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My Take On An Open Letter To Pgi

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#41 Victor Morson

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 02:10 PM

View PostJokerVictor, on 27 June 2013 - 11:25 AM, said:

I'd actually vote for you, jeff.

Awesome OP, good read... says pretty much all there is to say.


Can I bet a grumpy long winded angry senator in this administration?

View PostKunae, on 27 June 2013 - 12:04 PM, said:

They don't let him do his job. That is the problem.


Yeah, PGI, please don't go dragging Garth into a small room with baseball bats over all this. I too get the feeling someone up there put him on a chain, as well as possibly binding & gagging him.

#42 lpmagic

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 02:41 PM

I will submit that I like this idea, it is very well thought out, and very well represented. I question a bit how it will/would work, but that would only be a concern if and when it were to implemented. What I would personally like to see is, this thread to continue to be (mostly) troll free, so that it is taken seriously. What we as players need to see, is that they are simply not going to listen to every single idea or hate we have. They do have an idea of what they want to see as far as balance and timing, and that is going to be that. However, succinct, intelligent commentary on what they have done wrong, AND right that is well received because it is not knee jerk forumspeak would be extraordinarily refreshing and welcome.

Malora, Nice work young man, I love the concept, and I hope the Dev's do too. If we continue to take this thread seriously and utilize it to the advantage given (IE not being jettisoned) there might be some good to come of it.

If we were to vote, this would be one vote in favor of!

In sincerety
Lpmagic

#43 Krzysztof z Bagien

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 03:40 PM

View PostSyllogy, on 27 June 2013 - 12:19 PM, said:

Just because they don't acknowledge you doesn't mean they aren't listening.

They don't listen, or they do listen but ignore what they hear. I don't know which is worse.

#44 Solis Obscuri

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 04:15 PM

There's a lot of bandwidth to cover with all the players who are involved in this game, and they post a lot. I couldn't even read the whole OP. You think PGI can respond to everyone?

#45 Malora Sidewinder

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 05:06 PM

View PostSolis Obscuri, on 27 June 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

There's a lot of bandwidth to cover with all the players who are involved in this game, and they post a lot. I couldn't even read the whole OP. You think PGI can respond to everyone?

You just admitted you didn't read the whole OP.
If you had, you would realize that I had suggested a republic-esque system of representatives for each team.

#46 XFactor76

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 05:30 PM

I can never understand why a company doesn't listen to its community. I feel they don't always have to do what we ask, but remember that we are what make their continued idea behind the game. It boils down to always make sure you listen to your customer. Even when you don't follow what is asked. Sometimes its nice to know someone is at least listening.

X

#47 Malora Sidewinder

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 10:19 PM

on the topic of the test server: It will accomplish NOTHING if there isn't a valid venue for peoples opinions.
by virtue of the test server by itself, everyone's opinion will mesh together into one giant incoherent mess.

The representative system that i've suggested gets around that; every opinion gets heard, but through limited voiced that will by definition reduce the white noise background, making the entire thing much much easier.

I'm not saying the test server is a bad idea; quite the opposite. it's necessary. but instead of opposing each other or rendering each other redundant, the two ideas (test server and community liason) actually have a lot of inherent synergy and would complement each other beautifully.

#48 jeffsw6

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Posted 27 June 2013 - 10:38 PM

View PostProsperity Park, on 27 June 2013 - 01:05 PM, said:

So, this is not a discussion about GamePlay Balance.

It actually is a discussion about how to better communicate our GamePlay Balance concerns and ideas to PGI more effectively. I do not understand why you think the website/forum section is a better place for that, considering its abysmal readership, than the GamePlay Balance area.

I mean, no one in this thread is going, "man I sure wish they would fix the MC account log screen on the web page, that sure is a joke!" No one going, "we need stats links in our signatures!" No one saying, "I wish our stats were public." There is only one thing being discussed in that thread, and that is GamePlay Balance, and why PGI doesn't seem to understand some basic problems that VIRTUALLY EVERY FORUM POSTER IS TELLING THEM.

View PostProsperity Park, on 27 June 2013 - 01:34 PM, said:

Okay , after some review this will be moved to the Website and forums section; it's not going to remain Jettisoned, but it's not really going to fit in the Gameplay-related subsections either...

I suggest you return it to GamePlay Balance.

View PostHelsbane, on 27 June 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

I agree with the OP. Currently it seems that the developer staff simply switches things from OP to useless, flipping arbitrarily between the two. The very idea of 'fine tuning by incrementally adjusting' seems to be a foriegn concept, which is unfortunate.

