1911 replies to this topic

[Karl Berg]

Chronojam, on 17 April 2014 - 08:38 AM, said:

This hopefully does not come as a surprise, but among a number of players, there's a sort of eye-rolling you'll see whenever NGNG comes up. There was a bit of drama a bit back about whether or not they were being contracted to produce PR for MWO and whether or not money had exchanged hands, for example.

<snip...>

I don't have full background here; but personally, my interactions with NGNG have been entirely positive and I have nothing but good things to say about their work. They have been polite, they steer clear of questions they know would require me to break NDA, or preface questions that might cross the line with 'answer only if you can'. Quite like many of the posts in this very thread to be honest, for which you all have my gratitude, as it is a huge driver in keeping dialog open.

[Karl Berg]

Mawai, on 18 April 2014 - 03:48 AM, said:

Hi Karl,

I would like to offer a big thanks to the wonderful answers you have put in this thread ... from my perspective it is truly a breath of fresh air and most appreciated.

Earlier in the thread I asked the question quoted below on clarifying the statistics that Paul published in his Command center post. If you don't have the answer or for some reason aren't allowed to clarify the situation that's fine ... but I thought I would ask

Hi Mawai, I did push this one up and ask for clarification, as I wasn't involved in mining these stats. If I get a response back I will let you know.

[Karl Berg]

@Tekadept, Roadbeer, and Heffay

Indeed, IGP does handle most data-center concerns for us. On PGI's side, I'm not on a pager myself, although I watch production logs and telemetry pretty closely while I'm in the office, which thankfully includes both eastern and western peak times. On weekends there are a couple of us who use VPN to check in regularly to ensure everything is running acceptably. We have SNMP monitoring set up, and are using Nagios for emergency notifications. If any of the Nagios warnings trigger, the entire live-ops team receives immediate email notification of the issue.

[Karl Berg]

On the topic of that mysterious loading screen guy. I asked the UI team about it. Not one of them talked... All I got were smirks.

[Roadbeer]

Karl Berg, on 19 April 2014 - 12:59 PM, said:

On the topic of that mysterious loading screen guy. I asked the UI team about it. Not one of them talked... All I got were smirks.

Why's everything have to be a riddle, wrapped in an enigma surrounded with a chocolaty shell with most of you guys?

[Alaskan Nobody]

Roadbeer, on 19 April 2014 - 01:17 PM, said:

Why's everything have to be a riddle, wrapped in an enigma surrounded with a chocolaty shell with most of you guys?

Because chocolate is tasty?

[Dimento Graven]

Karl Berg, on 19 April 2014 - 12:59 PM, said:

On the topic of that mysterious loading screen guy. I asked the UI team about it. Not one of them talked... All I got were smirks.

Well then, as far as I'm concerned that means this guess:

Quote

Some people have said it indicates you are on an 'excrement' list and have had PGI set you up for additional 'difficulties' (HSR removed, 50% damage dealt reduction, in the case of any tie you automatically lose)...

Was the correct one.

It would explain a lot.

[Ax2Grind]

Karl Berg, on 19 April 2014 - 12:59 PM, said:

On the topic of that mysterious loading screen guy. I asked the UI team about it. Not one of them talked... All I got were smirks.

Noooooooooooo. How dare they leave us to anguish in our unknowing. Well, thanks for trying Karl.

I would never suggest you find the weak link in their team, and eventually social engineer an answer out of them with some fine whiskey or the like during an after work party, and then feed the answer here to us. But if the idea comes to you on your own...

Thanks again for keeping the conversation going!

[Rasc4l]

Karl,

thanks for entertaining us as long as you could on the matters you've had some say on but I think it's getting once more painfully obvious that even you cannot fix the problems upstairs. Once you swipe the table clean of the matters that should be trivial (not per se but rather to the survival of the game) such as SRM hit detection, your game is still plagued by placeholders like ECM. The continuous refusal of the Design department to address these issues is the most likely source of your downfall. Not your excellent work on fixing hit detection etc.

I've written something like 4 posts to this thread in order to gain your attention to issues that are fundamental to the survival of the game but apparently it is more important to discuss some icon in the left hand corner of the screen. Well, hell, maybe I'm missing the point.

