MechWarrior MOBA | MechWarrior Online's (unrealized) Community Warfare
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- If you're curious how MechWarrior Online's Community Warfare developed over the last nine years: it really hasn't. It failed to fully realize the inspiration behind it's game mode and the imagination achieved by other studios. A lot of the ground work was there at release--it's a shame it hasn't really developed into much.
With MechWarrior 5's release and subsequent investments, however, the assets and tools are there to fully realize Community Warfare and Faction Play. Other studios have achieved grander ambitions: PGI could, theoretically, follow.
0:00 Introduction to Faction Play & Community Warfare
1:24 Part 1: The Presented Environment
7:31 Part 2: The Presented Gamemode
11:28 Part 3: Creativity and Economics
20:10 Part 4: Failing to Firmly Grasp the Inspiration behind Faction Play
23:34 Part 5: Failing to Firmly Grasp the Imagination behind Community Warfare
27:50 Part 6: Available Assets to Realize Either Inspiration
#mechwarrioronline #planetside2 #dota2 - เกม
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Another great video BT, love your work. You especially hit the nail on the head with the "Spirit of Battletech".
I had originally imagined the whole MWO game to be somewhat linked together. I imagined fighting for a house and earning a wage, but having slightly limited choices for things like mechs and customisation, depending on the faction the player was fighting for and the status of that faction. I also then imagined that after saving enough c-bills, the player could leave a faction and start their own mercenary company. Running a merc company would allow greater freedom, but more responsibility and risk. You could also then hire other players to be part of your mercenary unit. Think Mechwarrior 2 and Mechwarrior 2 Mercs a the same time. Do well enough fighting for someone else and you earn the ability to fight for yourself with greater freedom and player control. Do poorly at that, and it's back to being a rank and file soldier fighting under orders.
It's why we love this universe so much, because the possibilities are so vast and inspiring. MWO had that same spark, until players eventually realise that their dreams will never come to fruition.
Thank you! Something I confirmed with the folk in the Sarna Discord: throwing a 48-mech reinforced battalion at a single objective was unheard of except for a rare few instances in the most fierce Fed-Com civil war fighting.
@@birthdaytruck You touched on it as well, battles of that scale also change the way the fight happens. Just throwing mechs into a grinder a gradually whittling away the enemy isn't the Battletech that I fell in love with.
I recall splits on the MWO forums regarding the direction the game was taking, and the point that always hit a nerve with me was "skill". A group of players wanted MWO to be a "skill shooter", which meant picking the right target and hitting the right component. Of course that takes skill. But it dismisses the immense skill required to succeed in the other types of gameplay that we should have been enjoying. Scouting, ambushes, positioning, deception, resource management, drop planning, etc etc etc. The list goes on.
I'm still hopeful that one day we'll have a title that depicts Mech combat the way it was meant to be. One day...
@@falconergray I experienced the exact same split in the MWO community. I feel that, now, watching others play MWO the footage feels very similar to a regular FPS: pop out of cover, dump shots, pop back in cover. It's usually dumping laser vomit alphas.
I'd like MWO/MW5 to feel more like WarThunder, where you're managing multiple different kinds of threats, not just trading laser vomit alpha strikes. One threat needs autocannons, one threat needs lrms, one needs flamers, etc. I guess that puts me into the detested [range bracket] camp of MWO fans.
rougetech is a good example of how even a simple battletech mod mmo would be popular
man, PGI need to hire you on as a consultant.
I have always dreamed of MWO actually doing something like planet side 2
It's worth noting that I'm not a designer, developer, or code monkey. We have to be careful in thinking ideas = easily translatable developments.
But I'd love a seat at the table.
@@birthdaytruck Yeah true, I think there must be a lot of issues at PGI that stop this kind of stuff happening.
However this kind of stuff should not be complex, its already built into the crysis engine for AI to be in live matches. Its an issue with the funding i think, unfortunately battletech is nowhere near as popular as it needs to be in order to make some of this stuff possible.
I have however seen what they are doing with the events, they are using them for data gathering.
the most recent one had bonus armour and drop decks in quick play, it was actually enjoyable because you could take some risks without being blown apart instantly. This is most likely a test to see if increasing the armour has a decent affect on player up time in the game.
I welcome this kind of testing because we get a bunch of C bills and we test out new mechanics.
one think i think they could do easily for a quick win is environmental weather affects. For example if you are on HPG manifold you have a pulse every.... say 2 mins or so that will knock out your hud and cause damage UNLESS you are shielded by being indoors. this would change the map flow and cause a massive brawl in the underground. you could even have it randomly happen so you can never really expect when its safe.
@@birthdaytruck set your imagination free else we all still be playing pacman
PGI is just.... hard to point the intent of. They are passionate I DO think that, but the leadership bite over TOO much of what they can accomplish + cash drive, they get ashamed and wont admit it. I think PGI should ditch Solo - Co-op MW story+ sandbox games, terminate existing MWO and with scrutinous oversight do a MWO 2 with faction play fully realized with no damn nascar/ deathball quick play! Oh and add in all the immersion aspects of piloting a mech. Kudos for actually bringing melee combat though + Cracking cockpit glass, crouch, MW3 aiming style, legging = limping, fall+get up, quicker b-Betty, customizable HUD colors, style and elements etc. Same for a hypothetical other studio doing mainline MW games. Should still be cross pollination thanks hugely to Alex Iglesias, the BT creators, Catalyst GL, authors, fans+community, lore+canon masters, overseers and correcters and whatever PGI + M$ can bring
There are very few games that I'm more bitter about than MWO. It's truly impressive how royally PGI managed to screw up one of the most obvious slam-dunk IPs in history.
