498 replies to this topic

[Jomacdo]

If there is a four month period where we only get new modules, maps, camos, and maybe equipement I'd probably still play, others will probably still play.

But it wont be enough and the game will die.

Plenty of us are looking forward to CW but it's not interesing enough to hold a big f2p playerbase unless they make it much better than it's shaping up to be.

Norris isn't saying the game is dead, he's not saying the game is going to die.

He's outlining an increasingly likely possibility.

PGI needs to have a second team working on Clan mechs right now
or
PGI needs to throw out the invastion idea and just release the Clan mechs as they're made month by month
or
PGI needs to get a alot more maps out, dropship mode and maybe some automatic base defense stuff to make CW more interesting
or
The game dies.

Stop attacking the messenger and be optimistic after you read his points, not before.

[Norris J Packard]

Tichorius Davion, on 04 March 2013 - 03:23 AM, said:

No, it does have a place in this conversation. I am doing the exact same thing.

C&C Generals is to be a Free to Play model game. Running on a new engine relatively untouched by anyone in that genre. They have their plans for factions (mechs) to be things you can acquire to play an online game against other people. They stated that any campaign or singleplayer (community warfare) is not expected upon release. Sure the delays in even getting the beta underway means that the alpha is not even finished! The game will fail!

Factions will still be included in a timely manner, I would assume, however my post is entirely about the lack of new Mechs in MWO that will happen during the time when they plan on introducing the Clans. This is not a hard distinction to make, at least for me. If C&C Generals up and decided to stop adding factions for a third of a year, I'd expect the same thing would happen to them. Also, a Single Player and Campaign is not Community Warfare. It is two entirely different aspects.

Edited by Norris J Packard, 04 March 2013 - 03:31 AM.

[Ralgas]

i think you underestimate the tenacity of mmo faithful, even if your "claims" prove true. 4 months of no new or simply fluff content is nothing new to several games that remain popular now.

As for the timeline, it is what it is. In your op you even point out reasoning why we should give them time and patience (the long turnaround on hiring)

Edited by Ralgas, 04 March 2013 - 03:33 AM.

[Inertiaman]

Bear in mind - Like most people I was at the "be patient" stage with most of these key issues approximately six months ago. Now - with none of them even referred to in the notes let alone resolved and with several entirely broken or plainly insulting features rolled out instead (blue on blue minimaps, ECM, several duff artemis versions and bad DHS) I've moved past sympathetically enthusiastic and just do not give a toss.

[Protection]

Dude, dude,

Think of it this way:

Mechwarrior: Online probably isn't the one. She's not the girl you're destined to be with. Maybe you thought she might be when you first heard about her, and even after your first impressions, but at some point you maybe started to realize that this isn't going to last forever. And now that you're realizing that, you're worried, and you're searching for problems -- problems that may or may not exist and that you have little to no control over and no power to change.

So just let her be. If you want to move on now, that's totally up to you. Otherwise you can stay with her for the time being and just accept her for who she is. It wont last forever - it can't. But for the time being, she's pretty special, she reminds you of someone you loved long ago and haven't seen in many years, and she's fun. She is working on some really amazing ideas -- no idea whether or not they will work or ever even be finished, but maybe you want to try and see it through with her.

Just relax and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the time you spend together with her now, and let the future unfold as it will. Maybe it'll all be over in a year. Maybe it'll last for another five. But it's up to you to enjoy the time that you have together. And if you can't enjoy it, then maybe she's not for you at all.

[Norris J Packard]

Sephlock, on 04 March 2013 - 03:24 AM, said:

First I demand that you acknowledge your name is from Gundam, or if not, tell me where it is from. After all these months of flinging Gundam references at you, I think I deserve that much,

It is.

Jomacdo, on 04 March 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

If there is a four month period where we only get new modules, maps, camos, and maybe equipement I'd probably still play, others will probably still play.

But it wont be enough and the game will die.

Plenty of us are looking forward to CW but it's not interesing enough to hold a big f2p playerbase unless they make it much better than it's shaping up to be.

Norris isn't saying the game is dead, he's not saying the game is going to die.

He's outlining an increasingly likely possibility.