Edited by Rasc4l, 19 April 2014 - 02:11 PM.

[Wintersdark]

Rasc4l, on 19 April 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

Karl,
I've written something like 4 posts to this thread in order to gain your attention to issues that are fundamental to the survival of the game but apparently it is more important to discuss some icon in the left hand corner of the screen. Well, hell, maybe I'm missing the point.

Keep in mind, Karl can only really discuss things that:
Are in his back yard, and
That he's allowed to talk about.

As Karl is an engineer, that means that game design issues (such as ECM) are well outside that. We all understand your concerns - and I'm sure everyone here has their fair share of them - but there's nothing Karl can do about those here, and that is simply not the purpose of this thread.

So, its not that you're being ignored, or that nobody cares, but rather that there's nothing Karl can really say or do about those concerns.

Even so, let's try to keep this thread as positive as possible, and do our best to squeeze every juicy tidbit we can from Karl while he's still foolish enough to talk to us at all

Also: I'm also extremely curious about that little dude on the loading screens. He haunts my dreams.

[Rasc4l]

Wintersdark, on 19 April 2014 - 02:55 PM, said:

Keep in mind, Karl can only really discuss things that:
Are in his back yard, and
That he's allowed to talk about.

As Karl is an engineer, that means that game design issues (such as ECM) are well outside that. We all understand your concerns - and I'm sure everyone here has their fair share of them - but there's nothing Karl can do about those here, and that is simply not the purpose of this thread.

So, its not that you're being ignored, or that nobody cares, but rather that there's nothing Karl can really say or do about those concerns.

Even so, let's try to keep this thread as positive as possible, and do our best to squeeze every juicy tidbit we can from Karl while he's still foolish enough to talk to us at all

Also: I'm also extremely curious about that little dude on the loading screens. He haunts my dreams.

Thank you for your reply. While it is obvious that Karl is going out of his way to answer community concerns in this thread (and deserves a raise for that!), it is also obvious to me that the real issues of MWO that e.g. Chronojam was able scratch the surface of, lie entirely in the department of design. That is exactly the department where we have the least interaction and communication. If we had proper communication in the design department, no one would, for example, come up with the idea of nerfing AC/2 when PPC+(U)AC/5 meta is the problem.


The only goal in current MWO is the ability to cause ~30 point *pinpoint* damage to an enemy in 100-1000 m distance. With most metamechs, this is accomplished with 2xPPC and 1xUAC5. The fact that UAC/5 gives the second bullet very fast after the first many times assures the damage goes to the same location. Adjusting dps will not change anything. Even changing fire rate to desync from PPC will not change anything. The only real options are to make the pinpoint damage of PPC (and maybe ACs as well) to spread (like 80/20 rule: 80 % damage to the aimed location, 20 % is spread to surrounding locations) or to make the cooldown of PPC real slow because no matter what you say, it's the only weapon in the game that can do both, cause pinpoint damage and have no ammo (i.e. you can use it as much as you like).

[Ilithi Dragon]

Wintersdark, on 19 April 2014 - 02:55 PM, said:

Also: I'm also extremely curious about that little dude on the loading screens. He haunts my dreams.

I can say with absolute certainty that it is not actually a little dude. It's an icon VERY similar to the emblem found on USB plugs. It's dark gray and it fills with a teal-ish color. Usually I get it when it's half-way through, causing it to look like a face of some sort, but I've had two or three occasions where it was not filled at all, and the little icon is just solid gray with a black pattern in it that looks almost exactly like this:



Only it has arrows on all three ends.

[Klappspaten]

Rasc4l, on 19 April 2014 - 03:19 PM, said:

Thank you for your reply. While it is obvious that Karl is going out of his way to answer community concerns in this thread (and deserves a raise for that!), it is also obvious to me that the real issues of MWO that e.g. Chronojam was able scratch the surface of, lie entirely in the department of design. That is exactly the department where we have the least interaction and communication. If we had proper communication in the design department, no one would, for example, come up with the idea of nerfing AC/2 when PPC+(U)AC/5 meta is the problem.

