86 replies to this topic

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

I really don't understand you NGNG haters. IMHO the discussion is objective and concerns are made clear in these interviews. I don't know what you're expecting... A hatecast trashing the devs? No thank you. My support goes to NGNG crew.

Once again, thanks for your effort, Peiper! I enjoy your notes as well, even if I don't agree with them.

[DocBach]

ugrakarma, on 25 April 2014 - 06:17 PM, said:

A hatecast trashing the devs? No thank you.

Wait - then why are you in general discussion?

[Deathlike]

Adiuvo, on 25 April 2014 - 06:10 PM, said:

They don't get paid for podcasts directly, they get paid for specific promotional materials that they put out that are created through contract. Such as the tutorial videos.

Well that's good to know.

[Ultimax]

Mister Blastman, on 25 April 2014 - 11:47 AM, said:

Clans: Damage over time. Lots of energy with increased firing times causing more spread. Far less jump-jets.

Hmm... yeah. I don't see a problem. Not at all.

It is a pretty concerning picture.

I'm kind of stumped on the changes he wants to make to clan pulse lasers. They are barely used now as it is.

The clans would end up with an actual viable, competitive pulse laser - so he's going to nerf them to be worse?


As a pulse laser fan, that's pretty sad.

Edited by Ultimatum X, 25 April 2014 - 06:59 PM.

[TLBFestus]

Odins Fist, on 25 April 2014 - 02:50 PM, said:

You can disagree all you want, that is your right, but if they Bungle an entire section of what MWO is supposed to be about, then everyone can expect very bad things for MWO.
I don't think anyone that has been involved with MWO would be naive enough to believe that if Clan Tech gets bungled, a whole section of the game gets implemented so badly, that it will mean nothing to the player base.

That's the reality of the situation.
And all of the delays in development are not helping, we have seen it before.

The sad thing is that they already have bungled many things during and since beta and yet the game keeps bumbling along because of a small, diehard fan base along with enough new players that have not been through the cycle of disappointment yet. How many times have you read in the forum something along the lines of "Sure they've messed up but this is the only MechWarrior game we've got so we have to support it", before?

I suppose that at some point they will exhaust their goodwill, but I've been shocked at the depth of devotion before and probably will be again.

Edited by TLBFestus, 25 April 2014 - 08:37 PM.

[Accused]

TLBFestus, on 25 April 2014 - 08:04 PM, said:

I suppose that at some point they will exhaust their goodwill, but I've been shocked at the depth of devotion before and probably will be again.

You should have been there when The Old Republic released (or Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3). Good laughs all around. In fact several of the poster's comments from the various official forums were sniped and went viral on the chans. Really good stuff man, can't make this up.

[Lightfoot]

I have adjusted to Ghost Heat, but it eliminates a lot of Mechs and the need to buy new ones because the Mechs now have all these slots that they can't use anyway because of Ghost heat. Especially the energy boats like the AWS-8Q. That narrowing of usable mechs makes Mechlab an elite skill since so many mechs get their slots gimped by Ghost Heat.

Clan UAC's burst fire is like MW3's burst fire which worked well. It guarantees a hit actually and maybe with all the rounds. Most players come straight at you in MWO so, well, they better learn not to do that.

[CtrlAltWheee]

I was happy with the information. The clans having unique mechanics sounds fun.

[SpartanFiredog317]

LMAO, sounds like a Clanner missile boat will be even MORE self-blinding than a flamerboat.....

40-80 missiles "streaking" out of the tubes.... It'll put all those videos of the Multiple Rocket Launcher Systems from Gulf War 1 to shame....

[Bagheera]

Ugh, fixes aren't even live for SRMs and they are already talking nerfs.

Devs, why do you guys hate variety in weapon load outs so much?

[Odins Fist]

TLBFestus, on 25 April 2014 - 08:04 PM, said:

The sad thing is that they already have bungled many things during and since beta and yet the game keeps bumbling along because of a small, diehard fan base along with enough new players that have not been through the cycle of disappointment yet. How many times have you read in the forum something along the lines of "Sure they've messed up but this is the only MechWarrior game we've got so we have to support it", before?

