Yeah the really sold it hard core. "Welcome to a game underdevelopment, IF you would like to help fund this then please do"
I don't see any changes to the game that require anyone to pay one dam cent to play it, However if your inclined to fund the game they will take the cash. Until the day they require a subscription for playing the game, I would really just like the haters to stop playing, go to whatever other game you want to play. If what you claim is true and you are the voice of the masses, then there should be an immediate impact to your choosing to play another game. I know there would be an immediate impact on the rest of us about not hearing your complaints in the middle of a match. I mean really if you are so morally outraged, why the hell would you spend the time to even log into the game?
I have been here since early closed beta, and I have been happy with the development of this game, I came in with the knowledge it was not complete and that it was going to take time to get it to the level that they wanted. What really confuses me is that I never felt their time line was a promise of this or that on exactly this date. I am not sure when exactly people started to believe that the time line that was presented in closed beta was locked in stone. the game is still under development, they are trying to provide content for us to enjoy while they work on it, but they still have to make the game. I think i prefer them striving for something better than we currently have, i mean you can rush stuff if you want, but then you end up with elder scrolls online. they took a good game and tried to mainstream it and now its not as good as skyrim or even oblivion.
The game looked and played so much nicer with the slower overall movement and lower heat caps before DHS. It often feels like a spastic FPS now with hyper convulsive torso-twisting and shaking. The mech skills go too far in speeding up movement, and the animations don't sync up well making the game feel even more cartoonish.
Personally, I would scrap a lot of the mechs skills and revamp the whole tree.
The tree was supposed to be a place holder, maybe now some see why some lost faith in PGI.
Quite some things where supposedly just placeholders, now they're the norm.
Yeah the really sold it hard core. "Welcome to a game underdevelopment, IF you would like to help fund this then please do"
I don't see any changes to the game that require anyone to pay one dam cent to play it, However if your inclined to fund the game they will take the cash. Until the day they require a subscription for playing the game, I would really just like the haters to stop playing, go to whatever other game you want to play. If what you claim is true and you are the voice of the masses, then there should be an immediate impact to your choosing to play another game. I know there would be an immediate impact on the rest of us about not hearing your complaints in the middle of a match. I mean really if you are so morally outraged, why the hell would you spend the time to even log into the game?
I have been here since early closed beta, and I have been happy with the development of this game, I came in with the knowledge it was not complete and that it was going to take time to get it to the level that they wanted. What really confuses me is that I never felt their time line was a promise of this or that on exactly this date. I am not sure when exactly people started to believe that the time line that was presented in closed beta was locked in stone. the game is still under development, they are trying to provide content for us to enjoy while they work on it, but they still have to make the game. I think i prefer them striving for something better than we currently have, i mean you can rush stuff if you want, but then you end up with elder scrolls online. they took a good game and tried to mainstream it and now its not as good as skyrim or even oblivion.
Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 09 May 2014 - 04:20 PM, said:
We certainly remain passionate about our game, which is why we could not let it suffer from being too demanding on the average users system. As has been pointed out by a number of players, we have had to tone down some of the graphical elements of the game in order to allow these players in.
Does this mean the end of those qualities forever? Certainly not. We still have a great deal of optimization work ahead of us and improvements to the average users specifications will allow us to push even further.
Thanks Nikolai. Its nice to see you respond. I really appreciate it.
Seems a lot of the founders might be in the same age range of late 20s to mid 30s. When we grew up with BattleTech, the miniatures game, the technical readouts, the animated series, the novels, all the original games, and the BattlePods for your birthday.
I think there is a core group of us who want BattleTech to succeed, and why we have invested in the Founders and the Overlord packages, participated in closed beta etc...
Now that Wing Commander is also being revived with StarCitizen, MWO really needs to step up and compete for that same audience. If the game is actually complete and has all the elements in the roadmap, I would happily do a subscription like WoW.
[color=#CCCCCC]Mr. Nikolai Lubkiewicz, [/color] [color="#cccccc"]Could you possibly relay this to Russ or Paul at all. Or would there be a way to get in contact without flaming or pointing the finger. Im not gonna say I am entitled because Ive payed a lot of money, because there are others that have paid way more. As you can see 10 pages without a flamewar. Everyone is just concerned and looking for answers and it seems like ive been rather good lately of keeping the civility at a all time high.[/color]
Thanks ahead of time.
