114 replies to this topic

[Thuzel]

KuritaGuard, on 08 April 2013 - 08:44 AM, said:

you said you spend money to another game instead to mwo because things running bad. no whining no?
REALLY?REALLY?

Actually, yes, it's not whining. It's a very simple observation intended to provide constructive feedback into MWO and PGI.

It's how feedback works (and why we are all here), you state the given issue with as much clarity and detail as appropriate and describe what would have impacted and/or resolved the issue.


Examples:
1. (not whining) I had a HUD bug and then I updated my drivers and now it works.
2. (not whining) I chose not to spend money on your product and here's why and what would have changed my mind.
3. (whining) I don't like this game anymore and <COMPANY> sucks.

2 of those examples are useful, the other is not. Thus, the difference between feedback and whining.

Edited by Thuzel, 08 April 2013 - 08:56 AM.

[IdolElite]

You start out saying you are a Battletech fan, and you are seriously going to tell me that regardless of any bugs or balancing issues it isn't a great time out there fighting with your giant robot vs their giant robot?

[Ihasa]

MN03, on 08 April 2013 - 08:27 AM, said:

@Ihasa,

1) I agree, the game is very DPS/escort dependent (tanking/Science CC is nerfed a lot), but still a lot of fun.
2) Every paid ship has something unique yes (otherwise no one would buy it). But again, you can get zen with in-game currency, it will just take some time (you can get 100-200 zen per day on multiple characters).
3) I disagree, the rate of bug fixes has increased a lot (I guess it's impossible to get a 100% bug-free game, but they are trying very hard).
4) I guess the MWO and STO community are about the same (except the lack of females here ) , both very adult.
5) Not in my experience, from what I've seen on the forums, they do contribute a lot on the forums.

1 - Yes, I was an escort player in STO, both Tactical and Science escorts, in the fleet SOB from about 2 weeks after it's creation and also in the closed beta. I also have a sci/sci toon. I hate where that game is now.
2 - Unique is okay. OP without counters is not. I've read about a lot of the new abilities that don't have counters. regardless if you can get it with zen via diithium or not, someone had to buy that zen in order for one to buy it with dilithium. A cash transaction had to first take place.
3 - okay since I haven't been there since August-ish, I'll conceed this that perhaps their bug fixing finally got better and faster.
5 - hm well I still don't see it. I try to read the forums once a month to see if i like where the game goes, I'm not seeing much better communication from them. Nothing anyone, even Stahl himself, ever says or does will change my mind about Stahl though.

Funny we'd get edited for having this very kind of conversation on their own forums, something else I can't stand about there.

Anyway, I've said before it's something PGI should consider is doing a study on Cryptic development and attention to STO and their forums and learn what not to do.

With a different Executive Director, perhaps NWN will be a bit different, but I'm finding the corporate culture of Cryptic and PGI becoming eerily and uncomfortably similar. And I don't like that at all.

Edit: and to the poster above me, I'm a trekkie big time and I left STO in a hot minute as soon as I got in this closed beta because the pvp was poorly developed and received no attention. And what did they give us instead of better pvp? More grinding and more grinding!

Edited by Ihasa, 08 April 2013 - 09:18 AM.

[Thuzel]

IdolElite, on 08 April 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

You start out saying you are a Battletech fan, and you are seriously going to tell me that regardless of any bugs or balancing issues it isn't a great time out there fighting with your giant robot vs their giant robot?

There's a whole lot more to it than that. There are parts of this game that I do enjoy, and there are other parts that I find exceedingly painful. The point of starting this thread wasn't to discuss those specific parts, but rather to highlight my experience yesterday when I had a 60 bucks to burn and was deciding what to do with it. So, I wrote down my thoughts and what would have influenced my spending the decision the other way.

[Roadbeer]

Page 3 was so much better.

[Thuzel]

Ihasa, on 08 April 2013 - 09:14 AM, said:

1 - Yes, I was an escort player in STO, both Tactical and Science escorts, in the fleet SOB from about 2 weeks after it's creation and also in the closed beta. I also have a sci/sci toon. I hate where that game is now.
2 - Unique is okay. OP without counters is not. I've read about a lot of the new abilities that don't have counters. regardless if you can get it with zen via diithium or not, someone had to buy that zen in order for one to buy it with dilithium. A cash transaction had to first take place.
3 - okay since I haven't been there since August-ish, I'll conceed this that perhaps their bug fixing finally got better and faster.
5 - hm well I still don't see it. I try to read the forums once a month to see if i like where the game goes, I'm not seeing much better communication from them. Nothing anyone, even Stahl himself, ever says or does will change my mind about Stahl though.

