control or is it just a big 'us vs. them' bar?


We had territory control in god damn Mechwarrior 2, sure our backend was a system of spreadsheets and a enormous JPEG of the Innersphere, but we had it dammit!

MPBT3025 was 4x4 matches with a galaxy map determined by victories.  It's a simple system that works.

Hey I may have played in that system. Did yours have "resources" the different Houses and Companies would use to "purchase" mechs for their pilots?

I would rather see a fully realized turn-based online version of Mechwarrior than what they are trying to do here. 

Yea, we even kept track of which planets had which mech factories producing which base models.


TKZ Mech 2 league and ADL Mech2Mercs League were the big territory/resource control ones, played through Kali. GrandCouncil was a big traditional ladder I participated in too, but wasn't really into it.

(http://i.imgur.com/HENsO.png)

So you'd rather see something that would never exist in a million years than WoMecha? Are you insane?

You can play BattleTech online like right now, there are free virtual table tops for it.

Yeah, they're free because they're unlicensed. :grin: Megamek isn't exactly what I'd call a mainstream release, either.

They accept the custom mech files from the free mech builders though!

Everything I see indicates these guys are trying to create an updated version of MPBT.  Since I wanted to do that back in 2002, my first question is "Are they hiring?"  MPBT was the first online game that ate my life.

--Dave (Lt. Col. Abuse Magnet TTO Skye Front, Ret.)

Why is this in the MMO forum?  They specifically said they were not going into MMO territory re persistent world stuff.

Also, if you are wanting the "classic" Mechs of the original tabletop game, this is not the Mech game you are looking for.

And wtf is the resistance to having the compressed 360 degree viewscreen about anyway? The concept was tried and proven viable back in the 70s/80s whith that raster graphics tank game, so are they incompetent or just idiots trying to field a vaguely Mechwarrior-like world but with their own weird-ass vision and are just glomming onto the Mechwarrior name for its brand recognition with absolutely no desire to remain faithful to the original?

Let's hope Cyanide gets the Battletech license  :why_so_serious:

Seriously, with all the hate for Cyanide, I would kill for a Battletech videogame as good (and bad) as Blood Bowl.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/02/28/exclusive-first-mechwarrior-online-trailer/

 :drill:

that hula girl better be available in the online store if there is one.

I'm hoping it's going to be PvP loot.

What they didn't show you was the Atlas making a gigantic crater, shattering into millions of pieces, and its reactor cracking open to bathe the landscape in the pallid fire of raw shattered atoms... because you can't drop 100-ton robots like you do a 180-pound airborne infantrymen.

I think it had a rocket pack, so maybe it was a special Jump Atlas.   :why_so_serious:

What they didn't show was bungee cord. :drill:

When did they start installing jump jets on Atlas'?

It was an Add on from the drop ship, likely cast off on landing.

Nothing wrong with jump jets on 100 ton mechs.  :P

Mechs were dropped in ablative cocoons from orbit.  The cocoon would take the reentry and pop off in the lower atmosphere, whereupon the mech would fire strap-on jump jets to slow enough to land safely.  It was described as a rather dangerous and harrowing prospect, especially given that the areospace pilots would use them for target practice if given the opportunity.

Apparently most of that trailer was from the game-engine. Including the cockpit view.

If that's true, I'll be extremely impressed.

What?  No way. 
Now I'm intrigued err sad, 'cause I'm gonna have to get another video card. (it is Cryengine 3 after all, so I anticipate ridiculous terrain that eats GPUs for lunch)

Here's the devpost on it, 'cause you know...  link or it didnt happen right?   :oh_i_see:

It's hard to describe how happy in the pants hearing the voice list off everything coming online makes me.  Online Robot Voice is so :heart:.

Too bad that w/o LRM's (which I heard they may not have) it's near pointless to listen to.
"incoming missi..." BOOM!   :oh_i_see:

The voice actually reminded me of "Mission to Mars."  Definitely cool.

I'm really hoping they go ahead with the startup/shutdown sequence, throw in heat generation, and allow shutdown mechs to have less radar/IR signature.  Sitting in a chokepoint with a shutdown mech is cool and all, but there wasnt enough of a price to pay when you can startup the entire machine in 1-click and 0.5 seconds.  Something tells me fusion reactor bohemoths take a bit longer to fire up.

What.
 :mob:

In other news, I've been searching for the audio of the mech's startup sequence from MW2 for frickin' YEARS to use as the startup sound for my computer.  The only one I've ever been able to find is 'dirty', bits of background music behind her voice; someone clearly just recorded it from in-game rather than finding the audio file in the game and extracting it.

This one? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvG_Txu82cA&feature=related)

The one I think you want starts at the 2 min mark.

I've gotta dig up the LRM rumour, dont quote me on that.  They may also change the way it works They'll HAVE to change the mechanics of it.  Bodypart snipes with LRM are imba.
If they get the missile warning right and allow some kind of countermeasure, maybe leave em in?  Stick with unguided?  nerf the dmg. heavily?  Raise the heat generation?  dunno.

Anyways, in MW2/3 you could win the game with just that one weapon, especially against the AI.  Typical routine:
-kite with LRMs
-target the leg
-blow off the leg (incapacitates the mech)
-move in for the quick kill from behind (or just blow off the other leg)

That's the music.   Here's the voice (music is still present in the background though)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_JE6gXBOKw

That would be sweet to use for a start up.

WTB MP3!

I used to have the wav.  I'll see if I can dig it up.

Id love you more than I do now.

http://www.noblefusion.com/graphics/mw/nominal.wav

Just found it myself

Oh wow.


I was all  :mob: when I heard 'all systems online', then I was happy again when I saw


I'm such a nerd.

If they actually make a functional cockpit, I will subscribe to this game for infinity.

The voice is directly from MW2, I think.

--Dave

Mech Sounds (http://hotlink.escapedredpanda.net/f13/Mechwarrior.zip)

A very similar nominal plus startup, shutdown, and self destruct.  I can't tell if it's just slightly quieter, or if it has slightly less noise in the background.  I'm not an audiophile though, so JWIV's might be the same.

The voice is from Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries.


-edit-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvm9V2A41CA

So, let me get this right. This is MPBT: 3025, but using CryEngine 3?

Um. Yes please? I was crushed when MPBT: 3025 didn't make it out of beta.

hopefully it's better...

That game was fun but kind of shallow.

It was still all kinds of awesome.

In game footage from GDC video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXJ9Jrbr9cE

like

Also, footage of Mechwarrior Tactics, turn-based F2P game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i48oVFNgDl8&feature=related

Yay, hexes!  In some ways I'm more interested in this than the first person game.

About damn time!  You're my favorite dev whom I haven't seen in ages for the week.

Wet AND Erect.

Also, the turn based one is interesting too.

I love Mechs.  The Simplicity of the Joy of Mechs.

Oh boy. They can have ALL MY MONIES if/when this gets released.

I used to play the old MW games with a big heavy Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 - does anyone have any opinion on a similar heavy feedback joystick that'll work on Windows 7 x64 and won't break the bank?

No one makes force feedback stuff anymore, just random rumble stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Flight-System-Feedback-Joystick/dp/B002G1YPP2 gets good reviews it seems. (But will break the bank...)

Absolutely sproingy for both these games, especially the turn-based one.

...and I jizzed in my pants.  Mechwarrior Tactics looks like the Battletech game I've been waiting for forever.

Part that bothers me, is this just going to be all arena fights? Can you get out of your Mech? Is this just the Exteel of Mechwarrior?

Tactics looks like all kinds of awesome.  Can't wait to play both games and be a hermit for awhile.

There was a quote somewhere that said you can't get out of your mech.

I suspect it's going to be a bit like World of Tanks, although I'm hoping for some single-player or campaign play or something.

World of Tanks with mechs?- what could be more awesome?

World of Tanks vs. 'Mechs?

"Yes please," says the guy who always played a tanker in BTMUX.

Too bad we cant fight over hexes for our House.  
It's gonna be a totally scrim-based game it seems, which is fine by me really.

edit: Oh wait!  (MBW, do not worry)


Between this and MW:Tactics many nights will be lost.

Count me in! :heart:

Mechlab design is up. (http://mwomercs.com/news/2012/04/193-dev-blog-6-mechlab)

Going on record as saying that this will make the game less fun to play not more. I would much rather they give only the official designs and variants rather than letting people customize. Allowing people to build their own does nothing positive for gameplay or the variety of units you will see on the battlefield.

You shut your whore mouth.  My Reaper assault mech design shall reign on the battlefield, just like when I was 14!  And all IS tech, none of this OP clan crap.

I'm leaning towards Hoax on this one, from Mechwarrior 2 and onwards, total customization resulted in everyone maxing armor, then speed, then shoving as many of a single weapon system onto their mech as possible. Usually Laser Boats or Missile Boats. The kind of Laser and Missile varied between games, but there was always one type that was just broken. All the leagues and ladders had to make customization rules to prevent every match from devolving into who could MedPulse Laser Alpha the other side first before overheating and shutting down.


The best customization from a gameplay perspective was from the first Microsoft Mechwarrior game, think that was Mech4? You could still swap weapons, but mechs had restricted hardpoints, like this arm could only take autocanons, and this shoulder could only take missiles, with size restrictions as well. The fully custom table top mech design just doesn't translate to a real time actiony game.

Add me to the list of those against total customization. In my long running Battletech campaigns in the 80s I never ever allowed for total customization. Minmaxing is not the point of the game. The point of game is to use the given models, eventually upgrade them when you can, and make the best out of their strengths without forgetting their weaknesses.

Can you imagine a World of Tanks with player made tanks? No thanks.

Part of the issue with this is the persistent timeline.  It's set fairly early in the 'verse so they had to make a system that'd easily add in late model variants for everything, including clan gear, as time went on.  And as we all know, as the timeline went on it really didn't matter if you customized or not because there would be a canon mech with the same design already out there.

Early mech design was fairly basic anyways yes?  And they can still restrict slots if they want to.

With triple-strength myomer you wind up with an assault mech that moves like a medium and hatchets for 34 damage.   :heart:

I would drive this.
6-ton hatchet-wielding death from above.

Max armor, Max speed, shove as many single weapons as you can on the thing.  :oh_i_see:

Oh ye of little faith, there is a reason for everything in my masterpiece, and not just piling in twenty machine guns for lol alpha strike.  The ERPPC is in there to engage at range while approaching the victim, and to push the heat up enough to activate the myomer boost that kicks in at 9 on the heat scale.  But at 10 or higher heat you start getting worse penalties, so ideally you want to get to 9 and keep it precisely there, which is why I'm using lots of smaller weapons rather than a few large lasers; it's easier to fine tune your heat with guns that generate 3 heat per shot rather than guns that generate 10.  Everything is ammoless because the design calls for running at medium heat and you don't want to risk the ammo exploding.  The speed and armor are maxed because most of the damage hinges on being at close range, ideally hatchet range but at least medium laser range, so the mech has to be able to quickly close in and be able to survive long enough to get close.  Same for jump jets, need to be able to bypass tricky terrain quickly.  Additionally, an 85-ton mech charging from 8 hexes away is a fun tactical option to be able to have.

So you need 8 Med lasers to fine tune your heat?

I initially tried a combination of small, medium, and larges, the problem is the lack of internal space in the mech.  After the hatchet, myomer, endo-steel internals, heat sinks, and PPC, the mech has exactly 8 free tons and 8 slots.  Medium lasers are one ton and one slot.  Large lasers ate weight and left empty space.  Lights ate the space and left free weight.

I'm dissappointed it wasn't a quad with the lasers in a turret.

Screw DFA, I'm going to mule kick your ass.

A strict 3025, maybe adding 2750, tech game is a lot more fun than adding all the 3050+ expansions.  There are serious trade-offs for the weapons up to that point.  Customization can still break it, but they're overall much more balanced.

Clan-era and later only works if you've got a GM to balance things out.  I do love custom 'mechs, but a game of all perfectly optimized 'mechs becomes about as exciting as a Monty Hall D&D game.

Didn't everyone make something like that mech? about the time you realise that heat is the limiting factor and the large weapons were just monstrously inefficient in both space and heat. Likewise the cheese that a melee weapon was awesome from a heat / weight ratio.

But that's at least partly bad game design, it doesn't mean you through out a large part of the game (mech design and gearing) entirely.

It's certainly nearly-identical to the Mechs I ran MW3/4 with.   The only thing it's missing are the LRM/ SRM clusters we'd do just to kill things as soon as they came on the scope.  "Mech Powering up"  *fwooosh* "Mech Destroyed"

Um.  I've just read it.  That's exactly what they're doing.

