The implementation was nothing short of incredible, though!
Again, we had 3-platform crossplay running flawlessly after entering a few invite codes. Reliably. Zero grief with desyncs. And once they patched in the "give people mech access" the "Oh I can't use MY mechs" issue just vanished because, well-- anyone could be working on "their" mech.
EDIT: I get the annoyance with not being able to port mechs back and forth. But considering the zoo that crossplay is, sacrificing mech portability for being able to play with anyone, ever who can run Mechwarrior 5 on any system, period, just literally tell them to go to a GameStop and pick up a box that says "Mechwarrior 5" on it, and know that they can throw it in whatever platform they have, and be playing with them in a matter of minutes?
That's worth pretty much any price-- ESPECIALLY if you're interested in growing interest in the universe.
I kind of forgot that MW5 went cross-platform. And Gamestop had the Xbox version on sale for $15, so my brother is getting a copy. I don't think I bought any expansions, but are there any version compatibility issues?
I feel like it can port to a controller all right, he bounced off Star Wars Squadrons really hard because of the difficult control learning curve, but MW5 at least takes place mostly on the ground...
Re: not having weapon 3d models, I'm not sure why they don't just pay freelancers to make them for them. Indie games have been doing it since forever, if they can afford it surely PGI can. Maybe Cryengine import and integration is a complete nightmare and they have no one that knows how to do it (but if that's true, how did they cobble together the Hatchetman?).
I kind of forgot that MW5 went cross-platform. And Gamestop had the Xbox version on sale for $15, so my brother is getting a copy. I don't think I bought any expansions, but are there any version compatibility issues?
I feel like it can port to a controller all right, he bounced off Star Wars Squadrons really hard because of the difficult control learning curve, but MW5 at least takes place mostly on the ground...
None. None at all. Anyone can play with anyone else as far as I'm aware and in my own experience.
Re: not having weapon 3d models, I'm not sure why they don't just pay freelancers to make them for them. Indie games have been doing it since forever, if they can afford it surely PGI can. Maybe Cryengine import and integration is a complete nightmare and they have no one that knows how to do it (but if that's true, how did they cobble together the Hatchetman?).
Their 3D artist left several months ago, it’s one of the positions they’re hiring for. Models will probably depend on if they can fill the position
The implementation was nothing short of incredible, though!
Again, we had 3-platform crossplay running flawlessly after entering a few invite codes. Reliably. Zero grief with desyncs. And once they patched in the "give people mech access" the "Oh I can't use MY mechs" issue just vanished because, well-- anyone could be working on "their" mech.
EDIT: I get the annoyance with not being able to port mechs back and forth. But considering the zoo that crossplay is, sacrificing mech portability for being able to play with anyone, ever who can run Mechwarrior 5 on any system, period, just literally tell them to go to a GameStop and pick up a box that says "Mechwarrior 5" on it, and know that they can throw it in whatever platform they have, and be playing with them in a matter of minutes?
That's worth pretty much any price-- ESPECIALLY if you're interested in growing interest in the universe.
Cross platform is really handy but it doesn't really factor in to me when evaluating co-op.
I mean Warframe has cross play now but if I was forced to use the hosts warframes, weapons, and equipment while the host gets all the progress and rewards I'd be very disappointed with that co-op experience as well.
There are some comparability issues for MW5 coop but this mainly has to do with mods that change important gameplay stuff. You can otherwise have UI mods on PC while playing on an Xbox host!
Not only that but Mechsarrior 5 Coop is hella generous. If the host has the expansions everyone can play the content. If you buy the base MW5 or get base MW5 through gamepass you can play with me and utilize all the stuff from all three expansions! (And the fourth when it comes out). Like. That saves like $80 per person in a group that plays this together!
The implementation was nothing short of incredible, though!
Again, we had 3-platform crossplay running flawlessly after entering a few invite codes. Reliably. Zero grief with desyncs. And once they patched in the "give people mech access" the "Oh I can't use MY mechs" issue just vanished because, well-- anyone could be working on "their" mech.
EDIT: I get the annoyance with not being able to port mechs back and forth. But considering the zoo that crossplay is, sacrificing mech portability for being able to play with anyone, ever who can run Mechwarrior 5 on any system, period, just literally tell them to go to a GameStop and pick up a box that says "Mechwarrior 5" on it, and know that they can throw it in whatever platform they have, and be playing with them in a matter of minutes?
That's worth pretty much any price-- ESPECIALLY if you're interested in growing interest in the universe.
Cross platform is really handy but it doesn't really factor in to me when evaluating co-op.
I mean Warframe has cross play now but if I was forced to use the hosts warframes, weapons, and equipment while the host gets all the progress and rewards I'd be very disappointed with that co-op experience as well.
Warframe is also a very, very different game to Mechwarrior. And when I've tried to co-op with friends in Warframe I basically just ended up sitting in a corner because the missions they decided to play with me were so horrifically over my gear's level that if an enemy so much as glanced at me I was obliterated entirely from reality, while my weapons did absolutely no damage. Meanwhile, they were killing enemies in numbers that would make an exterminator destroying an anthill blush.
I think I would have liked to only have had access to my friend's frames and weapons!
The implementation was nothing short of incredible, though!
Again, we had 3-platform crossplay running flawlessly after entering a few invite codes. Reliably. Zero grief with desyncs. And once they patched in the "give people mech access" the "Oh I can't use MY mechs" issue just vanished because, well-- anyone could be working on "their" mech.
