161 replies to this topic

[jakucha]

NamesAreStupid, on 30 May 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

Do tell how the flamers, small lasers, small pulse lasers, medium pulse lasers, large pulse lasers and arguably PPCs are fully ready.
And since when isn't BSR fully implemented?

I never said flamers or MGs were ready. Large pulse lasers are great; small pulse is the only pulse that needs any real changes. BSR isn't fully implemented; hits from those types of weapons register fairly often and much better than before, but it's still needing tweaking as some shots still aren't registering.

xRaeder, on 30 May 2013 - 02:02 PM, said:

All I know is that PGI should be ashamed of the game they've made. I've never played such an unbalanced mess of a beta.

I have played many betas that were far worse off than this. At least this game is fun despite a lot of the current flaws. Ashamed? Pretty heated words, sounds like you're upset over something more than that.

Edited by jakucha, 30 May 2013 - 02:19 PM.

[Gregory Owen]

I've been playing since closed beta, and while i love the game. they are so far behind it's absurd. we are 114 full days from launch - 29 weekend days, not including several holidays = 85 working days before the launch date they set.

we were told over a month ago the test server would be implemented by now. we were also told 12v12 would be in by now. BUT now they are saying 12v12 will be on the test server within the next 30-60 days.

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

[JokerVictor]

jakucha, on 30 May 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

I never said flamers or MGs were ready. Large pulse lasers are great; small pulse is the only pulse that needs any real changes. BSR isn't fully implemented; hits from those types of weapons register fairly often and much better than before, but it's still needing tweaking as some shots still aren't registering.




I have played many betas that were far worse off than this. At least this game is fun despite a lot of the current flaws. Ashamed? Pretty heated words, sounds like you're upset over something more than that.

They should be ashamed, it's a f*cking mess. And the fun factor has steadily declined into the toilet over the past couple months, largely due to bad balance.

But nice derail, we were talking about PGI repeatedly failing to meet our expectations and their own deadlines, not their p*ss-poor game balancing abilities.

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!?

The glacial pace of development just exacerbates the whole thing. Frankly I'm surprised you have the energy to still defend this trainwreck. You get tired of repeating yourself over the days and weeks and months as literally nothing changes?

Edited by JokerVictor, 30 May 2013 - 02:41 PM.

[Stone Profit]

GAME DEVELOPMENT PUSHED BACK!?!? NOWAY!!

[Chemie]

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

I've been playing since closed beta, and while i love the game. they are so far behind it's absurd. we are 114 full days from launch - 29 weekend days, not including several holidays = 85 working days before the launch date they set.

we were told over a month ago the test server would be implemented by now. we were also told 12v12 would be in by now. BUT now they are saying 12v12 will be on the test server within the next 30-60 days.

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

Please give link saying 12v12 is yet another 60 days out and when released will only be on test server (which is also delayed)?

Edited by Chemie, 31 May 2013 - 03:21 AM.

[Stone Profit]

Uh guys, the test server IS out. Its just not open to everyone And for good reason.

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

They should be ashamed, it's a f*cking mess. And the fun factor has steadily declined into the toilet over the past couple months, largely due to bad balance.

But nice derail, we were talking about PGI repeatedly failing to meet our expectations and their own deadlines, not their p*ss-poor game balancing abilities.

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!?

The glacial pace of development just exacerbates the whole thing. Frankly I'm surprised you have the energy to still defend this trainwreck. You get tired of repeating yourself over the days and weeks and months as literally nothing changes?

Game is still awesome for me, but then again I can adapt and know how to deal with poptarts. And lrms. And any other weapon there is. Its not the balance that makes this game unfun for you. its YOU.

[Sam Slade]

Did anyone read the post by Omid(I think?) about what was involved in chasing down Cryengine bugs... all the way back to Crytek?

We've all been spoilt by 'mega-devs'(EA, Activision, Valve, etc...) using Beta tests as a wedge marketing tool... stop being babies and start appriciating the idea of a game developed with almost total transparency. As to the spending real money thing; they did that mainly because people lept posting, agin and again, "Let us buy stuff!" and "Shut up and take my money".
Not Fanboying here, just saying that perhaps some of us should consider where Beta Test comes from as a concept and assess the massive system shock PGI gave to the development fraterity by turning Beta into Beta again. I know a few folks who work in Marketing who where positivly gnashing their teeth in rage at the whole 'consumer decides' idea that PGI began with; (tin hat time) and actually spoke of getting their Troll Teams into the Forum Fray.

P.S.: Troll Teams are a fact, plenty of consulting firms employ them to run negative press. Have a look through the writing jobs on Elance if you don't believe me.

Edited by Sam Slade, 30 May 2013 - 09:23 PM.

