63 replies to this topic

[Craig Steele]

Ordellus, on 01 March 2014 - 03:55 PM, said:

Holy shit you're dumb.

1) "They state it blunty" - THEY JUST CARE ABOUT MONEY..... again just read the article before pretending you follow the topic

2) I love how morons go to analogys (god I can't spell) when they don't understand something. Try an follow along.

The mechs they are making ARE THE PRODUCT BEING SOLD.

If half the workforce is making mechs.... HALF THE WORKFORCE IS DIRECTLY MAKING THE PRODUCT.

"Market penetration" means attracting customers you wouldn't normally attract.... again IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCT MANUFACTURING

"Sales force" means the people trying to sell you said product... aka the the mechs that are thrown in your face all over the mechbay, or the adverts that pop up all over the website.... again NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCT MANUFACTURING

So back to you "analogy" except instead of 2 people making food it's 20 and they expect 1 other guy to run the entire rest of the operation.

Funny thing is this ****** still won't get it.....

I get it exactly, the difference is you can't step outside your narrow view of the world and consider anything other than your own opinion of yourself.

I use the analogy I did to represent the difference between a core product (the food / game mechanics) and the presentation (the waitress and drinks / mech models)

If you spent more time considering the content of a message rather than ramming the words into your already formed view you might find the world less frustrating to live in.

[Dirkdaring]

If you don't like the game, don't play. Come back in a year when more content is here.

[Davers]

Ordellus, on 01 March 2014 - 03:55 PM, said:

The current game was "the finished product" until the license was renewed. What a joke.

This unfortunately is the truth. If it wasn't for the Founders, Project Phoenix, and people pumping money into the game to buy Hero mechs, Premium time, and cockpit items the IP might have been deemed 'unprofitable' and the licence taken back to sit untouched for another 10 years. Thank goodness PGI did the right thing and employed all these talented artists to keep the game alive. Please purchase an Oscillating Fan on your way out.

[Rebas Kradd]

Balance is not as simple as changing an XML file.

They're going to have meetings to discuss the myriad of variables that go into changing a weapon. They're going to look for mechs (e.g. those with lots of energy hardpoints in the case of pulse lasers) that might benefit way, way more from the changes and create min-maxes you armchair developers hadn't thought of. They're going to run simulations on their QA servers. They're going to gather telemetry so they can study the effects of new weapon changes on the server load. They're going to base their decision on whether it's a pinpoint weapon (which pulse lasers are) or a scatter weapon like missiles. They're going to compare it to other weapons to make sure they're not making it redundant compared to another one (something else most armchair devs don't even stop to consider).

The process is not as simple as 1) Listen to community, 2) change a value, 3) done. If it were, I'd be disturbed at PGI's cowboy methods and would not feel comfortable supporting them.

[Ordellus]

Dirkdaring, on 01 March 2014 - 05:32 PM, said:

If you don't like the game, don't play. Come back in a year when more content is here.

That's what is happening right now.

I see a map or two, tons of new hero mechs, and gold plated clan sales......but I'm sure things will get better.

[Ordellus]

Davers, on 01 March 2014 - 06:03 PM, said:

This unfortunately is the truth. If it wasn't for the Founders, Project Phoenix, and people pumping money into the game to buy Hero mechs, Premium time, and cockpit items the IP might have been deemed 'unprofitable' and the licence taken back to sit untouched for another 10 years. Thank goodness PGI did the right thing and employed all these talented artists to keep the game alive. Please purchase an Oscillating Fan on your way out.

Oh I forgot that the fans didn't shower them in money once they announced making a deep, detailed, mechwarrior sim.

Oh right, the only reason "profitable" was even an issue was because they turned away from the fan base and started the still continuing money whoring....but yeah, thank god.

But go ahead and keep pretending you aren't just some PGI suit trying to make yourself feel better.

Edited by Ordellus, 03 March 2014 - 02:13 AM.

