So now that we know that we are playing Smoke Jaguar what do you expect in MW5 Clans?

[Proxy]

:What I expect in MW5 Clans:

-Inverse Kinematics like in MW3/4

-Ratache Osis

-Leg movement matching mech speed like in MW3/4 (including inside cockpit foot steps)

-Better Lighting, sound effects, and textures that look dirtier/ more detail. MW5 Mercs just looked to clean and sterile. Modders literally fix these issues and made versions so much better, whoever works on lighting/sound effects and textures at pgi would be put out of a job. (Nostalgic sounds mod smashed the base games sound effects of MW5)

-Smaller UI without the radio chatter being in the center of the screen

-Weapon impact effects(like not knockdown but atleast throw my aim off if i just got hit with an AC20 point blank or if one arm on my mech was blown off)

-Fully voice story and no walls of text, like MW3/4

-unique missions and no copy paste like MW5 mercs

-Proper mission briefings clanner style pre combat, and no 'theres the target' style radio chatter when in combat 'im looking at you ray'

-NPC's at minimum 'spawned' in a way that looks like they have coordination, and no infinite 1 or 2 enemies spawn in from your blind spot.

-Full Limb destruction (if my mech is missing an arm show me i have no arm) Legging isnt really an issue as in MWO mechs legs have second highest armor value and are harder to hit than center torso

:I would Like to see In MW5 Clans:

-Returning MW3 Characters

-Infantry

-Game difficulties like normal (mwo stats) and Classic(MW3 stats where ER medium laser is equal to an IS large laser and clan ERPPC does 50% more damage than an IS PPC)

-More spacey / ominous music like MW2/3

-All UI elements built into each mech cockpit

-MW3 DLC

-Option to turn off certain UI elements

-All mechs having a different amount of coolant that could be flushed during gameplay



:Overall my expectations arent very much of a reach as MW3/4(even mechassault), games from up to 25 years ago all met these expectations, and i know PGI arent very capable. If modders have to fix your game to get even the slightest immersion im out. My wants arent all that heavy either, but are more of my own opinion. I'm not even asking for a good story. However if PGI decides to make another Minimum Viable Product like MW5 mercs, ill gladly wait till the games on sale for $5-$15.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Proxy:

:What I expect in MW5 Clans:

-Inverse Kinematics like in MW3/4

-Ratashe Osis

-Leg movement matching mech speed like in MW3/4 (including inside cockpit foot steps)

-Better Lighting, sound effects, and textures that look dirtier/ more detail. MW5 Mercs just looked to clean and sterile. Modders literally fix these issues and made versions so much better, whoever works on lighting/sound effects and textures at pgi would be put out of a job. (Nostalgic sounds mod smashed the base games sound effects of MW5)

-Smaller UI without the radio chatter being in the center of the screen

-Weapon impact effects(like not knockdown but atleast throw my aim off if i just got hit with an AC20 point blank or if one arm on my mech was blown off)

-Fully voice story and no walls of text, like MW3/4

-unique missions and no copy paste like MW5 mercs

-Proper mission briefings clanner style pre combat, and no 'theres the target' style radio chatter when in combat 'im looking at you ray'

-NPC's at minimum 'spawned' in a way that looks like they have coordination, and no infinite 1 or 2 enemies spawn in from your blind spot.

-Full Limb destruction (if my mech is missing an arm show me i have no arm) Legging isnt really an issue as in MWO mechs legs have second highest armor value and are harder to hit than center torso

:I would Like to see In MW5 Clans:

-Returning MW3 Characters

-Infantry

-Game difficulties like normal (mwo stats) and Classic(MW3 stats where ER medium laser is equal to an IS large laser and clan ERPPC does 50% more damage than an IS PPC)

-More spacey / ominous music like MW2/3

-All UI elements built into each mech cockpit

-MW3 DLC

-Option to turn off certain UI elements

-All mechs having a different amount of coolant that could be flushed during gameplay



:Overall my expectations arent very much of a reach as MW3/4(even mechassault), games from up to 25 years ago all met these expectations, and i know PGI arent very capable. If modders have to fix your game to get even the slightest immersion im out. My wants arent all that heavy either, but are more of my own opinion. I'm not even asking for a good story. However if PGI decides to make another Minimum Viable Product like MW5 mercs, ill gladly wait till the games on sale for $5-$15.

