2001 replies to this topic

[EvilCow]

Well after a while I reached the conclusion that the silent majority that does not post on the forum and want 3PV is just a smoke screen. The whole brilliant idea is that if you can look at your mech you would be more motivated in purchasing colors and camos.

[Barghest Whelp]

Terran123rd, on 30 April 2013 - 10:18 PM, said:

The bird in the hand can only feed the man for so long, ravenous, ever-growing creature he is. Before long he must also pursue the bird in the bush if he expects to live.

An MMO, especially an F2P one, as much as it's fans may wish it to do so, cannot subsist on just a core group of dedicated fans, let alone do important things like pay its devs' bills. EVE, WoW, WoT, Vendetta Online, they all succeed because they continually work to bring in new players, even if doing so isn't especially appreciated by those they already have.

Basically, as much as it ticks you off, the devs can't afford to NOT take the chance of ticking you off if ticking you off brings in more players. It's not that we don't matter, just that we, the current players, are just one variable in the equation. If our wishes conflict with the potential growth of the game, well.......prepare to get pissed off.

Yes, now see, you mentioned EVE there. The thing about EVE is, all though they do try and bring in new players, they never move away from their core product. If players all of a sudden were safe in High-sec, they would kill the game completely, because they would loose their core players and the game would die.

Another thing is, that just like in EVE, players are the content in the F2P world. In a niche product like EVE, it is imperative that the core product stays the same. The way to bring in new players is to give them something to do that does not conflict with the core product. I.E: if CCP gave the players an activity that they could do in completely safety from the sharks, it would mean that the older players no longer had their content, which is newer players to harass.

EVE is the living proof that staying true to the ideals of your product, and not dumbing it down is the way to go with a niche product. Mechwarrior is, and always has been a niche product. It doesn't appeal to the general masses. Games like Armored core do. It's quick, simple, and it has Ice scating with jumpjets.

See, 3PV is very far away from the top of that list, and they move away from the core product, and they separate the content from their already established whales. That's a massive risk, for some reward that's not even a sure thing. I wonder where they got this idea from. I would love to see some figures, because social media and the forums dictate exactly the opposite.

Plenty of games managed to become popular without 3PV. Counter strike didn't have 3PV. Borderlands didn't have 3PV. Those two games alone prove that 3PV view has nothing to do with a game becoming popular.

[Draco Harkins]

^This. If they dont care about the "soul" of the Battletech IP then they AT LEAST should ear the money in the bank screaming that it will be alone in the dark and die alone.

[r4plez]

This is how Piranha keeps words

Edited by r4plez, 01 May 2013 - 12:43 PM.

[DeaconW]

Thontor, on 01 May 2013 - 04:53 AM, said:

The UAV has nothing to do with 3rd person.

There are those of us who *hope* that an expendable UAV (hopefully an MC purchase only) will be the way they implement 3PV...Oh, and the UAV will not only be expendable but can be shot down. It's just an evil little hope of some of the 1PV-only crowd. The whiners get their 3PV but have to pay real money for every use and I get to shoot it down if my aim is good...plus it acts as a "marker" for where an enemy mech is located. I know, I know...but some of us have *dreams*, man....*dreams*...

[Barghest Whelp]

DeaconW, on 01 May 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

There are those of us who *hope* that an expendable UAV (hopefully an MC purchase only) will be the way they implement 3PV...Oh, and the UAV will not only be expendable but can be shot down. It's just an evil little hope of some of the 1PV-only crowd. The whiners get their 3PV but have to pay real money for every use and I get to shoot it down if my aim is good...plus it acts as a "marker" for where an enemy mech is located. I know, I know...but some of us have *dreams*, man....*dreams*...

