126 replies to this topic

[Centagon]

Wow this is awesome. Where can I fund this project?

[Archtype]

PRIORITIES: reaching a wider audience.

http://www.escapistm...-Fun-Priorities

I suspect MW:O as we thought it would exist was lost somewhere in the realm of attraction to *large single digits followed by* sequential, horizontal zeroes.

Edited by Archtype, 31 August 2013 - 12:31 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

What's next on memory lane? Will we dig out the dev blogs on role warfare and information warfare?

I don't want to cry myself to sleep...

[New Day]

Jettison in 3, 2, 1.

Edited by NamesAreStupid, 31 August 2013 - 01:35 AM.

[Trev Firestorm]

Oh the MWO everyone wanted, rereading those makes me not even angry anymore, just very very sad.

[Tolkien]

PGI staff need to re-read those interviews then ask themselves if the reason they haven't received or retained enough players is due to the 'target demographic' being wrong, or if it's just because they've let down the founders on 14 of 15 fronts and are now screwing us on the 1pv/3pv promises.

Maybe their failures aren't in their stars, but in themselves.

[Ted Steiner]

Just logging in for the first time in a long while, and I'm pretty excited to see where the game's gone since I've last played. I dropped double what I would have put into any "AAA" title (*on release not just some Steam sale or somesuch offloading of old software) into this game because I know you folks have got this covered, and I have nothing but faith in you.

I installed the client the first time in a while the other day (had to remake a new Windows partition, I did it just for you guys and to play BL2 again) and saw that not a lot had changed in that interface. Hit the forums button, and saw this thread!

Figured I'd save myself the trouble of reading the replies to see if they were bitter or happy in regards to where this game's gone since this article, and just ask. As someone who's been gone for a while, how have things been going? How are the new mechs? I saw mention of clan weapons, does that mean Community Warfare's moving along at a good pace now? How is CW at all? I can't play from here, will I be happy when I get home?

edit: cool forums transparency

Edited by Ted Steiner, 31 August 2013 - 05:10 AM.

[Tolkien]

Ted Steiner, on 31 August 2013 - 05:09 AM, said:

Just logging in for the first time in a long while, and I'm pretty excited to see where the game's gone since I've last played. I dropped double what I would have put into any "AAA" title (*on release not just some Steam sale or somesuch offloading of old software) into this game because I know you folks have got this covered, and I have nothing but faith in you.

I installed the client the first time in a while the other day (had to remake a new Windows partition, I did it just for you guys and to play BL2 again) and saw that not a lot had changed in that interface. Hit the forums button, and saw this thread!

Figured I'd save myself the trouble of reading the replies to see if they were bitter or happy in regards to where this game's gone since this article, and just ask. As someone who's been gone for a while, how have things been going? How are the new mechs? I saw mention of clan weapons, does that mean Community Warfare's moving along at a good pace now? How is CW at all? I can't play from here, will I be happy when I get home?

edit: cool forums transparency

Not sure if trolling but I'll take the bait....

1) Community warfare was supposed to be in 90 days after they rushed to open beta. 270 days later+ still nothing.

2) Clans were supposed to invade when the 1:1 realtime calendar hit summer. They were supposed to be here 2 months ago and nothing, calendar now frozen.

3) Still no such thing as a lobby so you can't scrimmage against your friends or run events.

4) Still no in game voice chat so pugs still get erased by 4 mans.

5) still no DX11 for crossfire etc.

6) Still no UI 2.0

7) Still no role warfare skill trees - some skills like pinpoint don't actually do anything either.

8) Information warfare still no function for the command console despite being in game for ~15 months, NARC still unusable, ECM still top dog but BAP now at least counters ECM.

9) Still no dropship mode.

10) Capture points still not bases with turrets, but at least they have a glowing fence.

11) New mechs, couple new maps, hit detection still bugged but mostly working

12) Collisions/knockdown still not back in.

13) Devs utterly screwing founders who paid in for a 1pv game by forcing everyone to play against 3pv.

So yeah, pretty stunning progress, but stunning by omission not by completion.

Edited by Tolkien, 31 August 2013 - 05:22 AM.

