96 replies to this topic

[Robottiimu2000]

Hi there,

So far I've been a firm believer of MW:O as a product, but now this has started to shift towards a slight worry...

You see I've been playing mostly two games for past half a year. Basic D&D via roll20.net and MW:O so I've been a bit in the shadows how things are developing elsewhere in the gaming market. Couple of days ago I got MW:O bore. Waiting for a new map (and stuff) just few days away usually does this to me. So I decided to try out couple of F2P games people has been going all over.

Case "an aeroplane game":

So F2P going straight against the biggest name in the field (World of tanks (and warplanes)). I jump in and I'm totally impressed with the amount of content, and ease of getting the ropes. There's just a huge amount of maps and planes and play modes, playing is fun and easy to get in to but hard to master.

Case "robot fps game":

Direct opposition of MW:O, I was not so much awestruck with this as with the " aeroplane game" but still very impressive amount of polishing done, not to mention huge visibility everywhere, with "grapichs card"-deals etc. Very similiar to bestselling fps's so very easy to jump in. Plus robots fighting!

While the latter was not much of a game for me, the amount of polished product was hugely impressive for someone whose been playing MW:O for half a year... understandable GUI anyone? While the "aeroplane game" was just good gameplay and a awesome amount of things to do, and yet they are going to implement tanks and ships to the same game in the near future (measured by MW:O standard time). Might I add full specs of people in queue, avarage waiting time to get in to game, users online, frames per second, in and out datarates etc. etc. data of interest available to users.

This got me very worried. Don't get me wrong I think MW:O has pure core of gold. Fighting with battlemech's (or mechai ) has never ever been this much fun, but the competition is pretty darn tough out there. So many people are leaving MW:O to wait more content "perhaps" returning.

I don't know do we need ECM tweaks or SRM tweaks.. hmmm perhaps.. but man do we need a catch! Something that makes you go WOW! You know something awesome that only this game has to offer besides good gameplay, which we already have, but so many games has good gameplay as well. And after this expedition I have a feeling that sooner is better than later, not saying though the game is doomed without one, but I'm starting to have my doubts will the community last for a long wait?

Oh man do I hope devs are being so silent because the devs are about to come out with their secretly developed CW and clans, and not because the devs really strugling to make the patches and living from hand to mouth...

sincerely,
Robo

[Ghost_19Hz]

i think PGI is a much smaller company than those, which is part of the problem. Their parent company may have seen the money from the founders program as a signal that the team can remain small to maximize profits.

[Stoicblitzer]

tl;dr. patch today.

[AlexEss]

Hawken (i asume that is what you are talking about) is a mech game in name only... every thing in that game seems to behaves like every other shooter ever made. it is UT with some better graphics. Not saying it is bad game. Just a very different game.

WoT does have about two.. maybe three years of development on MW:O (if we are to follow standard development times) and then two years "in the wild" so even if we count conservative WoT have a three year headstart

I have no clue what the aeroplane game is...

So i am still not worried, would it have been smart from a PR/Burnout angle to not release the game until it had another year in development... perhaps. Is the game in danger of being turned over dead.. nope. This game will remain a small game with a very loyal core and a fairly large pool of people coming and going.


At least that is my take on it.

[3rdworld]

If you don't have doubts after seeing the balance of this game.....

PGI going for balance

Edited by 3rdworld, 19 March 2013 - 07:46 AM.

[KingCobra]

Well Robo your right about 5 years ago I got bored with World of Warcraft it was fun but I wanted something new so I downloaded the private server software installed it on my computer and went to work converting it over to Battletech instead of orcs humans etc. I took all the characters rebuilt them in 3dmax after making some modules and we had inner sphere factions clans etc. WOW has over 1 million items for a basic server so I started to convert items as well. I rebuilt the whole map system with futuristic buildings even converted the balloons to transport's. This all took me 2 years and I am just one person so you can do a lot with just a few people PGI has no excuse why this game is not more advanced or evolved. It all boils down to direction from the upper management as in the lead designer. If its always 1 step forward and 2 steps backward it slows everything down. I still have the BT Like Universe I made with World of Warcraft still on disk maybe some day ill make it into a true game.

[Lyteros]

3rdworld, on 19 March 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

If you don't have doubts after seeing the balance of this game.....

PGI going for balance

Pretty much this.

The real problem are the golds / yay sayers though, who defend and declare every PGI decision holy.
They think they cannot let their holy grail be criticized. After 10 years without a MW game - they dont realize that ignoring problems kill the game, not talking about them and fixing them.

[MN03]

This game is a cheese fest. A-1's/3l's/etc topping the scoreboards. Being 2-shotted in my assault by splatcats is just fun and requires so much skill. PGI has shown itself that it's way to slow to balance this crap (most cheesebuilds have been around for months now).

[PANZERBUNNY]

Coollant Flush.

Nuff said.

MN03, on 19 March 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

This game is a cheese fest. A-1's/3l's/etc topping the scoreboards. Being 2-shotted in my assault by splatcats is just fun and requires so much skill. PGI has shown itself that it's way to slow to balance this crap (most cheesebuilds have been around for months now).

