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I'm not sure it's healthy to scrutinize a game based purely on representational balance. Also, I have no idea why anyone would grab the Mechwarrior license then make an arcade shooter out of it. It seems like the most senseless thing possible. Particularly when there were other properties at the time that suited fast arcadey mech combat far more. I can only imagine the hope was wearing the name would sell it, or someone wanted to make a Battletech game and got told 'politely' that no one would buy a Battletech sim. Perhaps a combination of both.
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Jan 21, 2018 18:43
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Day 1 made the first Mechassault, which was a faster-paced mech shooty game compared to MW1-4. I guess they thought "the faster paced part works, let's double down on that?" ...maybe?
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Jan 21, 2018 19:03
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BattleTech is, at least in theory, a very egalitarian setting. Nobody particularly cares about your race or gender, just how well you can shoot their robot with your robot. In the fiction, the most common descriptions are eye- and hair-color, and whether or not the person has a pronounced epicanthic fold. Skin color is almost never mentioned. There are a few exceptions, of course: - The Draconis Combine is notoriously misogynistic and get called out for it in-fiction both verbally and even better by having a large number of highly competent Combine-born female characters (Tomoe Sakade, Lainie Shimazu, "Mouse" Omizuki, Cassie Suthorn, Primus Sharilar Mori, about half of the DEST Ninjas and ISF leadership, the entire Order of the 5 Pillars (of which Sharilar Mori was a member  )).- The Federated Suns has some troubling anti-asian racism (born from the Kentares Massacre) that never quite gets condemned as strongly as it should. It's called out and identified as a bad thing that holds the Federated Suns back and gives fuel to their enemies, but that's sort-of undercut when those sneaky Capellans really are always up to something nefarious. - The Clans are depicted in the artwork as racially segregated. In the fiction they're not (the Clans are the least likely to be described with anything other than hair color (the only thing we know about Vlad Ward is that he has black hair and a scar)), the batshit crazy Clan eugenics program (and even more batshit crazy scientists) discourages homogeneity. But for the most part the cold, uncaring (yet oddly hopeful) BattleTech universe doesn't care about race or gender or sexuality. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Natalia Kerensky was originally planned to be the player character or that Microsoft decided they needed to emulate Halo so can't you make the player more like Master Chief? Edit: I have a feeling a lot of MA2's problems sprang from "Ok, but how can you make this more like Halo?" PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 19:09
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painedforever posted:Me not talk so good. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 19:40
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Yeah, the only commentary MA2 is prepared to make is "Those doors can't be blown, too thick. There's gotta be a terminal nearby you can hack."
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Jan 21, 2018 19:52
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also, yeah, the line between a good shooter and a good sim can be a particularly narrow one sometimes, especially when you're talking about a super complicated unit like a mech. being able to affect enemies in different ways can add a ton of spice to stuff. the old Dredd vs Death pc game was a good example of this - it was NOT a good game, but as an FPS, it's standout because it simulates being a Judge pretty well. in most games, you round a corner, you see a hostile and you immediately click on a head. game tape solved, next target. that will get you penalized in DvD in many cases! that's the way you should respond if it's an undead creature, but pretty much only in that case. if you're attacking a human, to not get penalized for killing them they have to commit a capital crime. you're also rewarded if you arrest them nonlethally across the board. attacking a judge is a capital crime, so after they shoot at you all bets are off, but you actually, factually cannot shoot a human first in that game without losing your law meter (which, if it ever empties, spawns very powerful enemies from the Special Judicial Squad). instead, you need to shout at them to surrender (which rarely works), or shoot the guns out of their hands (which makes humans surrender about 85% of the time). noncompliant humans can be further stunned with sturm gas canisters to make them arrestable (these are the grenades Dredd carries). mutants can be shot to death without a care, but they tend to be resistant to normal weapons so typically you're going to want to change ammo. they're also basically the only time you can use incendiary rounds without tanking your law meter.
