54 replies to this topic

[GodsHolyMember]

Mechwarrior Online...

She was brought back to life after years of lawsuits from patent-trolls kept it smothered beneath the depths like Cthulhu

LOL...what was I thinking_!

Wow...I forgot how antiquated the whole formula was!  But seriously...slow, trundling mechs engaged in a nerf-war is what it feels like.  It's like playing a WW1 flight sim where you don't have to worry about crashing into the ground.

Nothing in that game feels like it does any damage!  Lasers and auto-cannons and missiles fly about and twirl gloriously in mid-air like a gnat-tornado before gently pelting your opponent's mech like rain drops on a tin roof in a light drizzle.  Uninteresting, uneventful, and altogether boring.

1,500 years from today, with humanity an intergalactic, space-faring species rapidly producing giant, walking, heavily armed monsters to shelter a single human to engage another on the battlefield lugging the cutting edge in weapon systems and energy generation; the best it has to offer is a slow-paced pyrrhic victory against one's opponent(s), disregarding 1,600 years of history in warfare and the virtues of mobility in blitzkrieg doctrine and all but oblivious of air superiority tactics developed by the most powerful nations on Earth.
...how sad that humanity has forgotten how to effectively wage war and instead takes such an inefficient rout...I wonder how much coffee these mech-pilots must drink in order to remain conscious during battle_

While you can customize your mech any which-way, there's nothing all that powerful to begin with and there's clearly a P2W advantage to those that are not stuck with the default "trial mechs".

Honestly, the only thing that I think that MWO has going for it is a pretty neat little startup sequence where you see your pilot's hands and view firing up the reactor and testing the controls in the cockpit when you first enter the match.  Also, the HUD and sensory array actually is integrated with the cockpit's rendered monitors as opposed to how the instrument-data in Hawken just floats nebulously in your view independent of your cockpit (save for the weapon data and thrust-gauge).

But that's it...that's all that MWO seems to have going for it!  Wow...I mean, there's so much potential with today's technology and the level to which player preference and gamplay has evolved and matured...and instead, the MWO-team lovingly sanded, stained, and oiled the wood of this antique and put it on display as the same very comfy sofa that you used to pass out on at your Grandmother's house when you were 10!

Anyway...I'm sure some people enjoy MWO, they have a pretty decent following...but then again, people also watch televised competitive fishing.

/End Rant

Perhaps I'm missing something...some virtue, some shred of optimism for MWO that makes it better than its predecessors other than better online integration.

Edited by GodsHolyMember, June 25 2013 - 09:02 AM.

[angryhampster]

nostalgia from the very beginning MECHwarrior.

also, t he name screams for attention.

no one would know what HAWKEN is until they see trailer

but with MECHwarrior.  one can assume it has to deal with robots.

[Pure_Amazing]

This was a fun read, makes me think that Hawken is somehow in a way better position then MWO, I mean at least I can have fun in Hawken and at least I still have hope that Hawken is going somewhere and still has a lot of potential.

[N0stalgia]

Mechwarrior started its downhill stumble at Mechwarrior 4. Mechwarrior 2 and 3 were great.

Edited by N0stalgia, June 25 2013 - 09:24 AM.

[GodsHolyMember]

Pure_Amazing, on June 25 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

This was a fun read, makes me think that Hawken is somehow in a way better position then MWO, I mean at least I can have fun in Hawken and at least I still have hope that Hawken is going somewhere and still has a lot of potential.

Exactly!  Hawken is not held captive by a legacy of a popular, but very antiquated gameplay formula and set of mechanics.

I'm hopeful that Hawken can learn from and adopt some of the features that has always made Mechwarrior intriguing, but also capitalize on being a novel property that doesn't need to reinvent the wheel (particularly when said wheel has a flat-tire).

[ShadowGTR]

I tried MWO around the time Hawken went into Open Beta. Back then, it didn't have the start-up sequence you mentioned. But everything else....yeah, you pretty much had the same opinions I did. After a rather confusing slog through the mech selection area, and the painful realization I couldn't customize any of the starter mechs (I couldn't even remap any of the weapons on the keyboard! Beam weapons and rockets were spread all over the place with little rhyme or reason to them!). Finally, I just jumped into a match. After getting in with a group (of fully customized and experienced pilots no less), I fell in line behind them as they made their way to the enemy base. After a while, we started getting pounded by LRMs (long range missiles) and we scattered. I apparently had the fastest mech, so I ran ahead to try and locate the LRM launcher. I finally found it WAY off in the distance, but by that time, I was under a near constant barrage of LRMs. Needless to say, I died long before I got anywhere close to him. I then had to sit there and WAIT till the rest of my team eventually got slaughtered by LRMs and the rest of the enemy team.

