So, getting close to open beta, and the games is looking pretty good so far. I'm just surprised nobody here has mentioned it yet.

Http://www.mwomercs.com

I got a Closed Beta invite a couple weeks ago, but I've been busy with Borderlands 2. And will, starting next week, be busy with both Dishonored and XCOM:EU.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...0&start=100

And it USED to look pretty good, until...well, for now I'll just say don't get your hopes too high...

Well first of all there were several games being discussed in that thread so I'm not sure of exactally which one your refering too, but MWO is unbelievably awesome.



I've been in beta for about 2 months and now that the NDA for it is lifted I can talk about it.

I could talk generalities, but Im sure some people questions they would rather have answered, so go ahead and post them and I'll get to them ASAP.

the NDA has been canceled by the way, you can be as exact and asinine about that bullshit game as you want as of now . .

Heh, why didn't you say that?

So, this is them devs on their intended economy model:

This system has been tuned significantly and now acts closer to our intended goals. There are still some known issues associated with RNR [Repain & Rearm] that will be addressed over the coming weeks. Players will earn between 50-150,000 CB per match after repairs using Founder or Purchased BattleMechs, and around 40,000 CB using Trial BattleMechs. A Commando will take approximately 45 matches or 4.5 hours of match time to save up for using a Trial BattleMech without a Premium Account.

That was the 9/18 patch, the next patch increased earnings by ~50% but the general principle remains the same: You have to spend dozens of games in one of the "Trial Mechs" with their extremely crappy (fixed) stock configs for a Commando, god forbid you want to ride something frivolous as a Hunchback.


Another part that sucks badly is the hardpoint system. Apart from the standard slots and tonnage, you are also restricted by how many weapons of each type (energy, ballistic, missile) the stock config has in each section. So if the stock config has a Large Laser in the arm, that arm can mount only one laser weapon, even if you had slots and tonnage for half a dozen Small Lasers. Or vice versa, as long as there is a machine gun in the side torso off the shelf, you can put a Gauss Rifle there (but not two Machine guns)

Asinine, Bullshit.....I take it you have problems with the game. What exactally what are they?




the 45 matches or 4.5 hours is calculated at the minimum c-bills you could earn a game ie a loss, winning your matches will make this time significantly less.



I will agree that the hardpoint system is not the best but if they went with similar rules to TT crit locations and allow you to place anything anywhere it would be worse. The only reason the Hardpoint system is there is mostly to for mech balancing. Besides the only reason most people bitch about the hardpoint system is mostly because of the CAT-K2.

Founder, huh? Because you obviously never played with the stock mechs
Winning a match in a trial mech nets you 25,000 CBills (The regular 100k*0.25 because you are using a trial), plus a bit for kills and damage caused. So quite the contrary, the calculation is extremely optimistic

The poor economy also has a little side effect, teamraping public games is standard fare since it's the only viable way of making money...



And since it fails badly at that there is no reason for keeping it. If the fact that a mech has two machine guns makes it better than an Atlas, you are doing something wrong.

I'm making about 100k plus in a Raven. Per Match. If I get destroyed. AND loose. So yeah, that's 100 games for an Atlas, in the most pessimistic calculation. Get over it, there needs to be some motivation for longer play. Economy is fine, as it is now.
I like the game so far. It needs fine tuning, but in general it looks good.
The hardpoint system is fine, as well. I like it better than ALL THE OMNIMECHS! Much better, tbh. And what do you mean, 2MGs are better than an Atlas? Did you play lately? ^^

Yes I am a founder, and the bonus does help, but at the same time the repair cost for the mechs does get up there especially if you upgrade to advanced tech like xl engines, so I have had to grind in the trial mechs before to earn enough to repair my founders mechs.

The teamraping should eventually go away as they update the matchmaking system which they've stated is not even close to what its supposed to be.



I agree in its current incarnation the hardpoint system is flawed and would be in favor of just going to an unrestricted system ala TT

And its not the fact that it has 2 machine guns, Its the placement of the 2 ballistic points that's the issue since they are set in the left and right torsos people have been exploiting that and mounting gauss rifles in both slots. I'm with people that consider this a problem


Remember Its still a closed beta and they've not even hinted at open beta yet, they've just done away with the NDA.

So when not using a trial mech you don't have the problems of trial mechs. Thanks for the extremely irrelevant info, captain obvious...


