57 replies to this topic

[valkyrie]

Author's Note: This isn't a jab at Garth - having been a Community Moderator myself I know how hard his job is. This is about spreading the word about MWO/MWT as a whole.

I spent most of today hanging out at the SXSW Gaming Expo. While I was there, I noticed there were a LOT of F2P games being shown off. There were plenty of "meh" titles and some crappy Second Life clones, but the big names were there in force. Wargaming.net was there with a Hummer and a bunch of laptops with World of Tanks/World of Warplanes, and they were giving out cards with a week of Premium time and about $5 worth of in-game gold to people who played (plus a neat reusable tote, which was a big hit since Austin recently banned plastic shopping bags by city ordinance).

Also present? Meteor, who had Hawken running on about 4 PCs for anyone who wanted to stop by and play. They were also giving out little promo codes (which currently don't work but I'll give them an A for effort) and selling Hawken swag like t-shirts and graphic novels.

After seeing these two, I decided "well, I'm sure IGP has a booth around here somewhere! I'll check that out." An hour later, I'd found Devolver Digital, a ton of "game design" universities, some tabletop games stores, Rooster Teeth, countless iOS studios, even a booth selling custom .300 Win. Mag and .338 Lapua Magnum rifles with built-in ballistic targeting computers for over $20,000 each, but absolutely nothing MechWarrior related aside from one booth that had BattleTech rulebooks on sale. Even a booth for the Unity Engine had absolutely nothing MechWarrior Tactics related there.

Now, this has me wondering - exactly where is MWO/MWT being marketed? Of course, there's a big push to get old MechWarrior and BattleTech fans on board, but we're a very small community. The game will never hit WoT levels of popularity just by pulling veterans back in. I've seen the PC Gamer cover story, and occasionally a news story will show up on Joystiq or Penny Arcade, but the only actual ad or publicity stunt I've seen for MWO OR MWT has been this ad, which has become a giant in-joke amongst Kong:



Now, my understanding is that IGP holds a lot of the cards in this respect. My personal theory is that right now, MWO/MWT's success is supposed to be reliant almost entirely on word of mouth. That's great, but few successful games ever got as big as they did by word of mouth alone. I seem to recall MWO being shown at PAX last year with the Razer Artemis, but I'm now wondering how often MWO/MWT are hitting the trade show circuit - is it just for big hitters like PAX or E3? Are they even showing up at GDC like Wargaming.net always does? Even if they are, where are the little things that make people play the game? The WoT promo stuff I got likely cost the company very little, but people were lining up to play the game just for the bag - and playing the game will doubtlessly score them some converts.

So, PGI/IGP, where are your promotions? How are you reaching out to get new players? What about promotional things like concept art - are those being held back, along with other things? Reading and listening to Garth's posts, it almost seems like he knows a LOT of stuff we want to know, but someone is muzzling him for some reason, which is why we get things like Ask the Devs 33, which may as well have been called "The Answer is 'No'" 33. There's questions they can go into detail in answering, but someone is telling them they can't tell the public that.

For those of us who go to shows like this, have you seen PGI/IGP anywhere? What are they doing to ensure our game has a vibrant, growing userbase in the future that I haven't seen? I'm genuinely curious, and you should be too.

[StandingInFire]

I think the main reason PGI/IGP isn't putting that much into marketing is because it is still after all beta, and they know there are still lots of bugs/optimization/network code/feature stuff to add.

One of the worst things you can do is give a new player who doesn't already have some interest in the genre an obviously unfinished product as he will drop it without a second thought.

[valkyrie]

StandingInFire, on 09 March 2013 - 10:33 PM, said:

I think the main reason PGI/IGP isn't putting that much into marketing is because it is still after all beta, and they know there are still lots of bugs/optimization/network code/feature stuff to add.

One of the worst things you can do is give a new player who doesn't already have some interest in the genre an obviously unfinished product as he will drop it without a second thought.

And having a larger sample size to draw from when you're looking for issues with your game is bad because...?

Hawken is in beta too last I checked. They're still doing their publicity blitz.

[Ralgas]

Given the absolute flogging of pretty much anything they've done the last 2 months on the forums i don't blame them for not puting anyone in the team out for public scrutiny. It is a real shame though

[StandingInFire]

valkyrie, on 09 March 2013 - 10:37 PM, said:

And having a larger sample size to draw from when you're looking for issues with your game is bad because...?

