An added bonus to Friday night’s Nvidia MechWarrior Community Day… was the late addition of MechWarrior Tactics to the dance card. Â I was originally informed that MWT was only going to be a ‘press only’ demo, and was under the impression that us non-press (I’m a fan site, not press) folks would not get a chance to see the game.
Fortunately, plans apparently changed, as I was able to get into the MWT room, watch some gameplay, and chat with Producer James Romanchuk from Roadhouse Interactive.
Because there were real press members there, I did not record my conversation with James, and I’m going to be vague with some of the information I discuss (I don’t want to in-advertently scoop someone who may be subject to an embargo that I’m not). Â I did not get an opportunity to play the game, as the press was playing everytime I got a chance to visit the MWT room (being in the MWO Tournament did require I actually be in the room we were playing MWO in, oddly enough ;)).
Here’s a recap of what I discussed with James (kind of free form, stream of conscious format) :
We talked about the artwork (and the forum reaction to it), and I got a little more insight into how the team gets from “Hey, let’s add the Atlas!” to…giving us the concept art, and then the production art. Â This is a bit, that I think should be discussed further, so if it doesn’t show up in press coverage shortly, I’m going to try and arrange an official interview (via e-mail) with James or Chris to go over this.
James also talked about how important constructive feedback is to the team, and how they’re all eager for the Community to get it’s hands on it…(yes, I asked the “when” question…no I didn’t get a set date, but they are trying to get us a mostly stable game to help test, as soon as possible).
The gameplay hasn’t changed much from what we saw in the alpha footage (here’s the Alpha video on the official site), I did see a close up of ‘Mech damage, that I don’t think is in the Alpha footage..right now, damaged areas just look burnt. The plan is to have visible damage (limbs missing) indicators.
(don’t be alarmed by MWT not filling the screen, full screen mode hasn’t been implemented yet, but is definitely coming)
I watched some press folk play against each other (‘Mechs can become immobilized, without being destroyed), as well as someone play against the AI…that seemed pretty fluid too. There were some technical issues (client freezes, crashes, etc) it is still early beta after all… But, I was impressed overall.
There is some cool stuff planned for improving the cinematics as well, they want to add ‘kill’ cams, views that follow the missiles, etc (from the sound of it, the cinematics will look more like an action movie than they currently do).
We talked about the collectible aspect for a little, I mentioned that part being seen as a cash grab by some. James understands the concerns, but doesn’t think we have anything to worry about…pilots came up as an example of the collectible aspect..
James stated that they really wanted pilots to be more then just a piloting/gunnery skill. Pilots will have favored play styles that will drive how you build the ‘Mech, and potentially some of your tactics.
The example he gave me (and please remember early beta, not set in stone, not finalized, still subject to change, etc) was you might have a pilot with an affinity for auto cannon 20s..so if you put him in say, an Atlas, he might get a +1 hex range with the AC, or a small increase to hit/crit. Nothing super overpowering, but a nice little perk for using a weapon the pilot prefers.
It sounds like pilots will be the driving force behind how we build/configure our lances..since we’ll want to try and get as much synergy between pilot and ‘Mech as possible.
James explanation really did make it seem like they would be balanced perks, and nothing really overpowering..thought, I’m sure that’s an aspect we’ll be asked to test in beta (or, whatever the current implementation of pilot cards is at that time).
One important note..at an event dedicated to MWO..I heard a decent number of people talking about MWT..this is a good sign for the popularity of the game!
P.S.. IGP, this banner.. is shiny. Â It would look great in my living room (just ignore my wife’s protests about it going there):
