116 replies to this topic

[GaussDragon]

"Sarouter: When will a private practice/game room be implemented?
A: No firm ETA. We have to solve a few technical issues, along with design something that is viable from a business point of view."

http://mwomercs.com/...vs-32-answered/

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"As mentioned before in other avenues, there are numerous competitive players here at PGI, in all types of game genres, and we fully understand the need for features and tools that support this style of gameplay. We DO plan on bringing in the functionality to run PGI controlled tournaments/special events, and Community Warfare will fill in the rest of player's needs."

http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

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I've been trying to hold off from blowing the horn for the umpteenth time about matchmaking but this approach baffles me. This post doesn't speak for the entire player population, but it's touches on something I think is missing in the conversation. I'm making an assumption here but I I'm guessing there's a bottleneck in network engineers meaning it's hard to implement matchmaking and fix netcode at the same time.

Those things aside, I want to touch on another issue, the fact that IGP's terms probably have you guys in development straightjacket and it's monetize, monetize, monetize. However, this is me speaking to both parties, we all know that community warfare is more or less la raison d'être of MWO. Or, overwhelmingly anyway. People like to have ownership, they like to compete. Community warfare will inevitably have something to fight for, but since that's so far away, what do we have right now? A game that's still in beta that has been a repetitive slogfest for awhile.

I want to present an economics 101 idea - substitute goods. We all know everyone here is craving the ever loving **** out of CW, but tournament play is an imperfect, but partially satisfying substitute good because it satisfies part of the root cause of this demand - notoriety and something to fight for. Players like notoriety, they like fighting for territory and the meta game is content in abstract. And that's the really important part I think the whole monetization approach misses. A lot of the aspect of a community competing with itself is not directly part of the game itself, but putting a few structures in place allows this thing to flourish. With that, you get people involved, committed, spending time and becoming interested in the game and everything that is an offshoot thereof. And it's interest and dedication from more players that every game wants and needs, because it inevitably leads to people spending more money.

I'll be honest, the Run Hot or Die tournament is the only thing keeping me playing this game. Once it's over, I'll have nothing left to play for and the most important piece of content that the game never directly generated will be gone. A lot of the teams I speak to are of the same mind, 'we want to compete'. I play this game to compete, I spend time and money to be a better competitor, I would not have spent either time or money had it not been for the tournament. TheMagician has indirectly generated an income stream for this game because he leveraged the game's actual content into a tournament, using abstract overlays. It's a matter of logic and proximate cause; why am I spending money?

This certainly doesn't apply to the entire player base, but if more was made of putting in an actual competitive structure, you could put other elements into it that would entice even more players like limited edition content for winners that can be traded between players for an MC fee which therefore creates a market between competitive players and collectors. The current monetization scheme puts so much emphasis on the brute force approach like cockpit items and hero mechs. Not enough, it seems, is going into developing and monetizing on the possible vectors of exchange that naturally exist between players but that have not been given a mechanism to flourish.

[Glory in the Highest]

GaussDragon, on 27 February 2013 - 09:44 AM, said:

I'll be honest, the Run Hot or Die tournament is the only thing keeping me playing this game. Once it's over, I'll have nothing left to play for and the most important piece of content that the game never directly generated will be gone. A lot of the teams I speak to are of the same mind, 'we want to compete'. I play this game to compete, I spend time and money to be a better competitor, I would not have spent either time or money had it not been for the tournament.

This. PGI/IGP, I know we've said it a million times. I know you're tired of hearing it, and I know you don't think it's as important as bringing in the other elements of the game you've already made up your minds and checkbooks on.

But the fact still stands - this game would be nothing to close to 1000 players if not for the fact that we've wrestled a league out of an impossible system simply because we love MechWarrior, we want to support your game, and we want to compete at a higher level in big stompy robots.

It might do you some good to take a look at the RHoD rosters (you can get it from TheMagician) and see just how many of those players are Founders. To see just how many of those players have spent even more on MC since then. I guarantee you'll find that the competitive community accounts for a very significant portion of your income thus far. In fact, I might just run the Founder stats myself and post it up later.

RHoD is what is keeping those players playing. RHoD is the reason we've spent more on this game than we ever planned to. Open the door to league play. ASAP. Not 2 years from now. Not "ETA unknown". It will benefit you. It will benefit all of us.

