255 replies to this topic

[Nekki Basara]

Lazy Eye, on 14 August 2013 - 05:55 AM, said:

Concerned that #saveMWO isn't representing you or players like you? Contact Stalkerr and air your views at the next meeting. That's what I did.

I'm a hard-core fan, but I play like a "casual". I listened to the first town hall and felt that it would be good to have non-aligned players represented, so I joined in.

If someone else wants to represent non-aligned players, that would be great - I'm not in this for my ego, I'm in it because I feel that PGI "could be doing better" and I want to be part of the conversation that defines what "better" is and hopefully persuade PGI that we're not "foaming at the mouth fanatics" and that actually, what we're talking about is just GoodGameDesign™ and GoodBusinessSense™ and will promote and preserve MWO into the future.

Most of what we talked about is the lack of clarity; where is the game going? What's going to be there to keep us interested (i.e. keep us investing in MWO)?

The conversations about balance comes around, because there is a consensus that this could be done differently, in ways that appear less convoluted, in ways that would seem to take better advantage of the "beta" status.

Anyone who thinks we're in this to "wreck" MWO, think on this: why would intelligent, educated individuals who could be doing something else even consider spending their time organising an international meeting that means some of us have to stay up 'til 3:30am (or later) on a work night?

If you don't agree with us, come and participate, put your point across. You never know, we may actually change our minds. But if you don't try, what are we supposed to do, use ESP?

This is a good post and people need to read it again.

[Stormwolf]

Listened to the audio, I have one thing to add.

At one point it was mentioned in the NGNG podcasts was a bit more geared towards the BT crowd and not so much the competative crowd, this doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'm part of the more hardcore BT/TT crowd and I think that the game isn't delivering anything here.

Some examples, these scans can be downloaded in PDF format at the official BT website here:
http://bg.battletech...ut-3050-upgrade


Let's take the CN9-D here:



look at all that information, the Centurion is pretty much one of the most common mechs in the BT setting. This will ofcourse never be reflected in MWO unless they have some broken ingame advantage that would make it worth taking.

You can do a ton of stuff with this for stock mode players.

Own a CN9-A? Cheap mech with low costs generally, only that autocannon is going to give you problems, you might need to approach different vendors to get a compatible type.

Have you saved up enough money? Buy yourself a Field Refit Kit for that outdated bucket of bolts.

Have a lot of loyalty points in the FedCom? Get one for free! Hanse Davion will be footing the bill for that one, just don't expect him to get you leather seats.


It's not in the game, but here goes:





In the TT this mech will rarely overheat (apart from the C Config), in MWO it'll be a different story altogether, but let's not go into a DHS discussion here. The mech itself is pretty much a highly mobile heavy mech, the current balancing of weapons and equipment won't really do it justice.

This mech was actually pretty good in both MW2 and MW3, it would have really shined in MW3 if we had canon customization rules in that game. You would have run into situation where a Annihilator would pack more puch (but would be difficult to refit) and the lighter Summoner which could be reconfigured into a various configs (canon or custom, which is possible with omnimechs). Such a thing would have added a much needed dimension to making choices on what mechs to keep.


My point (yes there was one), you can be a competitive player in the BT setting with all the quirks that come with it.

The current game offers little challenge in obtaining the gear you want since we can get our hands on anything with sufficient C-Bills by grinding trial mechs. This is rather confusing to new players since they are often stuck with outdated trial mechs (designs that are contemporaries of the CN9-A in my earlier example). Either leave those mechs out or make it clear that they are "bargain bin" designs and sell them cheap.

Some mechs should be linked to your faction and be exclusive to that faction, Dragons should only be available in the FRR and DC. If you are in the LC, then you'll need to salvage one. You would also need to secure parts to actually keep this mech running. A good competative player would know what mechs are easy to maintain and keep them at peak performance in battle.

But now you might wonder, what about customization? Good question, it would ofcourse remain with the added option of stock only matches. the only thing that I would like to add here is that some supplies would be limited, these limitation should be linked to events on the IS map.
Lost a LRM ammo production site? I hope you were wise enough to stock up on ammo before, you're going to need them to win back the site.

The big winner with customization would ofcourse be to capture a omnimech, no hardpoint limitations, but you can't change the engine, armor levels or add/remove ferro/endo. Building a tricked out ride is easy, maintaining it should be the real challenge.

You could always join the Clans to get those cool toys immediatly, but the Clans should have everything dictated by honor points. This would be a challenge in its own right, you can't progress in any way if you fight dishonorable. There have been plenty of discussions about a Clan honor system, but I won't ramble on about that.

And there's also a place where you can play with pretty much what ever mech you want and create configs without having to worry about parts. I'm ofcourse talking about the Solaris Arena's, we even have Duncan Fisher for any voice work that needs to be done.

My other point here was, do something with the setting PGI.

