1105 replies to this topic

[Wired]

POWR, on 27 August 2013 - 11:25 PM, said:

It's sad how people act online now a days. Consider that we didn't have this kind of thing happening 10 years ago. People weren't collectively threatening violence in such direct manner to eachother or the developers of the game we were playing. Sure, there was always one guy saying something dumb, and people laughed at him till he left, but there was never this kind of outright hate put on display.

If you're one of the people screaming ilke that, or an apologist for the behaviour, get some perspective into your life. You need it.

Thanks for the update. Much appreciated. Sorry to read the paragraph about the threats. Really deplorable that things are like this now.

When you step back and get some perspective, you see that a lot of people invested themselves into a game which was not going to have 3pv and was going to have MANY features which are currently not in the game nor will never be. Not only that, but after the initial 3pv outrage we were promised that not only would they not implement 3pv if they could not do it without providing advantages to whoever was using it(Failure, check patch feedback forums), they would also provide an option to only play against people who were not using it. Failure.

I agree that threats of violence are just plain dumb and those people get what they deserve. However, there is evidence that is pouring in that not only do the developers of a game which was COMPLETELY FUNDED BY THE FANS have little regard on our input on the matter, but they are actively switching out core pillars of what this game was supposed to be to "Appeal to a wider audience", all the while saying one thing to the community while doing another.

You cannot compare it to back in the day, because simply this would not of happened back in the day because we wouldnt of payed for this without a game up front.

[Mindwiper]

In my opinion it's just another "Developer Fog of War" Thread.

After so much false information (aka Information Warfare aka lies) from your side over the last year we can't trust your words anymore. Don't you see that without hard Infos, especially concerning C-Bill earning and 3PV, no one believes you anymore.

From were I stand, you're just another company with short lived $$ in their eyes, not interested in the concerns of the real playerbase and not the virtual one you invented.

[Alik Kerensky]

Need more concrete information about community warefare and hit detection.

also,

InnerSphereNews, on 27 August 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

September Creative Developer Update

If players so wish, they can even increase C-Bill earnings substantially by exiting matches if they are destroyed early, and jumping into a new one.

For example:

If your Mech is destroyed to a roaming band of Jenners early on, you can jump out of that match and into a new one right away – potentially doubling your C-Bills to 1.2 million per hour! This cuts down your time to purchase new Mechs and equipment.

Like game balance, we are constantly evaluating the economic environment and will continue to make small tweaks to keep the economics balanced.

Bryan Ekman

So were encouraging suicide mech assaults again? i.e. charging over to the enemy side laying down a few shots into everything around for the assists and dying in a blaze of very short lived glory just to disconnect and do it again. Sorry, if it sounds rude, but this was the first thing that came to mind as it tends to encourage exploitation for c-bill farming... (in game reporting feature would be nice little fix... using majority of team vote if death occurs with in a certain timeframe and not just cause you were on the wrong end of an alpha strike to the head)

Edited by Alik Kerensky, 27 August 2013 - 11:47 PM.

[1Sascha]

POWR, on 27 August 2013 - 11:25 PM, said:

It's sad how people act online now a days. Consider that we didn't have this kind of thing happening 10 years ago. People weren't collectively threatening violence in such direct manner to eachother or the developers of the game we were playing. Sure, there was always one guy saying something dumb, and people laughed at him till he left, but there was never this kind of outright hate put on display.

I guess in this case, you could call it a side-effect of the free-to-play model that's been growing more and more popular. And of cheaper online-fees. In my "old days" of MMO-ing (Air Warrior, Warbirds), you paid a pretty hefty monthly fee for a game plus most of us had to pay for every hour spent online. That really added up for a lot of players - I've had online/gaming bills of $200+/month back then and knew of people who'd spend even more than that.

But it also kept communities relatively small and tightly knit. Sure there were flame-wars both on-/and off topic. But I don't recall seeing physical threats being posted on the newsgroups back then.

Back on topic, and it probably has been answered already on one of the 25 pages on this thread:

Quote

... we have been working hard on UI 2.0, CW and Clans

Glad to hear about UI 2.0. The sooner the old system gets thrown out, the better..

