565 replies to this topic

[grayson marik]

Ahasver, on 04 December 2013 - 04:07 AM, said:

Just to let you know,
this was new to me, I visited the site.
The Webpage failes to inform in a short and dircet manner what all this is about and what I could expect from it.
At least I didn't find this anywhere and I would expect this on the start page.
Therefore I could not generate the motivation to read a load of unneeded information to find out iof this would be
something for my Gamersgroup.

Yeah well, check the page again, now it is right on top, not even clicking on ISW/FAQ needed any more :-)

[SpiralFace]

MechWarriorBK, on 03 December 2013 - 05:59 PM, said:

question

why game dont look that good like in closed beta? even on pts with DX 11 looked worse

Those images you linked where promotional stills. More then likely, they ran that at extreme specs that are not indicative of physical gameplay. (4k textures, camera post effects, specially massaged lighting, no animations playing.)

I do want to say one thing about DX 11 though. DX 11 functionality the way they are describing it means nothing.

Direct X is a series of developer tools. Getting them implemented into the engine is NOT the same as using them or having it be a "make it awesome" switch.

At its core, the DX 11 update will expand the use of multicore thread use. The only thing you will probably see improve initially when its implemented, is that those with multicore CPU's that currently see MWO not using all of their core's processing power will see this amended. (If it works properly. Just because it utilizes all the cores doesn't mean the operations are optimized for its use.)

DX 11 integration will not be a switch that all of a sudden makes the game look like its the latest Call of Duty or other bleeding edge game, but rather, it will lay the ground work down to where the devs can re-visit and slowly wheel that kind of tech into the game piece meal so it can get there eventually. As stuff like high res textures, environment effects, camera effects, foliage, expanded physics, and everything else has to manually be set up by the designers or artists, and then de-bugged and optimized through Development. With them focused so heavily on UI 2.0, I expect the DX 11 update to pretty much be squarely focused on getting the tool set in the engine so they can continue to expand on the graphical power of the game as they move down the road. (Think how LoL is going back and "improving" the graphics on the older heros now. Its not a switch, its the start of a process.)

I just don't want people thinking that this is going to be some kind of magical "make it awesome" switch. Because if you think that, your probably setting yourself up for disappointment.

[Madoc Owain]

I find it telling that this topic only has 15 pages of responses a day after this PGI update, and that many of the "usual suspects" are now missing from the forum. For all the talk of how forum-goers are a tiny percentage, a healthy game should have a vibrant forum; this one is dying on the vine. See you in 6 months.

[Windies]

What's more telling for me is seeing the people who I personally would have thought would defend this game to the death finally being critical of it and getting fed up. I'm somewhat amazed that it actually has reached that point already or that PGI has let the game reach that point.

[Chuckie]

Apparently PGI is listening.. as they have deleted a few of my posts questioning harshly UI2.0 and the supposedly ASAP time table..

BTW PGI that's a good way to lose people.. all I know is if UI2.0 is installed in its current state, they will lose this wallet..

Edited by Chuckie, 09 December 2013 - 01:24 PM.

[Silent]

CMetz, on 04 December 2013 - 04:42 AM, said:

Have I only been a registered user for 2 months? Yes. Have I been following this game's development since the announcement that there "might" be another MW game years ago? YES. Have I spent money on this game? Yes, because I enjoy playing it, and I find it to be the best MechWarrior experience in existence by far. I've been playing tabletop Battletech since 1990 and I've got a copy of the original MechWarrior on floppy disk if you'd like to give that a go. Look, my opinion may not carry much (if any) weight around here. The problem is that all of the whiners and complainers think they are giving feedback when in reality they are providing mindless criticism without any constructive advice. Instead of wanting everything 5 minutes ago (and believe me, I'm as excited as anyone for CW and the Clan invasion), I think what we should be looking to do is provide the developers help in prioritizing the things we want. For instance, would the player base be willing to go 6 months without Clan tech if it meant CW was out in 2? Is our priority new maps or new game modes? Lets just assume that we can't have all of these things in the next 30 days. If we really want to help the developers make this into the game we all want, then we should be giving them feedback (not whining) in a constructive manner to facilitate that. Honestly, my preferences are CW before Clans, and new maps before new game modes. You opinion may differ, but it is our responsibility as the community to help the developers gain a consensus of our wants in a productive manner.

