kind of taking a break.

[BlackHawk*K]

hi all.

im sure some of you have noticed, that i havn't been around much in MWO this last week.

i wanted to start by saying, i have NOT given up on this game. i'm just frustrated with it. at first, in Beta mode, i was able to explain much of what i am dis-satisfied with as part of the process. but now, that the game has gone "live" i really cant use that excuse anymore. as some of you know, i'm not a hard core battle tech sort of guy. i don't know all the lore and i havn't read all the books. i find the Btech universe interesting but mainly in a way that affects the game. so i will tell you up front i don't understand, and i don't have the time to try to understand attempting to bring board game rules to a strait up dynamic real time game situation.

what i do understand is play ability and the fun factor. the current match making i find at present is TERRIBLE! the fact that the developers wont even tell you how the match making is setup, to me, gives me an impression that they dont WANT us to know. but however its set up doesn't really matter because what ever it is, is destroying any fun involved, especially when you are alone in a pick up group. most of us get on when we can. so that means some PUGing is involved until others get online. but, even with 2-3 or even 4 pilots online. with the current matchmaking it seems to me, more times then not, even with 3 really good pilots in a squad you cant make up for the other 8 really bad pilots on your team. the thing that match maker cant seem to make work is the fact that, 4 really good pilots with 8 bad ones.. cant compete against 12 average mech pilots. even with haphazard concentrated fire on a really good piloted mech, that pilot wont last long at all. i'm sure we have all been ganged up on enough to know this is true. now, i understand that this dosn't happen all the time, but, what is frustrating about it is, that this seems now to be the rule, rather then the exception.

sim or arcade? what are we playing? i cant figure this one out myself. some aspects to the game are very sim like. but then, they add effects that are purely arcade in value to 'immerse' the player. while some things make sense other things don't. its like they are trying to walk a fine line in both worlds and i'm not sure its possible to do that and satisfy both sides on the isle on this.. in trying to please everyone it seems they are failing everyone. personally this issue isn't that important to me as it is some others... but it does make me shake my head wondering what the heck they are doing sometimes. for example. jump jet shaking? you have a giant heavy vehicle on 2 legs waking, but threw what ever devices ( gyro, electronic stability controls, whatever) you are able to travel without wobble in your weapons platform. the sim view would be, each moving part has a degree of sloppiness involved. lets say its down to 100th of a inch in each joint. if you have 10 moving parts that is 1/10th of an inch. if you have a weapon at the end of a arm. the farther away the weapon is from the pivot point the worse the movement. so in essence if your reticule is a true indicator of your arms wouldn't it be jumping all over the place? your torso reticule would have less movement. if for playability reasons you did away with that. perhaps some device or devices, then why would jump jets change this? like i said its not a huge deal just something that makes me shake my head sometimes.

the playability and fun factor of the game kind of go hand in hand. so this next subject bothers me some. that is the weapon of the week. no matter what balances they throw in to try to fix this, there is always something. the results are always the same as well. you run into one or a few of them and your done, no matter how good you may or may not be. sometimes you can hardly get a shot off. unless you TOO have the same load out. they spend an huge amount of time tweaking weapons, yet another setup takes its place. why cant they just make the mechs just a bit more tougher? i don't know about the majority of people. but in game when we have a drag out battle, even the losing side seems to have enjoyed it a bit more then a roll over. my next issue on fun factor involves game modes! they spend a huge amount of time making maps, making mechs but we are stuck with the same 2 stupid game modes "until CW comes out" wth? they extended the conquest game mode by making it harder to cap, but in assault it takes half the time to cap the enemy base then it does capturing an enemy outpost in conquest. in Assault all you have to do is neutralize it to win. in conquest you have to neutralize and then capture. why not have to actually capture the base to win? and why no team death match where you don't have bases to capture? why not a Intel based match. you have to go to a number of enemy bases, download Intel and make it back to your base to upload it? you could even put a 'virus' inside the intel that makes the mech that has it transmit so the other team can hunt it down. and for the life of me, why no 4 vs 4 and 8 vs 8 in conjunction with 12 vs 12? as much as i enjoy new mechs and maps. i think some of these other game modes would of spawned much more interest until they get this beast up and going.

ok. that's just a few things that frustrate me. yes its a vent post, but its also some things that make me want to take a break. im not gone, but to be honest with you all, the biggest reason i stick around with this game is those i play with! its reached a point where the game alone is too frustrating and sometimes too boring to play unless someone else is on... and if you feel like i do, then it gets harder to stick around waiting for others to come along. in the end the very thing that keeps me playing it, other players, are harder and harder to meet up with.

so meanwhile i will get on from time to time to check out the progress of the game. will play a few pugs and see whats up. but i will probably be in another game. either way, i will be on teamspeak so stop in and say hi. or join me... im currently playing War thunder. http://warthunder.com/en/ at least this game i can pug and still have some fun most times.

[Hammer]

war thunder is pretty good.

how about a space fighter combat sim?

freespace 2 open is pretty good. there are also mods for a Battlestar Galactica game and a Babylon 5 game.

it would be nice to find something everyone likes and has access too.

[Tach Deneva]

Change some of the specifics and that could apply to almost any MMO-style game.



I've been playing GW2 pretty solidly for over a year now, but it's become painfully evident that the ArenaNet devs have lost their minds and are hellbent on destroying the last vestiges of anything vaguely resembling Guild Wars, so lately I've been dipping back into older games like TSW (love it but can barely run it), LOTRO (big changes incoming), and STO. When I updated STO, I was pleased to discover that for some reason I had a new free character slot and the option to create a Romulan character - so I promptly rolled a Romulan and have been having fun playing through the Romulan storyline, even with all the horrible voice acting and even horribler (new word) vision of Star Trek that is STO.

STO and GW2 have this in common: both games are fun to play if you can ignore the butchery of the source material.