1911 replies to this topic

[Klappspaten]

ciller, on 12 April 2014 - 06:51 AM, said:

Respectfully, I can not agree with this. The damage can be tested in training grounds, and hit detection is relatively reliable against slower moving, large mechs in matches. The inherent problems with SRMs remain.

Still I have to disagree with you. I am running several builds that heavily depend on SRMs and they are particulary effective against the usual high pinpoint meta.
The better heat efficiency, as well as the spread allow me to be way more agile and move frantic whilst between them. This lets me spread my dammage even against pinpoint and it allows me to fire from the turn, without stopping to aim.

Jason1138, on 12 April 2014 - 07:29 AM, said:

Russ got up on a stage and said CW would be here in 3 months when he knew for a fact they weren't even working on it yet

That tells you all you need to know about this company, or the likelihood of us ever seeing the features they've been promising all this time. they lie, intentionally, and constantly. its not an accident, its not a missed deadline, its fraud. Fraud committed for the purpose of getting people to put more money into the game, with Phoenix programs or Clan packs, or whatever

This game is nothing but a cash grab at this point, and some of the people associated with it literally belong in jail

Please do not start this destructive kind of argument in this thread. It has been a pleassure to talk with a dev so far, and the calm manner in which it happend and hopefully will continue to happen was a great part of it.
This is no place for a shitstorm, but a place for a calm and objective discussion.

[DEN_Ninja]

Jason1138, on 12 April 2014 - 07:29 AM, said:

Russ got up on a stage and said CW would be here in 3 months when he knew for a fact they weren't even working on it yet

That tells you all you need to know about this company, or the likelihood of us ever seeing the features they've been promising all this time. they lie, intentionally, and constantly. its not an accident, its not a missed deadline, its fraud. Fraud committed for the purpose of getting people to put more money into the game, with Phoenix programs or Clan packs, or whatever

This game is nothing but a cash grab at this point, and some of the people associated with it literally belong in jail

Ah the exact same type of behavior that would force away any interaction from the dev team.

Karl Berg, on 11 April 2014 - 11:42 PM, said:

CW has unfortunately been subject to every scheduling failure that I listed in that post. Plus, due to being a UI heavy feature, had the bad luck to be impacted by every scheduling failure of UI 2 as well. I have had reasonably detailed documents from design, laying out the whole feature, on my desk for many months now. Portions of that document are already released to production, or on the verge of being released. All together, it's a very large amount of work, and so you're definitely going to see us continue to break it up into lots of smaller individually releasable chunks to make it easier to manage. Be assured that we know we've been dragging implementation of this feature on for far too long. We want to get it in your hands as soon as we possibly can.

Paul's recent command chair post alludes to changes that had to be made to some of the final components of CW due to recent situational changes. I think when he is able to post the revised design, it will be very obvious what those changes were, and why they had to be made.

Back to being on topic. I am glad to hear that there are parts of community warfare that are completed. Any possible information on what is being worked on or is completed or is it too sensitive to be released at this moment?

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 12 April 2014 - 08:02 AM.

[VXJaeger]

This thread is solid gold, babe. Just solid gold

[Hammerhai]

Some feedback:

On the subject of intellectual honesty ...

I see this a lot when being on TS with a group. The phrase "damn PUGs" crops up a lot. As does "Matchmaker fail". Heavens, I think it happens to people because we are just not built objective by mother nature (She is a woman, too, you know).


Ghost heat:
I can also testify that Ghost heat, for all the vilification it gets, killed the Hexa stalkers at least and fairly drastically reduced Super high alpha builds in my ELO bracket, which is a LONG way from the top.


Match maker:
It seems to me that a lot of the bias problems in MM that you are intending to tweak for would normalise with a decent VOIP solution. I may be over optimistic here, but here is hoping. I personally am subject to the HOTAS user bug where ANY text comm means me stopping dead - with predictable results. Personally, I am doubtful it is a Cry Engine issue, just btw, because at one stage I could type, move and steer with no problems.

So here my question: Specifically, can we look forward to a Command wheel type interface or a bug fix on that? Where IS VOIP/ Command wheel on the bug fix/priority list? I submit this could save a lot of work eliminating biases in MM which are at least in part due to bad comms. Thank you for the good thread, again. I value the time you give us, for time is the most precious resource we all have, in the end.

