Signs and Portents

Disclaimer: I am not a member of PGI staff, nor have I had any meaningful conversations with PGI about their theory and game design, I am reading the writing on the wall, based on my observations and knowledge of game development. Chances are, some is right, some is wrong, and some will come as great amusement to the PGI staff. In this post I am including information that has been stated by PGI, that information is as accurate as their word is ;-), everything else is my personal commentary.

PGI as a company has been very communicative to its players, almost to a fault. They have since early in closed beta shown the players timelines, plans, and ideas well in advance of their implementation in the game. This comes as a double edged sword. On the one hand, the player base gets excited and passionate about the game, allowing them to maintain interest where a fair bit of the features are still barely on the drawing board. On the other hand, development can be unpredictable, and things change. Timelines alter, things are cut as practice shines a harsh light on theory, and external pressures drive priority shifts in the company. It is very easy for the player base to feel cheated, or outright lied to, when their pet feature gets pushed back or lost into the void. Unfortunately, that has happened quite a bit recently.

This is compounded by the fact that PGI describes features, content, and balance changes that are supposedly going to be released, but is fairly tight-lipped about the theory behind those changes. This then puts it on the players, and analyzers such as yours truly, to attempt to read the tea leaves and dig beneath what is being said, to try to understand the decisions behind them. Spoiler alert: I both like and dislike what I see.

Tomorrow is a very important day for MW:O, it marks the first content patch since the beginning of open beta, there has been a couple of posts that discuss the nature of this patch, and some future plans and this is a really great place to begin our investigation.

From Into the Lab:

• New DHS values (1.4) applied to all heatsinks, including engines.

This change was foretold in this http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/66075-heat-and-double-heat-sinks-dhs/ post and this simple change tells us a lot about what PGI feels about heat. To put it bluntly PGI disagrees with the community that heat is imbalanced, or at least in the same way the community does.

I was going to go into this here, however it became far too long, so I broke it out into its own post. I am already fearful as to how long this post will be as it is.

•  A fix for the glowing mechs and HDR blacking out screens.

The glowing problem is pretty new, only after the latest CryEngine upgrade came in did bloom become overdone, but even before they “fixed” that it didn’t darken your screen. It is obvious that they still are tinkering with their understanding of the new CryEngine, and that they are basically wasting development time trying to get it back to a state it was before the change.

• A rollback of some netcode changes, hitbox detection improved, but still needs work on faster mechs.

Another example of two steps forward two steps back. A close examination of their recruitment site http://piranhagames.com/Careers_General.html shows that they are actively hiring net code developers. I guess all I can say is let’s hope they find them soon.

This also makes me wonder what point they are rolling back to. Before the latest patch one had to lead quite a distance to have the hit be registered against a fast mover. I considered the current implantation better than that; however I agree it wasn’t awesome to watch Jenners using their teleport function as they rocketed past you. I will say that we will see on this one; however I do not expect anything promising until a while after that job posting goes down.

• Centurion CN9-D.
•  Artemis

I bundle these two together because they really are all about the same problem, the YLW. One of the effects of the YLW was the removal of the Centurion variant it was built off of. This reduced the number of free Cent variants down to two, which is not enough to unlock higher pilot skills in the current backwards advancement system. They stated that the CN9 would not be ready prior to the Artemis’ release, and that the Artimis was part of the ECM/ECCM package. The fact that this is now being released ahead of the ECM package is an indication to me that the YLW, and the outcry related to it, is the direct cause of this being released now. It is important to note however, later in the post indicates that ECM is working, however unbalanced, and so it has been delayed.

On a side note, from saran.net about the CN9-D:

“The D variant of the Centurion is the first of many upgrades using Star Leaguetechnology. The chassis was re-engineered to use Endo Steel construction techniques. Next the power plant was changed from the standard engine to an extralight engine. In the process the maximum speed was increased to 97.2 km/h. Finally, the weapons were upgraded. The Autocannon/10 was upgraded to an LB-X Autocannon/10 and an Artemis IV fire control system was added to the LRM launcher. The two Medium Lasers were retained.”

The Artemis itself appears to help missiles lock and hit as long as line of sight is maintained (not indirect fire). I have no idea how it will be changed, if any, for MW:O.

•  Cockpit Damage FX

I am guessing this means that we will get cracks and such on our cockpit when we are damaged there. This is likely something they have been working on for a bit under “neat immersion features” that finally is ready to go. On a side note: has anyone seen the “cockpit lights dim when you take heavy hits” feature? I haven’t really noticed that.

•  Missile Door Toggle/State Lights (Open, Closed, Destroyed)

This is a feature that has been asked for quite a bit by missile pilots, and I think will end up being more of a pain for them then they realize. What this seems to do is allow the pilot to keep their pods open, and thus reduce lag time for shooting weapons. However, when the pods are open, they take extra damage, so I expect to see streak kitties get their ears knocked off in record numbers after the patch.

•  Trial Mechs act like purchased mechs and stay locked until match ends. Reduces suicide farming, AFK players.

They tried so hard to fix this problem without making this change, but it was inevitable. However, this post  seems to imply that there is a major fix coming for the new player experience. I find it interesting that this is not expanded upon yet. The post was made five days ago, but the changes are still not detailed. IMO the new player experience may be the single most important thing for MW:Os development right now.

• Phase 1 Matchmaking. Max pre-made group size is now set to 4.

PGI I am not angry, just disappointed.

There are some other details teased at the bottom of the post. Of them, the camo sounds to be the likely to come out the soonest. According to the post, Bitchin Betty is already in, but has to be turned on by a cfg file I failed to find :/. However, I think it is hilarious that there is a feature in the game that is censored by the forum word filterJ.

Two modules are teased, but no details given so they make grilled cheese sandwiches, and French fried respectively until PGI says otherwise.

The only real thing I have to say about Conquest is that I predict it won’t be released until at least matchmaker phase 2, it just wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Over all, this patch appears to be a “placate the masses” patch. It appears as if they had learned their lessons from the patch prior to open beta, and did a better job separating out their features so they can release what is ready, and not hold off dueto features that are not fit for prime time. However, due to the high demand of a week patch cycle, and the pressure to keep up with it, has caused this patch to be largely a squeaky wheel fixer. I am fearful that valuable development time is being taken away from actual development, and reassigned to problem fixing, which is a dangerous thing to do in a beta (until of course you are near feature complete). What is also troubling me are the things not being discussed, however I will have to break that out into a post of its own.

UPDATE: Some updates have come from the latest Ask The Devs post. Amid the ice cream questions, some of it is even relevant.

• Paint schemes and other vanity stuff is likely to come out 20th or 27th (This is apparently VERY important, he answered at least three questions about this!)
• NARC is bad (officially now!) and is being worked on. No ETA.
• The missile pod change will be as I described above.
• ECM will likely do more then just jam or counter NARC/TAG 
• Garth is a light mech pilot (no wonder they thought tripping was broken ;-))
• Forest colony update TOMORROW (How was this missed in the original post?)
• Weapon grouping is coming to Mech Lab
• Trial Mechs should change every two patches (so we are due for a change tomorrow)