MechWarrior Online

WTF! AYS, MechWarrior Online Developers?

Editor’s note:  This post is all about nerd rage.  If you’re not into nerd things you probably won’t get it.  If you are into nerd things, but not into nerd rage, then fuck off.  I don’t like you already.  If you can’t understand why someone would be this pissed about a game, you’ve never YouTube’d screaming WoW kids, Eve freakout, Nerd rage, or anything else.  People get passionate about their hobbies – and since this site is about being over the top, I’m about to be a YouTube video waiting to happen.

Now, I know they say you should never bitch about a game that’s in beta, and one can only hope that there are some good changes to come, but there comes a time when you see that the design team is so fucked in the head stupid that you just have to have them tested for Down’s Syndrome. And if they don’t have Down’s Syndrome you have to come to the realization that they are another group of people who simply need to decide to chew on a cyanide tablet, because they have no redeeming value as people.

Fuck you, Harmony Gold, that’s a Warhammer!

So, what game am I bitching about? MechWarrior Online, a game being developed by Piranha Games and published by Infinite Game Publishing.

First of all, with the exception of the very first game, ALL of the Microsoft MechWarrior games sucked. Oh, they were pretty okay single player games, but for multi-player they were garbage.

I am going to address quite a few issues in this post, but understand that I am not addressing them all. If you are a MWO player and see that there’s an issue (or ten) that I didn’t cover, I know … I know. You’re welcome to post comments indicating other areas where the developers showed their complete ignorance or disdain for the BattleTech intellectual property (IP).

Oh, and before you ask: YES, I could project lead a better game than them.  I’d need coders and artists, but as far as leading a proper BattleTech/MechWarrior Online project – creating a fun game and one that’s true to BattleTech lore – I could easily lead that team.  Unfortunately, these Full Sail rejects got the funds and the rights.

BattleTech IP	MechWarrior Online
Light ‘Mechs are the second most common type on the battlefield. Their above-average speed and jump capability usually allows them to skirt heavy fighting to get a look at enemy formations. Whatever their assets, light ‘Mechs must still stay out of the way of their larger brothers. Even in numbers they are no match for heavier ‘Mechs.	Due to the obnoxiously small size of light ‘Mechs, the inability of heavier ‘Mechs to torso twist fast enough, and game lag light ‘Mechs can solo assault ‘Mechs. Whether this was a conscious design decision or simply the consequence of current coding, it is WRONG. And don’t give me that ‘balance’ bullshit.  Light ‘Mechs aren’t supposed to be balanced against assaults in combat.  If you want to balance them, make assaults cost too much to use constantly. I saw this quote the other day on the MWO site, and had to steal it:  “‘Mechs should NOT be balanced, weapons should be.“ I couldn’t have said it better, and I’m making this my new mantra.  Lights should not be ‘balanced’ with assaults – neither should mediums or heavies. I will add that with the 23 January 2013 patch, the lag shield that was making light ‘Mechs nearly invulnerable seems to be lessened, but they can still kill Assaults fairly easily – when they shouldn’t even have a prayer.
Medium ‘Mechs are by far the most common ‘Mech; they form the bulk of every unit.	Medium ‘Mechs are only used to level up as time permits or because the player has a personal reason for wanting to use it.  They are on par with heavy and assault ‘Mech in size, but they carry less firepower.There’s NO point in using a medium ‘Mech in competitive play, and many teams  won’t let you run a medium ‘Mech.  So, far from the most numerous and the workhorses, they are now the step-children of the MWO.
Although rare and often kept out of the battle because of it, one assault ‘Mech is usually equal to a whole lance of other ‘Mechs.Someone once calculated that if [thirty six 20-ton ‘Mechs] engaged an Atlas, the Atlas would retire for repairs an hour later, leaving only one [20-ton ‘Mech] still able to move.	Assault ‘Mechs are solo-killed by light ‘Mechs with ease.In MWO the 8vs8 matches are nothing but 6 Atlases and 2 Ravens versus another teams 6 Atlases and 2 Ravens.  Usually all of them have ECM.
ECM Game Rule:  An ECM suite has an effect radius of [180 meters] that creates a bubble around the carrying unit.  The ECM’s disruptive abilities affect all enemy units inside this bubble, as well as any line of sight tracked through the bubble.  It has no effect on units friendly to the unit carrying the ECM. Active Probe:  Active Probes cannot penetrate ECM’s area of effect. Artemis IV:  ECM blocks the effects of Artemis IV. C³:  C³ is cut off if caught within ECM. Narc Missile Beacon:  Lose the bonus if the pod lies within the ECM range. TAG:  ECM does not affect TAG or other systems not mentioned here.  (e.g. Standard missile firing rules apply, and Streak missiles are not affected by ECM.)	I’m 100% positive that even these hyper-retards will fix ECM in the near future, but for now check this out.  Compare this to the way it’s SUPPOSED to be.When a Mech is hidden by a friendly ECM: Enemy Mechs will have to come within 1/4 the normal distance (200 m instead of 800 m, by default) for hidden Mechs to show up on their battlegrid and HUD. The Beagle Active Probe is of no use in extending this range. It takes twice as long to achieve a missile lock against a hidden Mech. Narc beacons will stick to hidden Mechs, but they won’t provide their normal bonuses until the Mech leaves the ECM’s range. Artemis IV does not provide any bonuses against hidden Mechs. When your Mech is disrupted by an enemy ECM: You will not know where your teammates are, and they won’t know where you are, unless you have direct line of sight to each other. You cannot share any targeting data with the rest of your team, and vice versa. Your Beagle Active Probe ceases to function. You cannot achieve any missile locks. Your TAG laser can still fire but provides no bonuses. Your battlegrid and targeting information will flicker. Between the ECM’s 180 m range, and the 200 m range for detecting Mechs hidden by ECM, there’s a 20 m radius band where you can detect a hidden Mech, target it, and get a missile lock and/or share the targeting with your teammates. Really! A whole 20-fucking-meters that takes all of .0001 seconds to cover? Well golly gee, thanks for nothing shit for brains! And how do the rest of the abilities of MWO’s ECM have anything in common with the canon ECM? They are having a hell of a time balancing it, and I wonder why.  Maybe, just maybe, if they stuck true to the real game they would find that ECM is both useful and not over powered.
Whether it’s via the miniatures or the novels BattleMechs have always scaled between eight and twelve meters, with the Atlas being fourteen meters.  (Newer products have adjusted this to like 17-meters or some other garbage, but I’ll take 20+ years of canon over some upstart who wants to put his thumbprint on the universe.)	I forget the actual sizes, but I think they made the Catapult 22 or 26 meters. Ummm … what?  That’s over twce as tall as it’s supposed to be.So, maybe those light ‘Mechs are the right size, it’s just the other ‘Mechs they fucked up.
	Whoda thunk that these two ‘Mech are the same thing?No, there is no good reason to ‘update’ the models.  The original Centurion looked just fine – better than the garbage these ‘pigs’ created.