I am not sure, of course. But I think the recent Ac nerfs might have been made in the light of the upcomming Clan UAcs. Regarding a Clan UAc2 for example. The increased cooldown time on the Ac2 made the difference of 0.68 points of DPS, which on a UAc2 might even be 1.36 DPS. Which is a rather significant amount of Damage over time, especially if you run several of those weapons.
So keep in mind that any buffy and nerfs PGI is doing at the moment very well might have to do with the balancing of clan weapons. I imagine that its a bad pain in the ass getting them balanced.

[Tice Daurus]

Mother of God.

I never in my lifetime thought that a developer from this game would respond, and so honestly from PGI.

Karl, as many have said here before, had someone like yourself responded to questions like this you would not have 80 percent of the problems and negative feedback you've had in the past. So begrudgingly, I applaud you honesty and candor here.

I hope it's not too little too late however, but I wish you guys the best. I however will not play this game again until I see drastic improvements all around however, in development, playability and customer service.

My question is recently I've been studying for my Cisco certifications and one of my classes I've taken ITIL Foundations v3. I want to know, has PGI adopted an ITIL Foundation strategy and gotten an ITIL manager to work for PGI. If so, when did this happen, and if you haven't either adopted ITIL processes or a ITIL manager, why not?

[Dimento Graven]

Ilithi Dragon, on 19 April 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

I can say with absolute certainty that it is not actually a little dude. It's an icon VERY similar to the emblem found on USB plugs. It's dark gray and it fills with a teal-ish color. Usually I get it when it's half-way through, causing it to look like a face of some sort, but I've had two or three occasions where it was not filled at all, and the little icon is just solid gray with a black pattern in it that looks almost exactly like this:



Only it has arrows on all three ends.

In my opinion, NOT EVEN close.


It's a little upside down dude, and again, every time it showed up I had bad, bad hit registration, or when playing my missile boats, my missiles suddenly developed fear of any 'mech component colored solid RED. All convergences were slower (so many times a targeted 'mech had my lasers or gauss rounds pass on either side of it), and I just felt "hotter" though that might just me getting pissed at not being able to get my missiles to hit great big RED center torsos...

Oh yeah and I sure as HELL had a lot of lock "teases", where an enemy 'mech some how is able to stay 'targetable' UP TO THE POINT of getting "locked" for missiles, then "poof" would vanish from targeting.

THAT was extremely frustrating.

It is DEFINITELY NOT anything close to that USB symbol.

Edited by Dimento Graven, 19 April 2014 - 11:31 PM.

[Klappspaten]

Dimento Graven, on 19 April 2014 - 11:26 PM, said:

In my opinion, NOT EVEN close.


It's a little upside down dude, and again, every time it showed up I had bad, bad hit registration, or when playing my missile boats, my missiles suddenly developed fear of any 'mech component colored solid RED. All convergences were slower (so many times a targeted 'mech had my lasers or gauss rounds pass on either side of it), and I just felt "hotter" though that might just me getting pissed at not being able to get my missiles to hit great big RED center torsos...

Oh yeah and I sure as HELL had a lot of lock "teases", where an enemy 'mech some how is able to stay 'targetable' UP TO THE POINT of getting "locked" for missiles, then "poof" would vanish from targeting.

THAT was extremely frustrating.

It is DEFINITELY NOT anything close to that USB symbol.

I absolutely doubt that PGI has a random increase of the difficulty for random people in the game.

[Dimento Graven]

Klappspaten, on 20 April 2014 - 04:59 AM, said:

I absolutely doubt that PGI has a random increase of the difficulty for random people in the game.

Random? No.

You're lucky I'm not a designer of this game, the ability to 'muck' with individuals would be one of the first things I made sure went into a game.

Yeah, that's right, I AM that kind of person.

[Roadbeer]

EDIT:

Moving my conspiracy theories about "The Hanging Man" to HERE so as not to derail the thread

Edited by Roadbeer, 20 April 2014 - 06:46 AM.

[Wintersdark]

Klappspaten, on 20 April 2014 - 04:59 AM, said:

I absolutely doubt that PGI has a random increase of the difficulty for random people in the game.

While I'm sure his reasoning is totally off base, at least the image is right. It's definitely nothing like the USB symbol.

It's a little upside down dude.

What does the image mean? What does the blue highlight mean? Questions!

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Awesome thread.

I just want to add my thanks to Mr. Berg also, for taking the time to answer questions.