100% agree. PGI has gone out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot, it usually goes that way, but in most cases they have a great product before they turn, here the product was mediocre but they had a great IP.
Well, whoever worked on the weapon mechanics in mwo/mw5 is the best. Until mwo it was a mess - projectile weapons were hitscan, laser duration was purely cosmetic and so on. What PGI designed is considered standard now, this says a lot
PGI has had their faults, but compared to a lot of other game studios out there I think they've mostly had their heart in the right place. Unfortunately they've made some major mistakes like the gold mechs IGP wanted, or the Epic exclusivity, and I think selling themselves to EG7 could be another one to add to that list. They haven't been great at advertising the game either. At least they were able to get Harmony Gold to settle on the unseen once and for all, and they've become more receptive to player input in the direction they've taken in MWO. As rushed and unpolished as MW5 was on release (I blame Epic for that, my guess is they would have delayed another year instead of a few months if they didn't have the exclusivity deal), the mech combat at the game's core was great, and since then it's become a well rounded game available on multiple platforms. They've even given modders almost all the tools in the game editor that they used to make it in the first place. And even if EG7 is foring PGI to abandon MW5, that last point will at least allow the modding community to keep adding content long into the future.
@@ward0g415 I think you guys are too easy on them. I will never forget the forums during the ghost heat and balance the clans debates. They didn't listen to us at all. The community came forward with some great ideas that were very popular and they didn't even talk to us. They just balanced the clans or added ghost heat and moved on.
Thank god for modders working on MW5. Mods like MercTech, Piratech, YAML, Coyotes mission packs, vonBiomes etc have absolutely revitalized the game for me and im having a blast with it. Those mods add more than half of the game for me.
@@Mourningstar-kc7ft unfortunately, it has always been like that for console players, a good example is Skyrim. It took Bethesda, such a big company, to bring modding options to consoles, on re-released versions of Skyrim. And even then, it's barren in comparison to the modding scene of PC
@@GBV_VO unfortunately you are correct but for MW5 mod support doesn’t appear to have even been considered. The whole console release seem to have been an afterthought given how limited the options are. There isn’t even Hotas support
@@Mourningstar-kc7ft Console players have no business having an expectation for mods anyways (especially from smaller developers). Any people that do are being totally unreasonable. Even console games that famously do support mods (Skyrim...etc) still disallow the most interesting kind, such as those that require some kind of scripting (SKSE mods for example). Basically any mod that goes beyond a simple XML file edit is not allowed as running code/scripts could compromise the security of the console system. This they will NEVER allow, or even slightly risk the possibility of. Period.
IMO, MWO missed an opportunity with this game. They should have, from the beginning, designed a strategic layer that allowed merc units (player guilds) to conquer, own and operate from their own planets, moons, etc. Plan invasions, defenses, manage their in-game finances (with a closed economy much like Eve). I played MW2 with Netmech, on KIA back in the day and that community had a fantastic "mod" that was all web-based that did all of the things I listed. It was very fun and engaging.
Well, that WAS the original plan. Quickplay was only released as a "sandbox" by popular demand because of continuing (and permanent) delays in the development of the anticipated final product, which never came. So Quickplay, along with 'Community Warfare'/Faction Play, and Solaris ended up being THE final product instead.
MWO: Too many "squeakers" running rampant, bad "balancing", and it's non-canonical. MW5: This is the story mode that MWO lacked. It was a mistake to make console ports. MW games have never been good on consoles.
@@GojiKaichou mechassault is a notable exception, or rather an honorable mention. plays too much like an arcade game to be a true mechwarrior game, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.
I'll always appreciate PGI sticking up for the IP by fighting Harmony Gold's stranglehold on mechs and resulting in a settlement with prejudice. That's good for future IP holders once PGI hands over the torch. However, I feel that the stagnation with the IP was ultimately due to terrible management and lame excuses to the point we are now. I was honestly rooting for PGI because I feel that deep down inside they are truly passionate about the franchise, but alot of bridges were burnt with the community along with the little to no effort to capitalize/expand on the battletech universe has put them in this situation. It may be years or even a decade until we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but for the time being I'll enjoy what I have with the franchise and will always appreciate the community content that keep the IP going. I also feel that PGI should have been way more aggressive with the mass Warhammer fan migration not so long ago.
@@mrbouncelol With how modern business practice standards are with the video game industry were profit is prioritized over passion, I think you answered your own question. I just want a modern remaster of MW:2 that isn't half baked at this point.
I have been enjoying MW5 on and off since it launched, despite is various flaws. I've been obsessed with MechWarrior since I was a child, though, so I'm probably a bit biased. I hope this isn't the end of the MechWarrior games in the near future. I'm not eager for another years long dry spell.
@@JimBobJoeB0b I never got into Living Legends! I tried a few times but never managed to find active games. Maybe just bad timing and bad luck. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with LL2.
@@MrTBSC me too. Kh0rnz (the sound designer) told me a while back that Morkah’s (a Mech 5 modder) 3d sounds design he worked on for Mech 5 a while back, will be utilized in LL2. Super exciting!
This part is key too, on page 3 of the report: "During the quarter, the company reorganized its management team at the holding company. Robin Flodin, the founder and CEO, transitioned out together with other senior managers, including the Chief Commercial Officer and the Chief Operating Officer. " --i.e. the entire EG7 management team, including its founder, was fired.
They took pre-orders, promised Steam keys, then gave those customers a giant middle finger while dancing with Epic's huge bag of bribe money. Was it more money than a year's momentum would've given them? Was it worth it, guys?
This was one of the end's that PGI anticipated. If they cant bring us another title or constantly add DLC to 5 they have left MW5 totally moddable so it could be taken and kept by the modding community. PGI is the weirdest and kinda stupidest company I've ever seen but they've done so much for the MW Community I can't bring myself to foster any ill will toward them, I truly believe that without them we'd have nothing today beyond the TTRPG. From the bottom of my heart I thank them and look forward to the possible future and to the modding community, I hope that they can make it "the last MW game we'll ever need" like PGI hoped
@@harackmw I"m not a modder and thus haven't messed with it, I know modders are wanting some more tools to make it easier, but its my understanding that modding is already very deep with full access to most everything the game has to offer, with already mods that entirely change the way major mechanics works. in less then a year the game was turned into an RTS so I wouldn't call modding tools totally bare
@@harackmw Yes and no. They left a lot of stuff to work with and play around with (most if not all game assets, AI routines, etc.) if you just want to make adjustments. However, you need to spend quite a bit of time to learn how to work with it if you want to do more major changes....no C++ coding...you have Blueprints to work with...so that is an additional limiting factor. One area I think we all would have liked to see was was an easy mission creation tool...but since PGI went the auto-gen tile-based map approach...creating custom missions requires a lot of time consuming variable inputs. Nonetheless we have had some great modders who have gone ahead and done everything from MWO style advanced mechlabs to new mission types and custom environments. Now there is even someone adding a couple of clan mechs as a mod =) Interestingly also in CES (just a couple days ago) Mechwarrior 5 was also featured for Machinima support tools. Even if PGI moves on, I believe the community will continue to live, thrive, and grow...because we all love Mechwarrior ^^. Thanks for reading.
I've been saying that the Mechwarrior license needed to trade hands for a long time. PGI has a very dated interpretation and a lack of experience. They didn't want help from people that have a lot of experience in the gaming industry or that had a different vision. I was banned 2x from MWO for giving constructive criticism and solutions to fix the game (and I wasn't vulgar or disrespectful). Then MW5 came out and it showed Russ's dated approach to gaming. If it had come out a decade ago it would have still been a mediocre game. A lot of Battletech/Mechwarrior fans have been supporting the mediocrity fearing that it would never come back, but mech games are still being made by AAA, AA, and indie studios. New hands need to come in and take the game past the limitations of the prior generations and who actually understand gameplay loops, AI, emergent gameplay, sense of movement and impact, weapon feel, etc.
I could not agree more. MWO could have been a great game. But it suffered from PGI's arrogance, a lack of executive level talent, and the lack of understanding of the Mech Warrior fan. After the treatment paying customers got with MWO's hero mech bait and switch, boneheaded nerfs, and questionable dev choices (Skill Maze pointless hyper grind was my last straw) it's no wonder Mech Warrior 5 is in trouble.
Not sure what games you've been playing but Mech games have been somewhat dead since 2010. Hell even From Software has stopped making Armored Core cuz they know it won't sell like a souls game so they want to rework the games before they produce another one. The only other mech franchise besides Battletech that is still producing games is Gundam. And Gundam doesn't have as big of a fan base outside of Japan since Wing, G, and Seed came out. So yeah.... Mech games are dying along with alot of other franchises Titanfall!! Titanfall doesn't count because that's a mech game LITE. I love Titanfall, but apex has taken over the series and those mechs aren't really mechs as in controls and customization. It's just a good shooter with Mechs that control like a human character.
A big, well developed dlc can save or "relaunch" a game into popularity, a launch on console rarley has the same effect. Also this is another case and point of PGI either not being able to gauge what the community wants or doing it waaay to late like with MWO.
Absolutely. It's one thing to put out small DLCs that add features that feel like they should have been in the base game, because it feels like they're just doing it as a monetisation strategy to nickle and dime their fanbase. It's a different thing to add a slew of new content and story material through a DLC. A DLC for the Clan Invasion would do just that. It's also one of the most thoroughly enjoyed eras in the franchise, and something the fanbase has been asking for since MW5 was first announced. My bet is it would sell better than the base game or any of the DLCs have this far. That said, they've more recently been talking about making the Clan Invasion its own standalone release as MW6. While I'd rather it be a large DLC to continue the base game's timeline, MW4M was a standalone expansion of MW4 that didn't require you to already own the base game, so the idea has kinda been done before. Apparently there's an advantage to marketing the game this way too, but marketing hasn't been PGI's strongsuit so I'm not sure if they can really get much benefit from that. It could be a good opportunity for them to port MW5 over from UE4 to UE5, so there's some advancement on the engine while still taking advantage of work they've already done.
@@ward0g415 Everything that you just mentioned would be super! Problem is it costs a lot of money and they lost money on the stupid console launch, the license soon expires, so its gonna cost more money. At this point im almost hopeful that Microsoft gives the license to one of its studios, they would probably do a much better job. Looking at all the new reaally good releases lately over there...
Yup like I said it felt more to me like I was playing the devs merc company and not mine, because of the terribly linear and lackluster mechlab, if I'm running a merc company of frickin stompy mechs I want to be able to change every aspect of that mech at some point, power source, gyros, to hell with dedicated hardpoints super dumb, etc...
Life long fan of the MechWarrior series here. It is an absolute shame that fans had to make a mod to get the most known mechs in the Battletech universe in the game. IMO Mech 5's downfall is no clanner content and no Solaris.
Also my argument still holds that at the very least because I is a sandbox game that it always should've had the player choice of settings like health and damage modifiers and tonnage limits or none, this alone would've at least kept it on par with competing modern sandbox games like ark survival evolved, Conan exiles and others...one other huge thing we the mechlab being so lackluster that I seriously fall asleep controller in hand almost everytime I change load outs, I am on Xbox 1 currently but I bit the bullet and spent almost a thousand bucks on a gaming computer specifically for this game and the epic mods store made this game what it was always meant to be and should've been from the get go, I understand that the devs probably just wanted us to hyper focus on hero mech variants in the game, but that kinda defeats the purpose of running our OWN merc company, we should've had all the options to equip whatever the hell we wanted on any mech so long as we stayed withing the tonnage limits of the mechs, forced dedicated hardpoints are not even a funny joke anymore, it's 2022 like what the hell are we still doing with such simple linear options for customizing our mechs, makes no sense and it wouldn't have taken a team like piranha a couple of months tops to develop this part of the game better and richer for us players, to me it felt like I was playing their merc company not mine...
I pray that Mechwarrior and it's components are given to the people who genuinely want this series to continue, hopefully given to fans of the franchise who want to not only expand the lore but also FINALLY will give us a Mechwarrior game that will not only have new members of the Battletech series can start getting hooked but also having older members who loved Mechwarrior, MW2,MW3 and MW4. Please Piranha if you are going to give up on Mechwarrior please give the servers and game licenses to the fans and people who are dedicated to making a new Mechwarrior and making it not only feel like the older games but put a refreshing spin on it like what MekTek did for MW4 Mercs.