I have noticed that MG got an incremental adjustment from 0.04 to 0.08 to 0.10 damage per round. I think they fail to understand how gimp the MG is if they only buffed it another 0.02/round, but at least they are still increasing it. This is positive and they should apply that same method to EVERY BALANCE CHANGE until they get a working public test server that can be more tolerant of dramatic changes without bleeding the player base.

View Postmekabuser, on 27 June 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

...I can t for the life of me figure out WHY they havent filled the positions advertised for @ pgi.
THat fact actually deserves its own thread..
Pgi.. Why doesnt anyone want to work for you?

Bunches of kids graduate from college May/June and that is the best time to hire low-level grunts at a game studio, where hours are often long, pay low, and you have the opportunity to get new hires who may burn bright for a while before they burn out.

Also, keep in mind that MW:O does not have a huge, deep-pocketed publisher. IGP is basically their own "publisher," financed by the personal networks of PGI management. It may not be that people "don't want to work for them," but that they want good, experienced employees and are unwilling or unable to pay large enough salaries to attract people who already have jobs, so they hope they luck into someone who just wants to relocate to Vancouver, is tired of their current employer, etc. Who knows?

View PostXFactor76, on 27 June 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

I can never understand why a company doesn't listen to its community. I feel they don't always have to do what we ask, but remember that we are what make their continued idea behind the game. It boils down to always make sure you listen to your customer. Even when you don't follow what is asked. Sometimes its nice to know someone is at least listening.

There are many good examples of game companies listening to their community too much. This is, of course, what PGI always says they are trying not to do, when they ignore the ideas from the forum. Sometimes that is a good thing.
Ultimately, PGI's job is to make a profitable game title. If the forum is really the "vocal minority," and we are all wrong, I would be extremely surprised. But that is very clearly what Russ, Paul, etc. think and express somewhat regularly.

#49 Araevin Teshurr

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 06:18 AM

This is a good idea, it's also an old idea, been there done that.

Eve-online instituted a players counsel of players elected by the community. Usually active leaders of alliances won with sufficient numbers of votes to get a seat on the counsel. The goal of the counsel was to help CCP focus their efforts on what the players wanted to get working, and aspects that they wanted to see implemented to improve the game. It helped CCP focus their resources on what mattered to players to make it a better game.

MWO is not near as far a long as eve-online, though the games are similar - they are both combat sims, community warfare, territory control, etc.

Should PGI decide to put some of their players to work for them for free, as a community elected representative sounding board and feedback group, they surely should do so. Logistics can be worked out, monthly video conference, paperwork / reports in the interim.

All players are on the same page as the wonderful man that resurrected MWO for us, having both sides work together, focusing limited resources on what players are looking for, and how to get players to spend money on it, is a win for everyone.

#50 Brut4ce

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 07:23 AM

First of all Excellent Post Malora. Totally with you on that one.

Also quoting on the side:

View PostMalora Sidewinder, on 27 June 2013 - 10:19 PM, said:

on the topic of the test server: It will accomplish NOTHING if there isn't a valid venue for peoples opinions.
by virtue of the test server by itself, everyone's opinion will mesh together into one giant incoherent mess.

The representative system that i've suggested gets around that; every opinion gets heard, but through limited voiced that will by definition reduce the white noise background, making the entire thing much much easier.

I'm not saying the test server is a bad idea; quite the opposite. it's necessary. but instead of opposing each other or rendering each other redundant, the two ideas (test server and community liason) actually have a lot of inherent synergy and would complement each other beautifully.


I think if a system like the OP suggested worked, There wouldn't be a need for an ADDITIONAL test server IMO. Think of a simple recent example: HSR as is now, it is admitedly (even by the devs) not working as intended because of a number of reasons, and Hit registration has gone down the drain. Now, for the average player in this game that drops in game, sees "red", shoot where "red" is, PEW PEW DAKKA DAKKA BAM!, how long would it take to notice things were a bit off? probably LONG :D Now imagine the scenario OP talked about, and have some of the competitive players-teams feedback on that, since day 1. I have met and played with people out there that REALLY notice things like that, 'cause they are seriously digging into the game, love the competition, and try to stay on top. Would it not be helpfull to the game, having their voice heard? I absolutely think so :wacko:

*S*

#51 Peter2000

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 09:32 AM

View PostNiko Snow, on 28 June 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Selection of an "official" Community Liason places us in a predicament where we start listening to one individual more than the group as a whole, and any individual is subject to their own biases and beliefs: For that reason, it's up the individuals within the community to determine whether they wish to speak for themselves or have someone else organize group feedback for them: We will take the feedback either way.

