464 replies to this topic

[JohnnyWayne]

Niko Snow, on 16 July 2013 - 12:46 PM, said:

Hey guys,

Let's all play some avoid insulting each-other for having different opinions. Thanks.

Ahahaha sry, but i have to ask this: What the hell is a light admin? Are you the last one there to turn the lights off? XDDDD

To write something useful: The king is dead, long live the king! Welcome our new king the 1gauss2ppc mech!

Edited by JohnnyWayne, 16 July 2013 - 02:09 PM.

[S3dition]

Chronojam, on 16 July 2013 - 01:55 PM, said:

Making a game worse decreases its value, this is pretty straightforward. Making the gameplay harder to penetrate for new players decreases the value; some nights it is literally impossible to find an 8-man match despite trying for over half an hour. Because this game relies on active players as a strictly multiplayer game, anything that causes players to become frustrated and leave (or never decide to stick around) devalues the game.

Really, you can't continually say such stupid things and expect to be taken seriously. "Value" is not strictly tied to resale asking price, and the nostalgia factor and branding is probably one of the only reasons this free to play title has not already fallen apart -- sheer sentimental value keeps a lot of players hoping things will turn around.

Maybe if it were a better game your friends would want to play instead of taking one look and deciding it's not worth it.

Don't be coy. Price is not strictly a financial value either. But while you're still putting words in my mouth then harassing me for things I'm not saying:

1 WRONG! Where did I say my friends tried it? Literacy, my friend, separates us from the animals. None of them have even been to this website. They DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES.

2) I get invited to 8 mans all the time when I'm online. I think your problem is how you treat people, not the ability to find a match in the game.

3) You're trying to argue intrinsic and extrinsic value to me. Nobody cares about how you will look back on this game in 20 years. That has no value to the developers. Nostalgia means you are no longer paying and therefore is a non-factor. Online games have little to no extrinsic factors. You don't actually get anything from playing the game. I guess you could print out your K/D ratio and frame it though.

That leaves what you are getting out of the game right this minute. That's the way all online games, especially micro transaction games, work. The value for PGI is what you spend, and the value for you is enjoy the game right that moment. Don't believe me? Try out some other micro transaction games. Look at how many items you pay real money for and expire - yet people buy them. Why? Because they are having fun with them right that moment without caring whether they'll be usable in 3 days. Thats why candy crush is raking in millions of dollars a month selling 5 more moves at $1 right when you run out... because people care more about that level that they are playing right that moment than whether the next level will be twice as hard.

[MechFrog1]

Vincent Quatermain, on 16 July 2013 - 01:14 PM, said:

No, actually, some people were getting motion sick. One of my group's cadet instructors had to quit playing JJ mechs entirely due to motion sickness. But, it doesn't affect you, so it must not be real, right?

Jerk.

Well your entirely true and not made up anecdote justifies making the game objectively worse for everyone. Got me.

[Thoummim]

Srm are overbuffed in my humble opinion, ppc still op compared to other weapon espcially the LPL hopefully their base heat will be up next patch and they will finally be balanced.

[hammerreborn]

Thoummim, on 16 July 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:

Srm are overbuffed in my humble opinion, ppc still op compared to other weapon espcially the LPL hopefully their base heat will be up next patch and they will finally be balanced.

Well Paul did say anything big would die extremely fast to 2.0 srms, but still the community mashed that button. So...you really only have yourselves to blame.

[S3dition]

Lemming, on 16 July 2013 - 02:02 PM, said:

The fact that you think I'm trying to cover up for my own shortcomings shows that you're missing the entire point of the argument.

The new player experience is very important. If a game isn't fun and doesn't convey its game mechanics well, then people are going to stop playing and play a better game. It's part of the reason why the developers are doing 3rd person; it's a really bad idea, but at least their rationale is that they want to implement it to help new players.

A massive problem with the heat change is how nonsensical and unintuitive it is. If you explain to a new player that every time a weapon fires, it generates heat, and that over a certain level of heat, your mech shuts down and you start to receive damage, so you need to manage your heat, it's straightforward and makes sense. It allows for an extra dimension to the game and is a fun mechanic.