It's not PGI's decision anymore and who exactly is going to pay the server costs? The game licenses isn't going to be made free to the public either, but MW5 is atleast modable and the community has passion and talent to utilize that. Sadly i guess this is also the final nail in the coffin for MWO, so i wonder how much content and assets from that can freely be used? Anyways i've been here before and endured the painful long wait, i'll endure it again.
The license is owned by Microsoft, and they aren't going to give that up. But as far as everything else, PGI has basically already done that with MW5's mod editor. It has almost all the same tools that the devs used to make the game. I'm sure the modding community will use this to keep adding content to the game long after PGI ends their official support.
I still play MW4 MekTek to this day ( I know the download is technically illegal but I own a hard copy of the game and windows won't recognize it anymore started right around the time MW5 was announced 🤔)
I want Smith & Tinker to get the IP back. Their trailer is still extremely enticing. Aside from that, Mech 6 should certainly be done by a company that can perform a finer polish on the end product, and can execute a bit more custom-made campaign, harkening back to the original MechWarrior games.
@@sk1llblack Wait, really? I thought they were a large-ish game company, like Activision, or Microprose (other former developers of the MechWarrior franchise). Not EA levels, but bigger than PGI.
Yeah, Smith and Tinker closed in 2012. Also, the video game rights to the BattleTech IP is owned by Microsoft. Smith and Tinker licensed the rights from them, which was bought by IGP and then by PGI. Now PGI is on their third five year term which doesn't come up for renewal until 2025. Mind you, that doesn't mean it's an exclusive license. HBS had a separate license to make BattleTech, but I think they let that expire when they stopped future development on their game. I doubt they would let another company make a MechWarrior style sim/shooter though.
@@ward0g415 I knew about the MS licensing, but licenses can be revoked, renewed, exchanged, etc, depending on who can line whose pockets. The studio being outright closed is the bigger problem.
I just bought MW5 Black Friday, and am having a blast so far. I see the rinse and repeats being a problem in the future but I have my campaign, my friend and I doing a coop and I just started a new one with my 9 yo last night. Collecting mechs is still a high. I would buy any DLC they have. I wonder if going Epic exclusive hurt more than it helped? I backed MW5 on full tier and was so po they did that I JUST bought it on sale.
Yah I didn't get the game until it was on sale and didn't get the dlcs until they were on sale to be fair. Do I regret buying it? Not at all. Not sure how MWO was affected by MW5, but if it hurt their content in either direction I wouldn't be too glad.
Bought the game too I'm enjoying it but man I needed those AI mods cuz those lancemates are just way to dumb even with the mod it's like working at a daycare. Other than that the game with the DLC is fun.
If they can market it the game and show components blowing off etc. It can be a hit. There is a lot of lore here and mech pilot is unique. I hope Mechwarrior can continue, but I did ask gamers at work if they knew what Mechwarrior was and they did not... I showed them an old mad cat photo and they did not recognize it :
i got one of ngng's t shirts with the timberwolf icon pic from mech 2 and whenever i where it lots of people know what it is including teenagers. i will agree with you that they never really marketed the ip
@@perry92964 ngl there marketing was non existant pretty much you REALLY had to dig around to find anything on it if you were not already looking around at anything related and tbh i think thats what really killed it.
the last DLC should be clan invasion - all they really have to do is inject some mission types in a certain area of the sphere - and inject 5 to 10 mechs from MWO into it after that its fairly simple
That would be great. New mission types, a small DLC mission chain involving the Kell Hounds perhaps, and importing all the clan mechs from MWO. I’d buy it.
I still have no idea why they remade MW5 in Unreal instead of just starting with the MWO code base and assets and created MW5...... Would of saved a lot of production costs in developing base systems and then could focus on content.
if they don't make a MW6 I really hope they convert and add all the MWO mechs and add them to the editor. The biggest Roadblock right now on the MW5 CAB and modding in general for expanding the time line is converting the MWO mechs to UE4. We have been trying to get the mechs in with their textures, animations, and cockpits but the best prosses we have ruins the UVs and cant convert animasions from Cryengine. Templar brute forced it by re-rigging all the mechs and making basic textures for the Clan invasion mod. If you have played MercTech/PirateTech and seen the wasp, stinger, and wyvern quality is important to selling the mod.
We don't need another Clan era Mechwarrior game, Amaris Civil war game would be even better. Would love to take the controls as Kerensky and bash through the palace gates. The franchise is so much more than just Succession war era and Clan Invasion.
I actually found MW5, including its DLCs to be a good and fun game for those who do like sandbox gameplay rather than on rails story driven gameplay. On contrary I found the biggest flaws on MWO since its a lobby based PVP shooter that compared to similar games lacks a lot in balance and unfortunately a lot comes from the lore that is also full of imbalance
It's a very old game and a little hard to get to work but you should really try mechwarrior 4 mercenaries the game isn't on rails you can make a ton of decisions when it comes to the campaign and end the game very differently depending on what you do but every single mission is hand written and has different voice actors and lines making every mission feel unique even if it takes place on the same map it was really what I was looking for out of mechwarrior 5 but all I got was procedurally generated boring game play
PGI did an amazing job on the technical side. The way mechs and weapons feel and function in MWO/MW5 is the way they should. On the design and marketing side of things, though... the failure to create enough variety (all missions feel the same, can't custom mechs much, and they pretty much force players to always use big slow mechs), and the insane levels of nonsensical greed (selling mechs and expansions for a fortune, accepting a bribe for a year of exclusivity and extending it six months for free) have to have harmed sales a lot. I myself stopped playing MWO soon after I started due to how absurd the mech prices were, and I still haven't bought anything in the MW5 line because it's way overpriced even years after initial release. Bad sales "confirm" the belief that MechWarrior is neither popular (if no one buys it, no one talks about it and no one buys it) nor profitable. PGI's design and business practices may have murdered the IP.
Having started with MechWarrior 3 way back when I was a kid, I was disappointed by MW5. It's not that I haven't had any fun with it, but It just has too much grind and not enough variety. When I play it for too long, I just start to zone out and then suddenly realize that I'm defending the same military base for the 5th time in an hour. I miss the old format of fighting through a string of missions in a linear campaign that all fit into a story. In the old games, characters had more personality and the writing was a hell of a lot better. Go watch one of the briefings from a MW3 mission and see what I mean. I also miss the customization options of the old games. You used to have just about as much freedom as you do in the tabletop. I'm also not a huge fan of Piranha Games' art direction. My hope is that the next MW will be more story focused and use an art style more similar to the one Catalyst Game Labs have been using.
MW3 was where I started as well. And when MW4 Mercenaries came out, I thought it couldn't get any better. The voice acting, the story telling, the legendary Duncan Fisher. Piranha games had 20 years of good solid Mechwarrior foundation, and chose to use none of it. And 5 shows that, terribly so.
This is exactly my problem with MW5. In MW3 and MW4, all of the missions had purpose and were built from scratch, which gave them far more variety and made them far less predictable. In MW4 especially, you had interesting characters and your in-game actions with them could tangibly effect the outcome in future missions. Save Hammer Lance in one mission rather than let them die? They'll show up later in a completely different mission to back you up when you're getting your shit kicked in. Backstab Jade Falcon? You kill Aisha Thastus rather than fighter her and getting her and her mech as a lancemate. Who you do missions for in the campaign affects what missions you can do later and what ending you get, etc. etc. MW5, on the other hand, has randomly generated missions that are all exactly the same experience, with no reason to BE experienced beyond clicking on random enemies and praying you actually get to salvage them afterwards. If they had just made a solid, linear (or semi-linear with branches, like in MW4:Mercs) campaign with the mechanical and graphical foundation of MW5, they would have had a great game. Unfortunately, they decided to deliver an utterly undercooked sandbox with no character, no purpose, no variety, and no promises to entice players into continuing to play. Endless potential, absolutely zero soul in the execution.
THE GRIND is real my friend' your NOT lying about that one. on reddit there's a dude who has 1.1 Billion C-Bills and a fleet of Mechs not just in Cold Storage. he owns like 4 Annihilators and 2 Marauder II's in his lineup. he's in year 3082. i'll say this much too many of the Mission are repetitive, needs MORE Variety. start US OFF with 2 Full Lances , 5 Mil C-Bills ,Needs a Day - Nite Cycle during your missions, Better Briefings / De-Briefings. an AFTER ACTION REPORT that details what the Actual Fuck is going on, Create a "SOLRIS 7" Universe and actually Create an Actual SPORTING EVENT of Solaris similar to Like John Madden Games. YES we should be able place Bets, Gamble, enter in Solaris; everything while we're visiting Solaris 7. Now allow me to say this much EVERY MERC MW Game needs to STOP with the Same Formula . Give us a FULL SCALE Merc Co'. with all the bells and whistles to it. we should be able to build a Full Battalion / Regimental Merc Co Force to be reckon with on the battle field. to be fair NONE of the Past Publishers including MWLL, MWO, MW5, MW4 Vengeance / Mercenaries, MW 2 / MW2 Ghost Bear Legacy / MW2 Mercenaries ALL of the Other Expansion Packs Pirates Moon & Black Knight all of them THE SAME FORMULA OVER an OVER and OVER and OVER Again nothing has EVER EVER Changed. in the past 32+ years of Battle Tech / Mech Warrior franchise. when the FEDCOM Civil War happens we should see on a battle field over 50-100+ battle mechs fighting for dominance . the same should be at the battle of Tukkayid against the Clanners. .now i can say this I do like how we are Traveling to other systems, etc in MW5 especially when you visit the outer rim worlds.......but the SAME OL' Formulaic Ops over and over and over again gets soo stale' like MW4 if we fail to do something there' should be a Cause - Effect to our losing a Mission. this is how a MW Game should be.... again IMHO - Cheers
I will always be grateful for the renewed attention PGI has brought to the IP. I think without their work, Catalyst would not have pursued their kickstarter to update the tabletop minis which has breathed new life into that side of the franchise as well. Hopefully, MWO will hang on for a while longer as that and the PC Battletech are the main ways I scratch the itch these days. Looking forward to more MWO content, Sean!
I'm old, so old man's thoughts here: I used to get incredibly excited seeing the cardboard cut outs at game retail outlets for MW2, ghost bear's legacy, mercs, then MW3, Pirate's Moon, Vengeance.. You'd get a tangible box to drool over (embossed cardboard) PLUS a book, with all the Faction information, mech specs (IS vs Clan) weapon specs,..and true to Activision "big box" releases of the time, the manual (book) had hand scribble of pilots notes..making it feel like you were truly reading a log book of a Mechwarrior whom probably died in battle..also a keyboard function card. Yes, these were primarily campaign based games, BUT they released NetMech, which, once allowed online gameplay. The graphics by today's standard are extremely basic, but the game play was compelling and exciting. If a new IP were to take it over, it would be awesome to see these titles redone..not reinvented..but simply update the graphics. Release a boxed version to gain interest by gamers whom have no idea about the MW universe. Consoles get to create interest in retail outlets with games like Halo, COD, Doom, Wolfenstein. All of these have "loot" such as companion books, miniature figures, lore books, quality posters...Wolfenstein got a action figure and Doom got a wearable helmet! Imagine if MW got a mech figure to sit on your desk, a propaganda style Mech pilot recruitment poster, keyboard overlay templates etc. Heck I got a Mech Warrior 3 t-shirt with the game! TLDR: Create interest with a reboot - then release MW6..make it an option to order a physical special edition version...maybe some junk like mouse mats, t shirts and crap like that. Real fans would be interested in all that stuff I'm sure.
i would SOO LOVE a Reinvented / Updated Versions of MW2 - MW3- MW4 it'll be soooo awesome. (heck i 'm ol too) played my first MW1 game back in 1989 on PC, thats how i was introduced...love your ideas. wish they at least would Re-Do the MW2, MW3 - MW 4 games with Updated Tech , Graphics. etc.
so sad. Looking at the "upcoming games" I can only shake my head. Another company going for the quick cash grab route instead of the "lets make a good game and develop a steady playerbase" route.