[Cavendish]

There are indeed more people working with content they can sell or new maps for the players to use, but is this a problem? The company needs a steady cash flow to keep day to day operations going and we dont pay a sub so....

The feature guys, CW and so on, manage the live operation of the game and work on features. Its not like they have to reprogram the entire game, they dont need to reinvent the wheel, what they are doing is modifying the existing game and to be honest, that is a task Im not so sure "throwing manpower" at would help solving.

The CW needs a roadmap with the goals PGI wants to achive, only when that is complete and tested (and testing theoreticals can be a loooooong process) it wont help anyone to have 20 people hanging around the office doing nothing. Once the roadmap is done, the work begins but again this is not always a situation where more people actually help speed things up. In my experience its better to have a few people doing something they know very VERY well and taking their time rather then having the same people drowning in temps and people who mean well but are not as skilled or as deeply involved in the process and try to manage it all.

The current engineers are running the live ops meaning they are familiar with the actual game and how it is running, this is a great strenght for future development. Having some new guys who only have a rough picture of what is currently running and what the aim for the project is will not help much, it might even be counterproductive.

Im not trying to be the knight is shining armor here, if PGI had more experience with project management the roadmap would have been done during closed beta, however I do have some experience with both letting skilled people do their thing (under some guidance of course, or they NEVER get done) and "throwing manpower at the problem to fix it to next week" and my vote goes to the skilled people.

In the situation they are now, they need to have a very detailed goal that they want to achive and go for that, if they keep up the "oh hi gaijs! this is what we might do, whatcha think?!" posts like I am reading the whole clan tech stuff as, they need to get their crap together and get a bloody goal fixed and not try to get too much input or design tips from this community that is mostly self-serving and consider "balance" to be some code for "whatever I like is good, but I got stomped by X so now X needs to be nerfed or you suck!".

[Davers]

Ordellus, on 03 March 2014 - 02:10 AM, said:

Oh I forgot that the fans didn't shower them in money once they announced making a deep, detailed, mechwarrior sim.

Oh right, the only reason "profitable" was even an issue was because they turned away from the fan base and started the still continuing money whoring....but yeah, thank god.

But go ahead and keep pretending you aren't just some PGI suit trying to make yourself feel better.

You seem to think that they are very profitable. I guess 'turning away from the fan base' was just what the company needed.

[Randalf Yorgen]

lol Hey Davers did you hear that.... you're a PGI suit. LOL

Tell me more about the bar you used to be the head DJ in please

[mariomanz28]

You know, I stumbled upon a game yesterday that really made me question the competence of most of the PGI team. I mean don't get me wrong they do a good job on the mechs and maps and stuff but more to the point of time (and money?) management and sheer skill at programming and actually making a game.

This game is called Limit Theory, Google it.

It has been in production for about 1 year and 2 months give or take. The development team consists of 2 guys, one does sound and that's it. The other guy does everything else, from graphics, AI, gameplay mechanics, everything else. Top it all off? He wrote his OWN game engine. He didn't use one already made like the Cryengine 3.

This game has one of the most awesome UIs I have ever seen, it took PGI over a year to make the mess of a UI we have now, this guy has made about 65% of a game in that same time frame. Not only that but it has some of the most advanced AI in a game I have ever heard of or seen.

It's things like this, as much as I love MWO, that make me question the competence of PGI as developers, especially considering the manpower and resources at their disposal. If ONE guy can do all of this with funds gained off of Kickstarter, what does that say about PGI as a professional development studio?

[Deathlike]

mariomanz28, on 03 March 2014 - 09:36 AM, said:

It's things like this, as much as I love MWO, that make me question the competence of PGI as developers, especially considering the manpower and resources at their disposal. If ONE guy can do all of this with funds gained off of Kickstarter, what does that say about PGI as a professional development studio?

The word in bold is always called into question, for legitimate reasons.

