Why is Dark Age/Age of Destruction disliked?

[Bloodknight]

It's been wild-ass guessed that there are around 10,000 BT "fans" worldwide.

Is that the "current day" number? Because back in late 90s BT was, at least in my country Germany, a huge thing. It was the game everybody played, and 40K only overtook it in its 3rd edition. We had several thousand players in clubs, doing organized play, chapter fights and such. I drove through the republic quite a lot. I would have expected BT's fanbase in the US to be bigger by an order of magnitude, not to forget the rest of the world. 100K minis seems to be lowballing it, too. 10 minis per guy? 3000 minis a year? I must be 30 people. :D
Yes, the blisters vanished from the shops a while ago, but still. It used to be quite the seller. I'm actually astonished to hear that they made so much MWDA stuff and that it sold well. I only noticed MWDA in the bargain bins very quickly at the time. The only game that I remember that went from full price to 70% off quicker was AT-43 when Rackham went prepainted before they went bust.

But if 10K players is roughly what's going on today, I think I have to be super happy. I'm with the Mekwars people, and apparently we've been able to keep 10% of the fans playing the game - not at the same time, but that seems to be our player pool. And yes, we do advertise the books when people have questions. We want Catalyst to get our money, even if us old grognards are stuck in our timelines. I'm only interested in 3025, for example, but once in a while I'll buy something else so people whose work I value get a little something.

Anyway: I did not get into MWDA because I really hated the blind booster mechanism. At the time I did not even mind the time jump much. We were playing in the clan period anyway, so one step deeper into the madness was ok. But the awful clicktech and not being able to buy what I want put me off badly. For the same reason I never got into CCGs. I don't like the way they play and the terrible "pay to win" that's behind it all. I also missed the elegance of hexbased games. There's never an argument over "you're 1/8" short" "no, I'm not" as in other tabletop games (which I enjoy, but for other reasons). Hexes don't lie. BT's turn order is still, 30 years later, great, one of the best in the industry, IMO. The IGOUGO We Shoot system is brilliant. Particularly in 3025, that's what makes the game great, it puts more of the games decisions into the hands of the player instead of the dice; good movement is really important there. Classic IGOUGO with sequential damage means you're dead after a bad turn usually.  I can see why people don't like FASAnomics, but as a 3025 player, I don't feel that much. There aren't so many clusters around (I hate massive clusters in the later timelines because they invite Headplink spamming and thus put too much emphasis on list building and getting lucky), and those are the biggest time wasters. I can usually play a 4 on 4 in an hour, and that's ok with me, even without the computer doing the dice rolling and dumpling filling. Less than that and I wouldn't feel as if I had gotten a game, if you know what I mean.

Well, MWDA didn't have any of the things I liked, and a lot that I didn't like, I guess. Never spent a penny on it. And yes, I thought CBT was dead at the time and went to play WH40K and WHFB (the latter is just now going through an MWDA-like reboot, including a terrible information policy and a ruleset with no balancing mechanics). Only in 2010 did I discover that CBT was still alive. I get why Fanpro couldn't keep up with the advertising, the German branch was like a dozen people and they were always very short on money. It's still a shame, though. And I agree with the people who say that both games could have sold more if they had been marketed paralelly. As it was, it looked like MWDA existed mostly to piss BT fans off. Bad fan communication indeed. And stuff like that can make or break games. If you shoo away your veteran players, it's difficult to recruit new ones. Not only because a flourishing community draws newbies (nothing promotes a game better than it being easy to get a game, no matter where you are), but also because the veterans will be bitter. They will try to get the new players to play a different system. They will badmouth your new stuff.
And yeah, gamers can be harsh customers, often tight-fisted and petulant and hard on the devs. I wish the guys at Catalyst the best, so far they've been handling it all really well. Thank you, Catalyst (and also the Forum staff here. I don't read here very often, but I'm thankful for the time you guys put in to make this an enjoyable place on the web).

 

[worktroll]

Yes, that's a post-2010 estimate. In the wake of releases in the MW computer games and suchlike, there would have been big spikes. I have no numbers to relate the number of MWO or MWT players to the old PC games, but my gut feel is not as many; we've had useful spikes in new membership on this forum following their releases.

Plus Germany seems to have been a stronghold of BT, due to an active local licencee, organised fan activity, and possibly smaller distances with easier transport options. The Essen Spiel shows the sort of energy existing in that region, albeit for a range of boardgames past the Monopoly level.

