2002 replies to this topic

[Roland Verliden]

The whole "PGI going back on their word" thing made me think of something:

Anyone remember how Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve and based god of PC gaming, once said back in 2007-ish that he'd likely never work on PS3? Yet, cut to 2011, and Portal 2 is is the first PS3 game Valve did themselves. Thing is, when asked about the sudden 180, Gabe offered his reasoning for the shift and admitted that he might have been/was wrong about what he said.

Remember, guys, Bryan is off at PAX East. The devs do certainly have some explaining to do, and maybe the shitstorm will probably help them to formulate a new solution that satisfies some people. I mean, hell, Paul already added some ideas for 3rd-person to avoid it being cheesy. A lot of this is speculation, though, so we'll probably have to wait for Bryan to get back or wait for the next podcast, directorial update, or whatever.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

lol the OP has all of NINETEEN likes. THATS IT

[PlzDie]

Sir Fuzzy, on 23 March 2013 - 06:48 PM, said:

Well, whether there is a "quiet majority" or not is irrelevant. PGI is not required to prove anything. Sorry, but it's true. It's a business and we are customers, not stock owners. We either buy a product or not. End of story.



Again, why would WE, as customers, need to determine this? WE just need to determine if we buy or don't buy. A forum poll determined that 1% of the forum accounts don't want 3rd person. Not surprisingly, this unsanctioned and unprofessional data was discarded by the company. The poll has no official value.



The burden of proof is not on PGI. They can make their product however they want to. Sorry to rain on your parade here but really it's a simple matter of voting with your dollar. If you don't have constructive feedback to offer than you are just wasting your time typing out all these conspiracy theories over and over again.

Your opinion does matter, but it's been expressed already. They took it seriously enough that they made this thread (which has been derailed at this point but whatever). Now it's just waiting to see if you will buy more MC or not in the future.

edit: and I agree with you that MW4 quality 3rd person would suck. I am assuming it will just be another option we can ignore whenever it's implemented.

So as I understand your post, and please do point out if I am wrong, apart from the 3rd PV debate, or the splitting of the community. If I go by what you stated about this being a business and we buying a product, I can go and buy a Porsche tomorrow and then six months down the line when it turns into a VW Beetle should I then be happy with that?

I know I could have gotten a refund and all that but I liked my mechs too much. And for the separate lines, I do not think they will be separate for long.

Edited by Duppie1974, 23 March 2013 - 10:43 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Duppie1974, on 23 March 2013 - 10:41 PM, said:

So as I understand your post, and please do point out if I am wrong, apart from the 3rd PV debate, or the splitting of the community. If I go by what you stated about this being a business and we buying a product, I can go and buy a Porsche tomorrow and then six months down the line when it turns into a VW Beetle should I then be happy with that?

I know I could have gotten a refund and all that but I liked my mechs too much. And for the separate lines, I do not think they will be separate for long.

as for the seperate ques, I call it now. Once they see the numbers per que arent the same, we'll see them get merged and they'll say "that was our position at the time" JUST like they are now about it EVER being in the game at all.

[Deathlike]

I swear whoever was doing that analysis of why people didn't come back for the game because of aforementioned reasons... was lied to.

I can completely understand why 3rd person is wanted and not wanted.. on both ends. The major problem that needs to be resolved at its utmost importance.. 3rd person cannot provide any major advantages vs those playing in 1st person. Once that rule is broken, you will create the problems by literally fracturing the community. It goes w/o saying.

The real problem with this game when it comes to keeping people here is really the learning curve. Having a basic training system (the Training Grounds is only a small portion of what is necessary) has to be the one of the first key things that has to be implemented. All the most popular games have one... even if it's dumbed down to death. At least as it shows the fundamentals of piloting, shooting, and mech building.. you are at least well on your way to not sucking less. Then again, the trial mechs themselves need massive help.

Adding 3rd person does not cure what ails this game... it's great to add more people and many previous MW games had it. The problem is that with some of those games, the issue is the same.

Some thoughts/solutions on the matter:
1) DO NOT render stuff that a 1st person player would not have seen. It's that simple. It's unrealistic, but it's important for competitive play. This includes shakes/knockbacks/collisions. They must have equal, if not nearly equal feedback.

2) DO NOT increase the FOV by too much while in 3rd person. However, this game suffers from a lack of FOV slider (essentially, an officially sanctioned FOV control). This is necessary for those of us that need all that help we can get...

3) DO find ways to make it easier for "face huggers" to be shot while in 3rd person. That is the only real negative 3rd person has vs 1st person.

I can't think of that many more, but I swear whoever was doing the surveys were duped. There is no advantage of adding 3rd person to this game for "improving the play" for driving a mech. That's just simply absurd. I understand wanting 3rd person if you want more players, but you have to literally balance 3rd person correctly.. and not treat it like ECM. That's why people are up at arms about it. Your lack of action or occasionally overreaction to key legitimate issues is a problem.

Edited by Deathlike, 23 March 2013 - 11:17 PM.

