161 replies to this topic

[Odins Fist]

I made some predictions if X did or didn't happen and that Y would be or not be the result in June or shortly into July.

Some of those things happened, both positive and negative, and results have been both positive and negative.

I see small steps forward, I see small steps back, I see no huge improvements in gameplay or content "YET".

I see people getting really, really tired of waiting for promised, but as of yet released content, I see friends leaving, and I see friends coming back after every patch or hotfix to see what's happening, playing a few rounds, then leaving again. I hear friends saying that they are sick of waiting, and summer is here.

I think once the DEVS get the game balance (weapons, loadouts, modules) where they need to be that MWO will be on track to have it's additional content released, "BUT" there is a limit to patience, especially from "PAYING" customers, and that is not unreasonable one little bit.

Summer is here, all the little kids that are out of school will help player numbers from MWO stay at least close to where they are now, but if the DEVs listen to the rugrats, then MWO is sunk, face it, children are children, to be spoken to and "NOT" heard.
F.Y.I., this is not what I would call a title aimed at young children, and the day it gets dumbed down for that, then "BYE"..!!

In the more Northern climates you will see a drop in (current player) numbers, people that have been waiting, it's summer, enough said. Whether or not this is the begining of a first wave of a predictable exodus has yet to be seen, "BUT" I have already seen Merc Corps dry up and fold, but I do not think it will be as big as some have said.

Fall will be a greater indicator, early October.. (Children back in school, adults back on their computers after dinner)
Keep an eye out.

[Butane9000]

I'm kind of expecting 12v12 on this upcoming Tuesdays patch.

[Odins Fist]

Butane9000, on 31 May 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

I'm kind of expecting 12v12 on this upcoming Tuesdays patch.

Expectations lead to disappointments, just look at the last 8 months...

[Deathlike]

jeffsw6, on 31 May 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

They didn't even have employees who knew how to analyze a stack trace or a core file until they finally figured out they were in way over their heads.

They sank a huge amount of time into trying to reproduce, or not, the HUD bug on specific OS, driver, and PC hardware configurations. Read the dev post. We all know that was a stupid waste of resources because they have all these beta players and could easily know that all of them were affected by the HUD bug, with all different environments.

Again, that is bad Q/A and bad management.


See above. You don't try to pin down a problem affecting 100% of your players by having your Q/A team try to blame it on graphic drivers or operating system. You draw the obvious conclusion that it is a problem in your game.

Everyone with a brain knew it was pointer corruption in the UI. I don't know anything about CryEngine but that was incredibly obvious to me every time I had the HUD bugs. Information that should have been displayed in one place was instead put into another, interpreted differently as overloaded C++ operands are used out of context. This should have been easy to troubleshoot. It wasn't because they didn't have the right kind of skill on their staff and had to hire someone competent in debugging such problems.

A lay-person could easily be impressed by their description of the bug, and blame CryEngine. As a knowledgeable person, I am not, because their explanation shows they lacked the clue to deal with it, from "top management" allocating Q/A resources to developers not knowing how to debug.

Well, the part about figuring out that it's not a graphics issue really was self-evident. As I said, their QA processes suck. There is no debate there. They are capable of finding stuff, but like many things, the forum fires need to burn brightly before they try to rain on our torches...

[jakucha]

jeffsw6, on 31 May 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

LPLs do ZERO DAMAGE at 600m. LLs still do 6 damage. That's why LPLs are trash.

Regardless of damage drop-off they're still a viable weapon. The amount of damage and legitimate kills I get with them in-game don't lie.

[frag85]

This is a good example on why many devs do not give time frames. Unexpected challenges come up. Priorities shift. As a contractor I try to give my clients a window of when it will be done. Sometimes I finish early, sometimes not. If I give them a solid '2 weeks' and it takes 3, they get annoyed.

[Chemie]

Sam Slade, on 31 May 2013 - 04:06 AM, said:

Chemie, they introduced a Cryengine update remember; 1.4 or something?

