54 replies to this topic

[TruePoindexter]

ShadowWarg, on June 25 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

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

Easier to see than describe - here's an old video of mine.

[Bratwurst]

Out of the Mechwarrior 4 games I have played, Mercenaries was the most enjoyable, the tabletop games, the RPG D20 games, Mechwarrior 2, NOT MECHASSAULT for FUZZY BUNNY'S sake!

Chromehounds, amazing game, always played artillery as they had the guns that really go boom, why they shut down the servers, I will never know.

[Bratwurst]

TruePoindexter, on June 25 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

ShadowWarg, on June 25 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

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

Easier to see than describe - here's an old video of mine.

Dude you built the HVG-Legend! MY FAVORITE BUILD!

[Brewtality]

ShadowWarg, on June 25 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

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

I played it on 360. Might've been on PS3 too, but not sure.

Anyway, it is a lot more like MechWarrior than Hawken: lots and lots of customization options. Even moreso than in MechWarrior because you could build your own HOUND from the ground up rather than pick a ready-made body. The greatest thing about it though was how the HOUNDS handled: there was no boosting around or something fancy. They handled like you'd expect walking tanks would. If you built the largest classes it really felt like piloting a walking mountain. Weapons had recoil and stuff like that, too.

As I said previously, very "realistic" take on the whole Mech-genre. A far cry from Gundam, I tell you hwhat.

EDIT: Of I forgot; it was all online, too. You had a persistent map with areas you could conquer with three factions fighting for world domination. You picked one of the three and stuck with that faction for a week or so and any fights you won in on a certain map counted towards the domination of that area; the faction which won the most fights in any area conquered it. If your faction reached the enemy capital city area you would have a big bossfight against the AI-controlled "super weapon". Real fun, I remember the stereotypical Soviet faction having a bigass train with an even bigasser gun on it as their super weapon. Good times...



It was really all online except the tutorials, which is why it is essentially unplayable without servers...

Edited by Brewtality, June 25 2013 - 12:04 PM.

[GodsHolyMember]

Chromehounds was lovely!  It only came out for the XB360 unfortunately, and it sucks that the servers were shut down for it without ever allowing people to privately host their own...serious ripoff considering people PAY for XBLive!

Anyway...CH had a fantastic customization setup and was more interesting to build mechs there than in MW# in general.

As for mobility, I think that CH and MW both suffer from not having actual defense contractors consult them.

Talk with General Dynamics about how important mobility is and they'll point out that an M1A2 Abrams can fire its main turret accurately within a 3foot margin of error from over 2 miles away while going full throttle over incredibly rough terrain.

Ask yourself about realism.  If today's heavy military hardware such as an MBT like the Abrams (designed/built in the early 1980's mind-you) is incredibly fast and accurate with a weapon so powerful that a single DU-Sabot is all that is needed to completely destroy another MBT, (including its own-kind as seen in friendly fire incidents in Desert Storm).  Are the weapon systems of 1,500 yearsin the future going to be slow, lumbering, unmaneuverable and easy targets that trade weak blows against one another_  Does that sound like a logical progression from present-day_

I beg to differ.

Honestly, Hawken is probably more likely than Mechwarrior...the only thing unlikely about Hawken is bothering to make room for a pilot in the mech to begin with when you could cram more ammo and weapons into that space.

[KyRoS]

I tried MWO again about a week ago and it just felt bland to me. What really pi$$es me off though is how PC Gamer rates it amongst the top 25 FPS games of all time then trashed Hawken. Hawken >>> MWO by miles IMO.

