57 replies to this topic

[Renthrak]

So. MWO has lost half of the original Founders, and the current player count is too weak to be publicly shared. Aside from UI 2.0, nothing will change in the game at 'Launch', but it will be on-time.

This seems like a useful time to measure the mood of the community. Or at least that portion of the community that is sufficiently committed to the game that they take the time to visit these forums.

There are no 'right' answers. The questions are entirely subjective, and are intended only to gauge feelings. Votes are public, so everyone will be able to see how Founders and non-Founders respond.

[A banana in the tailpipe]

Where is the "Strongly Disagree" and "HELL NO" option?

[Renthrak]

lockwoodx, on 08 September 2013 - 09:33 PM, said:

Where is the "Strongly Disagree" and "HELL NO" option?

Since it's entirely subjective, you may consider any 'Disagree' to be 'HELL NO' for your own responses.

[Kermut]

First time I've been on in months and happened to see this poll.

Personally I'm very sick of the devs. All the announcements are solicitations to buy something, there are no sales on things like garage slots, and we still have to grind three much variants for god knows why. Its like they got it to a point, called it good enough, and then put up the for sale sign. I wish I could get all my money back. Not to mention how they screwed over the founders mechs by upping the standard cbill bonus for hero mechs.

[Jin Ma]

Renthrak, on 08 September 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

and the current player count is too weak to be publicly shared.

damned if you do damned if you dont. if they show usage data people will compare it to games like WoT and say MWO isn't successful. If they don't show it people say they are not showing it because its not successful

good poll. PGI/IGP definitely has a ways to go in terms of customer satisfaction

Edited by Jin Ma, 08 September 2013 - 10:07 PM.

[Jesus Box]

Renthrak, on 08 September 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

So. MWO has lost half of the original Founders, and the current player count is too weak to be publicly shared. Aside from UI 2.0, nothing will change in the game at 'Launch', but it will be on-time.

They are going to lose another one in the near future. I'm a Legendary and my days here are numbered. You're right about this "launch" not going to change anything too. People are like "It's a beta, it's a beta, IT'S A BETA". Sure, but nothing will magically be better once that sticker is taken off the title. The game has been ruined and driven into the ground by an awful Dev team. Taking off the sticker is not going to fix everything wrong with this game, most of which was put in when it shouldn't have been. The best thing for this game at this point now, ironically, is to reroll patch changes and yank a lot of their stupid BS back out of the game. But they will never do that. Their head is buried so far in their own rear they will not listen to any kind of reason or logic. It's why most voices of reason or most intelligent people have left. The forum is now only full of QQ wanting more horrible balance changes or mechanics. Those people stupid enough to support this shat will eventually be all that's left.

PGI has proved themselves to be a horrible company that just wants to cash crop the game while catering it to newbs rather than properly running it as a whole. Then they are wasting months of their time putting in {Scrap} we don't need like 3PV rather than better game modes or things like destructible environments. Ya, could we get that instead of 3PV? Buildings, cars, and trees that can blow up from excessive damage? Nope. We got to have 3PV instead. Something no one even wanted, something the community begged them to NOT put in, something no one uses now that it's here. Something that does not belong in an immersive MechWarrior experience. Meanwhile they will pat themselves on the back for a job well done, living with the delusional that they did the game a service, then go to work on the next BS balance mechanic.

[Jesus Box]

Kermut, on 08 September 2013 - 09:42 PM, said:

First time I've been on in months and happened to see this poll.

Personally I'm very sick of the devs. All the announcements are solicitations to buy something, there are no sales on things like garage slots, and we still have to grind three much variants for god knows why. Its like they got it to a point, called it good enough, and then put up the for sale sign. I wish I could get all my money back. Not to mention how they screwed over the founders mechs by upping the standard cbill bonus for hero mechs.

They screwed us hard by offering a second preorder package that's more money efficient than the one they sold us. Very shameful. If they really wanted to sell another one, it should have just been a copy of ours with 4 different variants. But they are money grubbing. They know a more efficient offer is going to be more profitable than copying the previous one. People are going to think, "Oh, this offer costs less, but is more valuable than what those guys paid. I'll definitely take this". Or Founders will think the same thing and get it, stacking packages.

[Imperius]

I disagreed on most of it. Too many delays, no DX11, no collisions, balance is still in the gutter. I can go on and on.