It's in our hands...let them earn money to keep them interested in investing resources, or watch it dying. This applies to the current or future owners alike.
but it's not "in our hands" any more. As Phil mentioned, it's no longer about simply making a profit, it's about the size of that profit. The game is now in the hands of the company's investors.
@@ThePereubu1710 beg to differ, where does any profit come from, if not from the customers? Investors money too is only given due to an assumption of return on invest, which is also profit from the customers in the end. No money (from us), no game (for us). If course, another option would be to run things dry so that the rights would sell for nothing and could be acquired by the devoted fan community to go on purely fan based but without the risk of being prosecuted to hell for copyright infringement.
I'm sure that it's been mentioned before, but there was a significant amount of bad blood that was created when Russ and crew decided to pull a fast one on the customer base and went to Epic games for the initial license. There were a number of people, myself included, who pulled out of our prepurchase orders after breach of contract. I love the universe, and what PGI has done with the IP looks wise, and wanted to support that so I had bought the highest tier package. Like I said... breach of contract meant that I pulled out of all of that. I did wind up getting the game a full18(?) months later when it finally came out on Steam, and I think I paid a quarter of what I originally had for it. To add insult to injury, by that time I finally was able to get the game on my launcher of choice, half the people I play(ed) MWO with (the ones who got it on Epic) were sick to the back teeth of the thing, making getting a group together incredibly difficult. background
*looks up from playing Merctech with most recent update making AMS system freaking awesome. Oh *Goes back to playing MW5. In many ways, this is good news. PGI is a hack dev anyways. We deserve a lot better than what this game ended up being, and what MWO is.
too bad if PGI discontinued the expansion of Mechwarrior 5 Merc, especially for creating the DLC that fitting with the story line, to bad. Well, if PGI want to end the MW5: Mercs progression, at least ended it with DLC regarding Clan Invansion that continued the previous campaign story line. the last DLC must epic! Its about time the Mechwarrior and Battletech take this matter seriously.
The modding community is keeping this game going, without a doubt. They've done the same thing for Harebrained Scheme's Battletech. The thing is; they shouldn't be doing it anymore. PGI needs to go under and MWO and MW5 need to die. We've had almost a decade of mismanagement and incompetence when it comes to Mechwarrior, and it's high time the BT fanbase acknowledged it and just pulled the plug. HBS Battletech is already done in. It was supposed to be the dagger savagely thrust into the heart of MWO. It barely got out of the gate and perished within two years under the weight of its own bug-riddled mediocrity. Now, no one talks about that game anymore besides the literal boomers that are still obsessed with it. Seriously, Battletech fans, it's time to walk away. This franchise needs to be taken off of life support so it can have a chance to possibly rise from the ashes again some day. Unless you stop clinging to PGI and HBS with the excuse that if don't support their games that there will never be anymore Mechwarrior games in the future, Battletech will never move forward.
Seems really active imo, I'm always finding new people to play with :) especially with all my lore friendly mods! I just wish I could find some battle armor mods xD
A Mechwarriorgame would be awesome for the upcoming PSVR2 for PS5. That's my dream scenario. It really feels like sitting in a Mechwarrior cockpit should be the perfect VR experience.
Yeah. PGI started working on VR when they were initially developing the game, but they had to drop it to focus on other things for its rushed release on Epic and never came back to it. A modder has finished their work with the VRWarrior mod, and even though the game isn't well optimised for VR it's just as immersive as you're imagining. It's the only way I play the game now. That said, mods can't be used on console, so you're kinda SOL.
@@ward0g415 Cool! Well, maybe they can release it as a DLC instead of a mod or something? I mean, if SONY wants it to be a thing for PSVR2, I'm pretty sure they can make it happen somehow.
Maybe Turbine will buy it...haha They like buying dying games :) Sadly even if people MOD MW5, if no servers no game. Maybe they could let the community keep MWO and MW5 alive with private servers! I just wish they bothered to make conquest more fun with more rewards and Solaris 7. They should've added daily quests for bonus rewards that help player growth. Obviously, there are many more things needed, but too little too late I guess...
Played the crap out of MWO back in the early days with Garth and friends. My niece loved the locust, was pretty gud with it too. Bought a mug from NGNG, it came in broken, got it replaced free, also bought a Warden hoodie. Good times, then it was all downhill from there. The last thing I did was cancel my MW5 preorder because of the Epic game store exclusivity, a final straw if you will, don't know if I'll ever buy it. It's no Starsiege and it was far cheaper compared to the money I spent on MWO. Even if they revived Mechwarrior, the final achievement of PGI, I fear, is prove that Mechwarrior is at best a risky investment.
Having played each of MWO, Battletech by Harebrained schemes, and MW5, my ideal outcome would be that HBS pick up the IP and PGI 'pursues other opportunities'.
The problem with all the MW games since MW4 is that non of them have really advanced in the last 20 years. We have abit better graphics, and that's about it. The genre needs pushing ahead and innovation.
sad TRUTH is EVERY Publisher does the Same Formulaic Game...: Start with a 20 Ton Locust , Jenner, etc. Starting C-Bill Account: 3 Mill. A.I. Pilots that CAN'T SHOOT for SHIT nor Assists you in anyway possible because THEY CAN'T Shoot For SHIT and soo your stuck on Levels 1-2 Missions. Now that would be Awesome if they were giving you at least 1 MIll C-Bills. BUT NOPE your ONLY Getting 220K C-Bills and NO Salvage No Support No Artillery, NO NOTHING. you don't EVER EVER Make enough money - even MW5 is like this. ( and i like really like MW5) MW4 only has 37 Missions including the fight with the Clans NOT including Solaris Events.......All the MISSIONS in hindsight are actually pretty Interesting, Creative, gud storylines. HOWEVER they're extremely Short, the lack any real "FEEL" like spectre lance is doing anything that makes an Effect to the Storyline(s). again they're WAY WAAAY Too short even for a MW Game. MW3 was one of the BEST actually. MW4 Vengeance as soon as you destroy the LAST mech the After Action Screen Comes Up and its OVER One And Done. it feels completely FLAT, WOODEN for a MW Game. we're NOT told anything about the situation going on with Ian Drisari's situation, the FED COM War or anything at all.its like things are just thrown together and we just play through it 1 after another and another and soo on and so forth. that's soo IMMERSION Breaking. it doesn't feel / act like a Battle Tech / Mech Warrior Game at all. again i enjoyed them when i played them ( heck i still have them Installed on my PC right now as we speak ...lol) but when i play MW4 Vengeance & Mercenaries then turn on MW5 on my Console (unfortunately thats where i have it and NOT on PC as i would like to have it ) its like NITE & DAY ...its soo drastically different IP's. now to be fair again MW5 isn't PERFECT at all. there's flaws in that game too. but at least it feels more realistic to me also to pont out MW4 is missing weapon Systems basic ones.......the Mech Lab is Fun to play around with but Way WAAAY OFF from the Lore & Battle Tech Read Out Manuals, some of the weapon stats are Completely OFF like Way OFF. 1 things for sure at least MWLL & MWO & MW5 Implimented everything from LORE & History. soo Big Props to the DEV Teams. soo i repeat i 1000% AGREE With You on It Desperately NEEDS INNOVATION, Story Building, Environment Building, a Real FULL SCALE MERC Co' to full OWN & OPERATE as you see fit to run it. if we're able to own & operate at least a Battalion / Regimental level force Just LIKE in the LORE of Battle Tech. then you'll deftly see a Rise in players new & old especially old ( like myself, because we've BEEN ASKING for this for the past 20+ years now) . you can actually build a Merc Co' with a larger scale like this. we should be able to Hire & Fire our Drop Ship Captains & Jump Ship Captains. Our A.I. Pilots, Battle Mech Mechanics / Engineers, Tankers for our Tank Regiments, Soldiers for our Battle Suit Regiments etc etc. like actually run a FULL SCALE MERC Company instead of the Same Ol' hire 3 pilots for a 1 Lance of Mechs and then THATS IT your have a MERC Company ............smfh Lol !! like wtf is that ??
Since i found MWO IN 2015, I have participated in all products within the universe. Bought MW5 both on PC and PS5, loved the game. I have about 2k hours in MWO, 300 in MW5 and 800 in Battletech. This being said, i do hope we will have happy times ahead. But i see only corporate intrests ahead...sh##
It's hilarious to me. As much as PGI has tried to do their own thing and pretend like the loyal fans of the IP don't know what they want, even though the most veteran players want a repeat of what made the series great (MW2 and MW3 with a dash of MW4), it should be of no surprise that their ideas have borne little in the way of any real progress or success. MWO is only played today because it's FREE, otherwise the playerbase would be even smaller, MW5 is only played because they're trying to pull in a new wave of players rather than catering to the veterans of the series. What they don't understand is that the vets vastly outnumber even the largest majority of new players that are showing interest. Like... the total number of sales PGI managed for MW5 is less than Valheim. IT'S MECHWARRIOR. It's HARD to screw up that bad. PGI and Mechwarrior are like Gearbox and Duke Nukem, though at least the former saw fit to make the game moddable for players to fix problems they're too lazy to bother with. (Sad when Skyrim is the bar you set your production levels at.)
It's a shame. Despite the hard work the developers (the ones that actually have to do the hard work) put into MW5, it's still a lackluster game, even for MechWarrior fans. Like really bare bones to the point where I wonder if PGI heads actually gave a damn. I feel PGI failed to capitalize on the BattleTech setting. To allow the player to interact with the universe outside of 'Mech combat. They kind of gave us the Fourth Succesion War. I guess in a better world we would have gotten the Andurien Crisis, the Ronin War (FRR fans would have loved that one), the War of 3039. All the way up to The Clan Invasion.
Barebones is a bit of an exaggeration honestly. If there’s anything that’s actually barebones, it’s the combat simulation, in terms of actual mechanics (lack of cool features from the old games, lack of MWO-style sensor warfare, lack of physical simulation (through armor crits, ricochets, stuff like that), etc.). And it’s made even worse by the poor AI. Sure, there’s a lack of good story (especially little in-between tidbits to help the game feel more lived-in), and Career Mode is lacking, but there’s still plenty of meat to be had. And the mechlab, that’s an issue as well, yes...
In a few short years we will see this IP get picked up by another developer, one more capable. They will revitalize an IP that has been milked to death. I wanted to like MW5, I wanted to like MWO, unfortunately sometimes it is clear that it is okay to take a step back and let it die, so out of the shit, a flower may grow. Until then, comrades. @ phil, good video
I like MW5 but from day 1 the game felt like a good but unfinished mod of Mass Effect 3. Piloting mechs in a game is always a good thing. The static npcs and bad voice acting did zero to add to the game and were just something to ignore.
bought MW5, played it for one week. its boring and repetitive and the grind is real. i still love MWO after all these years playing against human players is just way more satisfying.
@@thunderbug8640 i just played MW 4 vengeance and mercenaries recently and it just didn´t age well .. ballance even for the singleplayer campaing is an utter mess ..
@@MrTBSC Tbh the texture mods i use do a lot to fix the battlemechs, it’s the environments that really aged like milk, they are just so empty for a lot of the missions. Ive never noticed the poor balancing really, mind i do play with the Mektek mod and perfect balance is something I require in single player games, if I did, I wouldn’t like any Bethesda games lol.
i was afraid right when i heard they were making MW5 in unreal, not that cryengine was great but it must have just been so much time and effort that could have been spent either in the MWO engine or going all in and attempting to port MWO into u5 and just having one game..
The HBS game has definitely had more longevity for me than MW5 has, but I'm not going to pretend I didn't dump dozens of hours into MW5 and enjoy it. It had its shortcomings, but it was fun for the time I spent with it. That said, I think MW5 and MWO have just about run their course. It's probably best at this point if they end, and someone new takes a crack at it in a few years.
I've read this situation pretty much the same way. The way it's worded doesn't sound good, but it doesn't rule out another DLC or a stand alone sequel either. Also, wasn't there more than one team working on MW5? It would make sense to me that the staff working on the console ports would get reassigned since that job is now done, while the team that was working on game content stays on that project. Even if this is the end of official development, I'm sure modders will continue to breathe life into the game far into the future. The MekTek guys were working on their mod long after MW4M came out, and the fan made MWLL is still going as well. I can see the modding community adding to MW5 (and HBS' BattleTech game for that matter) for a similarly long period of time, because this franchise has such a dedicated fanbase.