The K2's two MGs mean it can mount two gauss rifles. Which in itself would not be so bad, but if a heavy is the ONLY mech capable of mounting two Gauss there is obviously something wrong. And if that ability is due to the fact that said mech normally mounts two MGs it gets downright ridiculous.



And before you say "it's only beta", the hardpoint system is a fundamental aspect of the game that won't be swapped out and the economy is how the devs want it to be.

Captain Obvious to Commander Pleasegetit: It's not a founder's Raven. It also mounts a 300XL engine which is in comparison extremely expensive to repair. Your trial mech (where you can drive an Atlas for free!) gets about 80% of a normal mech but has NO repair costs at all. So yeah, you gain just about the same money. Exception is when I drive my founder's Atlas. This one let's me earn WAY more money, if I were so inclined, but for obvious (!) reasons, I did not use that as an example.

re: Gaussapult 'problem'
I don't say it's only beta. I say: onetrickpony lol. I've killed more gaussapults with just about every mech type I've driven so far than have killed me. So, let em come and l2p.

OK, let's recap:
- I say the lacking income from trial mechs is a problem
- You respond "I don't have a problem in a Raven"
- I call you out on the fact that the Raven is not a trial mech and hence generates a totally different income
- you respond:


Do I smell homo sapiens ingentis, or just illiteracy?

Do you simply not understand, that there is NO difference in income in an expensive XL engine fitted raven that gets DESTROYED and a trial mech that has NO repair costs AT ALL?
Nothing to do with illiteracy, just with a failure to understand the connection, on your part. Nice try with the insults, btw. I would take a shower, if I'd smell something like that

You don't like the game. I get it. May have to do with the fact that you fail at it. But no sweat, no one's forcing you to like it

To expand on the concept in a friendlier tone:
A commando (admittedly not the funnest mech) costs 1,8mil C-Bills.
Assuming, you're using a trial mech (Jenner, Hunchback, Catapult with PPCs or Atlas atm) and have a horrible losing streak, you still get to ride in the weight class of your choice for about 18 games. that's 3h of work, in average. You get 75k per loss (guaranteed), and if you do anything at all right, you earn money for spotting, for destroying stuff, for capping bases. All things you can do in trial mechs, without problems. In average 100k for a lost match.
The only difference is that you do not earn XP during that time.

If you owned, like me, an expensive piece of technology and lose, you earn about the same amount of money for a lost match, because you need to include the repair and rearming costs.

So, there is actually no difference apart from the timesink factor. Oh wait. You play that game for free. And you still complain?
Personally, I dislike the instant gratification mindset, and prefer it the way it is. You need to actually do something before you can bring out the big toys. But in all this time you ear experience as a player and will be able to use those expensive toys better.
Take modern FPS games, you need to unlock all those addons, even if you paid for it. This is called motivation over time. The developers of a game want you to play it not lay it aside. If you bought BF3 for 50€, you will be disappointed if you have no target at all to play for.
In case of a F2P (not pay2win) game, they want you to play it even more and longer, because you only generate revenue if you actually buy stuff. If you're not so inclined, you'll have to play longer. Fair game, IMO, but if it's not for you, that's also fair.

I am a founder too.
i had such high hopes for this game, that i actually went and got the 120$ package.
and i find that with each patch, the suck goes up more and more.
the net-code is horrible.
the mech-lab is horrible.
the gui out of combat is horrible.
it takes more power to play than it has ANY RIGHT TO DO!
it's based on the fragging Crysis 2 Engine. The CryEngine3.
And in Crysis2, both the Net-Code and the graphical power were MUCH BETTER!
I have a pretty strong System here, and it still gives me 20 to 40 FPS maximum.
In Crysis2 i get 60 to 80 FPS.
The content is also sorely lacking.
Only what? 4 or 5 maps by now?

MWO is, in my eyes, A CHEAP COPY OF WORLD OF TANKS WITH MECHS!
I won't even give it the honour of calling it a copy of MWLL.
Because a made by fans MOD for Crysis1/Warhead looks and plays better than a premium game for frags sake!

I signed up for the Founder access. I didn't mean to but suddenly my credit card was in my hand and well, there it goes.

I will agree that the economy does need a little bit of work, but I think its a helluva lot of fun and I'm all for paying as much (or as little) for a game as I want. I've played mostly lights and mediums thus far, and I've been having as much fun, if not more, than every other incarnation of a Battlemech simulator (with the exception of the Virtual World pod).