That seems reasonable then - some customisation of 'normal' mechs (which was actually supported in the fluff) and then the inevitable Clan expansion adds the Omnimechs.

My fave mech was the Ryoken with all ER Med. Lasers, targeting computer, jump jets.

That's good news then!

There's no compelling reason for non-omnimechs to be very customizable in the first place, especially in pre-clan war IS when their technology sucked and production lines were scarce.  Their idea of mech customization involved things like strapping Marauder arms onto a Warhammer.  So I wouldn't lose any sleep over the game being restrictive in what parts you can swap for other parts on a pre-built mech model.

While I always liked total customisation better than what Microsoft Mechwarrior gave us, I did always balk at the idea of a Hunchback shooting laster beams out the big hole where his autocannon was.  It never seemed right.

This seems like an excellent compromise and I'm really, really, really fucking looking forward to this one.

I remember RAC boats of death in MW3 (heavy chassis like Daishi with lots of hardpoints, filled to the brim with rac's , or ac's ( autocannons))- no heat, pinpoint precision. By the time you run out of ammo you killed 3-5 mechs on your own.

Machine gun superheavy! Like firing thousands of angry bees. Bask in the envy of your lancemates for minutes on end!

Gameplay videos of the 4 mech classes, overview, and mechbay.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/10/six-new-mechwarrior-online-videos-count-em/

Holy shit, those laser burns.

NOW PLEASE.

Those videos do look pretty good.

Yeah, they've really got the right idea with the classes too.  No longer will it just be "get the highest tonnage and stick lots of fucking guns on".  Scouts and missile boats are tactically useful for once.

That guy in the mechlab tho.  What the fuck was he doing ?  "This is the Hunchback variant I like to call the 'total pussy'"

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Machine guns? Really? Did they add elementals into the game when I wasn't looking? WTF are you going to do with machine guns, tickle a bitch?

Hmm, take out the AC20.  Okay, I get that.  Gives you plenty of room to experiment with other stuff...

AC5?  Ooookay.  Well, lets see where he goes with it I guess...

Whoa, chief, ease up on that ammo button.  Oh, I see. Twin AC5's, nice mid to mid-long range pounding...except he forgot to put the second AC5 in I guess?

Wait, two small lasers and ONE machine gun with THREE TONS of ammo?  That's your genius plan?

Maybe they are secretly implementing the Solaris 7 rules variants... 

I reeeeaaally want this to be good. Those videos are pressing all the right buttons.

This is going to be free-to-play right? I'm worried it'll turn into another Chrome Hounds (buy the latest weapons pack every month or two if you want to remain competitive).

My talking out of my ass guess, is they'll do it like LoL, where you can buy Mechs/Heroes or whatever.

Damn that looks pretty good.  Is there a list of mechs yet?  I hope the Commando and Victor made the cut.

Going off concept art/featured mechs so far: Atlas, Awesome, Catapult, Centurion, Cicada, Commando, Dragon, Hunchback, Jenner and Raven.

Looks sweet

The worlds slowest moving FPS.

I am not yet seeing any compelling reason offered to not take the all-Atlas lance.  Mobility's great and all, but if you simply plop four assault mechs down in front of your base, the other team's going to splatter against them if it's all lights and mediums.  Price was the primary factor involved in not just filling the battlefield with Atlases for the Successor States; nobody could afford to plop down fifteen million per 'mech, but if they could've they would've.  And I don't see any real system in place in this game to limit the players from earning (or buying, yay cash shop!) enough c-bills for a pile of assault mechs.

Compare to World of Tanks Kitsune - in organised clan wars that's pretty much what happens. Everyone brings heavies. However outside of clan wars you can't form platoons of more than 3 tanks and the games are random, so you get a mix of all types of vehicles - scouts, mediums, heavies, artillery. Plus the different vehicle types play very differently and people choose to play all sorts. Despite the armour & weaponry superiority of heavy tanks good players in smaller, more agile vehicles can wipe them out. I'm hoping similar things will happen in this.

I'm actually more excited about this game than for D3  :awesome_for_real:

That's going to depend a lot on weapon balancing and team 'budgeting'.

If you have a points budget for a team, then scouts/mediums will look a lot more attractive, especially if LRMs are reasonably effective against slow moving assaults (even with AMS).

AMS ?  I doubt it.

I can clearly see 4 Atlases at a base getting utterly humped by long range.

It's 3025 tech isn't it?  No AMS there.

The Dragon makes me happy.  I'm hoping (but doubtful) of Marauders and Warhammers.  The Thug is unfortunately a 2725.  I'm crazy enough to pilot a Stinger though.

It's pretty disappointing as a "MMO" if there's no strategic resource considerations that would add depth to warfare, and add cost considerations to keep people from fielding assault mechs (one would assume for balance they have a bang for buck inefficiency compared to medium/small mechs).

Another balance mechanism would be to have gamemodes/maps with multiple objectives or mobile objectives, so speed is actually important as opposed to single static ones where firepower/heft will be the only major factor.

why not go all the way on the "WoT goes MechWarrior" theme and implement their premium system etc?

That's what I'm expecting to see.  LOL model works for those games, but MW almost perfectly meshes with the WOT model with all the equip, modules and ammo.

Though hopefully we can avoid the Gold Ammo thing that WOT has going.

Atlases pack LRM20s; there is no range at which anyone has a significant advantage over one.  Even if you stay far enough away that it can't hump your face with the AC-20, it can still reach out and touch you in a bathroom place.  A Catapult has 50% more LRM fire than an Atlas, but far less armor.

On a side note, the guy playing in those videos is a terrible shot with his autocannon.  If you're shooting an AC-20 at something, take that extra second to make sure the crosshairs are actually pointing at it first!

If they allowed for imbalanced team numbers based on the values of the mechs involved; i.e. if team 1 fields 60,000,000 in four Atlases, team 2 can bring in ten 6,000,000 c-bill medium mechs against them, then you'll see fair fights and a definite place for people piloting light, inexpensive mechs.

Yeah, but you need someone in the team with eyes on the target in order to launch them. 4 Atlases in a base are begging for a scout spotter to call in LRMs from essentially invisible Catapults farther out (as highlighted nicely in one of those vids).

As I said before though, budget caps should help with balance.

Which was what I meant.  Those videos made scouting actually have a point for once, as well as long range missile strikes.  Seems to fix the whole 'lots of guns that close and rip legs off' that all the other MW games had a problem with.

Yeah, but budget caps are unfeasible in public games.  If all of the players want to come in assault mechs, how does the game determine which players can't?

If it's a pure random pub match, maybe you'd have to pick your mech first and then let the team matchmaker find one where you fit into the budget.

That could work.  I honestly hadn't considered serverside team balancing; I'd been imagining wretched scenarios of logging into a match and seeing something like: Team Budget: 29,000,000/30,000,000.  Mechs available: Locust with the medium laser busted.  Good hunting, Mechwarrior!

There'll still be scouting, just the scout needs to be durable over fast if vision is long and the maps small. In other words you'll probably scout with an assault mech even if you have a significant number of mechs toting LRM's. And in the video it looked pretty much like everyone trundled forward into a mid field melee which supports that view.

Same as WoT. You still have long range specialists, much more so than this even, but in unlimited matches you still don't scout with a light tank.

What game are you talking about ?

World of Tanks I believe.

Will see. Mechs have jumpjets which is quite a difference. And yes you dont have light tanks in clan battles, but you still dont scout with heavies - you use mediums.

If it works like that video, I still say 4 Assault mechs only are going to have their shit pushed in by a competant mixed lance.

In a F2P game, isn't expecting competence out of teammates a bit of a stretch?  :why_so_serious:

Yes, but fortunately the same holds true about 4 heavy assault mechs grouping together.

Hell, if WoT is any indicator those heavies will charge headlong into a group on their own thinking they're indestructible.  Or they'll want to remain grouped but find themselves abandoned by their lancemates who move forward quicker and get blown to hell one at a time so the heavy can be picked-ff by a more coordinated team 50% of the time.

I just wanna pew pew big robots.

 Imho it all depends on the size of the map, range of LRMs ,etc. You can balance the game so scouts are really hard to kill by heavier mechs and therefore not instagibbed on sight. Though if WoT is any example the only protection scouts have is camo, and if it seen , no matter how fast it is raped very fast. In mechwarrior abundance of precise weapons  (lasers ,gauss, autocannons) will probably make life of a scout hell

I played a lot of MW game online (the mw3-mercs,the crysis mod ) and if you allow customization (which they do) some weapons setups on heavy chassis just give lighter mechs no chance whatsoever

Anyone know the engine this is on?

CryENGINE 3

I would imagine having stealth on the radar would probably help enormously.  Which means the enemy also needs a scout.

Right. The passive/active radar games are a lot of fun. plus terrain can be a huge part of play (much more so than in WoT). Overall  I  think they can make it work. I just wish maps were bigger than what was shown in IGN vids (they looked really tiny). MWLL has right size maps imho

[lorenerd]The problem is that the things they show in the demos with being able to take advantage of other mechs' sensors is actually ripping off the functionality of a Battletech item, the C3 computer.  Mechs aren't supposed to be able to do that without the special electronics, thus giving a reason to spend the weight and internal space to install that computer, and having the computer was sort of a big deal when the Inner Sphere developed it ahead of the Clans.  Alternately for spotting functionality for LRM barrages, there is the TAG system and the NARC pods, both of which were commonly deployed on light mechs specifically to make them super useful in that role.[/lorenerd]

As far as heavy mechs not hitting light mechs, this ain't Eve Online.  Hitting a fast-moving target in Battletech applied a penalty to anyone shooting it, but bigger mechs had no fundamental inability to bring their weapons to bear.  They were slow enough that a smaller mech could fairly easily run around behind them to nail their terrible back armor, and a light mech could run up too close to an LRM boat for the missiles to be able to hit them, but everyone's on the same playing field when it comes to shooting what's right in front of them.  If the light mech pilot can't stay behind the Atlas, it's sort of their own damn fault when they suck down an AC-20 to the cockpit.

Did they ever come up with some lore argument as to why huge trundling targets like this weren't just taken out via a missile fired from a couple of kilometers away? They can't be that well armored because for their size the weight would be prohibitive.

In Robotech they were fast moving and agile mini-tanks intended for environments with lots of cover, Hawken seems the same, Games workshop titans had void shields and the environment was actually sort of "industrial-tech", in Patlabor they were industrial construction tools...

Well, actually artillery could and would ruin your day in the wargame.  There's even a mech-mounted artillery missile system, the Arrow IV, that could fire at targets from multiple maps away.  But battlemechs aren't that slow; even the assault mechs can do 50 on a run, while lights that can reach 120 aren't uncommon.  Hauling ass isn't great for accuracy, though, especially against other moving targets, so most people dial it down to walking speed in firefights, both in the wargame and in all of the Mechwarrior games I've played.

It basically comes down to Giant Robots are awesome, therefore they are the best and will be our focus.

Yeah, as far as I am aware it's pretty much "For some reason, nobody in the future has run the cost/benefit of five hundred howitzers or one mech."

Most 'mechs had basic sensors, including seismic.  A powered-up 'mech would give some detectable signature under normal conditions.  Beagle Active Probes increased ranges and sensitivity, while ECM packages scrambled them.  C3 went beyond these capabilities and gave extensive targeting information shared between a lance, represented by using the most favorable range modifiers of the closest 'mech to the target.  TAG was generally used in conjunction with artillery, while Narc was a direct fire missile which increased the number of missiles hitting a target after a successful attack.

None of these technologies were a part of the 3025 game, though, and it did have indirect fire for LRMs.  Knowing the 'mech was there was sufficient.

Plus chicks dig them. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-kYiDbG39s)

If you really want cost/benefit, fill the battlefield with anti-mech infantry.  They'll run up to it and throw sticky bombs at the legs and joints.  Sure, 90% of them will die like dogs, but it's still a massive savings.

Use unmanned drones to swam the mechs.

I sense a mech-based argument incoming. Excellent.

Can the arguement include railguns?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7C27_lQdQQ
Now what?  :drill:

Anything manpower intensive isn't cost effective.

Cost effective would be using 42 light machine guns to saw the leg off an Atlas.  I knew I kept MW4:M installed for something.

Manpower is crap in 3025; most people are barely even serfs.  Handing a bunch of homeless guys a crate of sticky bombs and herding them out into a battlefield is pretty easy, whereas military tech is irreplaceable.