Funny we'd get edited for having this very kind of conversation on their own forums, something else I can't stand about there.

Anyway, I've said before it's something PGI should consider is doing a study on Cryptic development and attention to STO and their forums and learn what not to do.

With a different Executive Director, perhaps NWN will be a bit different, but I'm finding the corporate culture of Cryptic and PGI becoming eerily and uncomfortably similar. And I don't like that at all.

Edit: and to the poster above me, I'm a trekkie big time and I left STO in a hot minute as soon as I got in this closed beta because the pvp was poorly developed and received no attention. And what did they give us instead of better pvp? More grinding and more grinding!

There seem to be more than a few similarities between STO and MWO, and that does scare me a little. To anyone who was involved with STO early on, it should scare them too.

Similarly, what scares me more are the corporate culture similarities between PGI and Bioware when they were beta testing SWTOR. There were absolutely glaring issues there which were almost entirely addressed in the forums, only to be subsequently buried or deleted by the forum mods and completely ignored by the devs. Those same issues then went on to greatly harm the game after launch, and are major reasons it still struggles today.

I had a small hope someone at PGI would see all this and start to change things a bit, but I suppose it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme.

[AC]

I don't understand why they are not using BETA better. This is beta, use it for testing! If they want to dial in balance, they could easily release (for example) Large Laser A and Larger Laser B. Then the community could provide feedback. Heck, they could see which one everyone is using via their own servers. It seems to be that they are wasting a lot of testing opportunities with a community that is more than happy to provide constructive feedback (for the most part).

[Thuzel]

Roadbeer, on 08 April 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Page 3 was so much better.

Agreed, so then this happened:

[Thuzel]

AC, on 08 April 2013 - 09:26 AM, said:

I don't understand why they are not using BETA better. This is beta, use it for testing! If they want to dial in balance, they could easily release (for example) Large Laser A and Larger Laser B. Then the community could provide feedback. Heck, they could see which one everyone is using via their own servers. It seems to be that they are wasting a lot of testing opportunities with a community that is more than happy to provide constructive feedback (for the most part).

That's something I've been asking myself for a long time now. I understand that no code changes are straightforward, but why on earth do even the simple balance changes take so long?

[Han Fastolfe]

Thuzel, on 08 April 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

.........I had a small hope someone at PGI would see all this and start to change things a bit, but I suppose it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme.

Well.....they won't. People need to wake up and realize that what you see is what you get. My opinion is that they are using "beta" as an excuse and this will never be right. I point to the fact that they keep making pricy little baubles for cockpits and other "pay for" content but they're not addressing the real issues.

They will continue to string everyone along doing the bare minimum to fix problems while filling their coffers and then when the majority of people wake up and give up, it will be a broken game with lots of people that paid for extra content they can't use any more.

[AC]

Thuzel, on 08 April 2013 - 09:38 AM, said:

That's something I've been asking myself for a long time now. I understand that no code changes are straightforward, but why on earth do even the simple balance changes take so long?

They really shouldn't. They are simple numbers to swap in the code. Which brings me to another point. They should have a captive closed beta test group yet. Pick 50 of the original closed beta testers and roll patches out to them first for feedback. If anything is obvious at this point, it is that their internal test group isn't able to find the bugs and issues. But to their defense, how can they? They have canned hardware that is all in the same location with respect to the servers.

[Training Instructor]

I'm totally onboard with the OP here. I've been a BT player/fan since 1992.

I like MWO, I really do. It's the first FPS kind of game that has a slow enough pace for me to enjoy. Had a couple of months there from the end of December through the end of March where Graphics bugs, especially HUD and Minimap bugs, were almost non-existent. But now those bugs are back with a vengeance, and I'm just not interested in dealing with it anymore. My premium time ran out yesterday, which I had bought with the last of my MC. I've spent $150 on this game, which is more than enough for now. I'll still log on a couple of times a week for my unit practices, but I'm not going to spend any more money until I see content that is more interesting. I've mastered quite a few mechs now and I have 31 mech bays that are all full, even after I've sold some of the garbage variants that I was forced to buy to master out good variants.

