WTH Happened When These Forums Moved To Paraodox????

[Zeoran]

I was an early and strong backer of Battletech. Having played the game (the board game) as well as some of the good (and not so good) computer iterations, I was proud to be a member that was contributing to making a dream come true. Making my real dreams come true would require some serious VR tech and an old Sega R360.

But I joined this community and I started making posts about what my initial reactions were, what I thought were faults and what I thought would be great additions to the game. And I was respected by my brethren who corrected me when I was wrong and joined me in support when I presented a genuinely good idea.

Now that those forums are no longer the "official" forums, I wonder where the developers who WE PAID TO GET THIS GAME MADE are paying attention to???

I don't see a forum in here for submitting bug reports, or suggestions, or even just basic questions because like it or not, this game never was from the beginning and still isn't anywhere near the definition of 'intuitive", especially in combat. There are dozens of variables that the game takes into effect that they don't even remotely make you aware of, least of all give you options as to how to control those variables yourself.

I felt a very strong bond between like-minded players and I knew that those players had, like me, paid our hard earned money to help support and create this game and we truly wanted it to succeed. Now that it's out there for sale, it seems like the devs have gone radio silent and I still have not only a ton of feedback from the battle portion of the game, which was the only portion we had access to before, but I now have a ton of feedback/questions about the non-portion of the game. Yet I feel like I no longer have any voice with which to speak with. And I no longer feel like anyone's listening.

~Z

 

[Jerome736]

There's Bug Reports and a Suggestions sub forums at the top of the main BattleTech forum page.

 

[Eximar]

It's here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/battletech-bug-reports.998/

 

[Timaeus]

Greetings @Zeoran
The Bug Reports and Suggestions subforums are at the top of the BATTLETECH section. Eximar has helpfully provided a link to the bug report section. Also HBS—the Developers that made this game—are here, and regularly post on these forums.

 

[DownTheDrain]

Could've been worse, they could've made Steam the official forums.
I agree that a tad more communication from the devs would be welcome, but they're probably in crunch mode right now.

 

[Paendragon]

I also think a few days after release the Devs are allowed to "slack" off a bit. Crunch time is hell and after working though for a year takes a toll. I am sure they will be back in force after a week or two.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Zeoran]

I agree that the devs deserve to celebrate a bit. But just a bit. Once the game goes fully Public, that's when the shit hits the fan with regards to bugs, game-breaking bugs and those need top priority. And while I noticed those forums that were politely pointed out to me, my overall point remains that I just don't feel like this is/was the community of like-minded people that make up the backers. When it was just us bakers, I could almost guarantee a reply to any question I had, whether it be from another more knowledgeable player or a dev or both.

With the inclusion now of all mercenary ship and all the new logistics that go along with it, I have a thousand more questions. And frankly, I never did get all my questions resolved when it came to simple combat. I'll be damned if it's me or a combination of me and a game that is HORRIBLY unintuitive. I have yet to really figure out why some weapons gain/lose accuracy percentage for reasons that make no sense whatever. And whatever those lines in the firing cone are supposed to mean, the game NEVER explains it to you

~Z

 

[Timaeus]

I agree that the devs deserve to celebrate a bit. But just a bit. Once the game goes fully Public, that's when the shit hits the fan with regards to bugs, game-breaking bugs and those need top priority. And while I noticed those forums that were politely pointed out to me, my overall point remains that I just don't feel like this is/was the community of like-minded people that make up the backers. When it was just us bakers, I could almost guarantee a reply to any question I had, whether it be from another more knowledgeable player or a dev or both.