I wonder if you have any idea how much work you asked for here.

[pete]

Wrong forum dude.

[Explore]

Originally posted by Just Steve:

I wonder if you have any idea how much work you asked for here.

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

[pRaX]

A one and done deal with zero replayability because it's most likely gonna be a heavily scripted and linear story campaign.

I hope at least that modders can lift as much from it as possible to stick it into MW5Mercs.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by Explore:

Originally posted by Just Steve:

I wonder if you have any idea how much work you asked for here.

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

yes, simple implementations in much simpler programs.

like, i dont think you even understand you just asked PGI to improve lighting effects in unreal 5. it's not an impossible task, just one that would take a lot of time and effort from a well funded team. i'd like to point out that instead we have PGI.

you want full voice acting? p sure we do have that in MW5, anyway, but you're already draining the funding rewriting lighting. are we going to source our VAs from fivr? not that there's a big problem with that, but how then do you maintain consistency of both acting and recording? not that we had the stars of the VA world working on MW5, but with even less money to pay for it, how can we maintain current quality with less money?

mw5 has unique missions.... it also has copy-paste procgen missions. all story missions are hand-crafted, so i'm not sure what you're complaining about. you want them to remove the procgen missions so all we have to do are story missions?

[pRaX]

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

Originally posted by Explore:

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

yes, simple implementations in much simpler programs.

like, i dont think you even understand you just asked PGI to improve lighting effects in unreal 5.

They already improved the lightning because I guess someone finally found the settings.
The Ultra Visual and Weather modder already gave everyone proof that PGI were just lazy and it was indeed possible to have good lighting in MW5Mercs.

For anyone interested:
https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/178?tab=description
Literally makes it look like an entirely different game.
Even after disabling some of the more questionable "cinematic" effects, the lighting by itself is just miles ahead of the crap we got in vanilla.
All at a cost ofc, performance that is.

[Explore]

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

Originally posted by Explore:

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

yes, simple implementations in much simpler programs.

like, i dont think you even understand you just asked PGI to improve lighting effects in unreal 5. it's not an impossible task, just one that would take a lot of time and effort from a well funded team. i'd like to point out that instead we have PGI.

you want full voice acting? p sure we do have that in MW5, anyway, but you're already draining the funding rewriting lighting. are we going to source our VAs from fivr? not that there's a big problem with that, but how then do you maintain consistency of both acting and recording? not that we had the stars of the VA world working on MW5, but with even less money to pay for it, how can we maintain current quality with less money?

mw5 has unique missions.... it also has copy-paste procgen missions. all story missions are hand-crafted, so i'm not sure what you're complaining about. you want them to remove the procgen missions so all we have to do are story missions?

I be brief:

Not bothered about graphics (though as pRaX says, it's not a big deal)
There is not "full" voice acting in MW5, and it's not in the slightest bit unrealistic compared to other games. You're only using a false assumption about the lighting to claim there would be nothing left for that.
Missions just need to be a higher quality all round. The procedural generation is pretty bad, and there are regular problems on hand-crafted missions.

If PGI are not capable of reaching what we had before, perhaps we need a different team. Frankly though, I think they are, and these are just excuses to make a cheaper game.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Explore:

Originally posted by Just Steve:

I wonder if you have any idea how much work you asked for here.

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

Well, it's not like old features can be taken and dropped into a new engine. That has problems even with UE4 stuff ported directly to UE5 and that's supposed to be one of the biggest features of UE5.

It's quite clear to me, as I play through the campaign, that there were intentions to deliver much, much more and those intentions ran into the limitations reality tends to impose on programming (mostly time, engine ability and money). Like, fully voicing all these lines would have cost WAY more, and added a few GB to the download size. And that's just that.