After that, I got in with a different group. Again, not rookies, but experienced vets. Again I followed them, and we got to the enemy base. I followed along with another player, and we started attacking. Lets just say throwing rocks at the guy would have done more damage (at least in terms of my weapons). I tried being strategic and aiming for legs or visible weapon modules, but that seemed pointless, as I got hammered into the ground. Again, more waiting while my team slowly got destroyed. One guy apparently was afk at the start, so the match lasted until the enemy team found him way back at the start of the map! I tried a few more matches, same experience (minus the afk guy). After that, I uninstalled the game and went back to Hawken!

To those that like that kind of game, hey more power to you. For me, I think I'll stick with Hawken!

[Brewtality]

Personally I love Mech games where the Mechs actually have some weight to them. My favourite of all time was Chromehounds... before they shut down the servers. Hawken is tolerable, but stuff like Armoured Core and other Japanese stuff where the Mechs scoot about as if the ground was covered with ice or something... no thanks.

[TruePoindexter]

Being one of the few who span the gap between both MWO and Hawken I think it's important to note that they're very different games. Hawken lives and breathes twitch play where MWO is about being deliberate and careful. Mechwarrior mechs are more akin to walking tanks where Hawken mechs are something like super soldiers. Horses for courses and all that.

MWO's now P2W but does suffer from an excessively unforgiving grind for new players. You get a massive money bonus for your first 25 games but that can be painful to go through in a stock trial mech. Unlike Hawken the power difference between a trial free mech and a customized mech is absolutely massive. Test drive mechs in Hawken are not nearly as weak by comparison. Supposedly they're working on an update that will revamp the new player experience to give them a decent starter mech instead of a gimped trial.

MWO for better or worse is much more unforgiving as a whole too. No respawns - no repair - localized damage - and it's nearly impossible to evade fire making cover and tactical maneuvering mandatory. Select a long range fire support mech and the game picks a city map - tough deal with it. Select a high heat generating mech and the game picks the damn volcano map - tough deal with it. Tough deal with it is the status quo. Sometimes I have to admit I've found this enjoyable as it makes you hungry and desperate to succed against all costs. Sometimes I want to break my keyboard.

I do enjoy MWO a lot - it's a fun game and definitely channels a lot of the old MW nostalgia. The voice actress providing the computer's lines is even the same one who did it for MW2. Balance wise MWO is much more balanced than any prior MW - no weapon obviously dominates the field. Plus there are truly epic levels of customization possible - in some ways the mechlab is more important to the game than the game itself.

It should go without saying of course that I find Hawken equally enjoyable.

If I were to criticize both games it would be the lack of manual match making which makes any kind of competitive league play difficult to impossible. Hawken is better in this regard as at least you can pick your game (MWO just tosses you into a random game queue) but neither are providing tools yet for the game to grow into something remarkable. I hear though that something is in the works here in Hawken and I know the MWO devs have commented about adding something to facilitate high end play will be added in the future. I'm excited about the prospects for the future of big stompy robot gaming

Edited by TruePoindexter, June 25 2013 - 10:17 AM.

[TruePoindexter]

Brewtality, on June 25 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

Personally I love Mech games where the Mechs actually have some weight to them. My favourite of all time was Chromehounds... before they shut down the servers. Hawken is tolerable, but stuff like Armoured Core and other Japanese stuff where the Mechs scoot about as if the ground was covered with ice or something... no thanks.

I was not happy when they shutdown the Chromehounds servers... a sad day indeed.

[ShadowWarg]

Played it a couple weeks ago. Brief run down of my opinion. Limited selection for beginners (horrible compared to any one who has dished out the cash or played a long time), painfully slow, overly complicated controls than what is needed. and tank controls. I mean seriously_ Tank controls_ come on now. And when you die, that is. No respawn, just watching as your team is either pummeled (because when your team is losing there is almost no chance for a come back.) or they win, then you go back to the main menu and not a lobby, no option to continue on. Your better off just leaving as soon as you die imo.

I guess its not all bad, I mean there are some things in mech warrior that I like that may even help Hawken out. But as far as first impressions go, I'm sticking with Hawken for now.

The other thing it has going for it is its large fan base.