It had so much promise
@5:20 To say that it failed because PGI didn't commit to anything grander glosses over the reality. THE FIRST TIME we saw a rough draft of a community warfare map being worked on (posted by Paul I believe) was two or so weeks AFTER their Transverse kickstarter had failed. They didn't start working on community warfare until after their 'fly in to space' dreams had failed spectacularly and they realized that they were dependent on MWO living after all. What really bothers me is that in 2001 we had a functional community warfare in Multiplayer Battletech 3025 (MPBT3025) that also enforced tonnage limitations based on world development, and gave rewards for taking and holding territory in the form of a salary from your house. It wasn't perfect, but that beta from 2001 was far better than the overwrought mess that PGI developed in a panic after their star citizen clone blew up in their faces.
i remember way back when people were first talking about faction play, we called it community warfare back then, our unit was genuinly looking forward to the idea of taking a single planet for ourselves and just holding it and calling it a home. We werent a very big unit and we just wanted the fun of owning a piece of the innersphere while trying to defend it.
I wanted so badly to be a part of the Russian speaking Tikonnov defense force. It was fun playing with them, but repeating the same 4 wave suicides became stale.
@@birthdaytruck looking back on it, they also tried to force the launch of the clans in with faction warfrare and clans were blatently overpowered back then, making the launch of faction play that much more sour.
Man, the vision that you and undoubtedly many others had for this game amazes me. I think the scope of the possibilities was probably too large for a company as small as PGI to handle but they could have at least pulled some elements from the Battletech universe rather than just have Faction Play be a longer version of quick play.
I think MWO as a MOBA would have been more appropriate given their small size.
your videos on mwo are very insightful and accurate man. It reminds me how exciting mwo, early days, was when faction play was new. I do feel like another game that can be analyzed regarding this is world of tanks. Its frontline seasonal mode is used to test new features, give meaning to its 8th tier tanks for near endgame players and break up quickplay/ random game monotony by adding... moba lanes, repair zones, and a 'frontline' which is only the attackers advancing spawn boundaries. Pgi, honestly, should've looked at PS2, WOT, and WT... It bothers me sometimes; the missed opportunities.
Mechwarrior... it was in microsoft's hands... abandoned for halo's xbox future... became a f2p... now basically mw/bt remains a fan project........ ugh.... maybe living legends 2 or ma remake will be something...
They're such a small studio - and do relatively good work considering no publisher, small, etc - but they often don't make use of existing ideas that would benefit their small size. A Mech MOBA would translate fairly easily.
Love the mechwarrior content. Keep talking the truth, my dude
Thank you - I'm trying to balance the channel 50/50 with Battletech/MechWarrior content. I'm not really sure what else is there to talk about, other than "I wish MWO ballistics felt like WarThunder ballistics".
@@birthdaytruck also shout out to my fellow CCAF enjoyers 👑
@@RemTV Finally, someone who gets it.
as an OG legendary founder and buyer of the sarah jenner and timberwolf clan pack, i have been disappointed greatly
as an old school mechcommander player i always imagined the dream gameplay to be like the intro movie lol
I know I come back to the intros a lot, but they capture how a battle really ought to feel.
Finally the youtube algorithm has truly blessed my soul. Actual content I enjoy.
Some good ideas. I miss scouting and the Long Tom. One of the problems was that competitive players were mostly choosing merc and winning depended on which side they were playing on at the time.
I really hope they pick up the pace on updates now. With the Crusader now ingame, and a Hatchetman coming to MWO, it seems like they're intent on breathing new life into the game.... but that could also just be a trick of the light. For all I know they'll just keep adding mechs and mild balance tweaks, then nothing else, after all they did say that melee was still not coming despite the Hatchetman's announcement. This could become like Gundam Battle Operation 2, where new mechs just keep getting piled on and on, while the same boring gamemodes and maps get stagnant and neglected because its the mechs that get the money, not the game.
It feels like PGI have become apathetic towards their products, just content to let it rake in the premium sales while maintaining a guise of ongoing support, akin to Team Fortress 2. But those cases the studios usually do so because they have other projects they'd rather work on consistently; PGI doesn't have anything else as far as we know. It's strange.
PGI has MW5, and they're clearly investing into that title. They're small, but i think the MOBA angle is such an easy investment worth our time.
@@birthdaytruck The support of MW5 is also rather lackluster; I understand they're a small studio, but their method of updating MW5 tends to lead to disappointment as it breaks mods that are more interesting than any DLC they've put out. The upcoming DLC is bringing interesting changes though, mainly the rival merc outfits. It remains to be seen if mercs will be another barebones feature for modders to flesh out, but for now I'll say it again, I really hope they pick up the pace, because I (usually) really like what they put out, even if it needs a dozen mods to be fun.
As for MWO, I think it suffers a bit from its playerbase having Team Deathmatch syndrome and rarely picking objective gamemodes (I'd argue every recent Battletech release suffers from this). Knowing these kinds of gamedevs, they use pickrates as a big factor in deciding how to change and add to their games, and that may put them off making more objective-focused modes if they believe no one will play them anyway. As desirable and minor as it may seem to us, to PGI it may just be time better spent getting more mechs in. Maybe for something more risk-free they could juryrig Incursion into an Attack/Defend gamemode akin to Battlefield's Rush, I can see that being cheaper than porting over MW5 assets. Though maybe that'd be too similar to Faction Play already. I dunno, we can spitball ideas all we like but I doubt it'll get enough airtime to be noticed by someone influential.
Im so glad i subscribbled to you.
Good video as always, I'm personally holding out so much hope for Living Legends 2...
There's so much promise, lots of talented and invested people so I'm really hoping they pull it off. Only thing I'm worried about is whether they can produce a tight experience, or if they might try to achieve too much all at once. But I'm a lot more hopeful for them than for MWO.
I agree: I can sympathize with PGI's e-sport focused approach. It's a quality assurance thing. But I think many of us wanted this iteration of the franchise to be a fun sandbox - even if there's an occasional cat turd.
Saw your BF2 video in my feed, checked your channel and found great content, keep up the good work!
The system works! Thank you - give the library a share!
BF2, another dead game - thanks to it's devs and the elite chasing their playerbase away...
Did pgi actually borrow dice's strategies?
Just watched your previous video about the stagnation. One of the best video’s I have ever seen. I was Deep in this game back in the day right before clan mechs released, and I have always missed it. Hopefully it can be turned around.