Their community communications are pretty terrible, and I don't think the main guy in charge of community relations is a very good community relations manager. He tries to joke around with players, shows up randomly in threads to often make smart-alecky kind of remarks, and rarely actually communicates anything important. Honestly, I get the feeling he thinks he's communicating to generation Facebook rather than Generation X. *GenX and older people are the people most likely to be making the bigger cash purchases*

They'll get more money when they learn to code and test well enough for me to play 95% of my matches without some bug that puts me at a complete disadvantage, or crashes my client.

People keep reminding me that "It's a BETA". Cool, from here on out I'm treating it like a F2P beta game that doesn't need testers investing money in it. I'll play, I'll have some laughs, but I won't spend another dime.

[Valaska]

Dornhal, on 07 April 2013 - 05:45 PM, said:

You *****, PGI is already doing all of these things.

Welcome to a beta game run by a small company.

I remember league of legends, when everytime it would patch, it ****** the game so bad you couldnt log in for a FULL WEEK,

They do work with the forums, and they do listen to us, TO AN EXTENT. They don't cater to every whiney, snot nosed little troll that cries here, and they shouldnt.

There are a lot of vocal and popular people on the forums, and almost everything they want isnt being done either, because they are not part of the company either, and PGI is doing what it thinks is best, and most effective. It is run by professionals who are actually experienced in doing things like marketing, and balancing, and programming.

You are a player, thats it, you put forward a few dollars and got your times worth already. If you didnt, then you played the game for free and have nothing to ***** about.

Duke Nukem Forever.

[Dax Frey]

Tennex, on 07 April 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

The customer is always right.

So i can make arbitrary, unfounded demands because im the customer? False. This claim that the customer is always right is a huge fallacy and a discredit to the service industry on many levels. We are not their bosses, we are their customers...dont like what they are doing? stop being their customer. It's as simple as that.

What gives any of us the right to pretend we are so entitled that we can DEMAND they heed our wishes simply because we believe we are right. What if we are in fact....wrong? Does that still mean that by statement of fact, we are still right? How can we be both right and wrong at the same time. Simple logic would state that we would still be wrong.

[Han Fastolfe]

Training Instructor, on 08 April 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

People keep reminding me that "It's a BETA". Cool, from here on out I'm treating it like a F2P beta game that doesn't need testers investing money in it. I'll play, I'll have some laughs, but I won't spend another dime.

Yep, same here. I spent a bit of money in the beginning but not again.

[Han Fastolfe]

Dax Frey, on 08 April 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

What gives any of us the right to pretend we are so entitled that we can DEMAND they heed our wishes simply because we believe we are right. What if we are in fact....wrong? Does that still mean that by statement of fact, we are still right? How can we be both right and wrong at the same time. Simple logic would state that we would still be wrong.

From what I've seen on the forums so far doesn't present anyone "demanding" anything. I do see a lot of people complaining of problems though and that's part of what the forums are for. That's why they are usually titled "Feedback Forums". I've also seen very little in the way of "Childish" comments as some have put it. What I've seen so far has been fairly positive feedback along with the standard gripes and groans.

I've been a huge fan of the MW franchise since MW1. I also own a copy of the Battletech Sega Genesis game. I spent hundreds of hours playing MW1, MW2, MW3, MW4 and now MWO. I'm extremely disappointed in what I've been seeing and the developers need to know how their "customers" are responding to changes in the project. It's only fair if they expect people to pay for some content.

[Barghest Whelp]

A very well written post OP.

I just have one little thing to add really. I think part of the reason these forums have become so... caustic is due to PGI's behaviour recently. What I mean is, I'm not a bitter person at all. I don't anger easily, and I'm very laid back in my spare time. Nerf this, boost that, I'm all like: "oh yeah, that's fine. Let's see how this pans out."

And I know that I'm not a bitter person, because I used to think I was, until my friends made me realize that I'm anything but. BUT, and that's a very big but a that. The lack of communication from PGI, the lack of QA, the slimy weasling in a bit of p2w, that's the sort of behaviour that can get me fired up. At least to the point of confrontation.

But then, when confronted, they never admit any wrongdoings. In some cases it's just a simple neither confirm or deny. Like the whole founders money spent on funding two other titles which have nothing to do with mechwarrior. PGI has never confirmed or denied this. "Just zip up and shut up, it'll all go away eventually."

