565 replies to this topic

[WarHippy]

FupDup, on 03 December 2013 - 05:21 AM, said:

I'm not so sure why so many people are clamoring for Clans to be done the TT way, seeing how their TT implementation was not only gamebreaking but also hypocritical of the Clans' honor system. Battletech writer Randall Bills explains it as follows:

I don't buy his reasoning. Everyone has their opinion on things like this, but trying to reimagine history just annoys me.

FupDup, on 03 December 2013 - 05:21 AM, said:

Here the Clanners were supposed to be "honorable" warriors who were supposed to get up in your grill and duel you, but the TT game mechanics allowed them to impersonally poke you to death from extreme range. It was completely stupid, and a huge proportion of people who want the Clans to be like that again are probably the bandwagon jumpers who go from meta to meta, and want Clan tech only for the purpose of its superiority.

Given that the Clans developed away from the Inner Sphere and fought amongst themselves for all that time they were not breaking some sort of honor code by fighting with superior weapons because those superior weapons were not superior. They were just weapons, and both sides had them. Their weapons didn't become superior until they faced inferior Inner Sphere forces, but that doesn't really matter. The Clans were not going to come to the Inner Sphere and downgrade their tech to make things "fair" because the Clans were big on conserving of resources so they used what they had. In your face brawling might seem like the way to go, and it might even go well with the honorable warrior mentality, but it definitely goes against the conservation of resources. So what he thinks better fits the story only breaks it in a different way.

FupDup, on 03 December 2013 - 05:21 AM, said:

Now, I'm not saying that PGI will handle this the "right way," because it's definitely possible/probable that something will go awry. I'm just saying that the original implementation was terrible and should be avoided.

The original implementation was terrible for those who didn't like it, but for others it is fine. As for how PGI will handle it I am sure it will be a disaster.

[kotya]

I am sorry, but that is so freaking slow.
Really.
So much stuff promised and not released.
I pray THIS will be there...
At least this...

[Thorn Hallis]

Sometimes I wonder if certain people were mentally/emotionally scarred before or after MWO entered their life.

[Watchemkillem]

I feel like im in bed with my ex gf. She keeps screaming I'm coming, I'm coming. I'm holding it til i'm blue in the face. It started out as fun, but eventually it turned into something else. I think I've given up on expectations. Playing with some of the guys at House Marik is the only thing that's keeping me playing this heap of a broken promise.

[Nihtgenga]

So what do we have? UI2.0 for sales boosts and annoyance, a "CW" still to come after half a year of so-called "release" (even not yet worth the name in the announced "dimension"), prevailing issues on several basics of the game (guess, something like f-ing hit detection is not really "core issue" for a shooter, is it?) , plus Clans which intentionally will be neutered to a cuddly "light" version (Can I have my own pet Direwolf, please?), most of the rest "work in progress", as always... Yay, thanks for that, Mr. Santa Gauss.

Dear PGI, that rises my heartbeat like a nice cup of cold decaf. Could already say "traditionally", if it wouldn't be so sad. I have to agree: STILL not worth to spend MC, which is a pity.

[Vandul]

Dawnstealer, on 03 December 2013 - 09:32 AM, said:

Any thought of opening up mapping tools to the community? Granted, the vast bulk will be [insert whatever censored word you want here], but there will be some gems. Would be a good way to get the community engaged, add content, and free up resources within your group.
Resourcing this to the cloud might save you some time to focus on the things you really want to. Just a thought.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

[Stigson]

Pwnocchio, on 03 December 2013 - 09:16 AM, said:

I think about how fast Wargamming gets patches, updates, etc... out for World of Tanks... but then I realize they have 2,000+ employees. :/

PGI does need to get content out faster so they can grow their customer base (much) faster than it shrinks, but I also think they only have like 70 employees or so.

I'm getting tired of the "PGI is a small dev team" excuse. It's buŁŁ****. They got a fourtune of money - yes, much more than they asked for - from the founders and continuously getting more from selling fancy and useless eyecandies (yes, we bought them to support them).
They got the money from this community primarly to make a game that they had been promised us. So if they are low on numbers to achieve their goals they must hire more and more employees from the extra money they got. Otherwise they will get out of players before any real content gets into the game. I'd like to warn the Devs to make a working CW ingame they need... players. I know what I'm talking about, I saw this before. I was in Warhammer Online from the very beginning. They started without any conent and when they finally released the RvR system they promised all servers were extinct.