Sorry, ten page essays on suggestions, thoughtful criticisms, and ways to improve the game were done in closed beta and open beta. Maybe you would have realized this if you didn't decide to show up two months ago. That ship has sailed and people are just pissed off now. You're gonna have to deal with it.

[dangerzone]

I'm not about to read through all these pages, but I am pretty sure there is at least one post with someone complaining about them nerfing/balancing clans to make inner sphere stuff viable and saying how it will ruin the game. I want you to read this and reconsider your opinion.

Before I even throw my views into the air, let's understand something. In TT BT and previous mechwarrior titles, when clans became an option to play, everyone basically realized IS tech was worse, and everyone made the switch. When FASA added clans to TT, a majority of TT players swapped over to Clan Tech. That is basically rendering one half of the game useless.

Okay, here is my thoughts on this. Good job PGI. You are doing something right. Please, please PLEASE do not mess it up! PGI wants to make it so both clan tech AND IS tech each have their own advantages and not make one or the other OP. That's good. Why? Simple. If they introduced clans into MWO by the book, IS tech would no longer be viable, and a majority of players would switch to Clan Tech, making IS tech (which is currently going to be half of the game's content) useless. Which means PGI literally wasted 1.5 years and might as well have just given us clan stuff and never even bothered with IS stuff, which would have set the community in an uproar. They're actually being smart about Clans in a way no other game developer or FASA has before. Simple as that.

Whether it was PGI or a different developer making MWO, chances are, they'd try to balance it all out. Luckily, some people from PGI are BT/MW fans, so they have some knowledge on how to do this. (Not saying the perfect idea, but hopefully still good).

Clan weapons weigh less and create more heat. Okay, that is already a fair trade off. Clan mechs, is something we could speculate about all day long, but in the end PGI has their own ideas for balancing omnimechs and such.

This is actually the first thing they are doing right in my honest opinion. They have the good idea, and the good intentions, but the question is...can they pull it off? I hope so. Seeing clan tech not OP could actually make the game more fun believe it or not.

So to PGI, I say...Good job!

[Drunk Canuck]

Jaeger Gonzo, on 04 December 2013 - 04:32 AM, said:

How about balancing clans by actually battle value, not by dumping down clans and going even more away of the BT lore. This is huge work already done and is ready to pick up, but offcourse you are way off of the source I gues to do it.
Even simply balancing per numbers would be better.
3 lances vs 2 stars, anyone? or maybe 4 lances vs 2 stars.

Yeah tons and numbers would be enough for balance,
offcourse bv would be perfect, but its too complex to ctrc ctrv, and put some changes in to xml i suppose.

That has nothing to do with what Paul said. Balancing Clans was referring to weapon and Mech design, because it's literally impossible to balance them without completely making Inner Sphere technology non-viable.

[dangerzone]

SpiralFace, on 04 December 2013 - 05:37 AM, said:

Those images you linked where promotional stills. More then likely, they ran that at extreme specs that are not indicative of physical gameplay. (4k textures, camera post effects, specially massaged lighting, no animations playing.)

I do want to say one thing about DX 11 though. DX 11 functionality the way they are describing it means nothing.

Direct X is a series of developer tools. Getting them implemented into the engine is NOT the same as using them or having it be a "make it awesome" switch.

At its core, the DX 11 update will expand the use of multicore thread use. The only thing you will probably see improve initially when its implemented, is that those with multicore CPU's that currently see MWO not using all of their core's processing power will see this amended. (If it works properly. Just because it utilizes all the cores doesn't mean the operations are optimized for its use.)

DX 11 integration will not be a switch that all of a sudden makes the game look like its the latest Call of Duty or other bleeding edge game, but rather, it will lay the ground work down to where the devs can re-visit and slowly wheel that kind of tech into the game piece meal so it can get there eventually. As stuff like high res textures, environment effects, camera effects, foliage, expanded physics, and everything else has to manually be set up by the designers or artists, and then de-bugged and optimized through Development. With them focused so heavily on UI 2.0, I expect the DX 11 update to pretty much be squarely focused on getting the tool set in the engine so they can continue to expand on the graphical power of the game as they move down the road. (Think how LoL is going back and "improving" the graphics on the older heros now. Its not a switch, its the start of a process.)