[Rebas Kradd]

mariomanz28, on 03 March 2014 - 09:36 AM, said:

it took PGI over a year to make the mess of a UI we have now

The UI was only the most visible part of what they did. They were also heavily revamping the backend architecture.

[stjobe]

Rebas Kradd, on 03 March 2014 - 11:01 AM, said:

The UI was only the most visible part of what they did. They were also heavily revamping the backend architecture.

Let's just hope that those part aren't as big a mess as the visible-to-us parts...

[Deathlike]

stjobe, on 03 March 2014 - 11:07 AM, said:

Let's just hope that those part aren't as big a mess as the visible-to-us parts...

Well, the "queued messages" simply don't work.

[Ordellus]

Cavendish, on 03 March 2014 - 03:36 AM, said:

...

The game is still running, and they are pumping out new ways to make money left and right.
They clearly have no problem paying people, thus the only thing left is greed.

You don't mind them focusing on taking your money, instead of giving you an awesome game in return for it. Whatever it's your money.
Me I'll keep mine and keep sharing what I expect before I spend it.

Davers, on 03 March 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

You seem to think that they are very profitable. I guess 'turning away from the fan base' was just what the company needed.

Yes, screwing over the players and completely changing the game into a childs FPS has done wonders for their pockets.

mariomanz28, on 03 March 2014 - 09:36 AM, said:

You know, I stumbled upon a game yesterday that really made me question the competence of most of the PGI team. I mean don't get me wrong they do a good job on the mechs and maps and stuff but more to the point of time (and money?) management and sheer skill at programming and actually making a game.

This game is called Limit Theory, Google it.

It has been in production for about 1 year and 2 months give or take. The development team consists of 2 guys, one does sound and that's it. The other guy does everything else, from graphics, AI, gameplay mechanics, everything else. Top it all off? He wrote his OWN game engine. He didn't use one already made like the Cryengine 3.

This game has one of the most awesome UIs I have ever seen, it took PGI over a year to make the mess of a UI we have now, this guy has made about 65% of a game in that same time frame. Not only that but it has some of the most advanced AI in a game I have ever heard of or seen.

It's things like this, as much as I love MWO, that make me question the competence of PGI as developers, especially considering the manpower and resources at their disposal. If ONE guy can do all of this with funds gained off of Kickstarter, what does that say about PGI as a professional development studio?

It's amazing what can be done when people actually care about what they are producing.....

Bet these guys won't "need to resort to microtransactions in order to pay devs blah blah blah"

[Alexandrix]

Rebas Kradd, on 01 March 2014 - 06:22 PM, said:

Balance is not as simple as changing an XML file.

They're going to have meetings to discuss the myriad of variables that go into changing a weapon. They're going to look for mechs (e.g. those with lots of energy hardpoints in the case of pulse lasers) that might benefit way, way more from the changes and create min-maxes you armchair developers hadn't thought of. They're going to run simulations on their QA servers. They're going to gather telemetry so they can study the effects of new weapon changes on the server load. They're going to base their decision on whether it's a pinpoint weapon (which pulse lasers are) or a scatter weapon like missiles. They're going to compare it to other weapons to make sure they're not making it redundant compared to another one (something else most armchair devs don't even stop to consider).

The process is not as simple as 1) Listen to community, 2) change a value, 3) done. If it were, I'd be disturbed at PGI's cowboy methods and would not feel comfortable supporting them.

LOL what?
QA? Are you serious? how long have you been playing this game exactly?
How many "LRMageddon" scenarios has it seen? situations where it quickly becomes apparent to the player base that something is obviously broken literally minutes after the servers come up post patch?

Something so obvious that there's no way it would have been missed if anyone so much as launched one game with the new changes.LRM's flying over cover,directly down,and head shotting? no one in your "QA" department saw a problem with that?

Half the crap PGI puts out seems like something someone slapped together over a weekend of heavy drug use.