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Running the stats now, team by team:

Ajatar Syndicate: $1200

Legendary 5 $600
Elite 9 $540
Veteran 2 $60
Non-Founder 9

Antares Scorpions: $4050
Legendary 21 $2520
Elite 23 $1380
Veteran 5 $150
Non-Founder 23
Unaccounted 7

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More on the way... this takes time lol (only 32 more teams to go. Get what I mean yet?)
The rest will be posted in this Google Doc for those interested, so I don't make this page take a mile long:
https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing

Edited by Glory, 27 February 2013 - 10:45 AM.

[Vasces Diablo]

You are getting a game (that is still in development) that you payed nothin for and can play for free for an unlimited amount of time that has a fairly clear public road map in terms of content that will result in competitive play.

Just a few short years ago this game would:

1. Not be published yet
2. Cost $50 to buy
3. Cost $13- $15 a month to play

Is it "there" yet? Of course not.
Are some of their decisions driven by a need to get money from the player base? Of course!

Curse the "business model" all you want, but love it for providing a great game with a ton of potential FOR FREE.

[RG Notch]

Vocal minority continues to believe if they are vocal enough that will cancel out the minority part. I'm not saying competitive players like this aren't important to the game, simply that they aren't as important as some of them seem to think. You can count up all the money these league players spent and it will not come close to that spent by the huge mass of people who have never even heard of this league.

[deforce]

Vasces Diablo, on 27 February 2013 - 10:04 AM, said:

You are getting a game (that is still in development) that you payed nothin for and can play for free for an unlimited amount of time that has a fairly clear public road map in terms of content that will result in competitive play.

Just a few short years ago this game would:

1. Not be published yet
2. Cost $50 to buy
3. Cost $13- $15 a month to play

Is it "there" yet? Of course not.
Are some of their decisions driven by a need to get money from the player base? Of course!

Curse the "business model" all you want, but love it for providing a great game with a ton of potential FOR FREE.

Having potential, but not delivering a product in a timely manner means nothing. Goes with the saying... Too little, too late, its all wrong and I can't wait. Its only a matter of time untill the loyal fans start to explore other games and yes some will come back when CW/private matches are introduced. But I'm guessing a large majority of players only have time for one main game and once they move on and find it, that is the new game they dedicate too.

In one of the Q&A's they said CW and private matches were a priority, is there a rough ETA that isn't stated in the command chair?

[Ghogiel]

I think the OP is just saying:

'run some more tourneys and **** PGI I'm bored of random drops against nubs'

[TheMagician]

If I had my way, we wouldn't have any of the current grind elements. All mechs and weapons would be fully open to people. PGI would instead make their money by offering visual items. Basically, take the Dota 2 approach. But we can feel blessed that they didn't take the PlaneSide 2 approach, which has a pay-for-advantage system. But, by changing their economic model, they wouldn't have to be concerned about private matchmaking. People would be paying for custom cockpits, decals, and more.

PGI could introduce a simple method where players could make custom cammo patterns, and then sell them to other players, such as with Dota 2. The creators would make some money, and PGI would take their cut. But I'm also happy they didn't take the Hawken approach, and make every minor visual change be a cost of real $$. So, to cut PGI some slack, there are a lot of things I wish were different, but I think they've done a better job than most of these other games. As well, Hawken still lacks private servers (afaik, no player has made a league for that game yet either, even though, with a bit of work, the could do so).

What makes the league happen here, is we already had a lot of pre-established teams. If CW was out now, or in a month, the complaints would be far less. But we have pre-established, and new-teams, that want something to play for. They want the glory of the old leagues, whether ladder or planetary. PGI could easily monetize it, but instead they seem to be waiting until CW to start doing the heavy thinking about it. I think this will set them back, because they'll get caught up in their current economic model, instead of migrating to one that is more flexible and more supportive of the type of play that will end up occuring.

I have no doubts that CW will be an amazing experience for a lot of people. But, we need to ensure we maintain the attention of these people in the mid-term. For some teams that was the Marik Civil War, for others, its RHoD, and for others intra-team tournament.

These are the people who are streaming, making youtube videos, and drawing attention to the game way beyond anything that PGI and their affiliates are capable of doing. There is a rabid fan base here, that used to do pencil and paper league with several thousands of players, over AOL. It was big enough, that some house leaders received salaries from the company for being so instrumental in the organization and being what draws people to play.