I'll also note that we cannot accept many forms of support requests unless they come directly from the player experiencing them. The same applies for review of moderation actions. For that reason, it seems best that individuals use their own voices, as we are listening.


Malora, forgive me if I am misinterpreting your position, but I don't think that you were asking for a single person from the community to be liason to PGI. You were asking PGI to reach out to the knowledgeable members of the community by having someone responsible for doing so - and then actually do so. I highly doubt there would be any shortage of players from competitive tournament teams (for example - those are the ones my team-mates have been in touch with over this, and similar, issues) asking to work with such an individual on finding balance solutions.

Reading the forums is fine, but as PEEF pointed out in one of his rapidly derailed threads recently, there is a tendency for people to simply post "X is OP because it killed me two games in a row, and I don't know the counter yet" (this is, in my opinion, human nature). Making balancing decisions on that is probably unwise. On the other hand, communication with players who spend countless hours trying to break the balance of the game (in their team's favor) and as a result have remarkable knowledge of the game (they may have slightly divergent perspectives, but anything most of them agree on is likely real), combined with statistics on performance of various weapons/'Mechs at different ELO brackets would be far more useful.

For example, almost all top players will tell you they consider LRMs wildly underpowered (since they are easily able to use cover to effectively counter them, and the lock-on only helps slightly since their aim is already very good) - however, I fully expect that your statistics show that in games at very low ELO brackets they are still overpowered. This combination of information could help you come up with a solution to make them stronger for stronger players (by raising missile speed, and increasing stacking clustering bonuses for direct fire, Artemis, TAG, and NARC) and weaker for weaker players (slower lock acquisition, smaller lock acquisition box, faster lock loss, higher base spread), thereby bringing them into line with other weapon systems at a wide variety of levels of play.

#52 Malora Sidewinder

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 09:36 AM

I'd say the "support requests" that you mentioned a concern about are actually relatively low on the priorities list of the players who feel disillusioned with the negligible community outreach that has up till now been the reality.

if we have gameplay BREAKS or CRASHES, we can always use a support ticket. that was never in question.
the area that we're trying to help fix is actually gameplay, not game reliability.

On a more concrete note, your first concern about who gets to speak for a group of players?

I spoke with the Templars and Steel Jaguars. I know QQ mercs have been spoken to, and DV8 have as well as my unit, HHoD (whom I currently speak for... with the ENTIRE unit's blessing i might add)

The primary agreement we all have is that we could all, each one of our teams individually, elect someone that WE TRUST to speak for all of us.
so if your concern is that it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the players who aren't heard... the point is in the first place that it IS fair because they are FINALLY heard. One rep per team gives enough opinions to really matter, but not enough white noise that it couldn't be sifted through and progress made from it.

In topic, I would *not* volunteer myself because I know that on a matter that I felt strongly about, I would be tempted to speak my own ideas instead of my teams if they were different. On a side note, we (the competitive teams) all agree that we can elect someone who would. While it may be a concern of yours, all of us are not worried about who gets to speak in the slightest; as long as we are finally HEARD we can deal with having one person per team giving the opinions of the rest as a whole.

edit- ignoring the finesse that i usually like to have with my posts, i'm going to put this as plainly as possible.

The idea of a representative system for a community liason (in addition to whatever we have now) has met with OVERWHELMING POSITIVE RESPONSES FROM LITERALLY EVERY TEAM I HAVE SPOKEN TO ABOUT IT.

The community is begging for a liason between them and you. It's not going to be hard to do, it WILL be hard to screw up, has the potential to do very little damage but so much good.

I can't stress this enough; everyone wants this. are you actively going to deny your players this one thing?
When you say that you "are listening,"
you aren't listening enough, and barring that you aren't listening to the *right* voices. this is our attempt to correct that, but you need to work with us on it.

balls in your court now, guys.

Edited by Malora Sidewinder, 28 June 2013 - 09:52 AM.


#53 Helsbane

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 02:11 PM

Currently, it seems there is a disparity between 'listening' and 'hearing'. As a married man, I can tell you with absolute certainty there IS a difference :D

As I stated in my previous post in this thread, there does seem to be a great deal of 'two position switching' going on. Things are either FAR too powerful (LRM splash dmg to CT comes to mind) or totally worthless (MG crit seeking bandaid helped, but really until they HURT things in a meaningful fashion....). SRMs are a waste of good tonnage now, but they used to be completely overpowered. It's this 'on or off' type of scaling that makes NO SENSE.