[Malora Sidewinder]

PGI would benefit extremely dramatically from simply listening to the players.
the changes they make are usually more negative than positive. There are more missed deadlines than accurate ones.

Currently MWO is far more playable than it was a few months ago, but could still easily be radically improved overall. The recent tweaks were largely unnecessary and inefficient, but i will admit that they were definitely improvements.

us players know what we want. we are not getting what we want.
we are extremely vocal about what we want, but are persistently and energetically ignored on nearly every front.

I am a legendary founder, and despite me becoming disillusioned with MWO enough to move on a few months back, i would never ask for a refund. I feel as though i got my $120 worth (and then some!) back when MWO was in closed beta and freshly open beta. IMO, those were the most fun days.
Sure there were a lot of gimicky and annoying builds (splatcat/gausscat, looking at you) but there was tremendous diversity in design. brawling (the most-favored method of play by far) was the king of the battlefield. SRMs were powerful enough to negate jumpsniper builds that abused the game mechanics in a way they weren't meant to be used.

nerfing SRMs to the point where they actually were not worth running was absolutely terrible for the overall health of the game. shortly after that fiasco, they should have seen that SRMs were better severely overpowered and broken rather than useless, and acted accordingly.

the game isn't nearly as good as it could or should be, and PGI cant blame anyone but themselves. we're trying, we really are.

[MustrumRidcully]

Malora Sidewinder, on 08 September 2013 - 10:35 PM, said:

PGI would benefit extremely dramatically from simply listening to the players.
the changes they make are usually more negative than positive. There are more missed deadlines than accurate ones.

It's never that easy. So many player ideas are bad. But some are also great.
Listen, however, is one of the first steps to make. Understanding what they hear and analyzing it (is the critique justified? Does the talker make good points, would an idea work and what are the drawbacks?).

And I think a dialog is necessary, too. Asking questions, responding to feedback. Some ideas need a back & forth to become truely developed and understood.

[Dymlos2003]

Show's how vile the forums have become xD

[Naja]

I paid to pilot big stompy robots. I got to shoot big stompy robots.
I don't necessarily agree with all the directions the game has taken, but to be fair there's not a game i haven't had issues with.

Sure they have weapon balance issues. I also played CS 1.6 for years competitively, and if you didn't use one of maybe 4 weapons you were as good as dead.

They implemented some features I thought less than nice things about. Show me an online game that hasn't?

They don't listen to the playerbase as much as they should perhaps?.... Yeah I'm not even upset about that going off some of the "Great Ideas" I've seen around here. There are some genuinely good ones, but they're really one in a thousand.

"PGI are money hungry". Yup, businesses are, welcome to the real world. Know what I charge to do my job? A {Scrap} load more than it costs me to do it I can assure you, though I don't give you the option to have a slightly less fancy looking version for free.

I also enjoy the current trend that the game is attracting the wrong kind of players. I've not once had obscenity spouted at my by a pre-teen. Yeah the forums can be pretty toxic and pseudo-intellectual, but again, most forums are. Overall the playerbase seems rather polite and tolerable, so if they're the wrong type, what the hell is the right kind? O.o

TL;DR: I paid to pilot big stompy robots. I got to shoot big stompy robots. To expect more would display an uncharacteristic amout of optimism.

Really trying to avoid doing work right now =D

Edit: lol the language filter seems to be working

Edited by Naja, 09 September 2013 - 12:57 AM.

[Renthrak]

MustrumRidcully, on 09 September 2013 - 12:36 AM, said:

And I think a dialog is necessary, too. Asking questions, responding to feedback. Some ideas need a back & forth to become truely developed and understood.

What terrifies me is that it seems like they simply got to the point where they are dismissing 100% of player feedback now. As long as they have more total players, anyone complaining must be wrong.

I think the community uproar over the Coolant Flush modules was the last hurrah for the community actually changing PGI's minds on anything. At the time, I was truly impressed at how well they responded, sending the module design back to the drawing board and coming up with something that was actually reasonable. I guess this gave us the false sense that if we yell loudly enough, they will hear us. Instead, it seems like the greater the community consensus on something, the less PGI pays attention to our opinion on it.

Probably the most telling statistic, straight from PGI, is that 50% of the original Founders still log in each month. In most industries, 50% customer satisfaction would be horrifically bad. If half of the people that buy a PlayStation4 return it, you would have company executives throwing themselves off buildings. The fact that, of all the people who had faith in PGI from the beginning and were willing to offer their financial support for a game that was basically an Alpha build and a list of promises, HALF of them have abandoned the game is something that should have PGI going to red alert.