Their solution is to make it so people can choose their mech when they see what the map is so EVERYONE can use their splat Cats when they discover it's a small urban map.

[Ordin Hall]

Stoicblitzer, on 19 March 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

tl;dr. patch today.

Get out goldvision, you are only a detriment to the game.

[zverofaust]

All of it boils down to PGI being new and inexperienced in cutting edge game creation.

They have put together quite a wonderful and well-done package of code and art and created a stable game.

But yes, they are falling short of achieving the critical success of having actual fun gameplay, with interesting and inspired balancing mechanics, and IMHO are focusing way too much on trying to milk people. Since MWO went open beta it seems the majority of their development time has gone towards making things for us to spend real money on, rather than actually finishing the god damned game we were promised a year ago.

[AlexEss]

KingCobra, on 19 March 2013 - 07:46 AM, said:

Well Robo your right about 5 years ago I got bored with World of Warcraft it was fun but I wanted something new so I downloaded the private server software installed it on my computer and went to work converting it over to Battletech instead of orcs humans etc. I took all the characters rebuilt them in 3dmax after making some modules and we had inner sphere factions clans etc. WOW has over 1 million items for a basic server so I started to convert items as well. I rebuilt the whole map system with futuristic buildings even converted the balloons to transport's. This all took me 2 years and I am just one person so you can do a lot with just a few people PGI has no excuse why this game is not more advanced or evolved. It all boils down to direction from the upper management as in the lead designer. If its always 1 step forward and 2 steps backward it slows everything down. I still have the BT Like Universe I made with World of Warcraft still on disk maybe some day ill make it into a true game.

Not to doubt you in any way... Nor belittle your effort but seeing as the blizzard devs did all the heavy lifting for you i have a hard time seeing what this has to do with anything... Ofc a TC or a mod is easier to make then a full game because you build on a working foundation (and if you start messing with said foundation you will run in to problems)

But then again... desktop devs knows best i guess?

[KinLuu]

There is progress.

It is slow, but it is there.

As long as this is true, the game will be fine.

[zhajin]

I do agree the development cycle of MWO is painfully slow. Ive been playing mmo "betas" for over a decade, including large and small developers, and do not recall any other game with such a slow update and content cycle.

what scares me is the possibility it is slow not due to lack of developers, but due to lack of quality and experience. good developers even on a small team can do some amazing things. inexperience leading to poor code design will make it nearly impossible for the game to progress.

[LordDante]

ok there is a lot of work to be done and many things to be balanced BUT never underestimate the hardcore battletech nerd fanbase ! its huge!any other game i would be worried but mwo .... nah give em time

Edited by LordDante, 19 March 2013 - 07:57 AM.

[3rdworld]

KinLuu, on 19 March 2013 - 07:55 AM, said:

There is progress.

It is slow, but it is there.

As long as this is true, the game will be fine.

The game is more unballanced now than it has been for the few hours Art was introduced.

What progress are we seeing other than more bad mechs added?

[MrPenguin]

Stoicblitzer, on 19 March 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

tl;dr. patch today.

Yep, just waiting for the usual crowed to come in and say that the patch has ruined the game forever and that they're going to leave the game and PGI should feel bad.

Hell, Raven's are getting a nerf today. So that should garner quite a delicious amount of tears.

Edited by MrPenguin, 19 March 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[F lan Ker]

S!

The "aeroplane game" is propably War Thunder by Gaijin. It sure has evolved and evoles fast catering from easy settings to hardcore. Maps are big and look good, the overall atmosphere is nice in them. Not a foggy brownish whatever with a grain on top of it. Makers of WoT tried to make their own similar World of Warplanes, but it lost the competition to War Thunder early on.

MWO sure lacks deeper content other than smahs Mechs and win/lose, rinse repeat. And I hope CW will not be just the same rinse/repeat with a bit different flavor coated on it. Saw that already in WoT and do not need it here either. Copying the propably biggest F2P is not the most sound idea as it will not work 100%. Tanks appeal more than Mechs to common people.

So hopefully today's patch has something new not mentioned yet, giving us that catch

[zverofaust]

F lan Ker, on 19 March 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

S!

The "aeroplane game" is propably War Thunder by Gaijin. It sure has evolved and evoles fast catering from easy settings to hardcore. Maps are big and look good, the overall atmosphere is nice in them. Not a foggy brownish whatever with a grain on top of it. Makers of WoT tried to make their own similar World of Warplanes, but it lost the competition to War Thunder early on.

MWO sure lacks deeper content other than smahs Mechs and win/lose, rinse repeat. And I hope CW will not be just the same rinse/repeat with a bit different flavor coated on it. Saw that already in WoT and do not need it here either. Copying the propably biggest F2P is not the most sound idea as it will not work 100%. Tanks appeal more than Mechs to common people.

So hopefully today's patch has something new not mentioned yet, giving us that catch

Why do you start every post with S!

No seriously, I'm really interested to hear the reasoning behind this one.

[Elizander]

All I know is that tanks, airplanes, and warships don't have as many moving parts or are anywhere near as cool as giant robots.