But: Are we talking "squads"/player-clans or *the* Clans here?

Quote

i.e. charging over to the enemy side laying down a few shots into everything around for the assists and dying in a blaze of very short lived glory just to disconnect and do it again.

On a similar note: I still don't understand the reasoning behind the current kill/assist-system. Why do I get more reward for assists than kills, and why isn't the player who does the most damage rewarded with the kill? That's how kill claims work in every other sim *and* in RL, I might add. If it's a thing about lights getting their fair share, simply buff the rewards for the stuff they're supposed to do. Like spotting/TAGging/NARCing/launching UAVs or capping.

I don't know how scoring works for the UAVs (spotting-bonus?), but NARC/TAG seem quite a bit under-appreciated scoring-wise. Might have something to do with the absence of LRM-builds these days, but even in a good match and using both NARC and TAG, I'm getting around 8000 C-Bills max as TAG/NARC bonus. Considering how much you have to expose yourself with them, I can see why they're not getting used more frequently by most light-pilots.


S.

Edited by 1Sascha, 27 August 2013 - 11:56 PM.

[Onmyoudo]

11 hours of gameplay to buy a Quickdraw (sans 100% necessary upgrades like DHS) is bull. Twice that for an Atlas. What happened to all mechs being equal? What about new players who wasted all their cadet bonus on worthless Kintaros and now have to grind to be able to survive the first 30 seconds? The consistent failure of Eastern MMOs in the Western markets shows that endless grind with no reward is not popular.

I couldn't care less about your "slient majorities" but I haven't seen a single piece of good word of mouth about your game on the internet. Mostly it's fury over one thing or another.

And the crux of the issue: CW.

InnerSphereNews, on 27 August 2013 - 01:17 PM, said:

[color=#CCCCCC] You can expect the same when we reveal our Community Warfare design at the launch event! [/color]
[color=#CCCCCC]

[/color]

This is mind-boggling. At the launch event there will be information on the CW design!? What that means is that your game should not be launching. There is no game there - just grind.

I fully believe that you are working hard, and I'm sure we all accept that these things take time. But you absolutely cannot seriously think that this thing can be launched as "Mechwarrior Online" when it's missing that kind of major feature. It's insane.

[POWR]

Wired, on 27 August 2013 - 11:35 PM, said:

When you step back and get some perspective, you see that a lot of people invested themselves into a game which was not going to have 3pv and was going to have MANY features which are currently not in the game nor will never be. Not only that, but after the initial 3pv outrage we were promised that not only would they not implement 3pv if they could not do it without providing advantages to whoever was using it(Failure, check patch feedback forums), they would also provide an option to only play against people who were not using it. Failure.

I agree that threats of violence are just plain dumb and those people get what they deserve. However, there is evidence that is pouring in that not only do the developers of a game which was COMPLETELY FUNDED BY THE FANS have little regard on our input on the matter, but they are actively switching out core pillars of what this game was supposed to be to "Appeal to a wider audience", all the while saying one thing to the community while doing another.

You cannot compare it to back in the day, because simply this would not of happened back in the day because we wouldnt of payed for this without a game up front.

And if you have perspective, you realise that you've "invested" yourself in a videogame that so far has been mainly a testbed with a few combat arenas. If you came in thinking that things were going to go extremely fast, and not change in ways you may not like, you were too naive. Have people no experience with online games? Is this the first game any of these people ever played?

MWO was also not completely funded by the fans.

And yes, I certainly can compare this to "back in the day", where people played the original lineup of MMOs, which, while having both an initial cost as well as a subscription and no demo, were games that just changed and updated without anyone really knowing anything about what was going to happen. And people did not threaten with violence etc., but might post how the devs are clueless etc., but none of it was ever with the same level of disdain for the provider as is put on display here.
I've spent more time than I'm proud of raging against decisions or trying to have certain things changed in a game that to this day I have "invested" around 10,000 hours in, but it's been years since I've been able to get even a tiny bit worked up by anything.
Buyable things, for one, was something that was introduced and promises were made that you would never be able to buy x in that shop. But hey, suddenly you could buy a degree of that, because turns out, you can really bend things a lot and make x into y instead, so it doesn't look quite so bad. And really, it wasn't. What they sold did not take away from the experience. So why rage?