EDIT: I get the annoyance with not being able to port mechs back and forth. But considering the zoo that crossplay is, sacrificing mech portability for being able to play with anyone, ever who can run Mechwarrior 5 on any system, period, just literally tell them to go to a GameStop and pick up a box that says "Mechwarrior 5" on it, and know that they can throw it in whatever platform they have, and be playing with them in a matter of minutes?
That's worth pretty much any price-- ESPECIALLY if you're interested in growing interest in the universe.
Cross platform is really handy but it doesn't really factor in to me when evaluating co-op.
I mean Warframe has cross play now but if I was forced to use the hosts warframes, weapons, and equipment while the host gets all the progress and rewards I'd be very disappointed with that co-op experience as well.
Warframe is also a very, very different game to Mechwarrior. And when I've tried to co-op with friends in Warframe I basically just ended up sitting in a corner because the missions they decided to play with me were so horrifically over my gear's level that if an enemy so much as glanced at me I was obliterated entirely from reality, while my weapons did absolutely no damage. Meanwhile, they were killing enemies in numbers that would make an exterminator destroying an anthill blush.
I think I would have liked to only have had access to my friend's frames and weapons!
That's totally fair, and frankly an issue that Warframe has faced with it comes to new players for ages at this point, but it's not really addressing my issue.
To be clear I'm not trying to say that there's no fun to be had in MW5 co-op. There is! I had a lot of fun helping my roommate get into his campaign piloting garbage.
But at the same time it requires players to be ok with not being able to bring their own things to the game and also be ok with not getting any materials or progress.
And that was totally an ok thing to ask at one point but that point was a long, long time ago.
Designing a game so veterans and newbies all can contribute is hard, but it's possible. Eve Online comes to mind where a fresh player can jump in a beginner ship and help in battles by warp disrupting bigger ships while the veterans kill it.
Total War doesn't have the ability to advance your own personal campaign in co-op campaigns.
Divinity Original Sin II doesn't allow full character portability either. Neither Gloomhaven.
and I personally think those games are far more similar to what PGI was going for in Mechwarrior 5 than what Warframe is.
Not to mention, how do they handle timeline jumps? Say you've got a kitted out 3065 endosteel LBX-20 Fafnir or something. Do you just not get to use that in your friend's 3025 campaign? Does the game jump their campaign forward to 3065 for a little while until you leave then try to backport it? Or do they just entirely dispense with the idea that hey this is a campaign taking place in that universe and it's just a plain ol free-for-all romp with no regard for timeline as far as the PCs go?
I think they made an appropriate decision based on the style of game they were trying to make, one that also allowed them to handle seamless cross-platform co-op while also making sure people would roughly be on the same keel.
EDIT: And to be clear I'm not saying PGI did what they were intending to do all that well, but I do feel that was their intention, and I will defend their choice to not do full mech portability pretty rigorously especially in light of the greater context in which their co-op implementation is set up, where getting games bought on the same platform but from different storefronts to talk to each other is some unthinkable task.
I kind of forgot that MW5 went cross-platform. And Gamestop had the Xbox version on sale for $15, so my brother is getting a copy. I don't think I bought any expansions, but are there any version compatibility issues?
I feel like it can port to a controller all right, he bounced off Star Wars Squadrons really hard because of the difficult control learning curve, but MW5 at least takes place mostly on the ground...
None. None at all. Anyone can play with anyone else as far as I'm aware and in my own experience.
That's awesome about expansions and stuff too. I bought it for my brother on Xbox just a few days ago, because cross platform PvE and stompy bots. Not sure if he will get into it, certainly not hosting and building mechs and stuff but i feel like the gameplay (outside of dropping 10 min away from an assassination in Assault mechs) is easy and action-y enough that i might get a campaign with him.
PGI is amateur hour but I can’t bridge the gap into complaining about campaign carry-over. To me it’s like complaining that I can’t take my tanks into a new game of Civ, or take my JRPG character into a new game. This isn’t a persistent online game.
With the way campaign/career progression, story progression, and time-based equipment availability works, bringing single player gear to the coop save or vice versa would effectively be cheating. If you're really playing coop with friends then it makes sense that you would play together in a separate, shared and dedicated coop savegame. Otherwise, it's like watching a show together with your spouse but telling them we're going to skip episodes 4-7 because you went and watched them alone already. And if you're just jumping in to a friend's game to help them out with their personal story progress, I think it's a bit selfish to be hesitant to do so because of "but what's in it for me?" Especially when you are only playing with invited friends and not some random strangers in a public lobby.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Oh no, cheating? Please, not cheating in a non-competitive environment, anything but that.
*quick saves and quick loads a game because it went bad*
I'm a good boy.
With the way campaign/career progression, story progression, and time-based equipment availability works, bringing single player gear to the coop save or vice versa would effectively be cheating. If you're really playing coop with friends then it makes sense that you would play together in a separate, shared and dedicated coop savegame. Otherwise, it's like watching a show together with your spouse but telling them we're going to skip episodes 4-7 because you went and watched them alone already. And if you're just jumping in to a friend's game to help them out with their personal story progress, I think it's a bit selfish to be hesitant to do so because of "but what's in it for me?" Especially when you are only playing with invited friends and not some random strangers in a public lobby.
I guess it depends on how strongly you identify with the storyline.
