League of MechWarriors: Part 1

Today I want to go into the way-back machine and take you to a simpler time; to a time before Open Betas, bobbleheads, and Christmas canceling. Let’s go all the way back to a month ago. Back then the primary concern was the economy, and much like the American Presidential debates, the arguments surrounding the economy were heated, passionate, and often down right nasty. Well, a few weeks have gone by and things have settled down to what looks to be the implementation PGI will ultimately go for, which gives me a good opportunity to look at it and weigh in on what I find.

When I think of economy in online games I think of auction houses, trade goods, and the sprawling sophisticated economy of EVE. What I do not think of is a linear progression that amounts to an accumulation of goods and finances, unlocking more and more things I can do. The first thing that stands out about MW:O’s economy is that it is next to impossible to LOSE anything. Sure on a particularly nasty match in which you expend most of your reserve of LRMs and get cored in your shiny XL Engine Atlas, it is possible to have to spend more than you make to recover, but that loss is more of a setback then an actual loss. You don’t lose the mech, or the engine, in fact you get most of the armor and armament back, so if worse comes to worse, you could just drop again in the 65% repaired mech and hope for the best. Even barring that, you can always fall back to the trial mechs that are pretty good money makers all things considered.

So this is not an economy of gains and losses, advancements and setbacks. Likewise, due to the nature of the role warfare; it is fairly rare that the mech you are working towards is actually functionally better than the one you are using to earn the CBills to buy it. In all reality, you are not working towards STRONGER mechs, you are working towards DIFFERENT mechs. This, incidentally, is why PGI can claim there is no pay-to-win, because even the lowly trial mechs are built with the same rules as the rest. You are working towards versatility, not power.

Basically, you grind ever onwards, and as you play the game you unlock more things you can play the same games with, with a newish style. There is a tremendously successful game that uses this same model, and serves as an excellent comparison for our “economy”. That game is League of Legends.

For those who do not know, League of Legends  or “LoL” as they call it, is a stand-alone version of the Warcraft 3 mod, Defense of the Ancients. LoL is one of the most popular computer games in the world, sporting nearly twice as many game hours last year as World of Warcraft, and it all but coined “MOBA” to describe the game style that MW:O falls under. It also was one of the biggest forerunners of the Free-To-Play model. In LoL (and its derivatives such as SMITE) the player earns points for playing the game. You gain more points for winning, but everyone walks away with something. You may use those points to purchase new champions with new abilities. You can also use real life money to buy special points that can be used to instantly get a new champion, or buy skins that are only available through the premium points. Every two weeks or so, they release a new champion which is usually “balanced” with (although arguably slightly more powerful then) all of the previous champions. Right now I believe LOL has around 100 champions. Players have access to free champions that rotate every week, and may use them until they can purchase champions of their own. Any of this sounding familiar?

So let’s compare the two progression systems to see if MW:O is “balanced” by current industry standards. In LoL a brand new fresh out the box champion typically costs 6300 points. A player receives 75 to 120 points per win, with 150 point bonus for the first win of the day (a mechanic I almost guarantee we will see introduced somehow into MW:O). This means, in order to stay “caught up” a player would have to earn that within a two week time. 150 * 14 = 2100 (points for First Win Of The Day), 6300 – 2100 = 4200 (points needed to be earned, approx. 42 wins), and 42 / 14 = 3. So, a person would have to play, on average, three to five games a night (assuming they are not all wins) in order to earn the champion through gameplay before that champion is no longer “new”.

Likewise let’s assume that PGI stick to their schedule of a new mech every month (optimism). Mechs cost between three million and eleven million CBills. For ease of math, let’s assume the average mech will be seven million CBills. Let’s assume a winning player without premium time makes 100k CBills per match. 7m / 100k = 70 matches, 70 / 30 =  2.33 repeating matches per day. Assuming a few losses, and maybe a few good wins, you could earn a new shiny mech in just about 3 matches a day for the month.