Here's the part that gets me. This game is under developement for us as a player base, right? It's not an in house art project to be utilized by a select few, but a marketable game that should stand the test of time with a large and diverse group willing to open their wallets to you on a regular basis. Am I right here? If this is indeed the case, why does it seem we aren't being heard in regards to mechanics, balance, content, etc. The level of communication, real feedback, should be much better if this is indeed a 'beta' that is intended to be a long term money maker. A lot of us want to support you guys, but the feeling of being left out of the loop and shocked by certain decisions (coolant flush, 3rd person, etc....) brings on a real feeling of being alienated and ignored. We're your long term income guys. Talk to us...

#54 MCXL

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 09:03 PM

They have chosen a community liaison, it's NGNG. The problem with that is NGNG doesn't represent all of us.

#55 Pando

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 09:59 PM

View PostKunae, on 27 June 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

I know what he was talking about. Just reiterating the irony of having a separate "test server" in a "beta test". :)


Dude bro

We herd you liek "beta" testink

So we put a testink server with your testink server so you can test wile you test

Gee Gee





@ OP, well said. I do believe Garth is only a messenger for what's pre-scheduled as "un-classified" information. He's a community manager in that respect. However, just a glorified messenger with a pimped cicada 2A. What you're looking for...is not what we have sadly.

#56 Helmer

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 10:58 PM

View PostMCXL, on 28 June 2013 - 09:03 PM, said:

They have chosen a community liaison, it's NGNG. The problem with that is NGNG doesn't represent all of us.



And that's part of the issue. You have Moderators who forward on many interesting ideas and threads. You have Garth who does the same. You have many intelligent posts by individuals who have thousands of posts. You have the NGNG guys.
As well as , for the most part, most of the PGI guys are on the forums daily reading posts.

Each of these outlets might not "represent all of us". No matter how many individuals you elect, there will be those who feel their voice is not being heard.


Rest assured. Just about every thread, post, and idea is forwarded. If you'd like, I can start jumping into threads and saying "Heard and forwarded", but that gets old fast. Assuredly, that will not be enough for some, and will request feedback on how said proposal was taken, is it considered, being worked on , etc etc.

What many want is to be involved in the decision making process, or have a constant back and forth with the developers, which is time consuming for the individual developers who would then need to participate in said discussion. Time they don't have.

There is very much a difference between listening and hearing. Trust me , PGI is hearing... there are just more considerations that many don't think about other than their or their group's viewpoints.

I agree communication could be better, and there are many balance issues that still need resolved, but the best solution all around for feedback is posting concisely , intelligently, and without undue emotions.



Cheers.

#57 Deathlike

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Posted 28 June 2013 - 11:27 PM

I will say this... at the very minimum, if there is stuff PGI needs to communicate with us... it needs to be posted through the forums in some forum instead of "everywhere else" like twitter, reddit, etc.

Just having a page that some moderator or person (Syllogy's thread is close enough, but not good enough IMO) that references a dev or an MWO related piece is better than the scattering of information that SHOULD BE CONSOLIDATED. I simply do not like how every piece of potentially important stuff that was said and would be potentially implemented is not shared with the masses... as if it were some info that threatened national security (or specifically, the intentions of PGI). Even if it was a fluff piece about PGI or MWO, it can't hurt... but having "everyone else but PGI themselves" be the source of the material is... mindboggling.

If PGI could ever be consistent in their messaging, I don't think we'd be in such a mess.

Edited by Deathlike, 28 June 2013 - 11:29 PM.


#58 jeffsw6

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Posted 29 June 2013 - 02:01 AM

View PostNiko Snow, on 28 June 2013 - 07:38 AM, said:

Selection of an "official" Community Liason places us in a predicament where we start listening to one individual more than the group as a whole, and any individual is subject to their own biases and beliefs

All evidence indicates that virtually all the "big names" on the forum make far better observations about game balance, display a superior understanding of the game-play and mechanics, and in general, would do a substantially superior job of actually making balance decisions than the staff at PGI.

For that reason, I'd give my proxy to just about any of those guys, if it would cause PGI to listen, hear, and understand more readily. Currently it is obvious that you (PGI) do not.

It's not that I'm 100% sure that FupDup is always going to channel exactly what my opinion is. It's that I am 100% sure FupDup is smarter, when it comes to game balance, than Paul, Bryan, etc. If he represents me but disagrees with me about some things, so what; it's still an improvement upon what we have now, which is a game that is getting steadily worse, not better, with respect to meta-game and armament balance.