And welcome back, Bloodknight!

W.

[Bloodknight]

That makes a lot of sense. Particularly the influence of the Mechwarrior series (when I started playing BT, the Crescent Hawks' Revenge was the newest BT computer game *lol*). MWO bled over a little into the Mekwars scene, but not as much as we hoped.

As to MWDA again, I follow a couple other tabletop forums and I noticed that a lot of people who build BT armies repaint the old models and use them to play tabletop games with them, the inches variant. That looks actually quite nice.

And thanks for the welcome :).

[False Son]

I loathe the gentleman's warfare concept.  Battletech's concept is applicable in the real world.  One has to like and be able to play along such strict rules in order to be competitive.  I cannot even grasp the concept of standing there and hoping the enemy misses me.

Don't get too ahead of yourself.  Battletech supposes that both forces have the time to line up shots at roughly the same time.  It doesn't take into account initiative to the point of pulling the trigger first means the enemy doesn't get to shoot back.  The shooting phase all resolving at once is itself a gentleman's agreement.

[jackpot4]

Don't get too ahead of yourself.  Battletech supposes that both forces have the time to line up shots at roughly the same time.  It doesn't take into account initiative to the point of pulling the trigger first means the enemy doesn't get to shoot back.  The shooting phase all resolving at once is itself a gentleman's agreement.

It isn't even close to the same as the American Revolution, 40k or warmachine which is all gentleman's warfare.

As soon as the weapons reload/recharge everyone fires in Battletech.  It isn't I stand there let your atlas shoot me, then I shoot back.  We both shoot each other as our weapons are ready.  Each turn is nonstop weapons fire. 

When your gauss slug tears my arm off my PPC in that arm is already in the air coming at you etc. Etc.

Two different concepts from my point of view

[GhostCat]

It isn't even close to the same as the American Revolution, 40k or warmachine which is all gentleman's warfare.

I think it's a lot closer to the conventional war of the 18th century than you think.  Ranges are short, weapons not very accurate, and collateral damage was minimal.  Even though empires expand across many worlds with large populations, ecology's (plural, not possessive, see spell check) are still fragile on most of them, and resources still need skilled people to assemble them.  These huge war machines able to inflict massive damage, were generally designed to fight each other, not local farmers and factory workers.  Of course, there were still incidents like Kentares IV and Mallory's World that prove Destruction is easier than Domination.

False Son's reference was about the Game Mechanic.  Everybody gets a final shot from his dying swan, even if it's not very effective.  Pretty neat concept, even after thirty years of playing many other games. 

GC

[PGaither84]

Instead of starting a new thread, I was wondering what any of you might think of the following house rule ideas I have had:

1) Adopting you choice of the "I go-You go-We attack" system talked about here, or what I am now accustomed to, which is the Star Wars Miniatures combat system which is the same as Dungeons and Dragons. for those unaware, you have a choice of moving and then attacking, attacking and then moving, or moving twice. This is similar to the "Assault order" rules for Mechs in the Age of Destruction rule book. In fact, it is more powerful. I personally feel it is game changing in a positive way.

2)Extended range combat.
Here is a house rule my friends I and  used going back to 2002 when the game came out. The laughably short printed range values just ruined the flavor of combat for us. As I talked about in my previous reply, when 14 inches is the maximum range for LRMs, something just doesn't feel right. Our solution was to allow you to make an attack of up to double the printed range of the unit. however, this would grant an additional +2 the the target's defense value. All other restrictions applied, such as indirect fire, cover, and so forth. The flavor here is that the maximum printed range value was instead the effective accurate range value with the weapon. We agreed that we didn't want players shooting at each other from their command zones across the table, but when the average range for units is roughly 10 inches (less than one foot), there is a problem.
Source: http://www.warrenborn.com/Values_by_Faction.html

[Mindwiper]

Sry, for gravedigging... :D

Quick question: Who developed the MWDA timeline?

Was it already laid out by Randall back in the days, before Wizkids took over?

Or was it a new brainchild to come with the new gaming system in 2002-2003 and with it a Jordon Weissman hickup??

We have a small discussion at facebook and a guy says it was all Randalls or Herbs fault...Which i think is ridiculous. I only remember it this way that Herb took the pieces Wizkids/Topps left and formed our Battletech Dark Age, which I really like. Sadly I can't find the original interviews or comments.