This is BattleTech, not Warhammer. The general population is generally living at the same level we do currently, not tilling the dirt farms with their bare hands.

On the nicer worlds in the nicer states, yes.  But planetary feudalism is the order of the day, and there are plenty of worlds where people are dirt.  Especially in the Periphery and places like the Capellan Confederation, the North Korea of the Inner Sphere.  Even in the states that are shown as being fairly progressive, like the Federated Suns, Lyran Commonwealth, and Free Worlds League, there are planets with no perceived value where if you're born on it you're pretty much living on a planet made up entirely of West Virginia for your entire life.

It's not as cool as the thought of a line of 42 dudes sawing through the leg of an Atlas with machine guns.

More Videos Pls.

Leetle theengs.  Heeting each ozzer.

Early access launches July 17th!

http://mwomercs.com/news/2012/05/259-operation-inception

Hmmm. Leads me to believe they are going to have some kind of subscription type service (premium accounts). Might be worth it for the $30 level.

Yeah, looks very much like they're going to follow the WoT model.  C-bills, XP boost for premium subs. 

Where can I push a button and give them money already?

This, I'm prolly gonna go the 60 dollar route even.

The 60-dollar route is almost a no-brainer.  Even if the extra c-bills is only a 5% boost that will be a shitload of free cash over the long-haul if the game is any good. 

Key point being the last 6 words.

Plus, hey, free exclusive mech.  Depending on what tier it is, that could easily be $50.  Lord knows Premium tanks in WoT cost that much at times.

I really dislike the whole idea of paying without even trying the beta, it rewards potential failure and I almost never do it.  However it is giant mechs and it's the first thing that's caught my interest in a long time, so I'm very tempted.

Am I missing something or there isn't a full list of mechs out yet? I would love to know if we are talking about 5-10 original Fasa ones, or 20-40 you know?

:awesome_for_real:

One other thing that I am not sure if people know or not, but you have to activate your beta account. Log into the forums and then click profile. There is a tab called Beta that has a checkbox to activate your beta account. It then asks you for some computer spec information. When I went to my profile my beta account wasn't checked even though I thought I had signed up. A bit of a confusing process to be honest.

From announcements:

Jenner
Catapult
Hunchback

Dragon
Centurion
Commando
Raven
Cicada
Cataphract

They've got a total of 11, but I'm not sure what the missing ones are.

Have they announced what the 60 buck mech is?

It was on that page, those recolored/reskinned mechs.

Yeah, the "special" mech is a paint job and not an actual mech.  Which is fair enough; people would be rightly pissed if an entire mech chassis was off-limits to anyone who didn't cough up sixty bucks before the game was even done.  Not that it matters much; all of the best mechs are never gonna be in the game thanks to idiots not managing to correctly license things in the 90s.

I want LAM's! 

Eleven mechs at launch? That's... very few :(

Where did they clarify this? Because I'm reading:


And thinking of the premium tanks in World of Tanks that no one can get anymore because they were only offered during beta.

No Atlas?

 :cry:

What Furiously said about WoT is what I was thinking to be the case as well.

There's even premium tanks that you can no longer get.  So long as they're not vastly overpowered to the point a bad player can own anybody then nobody really cares.

Atlas is in all the videos...

No, they're highlighting one every couple of days.  I just skimmed their headlines.

I forgot the Atlas from the videos.  Add that to the list.

 WoT had if I remember 3 special pre-order tanks you couldnt get any other way. Their $60 one was also quite op for release (it was tier8 with insane armor and most no one had tier8 for first month) .And it was not that big deal.

It actually got a lot of people twisted around the axles at launch, it was a rare match that I ran mine that I didn't get people bitching about Wallet Warriors and suggestions that I needed to earn a tank like real players did.  People who didn't really understand the game thought it was completely unfair that just because you did the $100 preorder you got a tier 8 heavy.  People who knew how to play the game weren't that bothered by it once they learned how to fight it.   A lot of people sold theirs not to long after launch because they really didn't earn that well and the release of the later high tier premiums pretty much overshadowed the premium M6.  I still have mine, and thanks to a tweak to its earning potential  in one of patches, it earns a nice pile of credits every match.  But the current target of anti-premium tank anger is the type 59 tier 8 medium so instead of "die in a fire wallet warrior" I mostly I just get "wtf is that thing" kinds of comments when I run it now.

The tightrope that the Mechwarrior folks will have to walk is making the premium mechs good enough to be worth buying but not so good that they break the game.  WoT got burned pretty badly by the Type 59, the thing was just a monster in pug games until they were forced to nerf it, which pissed off the folks who had already bought one, and then stop selling it, which pissed off the folks who didn't have one.

The trick with exclusive mechs is that lots of battletech nerds are insanely attached to their favorite mech.  It's not even a pay to win thing; if they make it so that people can't get, say, a Zeus if they don't preorder, you can bet that there's some Zeus fanboy out there who will be plotting to bomb their offices over it if he misses out on the opportunity to get a Zeus.  Even a crap mech like Urbanmechs probably have rabid fans somewhere.

Especially the Urbie.  That along with the Locust had the biggest cult following in MPBT.  My personal preference was the BNC-S, a model that performed far better in video games than in the boardgame.

--Dave

no Archer no peace

(And yeah I know it is one of the copyright violation ones.)

Go Orion!

Locust lovers deserve derision.  At least there are tales of Urbies saving the day.

Also means no Warhammer or Marauders.  :(

I'm a Thunderbolt (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Thunderbolt) guy, and yeah I'd pay real money in order to make sure I get one at launch.

For me it's the Victor (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/victor).

The Victor-9B is a great little big ambusher.

Does the Mad Dog (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Mad_Dog_(Vulture)) fit the timeframe/rules? I fucking loved that one in every MW I played...

 I think this is set just before the clan invasion.  If it had clan, no one would play Inner Sphere.

Bummer...

You'd have both, but mixing the two techs is just asking for disaster.  It only works in carefully plotted tabletop games.

Clan tech is literally overpowered, it takes like 15-20 years of 'game time' for the InnerSphere to even pretend to catch up.

Yes.  In canon the clan is overpowered by a few centuries of relatively unimpeded weapons development while the Inner Sphere hammered itself into the stone age.  The factions are evenly matched because strategic and tactical thinking in the Clans is about one step removed from building mecha horses so they can joust.

Yeah, any game with clanners would have to have some sort of balancing mechanic in place or else they'd just steamroll the IS team.  Assuming that such a mechanic would be based around the C-bill value of the mechs, the IS team would need either more people or heavier mechs to reach an equivalent value.  As far as the Clan fighting goes, their tactics are usually fine, once they got over their hangup on single combat; its their strategy that throws them off.  Game lore fluff indicates that they're resource-poor to the point that they're insanely frugal with their machines, and their bidding system is meant to minimize the loss to equipment by only sending in as many troops as absolutely required to do a job.  Which I guess is just a nice way of trying to explain why the clan player's fielding half the number of mechs as their opponent.

Battlemasters have always been my favorite chassis, and they're caught up in the copyright abyss so I don't expect to see them.  FASA's efforts to redesign the copyrighted mechs always wound up looking godawful, so even if they do bring back the locust/wasp/marauder/etc. they're probably going to be too ugly to bear any resemblance whatsoever to the originals.

I would just like you to stop at this point and reflect on the notion of sending half the dudes your enemy has fielded with the expectation that your opponent is going to settle for one-on-one mecha duels.

Well they aren't refitting between said duels, so there is still some merit to it!  :why_so_serious:

Wait, weren't the Archers in the videos too ?

I love giant robots, but nothing at all, in any way, at any time has made sense in anything Battletech/Mechwarrior. Games Workshop products aside it's the worst fucking game system in existence and has been coasting for 30 years on being the first in the genre. Just love the giant robots and ignore everything else.

It's too bad the Renegade Legion franchise died out, now there were some good games.

Unfortunately, human players ignore all that.  I've seen what happens in large scale multi-player games.

Clanners talk about all their constraints, but when it comes to a battle they want to win.  They won't purposefully handicap themselves.  That results in the ISers pulling every dirty trick imaginable.  Then both sides end up hating the other, and it only devolves from there.

Mixing the techs will never, ever, ever work in a game without a human referee to step in for every conceivable battle.  It gets UGLY.

Closed beta invites are going out.. nothing for me so far  :heartbreak:

Of course the players themselves wouldn't go out of their way to have an actual fair fight.  That's why the servers would have to enforce a balancing mechanic to keep both sides on equal footing despite the vastly better clan tech; either more players or more tons for the IS side.

Which is why the Clan / IS tech difference is such a shitty game mechanic whether it be tabletop or computer.  Whoever dreamed it up doesn't know their audience.

I think it was more they were clueless about balancing the systems.

The 2750 readout added powerful equipment, but almost all of it had a big trade-off.  (A properly fitted C3 unit being the prime exception.)  Clan gear added yet more power while reducing the penalties below that of base 3025 tech.  There were several synergies which made it worse, such as pulse weapons, targeting computers, and clan heat sinks.

http://mwomercs.com/news/2012/06/272-battlemech-12-stalker
(http://i.imgur.com/vc3DZ.jpg)
I love a dev team with a sense of humour.  :awesome_for_real:

 :headscratch:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-out-of-here-stalker

Thanks.

The lore discussion is an interesting one, though. I don't think anyone has ever figured out a mechanism for "cultural particularity" in a MMO that doesn't come off as an annoying artificial limitation that eventually creates some kind of balance issue. But this also relates to a basic problem in wargaming (computer or tabletop): most actual battles in human history aren't particularly fun to game, because very few could actually plausibly be won by either side AND make an overall difference in the general conflict. Most battles are either seriously asymmetrical in terms of the forces involved or in terms of intelligence & terrain giving one side a huge advantage. And sometimes 'culture' plays a role in there too, with one side having a possible advantage that it doesn't use because the leadership or combatants don't see or understand that advantage. In gaming, asymmetrical set-ups are not much fun, and no player will stay within a cultural 'handicap' if they're not forced to. If you know how Agincourt actually went, you're not going to send your mounted forces into a muddy muck and get shot to pieces by longbows.

 :nda:

?

He's telling us that he can't tell us that he's betaing a massively multiplayer mech-based online title.

You utter cunt.

Score me a key, would you ?

I am annoyed that I still can't give them my money and earn a beta key that way. What are they thinking?

They are giving out 10k closed beta keys atm.  Buying one of the founder packages will get you a closed beta key as well from what I read.

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/13874-official-developer-update/

The founder package gets you in on August 7th, not one of the more immediate beta spots.  So don't hold your breath waiting for that email to arrive.

But... let's pretend I want to buy a founder package. Where do I get it? I must be dumb (or lazy) but I can't find a purchase option anywhere on their site.

The option to purchase it isn't opening until Tuesday the 19th.

August 7th is the new Founder's early access.  Not the date you'll get into a closed beta. 

Anyone want to summarize the founders package?  I read that link but it seemed to assume I knew what the founders package was already.

$60 ELITE Founder's Package Includes:

 Exclusive custom "Founder's BattleMech." This 'Mech includes a lifetime, per-match C-Bill booster.
 $80 value of in-game currency* for in-game item purchases.
 Two-month premium account to MechWarrior Online at launch: Earn XP & C-Bills faster.
 Founder's Tag - sets your status apart from the crowd & get noticed in-game and on the forums.
 Early access to the game along with Founder's assets availability starts July 17th.


$30 VETERAN Founder's Package Includes:

 $40 value of in-game currency* for in-game item purchases.
 One-month premium account to MechWarrior Online at launch: Earn XP & C-Bills faster.
 Founder's Tag - sets your status apart from the crowd & get noticed in-game and on the forums.
 Early access to the game along with Founder's assets availability starts July 17th.

Worth noting, the "Founder's Battlemech" is a Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult, or Atlas with an alternate paint job.  There is no indication that you can change your choice down the road, and it's unknown whether they have standard armament, and whether you can customize them.  So if you hate all four of those mech chassis, you're pretty much out of luck.  They may have stupid weapon loadouts, you may not be able to change them.

In short, don't put down $60 in the hopes that you're getting a badass mech for the cash.  At best you're getting a standard mech with a different skin that earns more money when you use it.  At worst you're getting a gimped mech that you can never customize.  That said, I wouldn't go tearing my clothes and wailing with ashes on my head if I got an Atlas with the default weapons and couldn't change them.  Its loadout is formidable enough that I would be fairly happy with the stock config.  But if they give me an Atlas with a Banshee's weapons, I would drive to their studio specifically to punch as many of them in the balls as possible before getting tasered.  Because seriously, fuck Banshees.

