1911 replies to this topic

[Karl Berg]

Klappspaten, on 16 April 2014 - 05:03 AM, said:

I got a question regarding 3/3/3/3.
Will there be any way to display which weightclass will be needed at the given moment?
It would help to keep waitingtimes low if we could see which weightclass the matchmaker needs the most.

Fir example: If there was a display based on percentage.

Light: 24%

Medium: 22%

Heavy: 28%

Assault: 26%

The players then could chose Lights or Mediums, so they wouldn´t have to wait as long for a match.

Interesting idea. We don't have a good way to extract these statistics from the Matchmaker in realtime. All our Matchmaker instrumentation focusses on our traditional matchmaking params for now. Elo differences, weight differences, wait times, etc. There are quite a few design driven changes coming for the matchmaker, so our realtime analytics will obviously have to continue to change in response.

[Karl Berg]

Cimarb, on 16 April 2014 - 07:05 AM, said:

Any chance you could drag someone from the weapon balance side of things in here for us to torture...uh, interrogate...er, talk to?

Not here; but Paul has agreed to do a segment with NGNG tomorrow later today.

[VXJaeger]

Why you are slowly turning all weapons and game into POS?

PPC + Gauss was problem, solution nerf Gauss.
PPC + AC10 was problem, solution nerf AC10
PPC + AC20 was problem, solution nerf AC20
PPC + AC2/5 was problem, solution nerf AC2/5
WTF?

You are turning this game into average-Joe's kindergarden where everything is safe to that "100 game hero". Nobody wants to be part of bulk army, already 12-mans did that individuals skill is pretty much irrelevant to outcome of the match and this weapons nerfing business just accelerates that development. And because of that, in somepoint The Core Players will abandon the game and after that it's just bye bye.
Also:
http://mwomercs.com/...l-never-happen/

Edited by VXJaeger, 16 April 2014 - 11:42 PM.

[Gasoline]

Karl Berg, on 16 April 2014 - 11:06 PM, said:

Not here; but Paul has agreed to do a segment with NGNG tomorrow later today.

Naaaah... honestly... Paul's evading every single occasion to confront player issues presented to him on a silver tablet. It's quite easy to talk to someone's who's totally biased. You guys are having a serious design problem and that will ruin your enterprise at some point if he keeps sitting ducks in his hole.

I know it's not your fault Karl, you're still an amazing guy and you do a lot to keep us at bay. But this statement makes me want to write Community Relations and Interaction on a plank and smash it right into Paul's face... repeatedly. NGNG is not the community. NGNG is not your official channel. It is here where your community resides, this is your official channel. Maybe he's the shy guy that doesn't dare interacting... okay... then have someone else doing his job. Man, Community Relations is no rocket science and the only thing why we keep raging on these forums is the freaking lack of communication/interaction! Ugh, I'm getting so tired of this...

Karl is there any way we could vote you for president of PGI?

Unrelated sidenote: Isn't it kinda ironic, that NGNG has a Marauder as their title pic on facebook?

Edited by Gasoline, 17 April 2014 - 01:10 AM.

[Modo44]

Gasoline, on 17 April 2014 - 01:09 AM, said:

NGNG is not the community. NGNG is not your official channel. It is here where your community resides, this is your official channel.

QFT. Phil does great PR work for free, but people think too much about his influence on PGI. There is very little, and none direct. However, many assume that there is, and communication suffers. Even with the best intentions, details get lost in that additional layer.

Edited by Modo44, 17 April 2014 - 01:34 AM.

[Klappspaten]

I absolutely agreee, NGNG is a fun thing to listen to, but its not "the community" its a tiny fraction of the community.
Talking to them is easy, because to keep their show running they can´t ask too demanding questions. No one would bother going there if they´d ask unpleasant questions.

[Cimarb]

Karl Berg, on 16 April 2014 - 10:38 PM, said:

Curiouser and curiouser.

Is it just me, or is "curiouser" a REALLY hard word to say, especially repeatedly?....

Karl Berg, on 16 April 2014 - 11:06 PM, said:

Not here; but Paul has agreed to do a segment with NGNG tomorrow later today.