Same here. 3pv doesn't take away from the experience. The endless crying about it won't make it go away, and the frankly ridiculous response to it is just sad to see. Yes, I was against it and did post several times about it and voted in some polls. But that was me not really thinking. The fact is, I don't care either way. It doesn't negatively impact my game experience with MWO, and I certainly won't allow such a thing to make me sit on a forum and spew bile all over it or question the professional qualities of the team building the game I'm enjoying.

It's a videogame. You might have spent 100$ on it, or 200$, and oh what a huge amount. For a videogame, sure. But in the scope of things it's nothing. If it was money you didn't have, perhaps you should've been more careful with it rather than squander it on your imagination of what MWO was, is or will be.

[Wired]

Onmyoudo, on 27 August 2013 - 11:50 PM, said:

11 hours of gameplay to buy a Quickdraw (sans 100% necessary upgrades like DHS) is bull. Twice that for an Atlas. What happened to all mechs being equal? What about new players who wasted all their cadet bonus on worthless Kintaros and now have to grind to be able to survive the first 30 seconds? The consistent failure of Eastern MMOs in the Western markets shows that endless grind with no reward is not popular.

I wonder how much of that would of been negated by still having RnR in place. You know, making it a viable choice to NOT run the best gear out there because it would cost too much to maintain. They restructured the game and removed RnR because of suiciders and people abusing wellfare ammo...and now they are encouraging suiciders again while the bar to have a heavy mech that is viable has been raised far beyond peoples expectations.

[Wired]

POWR, on 27 August 2013 - 11:55 PM, said:

snipped for long

Oh good lord the grasping of straws here...

First, a clarification of your overuse of this being "just a video game". This is "just" a forum on the internet, so if those of us who have a problem with "just a video game" are ruffling your jimmies that much that you have to reply on here to put those people down and disregard an obvious problem with the game that despite the fact that the proof is being waggled in your face like a rotting vienna sausage that you have to keep denying it to keep your sanity, than perhaps by your own standards, it is not worth you posting here ever.

And yes, i would say by the fact that the fans payed in 5 million dollars to fund this game, The fans funded this game. There was so much money there from us that IGP saw fit to take a huge chunk of it and divert it to mw: tactics.

And actually, I might say that it is YOU who have no idea about how it was back then. The earliest example of peoples outrages at sudden changes to their game that I can pull up right now is the Combat Update for the original Starwars online. There was ALSO a significant outcry when Ultima Online split its game into PVP and non PVP lands. So that aspect of what is happening here has certainly existed.

But why it is so vocal here is something you do not seem to grasp. Those other games, your initial investment was to a big faceless company which made no bones about not caring about the community. That is different here. As stated before, players invested FIVE. MILLION. DOLLARS. into a small business on promises of a game built around community warfare and with very specific promises made along with that, including a primary first person experience with no third person mode INCLUDING several posts made by the bigwigs stating how they hate 3pv during closed beta. This game was built on several foundations of trust, and those have been kicked out one after the other.

Just because it is "just a video game", does not change that in the business world this is a f--k up.

[Appogee]

I think it's clear from Russ's post that PGI are increasingly ''switching off'' from the feedback they receive in their forums, preferring instead to interpret statistics.

That's a mistake, because vocal minorities quite often do speak for quiet majorities. Ie they can be the tip of the iceberg.

However, if PGI is now discounting whatever we we post in these forums, then the rabid critics need to rethink their strategy. No person or company likes to read about how awful they are, day after day, week after week. It's human nature.

If we want PGI to take on board our views, we need them to stay engaged, and listening to us. That requires us to:

• be polite,
  
• avoid hyperbole and catastrophizing,
  
• acknowledge when PGI get things right, not just point out when they get things wrong,
  
• avoid trolling other users on contentious issues

I'm not a fan of the many contentious design and development decisions (ghost heat, 3PV, heel-dragging on oft-promised core features). But we have to stay engaged with them if we expect to see positive change.

