82 replies to this topic

[TheDeckardCain]

Victor Morson, on 04 July 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

My only interest, including when I am EXTREMELY critical of PGI, is breaking us out of this cycle before we go down in flames.

Lol. The problem is everyone is critical of PGI. Although some to the point where it is over the top and unhealthy. As most of the posters don't qualify their own remarks, unlike yourself.

I will say this I'm glad we have more of a voice here than the previous mw series. I mean Microsoft really listened to us when they made MW4... Oh wait.

[Ansel]

I hate to break this to ya, but they aren't going to listen to math or numbers.

Because they wrote you off as having "beta fatigue" a long time ago, thinking your maths and numbers and ideas were all some fatigue induced idiocy.

lol.

[Lazy Eye]

Eugene O'Neill said:

There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

Albert Einstein said:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

My experience of human nature is that it doesn't change.

My experience of people is that they have an infinite capacity for believing what they want to believe.


There are three types of people in the world: those who can, those who can't and those who care. Most people who care are insane.

My experience is that being right is only useful in a math exam. The rest of the time, it's the worst possible handicap; confirmation bias is the most powerful force in the universe. You don't mess with the confirmation bias!

[Elepole]

Doesn't surprise me. My conclusion after playing closed beta was that PGI doesn't know how to do a mmo game and will not correct the problems of the game, balance is just one of the problem they will not correct.

[Victor Morson]

Elepole, on 05 July 2013 - 07:33 AM, said:

Doesn't surprise me. My conclusion after playing closed beta was that PGI doesn't know how to do a mmo game and will not correct the problems of the game, balance is just one of the problem they will not correct.

Honestly outside of balance - which does include things like tonnage - there's very little wrong with MW:O and a lot right with it. I think that the biggest thing needed for content is stuff like more maps.. but I know that's coming, and their maps have been getting better and better with each release.

Balance has been, and still is, my sticking point.

Yet, as I just posted in my Game Balance thread (about balancing from a bubble).. I'm seeing honest to God positive change happening now. Ask The Devs is going to community vote; Paul's confirmed SRM buffs are on their way, due any time now. They are also working towards fixing the sniper meta.

I don't know details yet; I don't know if things will go off the rails, but I do know devs have been posting in a few threads which says to me that those threads are being read, even if the details are vague.

I'm leaving this as my forum sig for now, but my optimism has increased dramatically and I am looking forward to see what direction we go in the next patch!

Edited by Victor Morson, 05 July 2013 - 11:05 PM.

[B0oN]

Prosperity Park, on 04 July 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

I'm moving this down to the Barracks as a discussion about our forum and gameplay experiences.

Mr. Park ?
This thread might be irksome to say the least, still there are more than just a few drops of wisdom contained herein.

It hasn´t really devolved into the usual flamewars, as far as I am able to see it´s a "quite" civilised, if painful discussion and throwing around of old quotings.

And nothing should be wrong in quoting/stating some truth, even if they are painful.
Why move it to the "shenanigans" sections then ?
Oh wait, someone "told you so" ?
Tells me, someone is feeling guilty or gives exactly 0 hearts, because of "vision" ...

*Let´s wait how long this post will stand as is, I have marked down time and the whole post*

[SJ SCP Wolf]

Rad Hanzo, on 05 July 2013 - 11:52 PM, said:

Mr. Park ?
This thread might be irksome to say the least, still there are more than just a few drops of wisdom contained herein.

It hasn´t really devolved into the usual flamewars, as far as I am able to see it´s a "quite" civilised, if painful discussion and throwing around of old quotings.

And nothing should be wrong in quoting/stating some truth, even if they are painful.
Why move it to the "shenanigans" sections then ?
Oh wait, someone "told you so" ?
Tells me, someone is feeling guilty or gives exactly 0 hearts, because of "vision" ...

*Let´s wait how long this post will stand as is, I have marked down time and the whole post*

Oh hai Rad

[ryoma]

Was disappointed that this wasn't a Macross thread. Was hoping to discuss cloned Minmay.

[Alistair Winter]

Well, it's been some time since I had high hopes for this game. It was really weird for me, since I came relatively late to MW:O, after closed beta. So it took me some time to catch up with all the old interviews and command posts to read about the vision PGI had for MW:O. And by the time I read about the really cool stuff, like role warfare, they had already abandoned the idea.

So I don't really have the energy to say "I told you so" when this game continues to stagnate and/or decay. I'm not at all surprised by the development of the game. What really surprises me is that the MW:O fans continue to post long and eloquent suggestions, trying to get the attentions of the devs who have long ago announced that they don't really read most of what's being said on the forum. If you're lucky, Garth Erlam will drop by one of a hundred threads, to post a single sentence that is either snarky or promising something PGI won't deliver, or both. The communication between PGI and the fans is horrible, and getting worse.

The fans are still arguing about how to fix the game by looking at boating and convergence, as if oblivious to the fact that their discussion is entirely academic and no one's listening to them. You'll see threads like
"Bill's new hardpoint restriction and hitbox concept (warning: long read)"

Guess what, Bill? No one gives a ****.