I found it a barebones threadbare excuse to have players travel the map.
So if I had to create a separate game/player profile that was able to play coop but carried progression no matter who I was playing with then I would in a heartbeat.
Resetting my progress every time I played with someone new, or asking everyone else to reset their progress to my level every time they played with me seems like a big ask, when the big draw of the game is collecting mechs and equipment for yourself.
If you find the big draw as the storyline instead then the co-op implemented is perfectly serviceable.
Oh no, cheating? Please, not cheating in a non-competitive environment, anything but that.
*quick saves and quick loads a game because it went bad*
I'm a good boy.
Yeah there's no real consequence to it, but if the name of the game is to earn progress through playing, and you subvert that by allowing players to hop their progress between campaigns, you can damage the play experience. It's cheating in the strictest sense, literally working around the rules of the game being set before you. I'll bet you could make a mod that drops two free assault lances in your bays, but I would never take it. Because at that point, half of the game no longer makes sense. A huge theme of the Battletech and MW:Mercenaries videogames has been the joy of scrambling with the scraps you start with, and turning your squad into well-oiled, top of the line murder machines. Did it occur to anyone that PGI might have intentionally not have allowed carry-over to help preserve that theme?
Resetting my progress every time I played with someone new, or asking everyone else to reset their progress to my level every time they played with me seems like a big ask, when the big draw of the game is collecting mechs and equipment for yourself.
Why is it suddenly a big ask for PGI to operate with separate campaign saves? I'll be frank, this game and this company are the only time I've seen players treat this kind of system like it's some huge failing and disappointment to buyers. It's a noticeably different attitude. PGI aren't worth really defending a lot of the time but they are catching so much flak here for something that's design standard for this class of game.
Oh no, cheating? Please, not cheating in a non-competitive environment, anything but that.
*quick saves and quick loads a game because it went bad*
I'm a good boy.
Yeah there's no real consequence to it, but if the name of the game is to earn progress through playing, and you subvert that by allowing players to hop their progress between campaigns, you can damage the play experience. It's cheating in the strictest sense, literally working around the rules of the game being set before you. I'll bet you could make a mod that drops two free assault lances in your bays, but I would never take it. Because at that point, half of the game no longer makes sense. A huge theme of the Battletech and MW:Mercenaries videogames has been the joy of scrambling with the scraps you start with, and turning your squad into well-oiled, top of the line murder machines. Did it occur to anyone that PGI might have intentionally not have allowed carry-over to help preserve that theme?
No, because with PGI I never attribute to design what can be attributed to incompetence.
Resetting my progress every time I played with someone new, or asking everyone else to reset their progress to my level every time they played with me seems like a big ask, when the big draw of the game is collecting mechs and equipment for yourself.
Why is it suddenly a big ask for PGI to operate with separate campaign saves? I'll be frank, this game and this company are the only time I've seen players treat this kind of system like it's some huge failing and disappointment to buyers. It's a noticeably different attitude. PGI aren't worth really defending a lot of the time but they are catching so much flak here for something that's design standard for this class of game.
The core of the gameplay is collecting mechs and equipment, PGI's implementation of Co-Op disables that for everyone but the host. That is a bad implementation.
The "campaign" is barely worth the word, and the gameplay felt like a step down from MWO, so all that is left is the collection and coop aspects, which PGI failed at combining in a satisfying way for many players.
It’s a cooperative campaign. The progress is shared between all players. The only sticking point is that one person is hosting the game and save file.
This is how hosted multiplayer games work and have always worked.
What if I want to bring this "shared progress" to a different player's game, or play solo because people don't feel like multiplaying that evening? Your equivalency only works if all those involved play exclusively with one another and are all available at all times they feel like playing. Or, if you're the host.
Re: that being how hosted multiplayer games always work, that is absolutely not true. Just look at the many number of horde style games, where you bring your own character in to a hosted game, and get progress on your own save that you can then carry on into your own solo or others' hosted games (Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc). And Gunfire Reborn (I'm not reinstalling Vermintide to test) works just fine offline in solo mode.
The primary reason multiplayer games are always online these days is to act as DRM for microtransactions, not because it solves a genuine mechanical problem. Unless it's an MMO it doesn't need to be online (and with many games people call MMOs they don't need to be online either and could be handled by a player browser, since they make one of the players the host anyway).
The games you bring up are not campaign-based games; they have either meta progression or character-based progression. I have not played Gunfire Reborn, but if it’s like any of the other roguelites I play, then the progression is overall a meta-progression over many runs. I have not played Vermintide 1, but I’ve played 2, and the progression there was tied to individual characters if I recall correctly, which, again, is not the campaign based setup I’m referring to with MW5; it’s much closer to Diablo in that regard.
If you want to play solo, start a new campaign. Again, that is how every campaign setup works. Strategy games have done it for decades; is Civ a bad game now because I can’t carry progress between campaign files?
I guess I fail to see how your collection of mechs and resources in MW5 is meaningfully different from your collection of heroes and their progression in Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc. Ignoring the campaign for now, what's the mechanical difference between playing a randomly generated mission in MW5 where everyone brings their own mech, and playing a mission in Vermintide 2 where everyone brings their own hero?
Seriously, answer this question: “is the host/client campaign save system, with progression isolated to each filehost, bad in every game it’s in?”
It depends on the game and its implementation.