“Oh Pyro!” you may say, “you need to buy at least three variants to unlock the full potential of a mech! That’s three times as much work.” This is one of those assumptions that can be considered a fallacy. The average match length in LoL is about 40 minutes. The average match in MW:O is 10 minutes (or 6 if you operate by “PGI Math™”. So, you can get three times as many matches in MW:O then LoL and still have ten minutes for AFKs, mech reconfigurations, etc.

In the end, your effort in game is roughly equal between the MW:O economy, and LoL, with a slant towards MW:O once planets give us CBills and discounts. This difference can easily be explained away by requiring you to buy different armaments, and the hefty price of XL engines, which are often the value of a whole new mech.

A couple of side notes. First, a new mech is not exactly equivalent of a new champion.  While champions can be built different ways, most champions will not deviate far from their original play style. By contrast, one mech chassis may have several different builds, all which perform and play totally differently. Secondly, in LoL all champions earn points at the same rate, the same is not true for MW:O. An Atlas will likely have much higher bills then a Jenner, and thus make less CBills over time. This will drive players to feel that they may have to run in mechs they don’t enjoy to get through the “grind” faster. However, I am pretty sure I have made clear that in my humble opinion that is a problem with perception, and not necessarily the mechanics.

Tomorrow, I plan on addressing the other half of the economy, MC. (Spoiler alert, it is not quite as balanced as CBIlls are).

Signs of Strength, Signs of Weakness

First off, I was told by a buddy of mine, that to have a successful Blog on internet, you must have a cat gif, so here you go:

This week has been an odd one for the community. I have already discussed in an earlier post about the forums success in pushing back the date for Open Beta. I knew instantly that there would be consequences for this victory within both PGI and the MW:O community. Many people likened this to the Monoclegate from EVE online. I have said it before and will say it again; these issues that were part of the Summer of Rage are not even in the same city as the “Open Beta Crisis”. That being said, one thing is fairly similar; flushed with success, the community launched salvo after salvo of demands, complains, and threats to leave the game if they were not placated. There is something about convincing the publishers to change their mind that makes everyone into a bratty arm-chair developer. It’s probably the major reason publishers avoid relenting in the first place.

Imagine a coworker the just freaks out about everything. Every security concern, every staple wasted everything. At a certain point you will just get fed up with them, and eventually even issues that are probably a serious concern may be overlooked because it is “that guy” complaining about them. The noise completely outweighs the signal. By acting like everything is a huge deal, in the end nothing becomes a huge deal. You undermine your own authority with a group that has clearly demonstrated that they are willing to listen.

Today, the other shoe seems to have fallen, the message from on high is “If we can’t have the Open Beta we want, you can’t have the Christmas you want” (Never mind that the Christmas reference was two weeks ago saying that then was like a week before Christmas, which makes last week’s engine upgrade Christmas, the sheer number of toys we were supposed to get tomorrow made this more like the real Christmas). On one hand it seems almost as if PGI is exerting some sort of authority, taking things one step farther, and showing themselves as a strong company, willing to do what it takes to make a high quality product.

However, I fear that this ends up exposing their weakness. Many of these updates were originally scheduled for two weeks ago, which means, assuming they actually come out next week, that they will be a month behind schedule.  This is not a message you want to send to investors and onlookers as you continue to form your argument that your game and development staff are ready for prime time. Likewise, last week it was said that several features were in the game, just waiting to be turned on (including my monkey bobble-head). Hopefully, they will still go through the effort to turn at least those on, to give us the illusion of progress.

Now I often white knight PGI, and even in this I am not hateful, only skeptical. Now is a very important time for your team, you have opted to paint a bulls-eye on your back, and continue to act like no one will notice you. You have lifted the veil of the NDA, and continue to act like no one will talk about their disappointments. You may still be in closed beta, but the world is watching. I would use this as a wakeup call to bring your A game. My hope is that you do, you have already impressed me as a development company; don’t let this transition fall flat.

