1105 replies to this topic

[Druidika]

Aware, on 27 August 2013 - 04:42 PM, said:

If the forums are the "vocal minority" why even have them?

By banning them, PGI allows these users to become the silent majority.

[Tastian]

Well, I have over 100 posts; i guess my opinion doesn't count then. I received my refund on my Phoenix package today!

[Kunae]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

<little white-knight babbling>

Young "man", you show, through your posting, that you are not nearly as mature as you like to think you are.

A word of advice... if you don't understand a topic, as you obviously don't this one, it's best not to open your mouth at all. I suggest you read the entirety of this thread, without taking any statements in it personally.

[TKSax]

Well I had a draft Letter Posted about getting a refund from my Phoenix overload package that I had not sent. I wrote it after the patch and did not send it. When ATD 45 came I was hope full we had turned the corner on communication. However I am not the target demographic and I just sent my request for refund in. I will play this game, but will not spend another dime on it. I can wait to buy a shadow hawk when it comes out via the c-bill route.

Wow 1 week and 3pv is successful???

[Chronojam]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

Hey guys, let me ask you this. You all HATE and I mean HATE with the burning passion of a million suns, PGI and IGP....right? Well, you all seem to know a lot about what it takes to run a game. How about you all go and sign up for a game programming major at your local college and apply for PGI? I mean, you all have amazing ideas. Why not do something about it?

I don't think you can change the games programming, features and other things sitting at your computer hurling insults at the developers who actually went to college. Sorry to say it does not work like that.

Cheers!

You would not believe our pedigree even if we told you, but there are many among our number who do in fact develop commercial games and software, and a greater number of hobbyists. We do not desire to relocate to work at PGI because it is not an attractive shift in our careers. Because this is not something you would believe, I will instead tell you something else.

Having a job at PGI does not guarantee we are in a position to fix the problems; this is why several people carefully call out certain senior/management types when they post complaints, because they do not believe that customer service representatives, web technicians, or artists to be responsible for the poor balancing and awful gameplay direction they feel the game has stumbled into.

[Ter Ushaka]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

Hey guys, let me ask you this. You all HATE and I mean HATE with the burning passion of a million suns, PGI and IGP....right? Well, you all seem to know a lot about what it takes to run a game. How about you all go and sign up for a game programming major at your local college and apply for PGI? I mean, you all have amazing ideas. Why not do something about it?

Only if you promise to give me 5 million dollars upfront, sight unseen, that I will complete my game programming major. No refunds if I decide to change my mind and blow it all in a casino.

[Protection]

PGI, honest question to you:

If the 'silent majority' was actually fictional, and the 'huge increase to the target demographic' and 'improved player retention' -- if none of those things were real, what would your press release look like?

Because, honestly, I think it would look a lot like the one you just gave us.

[Druidika]

Ter Ushaka, on 27 August 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

Only if you promise to give me 5 million dollars upfront, sight unseen, that I will complete my game programming major. No refunds if I decide to change my mind and blow it all in a casino.

When is Bryan's next vacation to Vegas anyway?

[dangerzone]

Jyzene, on 27 August 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

Sometimes people forget who is developing this game.

PGI (Piranha Games Inc.) is a small company founded 13 years ago, emerging from the Half-Life modding community. All those years they made just one game, Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, a former HL mod that got the company started in the first place. A good game considering where it originated from, but hardly mediocre in comparison to professional projects at that time. For the following 13 years PGI did nothing else then console ports for all sorts of platforms. MechWarrior Online is in fact their first professional project. And you can see by the behavior and communication that they likely never had that much money in their hands in their whole life. The Founders Programm was in fact the biggest crowdfunding campain for a game ever at that time and raised a little more than five million $. With that success the expactiations jumped to a new hight. Maybe too high. PGI got bigheaded, avoided the community for big parts of the closed beta, turned down MechWarrior: Living Legends mappers who offered buidling maps or map prototypes for free and threatened fansites with legal complaints. But ultimately PGI couldn't cope. Broken promises, ****-storms and a messed up game with tons of quick&dirty code were the results. Which is kind of sad, because they got one thing right, the gameplay feels like a MechWarrior game should feel. And the first person view is a big part of that.