I am getting the elite package.. either way I'm getting $110 bucks worth of stuff before the Mech. 

$110 bucks worth of stuff AND a permanent credit bonus.  Those credits will be very useful in the long-run if, like in WOT, the upper-tier mechs & ammo cost more to repair than you make in a match where you die w/o 3+ kills.   Even if it's only a 2% boost it adds up quite a bit.

Yeah, $110 of stuff and a Derpback. Hunchbacks gonna hunch.

 :heart:

I am totally going with the 60$ too. That said, I really hope this game doesn't suck. It would really break my heart.

That really is tempting - though I can't see not just grabbing the Atlas. 

I can.  Being the big lumbering tub can be so fucking boring.  By the looks of the trailers, the other mechs have actual functions, so I suspect I'll be heading into something a little more medium and long rangey.

There is that.  Though looking at the requirements, I may be dropping 60 bucks and then not doing anything with them for a bit since my computer's age apparently is finally showing and I'm just under the specs.  *sigh*

The only thing that annoys me is that seems like there will be about 15 'mechs out of the almost hundred we should be able to choose from. In World Of Tanks you might end up sticking to a handful, but you can still choose among a big lot. I'm afraid that will end up being disappointing in the long run.

In the long run, they'll put them in and you know it.  Shush.

As long as they release a couple of chassis a month in regular updates, I don't mind the slim pickings to start.

I'm just hoping it isn't a steaming pile of crap.

Optimism? From Ironwood? This game is doomed.

Optimism ?

Don't be so fucking stupid - it's a free to play, so they need money somehow.  Every single mech chassis released after it goes live will cost a microtransaction to get into the cockpit.

Remember, inevitable doesn't mean good.  See;  Death.

I hope that they price-gouge the fuck out of people for Clanner tech.

I really hope they copy world of tanks.

+1

Well there is no Clan stuff for at least 1 year from launch.  Their game timeline uses our date with the year 3049.

I've kept all my tanks above tier IV, some tier II, and a lot of the premiums. There's just no way to play all those fucking tanks. If they have any sort of crew skills, even a basic, barebones system 15 tanks is more than plenty for a while.

Talking about the founders packs etc, I think that personally I'd wait until the NDA was lifted before spending $60 on a F2P game pre-release. Just saying.

Yea. I wouldn't spend a dime on this until someone breaks the nda to you.

So, are we getting a 'the NDA is broken as far as we're concerned once they start asking for cash' ruling on this?  They're essentially asking for people to buy the game tomorrow.

'Cause yeah, I'm not handing some stranger sixty bucks for in-game items in something I haven't gotten to play, and am missing big swaths of details about.

Wow, they're such great guys that they're now offering all four of the magical founder mechs for the low price of $120 for the game that nobody's gotten to play yet.  That's a steal!

Please someone talk me out of buying the 120$ Legendary package. I feel weak.

You need to save that money for Dungeon Bowl DLC!

Don't buy it, Falcon.  There has yet to be one single independent review of the state of the game or how well it plays.  Allowances for being in beta and all, miracle patch etc, but huge swaths of the game are just a  :headscratch: right now.  Since they're now soliciting money, I'd hope that Schild will agree to unleash the NDA people so we can get some actual facts instead of some youtube footage.

That's right. Thank you!

I know I'll buy some sort of founder's package for this game but only if I get to beta it before (and it isn't a total wreck).

Relevant information:


They need to do colored developer posts so it's easier to find.  Pres is doing a Q&A in this thread:
http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/15037-russ-bullock-taking-questions-on-founders-now/page__st__20

Yeah, additionally the premium membership bonus is 50% to money and experience.  Which also apparently made it into the e-mail but not into their website.

Also mentioned, the founder mechs come with extra garage space to accommodate them, so you get your normal starting slots plus the ones occupied by the founder mech, rather than the founder mech eating one of your available mech bays.  Which is nice.

Only reason I won't buy it is cuz I don't have that much cash to blow :(

Farken hell!

No wonder I never found this thread, it was in the MMO section.

Falc, I read the email and bought Legendary straight away before even knowing there were f13 people interested...

FARK, now to go through 9 pages pf awesomeness...

Also what Houses are people playing?  :drill: :drill: :drill:

People are ponying up $120 gees for internet robots? To get XP boosts when no one even knows what XP will be good for? In a game where the current win condition could be read off the liver of a sacrificial goat?

The "Mechs vs Tanks" thread was peculiar, but this shares a new level of bewilderment.

Agreed.

And I worship big fucking robots.

Have they said when this preorder period ends?

$120 is a trivial amount for some people.  It just means not going out a few times that month or cutting back over the next few.   I know people who regularly blow that on a weekend's drinking.

Not that I'd do it or think either option is fiscally sane, but people do blow more cash on less.  I'm more surprised at the bewilderment.

Fuck, people blew that much on SWTOR and Diablo III sight-unseen too and nobody blinked an eye.  All you got there was some digital costumes and no real in-game advantages.

Also it's not XP it's in-game cash boost.  Cash buys you ammo, and parts.  Evidently (based on what the president was saying in the thread I linked) you need to spend the real-money cash to get mechs. (He stated that the $80 would get you 8-10 mediums, or a lot of smalls or a few heavies.)

Gameplay & stability is the only real issue here, not the expenditure of cash. That's going to be required in some way or another.

 :uhrr:

 :oh_i_see:

Considering I totally skipped Age of Conan & SWTOR as they both appeared to be flawed concepts, I feel quite justified dropping $120 on this.  I buy games so rarely now it's not even an issue.

Quiet. If you stare too closely at the house of cards that is paying for computer games, you'll bring the whole thing crashing down around us.

Steiner. :drillf: :drillf: :drillf:

*whimper*

I really want to blow some cash on this. But I really want to know it doesn't completely suck first.

I'd like to share thought, since I'm sure hierarchically any consumer rights legislation trumps a video game agreement of secrecy when you're dealing with sums passed double digits, but there's at least one mod here who likely won't agree with that. Some may consider 120 bux chump-change or a night out on town, but in my little potato republic that's 6 hours in the company of a uptown prostitute. Also my liqueur budget for the whole summer.

A Commando standing next to an Atlas is like Robot Dad with his Robot Son. It's so adorable!

One thing I haven't checked: is there going to be any kind of persistency when it comes to war and the likes? Or is it all arenas after arenas? Can we create "guilds"? This is maybe the first time I'd really love to be part of an f13-kind-of-party. Do we need to all pick the same faction to make a guild (again, if possible)? I know it's premature considering some of us haven't preordered yet, but it's only 2 weeks 6 weeks away and I am rally looking forward to this.

Liao.

(http://i.imgur.com/JtW3f.gif)

Think it's Aug. 7th.

And I'll be in House Davion.

FWL for sure. Interested to see how many old names and faces from the old 3025 days are back.

Also +1 for any serious Friday or Saturday night out is going to cost at least $120.

House Davion is what I was back in the days of MW2 and our cobbled together meta-game. Dunno what I would want to pick if I played this game. Are merc companies an option?

From what I gathered the guilds will be Merc Companies.

Mercs are an option on the 'pick your faction' thing for the site profile.  As is "Lone Wolf"

Though Evildrider's post does ring familiar with me.

If Mercs are an option, then I'll be a Belt Pirate.

Why would you want to steal belts? You are the worst pirate!

$120 is a lot, but I haven't subscribed to an MMO for almost years now, haven't gone drinking for a few months and I love Battletech so I'll support it. I was shattered when 3025 beta/online/thingy ended.

You can create guilds (they're called Merc Companies though). The question is can you switch between faction with the same account? The impressiong I get is that you won't be able to which could be a bigger problem is what Simond hinted at.

Goonswarm is playing in House Liao and bringing all their poke the NeckBeard (which I qualify). So while I love the SA gaming culture, I have to smack myself not to take internet robots so damn seriously...

But Goonswarm/SA/PA/Ars or whatever group playing is great for the game because it adds an existing vibrant gaming culture and will keep it alive for at least a year.

But yeah it'd be nice to be in the same house as some awesome f13 folk.  :awesome_for_real:


Edit: Founders FAQ compilation

http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/15171-founders-qa-compilation/

You have until July 15 to crack Falc  :awesome_for_real:

If NDA hasn't dropped before then then I will consider this one of the most cynical moves in gaming ever.

Oh, don't worry. I did. But I bought the 60$ one, not the 120$.

(http://i.imgur.com/HFWRt.jpg)

Full credit to the nutter who created this thread (http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/16128-new-mech-psshh-i-got-fully-updated-forum-statistics-for-you-includes-founders-pack-sales/).

Just means you have 15th of JUly to upgrade for all 4 mechs...  :awesome_for_real:

Atleast until that (there's no definite end date for the founders yet I think).
Can't wait until someone spills the beans so I can give em money for an atlas (or a catapult)  :why_so_serious:

Holy shit.

SHIT. YOU KNOW ME SO WELL.

Yeah.

As Simond said earlier, the goons/goonfleet is going, there's wormsign Jade Constantine (http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/13174-rejoice-fellow-capellans-victory-is-near/page__st__280__p__413877#entry413877)...

And somebody is already ramping up the propaganda.

The Mittani (http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/662-affs-coc/page__st__620__p__397983#entry397983)


I'm not in the beta and therefore can't comment on the game itself, but it seems there's some interest out there for something other than Eve.

So we can be everything but Liao. Ok, cool.

This is my bad, I totally missed it, but could anyone give me a rundown on why we haven't been playing Mechwarrior Living Legends like crazy until now? Pros and Cons? I am trying to download it as we speak...

I had to laugh at Mittani's title.

Thankfully Star's End isn't on it.  Of course it is a useless clump of rocks on the far end of the galaxy from Liao.

This game looks fun, but I don't think I can play it since I close on my new house next week and will spending most of July doing shit.

Anyway, there any good writeups on this game since I'm lazy?  What's the gameplay like etc?  Or NDA is up and no one can talk?

The latter. There are gameplay movies from the company, and they seem to be too small to aggressively take down the  :nda: movies lying around. But I've seen nothing on the out of combat advancement mechanics beyond the text of the preorders talking about some form of tree.

I'm assuming that the game mechanics are going to be something like WOT?

Define 'Lying Around'.  With Links.

Yeah it's crazy, I can't find anything. Granted, I haven't ventured in the darkest corners of the internet, but I am surprised how little (actually: zero) is coming up. Not only the only footage they released is very, very limited (what, 5 minutes total? 10 if you had the mechlab?), but there's not much in written form either. It's the biggest tease I can remember in recent videogaming history, and still it managed to score 600k $ in 1 day. We are all a bunch of fools, I am sure. Especially because usually we'd think that such an obsessive radio silence probably means the game is shit, while this time around we are shelling out big cash out of nothing else than dreams & hopes.

May the spirit of the Hellgate London Lifetime Subscription save our souls.

Enough with your cynicism, giant internet robots are at steak!

On the other hand, that douchy announcement from that douchy mittani guy is almost enough to turn me off buying the game. I just want to log in, shoot robots in my robot, and log out. The idea that anything from boring as fuck Eve could be dragged into the game repulses me. That includes fucking fruity pseudo political roleplaying or whatever the fuck it is he's trynig to do. It annoys me so much I'd hit him in his fucking face with a claw hammer in real life to make him keep this shit to himself.

He's not roleplaying, he's just trying really hard to piss people off, as it will help his recruitment drive later on.

"Divine Feathered-King of the Tetaetae" is likely to cause strokes in quite a few of the traditional BT grognards all by itself.  :grin:
( http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tetatae )

So let's say I buy into the God King of Tetaetae, how do you go about joining them Simond? Is it the 6 month SA account thing?

Othewise I might just play Steiner with Lantyssa or Davion or something. Fuck Comstar. (Not the poster)  :why_so_serious:

You throw the right buzzwords around and nerds are happy to throw money at it. That's pretty much the rule governing every successful video game Kickstarter as well.

Someone needs to convince Sir Molle to join the Federated Suns. Get the old band back together.  Just like old times.


Damm, trying to tell myself not buy a full game price for a game that probably will such as much as WoT did (I loved it. Till I got to the 4th tank. Ugh).  I's really weird that there's so little your tube of it. WTF are they hiding (for)?!?

Maybe people spending $120 on this in advance should ask themselves the same question. Maybe there just isn't that much game to hide?

How many tanks and maps did WoT have at launch, does anyone know?

World of Tanks only had German and Russian tanks at launch, up to tier 8 if I can remember correctly. It was about 40 tanks I would say. And maybe 6 to 8 maps. Also, when it launched, it had been in OPEN beta for more than a year.