[jeffsw6]

xRaeder, on 30 May 2013 - 02:02 PM, said:

All I know is that PGI should be ashamed of the game they've made. I've never played such an unbalanced mess of a beta.

jakucha, on 30 May 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

I never said flamers or MGs were ready. Large pulse lasers are great

No, Large Pulse Lasers are trash. You just haven't analyzed the damage figures and accounted for typical combat range on current maps, in the current meta-game. LPL is heavier than LL and far less damage, DPS, and dmg/heat than LL at typical engagement ranges.

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.

It's also important because they need a lot more players than they have now to get the match-maker right, they probably could use revenue, and they need to get the balance issues addressed before "release." So far, they have not even learned the right process for balance changes. They are failing worse with every attempt!

Sam Slade, on 30 May 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

Did anyone read the post by Omid(I think?) about what was involved in chasing down Cryengine bugs... all the way back to Crytek?

Yes, I did. Without tooting my own horn too much, let me just say that I'm an exceptionally knowledgeable person when it comes to troubleshooting software bugs.

What I learned from their HUD post is that they have absolutely no idea how to troubleshoot / QA. They had to hire more help to finally track it down because they didn't understand how to use a debugger, or that the problem was happening to all players, unrelated to OS, graphics card, drivers, etc.

[Dulahan]

You're missing one important thing with LPLs that perhaps is hard to account for when talking about pure numbers.

Player skill.

Some of us don't have a steady enough hand to keep an LL on target for any length of time, so the pulses do end up netting much better damage than a normal LL would for us. Especially in a concentrated area. And it is one less slot than a PPC, so can be fit in Torso slots or other such places.

[Windies]

Once community warfare rolls out and people realize it's nothing more than a glorified World of Tanks Clan Wars system with absolutely no objective based game mode, this game will die. I'm pretty sure that's why they are holding off on it. That and the fact that even copying another system is probably hard for them to implement. It's literally like the only hope people are holding on to for this game.

I'm amazed that anyone is actually surprised that PGI can't come close to a deadline. Usually when they do, it's such a buggy mess that it takes weeks or months or half a year to fix. They have shown that they can't balance anything and the only thing they can produce reliably are overpriced monetized cosmetics and hero/champ variants of preexisting mechs that are insanely overpriced, just like World of Tanks.

I'm quite sure that this game has chewed through at least 90% of it's potential player base. I know for me personally that PGI would literally have to knock it out of the park when it comes to CW and everything else upcoming in the future as well as creating more varied content and way way better game modes before I would ever think of buying anything in this game or even re-installing it. Not only because I dislike the game in it's current state, but because it's simply just not worth it even if I actually did.

[Sam Slade]

jeffsw6, on 30 May 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

Yes, I did. Without tooting my own horn too much, let me just say that I'm an exceptionally knowledgeable person when it comes to troubleshooting software bugs.

What I learned from their HUD post is that they have absolutely no idea how to troubleshoot / QA. They had to hire more help to finally track it down because they didn't understand how to use a debugger, or that the problem was happening to all players, unrelated to OS, graphics card, drivers, etc.

You're making quite a few assumptions with this comment. "Use a debugger"? If the bug was in the original code for the game engine then why would a debugger consider it a software flaw? Fixing it would pop up on a debugger.

[Tice Daurus]

I think for all that they've promised, and all that they've missed dates for, on average, they normally provide a semi-reasonable explanation for a majority of things they've missed. Not all of the time, but things get in the way, people have real life events, get sick, just like the rest of us and projects can be delayed and pushed back.

Now, while that's acceptable and understandable, if they have a lot of work to do, then they need to hire more people to make it work. And one more thing...they normally state that the dates that they normally provide are rough estimates and are not set in stone, but what they like to reach by a certain timeline.

It's like having a boss that's overly ambitious and says, "We're going to deliver by X DATE, when in reality, the people all working there are going secretly in their minds saying "Boss, put down the crack pipe and stop promising **** you know we can't keep because we're already two months behind as is right now..." We've all had bosses like that, it's the way of the world.

I like that they are ambitious, but being realistic is much more better. The main thing is...

THIS IS STILL IN BETA. We've all signed on to help them work on the BETA. Keep calm and keep working on shooting big stompy robots and things will get better over time.

[aniviron]

I'd been wondering about this, I remember hearing 12v12 was coming and kept thinking, "Man, has it really been less than two months?" I guess not. I suppose it's possible it's coming in this patch, but usually the first patch is small things, and you can bet they will try to get people excited for 12v12 instead of sneaking it in unannounced. Gotta keep those playercounts up.

[Deathlike]

jeffsw6, on 30 May 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

Yes, I did. Without tooting my own horn too much, let me just say that I'm an exceptionally knowledgeable person when it comes to troubleshooting software bugs.

What I learned from their HUD post is that they have absolutely no idea how to troubleshoot / QA. They had to hire more help to finally track it down because they didn't understand how to use a debugger, or that the problem was happening to all players, unrelated to OS, graphics card, drivers, etc.

From the post, I believe they did a good job, but I think that this problem should have isolated much earlier. All the steps taking on a development side sounds pretty standard to me, so TBH, I think you're actually wrong on this.