Edit for a bit more clarity.

Edited by Hammerhai, 12 April 2014 - 08:37 AM.

[o0cipher0o]

Woah, how did i miss this amazing thread?
I wish more devs at PGI were eloquent like you, Karl. Because, really, devs that talk to the community about issues and aspects of game developing and related stuff are allways an enormous added value.


Having said that, i've got aa question i really hope you can answer:

Are you guys aat PGI aware of all the invisible walls that haunt the maps? I've been playng for quite some time now, and this of the terrain hitboxes not following the real geometri of the ground and of some buildings/objects has allways frustrated me. It's really annoying when i fire at someone i should have a clear shot, just to see the round get lost in an invisible wall.
So, are you guys aware of the problem? Is there any plan tomfix it?

I'm looking forward for an answer

[Klappspaten]

o0cipher0o, on 12 April 2014 - 08:54 AM, said:

Woah, how did i miss this amazing thread?
I wish more devs at PGI were eloquent like you, Karl. Because, really, devs that talk to the community about issues and aspects of game developing and related stuff are allways an enormous added value.


Having said that, i've got aa question i really hope you can answer:

Are you guys aat PGI aware of all the invisible walls that haunt the maps? I've been playng for quite some time now, and this of the terrain hitboxes not following the real geometri of the ground and of some buildings/objects has allways frustrated me. It's really annoying when i fire at someone i should have a clear shot, just to see the round get lost in an invisible wall.
So, are you guys aware of the problem? Is there any plan tomfix it?

I'm looking forward for an answer

Let me guide your attention to post #145 in this thread, its about the question you jjust asked.

http://mwomercs.com/...ost__p__3287064

[Roadbeer]

Karl Berg, on 11 April 2014 - 11:49 PM, said:

There will be a command chair post on exactly this topic, most likely some time tomorrow.

Weekend posting from the "Top 3"?

UNHEARD OF!*

*(snark based off of propensity to make a CC post on a Friday and let it stew for days or weeks on end)

Edited by Roadbeer, 12 April 2014 - 09:51 AM.

[Sandpit]

First

Thank you Karl. This kind of thread and interaction is much appreciated. Now if you could just convince some of the others over there to do the same once in a while....

In regards to ideas for groups:

Separate queues: Instead of having a 12man queue like we do now, or relegating them strictly to private matches. Why can't we just convert the 12man queue into a 5+ queue. So if you form a group of 5+ you are entered into teh 12man queue. Other players can opt into this queue as well but not be forced to join it. Keep the current plan for 4mans in the pug queue with the same limitations that have been discussed as in only one premade per side.
This solves the issue of groups "preying" on pugs while giving everyone the opportunity to play in CW, earn rewards, and play how they like.
(Sidenote: Elo, Elo would work MUCH better for groups if instead of averaging everyone's Elo you averaged the top 2-3 Elos in the group and used that as the group Elo. The means you wouldn't be able to sink Elos with a few players to drop into a lower tier bucket. If players want to group up they'll have to step up and play against stiffer opposition which would help offset the advantages that come with being a premade such as voip)

or

Private matches: This idea is also a good one with a few caveats.
Rewards (There's not much point in playing a game if you can't advance in that game, buy new mechs, master a chassis, etc.)
Some sort of lobby system where you don't have to individually invite players by their pilot name. This is not intuitive and just sets up a situation where "See? We gave you groups and CW!" while the reality of the situation is that, yes, we would be given CW and such but it's so hard to get a match together there's not much point in it. Don't just give this lip service.

or

Instead of taking any averages for Elo, you take the top Elo of the group and use that for MM. You could also place premades into a "special" bucket that automatically places them at the higher end of the Elo brackets. This prevents groups from dropping against new players and lower spectrum players which would help mitigate roflstomps. It gives players in groups the ability to play and not be punished. (I don't think playing at a higher Elo is a punishment as teamwork and voip go a long way of artificially boosting Elo for the purposes we are talking about here)

There's a few ideas on how to integrate this. The separate queues would probably be the most straightforward way to go about it but most of us are open to just about any idea that lets us group up past 4 and just play the game as everyone else can.

[Davers]

Why is the only thread where the Devs actually communicate and give explanations in OT?

