Not trying to be anal about this but it's best suited to point-by-point I think.
SirWinner wrote:The ONLY way that I would consider playing ANY Mech Warrior Game is: (Refer to "Mech Warrior 4")
1. Radar ON for everyone (referred) OR no radar at all.
Radar was useless.
Eh, yes and no - there is a tactical element to turning it off in that you get the opportunity to see enemies before they see you - but only if you're looking, and only if LOS is blocked. The league I used to play in (NBT) had a lot of people gaming that system, although many of the better units basically took the "screw it, we don't need stealth" approach so they could finish games faster, and it often worked too. Radar is really a pretty minor thing since battles usually outlast the element of surprise - although there have been notable exceptions.
Does it make the game more fun? I don't know. There might be an argument for removing it on that basis.
2. NO getting shot through buildings or terrain.
People could shoot you literally through the terrain if they knew where you were.
Only in early versions of the game; this was fixed pretty quickly.
3. NO extremely high pingers owning those with a low ping that can't hit them because of extreme packet loss.
You literally couldn't target the guy / gal with a ping over 1 second.
Dubious; I heard horror tales of the initial MW4:V release, but a high ping was definitely more of a disadvantage than an advantage by 2002 or so. The game uses a client/server model, so if you have a low ping and hit someone, they most likely
did take damage, even if they thought they were somewhere else entirely. The one thing that lag did help for was that such people often moved erratically, which you also might have observed in Descent 3.
4. NO extreme packet loss issues when people enter or leave the game.
Mech Warrior 4 was laggy to the point that I saw a slideshow until the person entering a started game until they were in the mission. Better yet, Nobody is allowed to enter a game after it is launched.
Oh, that was pain-inducing. It got fixed eventually though.
5. NOT sold nor produced by Microsoft or any company affiliated with Microsoft.
The publisher only makes so much of a difference... though if they try to push it out too fast and then dump it (EA is much worse at this than MS, though) there are exceptions.
Online Content as far as lag was too much.
Weapon Range was totally wrong. Got hit by light mechs from way way outside of weapons ranges. Yes, I know that there were way too many cheaters.
In the early days, definitely. It improved over time but ... of course ... not nearly as many people were playing by then.
Microsoft's software release pattern has long been to release MOST software before it is "completely" tested on all main functions. As a Computer Programmer for almost 32 years I know quite well that there will ALWAYS be bugs whether they have to do with not yet found bugs, unreproduceable errors / bugs, oddball Graphics Cards, etc.
Second part, yeah. You can never catch them all. First part I'm not sure about; I don't know how the games division works since it's presumably more informal. The widespread commercial/consumer software (Windows, Office etc) is tested quite heavily though, and certainly all the main scenarios will be automatically tested on a regular basis.
Haven't heard of anyone testing games in that way though; most studios just use manual QA testing. Which, honestly, is more cost-effective when you're only looking at one release cycle in the first place.