Then when you tell them well actually if you fire too many weapons of the same type then the amount of heat increases, but it doesn't if you wait a little bit, not that long but sort of long, and each weapon has a different limit as to how many weapons you can fire really close together, but also the amount of heat is different for every type of weapon that you fire too close together, it stops making sense unless you already have a good grasp of how everything works. It's really hard to explain to somebody who's not already very familiar with the heat system. It's not a good solution.

500 milliseconds is a "sort of long time?" it should be 1 or 2 seconds, since you can macro that out of existence.

Are you really arguing that it's difficult to say:

Hey, if you fire too many of the same weapon at once you generate more heat, so fire your weapons in groups. Here is how to make groups...

By the way, if you use emergency override, you'll take a lot of damage, so don't use it unless you have to.

Shock, a 3rd grader could figure that out. You really think it's THAT hard? 0.o

It's funny how many things about this game are intuitive, and you pick that to complain about.

Weapon groups? No other game has them.
Heat System? No other game has it.
No pop up for thermal, night, targeting,etc buttons?
Torso/arm reticules aren't labelled?
Gets hot when you start moving?
Heat suicide in the crater?
Weapons deal damage past their "max" range?

The list goes on. It's not like this is anything new. I agree, there should be something like a 10 game newby set where instructions pop up on screen, like "Press R to Target" when an enemy appears. But that's not because PGI failed to make the game intuitive - you CAN'T make battletech intuitive because it has components that no other games have. The kids coming over from battlefield and CoD aren't going to find anything other than point and shoot, and reload intuitive. Designing an intuitive UI for software with completely unknown features is impossible. I know, I've tried. Do you know how many people don't know what a long press is on mobile devices? Most of them.

So no, this is no more or less intuitive than anything else in the game so far.

Edited by S3dition, 16 July 2013 - 02:21 PM.

[Conga Whiplash]

Heat Scaling System = Dumb.

EDIT: This along with the Movement changes make me glad I saved my $80 by NOT endorsing the Phoenix Program.

Sad, very sad.

Edited by Conga Whiplash, 16 July 2013 - 02:27 PM.

[Warge]

Lemming, on 16 July 2013 - 02:02 PM, said:

It's part of the reason why the developers are doing 3rd person; it's a really bad idea, but at least their rationale is that they want to implement it to help new players.

3D in exchange of paperdoll - much help without 3PV. Model - that just a copy of Mech you are piloting: same camo, same movement, same damage shown. Help, no?

[WarHippy]

Azzras, on 16 July 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

Little Jimmy deserved to die and I'm glad he uninstalled.
Can't handle one death? Good bye.

Yeah, I mean who cares about new player retention!?!? Seriously, screw those new players that left not because of one death, but rather because of seemingly random deaths caused by a pointless redundant mechanic.

[S3dition]

WarHippy, on 16 July 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

Yeah, I mean who cares about new player retention!?!? Seriously, screw those new players that left not because of one death, but rather because of seemingly random deaths caused by a pointless redundant mechanic.

You know what makes more people leave? The venom in the community and people telling them to press alt+f4 to flush coolant.

Seriously, I've never seen a group of want a game to fail so much, they make themselves believe that there are no new players

[Lemming]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

500 milliseconds is a "sort of long time?" it should be 1 or 2 seconds, since you can macro that out of existence.

Are you really arguing that it's difficult to say:

Hey, if you fire too many of the same weapon at once you generate more heat, so fire your weapons in groups. Here is how to make groups...

By the way, if you use emergency override, you'll take a lot of damage, so don't use it unless you have to.

Shock, a 3rd grader could figure that out. You really think it's THAT hard? 0.o

No, a 3rd grader couldn't figure it out. You would have to explain it to them. That's the point. If you dropped someone in the game with 2 AC/20s and didn't explain how the heat system worked, it would be almost impossible for them to figure out that there's a lot of bonus heat generated if they fire both weapons at the same time, but a lot less if they wait at least half a second. There is no conveyance there. The game does not explain it to you through gameplay.