Design issues that are too late to change now …

… but would have allowed them to create a better game, a game that people could grow into and mature with.

• No customization of ‘Mechs, and give all starting players stock ‘Mech designs.
• 3025-era.
• Tabletop weapon values.

No player customization of ‘Mechs.

I fully understand that as the game grows and develops that unique, battle worn, and custom designs are needed; however, at the start of the game players should be fielding stock designs only.  As they grow and gain experience then customization should be allowed – slowly.  At first it could be small changes (e.g. a ton of armor for a heat sink), later larger changes can be made (e.g. replace a PPC and heat sinks with an autocannon and ammo).  Under no circumstances should a player be able to change out an engine or internal structure.

Fuck you, George Lucas, that there is ‘Droids!

Custom designs should be for the long time veterans and the elite players.

3025-era.

If these dipshits would have started in the 3rd Succession War era (aka: 3025-era), maybe using the same time – 3015 – as the teaser trailer they put out, they would not have the technical and balancing issues they have now.

3025-era tech is simple and easily balanced. They could have created the game there, then slowly released new tech under the guise of the Helm Memory Core. It would have afforded them the ability to put out a functioning game, take extended time to play test the new equipment, and give hope to the Clan faggots that one day they would get their precious cheese ‘Mechs.

Tabletop weapon values.

Okay, so let me state that for the record they made one good change – double armor.  I get why they did that, and I’m for it.  With that said, they fucked everything else up around that one change.

If you double the armor, but not the weapon damage, then you need to double the ammo that ‘Mechs carry.  It’s that simple – 2:1.  That will allow ‘Mechs to still put out equivilent damage over time without destroying a ‘Mech before it has a chance to play.

If you’re going change weapon timing – (in BattleTech weapons fire every ten seconds) – you have to adjust heat as well.  If you don’t want 10-second firing, at least make it some multiple thereof and make heat dissipation match it.  There you go, the heat issue is fixed.

Fuck you, Paul Inouye! Stop trying to figure out how to reinvent the wheel – you’re not that smart – and just make the game properly for fuck’s sake!

