Mechwarrior Living Legends

[Hoofhurr]

It looks like this Crysis Mod is finally in open beta and some of the forum reports look promising. I just bought Crysis off steam for $29.99 (Note: This is the original Crysis other versions are not supported) They really stretched the price out of that game for a long ass time didn't they? I'm going to fire it up when I get some time and I'll report on it here. I'm expecting something like a Battlefield style game set in the Battletech universe. If you don't like dealing with betas and the hoops you have to jump through to get a working version of a mod on your PC then I don't recommend trying the mod at this point. Wait for a proper release. The beta is free however and if you have a machine that can run Crysis (I may be disappointed here) and have a decent tolerance for in-development titles then I'd say go for it. It promises to be a fun game.

Past Battletech games put you in the cockpit of a mech. This game supports several different military branches including tanks, infantry battlesuits, VTOLS, aerospace fighters and, of course, mechs. There is also a strong RPG component in that you earn in-game credits and ranks that open up new technology and weaponry for you to use as you advance. You actually buy the equipment you use and stand to lose it if you get blown up.

Supposedly there is a solid rock-paper-scissors component to the game that strongly encourages team play in that you want a diverse representation of the military branches present on your team if you want to handle all that the enemy team might throw at you a la Team Fortress style games. Mechs are not the default best units on the map and have weaknesses just like any other unit.

I also know that mechs at least have extensive hit box locations. Cockpits have their own hitboxes and limbs do as well. As you get to know mechs better you can effectively neutralize them by shooting off their weapons which may be mounted on the shoulders, in either arma, or left right and mid torso of the mechs. You can also do damage directly to the cockpit of a mech exposing the pilot. If the pilot doesn't eject a second direct hit can kill the pilot.

Projectile weapons require you to lead the shot as the projectile itself has to close the distance from weapon to target. Lasers are instantaneous (practically) but do damage while engaged so you have to keep your target under the reticle for the duration of the discharge. The game is not a full on simulation and maintains many FPS components.

Expect terrain, unit selection, weapon loadouts, teamwork and twitch to be the primary factors in gameplay.

[Fretty]

Definitely sounds interesting.
I'm not against betas, but I don't care much for them. Put that on top of the pile of games I still have to play, I doubt I'll be taking part in the beta for this. I do want updates though, because if it's as good as it's "promising" to be, then I want in on launch.

[Hoofhurr]

I also expect a fully support ladder or strategy level community to develop around this mod. Battletech lovers are pretty hardcore gamers as is evidenced by the development of the mod. It will be interesting to see what springs up from this. Also, the original creator of FASA and battletech bought the license or obtained license back from Microsoft so we might see a Mechwarrior 5 in the next couple of years. This should serve to direct even more attention to this IP.

[Fretty]

I thought MW5 was already confirmed, no?

[Hoofhurr]

Minus the litigation with Robotech over certain mech models yes...

[Hoofhurr]

To illustrate another point about the teamwork in the game you can have a player sneak in close to a mech and laser-tag a target location like the arm or cockpit on one side of the map and your buddy's mech from across the map can launch an artillery strike that will home in on the laser target. Pretty cool.

[Hoofhurr]

Well the game's pretty damn amazing. Took me about 2 hours to install though with quite a bit of guessing. Seriously, if you don't have a tolerance for beta/mods don't bother right now. You'll ruin it for yourself.

I run a pretty shitty laptop for gaming. 8600M Geforce, 4 gigs ram, T8300 Duo @ 2.4ghz. The game is choppy for me at medium settings but the maps are dense with hills and trees and shrubs and grass etc. The models are amazing. And the maps are gorgeous. The lag wasn't bad at all it's mostly my FPS that was struggling and I expect that to improve with time.