[Sadist Cain]

Fix it

Break it

Fix it more

Break it harder

Revert...

Bury head in sand for 4 weeks

Make minor change

Hail as game changing masterpiece

Bury head in sand

Give a big explanation why everyone is wrong (include a graph where possible)

and so the development cycle is complete

[B0oN]

****** Cain, on 06 July 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

Fix it

Break it

Fix it more

Break it harder

Revert...

Bury head in sand for 4 weeks

Make minor change

Hail as game changing masterpiece

Bury head in sand

Give a big explanation why everyone is wrong (include a graph where possible)

and so the development cycle is complete

Sounds pretty legit to me ^^

@SJ SCP Wolf :
Hi there, Wolf, good to see you over here.
All amongst funnily whistling, merrily dropping bombs is where I feel safe ^^

[-Muta-]

I see a stalker with many ppcs and other weapons I think.... hmm easy overheat slow target.

[Fugu]

O boy, am I excited to see how bad this gets when the Clans come!

I am a very pessimistic person, when it comes to ongoing game developement. The concept of F2P can't bring about a truly fantastic game, I believe. Promising? Yes. But it can never deliver the initial idea. By the time that idea would have been realised there is usually done so much wrong to generate more money to not go under that the game is in a constant state of fixing issiues arisen by previous mistakes.

Now, even though I have predicted and expected horrible things, astonishingly I am almost in awe at how bad balance turned out to be. Much like I predicted Aliens: Colonial Marines to be awful, only to be suprised by how bad it really is.

I mean, coolant flushes and 3rd person perspective? Really? FFS

Just imagine what'll happen when clanmechs arrive! Not even my pessimistic soul will be able to conjure up how bad the situation is going to be.

[Bloody Moon]

Fugu, on 07 July 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

Not even my pessimistic soul will be able to conjure up how bad the situation is going to be.

Really? That is easy, if the weapon balance won't change then Mechs will get cored in less shots, everything else remains the same.

Not that big of a change if you ask me.

Edited by Bloody Moon, 08 July 2013 - 04:15 PM.

[GaussDragon]

Victor Morson, on 04 July 2013 - 12:54 PM, said:

Thousands. But almost all of them are from the non-competitive community. The competitive community came into this knowing what worked in the past and what did not, and how that would apply to MW:O.

We are not psychic, not really. It was prediction through experience. It is also the reason I keep shouting to ignore "low ELO" or "PUG" gamers, because almost all of the horrible suggestions you're talking about came from there, where most of the competitive community players were saying very close to exactly the same things I was.

I have had to read some really awful ideas over the past year and a half but when you talk to competitive players there's a much greater degree of consensus on what needs fixing... this isn't accidental. The people who are good at this game are logically the ones that get this game. They know what works, what doesn't and most importantly, why.

[S3dition]

Oh goody, another chicken little thread. Sorry, but the facts really don't agree with you for a couple reasons:

1) There is far more diversity in mech drops than you posted. Far, far more. Some games do result in heavier drops on one side, but not always. I've seen a vast spread of mechs, across every weight class, than we had a year ago. So no, you're not correct in your assumption that everyone will run a stalker, raven, or cataphract. Not even close.

2) LRMs were the end of the game. Then the AC20 was the end of the game. Then Streaks were the end of the game. Then gauss weapons were the end of the game. Then ECM was the end of the game. Now PPC's are the end of the game.

You see a problem with this pattern? This is exactly like every other forum for every other game in existence. You feel that any change other than the one you announce from your soap box will result in the developer going out of business.

I'm not saying the balance is perfect. I'll even admit that I stated that many mechs would be useless inside their own weight class. The awesome is at the bottom of it's class and is pretty rare due to the lack of fire power and easy of focusing on a single hit box to bring it down. On the other hand, I've seen them used as pretty effective missile boats as well. It could use a buff, yes. Or the stalker could lose some hard points. Or PPC's could generate more heat to discourage boating 6 of them.

League of Legends, probably the most successful televised game has armies of people doing exactly what you are. Nothing is balanced, the game will collapse tomorrow, the devs are stupid, blah blah blah.

But I can point out just as many (probably more) chicken little posts that completely failed, such as the trial mech system driving off every new player, hero mechs being pay-to-win, and camo prices to expensive for the market. Not surprisingly, there are new players, hero mechs aren't all that great (often worse) and I see a lot of custom camo and colors.

No, the sky is not falling.

[Pezzer]

Just sad to see a moderator bury this thread by putting it into a less-viewed, but incorrect section. Shame on whoever forced Park's hand.

And yeah, about the whole I told you so thing, Ive been playing since last year pretty seriously (whilst taking hiatuses at times) and every time I come back to the game it seems...off. Oh hey, more mechs and maps! OH hey, the graphics are prettier! Ohhhoh, objectives might've fixed everything!
And then I see SRMs practically bouncing off of armor, everyone sniping, scouts capping everything making the match less fun (so weird that we expected lights capping the objectives to fix everything :/), etc.