Do you guys think if I mention something to Sean Lang and NGNG about the thread that maybe he would ask PGI for a response?
Yeah the really sold it hard core. "Welcome to a game underdevelopment, IF you would like to help fund this then please do"
I don't see any changes to the game that require anyone to pay one dam cent to play it, However if your inclined to fund the game they will take the cash. Until the day they require a subscription for playing the game, I would really just like the haters to stop playing, go to whatever other game you want to play. If what you claim is true and you are the voice of the masses, then there should be an immediate impact to your choosing to play another game. I know there would be an immediate impact on the rest of us about not hearing your complaints in the middle of a match. I mean really if you are so morally outraged, why the hell would you spend the time to even log into the game?
I have been here since early closed beta, and I have been happy with the development of this game, I came in with the knowledge it was not complete and that it was going to take time to get it to the level that they wanted. What really confuses me is that I never felt their time line was a promise of this or that on exactly this date. I am not sure when exactly people started to believe that the time line that was presented in closed beta was locked in stone. the game is still under development, they are trying to provide content for us to enjoy while they work on it, but they still have to make the game. I think i prefer them striving for something better than we currently have, i mean you can rush stuff if you want, but then you end up with elder scrolls online. they took a good game and tried to mainstream it and now its not as good as skyrim or even oblivion.
Well kinda because they said so, like not breaking the timeline.
Or bringing some features right after this and that date, like CW would definatly come 3 months or so after launch, or loyalty points shortly after Phoenix.
It's just that all those post are in a kinda gone forever state, although there have been a few people making screenshots of said promises
And that's why people believed that they would do things, they promised.
If I say I promise to come to my appointments than I'd better do, after the 3rd time I miss them no one would believe me.
If PGI isn't sure, than maybe they should say so, being honest goes a long way with you're paying customers.
And who is rushing here? Delivering 4 maps a year or less is fast? Balancing a single weapons system, or rather trying, is sometimes the highlite of a patch.
Some of my friends do like ESO, loved skyrim too.
Also I do think that star citizen is going to be a better example.
Same engine, smallish developer team, funded by fans, AND damn diehard fans investing and expecting/hoping.
We're going to see which holds up the expectations of customers better.
Because you have to realize that while still fun for some, you need you're customers to come back and stuff to keep the lights running.
I have a 100 million C-Bills and a load of mechs, sooooo.
Except for my goodwill of funding this game, what else is there to spend real money on to keep the lights going?
A stock battle mode has been suggested since closed beta I think, it's a realy good example of how the leadership of PGI seems to not listen to its customers.
And now Paul liked it? Was it Paul who twittered it?
Or the lobby, been asking for it forever and ever now, and now they embrace it.
If they want to do something right then they should embrace stock matches as well.
Would make they're job of balancing so much easier as well.
Customer satisfaction goes up, less boating, less balance problems.
Why did no one think of this before????
Damn they did, many times actually.
Just listen to some forumites and actually try something on that test server.
It can't be there to work out the kinks in upcoming patches, those seem to be still quite a plenty even after testing.
Rather try some new ideas and features.
Mechs on the test server don't cost people real earned money, so it's a good way of testing the community's ideas.
Also, I have to agree; the 'mass-y' feeling of piloting a 'Mech is extremely apparent, even just from watching that video. Things looked like they were... heavy. I haven't felt that since MW3. In the current game, pretty much anything feels rapid and rough. Torsos are too responsive, movement is jerky. Playing a light can also get extremely ridiculous; granted, lights need to be fast to suit their role. But the fact I can instantly reverse my direction at speed by rapid firing my jumpjets is crazy.
the only reason lights need to be dodgem car fast today is because assaults torso twist and arm responciveness is too fast. and the speedtweaks etc don't help. the whole game needs slowing down to get the immersive and speed balance aspects back. oh
who am I kidding its a ATD's game now, who want's missions, objectives and a reason to progress, explore and conqure new worlds? big explosions with minmax weapons now is the core audience.
Peter2k, on 09 May 2014 - 08:34 PM, said:
The tree was supposed to be a place holder, maybe now some see why some lost faith in PGI.
Quite some things where supposedly just placeholders, now they're the norm.
Some cool ideas in some post :-)
yeah it's why some of the last "white knights" aren't around anymore they said group limits were a place holder too...
