Game News BattleTech Released

[Infinitron]

tbh I don't see HBS as the kind of company that would wade into Twitter and feed the flames. They sound quite humbled in the release Kickstarter update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/2169945

There's no "eureka" moment or single hero who always saves the day. Games are always bad before they're good. And good games are the result of years of hard work, passion, and slow incremental change, channeled into a single experience by talented collaborators with a shared vision. BATTLETECH may not be perfect, and our sales and review scores remain to be seen

 

[jungl]

tried it completely clueless what im doing failed the tutorial mission right at the end LOL there goes 10-20 minutes. dude hovered his mech next to the mentor black guys mech and killed him. Pretty unforgiving seem like mechs go down really fast in this game. Armor breaks fast and your dead.

Overall not impressed, Graphic wise its really ugly. ps2 games upscaled look better. Gameplay while I didnt know wtf I was doing seems basic.

 

[Bocian]

Games are always bad before they're good.

Calling bullshit, these excuses for bugs and half-assed game elements are getting stale. Sadly, ease of releasing patches allows developers to be lazy; practically every game on release is full-priced early access, and people buying right away are paying heavy cash for being betatesters. This is especially bad with kickstarted titles where there's no developer urging the devs to uphold the release dates.

 

[Blaine]

tbh I don't see HBS as the kind of company that would wade into Twitter and feed the flames. From the release Kickstarter update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/2169945

There's no "eureka" moment or single hero who always saves the day. Games are always bad before they're good. And good games are the result of years of hard work, passion, and slow incremental change, channeled into a single experience by talented collaborators with a shared vision. BATTLETECH may not be perfect, and our sales and review scores remain to be seen

The game needs to be good by release day, though. Plenty of games are actually good many months prior to release day, such as Factorio, Overload, and Underrail, just to name a few. Stardew Valley was developed by one person, and with virtually zero marketing clout sold a trillion copies and achieved Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam almost on the first day it was released.

They ticked off Steam (62/100 currently) with bugs and crashes, they ticked off GOG (3.5/5) by having DRM-locked promotional content, and they'll end up ticking off people who don't like SJW shoehorning, whose numbers are far greater than the For Her crowd will admit despite certain recent events that prove otherwise. Frankly, I think the gameplay will end up ticking off everyone, especially BattleTech purists. I played the original game with the original manuals and such back in the day, and I already knew I wouldn't be touching this game months ago.

As for whether or not they'll lower themselves and wade into the flames, HBS hasn't had a true stinker on its hands yet. This game is shaping up to potentially be one, so we'll see. Failure is when the recriminations usually begin in earnest.

 

[Forest Dweller]

You've read the updates, you've watched the streams and dev diaries,

I've actually done neither of those things.

 

[lightbane]

Don't forget guys that they also misteriously increased the price from 20~ € to 30 something, if that wasn't enough. Not sure whether to refund or wait a year or two for the extra-enchanted edition.

 

[DeepOcean]

It is sad to hear this, Harebrained schemes at least managed to hold their SJW nonsense enough on the shadowrun games for them to be enjoyable, guess I will buy at a sale.

 

[frajaq]

This game feels very badly optimized and buggy, I did the tutorial mission and after that the game was stuck on a vision of a ship in space, with no option on what to do, oh well

You have like 3 options of character background which is fine, although I wonder if it affects anything else in the game as far as dialogue options/quest resolutions goes

 

[Mark Richard]

You know the drill. In a month it will reach a playable state. In three it will add features that should've been in the game to start with. In six it will be a vastly superior game to the one at launch. I'm tired of this industry-wide fix it later attitude. I'm a customer, not a games tester.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

All I ever wanted as a BattleTech fan is a turn-based computer simulation of FASA's 3025 to 3055 BattleTech rules, with modernized graphics and either a sandbox style of play or a lengthly campaign. Something like the Crescent Hawk games or MechCommander Gold, but for today's computers, with better AI, and more faithful to the tabletop experience. Why can't I have such a simple thing?

 

[Black]

You wanted modernized graphics from HBS and improved AI in current year?

 

[Blaine]

All I ever wanted as a BattleTech fan is a turn-based computer simulation of FASA's 3025 to 3055 BattleTech rules, with modernized graphics and either a sandbox style of play or a lengthly campaign. Something like the Crescent Hawk games or MechCommander Gold, but for today's computers, with better AI, and more faithful to the tabletop experience. Why can't I have such a simple thing?

I don't see the issue with the literal and actual tabletop rules. BattleTech is the most satisfying tabletop miniatures game I've ever played, hands down, and I spent many years as a young dweeb trying them all out.

Unlike the space, time, and money investment necessary for Warhammer/40k, you could paint about six minis, fold out a hex map (or part of one) nearly anywhere, give half of the minis to some friend, and have a blast with a pretty crunchy and enjoyable (and immersive-feeling) set of rules.

There's always MegaMek, which unfortunately isn't exactly lush in the graphics department.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

You wanted modernized graphics from HBS and improved AI in current yer?