So, no one is up for an f13 thing? Based on the website and the Dev blogs, 6 factions are confirmed PLUS Mercenary Corps and Lone Wolfers (http://mwomercs.com/news/2011/12/44-dev-blog-1-community-warfare). We could all choose a faction (Both Steiner and Davion are OK to me), or go f13 Mercenary Corp.

An f13 Mercenary Corp sounds wonderful but would we have 4 people who consistently play in the same timezone? This is why I'm leaning towards the Serious business side of World of Lowtax. You will always have Lancemates, and besides the static of idiocy and publicity the majority of Goonswarm were (anecdotally) intelligent and nice.

I'm so overhyping myself for this...

OK, well those may be interesting numbers to remember. Just saying.

I hate to even dedicate one single post to the guy, but add me to the horde of people that would happily punch that privileged asshole to a pulp (EDIT: morally, figuratively). The simple idea of "playing with him" make my intestine want to rip out of my body and strangle him. Infinite reasons for this, Fanfest's display of "because I can" kind of mean mediocrity being the biggest one. My one and only off topic comment about that idiot.          

Getting rather excited.

Although beta leaks are reporting LOTS of problems, issues and a million missing features. Even some of the people who were OMG LET'S TAKE MY MONEY are reporting some form of pessimism. I hate to be the partypooper, but there's a chance the game will keep feeling very Alpha for another year or so.

Especially considering the President made it clear in a Dev Blog that community Warfare won't be in the game at launch, and not even all the 'mechs already announced will. Only about ten.
So basically, starting August 7th it will be deathmatch after deathmatch with just about ten 'mechs and no metagame at all.

Not seeing anything there that isn't expected, really.

I think part of the problem here is that a lot of people seem to have been conditioned to take Beta as released when it's really really not meant to be.

Of course, that's been backed up by us getting shat on by so called 'released' products that aren't worth fuck all.

You are right.
I think my only problem is that I couldn't stand this game not delivering. If they mess this up I am gonna have a gaming breakdown. So every hint at disappointment I capture anywhere makes me stupidly nervous.

Don't forget Mechwarrior Tactics (http://mwtactics.com/) is also coming out.  In some ways I'm more excited about this one, as all I've ever wanted was a computerized table-top game that's easy to hop into.

Well, from what little I've seen already, I'm happy that the two big sticking points are being addressed.

So there's that.

Mechwarrior Tactics totally calls for a f13 League, like the Blood Bowl one...  :heart:

Even if all that is true, this is the opposite situation to WAR where they wasted so much money on the PVE content that when the population tanked there was absolutely no way the funding wasn't going to get cut to the bone.  If they honestly do intend to add the features people want, while trying to improve the core gameplay of giant mechs shooting each other, I think players are going to be very forgiving.  It's not like they have a lot of choice if this is the type of game they want.

I already got strung along with "deathmatches while we work on the strategic level" for a year or so once.  Page me when the real game is ready.  Seriously, they'd be better with a half-assed strategic level lifted straight from the player-built systems put together for MW2/MW3 than launching with nothing but a half-assed dueling game and only a handful of mech types.

--Dave

I'm not sure what the intention is but I hope they don't officially launch with such a key feature missing, they made a million or so already just from pre sales.  The "we fully expect to have the core of the community experience in the game within 90 days of open beta" doesn't automatically read to me as "open beta is over by that point".

I don't see why Deathmatches won't suffice.  It's all I do in World of Tanks and that remains fun. 

Then again I don't have the love affair with the tabletop game others seem to.

Yeah, I'm kinda with you.  In all of these type of games, I'm an old fart of a father (read:Casual) so the actual progress of the War and Leagues and Standings means precisely Dick to me.

I just wanna log in with some mates and beat fuck out of big robots with large guns.  That's how I played the Tabletop one too; so I'm not too sure what expectations anyone else has.  As far as I can see, this game will deliver both big robots beating fuck out of each other as well as managing the thorny problem of 'Biggest Robot is the Biggest Fuck Beater'.  So I'm kinda happy.

Also;  Critical Hit :  Heat Sink.

It's all I want.  Heck, it's all MPBT3025 was really.  We just had a pretty map to make us think we were fighting each death match for a reason.

I wonder if it'll have DFA.  My squad thought I was crazy, but loved when I did it.

I just remember from the initial BT rules, you could actually pick up a severed arm and club your enemy with it.

That was... pretty cool.

Yeah, when DFA worked, it really worked.  I had a nice custom mech that went through about 20 games unbeaten until Chris did a tricky DFA move and crushed my head.  Good Times.

It does have DFA.

I hear they took heat sinks to the level that if you put them in your legs and you stand in water you get bonus heat loss.

That's cool. It's exactly like that in the original rules. You are even harder to hit because only half of your body is visible, but at the same time you are kind of stuck there since you move slower in and out of water and you have to perform stumble rolls, which means you can fall on your face a lot (and I heard the stumble mechanic IS already in the beta and not just for entering or leaving water).

I like the infra-red view.  It actually has a use, as well.

Fuck Goonswarm. Someone better make sure this game has some kind of faction population balance mechanics in place or else this wont even be worth playing if they bring the full zerg.

No interest in the game until they have community warfare stuff fleshed out and running.

Given that the actual battles seem to be team deathmatch with a sideline of capture the base, there's no faction population to balance.  You'll never see a 100 vs. 20 fight in any event.

From what I recall most of the huge battles in Eve where fairly even in numbers. The different was always that Goonswarm kept on coming back.

From what I understand it's all team deathmatch/capture the base, so raw numbers aren't in it. And the actual map showing conquests won't be in for 3+ months either.


That being said, if House Liao takes down the Federated Suns, it will also be hilarious.

Doesn't really matter what happens though, since two years down the line the Clans will arrive to push in everyones shit.

That just means less Space-Prussian reinforcements for the space-China front.  :grin:

Pretty much, even if there's no strategic crap, I just want to be in my Hunchback shutdown while a friendly light mech baits a fucker into the city then I start up 'Mech Online' and open up with an AC/20 into someone's tasty rear torso armour...

Yeah, the money I put in is good will and I won't be expecting Robot jesus at launch, just give me enough to bite into and slowly add more features.

Guilds push shit in by being organised, not by numbers. Fixed sides games like this they will always dominate the persistent elements because they have more time than we do.

As for goonswarm, they are about the only guild I've ever seen manage to even touch the serious business part of an mmo using casual players so no idea why all the sand is getting in vaginas about them.

New Developer Diary video or something. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma1Fj3bOfDg&feature=g-u-u)

(Granted, no new footage. God forbid...)

Where does one get a Big Robot fix in the meantime if they can't stand the Microsoft attempts ?

Everyone says Mechwarrior Living Legends (http://mechlivinglegends.net). Looks really good judging from gameplay videos on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC2BAeyVkYM) and it has a decent selection of 'mechs and vehicles. I will go as far as saying that I like their LRM video effects more than the MW:O ones so far. I am tempted to buy Crysis Wars myself just to try it out (it's 10€ on Steam)m but I was really hoping for someone here to drop some first hand impressions.

Also, that video is two years old. Beta advanced a lot since then some say.

Just about everything I've heard about them paints them as nerdy bullies, people who want to have fun by ruining your day, and fuck with your shit on a personal level because lol internets or whatever.  This is stuff coming from both their enemies as well as the Goons themselves.  I've never encountered them myself as far as I know, so I may be way off base, but that's the image of them that I'm getting.  *shrug*


The only new game I've seen recently is the new Steel Batallion game, which disappointingly looks kind of shitty. (http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-steel-battalion-heavy-armor/17-6241/)

To be honest, even a well done tabletop rendition would work for me.  I downloaded Megamek, only to find out it was horrendously shitty.

I like that you can get out of your mech.

I like that you can get out of your Mech and actually be useful.

The feel I got from the Eve group was that they're a really large group (so lots of differences internally) that puts the members getting maximum enjoyment out of the game above any other concerns, including social convention and expectations of how the game should be played. Which probably looks much like your version from the receiving end but is a slight difference in intent.

Humour>All.  It's a large group so you have the usual things you would expect, nice people & arseholes.  It has deeply committed people who will put months of effort into something boring and complicated just to piss other people off, while at the same time they will throw all that effort away with little thought if it's funny to do so. 

I like them, I wouldn't want to fight against them as their troll posting/propaganda is so good at making people hate them.

Nevermind.

Sounds like Malkavians.

That's probably the most apt description I've heard of the Goons.

They're pretty much 4chan Anons who act like 4chan Anons but who think they're not because they pay to be on SA forums. We have some at our local game shop who go on and on about retarded goonfleet crap and then flip their shit when you tell them that they're like Anonymous but lamer because they only do stuff in videogames and they pay to post on a message board.

Also, I wonder when Living Legends is going to be served a C&D since it's a fan mod, isn't it? MWO isn't going to allow direct competition, especially if it's prettier and completely free.

Nah, 4chan is a SA spinoff.

Not a spinoff, but SA did exist first. But that doesn't mean it's derivative. That would be like saying Haemish's writing is a F13 spinoff, Ironwood's whatever the fuck he does is a F13 spinoff, or F13 is a LTM spinoff.

Pretty sure F13 is a LtM spinoff.

This never ends well.  :oh_i_see:

As an F13 spin-off, we're going to put you in a house with, oh, WUA, Dash and grunk and film the results. It'll be zany!  :grin:

Guilds have aversion to Goonswarm in the same manner a group of friends leave a bar when the party bus full of drunken frat boys pulls up outside.

The goons aren't complex.  If they roll in and fight you, and you behave like you're playing a game and attack them back while not taking it too seriously, they'll like you.  But if you behave like they just dug up your dead mother and had sex with her because the game is serious and start making strident posts about them on the forums, they'll decide that you're their new project.  And then your pain will begin.

Nay sir. At least not directly. Somewhere, someone has surely made an awesome diagram of all the different boards that rose and fell and the dates involved.

Regardless, giant robots and whatnot.

Please.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1411632/stinson.jpg)

I don't think anyone is saying the goons don't come across as incredibly annoying, but with so many of them, there have to be some who aren't actually like that.  Also ltm used to link SA so that's how I found it.

The only concern I have about playing online with them again is that some mwo dev might go ape and ban anyone associated with them.

Goon Beta thread apparently got closed (no nda breaking stuff).

Even THIS beta-thread...

Someone went through 800 posts and listed all the reasons to lock the thread?  I know it's a Mechwarrior game and the number crunchers that attracts (Hi, I'm Lan!), but what kind of horribly crippling levels of OCD can possibly lead to that?

"Locked, because of trolling."  Done.

This makes me want to play with the goons. Does SA accept paypal ?  :drill:

If you do sign up, lay low for a month and join in some conversations outside the game forum, don't just run into their MWO thread.  If they see you pop into a gaming thread on the same day you made your account, they'll call you a J4G (Join SA 4 Guild) and probably a faggot for good measure.  They're lovable that way.

Which is pretty much what we'd do if someone signed up on F13 and immediately tried to get into bat country, except without the faggot part and with bigger words.

The more they tighten their grip, the more posting will slip through their forums.


Goonswarm is going to be House Liao (and take over the Federated Suns) until the Clans show up and then they'll switch to a Democracy and stop the clans 80 planets away from Tukkayid using armies of Urbanmech's.

If they hindered the Clanners I could do nothing but applaud.

For certain values of "humour" anyway.

Yeah. That's a given.  :grin:

I joined SA a few years ago as a backup plan when I was playing Eve with Bat Country. I eventually started posting and playing games with goons, and have been happy with both. In such a large community there are bound to be some antisocial types, but for the most part they are good folks. Similar to here, but skew probably 10 years younger. Just avoid the goddamned MLP freaks.

There is a lot good about the SA forums.  Have a question about your taxes?  There's a tax thread with lots of good advice and people willing to point you to the applicable part of the tax code.  Have a tech question?  There's a whole forum of Trippy level uber geeks who will answer it for you.  Don't know what new podcasts are any good?  Another whole forum, same with Music, TV, Movies, Books and etc... Want to lose weight?  There is a forum dedicated to health and exercise and and debunking bad info and so on.

Told you not to spill water on him.

Fuck knows what happens if we feed him at night.

MechWarrior Online - Frozen City Reveal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8syLTVXxIU)

Voice over man has a cold or something (not a professional voice actor I bet), it's not as good as the two leaked beta videos.  

BTW am I ok to post links to the two leaked videos even though the NDA is still active?