I wouldn't hold your breath. There was a Sean Lang Podcast with the studio lead, and a MWO 2 isn't likely. That's another video, but I'm thrilled you appreciated my prior work!
Great video, an keep up the great work
Thank You!
Amazing essay, thank you
Great video as always. I have put a few hundred hours into MWO but just started this year and never touched Faction play so this was my first introduction to the mechanics. It seems like I didn't miss out on a whole lot. When looking at faction play I'm reminded of something you said in your MW5 video about 'minimum viable product' - faction play appears to be another example of that coming out of PGI.
One thing that came to mind when you talked about MOBAs - I have always wondered why/how MWO has been unable to capitalize on the popularity of the 'hero' shooter genre like Overwatch etc due to the striking similarities in gameplay design - small teams of distinct characters fighting quick rounds on relatively small or centralized maps. Learning the many mech chassis and how they behave is such a fun part of MWO. I can hear a teammate call 'Nightstar' and immediately assume a lot about how the mech will be played and what loadout it will have. Many mechs have such strong characterization, and we already have 'hero' mechs to some extent. I've always thought that maybe some reinvestment and marketing at a key time a few years back could've made MWO gain some steam again.
I don't think the ingame balance can be altered very much at this point. Adding mechanics like knockdown or gyros would be a significant shift in the gameplay and I'm not sure I trust PGI or MWO's current state to handle such a change with so many chassis and perks to deal with. I've always had the feeling that the balance in MWO is hanging on by a thread and it just barely works in this current incarnation, especially at the higher tier levels.
Instead of a true combat rebalance, there's a lot of good suggestions for faction play you mention that would be comparatively very easy to implement. C-bill limit drops, limiting technology to a certain lore year, tying technology to a faction (MRMs being a Kuritan invention, Trebuchets being characteristic of FWL forces, etc), doing a clan invasion style small number of clan mechs vs a horde of older inner sphere mechs, etc. These things are only a small level above the events system that we currently have which has a decent buy in from players.
Faction is great if you want to lose to the best in the game, over and over and over again. They play like they actually want their opponents to quit. Nasty buggers, all-in-all.
Everything that has happened over the past decade has convinced me that PGI are NOT the right developer for any Battletech or Mechwarrior games. I love Living Legends and I would love it if Microsoft could make Living Legends 2 an official game. But that is incredibly unlikely.
A capella huh. *drinks from my Federated Commonwealth mug.* I guess we never could have been friends v.v
I'm new to your channel & it's clear you are a BT fan & I hope that means I'll find more BT & even MW content on your channel or be getting more BT content in the future.
My next grand project is the MW5 DLC - that will likely be another hour long essay.
It's funny that you say that you feel that pgi wanted mwo to be an esport, because they couldn't even be bothered to put a working ranked game mode into the game.
The core gameplay of MechWarrior online has so much opportunity for skill expression. But pgi has repeatedly avoided taking steps to properly support the players who wanted a competitive experience, and now they're all gone.
I mean, they were hosting and streaming tournaments with prize pools and they didn't even give players the opportunity to play the same game modes in the game. Absolutely ridiculous.
In terms of gameplay mechanics, mwo is my favourite game of all time. But gameplay mechanics does not a satisfying experience make.
You make some good points here. Figure out a way for someone/something/group to serve as house leaders. Give each planet various industry traits (water, food stuff, common metals, rare metals, light/heavy/battlemech industry, etc) as well as building that need to be built to exploit these traits. Give each house leadership the ability to allocate a budget and objective type to each world (in addition to a basic world militia budget) that players use to fight on the planet. Use the basic battletech objective types to generate battle objectives: objective raid, 12 mil c-bill budget, destroy rare metal mine on Z planet resulting in 3 maps (landing, advance, objective) each with its own objective culminating in the raid map requiring the destruction of 5 specific buildings. Add the repair/rearm mechanic you mention as well as a retreat mechanic with each lower the overall cost of each battle and thus how much of that planet’s budget is used. In addition, add the ability for players KO’d to take command of an NPC tank/vtol/infantry at little to no cost that respawns until the all mechs either retreat or are KO’d. Lastly, add a rudimentary salvage system that rewards the side holding the field of battle with a refund to the battle’s budget; encourage people to retreat instead of fighting to the death because it could make the opponent that much stronger next fight. For larger/longer battles, add a request/reward system that allows leadership to invest more funds into a planet’s battle budget.
This might be a video worth revisiting, as MWO factions playercount has skyrocketed in the past month or so due to an in-game event and community outreach effort.
Are the gamemodes and maps the same? That's the biggest deterrant.
I think too much time was spent reflecting on the MOBA and Planetside 2 references. Yes it points out the scale of how thing should be considered, but I veg out after 2 minutes video-wise. The point is good though.
Looking all past that, I'm positive that you bring out a good core point to what MWO should be. Just like in-lore, I believe we all gravitate to our personal mechs. For mine, it's the Phoenix Hawk Roc. Do I have a place in the current game? No, not really. Because unlike tabletop where the PHX is beloved as a decent scout that can defend itself, I'm just a waste of tonnage hoping to eek out 200 dmg at best before I go kaput. Can I get 700 often? Yeah! But wait, why is my value as a smaller mech also in the damage metric...huh.
Either way, it's a bit much. MWO itself has already introduced things like ankle-biting lights that are almost impossible to kill without another ankle biter or Assault one shot. Doesn't make much sense. I'm starting to think the answer to making Mechwarrior great again is to start designing a lore-faithful mech game and not a competitive brawler. The only truth in video games these days is that comp players ALWAYS ruin it for the rest of the community. Games have died when company's ask for comp player advice. Competition is not the same as viable, fun, and sustainable games for the average joe. Proof of this is the Piranha, a little guy that auto-kills anything and everything that is left by itself. How the F is that good game design? Well, it's certainly good for a game full of sweaty men who want to kill each other inside of a sumo bowl. That's right people, we're not actually playing Mechwarrior, we're playing a Sumo game where there are no weight and size limits.