I hated MWLL, and love this game, so I guess our priorities are different
I can't say anything about WoT, but I prefer stompy robots over treads and F2P with completely optional payment over pay2win (yay gold ammo ^^).

My gaming system is kind of old by now and it runs fine at high details with about 60fps average, just needs long to boot up the (not very pretty, but still usable) mechlab interface.
Netcode is getting better lately, so this is obviously a priority for PGI.
Lacking content and UI are, in my eyes a beta issue. I'll be disappointed if they haven't fixed that at release, but for now I'm content with what it offers.
Maybe you would have been better advised if you waited for the final game, but I see where you're coming from.

It sounds to me, like what they need to do is this: rate each gun for how many "points" it's worth. Then, exchange "1 hardpoint of Y weapon class" for "X points of Y weapon class". (And maybe also let you pay double points, to put in a different weapon class).

IOW, picture it this way: a Small Laser is 1 point; a Medium Laser is 2 points; a Large Laser is 4 points. Going ER or Pulse with any of them, is +1 points ...

Small, 1pt
Small ER, 2pts
Small Pulse, 2pts
Medium, 2pts
Medium ER, 3pts
Medium Pulse, 3pts
Large, 4pts
Large ER, 5pts
Large Pulse, 5pts

Do similar with the Ballistic and Missile weapons.

Missiles? 1pt per 2 SRMS, or 2pts per 5 LRMs. 8 points for an Arrow4 (as it was always identical to an LRM-20).

Ballistic weapons? 1pt for a MG. 2pts for an AC5, +2pts for every 5-point increase. +50% for an LBX or Ultra version.

...

So you want to replace that Large Laser with Mediums? Sure, two Mediums is as many points as one Large. Or you could put in four Small lasers if you want.

Swap out that AC-20 for an LBX-15? Well, you're a point short there (8 for the AC, 9 for the LBX) but if you can strip out a MG too, you're golden.

Change those three LRM-10's for ER Medium lasers? Well, now, an ER Med L normally takes 3 points; cross-fitting it into a Missile hardpoint will double that to 6 each. Those LRM-10s are only worth 4 points each, so ... you can only get TWO of the lasers, for all three of the missiles.

...

Poof. Balance (with some fine-tuning and polishing needed, naturally).

The mechs also mutate magically into OmniMechs, Pax
I do like where you're going with this, but I still like the idea of a ballistics hardpoint only being able to mount ballistics weapons.

You mean exactly like MW2-4?

Because in TT you can fill your slots however you like if you're doing a custom mech.

I do like Pax's idea on the point system, without the pseudo onnimech aspect. Keep the ballistics in a ballistic. Don't allow energy weapons in a missile, etc.

My biggest complaint is that the Raven(besides using the same model on both the 1 and 4) is that it just feels too tall.

Wow, you really have no idea...and didn't read what I wrote a few postings up. Trial mechs earn 25% of the normal income. And except for the Catapult, they are nearly unusable.

Wow, you have no idea.
When was the last time you actually played instead of just ranting?



So yeah. I have an idea. I've also USED trial mechs, before buying new ones, even if I have MC, to get a feel for the loadout. And I've found that I exceed these values lately, because the salvage value has also been increased. As I said, in general 100k PLUS, even when losing. NO difference when using the pimped out Raven OR a trial Hunchback. Those are numbers from _yesterday_. Now please stop pulling random numbers from months old patch notes and try to get it that they tuned the economy since then.

This exactly. It's. closed beta, so I expected unoptimised graphics, some ugly UI and balance issues. But when I hop in my Dragon and roll out with my lance, it's awesome. We're running a combo - one missile boat, one badass Atlas or Awesome, a couple light to medium, and me in the Dragon. I usually guard the missile boat for a while, the head in to take out softer targets. If no one comes after the boat, I just run around shooting stuff.

For $30, I got three mechs and all the gear I wanted. That's a fair deal to me.

Last week, so I partially have to apologize because I didn't get the last economy update, thus my claim of only making ~40k a game is as realistic as your idea of a newbie making >100k in a lost match while riding a trial mech.

(And for the record, even if it were 200k per game the economy model would still be bad. People get hooked by giving them small treats with promise of more to come, not by promising the chance of making the first minor after a few painful hours of play.)

Bugger, another $60 down the tubes ... as I join the ranks of the Elite (with a Catapult).