Heat Levels Critical

One thing I want to do in this blog is dig into the systems of MW:O. In particular, systems that seems to have a lot of misunderstanding/arguments within the community. Today, we will discuss heat.

Before I begin, I would like to point out that a lot of the in game weapon stats and the handy chart pictured below are care of Ohmwrecker, I will put his information at the bottom of the post. You should go check out his YouTube channel; he knows something about this gameJ.

So to begin the conversation with heat, you have to begin with the table top implementation of it. I will attempt to keep it fairly simple so that we may move on to the important parts.

Heating the table

Heat Chart from the Battletech rulebook

In table top Battletech, heat calculations are done in one phase at the end of a turn. All forms of heat generation (weapons fire, movement, etc.) and heat dissipation (heat sinks, water submersion, etc.) are calculated simultaneously. Heat generation adds to the total, and dissipation is subtracted from. The final result is applied to the previous heat, and then impact is calculated. As your heat climbs, you slow down, it is harder to hit, emergency shut downs were performed and ammo can explode. This is all based on a maximum of thirty heat “points”. It is important to note that in Battletech, one turn is ten seconds.

The “Problem” with MW:O

MechWarrior Online Weapons Cart Via Ohmwrecker

In MW:O heat sinks are designed to function exactly the same way as their table top brethren. Each heat sink reduces your total heat by one every ten seconds (or .1 every second). So if you have ten heat sinks, you heat is reduced by one a second. Likewise, with few exceptions, all weapons generate the same heat as they did in the table top rules. That is where the system begins to break down, and the arbitrary ten second rounds take its toll.

While the heat sinks are working on a ten second timer the weapon systems are generally working on a one to four second timer. This means that most weapons are firing at least three times more, and thus generating three times more heat, then the table top is designed to equate for. Many people point to this as to the reason why heat mechanics are “broken” in MW:O.

Note: to compensate for the ten second round, the “max heat” of a mech in MW:O is 30 + number of heat sinks.

So what is “Heat” anyways?

Heat is designed to provide a balance to a mech just doing everything it possibly can in a round, and also to be a balance to ammo-less weapon systems such as PPCs, and lasers. Almost all weapons generate heat. Ballistics generally creates less heat, but use up ammo. Energy weapons generate far more heat (almost double in many cases) but have no ammo. And missiles are a mix of heat and ammo. Ammo obviously requires tonnage to bring, and heat requires heat sinks to dissipate.

Note: In MW:O moving does also impact heat, however it is still in balance with the table top rules. They did this by effectively removing heat sinks while moving, whereas water effectively adds heat sinks.

The Million Dollar Question

So the real point to all this is does the current heat system break balance in favor of ballistics, in particular the Gauss Cannon, that generates next to no heat for very high damage. The answer is yes and no. Like many things, reality refuses simplicity. Let’s say a Catapult K2 with twin Gauss annons can fire five times before the enemy figures out that moving is a good idea. That would take twenty seconds and he would deal 150 damage for an average of 7.5 damage per second. Meanwhile another Catapult K2 ops to have twin PPC. The PPC fires once every three seconds, so to be generous let’s give him twenty-one seconds of fire. In that time the twin PPCs will deal 140 damage, and fire seven times with an average of 6.66 damage per second. Also, during this time it generates 140 heat, well beyond anything that any mech could possibly handle. In fact, that K2 would require forty tons of heat sinks in order to sustain this firepower, plus the fourteen tons for the PPCs, you only are left with eleven tons for everything else. Meanwhile, ten shots for the Gauss K2 is thirty-one tons (thirty for the twin Gauss, one extra for the ten rounds). By this logic one could confirm that the Gauss is superior in every single way and rage and wine about balance surrounding heat.