Edited by ShadowWarg, June 25 2013 - 09:49 AM.

[Brewtality]

I'm still not over the trauma of it...

The very notion of calling a Mech game realistic is silly, but honest to Cthulhu that is how that game felt.Chromehounds just got everything right. If we ever develop walking machines of war, I'm certain they'll look like the Mechs in Chromehounds.

[NBShoot_me]

LOL, sounds like the OP was trolling around in a trial mech playing PUG against an actual team..  MWO itself, was "meh" at best in CB, it was definatelly P2W, and probably still is.  MWO is also extremely unforgiving compared to Hawken.. which is going drive away a lot of people (from MWO) as making a mistake is usually fatal in MWO where in Hawken.. if you're in an A or B-class mech, you actually have a chance to dash away and self-repair to 100%.

Though, if this is going to be a thread on practicality/realism, I'd say the mechs in both MWO and Hawken are equally bad...

[OmniStone]

I tried playing MechWarrior Online, it was too slow and boring for me. I think if I were older(say 40-50 or so), I wouldn't mind playing it if my twitch was gone by that age. It seems to serve it's player base quite well, it is an older crowd that plays it. I'm not a MechWarrior hater or anything, it just isn't my cup of tea.

[Scapes]

N0stalgia, on June 25 2013 - 09:22 AM, said:

Mechwarrior started its downhill stumble at Mechwarrior 4. Mechwarrior 2 and 3 were great.

I did love me some MechWarrior 2.

[TruePoindexter]

NBShoot_me, on June 25 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

LOL, sounds like the OP was trolling around in a trial mech playing PUG against an actual team..  MWO itself, was "meh" at best in CB, it was definatelly P2W, and probably still is.  MWO is also extremely unforgiving compared to Hawken.. which is going drive away a lot of people (from MWO) as making a mistake is usually fatal in MWO where in Hawken.. if you're in an A or B-class mech, you actually have a chance to dash away and self-repair to 100%.

Though, if this is going to be a thread on practicality/realism, I'd say the mechs in both MWO and Hawken are equally bad...

It is very unforgiving - mistakes are almost 100% fatal and without respawns you're stuck watching the match in spectator view. At least if you leave the game after you die you still receive rewards once the match is over.

It's not P2W though - not anymore than Hawken. Both games follow the model of "Pay to not grind" which works well. The free trial mechs though in MWO are vastly inferior to custom mechs whereas a test drive mech in Hawken isn't that much weaker than a leveled mech.

[TruePoindexter]

Brewtality, on June 25 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

I'm still not over the trauma of it...

The very notion of calling a Mech game realistic is silly, but honest to Cthulhu that is how that game felt.Chromehounds just got everything right. If we ever develop walking machines of war, I'm certain they'll look like the Mechs in Chromehounds.

The entire walking robot thing will never rival basic tank treads for stability as a weapons platform. I doubt we'll ever see combat mechs - maybe the odd transport for especially rough terrain but never as a main line combat vehicle.

Powered body suits though are very likely. The smaller frame fits with modern combat principles and needs.

[hendman]

I am really just wondering what the OP had been doing at his grandma's house.......being 10 and passing out on the sofa. Or was that sofa so comfy it induced instant coma for all who sat on it_

[GodsHolyMember]

Keep in mind that I own all of the prior PC Mechwarrior itterations

I'm enthusiastic about that upcomming Mechwarrior Tactics (not sure if it's out yet...have to check the Googles).

But I just find the gameplay so antiquated...nothing about Mechwarrior feels modern.

• The mechs are slow and unmaneuverable like WW1 crawler tanks
  
  
• The weapons are far too weak, penalizing the fast and light mechs by allowing the heavy-mechs a chance to dish out PLENTY of damage and make use of their superior armor ratings.
  
  
• The locational damage is inconsequential because of #2, giving far too much preference to heavy armor over mobility and tactics.
  
  
• The learning curve is shallow, it's all about grinding out cash for gear...but the combat is the same old circle-strafe from MW2 and MW3...but they didn't even keep the pilot-kill feature where a well-placed shot with the Gause or AC150 would put hot-DU through your enemy's skull....which again, gives preference to endless LRM-bombardment, fruitless laser-strafing and picking high armor rating mechs and aggregating fire with your teammates since there's no point in aiming...this might as well be the old musketeer firing lines of Napoleon.

@Brewtality

I think that there's a happy medium that Hawken has not yet achieved with regard to giving mechs more mass.