After they had fixed missile dmg and buffed lasers/pulses, I loved the game. But sadly, I had gotten bored of it. I believe this was at Open Beta launch, I call it the Golden Age of balance. Almost everything worked well, and more features were being promised which excited everyone. Plus, wipe! Something for everyone to work for! Even the vets...

I still dont see why more people didnt hop on the matchmaker-suggestion bandwagon. IT fixed WoT (WHICH HAD THE SAME EXACT ISSUES with weight classes/tiers!! I was in both betas for it, and after MM was fixed the game was glorious at the time), it would fix this game. Lights, meds, heavies, assaults are all taken into account by an AI matchmaker that can take a look at mech types (categories) and weights, then wisk them away into the neverland of a balanced match in a randomly selected map. I begged for this in late Closed, not many even cared to listen. Too hot and bothered about LRMs and how PPCs sucked, etc.

Now look at where things are. New Mechs and features, broken gameplay balance as a sad whole. Shiny new things, broken mechanisms within them. Like a new cheap toy that you play with for about a month as a kid, then break, then decide to go back to those awesome old toys you've had for years. I wonder how MW4 Mekpak is...

Well, at any rate, my thoughts on this past year in MWO. Im still gonna throw money at the damn thing like Fry, and pray they get the guy on the USS Balance away from the helm before he hits that iceburg. Project Phoenix was exactly what I wanted, and what many players wanting to get thier money's worth outta the game wanted. Let's hope the MGs/SRMs fitted on those mechs be a sign that SOMETHING is being done about balance.

Just my pressimistic 0.02 cents, take from it what you will.

P.S. Sorry, I'm not very good with the Book O' the Dead, wish I coulda googled some old forum topics but I don't know what to search xD

Edited by Pezzer, 09 July 2013 - 12:45 PM.

[Marcus Tanner]

S3dition, on 08 July 2013 - 09:40 PM, said:

No, the sky is not falling.

I'm glad you agree with the the OP on that. This is a "Why are they making the same mistakes they did last year?" thread.

In some areas they're improved. They just do it at a glacial pace, and they leave other things unaddressed for very long periods.

Machine guns and PPCs and small pulse lasers aren't awful any more, but Narc sure is. Flamers remain... unimpressive. Narc has never even flirted with being anything but garbage.

There was a huge community prediction that ECM would be really awful when it hit. Sure enough, it turned out to be the least balanced game element we've ever seen. Even during the days before the Artemis hotfix you wouldn't see people look around at their team and disconnect if there weren't any LRM boats on their side. Paul said that it really didn't need a big nerf, and since that declaration it has had about 8 big nerfs. Even if you want to call it balanced I still haven't heard from anyone who would miss the thing if it disappeared. The effect and the response was entirely predictable, and, indeed, correctly predicted.

I was as shocked as anyone else when the Jagermech proved to be *yet another* mech that was dropped into the game with a head hitbox that was too big. Sure, every mech had a head hitbox that was too big way back in early closed beta, but for it to happen on the Cataphract and then again on the Jager had me wondering how exactly it is that this could happen again. People are still wondering about how the Battlemaster's head will turn out. They may be learning, but the pace is glacial.

High-damage alpha strikes are a thing that the dev team is working on right now. What perplexes me is that it isn't something they handled 8 or 10 months ago.

We still don't have Community Warfare in this game. I have no idea how this game managed to get to closed beta without it, let alone get so close to release without letting the closed beta group get some of the bugs worked out.

I shouldn't have to remind everyone that we still don't have integrated VOIP in this game. I don't know how we got as far as closed beta without that kind of functionality, let alone open beta. Even now they just don't think it's important which means we can expect to hit release date without being able to voice chat with the other people on your team. That's astonishing. The devs know how important coordination is and they're well aware of the effect that Team v PUG has, but integrated VOIP just isn't on their radar.

The game will do okay based on the strength of the core gameplay mechanics, in spite of the tectonic pace at which they're catching up with the most basic functionality and the Groundhog Day feel of balance decisions.

[GaussDragon]

S3dition, on 08 July 2013 - 09:40 PM, said:

Oh goody, another chicken little thread. Sorry, but the facts really don't agree with you for a couple reasons:

2) LRMs were the end of the game. Then the AC20 was the end of the game. Then Streaks were the end of the game. Then gauss weapons were the end of the game. Then ECM was the end of the game. Now PPC's are the end of the game.

Every time the LRMs were OP it was (thankfully) short-lived. Half the time it was due to an outright error. The AC20 has never been OP. The only thing streaks really meaningfully threatened was other lights. The gauss has never been OP (even in the era of the gaussapult).

PPCs have been the overwhelmingly predominant weapon for 3+ months now.

Your argument is pretty much premised on the thinking that anyone making a complaint is hysterical and wrong and around here... that's usually correct but these balance problems are indeed problems. We wouldn't be as alarmed if PGI was making progress but things have been getting worse in terms of balance, not better. If you seriously think balance is better now than it was prior to the SRM nerf then you have no business commenting on game balance.

Edited by GaussDragon, 09 July 2013 - 09:12 PM.

[Cold Macaroni]

TL:DR but congrats on being right about whatever it was that was bothering you.