And they would be half right

The problem is that the above theory-crafted scenario is totally impractical. First, the idea of an enemy allowing you to fire non-stop for 20 seconds is impractical. Second, the target would be dead long before this was over. Third, you must take into consideration that after this time is over; the Gauss at is now out of ammo (which can be fixed by adding more tonnage). Fourth, you fail to take into consideration the time off target benefit of heat weapons.

Once contact with the enemy is lost, the efficiency of heatless weapons drops dramatically. After four seconds (the reload time of Gauss), those thirty tons of guns are doing nothing, and getting you nowhere. Meanwhile the PPC K2 is continuing to dissipate heat, making him more prepared for the next engagement. Given enough short breaks in combat by proper use of cover, energy weapons are more effective over the entire course of the game. It is extremely rare to be able to sustain fire over more than ten seconds without at least an opportunity for breaking combat to occur. All the while every shot from the projectiles/missiles that miss means loss of combat potential overall.

While I am not saying it is 100% balanced, I do say that making any drastic changes to the system at the moment would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This issue will also see changes as we move to twelve v. twelve as ammo conservation becomes a bigger deal. Simply speaking, counters do exist, and reasons exist to utilize both weapons (even more so if PPCs will start ruining enemy targeting). Simply looking at one side of the problem will ruin more game balance then it solved.

Once again, thanks to Ohmwrecker for pervading the stats and chart used to create this blog. He has several such charts which I will list below. Check them out, and check out his YouTube channel. Be advised: it is up to him to update the information displayed.

Ohmwrecker's Hardpoint Chart
Ohmwrecker's Weapon Chart
Ohmwrecker's Engine Cheat-sheet
Ohmwrecker's Engine Values
Ohmwrecker's YouTube

A Tale of Two Lances

So tonight was going to be an easy night, hang out on MW:O, hope for a fix to the Atlas problem (which is hilarious as far as I am concerned), maybe write a post about heat mechanics, drink a glass of wine, and get to catch up on some well needed sleep.

The folks at PGI did not enjoy this plan apparently. In an amazing one two punch they release a patch that all but fixes much of the issues that have come up since the last patch, and a outpouring of information for the community. To top it all off, the distributed it TO THE PLAYERS, as opposed to some random news outlet, website, or create some crazy Valve level ARG to hunt down the information needed to stay current with this game.

PGI's news tried to come through as a "fix all your woes" post, clearly demonstrating their commitment to their players. They used this post, which was initially released only to beta testers, to announce the delay of the open beta. This is huge, delaying a game is never an easy choice, and they had worked so hard on their hype engine these last few weeks. First they lifted the NDA, then before anyone could react they had the PC Gamer issue that sung their praises. Many people were confused that the magazine was giving out trinkets and skins, but no closed beta passes and then BAM OPEN BETA ANNOUNCEMENT on the same day the magazine hits shelves. All of the dominoes were in line to skate them to an amazing launch open beta, nothing could stop them.

But then something did, the fan base rose up and cried out how silly of an idea this is. It wasn't so much the lag (they fixed it quickly enough to have it stable for release). It was the public, unified outcry from the player base (although I wrote a piece saying they were ready, even I wrote that mostly to spur discussion, not because I felt it was 100% true). The player base caused not just the game development team, but also the business guys to concede on several fronts all at once. This is huge! This is news! This should be a news article all in its own! So why wasn't it?

Nestled into the seeming parade of player appeasement announcements they address one of the most controversial topics on the MW:O forums (well, they DID gloss over goss kitties again). The announcement of the new "matchmaking system" which should really be called the new group making system. What could possibly be so controversial that they would have to wrap it in all of this player love?

The developers at PGI are all veteran game players. Many of us were or still are competitive gamers and truly know the feeling of a great match played between two equally matched teams.

