1911 replies to this topic

[TheCaptainJZ]

You guys should listen in to the New Player forum. There are a handful of "experts" (notably Koniving) that are a fountain of accurate information. Koniving would have answered your armor/internals question fully in one lengthy (as he explains in detail) post.

[Alaskan Nobody]

ICEFANG13, on 28 April 2014 - 09:28 AM, said:

I tested that too, but I used a single small laser and it took 12 shots. I'll check again later when I can.

12 shots of 3 damage would be pretty close to his result (though 1 more shot than needed?)

TheCaptainJZ, on 28 April 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:

(as he explains in detail)

Yes... yes he does.

[TheCaptainJZ]

Shar Wolf, on 28 April 2014 - 09:36 AM, said:

Yes... yes he does.

With videos that may or may not be directly related

[Hordamer Mendelbaum]

Karl: thanks for taking the time to answer our questions. This thread has been really awesome.

I'm really interested in how the matchmaker works, because there have been a lot of anecdotes, consistent with my own experience, that matchmaking quality has dropped in the last few months. Specifically, I'm curious as to how, after I click the Launch/Play Now button, I end up being placed with a team, and how that team is matched up against its opponent. Are both teams assembled simultaneously? Is there a target average Elo that the matchmaker is trying to achieve? Are premades added first, then the other slots filled in singles? Is there a queue of "searching" players that the matchmaker can pick-and-choose from? I'm just curious how it works.

[Karl Berg]

Wintersdark, on 28 April 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

Actually, Karl, if there's one thing you could do for us...

I understand this isn't your balliwack, but it's really important for player education.

Can you pass along to the Powers That Be, that we REALLY need one cohesive place where game mechanics like the above are posted?

There's so much misinformation and poorly understood aspects of the game that do not in any way benefit from obscurity. Ghost heat is one such thing, obviously, but there's many others: How much internal structure do mech components have? How exactly do crits work? How does CASE work?

We need a MWO sponsored Wiki or some such we can fill with such information, and have it vetted by Those Who Know. Forum threads are problematic because - as you can see above - they get filled with discussion about given mechanics and while they're interesting discussions the answers are lost in the cruft of the forum. There ARE posted answers for some of these, but they're lost between command chair posts, old AtD posts, and all sorts of random stuff.

It's really important for new players (and experienced ones) to have a cohesive place where they can learn how things work, because right now just asking on the forum is far more likely to get an incorrect answer than a good one. A place where people can refer players with questions, where they can get all their answers in one (known-good) place.

Clearing up a lot of the grossly misunderstood aspects of the game mechanics would really help a lot of players out.

Excellent idea with respect to the wiki! I'm not sure that PGI could commit time towards maintaining an official wiki; but keeping the gamepedia wiki up to date, for example, might help many players with specific questions such as this.

http://mwomercs.com/...ki-un-official/

http://mwo.gamepedia.com/Main_Page

And a couple other wiki's found by a quick web search:
http://www.mechwarri...hWarrior_Online
http://mechwarrioron...ior_Online_Wiki

[Wintersdark]

Karl Berg, on 28 April 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

Excellent idea with respect to the wiki! I'm not sure that PGI could commit time towards maintaining an official wiki; but keeping the gamepedia wiki up to date, for example, might help many players with specific questions such as this.

http://mwomercs.com/...ki-un-official/

http://mwo.gamepedia.com/Main_Page

And a couple other wiki's found by a quick web search:
http://www.mechwarri...hWarrior_Online
http://mechwarrioron...ior_Online_Wiki

I understand that PGI can't maintain their own full Wiki, but the problem we have with the current crop of Wiki's is that most just have standard information available in such as Smurfy's mechlab (which is awesome!), but not a concentrated set of "This is how these game mechanics work" - and that's where new players have such problems. There are so many things in MWO that are either completely incomprehensible black boxes for new players (or, for that matter, any players that are not long time Mechwarrior/Battletech fans). This is an inevitable problem with external Wiki's, as there's only limited information available to put up in the first place.

