498 replies to this topic

[Lil Cthulhu]

Gregory Owen, on 04 March 2013 - 02:51 AM, said:

all i hear in this long winded post is a bunch of crying because clan mechs aren't here NOW. the game is still in beta,

Yeah, lets keep parroting that whole 'beta' thing and completely disregard the lack of any kind of real content, the money grubbing, the persistent bugs while also taking into consideration that the Battlefield 3 Alpha (read PRE-Beta) was more put together than this.

Beta is a label, not an excuse. Stop using it as such.

[Earthtalker]

Aaren Kai, on 04 March 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

No problem, I am glad to help those that have weak reasoning and no concept of real life understandings. Oh, and now feel free to call me something derogatory because I refuse to agree with a baseless opinion thread that thinks forum posts somehow set a companies direction and decisions.

I respectfully disagree on the direction part. If we (the consumer) do not help the studio by letting them not what we would like or not like in the product they are trying to create here in the forums or other means of communication, then it will not be as successful as it could be, if not outright fail. That does not mean they have to do everything we say, far from it. But that also means they cannot simply disregard us and do as they like. There must be a balance on the give and take between the two for 1) The product to be successful and 2) The consumer be pleased and contented with said product.

[Sayyid]

I think this overall is a good post by Norris, but it does point out some obvious things that many people dont want to hear.

1- PGI bit off a bit more than they can chew with this franchise, and it is going to take longer than they claimed to get it to where it should be.

2- Developers are not 100% in control of everything in their product. Sometimes the publisher has other plans for the money.

I am not personally concerned with MWO success or failure. If MWO fails I wont be put out any, I like the game, but it isnt much more exciting to me than World of Tanks currently. The gameplay is about the same, the pacing is about the same, the grind is about the same. Overall World of Tanks and Mechwarrior Online are basically the same game, with different skins. And I am a fan of Battletech.

I was smart, or tenative in my purchasing of the Founders Package, and stayed far away from it, due to experiences with other Pay to Beta games in the past. I felt it was not worth the amount of money they were asking for, for an incomplete product, with no signs of it becoming a complete product anytime in the near future.

To be honest I dont see a real community warfare system on the scale of Multi-Player Battletech:3025 or even Solaris 7 coming anytime this year or even in the first quarter of next year. I feel that PGI isnt quite at that lost cause stage yet, but they are in the denial stage, where they feel they can salvage the situation, and they can.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

Firstly, let's be civil here. There's no reason to be discourteous.

I am being civil. If I wasn't you'd know. Trust me.

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

Secondly, to say that PGI is aware that a 4-month content drought would be commercial suicide does not imply in any way they cannot make any mistakes. That's an absurd extention of anything that was written.

Okay, first off, your preaching to the choir. IE, you're saying to me things I already said.

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

But this is pretty elementary content roadmap work here. Of course they know that a 4-month drought would seriously hurt them, as a steady content flow is part-and-parcel of the F2P model. So unless they deliberately decide to drive MWO into the ground, they will avoid anything approaching a 4-month drought.

They're human. They make mistakes. Have made mistakes. Will continue to make mistakes. This is not a question, this is FACT. The only question is, is how big will their mistakes be?

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

Heck, if anything this monthly release schedule shows that they're dedicated to keeping regular updates coming, adding significant revenue-generating content every month (such as new chassis and hero mechs).

Yes. Because Chinese Lanterns are significant revenue generators, and all the Hero Mechs so far have been fantastic. The Spider was such a great chassis, too. / Ben Stein voice

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

Now I don't know what their content roadmap for CW and the clans actually is, none of us know it this side of PGI. But unless we attribute to their management a deliberate desire for commercial failure, it is very reasonable to assume it does not involve a 4-month content drought.

Going from that line of thinking yes. Heres the point that Norris made - what if they don't have the manpower to do anything BUT a four month drought? Eh? And here we arrive at why I made the rose tinted idiocy goggles comment. THIS HAS ALL BEEN SAID. OP, AND SINCE. MORE THAN ONCE! Why, after all this, has it not sunk in?

