315 replies to this topic

[FupDup]

Mudhutwarrior, on 21 June 2013 - 08:00 AM, said:

My rep vote is broken but your exactly right.

Actually your rep vote got properly added to Jasen's post.


And anyways, just like Acid said at the top of this page, why not re-implement the player counter if the population is doing so well? I call shenanigans.

[Gallowglas]

FupDup, on 21 June 2013 - 08:02 AM, said:

Actually your rep vote got properly added to Jasen's post.


And anyways, just like Acid said at the top of this page, why not re-implement the player counter if the population is doing so well? I call shenanigans.

Regardless of whether player counts are up or down, I think they're right on the money for taking the counter out. Think about it: what possible good could ever come of it? Blizzard still has millions of subscribers and yet people have used every single tick downward or momentary stagnation as justification for why it's the end of WoW. It's nothing but a drama magnet.

Even if the counter showed hundreds of thousands of players, people would use any momentary tick downward as justification that the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

They'd compare it with [insert blockbuster game] and use it as a justification for why the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

They'd claim the counter was rigged to show more players than were really online and use it as a justification for why the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

What possible even modest benefit would such a thing have for PGI? What possible convenience would it be for you as a player? Would it make your queue times shorter? Would it improve your gameplay experience?

Look, I'm not trying to convince anyone they should love the game. You either like it or you don't. You either think things are doomed or you don't. I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince anyone how amazing things are. I've been down that path before and it's pointless because it's completely subjective. The people posting here have already made up their minds.

However, think about the issue of the counter objectively for a moment and I think you'll understand why, regardless of player count, it's a sound business decision.

Edited by Gallowglas, 21 June 2013 - 08:27 AM.

[tenderloving]

Gallowglas, on 21 June 2013 - 08:14 AM, said:

Regardless of whether player counts are up or down, I think they're right on the money for taking the counter out. Think about it: what possible good could ever come of it? Blizzard still has millions of subscribers and yet people have used every single tick downward or momentary stagnation as justification for why it's the end of WoW. It's nothing but a drama magnet.

Even if the counter showed hundreds of thousands of players, people would use any momentary tick downward as justification that the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

They'd compare it with [insert blockbuster game] and use it as a justification for why the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

They'd claim the counter was rigged to show more players than were really online and use it as a justification for why the game was terrible and absolutely doomed.

What possible even modest benefit would such a thing have for PGI? What possible convenience would it be for you as a player? Would it make your queue times shorter? Would it improve your gameplay experience?

Look, I'm not trying to convince anyone they should love the game. You either like it or you don't. You either think things are doomed or you don't. I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince anyone how amazing things are. I've been down that path before and it's pointless because it's completely subjective. The people posting here have already made up their minds.

However, think about the issue of the counter objectively for a moment and I think you'll understand why, regardless of player count, it's a sound business decision.

It's kind of a standard to show players online. Therefore:

1. PGI is smarter than the industry
2. PGI is not smarter than the industry

Now, let's look at their track record so far and then determine if they are ahead of the curve or not. You can draw your own conclusion but there are only two possible answers.

[jakucha]

Zylo, on 15 June 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

It's a logical conclusion based on past and current observations. Compare the recruiting forum for example, in the past it would require bumping a recruiting post multiple times in a day to keep it on the front page. These days many of the corps have stopped recruiting because their members are all playing other games. I wouldn't expect you to notice this though as you seem to be among those who will never accept any indications that MWO isn't doing as good as you seem to think it is.


Why would PGI make hero mechs cheap if some players are still buying them? Sales of hero mechs to the blindly loyal players is not an indication of a healthy population but instead only indicates that a portion of the players are still willing to spend money. Long term this system will not work if too many players leave but it's probably enough to keep things going for now.

Corps don't have anything to do with the random streams of f2p players that come in and out. Corps go dormant as they wait for the game to advance, so it's not a good indicator of guessing how the rest of the game is doing population-wise. As well, it doesn't matter what you think of the players who buy hero mechs, my point was that I see a fair amount on release day alone and that doesn't appear to be changing, comparing it back to when the game was newer. If it was doing as badly as people think those hero mech numbers would have fallen months ago.

Edited by jakucha, 21 June 2013 - 08:43 AM.

[Gallowglas]

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

It's kind of a standard to show players online. Therefore:

1. PGI is smarter than the industry
2. PGI is not smarter than the industry

Now, let's look at their track record so far and then determine if they are ahead of the curve or not. You can draw your own conclusion but there are only two possible answers.