[nitra]

sorry, while you see it as just a "video game" . it actually is a product .

and what really is the base of the whole issue is that its another product in the long line of software based products that are delivered unfinished, incomplete, and ultimately not working as expected.

it has been over 10 years of this methodology and very few in the industry wants to deliver a quality product.

a lot of people have been very forgiving over those year handing developers money had over fist .

and instead of getting finished bug free products that has the feature set outlined in the advertising they end up with partial product with promises to fix it in the next patch.


the point of it is that 10 years of this is pretty wearing .

10++ years should be enough time for the industry to get its collective bootay in gear and get some freaking infrastructure that enables devs to work quickly efficiently and enable them to release stable and unbloated code.

BUT thats a pipe dream (and its down right sad .)

consumers are burned left and right this day and age, we are nothing more than a money well, stick a tap in em and bleed em dry.

Because thats all they are good for . they provide no value to the company. use em up and when the time comes to become liable close up shop, take the profits and start up another money suck.

its not people acting unreasonably its people becoming tired of the abuse .

the software as a service industry has shown to the rest of the world that you do not have to offer quality to sell product.

and it is we as consumers who are to blame, who keep handing them money .

one day i hope before i die i get to see the return of quality to products. but i fear my family will end up a burying me in what they thought was going to be a premium coffin in a beautiful plot, unknowingly to them my corpse winds up in a card board box in a incinerator and the plot is actually a sheet of paper with a long list of names hung on a wall .

POWR, on 27 August 2013 - 11:55 PM, said:

And if you have perspective, you realise that you've "invested" yourself in a videogame that so far has been mainly a testbed with a few combat arenas. If you came in thinking that things were going to go extremely fast, and not change in ways you may not like, you were too naive. Have people no experience with online games? Is this the first game any of these people ever played?

MWO was also not completely funded by the fans.

And yes, I certainly can compare this to "back in the day", where people played the original lineup of MMOs, which, while having both an initial cost as well as a subscription and no demo, were games that just changed and updated without anyone really knowing anything about what was going to happen. And people did not threaten with violence etc., but might post how the devs are clueless etc., but none of it was ever with the same level of disdain for the provider as is put on display here.
I've spent more time than I'm proud of raging against decisions or trying to have certain things changed in a game that to this day I have "invested" around 10,000 hours in, but it's been years since I've been able to get even a tiny bit worked up by anything.
Buyable things, for one, was something that was introduced and promises were made that you would never be able to buy x in that shop. But hey, suddenly you could buy a degree of that, because turns out, you can really bend things a lot and make x into y instead, so it doesn't look quite so bad. And really, it wasn't. What they sold did not take away from the experience. So why rage?

Same here. 3pv doesn't take away from the experience. The endless crying about it won't make it go away, and the frankly ridiculous response to it is just sad to see. Yes, I was against it and did post several times about it and voted in some polls. But that was me not really thinking. The fact is, I don't care either way. It doesn't negatively impact my game experience with MWO, and I certainly won't allow such a thing to make me sit on a forum and spew bile all over it or question the professional qualities of the team building the game I'm enjoying.

It's a videogame. You might have spent 100$ on it, or 200$, and oh what a huge amount. For a videogame, sure. But in the scope of things it's nothing. If it was money you didn't have, perhaps you should've been more careful with it rather than squander it on your imagination of what MWO was, is or will be.

[jozkhan]

Regarding CBills

Bryan says just quit after you die and play another mech to maximise your CBill gain.

He does realize that if you do you DONT get the assist money for every mech that dies AFTER you quit?

Edited by jozkhan, 28 August 2013 - 12:39 AM.

[Polarice]

In case people had not heard of this: http://www.gamasutra...Eve_Scandal.php

Basicly, alot of comparisons can be drawn between how ccp and pgi are managing the interaction of the player base. The way both tried to avoid the issue and the way the player base were told one thing and another was being planned/delivered that was oposite are very very similar.

[cynicus]

Nice developer update, I don't want to work, I don't want to listen critique, just want to be PGI and pew-pew-pew.

[Shindj]

Out of honest interest (and having a fairly close relationship with market segmentation professionally) how are you actually discerning which of your signups represent your target demographic with such sparse data? Or is the demographic simply age related?