Awesome Diagram

LtM ->SND->WT->F13

Thing is, SND and WT were boring ass places. F13 was the first diaspora site that was fun, so for me, its a LtM knockoff  :grin:

PEW PEW PEW-PEW-PEW.

Want.

Wow. SND boring? The Eldon blow up was anything but boring and F13 hasn't had any drama that matched it. I guess WT was a matter of taste but I found it amusing. Besides I just diagrammed the progression, made no claims about any of the sites.

Is it August yet?  /impatient.

More keys going out July 10th.

 :nda:

 :drill:

That is all.

Arsehole!

 :drill: enough to be worth the $60 founder package?

500 keys went out last night, so worth checking  :cry:

Fuck.

Still, being a filthy Eurofag was a long shot anyway. 

(http://i.imgur.com/OW5Qf.jpg)

(http://www.abload.de/img/mwojaxed.jpg)

And I'm still not in the bloody beta yet.

All quiet here as well...

Please let the last mechs be a Panther and Victor...

Please...  :heart: :awesome_for_real: :drill:

I gotta say, their artists are great. They are making some 'mechs that were pretty "meh" in the original illustrations look fantastic.

Except the Raven.

The Raven always looks shit.  It's the new Locust.

Maybe if they make enough money they can buy the rights to the unseen and end that farce for once and for all.

Or a Banshee or Cyclops.  I'd love the Panther for sure.

Thunderbolt!

Thunderbolt is a Heavy.

I was about to say "what's your point?". Then I realized the grid is only missing a light and an assault. Which sucks in so many ways, including the fact that it's all a tease since they told us we are not even gonna get those 16 for release. So, since they are not stopping at 16 either, why do they even bother with the 4x4 scheme?

Catapult remains my favorite mech chasis. No idea why.

No clue either since it's nothing but an ugly Marauder. :wink:

I can't help it but Timber Wolf (Mad Cat) is my favorite mech in battletech.   :oh_i_see:

The arms make the Marauder ugly!  Reminds my of Kyron's mech in Robotech. Bleh!

Artist, singular. (http://flyingdebris.deviantart.com/) (He's also the one behind that "Atlas killing furries" picture (http://i.imgur.com/fJkh1.gif) )

There's, um, probably a reason for that.  :oh_i_see:

That was kind of the joke.  :awesome_for_real:


Not that I know the specifics but I'd heard the stories long ago and realized the Marauder was one of those "ooh no we didn't steal that <tee hee>" mech designs when I Googled the picture to see what Lant was referencing.

Yup! :drill:

MW2 + TW + jump jets = win!

Seriously once I learned how to dodge rockets with the jump jets I never lost in a TW thanks to my l33t skills and CH FlightStick, Throttle and Rudder Pedals. Oh and having an ISDN line while everybody else were still on modems didn't hurt either. :awesome_for_real:

I am so sad they don't have the Warhammer. The picture on the 2nd edition (the one after Battledroids).

The TW was a shitty mech to use in MW2, the hit box (well bubble) on the legs and head were ENORMOUS.

Clearly you never mastered the jump jets :awesome_for_real:

Jumpjets in MW2 (Mercs for me) were amazing...

Maybe too manueverable but damn was it fun. From what I remember of Jumpjets in 3025, they were a decent multiplayer compromise. Wasn't a big fan of teh slowness of MW3...

Probably a bit overpowered, if I recall correctly.  I used to make Assault mechs with tiny engines and toss a single jump jet in the torso somewhere, and outrun Jenners by jetting horizontally.

Quite the opposite, as the jetting just made your legs an even bigger target and you landed with one foot gone after I pumped 3 pulse lasers into you. Missile boats were for people who couldn't lead the lag and the folks with early high speed net were the easiest to hit of all. Bonus points for landing on the TW's giant head for the DFA. The chassis of choice was the Warhammer in netmech, the head was actually hunkered down between the L/R torso bubbles and the leg bubbles were quite small.


JumpJets in the MW2 games in general, were not even close to what they were supposed to be. They were fun, but they turned any Mech into something you would expect to see in a anime.

Only one way to solve this stupid Peen Contest.

RELEASE THE GAME !  F13 BLOODBATH !

LIGHT THE BEACONS !


(Cheryl Teague.  Nice.)

Clearly we should just play some NetMech, I still have the floppies somewhere  :why_so_serious:

Do you have a floppy drive though?

Bring it!

I'm sure I have one somewhere!

Take me on, chaps, you'll end up like this  (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0648339/)guy.

But seriously, I'm frigging Jonesing for a game here.

I'll say again, Goons are going to all join one house en masse, their only hope will be that having big numbers can win them shit on the campaign map. They are going to intentionally shit on a very beardy and overwrought fanbase in every way they can because they are 100% 4chan who pretends they are better than 4chan. The main reason many of them will play this game is a chance to disrupt people who take MW way too seriously and have been members of pretend house military units online for a decade(s).

Personally its depressing that they will be a part of this. 3025 was full of neckbeardy types that probably specialized in those hardcore detailed historical wargame tabletops but it was a good crowd that was mainly full of respect for opponents and certainly had lots of respect for the lore and people who wanted to really RP it.

Goons are going to go all in to disrupt that community that has existed because that's what anon would do.

Anyone who brushes that shit off is only doing so because Goons have a tendency to win, because they have a tendency to outnumber the fuck out of people, and being on the winning side is the most fun.

Which is why again I hope these devs do a lot more than 3025 did keep highest numbers online from determining so much of the campaign map success.

I take hope in the following from: http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/2247-dev-blog-1-community-warfare/


So even though there's going to be subtle changes in borders and planet control, some things will remain constant in the timeline. The interesting thing is how the community will react to this. The hardcore neckbeards won't mind Goons getting CCPed to match storyline but the average big robot fan that isn't neckbeard might see this as arbitrary Dev decisions...

Steiner-Davion/St Ives Pact 4 lyfe! :why_so_serious:

(http://i.imgur.com/47kjt.jpg)

It's the Caution:Owies that makes it.

I think you might be suffering post traumatic stress disorder from being on the losing side in one too many eve space battles? Number's won't count for much in 12 vs 12 matches. What will count will be 12 guys on the same voice comms working as a team vs 12 random people thrown together who can't talk to each other, but good luck with doing anything about that.

Even then the battlefield map won't come into the game for months, logistics, espionage and strategic abilities don't come into it either, and Goons are going the CapCon, who from the novel's and protagonist stories are the bad guys already. Surly most of the playerbase WANTS to be the MechKnight valiantly and honourably playing House Davion and fighting against the merciless and inscrutable hordes of House Lio?

For what matter, I don't think they did much in World of Tanks either. Personally I expect the House of Lowtax not to make much impact- if the Capellen Confederation starts wining the devs will just magic up some victory for House Davion anyway - isn't that what happened in the books?

I have sincere hopes that they take a page from WOT and don't allow more than groups of 3 in to pubbie groups.  You want to fight as an organized unit clan wars are the place for you, not pickup games.

However, Hoax is right.  If they start rolling over everyone people will just join their side and make it worse.  You will only see a minority who really care remain on the ever-losing side.  After all these years of seeing it happen in every PVP game ever I'm amazed this is even debatable.

I honestly don't understand who would care.

You get in a Mech with 3 other buddies and fight other Mechs that show up as red.  Everything else is just nonsense and, by the looks of it, Developer Controlled nonsense.

Can someone explain to me exactly HOW 4Chan are supposed to spoil my enjoyment of that ?

I don't see a problem, the goons will switch houses if everyone joins their side just to annoy people.  The official forums will get trolled to hell and back if the game is any good though, mind you, that might be an improvement over what's currently going on there.

Because its happened before and happened in 3025? Basically territory control shifted due to total victories by a side and there was a way to queue for a match and if nobody from the opposing house could be found to fight you you would give a minor boost to your house's control. You can see why they did it that way but the end result was the big houses (FedCom) had huge advantages due to a much larger population.

Hopefully they have some smart people figuring out how to balance the need for letting players fight on the planet/campaign/battle they want to fight at while at the same time stopping the house with more people who are willing to just bumrush empty rooms to force caps (read: whatever house has the goons who will happily do shit like this all day long) from getting the level of advantage they had previously.

Cap timers, restrictions on the total battles that can be fought at a time for a particular territory, making higher ranked player victories matter more, increasing the queue time for a fight on a world that already has a larger number of fights ongoing on it etc. etc. That's the type of shit I hope they have someone thinking about but I'm betting they don't.

I'd be surprised if controlling a bunch of planets is going to mean that much for the house players apart from some nice fluff.  Maybe I just haven't read enough but going from this.

 (http://mwomercs.com/news/2011/12/44-dev-blog-1-community-warfare)
I'm taking "buffer core and border worlds" as doesn't really matter that much.  I'd love to be wrong though as that would make it more interesting, plus I don't see a major problem with a larger force having an advantage over a smaller one.

If the control of the planets does limit mech availability or something that the players really care about, then they do have a problem, it's going to appeal to fewer players.  An average player would need to join an organised large force but more importantly most players don't like losing and will try to join the other side as you said.  If the faction hit is big enough maybe that would put people off switching sides, but people losing won't log in as much.

Currently playing Mech4:Mercs and, despite it being pretty fucking awful, it's reminding me how much a joystick is needed for proper Mech control.

Dammit.

I'm hoping this game will motivate me to finally build that simulator I've always wanted.  This is assuming they don't carebear the game to the point any sense if immersion is lost.

Nobody has mentioned this yet? (http://www.razerzone.com/artemis)  Razer is promising a custom controller for MWO.

--Dave

Don't like that pad on the left side. Needs a real throttle controller.

Isn't that what the slider on the left is for?



I wonder if my Sidewinder 2 still works.

I started on building the Pod/seat/speakers. Between this and WoW, it was time to build a cockpit with joystick/throttle. I have a lot of questions about multiple monitors though which is making the design of the top/front/sides a pain. I'd like to have a front window (read monitor) two windows on each side, and a overhead window. 6 monitors sounds like too many, and I don't know about multiple monitor support with games to begin with. I also don't want to have to spend a billion extra dollars on a special motherboard that supports 3 video cards.

Anyone have a link to a place that has easy to follow instructions to build a fake cockpit? And please not one of those godawful simpit places where they make a million individual toggle switches that each actually do something in game via specially made controllers.

I don't mean a throttle control -- I mean a throttle controller like this (http://www.thrustmaster.com/en_UK/products/hotas-cougar) or that (http://www.chproducts.com/Pro-Throttle-v13-d-719.html).

I always found those cumbersome on my desk. Something about how I sit/hold it, never feels right.

Ya unless your hand fits the design criteria it sucks. I had the ch throttle and it was way to big for my hand and felt terrible. I never used the damn thing.

Pretty much all of them are aimed at pilots who want to re-create as closely as possible the environment they'll be in for their Sim Evals, so they're trying to recreate an actual cockpit from a particular model of plane.  Only real recommendation I can make is to get a 6 monitor stand that will let you remove the two mounts you won't be using, and a big L-shaped desk.

--Dave

Yes, they have.  Pages back.

Still not sure about it.

I have a hard time believing this will be better played with anything but keyboard and mouse. The mouse is a beautiful thing, leave it alone.

Agreed.

Also, assuming the devs aren't complete idiots, they'll design it this way.

I'm not saying I disagree, I'm saying that I'm literally twisting my arms to play Mech 4 with the same setup.

Spoken like a man who never actually played a MW game with a joystick, Falc.

You could do it with a mouse, yes.  You can also play flight sims with a mouse instead of a joystick.  There's better inputs for some things.

My Sidewinder FF2 is back in England - I've been thinking about buying another from EBay (seems you can get them second hand for about $50), but I've heard it might not be great under windows 7.

There is nothing quite like a mech game with a good force feedback joystick.

As far as I know a certain other game's draconian NDA is still in effect so all I can say is that piloting a plane, let alone trying to dogfight with one using a mouse and keyboard is fucking abominable.

Planes are another story. Mechs hopefully should be more like tanks.

Am I the only one who thinks this game looks a bit boring?  Mainly, because its just Mechs circling each other. No aircraft? No troops? Nothing..

Comparing 'mechs to airplanes is ridiculous. Mechs ARE tanks. Also, I've been there for all the MW games, and the fact that they were built around joysticks has nothing to do with the fact that they can be, now, built around mouse in a smooth, efficient, precise way.

World of Tanks is one thing. It works perfectly fine the way it is, meaning mouse and keyboard. Or do you think a couple of tank rudders would actually make it more playable?
World of Warplanes is another thing, it somehow works with mouse and keyboard but do not expect to be successful with it. Or to have any fun.