I suppose that at some point they will exhaust their goodwill, but I've been shocked at the depth of devotion before and probably will be again.

Yeah, the fan/player base wants a new MechWarrior game so badly that they have put up with 2 years of development.
If I hadn't gotten so burned out on games like the BattleField series, I wouldn't be here.
With all that said though, I do not play MWO anywhere near as much as I use to for many different reasons.

[EgoSlayer]

Odins Fist, on 25 April 2014 - 03:40 PM, said:

They have already stated a long, long, long time ago that the map of the inner sphere will NOT change like that.
No houses will be knocked out by another house or Clan, etc, etc, etc....

That was something I brought up a long time ago in closed beta. My thought was, "then why bother with CW"?
The reason being is this, if they can't allow for one faction or another to make gains against another, or the whole inner sphere being in complete and utter chaos and change, then what's the point..??

Couldn't they do a reset after a certain length of time, say 6 months.? Oh, but then the timeline wouldn't move forward past a certain length.. Facepalm.
<snip>

I've always thought the no changing canon battles is a bad choice, there should be canon battles that are decided by the players. With regular resets e.g. 4-6 months. Resets don't have to reset the timeline - they just reset to the canon outcomes of what that time period is for the canon year.
The only reason I can think to reset to canon and not just leave the player decided outcomes is to offset any player created imbalances due to team/faction populations. E.g. If one faction has the largest population and/or the best teams and consistently is getting the bonuses from CW, new players and likely some vets, will move to the "best" faction. The under performing ones will be put at an even larger disadvantage.

[Corwin Vickers]

I've always thought that PGI was getting pressure from the money side to make these horrible decisions.

Gotta be a pretty shitty job to be a battletech fan working on a battletech game and have some money guy tell you that you need to put 3PV in to cater to the shooter crowd.

Is this the first time they have admitted that they were not 100% behind those bad decisions? I seem to remember them keeping up a pretty solid wall when these things happened.

I still don't believe that money was not taken from PGI and given to the Mechwarior Tactics guys from the founder money. Collectible card game Battletech? What a joke.

[Trauglodyte]

Quote

I really don't understand you NGNG haters.

It is really simple. I didn't ask the to host the pod cast which is irrelevant to the discussion. But, the second that they start getting money in from IGP for their part AND they start hosting devs all while voicing their opinions, they're becoming representatives of the community. It would be different if they came to the boards and asked us 1) what questions we had for the devs and 2) if it was pre-scripted how we felt about those topics. They do neither and, believe it or not, when they say something one way or another, it has weight to it. I don't need them speaking for me when they're asking my opinion and I don't need them reinforcing something that the devs are putting on us when I/we don't agree with it. Finally, if someone is going to speak for me, I'd rather it be people that are both good and credible to the game and not a bunch of freaking chuckle heads.

[Wieland]

What i get out of this podcast and some other sources like Twitter
-Someone else is pulling the strings(3pv, Clan preorder while Saber isnt even delivered and a release date that might cause trouble)
-CW will probably not be for Merc Units what they said last year
-The team is really small when the map guys have to help make the clan mechs
-Sooner or later we might have lots of half finished systems due to time and manpower problems
-We will probably only see 1 or 2 new maps this year
-We should not expect many IS mechs in the coming months
-They might do lots of crappy mech variants because we like that

Edited by Wieland, 26 April 2014 - 03:41 PM.

[Daekar]

Trauglodyte, on 26 April 2014 - 01:24 PM, said:

It is really simple. I didn't ask the to host the pod cast which is irrelevant to the discussion. But, the second that they start getting money in from IGP for their part AND they start hosting devs all while voicing their opinions, they're becoming representatives of the community. It would be different if they came to the boards and asked us 1) what questions we had for the devs and 2) if it was pre-scripted how we felt about those topics. They do neither and, believe it or not, when they say something one way or another, it has weight to it. I don't need them speaking for me when they're asking my opinion and I don't need them reinforcing something that the devs are putting on us when I/we don't agree with it. Finally, if someone is going to speak for me, I'd rather it be people that are both good and credible to the game and not a bunch of freaking chuckle heads.