It's like they think we're stupid. Rule number one of customer care: "Never treat your customer as if he/her is stupid. The customer is never stupid." Rule number two: "Never lie to your customer, because your customer is going to think that you think that he/she is stupid."

I mean seriously, it's not rocket science. Those two rules are the simplest most basic rules, and that'll take you half the way. I though this was common sense, but I guess I'm getting older than I thought.

[Training Instructor]

Barghest Whelp, on 08 April 2013 - 11:21 AM, said:

It's like they think we're stupid. Rule number one of customer care: "Never treat your customer as if he/her is stupid. The customer is never stupid." Rule number two: "Never lie to your customer, because your customer is going to think that you think that he/she is stupid."

I mean seriously, it's not rocket science. Those two rules are the simplest most basic rules, and that'll take you half the way. I though this was common sense, but I guess I'm getting older than I thought.

Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me. They give vague information, or no information, then they act like the *paying* customers are the bad guys for requesting more information. They float an idea that gets shot down by the community, or ignore an idea that is brought up by the community, and then wonder why they get so much negative feedback. Ex: People ask for machine guns that actually do damage commensurate with their drawbacks, and the devs give them *crit-seeking* properties instead. The players justifiably ridicule them and once again ask them to simply upgrade the damage on machine guns to turn them into a weapon worth mounting, and the response is nothing but silence from the devs on this topic. Oh sorry, they said that they're "looking into it." That's an answer that's about one step removed from "the check is in the mail." That's just one example of there being a massive disconnect between sensible requests from players and a "we know what you want better than you do" kind of attitude that the development team appears to have.

How many threads and posts were there about the post-ecm Raven 3L and all the glaring problems that single chassis highlighted? It was pretty cute watching PGI pretend that there wasn't a problem, all while they attempted every solution possible other than toning down ecm, fixing streaks, or working on the Raven hitboxes. They implemented various modules, three of which actually made the 3L even deadlier, rather than making it easier to kill. They cleaned up the netcode a lot, they implemented state rewind for lasers, and then the very last thing they did was quietly announce that they had fixed the Raven hitboxes. So it turned out they knew all along exactly what was wrong with it, but the entire time their communications on that issue were almost non-existent. They could have prevented a lot of rage by simply communicating something substantial beyond "We're looking into it."

PGI needs to look at this from our perspective. If we've paid, we're investors. Investors don't get to determine the direction of the company, but they have every right to ask for clear information about the goals and direction the decision-makers have decided upon.

[Thuzel]

Training Instructor, on 08 April 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

PGI needs to look at this from our perspective. If we've paid, we're investors. Investors don't get to determine the direction of the company, but they have every right to ask for clear information about the goals and direction the decision-makers have decided upon.

Regardless of anything PGI may or may not owe us, it makes good business sense for them to include us in the development process or at least keep us informed. Take the founder's program and look at what that was. PGI offered non-cheap packages for interested people who were quite literally willing to invest in a project with absolutely no promise of a real return. We love this franchise so much that a lot of us were willing to throw a lot of money ($120 is a lot in this industry) at the merest hint that we'd get a usable game in the end.

I don't remember the numbers exactly, but I think it was in the neighborhood of 5 million dollars raised from the founders program. That's just crazy, especially considering the whole "founders" idea wasn't a typical thing back then. It's obvious that we are a huge, passionate, and large group of people who want this so much we were willing to go to great lengths to help it along. Taking us as a group and not involving us as much as possible just seems silly. To be honest, I'd be willing to bet that given the chance, we'd pretty much make the game for them, no compensation necessary.

What has happened instead of that, however, was that all of the most passionate, well-funded, and interested people were gathered up and then only halfway engaged. Of course people are going to be upset.

[Ihasa]

Thuzel, on 08 April 2013 - 09:25 AM, said:

There seem to be more than a few similarities between STO and MWO, and that does scare me a little. To anyone who was involved with STO early on, it should scare them too.

Similarly, what scares me more are the corporate culture similarities between PGI and Bioware when they were beta testing SWTOR. There were absolutely glaring issues there which were almost entirely addressed in the forums, only to be subsequently buried or deleted by the forum mods and completely ignored by the devs. Those same issues then went on to greatly harm the game after launch, and are major reasons it still struggles today.

I had a small hope someone at PGI would see all this and start to change things a bit, but I suppose it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme.

So I'm seeing here is maybe you are thinking worst of both worlds. You sir are indeed in a bad place.