You know, that's not such a bad idea. That way the 3PV crowd get to pay their way in to the game, so we're ensured they don't ruin our game without giving anything in return, and there's a disadvantage to using it, and there's an effective counter to it

It's like win win win man! It's christmas, easter and my birthday all at once. Oh my god, I need to swap trousers now

[Barghest Whelp]

Buddahcjcc, on 01 May 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

They actually DID move away from their core product. It was partly called Incarna, Walking in Stations and the "Summer of Rage". It ended up effectively tanking the company White Wolf and cost CCP 20% of their employees (funnily enough, they fired mostly community managers - the ppl that were directly relating to the customers).
Im sure if you Googled it youd find a writeup on it



say it with me...

That's also why they had to scrap incarna. I remember Jita being on fire, and people queing up for shooting the jita monument.

But the whole debacle of them letting 20% of their staff go, that was because they tried to grab to much at once. Three major projects and not enough funds. They got an investment loan of about 12 million dollars, and couldn't rake in enough dividents. Largely due to wasting resources on incarna, when they should have been fixing gamebreaking bugs instead.

The patch after that however did focus on improving stuff that got left behind and got them back on track. Sure, it took a while before they regained the trust of their customers, but once again it was proven that the "vocal minority" wasn't a minority after all.

Is this game well enough established to survive such a debacle? Does, PGI have enough cash stashed up to survive 6 months of economic downturn?

Besides, once 3PV is implemented, it's going to be very hard to remove it. Incarna on the other hand, didn't actually conflict with the core product, and all they had to do was stop wasting developer resources on it.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Barghest Whelp, on 02 May 2013 - 12:57 AM, said:

Largely due to wasting resources on incarna, when they should have been fixing gamebreaking bugs instead.

Hence why I blame Incarna in part for that
But them moving dev resources away from "FiS" (heck, as I said THEN, "The fact that they even differentiate Fis/WiS at all is a bad sign") was all part and parcel to them losing focus on one game, then "greed is good" then the leaked email from Helmer, then it just snowballed. It wasnt ONE THING, it was all of it that caused their issues, but the one main bit that looks like their problem WAS they looked away from their core product and got greedy.

Barghest Whelp, on 02 May 2013 - 12:57 AM, said:

Besides, once 3PV is implemented, it's going to be very hard to remove it. Incarna on the other hand, didn't actually conflict with the core product, and all they had to do was stop wasting developer resources on it.

Eighteen months of wasted time/money wasnt it?
as for removing it, last I knew the Incarna crap was still IN EVE

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 02 May 2013 - 01:03 AM.

[Barghest Whelp]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 02 May 2013 - 12:58 AM, said:

Hence why I blame Incarna in part for that




Eighteen months of wasted time/money wasnt it?

Close enough. I think they had a small team working on it for more than 2 years, but in the last 6 months they went full ****** and had three different offices almost completely dedicated to work on that useless pile of garbage.

But yeah, I seem to recall them mentioning something about 18 months. At least there was a massive content draught for about 18 months, and that's when they announced that they weren't done yet, and the player had a to wait a bit more. Needless to say, that's when Jita burned.

[Mr Blonde]

I have the perfect implementation for 3rd person in MWO. A dedicated server, which is not connected in any way to the public. Whoever is pushing this can then play it as much as they like, and not infect the game. After the novelty wears off in an hour or two the server can be tossed into the nearest incinerator. I played World of Tanks for about an hour, and quickly realized that compared to MWO it sucks really bad, in my opinion 3rd person was a big factor in the crappiness. It had potential. I already can play a 3rd person view, it's called TT Battletech.

[Terran123rd]

/me wonders if he should mention reading a dev journal that mentions expansions for Incarna...

[Barghest Whelp]

Mr Blonde, on 02 May 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

I have the perfect implementation for 3rd person in MWO. A dedicated server, which is not connected in any way to the public. Whoever is pushing this can then play it as much as they like, and not infect the game. After the novelty wears off in an hour or two the server can be tossed into the nearest incinerator. I played World of Tanks for about an hour, and quickly realized that compared to MWO it sucks really bad, in my opinion 3rd person was a big factor in the crappiness. It had potential. I already can play a 3rd person view, it's called TT Battletech.