And don't forget, Wargamming have a lot of servers, over 70 millions of player accounts (yeah I know it isn't the number of players) and a huge staff who actually make quest and research for lost blueprints of tanks, and another bunch of people who control 3d models for authentic look. They make thousands of maps, and only the best 5% of them make it to the game.... and they have huge PR machine with a lot of salesmen. 2000 people doesn't seem too much for me.

I wonder when will a founder sew them for doing nothing they had promised.

Edited by Stigson, 03 December 2013 - 10:53 AM.

[Noxcuse]

a broken non working UI2.0 release in next time for money grabbing, CW in design status...paperwork little pics...an idea in head..nothing more for CW? so NO CW IN 2014...no chance...no real work for cw and clan features...

new mechs new map ..lol

so we get nothing ...again ..soon..we will see...F.. Y.. player give us money...buy MC ****** or you will never see CW

thx for nothing PGI..great communication with empty informations..or like the CW news...a real answer that all the CW news last year are lies to us..you have nothing.....

it seems like they have no idea how to make cw or clans..and push the moneygrabbing..and in 6 month PGI disappear ..and the game still dead. THATS more realistic than an working UI 2.0 or cw or clans.

Edited by Noxcuse, 03 December 2013 - 10:50 AM.

[Masaio]

Thanks for the update, looking forward to seeing all these new features in action.

[SpiralFace]

Good update, I'm happy to see the map tweaks and look forward to see how these effect the game.

I know many people don't like how slow things are progressing, but for a team of around 70 people working at the quality bar that they are shooting for, I'm not surprised with how long everything takes.

I'm sure the dev's are well aware that they are not producing content at a rate that their player base is satisfied which is why I highly suspect that this has been up for almost a straight year now:



As some have brought up, their competition is running with teams well into the thousands, for a game that only has less then 100 producing it, they seem to be producing content at a rate that I would expect out of a small team.

In the end, they need more staff, they seem to be trying to actively recruit them, but even if they get them, its not going to be a light switch where all of a sudden everything is better. It will be a slow progress but I'm sure they will get to it.

Also, the notion that they shouldn't waste their time on small incremental updates because of the monolithic retooling they've been teasing at is a bit silly. Tweaks for what is in game take only a few guys going in and doing work to make sure it gets done. New mechs are something that probably only really takes a designer and the art team time acomplish if their tools are set up correctly, which should leave their dev staff free to get the UI and CW ball rolling. No reason the artists and a handful of designers can't continue to produce content while the dev staff focus's on the new features. (Which it sounds like is what is happening from what they have been saying all this time.)

Great job guys. Its frustrating to see things take so long, but given the team size, its understandable. I hope that your hiring goes well enough that the ball can start rolling a little faster though.

[Pwnocchio]

Stigson, on 03 December 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

I'm getting tired of the "PGI is a small dev team" excuse.

I'm not suggesting their small size is an excuse. I'm suggesting that they simply may not have the capacity to get the job done.

Quote

They got a fourtune of money - yes, much more than they asked for - from the founders and continuously getting more from selling fancy and useless eyecandies (yes, we bought them to support them).

They got the money from this community primarly to make a game that they had been promised us. So if they are low on numbers to achieve their goals they must hire more and more employees from the extra money they got.

They apparently brought in $5M from the Founders sales. I haven't seen any sales figures for the Phoenix sales, or any of the normal sales they run.

It's hard for me to really know what's reasonable for them to do with their earnings because I don't really know what are their overhead expenses.

I'd really hope that they are churning some of the $ from Pheonix sales into new software engineers in order to ramp out generation of content because if they don't make the game more interesting very soon their sales are going to plummet.

[Nihtgenga]

SpiralFace, on 03 December 2013 - 11:02 AM, said:

Its frustrating to see things take so long, but given the team size, its understandable.