The whole concept is just sick and I can't believe they pulled it off so well. You get a certain amount of in-game currency at the start that gets you in to the basic units. As you rank up that base currency increases as does the variety of gear you have access to. There must be something like 30 different types of unit each with 4 variant weapon loadouts available. There's missiles, lasers, gauss projectiles, flamers, machine guns, rotary cannons, autocannons etc. Everything you'd expect from a Battletech game. Seeing a lance of assault mechs coming at you is fucking awesome. I might cough up 800 for a desktop if my gameplay doesn't improve.

The game is everything I've wanted from a new mech game for several years. There's a fair bit of work to do on it yet. I've crashed several times, fallen through floors, been unable to pilot through trivial terrain etc but the foundation is there for an incredible gaming experience if you're into this sort of thing.

If you run out of ammo or lose enough armor you retreat to the base and repair/rearm for cash of course.

The strategy possibilities are endless here with the variety of mechs, tanks, hovercraft, aerospace fightes, VTOLS, and battlearmors in the game combined with the variety of terrains they've created. Once they get the game smoothed out creating new environments should be gravy. I'll be keeping my fingers in this honeypot and will let you guys know when the game becomes glassy. Of course, if you love battletech and don't have anything else yummy on your plate then get your ass in there right now.

[Hoofhurr]

Well I don't know what game I was playing yesterday but when I logged onto the servers today all the graphics had cleared up and the crashing was greatly reduced. What a fantastic game. This is Mechwarrior4 on steroids and with an abundance of options. The dev team plans on adding several different gameplay types before they're done calling it a beta. Anyway, I think I've found my game for now. MMOGs just don't seem to bring the heat like tactic heavy 24v24 or 36v36 and require too much hoop jumping to get to what a good tactical sim(ish) game gives you right off the bat. I may still do STO if enough people play it and the grind to end game doesn't last more than a week or two but if it's going to be 2 months just to do arenas and gear grinds to keep up then I'm probably going to bow out early.

[Slamz]

I may still do STO if enough people play it and the grind to end game doesn't last more than a week or two but if it's going to be 2 months just to do arenas and gear grinds to keep up then I'm probably going to bow out early.

STO is basically like WAR in the sense that you can level through scenarios almost right away. I have no plans to do any PvE beyond level 6.


Is there an ETA on this mech game getting cleaned up enough for a general audience? I'm not generally big into mech games but I might give it a try, especially if they have all those other options (i.e., don't necessarily have to be a mech).


You should FRAPs some for us.

[Hoofhurr]

I wouldn't hold my breath on an ETA. I'll keep this post updated though. I crashed three times in about 3 hours last night. Not bad compared to the day before. They are actively patching and updating.

Fraps would melt my machine. But here you go.

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Action Gameplay
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HD Gameplay
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If anyone is interested in trying this out I'd be happy to hop on vent and walk you through the install, HUD and anything else you'd be interested in. Again, the caveat is that it's the first beta update and they anticipate going through many more updates before they reach 1.0.0 Under no circumstances slog me through an install unless you have a couple of hours of patience :wink:

I've also read somewhere that they may be porting the game to Crysis Warhead instead of Vanilla Crysis. Verify before laying down cash please.

I strongly suggest you buy the box set called Crysis Maximum. You get all three games for $40. That way you can play the mod when it comes out for Crysis and move onto Wars when the changeover happens without having to worry about getting another game.

Verified.

[Grunldesnapp]

This sounds pretty interesting, is it open content like Planetside or lil maps with limited people? Please say Planetside....please. FPSers are too closed in with their tiny ass maps. Give me continents!

[Hoofhurr]

Small maps. The polygon counts and textures are too memory intensive for huge maps and hundreds of players. I'm not sure why this is the case technologically but the highest pop server/games are still 32v32. I don't know why. That's not my area of expertise. You rarely see games that go higher than 32v32 without the game going to shit.

The maps in MWLL are a fraction of the size they were developed at and as they optimize the code they said they would expand them as well as create objective based gameplay. I'll keep this thread updated as they update the mod. I suck at it so far but it's pretty fun.

[Breand]

Ive always boycotted Mechwarrior products, specifically because I'm such a Robotech fan boy and get pissed off at the intellectual theft =)