[worktroll]

Short form, and this is personal recollection from an outsider, not Word of God, but Jordan Weisman (yes, the one behind the HBS game) was the source of the timejump aspect, but based his leap from the (then-)FanPro canon. Randall, Herb and other CGL employees were involved in fleshing out the details of the path from there, but as contractors/freelancers/etc working for WK

Mixed bag.

WK gave FanPro enormous latitude to develop the BT timeline in the gap, provided "no direct contradictions". So (for example) there was no way to extensively nuke Terra in the BT Jihad timeline, given it survived largely intact in the WK timeline. But other than that, WK were very good - eg. Herb, IIRC, added in the return of the LCS Invincible, because nothing in the WK timeline stated anything about it one way or another.

The one thing one can assign clearly to Jordan Weisman was the need to provide a jump-start, and the effort to make the MW game playable without having to have absorbed 20+ years of BT history. And the clix mechanism, which he'd invented, anyway. Long-term BT fans were not the target audience - there's only a few to several thousand of us, as far as anyone can guess. This did put some noses out of joint in the fanbase. But given the enormously larger reach, and commercial success, of the MW game over it's lifetime - did you realise they produced more than seven million minis for MW? - the decision was sound, financially, for him.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

W.

[cavingjan]

Hellbie summed it up nicely.

[Mindwiper]

thx guys! :)

[wantec]

Hellbie summed it up nicely.

Me thinks you have the wrong blue battlemaster. But Worktroll's summary is a good one.

[Atlas3060]

Me thinks you have the wrong blue battlemaster. But Worktroll's summary is a good one.

Oh you know the blue ones look alike.  ;D

[cavingjan]

They are the same person. We've never seen them in the same room together. Their posting habits are completely opposite each other. They are just good and hiding the evidence like using an Australian proxy to make it look like one lives down there.

[worktroll]

That's .... a new one, I admit. Fortunately Brian and I are not commensurate; he's known to engage in physical activity, unlike myself, and also appears in Washington DC/Virginia gameshops.

There is, however, a disturbing possibility that if I and Welshman ever shook hands, there would be a titanic explosion ....

[JadeHellbringer]

Plus everyone knows my alter-ego is actually Brian Posehn.

[Stoobert]

I played MW: Dark Age from the beginning, was an Envoy, then a playtester for MW: Age of Destruction, then I quit.

To answer the OP, "Why disliked?" I think it can be summarized as:

1. Blind boosters artificially inflate the value of certain rarer units, making the game cheap to enter, but unnecessarily expensive if you want a chance at winning (or simply not losing every game). 

2. The rules were wildly different from BT, and in some cases simply unbelievable.  Example: Mechs could initiate an unopposed 'charge' at ranges several inches longer than any direct weapon system could fire

3. As is the case with collectible games, the rules and "meta" change rapidly with each new release, making it more complicated and expensive to keep playing

I stuck with it in hopes some rules would be changed, but many did not, and when they introduced more nonsense in the form of Pilot and Upgrades in AoD I simply had had enough. 

The 'organized play' system and giveaways were actually cool, which got people playing the game faster and more often than without such a system.  Playing a mech game in 45min is also cool.  But then discouraged by the above 3 points players began to fall away.

[SpaceCowboy1701]

I wonder sometimes if the game would have lasted longer if it had actually started with the AoD rules, or at least the customizable 'mechs, with no significant V 2.0? I feel like the cards allowed the game enough flexibility to keep it going and changing without just power-creeping (not saying that it didn't power-creep, just that it didn't have to). I guess the related question is whether it would have lasted longer keeping the old format and doing something else to shake it up ... ? Locally, we probably had some of our largest play groups post-AoD, but they fell off somewhere after Domination, if I remember correctly ... but then our area is weird ...

[Hptm. Streiger]

I just had the idea to bring BT to my son - I fear the overcomplex calculation of BT might be a problem. MWDA seems to be ok.
I like the fast pace combat - its much faster as Alpha Strike (because in my eyes Alpha Strike kept the "calculation" and dropped the "cool" Micromanagement)

Perfect for a boy of 4 year  ;D - hey of course I'm joking he didn't understand the game - but he rolls the dice (never roll dice against a child - you are loosing.....triple or double six all the time) - and he counts the eyes and he is even able to do some minor calculation. And in our first game he destroyed me.