Ie: Diablo 1 had coop where each player brought their own character and retained their progress and loot gained while helping other players. More recent games are Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide etc
Civilization and Total War do not allow players to drop in and out with their own unique factions.
I guess I fail to see how your collection of mechs and resources in MW5 is meaningfully different from your collection of heroes and their progression in Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc. Ignoring the campaign for now, what's the mechanical difference between playing a randomly generated mission in MW5 where everyone brings their own mech, and playing a mission in Vermintide 2 where everyone brings their own hero?
A "randomly generated mission where everyone brings there own mechs" is called coop instant action. Which you can play if you want. But the coop career is about the progress of the merc company as a whole, not about progress of individual mechs. And individual mechs don't have permanent progress anyway. Any gear or even the entire mech can be lost at any time. The reason that doesn't ruin the game is because the true progress is with the company, not the individual, so losses can be recovered from.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
That's why I said "ignoring the campaign for now", because if we're talking about multiple points then no agreement can ever be reached as long as each point can be dodged into the next. Avalon was setting up the situation as if a mech company is somehow different from character progression in a meaningful way and I want to approach the topic point by point.
So first point, why can't I bring my own mechs into someone else's game. Once that's cleared up, we can move on to campaign quibbles.
The merc company, that all players are contributing to, is awarded. The cooperative group, that is working together, are rewarded as a group, in one save file. You can make choices on builds and mech purchases together. If that is legitimately a bridge too far, then my input here is stalled. I can’t relate to these issues any further.
I guess I fail to see how your collection of mechs and resources in MW5 is meaningfully different from your collection of heroes and their progression in Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc. Ignoring the campaign for now, what's the mechanical difference between playing a randomly generated mission in MW5 where everyone brings their own mech, and playing a mission in Vermintide 2 where everyone brings their own hero?
Well for one you do not acquire heroes in vermintide. You get unlocks.
In Mechwarrior you loot mechs based on your choice of money/salvage in the mission contract screen. And you can sometimes get other rewards as part of mission completion.
But then who gets them? Does a MP save get four times the salvage and credits? Does each person get 1/4 and so can never salvage mechs anyway? Do you have to have a fight over every piece of salvage for who it goes to? When you complete a mission does everyone get the mech? Can they then use that unique mech in the next mission? If you run into a hero mech, who gets to buy it?
You could conceivably make a game that solves all these problems. But it wouldn’t be a Mechwarrior game anymore. At least not insomuch as people understand them. It could not have the features necessary to make a Mechwarrior game feel like a Mechwarrior game for the majority of fans and consumers.
All I'm hearing is "but then PGI would actually have to design how their campaign coop balance works" and, like, yeah. Duh. That's the expectation when they're asking money for their product.
Yea they would have to design it to not be a Mechwarrior game. So uhh like, no thanks?
Design isn’t like. A thing that is free. That you just “design it” and then all of a sudden you get all the advantages of cooperative multiplayer with no costs to the rest of the game. It’s about choosing the trade offs.
Like. You absolutely 100% cannot have mods in multiplayer if you have shared progression. You cannot have cross equipment play. So if you join my game you have to buy all the dlc in order to get the DLC equipment.
It’s really hard and/or bad to have permanent equipment losses. Because then a rich host can select too hard missions and troll the rest of their players…
It’s not “lol they have to design their coop” it’s “they have to fundamentally change the game in ways that are bad for the game”.
As someone who designs and writes software for a living, and writes games for a hobby, I find myself unable to frame a response beyond repeating "...why not?" over and over. You keep claiming stuff as facts, but without anything that actually backs those claims up I have nothing to refute.
As someone who designs and writes software for a living, and writes games for a hobby, I find myself unable to frame a response beyond repeating "...why not?" over and over. You keep claiming stuff as facts, but without anything that actually backs those claims up I have nothing to refute.
I have backed up my claims far more than you have. I have explained some of the incompatibilities. I’m not going to back down because you say that it’s totally possible to go faster than light all PGI has to do is design it.
If you say it’s possible then show me the design. This isn’t a question of will where “why not?” is a sufficient response. It’s a question of possibility.
Yea they would have to design it to not be a Mechwarrior game. So uhh like, no thanks?
Please elaborate. You stated it, but didn't elaborate why "I play with my friend, but he can have his own mechs and rewards" is no longer a Mechwarrior game, but at the same time "I play with my friend, but he uses my mechs" is.
Design isn’t like. A thing that is free. That you just “design it” and then all of a sudden you get all the advantages of cooperative multiplayer with no costs to the rest of the game. It’s about choosing the trade offs.
Like. You absolutely 100% cannot have mods in multiplayer if you have shared progression. You cannot have cross equipment play. So if you join my game you have to buy all the dlc in order to get the DLC equipment.
The game already has mods that work and mods that don't work with multiplayer. In fact, since the game has built in mod support, you can have internal mod flags that indicate whether that mod is always suitable for multiplayer (HUD changes and alike), whether it requires all parties to use it (new content, changes to the shop, how shares work, etc) and whether it's not suitable for multiplayer at all (infinite resources? Can't think of anything practical). Based on that, when forming a lobby the game can simply cross compare the players' mods and react accordingly.