From a general QA perspective though.. they are rather poor at it. But, the actual post from a dev discussing how it was all tracked down was actually logical and legitimate. I cannot fault them there. I have no problems wanting to fan the flames as it were, but this unfortunately is not one of those times.

Edited by Deathlike, 30 May 2013 - 10:18 PM.

[Ansel]

Just as a frendly reminder, they said something most people seem to have forgotten back in closed beta.

Their entire QA is handled by IGP, PGI dosn't have a QA team. At least around the time they tried to go open beta.

We are two patches behind the internal test, the QA team is one patch behind. The QA team isn't on PGI payroll.

One of the Devs let that slip after we had to stop them from hanging themselvs with their "We are going OPEN BETA" patch because the players in closed beta had "beta fatigue".

I guess they got tired of hearing they needed to actuay fix things.

PGI are imcompentent, and that is possibly as nicely as I can put it.

[Chemie]

not to get off track, but the HUD bug explanation left one glaring issue out there. There was no HUD bug all of CB and part of OB. So despite them saying it was a deep cryengine error, the fact is they changed their code some time in Dec and broke the HUD. Now maybe they changed their code in a legit way and there really is a cryengine issue, but bottom line it was not just the cryengine code. Their code was broken too. This is why other cryengine games have working HUDs.

However, this is partly the issue. They release these minor game additions (like a module or such); they make no real change to the overall game from a content side (in terms of compelling game play), but break things sufficiently that they spend the next month fixing what they broke. This prevents more minor content from being released. Bottom line is this is the same game as it was in middle of close dbeta but a few bug fixes added. It makes me worried about what CW really will be. Those that say it is be half-assed overlay pretending to matter (a map overlay which means nothing) on top of eactly the same game we have now.

[Sam Slade]

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

[jakucha]

JokerVictor said:

They should be ashamed, it's a f*cking mess. And the fun factor has steadily declined into the toilet over the past couple months, largely due to bad balance.

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.

The fun factor has dropped for some because they don't like the current flavor of the meta, but mostly because devs haven't gotten around to adding new content other than mechs and maps. It is unfortunate that it is slow going, but it will get interesting again when they do.

JokerVictor said:

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!?

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.

jeffsw6, on 30 May 2013 - 06:11 PM, said:

No, Large Pulse Lasers are trash. You just haven't analyzed the damage figures and accounted for typical combat range on current maps, in the current meta-game. LPL is heavier than LL and far less damage, DPS, and dmg/heat than LL at typical engagement ranges.

Large pulse lasers are not trash. They can be used to great effect on most maps; it's not difficult to get into position to use them either at 600m for their max range or closer. I do extremely well with them. If you want to make them better, by all means, but I'll just be abusing them by that point if you do.

Edited by jakucha, 31 May 2013 - 04:12 AM.

[Gregory Owen]

Chemie, on 30 May 2013 - 05:01 PM, said:

Please give link saying 12v12 is yet another 60 days out and when released will only be on test server (which is also delayed)?

https://twitter.com/bryanekman

"Bryan Ekman ‏@bryanekman 29 May
@DinoMFX @russ_bullock converned that is. Initially the test servers will be used for bigger features, like 12 v 12 and UI 2.0."


ask the dev 37 which was a month ago, they are still working out how the test server is going to work.
http://mwomercs.com/...evs-37-answers/

[jeffsw6]

Windies, on 30 May 2013 - 07:55 PM, said:

I'm amazed that anyone is actually surprised that PGI can't come close to a deadline.

It's not dates or deadlines that bother me. It's their development process that is broken. That's bad management. Remember, PGI has never been the lead developer on any good game title. Most of their experience is porting existing titles from one console to another.

Sam Slade, on 30 May 2013 - 09:25 PM, said:

You're making quite a few assumptions with this comment. "Use a debugger"? If the bug was in the original code for the game engine then why would a debugger consider it a software flaw? Fixing it would pop up on a debugger.

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.

Deathlike, on 30 May 2013 - 10:17 PM, said:

From the post, I believe they did a good job, but I think that this problem should have isolated much earlier. All the steps taking on a development side sounds pretty standard to me, so TBH, I think you're actually wrong on this.

From a general QA perspective though.. they are rather poor at it. But, the actual post from a dev discussing how it was all tracked down was actually logical and legitimate. I cannot fault them there. I have no problems wanting to fan the flames as it were, but this unfortunately is not one of those times.

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.

In any case, now they do have more competent people on their staff, which is very good for PGI and for us players who remain hopeful about the game's future.

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

Large pulse lasers are not trash. They can be used to great effect on most maps; it's not difficult to get into position to use them either at 600m for their max range or closer. I do extremely well with them. If you want to make them better, by all means, but I'll just be abusing them by that point if you do.

You've demonstrated that you don't understand how damage decay works. LPLs do ZERO DAMAGE at 600m. LLs still do 6 damage. That's why LPLs are trash. If you are going to argue about the weapons then learn how they work.