The three-sided conflicts and aesthetics of the civilizations also felt a bit ahead of their time, with the NATO-like, Eastern Bloc, and the Middle East civs.
Though to be fair, before Chromehounds was Armored Core, so it's not like FromSoft's mecha pedigree is that obscure.
This new community is building itself on Discord, so the knowledge that players have access to ubiquitous Discord voice chat is a given going in. I've got a feeling that as the open source effort builds voice chat capabilities (this article suggests supporting Xbox Live Voice Chat isn't currently available in the emulator that this open source server relies on) the Community as a whole will try to work towards arrangements for avoiding out-of-game comms to recreate the original feel. That's probably a hard task in general scale (cheaters will always exist), but bans can matter in a small community and maybe they'll have just enough enforcement tools.
Thinking about this project in particular from the technical side, Discord could even be an asset to the community like that. As an armchair engineer taking a glance at this project from a distance, one interesting way to bootstrap an emulated, not-quite-fully-Open-Source Xbox Live Voice alternative would be by automating Discord Voice Channels. If you did that Discord itself might help maintain the invariant that users are only in one voice channel at a time, and admins have visual ways to see that in the Discord interface in addition to whatever automation tooling/bots are built to moderate the game voice comms flow.
I've seen fun games make use of interesting automation of Discord voice comms. There's also a "TTRPG" designed for Discord channels called "This Discord Has Ghosts In It" [1] that makes fun use of channel permissions to set play areas and define game classes/roles.
Somehow the mechanics were just right that you could pull off these rocket power side dashes to do these incredible dodges.
Not even armored core was able to imitate that effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NOVvZunHRs
;p
I feel like I’m piloting an mech and dodging actual projectiles
The one you shared feels like a flight simulator.
aetherspawn•8mo ago
One difficulty with games like this is fairness in the netcode, since a minor adjustment in projectile position or timing could be the difference between doing nothing or instantly killing (mech rotation to spread armour in-between shots is a mechanic - mechs have around 12 separate hitboxes that are metered separately). It took MWO a looong time to accomodate pings from all over the world playing together, but last time I played it felt flawless, or at least my hits on others hit where I landed them, and other people hitting me didn’t seem unfair.
frelupin_•8mo ago
Chromehounds gameplay seems a lot better than MWO, imo.
bigyabai•8mo ago
t-writescode•8mo ago
bigyabai•8mo ago
All that said - Armored Core embodies the platonic ideal of the "mech game" much better than TF ever did. It also typically boasted the better story, for what little that's worth. From has a talent for avoiding obvious tropes which snaps me out of the "Ace Combat briefing" stupor I feel listening to cutscenes in most arcade games.
tecleandor•8mo ago
bigyabai•8mo ago
We may never get a shooter campaign level that tops fighting robots on a prefab assembly line...
crabmusket•8mo ago
2muchcoffeeman•8mo ago
StanislavPetrov•8mo ago
It's been online for over 10 years. Definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of Mechwarrior games (I have no affiliation with them whatsoever).
https://mwomercs.com/
speed_spread•8mo ago
haiku2077•8mo ago
protocolture•8mo ago
I really fell out of love with that game. It was a much better game in beta, with knockdowns and inverse kinematics. When it went live they promised so much but what we got was years of crazy balance changes and weird side games.
djtango•8mo ago