So i was
going to write about how the Crew has been delayed due to its console port
being poop. But then I once again got proof that your average gamer has the
attention span of a goldfish and only care to express their opinion when
something is not working… And then only express it loudly and ill-informed.
First some
background. As I have mentioned earlier I play a game called Mechwarrior online.
It is a really nice game but suffers a little from “small player base”
syndrome. This causes matches in the game to from time to time have a fairly
big gap in skills between players both within a team and between teams as the
matchmaker loses its restrictions in order to launch a match. This is ofc not
uncommon but in order to sort of fix the problem the developers decided to redesign
the system behind the matchmaker. In short the change was to switch form a
system where players picked what game modes they wanted to play and the
matchmaker tried to match them up to a system where the players choose the game
modes they preferred to play and the matchmaker put together as even teams as
it could. This to eliminate the problem of the MM finding a perfect match skill
wise but being unable to launch it because people choose different game modes. Any
way you can read more about this HERE
This change
was communicated in every way possible short of them going to your house and
tell you personally. Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and ofc the official forums. The
feedback was generally positive and while some people was unhappy with losing control
over what game mode was to be played everyone was in agreement that faster and
more even matches would be a good thing. Yesterday this patch was implemented…
I give you
one guess as to what happened…
If that
guess was that a good section of the community flipped the proverbial shit (and
most likely a table or two) you would be right to such a degree that the devs
are now looking in to removing the change. Now this is very typical in my mind for
how your average game community acts and reacts. You have a simmering and gloopy
morass on a subject. The devs wade in and try to set it right, giving the
community a chance to voice it´s opinion. Most people do not give a flying fuck
until the change go in, then they skip the patch notes and go directly to complaining
in-game until someone tell them to shut the fuck up and go to the forum. Shortly
after that we have a minor rebellion on our hands. Now the interesting thing is
of course that most people do not leave any feedback before the change go in
but rather come howling after it is done. It is estimated that between 2 and 10
percent of a games active player base visit the forums so that there will be
some people who only comes around to complain about a change is to be expected
but that you see them same pattern from the so called regulars. How come that
so few people partake in a game and have such a strong desire to proclaim their
opinion but yet are so reluctant to actually read any of the information outside
of the game. Is this a trend.. Am I the odd one out who reads up on things and
try to understand what is going on and if so.. Is the system of higher
education doomed as people seem to be unable to do basic information gathering.
I just assumed that this was such a common skill that I usually give people I game
master in rpg´s with a modern or futuristic setting a free leg up on information
gathering.. Perhaps I have been wrong and held a way to positive view on
things.
Anyway, I just
felt I had to rant a bit about this. And if you are one of those people who
like to complain, do so by all means but do things in the right order… Don´t be
the person who skip voting and then comes yelling that nobody ever listen to
your concerns. You are the main reason that communication between developers
and community dries up, after all what is the point of them taking time to try
and communicate when you just shit on those efforts and then go rampaging
around the forums like a howler monkey on PCP.
So
MechWarrior:Online… I have been holding
off talking about this game even if it is my “main” game right now as far as
online play goes. The reason is that the game launched as what is called “minimum
viable product” and is a way for the developer to say that they ran out of time
but will finish that game as you play it. To make a comparison it would be like
buying car and getting all the essential bits but things like A/C, a stereo,
maybe some of the less important gauges and this or that bit and bob would be
missing. It is still a very drivable car. It just feels a bit raw.
The same
thing can be said for MechWarrior:Online. As it stands it is a fun death match
game with big stompy mechs and a surprising amount of tactical options. But
that is also all it is for now compared to the living galactic warfare that was
promised back when the game began taking pre-orders (darling enough called
Founders). The reason I am talking about this game now is that we (and by “we” I
mean the developers =P) finally are moving in to the home stretch of what have
become dubbed Community Warfare, the galactic spanning war that will be the
beating heart of the product.
So what the
heck is MechWarrior online? Well it all began in the 80´s with a miniature
wargame called Battletech that took place in a fictional universe based on a “what
if” scenario of human space colonization where we in fact where alone and we
create something called the inner sphere, its borders being the edge of the
practical reach of space travel. Within this sphere humanity spread out and began
colonizing planets. Cultures became more polarized as distances grew and the
old countries dissolved. Any way somewhere along the line someone had a rule of
cool moment and decided that giant walking tanks was the next hot thing.
Line art... always line art.
Now ruling
this huge space empire was not easy and soon a lot of people had some very
diverse and strong ideas on how to do it… This ended up about as well as one
can expect as before anyone knew it we had nuked our self back to the early age
of space exploration. So a large part of the military arm of in essence space
UN said “fuck this” and left the inner sphere. On their way out they left this
message (turns out that sub-light transmissions are really bad as it was found
about 400 years later… Still en-route towards Terra).