I'm not talking AAA here. How about serviceable graphics. But yeah, I would like better AI than what was in MechCommander.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

All I ever wanted as a BattleTech fan is a turn-based computer simulation of FASA's 3025 to 3055 BattleTech rules, with modernized graphics and either a sandbox style of play or a lengthly campaign. Something like the Crescent Hawk games or MechCommander Gold, but for today's computers, with better AI, and more faithful to the tabletop experience. Why can't I have such a simple thing?

I don't see the issue with the literal and actual tabletop rules. BattleTech is the most satisfying tabletop miniatures game I've ever played, hands down, and I spent many years as a young dweeb trying them all out.

Unlike the space, time, and money investment necessary for Warhammer/40k, you could paint about six minis, fold out a hex map (or part of one) nearly anywhere, give half of the minis to some friend, and have a blast with a pretty crunchy and enjoyable (and immersive-feeling) set of rules.

There's always MegaMek, which unfortunately isn't exactly lush in the graphics department.

I like MegaMek, but the AI is pretty bad. I suppose I can break out my old FASA campaign scenarios and just play through them in MegaMek. <shrug>

 

[Black]

You wanted modernized graphics from HBS and improved AI in current yer?

I'm not talking AAA here. How about serviceable graphics. But yeah, I would like better AI than what was in MechCommander.

MW3 Pirate's Moon AI can jump jet over canyons, I'd like to see modern companies do that

 

[Nael]

Poor optimized trannies lead to poorly optimized game...

Spoiler

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I'm surprised at how much tolerance you guys have for the new Shadowruns. I didn't hate them, but to me Returns and Dragonfall felt like they were only a few steps above shovelware. Why should BattleTech be any different?

Having experienced the combat in Dragonfall, I never once thought to myself, "you know what, HBS is just the studio to make a pure turn based tactical game."

 

[Blaine]

I like MegaMek, but the AI is pretty bad. I suppose I can break out my old FASA campaign scenarios and just play through them in MegaMek. <shrug>

The level of prestigiousness and technical and artistic skill required to produce the dream BattleTech game you envision (also that just about everyone else envisions) just doesn't exist anywhere in the correct concentration.

 

[Blaine]

Poor optimized trannies lead to poorly optimized game...

Spoiler

Yeah, this was one of the, uh... quote-unquote subtle hints that tipped me off a while back and erupted into a rolling argument about whether or not full-blown far-left wingdings can produce playable and enjoyable games.

Looking at it again, whoever took that screengrab had an interesting trends marquee:

 

[Black]

 

[Vorark]

I found this on GOG forums:

And more on this. I have been looking at this and i have noticed that game writes 3 files in a folder at Appdata\Local when you log in into Paradox account.

In one of those files, game writes the responses from Paradox server to activate or not the extra content while game is running. Ok, that's how it works, it seems.

But the problem is that the file also contains, in plain text:

-The code i used to redeem the content
-My email :S
-My backer level (that's it, how much money i paid)

Those files are NOT deleted when you exit the game and thus remain in your hard drive in plain text. I had to delete them manually after i noticed.

We don't have here any of the Paradox guys and girls that are in this very moment on the Steam forum answering threads and bad reviews, so probably no one of them will ever answer or even read this. But if you are playing the game and don't like that info to be left there, go to:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\Harebrained Schemes\Battletech\streamingWebResponses\

...and delete all the files in the folder (3 for each session you played, also, and seem to accumulate)

Drama aside, hopefully the game sells decently enough. I want my Shadowrun fix.

 

[aweigh]

Why would a studio that just spent 3 back-breaking years laboring to make a game that by no means is guaranteed to sell go and jeopardize it by including politics?

They seriously need a guy in a suit to tell them how to sell a product.

 

[Blaine]

They seriously need a guy in a suit to tell them how to sell a product.

Well, they do have a brown woman in hijab to tell you about her fifteen doctorates—and I mean really, if you even notice the significance of such a thing as the only dialogue preview on the game's sale page, I mean obviously you're a fucking bigot and we don't want your filthy money anyway.

Spoiler

Yes, a brown woman with ninety doctorates showing off her fictional STEM field. Total coincidence that this is the only piece of dialogue in the image marquee, NAZIS. Nothing epitomizes BattleTech more than talking about your academic degrees, I mean fucking duh.

 

[Morality Games]

I'm surprised at how much tolerance you guys have for the new Shadowruns. I didn't hate them, but to me Returns and Dragonfall felt like they were only a few steps above shovelware. Why should BattleTech be any different?

Having experienced the combat in Dragonfall, I never once thought to myself, "you know what, HBS is just the studio to make a pure turn based tactical game."

It's been mentioned before, but all three games (especially Dragonfall) were games where players could walk around and talk to characters without wanting to uninstall the game due to boredom. Most NPCs in Dragonfall were somewhat intriguing and some of the NPCs in Hong Kong were a little intriguing (not the companions as much, but some of the ancillary characters and situations).

In most AA and AAA games, every companion, every enemy, and every ancillary character is just boring.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Why would a studio that just spent 3 back-breaking years laboring to make a game that by no means is guaranteed to sell go and jeopardize it by including politics?

Game journos, feminists, and SJWs in general have spent the last several years convincing developers that pozzing up their games will massively increase sales, despite all evidence to the contrary. Naysayers are shouted down and called racist.

Pain is a necessary teacher sometimes.