I am glad he will be doing something to talk about it, as something is better than nothing, but to be honest that is disappointing in a very large way. I know he has read this thread, since Chronojam caught him lurking, so he has to have saw how civil and, well, positive this thread has been when someone is willing to step up and actually communicate with us, yet you are one of the only people that will do that. It's just disappointing

Gasoline, on 17 April 2014 - 01:09 AM, said:

Naaaah... honestly... Paul's evading every single occasion to confront player issues presented to him on a silver tablet. It's quite easy to talk to someone's who's totally biased. You guys are having a serious design problem and that will ruin your enterprise at some point if he keeps sitting ducks in his hole.

I know it's not your fault Karl, you're still an amazing guy and you do a lot to keep us at bay. But this statement makes me want to write Community Relations and Interaction on a plank and smash it right into Paul's face... repeatedly. NGNG is not the community. NGNG is not your official channel. It is here where your community resides, this is your official channel. Maybe he's the shy guy that doesn't dare interacting... okay... then have someone else doing his job. Man, Community Relations is no rocket science and the only thing why we keep raging on these forums is the freaking lack of communication/interaction! Ugh, I'm getting so tired of this...

Karl is there any way we could vote you for president of PGI?

Sadly, the reason most of PGI won't do what Karl is doing is likely because it is frowned upon and/or highly dangerous to their career. Based upon what happened with Garth and Niko, it SEEMS like there has been an active chokehold on communication going on somewhere, which has recently been alleviated at least to a point, but is still lurking, ready to take the head off of anyone that oversteps their bounds.

It may be totally my imagination, but that is my perception of the communication issue - I think a lot of PGI employees would love to interact like Karl has been, but the threat of retaliation for any misstep is akin to that of releasing Apple secrets, and only the highest levels of the company have the ability to skirt that issue enough to communicate. (In other words, Karl is too good to lose, so he can get away with being honest with us).

[Jody Von Jedi]

Cimarb, on 17 April 2014 - 05:49 AM, said:

Based upon what happened with Garth and Niko,

What happened to Niko?

[Hobo Dan]

Karl

Thanks for all the great posts.

I have a pretty simple question (IMO). When will we see the FOV slider in the in game options?

[DEN_Ninja]

Cimarb, on 17 April 2014 - 05:49 AM, said:

Is it just me, or is "curiouser" a REALLY hard word to say, especially repeatedly?....


I am glad he will be doing something to talk about it, as something is better than nothing, but to be honest that is disappointing in a very large way. I know he has read this thread, since Chronojam caught him lurking, so he has to have saw how civil and, well, positive this thread has been when someone is willing to step up and actually communicate with us, yet you are one of the only people that will do that. It's just disappointing


Sadly, the reason most of PGI won't do what Karl is doing is likely because it is frowned upon and/or highly dangerous to their career. Based upon what happened with Garth and Niko, it SEEMS like there has been an active chokehold on communication going on somewhere, which has recently been alleviated at least to a point, but is still lurking, ready to take the head off of anyone that oversteps their bounds.

It may be totally my imagination, but that is my perception of the communication issue - I think a lot of PGI employees would love to interact like Karl has been, but the threat of retaliation for any misstep is akin to that of releasing Apple secrets, and only the highest levels of the company have the ability to skirt that issue enough to communicate. (In other words, Karl is too good to lose, so he can get away with being honest with us).

Early in the posts Karl talked about how there was a bit of misinformation going on between departments. Any disparity of shared knowledge would be detrimental to the proccess.

There is a need for certain mechanics to not be released the angry mob that is the MWO community however. I respect that but I will agree there needs to be transparency in the stuff that exists now.

I HOPE. That when Paul talks not everyone will immediately spew hate upon him. The community is supposedly made of mostly 30+ year old people so I can only wish for maturity. My experience however is an astounding no,

Ask thought provking and constructive questions without malice and let Paul SPEAK.

Not a hard concept like what has happened here.

edit:
Have you seen the /r/mwo thread challenging Paul to get on there and talk? I think the top comments are pointed remarks about his ineptitide and cowardice. Great way to get Paul on that subreddit by insulting him fiercely. I wish I had the 'such brave' mentality to be 'so cool'. I'd rather not look like some shallow idiot that forms up the pitchfork mob so easily though.

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 17 April 2014 - 06:27 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

It's also easier for Karl to talk and for us to talk to him because he's not responsible for the design of the game which is what everyone is mad about. He's an engineer designing the backside of things. No one has any beef with him

[Rasc4l]

Gasoline, on 17 April 2014 - 01:09 AM, said:

Naaaah... honestly... Paul's evading every single occasion to confront player issues presented to him on a silver tablet. It's quite easy to talk to someone's who's totally biased. You guys are having a serious design problem and that will ruin your enterprise at some point if he keeps sitting ducks in his hole.