The people
left behind did not learn to live in peace… In fact they continued to fight.
The five major powers in the inner sphere are as follow
Draconis
Combine. Ruled by house Kurita these are your typical stereotypical space
samurai.
Capellan
confederation: Ruled by house Liao these are your very politically incorrect
space Asians that are not space samurai. Mostly Chinese.
Free World
League: Ruled by house Marik (in essence) this is space-murica and try to
function as a democracy but is not doing a very good job at it.
Federated
Suns; Ruled by house Davion these are your space Britts. But with less tea and
more guns… way way more guns… Colonial era amount of guns.
Lyran Commonwealth:
Ruled by house Steiner. Space French and German. The trade powerhouse to the
Fed Suns military might.
Then we
have the sixth “power” Free Rasalhauge republic: Ruled by house Magnussen as
the elected prince these are your happy go lucky space Vikings. Also a
democracy but doing a lot better then the free world league.
There are
also a tangled mess of minor powers but to list them all would take all day. If
you want a extensive wiki on all things Battletech I direct you towards sarna.net.
Any way
these people all kicked each other’s arse back and forth over the galaxy. Now
remember those angry people that left in a huff… Well it turns out they built a
communist-ish warrior cast society that think they are prophecies to return to
the inner sphere and save them from them self. So one day they got tired of waiting
and decided that now would be a good way to wreck the face of the IS. Being
known as the clans they cut a neat slice out of the IS and made them self at
home.
The battles
in the real world represented by small metal miniatures made by people who believed
that scale was something that other people suffered under. Battletech was
filled with 80´s sci-fi magic and casual racism but also pretty fun
Anyway at
one point Microsoft said “let´s make a computer game of that.” And the
Mechwarrior franchise was born (ok not entirely how it happened, Activision was
the forst butthat game never really took off). This is how the intro locked and
it sort of set the tone for the entire series.
In November
2000 MechWarrior 4 was released and signaled the end of the franchise. Beyond
an expansion and a few fan projects and mods Mechwarrior was a dead license.
Until…
roughly 10 years later the behemoth stirs again. First a teaser trailer pops up
And later
the very game MechWarriro Online. An online successor to the beloved
MechWarrior franchise the promised all that we had been missing over the years.
Now in hindsight Piranha games did pretty much everything connected to
marketing wrong. They set the expectations so high that not even if they had
managed to deliver on them would it have been enough. And delayed things where
for a bunch of reasons, not only a lack of communication with the playerbase but
also with the publisher IGP. Conflicting visions and priorities lead to a
community afraid to trust the developers and many of the forum going people
where split in to either defending Piranha tooth and claw or paint everything
they did with a tar brush.
While this
was going on slowly but surely a game was taking shape that actually delivered
on much of what was promised, it just took a lot longer than expected. So as we
stand today MW:O is a 12vs12 PvP death match game. With a selection of 10 maps currently
with a 11th coming this month and two more in production. As a player you pilot
a battlemech, 25-100 tons of sci.fi magic and enough weapons to level a city
block. The general rule of thumb goes, the smaller the mech the faster and less
armed/armored it is. And in reverse the biggest mechs sometimes carry a weapon
load that weights more than the lightest mechs. But they are also much slower
and much less agile so they can be out-flanked by smaller faster mechs. This is
something that PGi have worked very hard on. That every mech should have a
place on the battlefield no matter size or weight. In previous Mechwarrior
games it was pretty much a linear advancement. You began in a light mech and
then moved on to a medium, then a heavy and finally an assault.
So each
mech can be modified by changing weapons, engine, armor and something that is
called heatsinks. They keep your mech from melting… Literally.
Due to the
wide range of mechs and weapons combined with the fact that there are no
respawns at this time the potential for nuanced tactics are great and even a
single death at the wrong time can fold a solid battle line. Now this game have
a steep learning curve and it is easy to make rather devastating mistakes, especially
financially as mechs are expensive and money can be slow. So always ask if you
feel even the slightest unsure. The MW:O community is… Well… Helpful as long as
you do not give people attitude… Let us call it prison rules simply. Know your
place and respect your elders and things will work out just fine. I would
suggest joining a company (Don´t call them clans… As I pointed out before clans
have a very specific meaning in this game) and seeing as I am not a shy one I would
suggest the Skjaldborg Sheildwall of Rasalhauge. We have mead and cookies…
The game is
free to play without any paywall. You can buy premium time that let you earn XP
and money faster or you can buy the mechs, paints and camo schemes you like. There are also a special type of mech called a
“Hero mech” these are mechs that have a special weapon loadout and a paintjob unique
to them but are not more powerful than regular mechs. Their weapons do not do
more damage and they are not more resilient. Apart from the premium time and
the hero mechs anything that you can buy for ream money can be bought with
in-game money.