[zorak ramone]

If you look carefully, you can see the beginnings of the problems we have today (forced 3PV, ghost heat, ghost recycle, etc) when they talk about trial mechs. Everyone knew/knows that trial mechs sucked. The community provided many different ways to fix this. Yet you can see by the responses that PGI is convinced that trial mechs actually don't suck, and they're sticking with them.

This is an early example of PGI making a bad design decision and ignoring overwhelming input saying its bad because, damn it, they KNOW they're right.

Edited by zorak ramone, 31 August 2013 - 05:22 AM.

[Ted Steiner]

"8) Information warfare still no function for the command console despite being in game for ~15 months, NARC still unusable, ECM still top dog but BAP now at least counters ECM."

I remember this, this was the hot news last time I was playing this game. I'll have to search my old posts to tell you when that was but it wasn't recent. New mechs is good but the rest makes me sad.

edited to add: Zorak I would imagine considering the time it takes t put together code for a game like this that responding to incremental customer feedback would be nigh impossible, and that trying to do so with a limited budget would likely end up with a lot of threshing going nowhere. I am actually most bummed about CW just because that would be easy to sling together "on the cheap" so to speak just with little cheats like re-orging forums and integrating voice and lobby a little better. That they've put mechs out without cobbling together much more than that worries me.

Edited by Ted Steiner, 31 August 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[Tolkien]

zorak ramone, on 31 August 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

If you look carefully, you can see the beginnings of the problems we have today (forced 3PV, ghost heat, ghost recycle, etc) when they talk about trial mechs. Everyone knew/knows that trial mechs sucked. The community provided many different ways to fix this. Yet you can see by the responses that PGI is convinced that trial mechs actually don't suck, and they're sticking with them.

This is an early example of PGI making a bad design decision and ignoring overwhelming input saying its bad because, damn it, they KNOW they're right.

I think you are correct in concept but suggest a different interpretation.

PGI is trying to make the game have depth/length/grind by making it so you have to upgrade every mech you buy from being the trash default/trial mech configurations up to being a good fighting machine.

Unfortunately this fundamentally limits the depth of the game since the progression a player gets to experience is limited to grinding out 3 variants of the same chassis to master their favourite. Conceptually they can make their first mech an atlas or a highlander and never play another.

Compare and contrast this with every single other mechwarrior game before where you tended to start with lights and work you way up to the big stuff, so you had 8-12 chassis worth of linear progression.

I know they have a stiffy for role warfare but I think they underestimated how hard it would be to make the battlefield conform to their ideals about every single mech being equally valuable. Case in point they have acknowledged that mediums need help but all that's been done so far is to let them torso twist faster/further... not exactly what they needed.

If you look at a game like MPBT3025


Community warfare here was also dovetailed into 'role warfare' in that border worlds had bad supply lines and therefore everyone had to pilot light mechs there!

This meant that every pilot had to kick butt in a light mech since half your matches would be happening on planets where you could not bring a medium, heavy or assault. Assault mechs were kings of the battlefield but could only be dropped on capitals and 1 adjacent world.

This lead to lights, mediums, heavies and assaults all having their place on the battlefield but sidestepped the conceptual gymnastics of trying to make 100 tons ~= 25 tons.

It also gave the players a *much* deeper and organic progression path.

So yes, I think they have made a fundamental misstep in how they are trying to approach advancement, but I don't think the trial mechs being bad is the worst part of it.

Edited by Tolkien, 31 August 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[Aldman]

Ah, this reminds me of why I threw money at PGI.

[zorak ramone]

Ted Steiner, on 31 August 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

edited to add: Zorak I would imagine considering the time it takes t put together code for a game like this that responding to incremental customer feedback would be nigh impossible, and that trying to do so with a limited budget would likely end up with a lot of threshing going nowhere. I am actually most bummed about CW just because that would be easy to sling together "on the cheap" so to speak just with little cheats like re-orging forums and integrating voice and lobby a little better. That they've put mechs out without cobbling together much more than that worries me.

I understand that a developer can't just magic code/features out of nowhere the second someone posts on the forums. The trial mech issue wasn't like this at all.


