Jump to content

Photo

Help with Hawken's history? (New Player)

- - - - -

  • Please log in to reply
22 replies to this topic

#1
Nilithium

Nilithium

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 65 posts

Hello everyone! I'm a relatively new player to HAWKEN, and I initially saw the game under my Steam Recommendations. It was F2P, as you all can tell, but I've sunk $25 into it over 4 different purchases because I realized the best way to get a jumpstart on acquiring different bot types to use was to buy a G2 robot that already has max XP and then transfer it, which proved to be successful in helping me pick up new weapons without being stuck to that bot only. So far, I have the Berzerker, the Bruiser, G2 Assault, and a Technician at Rank 5, and my next robot will be a Brawler to start into the heavy category. I'll be honest, I love this game. The combat compared to other games is radically different, but easy to pick up and a blast to use. 

 

Enough with the praise though, the Steam reviews are kinda down, and the Play HAWKEN pages suggest putting points into things instead of using internals, and there are robots in the Play HAWKEN pages that I don't see in the PC version of HAWKEN. I also found out that HAWKEN is also 4 years old. I think the game's great, but what happened? It's my opinion that this should've taken off no problem.


  • Amidatelion and _incitatus like this

#2
CZeroFive

CZeroFive

    Hawken Dev

  • Hawken Dev
  • PipPipPip
  • 617 posts

Hey, thanks for checking the game out! Here's some honesty:

 

The PC version of the game hasn't been updated in over 2 years at this point. That's why the Steam reviews are down, popularity of the game is down, and arguably we know that sucks. We have been porting the game to consoles, which is what our primary focus was for the last year.

 

The console version is a bit different than PC, has new Mechs and weapon combinations and other forms of content, and PC will be getting the console version when we relaunch the PC version of the game early this year. Your progression should stay the same, so there won't be anything really changing beyond gameplay elements and the new content.

 

Beyond that, there's been database issues with our provider which is out of our control and we've been working to resolve them as best as we can. If it looks like we haven't done much, it's because on the PC side, we basically haven't done much. We've only done server side updates, and have been in a code freeze for the time being until we finish polishing the game.

 

I know that kind of sucks to hear, and I appreciate you checking out the game on PC - It's not a bad game, but our players are sick of waiting for new content. The relaunch will hopefully be sooner than later, the game will be more polished, and in general the complaints the Steam reviews have will be (hopefully) addressed.

 

Nothing has changed in the last 2 years really on the PC side, and that's why people are upset. It's a long time to wait for hardcore fans of Hawken, but it will hopefully be worth the wait.


  • _incitatus, Neraste, KOS_Baconman and 1 other like this

#3
WmMoneyFrmMissouri

WmMoneyFrmMissouri

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 735 posts
CZero, you mentioned previously to expect some type of PC update in February. Is that timetable still on?

wmmoney.png


#4
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

the Play HAWKEN pages suggest putting points into things instead of using internals

 

I'm pretty sure an earlier version of the PC game allowed you to upgrade your mech such that it generated less heat or walked faster or whatever, depending on the descisions you made. Right now you just modify mech's stats via internals, and equip items to throw out.

 

-but if you're wondering about the problems luking beneath the surface of the game I can give you a rundown of the meta issues I've run into as a new player. I've only played for around a month tops, but most of the old players seemed quick to just shill the game in it's entirety to me when I had similar concerns to yours, instead of pointing out the obvious issues like scanners to me (until I actually used one of course), most likely because they kinda need every player they can get (the game has around 200 people playing at any given point in time on each system).

 

1) Assault (G1) is essentialy better than the CR-T on PC.

Not a big issue since neither are terribly over or underpowered, but the only noteworthy advantage the CR-T has is more radar range. It recovers from overheating faster, but that's pointless because the ability prevents that. It also recovers fuel more quickly, but that's pointless because you'll fill your gauge either way after shooting for an extended period of time, which is exactly what the coolant ability is there for. The assault is basically better in every other way; the extra health and walk speed gives you far more opportunities to actually use it's coolant ability than the CR-T's.

 

2) Orblording on PC.

Orblording is where you use a big medkit and extractor then throw out healing orbs to rapidly regenerate health in a fight. The medkit descriptions say that they let you gain 25% more hp from health orbs, but they let you gain all that extra health in the same time it would take to consume an orb without a medkit. If you're eating 125% of a meal in just the normal 100% of the time, that means you've reached 125% speed. In other words, they give you more hp/s the same way extractors do, letting you stack the effect up far more than you could stack any other item like deflectors, which on PC can only fill up two internal slots tops. You can gain up to an additional 21 hp/s while standing on an orb using the largest extractor and kit (on top of the orb's base 38 hp/s healing rate) and lets you gain 25% more hp (you get another 42 hp on top of the 170 an orb already gives). In an extended firefight, that's a fair bit of health, and chasing a low health enemy only to turn the corner and see that they suddenly have more health than you is beyond annoying since players are expected to need to repair. It damages the flow of the game.