Oh I remember. That was during the terrible months of late Aug/Sept/Oct where they pushed out a ton of broken stuff and spent so much time trying to fix it, nothing got done with the game. That was the one step forward, two back time.

Lately, we have been 1 step forward, 0.5 steps back. (or 0.25 forward, 0.1 back?)

frag85, on 31 May 2013 - 10:59 AM, said:

This is a good example on why many devs do not give time frames. Unexpected challenges come up. Priorities shift. As a contractor I try to give my clients a window of when it will be done. Sometimes I finish early, sometimes not. If I give them a solid '2 weeks' and it takes 3, they get annoyed.

They could skip giving timeframes but that won't stop people from getting fed-up and leaving. With terrible slow pace, I would suggest that over communication is better than under. At least we can see what might be coming and when and stay die-hard fans. otherwise, people will decide "this is the game, and they are done" and leave cuz the game as it stands will not maintain a community.

Edited by Chemie, 31 May 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[JokerVictor]

jakucha, on 31 May 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

You're always upset with everything in this game Joker, I promise they didn't make it solely as an attack against you. Your interest quote makes it clear: "Watching the good ship MWO sink, burn, and explode". I suggest you stop taking everything personally, and realize this is a game under development. It's not going as quickly as everyone wants, but it's moving forward.

I'm upset because I have every right to be. Despite what you think is going on in PGI land, I can see the forest for the trees and this is not the first time this has ever happened.

For example:
http://en.wikipedia....ellgate:_London

I wanted this game to be incredible, the triumphant comeback of Mechwarrior! But it's not, and it won't be. It's a crappy knockoff of World of Tanks, and becomes more so with every single patch. We were sold a completely different game from the one we're getting, and that f*cking makes me mad.

jakucha, on 31 May 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

Please don't rant, take the time to read; I never said balance isn't important. I said there's not much point in making big changes to balance in the weapons that still don't even register every hit, which is still over half at the moment. It's only logical.

Allow me to reemphasize the point you completely missed.

JokerVictor, on 30 May 2013 - 02:37 PM, said:

But I'll bite. Why is balance important right now, as you argue against? Why, it's pretty damn simple really... because PGI have proven to be completely incapable of doing any kind of feature release without massive game breaking bugs along with it. Point being, the game we have got at the moment better be damn fun to play for every playstyle or it's REALLY not worth the headache of dealing with the problems. Why every playstyle? Simple again bob, because if only one playstyle is fun and effective we end up with the slow rolling t*rd gameplay we have right now. Alphas, assaults, and corners to camp for everyone! RIGHT!?

I understand the point you're trying to make, but the fact of the matter is that development is entirely too slow to wait for feature X to be implemented to balance weapon Y. Balance should have been a continuous priority, constantly being tweaked as things changed in the development process. But no, the meta was allowed to flounder and stagnate for so long that it's driven huge chunks of the player base away.


PS - I saw you visited my profile page and downrated me, oh man... you got me so good. How am I going to recover from that? And btw, "Watching the good ship MWO sink, burn, and explode" is a completely valid hobby. It makes my slow days at work go by much faster watching all of the disillusioned mechwarrior fans posting on these forums trying to come to terms with sad fact that this game is doomed. I can freely admit it... It's a lost cause, I wasted my money. GG PGI, and shame on you.

[Waking One]

This is why they don't give you any dates anymore.

Bunch of ******** in this community.

[jeffsw6]

It might not be doomed. I maintain hope that they could finally shift to an iterative armament-balance process one the public test server is ... public.

The things that desperately need fixing are not that many. I think there are three basic things holding them back from having a both fun and mass-market game, even before "community warfare," whatever it's going to be.

