1555 replies to this topic

[Nekki Basara]

PGI has survived other failed games in the past. It won't die just because MWO wasn't a success.

[Chronojam]

Vaderman, on 21 October 2013 - 05:35 AM, said:

You missed the part I was referring to, where the poster called the devs incompetent and lazy.

If that were true we wouldn't have a battletech game at all, and certainly wouldn't have Reseen mechs.

Also what deadlines are you referring to? Are you part of the in-house development team?

Do you think the devs don't know UI2.0 (you forgot that one), CW and dx11 aren't in yet?

This game is a work in progress, and every game of it's type have people on the forums howling for blood because of some "feature" they demand now. It'll be done when it's done, all the finger pointing and jumping up and down and holding your breath won't change that. Weapon balance imo is pretty good right now.

They just gave us a list of upcoming updates and where they are in the development schedule.

Either the game is fun for you or it's not, I took a break myself during the "LRM's blotting out the sun" period. Play it how it is or don't play, the choice is that simple.

So if the devs aren't lazy or incompetent, you must be shifting the blame to the management -- because one of these things is probably true.

Also if you're going to just outright pretend they haven't presented target dates for all kinds of things that they've missed, you're not worth talking to because you're either a liar or far too uninformed to bother with. You know that Community Warfare was supposed to start by January-February of 2012 right? The October DirectX 11 test is quickly running out of days in October.

[Warge]

Nekki Basara, on 21 October 2013 - 07:11 AM, said:

PGI has survived other failed games in the past. It won't die just because MWO wasn't a success.

I don't care about PGI. I care about adequate BT-game but PGI have no skill to make it...

Edited by Warge, 21 October 2013 - 10:55 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Deathlike, on 20 October 2013 - 04:37 PM, said:

Just so you know, being a "yes-man" to everything PGI or any company while still making mistakes doesn't mean it'll survive long. Even successful companies can fail due to overconfidence and delays. There are plenty of examples of that in the industry.

There will always people that try to at least question whether the decision is good or bad... and usually are classified as "nay sayers". The primary intent is not to be a "negative Nancy" but rather question at least consider all other possible options of the decision that is to be made. People that disagree do want the company to succeed.

It is obviously up to the company to decide what is best for the future of the company and its customers. Every decision should always be looked it from all angles, and no stone should stay unturned. Thinking that there's only one way to do things can be a recipe for failure.

I agree with this completely.

I've never been nor have I advocated being a yes man to everything they say. Point out problems, sure. Question decisions, absolutely. But there is a point where all you're doing is ranting, where everyone knows your opinion there and there's no "constructive" left to the criticism.

As to delays, I'd bet that there's nothing that can be done about them now. It's not like PGI chooses to delay features out of spite. PGI wants CW out as fast as possible, because it's a major foundation for player retention and thus moar dollars.

Nekki Basara, on 20 October 2013 - 07:19 PM, said:

See that red star under your founders tag?

That means he wanted to buy those mechs to play, it has nothing to do with "following PGI no matter what." Be bought a product. With that said, keep in mind things you find terrible about MWO? Not everyone finds those things so bad (even if most agree they're not good).

Chronojam, on 20 October 2013 - 10:48 PM, said:

If you're constantly missing deadlines either your management can't manage or your developers can't develop, barring some natural disaster interfering with the whole process. I've seen a few people suggest that we still don't have community warfare, directx11, or weapon balance due to "fan negativity" which is a creative excuse but I'd suggest it's not the fans who are running the show.

I certainly hope you're not attributing that ridiculous notion to me - that features are delayed due to fan negativity.

In fact, it's been a major crux of my argument all along that your ranting is useless here because it's not the fans running the show. The devs have heard your concerns, and your constant bitching achieves nothing other than bringing people down. It's not like, if you keep complaining, suddenly Paul is going to say "Hey, you know what, Chronojam? I thought Ghost Heat was a perfect solution, but your 100th post on the subject has really opened my eyes. I see the error of my ways, and I'll remove it immediately."