The next 3 stages of planned releases for Match Making involve the following:

Phase 1:

Reduce the maximum # of players in a group to 4. This means when players form a group, they will only be able to add 3 people. When that group launches, they will be put in a bucket. The match maker will then fill the rest of the 8 player team with 4 PUGs or any partial groups that are looking for a match at that moment. The same will happen for the other team. Matches will still be 8v8 but instead of playing against 8 people in an organized premade, you will see a max of 4.

Now before you light your pitchforks, we know that this does not address all the issues and that 8-player groups are the mainstay of community and organized team-play. This is why we move to Phase 2 VERY soon after Phase 1.

Phase 2:

Players will be able to convert their 4-player group to an 8-player group similarly to how World of Warcraft’s group to raid conversion works. With a click of a button, a group leader can convert a 4-player group to 8-players and invite 4 more players to the group. There is a limitation to this however. If the group leader decides to convert to an 8-player group, they MUST have 8 players in order to launch. (i.e. you cannot launch a game with 5,6 or 7 players). In addition to that, your 8-player group will be matched to another 8-player group ONLY. This does reduce the change of finding a match quickly but at the same time 8-players teams will finally be matched to other 8-player teams exclusively.

At some future date we will also want to include the ability to challenge a specific 8-player team to a match in a competitive/eSport manner. But as stated, this will be coming at a later date.

Phase 3:

We have been examining the various ranking systems in other games/structured tournament play etc. This includes ELO, TrueSkill and others. Our current plan is to use a hybrid system that uses the mentality of ELO with a weighting system that we’ve determined that drives down to player effectiveness/skill in a match. In order for this to work properly, we will need to do heavy pre-release testing before it goes live to the community and hence the amount of time to get it implemented.

We currently cannot go into detail as to how this system will work because we are not going to over-promise something that may change during implementation. We will try to keep you as up to date on this as possible.

What? Really? You are going to nerf teamwork? There is no reason for this!

Well, yes and no. In the Battletech universe a "Lance" is four mechs. and teams can be comprised of multiple Lances. This, by the way is the rational of jumping from 8v8 to 12v12 etc. Each Lance is a team in themselves, you may have your scout lance, or your LRM lance etc. So in a way having a team of 4 instead of a team of 8 does start to make sense. Really the only problem I see is a delay between phase one and phase two. Personally I think that phase one is "what we have ready for testing" and phase two is "what we were trying to get happening in the first place"

Honestly, I like this idea more the more I think about it, but I think they should go one further. A group, or Lance can comprise of up to four players. Once a lance hits four, the Lance commander is given the option to combine with another Lance of four. This means you end up with two merged groups of four, not one group of eight. If you give each one a leader, and the ability to make their own marks on the maps, communication, etc. you start to have the ability to function more like an actual military unit.

So lets say Pyrodante forms a Lance and gets three other players. Pyro leads his group, so he then invites a second Lance to join. Pyrodante is now the "Drop Commander" and the "Lance Commander", and can send commands to his Lance, the other Lance commander, and everyone. Meanwhile the Lance Commander for Bravo Lance can issue his orders to his Lance. Chain of command is established.

Creating a modular Lance system allows all sizes of battles as well, 12v12 is just three groups of four, and 8v8 is just two Lances. This provides an expandable system with shared communication and clear command structure. Could be cool.

The only glaring problem is this partial implementation. No one likes to be told they can't drop with their buddies, especially when you combine that with the frustration of having your buddies replaced by someone who may end up being a total failure. I think that letting us know where you are going is enough for now. Get it ready and release it all at once to us. Please don't replace a borked system that angers a segment of the player base with a second borked system that angers the other segment of the player base. All that will do is further the animosity between to two groups.

One last note, although this announcement was made at the same time as the emergency patch, this was not included in the patch. In fact, so far there is no direct indication of when ANY of this will be implemented. The assumption is they are going to release it on Tuesday, but with Open Beta delayed, I would like to see them reign it back in and just finish phase two, but hey Keep Calm and Continue Testing right?