[Damocles69]

Niko Snow, on 14 August 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Please #savethisthread by keeping it constructive.

Niko, what here has been nonconstructive? 90% of these threads are either thanking the goons for putting this on or disscussion of good points raised during the meeting.

[Chronojam]

CSPshala, on 14 August 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

Man some of you need to find out how to use an enter key.

A quick comment on this. The enter key no longer works for me on the MWO forums as of around a month ago, not when using the assisted-editing mode. Unless I switch into raw bbcode mode, which enables me to use linebreaks again. It's very annoying and I often store a linebreak on the clipboard while posting because of it.

[MechFrog1]

sokitumi, on 14 August 2013 - 07:14 AM, said:

And here we thought mechassault killed the franchise.....

edit/expansion:
A lot of good commentary in there. But come on, communication has been the problem since forever with this team. You srsly STILL have hope these guys can turn this train around 4 weeks before release? Before metacritic scores this thing into oblivion?

Hope spring eternal. If nothing else, Goons are an optimistic group.

[Victor Morson]

Shoot, sorry I missed the 2nd townhall! I didn't see the post in time. Thank you for hosting it, guys.

One thing I still really want to proceed forwards with is the "Educate" strategy. I'm still hoping to put together training videos for MW:O that tell people how to do well in the game we have.

The first step to getting any notice is to start educating new players in a nice, polished way I think. There's way too many people on these forums that will convince newbies to build horrendous Frankenbuilds, that they will then defend against "cheesy builds."

If some unit is interested in shooting some footage like this, drop me a PM, because we really need all 24 people on the same page to do this efficiently and it's rare for us to have a full 24 on at any given time.

The more players that are given good easy to use builds and strategies, the more problems become apparent. PGI considers ghost heat a success I think, in part, due to the fact pugs overreacted and stopped running Stalkers and went immediately back to cluster designs with AC/10s and stuff. So they think it's working. Ugh.

EDIT: It is my hope pilots looking at the existing tutorial videos will find these videos, and actually learn something.

Edited by Victor Morson, 14 August 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Stormwolf, on 14 August 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

look at all that information, the Centurion is pretty much one of the most common mechs in the BT setting. This will ofcourse never be reflected in MWO unless they have some broken ingame advantage that would make it worth taking.

Ironically the Centurion is already the most common medium, because it's the only one that's reasonably durable and not engine handicapped (*cough* Hunchback). The Trebuchet is a close second, but the Centurion is clearly superior for brawling.

Still pretty much everything you said isn't something that they should be concerned about right now. Let's just fix what we have before trying to make stuff exclusive or adjust prices purely to fit with canon (because again, the "garbage" Cent 9A is the very best medium in the game.)

[Victor Morson]

Big Giant Head, on 14 August 2013 - 06:48 AM, said:

So, IGP owns PGI (MWO) and Roadhouse (MWT)
And we all know that MWT was in early production for very long time due to instability of Unreal Engine web player and they still are.

Recent move by IGP switching Roadhouse for Blue Lizard Games form Ecuador that was making casual games probably because it would take so much resources and money to support Roadhouse's development.

I don't doubt the game had a lot of good things going for it, but the art style was a huge put-off to me and several people I know. The 'mechs looked like the unfortunate children of Dark Ages and a Cartoon and were utterly butchered so badly that I - rather unfairly - never gave MW:T a chance.

That said this honestly gives me hope, because now I think if the launch ends up imploding, they might just replace PGI rather than cancel the game.

Given the foundation is already strong, I cannot imagine even an outsourced dev could be worse than our current situation. If they'd spend a few weeks making a basic RISK map for community warfare and spend an hour editing the XML files, they'd already be leaps, bounds and miles ahead of where we're at.

Edited by Victor Morson, 14 August 2013 - 03:21 PM.

[Galen Crayn]

Quote

Please #savethisthread by keeping it constructive.

Niko, pls tell us all what was NOT constructive here. I dont see it. Instead of saying: Wow, these guys are real fans and want to make the game better - only such a unqualified comment was made...

[Sybreed]

Niko Snow, on 14 August 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Please #savethisthread by keeping it constructive.

Woah, Niko, I usually don't complain about mods' work around here, but this felt more like bullying than actual moderating. Nothing wrong with the thread so far.

[Miekael]

I believe Niko was referring to the last townhall thread. There was some ugly in the previous two, again remember guys, this thread is for the cause, keep it civil and on topic.

As for your ideas Stormwolf I think they are great, however, Victor is right in that we cannot expect elaborate new ideas to actually be presented and worked on, I think we should just focus with what we do have, and what can be done about it. If you like to go to the forum in my sig you can start a thread (in Mecha Lingua) and post it, or bring your ideas to the chat room and actively discuss it with people that are on.

