1741

Agreed! This could be the start of a really great thing.

1742

Tech progression is what I miss most as well. That’s why a game like WoT had longer legs for me.

1743

I just feel the need to reiterate this for folks who might have played and gotten scared off by the aforementioned terrible netcode.

If you are playing with a low ping, as most folks in North America are, then the game no longer has netcode problems as far as I can tell. Shots are all registering as they should.

This has totally changed the game, and made it as it should have always been. First mechwarrior experience I’ve had online without having to lag-shoot, which is amazing. The population of light mechs has dropped significantly, since now they can actually be shot.

1744

Oh, no doubt. I guess what I’d really like is a more MMO-like Mech game structure, where the combat is tied to progression/story or faction-based PvP, rather than constant death match. For what it is, though, MWO does a good enough job.

1745

I’ve been finding random matches very unsatifying here too. I’ve found little reason to take a light over an assault, aside from working on masteries and the rare capture match. Makes me wish for a progression similar to world of tanks where you would have to earn your way up into mediums, etc. dunno. Mwtactics is looking more and more appealing in the long term despite its ccg like mechanics.

1746

The last patch improved the lag issues, that’s true.

That said, I have to ask where the hell is the European server located, because for example yesterday I played a game were 4 players have a ping of 250. Maybe some people don’t set up properly the region selector?

1747

Heh.

The European server is located in Canada.

1748

The thing is though, a light mech is not straight up inferior to heavier mechs, like light tanks are in WoT.

Light mechs, certainly, may require some additional skill to play well (now that folks can actually consistently shoot you) but they provide abilities which are somewhat unique. The kind of mobility provided by light mechs is required in any kind of competitive environment. You need scouts to effectively deploy the rest of your lance. And a good light mech can absolutely ruin assault mechs who aren’t good enough to deal with them.

Of course, any weight class takes skill to pilot effectively, so it’s not really fair to say light mechs need “more”. The extreme weight classes tend to just be less forgiving in different ways. For instance, a light mech is less forgiving if you put yourself into position where you can be hit, in that you can’t take many hits before you die… But an assault mech is also less forgiving if you manage to get out of position, because you can’t get BACK in position easily.

Ultimately though, what is really necessary is some sort of battlevalue or weight balancing system, so that lances are restricted to a fixed amount of tonnage or value, and then need to distribute that across their mechs. That’s what we used to do back in the old Mechwarrior 4 planetary leagues.

Oh, no doubt. I guess what I’d really like is a more MMO-like Mech game structure, where the combat is tied to progression/story or faction-based PvP, rather than constant death match. For what it is, though, MWO does a good enough job.

As I just said, back in MW4, I played extensively in the planetary leagues like TFS/UTS and NBT… Those games took the deathmatch gameplay, and built a whole geopolitical universe around it, which truly did add a level of depth that kept that game interesting for the better part of a decade.

I think that in MWO, the “Community Warfare” that is planned to go in this year will potentially fill that role, to an unprecedented degree.

The ultimate game type may still be something akin to deathmatch, but the effects of those matches will have some greater meaning. And to me, the depth provided by the old planetary leagues was infinitely better than anything any single player campaign ever offered. Being able to name our price as a merc unit, get a contract from a major house, and then start digging up through clan space and taking their homeworlds despite their superior tech was epic… Or defending against a planetary assault, and beating the invading clans so baddly that you pushed them into forced retreat which resulted in them having to abandon 75% of their invasion force on the planet was totally awesome. “Sorry clanners, all those fancy toys you brought to take that planet? Now they’re ours, and we’ll use them to kill you the next time you show up.”

1749

That would explain a lot of stuff!!

Is because the French connection to Canada or what? :P

1750

IF this every happens, I do think it’ll be a great improvement. At this point I’m not that confident though. One, I’m unconvinced any such thing will ever actually be rolled out, at least in that much depth. Two, I’m worried that if it is implemented, it’ll end up as static and boring as WoT’s Clan Wars. But hey, let’s see what happens, sure.

1751

The game feels a bit tighter, and the startup is nice. I still think ECM’s got to be tweaked down. It’s just ridiculous to not be able to target shit that’s right in front of you.

1752

But now you can counter ECM pretty easily.
You kill the ECM mech.

1753

Does the Atlas still have an ECM variant? That’s…not that easy to kill.

1754

Well, you can still shoot em, I’m going to say that’s it’s the lock-on functionality that’s having problems?

Also the DC version of the Atlas has ECM…and no its not easy to kill, but its a brawler…mostly.

1755

Well, more than the lock on for missiles, it just drives me nuts not being able to see damage on mechs.