You can handle DLC similarly. Since the host determines what missions you see the situation where the host lacks DLC, but the players have it doesn't even come into effect. If the host has DLC, but other players do not, then those players cannot get rewards that require said DLC, but it otherwise is not a problem. There's really no reason they couldn't choose to use the host's DLC mechs (if we go the route that one company can let another use their mechs at their own risk), because owning the DLC only determines whether or not you have access to content, all players will have those assets installed regardless (because that's far easier than making two games that aren't on the same patch version run together smoothly).
It’s really hard and/or bad to have permanent equipment losses. Because then a rich host can select too hard missions and troll the rest of their players…
I mean okay? That same host can also spew obscenities over chat at their players, you don't remove ingame communication because of it. Don't play with assholes.
It’s not “lol they have to design their coop” it’s “they have to fundamentally change the game in ways that are bad for the game”.
I guess I fail to see how your collection of mechs and resources in MW5 is meaningfully different from your collection of heroes and their progression in Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc. Ignoring the campaign for now, what's the mechanical difference between playing a randomly generated mission in MW5 where everyone brings their own mech, and playing a mission in Vermintide 2 where everyone brings their own hero?
Well for one you do not acquire heroes in vermintide. You get unlocks.
In Mechwarrior you loot mechs based on your choice of money/salvage in the mission contract screen. And you can sometimes get other rewards as part of mission completion.
But then who gets them? Does a MP save get four times the salvage and credits? Does each person get 1/4 and so can never salvage mechs anyway? Do you have to have a fight over every piece of salvage for who it goes to? When you complete a mission does everyone get the mech? Can they then use that unique mech in the next mission? If you run into a hero mech, who gets to buy it?
You could conceivably make a game that solves all these problems. But it wouldn’t be a Mechwarrior game anymore. At least not insomuch as people understand them. It could not have the features necessary to make a Mechwarrior game feel like a Mechwarrior game for the majority of fans and consumers.
WTF? How does splitting the rewards that a team of players earned among the team of players suddenly invalidate that it is a Mechwarrior game?
The host in MW5 is the same as any other mech pilot, except that they are the only ones that interact with the out of combat NPCs that actually control the Merc company. (Contracts, Repairs, Merchants, Starmap, etc)
MWO has map voting already. There are ways to implement systems that allow multiple players input.
Please elaborate. You stated it, but didn't elaborate why "I play with my friend, but he can have his own mechs reward" is no longer a Mechwarrior game, but at the same time "I play with my friend, but he uses my mechs" is.
In Mechwarrior you loot mechs based on your choice of money/salvage in the mission contract screen. And you can sometimes get other rewards as part of mission completion.
But then who gets them? Does a MP save get four times the salvage and credits? Does each person get 1/4 and so can never salvage mechs anyway? Do you have to have a fight over every piece of salvage for who it goes to? When you complete a mission does everyone get the mech? Can they then use that unique mech in the next mission? If you run into a hero mech, who gets to buy it?
You could conceivably make a game that solves all these problems. But it wouldn’t be a Mechwarrior game anymore. At least not insomuch as people understand them. It could not have the features necessary to make a Mechwarrior game feel like a Mechwarrior game for the majority of fans and consumers.
It’s almost like this was discussed and you just didn’t care to listen.
If the host has DLC, but other players do not, then those players cannot get rewards that require said DLC, but it otherwise is not a problem. There's really no reason they couldn't choose to use the host's DLC mechs (if we go the route that one company can let another use their mechs at their own risk)
But how do you allocate rewards!!!
The game already has mods that work and mods that don't work with multiplayer.
But not if you need to allocate rewards! Because you need a set reward schedule to deal with the multiple players progression. Remember that we are designing a game and part of the game is the reward structure and advancement. So if an early game player in coop gets a late game reward then this breaks the fundamental reward structure of the game.
This is why, in “4 player coop shooter” games each player is on a set reward schedule. You can modify the set reward schedule to have some RNG in it but items are always character level locked and characters always receive rewards at their character level.
This is not repeatable in a Mechwarrior game where the rewards are based on the difficulty of the mission. If I can use an allies mech. Then we can do hard missions. Then we can get rewards based on that difficult mission. And if we cannot then it’s not a Mechwarrior game anymore. Do you want a rep system such that you cannot pilot high tonnage or high quality mechs until you hit that personal rep? Well that would be some hot bullshit in a Mechwarrior game. (And also breaks the cross play!)
And since you have a set reward schedule you cannot have mods because mods will break your set reward schedule. Like. I don’t terribly like YAML but it very much does not work with this system. Because you will be unable to acquire bonus equipment not in the base game.
And these set reward cycles break the risk/reward system because if you lose equipment you’re suddenly actually behind the ability to fight the missions to progress and get rewards and cannot acquire equipment to do so!
Please elaborate. You stated it, but didn't elaborate why "I play with my friend, but he can have his own mechs reward" is no longer a Mechwarrior game, but at the same time "I play with my friend, but he uses my mechs" is.
In Mechwarrior you loot mechs based on your choice of money/salvage in the mission contract screen. And you can sometimes get other rewards as part of mission completion.
But then who gets them? Does a MP save get four times the salvage and credits? Does each person get 1/4 and so can never salvage mechs anyway? Do you have to have a fight over every piece of salvage for who it goes to? When you complete a mission does everyone get the mech? Can they then use that unique mech in the next mission? If you run into a hero mech, who gets to buy it?
You could conceivably make a game that solves all these problems. But it wouldn’t be a Mechwarrior game anymore. At least not insomuch as people understand them. It could not have the features necessary to make a Mechwarrior game feel like a Mechwarrior game for the majority of fans and consumers.