Hawken is in beta too last I checked. They're still doing their publicity blitz.

I haven't been following hawken closely at all but they are much closer to having a finished product last time I checked (no core features missing).

Core Features Missing from MWO:
- Community Warfare (PGI doesn't consider this game out of beta till that is in at the very least) [Also a "selling point" for the game]
- State Rewind for Ballistics
- Collisions
- 12v12
- DX11 and many other graphical optimizations (MWO atm has fairly poor performance on a lot of systems)

[Team Leader]

StandingInFire, on 09 March 2013 - 10:45 PM, said:

I haven't been following hawken closely at all but they are much closer to having a finished product last time I checked (no core features missing).

Core Features Missing from MWO:
- Community Warfare (PGI doesn't consider this game out of beta till that is in at the very least) [Also a "selling point" for the game]
- State Rewind for Ballistics
- Collisions
- 12v12
- DX11 and many other graphical optimizations (MWO atm has fairly poor performance on a lot of systems)

This might be it. However because I'm uh... Embarrassed to say I'm on the forums a lot, those ad choices things have a really high chance of saying "MWO" on them. That's the only ads I've seen as well, with the only major attention outside the site being aegis kleais's ultra negative reviews lol

[Crunk Prime]

They wont advertise it because the game is a ******* joke. Most people think it wont even last a year, and if you ask anybody online about it, they ask why you would even bother playing it when theres Hawken.

MWO in a nutshell:

-horrible base capping game modes, with no basic game modes like team death match which is what everybody wants
-horrible new player experience
-horrible maps
-horribly unbalanced items and weapons, with everybody in charge having no idea how to properly balance things, and ignores the community on what needs to be fixed or changed
-slowest updates ive ever seen
-one of the worst online and player communities ive ever seen

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Crunk Prime, on 09 March 2013 - 11:14 PM, said:

-one of the worst online and player communities ive ever seen

Its nowhere near.
EVE is FAR worse than this, as is 4chan and WoW

Hell in EVE a certain person tried to get their corp to get another player to commit suicide by harassing him into it. I havent seen that yet here

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 09 March 2013 - 11:28 PM.

[valkyrie]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 09 March 2013 - 11:27 PM, said:

Its nowhere near.
EVE is FAR worse than this, as is 4chan and WoW

Hell in EVE a certain person tried to get their corp to get another player to commit suicide by harassing him into it. I havent seen that yet here

I think Crunk's jab at the community was more against the way nobody ever questions PGI unless it's something that's a blatantly bad idea (see: Coolantgate). Everything else usually gets drowned out with "IT'S A BETA!" and "learn 2 play," even when the actual issues are discussed at length, the facts laid out with detailed analysis, and step-by-step suggestions on how to alleviate or even solve the problem outright are presented.

[Wounded Slug]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 09 March 2013 - 11:27 PM, said:

Hell in EVE a certain person tried to get their corp to get another player to commit suicide by harassing him into it. I havent seen that yet here

Is that really what people think happened? Wow.

[aptest]

Crunk Prime, on 09 March 2013 - 11:14 PM, said:

-horrible base capping game modes, with no basic game modes like team death match which is what everybody wants

TDM is not a required or desirable core game mode for MWO. This is a mech game, not an unreal clone with mechs (*caugh* hawken *caugh*)

[borisof007]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 09 March 2013 - 11:27 PM, said:

Its nowhere near.
EVE is FAR worse than this, as is 4chan and WoW

Hell in EVE a certain person tried to get their corp to get another player to commit suicide by harassing him into it. I havent seen that yet here

Anyone remember Tseric from the original WoW vanilla days forums? That guy was ruthless as a community manager.

This community is JUST fine. WoW and EvE are way way worse.

[Crunk Prime]

aptest, on 09 March 2013 - 11:59 PM, said:

TDM is not a required or desirable core game mode for MWO. This is a mech game, not an unreal clone with mechs (*caugh* hawken *caugh*)

That is the biggest load of crap. Most people in the game groan and roll their eyes as soon as YOU BASE IS BEING CAPTURED pops up becuase they dont wnat to have to deal with that garbage. They just want to shoot at other mechs.

