2555 replies to this topic

[Grrzoot]

Gremlich Johns, on 22 September 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Actually, some went to Crytek.

last post derailing topic,

I heard that alot of the LL guys allready did work for crytek?

[merz]

Gremlich Johns, on 22 September 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Actually, some went to Crytek.

several worked for crytek to begin with. some that weren't in the industry have since found jobs with pgi, is what i was saying. and a bunch of the 'community contributors' had always been with PGI. Alex Iglesias did some work on MWLL... Painting it into some kind of a struggle, especially on the part of those who weren't in any way involved, is rather lame.

Edited by merz, 22 September 2013 - 04:42 PM.

[Chronojam]

Gremlich Johns, on 22 September 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Actually, some went to Crytek.

Also, Star Citizen.

[merz]

Chronojam, on 22 September 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

Also, Star Citizen.

looking forward to your posts there in a few years, accusing the developer of the same thing.

[AndyHill]

The thing that bothers me about MWO and the launch is that there's none of the really important stuff there. I've just spent a while poking around with another beta (closed) product I won't name here and it does crash quite a bit and it's a bit unpolished, but there's just so much design there. Some of it works pretty well, some seems imbalanced and some aspects might not be so brilliant at all, hard to say at the moment. One thing is certain, however: there's a lot of novel and innovative design in that game and you can see it's going places - good or not I can't really say yet.

In MWO, what we have is pretty graphics and decent playability. The 'mechs are nice to steer, separate arm reticle is a nice touch and I kind of like the balance between speed, acceleration and accurate firing.

But that's it and a lot of what we have comes from decades of MW game tradition - although in a nice polished format. Almost everything else in the actual game design is poorly implemented in my view. The heat system is wonky, weapon balance burdened by terrible design decisions such as ghost heat, 3rd person feels like a terrible idea that in its current form serves no other purpose than to act as a cheat-like viewing tool for experienced players and I actually don't believe the whole base design is solid. But by far the most important question is the metagame and that's what really scares me.

First of all, have you ever seen a flat or actually even a decreasing progression curve in any grind-based game anywhere ever? In MWO the first 'mech you buy is going to cost you exactly as much as the last one in line. There are worse grinds out there, but all of them offer you an increasing effort level. In WoT you'll get new tanks to play with within hours or less of your first match, but you'll have to work your butt off to get the tier X monsters. Then you have infinite grindability with crew skills and expensive equipment that give fairly subtle boosts for the tank you're driving. In MWO you get the skills relatively quickly - although you have to grind a number of different variants, which is expensive - and then have to work your butt off for expensive, yet super powerful massive competitive advantage feature which is the seismic sensor. Of course that is everything there is in the metagame right now. Buy and drive 'mechs.

The two game modes for driving the 'mechs are pretty simple and although there's nothing wrong with copying good designs, I would really, really like to see some genuinely impressive innovation in the game, but I see none. Even on the financial side I'm not impressed. Compared to WoT that is a thoroughly engineered money making machine you have to appreciate on some level even if you don't like people getting milked, MWO is a clumsy copy. PGI took the price of a premium month, garage slot and other things, but seemingly failed to properly understand and apply in a new environment the complete system that is the WoT microtransaction model.

Then there is the launch. One of the reasons given for launching now (and the only one that makes sense of the totally underwhelming launch date ceremonies) was to get reviews and media attention before the new consoles come out. So they released on the same date as GTA 5. But what makes even less sense is actually wanting reviews at this time. I know a bit about gaming media, but it really doesn't take a genius to realize that you do not want people reviewing an unfinished product! I totally get how companies want to balance in the gray area with open betas, staying safe from reviews while already getting income and I understand why MWO did that for almost a year. What I do not understand at all is the sudden coming out and stating yeah now it's ready for reviews - when the game has basically changed little since closed beta.

All the above makes me think there's something really odd going on in the production of the game. But the real question I'm thinking about is why should I feel positive about the community warfare, clan invasion etc. when I've seen basically zero imagination, innovation or even really clever copying of existing stuff. With the change of hearts on a couple of occasions (which we all know quite well by now) added to the mix it's basically impossible for me to believe that there is actually any kind of coherent vision driving the project.

I can forgive bugs, rough edges and glacial development pace if the developer has a vision I can believe in. A lot depends on launch party announcements, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm not terribly optimistic at the moment.

Edited by AndyHill, 23 September 2013 - 09:17 AM.

[Calica]

AndyHill, on 22 September 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

-True Words-

Very well done. Best read of the last 25 or so pages.