I think that Hawken needs to account for mass, inertia, acceleration and momentum with regard to the different mech classes.  It would allow for more complex maneuvering and stunts as well as increase the learning curve a little bit with regard to dodging, evasion and pursuit.  I'd love for Hawken to take a page from Mirror's Edge with regard to allowing for complex maneuvering, but perhaps something more akin to a drift-racing game combined with a helicopter simulator.

Anime mechs are just over the top.  Armored Core could never strike the right cord with me in multiplayer.  The mechs moved like mechwarrior when they weren't boosting, and moved like mosquitos when they were boosting.  It was neat to be able to customize so much of the loadouts and components, but most of the building was more like progressing to better gear in an RPG where you graduated to better equipment rather than you chose a lighter and more advanced radiator because you need superior weapons cooling, but as a compromise, there is little redundancy so there's a greater likelihood that a solid hit will disable it compared to the lower level radiators.  Armored Core never had that compromise...you bought better gear, and it was just better all-around.  And even then the mech combat was uninteresting due mostly to the aiming recticle simplicity and easy-to-fool targeting system that gave preference to manually aimed weapons at higher-level play.

TruePoindexter, on June 25 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

NBShoot_me, on June 25 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

LOL, sounds like the OP was trolling around in a trial mech playing PUG against an actual team..  MWO itself, was "meh" at best in CB, it was definatelly P2W, and probably still is.  MWO is also extremely unforgiving compared to Hawken.. which is going drive away a lot of people (from MWO) as making a mistake is usually fatal in MWO where in Hawken.. if you're in an A or B-class mech, you actually have a chance to dash away and self-repair to 100%.

Though, if this is going to be a thread on practicality/realism, I'd say the mechs in both MWO and Hawken are equally bad...

It is very unforgiving - mistakes are almost 100% fatal and without respawns you're stuck watching the match in spectator view. At least if you leave the game after you die you still receive rewards once the match is over.

It's not P2W though - not anymore than Hawken. Both games follow the model of "Pay to not grind" which works well. The free trial mechs though in MWO are vastly inferior to custom mechs whereas a test drive mech in Hawken isn't that much weaker than a leveled mech.

Making mistakes in MWO is 100% fatal if you are in a light mech up close against a heavy...but those mistakes are realized slowly because nothing 1-hit-kills and armor ratings are only important if you have enough teammates concentrating their fire on your torso or arms to make a dent.

I tried all of my trial mechs and was unimpressed.  I've cut my teeth in MW1-4, I know positioning and tactics...I also know that having only a single flamer and a laser is a waste of time against an Atlas...but even if I land my flashlight on his left-eye, it doesn't matter because armor>weapons>aim.  I don't get the kill, I get pummeled...feh

While Hawken lacks locational damage, which I think it needs.  MWO goes the opposite rout and implements locational damage AND component destruction, but makes it so that only the heavy weapons and many repeated salvos are needed to accomplish such destruction...thereby mostly negating the use of a light mech in favor of one with more amor and simply more weapons to bring to bear.

Edited by GodsHolyMember, June 25 2013 - 10:43 AM.

[ShadowWarg]

I keep seeing Chromehounds being brought up. Never played, was it any good_ what system_

[TruePoindexter]

GodsHolyMember, on June 25 2013 - 10:32 AM, said:

Making mistakes in MWO is 100% fatal if you are in a light mech up close against a heavy...but those mistakes are realized slowly because nothing 1-hit-kills and armor ratings are only important if you have enough teammates concentrating their fire on your torso or arms to make a dent.

I tried all of my trial mechs and was unimpressed.  I've cut my teeth in MW1-4, I know positioning and tactics...I also know that having only a single flamer and a laser is a waste of time against an Atlas...but even if I land my flashlight on his left-eye, it doesn't matter because armor>weapons>aim.  I don't get the kill, I get pummeled...feh

While Hawken lacks locational damage, which I think it needs.  MWO goes the opposite rout and implements locational damage AND component destruction, but makes it so that only the heavy weapons and many repeated salvos are needed to accomplish such destruction...thereby mostly negating the use of a light mech in favor of one with more amor and simply more weapons to bring to bear.

Agreed - lights are too weak in MWO with perhaps the exception of a customized Raven or Jenner. Plus the mobility difference between a light and a big assault mech is huge.

Hawken has the difference between an A-class and C-class much closer by comparison which helps keep the field more even.

Edited by TruePoindexter, June 25 2013 - 11:59 AM.