Open Beta Survival Guide: Preparation

Welcome prospective MechWarriors! As we are all aware, this upcoming week marks the launch of Open Beta, and hopefully an influx of new blood into the game. This post is designed as a bit of a guide for those who are gearing up to be entering into the game for the first time on Tuesday, however I welcome all players to read, and comment and add your input.

This edition of the guide will be mostly about the preparation for, and the experience of, your first few days of MW:O. I hope to provide further guides as things that need to be discussed pop up. I have split it up into “Before Tuesday” things to do to prepare, and “Your first day”. Each is split into do’s and don’ts and are discussed a bit in detail. So let’s get started.

Before Tuesday:

Do’s

• Read Guides and Stickies: It is unfortunate that many of the best information are still locked behind forums that non-closed beta players cannot access, however there are some that have filtered out, and hopefully I can get permission to post some of the most useful ones here. Otherwise I hope to post links to useful guides. That being said the information is out there, even if you can’t read all the stickied guides now, this can be deferred to be a “Your first day” sort of thing. Either way, reading the information that has been collected by diligent players before you will make a world of difference.

      Edit: Several people have been providing me with guides, tutorials, and video's, I will try to maintain a handy list at the end of this post

•    Ignore the hate on the forums: There is a lot of controversy on the forums at the moment, and sadly some of that is spilling into the public forums. While a lot of the concerns are valid, much of it is being addressed, and honestly reading about how miserable you will be won’t help anything. Bottom line is, if you’re excited for the game, great! Allowing others negativity to ruin your experience before you even get started is no good for anyone.

•    Read up on the lore: The MechWarrior fan base knows their stuff when it comes to the story, and a lot of discussions will deal with the authentic cannon in which MechWarrior takes place in. There are good places to read up about the history, and mechs on MechWarrior. So, if you have time, it can’t hurt to brush up. (A good example would be http://battletech.wikia.com/wiki/History_of_the_BattleTech_universe, by the way MW:O takes place on a 1:1 time scale starting in 3049)

• Make sure your video drivers are up to date: A lot of people have been having problem with the new engine, and honestly a lot of those problems could be solved with good drivers. Might as well update them now.

Don’t

•  Go out and buy a joystick: Honestly, with such a highly competitive game as MW:O, having a joystick, especially with the current limited support for them, is a hindrance.

• Take time off work: It is a beta, chances are Tuesday will be largely unplayable. Don’t set yourself up for failure.

• Wait to get Founders: I believe today is the last day to pick up the cool mech’s/status for your profile. If that is something you want, now is the time to get it (the founders mechs represent a permanent increase to CBills while using them, but requires the $60 or $120 version of the program).

Your first day:

Do’s

•  Watch the tutorials: The game is fairly complicated, and while there are plenty of good guides on the forums/elsewhere, PGI has said tutorial videos will be available on Tuesday. Hopefully these end up being good. Otherwise, keep reading the guides on the forums.

• Be patient: Launches are rough, especially if the game is being successful. Hopefully all goes well, but if not, don’t be surprised if there is lag, servers brought down for maintenance, and not a lot of news from the staff as they panic to keep the hamsters running. Sad to say, this is pretty much normal in this industry.

•   Find people to hang out with: I am unsure what the state of the unofficial TS server will be in Open Beta, but if it is available USE IT. Talking with others and finding people to play with is probably the single biggest thing you can do to ensure your success.

•   Have fun: if you find yourself looking at the game as work, or a grind. Take some time off. (and post your level headed feedback on the forums)

Don’t

•  Expect MechLab right away: One of the cool things about MechWarrior is the ability to customize your mechs. However, as a new player you will need to play some games with your Trial Mechs. These mechs are not customizable, and based on Table Top templates. They swapped out which mechs were the Trial Mechs a week ago, so it’s anyone’s guess which will be the mechs for next week. In general expect Trial mechs to run hot, and have weapon systems that cover several different ranges (non-specialized).