Anyways, as to deadlines, perhaps you should consider a third cause: That the deadlines where set overly optimistically and were, given resources available, unachievable. While this is indeed a management failing, it's not one necessarily due to rampant incompetence. Original software development is extremely hard to plan, because you're creating a new unique work. Nobody has made what you're making before. The smaller your development team, the more random the actual time required to make something, because as things come up that need to be dealt with (serious bugs and balance issues; lrm apocolypse, hsr problems, etc) this takes some to all the coders otherwise working on CW off their project to fix more pressing issues. There's a reason most multiplayer games like this have 5 year closed development cycles - even ones with far larger teams and budget.

Whose fault is it? It doesn't matter. Firing a planner and replacing him won't get things made faster, it'll just get either more accurate deadlines (read: much further away) or the same deadlines (which still won't get met). Replacing coders doesn't help either, as you end up with new people who don't understand the current state of the project. Adding coders can help, but budgets and the pool of applicants are what they are.

[Chronojam]

In all honesty PGI will probably never remove ghost heat, and long ago I came to accept that fact. However, accepting its permanence doesn't mean we should give the impression that we've come to accept it as a good design decision.

PGI staff have suggested that fan complaints about things like ghost heat are simply "noise" that must be outlasted. As if we will just open our eyes one day and embrace it, a notion as ludicrous as any post of mine convincing Paul that ghost heat was a bad idea.

You know, I want the game to be fun and all that and it would be cool if there was more testing and more radical balancing or mechanics switcheroos. The problem is that there aren't enough, and we get stuck with bad things for a very long time. The attitude is that if we don't appreciate the single magic-bullet attempt to fix things, then we just haven't given it enough time. I'm curious what alternatives to ghost heat were even considered; wouldn't that be a neat developer piece to read? Even neater if it was presented before a decision was made and PGI married themselves to the ghost heat solution.

Wintersdark, on 21 October 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

I certainly hope you're not attributing that ridiculous notion to me - that features are delayed due to fan negativity.

Didn't mean to make it sound that way, that was not my intent.

[jack 0]

I'm starting to think PGI could make a fortune selling tin foil hats to add to mechs.

[Deathsiege]

Nekki Basara, on 16 October 2013 - 11:07 AM, said:

What's a "war mongler"?

Cousin of the "Ham Burglar."

[Zerberus]

Warge, on 21 October 2013 - 10:42 AM, said:

I don't care about PGI. I care about adequate BT-game but PGI have no skill to make it...

So your solution to this is to post doom and gloom and be as detractory as possible towards PGI at all times, so that the ONLY MW game currently on the market AS WELL as the only one with a valid license in any forseeable future scenarion is gone, too, so that you have no game instead? 0.o

Yeah, why post constructive stuff when we can throw ourselves on our backs and roll around in broken glass? YEAH!! That`ll show them! I will not have been screaming and bleeding from self-infliicted wounds in vain!!!

Nekki Basara, on 21 October 2013 - 07:11 AM, said:

PGI has survived other failed games in the past. It won't die just because MWO wasn't a success.

No, but the Battletech IP will with regards to video games.... Which is what`s most ironic about the incessant posts from people like Warge that "love BT in all it`s forms".... they supposedly love it in all it`s forms, but would prefer not to have a MW game at all for the next 10-15-20-or even worse years than to have MWO, solely because of disdain for the developers.

Usually not necessarily because of "actual" gripes with the game other than the most common one "development is too slow" in all it`s various forms.

Rarely gripes with the actual gameplay beyond "development is too slow" in all it`s forms

But more often than not almost entirely because of misread /half read /misinterpreted statements (The age old "but you said 3pv would never be in the game" BS, for example, whioch could have been entirely avoided if people hadn`t all stopped reading after 2 sentences and had practiced reading comprehension instead of statement-pretzeling in school)

In other words, some of them openly admit to the game being fun, but would still like to see it die a quick and painful death, so they can play, well, nothing. All because they feel personally insulted by a coompany that couldn`t care less who you are (as is absolutely normal for businesses) and almost certainly wouldn`t invest more than most of us earn in a year specifically to step on your johnson. Talk about cutting off your own nose to spite your face....

Edited by Zerberus, 21 October 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Nekki Basara]

"All it's forms" eh? I guess I totally did love clickytech and MechAssault despite thinking I hated them both. Ah well, thanks for clearing that up for me, mysterious internet stranger, who hasn't bothered to read my previous posts!

[MechFrog1]

"Get Better" != "We want you to fail"

Some of you dezgra still seem to be having problems with the distinction. I know it's a lot easier to argue against the 2nd position, but at least pretend like you have some integrity.