To put it into a nutshell, PGI are amateurs. Consider this whenerver PGI makes a fishy descision.

Like communicating this matter only through the forums and then telling us that the forums are not representative because the players who actually use them are not their target group. Or dangering the only thing they got really right with this game, the core gameplay.

But hey, I'm a founder. I already tossed money at PGI. The understanding at that time was that 3rd person view would never ever be implemened into this game. But whatever...

It's an easy calculation for me. I play (and pay for) this game until it stops being fun to me. There were MechWarrior titles before this game and there will be more after it. Even if it takes another ten years.

Good night.

Thank god!!!! Someone understands!!!!!!!
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs[/url]

[AndyHill]

First of all, any kind of threats against persons and preferably personal attacks as well must stop. Some may know that I've been highly critical about design considerations and I am passionate about the game. However, I have nothing against the people and even if MWO became the most miserable failure ever, I'd hug them and offer beers for the brave effort and to drown our sorrow together.

As for the communication; the problem isn't about promising too much, it might be a bit about too big words in the past but it's a lot about the whole thing not flowing both ways. You announced 3rd person view and asked for community feedback, got boatloads of it, never bothered to address any of the concerns and in the end the result had all the problems predicted in the feedback and more. For the ghost heat crab you never even asked for feedback, still got boatloads of it and again no effect.

Here's how I see it:

Every game has explicit* rules that define the boundaries and rules of the gameplay. They are your responsibility (PGI). However, every game also has implicit* rules that define how the game actually plays. They are influenced by the explicit rules, but in the end they are determined by the advanced players who dig into the system and start gaming it.

They are the vocal minority you don't seem to want to listen to. You make a design, they rip it apart and only if the design holds under their onslaught, it's a good one. Some of them will gladly also tell you why a given system is failing. You can say that for example 3rd person mode is designed to help new players orient their legs and torso and that it should not provide tactical advantage and that it's activated with a specific key as often as the user desires. These are game design and explicit rule issues. However, you do not get to say there is no tactical advantage to it or that it actually helps the newbies. That's for the vocal minority to determine.

A game designer doesn't need to be the world champion at playing the game and he doesn't even need to have all the ideas or especially the answers. But he darned well better know how the world champion plays the game and he needs to be able to collect all the knowledge in the community to a coherent and robust design.

*Examples:

- In ice hockey passing the puck from beyond the centerline all the way to the opponent's end results in "icing" and a faceoff in your defensive zone. This is an explicit rule defined by the game designer in a rulebook.

- In ice hockey getting a defensive zone faceoff is a bad thing, but if there is significant danger of the opponent getting the puck and creating a good scoring chance out if it, it is better to just ice the puck. This is an implicit rule defined by the people who coach and play the game.

[Ryvucz]

Mr Andersson, on 27 August 2013 - 04:41 PM, said:

[/color]

You consider 3PV being launched successfully? Those 5500+ posts in the ComStar focus group are doing what, applauding you?

To be fair, anyone that has an opposite view of what the naysayers feel, gets bashed, harassed and insulted.

So no, the majority don't post our applause on the forums much anymore. Thanks.

[Wales Grey]

Garth Erlam, on 27 August 2013 - 03:38 PM, said:

So please, keep posting suggestions, I'm here to forward them

Okay, here are my suggestions:

• Separate queues for third and first person
  
• Actual roles in combat for each chassis
  
• Re-balanced customization system
  
• Remove #ghostheat
  
• Listen to feedback from top-level players instead of slapping extra mechanics on a problem
  
• Make my mech's instrumentation actually display things
  
• Discuss plans to balance Clantech
  
• Make an appearance on VCRS
  
• Keep Russ off Twitter
  
• Redo mech scaling

That's all I got for now, I'll post more later.

[codynyc]

Araara, on 27 August 2013 - 04:41 PM, said:

Seriously, you guys need to stop blabbing illogical nonsense and put out some concrete numbers / facts with evidence to support it.

they cant because there isnt any

[Chronojam]

Ter Ushaka, on 27 August 2013 - 04:52 PM, said:

Only if you promise to give me 5 million dollars upfront, sight unseen, that I will complete my game programming major. No refunds if I decide to change my mind and blow it all in a casino.