We'll see how this game plays out, but no matter how slowly the torso, the turret or the legs move, if there's aiming to do please give me a mouse.

If you want to be authentic you'll make a neuro-helmet and pilot in your skivvies.

50 % ain't bad.

Wanna see ?

would going commando in your Commando be over the top?

Not over the top so much as a little to the left.  :why_so_serious:

Jesus, I wasn't comparing mechs to planes, because for one thing the very concept of mechs is stupid as fuck and pointless except they're geekish fun. I simply meant I want a joystick/throttle/pedal setup in my cockpit, especially since it's going to do douple duty for World of warplanes. What the rest of you use for controls in the game, who gives a shit. Both types of control will probably work just fine, but for playing mechs I like joystick. Blah, blah, blah. Go die in a fucking ditch or something.

There are supposed to be planes, sorta, of a sort, kinda-maybe in the sense that some proposed skills in the command tree involve calling in airstrikes.  Just not so much in the sense of players piloting them.  Adding in infantry and ground vehicles would be dandy, but who would play them?  For every ten people in mechs you might have one who wanted to be in a not-mech, which doesn't really make for dynamic mixed-arms teams.  Planetside had a good mix by starting everyone as infantry and making it progressively more time-consuming to get the certs for vehicles and robots, and by having a large indoor component where the vehicles and robots are useless.  Mechwarrior doesn't have either of those factors in play.

Additionally, the official MWO forums are a seething maelstrom of raw stupid.  4chan looks like a pillar of calm reservation compared to the things that crawled out of the woodwork to infest MWO.  Apparently instead of hiring community mods, the company just put out a 'hey who wants to be an unpaid volunteer moderator?' post and then picked random users for the job.  Amazingly, they seem to have turned out to be largely either imbeciles or socially-retarded neckbeards with no consistent moderating policy, which must come as a shock to everybody.  :facepalm:

 :heart:

They were meant to get production hardware today and there was a decent chance of more keys going out to the founders, but apparently the major patch, also due today, has been put back till the 12th.

I hear the patch will be Awesome.   :oh_i_see:

They must be tempted to consider adding Elementals when/if they get to the Clans.  That would be a totally different experience, I don't even know if it's graphically possible to have two entirely different scales of combat going on at the same time, but I'd be tempted to play as an Elemental, the rest of the overpowered clan stuff doesn't appeal to me though.

I actually had an elemental character in the RPG and managed to last a bit of time before I bit the ac/20. 

I think the only way to make Elementals viable would be for them to allow a player to play a full star of them.  Some tanks can be pretty ruthless as well.  I don't see Aerospace ever coming into play though.

Only if the 50% is a working neuro-helmet.

There was a multiplayer mod for Shogo (big anime robots) called Mechs vs. Squishies where there was one mech and a team full of human-sized fuckers. It was quite fun.

The phrase 'rampant fanboism like I've never seen before' comes to mind. (but maybe I just don't participate in enough pre-release forums)

The fun will arrive when MWO starts announcing things its own moderators don't like.

What no LAM? :-(

For those of us without beta access have we come to a decision if the founders program is worth the cost knowing so little about the game. I want to get it I just dont want to be burned

I'm not in the beta.  But if things go as planned a lot of founders will be getting in over the next 2-3 weeks, up to ~10000.  I imagine NDA enforcement is fine when testing something for free but a lot more difficult when people are actually looking at what they spent money on.  It's rapidly going to reach the point of the NDA hurting them, what are they going to do, ban & give refunds to people who talk about it?

From what I gathered beta Alpha at the moment is totally exciting for the first few hours. Then you start getting worried, and then you realize it's Alpha and try to stop worrying. The more you care the more you'll be worried, but the consensus seems to be that it's worth it. Sadly, and I mean it, I am not in it yet.

According to the Piranha Games, it's been in closed beta since March.

Yah, I was about to say an HMD with a TrackIR would be best.  You could then add an emotivEPOC eeg for the aiming system, but it's a bit clunky.

Everything I've seen so far is just showing team deathmatch with robots.  The game starts, your team moves forward, their team moves forward, you meet somewhere in the middle of the map and pew at each other until one team's dead.  Rinse, repeat.  The actual content has yet to be patched in, so you might want to hold back on sending piles of money until that content has made an appearance.

Why? TDM with giant robots is fun in and of itself.

This.

I mean that is enough for a lot of people.  Look at how many people play CoD or Battlefield...  That's just TDM without mechs. 

Also you don't have to buy anything.  You can always just wait for it to launch and play for free.

It is, but the "feel" is everything if that's all there's to the game (atleast for the near future) and it's something I for one can't assess without trying it myself (and that's why I have not spent $60 yet despite really wanting to).

It's best to be cynical about these things but I was blown away by the sound in the videos I've seen so far.  If Eve can be incredibly tedious, yet popular enough to be profitable and add content over time, I think giant robots with missiles/lasers is a pretty good base to build on.  They might be clueless and do stupid shit, but absolutely nothing else interests me.

Sounds like World of Tanks with robots.  If they deliver that, then they'll get some of my money.

I'd be wary of Deathmatch with Robots, but I've really enjoyed WoT. Simplicity with Robots may actually be a bunch of fun, but we'll see how the battle gameplay and out of battle functionality works.

Actually, my natural pessimism agrees with you 100%, but you can put me in the camp that doesn't really care too much about 'content' beyond big fucking metal robots kicking the shit out of each other.  I also agree that the 'feel' is everything.  Playing through Mercs and it STILL isn't doing it for me.  The departure in 'feel' from Mech 3 to Mech 4 is utterly jarring to me and not in a good way.  Mech 3 was the highlight for me.

This looks like it might be better.  I'm hopeful for that.

It's all I'm looking for.  Screw your content and world matches and clan-vs-clan/ house-vs-house garbage.  If I cared I'd play the tabletop.  

I want to shatter giant robots to pieces with lasers, missiles & PPCs.  Quickly and on a regular basis.  That's all I care about.

World of Tanks with robots?  I'm there for a long time and spending more money than I should.   MMO primarily concerned about turf wars and lore? Fuck it I'm out.  ANY sort of logistics beyond "kill shit, earn credits, buy modules/ mechs/ ammo"  I'm out.

Add me to the Persistent world, Clan v Clan, Leaderboard-only prizes, etc will make the game suck camp. Two teams roughly even fighting until one side is left. Have a skill system for your "pilot" and maybe tech trees.

Tanks is largely interesting because your interaction with the terrain is so deep. A bush, an angle, a rock along with lines of sight can all make the difference between winning and losing. I don't see how you are going to get that when the tanks have huge profiles. Likewise you won't get eve style dynamics out of 12x12 and an abstracted strategic map.

... but yeah, mech's.

I always thought Global agenda had a good mix of the "traditional" world stuff, and the session based matching stuff.

Id watch the videos a little more closely.  It really does look like there's opportunity for what you're talking about.  Watching heavy mechs get caught in the ice caves and sodomised was a giggle.

Do you happen to have a link to that one? The one's I saw were mostly just a mid-ground slug-fest and I lost interest.

There's the approved one.

MechWarrior Online - Frozen City Reveal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8syLTVXxIU)

There were also 5 leaked combat videos out of varying quality, 2 of them on the ice map, it's not really worth tracking them down as it seems the patch today will be changing things around a lot.

I played one of my friends in MW2, 1:1, any mech you wanted.  I'd seen him jump turning and generally cutting it up and I had just got the game so I selected something that would negate his advantages.  I selected an Elemental.  He had selected a Warhammer IIC and couldn't drop arms fast enough to get a bead on me.  I lost my weapon to splash damage while closing with him, but after about 10 minutes of trying to get a shot off at me he abandoned the game.  I think in a rematch I could have taken his leg.

This is the Mek-fu, being developed for the upcoming mech game Hawken (which is not Mechwarrior alike at all).
What do you think of it MWO-wise?

(http://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/k/2012/06/hawkcontroller.jpg)

MWO may not precisely have solid joystick support yet.  Much less dual joystick and lots of buttons between them support.  So until you hear otherwise, you may wish to hold off on buying that Steel Battalion controller off eBay and trying to repurpose it, as there is no guarantee that joysticks will be as good as mouse/keyboard, much less superior to it.  But MWO may have surprisingly good mouse/keyboard control, to the point that joysticks aren't so necessary as they were for the older games.

You may or may not choose to listen to me, as I may or may not have first-hand experience.

Well, god help me I dropped the $120 on the big package. I just couldn't resist 4 mechs with alternate heads and paint jobs that I'll never be able to get again if I don't get them now. fhhhhbleh.

Evidently you get put in the credits also.   :why_so_serious:

ARggghh make these people invite me I'm going to go crazy waiting for founders beta.

Hello there friend



yep. Is that still starting 7th of August?

_Almost_ caved yesterday and got the $60 pack, still not happy about parting cash with the NDA ups.

Yeah, me neither, but the gameplay videos pretty much show that it has what I want and expect already. MMOs have conditioned me to expect shit to go wrong the first month of games so I won't be to upset about a rough beginning. I fully expect the first couple of weeks to be teams comprised entirely of people in a Founders Atlas and one guy in a jenner because 'hhhhnnnnghaha i'm ina jenner". As long as they keep developing things like new paint jobs and accessories I'll be happy.

Centurion Mech Reveal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvUNerjrr-0&list=PL1FFF08B491505DC9&index=1&feature=plcp)

 :heart:

Check your e-mails. More invites went out.   :heart:

Not enough of em.

Still waiting.

This is ridiculous!

I've given up entirely, due to the fact I refuse to shell out cash as well as being a filthy Euro.  I have no chance.

But goddamn, it's looking good.

Reading this (http://mwomercs.com/news/2012/07/323-average-day-in-beta) didn't help

NDA is rumoured to be dropping this month, I'm not in yet so I'm free to say from what I've heard.  It has issues, there's not much content as yet, only 1 play mode so far, only 3 maps, they are also balancing weapons so most people are using the latest overpowered mech/weapon type .

Having said that though, I can't wait to play it.

Woo Dragon!

Yeah, I read that.

You know, if I was to choose one thing to NDA break, it'd be to see someone actually playing it.  I mean, recording how they control the mech at the machine.  It all looks so fluid and fast and I really, really want to know how they're doing it.  The Centurion playthrough was just fucking awesome looking.

Arg.

(http://i.imgur.com/UdoPJ.jpg)

New mech, plus another 1000 founder keys going out in next few hours.

My inbox still has no invite and my status is pending.    :heartbreak:

Kick ass!  I love the Spider.

Not familiar with the Spiders work.

I must study.

I got something special in my email!

Check your inboxes people!!!

Die die die.

What the hell's that got to do with my quote ?

 :why_so_serious:

Pew-pew PPC is much better than Pew-Pew Lasers.  Just sayin'.

I know this is from a different game, but why waste a chance to see a 3D turnaround of a Commando (http://)? (Unity plugin/player required)

Was I the only one thinking that the way the mechs were able to 'glide' up rocky surfaces felt wrong?

Great link.

Speaking of duff links, this one could really do with updating.

What laser is the purple one?  I need to start planning my builds around that. :drillf:

The lack of jaded cynicism in this thread scares me.


NOW GIVE ME MY BETA KEY!!!

We're waiting for the NDA to drop.

^^ That.  Can't discuss a whisper or even say you're in Beta as I understand it.

Yep.

How would you know... unless

I'm off to play this zombie thing (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=20529.0) while waiting, sounds just like the AC1 pvp server.

btw anyone here ever play the old Btech MUX/MUSHes? If so there is a squad for you now. (Geldon you in?)

Geldon's back?!

He still seems to read, so I suppose it's just as effective. ;D

2000 keys went out a short while ago.

Funny. They sent out another 2000 keys and there's people who gave them a lot of money who are still without one... (fuck fuck fuck)

Agreed.  Starting to get cheesed off.

Not sure of the exact figure but somewhere around 40% of founders have got in, so they have been lucky is all.  Might be more invites going out today.

Probably a good idea to check the website too.

If they've got your money they don't need to try too hard to sell the game to you.

Ha! But I only paid half (60$), and I'll only give them the other half AFTER I tried and liked the beta. If they let me wait until the 7th, they lose money.

Long story short, if they still plan on pulling the 120$ offer on August 7th, which is the day all those who preordered are guaranteed to get in, they are potentially losing money.
They should leave on the waiting list those who paid the whole 120$, not those who paid only 30$ or 60$.

Whine!