I think it's time for Microsoft to go hard with MW6 and give us a new PC/Xbox usable, force feedback joystick to go with it. MW3 and 4 with the Sidewinder 1&2 FF joysticks was unique and fantastic. Just the stick sublty moving left and right with each footfall is embedded in my mind 'till this day!
PGI did a lot for Mechwarrior, particularly in the art style of the Mechs. While its apparent they didn't have the skills to work outside the engines box enough to truly make an innovative game, I think they tried hard to keep the spirit of MW. I'm afraid that most Devs would think the game play too slow, and would turn it into a twitch shooter like every other FPS out there.
Piranha never should have gone Epic exclusive. I can bet that issuing refunds and going exclusive with a games store that is not remotely the dominant storefront caused a huge cash crunch. Snubbing the biggest sales store is the dumbest business decision one can possibly make. Lo and behold, they ended up getting bought out not long after. Surprise, surprise.
With about 20 years between mech 4 and mech 5, I almost didn't expect it to ever be a thing. I think Catalyst or whoever owns battletech should do the GW thing and just hand out license to anyone who wants to make mechwarrior games instead of doing exclusive licenses, but I don't even know if Piranha has an exclusive license. I myself am disappointed by MWO and wasn't happy that Piranha was doing MW5.
Looking at the massive gap in time between MW 4 and MW5 I think we definitely not going to see MW6 soon. I think MW5 was a risk for them, as sadly this still remains a niche game. One of my favorite memories from the 90s is playing MW2. So my heart bleeds if MW5 did turnout to be not profitable for them, it's not going to promote other devs picking up the IP and having their spin on it.
I'm sad that they're not making a sequel to the tactical turn based strategy game Battletech. Roguetech and Battletech Advanced 3062 shows just how much potential this game has if you just give it an upgrade across the board. You can set yourself up for a sequel as well if you chose the Amaris Civil War as your campaign/main story. You play through the main campaign as a Mech Commander with Kerensky and it ends with the retaking of Terra. After beating the campaign, you then unlock career mercenary mode where it's several years later and you're a merc during the First Succession War. The sequel can then be about what happened with the SLDF, the Exodus Civil War, and how the Clans started with the ending mission being Operation Klondike. This universe has so much lore that you can create a good mechwarrior/battletech game out of that and it's just sad that they keep going back to the clans.
They should have learned from Multi-Player Battletech and set up a strategic mini game the way how they did it. It made combat and invasions actually have a meaning.
I am glad NGNG that you and so many others supported MW5 / MWO. Being an old player myself I drop out of MWO due to redundancy's of the game play and, like so many of the earlier MWO tubie's, after a decade + I had to defer to their comments about the game becoming a cash-grab...as old Macky would say ( but he's always been hard to please ). I hate to see either games go but it might be their time to do so & because of the many redundancy's over the near 20 years of the game's. Don't feel bad about the news, you and those around you have done all you can, and for that...I Thank You.
would be doing better if they had added VR support... its built into the engine so might not take that much for them to patch it. or maybe make it a DLC?
Already on my second run through and I'm still without the DLC. May get Heros just to get Artillery and Air Strikes. Game is still fun as is not even modded on Xbox One.
I like this take, but i doubt anyone else will pick up the torch. The legal wrangling of the IP being divided ALL to hell puts off any potential developers looking at it from a profit standpoint. THe division of the IP is so convoluted it leaves it too open to legal harassment. That's what truly condemned this franchise.
@@harackmw MechWarrior is Microsoft license, board-game is licensed to Catalyst, owner of IP is Topps, and I don't know where the BT turn-based video game license belongs to, is it part of Microsofts' portfolio or is it somewhere else... That's what's meant by the IP being divided. But yes, the Harmony Gold issue has been settled permanently.
@@Finwolven Microsoft has ALL video game rights. Topps has all other rights (physical games, merch, physical and digital books) and Catalyst licenses it from Topps. HBS BattleTech was licensed through Microsoft.
@@Finwolven PGI managed to sell Gold Mechs for 500 bucks a pop with years of insane pricing of mechpacks AND use all that to fund mech 5 ....and keep MWO afloat through years of maintenance mode. I can only imagine what a dev team who knew what they were doing could do with the franchise, it seems more like a massive untapped market.
If they do consider Mech6 in the future, I hope it takes the multiplayer aspect from MWO and supplements it with the better mods from MW5 to deliver a product that takes the best of both worlds
I originally started playing Mechwarrior 5 on the Xbox through the gamepass. I enjoyed the base game so much that I got it on PC with all the dlc soon after. Then I modded it and its now one of my most played games on Steam. I’m not an expert on the universe, neither have I played any of the prior games. But I love the game for its simplicity and kickback gameplay. I’ve missed PvE co-op games like this where you can just chill out with some buddies beating the shit out of baddies. If there’s no future games from this point, then I hope the modding community can continue to improve upon the works of MW5
Well now I think I understand why Microsoft was so chill with the Living Legends team. They know it'll be the better part of a decade before that IP sees the light of day in a AAA release, and so that project is zero threat.
Man I was so pumped when I saw mech5 for ps5. It litterly made me feel like a kid again when I saw it at Gamestop. Snatched that shit up as fast as I could lol. I've been really enjoying it... I hope this isn't the last mechwarrior. I've been so happy to play mechwarrior again. Kinda took the win out of my sails to hear this.
They should just release modding tools and get to work on MW6M. I really hope they do the same formula just expanded... a crafted campaign inside a procedurally generated sandbox and just improve upon the AI and adding many more mission types
Haven't PGI been talking about developing their own IP? No mention about that in the report or the upcoming games. Seems like they've been underperforming since being acquired and they're just being pushed into the LOTR online franchise.
Of course it's dead... PGI (correction, PGI Leadership) has never really cared about Battletech and Mechwarrior beyond "how much of a quick buck can we make". Are there staff at PGI that actually care, sure, I'll concede that, otherwise we wouldn't have had awesome stuff like the concept art that was created and mech designs. But overall? They milked their cow, then burned the bridge to the cow, and are probably wondering why no one is playing or caring anymore... I'm still amazed the new parent company hasn't outright fired Paul "Let make a BT League of Legends", or Russ the drunk PR disaster...
If they took mw5... And relaunched either as a new mw5 (not mercs) or launched as a mw6, but in reusing what's currently there and using the saved time to overhaul the surface, overhaul the balance, hash the material, and actually....animate people.
Confused. I thought Lord of the rings online was run by Standing stone? Same as d&d online.[ for a very old game has been geting good support nd updates / new content lately]
My problem is they always only have a lance 4 Mechs that means you cannot bring the Clans into it as they work in Stars 5 Mechs 4 Inner Sphere Mechs have not change against 5 Clan Mechs. This is what they do not see. Mech Warrior online is still going strong for now better than I expected.
Have only just bought this game and am really enjoying it. The only thing I wish could be improved was the co op integration, it could've been done so much better. Let the other players at least view your mech storage, see the star map and markets. Have a permission to give them financial control too, let them buy mechs and equipment, but keep destinations the decision of the commander. Having them just sitting on the sidelines pretty much uninvolved in the storyline is a bit boring at times. Other than that, definitely worth playing 😁
Would love to see a MechWarrior title with a darker and more serious tone like MW3 and it’s expansion had and also a serious story. It’s a brutal and dark universe with unending war and war crimes being committed without a second thought.
Imho the modders did a great job with various mods for MW5. There even was this great idea to turn it into a mech commander. MW5 has a good foundation and I hope, that if it is not continued, some of this great modders come up with a Clan campaign. Maybe piranha decides to release some mech packs as I am quite sure there is a lot pf develppment in stock right now which will not be relaesed in a new dlc anymore. So maybe Pirinha is out but the game will stay alive much longer. O really hope so
:( Oh no I hope not. I actually just bought it a week ago on an early year sale. I've played since a kid with Mechwarrior 2, loved MW4:Mercs, but hadn't kept up for a while lately. My house was robbed a while back and I have been replacing all I lost, so since before this was released I had more important things to replace first before games. That also meant being out of the loop with the news on it, but I recently caught up enough to get a new system, buy the games I had previously owned yet hadn't finished, and now I'm onto ones I hadn't tried or which were released during that down-time. I think few things in gaming are more of a gut-punch than to catch up on a game like this only to find its glory days are already over, the devs have already shit the bed, and the community is on its way out. This is exactly why devs need to realize the life-span of a game doesn't need to be this short-term party that burns out, but a long-term strategy. An IP like Battletech/Mechwarrior has a lasting appeal that can go on for years and keep both new and old players if treated properly. I'm enjoying the campaign immensely, still, but I can only hope they get the online part turned around for that full experience. I hope I didn't just buy essentially half a game.
To be brutally honest, I'd very much like to see a different game dev get the IPO. Piranha has abused it's customers far too much for my liking.
You will struggle to find a dev where you cant make that claim.
100% agree. PGI has gone out of their way to shoot themselves in the foot, it usually goes that way, but in most cases they have a great product before they turn, here the product was mediocre but they had a great IP.
Well, whoever worked on the weapon mechanics in mwo/mw5 is the best. Until mwo it was a mess - projectile weapons were hitscan, laser duration was purely cosmetic and so on. What PGI designed is considered standard now, this says a lot
PGI has had their faults, but compared to a lot of other game studios out there I think they've mostly had their heart in the right place. Unfortunately they've made some major mistakes like the gold mechs IGP wanted, or the Epic exclusivity, and I think selling themselves to EG7 could be another one to add to that list. They haven't been great at advertising the game either. At least they were able to get Harmony Gold to settle on the unseen once and for all, and they've become more receptive to player input in the direction they've taken in MWO. As rushed and unpolished as MW5 was on release (I blame Epic for that, my guess is they would have delayed another year instead of a few months if they didn't have the exclusivity deal), the mech combat at the game's core was great, and since then it's become a well rounded game available on multiple platforms. They've even given modders almost all the tools in the game editor that they used to make it in the first place. And even if EG7 is foring PGI to abandon MW5, that last point will at least allow the modding community to keep adding content long into the future.
@@ward0g415 I think you guys are too easy on them. I will never forget the forums during the ghost heat and balance the clans debates. They didn't listen to us at all. The community came forward with some great ideas that were very popular and they didn't even talk to us. They just balanced the clans or added ghost heat and moved on.
Thank god for modders working on MW5. Mods like MercTech, Piratech, YAML, Coyotes mission packs, vonBiomes etc have absolutely revitalized the game for me and im having a blast with it. Those mods add more than half of the game for me.
That doesn’t do anything for console players
@@Mourningstar-kc7ft unfortunately, it has always been like that for console players, a good example is Skyrim. It took Bethesda, such a
big company, to bring modding options to consoles, on re-released versions of Skyrim. And even then, it's barren in comparison to the modding scene of PC
@@GBV_VO unfortunately you are correct but for MW5 mod support doesn’t appear to have even been considered.
The whole console release seem to have been an afterthought given how limited the options are. There isn’t even Hotas support
@@Mourningstar-kc7ft it has been considered. The Devs told us why mod support would be extremely difficult to do for ALL consoles
@@Mourningstar-kc7ft Console players have no business having an expectation for mods anyways (especially from smaller developers). Any people that do are being totally unreasonable. Even console games that famously do support mods (Skyrim...etc) still disallow the most interesting kind, such as those that require some kind of scripting (SKSE mods for example).
Basically any mod that goes beyond a simple XML file edit is not allowed as running code/scripts could compromise the security of the console system. This they will NEVER allow, or even slightly risk the possibility of. Period.
IMO, MWO missed an opportunity with this game. They should have, from the beginning, designed a strategic layer that allowed merc units (player guilds) to conquer, own and operate from their own planets, moons, etc. Plan invasions, defenses, manage their in-game finances (with a closed economy much like Eve). I played MW2 with Netmech, on KIA back in the day and that community had a fantastic "mod" that was all web-based that did all of the things I listed. It was very fun and engaging.