You're certainly welcome to your opinion, but I completely disagree with pretty much everything you said or implied.

They aren't elected officials, selected to be your mouthpieces. They are some battletech-obsessed guys that started a fan podcast and did it well enough that the devs wanted to work with them to do tutorials and such. They're not your representatives and they don't try to be. They don't claim to be. God knows you don't need a representative, the forums offer plenty of space to express yourself.

If you don't like it, start your own podcast and invest your time and money into the community. Yes, Phil can be pretty damn opinionated sometimes and has a bad habit of talking over people, but come on... if you can't see past that to the good they do, then I can only conclude you're willfully deceiving yourself.

[Trauglodyte]

I'm not arguing that they don't do good for the game. But, all the same, we're like 2+ years into this and we're just now getting PGI to start talking to us more on the forums. We just now have a community dev that not only talks to us but also puts up twitter responses from the devs along with dev posts. We have a video blog which NGNG is a part of and I like it.

The point that I'm trying to make is that I don't feel like they're (NGNG) are trying to turn the game one way or another. Every time that they say something, though, it carries weight and that can't be argued. Phil doesn't let anyone finish a sentence and when he says that he thinks this or that, whether he intends it or not, he's speaking for all of us. And the power behind that is much greater than what we have here on the forums because it is an in person one on one communication as opposed to the devs trying to sort through all of the crap here. I appreciate what they do, I just don't like the way it is put forth because they're talking without allowing us to voice our own ideas. If they wanted more credit, they should come here and ask us what the hot topics are. If they want to be the voice, carry the collective voices. In my opinion, they're too biased. And that could very well be that the interviews are scripted - I don't know.

[Corwin Vickers]

Their twitter feed has actually advertised hiring for positions in a lot of the places people constantly complain about.

Edited by Corwin Vickers, 26 April 2014 - 04:09 PM.

[Trauglodyte]

For the record, I would be beyond happy if PGI would talk to us about what they're "VISION" ™ of the game is. For those that are old enough to remember, Varent (Sony) used to use that term in regards to the direction that Everquest was moving back in the day and it used to piss the community off to no end. It wasn't until a few of us actually emailed the head guy (yes, I was one of them) and got him talking to us where they actually came out and talked about where they wanted the game to go and how they envisioned the classes working. In a lot of cases, they had no idea that certain things were actually a bother. I can remember in one of my emails to the head dev, he had NO idea how the weight limit imposed on Monks because such an issue. To him, he/they all thought that it was a cool idea how the class had to stay under a certain stone weight limit or they'd end up taking an armor penalty - can't tell you how many times that I ended up having to drop, move, pick up, and repeat all of my gold after a marathon farming session and they had no idea that it was a problem.

The point is, all issues need to be addressed in that forum because so much gets lost in the wash here. If they're not covering everything or are being forced to script the interview, then it is a problem.

[Lostdragon]

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Peiper.

One thing I'm surprised hasn't been brought up in this thread already is that Paul has finally admitted ghost heat was not in fact designed to curb boating but to stop high damage pinpoint builds and keep people from getting one shot. That is something that has been fiercely debated within the community and I feel a bit of vindication that I was apparently correct in my assessment of the system.

I also find it interesting to finally hear a PGI employee admit they have been forced to do things like add 3PV to the game against their wishes. I've been in similar positions in my professional life and it is always satisfying to see those ideas crash and burn as hard as 3PV did. I'd also like to formally apologize to PGI for all the crap I gave them about 3PV, however, if they'd just come out and told us this upfront they could have avoided a lot of negativity.

That being said, I've recently started trying to spend more time playing MWO again but I am finding that it is still frustrating and not a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I think that as long as Paul, Russ, and Bryan are in charge things are not likely to get better. I'm sure they are well intentioned, but their ideas are just really out of left field and make me want to punch a manatee.