From the moment they were introduced (I think this was Fall of last year), the consensus on the forums was that it was a bad system and would alienate new players. The reasons were as follows:
-Trial mechs were CBT stock configs that, although they were awesome in CBT, were not suited to MWO's game balance environment
-New players in these substandard mechs would be facing veteran players in superior mechs (not fun)
-They would be forced to grind thusly for many matches before being able to afford a light or med (not fun)
-New players are therefore unable to participate in one of the main draws of MW (mech customization) up front

These points were articulated within a week or two on the forums within a week or two of the concept being announced. A couple of fixes were suggested that would have required NO development time at all:
-Change the configs of the trial mechs
-Give new players a free mech, free cBills, free MC, or some combination of the three up front

PGI did nothing about this for many many months. During this time, as you can see in the interview, they insisted that everything was fine and Working As Intended. Of course, things weren't fine, and eventually PGI figured it out (although they didn't admit it publicly). They have made some changes to mitigate these problems (cadet bonuses, champion configs as trial mechs), but they haven't solved some aspects yet (e.g. new players being locked out of customization).

===============

Overall the pattern is the same:
-PGI makes a bad design decision
-Players identify it as a bad decision and why its a bad decision
-PGI ignores the players because they're convinced they're right
-Months go by and damage is done (loosing core players, turning off new players)
-PGI implements a half-measure solution (ignoring the full-measure fixes proposed by the community) that mitigates the symptoms of the problem but doesn't solve the core problem ... i.e. a bad design decision ... brining us back to the start of the loop

[Tolkien]

zorak ramone, on 31 August 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

...
===============
Overall the pattern is the same:
-PGI makes a bad design decision
-Players identify it as a bad decision and why its a bad decision
-PGI ignores the players because they're convinced they're right
-Months go by and damage is done (loosing core players, turning off new players)
-PGI implements a half-measure solution (ignoring the full-measure fixes proposed by the community) that mitigates the symptoms of the problem but doesn't solve the core problem ... i.e. a bad design decision ... brining us back to the start of the loop

Agreed.

See also ECM
See also crit seeking weapons
See also Ghost heat
See also 3pv

Edited by Tolkien, 31 August 2013 - 06:15 AM.

[StandingCow]

Trying to send a message to past me.... RUN!

[General Taskeen]

zorak ramone, on 31 August 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

From the moment they were introduced (I think this was Fall of last year), the consensus on the forums was that it was a bad system and would alienate new players. The reasons were as follows:
-Trial mechs were CBT stock configs that, although they were awesome in CBT, were not suited to MWO's game balance environment

And has been pointed out many times, like by myself, those that actually do want to play in more classic style Mechs from CBT, they are no where near as amazing as a no-brainer high efficiency customized builds, and thus are screwed out of that play-style.

The only way around it is, which have been suggested numerous times:

- A lobby system that allows players to create matches and wait for players to join in (the match creator specifies the 'mode' or difficulty level settings, for instant if the match creator selected "stock only," and the ability to choose a 'random' map selection or a specific map)
- Specific Game Play modes for limited customization and/or stock modes
- Trial Mechs (AKA stock mechs) are automatically matched with players using a stock mech or other Trial Mechs only.

All of those things could have helped, along with actual tutorials... If PGI would have laid out plans like that, players will all sorts of different playstyles would have stuck around, of course - if balance was corrected too at the same time.

There are other balance issues too though, like SHS and DHS not being well balanced. MW:LL doesn't have anywhere near as much problems as mechs with SHS are actually viable even with just 10 SHS.

Edited by General Taskeen, 31 August 2013 - 06:34 AM.

[MustrumRidcully]

Tolkien, on 31 August 2013 - 05:34 AM, said:

I think you are correct in concept but suggest a different interpretation.

PGI is trying to make the game have depth/length/grind by making it so you have to upgrade every mech you buy from being the trash default/trial mech configurations up to being a good fighting machine.

Unfortunately this fundamentally limits the depth of the game since the progression a player gets to experience is limited to grinding out 3 variants of the same chassis to master their favourite. Conceptually they can make their first mech an atlas or a highlander and never play another.

Compare and contrast this with every single other mechwarrior game before where you tended to start with lights and work you way up to the big stuff, so you had 8-12 chassis worth of linear progression.

I know they have a stiffy for role warfare but I think they underestimated how hard it would be to make the battlefield conform to their ideals about every single mech being equally valuable. Case in point they have acknowledged that mediums need help but all that's been done so far is to let them torso twist faster/further... not exactly what they needed.