[Kazma]

The first time I played MWO I too thought that this game is completely bullsh*t.
Until I started playing with friends.
MWO is a more team based game then HAWKEN, and thats another thing they have to fix ...Matchmaking ...
if you don't play with friends you should probably not play at all^^ only if your already experienced enough.
The game also has problems with balancing, wich is most likely the MWO dev's hardest task right now. (they have a very long list of patches for weapons ...)
Anything else is pretty much well made / the devs are doing really really many updates.
They are also right now creating the "UI 2.0", a complete rework of the UI with many positive changes.
I am not sure, but you might've been experiencing the same thing as me when I started MWO.
I did not watch the damaged mech parts (Press R^^). You can shoot off their limbs etc.

and ... well MWO is complicated, but it is by far not a bad game. You have to get the knowledge first before having fun with it.
since HAWKEN is a game where you can jump in and shoot stuff, you'll feel like an idiot when playing MWO^^
I also heard something about an upcoming tutorial with UI 2.0 xD

oh and, MWO is not P2W, it just seems like it is

Edited by Kazma, June 25 2013 - 12:06 PM.

[Brewtality]

GodsHolyMember, on June 25 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

Ask yourself about realism.  If today's heavy military hardware such as an MBT like the Abrams (designed/built in the early 1980's mind-you) is incredibly fast and accurate with a weapon so powerful that a single DU-Sabot is all that is needed to completely destroy another MBT, (including its own-kind as seen in friendly fire incidents in Desert Storm).  Are the weapon systems of 1,500 yearsin the future going to be slow, lumbering, unmaneuverable and easy targets that trade weak blows against one another_  Does that sound like a logical progression from present-day_

Mechs are never going to work, obviously. What I am saying is that Chromehounds have come the closest to suspend my disbelief enough for me to actually feel like "Hey, if we had giant bipedal tanks walking around, this is probably quite close to how it would look".

As for the mobility, I'd say that's just irony. Despite the fact that Mechs/HOUNDS are incredibly advanced by our standards, lore-wise the characters in the universe are still stuck in a WWII-esque arms' race kind of thinking where they are adding as much armour as possible to their Mechs. Just like the fuzzy bunny kept making increasingly heavier tanks towards the end, with little regard for anything else.

As for weapons, I am pretty sure that the Chromehounds universe is a parallel history set during the cold war or Vietnam war era. The weapons aren't laser beams or anything fancy; just oversized "regular" weapons.

[Audible_Silence]

i remember playing MW2 in middle school... with respawns, infinite ammo, and no heat generation    best mech game ever lol.

now that im older i obviously would play differently, but when MWO doesnt have these option in there servers... it pushes away a good chunk of players.

[NBShoot_me]

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

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.

Mistakes in MWO are usually fatal because the affects of damage taken and ammo used are cumulative in MWO.  It doesn’t matter if you’re in an Atlas or a Jenner, if you trying to CoD that game like you can in Hakwen, you die, and you die quickly.  Even in the largest mechs, the armor doesn’t last forever, and when taking focus fire from 3 or so enemy mechs, it doesn’t last all that long.  Heat management is also much more important in MWO as your mech shuts down, none of this “ONLY weapons go offline” business that you see in Hawken.  Coupled with the ability to actually run out of ammo (provided you’re not using energy weapons) MWO isn’t one of those “simply mindless button mashers” out there.  .. and I'll say it again, Hawken weapons might as well be 100% energy weapons as they have the )($#( characteristics of video game energy weapons... massive heat generation and no ammo usage... darn things don't even use up some depletable form of fuel/energy of the mech.. .just fires until overheats and starts firing again once cooled, no other limiters..


I’m not saying MWO is closer to perfect or even more entertaining than Hawken, but compare the two and MWO is closer to a slow game of chess to Hawken’s connect 4..

In Hawken, it seems to mainly focus on mobility first, with everything staying on the back burner.   Trolling around in an A-class mech, I didn’t really feel like I was all that limited when it came to firepower, only HP, which if you learn how to keep moving and know when to back off, wasn’t a huge problem.  Take that mobility away with a C-Class mech and holy *#($#* things can get ugly… too slow to go after objectives, too slow to go anywhere without backup, too slow to run away, big enough to be an enticing target, and not really that much more firepower than smaller more mobile mechs and not enough HP to having any staying power like a huge lumbering somewhat less tiny mech it's supposed to be… something that really hurts as those smaller faster mechs can quickly dash away, repair/cool-down as you either try to waddle around the map to follow them or back away.  Granted, things probably changed in Hawken since I last played, but who cares besides me.. since this is only my opinion after all.