[Alaskan Nobody]

Modo44, on 12 April 2014 - 01:15 AM, said:

2xLRM20 tends to be way less effective than 6xLRM5, which seems just weird given the weight and size difference -- the technically support/backup weapon system (LRM5/10) is better both as that, and as a main weapon system.

Made more awkward by the fact that more mechs can more easily mount the 2X20 than the 6x5.

[Karl Berg]

mansquid, on 12 April 2014 - 06:08 AM, said:

Fantastic Karl, wish this had come sooner. Pray tell, is Clan Warfare going to come in portions? I'm imagining this like the Warframe community warfare events, wherein they released conclave (controlled dueling space), Clan houses (private dueling space you could build/research in), and now finally contested dueling space (Solar Rails) wherein Clans have established player control over an arena. I don't expect MWO to release exactly like that, but it seems like a good way to test individual functions while building overall player to player interactivity features? You're the dev.

Anything of the sort? A hint? A whisper on the wind?

Yes, functionality related to clans will be introduced in phases. I don't want to promise future design here though, so I can't really tell you what's coming.

[Rebas Kradd]

Guys, I know we're all just itching with questions here, but I'd like to humbly ask that we hold off with design-related questions up in this house. I certainly can't force anyone, so it's a request, but design is not Karl's domain and he's unlikely to hold a lot of satisfying answers there. And we don't want a situation where a whole bunch of people ask unanswerable questions and end up feeling stiffed.

There's plenty of other stuff to talk about.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 12 April 2014 - 10:48 AM.

[Chronojam]

Hammerhai, on 12 April 2014 - 08:31 AM, said:

Ghost heat:
I can also testify that Ghost heat, for all the vilification it gets, killed the Hexa stalkers at least and fairly drastically reduced Super high alpha builds in my ELO bracket, which is a LONG way from the top.

So does uninstalling the game. You have to look at trends over time, to really get a sense of why the PPC became so dominant. There was a point that PPCs were considered rubbish to use due to a firing delay, paired with low projectile speed, high heat, and poor hit detection. Compared to other weapons, it was simply sub-optimal and unreliable.

Several factors over several patches contributed to its popularity. Its firing delay was removed. Its heat was lowered. Its projectile speed was increased. Its hit detection was fixed. Arm lock to hold convergence steady is one many people don't consider. Jumpjet platforms became more readily available. Its competition was slowly reduced in efficiency, and long range barrages became in vogue. The only penalty for overheating was to just shut down unless you choose to override.

This made the PPC very viable. The 4xPPC Stalker and 6xPPC Stalker were never truly competitive builds due to sacrifices in speed, armor, and the fact they do shut down frequently -- a gimmick in low tiered matches at best. Ghost Heat did not really balance them away, it was just an extra layer of punishment. At the cost of making SRM builds, the 2xAC20, and certain laser or LRM fits no longer possible -- plus the AC2 chainfire issues -- despite these builds not being a "problem."

By not actually addressing the real issue, and instead making punitive changes across the board, build variety suffered and people were funneled towards 2PPC1Gauss. All manner of other changes could have been tried; heat scale tweaks, refire rate adjustment, mech health increases, buffing other weapons, providing equipment bonuses (which would help differentiate chassis, another problem the game has).

Seriously Ghost Heat is/was bad, bad, bad.

[Karl Berg]

juju2112, on 12 April 2014 - 06:37 AM, said:

Hi Karl!

I have some questions from the perspective of a fellow programmer:

• Beyond just having QA test things, what strategies do you employ to minimize bugs?
  
• Do you have lots of good unit tests? Is your codebase modular enough for these to be useful?
  
• When a bug is fixed, is a unit test created to test for it in future builds?
  
• Are there integration tests?
  
• Do you have a Continuous Integration environment like Jenkins running?
  
• How frequently do you need to pull out memory analysis tools like Valgrind, Purify, or GDB?
  
• Do you have static analysis tools like SonarQube?

Hi juju2112, some excellent questions:

• Beyond just having QA test things, what strategies do you employ to minimize bugs?

We perform regular code reviews before submission. We have an integration pipeline which assists QA by providing them multiple opportunities to test the same code

• Do you have lots of good unit tests? Is your codebase modular enough for these to be useful?