Maybe - I'm spitballing here - but maybe we could get a Ask The Devs style forum thread, but with gameplay questions only? No future design questions, no questions as to WHY things are the way they are or how they will be, just "How does this work"), even if it's only compiled and answered say monthly by say a gameplay engineer? I'd imagine many would be answered by players in the very thread, then the employee could simply quote the appropriate response and say it was correct (yay, time saving!) Then answers collated into a single organized thread - any random volunteer player could do this, or a CM, or some such.

I'm sure a volunteer mod could manage that thread, ruthlessly delete inappropriate questions/chatter, as to save as much dev time as possible.

Such an endeavor would allow us to build a factual, organized knowledge base here on the official forums.

[Cimarb]

Wintersdark, on 28 April 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

I understand that PGI can't maintain their own full Wiki, but the problem we have with the current crop of Wiki's is that most just have standard information available in such as Smurfy's mechlab (which is awesome!), but not a concentrated set of "This is how these game mechanics work" - and that's where new players have such problems. There are so many things in MWO that are either completely incomprehensible black boxes for new players (or, for that matter, any players that are not long time Mechwarrior/Battletech fans). This is an inevitable problem with external Wiki's, as there's only limited information available to put up in the first place.

Maybe - I'm spitballing here - but maybe we could get a Ask The Devs style forum thread, but with gameplay questions only? No future design questions, no questions as to WHY things are the way they are or how they will be, just "How does this work"), even if it's only compiled and answered say monthly by say a gameplay engineer? I'd imagine many would be answered by players in the very thread, then the employee could simply quote the appropriate response and say it was correct (yay, time saving!) Then answers collated into a single organized thread - any random volunteer player could do this, or a CM, or some such.

I'm sure a volunteer mod could manage that thread, ruthlessly delete inappropriate questions/chatter, as to save as much dev time as possible.

Such an endeavor would allow us to build a factual, organized knowledge base here on the official forums.

I volunteer if that matters. I completely support this idea, and would be more than willing to put the effort into doing whatever needs done. Anything to get some solid facts about how things work.

[Vlad Ward]

TheCaptainJZ, on 28 April 2014 - 09:34 AM, said:

You guys should listen in to the New Player forum. There are a handful of "experts" (notably Koniving) that are a fountain of accurate information. Koniving would have answered your armor/internals question fully in one lengthy (as he explains in detail) post.

I used to post guides in that forum, but at the end of the day there were just too many people posting the same information over and over again and still getting bumped off the front page by Q&A threads. It wasn't worth the maintenance.

In general, I prefer to use first-hand sources, though. Most of the relevant game mechanics were outlined in the old Closed Beta patch notes and haven't been changed significantly since. This is where I obtained my data regarding the Salvage Bonus Calculations and the Critical Hit System.

Player-based testing can work well in some cases, such as identifying the position of parens and floors in the Heat Perk calculations (another old thread of mine), but is generally not performed under the most controlled circumstances.

While a Dev-maintained wiki would probably be waaaay too much work to maintain, Dev/Engineer confirmation of mechanics that doesn't get buried under years of slag and forum restructuring would certainly be nice. I know we've had a few engineers come down and write amazing threads detailing, for example, the critical hit system that were linked to en masse for a while and then eventually forgotten. Maybe Engineer-written Stickies in the Game Mechanics section, or even a stickying of some of the old Engineer posts would be nice.

At the end of the day, the single biggest fault with player-maintained Wikis is that players are often wrong. First hand sources are absolutely vital to maintaining the integrity of these sorts of repositories.

Edited by Vlad Ward, 28 April 2014 - 12:31 PM.

[Modo44]

I would be happy with more detailed patch notes, honestly. It is hard to see why you would not brag about all bug fixes, map improvements, UI additions or other adjustments. Instead of that, we get slightly expanded marketing messages, mainly focused on "we got glorious new mechs/features for ya" information. Duplicate basic info with limited details does not really fit with the improved communication agenda.

[Tekadept]

Karl Berg, on 28 April 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

Excellent idea with respect to the wiki! I'm not sure that PGI could commit time towards maintaining an official wiki; but keeping the gamepedia wiki up to date, for example, might help many players with specific questions such as this.