PGI over the last few months has wavered a lot, and said different things at different times. We've heard that private matchmaking is a priority, and we've heard that its not a priority, we've heard that they want to provide the tools for league play, but perhaps only if they are the ones running it. We've heard that we'll get private servers, but we won't be able to setup custom options.

Let's be honest, in 2-3 weeks PGI could have a private matchmaking system in place, with options to control the map, tonnage, time of day, weather, fog, type of game (including adding Team Destruction as an option), base tick rate on conquest, an observe mode, and many other options which the community would then run with and give PGI tons of data on what the players most enjoy playing.

Then, players could start running tournaments at cyber cafes. You'd have easily managed ladder and planetary leagues. Suddenly, the game is getting self promoted, and then once CW comes on, with all the amazing options and awards for players, it would be hugely popular with the pre-existing fans, as they also participate in their private games.

I see great things for MWO, I just hope that they take a deep breath, and reconsider some of their priorities.

[GaussDragon]

Vasces Diablo, on 27 February 2013 - 10:04 AM, said:

Curse the "business model" all you want, but love it for providing a great game with a ton of potential FOR FREE.

You... completely missed the point. How is that relevant when we WANT TO SPEND MONEY. How is that relevant when the fact that it's free isn't enough to keep us playing in absence of the competitive aspect?

[Thirdstar]

CW isn't going to be the panacea that people think it's going to be. It really won't.

It can't possibly match the hype that people have been generating about it. Parsing all the Devs quotes so far, I'm inclined to double down on my prediction that CW in MWO is going to be very similar to Clan Wars in WoT.

[deforce]

Ghogiel, on 27 February 2013 - 10:11 AM, said:

I think the OP is just saying:

'run some more tourneys and **** PGI I'm bored of random drops against nubs'

not a skilless grindfest tournmanet, where the winners can be determines by who can drink the most redbull and hot pockets..... im glad a few of the top placers actually had good W/L records and not just a 50/50 with ridiculous mass games played.

i think a lot of players hit the top leaderboards on friday evaluated how dumb grinding a 100+ solo drop games in one night was and gave up....

Edited by deforce, 27 February 2013 - 10:18 AM.

[Steven Dixon]

People do often forget that this game is still in beta. Some might claim that they don't get to claim its in beta because they are charging, I disagree but its a moot point because the devs still see it as beta. I fully support tournament play, private servers, lobbies, ect. But it doesn't really make much sense for a beta. Right now they want to create the basic gameplay and they want to make the game at least tolerable for new players. The hardcore players have waited a long time for this game hopefully they can wait a little longer.

[Moku]

Well they outlined a separate mercenary corp unit player game and a faction player game. We want our mercenary corp game now and some of the basic features aren't that complicated to implement.

Moku

[NdYAG]

I agree with this 100%. My interest in the game is to have some sort of competitive element and RHOD is the only aspect that keeps me currently interested. It would be nice to have CW soon and if not, to have a PGI sponsored tournament system in addition to RHOD.

[Vasces Diablo]

deforce, on 27 February 2013 - 10:10 AM, said:

Having potential, but not delivering a product in a timely manner means nothing. Goes with the saying... Too little, too late, its all wrong and I can't wait. Its only a matter of time untill the loyal fans start to explore other games and yes some will come back when CW/private matches are introduced. But I'm guessing a large majority of players only have time for one main game and once they move on and find it, that is the new game they dedicate too.

In one of the Q&A's they said CW and private matches were a priority, is there a rough ETA that isn't stated in the command chair?

I'll start with your last statement first: rule 1 of development - never tell people when they are going to get something until you can be absolutely sure you can deliver in that time frame. Nothing kills reputation faster than vapor ware. I think waaaayyyyy back they gave an ETA of fall of last year, so yeah, I'm guessing they won't make that mistake again.

Next, again, you have to consider the business model they are using. Cash flow from the player base is sporadic so you have to be some what conservative with your staff. Does this mean having to choose between content and capability sometimes, yes. Does that suck for us as players. Yes.

I agree that most players can only dedicate time to one primary game. But nothing drives off players faster than broken code and buggy game play. Some will come back and some wont, but the glory of free to play is that its reallllly easy to pick up new players.