I just don't want people thinking that this is going to be some kind of magical "make it awesome" switch. Because if you think that, your probably setting yourself up for disappointment.

Couldn't agree more. A lot of people like to moan about "how hard is it to code that?", "why can't you just do this in a day?"

It's simple. Coding/Programming is a PAIN IN THE ***. I am proficcient in C++, C and learning Java. IT sucks. Period. It ain't easy. Even something as simple as just making a button glow green is easily 15-30 lines of code. You have to call libraries that support those functions, tell the program to send this color to this button to this part of the game, etc.

As for DX11, it is more for making the Developers' lives easier for implementing newer things. Yes, it does optimize multicore usage, assuming it is alreayd optimized out of the box, like you said. Coincidentally, DX11, has a DX9 emulator built in, so for those still on DX9 machines, you can still play MWO

All in all, DX11 is a much needed thing more for devs than it is for players, albeit, it does still help us with optimizing our usage of our CPUs to the game.

Before, we go and board the "MOAR FPS train", DX11 won't provide much of a boost. It's more a backend thing, which will make your PC handle MWO nicer. If anything expect your CPU to run cooler in-game more than expecting FPS gains. I honestly do not expect people to get any more than 5fps gain.

Edited by dangerzone, 04 December 2013 - 09:49 AM.

[Pwnocchio]

CMetz, on 04 December 2013 - 04:42 AM, said:

...The problem is that all of the whiners and complainers think they are giving feedback when in reality they are providing mindless criticism without any constructive advice. Instead of wanting everything 5 minutes ago (and believe me, I'm as excited as anyone for CW and the Clan invasion), I think what we should be looking to do is provide the developers help in prioritizing the things we want....

I've read an awful lot of posts that are critical and constructive from disaffected players, some of whom still play, some of whom aren't currently playing until the game is further developed.

For the most part people have been extremely clear in what they don't like.

...and to answer your question, I think people would be jubilant to get CW in as little as a month at the cost of any Clan content for the next 6 months. I don't believe that CW will be here anytime soon, however, based on this update from PGI.

[Blurry]

CMetz, on 04 December 2013 - 04:42 AM, said:

Have I only been a registered user for 2 months? Yes. Have I been following this game's development since the announcement that there "might" be another MW game years ago? YES. Have I spent money on this game? Yes, because I enjoy playing it, and I find it to be the best MechWarrior experience in existence by far. I've been playing tabletop Battletech since 1990 and I've got a copy of the original MechWarrior on floppy disk if you'd like to give that a go. Look, my opinion may not carry much (if any) weight around here. The problem is that all of the whiners and complainers think they are giving feedback when in reality they are providing mindless criticism without any constructive advice. Instead of wanting everything 5 minutes ago (and believe me, I'm as excited as anyone for CW and the Clan invasion), I think what we should be looking to do is provide the developers help in prioritizing the things we want. For instance, would the player base be willing to go 6 months without Clan tech if it meant CW was out in 2? Is our priority new maps or new game modes? Lets just assume that we can't have all of these things in the next 30 days. If we really want to help the developers make this into the game we all want, then we should be giving them feedback (not whining) in a constructive manner to facilitate that. Honestly, my preferences are CW before Clans, and new maps before new game modes. You opinion may differ, but it is our responsibility as the community to help the developers gain a consensus of our wants in a productive manner.

Hrm lets see I have asked for only a few things and nothing else.
Fix the matchmaker - that in turn will fix the grind - hopefully if not then they can reduce that. (simply reduce the ton)
Have solo and premade q.

But I guess what I am asking for cant be done and is just whine. SO I should take my money elsewhere then. You are right I am just whining and should play the game getting crushed day in and day out 12-1 or doing the crushing. What about you know fun and competition? oops sorry whining again.

[Windies]

Silent, on 04 December 2013 - 07:29 AM, said:

Sorry, ten page essays on suggestions, thoughtful criticisms, and ways to improve the game were done in closed beta and open beta. Maybe you would have realized this if you didn't decide to show up two months ago. That ship has sailed and people are just pissed off now. You're gonna have to deal with it.

Pretty much this ^. Everything I see suggested has been suggested by someone since Closed Beta. It's just those people gave up and moved on mostly. I only watch from the sidelines to see whats changed every month or so anymore, where back in closed/open beta I actually used to play from time to time.

No way in hell is PGI ever gonna come back from the bad reputation they earned themselves with most of the community on here. Key word there is earned. The only way for them to really redeem themselves I think in the eyes of most of the players would be to actually produce CW and a worthwhile UI 2.0 within a very timely manner and that just isn't going to happen.

[Warrior UK]

It must of all been said by now, so i will keep this short...

Looking forward to it all, thanks for the info update and ignore the rebuffs about this and that. At the end of the day it is your baby and I for one thank you for getting your dream game together for us.

Keep up your amazing hard work...

[Nekki Basara]

Void Angel, on 02 December 2013 - 11:06 PM, said:

... PGI: "Hey, players, we've got some neat things on the horizon"

Most players: "Yay, that looks cool, but maybe we could use some clarification or change on [this subject?]"

The Professionally Dissatisfied: "WAAAAH, I hate you! I wanted something different! I wanted everything sooner! I hate your face! You should sell the rights to make this game to a REAL company! You're stupid, I hate your face! Insults! More Insults! INCOHERENT, WHINY RAAAAAAAAAGE!"

Question: Which one of these three parties is not a grown-up?

Which one are you? Because that one.

[Keyman1848]

Good to see the update. Like the previous updates this one has good and bad things.

Bad
UI 2.0 is still late and will likely have bugs
Community Warfare seems months away
PGI is working on Clan mechs
Clan tech will be nerfed to be like IS tech. I want to pilot a Mad Cat not a Rakshasa!

Good

Some improvements to hitboxes
Map fixes
New mechs and maps

The real problem is trying to do too many things at once. Get UI 2.0 and community warfare done and then worry about clan stuff! Focus on a couple of high priority items and get them done.

[Deathlike]

Morang, on 04 December 2013 - 04:41 AM, said:

Before they protected their files, limiting the amount of working console commands in user.cfg, I tinkered with gravity. There's a console command for gravity in Engine.pak (config/CVarGroups/physics). I was able to set negative gravity (so my mech - without any JJs - took off and flew up until out of bounds. Yes, maps also have a "ceiling", not only "walls") or reduce it, increasing the efficiency of JJs (I flew around a lot in Spider). It only worked in Testing Grounds, because they run on your PC without connection to MWO server.

In a combat drop server checks mech's position each second or half, and if the mech does impossible movements (in an environment set for this map on the server, i. e. normal gravity), the server returns a mech in the boundaries of possible movements. So with a negative gravity set in user.cfg a mech starts to take off but is dropped back on the ground after a second of flight. I don't know how other players perceive it, but I was unable to aim because of these jumps and speed also dropped to zero each time the mech took off, so I got no advantage, being a firepower and mobility kill right from the start. It was done during Beta for testing purposes.

It means that it is possible to make mechs move in low gravity using current engine (see my Testing Grounds experiment above). But while the settings for particular map can be altered on the server (I suppose so), I don't know if they can conflict with a single gravity value written in engine.pak. If it can be overriden as well client-side for particular map, then everything is OK. Otherwise, the opposite to my experiment will happen: airborne mechs will "try" to fall faster because of client-side default gravity, but the server will jerk them up each second, bringing their position in accordance with server-side low gravity setting.

I was talking more about the movement aspect (like MW2, being able to go above the normal speeds), not the floating/flying/jj aspect.

Although if I believe PGI's words, they would just reinvent the wheel instead of using the built-in stuff. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me to use it the built in tools and say "hey, we added it in".

Edited by Deathlike, 04 December 2013 - 12:32 PM.