Well, that WAS the original plan. Quickplay was only released as a "sandbox" by popular demand because of continuing (and permanent) delays in the development of the anticipated final product, which never came. So Quickplay, along with 'Community Warfare'/Faction Play, and Solaris ended up being THE final product instead.
Oth its dying because lack of multiplayer play. Mwo is flourishing in faction warfare
MWO: Too many "squeakers" running rampant, bad "balancing", and it's non-canonical.
MW5: This is the story mode that MWO lacked. It was a mistake to make console ports. MW games have never been good on consoles.
This sounds fucking amazing
@@GojiKaichou mechassault is a notable exception, or rather an honorable mention. plays too much like an arcade game to be a true mechwarrior game, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.
I'll always appreciate PGI sticking up for the IP by fighting Harmony Gold's stranglehold on mechs and resulting in a settlement with prejudice. That's good for future IP holders once PGI hands over the torch. However, I feel that the stagnation with the IP was ultimately due to terrible management and lame excuses to the point we are now. I was honestly rooting for PGI because I feel that deep down inside they are truly passionate about the franchise, but alot of bridges were burnt with the community along with the little to no effort to capitalize/expand on the battletech universe has put them in this situation.
It may be years or even a decade until we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but for the time being I'll enjoy what I have with the franchise and will always appreciate the community content that keep the IP going. I also feel that PGI should have been way more aggressive with the mass Warhammer fan migration not so long ago.
Well put
Do you think we will live to see a decent first person MW game again? I'm afraid the answer will be no
Mijnhoh
@@mrbouncelol With how modern business practice standards are with the video game industry were profit is prioritized over passion, I think you answered your own question. I just want a modern remaster of MW:2 that isn't half baked at this point.
@@mrbouncelol the modders for other titles have great games out and in the works atm
I have been enjoying MW5 on and off since it launched, despite is various flaws. I've been obsessed with MechWarrior since I was a child, though, so I'm probably a bit biased. I hope this isn't the end of the MechWarrior games in the near future. I'm not eager for another years long dry spell.
Keep in mind that we have a good few fan projects to look forward to, besides modding stuff. Living Legends 2, for example!!
@@JimBobJoeB0b I never got into Living Legends! I tried a few times but never managed to find active games. Maybe just bad timing and bad luck. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with LL2.
Third. That dry spell never happened for me thanks to Wandering Samurai and friends.
@@JimBobJoeB0b living legends 2 is a game i definetively am not looking forward to ..
@@MrTBSC me too. Kh0rnz (the sound designer) told me a while back that Morkah’s (a Mech 5 modder) 3d sounds design he worked on for Mech 5 a while back, will be utilized in LL2. Super exciting!
This part is key too, on page 3 of the report: "During the quarter, the company reorganized its management team at the holding company. Robin Flodin, the founder and CEO, transitioned out together with other senior managers, including the Chief Commercial Officer and the Chief Operating Officer. " --i.e. the entire EG7 management team, including its founder, was fired.
wow, sounds terrible! sounds a bit "hostile takeover"
Inb4 company goes woke
That's a huge detail. There's a lot of stuff going on behind the curtain.
It's almost like it was a bad idea shooting the game in the kneecaps for its first year by restricting it to Epic launcher.
They took pre-orders, promised Steam keys, then gave those customers a giant middle finger while dancing with Epic's huge bag of bribe money.
Was it more money than a year's momentum would've given them?
Was it worth it, guys?
Agreed.
This was one of the end's that PGI anticipated. If they cant bring us another title or constantly add DLC to 5 they have left MW5 totally moddable so it could be taken and kept by the modding community. PGI is the weirdest and kinda stupidest company I've ever seen but they've done so much for the MW Community I can't bring myself to foster any ill will toward them, I truly believe that without them we'd have nothing today beyond the TTRPG. From the bottom of my heart I thank them and look forward to the possible future and to the modding community, I hope that they can make it "the last MW game we'll ever need" like PGI hoped
Amen!
I thought the modding tools were largely bare bones, no?
@@harackmw I"m not a modder and thus haven't messed with it, I know modders are wanting some more tools to make it easier, but its my understanding that modding is already very deep with full access to most everything the game has to offer, with already mods that entirely change the way major mechanics works. in less then a year the game was turned into an RTS so I wouldn't call modding tools totally bare
@@Dar_K_Stuff yeah it would be good if that is the case.
@@harackmw Yes and no. They left a lot of stuff to work with and play around with (most if not all game assets, AI routines, etc.) if you just want to make adjustments. However, you need to spend quite a bit of time to learn how to work with it if you want to do more major changes....no C++ coding...you have Blueprints to work with...so that is an additional limiting factor. One area I think we all would have liked to see was was an easy mission creation tool...but since PGI went the auto-gen tile-based map approach...creating custom missions requires a lot of time consuming variable inputs. Nonetheless we have had some great modders who have gone ahead and done everything from MWO style advanced mechlabs to new mission types and custom environments. Now there is even someone adding a couple of clan mechs as a mod =) Interestingly also in CES (just a couple days ago) Mechwarrior 5 was also featured for Machinima support tools. Even if PGI moves on, I believe the community will continue to live, thrive, and grow...because we all love Mechwarrior ^^. Thanks for reading.
I've been saying that the Mechwarrior license needed to trade hands for a long time. PGI has a very dated interpretation and a lack of experience. They didn't want help from people that have a lot of experience in the gaming industry or that had a different vision. I was banned 2x from MWO for giving constructive criticism and solutions to fix the game (and I wasn't vulgar or disrespectful). Then MW5 came out and it showed Russ's dated approach to gaming. If it had come out a decade ago it would have still been a mediocre game. A lot of Battletech/Mechwarrior fans have been supporting the mediocrity fearing that it would never come back, but mech games are still being made by AAA, AA, and indie studios. New hands need to come in and take the game past the limitations of the prior generations and who actually understand gameplay loops, AI, emergent gameplay, sense of movement and impact, weapon feel, etc.
I could not agree more. MWO could have been a great game. But it suffered from PGI's arrogance, a lack of executive level talent, and the lack of understanding of the Mech Warrior fan. After the treatment paying customers got with MWO's hero mech bait and switch, boneheaded nerfs, and questionable dev choices (Skill Maze pointless hyper grind was my last straw) it's no wonder Mech Warrior 5 is in trouble.
Not sure what games you've been playing but Mech games have been somewhat dead since 2010. Hell even From Software has stopped making Armored Core cuz they know it won't sell like a souls game so they want to rework the games before they produce another one.
The only other mech franchise besides Battletech that is still producing games is Gundam. And Gundam doesn't have as big of a fan base outside of Japan since Wing, G, and Seed came out.
So yeah.... Mech games are dying along with alot of other franchises
Titanfall!! Titanfall doesn't count because that's a mech game LITE. I love Titanfall, but apex has taken over the series and those mechs aren't really mechs as in controls and customization. It's just a good shooter with Mechs that control like a human character.
Better Ai is key
@@bombomos I take it you didn't hear about the leak of the new armored core game?
Yeah, couldn't agree more either!
A big, well developed dlc can save or "relaunch" a game into popularity, a launch on console rarley has the same effect.
Also this is another case and point of PGI either not being able to gauge what the community wants or doing it waaay to late like with MWO.
This^. It needs to be clans. Adding the clans is what's going to bring in the hype!
They need to make it a real story driven campaign without the planet hopping boring BS the main game is. Go back to mw2,3,4 style gameplay
Absolutely. It's one thing to put out small DLCs that add features that feel like they should have been in the base game, because it feels like they're just doing it as a monetisation strategy to nickle and dime their fanbase. It's a different thing to add a slew of new content and story material through a DLC. A DLC for the Clan Invasion would do just that. It's also one of the most thoroughly enjoyed eras in the franchise, and something the fanbase has been asking for since MW5 was first announced. My bet is it would sell better than the base game or any of the DLCs have this far.
That said, they've more recently been talking about making the Clan Invasion its own standalone release as MW6. While I'd rather it be a large DLC to continue the base game's timeline, MW4M was a standalone expansion of MW4 that didn't require you to already own the base game, so the idea has kinda been done before. Apparently there's an advantage to marketing the game this way too, but marketing hasn't been PGI's strongsuit so I'm not sure if they can really get much benefit from that. It could be a good opportunity for them to port MW5 over from UE4 to UE5, so there's some advancement on the engine while still taking advantage of work they've already done.
@@ward0g415 Everything that you just mentioned would be super! Problem is it costs a lot of money and they lost money on the stupid console launch, the license soon expires, so its gonna cost more money.
At this point im almost hopeful that Microsoft gives the license to one of its studios, they would probably do a much better job. Looking at all the new reaally good releases lately over there...
Yup like I said it felt more to me like I was playing the devs merc company and not mine, because of the terribly linear and lackluster mechlab, if I'm running a merc company of frickin stompy mechs I want to be able to change every aspect of that mech at some point, power source, gyros, to hell with dedicated hardpoints super dumb, etc...
Life long fan of the MechWarrior series here. It is an absolute shame that fans had to make a mod to get the most known mechs in the Battletech universe in the game. IMO Mech 5's downfall is no clanner content and no Solaris.
I saw the clanners coming in the next dlc because the storyline is now just before the clan invasion I think. I may be wrong though.
Also my argument still holds that at the very least because I is a sandbox game that it always should've had the player choice of settings like health and damage modifiers and tonnage limits or none, this alone would've at least kept it on par with competing modern sandbox games like ark survival evolved, Conan exiles and others...one other huge thing we the mechlab being so lackluster that I seriously fall asleep controller in hand almost everytime I change load outs, I am on Xbox 1 currently but I bit the bullet and spent almost a thousand bucks on a gaming computer specifically for this game and the epic mods store made this game what it was always meant to be and should've been from the get go, I understand that the devs probably just wanted us to hyper focus on hero mech variants in the game, but that kinda defeats the purpose of running our OWN merc company, we should've had all the options to equip whatever the hell we wanted on any mech so long as we stayed withing the tonnage limits of the mechs, forced dedicated hardpoints are not even a funny joke anymore, it's 2022 like what the hell are we still doing with such simple linear options for customizing our mechs, makes no sense and it wouldn't have taken a team like piranha a couple of months tops to develop this part of the game better and richer for us players, to me it felt like I was playing their merc company not mine...
My daughter woke up Cristmas morning, shes 3. She didn't even want to open her presents. She just wanted to play "Robots" with daddy. Lol
I pray that Mechwarrior and it's components are given to the people who genuinely want this series to continue, hopefully given to fans of the franchise who want to not only expand the lore but also FINALLY will give us a Mechwarrior game that will not only have new members of the Battletech series can start getting hooked but also having older members who loved Mechwarrior, MW2,MW3 and MW4. Please Piranha if you are going to give up on Mechwarrior please give the servers and game licenses to the fans and people who are dedicated to making a new Mechwarrior and making it not only feel like the older games but put a refreshing spin on it like what MekTek did for MW4 Mercs.
It's not PGI's decision anymore and who exactly is going to pay the server costs? The game licenses isn't going to be made free to the public either, but MW5 is atleast modable and the community has passion and talent to utilize that. Sadly i guess this is also the final nail in the coffin for MWO, so i wonder how much content and assets from that can freely be used? Anyways i've been here before and endured the painful long wait, i'll endure it again.
We can only hope. Mektek MW4 is still an amazing game!
The license is owned by Microsoft, and they aren't going to give that up. But as far as everything else, PGI has basically already done that with MW5's mod editor. It has almost all the same tools that the devs used to make the game. I'm sure the modding community will use this to keep adding content to the game long after PGI ends their official support.
I hereby call upon PGI to sell the Mechwarrior license to Tex from Tex Talks Battletech. xD
I still play MW4 MekTek to this day ( I know the download is technically illegal but I own a hard copy of the game and windows won't recognize it anymore started right around the time MW5 was announced 🤔)
I want Smith & Tinker to get the IP back. Their trailer is still extremely enticing. Aside from that, Mech 6 should certainly be done by a company that can perform a finer polish on the end product, and can execute a bit more custom-made campaign, harkening back to the original MechWarrior games.
id love a MW6 with systems/campaigns like we had in MW3/4 (Mercenaries), that'd be soooo epic... well, one can dream, right?