32:14 Planetside had Mechs, core expansion and it was awesome
The last of the MWO team just put out a video saying they're talking about the next pvp Mechwarrior game, so there's still hope. They even said in their video that their approach is to talk to the community and actually (allegedly) listen. Might be a good time to pop open that discord and get into the cauldron. I've never been active in the communities, but I might now just to be involved.
To your videos points:
I love the planetside idea, but I think something they could have implemented quickly without rewriting the entire game would have been procedural levels and objectives. Make the locations known for somethings sometimes, but other times just complete fog of war, so scouts have an actual role to play. Generate the map server side when the game pings out a match. Have drop decks locked in before the player clicks join, as if you're stuck in a dropship. Feed the generated image to players first and then download the map to people's computers during a planning phase. Realistically this could have been done quickly if the height map materials for biomes were pre-installed, all players would have been downloading would have been the height map itself and which objective points were active. All of this could have been done with what the game already had when faction play was released to give it legs. Then they could have worked on the economy, etc.
The economy would have made a huge difference. Salvage rights and whatnot.
But nah, just a dead mode, like you said. Even when it was really active I only played it a few times, because it was immediately stale for all of the reasons you listed above.
Are you referring to the Russ Bullock podcast?
Screw the cauldron and the knowitalls who prop it up.
@@birthdaytruck no, but thanks for reminding me I wanted to watch that. The video I'm referring to is on the Mechwarrior online main channel titled "Mechwarrior online 2023 plans devlog"
As a proud taurian I'd be happy to have a good old fashioned smackdown with you in this hypothetical game XD
Mwoba sounds interesting. Combined arms is good way to feel mech as large and mighty unit
The code for BTmux's still exist. It's not much to look at, but it's entirely capable of doing what you ask for at the end of this video. Doing so and being iterated upon. Back in the day Frontier Lands wasn't far away from your Planetside 2 concept. It just wasn't 'pretty'. We were hacking away at each other in level 1 tech, mechs, tanks, infantry, and vtols, back in 2006. We could still be doing so.
Imagine having to ambush the enemies assaultlance with nothing but urbies because your own team invested heavily into artillery in the last match and now has to save up C-Bills for the wider campaign. But what the enemy doesn´t know is that one of your lances was swapped out for a lance of the allied Big Mac and the next inbound leopard wave will drop off 4 T-Bolts
Imagine anything other than 3 lane maps of deathball/deathparade gameplay.
Haha, BWC were the first to do the light rushes over the gates. Great fun, though the community adapted really quickly to it.
I may disagree with some of your points, but it's clear that you're passionate about the setting, and just want Battletech and Mechwarrior to live up to the massive potential that the setting has.
I have seen other games do the faction play style that people wanted out of MWO's faction play, and tbh the same bigger issues that drove people away from MWO's faction play drove people away from those other games' faction play. Yes, the maps and the objectives in MWO were absolute rubbish, but even if those were fixed the overall issues would still be the same. Large groups of organized players would crush anything smaller from the weight of numbers behind it, and it wouldn't be a 'living' map with push and shoves happening from the various factions like what people imagine it to be. It'd be up to the largest organized group of players to decide what faction 'won' and everyone smaller either got steamrolled or swapped sides to make the steamroll even worse. Either they price out the smaller (relative) groups from having any influence, or the larger groups just buy their way to victory.
It's been shown that time and time again across genres, when it comes to faction style gameplay mechanics that the vast majority of people who play games aren't going to be following lore, they're going to follow the wins, *especially* if there's rewards for winning.
This killed faction play much more then all the things you rightfully criticize in this video. It was pug stomp heaven. Organized teams on coms with clear chain of commands tore through PUG teams that had too many armchair generals and no organization to their drops. One could say that was the point, but alienating a large chunk of your playerbase by making it so that they are the fodder in a horde shooter isn't going to help a game mode (or a game in general) grow and sustain itself.
One of the issues that MOBAs do have is that the winning team snowballs hard, and there's a _lot_ of controversial mechanics that they have to fight back against it, because getting farmed isn't fun but taking away earned power isn't either.
One of the things I personally wanted out of faction play, more then anything else tbh, was for lights to be able to fulfill their role that they have in the lore. They're supposed to be far forward scouts and suppressors of units smaller then themselves. Having maps so large that teams _need_ to have a couple of lights to keep tabs on where the enemies are, and having your intel focused lights trying to keep one step ahead from your knife fighting lights _in the same match as everyone else_ would be the light gameplay that we've been lacking since the introduction of the tabletop game. Having lights take out forward operating bases full of tanks and infantry, marking tasty targets for the chonkier, slower mechs coming up behind.
PGI deserves a _lot_ of flak for how they've managed hype over the years, but they should get more credit from their critics for doing something that no one else was able to do. Fight Harmony Gold and winning. Despite that fight happening _years_ ago, they're still trying to recover financially from it. That fight bankrupted studios before PGI took up the fight, and HBS didn't really commit to it. You can tell there's passion behind what PGI does, but it's like 30 people in the whole studio trying to manage two games that frankly needs at least triple that amount of people on the team in roles that they just don't have currently. As you said in your MWO video, the engine is showing in MWO and there's absolutely no way that migrating to a new engine is going to go well for MWO, because of the literal thousands of dollars and hours that a single player can have thrown their way over the nearly decade since the launch.
would love to see Mechcommander Online
Mwo, as an mmo. Fills all these things..
I really enjoy your video essays in general, especially the battletech ones! However I feel like this discussion is missing out on (what in my opinion) was the best part of faction play: Scouting! premade 4v4 objective based missions with only light and medium mechs! To refer to your previous MWO video, the golden triangle potential is HUGE, so many memorable moments playing that gamemode, and close friendships formed through cooperating and tuning our builds to make the best performing scout lance together. A real shame you decided to omit it from your review of faction play, as the objective based 4v4 nature is very close what you outlined as ideal.
After a quick google it would seem scouting was scrapped for some reason.. RIP.
It was scrapped but I, too, don't remember why. I played a handful of matches with it, but I recall the objective was often eschewed for just brawling it out. I wish I played more of it, and I wish the only 4 v 4 mode wasn't tied specifically to a middling community warfare game mode.