[TruePoindexter]

Bratwurst, on June 25 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

Dude you built the HVG-Legend! MY FAVORITE BUILD!

Thanks! I miss those days recording off of a cheap DVD recorder. Videos were much smaller and easier to manage. I should do some for Hawken.

[damnitDave]

i used to play the tile based role playing game that it came from years ago, Battletech. Way boring by todays standards of gaming, it was a breath of fresh air at the time. Ah fond memories!

http://bg.battletech.com/

[Teljaxx]

One of the biggest problems with MWO is how the Devs have this bizarre notion of what they should keep 100% accurate to the original tabletop rules and stats, and what they can change to balance things. They will do one thing, like doubling the total armor values, modifying heat generation on various weapons, but keep standard heatsink dissipation at one point per ten seconds, as is tabletop accurate. But then they also make double heatsinks, which are supposed to dissipate double the heat of their standard counterpart, only dissipate 1.4 heat per ten seconds.

I was lucky enough to get into the MWO closed beta back in June of last year. I actually really enjoyed the game at that point, even though there were only two maps, five mechs, and very little of the equipment that is in now. Overall, the game itself was in a much better state than it is now. There were no premium hero mechs, there were collisions, so you could actually fall over if you ran into other mechs, and since there was no grind, the game was actually playable from the get go.

But now, I am seriously disappointed in the current state of the game. The hero mechs are so close to P2W that it hurts, the grind to get a new mech is atrocious unless you pay for premium time, the consumables are just idiotic, they are implementing a 3rd person view even though at the beginning they said they never would, and there are several bugs and balance issues that have gone unresolved SINCE THE BEGINNING OF CLOSED BETA. And it uses the Crytek engine, yet somehow looks so much worse than Hawken does.

Game style preferences aside, compared to the illogical mess that MWO has become, Hawken is perfection incarnate.

And no one outside of the closed beta testers will ever know the rage that the Trollmando caused.

[RooksBailey]

Today, MWO announced yet another "premium package" in anticipation of the game leaving beta in October.  This has created some furor on the official forums.  Case in point, this posting:

Quote

Congratulations, PGI. Instead of shifting the game back into a role-defined team-oriented combat simulator using giant robots, you're giving us shiny new toys. So which one of them can cram the most PPCs, AC20s or LRMs on it_ Because thats what this game's victory conditions come down to. Whoever can boat the most high-damage alphas.

This game is Call of Duty with giant robots. I challenge PGI to fix gameplay balance first -- or at least offering some kind of sign that gameplay balance is being addressed in a logical fashion... then maybe I'll lay down my cash for one of these packages.

Until then, this is just a shiny new distraction to keep people from remembering that MWO at this point is all about high-damage alphas and to hell with any sort of team-oriented tactics. 8-mans are horrible because it just consists of which team has the most ERPPC snipers.

Fix the game first, then ask for my money. I promise you I will pay you money if you at least give us an indication you're trying to steer this game back into the right direction it used to be in.

I think this is spot on. One of the reasons why I have spent money on Hawken is that the mechs in this game truly feel distinctive. Even if you are only using a small scout mech, you still feel like you are making a contribution to the overall battle. What is more, a well piloted mech in Hawken can usually hold its own against a much more powerful mech - as my poor heavy mech has the scars to prove. It for this reason that I have become fond of my mechs as I have had to really invest the time to get to know how to best use their abilities for a good performance.