If you want to succeed, you need to listen to the people who demonstrate the strongest commitment to your product. One person that buys MC is worth ten thousand free players. One repeat buyer is worth a dozen single purchasers. The people who really become invested in the game are the ones that will continue to provide revenue over the long term. I know the comparison is getting old, but for a perfect example of the power of a small number of people who really care about the product, look at Star Citizen. Approaching $20 million raised, and nobody can even fly a ship yet. It's amazing what confidence in a developer can do. It would be unreasonable to expect PGI to compete on the level of multi-decade veteran developers led by the man who basically invented the entire genre in its current form, but more could be done here.

Players need to have faith to spend money, and we are in a serious crisis of faith.

[Horus1337]

All i wana know is: when ,in the name of whoever you believe in Diety wise, is another game mode other then assault or conquest coming out? i feel i have more variety on some app games on my phone. Seriously

[John MatriX82]

Meh, considering I've been playing this game for over a year now, I don't think that spending the 110$ I've thrown at them wasn't fair; this has become basically my only game, while previously I could spend twice if not more to get those 3-4-5 titles during a year so whatever, it was fine.

But for sure I'm one of those who won't be throwing further money at PGI until I don't see this game getting CW, Clans (done in a balanced manner), live to see the game balanced without clumsy things like ghost heat, gauss rifles that don't shoot if you don't do it in 1", proper scaled mechs and many many other things that quite frankly will probably never happen.

I still have many MCs left and I plan to spend them only in mechbays whenever I'll need them, I refused to go phoenix and I might throw some money the next year once clans show up, always if the game becomes more balanced and more FUN.

[Shiney]

Looking at the votes, it seems that this is pretty damming to PGI, the majority don't agree with their direction. It's about time they started giving their player base what they want some more, go figure, that's where the money comes from.

[xengk]

Renthrak, on 09 September 2013 - 01:07 AM, said:

Probably the most telling statistic, straight from PGI, is that 50% of the original Founders still log in each month. In most industries, 50% customer satisfaction would be horrifically bad. If half of the people that buy a PlayStation4 return it, you would have company executives throwing themselves off buildings. The fact that, of all the people who had faith in PGI from the beginning and were willing to offer their financial support for a game that was basically an Alpha build and a list of promises, HALF of them have abandoned the game is something that should have PGI going to red alert.

In any other industry, 50% retention would be horrible.
But for F2P Online game, 50% retain after 1+ year is very good and many F2P game doesn't even reach that high after 6 months, by 12 months most would have announce server merge.

As long as they can keep recruitment rate above 50%, the playbase will have the number to survive.

Quote

If you want to succeed, you need to listen to the people who demonstrate the strongest commitment to your product. One person that buys MC is worth ten thousand free players. One repeat buyer is worth a dozen single purchasers. The people who really become invested in the game are the ones that will continue to provide revenue over the long term. I know the comparison is getting old, but for a perfect example of the power of a small number of people who really care about the product, look at Star Citizen. Approaching $20 million raised, and nobody can even fly a ship yet. It's amazing what confidence in a developer can do. It would be unreasonable to expect PGI to compete on the level of multi-decade veteran developers led by the man who basically invented the entire genre in its current form, but more could be done here.

People keep saying listen to the community, but when the community cannot decide on a topic then who do you listen to?

say; Group A demand MLaz get heat drop to 3 but retain 5 damage, Group B demand that MLaz stay 4 heat but up damage to 6 to compensate. Each group threaten to walk/stop spending if not listen to.

Edited by xengk, 09 September 2013 - 01:48 AM.

[AlexEss]

I feel that MWO is worth the money that I have spent on it.

Yes, if i look at the time spent enjoying the game vs what i paid i so far it is very cheap entertainment

I would be willing to spend money on MWO in its current state.

Yes, i would have no problem in doing that. In fact i will most likley pick up a Phoenix pack as soon as the next bunch of monies comes in.

I feel that my opinions are being heard by PGI

Yes, they have shown time and time again that they listen to the community. I do not always agree with their ideas but i do not feel ignored. (I have NFS:W for that)

I feel that MWO is or will become the game I wanted.

