592 replies to this topic

[onipanda]

I really hope PGI listens to what comes of this. I have major doubts about PGI's testing protocol and ability to balance, and listen to constructive criticism because Russ said that through the testing, the opinion on the new heat scale was "unanimous." You have serious problems with your testing protocol if the response from your testers is unanimous. There has to be someone pointing out what's wrong with your decision because if everyone is saying it's good, the you have a bunch of yes men or a group who want that for their own gain not the game's. Vocal minority cuts both ways.

[Vassago Rain]

Will partake if I can.

[INAPPROPRIATE NAME 0001]

>Save MWO
>created today

gosh guys, took you long enough

[fil5000]

Very much looking forward to this - while I'm sure there'll be disagreement, from the heat scale maths feedback thread there's definitely a consensus on a lot of issues.

[ninjitsu]

The game is dead. Nothing we can do about it. Time to move on.

[Barkem Squirrel]

ninjitsu, on 21 July 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

The game is dead. Nothing we can do about it. Time to move on.

I found this game not long after open beta started, but after the founders program ended and just watched video's for a few weeks. Then I joined, no regrets. Now we have unseen coming into play. What developments will we see in the next year, well we have an idea for the mechs for the next 6 months, Orion, Flea, Locust, Shadow Hawk, Thunderbolt and Battlemaster. Then we have the Clans. Then there is the community warfare, but I see some information being released in spurts through the summer. The plan is not assembled, but is still a work in progress to being assembled soon. As for some people just wanting a finished game, wait and then come back or continue to play, adapt to changes and most of all have fun. That is all it is about, fun.
Just think, I play with fps around 8 to 12 and sometime bumping up to 20. I still get kills, assists, and play squirrel leading people to my team to finish off. I just had my second tie game about an hour ago, that was the most fun I have had in a while, one kill and 6 assists and I just could not hit the legs on the cicada for minutes.

When you see Squawk on the screen, whether they are on your side or the other side, it's game on and boast back about how the AC 20 raven will core'em.

[fil5000]

Barkem Squirrel, on 21 July 2013 - 11:50 PM, said:

The plan is not assembled, but is still a work in progress to being assembled soon. As for some people just wanting a finished game, wait and then come back or continue to play, adapt to changes and most of all have fun. That is all it is about, fun.

None of the complaints that are being raised are to do with this not being a finished game, they are to do with the direction the game is taking. If you're having fun, that's great - no one is telling you that you're not allowed to. Enough of us aren't that this sort of meeting seems like a good idea.

[Chronojam]

JadeRaven, on 21 July 2013 - 10:00 PM, said:

Thanks for your kind words, but I'm honestly worried that this might tarnish our tough guy persona way too much.

If there's no game worth playing come September, there's nobody left to squawk at and nobody left to do the squawking. That would be a sad day indeed.

[Tadferd]

I'll try to remember this and attend. Seems like it could be very interesting discussion.

[grayson marik]

Well, I am the creator of Inner Sphere Wars. While I am on vacation with only my tablet at hand, i cannot atend to such meeting.

But to answer the question, the OP created:
For the roughly 400 people, playing ISW the lack of private matches is breaking the game most seriously. And the most frustrating thing therefore is that this particular feature has still no ETA.

Why this feature?
Because it would enable better league play of course. And because it would enable to play stock, 3025, king of the hill etc. with likeminded people, until the devs ahow up with the proper content.

Long story short: because it is the perfect bandaid for the current flaws and enables fun play until PGI can sort things out.

Edited by grayson marik, 22 July 2013 - 02:55 AM.

[Bluemaxx]

This threads makes for some interesting reading.

Members of ARMD will be at this meeting to hear more about this.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

I'll be there.

[xZaOx]

Just remember what happens when you have too many cooks in the kitchen.

Also remember when KaoS and a bunch of top units pooled together and wrote a big long letter from the competitive community, how much that did?

[BoyWonder]

DV McKenna, on 22 July 2013 - 05:03 AM, said:

I'll be there.

This guy has over 2,200 posts, what you really need is some deep thinkers... we will be sending Keith over with a platter of assorted cheeses.

I will be there and my +1 will be a 12-pack..might need it.

Looking forward to hearing some of the other ideas, even if they are ultimately ignored.

[Gwaihir]

Personally, I don't think there's much (or anything) to be gained from agitating for things that I and the other competitive teams would love right now (lobbies) but which wouldn't actually provide a good return on investment for PGI.

That's aside from the fact that without a fundamentally sound balancing approach, what good will lobbies and their accouterments do us? Great, we can play private matches that are just as one dimensional and stale as normal public matches have been for the last 4+ months.

Edited by Gwaihir, 22 July 2013 - 06:04 AM.

[Lemniscate]

As much as I would love to see more coding work put into making the game more friendly to competitive teams, as Gwaihir said there just isn't enough return on investment in that right now, it isn't going to happen.

Similarly, as much as I would love for the community to come together with a list of balance fixes, hand them to PGI, and have them start iteratively testing and implementing them, that isn't going to be the outcome of a meeting like this either.

Those things aren't the real, core issue with MWO right now. They're just symptoms. More than anything, I would love to see the community come together to talk about the direction that PGI is taking this game and the Mechwarrior franchise, and ideally what I think is the best thing that could come out of it is enough community pressure that PGI is forced to be more accountable to the organized and invested parts of their playerbase. No one is going to show up to this meeting without being pretty heavily invested (emotionally and likely financially) into MWO and the larger Mechwarrior franchise, there's no reason for our collective opinions on the larger direction that the game is taking to continue being ignored.

So let's all get together and get organized. I'll certainly be there representing KDR Squad.

Edited by Lemniscate, 22 July 2013 - 06:11 AM.