Edited by Calica, 22 September 2013 - 06:10 PM.

[Nekki Basara]

Heffay, on 22 September 2013 - 08:20 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure I would have made a great goon.

I'm sure you wouldn't. You can always try though.

merz, on 22 September 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

Alex Iglesias did some work on MWLL...

Alex Inglesias is also one of the finest artists involved with CGL doing book illustrations. He's been with Battletech for a decent while now, and TBH there aren't many that do robots as well as he does.

[Sandpit]

AndyHill, on 22 September 2013 - 05:12 PM, said:

Genius

This, this is exactly the point I truly believe most players are trying to make. Very articulate post and probably one of the best I've has the pleasure of reading in a long time. I agree with everything said here

[VshadowPR]

I love mechwarrior! I game since MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy

I would like to see some of these things implemented in MechWarrior Online.

https://www.youtube....d&v=UHUTgnfiSRE

[zudukai]

welcome to launch mechwarriors

Spoiler

Spoiler

mass disconnects at random are just for nostalgia... right?

Edited by zudukai, 22 September 2013 - 10:25 PM.

[MechFrog1]

merz, on 22 September 2013 - 05:08 PM, said:

looking forward to your posts there in a few years, accusing the developer of the same thing.

And as is it is your nature, you will be there to destroy that game too. You guys are gaming vampires. Supporting bad dev decisions like you're collecting pokemon

Hellgate London
FFXIV
Aion
WarhammerOnline
etc...

On each of these, I was on the closed, then open betas. In all of them, there were people who screamed that the major problems with the game were trivial and that we should stop whining. For Hellgate London, the reports that the game was unplayable due to not being able to see players you were grouped with were shouted down by true believers who pushed the rumor that there would be a day 1 patch that would fix everything. That patch never came and the game was an unmitigated disaster.

In Aion, we begged the American NCSoft people to report to Korea the grind would never work with American players. We were called babies, whiners, carebears, and every other name generally attributed by your types to those who report problems with a game.

I don't know if MWO can be saved at this point. I sincerely hope it can be. However, it is not helped by people such as yourself who confuse loyalty to the developer right or wrong with supporting the game's future. People make mistakes. Game companies make mistakes. If we never have anyone call us out on our ********, we're never going to get better.

The game is launched. The petulant cry of, "It's beta!" is no longer applicable. It's time to be brutally honest with the developers about what needs to be fixed. Not 180 days from now, not 90 days from now, but in the next few patches. Every day that passes, more people have an opportunity to play the game as it is. Unfortunately, for the new player, that means going through a single movement tutorial, and then being dropped into the killing floor in 3rd person view, arm lock, and acceleration decay. Oh, and in a crappy mech that is way outclassed by the opponents.

I know that we somehow measure player retention after a week of data, but does this sound like a good recipe for creating long term customers?

To Do List in Order of Importance: (Since i'm all about being constructive)

• Every possible resource needs to be dumped into completing UI2.0 since as by PGI's own admission, it's a bottleneck in feature implementation. Any secret surprise projects like 3PV need to be shelved until you have the time and liberty to work on them.
  
• Remove or radically simplify the ghost heat system. You have an incredibly complex system that we've seen you are having trouble balancing. Adding another complicated system to fix it is not going to solve any problem. The PPC/ERPPC menace didn't go away until after you tweaked their numbers. Ghost heat solved nothing and caused damage to the game through lack of documentation and radical reduction in viable builds. (see: every 3LL build)
  
• King of the Hill game mode. Large central point that gathers points for your team for every person standing inside of it. (picture something 2x2 squares big on the map) This encourages combat rather than avoiding it. You know, the fun part of the game?
  
• Find people with experience balancing complex gaming systems. The money you invest now will return a thousand times over when competitive players return to the game.
  
• If you're having trouble generating content, give players a sandbox in which to play. Let your players generate your content for you. (read: lobbies, flexible game mode options)

Btw, the Star Citizen now has a track record of under-promising and over-delivering. They're already a very different creature than others...

Edited by mint frog, 22 September 2013 - 11:05 PM.

[Zanathan]

zudukai, on 22 September 2013 - 10:21 PM, said:

welcome to launch mechwarriors

Spoiler

mass disconnects at random are just for nostalgia... right?

I've noticed this myself today. I've gotten about 4-5 drop outs sometimes at the mech bay screen sometimes when searching for a match.

I've had it freeze up completely twice where the screen is black and you can't do anything, nor even view your other windows unless you kill it with task manager.