Everything else you can learn through just playing the game. You would need to do a lot of experimentation to figure out how many weapons made the system kicked in, how much time you have between shots, and how much extra heat is generated if you fire them at the same time. In order to thoroughly understand what's happening, you need to read the forums. That is a garbage system, ESPECIALLY since it does literally nothing to make the game BETTER. It is just a complication for the sake of complication with no depth or thought. It solves no problems, and it makes the game worse for both new and old players, especially new players who won't necessarily have someone familiar to the game holding their hand.

It is a thoroughly garbage system.

Edited by Lemming, 16 July 2013 - 02:26 PM.

[Count van Count]

Azzras, on 16 July 2013 - 01:44 PM, said:

Little Jimmy deserved to die and I'm glad he uninstalled.
Can't handle one death? Good bye.

Why are you so mean to LittleJim

[S3dition]

Lemming, on 16 July 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

No, a 3rd grader couldn't figure it out. You would have to explain it to them. That's the point. If you dropped someone in the game with 2 AC/20s and didn't explain how the heat system worked, it would be almost impossible for them to figure out that there's a lot of bonus heat generated if they fire both weapons at the same time, but a lot less if they wait at least half a second. There is no conveyance there. The game does not explain it to you through gameplay.

Everything else you can learn through just playing the game. You would need to do a lot of experimentation to figure out how many weapons made the system kicked in, how much time you have between shots, and how much extra heat is generated if you fire them at the same time. In order to thoroughly understand what's happening, you need to read the forums. That is a garbage system, ESPECIALLY since it does literally nothing to make the game BETTER. It is just a complication for the sake of complication with no depth or thought. It solves no problems, and it makes the game worse for both new and old players, especially new players who won't necessarily have someone familiar to the game holding their hand.

It is a thoroughly garbage system.

Are you really suggesting that it's impossible for someone to figure out that firing too many weapons at once generates more heat, but they'll quickly figure out, say, lrms getting destroyed because their missile doors are blown off? Or that having heat sinks in their legs cools them faster when in water? Seriously, how are people going to figure that out without someone telling them? Yeah, if someone looks up "dah ubberz buildz" on the internet and tries to copy it (but a new player can't anyway, since they have to grind the cbills), they're going to die horribly now. Of course, if they figured that out then they probably read enough to know its a bad idea.

You know another game that's completely un-intuitive and about to fail? World of Tanks... even though wargaming.net is rolling in cash right now. Seriously, you can get 1 shot by a tank which has a gun with less penetration than you have armor. Invisible tanks can hit you as a full camo TD when you can't see them (technically impossible according to the item/skill descriptors). Yeah, they're rolling in money and they started without so much as a tutorial.

[Sir Roland MXIII]

Oh great, performance improvements? Time to remind everyone of the Murphy's Law of PGI - Performance Improvements, AREN'T.

So let's see how much performance I just lost, again...

Edited by Sir Roland MXIII, 16 July 2013 - 02:46 PM.

[Crimson Angel]

"Sips from tea cup"

Ah, have waited so long for this.

"Sips from tea cup "

The finest tears for my cup, the tears of the ppc boater.

"Sips from tea cup"

No more 6 ppc for you my friend.

[fil5000]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:33 PM, said:

Are you really suggesting that it's impossible for someone to figure out that firing too many weapons at once generates more heat, but they'll quickly figure out, say, lrms getting destroyed because their missile doors are blown off?

This is a terrible comparison. The specific issue is that the "boating fix" is a badly explained mechanic that isn't shown AT ALL within the game. The UI literally has nowhere to show it. If you look at the heat generated by an AC/20 heat and look at how many heat sinks you have you can work out how many shots you can fire before you hit heat cap. Once you get into the game, you fire two and you generate DOUBLE the heat. This is not intuitive. Even if you read the patch notes, it isn't actually clear exactly WHAT will happen other than if you use more than one AC/20 a "scale multiplier" will kick in. And what exactly that means isn't defined in the patch notes.

If you put LRMs in your arm and your arm gets blown off, you lose the LRMs. Because they were in the arm. And the arm was blown off. This makes perfect sense.

The difference between these two seems fairly clear to me.

Crimson Angel, on 16 July 2013 - 02:46 PM, said:

"Sips from tea cup"

Ah, have waited so long for this.

"Sips from tea cup "

The finest tears for my cup, the tears of the ppc boater.