With the inclusion now of all mercenary ship and all the new logistics that go along with it, I have a thousand more questions. And frankly, I never did get all my questions resolved when it came to simple combat. I'll be damned if it's me or a combination of me and a game that is HORRIBLY unintuitive. I have yet to really figure out why some weapons gain/lose accuracy percentage for reasons that make no sense whatever. And whatever those lines in the firing cone are supposed to mean, the game NEVER explains it to you

~Z

Ask around an you'll get people to give you answers.
AS for how to tell what is given your weapons bonuses/maluses to-hit when you are in the firing step, and can see the hit percentages next to your weapon move your cursor over a weapon and wait a second or two and a popup will give you a breakdown of the modifiers applying to the weapon's chance to hit. Base to-hit is 75% and each shot modifier is 5% per point step (so +5 is +25% -3 is -15%) for the first 10 points, and anything 11 and over is 2.5% per step.
The Red firing lines are your Line of Effect and tell you if you have a clear shot (solid red line), obstructed shot (broken red line with eye in the middle), indirect fire (curved line), and line of sight only (dashed grey line).
The grey weapon arcs show you your short and medium range brackets for each weapon (try turning off individual weapons to see how it changes) with the most opaque band of the arc being the optimal range for all weapons currently selected.

 

[emmasterakia]

I agree that the devs deserve to celebrate a bit. But just a bit. Once the game goes fully Public, that's when the shit hits the fan with regards to bugs, game-breaking bugs and those need top priority. And while I noticed those forums that were politely pointed out to me, my overall point remains that I just don't feel like this is/was the community of like-minded people that make up the backers. When it was just us bakers, I could almost guarantee a reply to any question I had, whether it be from another more knowledgeable player or a dev or both.

With the inclusion now of all mercenary ship and all the new logistics that go along with it, I have a thousand more questions. And frankly, I never did get all my questions resolved when it came to simple combat. I'll be damned if it's me or a combination of me and a game that is HORRIBLY unintuitive. I have yet to really figure out why some weapons gain/lose accuracy percentage for reasons that make no sense whatever. And whatever those lines in the firing cone are supposed to mean, the game NEVER explains it to you

~Z

Hey Z,

Sorry to hear you don't feel the same bond as before. I can assure you we are the same passionate people behind the screens everywhere, just a few more people nowadays

We have multiple guides out there made by players explaining all from simple to more difficult combat. If you can't find your answers there, you can always give us feedback on what to bring up in future streams or ask a fellow MechWarrior in the forum.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ping me.

Emma

 

[Kurek]

We have multiple guides out there made by players explaining all from simple to more difficult combat. If you can't find your answers there, you can always give us feedback on what to bring up in future streams or ask a fellow MechWarrior in the forum.

Most of this stuff ought to be explained in game with a decent tutorial instead of the extremely basic one in the game that explains hardly anything or in a pdf manual. I found a link to the backers beta manual on reddit https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/backer-beta/manual.pdf which is actually extremely helpful.

It's a shame there isn't a more up to date release manual. It amuses me how in the PDF it states that this is just a rough guide to be used until an in game tutorial is provided yet we have a pretty useless tutorial that explains hardly anything compared to this slightly dated PDF. A lot of things with the UI were just not explained at all in game and required mucking around to try and figure it out yourself which you can do with some things, or reading this forum, reddit or watching videos which isn't ideal.

Anyway aside from the lack of information presented in game I'm finding it very good so far, despite a few UI niggles.

 

[Packrat]

And while I noticed those forums that were politely pointed out to me, my overall point remains that I just don't feel like this is/was the community of like-minded people that make up the backers. When it was just us bakers, I could almost guarantee a reply to any question I had, whether it be from another more knowledgeable player or a dev or both.

If the game achieved any degree of success, that feeling was going to go away regardless of which forum we're on. It's just natural that larger communities feel less personal than smaller ones, and a sudden influx of new members (always an inevitability once the game launched) changes a community's culture unless that community is monolithic in size.

I'm still trying to answer questions for people, and so are a lot of the other backers, but there's just so many new posts being made now that the game is live that it's tough to stay on top of things. On the old forum, I could visit once a day and still easily keep up with most threads, but the past few days I can leave for an hour and come back to pages of unread posts on multiple forums.

Fundamentally, it's a good thing. It means lots of people are playing the game, and the loss of that old tight knit community is just an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect.