248 replies to this topic

[WmMoneyFrmMissouri]

OMG i already hate the nief, i will be hearing the whistles all day, I will be just dying to that. If the dps on the seeker is not nerfed i think i just ragequit this game all the time. I think its a really bad idea. No other A class mech will be able to compete with this bs on an open field

I think you're mistaking seeker with hellfire. There is no lock on alarm for the seeker. Heat scout along with EOC infil will make the Nief their slave.... Your concern levels can officially lower.

[Wormsign]

The Devs (or anyone) don't have to take me too seriously on this, I'm just a guy that bought some Hawken content on Steam a while ago and didn't really get into it. The overall gameplay was a bit too Quake-y for me (that is, too fast for my reflexes), plus I met obvious aimbotters more often than I'd like, so I just went back to doing mech PVP in MWO.

 

However I did want to see Hawken succeed. It was a fun game, it ran smoothly on the Unreal Engine, it was beautiful, and it had great music. I wouldn't mind returning to it from time to time, but what I see now makes me doubt I'd want to bother. Here's why.

 

If I understand correctly, the game has been fine, but its business model wasn't very well done, so it had to undergo what's perhaps the most painful thing for a game project short of cancellation: being orphaned and overtaken by another developer. This, in and of itself isn't bad, but there are several points in Q&A that make me worried.

 

1. The focus on consoles is an instant red flag. I'm a firm believer that consoles have no real reason to exist past 5th generation. Yes, that's just a personal impression, but what's not a personal impression is that PC versions of every cross-platform game I know of suffer to a degree from also being on consoles. At best it's a horrible UI optimized to be browsed with a controller with elements too big and unresponsive to the mouseover, at worst it's a whole set of carried over control and graphics limitations that have resulted in existence of a term "s******y console port". To what degree this will affect Hawken remains to be seen, but I expect nothing good coming out of console-centric approach.

 

2. The new business model, whatever that is, already seems to be including direct upgrades to mechs with new G2 system, which is bound to make half of the mechs indirectly obsolete, while also providing a competitive advantage to people driving G2's. If this is supposed to drive people to spend money/grind for G2's, then I guarantee that there will also be people that simply quit in frustration. There is no way making any content of the game obsolete is a good idea. Sure, all of competitive hero-based games have emergently weaker and stronger heroes, but canonizing that by making half the existing roster weaker by definition is simply hindering your own game.

 

3. Locking the mechs into a single primary and single secondary takes away from one of the core value mechanics of the game. Hawken's mechs felt defined by a combo of a secondary weapon and special ability, while providing variation with the primary changes. If you change that (and one of your new ideas is an A-Class with 2 of the same weapon), you'll make each mech feel less like a platform that can be leveled up and experimented with/adapted for different goals, and more like a one-trick pony. Customizability, or the ability to "build" the mechs/heroes is what makes every one of them feel like more of a worthy investment. In MWO every mech variant can carry a variety of builds. Sure, there are soft limitations, and some builds are meta, while others aren't, there is still room to adapt your build to your playstyle, or the mission parameters. This is also one of the reasons why out of recent hero shooters I prefer Battleborn to Overwatch. One has global hero talent unlocks, in-mission talent choices as well as items that can be activated, the other has just a hero set in stone, which frankly results in less customizibility than CoD4 used to offer, which isn't exactly a good thing in year 2016.

 

4. Oh, and since old players are going to retain changeable primaries, I can see a LOT of new players (especially serious-minded ones) being understandably unhappy about it, because you'll either make new locked combos more powerful, and that will mean old variants are obsolete, or one of the older combos will be more powerful, which mill mean new players are getting penalized. Really, I just see no reason for doing this, but I don't know all the details so let's wait and see.

 

It's good to see that orphaned Hawken is still alive, but whether or not its new parents will make it better remains to be seen. I sure hope so, since there aren't too many good mech games out there, and Hawken is one, but even at a glance certain reasons for concern can be found.

[DallasCreeper]

I was just lying around and got an idea: what if Legacy mechs had "Legacy" before their name, like how the Cupcake is the "Initiate" Vanguard. 

[StubbornPuppet]

I was just lying around and got an idea: what if Legacy mechs had "Legacy" before their name, like how the Cupcake is the "Initiate" Vanguard. 

It's a pretty solid suggestion.  I've seen many, many games do that when they come out of Alpha or Beta - tagged rewards for the early adopters.

 

I made that suggestion last week: https://community.pl...scussion/page-2

 

 

 

StubbornPuppet, on 23 Jun 2016 - 10:40 AM, said:
If we want to alleviate the potential misconception of new players seeing these "grandfathered mechs" and thinking they are cheating or P2W,  ReLoaded can just put a "Tag" on the window that shows the name and mech image of the player who killed them - you know, the thing that also shows what weapons and equipment the person who killed you is running?

So, when you are killed by a player in one of these "Beta-Legacy Mechs" (as I'd prefer to call them) it is right there, in plain, easy to understand imagery and text, giving you a very sufficient explanation of why they might look or be configured differently.  Then, you may get some whiny idgits who complain that it's unfair that they can't have the alpha rewards... but then thousands of others will just tell them to shut up, because they weren't an alpha/beta player and shouldn't ever expect to recieve rewards for something they didn't do.

This is a very common practice for games coming out of alpha or beta.  They have unique 'stuff' that was only available to the fine and dedicated players who helped them play-test the game so that the general public could benefit from the fruits of their labor.  Think of the Legacy Mechs as our "Rewards" for sticking it out with Hawken.

(I don't know why the forum keeps separating paragraphs into separate quotes)

 

And, though I was never quoted, people seemed to embrace the idea and the topic ran with it.

[Josegrowl]

So if existing PC players get to keep all their content (skins and such). Does this mean that we'll keep the weapons that are going to be switched out as well? Like the SMC on the Vanguard for example?

[blackace16]

Will there be cross play? I cant wait for this game to come back I love it. Best game played yet.

[MomOw]

Now that the game is released on Xbone, may we have a piece of information about a changelog or a date for a dev stream or anything "official" ?

It would be welcome 

[nepacaka]

Now that the game is released on Xbone, may we have a piece of information about a changelog or a date for a dev stream or anything "official" ?

It would be welcome 

I want it right noaw!

[Vuduvince]

" Existing purchases, however, will remain available to be equipped."

Unless they've lost your entire account in which case you get to start over....