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Jan 21, 2018 19:53
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PoptartsNinja posted:Edit: I have a feeling a lot of MA2's problems sprang from "Ok, but how can you make this more like Halo?" Yeah, other than the weight of these massive loving mechs you pilot, so much of this (and I presume MechAssault 1 as well) feels less like an actual mech game and more just a shooter taking cues from Microsoft's then biggest loving IP at the time. Doesn't even need to be a sim if being arcade-y was the goal, but there's always better ways at conveying that you are piloting a robot and not playing a third person shooter with a robot skin. Although my only reference points are from Japanese games, so I wouldn't know the first thing of translating BattleTech's specific qualities to a more pick up and play kind of game.
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Jan 21, 2018 20:50
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Coolguye posted:i wasn't criticizing you, or at least that was not my intention. my thrust there was that to be feminist, or chauvinist, or any kind of -ist, the game would require a lot more deliberate thought and intelligence put into it. maybe i'm being an elitist snob here, but social commentary from shovelware that was clearly designed in a boardroom just seems particularly absurd to me. Oh. Well, you really should have been. I don't mind folks calling me out when I'm being incoherent. After all, I went from trying to make a semi-serious point to trying to make a lame joke about the obvious sexual tension between the only two female characters in the game, forgot what I was writing in the first place, and then decided to click the "Submit Reply" button without reading what I'd written. Which happens very often. Still, I'm glad it got through on my second attempt.  I do like PTN's suggestion that maybe Natalia was going to be the PC in a very early draft of the first game, but it must have been really early. But... Shovelware? Okay, I'm not the biggest fan of either of the MA games, but weren't they promoted a lot? Well, maybe not MA2. It seems to be the same engine, and the missions are very gimmicky, there's little attempt to make a coherent narrative, and it looks like they just threw in a bunch of assets that they may have been developing for another game into MA1's engine, trying to capitalize on its success... Ah. I see what you mean.
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Jan 22, 2018 03:38
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Mechassault 1 feels way closer to the source material, but I could be remembering it wrong as it's been a long time since I've played it.
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Jan 22, 2018 05:59
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Last Time on Dragoonball Z So, hear me out. If we. Have more 'Mechs. Than the bad guys. We win. ... Don't you only have one Mechwarrior? Shut up, I'm a genius. I can drive the BattleMorks too! 
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Jan 23, 2018 18:14
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i mean the major's not ENTIRELY wrong on that note, a lot of planetary battles end up getting decided when one side runs out of mechs and the opposing house is just sort of like "yeah that's game unless we want to get into scorch the earth and all who stand upon it tactics" which the IS is fairly unwilling to do since planets tend to change hands pretty often. probably own that ball in a couple decades, after all. but then word of blake
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Jan 23, 2018 18:31
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Atlases are supposed to be scary? Huh. I always thought they were incredibly useless in the one BattleTech game I played because of how slow they were - they couldn't do much if you stayed at range and picked them apart. The big mech that always scared me was the Warhawk. And for that matter, what's the Draconis Combine doing with Clan mechs? Cythereal fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 23, 2018 |
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Jan 23, 2018 19:09
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Ah,dat 360p quality.
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Jan 23, 2018 20:45
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So which of you three (who am I kidding, it's Coolguye) owns the obnoxiously loud mechanical keyboard?
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Jan 23, 2018 21:02
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it wouldn't be so bad if i could stop myself from typing so drat fast
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Jan 23, 2018 21:10
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Cythereal posted:And for that matter, what's the Draconis Combine doing with Clan mechs? This is MechAssault 2, wherein Defiance Industries has built a colossal monument to the Mad Cat.
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Jan 23, 2018 21:47
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PoptartsNinja posted:This is MechAssault 2, wherein Defiance Industries has built a colossal monument to the Mad Cat. I'm still weirded out by the IS having regular access to Clan tech at all, much less apparently building their own omnimechs. Nor do I have a clue what the Word of Blake is. Guess the timeline moved on significantly after the Clan invasion, which is the only part of the setting I'm familiar with.
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Jan 23, 2018 22:08
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Cythereal posted:I'm still weirded out by the IS having regular access to Clan tech at all, much less apparently building their own omnimechs. Nor do I have a clue what the Word of Blake is. The Word of Blake is a super-fanatical offshoot of ComStar which managed to make/rediscover a whole lot of new technology (cyborgs and drones mostly) and build whole regiments of new 'Mechs in the twenty years after the Clan Wars before they launched their campaign to take over the The writers called that campaign the Jihad.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:40
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Thinking on it, I can understand why the experimental armor ended up better than mechs in a lot of circumstances. Much weaker than it is now and I could see completing the game being too difficult when a section requires you use it. Though this just raises the further question why you'd include it in the game at all and balance around it.