So much this. What I've wondered many times is that PGI could have basically designed MWO based on maybe the ~50 most intelligent posts on the forums about game mechanics. I guess the skill would be to understand which ones are those among all the "nerf this!" -yelling.

But because PGI doesn't involve themselves in commenting any of the suggestions (outside this thread), that leaves people like me trying to advertise their One Good Suggestion to anyone who will listen (unnecessary forum traffic at least if not hijacking threads :).

For example, I would submit that I present clear arguments in the post in my signature after first identifying the goal of what Information Warfare should be. PGI doesn't have to like my suggestion but it would be cool to have some indication that someone actually read it with some thought. And of course, present some arguments if it doesn't work. But basically anyone who has read my suggestion has said it's great (it has over 90 % approval rate in votes).

[DEN_Ninja]

Rasc4l, on 17 April 2014 - 06:47 AM, said:

So much this. What I've wondered many times is that PGI could have basically designed MWO based on maybe the ~50 most intelligent posts on the forums about game mechanics. I guess the skill would be to understand which ones are those among all the "nerf this!" -yelling.

But because PGI doesn't involve themselves in commenting any of the suggestions (outside this thread), that leaves people like me trying to advertise their One Good Suggestion to anyone who will listen (unnecessary forum traffic at least if not hijacking threads .

For example, I would submit that I present clear arguments in the post in my signature after first identifying the goal of what Information Warfare should be. PGI doesn't have to like my suggestion but it would be cool to have some indication that someone actually read it with some thought. And of course, present some arguments if it doesn't work. But basically anyone who has read my suggestion has said it's great (it has over 90 % approval rate in votes).

Can we not base it off the top 50 ideas.

Could you imagine? No more ghost heat, the gauss charge is gone, and Double Heatsinks are at 2 heat dissppation.

Also, Clan Tech would be at TT levels and thus completely invalidate IS tech.

edited;
The era of the Misery/Boar's Head comes with the quad PPC Gauss rifle comes back.

edit; I believe ghost heat is a half decent attempt at curbing the overly potent min maxing meta builds but rquires a major reworking.

Edited by Tichorius Davion, 17 April 2014 - 07:06 AM.

[Heffay]

Rasc4l, on 17 April 2014 - 06:47 AM, said:

For example, I would submit that I present clear arguments in the post in my signature after first identifying the goal of what Information Warfare should be. PGI doesn't have to like my suggestion but it would be cool to have some indication that someone actually read it with some thought. And of course, present some arguments if it doesn't work. But basically anyone who has read my suggestion has said it's great (it has over 90 % approval rate in votes).

That's a tough road to follow. You have one idea posted among thousands. Do they answer all? If they say no, does the dialog continue if you disagree with their reply? How long do they maintain the conversation?

Dialogues with the player base are tricky.

Edited by Heffay, 17 April 2014 - 07:00 AM.

[Rasc4l]

Tichorius Davion, on 17 April 2014 - 06:58 AM, said:

Can we not base it off the top 50 ideas.

Could you imagine? No more ghost heat, the gauss charge is gone, and Double Heatsinks are at 2 heat dissppation.

edited;
The era of the Misery/Boar's Head comes with the quad PPC Gauss rifle comes back.

edit; I believe ghost heat is a half decent attempt at curbing the overly potent min maxing meta builds but rquires a major reworking.

I was a bit unclear. I don't mean individual suggestions like "make AMS have a toggle". I'm talking about longer posts where the author presents a goal, discusses the case and is able to give at least some compelling arguments for it. Such suggestions usually contain abstract matters and the reader should be able to perceive the spirit of the suggestion even if they don't agree on the individual numbers, that were given as example. Also, the longer the post, the more attention span it requires to go through i.e. the more trustworthy the vote result becomes, because attention span correlates with intelligence (not claiming causality).

EDIT: Changed "threads" -> "posts" in the paragraph above, which was what I meant. Going thru endless yes-no threads may not be the best use of time. If OP is good, there may not even be much more posts in the thread, because the matter was handled already from many points of view.

Heffay, on 17 April 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

That's a tough road to follow. You have one idea posted among thousands. Do they answer all? If they say no, does the dialog continue if you disagree with their reply? How long do they maintain the conversation?

Dialogues with the player base are tricky.