And why did you change weapon timing anyway?  BattleTech – [in the core game and in the fluff (e.g. novels based on the universe)] – is always about fire and maneuver.  It’s not about pew-pew-pew-pew-dead.  It is about getting position, fire, maneuver into position, fire, maneuver, etc.  This is more like some stupid ass action game in mecha.  Fuck this, it’s not BattleTech.  Piranha Games and  Infinite Game Publishing should feel so bad for this atrocity that they make a pact to join Do out there around the Hale-Bopp comet.

Is a ten second recycle/reload time too long?  No, not at all.  In fact, if all of the people who bitch about that (saying it’s too long and not fun) actually TRIED it, they would find that it makes the game much more about maneuver and position.  It would also encourage rotating fire and help with heat management.  It’s a win-win-win all the way around.   This game is supposed to be a fucking simulation, not a first person robot shooter. Simulations are slower and more ‘realistic.’ Yes, I know, that ‘r’ word is verboten in games nowadays. Too fucking bad.

But, let’s pretend for a moment I’m the type of person willing to compromise.  Okay, bring it down to five seconds.  This is doable as well.  Just be sure to scale heat accordingly – unlike what they have done with the current version of MWO.  These fucking geniuses have decided to create all types of new issues based on  2,732 different recycle/reload times depending on which weapon you have.  Really?  What it your intent to make your work harder and create a game where you can’t balance site because you don’t even know your own math anymore?  Good job, fucktards!

This shit is like the tax code.  If you simplify it to two pages, take out the loopholes, exceptions, and shtick garbage, you can actually have something simple and usable.  But, noooooooo.  In fact, the word on the street is that they are going to add some fluff to the PPC to that it has some sort of EMP effect.

For people who say that using tabletop BattleTech rules will never work in an action video game:

1. Fuck you in the asshole with the claw end of a rusty hammer.
2. The game is meant to be a simulation, not an action shooter – in fact, it was stated in the FAQ that it’s going to be based on the tabletop game.
3. Yes it would work – it’s simple math.

If you don’t find the core BattleTech IP to be fun, don’t play it. Either accept it as it is – as it’s supposed to be – or make your own fucking game. If this was Piranha Games Mecha Online I would not say a single thing against it (in comparison to BattleTech/MechWarrior), but since they chose to base it off an existing IP, well, fuck them – because they are certainly trying to fuck us.

But, hey, I guess I shouldn’t expect much from these people.  With Paul Idiot-uye joking about how he has a griefer ‘Mech – (yeah, that’s what you want to hear from your developer), and how he believes that customization is the cornerstone of any good MechWarrior title, this tells me that this ball-sweat-and-jizzed-mouth moron has no fucking clue about the BattleTech intellectual property.  I hope you read this and it gives you nightmares; I hope you get two forms of eyeball cancer.

Design issues they could still implement …

… but probably have their heads stuck so far up their asses, getting high off of the ass-fumes, to actually try and make an appropriate product.

• Starting ‘Mech
• Water
• Autocannons

Starting ‘Mech

^^ This ^^

Start new players to the game off with a random Medium Mech. This would help keep the game true to canon and also give the player a viable ‘Mech to use in game.

Water

Why the fuck does water not slow ‘Mechs down? That’s not some minor deal or idiosyncrasy that we’re talking about here, but a major design of the core game. Also, since when can ‘Mechs jump out of water if their jump jets are submerged? These fucking midget ‘Mechs are always submerged – you can’t hit the fuckers, but they can run laps around and hurdles over you.

Autocannons

Hey dicks, why does an AC/2, a weapons that’s supposed to do TWO points of damage every ten seconds have a higher damage per second (DPS) output of a particle projection cannon (PPC) that does TEN points of damage every ten seconds?  Even if you speed up firing time you should keep the DPS ratios the same.  And for the love of Kerensky – BattleTech nerds will get the reference – why does the PPC have a minimum range and the AC/2 does not?

I know some fucking cabbage out there is going to attempt to say that these changes are for weapon balance.  Ummm, that’s stupid … kill yourself.  You want to balance an AC/2 properly?  Make weapon zoom tied to the weapon.  Allow someone with an AC/2 to zoom in more and allow them to tighten the cone of convergence more by being zoomed in.  Treat the fucking weapon like a sniper rifle.  That way it hits at long range much better than say a PPC.  Which, when I look at ranges in the game, makes perfect fucking sense!

“But then it won’t compare to the Gauss rifle!”

Really?  Ya fucking think?  It never did, dipshit!  Don’t try to rework a weapon just to balance in the game when it’s not meant to be balanced.  If you want to balance it, make the Gauss Rifle cost 10x more to install, repair, and reload.  Use the economy as your balancing factor, because you’re obviously unable to get the fucking weapon to work right your way.

This is Paul Inouye when asked anything BattleTech related.