Victor, set up a day and time and I will see who in The Fallen wants to help with video work, Rahl makes some cool vids and can be one of the cameramen if he is available, and I am sure others here would be interested as well in sync dropping and making some vids.

[Miekael]

Last I checked collisions were not going to be back until after launch. No specific timeframe has been given.

[Nekki Basara]

To be fair to that video, the problem was that machine guns were utterly worthless at that point in time (as opposed to almost utterly worthless like they are now).

Also facebook game ads always tell you that it's the bestest, most hardcore, totally-not-for-kids-adults-only-srsly-grownup-stuff-here game ever made.

[PeekaBoo I C Ju]

Save MWO, i thought they were doing good?...so let me get this straight...when MWO was in its beta and was still fun they were raking in cash...now that they nerfed everything into boringness they are hurting for $$$?....hate to say it...but i told you so!

[DOTSGEMINI]

I was so happy with the MWO community when I saw how much we raised during the sarahs mech fundraiser. While I support the movements overall motives, I just feel like its being implemented poorly. :/ Id like for the public test server, but id also like it if everyone didnt bash PGI.

[PeekaBoo I C Ju]

I will not bash PGI...it is not a productive use of my mental resources...i made an argument on the forums a few months back that stated that this very thing would happen should they decide to try and "Balance" everything....they are losing long time fans in hordes and not gaining many new people at the same time...fans spend money because they love the franchise...especially if it is Cannon....others may spend a few here and there....but with the amount of hardcore fans PGI loses by listening to the less dedicated new players in regard to balance is not gonna make up for it...in the end...they lose...if newbs want balance set them up on a server where all mechs and all weapons are EXACTLY the same...see how long it lasts...i believe they will get bored really fast and stop playing....that is my educated opinion

[Stormwolf]

Victor Morson, on 14 August 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Ironically the Centurion is already the most common medium, because it's the only one that's reasonably durable and not engine handicapped (*cough* Hunchback). The Trebuchet is a close second, but the Centurion is clearly superior for brawling.

I haven't played in a while, but I was given to understand that medium mechs are getting rare.

Quote

Still pretty much everything you said isn't something that they should be concerned about right now. Let's just fix what we have before trying to make stuff exclusive or adjust prices purely to fit with canon (because again, the "garbage" Cent 9A is the very best medium in the game.)

I was only exemplifying why it isn't a bad thing to get some input from BT players in addition to purely competative players. Having a balanced game is good, having a balanced game with some actual flavor to it will make it even more enjoyable.

[Nik Reaper]

The most strange thing I found about PGI's behavior is that while it is somewhat evident that they fell behind on there plans and needed a instant cash boost several times, what was the money used for?

The fist founders package money was probably used to pay off the loan they got from IGP to start development, and even as it didn't directly go to the game ( many hoped that development would pick up pace as more funds were available ) it might have cleared the debt and made the new investments from MC and premium time go directly to the war chest.

I'm having a very hard time coming to understand the relationship PGI has with IGP , in general if the developer doesn't sit on a pile of money the publisher provides funds like a loan shark and handles the distribution and some times the marketing. If PGI payed off the initial loan but could not sustain it's self off of the loaned money, witch might explain the rushed open beta with promotion of buying mc, it makes sense that they took a second loan , but as was stated by a developer ( someone might state witch one and when ) MW:O is pulling a profit as it is so it sounds they don't need to take out more loans.

So my question is if they are debt free and can sustain them self's and they know they are behind in development , why have they not preformed a substantial hiring pass with the phoenix package money? The only thing that helps development is a higher quality of the devs and/or more devs and the last we heard is they have about 50 people working on the game right now.

I am happy that there is going to be a new MW game after all this time but it's just not going to be a AAA MW game and even that's fine , just don't go doing false advertisement or advertise ones wishes despite ones ability to perform.

Constructive part of the post : Hire more developers and programers?

Edited by Nik Reaper, 15 August 2013 - 12:45 AM.

[Destructicus]

Niko Snow, on 14 August 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Please #savethisthread by keeping it constructive.

I don't know if I'm relieved or disturbed by this
I'm relieved because at least somebody involved with PGI knows about this
I'm disturbed because this seems like a veiled suggestion for us to censor ourselves....
But then again I'm very cynical in nature
I'm even more disturbed that someone who more than likely has a more direct line with the people in charge than we do is aware of this movement and it still hasn't been addressed at all
I'm not saying it's any moderators responsibility to represent the community in any fashion
I'm just saying its become blatantly clear we're being ignored
I really wish you could just please tell me I'm wrong

Edited by Destructicus, 15 August 2013 - 12:53 AM.

[Deathz Jester]

I saw an arbitrary post by a mod, and then some replies to it, that will probably be ignored, since apparently we're not being constructive [pointed out by the casual dismissive glance that this thread probably got, and the arbitrary post that followed]

Edited by Iron Harlequin, 15 August 2013 - 01:02 AM.