[Pando]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 23 March 2013 - 10:33 PM, said:

lol the OP has all of NINETEEN likes. THATS IT

Loud minority remember. This group of persons screaming NO NO NO even if 5,000 strong make up 1.2% of the entire community at 450,000 members.

[Mystere]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 23 March 2013 - 11:08 PM, said:

as for the seperate ques, I call it now. Once they see the numbers per que arent the same, we'll see them get merged and they'll say "that was our position at the time" JUST like they are now about it EVER being in the game at all.

Actually given the information we have so far, I expect the queues to not be separated.

[Tai Bekker]

i'm sure someone else has mentioned this already so i'm just here to push the idea.

Why not just have a Arcade Mode where you drop in the various mission types that people can play where 3rd and 1st person is an option and leave the whole simulation of Community Warfare to 1st person only. This way new players can drop and learn the mission types and how to play while satisfying the core demographic desire for a 1st person only larger meta game. The male action player target demographic Mentioned who play multiplayer FPS won't miss the addition of CW anyway as most of the popular military shooters, from which most draw their experience, lacks the CW feature .

I think War Thunder has a similar system where you can play Arcade, Historical or Real flight styles. Just make Community Warfare mechwarrior's equivalent of historical/simulator. Maybe it isn't about keeping 3rd person out of Mechwarrior online, but keeping it out of the simulation of community warfare...okay no more saying community warfare and simulation.

also, just lock the 3rd person camera behind the Mech at a few meters so they can't swing it around and see 360. I dunno just a few unoriginal ideas.

[Mystere]

David Lono, on 23 March 2013 - 11:50 PM, said:

Why not just have a Arcade Mode where you drop in the various mission types that people can play where 3rd and 1st person is an option and leave the whole simulation of Community Warfare to 1st person only.

Actually, it should not even matter as long as 3PV is implemented right (i.e. visual/sensor information parity with 1PV). That is the key.

[Jonathan Paine]

Solaris 7 style arena combat. Two mechs enter, one mech (or none!) leaves. This is the only competitive mech combat where I'm OK with limited 3rd person views.

[Caleb Lee]

CheeseThief, on 23 March 2013 - 06:55 PM, said:

Firstly the attempt to appease the whiners by segregating the community into a million tiny little bits is the stupidest idea I've heard in a while.


Secondly, how robust is the lighting engine?

A way to do 3rd person fairly would be to add a 'vision' light or something similar to the cockpit, and when in 3rd person making enemy mechs invisible unless 'illuminated' by this vision light. Terrain and buildings stop the light, but not trees or bases. Optimistically doing it with the lighting engine would let the game illuminate the pair of Jagermech arms poking over the hill instead of going 'Ahah, Vision point! Thy mech is now relieved!", but vision points would probably be a lot easier. Also the lighting engine lets the client do it instead of adding more load to the server.


I am in support of 3rd person so long as it doesn't give any awareness advantages over 1st person. I want to be able to flip to 3rd person and oogle my mech and check possible lines of sight on it but I don't want to have to constantly flick between 1st and 3rd for situational awareness nor do I want to have the community chopped into hundreds of little bits by 10+ matchmaking pools.

This would be ideal if they can assure that there is no way to exploit or even hack to give an advantage. I'm not so sure it wouldn't be exploited in some way hence my very firm line against this especially after they said they wouldn't do it.

Basically if I read your post right the only thing they'd see would be the world, their mech, and anything they could normally see out of that specific cockpit? Are they going to design custom views as well as not every cockpit has the same limitations.

I.E. an Atlas can't see the light mech humping their leg.

Also, what about taking damage to their back? I don't want the player to be able to see that either. If I work hard to get an ambush on someone, I don't want them to see the direction the fire is coming from regardless of what mech they are in and what mech I am in.

Good idea but it does need some more fleshing out and hopefully gives PGI an idea of how screwed up this will be to do it right and time consuming. Anything else and they alienate a big portion of their player base, silent or vocal.

Edited by Caleb Lee, 24 March 2013 - 12:04 AM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Pando, on 23 March 2013 - 11:19 PM, said:

Loud minority remember. This group of persons screaming NO NO NO even if 5,000 strong make up 1.2% of the entire community at 450,000 members.

you have absolute proof of this? OTHER than what theyre trying to shovel?
Where are YOUR polls proving this?

Also; where you getting that 450,000 number? because the devs themselves have told us on numerous occasions the forums tracker number doesnt mean anything.

And they took away the online counter in game so we actually have no way of knowing how many players there are. They told us there was "no good business reason" for them to tell us that number.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 24 March 2013 - 12:18 AM.

[Krell Darkmoon]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 24 March 2013 - 12:15 AM, said:

And they took away the online counter in game so we actually have no way of knowing how many players there are. They told us there was "no good business reason" for them to tell us that number.

I remember when the Counter went away, numbers were getting Low daily and then it was gone.

I wonder how many times I've even logged in this year so far?? Can't be that many, boredom brews fast in MWO for me so far....

[Volthorne]

I just want to say:

If we wanted 3PV, we would have gone and bought the newest Armored Core (whatever the hell it is called), or the next best thing (which might be FireFall, it has power suits). Instead, we bought into MW:O specifically becuase of the "MW" part of the title.

