KickStarter BattleTech Pre-Release Thread

[Ezeekiel]

I take it there won't be any deployable tanks/infantry either to use in place of mech slots?

 

[Bohr]

You sometimes have allied forces (seen mechs but possibly vehicles later) but you don't control them.

 

[Cael]

I take it there won't be any deployable tanks/infantry either to use in place of mech slots?

No.

 

[Black]

I take it there won't be any deployable tanks/infantry either to use in place of mech slots?

Combined arms in a game called Battletech?

 

[Cael]

I take it there won't be any deployable tanks/infantry either to use in place of mech slots?

Combined arms in a game called Battletech?

Used extensively by all Great Houses, and advocated by Clan Hell Horses. In fact, Davion formed his regiments into regimental combat teams, which averagely consist of 1 'mech regiment, 3 vehicle regiments and about 5-7 infantry regiments. They vary a bit, but the basic is there.

 

[Ezeekiel]

FWIW I wasn't really expecting it or anything, but it does seem silly to look back and note that this game does basically nothing better than mech commander in terms of gameplay and the ruleset is even simpler than tabletop battletech (not the click crap) in basically every aspect while introducing problems that the source material had already solved (light mech issues, pilot survivability and other balance stuff).

Having only 4 mechs on the field imo also seriously restricts your options. This smacks of nuxcom influence. Few actions, few actors per turn = high RNG dependability and either it's frustrating as hell or easy peasy.

 

[Cael]

FWIW I wasn't really expecting it or anything, but it does seem silly to look back and note that this game does basically nothing better than mech commander in terms of gameplay and the ruleset is even simpler than tabletop battletech (not the click crap) in basically every aspect while introducing problems that the source material had already solved (light mech issues, pilot survivability and other balance stuff).

Having only 4 mechs on the field imo also seriously restricts your options. This smacks of nuxcom influence. Few actions, few actors per turn = high RNG dependability and either it's frustrating as hell or easy peasy.

Read the last 30 or so pages. They basically removed stuff they didn't think make sense based on a flawed understanding of the actual scenario, wholesale made stuff up, and added in all sorts of stupid prejudice and dumbfuckery. And then when it all came back and bit them in the ass, they are now frantically tweaking this and that to make things work again.

When they started off with an IP that worked perfectly from the get go.

They are basically a bureaucracy expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.

 

[Ezeekiel]

Read the last 30 or so pages.

 

[Bohr]

I know I'm more optimistic than many here about the game (particularly after mods and given my modest initial expectations) but was disappointed to see it confirmed from the streams that the "salvage 3 chassis pieces and instantly get full weapons loadout at no cost" thing is confirmed to still be in the game. Most of us suspected it, and the fanboys on the forums arguing it was just a bug could never actually get confirmation that it was a bug, but still disappointing. Clearly they didn't want new players to be put off by having to learn the mech lab right away when they first salvaged a mech, even though that ends up being one of the more fun parts of the game. It joins a list of the things I wish they'd done differently.

Having said all that, I have a feeling that these changes are actually going to make the game more successful, as they probably calculated - much as we may hate that idea or spam decline smileys. Early feedback from the press seems positive, new players are interested, I think sales could be decent. And there's still (at least at first) seemingly enough complexity for the XCOM gang:

Spoiler

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I take it there won't be any deployable tanks/infantry either to use in place of mech slots?

I'm pretty sure that infantry won't be in this game at all.

 

[Bohr]

Didn't say I liked the idea, just how it might pan out... given some of the reception.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's an important question IMO: What will your opinion of this game be if you enter with Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games as your baseline of expectations?

 

[Jenkem]

Here's an important question IMO: What will your opinion of this game be if you enter with Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games as your baseline of expectations?

Will wait for director's cut.

 

[agris]

will wait for Battletech 2: Mech Fall.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/webeharebrained/battletech/posts/2167872

BATTLETECH Keys Are On Their Way!

We are excited to let you know that we have begun distribution of BATTLETECH game keys into BackerKit accounts!

With over 50,000 Backers, it will take some time for all the keys to be distributed. You will get an email from BackerKit when your key has been delivered into your account so you don’t need to keep checking it. If you go to your account and see a “Pending” message, please be patient.

The game will be available for pre-load on Steam on Monday, April 23rd at 9am PDT but the game WILL NOT unlock until April 24th at 9am PDT. Neither GOG nor Humble will have pre-load available so you’ll need to wait to download the game until April 24th at 9am PDT if you are on those platforms.

All other digital Backer rewards - the Official Soundtrack, Art of BATTLETECH pdf, and codes for in-game rewards - will be delivered to BackerKit accounts in time for launch. You will receive a BackerKit email when that happens and must return to your BackerKit account to retrieve those rewards.

How to Get Your BATTLETECH Key: If you answered your BackerKit survey, your account has been "locked down," and you will find your key in your BackerKit account. The key, codes and digital rewards will remain there in case you ever need to find them again.

Go to https://battletech.backerkit.com/
- Enter the email address you used to back the game into the "Kickstarter Email" box and click on "Get My Survey"
- When you get the email from BackerKit, follow the link inside to your account Click on "Get Your Digital Rewards"
- Copy and paste your key into your gaming library of the platform

BETA players: please note that you must retrieve your *new* game key. The Beta *will not* update to the final release version of the game.

If you have trouble with your BackerKit account, please see the FAQ below.

We’re almost there!

Thank you for all your support over the last 2.5 years!

- HBS

In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the intro video for the game. We attempted to capture the epic story of humankind's ascent to the stars and its eventual fall from the height of the Star League to the declining years of the Succession Wars. Hope you like it!


FAQ

I can’t access the email address connected with my BackerKit account to recover my account - what do I do?
Send us an email at info@hbs-studios.com with the old address AND the new address and we can update that for you.

BackerKit says I don’t have an account - what do I do?
Please try again following these directions:
Go to https://battletech.backerkit.com/
Put your email into the box labeled "Kickstarter email" and click the "Get My Survey" button.
If you get still get this error message: "Sorry, we couldn't find a survey for that email." -- then contact us at info@hbs-studios.com and we will help you out. Include as much information about your pledge as you can, including your current email address and any old email addresses that you may have used when you pledged and if you backed on Kickstarter or BackerKit.

I didn’t fill out my BackerKit account before the deadline - what do I do?
If you did not fill out your BackerKit survey, we are unable to fulfill your Kickstarter rewards. You’ll need to go to the survey recovery page https://battletech.backerkit.com/ to fill out your survey. Your digital rewards will be in your BackerKit account soon after that.

I only see the Add-Ons that I purchased in BackerKit and not my rewards - what’s up with that?
It’s likely because a second account was automatically created for you when purchased the Add-Ons. On the page with the Get Your Digital Rewards button, you'll see a yellow band at the top. Just click on "Switch to another survey" and you'll be given the option to access the first account.

What about my other digital rewards like the code for the 'Mech skin, soundrack, or art book? When do I get them?As noted above, all other digital Backer rewards - the Official Soundtrack, Art of BATTLETECH pdf, and codes for in-game rewards - will be delivered to BackerKit accounts in time for launch. You will receive a BackerKit email when that happens and must return to your BackerKit account to retrieve those rewards.

If you have any other issues, emailing us directly at info@hbs-studios.com rather than through Kickstarter messages will help us serve you faster.

 

[Junmarko]

Here's an important question IMO: What will your opinion of this game be if you enter with Harebrained Schemes' Shadowrun games as your baseline of expectations?

Despite how you could slam the Shadowrun games for being watered down - I couldn't stop playing any of them until I finished and enjoyed replaying through each game twice.

Here's hoping for the same.

:russiastronk:

 

[Infinitron]

Got my key.

 

[santino27]

Same.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...making_BattleTechs_first_two_hours_matter.php

The challenge of making BattleTech'sfirst two hours matter



Next week, Harebrained Schemes' BattleTech hits Steam, and while we're normally happy to play any game that features giant robots doing giant robot-y things (including but not related to stomping on vehicles, smashing buildings, and standing still while pilots scream at each other), we also were excited to check in with a smaller company that's managed to put out interesting games while running with a smaller team.

So today on the Gamasutra Twitch channel, we checked in with BattleTech director Mike McCain and Harebrained Schemes producer Mitch Gitelman to discuss the game's design and development, and get some solid takeaways from the process that could help out other game-makers. In particular, we had an exciting conversation about how smaller companies compete in a crowded game market, and the process of adapting tabletop mechanics for a digital game environment.

If you've got the time, you can watch our full conversation up above, but if you're hopping into a Blackjack right now to make some cash for your mercenary company, here's some quick takeaways for you to read on the drop down.

Your game's first 2 hours will literally impact your game sales

This should be fairly obvious to many developers on Steam right now, but as we chatted with Gitelman and McCain about the learning curve of BattleTech, Gitelman explained that a lot of decisions about the game's tutorial process orbited the fact that if Steam users didn't feel attached within 2 hours, they'd be returning the game under Steam's refund policy.

That meant a lot of focus for the BattleTech team was on balancing the early story, the tutorialization, and encounters that occur within those first 2 hours (which roughly amounts to 2 to 2.5 missions, by our estimate). It's not a lot of time, so every minute spent explaining to the player how the game works instead of letting them explore what BattleTech is about will have a cost in some way.

But the obvious trade-off is, as McCain admits, the game doesn't have the most robust tutorialization in the world, especially for some rather complex systems. It's a trade-off that definitely impacts how well players will understand concepts like pilot abilities, repairs, and more, but knowing it comes from a focus on early player retention adds a new perspective on what sacrifices developers have to make to preserve that early experience.

Don't make knee-jerk playtesting decisions

When you work for a smaller company, as McCain pointed out, you probably don't have access to 100 players who can test new builds and provide raw data on how your game is working. That meant working with the 25 testers that Harebrained Schemes rounded up, McCain's job wasn't just to solve problems that playtesters reported, but respond to them carefully and consider the play experience of the person offering feedback.

It's an approach that led to McCain, Gitelman, and company to try and identify "problem feelings" that they could address, rather than making proportional changes to each piece of feedback received. In one notable instance, the game's Kickstarter backer beta was originally delayed while the team tried to solve feedback about unit movement, and how it was "janky." The result was a system borrowed from the original tabletop game that encouraged players to move units further in order to make them more evasive and less likely to hit, and providing clearer incentives for staying put versus walking around the map.

The RNG of BattleTech impacted how far Harebrained Schemes could develop all the promised game features

When Harebrained Schemes put BattleTech on Kickstarter, it used the backer goals to set clear milestones for how far development could proceed with different kinds of content. While it did rocket through those goals, we were curious if the realities of game development impacted the company's ability to deliver on those promises over time.

According to Gitelman, there was one key gameplay feature that was scaled back during the development process, and that was the game's multiplayer. Right now, BattleTech supports 1v1 multiplayer, but unlike a lot of other multiplayer games on the market, there's no ladder, gameplay modes, or general broad variety of options. Apparently that's in part due to the fact that the core mechanics of BattleTech rely far more heavily on random number generation than was originally anticipated.

As Gitelman and McCain explained, making that randomness work for the game's campaign mode meant it was difficult to create predictable outcomes for a multiplayer system, so rather than trying to bend literal randomness to their will, the BattleTech team opted to scale back their plans for multiplayer and create a more casual mode instead. (It's also a mode that supports player mods, so if players choose to alter the JSON files in their game, they just need to make sure both players have access to those values to create a compelling, personal multiplayer experience).

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

 

[Cael]

This seems to be the ONLY BTech game ever that had full tabletop rules implemented AND follows the established lore. There is still NO BTech game that comes close and even then, their implementation of RTwP made smaller weapons absurdly powerful due to much faster firing cycles; MGs and small lasers were hilariously broken. However, smaller weapons = less range, and thus comes into effect far less than you'd expect (except for Mission 1).

 

[almondblight]

Having said all that, I have a feeling that these changes are actually going to make the game more successful, as they probably calculated - much as we may hate that idea or spam decline smileys. Early feedback from the press seems positive, new players are interested, I think sales could be decent. And there's still (at least at first) seemingly enough complexity for the XCOM gang:

It seems like that's the idea behind it (and the excuse that gets used a lot on the forums) but I'm not sure how true it actually is. We're not talking about them following the trend of changing difficulty modes from very easy/easy/normal to normal/hard/OMFG YOU MUST BE SUPERBADASS ELITE TO PLAY THIS, we're talking about them only including the super easy mode. Would NuXCOM have sold better if it only came with the lowest difficulty level? At the very least, this is probably going to make better players bored of the game and weaken the hardcore nucleus of superfans and modders which help a game thrive.

HBS at one point thought that making mobile ports of the Shadowrun games was a good idea, but it turns out the movile market wasn't that interested in it and it only cause the engine to be limited and the UI to suck. I'm hoping this doesn't hurt them too much, but HBS does have a history of scoring own goals (lack of save system in SRR, getting rid of all but one class in Necropolis, etc.). HBS would probably be a lot better off if their fanbase vocally pointed these out, but they're usually too busy cheerleading.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's debatable whether or not they'd be more or less receptive to that feedback tho, when it comes to Kickstarter and being effectively paid the bottomline in advance.

 

[Cael]

It's debatable whether or not they'd be more or less receptive to that feedback tho, when it comes to Kickstarter and being effectively paid the bottomline in advance.

Given some of Kevin's twits, the receptivity to feedback at HBS seems to be somewhere between utter contempt and white hot rage.

 

[almondblight]

It's debatable whether or not they'd be more or less receptive to that feedback tho, when it comes to Kickstarter and being effectively paid the bottomline in advance.

HBS has been somewhat decent about that in the past. Dragonfall was pretty much the result of responding to fans. It was originally going to simply be a quick mission pack DLC for SRR, but they extended the production time and instead created a full blown campaign (one that fixed many of the issues people had with DMS).