 

3) Armor fusor on console.

The devs realized that orblording was too powerful of a regeneration method, and they nerfed it fairly hard, especially extractors, but they felt like they needed to buff the fusor at the same time since it looked overshadowed or something. On PC the largest fusor recovers 20% of your max hp in 20 seconds, which is 1% per second. This means mechs with more max hp recover more health with it. Since stacking heavy mechs was overpowered, they decided to make this a flat rate instead of a scaled one on console. That's good until you see what the healing rate is. On PC, with the largest healthbar you can get, you heal 8 hp/s with it for 20 seconds. On console, you heal 20 hp/s in 10. Yeah, 20 hp/s, and an additional 200 health. It adds almost as much regen as the 21 hp/s orblord setup, and gives 200 hp total instead of 42 more health form orbs, and only costs three slots instead of five. Plus you can get the extra 25 hp/s without having to sit still on an orb. And again, this is a flat rate; with a beserker that only has 350 hp, you can slap this part on and gain 200 health every time you kill someone, and around half as much on an assist. That's up to like a 550 hp sum, more than any midweight mech's base health (though they can use this too of course). They're easily twice as powerful as they should be. It isn't just that this is broken, but that the devs let it be broken in spite of already seeing the problems orblording does. It kinda just comes off as negligent to some people.

 

4) Scanners in general.

They aren't too bad in TDM pubs if noone is using teamwork anyway, but in stronger lobbies or in modes like siege where you have to camp on objectives they're ridiculous. With a radar scrambler you can at least recognize that you're in a scrambler's range and go find it, but with scanners you have no idea that the enemy can see you until you get close enough to the scanner to hear it. And much like being able to heal health too fast, it just sort of damages the gameplay as a whole on a conceptual level since you're normally expected to have teammates to spot targets.


Edited by Acguy, 02 January 2017 - 07:21 PM.


#5
hestoned

hestoned

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 252 posts

armor fusor isnt based off percentage in the console version. advanced armor fusor is just 200hp over 10 secs



#6
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

armor fusor isnt based off percentage in the console version

 

yeah, I said it was a flat rate instead of a precentage

 

 

advanced armor fusor is just 200hp over 10 secs

 

I'll fix that in my post. That's still absurdly broken though, you're getting 20 hp/s for a total of 200 hp for three slots (it is three right? not four?) whereas full five-slot orblord gave an additional 21 hp/s and only 48 more health per orb, and only while you sat still on an orb.


Edited by Acguy, 02 January 2017 - 07:26 PM.


#7
Nilithium

Nilithium

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 65 posts

yeah, I said it was a flat rate instead of a precentage

 

 

 

I'll fix that in my post. That's still absurdly broken though, you're getting 20 hp/s for a total of 200 hp for three slots whereas full five-slot orblord gave an additional 21 hp/s and only 48 more health per orb, and only while you sat still on an orb.

Hold on. I thought the Fusor added 20% and 13% armor over 20 seconds as the description says, meaning the benefit is dependent on the HP of the robot you equip it on, no?



#8
Amidatelion

Amidatelion

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 2474 posts

... was to buy a G2 robot that already has max XP and then transfer it

 

...and so the ranks of our scrubs continue to impress with marked intelligence and foresight. Like, goddamn. That is an amazing idea, I never thought of it (largely because the G2s were among the last things I bought, just before Scout) and I am sincerely impressed. AC covers a lot of good comments and is also brand new, so maybe go make friends.

 

Goddamn I think 2017 might be a great year.

 

As to the history of the game, in brief:

 

In the early 2010s Hawken was announced as a huge, multiplatform release. We're talking games, comic books, tv series, the works. It would be produced by a dedicated company called Meteor and developed by Adhesive. Without getting into details, Meteor dropped the ball hard in regards to money and project management, like, hard. I can't believe there were lawsuits from investors. Adhesive proved to be better at development, with a few exceptions and they created the excellent experience we all love. However, they made some mistakes that mired them in technical debt that eventually led to a handful of devs scrambling to keep servers up for us on the down-low while... things happened. Aside from a few excellent researchers who will remain unnamed unless they wanna out themselves and an Inside Man (praise be to Ashfire, long may he reign) we didn't know what things were happening until it was announced that Reloaded Inc. had bought Hawken.