Pass this on that is the problem right there, and why new players don't stick with this game (at least in my experience) Sooo PGI has the time to make a game , but not the time to to document the game teaching people how to play it? hrmmm.. oh thats right, minimally viable product..

Having a community run one is great, but they still didnt develop the game and know the core game mechanics and can definitively say what is what.

Imagine if sporting rules were no longer managed by a governing body, but maintained by the fans only..

I am currently developing a Purchase order system. Imagine if I didn't "have time" to provide documentation and expected the clients to figure it out, or form into a community to figure out collaboratively how it works. Lets just say sales would not be through the roof.

Edited by Tekadept, 28 April 2014 - 03:49 PM.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Tekadept, on 28 April 2014 - 03:41 PM, said:

Pass this on that is the problem right there, and why new players don't stick with this game (at least in my experience) Sooo PGI has the time to make a game , but not the time to to document the game teaching people how to play it?

The complete lack of a useful new user experience is why I will not try to convince my IRL friends to play the game. My freinds and I are all old enough to remember when AAA video game titles came with a hard-copy manual that gave you at least the basic information about how the game worked.

In Paul's NGNG 'Mechs, Devs, and Beer interview he stated (I'm paraphrasing) that new players just want to hop right into the action and not spend time figuring stuff out.

I call BS.

New players that are a little bit serious about their entertainment time (the ones who might actually spend money in the long run) are going to try and find out as much as they can about the game before dedicating their time (and certainly their money).

Provide us a meaningful new user experience, and not only will I upgrade to a Masakari package, I'll (figuratively) shout from the mountaintops to try and bring my old IRL friends into the game.

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 28 April 2014 - 04:23 PM.

[Heffay]

Dear Mr Berg,

What is your favorite libation?

Love,
Heffay

[TheCaptainJZ]

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 28 April 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

The complete lack of a useful new user experience is why I will not try to convince my IRL friends to play the game. My freinds and I are all old enough to remember when AAA video game titles came with a hard-copy manual that gave you at least the basic information about how the game worked.

In Paul's NGNG 'Mechs, Devs, and Beer interview he stated (I'm paraphrasing) that new players just want to hop right into the action and not spend time figuring stuff out.

I call BS.

New players that are a little bit serious about their entertainment time (the ones who might actually spend money in the long run) are going to try and find out as much as they can about the game before dedicating their time (and certainly their money).

Provide us a meaningful new user experience, and not only will I upgrade to a Masakari package, I'll (figuratively) shout from the mountaintops to try and bring my old IRL friends into the game.

At the very least, they may jump into the game to get an initial impression, then check the manual, then play again seriously.

[Karl Berg]

Wintersdark, on 28 April 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

Maybe - I'm spitballing here - but maybe we could get a Ask The Devs style forum thread, but with gameplay questions only? No future design questions, no questions as to WHY things are the way they are or how they will be, just "How does this work"), even if it's only compiled and answered say monthly by say a gameplay engineer?

Cimarb, on 28 April 2014 - 12:19 PM, said:

I volunteer if that matters. I completely support this idea, and would be more than willing to put the effort into doing whatever needs done. Anything to get some solid facts about how things work.

Vlad Ward, on 28 April 2014 - 12:28 PM, said:

At the end of the day, the single biggest fault with player-maintained Wikis is that players are often wrong. First hand sources are absolutely vital to maintaining the integrity of these sorts of repositories.

I will most certainly follow up on this tomorrow later today. I'll ask some of the gameplay and design team if they would be willing to act as fact checkers in such an endeavour. It would be a fairly serious time commitment. It's pretty easy to get flooded with requests, as I'm finding out and I expect this work would all end up being done on their own time. In the end, I can only speak for myself though, and I'd be more than willing to look over any articles you send my way that relate to my work.

[Tekadept]

Wintersdark, on 28 April 2014 - 11:14 AM, said:

Maybe - I'm spitballing here - but maybe we could get a Ask The Devs style forum thread, but with gameplay questions only? No future design questions, no questions as to WHY things are the way they are or how they will be, just "How does this work"), even if it's only compiled and answered say monthly by say a gameplay engineer? I'd imagine many would be answered by players in the very thread, then the employee could simply quote the appropriate response and say it was correct (yay, time saving!) Then answers collated into a single organized thread - any random volunteer player could do this, or a CM, or some such.