Actually, there's one more option. It's called mechassault. However I get the feeling that you're not very interested, so I'm not sure why I'm telling you this.

Oh yeah, now I remember, it was in hopes of the devs actually reading this thread, and the golden opportunity to poop in their faces by comparing this game with mechassault.

[CyBerkut]

I remember the Eve Online Incarna / leaked internal CCP employee newsletter debacle, etc. It was a classic example of management hubris that bit them in the arse. I have pointed to that example in some other thread in these forums, in fact. Their initial attempts at damage control were ill conceived, and actually served to compound the problem.

It's not hard to understand how the CEO, and probably some other upper management could become so over-confident in their own judgement... after all, they had a long running, successful game. They had made a lot of good moves along the way. But they just couldn't help themselves, and bought into their own hype, and it cost them.

I give the CEO credit for finally owning up to his erroneous thinking, after the players council (whatever it's called) flew out there and gave CCP an earful. I stuck with the game awhile longer, but finally decided it wasn't really fun for me anymore. Many of my corporation mates have gotten back into the game recently, but I still find no attraction in the idea. The $45/month I was dropping in CCP's pocket is better spent elsewhere... Quality high fidelity sims like the DCS series, and hardware, for instance... and maybe even MWO again, if they make the right moves.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

CyBerkut, on 02 May 2013 - 03:02 PM, said:

It's not hard to understand how the CEO, and probably some other upper management could become so over-confident in their own judgement... after all, they had a long running, successful game. They had made a lot of good moves along the way. But they just couldn't help themselves, and bought into their own hype, and it cost them.

That wasnt exactly hard to do for them given the years of HTFU they spewwed in reaction to ppl crying about the game and the players OF that game agreeing, again, for years, notwithstanding their music videos lol



I do have to ask though;

Quote

Jeremy LaMont ‏@Jeremy_LaMont 11h

@bryanekman Wait, I'm not up to date on this. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle?
Expand
Bryan Ekman Bryan Ekman ‏@bryanekman 11h

@Jeremy_LaMont You bet. A new consumable. Due out May 21st (now) #mwo
Expand
Jeremy LaMont Jeremy LaMont ‏@Jeremy_LaMont 11h

@bryanekman Well how about that! I know you guys have stated that mixed arms is not in the scope of the project before, but... maybe?
Expand
Bryan Ekman Bryan Ekman ‏@bryanekman 11h

@Jeremy_LaMont controlled by a player, correct. This is unmanned.

So wonder if this means we will be having 3rd person view in the games with 1st person after all? Because if you think about it, as we've seen with the zoom module, they cant do picture in picture rendering in Cryengine 3, how are they planning on working a UAV you pilot yourself? If ppl cant handle walking in their mech in first person how are they going to do it while having to control a flying camera too?

[Terran123rd]

When you activate the UAV, your view switches to that and your 'mech can't move until you switch back to your 'mech. Since there's already a system in place that allows camera-switching, such a system could conceivably be used to implement the UAV.

Might not be what PGI will do, but that's one way.

[irony1999]

You guys are too ambitious. Most likely 1st/3rd person will be a startup option you set before the match... because its easiest to do it that way...

And UAVs will get you expanded sensor coverage on the map, and be commanded by aiming somewhere and hitting a button to fire/move the UAV to that location... because its easiest for them to do it that way.

They're having trouble getting a new UI and CW out. They're not killing themselves reinventing the wheel for 3rd person (or UAVs)

[Gremlich Johns]

UAVs make no sense unless your orbital surveillance system cannot see the ground. C'mon, 3050 for crying out loud.

[HarmAssassin]

Orbital surveillance can also be accomplished by the drop ships and jump ships still in orbit - don't need satellites.

[Warge]

Bryan Ekman, on 21 March 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

• HUD will be significantly reduced if not completely removed.

I like this idea: if 3rd PV active - no HUD at all.

[Dishevel]

3rd person is coming and what we want does not matter. Remember?
All you have to do is read my signature and the intent is clear. It is coming. "Shut Up and be good little money machines."