It’s almost like this was discussed and you just didn’t care to listen.
I really do not see how a game designer coming up with a satisfying way to balance multiplayer rewards makes this not a Mechwarrior game any more. Unless your definition of Mechwarrior is "me, the host, get all the rewards, and all the other players can sit on it".
Also, don't be a goose, I'm treating your responses in good faith, the same would be appreciated from you.
If the host has DLC, but other players do not, then those players cannot get rewards that require said DLC, but it otherwise is not a problem. There's really no reason they couldn't choose to use the host's DLC mechs (if we go the route that one company can let another use their mechs at their own risk)
But how do you allocate rewards!!!
Any which way you want! You can give each player their own pool to pick from, you could give a larger pool and players can bid for items, whatever the designers come up with. This is like one choice in a sea of choices that need to be made when making games, and it's hardly the most difficult one. I do not understand the fixation on the host:client reward distribution.
The game already has mods that work and mods that don't work with multiplayer.
But not if you need to allocate rewards! Because you need a set reward schedule to deal with the multiple players progression. Remember that we are designing a game and part of the game is the reward structure and advancement. So if an early game player in coop gets a late game reward then this breaks the fundamental reward structure of the game.
This is why, in “4 player coop shooter” games each player is on a set reward schedule. You can modify the set reward schedule to have some RNG in it but items are always character level locked and characters always receive rewards at their character level.
This is not repeatable in a Mechwarrior game where the rewards are based on the difficulty of the mission. If I can use an allies mech. Then we can do hard missions. Then we can get rewards based on that difficult mission. And if we cannot then it’s not a Mechwarrior game anymore. Do you want a rep system such that you cannot pilot high tonnage or high quality mechs until you hit that personal rep? Well that would be some hot bullshit in a Mechwarrior game. (And also breaks the cross play!)
And since you have a set reward schedule you cannot have mods because mods will break your set reward schedule. Like. I don’t terribly like YAML but it very much does not work with this system. Because you will be unable to acquire bonus equipment not in the base game.
And these set reward cycles break the risk/reward system because if you lose equipment you’re suddenly actually behind the ability to fight the missions to progress and get rewards and cannot acquire equipment to do so!
If you're helping the host complete a more difficult mission then I fail to see the problem with getting those mission's rewards, they put their own time and resources into it, didn't they? People in Diablo, Path of Exile and so on can also freely trade high rank items among each other, even if the other person is a new player playing on the easiest campaign, I don't see the devs there going out of their way to stop it. Is it bothering you because it's "cheating"? Because you feel new players shouldn't get something you yourself "worked" for? Or are you genuinely so worried about the sanctity of progression that you'd rather your friends get nothing than risk upsetting the balance of a campaign where most missions are just randomly generated?
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Again, we had 3-platform crossplay running flawlessly after entering a few invite codes. Reliably. Zero grief with desyncs. And once they patched in the "give people mech access" the "Oh I can't use MY mechs" issue just vanished because, well-- anyone could be working on "their" mech.
EDIT: I get the annoyance with not being able to port mechs back and forth. But considering the zoo that crossplay is, sacrificing mech portability for being able to play with anyone, ever who can run Mechwarrior 5 on any system, period, just literally tell them to go to a GameStop and pick up a box that says "Mechwarrior 5" on it, and know that they can throw it in whatever platform they have, and be playing with them in a matter of minutes?
That's worth pretty much any price-- ESPECIALLY if you're interested in growing interest in the universe.
I feel like it can port to a controller all right, he bounced off Star Wars Squadrons really hard because of the difficult control learning curve, but MW5 at least takes place mostly on the ground...
None. None at all. Anyone can play with anyone else as far as I'm aware and in my own experience.
Their 3D artist left several months ago, it’s one of the positions they’re hiring for. Models will probably depend on if they can fill the position
Cross platform is really handy but it doesn't really factor in to me when evaluating co-op.
I mean Warframe has cross play now but if I was forced to use the hosts warframes, weapons, and equipment while the host gets all the progress and rewards I'd be very disappointed with that co-op experience as well.
Not only that but Mechsarrior 5 Coop is hella generous. If the host has the expansions everyone can play the content. If you buy the base MW5 or get base MW5 through gamepass you can play with me and utilize all the stuff from all three expansions! (And the fourth when it comes out). Like. That saves like $80 per person in a group that plays this together!
Warframe is also a very, very different game to Mechwarrior. And when I've tried to co-op with friends in Warframe I basically just ended up sitting in a corner because the missions they decided to play with me were so horrifically over my gear's level that if an enemy so much as glanced at me I was obliterated entirely from reality, while my weapons did absolutely no damage. Meanwhile, they were killing enemies in numbers that would make an exterminator destroying an anthill blush.
I think I would have liked to only have had access to my friend's frames and weapons!
That's totally fair, and frankly an issue that Warframe has faced with it comes to new players for ages at this point, but it's not really addressing my issue.
To be clear I'm not trying to say that there's no fun to be had in MW5 co-op. There is! I had a lot of fun helping my roommate get into his campaign piloting garbage.
But at the same time it requires players to be ok with not being able to bring their own things to the game and also be ok with not getting any materials or progress.
And that was totally an ok thing to ask at one point but that point was a long, long time ago.