I believe they have hinted that all founders will be in before the end of July, beating their August 7th date by a week, it does concern me slightly that their marketing so far has been terrible, some guy leaking 2 videos from beta should not make your official marketing releases look crap imho.  I'm guilty of it too, but chomping at the bit for a beta key runs the risk of setting yourself up for disappointment when it's buggy.

Somehow.. I think this has a bigger learning curve than tanks, and that might dampen some of my enthusiasm.

But then... GIANT ROBOTS.

Either I seriously overestimate the learning curve of WoT or wtf? I wasn't even expecting torso rotation.

You thought a mechwarrior game wouldn't have torso rotation?

Not navigation-wise but other elements.  WOT has map learning, weak-points to memorize, knowing when to fall back and when to push.   This will have all that plus the piloting problems and every mech with missiles will be a much more mobile and deadly artillery piece.

In one of the videos they showed LRM's locking on so I doubt they'll be anywhere near as fatal as a WoT arty.  You have to aim those at least.

I just caved :-(

Seriously, those graphics are awfully pretty.

Caustic Valley. (http://youtu.be/YCYQtzfp9BM)

Nice video.  Purple is either ER Large Laser or Medium Pulse.  I hope it's the ERLL.

The headshot was  :heart:

Russ Bullock (https://twitter.com/russ_bullock)


1200 keys going out in the next hour or so, he's worth a follow on twitter if you aren't a founder as seems like he might spawn keys to his twitter followers next week.

That's pretty awesome...

My nick on MWO is Eek for future reference btw...   :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real:  :drill:

Apparently, more invites went out.

Something i want Logitech or someone I can pay money to makea Vital Home Improvements Of Mechwarrior Fandom (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/24/vital-home-improvements-of-mechwarrior-fandom/#more-117258) - a fully operational Mech Cockpit.

The hula girl is a nice touch.

*sigh*

Founder's Jenner (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8dWwXwIcFo)

This game is a dream come true. I was trying to explain to my partner my excitement, and I managed to do it like this: "I've been dreaming about something like this for about 25 years. Back then, we only had drawings, and kept fantasizing about seeing these things in motion one day..." while flipping the pages of my original manuals to her. It really is that bad (I mean good). When you see the Catapult rack's lid opening to unleash the LRMs, and then closing again in real time, you think that kid's dream finally made it to reality.

I have to say from the video's they really really nailed the animation/sounds/effects.

It feels like a giant mech and i am just watching.

So I ran here to post this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. 

That's the fucking stuff.  It's a sheer pull at the gonads to shell out for the founders and get an early beta and, fuck me, if it's not the most irresistable thing.

But I WILL RESIST.

I won't. Just gave them the other 60 bucks.

YOU FOOL.

Heh. Well, let's say I didn't decide based on that video.

You're crazy.  I picked up the $60 because the mech + the other stuff seemed like a decent upgrade from the $30 pack.   Another $60 for 3 more mechs seems a bit of a waste though.  You can get all those mechs normally according to the faq's.  They just have a different cockpit and a small c-bill booster.  You might end up not even liking those particular variants.

It's three more "unique" 'mechs, plus one additional month of premium account. Plus I want to fund the project.

You'll be saying that about yourself if you don't get them...

I also upgraded.  :awesome_for_real:

Fucking casual.

So - when does the founders deal end?

I don't think they have said, but I'm thinking maybe Aug. 7th.

To be honest and humour free :  I really don't care.  The actual only compelling reason I find to do this mad move is to either help them fund it to get it out the door (and frankly, the cost is prohibitive for that kind of action) or to get into Early Beta, which I really, really don't have time for right now.

The other advantages it confers don't bother me at all.  I won't give a fuck what my mech looks like, nor will I particularly care about money or exp, since I just want to get into a big robot and smash fuck out of other big robots.

That said, all the videos are touching me right in my funny place and the idea of getting into the beta (even just to get into the fucking mech lab) is an itch that I would love to scratch.

I also have NDA breaking questions about the Mech Lab, but wonder if it's in any of the released stuff thus far :  How is the hardpoint system working out ?  Have they released anything showing it yet ?  Don't break the NDA, since, you know, just don't, but I'd be interested in seeing how this was going.  Everything else I'm seeing seems to gloss over it.

They said multiple times it will end on August 7th. Sorry, can't find the link now.

EDIT: This is old, so you probably saw that before, but this is the best non-NDA breaking thing you can find about the Mechlab (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVMObAvfgl4).

It would be pretty silly if they didn't have a hardpoint system if they have different variants of mechs.  *cough*

No, they've made it clear that they're going to have it, but all the shots of the mechlab and even the video don't really show how it's classified.  In the Microsoft version, it was all different colours and sizes and was quite clear.  I'm just not seeing the differences here.

Never mind, I'll find out soon.

I've read a lot about it and I am pretty sure it does have it. How does it look like in the UI I have no idea and I can't figure it out from the video either. But it does have it. Different variants should have different hardpoints so you can't just buy "a" Marauder and fit whatever you want on it based on weight, money and criticals, you have to actually get the variant that has the hardpoints you need/want to apply your changes.

You can't buy a marauder.

 :heartbreak:

IIRC in the mechlab video he says if you can't equip something in a slot it never even shows up on the list of parts on the right.  So no need for the color-coding of "this is a missile/ this is energy".

Blame Harmony Gold.

OH, I DO.  I BLAME THEM WITH THE HATRED OF A THOUSAND SUNS.

Not really.  Who are they ?

They have the US rights to Robotech/Macross from which various of the original Battletech mech designs were taken from.

Eh, people have been blaming them for 30 years now. It's time for people to move on and realiize that FASA did in fact just use pictures directly lifted out of anime art books and that the original official Battletech "miniatures" were literally 1/144 scale models from Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe repackaged together. Fuck, I sitll have them unbuilt in the box somewhere. Also, it's not as if there haven't been a million fan designs that were just as good and didn't violate copyright. You can go to deviant art and find a dozen Maurader designs that look great. Same wih all the mechs for that matter. That should be a hint to the people publishing the books that they need to update the art and hire actual artists this time.

In fairness, Bob, the art guy doing Mechwarrior Online is putting out some really good shit.

Not that it impacts on your point any.  You're quite right.

If you watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPoqjslGcO0&feature=channel&list=UL

You see that the mechs are divided into hardpoints.  When he goes to equip something (1:26 for instance) you can see the slots where stuff goes.  Below the slots it says "hardpoint restrictions" with 0/0 ballistic 2/3 energy etc.  So probably the variants have different hardpoint restrictions.  The video also shows stuff like gyros and engine or whatever so possibly some variants have gyros/dodads in different spots.  I assume you can't just throw the engine on an arm or whatever either.

Instant Founder Access enabled.

HMmm.

Oh Yeah.  Good Spot.

Thanks.

It looks to be a mix of MW4 with the color coded hardpoint restrictions and basic boardgame mech sheets and design rules (XL engines will wipe out 3 slots in each side torso, etc.).  The MW4 UI provided instant awareness of what kind would fit where, I think that is lost in this mechlab incarnation, though I'm much more a fan of this mode of freedom where you've got the freedom to put a few of these types into this area and no restriction on parts of that area (like no 2-slot ballistic only restriction within the Right Torso, which I remember from prior games). 

I guess the open question would be, do different variants actually change the mix of available weapons in the chassis' hardpoints, or are they just different weapon loadouts adhering to the same rules per chassis. 

Yes.   :awesome_for_real:

Btw, anyone who has bought a founders pack should be getting an invite today.

This is true and correct.

Purchased.  I am worthless and weak.

 :oh_i_see:

 :roflcopter:

What founder level did you go for?

This is going to be such a regret-free purchase.

I gave in and bought the founders pack (with a catapult)

(just couldn't help myself :why_so_serious:)

I bought the $120 a while back.  I have no regrets.


But you can't say so even if you got in earlier.  :wink:

I think I read somewhere that due to every founder now being officially in the beta, if you are a founder you _can_ say you are in the beta. This is to reflect the fact that founders have a tag in the official forums, so it would be ridiculous for them to pretend not to be in the beta.

But you still can't say anything else.

In your opinion, which may or may not be swayed by actually being able to play the current version of the game- is the founders package worth getting?  :grin:

The bare ass version, mechless.

I have downloaded the stuff and will see you all online.

Given that they've said this will happen, I'm quite sure it's not NDA breaking.

In my opinion, it's absolutely mandatory to play this game.
I can't, in any way, suggest how much money should you spend on it considering you will still be able to play it for free.

I chose to pay 120$, in two installments. Do with that information anything you want.

Woo! ;D

SILENCE WOMAN.

I can't hear you over the sound of my alpha strike.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QbuHm4ZaZkQ/Soix88FoH3I/AAAAAAAAPWc/-HJD_3R4nbQ/s1600/raiders-pf33.jpg)

Meh, almost caved but reading the hardware requirements my old PC just slowly shook its head... :heartbreak:

I just upgraded my graphics card a few weeks ago, my pc is from 2008, dual core E8400.

The issue was they thought they had the rights (someone sold them...something) and various iterations of FASA, MS, Smith & Tinker et. al. have tried to untangle that legal mess but Harmony Gold doesn't want them to because being copyright trolls over everything that is even vaguely related to Robotech is the only thing keeping them in business as a company.

Yeah, I am not from North America, but what the hell is Harmony Gold anyway? I mean, I know what they were and what they did in the early 80s, but are they seriously still in business? Companies come and go, economy died and resurrected a few times in the last thirty years, and they are still out there pissing on our Battletech? If Capitalism could ever do something good for me, would be to crush Harmony Gold to pieces (and of course I don't mean it. There's people working there and I don't want them to lose their jobs).

They still own the rights on some of their anime titles and movies, but I think they are more into real estate or something now.

Are we going to get a private subforum to talk about this game while the NDA is still in effect?

No. We only do that if the developer/publisher gives us special permission.

Bet they have one at mechwarrioronline.com  :awesome_for_real:

It's really not the same. This game totally deserves its own f13 forum (not a just thread) when the NDA will drop.

We shall see.

 :awesome_for_real:

Someone did some tally's on the boards if you are interested in founder numbers:

Legendary - 9,323
Elite - 5941
Veteran - 745

 

Lower than I'd expect but not surprised to see Legendary outselling the others.

On an unrelated note fuck CTDs and lockups.

Fuck Authentication Servers.

I think these numbers are only from people who have posted on the forums, so there are probably more.

I'd settle for a list of folks in-game name, so I know who to shoot.  :grin:

Yeah. Sure we can be patient, but damn this game screams for playing it with people you know.

They are that but what you said doesn't invalidate what eldeac says. To quote someone else in a serious discussion about the PVPing in Eve Online.

In-game names might be close to breaking NDA but my forum name in MWO is the same as here (satael)  :why_so_serious:

Unfortunately, my pilot name is super hard to guess as it's all lower-case.

oesrgoinergoiensrg   ?

So close.  You're off by one.

Dammit.

In entirely unrelated to game news, why would you release a 'Mech that is all but useless without an XL engine ?  And then, you know, equip it with a standard engine as standard ?

It makes no sense, unless Bear is driving.

There was a post somewhere along the lines of 'all founders are in closed beta' so yes they can say they are in beta.

I've always been fond of the name Galen Shannow when playing mech games.

We can totally say we are in the beta. But I don't think we can say our handles.

Some of us are old enough to have love handles.

 :oh_i_see:

Well the forum name is "public" ai. anyone can see it even in the open parts of the forum that do not even require registering.

Just a question but how can saying your in game handle be construed as breaking Nda or what sort of f'ed up Nda regards a game handle as topsecretinfo!!!  ?

Off by one word, not letter, btw.

You name your love handles?

I even name my handles handles, luv.

yeah, they were promoting reserving your Callsigns before the additional closed beta invites started going out...

I'm in as Cornjob.

Oh sweet.  This just bluescreened my machine and now it won't startup.  Just what I wanted to do, spend an hour troubleshooting and repairing.

Eek

I just wish i knew if this was good enough to be worth spending some money on a founders package. So sad that there is no way to find out if it is a decent mech game before buying....

Unless you are a big fan of mech based games there's no real reason to buy a package.  They will be selling mechs that get a c-bill boost after launch so all you miss out on by not buying a founders package is a chance at the closed beta, a mech or mechs with a spiffy paint job and a forum title.   If I hadn't prepurchased GW2 and Torchlight II, I probably would have bought one of the packages but I really haven't run across anything that makes me feel like I'll be missing out on something special by not being in the beta.

I bought the Legendary package because I am weak and i wanted all of the founders mechs. :ye_gods: