420 replies to this topic

[Countess Crow]

Thank you for the changes. I love the game. I play every night on my days off. Honestly, weapon balancing, mech's, game play changes are all well and good.

What this game is lacking is MAPS. I can play for 5 hours and see 1 map 15 times "usually River City Night....." But by the end of my time off I'm happy to go back to work because I'm sick of seeing the exact same map every game.

At a bare minimum you should roll out 1 map a month for at-least half a year.

One negative comment. The OXIDE seriously? That is the worse hero Mech I have ever seen. You outfitted a mech designed to move constantly with point, stand still, and shoot missles????? Yes I know we can change it but I am spending real dollars on Hero Mech's they should be outfitted and balanced like a Hero Mech.

[Master Q]

Blurry, on 03 December 2013 - 10:12 AM, said:

match maker been fixed or the grind reduced?

Of course not. It would make sense to do those things which is why they won't.

[Heffay]

Countess Crow, on 06 December 2013 - 05:23 AM, said:

At a bare minimum you should roll out 1 map a month for at-least half a year.

Each map costs $250k to make and months to develop. It's not the kind of thing they can just **** out at will.

[Kunae]

Heffay, on 06 December 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

Each map costs $250k to make and months to develop. It's not the kind of thing they can just **** out at will.

If that's correct... they're doing it wrong.

Release the assets to the modding community and you'd have 3 maps a month.

Edited by Kunae, 06 December 2013 - 06:40 AM.

[Heffay]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

If that's correct... they're doing it wrong.

Release the assets to the modding community and you'd have 3 maps a month.

That you'd have to clean up (hundreds of hours worth of cleanup) and test a LOT.

It's still not free. Not even close.

[Kunae]

Heffay, on 06 December 2013 - 06:51 AM, said:

That you'd have to clean up (hundreds of hours worth of cleanup) and test a LOT.

It's still not free. Not even close.

Of course it's not free, and they'd actually have to hire, or re-purpose some artists to be, some QA folks. And no, it wouldn't be "hundreds of hours worth of cleanup". Testing? What testing? It's a map.

With less cost and more options, it's not like they couldn't remove a map that shows a weakness soon after they release it. The more maps, the less of an impact that would have.

[DragonsFire]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 07:10 AM, said:

Testing? What testing? It's a map.

Come on now, if you don't know that each map needs to be tested then you haven't hit one of the various stuck bugs present on any given map. Even large amounts of walk-through testing prior to the release of a new map will not catch all of them, and that's just one aspect of testing that needs to be performed.

Does the art mesh match up with the collision mesh so shots aren't blocked? How about LOD specs so the map doesn't outright kill lesser PC's? And then there's the whole balancing the map for 12 v 12. Yeah, it might not be rocket science, but it's not something that can just be whipped out without a considerable amount of thought, verification and testing either. They may get to a place where they can open it up to the user community but that time is certainly not now.

[Kunae]

DragonsFire, on 06 December 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

Come on now, if you don't know that each map needs to be tested then you haven't hit one of the various stuck bugs present on any given map. Even large amounts of walk-through testing prior to the release of a new map will not catch all of them, and that's just one aspect of testing that needs to be performed.

They don't do that now, until 4 months after a map has been released... why should it matter for community generated maps?

DragonsFire, on 06 December 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

Does the art mesh match up with the collision mesh so shots aren't blocked? How about LOD specs so the map doesn't outright kill lesser PC's? And then there's the whole balancing the map for 12 v 12. Yeah, it might not be rocket science, but it's not something that can just be whipped out without a considerable amount of thought, verification and testing either. They may get to a place where they can open it up to the user community but that time is certainly not now.

It's called having proper guidelines and specs that submitted maps have to adhere to. Once you have a proper process in-place for map submittal and verification, the necessary resources are minimal.

[Kotzi]

lol people pay for betatesting. If a map is released the community would love to test. Thats no real argument.

Edited by Kotzi, 06 December 2013 - 07:30 AM.

[Heffay]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 07:21 AM, said:

They don't do that now, until 4 months after a map has been released... why should it matter for community generated maps?

They do it now. They even have extensive player testing prior to releasing a map. The tests generate a wealth of data, which are turned into bug reports and then prioritized with the millions of other things they need to do.

Sometimes you have to release something with known bugs. It doesn't happen often in software development, just in cases like every single software product ever created.

[NocturnalBeast]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

If that's correct... they're doing it wrong.

Release the assets to the modding community and you'd have 3 maps a month.

Yeah, a map / scenario editor, similar to the Foundry in Neverwinter would be great. Hell, they could even add "premium" MC options and have a steady source of income.

[Kunae]

Heffay, on 06 December 2013 - 08:04 AM, said:

There is more to testing than just playing a match. Surely you know that.

Absolutely.

And surely you know that PGI isn't actually interested in really testing anything. They just want answers to the few specific questions in their poll/feedback form. All they care about are statistics and metrics, everything else is irrelevant to them.

As was profoundly said in a meeting recently, "You can't run a business solely on spreadsheets.". You can't build a game solely on spreadsheets either... and that is precisely how this is being done.

[Kunae]

Rizzelbizzeg, on 06 December 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

super old anecdotes == "precisely how this is being done"

You actually think they've changed anything in their processes over the last 15 months? There is no evidence of this.

[Feetwet]

Heffay, on 06 December 2013 - 06:10 AM, said:

[/size]

Each map costs $250k to make and months to develop. It's not the kind of thing they can just **** out at will.

Actually I think the real number is 500k and it takes 72 days to complete. The 250k number is for changing a map from day to night.

S

[NocturnalBeast]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

You actually think they've changed anything in their processes over the last 15 months? There is no evidence of this.

Kunae, respectfully, you are incresingly negative in each one of your posts. It is obvious that you no longer love MWO, nor do you believe that PGI is capable of taking the game in a direction that you will be happy with. Also, I thought you had quit playing for the time being? Just take a break, we already know that PGI does not respond well to negative "motivation".

Edited by Ed Steele, 06 December 2013 - 12:45 PM.

[kuangmk11]

Feetwet, on 06 December 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

Actually I think the real number is 500k and it takes 72 days to complete. The 250k number is for changing a map from day to night.

S

****, I want that job, I think its one slider in cryedit.

[Rizzelbizzeg]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

You actually think they've changed anything in their processes over the last 15 months? There is no evidence of this.

Good thing there's so much evidence towards anything you've said. oh wait...

[Countess Crow]

Probably like most of you here. We buy MC every month....New Hero Mechs...promotions...In all honesty I spend 3 to 4 times more money a month than I would have on a subscription based game.

I also have a hard time believing that it takes 2 months to release a map. However, if this is true. Then they should be working on 2 maps at once so they can be released every month. That dollar figure quoted above to create a map I find impossible to believe.

Logically most of us have been playing online games of many types for a very very long time. Maybe a new map would cost 500k to develop in the 1990's. However, there are just to many tools to create things now. The cost of development is wayyyyyyyyyyy less then at that time.

I agree new maps do need testing. One of my mains is a spider, which trust me find every stuck spot on a map. Its not just spiders though.I remember playing my DD with all Machine guns and got stuck a few months back. It was down to 2 VS 2 and I could not move. I coordinated with the other Mech to pull them back to me and ended up finishing them off. I have been in at least one active beta of some sort of game since about 1999. I have yet to be PAYED to be a beta tester "however EQ did allow me to play for free for many years". There is no cost for this service. Most players participate in a Beta Testing program just to be able to play and view the new content.

New mech's, balancing issues, weapons, will always be needed in this type of game. However, it is the new MAPS that hold the players interest.

[Heffay]

Kunae, on 06 December 2013 - 09:28 AM, said:

You actually think they've changed anything in their processes over the last 15 months? There is no evidence of this.

No evidence of an internal process == isn't happening?

Countess Crow, on 07 December 2013 - 04:58 AM, said:

II also have a hard time believing that it takes 2 months to release a map. However, if this is true. Then they should be working on 2 maps at once so they can be released every month. That dollar figure quoted above to create a map I find impossible to believe.

Just double the amount of work they are doing? Sure, why not?

I heard a standard 8 hour workday can be easily extended to 16 hours for no extra cost!

[MechFrog1]

Yes, it's a shame that the production costs in time and money make it so that PGI can't produce enough 'content' to sustain the playerbase. If only there was some sort of heads up that this could happen.