Bryan Ekman on rude people

Q: Is your team discouraged at all by the community outrage?

A: It hurts, and you are always amazed at how nasty people can be. Some days you don’t want to deal with it. But you suck it up and try and understand why someone would call you an idiot or asshole, or threaten you. I can’t tell you how many people complain, yet play dozens if not hundreds of matches a day, and spend significant amounts of money. I generally don’t take it to heart any more, especially when comments come from someone who has 100s or 1000s of posts. It’s the guy who has 1 post that I’m worried about. It took something significantly good or bad for them to come and make a post, and we tend to listen to them more carefully. And before you all go off about not listening to the core fans, we still listen to you as well.

(1):  I’ll sum up why I’m calling you an idiot or an asshole; or better yet, why I realize that you are the result of a failed abortion attempt.  Now we know what happens when Planned Parenthood fucks up, we get Piranha Games.  It’s because you’re trying to make your own fucking PGI Mecha Robots Online game, you’re not creating MechWarrior Online as you are advertising.  I understand that you’re the ‘Creative Director,’ but how about you stop creating shit while on ‘shrooms!  Stop being so God damn ‘creative’ and make MechWarrior – the MechWarrior we have known and loved since the mid-80’s.  The information is already there for you to use, (e.g. how a fucking ECM is supposed to work).  Maybe if you tried using what came before you for a change you can finish the game in a proper working order before 2016.  As it stands right now, I hope the game fails so horribly that you have to sell your children to Swaziland just to avoid debtor’s prison.

(2):  I play dozens of matches a day – well, on the weekends I do – because I have friends that play.  Some of these friends paid real money in the hopes that you wouldn’t shit on their hobby.  A couple of them got their money back from you (thank you) in order to pay some Mexican to clean the shit stains you left all over MechWarrior.  You will never, ever, EVER get a single penny from me or anyone else I know in the condition the game is in.

(3):  My friends have hundreds of posts because they hope (or hoped) that you’d listen to real BattleTech and MechWarrior fans, not the X-Box faggots and Counter Strike homos.  While I understand business models and the desire to make money, you don’t make random changes and ruin what-is to cater to the idiot masses for a buck.  If that’s the case you should have taken an example from Hawken and made your OWN battle-bot game.  So, don’t give me any bullshit, implying that it’s somehow hypocritical to play the game and post about the game and still hate it. The game’s in beta, some people are holding out hope that you’ll get a fucking clue, but I guess your Founder’s money couldn’t afford that quarter to buy one, huh?

(4):  How about the ‘me’ that has 0 posts?  Why? Because my friends sum up how I feel in a much more congenial manner on your site.  If I were to post you’d get THIS post, and I’m sure that’s against some term of service or some shit.  It’s obvious to many of us that you don’t give a flying fuck what people who have poured nearly 30 years and (literally) thousands of dollars into the franchise really think.  No, your mommy says that everyone can win a prize and that you should just be yourself, no matter what you’re a winner.  *cough* bullshit *cough* You want to make your own game, while using the ‘MechWarrior’ franchise tag to bilk people out of their money – by making them think they’ll get to play something they won’t.  I almost … almost … paid for a Fucking Retard Pack, or Founders Pack, whatever you call it.  Thank God I didn’t.

(5):  Yeah, thanks for listening to us ‘as well,’ you prick.  Maybe if you would have listened to us from the first place you’d have a game bringing in good money and able to expand to the next era/generation.

Fine, I’ll quit bitching …

… until next time.

Editor’s Note: I think my mom’s parental controls are going to kick me off the Internet any moment, and I still need to fuck my Internet girlfriend – SHE’S REAL!  She sent me an e-mail saying so; and if I send her $2,000 to fix her car she’ll drive here to meet me.  She promised!  Oh, I love her.  Her name is Bernice O’Tuil, ain’t she a purdy Mexican? 

I ordered this one from a Russian bride website. She should be coming in the mail, soon!

Well, like I said at the beginning, I have a LOT more issues with this game – (weapon convergence, critical hit math, LRM & SRM grouping, Raven leg damage for steeping on a rock, pilot lab XP model, net code (may be fixed now), etc.) – which maybe I’ll either edit in later, add as a comment, or make a whole new post … who knows.  Hell, maybe I’ll just leave it at this.  I already personally hate each and every developer of MechWarrior Online, I don’t know them personally, and I don’t want to, but I hate them.  I usually tell people that I don’t care enough about them to waste the emotion of hatred on them, but in this case I care enough about BattleTech – (yes, I care about a game and a fictional universe) – enough to hate the people who are ruining it – and my hate DOES make me powerful.

Oh, what should have been …

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