Until a proper "red team defends the base/blue attacks the base" mode is put in, a TDM mode would be preferred by most players.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Wounded Slug, on 09 March 2013 - 11:53 PM, said:

Is that really what people think happened? Wow.

I can post the video but itll get deleted when the Goons report it but it SHOWS thats what happened.
Google it its not hard to find

Hell "eve cyberbully" brings it right up

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 10 March 2013 - 12:13 AM.

[roguetrdr]

PGI have been getting their PR and community interaction tips from Hammerpoint Interative.

Community is upset about something they feel will negatively affect the game overall and their own fun while playing the game(but pgi will make money off it)- PGI goes full republican guard.

Community is upset about unbalance or a bug that negatively affects the game overall and their own fun while playing (but pgi aren't going to make money)- Ghost town

Edited by roguetrdr, 10 March 2013 - 12:20 AM.

[Wounded Slug]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 10 March 2013 - 12:12 AM, said:

I can post the video but itll get deleted when the Goons report it but it SHOWS thats what happened.
Google it its not hard to find

Hell "eve cyberbully" brings it right up

I'm an EVE player myself, I know exactly what happened, but this isn't an EVE forum or thread so I'll stop as to avoid going off topic.

To get back to the topic at hand, I think, or at least hope, PGI knows that the game isn't where anyone wants it to be, and that they want to get the game closer to what was originally advertised before they get to anything beyond a few ads and articles floating around the web.

[Writer]

aptest, on 09 March 2013 - 11:59 PM, said:

TDM is not a required or desirable core game mode for MWO. This is a mech game, not an unreal clone with mechs (*caugh* hawken *caugh*)

It's 2013, why are we even still using 2 base modes of gameplay on asymmetrical maps? One team should be offense, another defense. It makes more sense from a canon-perspective anyway.

Two base is pointless from an 8-Man perspective.

PGI doesn't seem to be spending much money on community outreach.

Edited by Rhenis, 10 March 2013 - 12:29 AM.

[Adrian Steel]

Wounded Slug, on 10 March 2013 - 12:25 AM, said:

they want to get the game closer to what was originally advertised before they get to anything beyond a few ads and articles

You must be new here.

[valkyrie]

Wounded Slug, on 10 March 2013 - 12:25 AM, said:

I'm an EVE player myself, I know exactly what happened, but this isn't an EVE forum or thread so I'll stop as to avoid going off topic.

To get back to the topic at hand, I think, or at least hope, PGI knows that the game isn't where anyone wants it to be, and that they want to get the game closer to what was originally advertised before they get to anything beyond a few ads and articles floating around the web.

Rhenis, on 10 March 2013 - 12:28 AM, said:

It's 2013, why are we even still using 2 base modes of gameplay on asymmetrical maps? One team should be offense, another defense. It makes more sense from a canon-perspective anyway.

Two base is pointless from an 8-Man perspective.

PGI doesn't seem to be spending much money on community outreach.

Ok, so here's the thing - I think PGI knows they're not anywhere near where they need to be (though I wish they'd stop working on things like consumables and focus on stuff like ballistics/missile state rewind, better gametypes, and general balance, but that's another thread entirely). The thing is, there's still so much that could be done in the meantime that it boggles the mind. Like I've said in other threads, it's all stuff that can be done by the community and has even been done before by PGI in some cases - comics, videos, concept art packs, dev diaries, etc. It's all suddenly dried up.

The thing is, a lot of this stuff doesn't really require much in the way of effort from PGI. Take the whole "Mech 20" concept art thing. We've been waiting on it forever, but it's yet to show up. Part of me is starting to think it's less PGI's issue and more IGP telling them to ignore those things and focus on stuff we care little about, while simultaneously dodging questions on the stuff we do. Their failure to invite new blood (which the game needs at ALL phases) is an extension of that. I can think of so much stuff that would invite new players but I can see management types shutting it down all the time. Good example would be a weekend of free Premium for all members (non-storable). Suddenly people are telling their friends "hey, now's a good time to start playing, we'll drop this weekend and we can get you your first 'Mech quick!" But, that would require giving something away to raise awareness, so it probably wouldn't happen.

Edited by valkyrie, 10 March 2013 - 12:39 AM.

[Moromillas]

Nah, the numbers are pretty good for testing, well they seem to be anyway.

I don't think they should be marketing quite honestly, but instead having demonstrations about what MWO can do, and what their scope is.