[Alaskan Nobody]

mint frog, on 21 October 2013 - 05:04 PM, said:

"Get Better" != "We want you to fail"

Some of you dezgra still seem to be having problems with the distinction. I know it's a lot easier to argue against the 2nd position, but at least pretend like you have some integrity.

When all we hear is negativity, that is all we can work with.
When all you post is "X Sucks!!!!" .... what do you expect those of us who would respond to that to post?

[Nekki Basara]

You truncate the arguement. Usually it's something like "X sucks, so take it out and the game will be better". We can rehash all the reasons taking X out will make the game better, but that seems pointless now if you haven't grasped them yet.

[Rift Hawk]

The Biggest problem with the forums *and the devs know it* is that when your happy with the state of a game, you usually don't come here. When your p*ssed off, you come here all the time. I won't say I'm different, I'm not. I do the same thing and I vent my displeasure on the forums. The fact that people speak out in the hopes of tanking this game however, is absurd. A few malcontents are not going to make this game fail because the vast majority of the player base doesn't even come here. So why they even try is beyond me.

The few times I have been extremely displeased with the state of this game, I have stopped playing. Once for almost 3 months. Everything gets better as time goes on. New problems surface and yes, sometimes we get patches or fixes that aren't as well thought out as they should be. It happens. PGI isn't Blizzard or CCP. Keep that in mind. They don't have the staff or the funding those companies do. They're doing what they can with the resources they have. Calling them incompetent is way over the line.

So many people who know absolutely nothing about coding keep complaining about why we don't have CW yet. I wonder if they even have the slightest idea about what it actually takes to create something like that without totally destroying what you already have ? Not to mention there is far more to making a feature to this or any game than coding.

I have my problems with this game, as I'm not happy with quite a few aspects of it at the moment. That doesn't mean I won't buy something. Without money from the players, if the game can still operate, it would take far longer to get things done. You can't run a company without money. I purchased the protector when it came out. I thought 80$ for overlord with the pheonix pack with a bit much but that was just my opinion. So I went with the 40$ pack. Money is a major key to the success of this game. The more we put into it, the more we'll get in return over the long run. The other key is constructive criticism. Ranting on the forums about how ghost heat sucks because you can't boat 4 AC/2s anymore isn't helping anything. Nor is the e rage that comes when the devs say they aren't changing it in the foreseeable future.

Its like a rollercoaster at the fair. Hang on because there are a lot of ups and downs. Jumping off half way through the ride isn't helping anyone.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Nekki Basara, on 21 October 2013 - 05:35 PM, said:

You truncate the arguement. Usually it's something like "X sucks, so take it out and the game will be better". We can rehash all the reasons taking X out will make the game better, but that seems pointless now if you haven't grasped them yet.

We have grasped them, but you are missing MY point.
If nothing else the way you are phrasing them is so absolutely negative, it is no wonder in the WORLD that people do not like/listen/implement them.

Numerous people on the forums have repeatedly called the Developers idiots.

Would you listen to anyone calling you an ***** long enough to know whether or not you would even want to implement what he wants you to?

MY point was, that when all you present is negativity, no one wants to listen to you. So no, what you want doesn't happen.

[Nekki Basara]

Please enlighten me, how would you present "Ghost Heat is counter-intuitive and just plain silly, and doesn't address the stated problem" in a positive fashion, other than by implication that removing it is thereby improving the game.

Remember, if you can't do it better than me then you can't criticise my efforts either. Them's the rules as established above.

[Wintersdark]

Chronojam, on 21 October 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

In all honesty PGI will probably never remove ghost heat, and long ago I came to accept that fact. However, accepting its permanence doesn't mean we should give the impression that we've come to accept it as a good design decision.

PGI staff have suggested that fan complaints about things like ghost heat are simply "noise" that must be outlasted. As if we will just open our eyes one day and embrace it, a notion as ludicrous as any post of mine convincing Paul that ghost heat was a bad idea.

Yeah, I'm with you here. It wasn't a good idea nor will it become a better idea. The funny part about it is that it's going to really complicate things when clan mechs are added, as they're all about boating. Of course, PGI has never been particularly concerned about their systems making stock mech loadouts terrible beyond belief.