"Understandable"? Sorry, but breaking claims which were made based on planning with the existing ressources and doing things which are (trying to say it politely) "very actively in contrast" to the likings of their customers has nothing to do with team size.

They'd be much better off being more honest to the ones financing them (and the ones they want to be financed by in the future).

Edited by Nihtgenga, 03 December 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[Listless Nomad]

Tarzilman, on 03 December 2013 - 05:12 AM, said:

Yes, but what about the egg?
Someone mentioned "dragons egg".
Maybe it's more some kind of easter egg?

That said, did anyone notice this little thingy in the map?


In one of the last NGNG Podcast they talked about a new Mech that will be released early next year (spring?). And they definitely talk about a humanoid light mech! Now look at the picture again.

Looks like an Atlas facing to the left, away from the camera to me.

[SpiralFace]

Nihtgenga, on 03 December 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

"Understandable"? Sorry, but breaking claims which were made based on planning with the existing ressources and doing things which are (trying to say it politely) "very actively in contrast" to the likings of their customers has nothing to do with team size.

Something as highly complex as a complete UI re-vamp and a full CW experience (Which even as a base planning I feel is a bit "overambitious" of them.) requires a substantial amount of personnel to get done. Team size directly relates to how quickly the turnover for these features can be, in addition to how quickly they can be de-bugged and pushed live.

Their scheduling on the otherhand is on them. They should know their scope and personnel, but there are always problems that come up. (We lost our Design lead for over 5 Months after he got into a car accident. You better believe that set our production back a bit.) When you are on a small team, those random sick days or family crisis' crop up can temporarily leave a team dead in the water if proper steps aren't taken. Larger teams are better insulated from these kinds of things in addition to having the personnel to form "attack teams" that handle issues that come up.

I'm not going to defend them for over estimating their deployment time of features, but I can almost guarantee you that the hostility that is held against them in regards to those "broken promises" is the exact reason you aren't going to see them give people any more time estimates until its pretty much done. Sure, they might have earned some of that hostility with their disastrous messaging around the time of the huge 3rd Person disaster, and I'm not going to defend them saying they where supposed to get this to us more then a year ago.

But from the information that is out there, it seems like progress is being made, just at a snails pace.

I wouldn't hold it against anyone who was invested in those promises to not hold a grudge, but for the team size that they report they have, and from what I've seen come out of the previous patches, nothing really says that they are doing anything wrong for the team size they have. If they want it done faster, they need to get more qualified people on the job.

If the game is doing as financially well as they make it out to be, I hope they are doing the right thing by investing those profits into new blood for their studio.

[Obelus]

So Community Warfare is still basically in the planning phase? Ugh too slow guys...too slow.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

xhrit, on 02 December 2013 - 10:25 PM, said:

So instead of just writing stuff and posting it on the internet, now you have to write text, make a video of someone saying the text, then edit the video in postproduction, then post the video to the internet.

How is this supposed to save time? Do you see the fail in this logic?

@cos the next dev update will just be reading out the text from this one - time saved and everything will still apply.

[Gauvan]

There have been a number of good posts concerning the switch from written answers to a video format. All I would add is that I believe a written answer allows you to respond in a more clear and thoughtful fashion. I don't think having folks speak extemporaneously on camera is going to do as good a job communicating to the community as written posts have. With proper pre and post production it can be effective but it sounds like a more quick and dirty approach is planned.

[Sudden]

nice report. keep it comming.
there was a report on the clans. igp you seriously need to rethink your approach to them. keep to the lore as much as possible.
thanks

[Silent]

PGI realized that they couldn't make reasonable excuses about no updates when previously all it took was time to write out a forum post so they've decided to go for a medium that requires hours of recording work and motion graphics and editing so now when the community asks for an update they can say "Well, we're still working on tightening up the video" and push it off into development hell with the rest of the game.

Edited by Silent, 03 December 2013 - 12:59 PM.

[XphR]

I am more than a little disappointed with the switch to video informationals.. Get an intern, have them type up the summery.. Its fine to shoot videos but taking a moment to put it to text will not only make it more accessible.. It looks better on your part as a "company".