No, it's not "standard". Some games do it. Others do not. Was Blizzard hiding plummeting subscribers when they removed the actual counts from their servers? No. At that time the subscriber base was going up. So why would they do it? It's a business decision, not necessarily the basis for conspiracy theories.

BTW, so it's clear, I am not personally suggesting that the population is booming or sinking. Frankly, I have no information which would support or deny either claim, particularly when Elo complicates even observational data. All I'm saying is that the removal of a counter can't be seen as definitive proof of anything.

Edited by Gallowglas, 21 June 2013 - 08:57 AM.

[Mercules]

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

It's kind of a standard to show players online. Therefore:

1. PGI is smarter than the industry
2. PGI is not smarter than the industry

Now, let's look at their track record so far and then determine if they are ahead of the curve or not. You can draw your own conclusion but there are only two possible answers.

Ever hear of a "False Dichotomy"? It's basically a fallacy where you ignore that there actually are more than two possibilities. On top of that you stated a falsehood as part of the reasoning behind your false dichotomy. It is NOT standard to post how many players are online. Most games give you a rough estimate of how many players are on a given server like "Full, High, Low, Empty". Now a first person shooting using hosted servers might show you how many out of 60 players are on that given server and since you could do the math anyway might just add it all up for you, but most MMOs do not.

Edited by Mercules, 21 June 2013 - 08:56 AM.

[tenderloving]

Mercules, on 21 June 2013 - 08:55 AM, said:

Ever hear of a "False Dichotomy"? It's basically a fallacy where you ignore that there actually are more than two possibilities. On top of that you stated a falsehood as part of the reasoning behind your false dichotomy. It is NOT standard to post how many players are online. Most games give you a rough estimate of how many players are on a given server like "Full, High, Low, Empty". Now a first person shooting using hosted servers might show you how many out of 60 players are on that given server and since you could do the math anyway might just add it all up for you, but most MMOs do not.

1. It is standard in similar instanced battle games. World of Tanks, War Thunder, Star Conflict, show player counts.
2. It's not a false dichotomy given that I set the scenario where the practice was a standard. Now, I might have been wrong about that, but I did not create a false dichotomy because I prefaced it with an assumption that narrowed it to two possibilities. You can attack the assumption all you want and we can debate the mertis of my assumption (see point 1 about similar games), but under my framework that was not a false dichotomy. Don't start throwing around fallacy ********. Even if you knew what you were talking about, it never helps a discussion.

Edited by tenderloving, 21 June 2013 - 09:07 AM.

[tenderloving]

Gallowglas, on 21 June 2013 - 08:54 AM, said:

No, it's not "standard". Some games do it. Others do not. Was Blizzard hiding plummeting subscribers when they removed the actual counts from their servers? No. At that time the subscriber base was going up. So why would they do it? It's a business decision, not necessarily the basis for conspiracy theories.

WoW and this game have about as much in common as Minecraft and this game.

[Jasen]

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

WoW and this game have about as much in common as Minecraft and this game.

Minecraft and this game both have a ****** and limiting graphics engine...

[Gallowglas]

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 09:10 AM, said:

WoW and this game have about as much in common as Minecraft and this game.

That the games are dissimilar is indisputable. However, the basis for the decision about why you'd remove a counter for populations is identical.

[Jman5]

[Mercules]

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 09:07 AM, said:

1. It is standard in similar instanced battle games. World of Tanks, War Thunder, Star Conflict, show player counts.
2. It's not a false dichotomy given that I set the scenario where the practice was a standard. Now, I might have been wrong about that, but I did not create a false dichotomy because I prefaced it with an assumption that narrowed it to two possibilities. You can attack the assumption all you want and we can debate the mertis of my assumption (see point 1 about similar games), but under my framework that was not a false dichotomy. Don't start throwing around fallacy ********. Even if you knew what you were talking about, it never helps a discussion.

No, you very clearly created a false dichotomy.

tenderloving, on 21 June 2013 - 08:34 AM, said:

1. PGI is smarter than the industry
2. PGI is not smarter than the industry

PGI could be just as smart as the rest of the industry and have completely unrelated reasons for not posting numbers, like IGP told them not to or it would pull their license. It's possible they went, "Either way we have drama so why bother tracking it?" and that is neither smarter or dumber than the industry. By turning it into two black and white choices you can then provide evidence for one and ignore evidence that doesn't clearly fit into either thus leaving the other side unsupported and thus "disproving" that side. Well if there ARE only two choices and one side is disproven then you can try and claim the other is thus proven by that... instead of supporting an argument based upon it's own merits.

[tenderloving]

Mercules, on 21 June 2013 - 09:14 AM, said:

No, you very clearly created a false dichotomy.