The problem I have with MWO is that even though this game has far more detailed mechs, with far more upgrade options than Hawken, combat always comes down to who deals out the most damage per second. MWO feels more like a destruction derby where the premium mechs dish out stunning amounts of damage on the free2play mechs. The balance definitely feels off to me in this regard. Even worse, though, is the disconnect between performance and result. Win or lose in Hawken, I always have a sense of why the result of the match was what it was. Not so in MWO. When a game ends, I am never clear just why my team won or lost. Maybe this is because I don't grasp all the details related to the various models of mechs, but even so this would indicate a design flaw where the player who isn't a MechWarrior veteran is left clueless. What is more, the game gives poor feedback on personal performance. Hawken is like Call of Duty in that it is always telling you when you earned XP because of something you did. MWO doesn't do that at all. It just dumps a bunch of XP/credits in your lap without explanation at the end of the match. And while Hawken makes it intuitively clear why you should be trying to level up your mech, or why you should be trying to earn as many credits as possible for that special piece of hardware that will buff one of your stats, MWO XP system is lackluster as best (and practically invisible), and the equipment is so nuanced and varied that I am never clear why I should buy one piece of equipment over another. I am always hungry for more money in Hawken, while I often have piles of cash sitting around in MWO. Again, this indicates a serious design flaw (especially seeing how there is far less to buy in Hawken! Sometimes less is more, MWO!).

Lastly, Hawken just looks so much better. In Hawken, you feel like you are in a multi-ton war machine because you can see your mech knocking over street lights, and kicking small vehicles out of the way. What is more, the maps all look different and interesting. The terrain in MWO, on the other hand, in bland, unimaginative, and lacks any sort of destructible terrain that would indicate that you are strapped inside of a massive war machine.

I think MWO has a lot of promise, but right now it remains a confused and under-developed game. So I find myself agreeing with that poster (however, I disagree about the CoD reference - MWO would be a far better game if it WAS more like CoD, something Hawken, ironically, understands). I know the MWO crowd likes to bash Hawken as not being a "real" mech game, but get a clue guys: the Hawken devs have developed the better mech game to date.

Edited by RooksBailey, June 25 2013 - 11:51 PM.

[Bratwurst]

I have a problem, I have over 3000 MC I got for free...... AND I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT!

[Audible_Silence]

buy another mech___ i have 2500... i need new items for 3 mechs, and i need to buy a scout.

oh MC... yeah i have 15000 mc.... im waiting for the next patch for new camos and what not... other than that.. i usually buy 30 day boosts... best bang for the buck.

Edited by Audible_Silence, June 26 2013 - 12:46 PM.

[GodsHolyMember]

Brewtality, on June 25 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

GodsHolyMember, on June 25 2013 - 12:03 PM, said:

Ask yourself about realism.  If today's heavy military hardware such as an MBT like the Abrams (designed/built in the early 1980's mind-you) is incredibly fast and accurate with a weapon so powerful that a single DU-Sabot is all that is needed to completely destroy another MBT, (including its own-kind as seen in friendly fire incidents in Desert Storm).  Are the weapon systems of 1,500 yearsin the future going to be slow, lumbering, unmaneuverable and easy targets that trade weak blows against one another_  Does that sound like a logical progression from present-day_

Mechs are never going to work, obviously. What I am saying is that Chromehounds have come the closest to suspend my disbelief enough for me to actually feel like "Hey, if we had giant bipedal tanks walking around, this is probably quite close to how it would look".

As for the mobility, I'd say that's just irony. Despite the fact that Mechs/HOUNDS are incredibly advanced by our standards, lore-wise the characters in the universe are still stuck in a WWII-esque arms' race kind of thinking where they are adding as much armour as possible to their Mechs. Just like the fuzzy bunny kept making increasingly heavier tanks towards the end, with little regard for anything else.

As for weapons, I am pretty sure that the Chromehounds universe is a parallel history set during the cold war or Vietnam war era. The weapons aren't laser beams or anything fancy; just oversized "regular" weapons.