Divinity Original Sin II doesn't allow full character portability either. Neither Gloomhaven.
and I personally think those games are far more similar to what PGI was going for in Mechwarrior 5 than what Warframe is.
Not to mention, how do they handle timeline jumps? Say you've got a kitted out 3065 endosteel LBX-20 Fafnir or something. Do you just not get to use that in your friend's 3025 campaign? Does the game jump their campaign forward to 3065 for a little while until you leave then try to backport it? Or do they just entirely dispense with the idea that hey this is a campaign taking place in that universe and it's just a plain ol free-for-all romp with no regard for timeline as far as the PCs go?
I think they made an appropriate decision based on the style of game they were trying to make, one that also allowed them to handle seamless cross-platform co-op while also making sure people would roughly be on the same keel.
EDIT: And to be clear I'm not saying PGI did what they were intending to do all that well, but I do feel that was their intention, and I will defend their choice to not do full mech portability pretty rigorously especially in light of the greater context in which their co-op implementation is set up, where getting games bought on the same platform but from different storefronts to talk to each other is some unthinkable task.
Lookin at you, Darktide.
That's awesome about expansions and stuff too. I bought it for my brother on Xbox just a few days ago, because cross platform PvE and stompy bots. Not sure if he will get into it, certainly not hosting and building mechs and stuff but i feel like the gameplay (outside of dropping 10 min away from an assassination in Assault mechs) is easy and action-y enough that i might get a campaign with him.
*quick saves and quick loads a game because it went bad*
I'm a good boy.
I guess it depends on how strongly you identify with the storyline.
I found it a barebones threadbare excuse to have players travel the map.
So if I had to create a separate game/player profile that was able to play coop but carried progression no matter who I was playing with then I would in a heartbeat.
Resetting my progress every time I played with someone new, or asking everyone else to reset their progress to my level every time they played with me seems like a big ask, when the big draw of the game is collecting mechs and equipment for yourself.
If you find the big draw as the storyline instead then the co-op implemented is perfectly serviceable.
MWO: Adamski
Yeah there's no real consequence to it, but if the name of the game is to earn progress through playing, and you subvert that by allowing players to hop their progress between campaigns, you can damage the play experience. It's cheating in the strictest sense, literally working around the rules of the game being set before you. I'll bet you could make a mod that drops two free assault lances in your bays, but I would never take it. Because at that point, half of the game no longer makes sense. A huge theme of the Battletech and MW:Mercenaries videogames has been the joy of scrambling with the scraps you start with, and turning your squad into well-oiled, top of the line murder machines. Did it occur to anyone that PGI might have intentionally not have allowed carry-over to help preserve that theme?
Why is it suddenly a big ask for PGI to operate with separate campaign saves? I'll be frank, this game and this company are the only time I've seen players treat this kind of system like it's some huge failing and disappointment to buyers. It's a noticeably different attitude. PGI aren't worth really defending a lot of the time but they are catching so much flak here for something that's design standard for this class of game.
The core of the gameplay is collecting mechs and equipment, PGI's implementation of Co-Op disables that for everyone but the host. That is a bad implementation.
The "campaign" is barely worth the word, and the gameplay felt like a step down from MWO, so all that is left is the collection and coop aspects, which PGI failed at combining in a satisfying way for many players.
MWO: Adamski
This is how hosted multiplayer games work and have always worked.
I’m not arguing any opinion that PGI is bad, but I am absolutely saying that “PGI Bad” is coloring opinions to an extreme degree.
Re: that being how hosted multiplayer games always work, that is absolutely not true. Just look at the many number of horde style games, where you bring your own character in to a hosted game, and get progress on your own save that you can then carry on into your own solo or others' hosted games (Gunfire Reborn, Vermintide, etc). And Gunfire Reborn (I'm not reinstalling Vermintide to test) works just fine offline in solo mode.
The primary reason multiplayer games are always online these days is to act as DRM for microtransactions, not because it solves a genuine mechanical problem. Unless it's an MMO it doesn't need to be online (and with many games people call MMOs they don't need to be online either and could be handled by a player browser, since they make one of the players the host anyway).
If you want to play solo, start a new campaign. Again, that is how every campaign setup works. Strategy games have done it for decades; is Civ a bad game now because I can’t carry progress between campaign files?
It depends on the game and its implementation.
Ie: Diablo 1 had coop where each player brought their own character and retained their progress and loot gained while helping other players. More recent games are Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide etc
Civilization and Total War do not allow players to drop in and out with their own unique factions.
MWO: Adamski
A "randomly generated mission where everyone brings there own mechs" is called coop instant action. Which you can play if you want. But the coop career is about the progress of the merc company as a whole, not about progress of individual mechs. And individual mechs don't have permanent progress anyway. Any gear or even the entire mech can be lost at any time. The reason that doesn't ruin the game is because the true progress is with the company, not the individual, so losses can be recovered from.
So first point, why can't I bring my own mechs into someone else's game. Once that's cleared up, we can move on to campaign quibbles.
In the campaign you hire and pay other pilots.
But if a friend comes to help in coop they dont even get C-Bills.
MWO: Adamski
Well for one you do not acquire heroes in vermintide. You get unlocks.
In Mechwarrior you loot mechs based on your choice of money/salvage in the mission contract screen. And you can sometimes get other rewards as part of mission completion.