[Haitchpeasauce]

Appogee, on 28 August 2013 - 12:14 AM, said:

...
No person or company likes to read about how awful they are, day after day, week after week. It's human nature.
...
I'm not a fan of the many contentious design and development decisions (ghost heat, 3PV, heel-dragging on oft-promised core features). But we have to stay engaged with them if we expect to see positive change.

Perhaps each comment has to come with a hug before and after the comment, plus a debriefing session, and then regular counselling for PGI to help overcome the trauma? Are you suggesting PGI have fragile feelings?

Surely they are professional grown up adults who can discern between serious feedback and intentional insult, and pay no heed in such cases. If PGI need that kind of bubble wrap then they will not survive. If they choose to shut out all comments, and disengage from community collaboration completely, then look at the bottom line. Which is why people are quitting.

The community has grown increasingly vocal (and I've been following these forums for a year now) because of increasing frustration, disappointment, and stonewalling from PGI.

Here's an idea. If they were truly professional, and don't like receiving the negative feedback, threats, and outrage in volume, then they shouldn't try to anger the community in the first place, look to patch up relations as quickly as possible, then collaborate and engage.

[csebal]

What a horribly arrogant post from the devs, jesus. How can you say that 3PV was a success, when it alienated a noticeable portion of your hardcore fans? You know.. the ones that are loud, the ones that will take time to promote your game on other forums / message boards. The ones that also have the power of ruin your game if they trash your game instead? More importantly: the ones that have put their faith into you and helped you make the game by buying those fancy founder packages?

Even if the feature was a success, communicating it was a total and abysmal failure and boasting about it like this will only pour oil onto the fire.

Hell, even I am starting to think about refunds. Where is the community warfare that was supposedly a few months down the line LAST SUMMER? If you think that you can keep ******* on existing players in order to attract new ones, by not keeping / holding your promises and then acting as if everything would be in perfect order slash going according to plan, you are in for a rough surprise.

You want a better new player retention? Well then how about you give those players something to do with your game on the long term? Something meaningful, other than waiting for the next hero mech to buy and play for a week or so before they get bored of it?

That it would require you to do some actual development work on the game, instead of moving the camera around a little? Oh my.. I'm terribly sorry, I figured thats what you are here for. My bad.

See here is the funny thing about the vocal minority. They are the tip of the iceberg. They are your thermometer for measuring the satisfaction of your customers, as they are the sample of your customers whose opinion you can readily access. If you ignore them and try to go around the tip, thinking that the rest will be okay with whatever you do, then MWO and your company will sink like the titanic, because there will be no warnings, no cries for change from those under the surface (those not on the forums). They will just get fed up and leave...

[nitra]

Polarice, on 28 August 2013 - 12:39 AM, said:

In case people had not heard of this: http://www.gamasutra...Eve_Scandal.php

Basicly, alot of comparisons can be drawn between how ccp and pgi are managing the interaction of the player base. The way both tried to avoid the issue and the way the player base were told one thing and another was being planned/delivered that was oposite are very very similar.

The interesting thing here is the ccp was stating similar things about the silent majority . but in a few days something happened that made them realize this majority was not going to replace the "stacked accounts" of the vetran player base.

stacked accounts means that the majority of ccp subscribing players hold multiple accounts .

im sure some one with some sense rans some numbers showing that if just 1000 player left the would actually loose 5000 paying accounts .

that probably led to the abrupt turn around .

and in the end guess what ? eve is a better game they have fixed many bugs implemented many features and are on a path of steady growth (approx another 10000 active players ) .

sure they didnt JACKPOT with micro transactions but i bet they have made more money in the long run than if they successfully executed the player purge necessary to allow for what they were trying to accomplish.

[HellJumper]

26 pages of heavy criticism and you dont have the guts to even clarify the people here.. good job devs..


this clearly shows that you are not at all bothered about what your community says... great work

and then you expect people not to go verbally abusive on the PGI team...epic...

[Kobura]

Appogee, on 28 August 2013 - 12:14 AM, said:

I think it's clear from Russ's post that PGI are increasingly ''switching off'' from the feedback they receive in their forums, preferring instead to interpret statistics.