[Hubis]

In order for this meeting to be the most productive, I think we need to focus on coming to a consensus at the most broad level, and then drilling down, rather than focusing on individual peeves from the get-go (even if they are very well-founded).

To that end, I'd suggest that groups who want to take part in this talk among themselves and come up with a very short list of bullet points, starting at a very high level and going into specifics as separate items. This will allow us to quickly compare our thoughts, pull out what we agree on, and both collectively recognize that these are agreed upon problems, and jump straight into discussing what we think the solutions are. There's no point in debating mechanic changes if the parties involved don't even think the problems they're trying to solve exist. As an example, I'd suggest a list that consists of the following:

• What are your main problems with MWO right now?
  
  • (Very high-level: "Tactical game is not fun", "Low mech variety", etc.)

• What are the causes of these problems?
  
  • (Directly related to the above: "Sniping is too good", "Objectives are too simple", etc.)
• What types of changes would fix these problems?
  
  • (Generic changes rather than systems: "Weapons need rebalance", "Time to live needs to increase", "Need more motivation to split forces", etc.)
• What would you suggest to implement these changes?
  
  • ("Increase heat on PPCs", "Buff mech armor/structure", "Fix SRMs", etc.)

I think this will also be maximally useful to PGI as feedback if we can come up with a similar "consensus opinion" from this, since it will let them know what the highest level problems and symptoms are, even if they don't like the suggested solutions themselves. Part of the problem with the "Heat Scale" fiasco is that a lot of people are in disagreement on what it's even supposed to fix, let alone whether it's a good way to fix it. If we can provide a vision for what we want the game to be and why we think the current situation is a problem, hopefully this will inspire PGI to do the same and outline their entire chain of thought better as well.

Edited by Hubis, 22 July 2013 - 06:33 AM.

[moderatepudding]

As KDR squad's second in command, I'll be making an appearance as well.

To prepare for the coming Balance War, I've started taking Jujutsu classes and have been sewing a flag together, and I just recently placed a massive order of REMOVE PAUL pins and bumper stickers and flyers. My body is so ready for this

[Teralitha]

Despite the typical goons superiority complex and arrogance in thinking that they speak for all of us, or that their opinions matter more.....

It may be worth a shot, but I doubt it. Everything wrong with the game has already been addressed on their own forums, they just dont act on it.

The best thing for MWO right now is for PGI to sell the game to another developer. They have proven time and time again that they while they supposedly "listen" to us, they do not take the appropriate steps to fix what many mechwarrior experts see are the real root issues.


Weapon recycle is too fast
Projectile speeds are too fast
Certain weapons need buffing(like the LBX10)
Knockdowns need to be brought back
Double heat sinks need to be removed
Single heat sinks need to be buffed "slightly" in conjunction with removing DHS
LRMS need rewritten to MW4 LRMs or similar(skill based)
ECM should be removed or rewritten to make it less complex.
Assault mode needs real bases.
Matchmaker needs tonnage limits and/or battle value.
There should have been a solo queue only option, and 4 vs 4, and an 8 vs 8 option, all separate.
PGI needs to stop adding features and fix all the above.

Im sure there are many more, minor issues that could be added to that list. But those are the main issues.

Players have been screaming at PGI since closed beta about all those, and they still havent done any of it.

Your townhall meeting wont make a dent, but I wish you luck. I may show up, I havent decided.

[Vulix]

- Mechs don't die too quickly really, it's only perceived that way right now because theres no tonnage limits preventing the entire enemy team from running only assaults - of course smaller mechs like mediums will die quickly. Light vs light, medium vs medium, etc. is basically the same as MW4, aside from a few builds like AC20 Jaegers. Those are mostly 1-dimensionally spec'd builds though that have an easy counter if you scout them out.

- The author claims LRMs in mass are weak, which is just wrong. LRMs are just another long-range weapon that come with their own pros and cons, much like PPCs IMO - PPCs are better if you can aim them, worse if you can't.

- Authors complains about newbies not knowing to run meta-builds and wasting cbills, but fails to realize 80% of players will probably play casually and not care about Min\Max builds or the upper echelons of competitive play. That's the truth, PGI is making the game for the masses, not the people who want to be super-competitive. It's pretty much how most games work these days.

- Complains long range weaponry is superior to short range weaponry, which actually pretty much makes sense to me. Large pulse does indeed need a buff though, it's just pointless right now

- The author states that PGI has stuck to tabletop values when they totally have deviated from them

- PGI has already stated future game modes will be about objectives, which will force the current blob lance tactics (as the author described it) to split up and simultaneously defend\attack different objectives

Really, I think the biggest issue is still matchmaking. Doing this Assaults vs The World tournament, I had several monstrous games where I get 5 kills and do 800+ damage. If complete newbies are dropping into matches with people destroying everything, that will probably be what discourages them the most. If newbies only dropped with newbies and then slowly progressed to more competitive players, they would gradually adopt IMO. No one is going to be a perma-newb, they will gradually learn the game and get better. They just need to survive the first few matches, and better matchmaking will help.

Plus, we see PGI trying to fix balance by implementing the new heat penalties. We need to remember the version we are playing is always a few weeks behind the internal build PGI is working with. Nothing will ever be fixed seemingly instantly unless it's a hotfix.

We also haven't even seen UI 2.0 out yet and we know that community warfare should start around September 30th. Having played since closed beta, the game has seen a lot worse things and has survived. I'm sure MWO will be just fine, with or without goons.

Guys - remember when ECM was the end of MWO and then it got fixed? Yeah, stop whining and just give it time.

tl;dr People are going to ***** but others are going to play anyway so this thread is pointless just like the other 5000 QQ threads

Edited by Vulix, 22 July 2013 - 09:18 AM.