But then who gets them? Does a MP save get four times the salvage and credits? Does each person get 1/4 and so can never salvage mechs anyway? Do you have to have a fight over every piece of salvage for who it goes to? When you complete a mission does everyone get the mech? Can they then use that unique mech in the next mission? If you run into a hero mech, who gets to buy it?
You could conceivably make a game that solves all these problems. But it wouldn’t be a Mechwarrior game anymore. At least not insomuch as people understand them. It could not have the features necessary to make a Mechwarrior game feel like a Mechwarrior game for the majority of fans and consumers.
Plus for most platforms you can just copy and send the save file to the other people in the group. Now they have the progress.
Design isn’t like. A thing that is free. That you just “design it” and then all of a sudden you get all the advantages of cooperative multiplayer with no costs to the rest of the game. It’s about choosing the trade offs.
Like. You absolutely 100% cannot have mods in multiplayer if you have shared progression. You cannot have cross equipment play. So if you join my game you have to buy all the dlc in order to get the DLC equipment.
It’s really hard and/or bad to have permanent equipment losses. Because then a rich host can select too hard missions and troll the rest of their players…
It’s not “lol they have to design their coop” it’s “they have to fundamentally change the game in ways that are bad for the game”.
I have backed up my claims far more than you have. I have explained some of the incompatibilities. I’m not going to back down because you say that it’s totally possible to go faster than light all PGI has to do is design it.
If you say it’s possible then show me the design. This isn’t a question of will where “why not?” is a sufficient response. It’s a question of possibility.
Nut up or shut up, as it were.
Please elaborate. You stated it, but didn't elaborate why "I play with my friend, but he can have his own mechs and rewards" is no longer a Mechwarrior game, but at the same time "I play with my friend, but he uses my mechs" is.
The game already has mods that work and mods that don't work with multiplayer. In fact, since the game has built in mod support, you can have internal mod flags that indicate whether that mod is always suitable for multiplayer (HUD changes and alike), whether it requires all parties to use it (new content, changes to the shop, how shares work, etc) and whether it's not suitable for multiplayer at all (infinite resources? Can't think of anything practical). Based on that, when forming a lobby the game can simply cross compare the players' mods and react accordingly.
You can handle DLC similarly. Since the host determines what missions you see the situation where the host lacks DLC, but the players have it doesn't even come into effect. If the host has DLC, but other players do not, then those players cannot get rewards that require said DLC, but it otherwise is not a problem. There's really no reason they couldn't choose to use the host's DLC mechs (if we go the route that one company can let another use their mechs at their own risk), because owning the DLC only determines whether or not you have access to content, all players will have those assets installed regardless (because that's far easier than making two games that aren't on the same patch version run together smoothly).
I mean okay? That same host can also spew obscenities over chat at their players, you don't remove ingame communication because of it. Don't play with assholes.
I don't see how this is a fundamental change.
WTF? How does splitting the rewards that a team of players earned among the team of players suddenly invalidate that it is a Mechwarrior game?
The host in MW5 is the same as any other mech pilot, except that they are the only ones that interact with the out of combat NPCs that actually control the Merc company. (Contracts, Repairs, Merchants, Starmap, etc)
MWO has map voting already. There are ways to implement systems that allow multiple players input.
MWO: Adamski
It’s almost like this was discussed and you just didn’t care to listen.
But how do you allocate rewards!!!
But not if you need to allocate rewards! Because you need a set reward schedule to deal with the multiple players progression. Remember that we are designing a game and part of the game is the reward structure and advancement. So if an early game player in coop gets a late game reward then this breaks the fundamental reward structure of the game.
This is why, in “4 player coop shooter” games each player is on a set reward schedule. You can modify the set reward schedule to have some RNG in it but items are always character level locked and characters always receive rewards at their character level.
This is not repeatable in a Mechwarrior game where the rewards are based on the difficulty of the mission. If I can use an allies mech. Then we can do hard missions. Then we can get rewards based on that difficult mission. And if we cannot then it’s not a Mechwarrior game anymore. Do you want a rep system such that you cannot pilot high tonnage or high quality mechs until you hit that personal rep? Well that would be some hot bullshit in a Mechwarrior game. (And also breaks the cross play!)
And since you have a set reward schedule you cannot have mods because mods will break your set reward schedule. Like. I don’t terribly like YAML but it very much does not work with this system. Because you will be unable to acquire bonus equipment not in the base game.
And these set reward cycles break the risk/reward system because if you lose equipment you’re suddenly actually behind the ability to fight the missions to progress and get rewards and cannot acquire equipment to do so!
Also, don't be a goose, I'm treating your responses in good faith, the same would be appreciated from you.
Any which way you want! You can give each player their own pool to pick from, you could give a larger pool and players can bid for items, whatever the designers come up with. This is like one choice in a sea of choices that need to be made when making games, and it's hardly the most difficult one. I do not understand the fixation on the host:client reward distribution.
If you're helping the host complete a more difficult mission then I fail to see the problem with getting those mission's rewards, they put their own time and resources into it, didn't they? People in Diablo, Path of Exile and so on can also freely trade high rank items among each other, even if the other person is a new player playing on the easiest campaign, I don't see the devs there going out of their way to stop it. Is it bothering you because it's "cheating"? Because you feel new players shouldn't get something you yourself "worked" for? Or are you genuinely so worried about the sanctity of progression that you'd rather your friends get nothing than risk upsetting the balance of a campaign where most missions are just randomly generated?