If you look at a game like MPBT3025


Community warfare here was also dovetailed into 'role warfare' in that border worlds had bad supply lines and therefore everyone had to pilot light mechs there!

This meant that every pilot had to kick butt in a light mech since half your matches would be happening on planets where you could not bring a medium, heavy or assault. Assault mechs were kings of the battlefield but could only be dropped on capitols and 1 adjacent world.

This lead to lights, mediums, heavies and assaults all having their place on the battlefield but sidestepped the conceptual gymnastics of trying to make 100 tons ~= 25 tons.

It also gave the players a *much* deeper and organic progression path.

So yes, I think they have made a fundamental misstep in how they are trying to approach advancement, but I don't think the trial mechs being bad is the worst part of it.

You make a good point.

Just wishing that a 25 ton mech is equal in value to a 100 ton mech doesn't make it so.
Battletech is really a poor system if you truely want to achieve this, and unfortunately, PGI really does't have a good plan on how to do it.

Their mission design can't pull it off.
Their "information warfare" components can't pull it off.
Their "role warfare" components can't pull it off.

I am still not sure if trying to make all mech weights equal is possible, but I don't really see any mechanics or game modes in MW:O that really would bring it out.

The system that might have been closed to achieving it was Repair & Rearm, except it didn't, because damn, those XL engines that light mechs really need to compete are ridicilous expensive, and the rest of the mechanics invited stuff like trial suiciding and afk farming like no other game mechanic before or after which meant that any semblance of fairness or balance the game might or might not have had was irrelevant because you couldn't even count on your team mates bothering to fight, and even if you did, the stuff that cost money was not necessarily the stuff that was great. That they failed to see the big picture when they came up with the system... Well,I guess I shouldn't be to harsh, at least they got rid of it when they realized it did more harm then good, but that seems to be the only time they were doing it that way. ECM, Heat Scale, Movement Code, 3PV...

[Tolkien]

MustrumRidcully, on 31 August 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

You make a good point.

Just wishing that a 25 ton mech is equal in value to a 100 ton mech doesn't make it so.
Battletech is really a poor system if you truely want to achieve this, and unfortunately, PGI really does't have a good plan on how to do it.

Their mission design can't pull it off.
Their "information warfare" components can't pull it off.
Their "role warfare" components can't pull it off.

I am still not sure if trying to make all mech weights equal is possible, but I don't really see any mechanics or game modes in MW:O that really would bring it out.

The system that might have been closed to achieving it was Repair & Rearm, except it didn't, because damn, those XL engines that light mechs really need to compete are ridicilous expensive, and the rest of the mechanics invited stuff like trial suiciding and afk farming like no other game mechanic before or after which meant that any semblance of fairness or balance the game might or might not have had was irrelevant because you couldn't even count on your team mates bothering to fight, and even if you did, the stuff that cost money was not necessarily the stuff that was great. That they failed to see the big picture when they came up with the system... Well,I guess I shouldn't be to harsh, at least they got rid of it when they realized it did more harm then good, but that seems to be the only time they were doing it that way. ECM, Heat Scale, Movement Code, 3PV...

Hmm, with movement code I would say that the consequence has been more poptarting but has helped lights and mediums to have better mobility. So while they achieved what they were trying to do the unintended consequence has made battles much more static and more emphasis on sniping. Let's be charitable and call it equal parts good and bad.

With repair and rearm you hit most of the points that made it problematic, but there was also a tragedy of the commons mechanic in play (partially covered by your trial mech farming mentioned above).

With RnR in, if you win a match you get 1/8 (now 1/12) of the benefit from salvage etc. but if you lose a match you get a pittance and you are responsible for the entire repair bill. This dynamic meant that in public games the 'correct' choice from game theory was to run the crappiest cheapest mech you could and hope your team would pull it off for you.

[Tolkien]

Addendum - current media coverage of MWO (including independent blogs)

Penny arcade report The hardcore mechwarrior online community is in open revolt
GameFront A cautionary tale: The rage of the mechwarrior online community
Starburst Magazine Mechwarrior Online faces widespread accusations of false advertising
The Mittani MWO A failure to communicate
Loaded Dice What happened to mechwarrior online?

[matux]

I Had a fun once, i think it was back in 2012 too.