There are games where 3PV are nice and all. This isn't one of them. I'll "borrow" and modify a quote from Tuco, now: if you're going to improve the new user experience, do it, don't implement a placebo".

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

As Ive said elsewhere:
Turorial / Documentation > 3rd pov

[valkyrie]

Volthorne, on 24 March 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

I just want to say:

If we wanted 3PV, we would have gone and bought the newest Armored Core (whatever the hell it is called), or the next best thing (which might be FireFall, it has power suits). Instead, we bought into MW:O specifically becuase of the "MW" part of the title.

Armored Core V is the newest one; AC: Verdict Day comes out later this year. It also has a relatively in-depth persistent online multiplayer - you could even call it...community warfare.

Nonetheless, it's not a great comparison since AC gameplay is so much faster than MechWarrior that 3PV doesn't impact it nearly as much. For MechWarrior, it'd likely eliminate anything resembling tactical maneuvering through cover in a heartbeat.

[Caleb Lee]

Ok, here's some constructive feedback regarding 3rd Person and any other hot topic...

Instead of opening up the forums to a LOT of banter back and forth with angry invective (of which I'm very guilty), how about using a professional Survey Service for key issues such as Survey Monkey and this whole Poll I created:


http://mwomercs.com/...erately-needed/

It would allow you to poll the entire community instead of just the forums same as you send out newsletters and do it in a professional manner where everyone can see the results.

I.E. Survey:

Do you want 3rd person? Yes/No

If the overwhelming i.e. 2/3 or more majority say yes, then you create a new Survey based on suggestions from threads like these i.e.

Would you support 3rd person in:

A) Training Grounds? Yes/No
Cadet Queue until they complete starter missions? Yes/No
C) Split playerbase with separate queues? Yes/No
D) Limit 3rd person view to only what they could see out of the cockpit normally? Yes/No

And so on.... then we all get to see what everyone wants without screaming back and forth about who's the vocal or silent majority and most people who care ANYTHING about the game would respond as it would be anonymously done via a 3rd party system that you could then draw whatever reports you needed to.

This would make PGI come across in a professional manner and set you apart from a lot of the other studios and the path you currently seem to be walking as all we have to go on are the 5000+ polls saying NO to this solution and it LOOKS like you are walking all over us.

[valkyrie]

Caleb Lee, on 24 March 2013 - 12:54 AM, said:

Ok, here's some constructive feedback regarding 3rd Person and any other hot topic...

Instead of opening up the forums to a LOT of banter back and forth with angry invective (of which I'm very guilty), how about using a professional Survey Service for key issues such as Survey Monkey and this whole Poll I created:


http://mwomercs.com/...erately-needed/

It would allow you to poll the entire community instead of just the forums same as you send out newsletters and do it in a professional manner where everyone can see the results.

I.E. Survey:

Do you want 3rd person? Yes/No

If the overwhelming i.e. 2/3 or more majority say yes, then you create a new Survey based on suggestions from threads like these i.e.

Would you support 3rd person in:

A) Training Grounds? Yes/No
Cadet Queue until they complete starter missions? Yes/No
C) Split playerbase with separate queues? Yes/No
D) Limit 3rd person view to only what they could see out of the cockpit normally? Yes/No

And so on.... then we all get to see what everyone wants without screaming back and forth about who's the vocal or silent majority and most people who care ANYTHING about the game would respond as it would be anonymously done via a 3rd party system that you could then draw whatever reports you needed to.

This would make PGI come across in a professional manner and set you apart from a lot of the other studios and the path you currently seem to be walking as all we have to go on are the 5000+ polls saying NO to this solution and it LOOKS like you are walking all over us.

Bonus points if they send it out to player e-mails instead of just sticking it on the website.. All they have to do is ask people to take a few minutes to help make MechWarrior Online™ better and they'll probably get responses.

Edited by valkyrie, 24 March 2013 - 12:55 AM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Caleb Lee, on 24 March 2013 - 12:54 AM, said:

whole Poll I created:

the whole poll THEY DONT CARE ABOUT
you mean?
they make numbers up in their minds then say that they polled people and that majority are the ones theyre working with.

Edited by Mechwarrior Buddah, 24 March 2013 - 01:01 AM.

[Caleb Lee]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 24 March 2013 - 01:00 AM, said:

the whole poll THEY DONT CARE ABOUT
you mean?
they make numbers up in their minds then say that they polled people and that majority are the ones theyre working with.

Aye... that's why I'm recommending a 3rd party survey that we can trust that can be filled out via email or form on this site. Either way, each player gets a single vote and then we get to the heart of the matter.

They say we represent a minority versus the majority of the playerbase/demographic that 'wants 3rd person'.

I'm basically calling them out to prove it in 3rd party/neutral setting that costs them virtually nothing. Heck, I'd pay for their subscription.

Frankly I think they are making things up and not caring what we say or do, I'm hoping that's not the case and giving them an option to 'come clean' and settle what the 'majority' really wants in a way that we can all see and key word here... trust.