PGI could be just as smart as the rest of the industry and have completely unrelated reasons for not posting numbers, like IGP told them not to or it would pull their license. It's possible they went, "Either way we have drama so why bother tracking it?" and that is neither smarter or dumber than the industry. By turning it into two black and white choices you can then provide evidence for one and ignore evidence that doesn't clearly fit into either thus leaving the other side unsupported and thus "disproving" that side. Well if there ARE only two choices and one side is disproven then you can try and claim the other is thus proven by that... instead of supporting an argument based upon it's own merits.

Again, my assumption is that the industry (publishers of similar games) knows what's best. We can eliminate any other variables past that point, because we are in a competitive, Darwinian environment. They can have a million reasons for making the decision, but since you can't simultaneously display and not display the count, they are either making a good decision relative to the industry or a bad decision. All of the reasons you listed can fall into one of the two choices in my questions, but that's not what my question is asking.

I am asking a very narrow question; is this decision ahead or behind the industry? I even leave it up to the reader to decide and draw no conclusions of my own. I make no arguments other than my original assumption.

Here is a simplified version:

If it is the industry standard to display population counts, then not doing so is either a positive step ahead of industry practice or a negative step that lags behind the industry.

Seriously, close the tab you have open to the wikipedia list of fallacies and go do something else.

Edited by tenderloving, 21 June 2013 - 09:25 AM.

[Jasen]

I didn't do any such thing. I can delete the picture if that is how you're going to take it.


I mean... when someone gets PPC'd in the face after doing only 1 damage in a match, it ain't really their fault. Just how it goes in a well balanced, healthy game.


Sorry man, if I had known it was like that I would held fire for a second.. let ya get double digits at least.

Edited by Jasen, 21 June 2013 - 09:31 AM.

[Deathlike]

PGI is not smarter than the rest of the industry... however it is standard industry practice, so it's unlikely they would actually show something that's legitimate unless it's for PR (which, is at a bottoming out stage).

It's low.. when you see people you have seen before in a match... frequently.

[Stoicblitzer]

Jasen, on 21 June 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

I was wondering why your name looked familiar... then I remembered I saw you in-game yesterday.



Rock on brother

comparing a 3F to a HBK? props to jman5 for running a HBK in the current high pinpoint alpha environment.

[jakucha]

Stoicblitzer, on 21 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

comparing a 3F to a HBK? props to jman5 for running a HBK in the current high pinpoint alpha environment.

My last game I got about 600 damage in a 4sp and a few kills, against decent players even. Our team still lost, but the 4sp is not too bad despite SRM's current underpowered status.

[Jman5]

Stoicblitzer, on 21 June 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

comparing a 3F to a HBK? props to jman5 for running a HBK in the current high pinpoint alpha environment.

No no. I'm obviously terrible because I have the occasional bad game. I totally wasn't making fun of my own poor showing there in the chat box. 1 damage is just par for the course for me.

[Jasen]

Jman5, on 21 June 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

No no. I'm obviously terrible because I have the occasional bad game. I totally wasn't making fun of my own poor showing there in the chat box. 1 damage is just par for the course for me.

Which is why I even screenshotted it because it was funny. didn't know you'd all the sudden take it seriously.


(I had to jump on the paragon hypocrisy tho)

[Hellen Wheels]

Mudhutwarrior, on 21 June 2013 - 07:37 AM, said:

.... out of five people all hardcore gamers I got to join all five left. What they had to say was important. Its tough a hell to start out small and inexperienced and stay alive longer than two minutes a match. You cant learn anything from that experince especially when you get mass assaninated by hard core teams over an over. Past that its not fun. Not one spent a dime in the game because of that. There is no curve for beginers here, none. Its get good or be meat. Kind of stupid if you want a new generation of players to support the game down the road. PGI riding out the money you spent until it collapses or their rep in the industry gives them a way out. You all have seen it happen time and time again but so many want to be blind till the end then bitter after.
Instead maybe you should embrace the new player concept. Help them and promote fair play minus the murder death kill rage team play.

This.

The new player experience in MWO is so much different than it was in NetMech / MPBT etc.

"Murder death kill rage" me me me is about all I have ever seen from other players in this game.

I can count on one hand the number of times a trial mech player has asked a question in chat in the game and had it answered courteously. The vast majority encounter "noob, u suxor lrn 2 play" or other derisive behavior that just drives most away.

PGI should consider adding, besides training grounds, another queue intended for new players. Maybe a drop zone populated by volunteer "New Player Liaisons" to provide the necessary training in game, without all the vitriol spewed by the "better" players.

They would catch a lot more fish that way.