Just give me a 4 v 4 quickplay with one of each weight class, please.
IIRC scouting was scrapped because there was a lot of 'meh' response to mode, even more then Solaris or FP had in general. Light pilots wanted more then just brawling in lights, and people who didn't like light piloting were locked out of other options when it sprung up as an option.
Now I was dota mechwarrior. Ah a longing for that which does not exist. Pain.
Could have been SO grandiose and so much more... Oh and the map in your vid lacked the Aurigan Coalition which still exist in canon-lores ilClan era, my fav periphery state thanjs to BT the game. And Free Rasalhague Republic/ Ghost Bear Dominion/ Rasalhague Dominion exist still to. THE merger and actual vision realization and wish of Kerensky himself! Best of both worlds and tries to rid themself of the worst aspects what little there is.
Man, I just want EvE: Online with mechs, honestly.
lets hope some indie/AA team gonna risk and make mech game similar to your ideas. Until PGI meet some competition situation might stay the same.
Just staryed playing this year pumped some money an hours into it XD iam glad ive mangaed to have a good blast one of the most epic spectacle games to be in at times
I never have had much confidence in MWO, it just feels like Halo with mech skins
I have an idea. Since MW0 normal matches fill that "pvp as mechs" very well, maybe faction play could've been a “coop PVE” experience.
so, I imagine it would be sort of like a type of "left for dead" like game. there would be a horde of enemies, that can be battlearmor, tanks, and of course battlemechs. light and medium battlemechs would be the most common kind, but for the final boss lances it would be heavies and assaults (and maybe even those tripod superheavies). NPC wrecks would have to disappear in order to not strain the game too much.
there would still be drop decks. so if you die to a hard npc, you can come back in with a mech more suited for the fight
there would be 3 drop types. a lance of four for a small map, 2 lances for the medium maps, and then 3 lances for the big maps.
there would be mainly 2 game types. attack and defend. in "defend" its horde mode, but there would be additional objectives for extra exp and cbills scattered throughout the map (so the players might consider bringing a light mech in their drop deck). in "attack" its based on dropping in and then trying to accomplish main, secondary and even tertiary objectives (there would only be a set amount of enemy units, and your willingness to risk the mission and your repair costs would be to get those secondary and tertiary objectives)
these battles result in a type of "victory points" for the specific border planet. After both sides of players had done the certain amount of allowed games for that planet, the total VP would be tallied against each other. who got all the extra points and more mission badges (one of the bigger badges would be for suffering the least amount of losses/damage) would win the planet for their faction.
I think this game mode would best be used in separate "wars" and separate mech bays. When a war starts, your "faction play" specific mechbay is cleared, and you have to start over from the bottom with basic starter mechs. the missions would be the smallest at the start, and as players gain cbills and reputation with a faction they will get more mechs and can participate in the bigger games (3 lances vs AI).
There is a lot of potential for players to start their mechbay and career, and earn their badges and cbills. There would be no real money purchase of cbills or mech, but at least there would be cosmetics if the company is desperate to monetize it. and if someone joins in late into a war they will get a larger stipend of starter cbills and mechs for "catching up" with the rest of the people in the war (but not as much if they had been playing the whole time).
Enemy units can be tweaked to be easier to kill. The enemy AI machines would mostly have basic armor and weapons, but the bosses would have the good tech. and you can salvage from the AI, so there is incentive to not core or disarm a mech (shoot legs or head). that stuff can be salvaged and put on your own stuff.
The balance of player mechs can be redone. so that clan weapons that are purchased or salvaged are actually super good, and you can put it in your IS mechs. There could be a unique skill tree (that applies your piloting skills to all mechs), that can involve call ins and other unique game abilities (maybe a call in for a tank “pet” to follow you).
And maybe to keep things from being too stale you can have an optional “enemy commander”. They would have the power to summon the NPC tanks and mechs from his available options and even tell those units to attack certain objectives or areas (i would keep them from telling the units to attack a specific mech just to limit griefing), this way the matches can be unique and would attract players who like micromanaging.
it gives the less hardcore players a way to play the game without having to feel like they need to have the best mech and gear just to compete (like in quickplay)
and it would also make the que time way less. you only need 4 (to 8 to 12) people for your faction to get a game started. instead of waiting for an additional enemy team. It would feel like a massive war, as you usually fight more enemy NPC units then what mechs your team brings.
This actually sounds very cool. and is a great entry point for new players if they don't want to mess with being shot up by long standing players in the quick que. They can have a fun co-op PVE experience in the universe of battletech.
this would be impossible to happen (although they now have the AI and tank assets from MW5), i doubt they would ever go in this direction (if they ever decide to fix it). But its fun to dream of what could be.
I hadnt considered the moba angle, id still be rather an all out combined arms combat with some kind of economy to balance things out as done in living legends. but if people get it working im in.
I would prefer Planetside 2's approach, too, but PGI is a small studio. I think the MOBA angle would provide vastly more fun for only a minor investment.
i still like this game ill be back in sometime
We need more your type. Telling us the hard truth.
Thank you - I hope my videos are full of actual truths. Without being a developer and knowing any of PGI's dev team, I can't say it'll always be the whole truth.
If you only knew how accurate it is and how impossible it is to kill these zombies who control the IP's direction
Mechwarrior Living Legends still exists.
PGI has been living off of Mechwarrior online for almost a decade and it's such a shame that that the community warfare pillar was so low effort.
out of .... way too many games, this mode either would crash when tryna leave the que was seemingly locked into
frankly didn't even know there was a planet control element to it not that it seems to matter
I'm really excited for gundam battle operation 2 it's like mechwarrior online in some aspects but far more fun.
It isnt lol, have fun with stupid gacha mechanics and stun locking from people who’ve played the game since launch
MWO servers still alive
I raise my glass to my fellow Comstar Veterans who fell at Tukayyid. It was doomed from the start. Should've been 10 Clanners vs 12 IS.
Don't worry, the butthurt devs at pgi have actually inverted the strengths over the last 2 or 3 years - Clans are now much, much weaker than IS.