[Plaguicida]

I just think that announcing to launch a game it's not exactly like launching a game. They are offering nothing, adding nothing to MWO in this 'launching' event. The game keeps as it is and everything interesting is vagely relegated to 'next year'.

It would be great if they released a good CW system, if the units that have been already set (and the new ones that may appear) began fighting for the Inner Sphere. It would be great if they added new missions, planetary campaigns, rank systems, etc etc.

That would be expected for a launching event. But we got nothing of that. They say the game has been launched. I think not, and if they keep on this way I guess MWO will finish being a 12v12 arena game in which all interesting, strategic stuff will most probably be done unoficially in fan forums, if worthy. And that would be sad.

[StoneMason]

mint frog, on 22 September 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

And as is it is your nature, you will be there to destroy that game too. You guys are gaming vampires. Supporting bad dev decisions like you're collecting pokemon

Hellgate London
FFXIV
Aion
WarhammerOnline
etc...

On each of these, I was on the closed, then open betas. In all of them, there were people who screamed that the major problems with the game were trivial and that we should stop whining. For Hellgate London, the reports that the game was unplayable due to not being able to see players you were grouped with were shouted down by true believers who pushed the rumor that there would be a day 1 patch that would fix everything. That patch never came and the game was an unmitigated disaster.

In Aion, we begged the American NCSoft people to report to Korea the grind would never work with American players. We were called babies, whiners, carebears, and every other name generally attributed by your types to those who report problems with a game.

I don't know if MWO can be saved at this point. I sincerely hope it can be. However, it is not helped by people such as yourself who confuse loyalty to the developer right or wrong with supporting the game's future. People make mistakes. Game companies make mistakes. If we never have anyone call us out on our ********, we're never going to get better.

The game is launched. The petulant cry of, "It's beta!" is no longer applicable. It's time to be brutally honest with the developers about what needs to be fixed. Not 180 days from now, not 90 days from now, but in the next few patches. Every day that passes, more people have an opportunity to play the game as it is. Unfortunately, for the new player, that means going through a single movement tutorial, and then being dropped into the killing floor in 3rd person view, arm lock, and acceleration decay. Oh, and in a crappy mech that is way outclassed by the opponents.

I know that we somehow measure player retention after a week of data, but does this sound like a good recipe for creating long term customers?

To Do List in Order of Importance: (Since i'm all about being constructive)

• Every possible resource needs to be dumped into completing UI2.0 since as by PGI's own admission, it's a bottleneck in feature implementation. Any secret surprise projects like 3PV need to be shelved until you have the time and liberty to work on them.
  
• Remove or radically simplify the ghost heat system. You have an incredibly complex system that we've seen you are having trouble balancing. Adding another complicated system to fix it is not going to solve any problem. The PPC/ERPPC menace didn't go away until after you tweaked their numbers. Ghost heat solved nothing and caused damage to the game through lack of documentation and radical reduction in viable builds. (see: every 3LL build)
  
• King of the Hill game mode. Large central point that gathers points for your team for every person standing inside of it. (picture something 2x2 squares big on the map) This encourages combat rather than avoiding it. You know, the fun part of the game?
  
• Find people with experience balancing complex gaming systems. The money you invest now will return a thousand times over when competitive players return to the game.
  
• If you're having trouble generating content, give players a sandbox in which to play. Let your players generate your content for you. (read: lobbies, flexible game mode options)

Btw, the Star Citizen now has a track record of under-promising and over-delivering. They're already a very different creature than others...

Reposted, great advice. One major problem with current f2p titles is they restrict the kind of content the community can produce. This might not be important if you're only thinking six months into the future but realistically, two, three years down the track you can have the community doing the bulk of marketing, mapping and storytelling.

[Literally]

mint frog, on 22 September 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

And as is it is your nature, you will be there to destroy that game too. You guys are gaming vampires. Supporting bad dev decisions like you're collecting pokemon

Hellgate London
FFXIV
Aion
WarhammerOnline
etc...

On each of these, I was on the closed, then open betas. In all of them, there were people who screamed that the major problems with the game were trivial and that we should stop whining. For Hellgate London, the reports that the game was unplayable due to not being able to see players you were grouped with were shouted down by true believers who pushed the rumor that there would be a day 1 patch that would fix everything. That patch never came and the game was an unmitigated disaster.

In Aion, we begged the American NCSoft people to report to Korea the grind would never work with American players. We were called babies, whiners, carebears, and every other name generally attributed by your types to those who report problems with a game.