EDIT TO ADD: .... and I'm an idiot. I should have tried the beta before putting money down on the game. I fear I have made a sixty dollar mistake ... because with a learning curve that steep, I just know I'm not going to slog through loss after loss after loss, just to learn how to MAYBE begin learning how to play.

Bugger. :'(

So much negativity for a free to play game that is still in beta

I've played every incarnation of the Mechwarrior games besides Mechassault (I dont do xbox), I've even played in the old Virtual world pods (3.0 and Tesla) and by far this
is the best game I've seen. Yes it has is issues but I can look past them all and still have a good time playing.

I'm sorry for those of you you are dissapointed in MWO, and cant get past the issues of the beta and have fun regardless.

For those of you that are enjoying themselves in MWO my callsign is "Mr Sockpuppet" drop me a friend invite on the forums and in game and maybe we can get together and play sometime.

I'm still stuck on the Trial Mechs, so can't comment much on anything...

"mongoose" if anyone cares.

just to be clear: I'm not saying MWO is a bad game. Just, I think it's not a good choice of game for me, and I probably should have tried the beta before dropping sixty dollars on the game.

The learning curve isnt that steep Pax, just keep playing you'll get the hang of it.

You want a GOOD Mech-Game?
Try the MWLL Mod. Sadly, the Player-Count is VERY LOW.

Being F2P does not make a game immune to criticism, it still has to compete in the same market. Beta stage means some things are still being worked on, but if something has been around unchanged since the early beta (the slot system) or even is the stated intent of the devs (tying new players to the trial mechs for hours) chances are it will stay more or less unchanged.


Me too, and so have 99.9% percent of the people on the beta. But to be successful the game would need a far broader reach than that, which it currently fails at badly. That's also the reason why I don't see myself shelling out for it, I don't put money into something that I believe will wither soon after release

Excuse me while I go laugh. Matchmaking systems can be gamed, easily. If you believe otherwise, go ask Blizzard to provide info on how much of problem they have with matchmaking where people willfully drop themselves into lower brackets to roflstomp people worse than them.

Yes they can be gamed, I know that and I'm not saying they wont be I'm just saying that the matchmaking as we know it now is just a basic matchmaking system so they can have a functional beta, its not even set to differentiate between any significant data atm its just whoever is queuing up for a match currently (much like a WoW battlegrounds) which is why you see premade teams stomping pugs eventually that wont happen when they implement their real matchmaking system.


Its also easier to game the matchmaking system with less people, we're talking about a game here that will eventually be set for 12 vs 12, i'm not saying it wont be done just much harder.

And btw Blizzard doesn't really care, if they did they'd do something about all the hacking and gold sellers, and all the other problems too. Blizzard just hasn't been the same company since being bought by Activision.

I think the next change to the match maker is going to simply be separating pre-made team from teams made up of random players since that has been the main complaint about the matchmaker in the beta forums.

They weren't fixing those problems before Activision either, to be fair.

Personally, I think that it's just become a more visible problem with Blizzard games, due to the markets becoming larger so it's more profitable for gold sellers etc. to sell stuff in their games.

MWLL Page is back up, kinda, there were some problems.
If you have a computer that can run it and own Crysis Warhead/Crysis Wars(The Multiplayer-Part), i advise in checking MWLL out.
If you actually LIKE MWO . . well, there's no helping you in my eyes, but a good chance that you might LOVE MWLL even more.

MWLL Page is completely back up again.
Sadly, still low player count.
But new toys!

I was finally able to afford my own mech. I'm so proud.

?

CanRay, Is it Awesome?

No, I couldn't afford one of those. Raven RVN-4X, with some customizations.

Nice,so far I've managed to save enough to buy two commandos.I would have kept saving for something bigger rather then get the second com but this was just before we all though open beta was going to be on the 16th so was kind of just screwing around before the wipe.

hmm, fitting choice somehow O.o

He was really hoping for a CL4P-TP.

How so?Not really. Can you imagine riding on the top of one of those when everyone else has 50-foot tall mechs?

The Raven, isn't that up there in canuckistan iniun mythology the image(or at least one of them) of the trickster god?
And untill i read up on the 4x variant i thought it was one of the usual backstabbing täuschen tarnen verpissen ravens.
Seeing how you can be a bit of a devious mind, it would have been fitting for you to be in one of the electronic monsters.

I was thinking of the final boss from Claptrap's New Robot Rebellion.