Yup, we have unit tests for some components of our system. These are very low-level tests however, that exercise thread safety on concurrent data-structures, correct behaviour of specific systems, etc.. As to how useful theses tests are, that's difficult to say. They definitely provide more confidence in changes, but we change most of that fundamental code so infrequently that I've never really seen a test fail. In addition unit tests can't really capture interactions between distributed systems, which is the vast majority of our backend architecture; so their utility is definitely limited there. One of our systems engineers has a side project combining which lua tinker and busted to set up high concurrency functional tests. He's actually got this working for the most part. It's a neat system, and I hope we'll start to make much more use of it in future.

• When a bug is fixed, is a unit test created to test for it in future builds?

Sometimes, when it is possible to. Most usually not however, as most bugs require specific edge cases to be set up in a database beforehand, or require some specific interaction of multiple servers to manifest. This is related to the functional testing above.

• Are there integration tests?

We have an integration pipeline as mentioned previously. Moving each stage in the pipeline requires another QA pass and sign-off. We don't really have automated testing set up at this time, although QA has the ability to write / macro test drivers to assist them with 24-player bot testing under various network conditions, or to exercise specific front-end options.

• Do you have a Continuous Integration environment like Jenkins running?

Nope, not at this time.

• How frequently do you need to pull out memory analysis tools like Valgrind, Purify, or GDB?

Every few months I would say. There is no regularly scheduled Valgrind runs, it's on an 'as we remember to do it' basis. That said, it is an amazing tool, and has found some very tricky issues with our code in the past.

• Do you have static analysis tools like SonarQube?

We run CPPCheck against our backend code regularly. We've run it against the engine a couple times, but it's only feasible for us to fix issues discovered in our game logic. The engine itself produces an encyclopedia of output that would take us years of dev time to address.

[Chronojam]

Much like gutting teamplay down to 4 man or 8[12] man with nothing in between, Ghost Heat is a bad solution that introduced more problems and felt more like a temporary fix we got stuck with.

[SilentWolff]

Wow, somebody want to explain to me why this this is in the "Off Topic" section?
I've been around since closed beta and have never seen this amount of clear, concise, honest communication from a PGI employee. We need more of this.

Karl I would like to thank you for taking the time to answer questions so directly. I would also like to add to this conversation by confirming what CJ had said earlier about the lack of social elements in what is supposed to be a social game. Its almost as if the social part of the game was just an afterthought. I feel this is absolutely killing the game.

You HAVE to get real lobbies or something similar implemented ASAP. Playing random games that mean nothing over and over again gets old after awhile. Its the main reason almost all of my unit has left. There has to be a reason to play. Real lobbies, similar to what the MSN gaming zone had, would do so much for the game. I think back to MW3 and MW4 and all the leagues that we had and how easy it was to coordinate games. Not to mention you could choose the amount of people you played against 1v1, 2v2, 8v8, ect. We have none of that with MWO. Its the reason the game is dying on the vine. The increase in population you guys would get if you had something like this implemented would be substantial.

Thanks for taking the time to read our concerns and responding.

[Karl Berg]

Tichorius Davion, on 12 April 2014 - 08:01 AM, said:

Back to being on topic. I am glad to hear that there are parts of community warfare that are completed. Any possible information on what is being worked on or is completed or is it too sensitive to be released at this moment?

You have some components in your hands right now. The achievements system for example, it's granting titles, which you can't do anything with at this time, but that title system is a critical component of faction rankings.

The UI 2 sales systems, that someone mentioned elsewhere. That work came along with an large refactor to allow arbitrary systems to interact with player inventory. That included:

- Bundles
- Achievement rewards
- Tournament and contest rewards
- New CSR functionality
- Faction rewards

Among others. And of course Launch module is almost out of development. The rest probably steps into discussing unannounced design territory though.

[Rebas Kradd]

SilentWolff, on 12 April 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Wow, somebody want to explain to me why this this is in the "Off Topic" section?

I posted it here, that's all.

[Cimarb]

Thank you, Karl, for the wonderful post. I have reported it in the hopes that it will be "promoted" to Command Chair post or other prominent place in the forums, as everyone needs to read it. THIS is the communication that will #saveMWO!

[Heffay]

Karl, can you post a picture of yourself? I want to make sure that if I ever run into you at a bar that I buy you a beer.