Ask anyone with a clue what they think about the recent Pulse Laser heat/dmg output "normalization." They'll tell you those changes were so idiotic as to be utterly beyond belief.

I'm trying to state it very simply: That decision was so stupid, I can't ******* believe it actually got applied.

The only reason there isn't huge outrage about it is Pulse Lasers basically sucked before, and now, they just suck a tiny bit more. It would be like if MGs went from 0.04 dmg/shell instead of 0.037 dmg/shell, except there were no mechs who had to depend largely on MGs for damage.

With all the politeness I can muster, I would like to know if you (Niko Snow) understand the statements I'm making, above. If you don't, I can keep on explaining it.

View PostHelmer, on 28 June 2013 - 10:58 PM, said:

Rest assured. Just about every thread, post, and idea is forwarded. If you'd like, I can start jumping into threads and saying "Heard and forwarded", but that gets old fast.

Every thread, post, and idea? I'm not saying that's an exaggeration just to accuse you of misrepresenting the way things work, but surly, that must be an exaggeration? It obviously isn't practical for you to forward "every thread, post, and idea" to Paul/Bryan/whoever, so there must be some aggregation going on. If player concerns reach them at all, I don't know. But I hope those guys don't spend a significant portion of their week reading the forum, facebooking, twittering, etc.

You see, we don't understand how you aggregate player feedback. What many of us seem to think, though, is however you do it ... doesn't work.

That is why I would rather just throw my name, and the hundreds of dollars I've spent on MC, behind some player I largely agree with, who can represent me and others. Because right now, I'm done spending money on MW:O. You guys ruined the game for me by making the meta worse and worse and WORSE with every major patch. I am sure as hell not the only person who feels this way.

I've got more money to spend on MC. I'd like those new mechs in that Phoenix pack. I still have some mechs I haven't mastered, too, and I buy camo and consumables with MC, and Premium Time, blablah. I've got plenty of entertainment dollars to spend, and PGI can have them, if you can fix the damn game balance! Right now, playing the game is just aggravating for me. It is not fun at all. That's why I am not purchasing any MC right now, or pre-ordering the Phoenix pack, and why I let my Premium lapse. That's why I am spending more time complaining to you on your forum than I am playing your game! That's not "negative feedback," it's just "feedback!" Take it that way, and do something useful with it. Nerf PPCs, prioritize that public test server, or something.

View PostHelmer, on 28 June 2013 - 10:58 PM, said:

There is very much a difference between listening and hearing. Trust me , PGI is hearing... there are just more considerations that many don't think about other than their or their group's viewpoints.

I don't know what they hear, but they sure don't understand how the game is played. They don't even understand how to use available data to drive their balance decisions. Remember them saying MGs were fine? Now they are 150% stronger and they are STILL trash. Now, I'm encouraged by the fact that MGs are still being adjusted.

Where is the PPC adjustment? They think it's fine, obviously. Why do they keep making HUGE changes to LRMs, obviously a tricky weapon to get working right, and chasing players away? Why do they keep adding more complexity, such as BAP countering ECM, Seismic Sensor, etc. etc. when there are far easier fixes available for game-play problems that they have not tried yet?

Don't tell me they are play-testing things. They don't, and we know they don't. There are plenty of examples of huge ****-ups that got released and would have been discovered in the first hour of pre-release testing.

The simple fact is, PGI have a great deal of trouble admitting when they have made bad balance decisions. Do you think that's undue emotion? It's not. It is an observation supported by evidence. Undue emotion or ego would be basically telling the players to **** off about MGs and trolling them by saying, oh man, that 6 MG Spider would core out an Atlas in seconds. Yeah, that's a nice thing to say to the dedicated players who want your game to be successful.

There is very clearly "undue emotion" at work on the PGI side of things. Why else would I have mail from a PGI staffer, complaining about how players gripe about the game? It's sad and pathetic!

#59 ihateharriers

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Posted 29 June 2013 - 07:44 AM

View Postjeffsw6, on 29 June 2013 - 02:01 AM, said:

There is very clearly "undue emotion" at work on the PGI side of things. Why else would I have mail from a PGI staffer, complaining about how players gripe about the game? It's sad and pathetic!


Great post jeffsw6, and I think this last statement you made is a great illustration of the current state of affairs in regards to community and PGI.

Or, should I say I say, the community VS PGI?