[Turist0AT]

You are not alone who is aware of this. This point shows the priority of PGIGP

mech=money the rest is coming soon™

Edited by Turist0AT, 05 March 2014 - 01:20 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

Alexandrix, on 05 March 2014 - 01:16 PM, said:

LOL what?
QA? Are you serious? how long have you been playing this game exactly?
How many "LRMageddon" scenarios has it seen?

One.

I've seen a handful of "how was this not caught" scenarios of a much lesser degree, but since you're obviously trying to exaggerate to reinforce your point, I'm not going to dignify that line of conversation any further.

QA is not a panacea nor foolproof. Live factors exist on the live servers that don't on their QA servers, including (most obviously) the number of players participating. And their QA team is pretty small. Like it or not, despite their efforts to eliminate as many bugs as possible in their own QA process, they're going to get through. Ultimately, we are their QA.
And please...don't switch to this "but the beta tag is dropped!" line. That means nothing.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 05 March 2014 - 01:27 PM.

[Rokuzachi]

This game needed a phenomenal early showing/launch to get more heads on the project, which would have likely meant snowballing success like certain other online match-based games that you can't surf the internet without hearing about or seeing an ad for.

Instead it's been hamstrung from the start and this is the result. Small crew for an ambitious project. I've seen less ambitious projects with much larger headcounts.

[theta123]

Craig Steele, on 22 February 2014 - 08:16 PM, said:

So what's the point here?

Virtually every product / service has a significantly larger sales force than the production of it. Cars, toasters, restuarants, clubs. It's business 101 to reduce your production cost and increase your market penetration.

So the maths has deduced that PGI is apparently no different to virtually every other company in the world.

A business is set to thrive and keep on thriving. Many companies erected with a great product but the,failed to keep performing like that. One of the main reasons for the many bankruptcies is the massive short term profits that are expected, and maximum profits. The same goes for video games. How many studios dint brought out instant classics, only then to **** the community in the back by releasing a dumbed down, lamed up sequel wich is intended for "a broader audience?"Many of those studios, are now bankrupt.

In the Free MMO genre, if you release solely money orientated items, then you alienate your community wich will turn their backs to you in the LONG run. PGI is one massive example of this. Everything that is released, is money orientated first, then after a long time, Maybe for the community.

-Hero mechs are okay, every MMO has their type. PGI makes the first mistake here in overpricing them

-Releasing new content: Paying players first, then after a while non paying players. As it stands now, you pay alot, and then get exclusive acces to a mech chassis for 2-3 weeks, even longer. All this time, Free players are getting this rubbed in their nose. It would be better, to lower the price as an 'exclusive discount purchase" and then release the new content 2 weeks later, at most.

-Events. They are all money related once more. Discounts on MC...Patterns and sometimes mechs. Yet again no love for non-paying players. World of tanks, Warthunder..you name it. These games ALL released events wich suits both Paying as non paying players. KV-5 tank 2500 gold reduced in price! And Silver discounts for all these tanks!
Or war thunder with their amazing events. Win X amounts of matches, recieve That amount of gold. Man i LOVED those events. X amounts of wins= THIS epic cool plane for free! Now it seems PGI did caught up to that..The free Champion Centurion mech? That was one great move


All these things, are long term investments. Games like WoT and WT..They all did this. The massive community support then quickly follows. I helped many players into WOT and WT. I have only felt the need to help one person in MWO.


One of my friends owns a buisiness. And he applied that long term investment thingy. He owns a coffee bar in antwerp. He did things like discounts, Double morning coffee mondays. Free muffin friday if you buy a coffee with 2 people. Things like that. His revenue Doubled to tripled. After 7 years, he passed on the bar to his friend because of health problems, but he made ALOT of money doing this


So PGI. putting all that people on MONEY income....Not good in the long term.You might be a monopoly now. But as Wargaming/WOT found out, that does not stop other companies. War thunder came, with a much better game, and they are the ones making fortunes now.