I for one can't wait for CW, it's a major reason I play. If we remove the assumption that "we deserve everything right now", this is a pretty sweet deal right here.

[Terror Teddy]

TheMagician, on 27 February 2013 - 10:13 AM, said:

If I had my way, we wouldn't have any of the current grind elements. All mechs and weapons would be fully open to people. PGI would instead make their money by offering visual items. Basically, take the Dota 2 approach. But we can feel blessed that they didn't take the PlaneSide 2 approach, which has a pay-for-advantage system. But, by changing their economic model, they wouldn't have to be concerned about private matchmaking. People would be paying for custom cockpits, decals, and more.

Ok, please enlighten me where PGI DOESN'T make money by offering visual items and less-than optimal designed "hero" mechs that gives a meager C-bill bonus?


Grinding the cash is one of the ways to get people to pay for a premium so you do have a choice. Grind or pay a fee. That said I do think that almost all things in regards to Mech Credits are far to expensive.

If it wasn't a C-bill barrier to all the gear then there would most likely be a rank barrier similar to Warthunder before you can get the vehicle you desire.

[IceSerpent]

GaussDragon, on 27 February 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

You... completely missed the point. How is that relevant when we WANT TO SPEND MONEY. How is that relevant when the fact that it's free isn't enough to keep us playing in absence of the competitive aspect?

My thoughts exactly. "For free" means absolutely nothing to me - I am more than willing to pay the shelf price and monthly suscription for a game that I like.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

I'm not interested in League play myself, however I think that it is necessary in some form to maintain the interest of those who do want a more competative game than we have at present. If PGI worry about people abusing the system to "farm" XP and C-bills then they just make it so that you don't get any for those games.
Members will still play the "ordinary" game to get mechs levelled up etc, or even just for a quick blat when not competing (fun has a place as well).
Even if they can only provide a basic framework within a reasonable timescale I'm sure it would help.

[Mechteric]

If memory serves even in Mechwarrior 4 somebody had to pay for the servers and bandwidth to run the servers, exactly how is this different if PGI decides to charge to have private matches (assuming its a reasonable $$)?

[Lord Ikka]

The 9th Sword of the Dragon had to pull out of RHoD due to timing conflicts, but having something until CW is essential. I've noticed members of the 9th, House Kurita, and the general players pool suffering from "burnout" syndrome. I know that PGI/IGP are working on CW, that getting in a variety of Mechs is needed, and that fixing all the various bugs/exploits take time- but give us some info other than "Upcoming" or "Soon". You can't expect even rabid fans to play a beta that is nothing but random matches forever.

The major problem I see is that there was a very large overestimate of the time needed to implement all the content. CW alone will be a huge project, and the Clan invasion as big if not bigger due to the necessity of adding Clan Mechs. If CW is implemented in the next two months, you will at least get a six-month or so grace period to add in the Clan stuff. Even if it isn't exactly on time via the BT timeline, you need to give the CW players six months to get a handle on the CW stuff and work out kinks before adding in more content.

CW is the priority for almost every core member of the player base. Yes, casual players need to feel important and necessary, but the core players are the ones that will spend the most money. If you give us some of what has been promised, you will see the $$, because you already have via the Founders packs. You raised 5 million on a game that wasn't even out of Closed Beta, just on the basis of what you said would come, when only a few were even able to play the game and it was very limited. Now we have a much more diverse Mech selection, more maps, another game mode, and still no real word on CW. Its disappointing in the extreme.

[Vasces Diablo]

GaussDragon, on 27 February 2013 - 10:15 AM, said:

You... completely missed the point. How is that relevant when we WANT TO SPEND MONEY. How is that relevant when the fact that it's free isn't enough to keep us playing in absence of the competitive aspect?

If that is the case, I apologize. Reading the forums from my phone at work.

I guess my general point would be than, that Free to play strives to grab as large of a player bass as possible, knowing that only a small percentage will convert to paying customers. This ultimately leads to a slower (but long lasting) development cycle. I myself don't see much to spend money at this point that I haven't already (got my extra garage spaces, couple camo specs and cockpit items). Truthfully, short of premium time, there just isn't a lot to spend money on with introducing pay to win times, and that doesn't go away in the long run.

I think we can all agree the CW will be the big deciding factor for a lot of people, so I'm cool with them taking their time if it means getting it right.