Of course they don't answer all. They could have, say a Community Manager to dig out the most well argued posts where basics are right (for example, you can just by default ignore posts, which don't use capital letters at all or have more than 5 exclamation marks in a row).

About dialogue: I certainly don't expect a game designer to entertain me with his precious time by explaining every little detail to me. I would be basically satisfied with any response. If there are arguments along the answer, that'd be great. Like my IW thread, the options for PGI to answer might be something like this:

1) No good, because a very bad idea
2) No good, because very hard to implement
3) Interesting idea, we might look into it
4) A very interesting idea, we are definitely looking into it
5) OMG, this will be in the next patch even though it's tomorrow!

If with 4 and 5 PGI also told me, "Since you are so eager to do our job for us for free, why don't you update your idea regarding x and y, which we cannot make happen but the rest looks good so go over it again and post us your latest."

I'd definitely help them, because I want the darn Thinking Man's shooter, not a game for the console generation.

Edited by Rasc4l, 17 April 2014 - 07:54 AM.

[DEN_Ninja]

Rasc4l, on 17 April 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

I was a bit unclear. I don't mean individual suggestions like "make AMS have a toggle". I'm talking about longer threads where the author presents a goal, discusses the case and is able to give at least some compelling arguments for it. Such suggestions usually contain abstract matters and the reader should be able to perceive the spirit of the suggestion even if they don't agree on the individual numbers, that were given as example. Also, the longer the thread, the more attention span it requires to go through i.e. the more trustworthy the vote result becomes, because attention span correlates with intelligence (not claiming causality).

Unfortunately some of the longest threads ARE infact about these such things because they are high points of contention. Generally because there are people arguing both sides vehmentedly.

Like you said in your other argument.

I would rather have it that good, solid ideas are exemplified as long as they are reasonable with some sort of basis/evidence.

Then have a specific Dev with pertinent information debunk or address the post.

It is just hard to find those good and reasonable threads.

[Cimarb]

Jody Von Jedi, on 17 April 2014 - 06:06 AM, said:

What happened to Niko?

Is it bad that I am catching up to Niko on the "posts per day" metric?... I'm not sure whether I should be sad that I am on the forums that much, or sad that he isn't...

[Cimarb]

Heffay, on 17 April 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

That's a tough road to follow. You have one idea posted among thousands. Do they answer all? If they say no, does the dialog continue if you disagree with their reply? How long do they maintain the conversation?

Dialogues with the player base are tricky.

Just like it did in this thread, the only thing that is required is to have a PGI employee respond to an idea, and the community will gravitate to that thread over all duplicates. If they just said, "this is the basic idea we would like input on" and followed up on it periodically, EVERY duplicate thread about that subject would quickly disappear and the forums would be immensely better for it.

Unfortunately, though, we get feedback threads made for command chair posts, and then the thread is essentially "forgotten by PGI", at least from the customer perspective, because no staff members follow up and direct the conversation after it is posted. Then, eventually, after the thread has been derailed for months, someone will finally lock the thread, and it will at least appear that absolutely nothing came out of the feedback and we were ignored yet again.

Feedback doesn't just go one way - it HAS to be an effort on both sides to be productive. Otherwise it is just yelling into the wind and hoping you hear an echo.

[Chronojam]

Karl Berg, on 16 April 2014 - 11:06 PM, said:

Not here; but Paul has agreed to do a segment with NGNG tomorrow later today.

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.

Another reason for this eye-rolling is that despite a long-standing desire for proper VOIP integration, "Just use the NGNG TeamSpeak" has been presented as a viable alternative. It was more than a little cringeworthy when the launch event tournament had to rely on the NGNG TeamSpeak server due to a lack of integrated VOIP, and the actual casting/presentation was similarly cringeworthy at times.

There's also a sense that NGNG will routinely softball questions and fail to pursue satisfying answers to important questions. This is compounded by the fact that MWO senior developers have pretty much treated them like the only game in town; tying back to communication problems, this exclusivity can be a problem especially as it was compounded historically by the lack of transcript availability.

And of course, Ask The Devs has now come under criticism because it feels an awful lot like "NGNG Presents: NGNG Asks The Devs" rather than the old format where it was very clear where players like those posting in this thread could have a chance to raise their concerns. Despite players asking where they ought to be asking their questions in the ATD feedback threads, there's never been a clear answer; it was hinted to ask in those feedback threads but seemingly that's not were the questions are being vetted.

[NoSkillRush]

Excellent responses from Karl. Gives me hope for MWO.