PGI needs to have a second team working on Clan mechs right now
or
PGI needs to throw out the invastion idea and just release the Clan mechs as they're made month by month
or
PGI needs to get a alot more maps out, dropship mode and maybe some automatic base defense stuff to make CW more interesting
or
The game dies.

Stop attacking the messenger and be optimistic after you read his points, not before.

Oh wow, someone who read my post, didn't get vitriolic and understood what I was saying.

I said that this was a potential road. I said that PGI has not given any details on a plan to circumvent this.

If they do not, then it inevitable.

Also, about those Maps... They take about three months each since they have such a small team working on them.

[DEN_Ninja]

Too much flame bait in this thread, Aborting out of it.

P.S. I make the comparison of CW to Campaign and Single player because CW is core part of the game and the lore.
Command and Conquer games have always been about a cheesy storyline with a campaign and lots of RTS Sandboxing against Bots. Not having it in a C&C game is like having no CW in MWO

[Inertiaman]

Protection, on 04 March 2013 - 03:33 AM, said:

Dude, dude,

Think of it this way:

Mechwarrior: Online probably isn't the one. She's not the girl you're destined to be with. Maybe you thought she might be when you first heard about her, and even after your first impressions, but at some point you maybe started to realize that this isn't going to last forever. And now that you're realizing that, you're worried, and you're searching for problems -- problems that may or may not exist and that you have little to no control over and no power to change.

Dude - loving the tone.

However, it's more like I'm with someone else anyway but MWO is the girl I used to see who got fantastic grades at school, was voted most likely to succeed but unfortunately got big into meth, made a complete mess of her life and keeps phoning me up crying at 0300 in the depths of a depressed binge and telling me this is the last time and from now on she's going to do better.

[Protection]

Inertiaman, on 04 March 2013 - 03:35 AM, said:

Dude - loving the tone.

However, it's more like I'm with someone else anyway but MWO is the girl I used to see who got fantastic grades at school, was voted most likely to succeed but unfortunately got big into meth, made a complete mess of her life and keeps phoning me up crying at 0300 in the depths of a depressed binge and telling me this is the last time and from now on she's going to do better.

DONT YOU HIT HER! SHE'S A CLASSY LADY!

[Mycrus]

When i read the title wwas thinking of trolling...

Good write up, op.

[Norris J Packard]

Tichorius Davion, on 04 March 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

Too much flame bait in this thread, Aborting out of it.

P.S. I make the comparison of CW to Campaign and Single player because CW is core part of the game and the lore.
Command and Conquer games have always been about a cheesy storyline with a campaign and lots of RTS Sandboxing against Bots. Not having it in a C&C game is like having no CW in MWO

It's a core part of the game that is apparently being completely reworked, and as I keep having to point out, won't be around until the end of the year. So we know nothing about it, except that maybe the individual Factions will fight each other to some extent, in some way. I wouldn't call that a core gameplay mechanic, at least not at this point.

Would you call it that if it was merely a tally system that kept track of who won the most often and did nothing else?

[Plague Bear]

Tichorius Davion, on 04 March 2013 - 03:34 AM, said:

Too much flame bait in this thread, Aborting out of it.

P.S. I make the comparison of CW to Campaign and Single player because CW is core part of the game and the lore.
Command and Conquer games have always been about a cheesy storyline with a campaign and lots of RTS Sandboxing against Bots. Not having it in a C&C game is like having no CW in MWO

But that is a terrible comparison. Campaign entails creating a story, designing unique levels, and probably voice acting. To make a barebones CW all they need to do is look at BT lore/timeline and straight up steal Chromehounds persistent multiplayer system.

[Chrithu]

In direct answer to the OP:

The answer already is given in your opening post:

Allthough the Founders Program raised a fairly large amount of money obviously almost none of it went back into actually developing MWO.

Ultimately the reason I did not back up the project through the Founders program was that a pretty newly founded publisher was already involved and prominently shown off on the website and stuff. This had my alarm bells ringing that no matter how straight up and engaged Russ and his folks at PGI seem, IGP on the other hand smelled like the usual Investors after a fast and huge cashgrab. The money instead went elsewhere (CIG and Chris Roberts in fact).