Great analysis on faction play and it's inherent weaknesses and the lack of innovation on the side of PGI. MWO holds a very special place in my heart but it has not had the love that other games in similar genre's have had. Comparisons to Planetside 2 and War Thunder are great because these games are similar in age but have clearly hit a different mark with their communities. It all has to do with the curation of the title and the curators being PGI have a responsibility to their players to keep the game engaging and not be there just to collect a paycheck. That being said, some of the new changes that have been coming to MWO have me hopeful for the longterm future of the IP, and maybe one day we will see something in mech5 that will be more of a spiritual successor to living legends.
I'm thankful you appreciate the comparisons to Planetside 2 and WarThunder. 2012 was a keystone year for F2P titles, and I'm disappointed MWO seems to have hit a development wall.
Even Star Citizen, now 10 years along, is doing better.
Polite feedback:
I completely agree with what this video is saying. As you have presented, Faction Play feels 1 dimensional, uninspired and loses out on the whole "try to win with as little as possible" motiff that's frequent in any battletech mercanary story.
And while I agree many of your points need restating, I do feel many parts in the middle section were just restating what you said before with different words. 12-20 felt cyclical, which started to wear thin and undercut your message by the end of it.
That's good feedback, and I appreciate the honesty and civility, here. I think my writing would, generally, benefit from parsing down and this comment makes absolute sense to me.
I'd love to check out an honest attempt at a Mechwarrior MOBA/MWO MOBA gamemode.
A slower, first/third person cover-based MOBA isn't something I've seen before.
Honestly - a traditional top-down Battletech themed MOBA would be entertaining, too.
“What a great video!”
> Capellan
Video ruined
Well, this was disappointing. Is definitely been a few years but I was kind of hoping this mode would have been developed into Planetside or Tribes but with big stompy mechs.
Although I will say there is a very good reason mechs as vehicles is a concept that is absent from Planetside 2. Mechs in the original were introduced as fight ending bipedal death machines and took too long to balance out. There is probably a rough draft for inclusion somewhere in the development studio but I am willing to bet the general consensus is it’s just not worth the effort given the history.
Damn MWO MOBA is an awesome idea....makes what MWO gave us even worse when you realise it :(
i agree with almost everything you put here
i was one of the top players on the leaderboard for faction play kurita loyalist.. with the unit COMA
but there is some things you missed out that really killed off faction play
1: the weapon ballance was very bad... dos anyone remember the kodiac 4 UAC 10 that they never fixed for a year.. or pop tarting clan PPC's..
2: they added this thing called scouting.... sounds good right do good in scouting and you get stuff like UAV or scambleing... or long tom that nukes the enermy team... wait thats not a good idea ... you mean they did not remove it for 6 mounths... you mean one giant unit called MS would dominate pugs in scouting. so they would always get the long tom... you mean they only removed the long tom. when people would spread out. go into groups of 3 towards the enermy and use the longtom against them. and the community mannager got sick of getting nuked all the time....
3: then they added quick play maps.... you spawn 4 times on quick play maps in the same area.... that turned into spawn kill only games....
my unit coma quit MWO because of the BS....
if you would like to know do some research into what the Mech Registry was for MW4... it was almost everything you wanted for faction play but for MW4... i know the guy SURN that made it ... wish i was around to play that version
I was always aware of the MW4 scene, but never part of it. The balance discussion is one worth having, but *so* difficult because of all the ideas out there. It's why I think it was worth sticking to a tried and true MOBA or Planetside 2 model: there wasn't a need to reinvent the wheel, especially with PGI being a small team.
I've tried faction play three times and all three times I essentially waited for a bit to get yelled at.....not what I play games for
If battletech was just a game about giant robots I don't think anyone would have a problem with the state of pgi games. But because it's not, it disheartening to fans like us the state pgi games are in. I was part of the beta test for mwo I stopped playing because of cheese builds and murder balls. The lack of tactics from teammates really killed the game for me. The most fun I had in mwo was getting on team speak and actually running flanking maneuvers on the enemy. When people stopped doing that and just played by the meta of murder balls I gave up. Faction play was the same. Getting stomped multiple times win or lose was just painful. They tried having scouting missions for faction play but even that was a bitter pill.
It's also an odd Battletech scenario that 48 mechs - A REINFORCED BATTALION - would run into a meat grinder.
I wonder if you consider the unrestrained mechlab an issue. It's after all what enables the degenerate minmaxed builds where Warhammer's machine gun nipples swell to become dual gausses. Even if economics would be in play people would just default the economically viable build that would probably consist of a gauss rifle with SRMs or whatnot - builds that have nothing in common with the Lore or Tabletop.
Yes, I do, and it's a video on it's own that I'm going to script out, soon.
Ima have fun taking tikinove over and over again
CW started Dec 2014
IMO pgi don't care what players want. They just want to make money for the least amount of effort possible.
MWO could have been the greatest game ever...with a different developer.
haven't watched all the way through yet, but I suspect limiting customization to stock builds with only minor (regulated) customization and segregated clan and IS play will appear as a suggestion as to how to avoid the cancerous experience of playing pub IS against a full stack running clanner las vom, will check in at the end of the video
nvm, you went deeper, good analysis
i dont know why they dont do a Battlefield mod.....just a big tatical map....Pcs can handle that nowadays...
Microtransactions go brrr. Hopefully Piranha will lose the license and something better can come out of it.
"show me anything at this point"
here you go a new mech pack and a bunch of lootbags.
Are you not entertained?
idk, i feel like a madcat could kill about 4 urbies
Still probably not breaking even on the investment, though. Unless you start "valuing" MechWarrior life.
Dude, they can't copy-paste from Sarna because copyright exists.
That was a hyperbolic example. The point is that sufficient material exists already that it would be easy to incorporate little written details about the world they're selling to us.
Fair enough.
Faction play needs more rewards the game mode is long play will little to no reward
Alot of you don't realize how hard it is to get a game to run like planetside 2 ... as a person who has close to 8,000 hours in it, I can say it is NOT the way to go , for something as complex as Battletech / Mechwarrior . PS2 has a MULTITUDE of problems, and has HAD them since it's inception. Mainly because of the engine and how it functions. No one else has had the ability to pull anything like it off. Warhammer 40K Eternal Crusade was suppose to be like Planetside 2, but they couldn't pull it off, and folded.