I think that it's possible that mechs (at least around Hawken's dimensions) are a possibility in distant future wars.  I imagine that from a technological progression and arms race that robotic exoskeletons (as we are developing today) become a standard requirement to improve infantry survivability and effectiveness by allowing the soldier to carry larger loads longer and to also carry and utilize heavier weapons in a mobile manner rather than what traditionally required fixed emplacements or vehicle mounts (e.g. what's the value in a single man being able to carry and fire M2 0.50cal rapidly and accurately without the tripod and from an unsupported position similar to traditional firing-stances).  As robotic assistance allowing for heavier weaponry and more armor becomes ubiquitous, the ante is upped as standard infantry can carry better and better anti-personnel and anti-material capabilities that used to be reserved for vehicles.  When the lethality levels reach a certain threshold that soldiers become mobile pillboxes and AA installations (with all the same detection/deterrence equipment) against traditional combat vehicles and attack aircraft, the next step to full-on mech is the rapid mobility thrusters trumping traditional combat vehicles.  Legs don't require roads and can handle trenches and hairpins that wheels and treads cannot (Bigdog is an early example, wait until it carries a grenade launcher), and the thrusters and jump-jet capabilities negate much of the rapid deployment and CAS-needs traditionally provided by attack helicopters and IFV's

I think at the very least, exoskeletons are going to be in the near future and it may lead to full mobile suits as anti-infantry technology responds unless/until the world accepts autonomous infantry-drones that replace human-boots on the ground.  Further, if we develop thrusters and low-flight maneuvering similar what's exhibited in Hawken, that would completely negate the value of wheels/treads over legs in a combat scenario, even with legs being more fragile and complex.

@NBShoot_me

Hero Mechs are pretty much P2W and trial mechs are garbage.

MWO does not have pilot-kill, as long as that's the case, armor>weapons>aim, heavy mechs with a lot of capacity trump light mechs with mobility.  Even posters on their forums lament it...look at RooksBailey's quote.

I'm not trying to lone-wolf MWO.  As I noted earlier, I've played many iterations of MW before MWO.  I know the gameplay and the strategy.  As noted in my opening remarks, I'm shocked at the outdated formula and saddened by the missed opportunity to update it tastefully rather than simply restoring it like one does an antique.

MWO has better graphics and ambiance compared to older MW games, but that's about it.  It didn't retain or expand upon many of the novel virtues of the older titles, it retained a number of the quirks and eccentricities, and it experiences the same pitfalls in balance and performance as the older ones have pretty much all suffered from due to the vast number of variables allowing for balancing headaches.

Hawken is not bound by these constraints.  It can evolve as it sees fit without having to live up to or drag with it baggage from older versions.

I started this thread as both an observation of the state of MWO and also an area where Hawken is doing well, and something that it can learn from.

Edited by GodsHolyMember, June 26 2013 - 04:55 PM.

[hoghead]

OmniStone, on June 25 2013 - 09:50 AM, said:

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.

don't under estimate us 40 or 50 year olds KID my twitch ain't gone yet and I don't think many of  the other 40 ,50 or 60 year olders are either!

[TruePoindexter]

hoghead, on June 26 2013 - 04:57 PM, said:

OmniStone, on June 25 2013 - 09:50 AM, said:

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.

don't under estimate us 40 or 50 year olds KID my twitch ain't gone yet and I don't think many of  the other 40 ,50 or 60 year olders are either!

I personally think twitch skills are case of you either have it or don't - until the extremes of age you're going to keep it if it's there.

[Teljaxx]

One of the biggest problems with MWO is what all Mechwarrior games have had problems with. It is impossible to directly translate a tabletop game that uses dice, turns, and random numbers into a first-person, skill based game. But then you run into the problem of how to balance the necessary changes. If you make it too similar to the TT rules, then it is unbalanced and barely works. but if you stray too far from the core rules and stats, then you risk alienating the core rule purists and long time fans.

As I said in my previous post, PGI has done an awful job of this. This is also part of why their trial mechs are so useless. They all use loadouts that are designed to be used in the TT game, and work fine there. But because of the changes that were done to make MWO work at all, they no longer fit within the system, and are far outclassed by mechs that can be made to fit the new system.

And it really sucks that the game has such lackluster graphics, because their concept artist is amazing. Their CG team has not done a very good job of translating his 2D designs into 3D, though. And, just like with MW3&4, they are not using the potential of the graphics engine to make interesting worlds to battle on. Instead, we get boring Earthlike snow, desert, city, and forest maps. When MW2, a game from 1995 has more interesting worlds than a Crytek game, there is something wrong.