 

Initial development from Reloaded was extremely limited and dedicated towards learning the codebase, which was fair enough. Then things became rocky as communication slowed down and took a dark, censorious turn. It was announced to mixed reception that Hawken would be released to consoles, due to Reloaded (or perhaps just their Hawken division?) needing a cash infusion. Which, you know, fair enough, businesses need to make money. But the console release was disastrous and while there are still die-hards, the framerate, balance and server quality have reduced console population to barely better than PC. With trust in Reloaded rapidly dwindling due to a lack of communication (literally THE FIRST AND ONLY GODDAMN THING WE TOLD CAP'N JOSH WE WANTED alskjdf;klasjdf;lkjsd;) and repeated server, database and community issues, things were looking dark.

 

Following a change of, at least, community management, CZeroFive ushered in an era of developer clarity and has at least addressed the majority of community concerns. Only consoles have seen any marked development and signs of developers listening to the community recently and there have been serious database problems, but we remain tentatively hopeful. Things are happening and we are being kept abreast, which is literally the best fuzzing condition community-dev interactions have been in two fuzzing years. There are balance and quality of life disagreements, but the joys of the cat-faced dev are that a reasonable amount of discussion can happen regarding these. Only time will tell about the future of the game, but again...

 

tentative hopes for 2017.

 

Die well, my scrublet.


Edited by Amidatelion, 02 January 2017 - 08:01 PM.

  • FRX23, crockrocket, DieselCat and 5 others like this

#9
Morquedeas

Morquedeas

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 161 posts

1) Assault (G1) is essentialy better than the CR-T on PC.

Not a big issue since neither are terribly over or underpowered, but the only noteworthy advantage the CR-T has is more radar range. It recovers from overheating faster, but that's pointless because the ability prevents that. It also recovers fuel more quickly, but that's pointless because you'll fill your gauge either way after shooting for an extended period of time, which is exactly what the coolant ability is there for. The assault is basically better in every other way; the extra health and walk speed gives you far more opportunities to actually use it's coolant ability than the CR-T's.

 

I highly, highly doubt the console Assault is better than the CRT, unless their stats are wildly different from what they are on PC.  Consider that the PC assault is easily one of the best mechs in the game, and its stats really aren't that much better than the CRT's.  And the G2 Assault on PC is considered one of the worst mechs in the game.  Sustained primary + Tow is the recipe for high A tier.  If you have trouble remembering, A tier is everything that has Tow (aside from the CRT, although this is just because the Assault has all-around better stats on the PC) and the Infiltrator.  I don't think the slightly worse stats of the CRT would demote it to any where near the twin primary assault, especially in the absence of the PC Assault.



#10
DeeRax

DeeRax

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 689 posts

-snip-

He's talking about assault vs. crt on PC, not the console version.


         starfox-sig.gifrYFaSGG.gif

 

          2XhpJes.png

 

"DeeRax's got what you've always wanted."


#11
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

Hold on. I thought the Fusor added 20% and 13% armor over 20 seconds as the description says, meaning the benefit is dependent on the HP of the robot you equip it on, no?

 

That's correct, but only on PC. On console it's a flat rate, that's why I said "Armor fusor on console."

 

I highly, highly doubt the console Assault is better than the CRT, unless their stats are wildly different from what they are on PC.

 

I was talking about PC, where assault G1 has a tow instead of double vulcans like PC AG2. Hence why I said "Assault (G1) is essentially better than the CR-T on PC."

 

Come on guys.


  • DeeRax likes this

#12
Morquedeas

Morquedeas

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 161 posts

Whoops, sorry.

 

But what's the point of saying PC Assault is better than CRT?  Everyone knows this already, all you have to do is look at their stats.

 

On another note, I'm pretty sure if the PC Assault didn't exist, CRT would just take it's place in the top tier, which is probably the case in the console version.

 

Edit: Ignore me though, I've been planning on make another (pointless) balance thread so we can discuss these things then.


Edited by Morquedeas, 03 January 2017 - 08:39 AM.


#13
Amidatelion

Amidatelion

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 2474 posts

Whoops, sorry.

 

But what's the point of saying PC Assault is better than CRT?  Everyone knows this already, all you have to do is look at their stats.

 

The kids brand new. He may not know this.


  • ThereIsOnlyOne likes this

#14
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

There's not that much a point, but the first thing I asked as a new player was "how do I spend wisely?" so it'd make sense to tell him assault it better before he buys CR-T.

 

Though the assault G1 might have its tow swapped out for a vulcan when we get brought up to the console version (saying this because console assault G1 has PC assault stats), so in the long term fred might be a better purchase.

 

And to old players who are out of the loop, you don't start off with any mechs at all right now, not assault nor crt. Until you buy one you just have rentals, and you only start off with 9k credits, plus 500 for filling out personal information or something.