•  Be afraid of loss: The one big advantage of Trial Mechs is no cost to rearm/repair. So focus on tactics, and supporting your team. It doesn’t really matter if you deplete your ammo, or if you get cored, so if you want to do your buddies a favor you can be the guy to peek around the corner, soaking up damage that otherwise would have to be paid for in the end.

•  Be a hero: MW:O is a team game. It is not Call of Duty, it is not a single player game. You cannot single handedly take on the enemy. The lance that sticks together… sticks together. You may see scouts run off on their own, that doesn’t mean your Awesome should chase after them. Which brings me to...

• Chase the Squirrel: Light Mechs are fast, agile, and still can do a fair bit of damage. A common tactic is to be spotted by the enemy and then lure a few of the more tunnel vision infected enemies into an ambush, or clean out of bounds. Don’t be that guy.

All in all you should be excited to get into MW:O, and we are excited to have you! I hope to see you on the battle field. As I said before, any additional advice/warnings, please leave in the comments.

Tutorials/Guides

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bykz9kUNBTI - Seems very good for basic controls, and mech piloting. Excellent for those who may never have played a MechWarrior game before. - Thank RedShift2K5

UPDATE: The Open Beta has been delayed. We do not have a new date for the Open Beta, I will keep you updated as I can.

I For One Accept Our New Reddit Overlords.

I make no secret that I am an EVE player, and being such I have a past with Reddit. I like to go to Reddit pretty often for amusing pictures, awesome links, and other random things. However I have a history with Reddit USERS. The members of Test Alliance (The Reddit group in EVE) are second only to Goons in their reputation of tomfoolery. I have seen some good AMA's on Reddit, but I have also seen some BAD AMA's on Reddit. Given the current culture of the forums on MW:O beta I feared the latter. But I am surprised to say that a fair chunk of interesting things have come out of it. I will attempt to summarize here.

First off, for those who don't know, Reddit has a tradition called AMA's (Ask Me Anything) where someone gets on and answers as many questions from the public as they can stand in a period of time. In the past we have seen everything from porn stars, to prop handlers of famous movies, to the freaking President of the United States doing AMA's. So why is Paul doing an AMA, and why now? Doesn't he have other things to do?

In my opinion this AMA was brilliant, and well timed. There is a lot of controversy within the community at the moment, and this has been used as an excellent opportunity to address the doom and gloom directly, albeit vaguely. Secondly, while Goons has a presence in MW:O (as shown by the "Ask a Goon" thread and the many Squaking in game), so far the Reddit gaming community has not latched onto MW:O as much as I would expect. If you go to the MW:O subreddit you only will find a handful of posts, and not much chatter beyond the fact that the NDA has lifted. Right now, more then ever PGI needs to begin building strong groups of interest in their game, if they want a solid launch open beta next week. Starting up a stir in /r/iAMA is an excellent way to get Redditors attention.

So now that we have address why they did this, lets talk about what he has said. I will throw in my own commentary as I can.

Tutorials Next Week -
In my opinion this was the biggest news drop of the day. It shows that they have plans for next week that they haven't mentioned, even beyond the already large list they have planned. Not much has been said about what these tutorials are, however if I gathered it correctly, it will likely be a series of videos, as opposed to an actual interactive experience. Still something better then nothing.

Solution To Premium Time -
While no specifics have been mentioned, the issue was addressed. Paul pointed out that this is not a "game" decision but rather a "business" decision (I could have told you that much). The big wigs that can officially decide what to do about this are currently out, but Paul and his crew are hard at work fighting for us. As an aside I would like to point out that this is one of several examples in the last week that show that, at least Paul and crew, pay attention to the forums, and have a real concern about our happiness as users. I say it again: This. Is. Not. Monoclegate. Please stop using that comparison.

