Piranha Games was at the 2012 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week for a live, behind-closed-doors demonstration of the upcoming Mechwarrior Online, a “premium free-to-play” title that will be the first game in the Mechwarriorfranchise to be released for over ten years. With graphics and rendering powered by CryEngine 3, Piranha Games President, Russ Bullock, confidently claims that Mechwarrior Online will have the highest level fidelity of not just any previous Mechwarriortitle, but any free-to-play title there’s ever been.
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The demonstration begins with a first-person perspective from the pilot sitting in a Hunchback-class mech. Indeed, it is the cockpit itself that first draws the eye.
The player moves the pilot’s head around to look at the dozens of screens, buttons, and outputs scattered around the cockpit that also double up as a diegetic HUD. “All these screens contain real information about your mech,” Bullock explains. “How hot it is, how much damage it has taken, what’s going on around you, and when you start to get really damaged you will see that represented here. Screens might be exploding. You’ll see fires in here.”
Central to Piranha Game’s re-imagining of the series is that the player must not feel like they are the mech itself, but the pilot inside the mech. “We want to give you the sense that you are inside this cockpit inside the giant mech. This is reinforced when the player looks down and the pilot’s own torso and limbs sitting in the cockpit chair come into view.
This affects the game mechanically, too. A new innovation for the series that Mechwarrior Online introduces is a dual crosshair system—one for torso-mounted weapons and another for arm-mounted weapons. While the arm-mounted weapons can be aimed easily with a movement of the mouse, torso weapons are more restricted and can’t be aimed as easily or swiftly. This gives a real advantage to mounting weapons on arms, balanced out by the risk of that arm being destroyed.
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Bullock explains that the game will focus on 12-versus-12 battles with a strong emphasis tactics and class. “Role warfare is one of the biggest innovations of Mechwarrior Online,” Bullock explained. Rather than an “arms race” to get the biggest, most weaponised mech as fast as possible,Mechwarrior Online will reportedly reward a variety of different play styles. “It’s not just about receiving the kill shot,” says Bullock.
In the demonstration, apart from the Hunchback mech controlled by the player, we also saw a smaller, more nimble mech used for scouting and recon, which can alert team mates to an enemy’s location. Also seen was a giant, lumbering mech that could launch dozens of missiles at once in a terrifying swarm.
To stress the need for a variety of roles on a single team, Mechwarrior Online’s progression system will reward different actions and objectives through a game. Bullock is light on details as to what exactly the progression system will be, but explains that both mechs and pilots will receive experience points and upgrades.
While the demonstration only shows a forested, earth-like map, Bullock details a variety of environments that won’t be just backgrounds, but will affect how the game is played. For instance, a hot, desert map will cause weapons to overheat far more quickly and require far more careful planning, or conversely, water areas can be used to dissipate heat buidup. He also hinted at close, claustrophobic ‘urban’ maps.
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The game will primarily focus on team deathmatches when the game launches this winter, with a galactic map of different worlds changing over time as different teams and sides capture and lose different maps. Though, Bullock suggested there may be other game modes announced in the future.
For those concerned that the free-to-play model may turn out to be a pay-to-win model, Bullock stresses that monetary transactions will primarily be for vanity items. “The game is free for all players to play. In the end it is a skill based game and skill can’t be bought. You cannot buy dominance on the battlefield.”
As for local server chances, Bullock says they are “aggressively exploring all options,” and that there will be localised servers for every region.
http://games.on.net/article/15087/Live_from_GDC_MechWarrior_Online_Preview
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