If there was a MWO game like planetside 2 , it would be shoddy / janky as fuck.
*HOWEVER* People / companies are coming out with things close to it, and the size and scope as well. Star Citizen is a good example. Complex ships , in a "open world system" , with spread sheets affecting everything ( IE the characters being all individual action/reaction randomness)
And by the way , I agree with you. We need the mechs to *mean* something and be the center of attention. And with that said we need variety in "missions" or even "contracts" that we can manipulate/negotiate.
And maybe even "bounties" , even Planetside 2 has that.... I believe the ability to create something like this does exist, it just needs the team, the money, time and technology to become a little bit better.
I would rather take a janky MWO take on PS2 than the boring ass milquetoast effort we got.
PS2 had ambition and I care more about that.
as someone who has played MWO for years i have to say that my main reason for not playing FP is not the mechanics (or lack there of) but in the community. Fp Units became so toxic i had no interest in dealing with them. it quickly became nothing but a 12 man pre-made stomping on pugs every match.
as for moba hell no, they are always nothing but a pay-to-win shitfest.
having played Planetside 2 i would go for that style of a drop in drop persistent world but it would be complicated to keep things from being nothing but assault mechs or forcing you to play lights because you aren't getting whatever resource lets you bring in heavier stuff (the point system in Planetside) as i hate light mechs and just can't play them well.
one has to keep in mind that as far as F2P games go MWO is likely the least pay-toWin game out there and should stay that way, its one of its charms.
I just want to point out how ironic all these ideas are.. I mean Planetside 2 and MechWarrior share the same root. Further more, I think Planetside 2/1 have been planned exactly as you wanted MechWarrior to be, imo even better! Instead of Planetside 2 it should have been called Earthsiege MMO or Cyberstorm MMO, instead of Mechs and Mechwarriors you would have had HERCs and Bioderms.. Man it would have been awesome! Nice video man, tho it made me a bit sad. Earthsiege/Cyberstorm over BattleTech MechWarrior all the way!
I remember Planetside 3 was "announced" a little while ago. I'm curious if it'll ever see fruition.
@@birthdaytruck There is so much to be said here but I don't want to bore you to death. If you have time checkout Earthsiege/Starsiege/Cyberstorm franchise.
@@birthdaytruck Sadly no, that announcement were some devs forced by executives to garner hype for a failed BR clone that died before it could launch. Fortunately Planetside 2 has been getting some major content patches since then like new continents, vehicles, and weapons.
@@hindel6141 Share a good video with me - I'll probably watch it.
@@theangrygrunt1481 I had assumed as such 😢
Leg-hunters of Davion was my favorite game night.
I'd love to get hired by PGi just to call Russ a uncreative twit.
Right before they fired me.
I don't think it's fair to call out developers like this. Developers often shy away from these forums because of such , although I tend to agree that studio leadership has made bad decisions, though.
@@birthdaytruck If you are a developer you should have a thicker hide. Don't get me wrong I've defended PGI a thousand time on the forums and I've played since closed beta. And still do on a almost daily basis. But when you neglect to look at helpful criticism and literally squander such a rich game history it's just grievous. I picked up my first copy of Battletech way back in '84 and been a fan ever since. So much just has been overlook and tossed aside to make a minimally viable product it kinda pains me. I understand you work with what ya have for resources. But seriously this game could have been just huge as WOT with as just much lore. I'll play until the servers go dead, but it could have been much more and maybe it still can be.
@@KroMagnum4 It is difficult seeing WarThunder and Planetside 2, both F2P titles released in '12, succeed where PGI hasn't.
@@birthdaytruck Agreed.
This video pretty much just described Living Legends lol.
Man this is why Im so salty at MWO. I was there since closed beta and although, credit where credit is due, they did pull off a fantastic mechbay, distinguishable mech designs, and balanced weaponry, the core gameplay was ALWAYS the deathball, quick play World of Tanks-esque(though no where near as good as WoT), skirmishing, meta building garbage. No flavor/color whatsoever, it's even reflected in the grey brown graphics that I can't stand to look at anymore.
This is why I fail to understand why no one plays Mechwarrior Living Legends, it does everything MWO does, completely Free and better bar the nonexistant mechbay and customizability. But I can live with that because MW:LL brings those large maps, it brings the Clan vs. IS dynamic locking you on one side or the other, gives you options to retreat rearm, combined arms, ticket system, ejection sequences, Active/Passive radar gameplay which in turn effects LRM and ArrowIV usage. Effective Tag usage netting you CBills and the possibility to upgrade your mech mid match. Like you talk about Planetside 2 mixed with Battletech, well Mechwarrior Living Legends does just that. Okay MWLL is missing out on the planet scale of PS2 and the background of faction and persistant rewards, but it's as close to The Dream of community warfare as it gets.
Yet MWLL servers are a ghost town bar like weekends and like late evenings and MWO are somehow still largely populated? I do not understand. I guess it has to do with the fact that games are longer in MWLL, or no persistant rewards? Or maybe people spent so much money on MWO that they feel tied to that game? Maybe the lack of Mech customization? All of the above? Idk, but I do know that even though I spent a fortune at MWO, I have 0 intentions of ever going back.
Not disagreeing with many of the thoughts here, but I always understood that FW was popular up until the Long Tom was introduced, and the combination of that and the transverse fiasco caused the population decline.
That's my recollection, too, but I don't know if those two factors themselves dominated the decline of Faction Play. I think the repetitiveness of it shortened the lifespan and I don't think it was interesting enough for the growth it needed.
To this day they still think they are doing a great job its pretty sad. MWO could have been so much more.
its dead because competitive pvp is just not that fun for most ppl who just wanna dick around and shoot some guns at big metal man, that era in gaming, the competitive pvp is dead, its a niche now.
what's a better future for BT is a pve coop type game where we play a role in a lance.