That's a mistake, because vocal minorities quite often do speak for quiet majorities. Ie they can be the tip of the iceberg.

However, if PGI is now discounting whatever we we post in these forums, then the rabid critics need to rethink their strategy. No person or company likes to read about how awful they are, day after day, week after week. It's human nature.

If we want PGI to take on board our views, we need them to stay engaged, and listening to us. That requires us to:

• be polite,
  
• avoid hyperbole and catastrophizing,
  
• acknowledge when PGI get things right, not just point out when they get things wrong,
  
• avoid trolling other users on contentious issues

I'm not a fan of the many contentious design and development decisions (ghost heat, 3PV, heel-dragging on oft-promised core features). But we have to stay engaged with them if we expect to see positive change.

We tried this. I'm not a fan of the absolutely livid responses either, but frankly, anything to get light on this mess at this point. http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__2684118

[Angel of Annihilation]

Homeless Bill, on 27 August 2013 - 01:41 PM, said:

This is super disappointing.

TL;DR:

• Balance - HSR is coming.
  
• Charity - We did Sarah's Jenner.
  
• Economics - C-Bill nerf is working as intended.
  
• Community - We listen and do what we think is best.
  
• Policy - Stop making death threats.
  
• Launch - It's happening.

It sounds to me like launch is just removing Beta from the game's name, getting panned by reviews, and telling us what to expect if the game makes it another six months. I had a lot of optimism for a long time, but it's dwindling every day.


Please tell us the new UI is going to be in at launch. Or that the new player experience is being fixed. Or something. Tell me this game isn't just waiting to be ripped apart by game critics funneled into the meatgrinder that is the new player experience.

( ._.)

The sad part is that what you posted here is so true.

A couple other things we can take out of the post is that CW is 100% NOT going to be in, in any format at release form this quote:

Quote

You can expect the same when we reveal our Community Warfare design at the launch event!

Apparently they are just going to tell us what the "design" i.e.what they intend to do for CW at the launch event. This means that it is going to be month and month before even stage 1 or whatever they call it of CW will be game.

Another thing that is vexing:

Quote

Our first UI 2.0 preview build was just delivered to me this week, and I’m really excited to get a version up on public test.

Is he kidding us? I mean he just got the first build of UI 2.0 this week? Shouldn't they be very close to their final itteration by now, not just the first build? Also what does he mean by preview? It is functional or not? This is not sounding like it is going to be in at launch either.

Lastly a comment on the economy:

Quote

Some economic math from our telemetry data:

• Average match time is 8.4 minutes.
  
• Average CB/match is 79,069.
  
• Average CB/hour is 564,778 if you only have 1 BattleMech to use.
  
• New players can earn 7,981,686 in cadet bonuses during their first 3.5 hours in addition to between 1-3 million in regular game earnings

It’s important to note that new or inexperienced players will be below this average, while experienced or veteran players will be above this. Player’s with premium time and/or a Hero Mech can expect to better still. New players can earn enough money to buy several light or medium Mechs with just their cadet bonus, or can opt to buy 1 or 2 heavies, or 1 assault.

Great, according to my stats, I was earning about 128k per match and now the average is only 80k. That is a bit more than the 13% tweek they say they did to rewards. Oh I almost forget about the other 16% we were making that they changed so yeah a 29% cut across the board Woot.

All I can say to this is they better start working overtime on new game modes, maps, missions, CW, what have you if they are going to keep this economy because there isn't enough to keep people interested if they are going to make it very difficult to collect and outfit mechs since that is about the only form of progression we have right now.

Also PGI sorry to tell you this but one Jenner costs near 10 million to outfit properly to be competitive. Jenner 3.0 million C-bills. 285-300XL engine 4.0 million C-bills. DHS 1.5 million C-bills. Endosteel, 350k Cbills. FF armor 175k Cbills. New weapons 200K? Smurfy's has the Jenner F cost 10,114,776 C-bills. So no, new players aren't going to be buying several lights or mediums or 1-2 heavies or 1 Assault off what they make with the Cadet Bonus not if they want a mech they can be competitive with that is.