Anyhow, I think MWDA was disliked mostly because WizKids tried to create something completely new factions. Swordsworn, Dragon Fury bubble gum, neon colored factions.

The second might be the micro management. Lucky I have the TRO3145/3150 now, but without it i would have a hard time to imagine the game. So this Sekhemet, just energy weapons? But it is supposed to have missiles and AP gauss either...

Otherwise its a great and simple combination of combined arms - with lots of options to "create" house rules.

[GordonBlackhammer]

I've seen a lot of criticism directed towards MechWarrior: Dark Age on other forums. Not so much this board, but then again, it's probably because it's a board dedicated to the game and coming here just to trash it is what's known as trolling.

Anyways, I'm rather curious as to what BattleTech fans didn't like about Dark Age back in 2003. I'm referring specifically to the game's story and background, since I'm sure the actual game itself had balance issues and stuff like that. Is it because of the jump in time frame with no explanation or lead up to the Inner Sphere's current state resulting in the setting becoming almost unrecognizable? And what do you all think of it now, when the original game's timeline has almost (already?) caught up to the Dark Age?

I'm probably a rarity, but I enjoyed the clix game a lot.  I could get almost half a dozen 300 point clix battles in in the same time it took to run one company vs. company battle in Battletech and there wasn't as much fiddly minutia to deal with either.  Plus, the clix game made it a lot easier to field combined arms units and use them effectively (though I admit that infantry seemed almost ridiculously overpowered early on).  It was a different kind of enjoyment than I had playing Battletech, but it was still enjoyable.  Plus it was easier to teach and easier to get people involved in as a quick pick-up game compared to some of the long drawn out game sessions of Battletech. 

I paid very little attention to the backstory for the most part other than knowing what the factions were representing and the overview of how we had gotten to the point where we were in the story.  The clan invasion of 3050 storyline was not something I enjoyed much in Battletech.  I had a lot more fun with the 3025 era, though I did run a game during Star League's War of Reunification and a few alternate timeline versions too.  3039 was the last Battletech era I enjoyed because of the return of the Star League mechs and the development of the Grey Death datacore.  So perhaps my mindset towards the MWDA timeline and its more balanced opposing factions was going to be more appealing than the incredibly mismatched IS vs. Clan battles of the early Clan era. 

I get few, if any, chances to play either game anymore, and I know of very few Battletech players in my area and none who seem to want to play anymore.  So the clix make it possible for me to run a quick battle when I have an hour to spare, even if it a solo battle.  It's not much, but it is better than nothing at all.

[pensiveswetness]

Ahh, memory lane (with all the dents, pot holes and beer cans littering the roads with it)... I remember being the first one on DropShipCommand.com(Now defunct) to coin the derisive term "Dorkage" for what most of us called 'ClickyTech'. It really summed up my feelings for the game, even though I did support it briefly. I guess it didn't help that, at the time [2003], I moved from Norfolk, Va (which had a reasonably strong gamer community fed from both Military, Military Contractor and College Student pools) to Oxnard, Ca (which did not). There was only ONE comic book & gaming store in the Ventura area & they rarely played MW:DA. Asking about BT was likened to expressions about BT's demise. There was one time I played a pick-up BT at someone's house. The end result was that my mini's gathered dust in my cases for the remainder of my time in California and were in storage until after I retired from the Navy.

Everyone else has given very good reasons why they disliked the game. It literally took reading current content (Era report/Field Manual 3145 as well as the current TRO's) to get me to appreciate the setting better but to me, the games will always be separate & unequal.

[jackson123]

I believe it was disliked because they tried moving away from mech vs mech and more to combined arms combat.
I dont think a lot of the fan base was ready for that type of move.

[Wrangler]

Essentially the combo everything.  The shock of the end of FASA WAS a thing.  Then rise of WizKids and their purchase of Franchise.  Now if it weren't for them, our current game company who keeps the torch alive for original branch of entire franchise would not be here.  They saved and "unfortunately" re-branded it Classic Battletech.

As its been mentioned above as years (Gaud this thread so old  :o) sudden changes that new company were bring into the franchise. Combined Arms, Goofy art work that littertly changed how old designs were going to look like, seeding new fans with possibly bad info, feeling of the dumbing down of the franchise from how MWDA was rolled out, not mentioned other things including pure protectism.  I myself had initially had bubbling hate for it, because i was seeing franchise being altered in way that could mess with new fans and potentially ruin the game as whole for the sake of quick sell for WizKids part.