Smith & Tinker is gone mate.
@@sk1llblack Wait, really? I thought they were a large-ish game company, like Activision, or Microprose (other former developers of the MechWarrior franchise). Not EA levels, but bigger than PGI.
Yeah, Smith and Tinker closed in 2012.
Also, the video game rights to the BattleTech IP is owned by Microsoft. Smith and Tinker licensed the rights from them, which was bought by IGP and then by PGI. Now PGI is on their third five year term which doesn't come up for renewal until 2025.
Mind you, that doesn't mean it's an exclusive license. HBS had a separate license to make BattleTech, but I think they let that expire when they stopped future development on their game. I doubt they would let another company make a MechWarrior style sim/shooter though.
@@ward0g415 I knew about the MS licensing, but licenses can be revoked, renewed, exchanged, etc, depending on who can line whose pockets. The studio being outright closed is the bigger problem.
I just bought MW5 Black Friday, and am having a blast so far. I see the rinse and repeats being a problem in the future but I have my campaign, my friend and I doing a coop and I just started a new one with my 9 yo last night. Collecting mechs is still a high. I would buy any DLC they have. I wonder if going Epic exclusive hurt more than it helped? I backed MW5 on full tier and was so po they did that I JUST bought it on sale.
Yah I didn't get the game until it was on sale and didn't get the dlcs until they were on sale to be fair. Do I regret buying it? Not at all. Not sure how MWO was affected by MW5, but if it hurt their content in either direction I wouldn't be too glad.
Bought the game too I'm enjoying it but man I needed those AI mods cuz those lancemates are just way to dumb even with the mod it's like working at a daycare.
Other than that the game with the DLC is fun.
I didn't get the game until it came to console. The controller binds hurt my head a bit but I have a ton of fun with it.
Get the dlcs. Completely worth it and opens you up to mods which require dlc assets.
Definitely hurt more than it helped. The loss in sales completely outweighed the extra margin on each sale
If they can market it the game and show components blowing off etc. It can be a hit. There is a lot of lore here and mech pilot is unique. I hope Mechwarrior can continue, but I did ask gamers at work if they knew what Mechwarrior was and they did not... I showed them an old mad cat photo and they did not recognize it :
i got one of ngng's t shirts with the timberwolf icon pic from mech 2 and whenever i where it lots of people know what it is including teenagers. i will agree with you that they never really marketed the ip
@@perry92964 ngl there marketing was non existant pretty much you REALLY had to dig around to find anything on it if you were not already looking around at anything related and tbh i think thats what really killed it.
the last DLC should be clan invasion - all they really have to do is inject some mission types in a certain area of the sphere - and inject 5 to 10 mechs from MWO into it
after that its fairly simple
Then the Living Legends team can turn those assets into something incredible. Here's to hoping
A half assed light-on-content clan invasion is not what i want.
That would be great. New mission types, a small DLC mission chain involving the Kell Hounds perhaps, and importing all the clan mechs from MWO. I’d buy it.
I still have no idea why they remade MW5 in Unreal instead of just starting with the MWO code base and assets and created MW5...... Would of saved a lot of production costs in developing base systems and then could focus on content.
@@hopelessdecoy because the Crysis engine is incredibly dated in comparison.
if they don't make a MW6 I really hope they convert and add all the MWO mechs and add them to the editor. The biggest Roadblock right now on the MW5 CAB and modding in general for expanding the time line is converting the MWO mechs to UE4. We have been trying to get the mechs in with their textures, animations, and cockpits but the best prosses we have ruins the UVs and cant convert animasions from Cryengine. Templar brute forced it by re-rigging all the mechs and making basic textures for the Clan invasion mod. If you have played MercTech/PirateTech and seen the wasp, stinger, and wyvern quality is important to selling the mod.
Another big problem is mod support for console community. Consoles have base game
@@bombomos thats they're own choice for going with consoles. Its a trade off for conveniance
We don't need another Clan era Mechwarrior game, Amaris Civil war game would be even better. Would love to take the controls as Kerensky and bash through the palace gates. The franchise is so much more than just Succession war era and Clan Invasion.
We do need a clan mechwarrior game because we have like 2 generations of mechwarrior fans that have not played any clan based stuff.
Hot take: I loved MW5 and am sad to see the franchise being put out to pasture here.
I actually found MW5, including its DLCs to be a good and fun game for those who do like sandbox gameplay rather than on rails story driven gameplay. On contrary I found the biggest flaws on MWO since its a lobby based PVP shooter that compared to similar games lacks a lot in balance and unfortunately a lot comes from the lore that is also full of imbalance
It's a very old game and a little hard to get to work but you should really try mechwarrior 4 mercenaries the game isn't on rails you can make a ton of decisions when it comes to the campaign and end the game very differently depending on what you do but every single mission is hand written and has different voice actors and lines making every mission feel unique even if it takes place on the same map it was really what I was looking for out of mechwarrior 5 but all I got was procedurally generated boring game play
It's almost like doing an exclusivity deal with Epic Games for a full year is a terrible idea.
PGI did an amazing job on the technical side. The way mechs and weapons feel and function in MWO/MW5 is the way they should.
On the design and marketing side of things, though... the failure to create enough variety (all missions feel the same, can't custom mechs much, and they pretty much force players to always use big slow mechs), and the insane levels of nonsensical greed (selling mechs and expansions for a fortune, accepting a bribe for a year of exclusivity and extending it six months for free) have to have harmed sales a lot. I myself stopped playing MWO soon after I started due to how absurd the mech prices were, and I still haven't bought anything in the MW5 line because it's way overpriced even years after initial release. Bad sales "confirm" the belief that MechWarrior is neither popular (if no one buys it, no one talks about it and no one buys it) nor profitable. PGI's design and business practices may have murdered the IP.
That they did R I P mechwarrior
Having started with MechWarrior 3 way back when I was a kid, I was disappointed by MW5. It's not that I haven't had any fun with it, but It just has too much grind and not enough variety. When I play it for too long, I just start to zone out and then suddenly realize that I'm defending the same military base for the 5th time in an hour.
I miss the old format of fighting through a string of missions in a linear campaign that all fit into a story. In the old games, characters had more personality and the writing was a hell of a lot better. Go watch one of the briefings from a MW3 mission and see what I mean. I also miss the customization options of the old games. You used to have just about as much freedom as you do in the tabletop. I'm also not a huge fan of Piranha Games' art direction. My hope is that the next MW will be more story focused and use an art style more similar to the one Catalyst Game Labs have been using.
MW3 was where I started as well. And when MW4 Mercenaries came out, I thought it couldn't get any better. The voice acting, the story telling, the legendary Duncan Fisher. Piranha games had 20 years of good solid Mechwarrior foundation, and chose to use none of it. And 5 shows that, terribly so.
This is exactly my problem with MW5. In MW3 and MW4, all of the missions had purpose and were built from scratch, which gave them far more variety and made them far less predictable. In MW4 especially, you had interesting characters and your in-game actions with them could tangibly effect the outcome in future missions. Save Hammer Lance in one mission rather than let them die? They'll show up later in a completely different mission to back you up when you're getting your shit kicked in. Backstab Jade Falcon? You kill Aisha Thastus rather than fighter her and getting her and her mech as a lancemate. Who you do missions for in the campaign affects what missions you can do later and what ending you get, etc. etc.
MW5, on the other hand, has randomly generated missions that are all exactly the same experience, with no reason to BE experienced beyond clicking on random enemies and praying you actually get to salvage them afterwards. If they had just made a solid, linear (or semi-linear with branches, like in MW4:Mercs) campaign with the mechanical and graphical foundation of MW5, they would have had a great game. Unfortunately, they decided to deliver an utterly undercooked sandbox with no character, no purpose, no variety, and no promises to entice players into continuing to play. Endless potential, absolutely zero soul in the execution.
@@SuffyANX Couldn't have said it any better. Big sad.
The Kestral Lancers DLC has a more linear story, so you could get that.
THE GRIND is real my friend' your NOT lying about that one. on reddit there's a dude who has 1.1 Billion C-Bills and a fleet of Mechs not just in Cold Storage. he owns like 4 Annihilators and 2 Marauder II's in his lineup. he's in year 3082. i'll say this much too many of the Mission are repetitive, needs MORE Variety. start US OFF with 2 Full Lances , 5 Mil C-Bills ,Needs a Day - Nite Cycle during your missions, Better Briefings / De-Briefings. an AFTER ACTION REPORT that details what the Actual Fuck is going on, Create a "SOLRIS 7" Universe and actually Create an Actual SPORTING EVENT of Solaris similar to Like John Madden Games. YES we should be able place Bets, Gamble, enter in Solaris; everything while we're visiting Solaris 7.
Now allow me to say this much EVERY MERC MW Game needs to STOP with the Same Formula . Give us a FULL SCALE Merc Co'. with all the bells and whistles to it. we should be able to build a Full Battalion / Regimental Merc Co Force to be reckon with on the battle field. to be fair NONE of the Past Publishers including MWLL, MWO, MW5, MW4 Vengeance / Mercenaries, MW 2 / MW2 Ghost Bear Legacy / MW2 Mercenaries ALL of the Other Expansion Packs Pirates Moon & Black Knight all of them THE SAME FORMULA OVER an OVER and OVER and OVER Again nothing has EVER EVER Changed. in the past 32+ years of Battle Tech / Mech Warrior franchise. when the FEDCOM Civil War happens we should see on a battle field over 50-100+ battle mechs fighting for dominance . the same should be at the battle of Tukkayid against the Clanners. .now i can say this I do like how we are Traveling to other systems, etc in MW5 especially when you visit the outer rim worlds.......but the SAME OL' Formulaic Ops over and over and over again gets soo stale' like MW4 if we fail to do something there' should be a Cause - Effect to our losing a Mission. this is how a MW Game should be.... again IMHO
- Cheers
I will always be grateful for the renewed attention PGI has brought to the IP. I think without their work, Catalyst would not have pursued their kickstarter to update the tabletop minis which has breathed new life into that side of the franchise as well. Hopefully, MWO will hang on for a while longer as that and the PC Battletech are the main ways I scratch the itch these days. Looking forward to more MWO content, Sean!
I'm old, so old man's thoughts here:
I used to get incredibly excited seeing the cardboard cut outs at game retail outlets for MW2, ghost bear's legacy, mercs, then MW3, Pirate's Moon, Vengeance..
You'd get a tangible box to drool over (embossed cardboard) PLUS a book, with all the Faction information, mech specs (IS vs Clan) weapon specs,..and true to Activision "big box" releases of the time, the manual (book) had hand scribble of pilots notes..making it feel like you were truly reading a log book of a Mechwarrior whom probably died in battle..also a keyboard function card.
Yes, these were primarily campaign based games, BUT they released NetMech, which, once allowed online gameplay. The graphics by today's standard are extremely basic, but the game play was compelling and exciting.
If a new IP were to take it over, it would be awesome to see these titles redone..not reinvented..but simply update the graphics.
Release a boxed version to gain interest by gamers whom have no idea about the MW universe.
Consoles get to create interest in retail outlets with games like Halo, COD, Doom, Wolfenstein.
All of these have "loot" such as companion books, miniature figures, lore books, quality posters...Wolfenstein got a action figure and Doom got a wearable helmet!
Imagine if MW got a mech figure to sit on your desk, a propaganda style Mech pilot recruitment poster, keyboard overlay templates etc.
Heck I got a Mech Warrior 3 t-shirt with the game!
TLDR:
Create interest with a reboot - then release MW6..make it an option to order a physical special edition version...maybe some junk like mouse mats, t shirts and crap like that.
Real fans would be interested in all that stuff I'm sure.
i would SOO LOVE a Reinvented / Updated Versions of MW2 - MW3- MW4 it'll be soooo awesome. (heck i 'm ol too) played my first MW1 game back in 1989 on PC, thats how i was introduced...love your ideas. wish they at least would Re-Do the MW2, MW3 - MW 4 games with Updated Tech , Graphics. etc.
so sad. Looking at the "upcoming games" I can only shake my head. Another company going for the quick cash grab route instead of the "lets make a good game and develop a steady playerbase" route.
It's in our hands...let them earn money to keep them interested in investing resources, or watch it dying.
This applies to the current or future owners alike.
but it's not "in our hands" any more. As Phil mentioned, it's no longer about simply making a profit, it's about the size of that profit. The game is now in the hands of the company's investors.
@@ThePereubu1710 beg to differ, where does any profit come from, if not from the customers? Investors money too is only given due to an assumption of return on invest, which is also profit from the customers in the end.
No money (from us), no game (for us).
If course, another option would be to run things dry so that the rights would sell for nothing and could be acquired by the devoted fan community to go on purely fan based but without the risk of being prosecuted to hell for copyright infringement.
I'm sure that it's been mentioned before, but there was a significant amount of bad blood that was created when Russ and crew decided to pull a fast one on the customer base and went to Epic games for the initial license. There were a number of people, myself included, who pulled out of our prepurchase orders after breach of contract. I love the universe, and what PGI has done with the IP looks wise, and wanted to support that so I had bought the highest tier package. Like I said... breach of contract meant that I pulled out of all of that. I did wind up getting the game a full18(?) months later when it finally came out on Steam, and I think I paid a quarter of what I originally had for it.
To add insult to injury, by that time I finally was able to get the game on my launcher of choice, half the people I play(ed) MWO with (the ones who got it on Epic) were sick to the back teeth of the thing, making getting a group together incredibly difficult. background
*looks up from playing Merctech with most recent update making AMS system freaking awesome.
Oh
*Goes back to playing MW5.
In many ways, this is good news. PGI is a hack dev anyways. We deserve a lot better than what this game ended up being, and what MWO is.
too bad if PGI discontinued the expansion of Mechwarrior 5 Merc, especially for creating the DLC that fitting with the story line, to bad. Well, if PGI want to end the MW5: Mercs progression, at least ended it with DLC regarding Clan Invansion that continued the previous campaign story line. the last DLC must epic! Its about time the Mechwarrior and Battletech take this matter seriously.
The modding community is keeping this game going, without a doubt. They've done the same thing for Harebrained Scheme's Battletech. The thing is; they shouldn't be doing it anymore.
PGI needs to go under and MWO and MW5 need to die. We've had almost a decade of mismanagement and incompetence when it comes to Mechwarrior, and it's high time the BT fanbase acknowledged it and just pulled the plug. HBS Battletech is already done in. It was supposed to be the dagger savagely thrust into the heart of MWO. It barely got out of the gate and perished within two years under the weight of its own bug-riddled mediocrity. Now, no one talks about that game anymore besides the literal boomers that are still obsessed with it.
Seriously, Battletech fans, it's time to walk away. This franchise needs to be taken off of life support so it can have a chance to possibly rise from the ashes again some day. Unless you stop clinging to PGI and HBS with the excuse that if don't support their games that there will never be anymore Mechwarrior games in the future, Battletech will never move forward.
Seems really active imo, I'm always finding new people to play with :) especially with all my lore friendly mods! I just wish I could find some battle armor mods xD
A Mechwarriorgame would be awesome for the upcoming PSVR2 for PS5. That's my dream scenario. It really feels like sitting in a Mechwarrior cockpit should be the perfect VR experience.
Yeah. PGI started working on VR when they were initially developing the game, but they had to drop it to focus on other things for its rushed release on Epic and never came back to it. A modder has finished their work with the VRWarrior mod, and even though the game isn't well optimised for VR it's just as immersive as you're imagining. It's the only way I play the game now. That said, mods can't be used on console, so you're kinda SOL.
@@ward0g415 Cool! Well, maybe they can release it as a DLC instead of a mod or something? I mean, if SONY wants it to be a thing for PSVR2, I'm pretty sure they can make it happen somehow.
With how Piranha treated the kickstarter and what they did to the fans from the start I am surprised they have lasted as long as they have.
I would love to see a MW that is more RPG focused. Join a faction make a character.
Maybe Turbine will buy it...haha They like buying dying games :) Sadly even if people MOD MW5, if no servers no game. Maybe they could let the community keep MWO and MW5 alive with private servers! I just wish they bothered to make conquest more fun with more rewards and Solaris 7. They should've added daily quests for bonus rewards that help player growth. Obviously, there are many more things needed, but too little too late I guess...
Played the crap out of MWO back in the early days with Garth and friends. My niece loved the locust, was pretty gud with it too. Bought a mug from NGNG, it came in broken, got it replaced free, also bought a Warden hoodie. Good times, then it was all downhill from there. The last thing I did was cancel my MW5 preorder because of the Epic game store exclusivity, a final straw if you will, don't know if I'll ever buy it. It's no Starsiege and it was far cheaper compared to the money I spent on MWO. Even if they revived Mechwarrior, the final achievement of PGI, I fear, is prove that Mechwarrior is at best a risky investment.
MW5 with mods is an excellent game IMO. I have around 40 mods that enhance the game. I wouldn't completely dismiss this game if you like MechWarrior.
It's a single player game it can't be "dead"
I'd like to know what Q4 revenues were for the game. Holiday sales may have made a difference.
I always wondered why they don’t make mechassault again (wait is that game series made by a different game company)
Having played each of MWO, Battletech by Harebrained schemes, and MW5, my ideal outcome would be that HBS pick up the IP and PGI 'pursues other opportunities'.
Quite frankly this looks like they are getting ready to bury MechWarrior all together.
Was looking up if armored core still existed and found this game. Too late to start playing?
I REALLY LIKE ARMORED CORE 2 ANOTHER AGE AND ARMORED CORE 3, GREAT GAMES
The problem with all the MW games since MW4 is that non of them have really advanced in the last 20 years. We have abit better graphics, and that's about it. The genre needs pushing ahead and innovation.
Contex is massive, that's the last thing required. Problem is applying it in a marketable way.
sad TRUTH is EVERY Publisher does the Same Formulaic Game...: Start with a 20 Ton Locust , Jenner, etc. Starting C-Bill Account: 3 Mill. A.I. Pilots that CAN'T SHOOT for SHIT nor Assists you in anyway possible because THEY CAN'T Shoot For SHIT and soo your stuck on Levels 1-2 Missions. Now that would be Awesome if they were giving you at least 1 MIll C-Bills. BUT NOPE your ONLY Getting 220K C-Bills and NO Salvage No Support No Artillery, NO NOTHING.
you don't EVER EVER Make enough money - even MW5 is like this. ( and i like really like MW5) MW4 only has 37 Missions including the fight with the Clans NOT including Solaris Events.......All the MISSIONS in hindsight are actually pretty Interesting, Creative, gud storylines. HOWEVER they're extremely Short, the lack any real "FEEL" like spectre lance is doing anything that makes an Effect to the Storyline(s). again they're WAY WAAAY Too short even for a MW Game. MW3 was one of the BEST actually. MW4 Vengeance as soon as you destroy the LAST mech the After Action Screen Comes Up and its OVER One And Done. it feels completely FLAT, WOODEN for a MW Game. we're NOT told anything about the situation going on with Ian Drisari's situation, the FED COM War or anything at all.its like things are just thrown together and we just play through it 1 after another and another and soo on and so forth. that's soo IMMERSION Breaking. it doesn't feel / act like a Battle Tech / Mech Warrior Game at all. again i enjoyed them when i played them ( heck i still have them Installed on my PC right now as we speak ...lol) but when i play MW4 Vengeance & Mercenaries then turn on MW5 on my Console (unfortunately thats where i have it and NOT on PC as i would like to have it ) its like NITE & DAY ...its soo drastically different IP's. now to be fair again MW5 isn't PERFECT at all. there's flaws in that game too. but at least it feels more realistic to me also to pont out MW4 is missing weapon Systems basic ones.......the Mech Lab is Fun to play around with but Way WAAAY OFF from the Lore & Battle Tech Read Out Manuals, some of the weapon stats are Completely OFF like Way OFF. 1 things for sure at least MWLL & MWO & MW5 Implimented everything from LORE & History. soo Big Props to the DEV Teams.
soo i repeat i 1000% AGREE With You on It Desperately NEEDS INNOVATION, Story Building, Environment Building, a Real FULL SCALE MERC Co' to full OWN & OPERATE as you see fit to run it. if we're able to own & operate at least a Battalion / Regimental level force Just LIKE in the LORE of Battle Tech. then you'll deftly see a Rise in players new & old especially old ( like myself, because we've BEEN ASKING for this for the past 20+ years now) . you can actually build a Merc Co' with a larger scale like this. we should be able to Hire & Fire our Drop Ship Captains & Jump Ship Captains. Our A.I. Pilots, Battle Mech Mechanics / Engineers, Tankers for our Tank Regiments, Soldiers for our Battle Suit Regiments etc etc. like actually run a FULL SCALE MERC Company instead of the Same Ol' hire 3 pilots for a 1 Lance of Mechs and then THATS IT your have a MERC Company ............smfh Lol !! like wtf is that ??
Wait, it was alive?
Since i found MWO IN 2015, I have participated in all products within the universe. Bought MW5 both on PC and PS5, loved the game. I have about 2k hours in MWO, 300 in MW5 and 800 in Battletech.
This being said, i do hope we will have happy times ahead. But i see only corporate intrests ahead...sh##
Are there any still running MechWarrior games on line
Mechwarrior Living Legends
i have the game for XB1.
Can we still play the game?
Has dev support for the game just been stopped?
Are the multiplayer servers being shut down?
Are there any MechWarrior games still able to be played online?
It's hilarious to me. As much as PGI has tried to do their own thing and pretend like the loyal fans of the IP don't know what they want, even though the most veteran players want a repeat of what made the series great (MW2 and MW3 with a dash of MW4), it should be of no surprise that their ideas have borne little in the way of any real progress or success. MWO is only played today because it's FREE, otherwise the playerbase would be even smaller, MW5 is only played because they're trying to pull in a new wave of players rather than catering to the veterans of the series. What they don't understand is that the vets vastly outnumber even the largest majority of new players that are showing interest. Like... the total number of sales PGI managed for MW5 is less than Valheim. IT'S MECHWARRIOR. It's HARD to screw up that bad.
PGI and Mechwarrior are like Gearbox and Duke Nukem, though at least the former saw fit to make the game moddable for players to fix problems they're too lazy to bother with. (Sad when Skyrim is the bar you set your production levels at.)
It's a shame. Despite the hard work the developers (the ones that actually have to do the hard work) put into MW5, it's still a lackluster game, even for MechWarrior fans. Like really bare bones to the point where I wonder if PGI heads actually gave a damn.
I feel PGI failed to capitalize on the BattleTech setting. To allow the player to interact with the universe outside of 'Mech combat. They kind of gave us the Fourth Succesion War. I guess in a better world we would have gotten the Andurien Crisis, the Ronin War (FRR fans would have loved that one), the War of 3039. All the way up to The Clan Invasion.
Barebones is a bit of an exaggeration honestly. If there’s anything that’s actually barebones, it’s the combat simulation, in terms of actual mechanics (lack of cool features from the old games, lack of MWO-style sensor warfare, lack of physical simulation (through armor crits, ricochets, stuff like that), etc.). And it’s made even worse by the poor AI. Sure, there’s a lack of good story (especially little in-between tidbits to help the game feel more lived-in), and Career Mode is lacking, but there’s still plenty of meat to be had. And the mechlab, that’s an issue as well, yes...
"I feel PGI failed to capitalize on the BattleTech setting. " Indeed.
In a few short years we will see this IP get picked up by another developer, one more capable. They will revitalize an IP that has been milked to death. I wanted to like MW5, I wanted to like MWO, unfortunately sometimes it is clear that it is okay to take a step back and let it die, so out of the shit, a flower may grow. Until then, comrades. @ phil, good video
I like MW5 but from day 1 the game felt like a good but unfinished mod of Mass Effect 3.
Piloting mechs in a game is always a good thing. The static npcs and bad voice acting did zero to add to the game and were just something to ignore.
According to Steamdb, there is still activity. Might be a patch or DLC3 but they are doing something. Pretty much daily.
I just hope MWO will continue to exist after the 4 years you mentioned :(
on a side note... they gave full access to the mod community
bought MW5, played it for one week. its boring and repetitive and the grind is real. i still love MWO after all these years playing against human players is just way more satisfying.
I didnt like MWO very much tbh, i was only warm on MW5. You are right its boring and grindy at times. Id rather play MW4 Mercs than MW5 Mercs.
@@thunderbug8640 i just played MW 4 vengeance and mercenaries recently and it just didn´t age well .. ballance even for the singleplayer campaing is an utter mess ..
@@MrTBSC Tbh the texture mods i use do a lot to fix the battlemechs, it’s the environments that really aged like milk, they are just so empty for a lot of the missions. Ive never noticed the poor balancing really, mind i do play with the Mektek mod and perfect balance is something I require in single player games, if I did, I wouldn’t like any Bethesda games lol.
I still play mw5 daily. I would definitely buy more dlc if they put it out there!
i was afraid right when i heard they were making MW5 in unreal, not that cryengine was great but it must have just been so much time and effort that could have been spent either in the MWO engine or going all in and attempting to port MWO into u5 and just having one game..
Agreed, remaking essentially an offline MWO just to use a new engine seems dumb
its a shame PGI wasted this great franchise. Battletech and MW deserves so much more than what is actualy seen.
The HBS game has definitely had more longevity for me than MW5 has, but I'm not going to pretend I didn't dump dozens of hours into MW5 and enjoy it. It had its shortcomings, but it was fun for the time I spent with it. That said, I think MW5 and MWO have just about run their course. It's probably best at this point if they end, and someone new takes a crack at it in a few years.
A single player game that can be modded only As Dead As You Let It Be
bummer, man. this sucks especially considering how much more popular the tabletop game is these days
I've read this situation pretty much the same way. The way it's worded doesn't sound good, but it doesn't rule out another DLC or a stand alone sequel either.
Also, wasn't there more than one team working on MW5? It would make sense to me that the staff working on the console ports would get reassigned since that job is now done, while the team that was working on game content stays on that project.
Even if this is the end of official development, I'm sure modders will continue to breathe life into the game far into the future. The MekTek guys were working on their mod long after MW4M came out, and the fan made MWLL is still going as well. I can see the modding community adding to MW5 (and HBS' BattleTech game for that matter) for a similarly long period of time, because this franchise has such a dedicated fanbase.
I think it's time for Microsoft to go hard with MW6 and give us a new PC/Xbox usable, force feedback joystick to go with it. MW3 and 4 with the Sidewinder 1&2 FF joysticks was unique and fantastic. Just the stick sublty moving left and right with each footfall is embedded in my mind 'till this day!
PGI did a lot for Mechwarrior, particularly in the art style of the Mechs. While its apparent they didn't have the skills to work outside the engines box enough to truly make an innovative game, I think they tried hard to keep the spirit of MW.
I'm afraid that most Devs would think the game play too slow, and would turn it into a twitch shooter like every other FPS out there.
Piranha never should have gone Epic exclusive. I can bet that issuing refunds and going exclusive with a games store that is not remotely the dominant storefront caused a huge cash crunch. Snubbing the biggest sales store is the dumbest business decision one can possibly make. Lo and behold, they ended up getting bought out not long after. Surprise, surprise.
With about 20 years between mech 4 and mech 5, I almost didn't expect it to ever be a thing. I think Catalyst or whoever owns battletech should do the GW thing and just hand out license to anyone who wants to make mechwarrior games instead of doing exclusive licenses, but I don't even know if Piranha has an exclusive license. I myself am disappointed by MWO and wasn't happy that Piranha was doing MW5.
Systems NOT Nominal....
Looking at the massive gap in time between MW 4 and MW5 I think we definitely not going to see MW6 soon. I think MW5 was a risk for them, as sadly this still remains a niche game. One of my favorite memories from the 90s is playing MW2. So my heart bleeds if MW5 did turnout to be not profitable for them, it's not going to promote other devs picking up the IP and having their spin on it.
I'm sad that they're not making a sequel to the tactical turn based strategy game Battletech. Roguetech and Battletech Advanced 3062 shows just how much potential this game has if you just give it an upgrade across the board. You can set yourself up for a sequel as well if you chose the Amaris Civil War as your campaign/main story. You play through the main campaign as a Mech Commander with Kerensky and it ends with the retaking of Terra. After beating the campaign, you then unlock career mercenary mode where it's several years later and you're a merc during the First Succession War. The sequel can then be about what happened with the SLDF, the Exodus Civil War, and how the Clans started with the ending mission being Operation Klondike. This universe has so much lore that you can create a good mechwarrior/battletech game out of that and it's just sad that they keep going back to the clans.
They should have learned from Multi-Player Battletech and set up a strategic mini game the way how they did it. It made combat and invasions actually have a meaning.
I am glad NGNG that you and so many others supported MW5 / MWO. Being an old player myself I drop out of MWO due to redundancy's of the game play and, like so many of the earlier MWO tubie's, after a decade + I had to defer to their comments about the game becoming a cash-grab...as old Macky would say ( but he's always been hard to please ). I hate to see either games go but it might be their time to do so & because of the many redundancy's over the near 20 years of the game's. Don't feel bad about the news, you and those around you have done all you can, and for that...I Thank You.
would be doing better if they had added VR support... its built into the engine so might not take that much for them to patch it. or maybe make it a DLC?
Already on my second run through and I'm still without the DLC. May get Heros just to get Artillery and Air Strikes. Game is still fun as is not even modded on Xbox One.
I disagree, this is good news. PGI needs to drop the license and let it go to another developer.
I like this take, but i doubt anyone else will pick up the torch. The legal wrangling of the IP being divided ALL to hell puts off any potential developers looking at it from a profit standpoint. THe division of the IP is so convoluted it leaves it too open to legal harassment. That's what truly condemned this franchise.
@@Raythe I thought most of that had been settled? no?
@@harackmw MechWarrior is Microsoft license, board-game is licensed to Catalyst, owner of IP is Topps, and I don't know where the BT turn-based video game license belongs to, is it part of Microsofts' portfolio or is it somewhere else... That's what's meant by the IP being divided.
But yes, the Harmony Gold issue has been settled permanently.
@@Finwolven Microsoft has ALL video game rights. Topps has all other rights (physical games, merch, physical and digital books) and Catalyst licenses it from Topps. HBS BattleTech was licensed through Microsoft.
@@Finwolven PGI managed to sell Gold Mechs for 500 bucks a pop with years of insane pricing of mechpacks AND use all that to fund mech 5 ....and keep MWO afloat through years of maintenance mode. I can only imagine what a dev team who knew what they were doing could do with the franchise, it seems more like a massive untapped market.
If they do consider Mech6 in the future, I hope it takes the multiplayer aspect from MWO and supplements it with the better mods from MW5 to deliver a product that takes the best of both worlds
I originally started playing Mechwarrior 5 on the Xbox through the gamepass. I enjoyed the base game so much that I got it on PC with all the dlc soon after. Then I modded it and its now one of my most played games on Steam.
I’m not an expert on the universe, neither have I played any of the prior games. But I love the game for its simplicity and kickback gameplay. I’ve missed PvE co-op games like this where you can just chill out with some buddies beating the shit out of baddies. If there’s no future games from this point, then I hope the modding community can continue to improve upon the works of MW5
Hell yeah brother. MW5 is really good with mods.
PGI seems to be no longer in control. So it's up to the owner. They don't seem to care about MW. So...were on autopilot again.
Well now I think I understand why Microsoft was so chill with the Living Legends team. They know it'll be the better part of a decade before that IP sees the light of day in a AAA release, and so that project is zero threat.
For all we know their long term plans are to give that group the license next
Giving the IP to the LL devs would be the best choice for the franchise.
I used to play Mech Assault 2 back in the day and it was the most fun I ever had online . Is MechWarrior 5 anything like Mech Assault 2 ?
Man I was so pumped when I saw mech5 for ps5. It litterly made me feel like a kid again when I saw it at Gamestop. Snatched that shit up as fast as I could lol. I've been really enjoying it... I hope this isn't the last mechwarrior. I've been so happy to play mechwarrior again. Kinda took the win out of my sails to hear this.
They should just release modding tools and get to work on MW6M. I really hope they do the same formula just expanded... a crafted campaign inside a procedurally generated sandbox and just improve upon the AI and adding many more mission types
very well --> free raign for modders and Living Legends 2
Haven't PGI been talking about developing their own IP? No mention about that in the report or the upcoming games. Seems like they've been underperforming since being acquired and they're just being pushed into the LOTR online franchise.
Of course it's dead... PGI (correction, PGI Leadership) has never really cared about Battletech and Mechwarrior beyond "how much of a quick buck can we make". Are there staff at PGI that actually care, sure, I'll concede that, otherwise we wouldn't have had awesome stuff like the concept art that was created and mech designs. But overall? They milked their cow, then burned the bridge to the cow, and are probably wondering why no one is playing or caring anymore...
I'm still amazed the new parent company hasn't outright fired Paul "Let make a BT League of Legends", or Russ the drunk PR disaster...
I remember realizing this when the cheapskate comment dropped
If they took mw5... And relaunched either as a new mw5 (not mercs) or launched as a mw6, but in reusing what's currently there and using the saved time to overhaul the surface, overhaul the balance, hash the material, and actually....animate people.
Confused. I thought Lord of the rings online was run by Standing stone? Same as d&d online.[ for a very old game has been geting good support nd updates / new content lately]
My problem is they always only have a lance 4 Mechs that means you cannot bring the Clans into it as they work in Stars 5 Mechs 4 Inner Sphere Mechs have not change against 5 Clan Mechs. This is what they do not see. Mech Warrior online is still going strong for now better than I expected.
Have only just bought this game and am really enjoying it.
The only thing I wish could be improved was the co op integration, it could've been done so much better.
Let the other players at least view your mech storage, see the star map and markets. Have a permission to give them financial control too, let them buy mechs and equipment, but keep destinations the decision of the commander. Having them just sitting on the sidelines pretty much uninvolved in the storyline is a bit boring at times.
Other than that, definitely worth playing 😁
As long as someone gets NavidA1’s 3D HUD mod working again, MW5 will never die for me.
I play on xbox through gamepass and it reignited my love for mechwarrior all over again i went and brought the game and all DLC so far
I hope the DLC for MW5 is clan invasion, that is a must.
I wish MS buy the MW franchise and revive it
Would love to see a MechWarrior title with a darker and more serious tone like MW3 and it’s expansion had and also a serious story. It’s a brutal and dark universe with unending war and war crimes being committed without a second thought.
Wait, are you saying the DLC that got ABSOLUTELY ZERO advertising didn't capture a new audience?
Imho the modders did a great job with various mods for MW5. There even was this great idea to turn it into a mech commander. MW5 has a good foundation and I hope, that if it is not continued, some of this great modders come up with a Clan campaign. Maybe piranha decides to release some mech packs as I am quite sure there is a lot pf develppment in stock right now which will not be relaesed in a new dlc anymore. So maybe Pirinha is out but the game will stay alive much longer. O really hope so
Gents, based on what it looks like with Piranha and their parent company (and the games they are putting out), there will be no Mechwarrior 6.
:( Oh no I hope not. I actually just bought it a week ago on an early year sale. I've played since a kid with Mechwarrior 2, loved MW4:Mercs, but hadn't kept up for a while lately. My house was robbed a while back and I have been replacing all I lost, so since before this was released I had more important things to replace first before games. That also meant being out of the loop with the news on it, but I recently caught up enough to get a new system, buy the games I had previously owned yet hadn't finished, and now I'm onto ones I hadn't tried or which were released during that down-time. I think few things in gaming are more of a gut-punch than to catch up on a game like this only to find its glory days are already over, the devs have already shit the bed, and the community is on its way out. This is exactly why devs need to realize the life-span of a game doesn't need to be this short-term party that burns out, but a long-term strategy. An IP like Battletech/Mechwarrior has a lasting appeal that can go on for years and keep both new and old players if treated properly. I'm enjoying the campaign immensely, still, but I can only hope they get the online part turned around for that full experience. I hope I didn't just buy essentially half a game.
I regret putting $100 into MWO. I never spent so much on a single game before. How much money did you spend on MWO?