• balance, this is obvious to everyone (except maybe PGI; it remains unclear)
  
• performance, the FPS on PCs without discrete graphics needs to improve for wider audience-appeal
  
• integrated VOIP, this is needed to give PUGs a fighting chance with 4-mans sharing their queue

These are not huge, impossible goals. They could do that and at least hang on while they figure out how to improve the new player experience (which will be partially done just with VOIP.) UI 2.0 will probably make it easier to socialize and group in-game, instead of forcing players to find and join a clan.

They really can get there. But as long as they keep thinking the armament-balance and meta-game is anything other than freaking terrible, we better keep QQing about it.

[JokerVictor]

jeffsw6, on 31 May 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

It might not be doomed. I maintain hope that they could finally shift to an iterative armament-balance process one the public test server is ... public.

The things that desperately need fixing are not that many. I think there are three basic things holding them back from having a both fun and mass-market game, even before "community warfare," whatever it's going to be.

• balance, this is obvious to everyone (except maybe PGI; it remains unclear)
  
• performance, the FPS on PCs without discrete graphics needs to improve for wider audience-appeal
  
• integrated VOIP, this is needed to give PUGs a fighting chance with 4-mans sharing their queue

These are not huge, impossible goals. They could do that and at least hang on while they figure out how to improve the new player experience (which will be partially done just with VOIP.) UI 2.0 will probably make it easier to socialize and group in-game, instead of forcing players to find and join a clan.


They really can get there. But as long as they keep thinking the armament-balance and meta-game is anything other than freaking terrible, we better keep QQing about it.

You're absolutely right. You're far more optimistic than me, but good on you I suppose.

I would also throw lobbies on that list, lobbies with tonnage/BV parameters. That would help tremendously in trimming the horrible weight bloat the game's got now.

[blinkin]

Waking One, on 31 May 2013 - 03:47 PM, said:

This is why they don't give you any dates anymore.

Bunch of ******** in this community.

the gameplay balance section of the forums seems to be collecting all of the impotent rage runoff that was originally reserved for general discussion.

the suggestions forum does tend to be a decent place for constructive conversation most of the time though.

[Windies]

Does anyone remember the PC Gamer article describing the aspects of Conquest mode and how "different" the actual conquest mode we got was? Now picture Community Warfare......

[jakucha]

JokerVictor, on 31 May 2013 - 03:33 PM, said:

PS - I saw you visited my profile page and downrated me, oh man... you got me so good.

Nah, I visited your profile page to check your old posts. Couldn't remember if I was thinking of you or sifrit. Seeing as how you two have the exact sig and similar demeanors it's very easy to confuse you two for eachother.

Edited by jakucha, 01 June 2013 - 04:56 AM.

[xRaeder]

This whole thread is kind of hilarious. All the fanboys seem to have stopped defending the game/stopped playing, and low and behold the only people left are people like me who have been saying these exact things on these very forums for an entire year or people who have finally seen how ****** the game is.

[jakucha]

xRaeder, on 01 June 2013 - 10:54 AM, said:

This whole thread is kind of hilarious. All the fanboys seem to have stopped defending the game/stopped playing, and low and behold the only people left are people like me who have been saying these exact things on these very forums for an entire year or people who have finally seen how ****** the game is.

People who don't get emotionally angry over the game are playing it. People who have legitimate problems and people who just get angry over video games are mostly the ones who post. It's the way it is for just about any video game forum.

[Hammerfinn]

Has anyone pointed out yet that "projections" are estimates that change as more information emerges?

Say, like, information that Crytek has a bunch of inherent bugs that they have to rack down and fix?

[Sug]

Ransack, on 29 May 2013 - 05:03 PM, said:

It's almost like watching a slow motion train wreck.

Love it.

[Sug]

Gregory Owen, on 30 May 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

community warfare is pretty obviously not being worked on at the moment.

A small part of my brain still hopes that somehow PGI has about 100 secret employees that have a metric f*ckton of content just waiting to be released.

[B0oN]

Niko Snow, on 01 June 2013 - 11:45 PM, said:

Soon™
MechTime® is a registered trade-mark of ComStar and is used under license.

Soon ...
so I just read Valvetime there .