In end WizKids didn't survive, fortunately the staff managed to save entire franchise.  However the damage was done, many the things introduced into the game in MWDA years had to be added to canon because it WAS canon due to way it was declared so many years ago.

NOW: Things are better, Dark Age was managed in manner that made sense and the material made it rough to handle was merged and made less of a problem.   

Hopefully, in the coming year (pray to the Battletech gods) new era begin. 

[roosterboy]

I remember being the first one on DropShipCommand.com(Now defunct) to coin the derisive term "Dorkage" for what most of us called 'ClickyTech'.

Watch out, Oscar Wilde!

[worktroll]

Just want to remind people that the ones creating the "the dumbing down of the franchise" had names like Randall Bills, Herb Beas, Ben Rome, etc.

The hacks :)

I get it. Some people didn't like MW:DA. That doesn't mean it was a bad thing for everyone. I don't like W40K, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game - a heck of a lot more people passionately love that game than love ours.

Accept we're niche dwellers. Embrace our niche, let go the need to hate others for not being our niche.

And - as Wrangler points out - we wouldn't be here if WK hadn't actively done a heck of a lot to allow our game to live on. I was inside the curtain on some of that - literally, it was "As long as you don't directly contradict anything, do what you want", and for way under commercial licencing rates.

W.

[cavingjan]

WT: don't forget the ring leader: Jordan Weisman

[worktroll]

To be honest, I don't think Jordan had any involvement in the writing. Full credit to him for a) wanting to popularise the BT IP via the game mechanism he developed, and b) being incredibly supportive of FanPro and then IMR/CGL.

An unkind person might point out how each time he actually succeeds in getting something new off the ground & successful, he loses interest & moves off to do something new, and the old project grinds down. But I should be as successful as he is ... face it, he's the only person I can think of who's made money off the BT IP, and done so more than once.

[Adun42]

I'm bringing this up again as I'm coming back to bt.
I couldn't get into bt, and mind you, I played adv squad leader and was a big avalon hill fan.
But all the paper work of bt....

Mwda comes out without the need of an advanced degree in battletech! Awesome!!

But the best armies, you know, didn't have any...you know...actual mechs...in them.

Kinda like an aircraft carrier being rendered ineffective by a motor boat.

The economics got me, why would you field this multi million c-note tool of war to have someone on a moterbike hold it still for artillery.

Worse yet you could take that expensive warmachine and walk..walk..not fire...not run..across the board and have it blow up.

I dont even want a car that I have to pull over every couple of blocks and let cool before I continue on my way to work, much less the ultimate machine of war..
And I'm looking at you swordsworn.

I could outrun a laser...huh?
Right, my effective laser range for is 6"
My movement is 8"
Wait, let's talk about high intensity beams of light...or not...it just didn't feel...right
So the entire game system didn't seem right, and yes the spike bits on the Atlas... I've had wire cutters in hand...ready to "fix".

But now I've found alpha strike and seems to convert well to "n" scale, those minis are back on the gaming table.
Yay bt!

 

[JDbigmoney]

You could sum up three web pages of sepporit comments like this......

MWDA was a reboot that never should have happened.

CBT is a game that REQUIRES an attention span......I mean that exactly how you read it

The world does not work that way anymore, in fact, an attention span is the last thing any seller of anything wants you to have

Even wonder why the newest Star Trek series of movies is another rehash ( don't ignore the fact that in order for the stories to flow they litterally have to check in with "another demension" for answers ) and you have two glarring examples of why attention spans are bad for buisness

CBT or as I prefer to call it....Battletech, is a game built around the concept of a fantastically massive story line that was created in the time when computers were just a step above type writers. It took an investment of time to just understand what you were looking at.

Then it happened

F.A.S.A. died

And just like everything else ever.....rather than let it die and we mourn over it's grave while remembering the good times, someone decided to make a zombie and try to resurect a corpse.

It's never the same as the original and the shammans who shake the rattles just want you to forget that fact but still shovel over money in the hopes that you might get back what you lost.

And in the case of Battletech....they did it twice

[worktroll]

Mate ... give it up. MW:DA wasn't meant to be BattleTech. And it had wildly more players, over the period it was supported, than BT ever had.

Didn't appeal to you? No problems. Cool. You're allowed to have your preferences.

But crapping on those people who did enjoy it - not necessary. Let it go ....