I very strongly doubt UE4 could have handled all this robot action AND kept up with tiny infantry people acting realistically. There's a lot happening on these maps through the campaign. UE4 can barely keep up with the token humans animated in the background during a mission launch check.

Building all UI elements into each cockpit would mean redoing each cockpit AND adding more stress to the CPU in that the readouts would have to keep up in real-time. That's a fair bit of work under the hood to get that running right, esp. on UE4 (which is notoriously difficult for keeping track of inventories in a sandbox in real-time -- ask the developers of Conan Exiles and Ark on that one).

I'm not saying they wouldn't be very, very cool things. But it would take a well-backed dev team with experience four years tops to bolt all these things that were requested onto the game and QA and ship for multiplatform.

If it were JUST for PC or JUST for console, then 3, maybe 2 1/2 if you crunch. But this is a multiplatform title.

[Explore]

Originally posted by Just Steve:

If it were JUST for PC or JUST for console, then 3, maybe 2 1/2 if you crunch. But this is a multiplatform title.

Isn't that about normal for a AAA game? I know they often aim to get it done much quicker, but those games often end up as rushed messes (Anthem). Also, from what I can dig up anyway, that is approximately the time they took on this game.

I can expect this is difficult if the team have little experience, not enough time, and they use an outdated game engine. I'd suggest that not be the starting point, otherwise I'd expect a mess whatever game we're talking about.

P.S. For infantry I was expecting emplacements rather than loads of individual units with their own AI. We did used to have Elementals (bloody annoying things!), but only a few at a time. Voice acting cost is being wildly exaggerated - it would require a few (maybe 6) actors in a studio for a couple of days, and these people aren't typically paid well (enough).

[Proxy]

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

Originally posted by Explore:

Is it? Most of them are features we previously had in the series. I think it shows how our expectations have dropped since MW5 Mercs.

yes, simple implementations in much simpler programs.

like, i dont think you even understand you just asked PGI to improve lighting effects in unreal 5. it's not an impossible task, just one that would take a lot of time and effort from a well funded team. i'd like to point out that instead we have PGI.

you want full voice acting? p sure we do have that in MW5, anyway, but you're already draining the funding rewriting lighting. are we going to source our VAs from fivr? not that there's a big problem with that, but how then do you maintain consistency of both acting and recording? not that we had the stars of the VA world working on MW5, but with even less money to pay for it, how can we maintain current quality with less money?

mw5 has unique missions.... it also has copy-paste procgen missions. all story missions are hand-crafted, so i'm not sure what you're complaining about. you want them to remove the procgen missions so all we have to do are story missions?

yes. i would gladly remove all copy paste missions to get a hand full of good hand made missions. Quantity does not equal quality

[SLDFMechwarrior]

After how bad they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up this game, they can wait until clans is on sale for 10 bucks if they want my money.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Explore:

Originally posted by Just Steve:

If it were JUST for PC or JUST for console, then 3, maybe 2 1/2 if you crunch. But this is a multiplatform title.

Isn't that about normal for a AAA game? I know they often aim to get it done much quicker, but those games often end up as rushed messes (Anthem). Also, from what I can dig up anyway, that is approximately the time they took on this game.

I can expect this is difficult if the team have little experience, not enough time, and they use an outdated game engine. I'd suggest that not be the starting point, otherwise I'd expect a mess whatever game we're talking about.

P.S. For infantry I was expecting emplacements rather than loads of individual units with their own AI. We did used to have Elementals (bloody annoying things!), but only a few at a time. Voice acting cost is being wildly exaggerated - it would require a few (maybe 6) actors in a studio for a couple of days, and these people aren't typically paid well (enough).

Anthem was a mess for way more than just voice-acting. @_@ IDK if it'd be useful to compare development milestones from MW5 to Clans. This title was developed during the pandemic from largely scratch. Clans will almost certainly re-use assets. For example, you're definitely not getting the UI and radio chatter requests. Those are already set. (UI is a glowed-up version of the current, radio chatter's right in the middle as it is on MW5.)