"Sips from tea cup"

No more 6 ppc for you my friend.

Oh do hush, no one with any sense used six PPCs anyway, because you needed an XL to make it viable and an XL on a stalker is death.

[ToxicValor]

S3dition, on 16 July 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

You know what makes more people leave? The venom in the community and people telling them to press alt+f4 to flush coolant.

Seriously, I've never seen a group of want a game to fail so much, they make themselves believe that there are no new players

It is crazy. I have never seen such a rotten community. It makes me sad. I LOVE mechwarrior.. played since early 90s. I can see MWo is going in the right direction contrary to the community who apparently wants to see ruin instead of work and progress.

Lemming, on 16 July 2013 - 02:25 PM, said:

No, a 3rd grader couldn't figure it out. You would have to explain it to them. That's the point. If you dropped someone in the game with 2 AC/20s and didn't explain how the heat system worked, it would be almost impossible for them to figure out that there's a lot of bonus heat generated if they fire both weapons at the same time, but a lot less if they wait at least half a second. There is no conveyance there. The game does not explain it to you through gameplay.

Everything else you can learn through just playing the game. You would need to do a lot of experimentation to figure out how many weapons made the system kicked in, how much time you have between shots, and how much extra heat is generated if you fire them at the same time. In order to thoroughly understand what's happening, you need to read the forums. That is a garbage system, ESPECIALLY since it does literally nothing to make the game BETTER. It is just a complication for the sake of complication with no depth or thought. It solves no problems, and it makes the game worse for both new and old players, especially new players who won't necessarily have someone familiar to the game holding their hand.

It is a thoroughly garbage system.

What is funny about all that.. is that even screenies from UI 2.0 explains their heat and I'm absolutely sure that it will explain through graphs how it works now in 2.0. If a 3rd grader can't read graphs, he shouldn't be playing a game that requires him to think. I honestly didn't need to read the forums to figure things out; just experimentation and play time. I swear, I've read up on how to do things about WoW than anything else and that game is more friendly for those who don't like to think and rather have things given with little effort.
I hopped into this game solo, figured out how to play on my own and I do rather well.
If you can't make someone think on their own, develop and use that special cognitive part of the brain responsible for reasoning and more... then you create a holding hand dependancy. That doesn't help anyone.

[S3dition]

fil5000, on 16 July 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

This is a terrible comparison. The specific issue is that the "boating fix" is a badly explained mechanic that isn't shown AT ALL within the game. The UI literally has nowhere to show it. If you look at the heat generated by an AC/20 heat and look at how many heat sinks you have you can work out how many shots you can fire before you hit heat cap. Once you get into the game, you fire two and you generate DOUBLE the heat. This is not intuitive. Even if you read the patch notes, it isn't actually clear exactly WHAT will happen other than if you use more than one AC/20 a "scale multiplier" will kick in. And what exactly that means isn't defined in the patch notes.

If you put LRMs in your arm and your arm gets blown off, you lose the LRMs. Because they were in the arm. And the arm was blown off. This makes perfect sense.

The difference between these two seems fairly clear to me.



Oh do hush, no one with any sense used six PPCs anyway, because you needed an XL to make it viable and an XL on a stalker is death.

As compared to a... completely unexplained mechanic? Seriously, you're saying it's counter intuitive because you don't agree with it, not because you can actually prove it's less intuitive than anything else in the battletech universe. "Hey, fired my lasers and my ammo blew up! lolz!"

[Dawnstealer]

Going to be interesting with people running the AC2/UAC5 macros and how fast they'll overheat.

Looking forward to playing this - might be changing up a few of my builds and I'm not even really boating anything. Even as a Stalker pilot, I never loaded up the 6PPC version. Now I feel like I missed out.

Even so? GLAD they tweaked it, glad they're still tweaking things, and this is really starting to feel like a great game coming together. I'm going to be ecstatic when 12v12 hits and hopefully we hear a bit more about community warfare.

Good job, PGI!

[Zanathan]

Horrace, on 16 July 2013 - 02:53 PM, said:

I'm getting a refund for Phoenix, they seemed quite concerned I was unhappy and we had a nice email chat about it.

Did you just contact support for this or is there another contact for refunds?