I tired suggesting it
http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3314260

[Alymbic]

Karl Berg, on 28 April 2014 - 10:57 AM, said:

Excellent idea with respect to the wiki! I'm not sure that PGI could commit time towards maintaining an official wiki; but keeping the gamepedia wiki up to date, for example, might help many players with specific questions such as this.

http://mwomercs.com/...ki-un-official/

http://mwo.gamepedia.com/Main_Page

And a couple other wiki's found by a quick web search:
http://www.mechwarri...hWarrior_Online
http://mechwarrioron...ior_Online_Wiki

Seeing as no one has updated a lot of the gamepedia wiki page in about 8 months, I've just made an account for that and I'll keep it somewhat up to date. If you type MechWarrior online wiki into google, you get that page as the first link, and I've seen too many new players with conflicting/misleading information in the last 2 years. If anyone would volunteer to help me revive that website, it would be appreciated.

Edited by Alymbic, 29 April 2014 - 01:17 AM.

[Karl Berg]

Tekadept, on 28 April 2014 - 03:41 PM, said:

I am currently developing a Purchase order system. Imagine if I didn't "have time" to provide documentation and expected the clients to figure it out, or form into a community to figure out collaboratively how it works. Lets just say sales would not be through the roof.

Kageru Ikazuchi, on 28 April 2014 - 04:10 PM, said:

The complete lack of a useful new user experience is why I will not try to convince my IRL friends to play the game. My freinds and I are all old enough to remember when AAA video game titles came with a hard-copy manual that gave you at least the basic information about how the game worked.

Just curious, but what level of documentation are you looking for. Are you looking for the basics? 'Here are the default key bindings', 'This is how you purchase a mech', 'This is how you unlock a mech efficiency'; or are you looking for detailed technical info on how the product works?

Given your background working on commercial software systems, you will have a good understanding of how much time and effort goes into writing up accurate and readable documentation, as well as maintaining that documentation as you extend and maintain your product. The effort is certainly non-trivial; and inaccurate documentation is arguably much worse than no documentation, so the maintenance costs of detailed documentation are high.

In our case, the product changes every 2 weeks. We have roughly 1 million lines of server code, and probably closer to 2 million lines of code in the client. We most certainly do have internal documentation, both of our codebases and of the design; but throwing up dozens of 50+ page documents intended for engineering, full of bullet points for specific behaviours and edge cases, as well as wireframes for intended presentation, is by no means acceptable as an end-user manual.

[Karl Berg]

Heffay, on 28 April 2014 - 05:16 PM, said:

Dear Mr Berg,

What is your favorite libation?

Love,
Heffay

Tea? Is it ok to be that boring? Of the alcoholic beverage kind, I'm fond of some amber ales. Keith's red used to be a favourite, but I've found in recent years it has become less delicious.

If you ever find yourself out around Vancouver though, give me a shout. There are some fairly decent english bitters at a pub not too far from us.

[Modo44]

Karl, the product may change and have a lot of nuances, but the basics remain the same for long periods of time. Due to the complexity, many new people have this reaction. Threads like that pop up almost every day. Very basic game info is not directly provided nor quick-linked in the client, and often out of date on PGI's own Training Grounds (all old UI videos).

Separately, advanced players have trouble finding all information (e.g. exact ranges of weapons) within the game. You pretty much need to go to Smurfy or look through advanced guides/old command chair posts/old patch notes to find a lot of data.

Edited by Modo44, 29 April 2014 - 01:45 AM.

[Karl Berg]

Alymbic, on 29 April 2014 - 12:42 AM, said:

Seeing as no one has updated the gamepedia wiki page in about 8 months, I've just made an account for that and I'll keep it somewhat up to date. If you type MechWarrior online wiki into google, you get that page as the first link, and I've seen too many new players with conflicting/misleading information in the last 2 years. If anyone would volunteer to help me revive that website, it would be appreciated.

I've also made an account, PGIkberg. Looks like there may be editing restrictions in place however.