Still seeing an average of 4 ecm mechs per match, usually two atlas, two something else, so ECM coverage is pretty broad. If I’m running missiles I pack my own TAG but it’s annoying.

1756

Right, but as it’s among you brawling it’s covering the other guys who are blasting you (unless they’re missile boats, I guess).

I really hate ECM, it’s pretty much made me stop playing. As I only do PUGs I’ve found ECM is the single biggest determinant of failure–no ECM, no win, period. I know some folks say that it’s not always like that, etc., and statistically, sure, you’re right, but in my experience I have NEVER been on a team without ECM, playing a team with ECM, and won. Ever.

1757

Atlases aren’t that hard to kill… but in that case, their weakness is their lack of mobility. You don’t need to kill them as much, since unlike the ECM lights, they can’t just swam your support mechs and chew them up with impunity.

Atlases are pretty easy to tag, and then you can just pound them with LRMs.

1758

I’m not sure I entirely agree with this yet. I’ve definitely noticed I can connect a lot more shots on lights but I still noticed a few iffy moments as well. It’s a big improvement for sure but it has a ways to go to match the best netcode in other FPS games. I suspect if it’s a low ping light vs a low ping attacker the netcode is a lot better but with a higher ping player in the mix I’m not so sure. I did notice a few times where light mechs swarmed us and I killed or did damage to them and they ran off. That is unusual compared to previous patches where they are unlikely to leave you alone after one attack. In one 8v8, our whole team got attacked by 3 lights, we killed 2 of them before they managed to run away (they literally ran through us and died in seconds). Never seen that happen before.

I played about 5 hours last night. I also played about 15 8v8s and won maybe 10(?) with a very casual group (we didn’t have strategy, tactics or even call targets much) with almost random mechs. We didn’t encounter many min/max competitive groups except one that had jump jetting CTF-3D with 2xPPC/2xGauss (be curious to see this build). They beat us twice but I think we killed 3-5 of them each time. I didn’t see any ECM heavy line ups anymore. I’m not sure if that’s a reflection of it no longer working or people just getting tired of it. I hadn’t played a lot of 8v8s for roughly a month, where before ECM heavy line ups where all I saw. So 8v8s seem to be fun again at least for now.

For the people expecting a lot more from MWO, I think it might get there but it’ll be years. They literally are building the base before worrying about everything else still (as you can tell with netcode improvements). If they keep making money there are enough features and improvements to keep them busy for years. Just equaling what was possible in past games will take a long time.

Timex do you have any more information on that league? I’ve heard people mention is vaguely like you did but I’d love to see a lengthy write up on it or a video explaining it more. It sounds awesome, shame I had never heard anything of it till MWO.

1759

On the old Mechwarrior leagues?

I played back in the old Flaming Sword (TFS) league, which eventually became UTS (don’t remember what UTS stood for). Then later on, we played in NBT, which is actually still around at www.netbattletech.com (although it seems to be down right now? No idea why… I’m 99% sure they are still alive).

There were basically two types of leagues back in mechwarrior 4… ladder leagues, which were pretty straight up deathmatch fights, to move up or down a ranking… and planetary leagues, which were much more in depth, and usually limited play to forced-first-person view, and no-respawn.

NBT also enforced pure-tech, meaning that you could only mount inner sphere tech on inner sphere mechs, and clan tech on clan mechs… UTS allowed mixtech, but ended up being much more restrictive in terms of what mechs units had access to (generally, in UTS, inner sphere units really only had access to IS mechs, where as in NBT most units on both sides had access to clan mechs).

The league had a huge galactic starmap, where every planet in the Battletech universe was represented. Ownership was broken up by unit, with different groups of folks would play those different units… from the major houses, to clans, to periphery units, pirates, mercenary units, etc.

Your unit had planetary holdings, money, jumpships, mech garrisons, etc… Then, each week, units would launch attacks, stage defenses against attacks, etc. through the website’s automation system, and then unit leaders would coordinate a time to fight those fights, then we’d all meet up on one of the league’s servers at the appropriate time and fight the drops.

Overall, it was a great system… We played that game for literally years in those leagues.

MWO promises to replicate some aspect of that type of gameplay through its community warfare system. I understand wombat’s skepticism, but it’s absolutely doable… because hell, we did it for years, using nothing more than fairly antiquated website stuff.

Oh, there was also a league called War Online (W!O) which had perhaps the best automation system, but didn’t have the legs of the other leagues.

1760

Sounds quite cool. Thanks for the links and info, going to read their rules. Were there problems with certain teams dominating? What stopped all the best players from teaming up together? Almost every game with small competitive communities seems to suffer from this eventually.

I also saw this a while back and have no idea about it -

http://imgur.com/VrlwY

Was that related to these leagues too?