Other than that I share your concerns that if PGI isn't able to man up soon to pump stuff out faster this game is in danger of dying even before it got completely started. At least as far as the super involved BT crowd goes. On the other hand getting rid of them might be a goal from Publisher side so the costs on the game can be kept low by maintaining the current feature set and scratching community warfare or postpone it until they see a serious decline in income from the game. And as sad as it is I fear should IGP think along those lines then there isn't much PGI could do about it.

Edited by Jason Parker, 04 March 2013 - 04:26 AM.

[Sir Burpalot21]

While I think Norris J Packard may have sensationalized the issue a bit too much, he brings up issues that I've been concerned about since the movement from closed to open beta was made.

Looking back on the originally proposed schedule I can't help but wonder what kind of **** happened to throw it off by so much. Did the developers grossly overestimate their capabilities? Or, as Norris proposes, did something happen with the publisher that caused them to lose their funding to other games?

And don't give me that BS of "Oh its ok I'm sure the devs and management have everything under control" or "Oh it just takes time and patience". Time is everything, and the longer this game takes to get fully implemented, the bigger the risk is it will either flop and/or the publisher will abandon it.
Not every venture is a success story. I want MWO to be a success story, but at this rate it's not going to be.

Community warfare is going to be the biggest pull for this game. Even now I'm getting tired of playing a game that's simply mech deathmatch and with little positive outlook on future features. It's essentially impossible for me to get any of my friends interested in this game because of the lack of meta-game and it still irks me how mull PGI is on it's implementation. The best case scenario I can come up with is that CW gets implemented in the latter quarter of the year, which is absolutely absurd when considering the original timeline we were given last year.

[Inertiaman]

Out of interest has anyone in the US or Canada got an account with your version of Companies House/Riskdisk etc? Their 2012 books must be up by now and I'd be interested to see P/L and dividends etc.

[Artgathan]

Jomacdo, on 04 March 2013 - 03:28 AM, said:

PGI needs to have a second team working on Clan mechs right now
or
PGI needs to throw out the invastion idea and just release the Clan mechs as they're made month by month
or
PGI needs to get a alot more maps out, dropship mode and maybe some automatic base defense stuff to make CW more interesting
or
The game dies.

There's a few problems with the argument that Packard makes though. Firstly is that we don't know what's actually happening in PGI's building. They could very well be developing two mechs a month - one Inner Sphere (which they release) and one Clan (which they're holding onto). Just because a dev stated that they have not hammered out the way they're going to work Omnimechs does not mean that the mech models are not prepared. It just means that they have to go back and add hardpoints.

We're also supposed to see a new map (Desert) this month (on the 19th). They're creating new content. But development takes time. I doubt (very much) that PGI would allow the game to go 4 months without the introduction of new content because they know it would severely hurt the game (and therefore their own wallets).

[Norris J Packard]

Sephlock, on 04 March 2013 - 03:18 AM, said:

Did it say that? I don't know if its the sleep deprivation or what but I'm not getting that from the text as quoted.

The article states that all of the Founders money went to IGP.

It doesn't take that much to figure out that they took said money (being a new Publisher and all) and put it into the other two games. Especially when PGI just locks any threads on the topic and has only stated the relationship between them and IGP is "complicated".

[Elizander]

[Norris J Packard]

Artgathan, on 04 March 2013 - 03:44 AM, said:

There's a few problems with the argument that Packard makes though. Firstly is that we don't know what's actually happening in PGI's building. They could very well be developing two mechs a month - one Inner Sphere (which they release) and one Clan (which they're holding onto). Just because a dev stated that they have not hammered out the way they're going to work Omnimechs does not mean that the mech models are not prepared. It just means that they have to go back and add hardpoints.

We're also supposed to see a new map (Desert) this month (on the 19th). They're creating new content. But development takes time. I doubt (very much) that PGI would allow the game to go 4 months without the introduction of new content because they know it would severely hurt the game (and therefore their own wallets).

There's a post I could probably find if I cared enough to look from about one or two months ago there it was actually stated it still takes them a month.

[Inertiaman]

I really do feel like PGI want to achieve more than they have. But it's impossible to find sympathy given how they prioritise work against the resources they have as it stands. Chinese lanterns or a better front end? Can't sell a menu, problem solved!