[Victor Morson]

Quote

Community Warfare:
The first set of features for Community Warfare have been broken down and reviewed by engineering. The systems engineers have a roadmap and schedule in which they will start addressing the needs of all new systems required by Community Warfare and are working on the core layout for faction/unit gameplay. What this sums up is… engineering has done all project management breakdowns and specs for the upcoming feature and code clean-up and preparation is being worked on in a special new branch build (much like PTS). Some of the core new features, like database sharding for improved load handling, have been completed and are in that branch now.

We will update as each feature of Community Warfare enters development so you will know what order to expect things to start appearing. Right now all development is heavily, under the hood.

So, Paul, you ever going to tell us what you were doing instead of working on this last year?

I'm still curious where all those months of missing time where no changes or updates from your part of the team happened. At all. Ever.

People all talking about CW like it's the second coming and you guys haven't even started it yet, all while trying to shovel Clan 'mechs into the game without Clan factions to make people rebuy libraries.

I'm not liking where this is going.

Edited by Victor Morson, 04 December 2013 - 12:43 PM.

[stjobe]

dangerzone, on 04 December 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

Couldn't agree more. A lot of people like to moan about "how hard is it to code that?", "why can't you just do this in a day?"

It's simple. Coding/Programming is a PAIN IN THE ***. I am proficcient in C++, C and learning Java. IT sucks. Period. It ain't easy. Even something as simple as just making a button glow green is easily 15-30 lines of code. You have to call libraries that support those functions, tell the program to send this color to this button to this part of the game, etc.

I'm a professional software developer, programmer, coder, code monkey, whatever you like to call it; I get paid to write computer code in Java, C#, .Net, X++, and when I get away with it, Perl. I work on projects with code bases ranging in size from a couple of hundred thousand SLOC to well over a million. I've been doing this for longer than I care to divulge - I'll just say that I learned to code on a computer whose CPU ran at 3.25 MHz (yes, you read that right), had 1 kB of RAM (yep, a whole 1,024 bytes) and no storage.

PGI is a small studio (65 employees according to their wikipedia page), and I don't know how many of those are actual coders (as opposed to management, art guys, animators, and so on), but let's say they have 15 actual coders. That's about 5-600 hours worth of coding per week, or 2,000-2,500 hours worth of coding per month.

Or, put it this way. There's been 561 days since closed beta started (May 22nd, 2012); let's say they've worked 500 of those days. 500 * 15 * 8 = 60,000 hours worth of coding since closed beta started.

I cannot help but ask myself what they have been doing with those 60,000 40,000 hours, and why we haven't seen a single shred of CW yet (aside from mock-ups and a lot of talk).

Edit: That was a bit of bad math from my side, and the poor developers didn't get weekends off either. But now I've looked up the statistics for hours actually worked per year for Canada, and with 15 developers working for 18 months they should have put in roughly 40,000 hours worth of development since closed beta start.

Edited by stjobe, 05 December 2013 - 08:09 AM.

[Burning Chrome]

When I saw UI2.0 I couldn't believe all that time was wasted.

All that effort into something that has minimal impact on gameplay and is worse than the what we have now.

FAIL.

Now we're talking Clans development when there are so many issues remaining with the game as is.
Hitreg

Ghost Heat

ECM is still ridiculous...

Gauss (I don't even use it)

Disconnects/game freezes

Yet PGI focuses on...who the hell knows anymore.

At least the dev's for MW5 were smart enough to have it take place in 3015.

Maybe the rumors about console port are true. Not like MWO could compete in that arena, but I'd "believe" anything after the previous lies.

Too few steps forward, so many back.

Edited by Burning Chrome, 04 December 2013 - 01:16 PM.

[Kattspya]

Where are the textures?

Edit:

Quote

Current plans are to shift the regular forum updates to a video format which will hopefully be a little less time consuming as the current method of communication.

Get a secretary or whatever the euphemism is today or learn to type. In fact, get a secretary who can type.

Also I think you mean than rather than as in the sentence above.

P.S. Make sure the secretary knows grammar and spelling as well.

Will continue to add as I continue to read.

Edited by Kattspya, 04 December 2013 - 02:01 PM.