Yes, but then i am not a TT purist and i always prefer fun over heart attack serious.

I feel that MWO is catering to people that share my opinions.

Not really, but then again i am not sure how many people that actually share my specific opinion. I generally trust them to look at the big picture and do what is best for the game.

I feel that PGI is addressing my needs and concerns about MWO.

Yes, as i said i do not always agree but on a macro level i would say they are. After all my needs and concerns are notgospel to the entire player base of MW:O

I feel like I understand why PGI has made their recent decisions.

Yes, better then i would care to actually. Any project lead will sooner or later see how the well laid plans crumble around them. It is a learning process to form a efficient project.

I believe that MWO will be healthy and profitable 2 years from now.

I do actually, it is unique enough that i think there is a place for it on the market

I enjoy playing MWO enough to overlook the issues with the game.

This is srot of a loaded question, without specifying what the issues are i have to say yes. But then again i have good computer and 100/10 fiber optic LAN for internet so i don´t see much in the way of game breaking issues.

I would encourage my friends to play MWO.

Now this one is tricky, most of my friends that like this kind of games play it already, and the rest would not like playing shooters at all.

I would encourage my friends to spend money on MWO.

I rarely encourage my friends to spend money on anything,

I think MWO strikes a good balance between attracting new players and satisfying dedicated fans.

Yes, it seems to do a very poor job of satisfying the fringe groups, but in general i would say it does a very good job.

I think that MWO is attracting the right kind of players.

Yes, but then again my definition of "right" is, someone with a computer who does not use cheats.

I am satisfied with the state of MWO for Launch

Yes and no, i agree with Bryan that the game it self is stable enough to not warrant a beta tag any more. But i would really like to have seen more features in before we went "gold"

I think that MWO is a worthy addition to the line of MechWarrior games.

Yes.

I feel that PGI is doing enough to respect the source material.

Yes.

I feel that MWO is more fun now than it was 6 months ago.

Yes. I feel the balance have improved and that matches are a lot more varied.

I feel that spending money on MWO provides a good amount of entertainment for the money.

Yes.

I feel that PGI understands the feelings of the player community.

Yes i feel they understand, but i do not think they can (or should) act on every one of those. Sometimes you have to disapoint one sub-section or the other for the greater good.

I feel that MWO will have enough loyal fans to support the game for years to come.

Yes, That is not saying that those will be the exact same loyal fans that Played MW2 for an example. But in the long run i think it will.

______

So now that i have explained my point of view, i am not sure what this poll intends to do except sampling a very small part of the community. But now you have my take on it.

[jeffsw6]

Jesus Box, on 08 September 2013 - 10:28 PM, said:

They screwed us hard by offering a second preorder package that's more money efficient than the one they sold us.

That's what is called a desperate, last-ditch money-grab to try to make the game sustainable before launch, which they already know, will go up in flames.

Gaming sites are already writing nothing but negative pieces about MW:O; some going so far as to state that MW:O is a case study in what not to do. In other words, if you want to fail, follow PGI's example.

[Shazarad]

Good to see that the OP states that this poll is directed at forum goers. Of course I expect the numbers shown to be used in incorrect ways or as substance to an argument.

Simply put, forum population does not represent a huge portion of the player population. This has been stated many times in the past. Other games I'm sure are the same way. People's ideas and feelings here are looked at I'm sure, but the forum goers also do not have access to the information that the developers have to see things in the big picture which is crucial for a game like this.

Those that complain about lack of communication and listening from the developers simply aren't looking or are ignorant of what the developers are doing to communicate. They have the podcasts from NGNG, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit AMAs, I could go on and on. The information and communication is out there. If you continue to insist they don't listen, it's as if you're saying they want their work to fail and not make them money. It is also extremely possible that the proposed community ideas do not fit the bigger picture. You would have no way of knowing one way or another because you are not privy to the critical information they have and therefore all you can make is conjecture and suggestions. A proposal of ideas is just that, a proposal. Nowhere does it say that if you make a forum post with a suggestion that it will be implemented.

Looking at the numbers in the poll, it is not all surprising and to be expected. Similarly minded people will vote in a similar fashion due to the ideological demographic here. I'm not quite sure what the OP intends to achieve with this poll, but he/she knew beforehand of the forum populace and their attitude towards the questions posed here.

Edited by Shazarad, 09 September 2013 - 03:44 AM.