I don't know if MWO can be saved at this point. I sincerely hope it can be. However, it is not helped by people such as yourself who confuse loyalty to the developer right or wrong with supporting the game's future. People make mistakes. Game companies make mistakes. If we never have anyone call us out on our ********, we're never going to get better.

The game is launched. The petulant cry of, "It's beta!" is no longer applicable. It's time to be brutally honest with the developers about what needs to be fixed. Not 180 days from now, not 90 days from now, but in the next few patches. Every day that passes, more people have an opportunity to play the game as it is. Unfortunately, for the new player, that means going through a single movement tutorial, and then being dropped into the killing floor in 3rd person view, arm lock, and acceleration decay. Oh, and in a crappy mech that is way outclassed by the opponents.

I know that we somehow measure player retention after a week of data, but does this sound like a good recipe for creating long term customers?

To Do List in Order of Importance: (Since i'm all about being constructive)

• Every possible resource needs to be dumped into completing UI2.0 since as by PGI's own admission, it's a bottleneck in feature implementation. Any secret surprise projects like 3PV need to be shelved until you have the time and liberty to work on them.
  
• Remove or radically simplify the ghost heat system. You have an incredibly complex system that we've seen you are having trouble balancing. Adding another complicated system to fix it is not going to solve any problem. The PPC/ERPPC menace didn't go away until after you tweaked their numbers. Ghost heat solved nothing and caused damage to the game through lack of documentation and radical reduction in viable builds. (see: every 3LL build)
  
• King of the Hill game mode. Large central point that gathers points for your team for every person standing inside of it. (picture something 2x2 squares big on the map) This encourages combat rather than avoiding it. You know, the fun part of the game?
  
• Find people with experience balancing complex gaming systems. The money you invest now will return a thousand times over when competitive players return to the game.
  
• If you're having trouble generating content, give players a sandbox in which to play. Let your players generate your content for you. (read: lobbies, flexible game mode options)

Btw, the Star Citizen now has a track record of under-promising and over-delivering. They're already a very different creature than others...

This should be a memo taped to every cubicle and door at PGI.

[CSPshala]

merz, on 22 September 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

it wasn't, like, five guys hitting 'like' on each other's posts

you feel me, dawg?

Keep telling yourself that.


Dawg.

[G-LOC]

mint frog, on 22 September 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

And as is it is your nature, you will be there to destroy that game too. You guys are gaming vampires. Supporting bad dev decisions like you're collecting pokemon

Hellgate London
FFXIV
Aion
WarhammerOnline
etc...

On each of these, I was on the closed, then open betas. In all of them, there were people who screamed that the major problems with the game were trivial and that we should stop whining. For Hellgate London, the reports that the game was unplayable due to not being able to see players you were grouped with were shouted down by true believers who pushed the rumor that there would be a day 1 patch that would fix everything. That patch never came and the game was an unmitigated disaster.

In Aion, we begged the American NCSoft people to report to Korea the grind would never work with American players. We were called babies, whiners, carebears, and every other name generally attributed by your types to those who report problems with a game.

I don't know if MWO can be saved at this point. I sincerely hope it can be. However, it is not helped by people such as yourself who confuse loyalty to the developer right or wrong with supporting the game's future. People make mistakes. Game companies make mistakes. If we never have anyone call us out on our ********, we're never going to get better.

The game is launched. The petulant cry of, "It's beta!" is no longer applicable. It's time to be brutally honest with the developers about what needs to be fixed. Not 180 days from now, not 90 days from now, but in the next few patches. Every day that passes, more people have an opportunity to play the game as it is. Unfortunately, for the new player, that means going through a single movement tutorial, and then being dropped into the killing floor in 3rd person view, arm lock, and acceleration decay. Oh, and in a crappy mech that is way outclassed by the opponents.

I know that we somehow measure player retention after a week of data, but does this sound like a good recipe for creating long term customers?

To Do List in Order of Importance: (Since i'm all about being constructive)

• Every possible resource needs to be dumped into completing UI2.0 since as by PGI's own admission, it's a bottleneck in feature implementation. Any secret surprise projects like 3PV need to be shelved until you have the time and liberty to work on them.
  
• Remove or radically simplify the ghost heat system. You have an incredibly complex system that we've seen you are having trouble balancing. Adding another complicated system to fix it is not going to solve any problem. The PPC/ERPPC menace didn't go away until after you tweaked their numbers. Ghost heat solved nothing and caused damage to the game through lack of documentation and radical reduction in viable builds. (see: every 3LL build)
  
• King of the Hill game mode. Large central point that gathers points for your team for every person standing inside of it. (picture something 2x2 squares big on the map) This encourages combat rather than avoiding it. You know, the fun part of the game?
  