Quote

You know, I want the game to be fun and all that and it would be cool if there was more testing and more radical balancing or mechanics switcheroos. The problem is that there aren't enough, and we get stuck with bad things for a very long time. The attitude is that if we don't appreciate the single magic-bullet attempt to fix things, then we just haven't given it enough time. I'm curious what alternatives to ghost heat were even considered; wouldn't that be a neat developer piece to read? Even neater if it was presented before a decision was made and PGI married themselves to the ghost heat solution.

I'd love to hear all these things as well.

What could have - should have, IMHO - been done would be better leverage test servers to try out other systems.

Moving forward, that should be being done as well - in fact, all new systems and balance changes should be run on the test server for a week or so before being pushed to production.

PGI has the test server set up, but I feel they are really, really neglecting a powerful tool they could be using. Just running a couple brief tests will show if there are game-breaking bugs, but they could simply run the test server continuously for a while to test out new systems under live conditions.

It's pretty clear that QA has limited capabilities (I don't mean this in an insulting way, but rather that there are only so many of them and they only have so much time) so PGI could essentially vastly increase their effective QA staff by doing that. Create a Test Server feedback forum for each specific build, and let us break things.

[Warge]

Zerberus, on 21 October 2013 - 02:59 PM, said:

So your solution to this is to post doom and gloom and be as detractory as possible towards PGI at all times, so that the ONLY MW game currently on the market AS WELL as the only one with a valid license in any forseeable future scenarion is gone, too, so that you have no game instead? 0.o

If devs call hardcore fans "minority", "just buzz" or "u r on island"... do I need such game?

P.S. There will be another MW:LL game if MWO falls...

Edited by Warge, 21 October 2013 - 05:59 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Nekki Basara, on 21 October 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

Please enlighten me, how would you present "Ghost Heat is counter-intuitive and just plain silly, and doesn't address the stated problem" in a positive fashion, other than by implication that removing it is thereby improving the game.

Remember, if you can't do it better than me then you can't criticise my efforts either. Them's the rules as established above.

It's all been said. Saying it again isn't going to change it. We've presented our feelings, and clearly they aren't changing.

The criticism of your methods is because they're causing collateral harm, while not accomplishing anything.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that, for example, Ghost Heat is terrible. But you don't hear the rest of us going on about it all the time because it's been said many, many times, and we know that PGI isn't going to remove it.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Nekki Basara, on 21 October 2013 - 05:52 PM, said:

Please enlighten me, how would you present "Ghost Heat is counter-intuitive and just plain silly, and doesn't address the stated problem" in a positive fashion, other than by implication that removing it is thereby improving the game.

Remember, if you can't do it better than me then you can't criticise my efforts either. Them's the rules as established above.

I personally have no way to say Ghost Heat isn't stupid, without being an ***, so I have not.

On the other hand, as for it being counter intuitive... what is intuitive for one person is not necessarily intuitive to another.
For me the actions required for driving a car are about as counter-intuitive as it gets. (and yet this game isn't funny world no?)

PS:
I explain most of the mechanics to my very-not video-game oriented sister to check on stuff like that: Ghost Heat makes sense to her. (but that would be hearsay, and not stand up very well in a forum wouldn't it?)

[Wintersdark]

Warge, on 21 October 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

If devs call hardcore fans "minority", "just buzz" or "u r on island"... do I need such game?

P.S. There will be another MW:LL game if MWO falls...

I don't care what the devs say, to be honest. It's a game, I play it for fun. If the gameplay is fun, I play, if it's not I don't. And keep in mind what you yourself and many others have said about the devs, before criticising them for what they said about you. They're substantially more polite... And, arguably, correct. You are a minority - you don't even constitute all the hardcore fans - I'm absolutely a hardcore fan, for example, and clearly I'm not on your island. With that said, I do think they've treated their hardcore fans and founders fairly badly - I've always maintained that founders in particular have a lot of reason to be upset. PGI's very weakest area is PR; they're spectacularly bad at it.

As to LL? Yeah, only so long as it's entirely fan run and non-commercial. It'll never have a budget, and if it ever gets popular it'll be shut down because - like it or not - people do not have the right to make MW games without paying Microsoft for the privilege. Even non-commercial ones. I wouldn't put much hope in random people sacrificing huge amounts of their lives to make a game without any hope of making money off it - particularly when doing so leaves them vulnerable to lawsuits that they would lose.