That is largely how it's felt lately, anytime PGI does something totally asinine with this game - such as the pulse laser "normalization" and this totally silly "heat scale" - it's like the community that actually plays this game is wrong and somehow there some magic metric that only PGI can see that must clearly be beyond the realm of the observations of the people who play this game for hours a day.

I wish I could say that I commend PGI for their efforts, but I would be lying. Their efforts have all been very poorly thought out, reasoned, and implemented, and the game has suffered as a result; every time the community rallies in disappointment, I feel PGI tells the community to take a hike every time - PGI must clearly know better, despite all of the hard evidence proving otherwise.

Fact is, had we had a legitimate council of numerous players to be consulted months ago, many of these changes would never have happened, and the game balance wouldn't have spun so far out of control. Much of it would have been as simple as re-aligning SRMs to proper damage numbers (minus the clearly out of control splash damage) so that brawlers could still brawl, a point that I can guarantee would have been made very strongly by this council - we in the competitive community have known that SRMs needed a buff months ago after their initial nerf to death.

Therein lies the other large problem with the community VS PGI issue: nerfing things into oblivion, which has been done on the regular for a few months now, contributing the horrendous state of the game we're presented with now, and the very clear anger among much of the community that is, in many shapes and forms, directly related to the current state of gameplay.

We need more buffing, and less nerfing - something I know a council of players would have been all about as well, because many of us have said for months that more weapons need to be buffed to brought in line with the others - two shining examples are LRMs and Pulse Lasers.

But, alas, here we are, banging our heads against the wall again. And even here, in a popular thread that has made great points about the issues that are boiling between PGI and it's larger community, and we can't even get an honest answer.

Niko Snow, you didn't even respond the actual points being made in the OP. Your answer actually implied to me that the OP wasn't even read except for the title, and maybe a sentence or two, which, quite frankly, wouldn't surprise me. I would have rather your post said "we didn't really read it, but we're pretty much going to shut you down anyways" - at least that would have been an honest answer.

Get honest with us PGI, and stop treating us like we don't play the game. We do, and we're not trying to destroy it, we're trying to help it, because it's failing miserably. Answer the actual questions and give us actual responses to things, and on that matter, try actually responding to things, or least giving us something to believe that you might actually have some presence on these forums.

In the meantime, I'll be playing Warframe - it's a great game, run by some of the best devs in the biz (Digital Extremes is one half of the original Unreal development team), and guess what - they love their community like you wouldn't believe. They bend over backwards to make sure the community is happy with the community's game. They don't tell the community to take a hike if they don't like the game, they just fix it. They even have something called the Design Council, where Tier III founders packages and above help create all of the future content for the game, and have control over much of the content that makes it into the game, as well as game balance and pretty much anything related to the health of the game.

That's right, it's a game that's pretty much made and run according to the community's wishes, and this game is doing phenomenally well.

Take a hint PGI.

#60 jeffsw6

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Posted 29 June 2013 - 04:22 PM

View Postihateharriers, on 29 June 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

Fact is, had we had a legitimate council of numerous players to be consulted months ago, many of these changes would never have happened, and the game balance wouldn't have spun so far out of control. Much of it would have been as simple as re-aligning SRMs to proper damage numbers (minus the clearly out of control splash damage) so that brawlers could still brawl, a point that I can guarantee would have been made very strongly by this council - we in the competitive community have known that SRMs needed a buff months ago after their initial nerf to death.

And it's not like we, the forum warriors, don't admit that there are some clear technical challenges.

We understand that HSR / hit detection is a factor in balance that makes it difficult to predict the future performance of weapons, following changes to hit detection. We get that. That does not mean that the game-balance has to suck for months because some dev has his feet planted and doesn't want to adjust some simple variables.

We understand, obviously better than PGI, that issues like LRM arc and available cover on the existing maps are integrally linked -- you can't make a huge change to LRM arc and expect the maps that exist to play well without huge and expensive modification to said maps.

We understand that splash damage is complicated. No one is going around faulting PGI for still failing to get that right.

What we are faulting them for is failing to do even the simple, obvious things.

Game-play balance makes or breaks any PvP game, period. MW:O has great graphics, sound, pretty cool customization, a lot of concepts that set it apart from other first-person shooters, etc. None of that matters at all so long as the game balance is broken.

PGI is basically betting millions upon millions of dollars that Paul is right, and virtually every "vocal minority" forum warrior is wrong. That's a pretty stupid bet. Smart management would not make that bet without testing some alternatives to see if Paul really is wrong.





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