PGI shit all over their founders and completely broke the mechanics of the game more and more as they got past closed beta. They catered to the headshot kiddies, instead of the fans that would be there for years if they could deliver on what they promised. So when the game went that way and faction play never really happened, all the actual fans left that would have made CW work.
TL;DR: Factionplay is more of the same
It is, but the viewer should hear what it could easily become.
Yeah Faction play never interested me, when ever I tried I never had any fun and just played Quick Play for like 7 or 8 years now. The community for Mechwarrior Online might be small but it's very active and there is alot of content. Heck even I have game play videos I post in TH-cam or Twitch. Clearly the community wants something better and would play the shit out of it but they need to give up something better
You have a interesting video titled "Anime Influences on Mechwarrior/Battletech" - but you've turned comments off. I think you've got a good way of sharing Battletech stories. Perhaps start the actual content quicker in the video: it took about 30 seconds for the story to "begin".
@@birthdaytruck I forgot I did that video, to be honest I didn't realize at the time when I made that that Kid safe videos have comment turned off I will change that now...
okay feel free to post now, damn can't believe it's like 1 to 2 years I have posted that th-cam.com/video/KSKigenSB3U/w-d-xo.html
Yeah there a joke a of company wish they get the ip revoked from them.
Faction warfare is great if you're in the top 0.5% of players.
For the rest of us, it's an unrelenting test of patience as you lose over and over and over to elite dedicated 12 man groups.
It's honestly disgusting to endure and these fool pros think this makes them the "best". Yes. The "best" at killing any chance mwo had at a resurgence of players.
It's dead, Jim.
What's, perhaps, worse is that if you managed to gather a group of 4 players - a lance - you don't have a place to play against another 4 player lance. You HAVE to organize to a 12 man if you want to have, at minimum, an equal chance.
Don't you ever think that a bracket build is better than a range specialists, even if endo and DHS was not being used.... The only mechs that can get away with bracketing are mechs with a million laser hardpoints (like the crusader and executioner) because they can boat small lasers for close range defense along with two bigger, longer range weapons. In MW:O, medium range weapons are the versatile weapons that have few weaknesses. There's no way anyone is going to use those 1 lrm10, 1 ac20, 1 erlarge laser builds, and this is because they suck and aren't fun to use.
Default mechs are fucking awful and if players were forced to use them they would use the same 2-3 that have somewhat usable loadouts, then you'll have a real "META MECHS" problem. Also, 1-2 click mechs are superior because they're simply easier to use, they will always be superior. I don't understand why this is a problem to you. The core combat gameplay of MW:O is actually very good. The weapons are unique and all have uses, the chassis have multiple unique and valuable loadouts that can be put on them, the mechanics of twisting and component damage is excellent. The biggest problem lies with most of the gamemodes and maps, and FP is no exception.
I agree with the rest of the video. Faction Warfare is far too bland and boring. I want to be rewarded for keeping my mechs alive, it needs to be more dynamic, it needs a greater sense of scale and weight. The moment you lose the first wave you can pretty much guarantee you're going to lose the whole match and there's little incentive to continue playing. It would be awesome if I could get some reward for giving the victors a pyrrhic victory instead of a complete wipeout (besides the extra cbills for farming big numbers), but the result for either is the same so who gives a shit?
I've always thought about titanfall's thing where you have to escape when you lost the match, that could be very interesting in FP because you could lose the battle but still win in the extraction part of the battle, and maybe save your faction/unit resources that would've been lost otherwise.
Current MWO Experience (Oct 2023)
well I can officially say MechWarrior online is dead officially overall.
the game has less than 600 players on average in quickplay and has a "cult following" now.
where those who are still playing are "holding onto nostalgia" or lying to themselves that the game is still "alive".
I put over 1500 hours or so into MWO, Regrettably so also money as well, its been on a downward spiral for years and unfortunately its just how it is as PGI proves again and again that they don't listen to the community and just wing it with updates hoping we enjoy it.
MWO now (Oct 2023) is a microtransaction MESS, where each update instead is filled with "skins" - "reskins" and P2W packages that give you mechs that give you a clear advantage over others.
Im sad to see it go like this as a dull whimper instead of a cry of glory.
I look back fondly of memories of my old unit stomping around in Faction play and barely pulling matches into a win but now its a barren wasteland of samey builds and "META" 24/7.
MWO was a game I played day in - day out for a long while and I quit due to the direction its gone in.
This is Maxzer Signing off..
I will be moving on to older MechWarrior games and hopefully MECHWARRIOR 5 CLANS is enjoyable but PGI hasn't had the best track record and it is what it is.
I started playing in 2013 and unfortunately.. its time to put it to rest
The biggest hurfle is and was always the cry-engine. The only thing you can do with that crappy engine is what we got and for some (allegedly) legal reason they can't change it, so though-luck it will never get good
PGI needs to go. Unimaginative equates to incompetent in video game designer language.
Good idea breaks on poor realisation and low budget. Thats called MWO. Not a lot of mmo can live 10 years. Time to stop and make brand new game with proper war like autor said - planetside 2 style.
Your naming of the houses is very poor… Liao should obviously be the Space imperialized CCP.
Also: the attempt to compare MWO FP with MW5 and other online games seems… Entitled? For myself and my fellow FP fans, the whole point of FP was to play MWO semi-competitively with people you could relate to with your disdain for lowly Freebirths/Test-tube Babies.
Yes: that was the point. But the core gameplay loops were limited. A 40 v 40 'mech fight over a single anti air battery is absurd, canonically, and not a super fun experience.
The Scope of FP is what disappointed. I compare FP to other titles to show that there is room for creativity and other titles have successfully offered a FP experience that towers of MWO's.
God please no, dont bring CC into Mechwarrior. CC is the biggest cancer in games. Also mechwarrior as a moba would be a moba, not mechwarrior. PGI should have looked at Living Legends and took notes
I hope that company will go bankrupt and the rights to the universe will be given to people who will really do something
Mech warrior moba sound really bad
PGI are a bunch of gay artist, and we all know how well those guys make games... or movies... or anything at all.