• Find people with experience balancing complex gaming systems. The money you invest now will return a thousand times over when competitive players return to the game.
  
• If you're having trouble generating content, give players a sandbox in which to play. Let your players generate your content for you. (read: lobbies, flexible game mode options)

Btw, the Star Citizen now has a track record of under-promising and over-delivering. They're already a very different creature than others...

Nail on the head, great post Mint frog!!!!

[Kooler]

I understand that features get pushed back. But when you launch a game, you need to make it an event, something people look forward to.

When you came out and say Launch is September 17th and then don't add anything to that statment to get the playerbase hyped up, it ends up not being anything special. A player tournament in California for 50 people does not make the community feel invloved in the launch.

All they had to do is have something to add to the launch. A new game mode would have been nice, an update on the CW system would have been nice, maybe an announcement of everyone that had a valid account before September 1st gets 2 free mech bays as a thanks for testing the game out and helping them find bugs would have been nice. An MC sale , a tournament for all weight classes would have been nice (which they have done in the past during open beta so it couldn't have been that hard).

They should have launched on the one year anniversary that open beta dropped , that way they would have had time to implement something, anything for launch, instead we got a regular patch day which isn't special which makes the community wonder why we even spend time playing this game.

Edited by Kooler, 23 September 2013 - 04:39 AM.

[marlyy]

mint frog, on 22 September 2013 - 10:23 PM, said:

And as is it is your nature, you will be there to destroy that game too. You guys are gaming vampires. Supporting bad dev decisions like you're collecting pokemon

Hellgate London
FFXIV
Aion
WarhammerOnline
etc...

On each of these, I was on the closed, then open betas. In all of them, there were people who screamed that the major problems with the game were trivial and that we should stop whining. For Hellgate London, the reports that the game was unplayable due to not being able to see players you were grouped with were shouted down by true believers who pushed the rumor that there would be a day 1 patch that would fix everything. That patch never came and the game was an unmitigated disaster.

In Aion, we begged the American NCSoft people to report to Korea the grind would never work with American players. We were called babies, whiners, carebears, and every other name generally attributed by your types to those who report problems with a game.

I don't know if MWO can be saved at this point. I sincerely hope it can be. However, it is not helped by people such as yourself who confuse loyalty to the developer right or wrong with supporting the game's future. People make mistakes. Game companies make mistakes. If we never have anyone call us out on our ********, we're never going to get better.

The game is launched. The petulant cry of, "It's beta!" is no longer applicable. It's time to be brutally honest with the developers about what needs to be fixed. Not 180 days from now, not 90 days from now, but in the next few patches. Every day that passes, more people have an opportunity to play the game as it is. Unfortunately, for the new player, that means going through a single movement tutorial, and then being dropped into the killing floor in 3rd person view, arm lock, and acceleration decay. Oh, and in a crappy mech that is way outclassed by the opponents.

I know that we somehow measure player retention after a week of data, but does this sound like a good recipe for creating long term customers?

To Do List in Order of Importance: (Since i'm all about being constructive)

• Every possible resource needs to be dumped into completing UI2.0 since as by PGI's own admission, it's a bottleneck in feature implementation. Any secret surprise projects like 3PV need to be shelved until you have the time and liberty to work on them.
  
• Remove or radically simplify the ghost heat system. You have an incredibly complex system that we've seen you are having trouble balancing. Adding another complicated system to fix it is not going to solve any problem. The PPC/ERPPC menace didn't go away until after you tweaked their numbers. Ghost heat solved nothing and caused damage to the game through lack of documentation and radical reduction in viable builds. (see: every 3LL build)
  
• King of the Hill game mode. Large central point that gathers points for your team for every person standing inside of it. (picture something 2x2 squares big on the map) This encourages combat rather than avoiding it. You know, the fun part of the game?
  
• Find people with experience balancing complex gaming systems. The money you invest now will return a thousand times over when competitive players return to the game.
  
• If you're having trouble generating content, give players a sandbox in which to play. Let your players generate your content for you. (read: lobbies, flexible game mode options)

it would be like

[Mavqie]

im interested to see what all of these "big" announcments are going to be at the event on the 27th, if its a case of ui 2 wont be for another 6 months like they have been doing so far then i think it will be game over for me for the time being.

as it stands i have good and bad days in mwo, some days i enjoy it and some days it bores the **** out of me this game is in need of serious new content other than mechs