#15
DeeRax

DeeRax

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 689 posts

And to old players who are out of the loop, you don't start off with any mechs at all right now, not assault nor crt. Until you buy one you just have rentals, and you only start off with 9k credits, plus 500 for filling out personal information or something.

I did not know that. That's pretty gross. :yucky:
I guess it's cool that you start off with some creds, but newbs should really get Fred for free + enuff creds for another mech, IMHO. At the very least they should start with Fred for free, as per the ancient & sacred traditions.


Edited by DeeRax, 03 January 2017 - 02:07 PM.

         starfox-sig.gifrYFaSGG.gif

 

          2XhpJes.png

 

"DeeRax's got what you've always wanted."


#16
Amidatelion

Amidatelion

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 2474 posts

And to old players who are out of the loop, you don't start off with any mechs at all right now, not assault nor crt. Until you buy one you just have rentals, and you only start off with 9k credits, plus 500 for filling out personal information or something.


Wait what? When did this happen?
  • dorobo, claisolais and ThereIsOnlyOne like this

#17
CZeroFive

CZeroFive

    Hawken Dev

  • Hawken Dev
  • PipPipPip
  • 617 posts

I did not know that. That's pretty gross. :yucky:
I guess it's cool that you start off with some creds, but newbs should really get Fred for free + enuff creds for another mech, IMHO. At the very least they should start with Fred for free, as per the ancient & sacred traditions.

 

Good thing it's not true.

 

 

Wait what? When did this happen?

 

It happened on February 31st of last year. Didn't you read the patch notes that day?

 

Side note: I just registered an account to make sure a bug was not happening, and it wasn't - You start off with 5000 HC and the Assault. There used to be a bug back on our old database backend and sometimes there would be data loss on registering an account - that has since been fixed when we moved to the new database backend provider.


Edited by CZeroFive, 04 January 2017 - 08:23 AM.


#18
wischatesjesus

wischatesjesus

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 184 posts

I would actually really like an account that has literally no mechs on it just for the novelty.

 

I had one for a while, but made the mistake of bringing it up to Ashfire and he "fixed" it.

 

*shakes fist*


oFFOtRH.jpg

 

High Tier Cabal (Noun): A group of people who used to play Hawken.  


#19
Nilithium

Nilithium

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 65 posts

I was going to say, the Assault is the first bot I received. It doesn't seem like you can buy the Recruit either, so maybe it's an antique bot now! In other news, with that 5000 HC there are HC rewards for completing the basic achievements, as well as doing your first DM/TDM/MA/Siege modes.



#20
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

Good thing it's not true.

 

 

 

It happened on February 31st of last year. Didn't you read the patch notes that day?

 

Side note: I just registered an account to make sure a bug was not happening, and it wasn't - You start off with 5000 HC and the Assault. There used to be a bug back on our old database backend and sometimes there would be data loss on registering an account - that has since been fixed when we moved to the new database backend provider.

 

I know for-sure I started off with 9k and no assault mech. I did some offer that let me add some personal info for an additional 500, could that have yucked something up?



#21
CZeroFive

CZeroFive

    Hawken Dev

  • Hawken Dev
  • PipPipPip
  • 617 posts

I know for-sure I started off with 9k and no assault mech. I did some offer that let me add some personal info for an additional 500, could that have yucked something up?

 

You may have started with the aforementioned bug on an older account. Given your registration date, one of the possible scenarios is your registration failed (it was a mess during december 2nd to about the 11th, which we resolved) to complete fully, and you ended up not getting the basic package. In those cases contacting support will be your only option to resolve it.



#22
Amidatelion

Amidatelion

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 2474 posts

Good thing it's not true.

 

 

 

It happened on February 31st of last year. Didn't you read the patch notes that day?

 

Side note: I just registered an account to make sure a bug was not happening, and it wasn't - You start off with 5000 HC and the Assault. There used to be a bug back on our old database backend and sometimes there would be data loss on registering an account - that has since been fixed when we moved to the new database backend provider.

 

Ok, yeah, I knew about the Assault thing, but the no mechs bit was new to me. Made very little sense to me given the limited nature of the test-drives.


  • ThereIsOnlyOne likes this

#23
Acguy

Acguy

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 170 posts

You may have started with the aforementioned bug on an older account. Given your registration date, one of the possible scenarios is your registration failed (it was a mess during december 2nd to about the 11th, which we resolved) to complete fully, and you ended up not getting the basic package. In those cases contacting support will be your only option to resolve it.

 

Oh right, yeah, I actually made this account around when the game came out I think but I didn't have a computer good enough to run it at the time. That's probably the reason why, meaning other people probably don't get this issue. Not a big deal.






0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users