43 monkeys in a month can only do one months work of 43 monkeys. No matter what IGP wants, or PGI intends, they cannot take 43 monkeys and in a single month output a month's work of 76 monkeys. So the idea isn't so much whether they know to avoid a draught, or some other crippling mistake as.... CAN they avoid it?

[Sifright]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

So your solution is to have one monkey do the work of two monkeys in the time it would take those two monkeys to do it?

Spoken like true Grade A Management.

Isn't that just all management now? every company tries to push stuff like this now.
I'm still shocked at all the people that seem to think complaining about a lack of new content arriving in a game which is in beta is some how wrong and those who do so should be mocked...

Lastly,

I would argue every one is setting the bar far to low.

I don't consider one new mech a month new content.

If we were getting one new map a month it would be one thing... but one mech just doesn't cut the mustard so to speak, and no River city night, Forest colony Snow and frozen city night are not new maps.. Reskins do not in any way count.

[Inertiaman]

Aaren Kai, on 04 March 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

No problem, I am glad to help those that have weak reasoning and no concept of real life understandings. Oh, and now feel free to call me something derogatory because I refuse to agree with a baseless opinion thread that thinks forum posts somehow set a companies direction and decisions.

Any company that ignores customer opinion is ignoring one of the founding tenets of modern micro scale business analysis.

http://en.wikipedia....forces_analysis

Happy to discuss the fundamentals of why even individual opinion is amplified by the internet and can unduly hazardous to a seller in a competition rich industry but that's probably best left to PM if you feel the need to expand your knowledge of "real life understandings" today. If you'd rather do some investigation on your own then check out the reasons and analysis behind Domino's new recipe marketing drive in 2010 and the resulting improvement in fortune. As the then-new CEO (Patrick Doyle) in question said at the time;

“Your business will end if you just say, ‘The safest thing I can do is to continue to do what I have been doing.’ That leads you nowhere.”

[Agent of Change]

Norris,

You've definitely put together a number of pieces for your theory and have certainly put some work into it, I believe that IF your assumptions are all correct you are likely within 90+% of the truth. Given the information available to us your assumptions are among a number that are entirely reasonable to make, if on the more pessimistic side, but still entirely reasonable.

However, if we were to take a slightly different tack on this (a more optimistic look if you will) lets modify one or two assumptions and see where that takes us:

Modified Assumptions:

• Concurrent Clan-Mech development - This one was already posed earlier in the thread they may well have slowed down in the actual release of Mechs but are in fact currently working a stable of mechs (including clans mechs) well in advance of their release to create a back log the can draw on when shifting resources to other aspects. Potential Result: Clan Mech dump sooner than later.
  
• CW Development - based on assumed manpower limitations it could very well be that focus has been on creating, finalizing, and preparing for a CW release which has sapped resources from Mech development slowing down Mech releases. Potential Result: CW sooner Clan mechs delayed.
  
• Mechs are the Primary Content - Assume that for many players new mechs are not why they log in, but new maps, game modes, skills, modules, improved matchmaking, and CW. I speak for myself and say that if they keep any combination of the previously mention game elements coming steadily in the updates I could go several months without any new mechs, (hell to be honest none of the announced mechs hold any interest to me so i'll be playing without new mechs for months anyway). The law of averages says neither of us are likely to be unique in our approach to what brings us to the game, so the question becomes which viewpoint is closer to the majority you assumed yours, however if it becomes mine the game could sustain the delays so long as there is something forthcoming. Potential result: Gaming population takes some hit for a delayed mech drop for clans but is mostly intact game survives and get a massive influx when clan mechs are announced.

Now I was back in CB and I have seen with no small amount of frustration the missed deadlines, the flubbed communication, and the apparent backsliding on "pillars of gameplay". I have also seen leaps forward recently and while the Devs definitely have an image issue when it comes to self imposed deadlines it should also be pointed out that if the devs don't follow to the letter exactly what they tell us they tend to get burned in effigy here on the forums which isn't exactly fair. So in some sense pulling back on specifics and what they tell us is just a reasonable play on their part, is it a good one... i can't say.


