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I've been meaning to make this thread for a while. When I initially talked about it some time ago with some other players, I sort of felt like Sol Roth in Soylent Green when him and the rest of the people at the Exchange discuss the Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report. If you haven't seen the film, basically they determined that the plankton populations in the oceans have completely died out and that a complete breakdown of the Earth's food supply is inevitable. It was a solemn discussion.
Of course though, we should start at the beginning.
It all begins in Closed Beta:
During Closed Beta this was a board that PGI had posted showing their timetable for content in the pipe. They'd later on going to regret that when the Raven was delayed considerably, and most of the features that were supposed to accompany it were also late, and didn't function in any way that made them useful. I am talking about NARC, TAG, and the complete lack of ECM. Anyway. This board is pretty important because at the time, PGI had mentioned how they'd like to introduce two Mechs per month. As you can see, they were planning on releasing the Cicada and the Raven in September. Now that didn't happen. Why? Who knows, it was never really explained.
Then around the same time, but before the Raven was delayed, this article was posted:
The incredibly Detailed, beautifully illustrated, insanely intricate birth of a Mech
(Penny Arcade)
It is a pretty great article. It details the overall process and workflow of the Mech and shows off everything PGI does to bring us Mechs. I love this article, and got me pretty excited for the future of MWO. I mean, if PGI could bring us two Mechs per month of such high quality, what couldn't they do!? Anyway. So then the Raven got delayed, and this caused people a great deal of concern. The Clans were supposed to be coming in March after all, time was of the essence! Over all though, there wasn't much worry. That was of course, until PGI switched back to a one Mech per month schedule and stayed there. This became abundantly obvious once the Cicada was released in October and the Cataphract was released in November. Little could we know though, that things were about to get much worse.
[Openly this doesn't seem like a big deal, but to the people who really pay attention to this game, it should. I know a lot of you have put it in the back of your minds to try and not think about it, but now is the time to think about it. In fact, we should have probably been thinking about it in Closed Beta.]
MechWarrior Online's unconventional crowdfunding pays off
(Gamasutra)
I am going to cut out the relevant section for you;
Quote
The money IGP has picked up from the Founder's Program preorders will go toward Piranha's efforts developing MechWarrior Online and supporting it post-launch. The independent publisher has two other free-to-play titles it intends to launch open betas for later this year: MechWarrior Tactics and Sins of a Dark Age.
"The success of the Founder's Program reinforces IGP's vision to help independent developers build exceptional games with the right economic model for the global marketplace," says IGP CEO Nick Foster.
"The success of the Founder's Program reinforces IGP's vision to help independent developers build exceptional games with the right economic model for the global marketplace," says IGP CEO Nick Foster.
This caused something of a row on the forums, a lot of people wanted to know why the money that was supposed to be going (or assumed to be doing) towards MWO was actually going towards to other games. Finally the Devs commented (paraphrasing), "The Publisher-Developer relationship is complicated." Thread link. One of main reasons for this was that PGI had roughly a dozen positions open at the time, but none of them had been filled. And if IGP was taking the money and spending it on other games, where was PGI going to get the cash to fill these seats? Well, as we now know (if you listen to the NGNG podcast) they haven't hired anyone since at least August.
During the Closed Beta shenanigans that were going on, there was a particular series of patches that caused a lot of gameplay issues. Initially PGI had intended to begin the Open Beta in the middle of October, but that didn't occur due to these patches introducing some large, game breaking bugs. Russ stated that until they were confident they could produce a stable enough game, that they wouldn't open the game. There was also the issue of Founder's Premium Time starting at the beginning of Open Beta, this was also eventually rectified. Then at the end of October, PGI did their final reset and started Open Beta. Now the concern here was that PGI wouldn't go back to the two Mech per month schedule as they had originally intended. Additionally though there was another problem. Prior to Open Beta, PGI had run the PC Gamer article. It had been widely speculated that the Assault Mech that we would be getting would be the last (announced) Inner Sphere Mech for a while.
And a few weeks before the release of the PC Gamer article, someone had leaked a scan of one of the pages. Showing off the Highlander.
However a few days after this picture was leaked, PGI announced the Flea without warning. Suddenly the idea of this being the final Inner Sphere Mech was tossed aside. Now there was going to need to be an entirely new rotation added. Let me explain why this is a problem, initially the timetable was supposed to look like this:
September: Raven / Cicada
October: Cataphract / Stalker
November: Spider / Trebuchet
December: JagerMech / Highlander
Then the following would occur:
January: Clan Light / Clan Medium
February: Clan Heavy / Clan Assault
Which meant that PGI would have been able to easily meet the assumed March deadline for the invasion given the timeline. We now know that PGI has no intentions on doing this, they have stated that the final design for how OmniMechs will function (not when the Mechs will be in the game) should be around April or May. Let me state right now in big, bold letter that the Clan Mechs being delayed is not necessarily a problem. The problem lies in the following:
The Current Timetable:
March: JagerMech
April: Highlander
May: Flea
June: BlackJack
July: Orion
August: <Unannounced Assault Mech>
September: Clan Light Development
October: Clan Medium Development
November: Clan Heavy Development
December: Clan Assault Development
Because PGI seems either unable, or unwilling, to get back to a two Mechs per month timetable, it will inevitably be the end of the year or the beginning of next year before there is even a chance of Clan Mechs being added. This is of course assuming absolutely zero delays. Now the problem with this is that unlike the previous timetable, it takes place over a four month period. Which means, because this is supposed to emulate Closed Beta they must release the first four Clan Mechs at the same time. Otherwise there won't be enough Mechs to fit the individual weight classes, thus you probably won't be able to drop with them properly if we assume that the Clan Faction is added at the same time.This is a huge problem. Imagine playing MWO for four Months, with zero content real being added (except for four Hero Mechs) because PGI does not predict that they will have Community Warfare out until several months after Open Beta is done, which should be around the Summer Time.
This means that in all likelihood, Community Warfare will not be added until the end of the year either. Now this might not seem like a big deal to you, but back in Closed Beta, the delay of the Raven being nearly one month caused a lot of players to stop playing. At the end of the day, the primary content of MWO is the Mechs. Not the paint, not the camo, not the stupid lights in our cockpits. It is the primary content and primary attraction of MechWarrior Online. Without Mechs, there is no game. If PGI stops putting out any new Mechs for four Months, I wholly expect that there will be a repeat of the Raven debacle but on a scale that is many times worse. And since they don't appear to have any plans to circumvent this, I must assume that MechWarrior is basically doomed to being a dead game by the end of the year. Despite what some people with Founders next to their names say, a few hundred people playing does not equate a game with a healthy playerbase. Finally, I'd absolutely love to be wrong. I'd love to play with the Clan Mechs, I'd love for there to be no content drought, but I honestly don't think I will be wrong.
Edited by miSs, 04 March 2013 - 08:02 AM.
Thread was not erased, it was archived in the Beta Forums. Thanks..