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Jan 23, 2018 23:50
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Cythereal posted:Nor do I have a clue what the Word of Blake is. You know those religious nerds in Comstar? Word of Blake is that, mixed with cyborgs and JIHAAAAAAAAD! 
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Jan 23, 2018 23:53
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Rorahusky posted:You know those religious nerds in Comstar? Word of Blake is that, mixed with cyborgs and JIHAAAAAAAAD! So they're low-budget knockoffs of the Adeptus Mechanicus, gotcha.
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Jan 24, 2018 00:02
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Technowolf posted:The writers called that campaign the Jihad. It was going to happen a lot sooner, too. They were building up to the Word of Blake being the Next Big Threat in 1998-2000 after the Twilight of the Clans. Then 9/11 happened and the WoB Jihad got put on a 5 year back-burner in favor of the FedCom Civil War. Edit: Then they got bought out by WizKids and they needed an excuse for ClickyTech, so the Jihad was presented as fait accompli right around the time BattleTech novels stopped being published. Most of the details were filled in after-the-fact. These five "Data Cores" we're seeking out correspond with the five hidden worlds where the Word of Blake did all of their WMD research. Just, y'know. Not on any of the planets we find the Data Cores on. Further proof that Captain Wolf Mechwarrior is actually a Wobbie Cyborg. Double Edit: The original reason the Wobbies were putting their secret 'Mech force together was to "gift" the Inner Sphere a second dead Clan (probably the Jade Falcons because you just know The Master is OCD) when they were finally recognized and brought into the Second Star League alongside ComStar. The Wobbies were brought in on the very session the 2nd Star League was disbanded, and their response was a very reasonable and measured "If we can't sit at the big-kids table, we're going to burn down the big-kids table!" PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 24, 2018 |
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Jan 24, 2018 00:12
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While it would be a stretch to say that battletech lore tends to be well-written and a lot of the characters tend to be one-dimensional stupid assholes, it as least nice that they tend to suffer consequences for being one-dimension stupid assholes (maybe sometimes when another author gets their hands on them?)
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Jan 24, 2018 03:08
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I have decent memories of the first Mech Assault as one of the first Xbox live games, kinda glad I never picked this one up. Although this came out around the time of Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel so I guess the mid 2000’s was a time to do stupid things with complex and well regarded IP’s. I do like the protagonist, though. I’m going to grow up to be just like Captain Wolf MacWarrior one day. Always helmeted, fearless, speechless, and completely dead inside. I’m 1/4 the way there already!
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Jan 24, 2018 03:24
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Technowolf posted:The Word of Blake is a super-fanatical offshoot of ComStar which managed to make/rediscover a whole lot of new technology (cyborgs and drones mostly) and build whole regiments of new 'Mechs in the twenty years after the Clan Wars before they launched their campaign to take over the They did have the free worlds league backing them.