That said the raven incident you refer to and the exodus (temporarily) of players was also during a period where nothing was released, no maps, modules, nadda, nothing. So yeah we can expect people to wander off I'm not sure that is the best example to hold up in light of the fact that we are getting content just not mechs rapidly.

All in all you gave us something to think about so thanks for that.

Edited by Agent of Change, 04 March 2013 - 06:27 AM.

[RG Notch]

Well obviously the only solution is a boycott!

[DragonsFire]

Lil Cthulhu, on 04 March 2013 - 06:19 AM, said:

Yeah, lets keep parroting that whole 'beta' thing and completely disregard the lack of any kind of real content, the money grubbing, the persistent bugs while also taking into consideration that the Battlefield 3 Alpha (read PRE-Beta) was more put together than this.

Beta is a label, not an excuse. Stop using it as such.

BF3 was a AAA title with EA, gobs of money and many more developers thrown at it than MWO. It's not a proper comparison to put the beta test for BF3 up against MWO's own beta test as the 2 games do not resemble each other.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Inertiaman, on 04 March 2013 - 06:22 AM, said:

“Your business will end if you just say, ‘The safest thing I can do is to continue to do what I have been doing.’ That leads you nowhere.”

And let's not forget that nothing in this game - NOTHING - isn't something someone has already done better before the year ticked over to 2000. They aren't just doing their own same old tired stuff, their doing the same old tired stuff as OTHERS have. Only with better graphics. Woo.... hoooo.

[Yankee77]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

43 monkeys in a month can only do one months work of 43 monkeys. No matter what IGP wants, or PGI intends, they cannot take 43 monkeys and in a single month output a month's work of 76 monkeys. So the idea isn't so much whether they know to avoid a draught, or some other crippling mistake as.... CAN they avoid it?

And, again, it's been stated how it can be achieved. Those 7 people are not busy for a whole month as a block to make a mech. Bottlenecks can be widened (and yes, even if there's no new hires. I'm fairly confident PGI has more than 2 modelers, for example), they can be buffering content as well (for all we know maybe they've got 3 clan mechs ready now).

And, most importantly, content roadmaps change. My point is that it is almost a certainty that they'll avoid a 4 month drought. That is something they've accounted for. Maybe that's precisely why CW and the clans was delayed in the first place.

Yes PGI can make mistakes, but not releasing new content for 4 months will only occur if they deliberately want to drive this into the ground. They're still professionals, and are fully aware what a 4 month content drought would do to their player base.

So sure, IF they don't release new content for 4 months, MWO is probably doomed. But that almost certainly won't happen. How they'll avoid that, I don't really know, none of us do. Maybe they've been secretly building the clan content piecemeal while keeping up the regular IS content, or maybe they're reworked their roadmap to account for it. But either way, there won't be 4 month without new revenue-generating content to keep the player base interested.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:30 AM, said:

Those 7 people are not busy for a whole month

You've said this twice now so obviously you don't realize the absoultely and absurdly unrealistic nature of what you are saying. I've refuted it twice as well and you refuse to listen. Obviously you believe the manure that is spewing out of your head. I've obviously wasted my time in replying to you, a mistake I shall not repeat.

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 04 March 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[Norris J Packard]

Agent of Change, on 04 March 2013 - 06:25 AM, said:

Norris,
<snip>

Agent, I do appreciate your response (really), I don't really have much to say to your post other than that is a fair analyses, that I would like to be wrong, and what you say is a possibility. Maybe PGI's just been lying. Maybe they really do have something going on, it is possible.

[Sifright]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 06:33 AM, said:

You've said this twice now so obviously you don't realize the absoultely and absurdly unrealistic nature of what you are saying. I've refuted it twice as well and you refuse to listen. Obviously you believe the manure that is spewing out of your head. I've obviously wasted my time in replying to you, a mistake I shall not repeat.

I work in a tech company as a hard ware engineer, I can count on 0 hands the number of employees who aren't spending all their working hours working.