For the stuff that was already in the game, it'd be a lot easier to port that over. Some of this stuff (like the living UI on cockpits esp.) isn't easy at all to bolt on, though, and Clans didn't start from scratch like MW5 did.

Good news on the engine though, it's UE5. You should appreciate the lighting changes.

For infantry, best you'd probably get are building emplacements (if you remember Starcraft, kinda like the bunkers except no actual infantry would be required to load into them or spill out after destruction of the building). They'd be animations attached to the building, rather than individual actors.

[Skrain]

I expect the same sub par stuff from MW5 Mercs to be in Clans, and that it'll only be playable after YAML releases. All I know is I won't be buying it, Piranha can, and should do better.

[Thundercracker]

Originally posted by pRaX:

Originally posted by Thundercracker:

yes, simple implementations in much simpler programs.

like, i dont think you even understand you just asked PGI to improve lighting effects in unreal 5.

They already improved the lightning because I guess someone finally found the settings.
The Ultra Visual and Weather modder already gave everyone proof that PGI were just lazy and it was indeed possible to have good lighting in MW5Mercs.

For anyone interested:
https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/178?tab=description
Literally makes it look like an entirely different game.
Even after disabling some of the more questionable "cinematic" effects, the lighting by itself is just miles ahead of the crap we got in vanilla.
All at a cost ofc, performance that is.

this is not reworking the engine's lighting system, this is running shaders on top of the engine. modders dont really have access to changing unreal's lighting system, as that's something you have to change the code of the unreal engine to change. if you did do that for your individual copy, it'd show as a pirated version, as the versioning would no longer match the checksums of the current or any previous version, locking you out of all multiplayer content.

Originally posted by Explore:

I be brief:

Not bothered about graphics (though as pRaX says, it's not a big deal)
There is not "full" voice acting in MW5, and it's not in the slightest bit unrealistic compared to other games.

what dialog is not spoken in this game? every single time a character is supposed to be saying something, they are voice acted. the game is fully voice acted.

or are you including mission briefings, which are not dialog but something you are in-universe reading?

Originally posted by Explore:

You're only using a false assumption about the lighting to claim there would be nothing left for that.
Missions just need to be a higher quality all round. The procedural generation is pretty bad, and there are regular problems on hand-crafted missions.

engine changes take a lot of time and money, assuming you are trying to avoid the program breaking. again, MW5 didnt spend the most on voice acting, and it did /not/ make sweeping changes to the engine.

there's no world in which they money around in the engine and have the budget left for better voice acting than we got in this game.

hell, i'm willing to bet clans has a much smaller budget than mercs did.

Originally posted by Explore:

If PGI are not capable of reaching what we had before, perhaps we need a different team. Frankly though, I think they are, and these are just excuses to make a cheaper game.

that's just how it works. you will pretty much never find a big increase in budget in the middle of a series unless the last entry smashed sales expectations. MW5 did not smash sales expectations.

yes, they are excuses to make a cheaper game, because this is PGI, we're getting a cheaper game no matter what. i'm just softening the blow, so that people dont hype themselves up so much that they are dreadfully disappointed when they see the reality.

[Explore]

Ok Thundercracker, this game is "Fully voice acted". They just chose not to have much spoken dialogue, and give briefings in walls of text. Also, for the millionth time, voice acting does not cost a fortune in games (unless you're Star Citizen and you have a stretch goal to spend on, and even for them it's a minor spend compared to whole project).

I'm not sure if after being forced to explain this, I can take your statements on this seriously, especially when you make your motivations clear. To "Soften Expectations" doesn't help us or them. I'll be giving honest feedback to clans when it comes out in the hope that the next game is better.

For me, this certainly doesn't help. I hope people here are at least slightly wrong, otherwise I feel like I could write much of the review now. I'm already thinking I might have to refund it. I am expecting something significantly better, and if it's not, I'll just continue playing and modding this.