Will you gamble in first or third person? Basically, dealt-cards or video poker?

[Ohsh]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:29 PM, said:

I'm done. Goonsquad has taken a the 10yo insult route and made me out as impatient. Impatient....right....I took a good 30mins to make a post while all of you spend 1 second skimming the update and then take 2mins to make a hateful post towards PGI and IGP.

Ever wonder why the staff don't respond to you anymore? this is why. Good job guys. The reason they do not listen is because of YOU. Yes, YOU. That's right. Whining and moaning and insulting rather than nicely providing suggestions where appropriate has made the staff choose not to respond as often because they KNOW whenever they do, they get bombarded with QQ and shitstorms of hate.

Good job guys. Way to be a great gaming community. I hope you're happy with yourselves.

lol

[Ter Ushaka]

Druidika, on 27 August 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

When is Bryan's next vacation to Vegas anyway?

There's an anime convention in Las Vegas come November. A man could buy a lot of ~*moe waifu*~ pillows with that Project Phoenix money.

[Anders]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

thanks for proving you guys are uh...immature.

Also for the person who had the gall to requote my post as "im smart and you are all dumb", is not bright in themselves. That is just cyber bullying, my friend. I chose to express my opinions as to why I think the community is partly to blame as well, and because my views are different than yours, you insult me and mock me for it. Good job. Totally mature. I tip my hat to you.

Honestly, this disgusts me. 12 pages of QQ, insults and other bs.

Hey guys, let me ask you this. You all HATE and I mean HATE with the burning passion of a million suns, PGI and IGP....right? Well, you all seem to know a lot about what it takes to run a game. How about you all go and sign up for a game programming major at your local college and apply for PGI? I mean, you all have amazing ideas. Why not do something about it?

I don't think you can change the games programming, features and other things sitting at your computer hurling insults at the developers who actually went to college. Sorry to say it does not work like that.



Cheers!

Dearest Mr. Loggins:

While we here at the Word of Lowtax have been, in the past, accused of immaturity, we here at the Word of Lowtax can assure you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are deadly seriously when we state that we are committed to #savemwo and all that it entails. If you could direct your Mk.I sound sensing devices to the 3 town hall meetings (located here: https://soundcloud.c...wnhall-unedited, https://soundcloud.c...hall-number-two, https://soundcloud.c...nity-townhall-3), you will notice a community based group who is passionate about the game they play, and they are reasonable, intelligent, and calm about the things that they have to do to attempt to engage the developers in opening up the lines of communication about the game they purport to develop! How crazy is that demand? No requests for preferential treatment, or special access, just "talk to us."

We here at the Word of Lowtax can channel your million suns (and associated electrons) into something positive, like Macramé. It would also lower your stress level, which as we here at the Word of Lowtax have been told, is a major contributor to cancer and cancer related illnesses.

We here at The Word of Lowtax thank you for your post. We here at the Word of Lowtax realize that you have limited entertainment destinations and appreciate that you're spending your entertainment electrons on us. Please continue to choose the Word of Lowtax in your future holiday destination spending! We are grateful for your out of the box, blue-sky thinking, and appreciate you touching base with us here at the Word of Lowtax. We hope to synergize our efforts to achieve quantifiable paradigm redefinitions in a future collaboration soon.

As always, I humbly remain:

Robotically Yours,
Anders

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[Kunae]

Druidika, on 27 August 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

When is Bryan's next vacation to Vegas anyway?

You mean he isn't already there?

[Beadhanger]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:53 PM, said:

Thank god!!!! Someone understands!!!!!!!
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs[/url]

what? seriously? he is saying the total opposite of what you are babbling....

[MechFrog1]

dangerzone, on 27 August 2013 - 04:45 PM, said:

Hey guys, let me ask you this. You all HATE and I mean HATE with the burning passion of a million suns, PGI and IGP....right? Well, you all seem to know a lot about what it takes to run a game. How about you all go and sign up for a game programming major at your local college and apply for PGI? I mean, you all have amazing ideas. Why not do something about it?

So in order to get PGI to stop making a good game into a bad one I need to change careers?
Sorry but I already have a job that I do very well. It's not inappropriate for me to ask someone else to do their job well too.