I would love to know why people think people who work in tech companies just have oodles of free time during their working hours instead of actually working huge amounts of overtime to meet massively unrealistic deadlines because of a lack of resources because management are trying to save money.

Yea.....

[Yankee77]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 06:33 AM, said:

You've said this twice now so obviously you don't realize the absoultely and absurdly unrealistic nature of what you are saying. I've refuted it twice as well and you refuse to listen. Obviously you believe the manure that is spewing out of your head. I've obviously wasted my time in replying to you, a mistake I shall not repeat.

*chuckle*

Very well then.

In that case I'll go back to my development sprint. You know, the one we knock out every month, but half the team is working on the next sprint because their tickets are in QA.

[Norris J Packard]

Sifright, on 04 March 2013 - 06:36 AM, said:

I work in a tech company as a hard ware engineer, I can count on 0 hands the number of employees who aren't spending all their working hours working.

I would love to know why people think people who work in tech companies just have oodles of free time during their working hours instead of actually working huge amounts of overtime to meet massively unrealistic deadlines because of a lack of resources because management are trying to save money.

Yea.....

Because PGI wears luchador masks sometimes.

[Lil Cthulhu]

DragonsFire, on 04 March 2013 - 06:27 AM, said:

BF3 was a AAA title with EA, gobs of money and many more developers thrown at it than MWO. It's not a proper comparison to put the beta test for BF3 up against MWO's own beta test as the 2 games do not resemble each other.

I'm not putting the BF3 beta against the MWO Beta, I'm using the BF3 ALPHA for that.
With the oodles of money they got from all the founders packages, silly hero mechs and grossly overpriced MC if they don't have a competent dev team, they have no one to blame but themselves. I'm sorry but this whole "l0lol0lol0lol0 iz beta" argument that's been floating around since before closed beta ended is more of a crutch being used to defend ones own ego from being bruised due to someone making a real criticism of something that they have some irrational emotional attachment to.

[aptest]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Wow wait what. TIME OUT. TIME THE **** OUT. Did you just try to sneak in a "no one is leaving the game" comment there? Norris said people have left as far back as August / September last year. I can pull a half dozen names out of a mental hat of people who've stopped playing, and I would have to do so 5 times before I needed to repeat names. And that's just people *I* know of. Now magnify that by whatever number you want and the FACT becomes clear, as Norris stated in his Op and which you obviously missed or ignored:

People ARE leaving. They HAVE been for some time now.

Here's a grim fact about games. They gain and lose players. People get bored at playing the same game over and over and over again and switch games. maybe less so if they are die-hard fans of the lore, but still. It's clear as daylight that lots of the players who've played this game and made it happen through their money and time are no longer active, dedicated, 1-game-a-day-or-more players. On the other hand, you have some LoL rejects like me who come in to replenish the ranks.

The question is not if people are leaving, but if they are leaving at a higher rate than new people discover and invest into this game. If some other guy leaves, and I step into his shoes and start playing, the game as a whole only benefits. Because that other guy may come back as a sporadic, once-a-month player.

[Sifright]

Itkovian, on 04 March 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

*chuckle*

Very well then.

In that case I'll go back to my development sprint. You know, the one we knock out every month, but half the team is working on the next sprint because their tickets are in QA.

So basically you work for a company with more resources than PGI.

Do bare in mind they have 42 employees split over at least two projects.

At least 2-5 of those employees will be ancillary support staff like reception and admin workers.

[Lyrik]

Sir Roland MXIII, on 04 March 2013 - 06:33 AM, said:

You've said this twice now so obviously you don't realize the absoultely and absurdly unrealistic nature of what you are saying. I've refuted it twice as well and you refuse to listen. Obviously you believe the manure that is spewing out of your head. I've obviously wasted my time in replying to you, a mistake I shall not repeat.

Just because it doesn't fit your narrow view of the reality you choose to ignore it?

The desing team for the mechs doesn't work an entire month on the same mech. Or working together at the same time on the same mech.
There are several steps in creating a mech. They can work at several mechs the same time . They are probably now capable to finish the mechs faster etc...