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Jan 24, 2018 05:19
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Cythereal posted:Atlases are supposed to be scary? Huh. I always thought they were incredibly useless in the one BattleTech game I played because of how slow they were - they couldn't do much if you stayed at range and picked them apart. I was never really impressed with the Atlas myself. I started out with MW2, and they didn't show up until Ghost Bear's Legacy, and the thing about those games is that the Atlas, being so tall, had a really big hitbox. Also, if you're riding around in a Clan 'Mech, IS 'Mechs don't really impress. In the games I preferred riding around in the Heavies. Good mix of armour, weapons and mobility. Warhammer, Marauder, Timber Wolf... piloted well, those are the real kings. Calax posted:They did have the free worlds league backing them. Kinda-sorta? It was complicated. Thomas Marik, the first competent FWL leader turned out to be a ComStar/WoB plant, except that he wasn't really a bad guy, but the real Thomas Marik was trying to run things from the shadows, calling himself "The Master", and at around this point I lost interest, because I couldn't figure out who was real and who wasn't, and everything wound up in the Dork Ages, which had really badly written novels (for the most part), with nearly no 'Mechs or 'Mech combat. PoptartsNinja posted:Then 9/11 happened and the WoB Jihad got put on a 5 year back-burner in favor of the FedCom Civil War. Did not know that. And the FedCom Civil War was such a significant event, too. MechCommander 2 and all of MechWarrior 4 took place during it. I think that they did a really good job at it, considering that I couldn't really see the seams of it. ... not that this speaks much for the quality of the writing, I tend to be rather obtuse even at the best of times.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:34
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painedforever posted:Did not know that. I wouldn't take it as gospel, either. It just fits a 'between the lines' reading. The Wobbies were being built up as a big threat in the Camacho's Caballeros novels (1994-1996), they took over Terra in I want to say 1996-1997? And then they dropped off the radar almost entirely after 9/11. They don't even influence the FedCom Civil War even though you'd think they'd be all over encouraging the Commonwealth to balkanize by funding rebels everywhere (it was the Capellans who were doing that). 
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Jan 24, 2018 06:49
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Hate to post directly after posting one, but I just got done watching the video, so: a) I love the "No-one fights like Gestalt" line. There needs to be a Nobel prize for bad puns, so that Robokye can win them every year. b) Can you jump in and out of the Battle Armour? Would that reset your armour? And if you climb into a 'mech (in this mission, where you're not expected to jump back into the Battle Armour), would it despawn?
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Jan 24, 2018 06:55
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painedforever posted:b) Can you jump in and out of the Battle Armour? Yes quote:Would that reset your armour? No quote:And if you climb into a 'mech (in this mission, where you're not expected to jump back into the Battle Armour), would it despawn? Equipment is persistent in theory but I don't trust it not to despawn when it's off screen for long enough.
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Jan 24, 2018 06:58
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The correct plural for Atlas is 'Atloxen' 
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Jan 24, 2018 11:57
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PoptartsNinja posted:Double Edit: The original reason the Wobbies were putting their secret 'Mech force together was to "gift" the Inner Sphere a second dead Clan (probably the Jade Falcons because you just know The Master is OCD) when they were finally recognized and brought into the Second Star League alongside ComStar. The Wobbies were brought in on the very session the 2nd Star League was disbanded, and their response was a very reasonable and measured "If we can't sit at the big-kids table, we're going to burn down the big-kids table!" Militant religious fanatics are not exactly the most well known for making calm, rational decisions when presented with situations that come into conflict with the core tenants of their faith.
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Jan 24, 2018 11:59
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I am never going to get over the gauss shots curving in midair.
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Jan 25, 2018 00:04
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Voyager I posted:I am never going to get over the gauss shots curving in midair. Honestly I love it, it just belongs in a different setting, one where passable missile guidance isn't lostech.
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Jan 25, 2018 01:42
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wiegieman posted:So which of you three (who am I kidding, it's Coolguye) owns the obnoxiously loud mechanical keyboard? Let me tell you about editing our commentary for our videos where I'm silence mechanical keyboards and cups being put down every five seconds. painedforever posted:a) I love the "No-one fights like Gestalt" line. There needs to be a Nobel prize for bad puns, so that Robokye can win them every year. Don't encourage me. Paingod556 posted:The correct plural for Atlas is 'Atloxen' See I figured it was Atlots.
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Jan 25, 2018 02:42
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Atlapodes, clearly.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:00
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Depending on how you think declension should be applied to a proper name, the plural of Atlas might be Atlas with two dots over the second a.
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Jan 25, 2018 03:01
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the technical name for a group of atleese is a "scrum" or "cacafuego"
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Jan 25, 2018 03:13
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Really Pants posted:the technical name for a group of atleese is a "scrum" or "cacafuego" I thought a group of any 'Mechs was a 'fuckcity'
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Jan 25, 2018 03:15
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Really Pants posted:the technical name for a group of atleese is a "scrum" or "cacafuego" Actually it's more properly called an "Atlantean". An Atlantean of Atlaii.
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Jan 25, 2018 04:08
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Maybe "Atloads" but definitely not "Atleast"
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Jan 25, 2018 04:15
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