Lag is being addressed -

As a matter of fact just to display his awesome multitasking capability (or to prove how little of the grunt work he really does) a hotfix for the lag issue came out DURING the AMA. From my understanding this hasn't fixed all the problems, but it does show they are committed to fixing the problem. Although in my opinion that should have been obvious from the start. The fact that this hotfix seems to not have fixed all the problems, and possibly caused NEW issues, causes some concern. I truly hope they are not just rushing out fixes in a panic to sate the masses. Just tell us what is going on, and let us wait for a fix. Just don't go into open beta without at LEAST a few stable days under your belt.

Iterative changes to matchmaking coming -

While community warfare may be a bit on the horizon, it looks like at least some changes may be coming sooner, with at least some community support (this is a very good thing). They acknowledge that the current situation is not ideal, but state that separating pre-mades outright would be worse, which I tend to agree. However, they also say that they want the new system to be based on skill, which sounds like a ELO style system which I think would be a mistake. However, I concede that it would be a useful stop-gap until we can actually start sieging planets against each other.

DDR Gangnam style Match to unjam Ultra AC/5 -

This not being true is about the saddest thing from this AMA.

While that is not all of the information that has come out, it is the highlights so far. I will update this post with any interesting things pop up. The moral of the story is this sort of communication is a good thing. Personally I feel they should just expect to give an official announcement after every patch, just to clear up whatever happens to crop up.

He also brushed on Gauss cats and balance, but I think that is an issue for a longer post.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11bvw1/we_are_the_developers_of_mechwarrior_online_a/

The Veterans Pledge

Today I found something interesting on the forums, with the imminent influx of newer players, the current testers have taken up two camps.

1) We should be as nice and friendly as possible, so that newer players enjoy their experience and become part of our little game community.

2) DO I SMELL AN EASY KILL? I THINK I DO

This reminds me of a discussion that comes up in EVE Online about weekly, which basically amounts to "Does making the game more understandable, make it easier and thus less fun for those looking for a 'hard' experience". In other words, what I like to call the "uphill both ways in the snow" problem.

I like to fight people, preferably in a game, preferably in a game with big machines. The reason I enjoy this over some single player experience is largely because players adapt, the make decisions, and behave unpredictably in a way you simply cannot program a computer to do. After fighting bots for any significant period of time, the experience begins to feel hollow, and the cognitive disconnect becomes harder and harder to ignore.

The problem is that while killing people is fun, killing people who are obviously outgunned or out-skilled only is fun for so long. Sure its entertaining to watch the LRM Catapult launch set after set of LRMS from 50 feet away into your torso as you rip them apart with your weapons, but eventually it becomes dull, and unfulfilling  True enjoyment in a competitive game is facing off against an opponent of near equal skill, and besting him in a round of fierce adrenaline pumping action.

Because of this I think that we as a community SHOULD be dedicated to teaching newer players as much about the game as they are willing to learn. It is not enough to simply have more players, we must have more QUALITY players, for this grand experiment to be successful. Do not horde your knowledge  but give it freely, only then can you know that you have truly bested your enemy (as an aside, there are a lot of "vets" that could use some lessons as well :D)

To to that I pledge:


I Pyrodante pledge to be helpful to noobs during the opening of beta.

I will not berate those who ask questions, because we've heard them a million times before, doesn't mean they automatically know.

I will be helpful in game when asked how to set up firing controls and any other setup or how to play questions.

I will not belittle the new players for running off alone and dying in a fiery twisted hunk of shame.

I will politely tell them tactics on maps.. like for god's sakes stay out of the crater on Caustic it will increase your heat and thus make you fire less and prone to blowing your mech up!

I will politely direct them to the multitude of stickies in the forums (which I will assume to be moved where all can read)



See you on the battlefield

PS: I know the original post called this the "Noob Pledge" but I changed the name because it is the vets giving the pledge, not the noobs :) Reference: http://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/58982-the-16th-of-october-noob-pledge/