You have to realize that while still fun for some, you need you're customers to come back and stuff to keep the lights running.
Except for my goodwill of funding this game, what else is there to spend real money on to keep the lights going?
A stock battle mode has been suggested since closed beta I think, it's a realy good example of how the leadership of PGI seems to not listen to its customers.
And now Russ liked it?
Or the lobby, been asking for it forever and ever now, and now they embrace it.
If they want to do something right then they should embrace stock matches as well.
Would make they're job of balancing so much easier as well.
Customer satisfaction goes up, less boating, less balance problems.
Why did no one think of this before????
Damn they did, many times actually.
Just listen to some forumites and actually try something on that test server.
It can't be there to work out the kinks in upcoming patches, those seem to be still quite a plenty even after testing.
Rather try some new ideas and features.
Mechs on the test server don't cost people real earned money, so it's a good way of testing the community's ideas.
There. Slight correction, and agreed here.
I do not believe we will ever see an intelligent use of the public test servers however beyond what PGI already does.
the only reason lights need to be dodgem car fast today is because assaults torso twist and arm responciveness is too fast. and the speedtweaks etc don't help. the whole game needs slowing down to get the immersive and speed balance aspects back. oh
who am I kidding its a ATD's game now, who want's missions, objectives and a reason to progress, explore and conqure new worlds? big explosions with minmax weapons now is the core audience.
As said here. Basically pilot trees.
Originally there were none. So in those videos that was without any unlocks.
Then later, "2.2%" was the benefits received, then 4.4 with 2x basics. I actually believe there was a 4x, too, but couldn't prove it.
Point is, even with 4x basics you'd get 8.8% increases to what they changed. Threshold changed the random shutdown threshold from just above 90% to closer to 100%. At the time, override only restarted you up faster or allowed you to 'ignore' a premature automatic shutdown, but you'd still shutdown at 100% regardless. Heat containment has been changed to raise where "100%" is now, instead of allowing you to 'coast' closer to 100% without a premature shutdown risk, damage to components, or having to press override.
If you road rode the flashing level of heat (80%+) too long, ammo, weapons, heatsinks would start to take damage over time, one random component at a time, at random intervals. This got removed.
But yes. Read the skill tree "Kinetic burst."
+ 22.5% faster acceleration.
x2 basics = 55% faster acceleration.
On an ATLAS.
If you have a mastered Atlas, get a new heavy mech and just run it stock without any unlocks. Doesn't that feel like your Atlas? Maybe even SLOWER to react than your Atlas? That's how overly agile your Atlas is.
That's how overly enhanced everything is.
Firebrand. No unlocks at all.
Imagine how different the game would be.
Add to this, the removal of Delayed Convergence. This, when enabled, meant that you had to calibrate your shots just like World of Tanks by focusing on the target's location. It went by distance adjustment and increased/decreased your accuracy based on your movement compared to theirs. Basic movement up to 86 kph was well adjusted for. Anything faster was difficult to calibrate to. This also made poptarting a very difficult and thus non-meta attack strategy. You may notice poptarting didn't start until midway ballistic HSR, where delayed convergence was completely removed. You can find the remnant of this, "convergence," under the Elite Skill Tree of your mechs.
Delayed Convergence was the difference between poptarts being perfectly difficult to achieve without screenshake or random missing while thrusting, and needing a boatload of nerfs on poptarting. It was the difference between whether or not PPCs + Gauss or PPCs + ACs would work -- which could not as they did not converge at the same speeds. It was the difference between whether or your SRMs converged on the target or went completely around the target to hit something behind it.
Delayed convergence made this shot possible; now impossible.
Now, add to this that Streaks did not defy the laws of physics. These were really good, despite being called "Over Powered."
I thought that was great. Nice, pretty fair, skill-based as following too closely or going too fast made your missiles MISS. I liked it!
But...Streaks by definition "will not fire if they cannot hit." Since this is impossible to do without putting 100% of fire control of streaks to the game and not to the player, PGI went with "They Always Hit."
And now streaks are like this.
So it's not safe to be 'slow' anymore. But wait, we're not done yet! We need to make it even harder to survive!
Add to this still... Armlock, which allows you to get pinpoint out of all weapon systems instead of just your arms.
Before this, the only way to get truly accurate, pinpoint shots was through doing this. Watch the "o" crosshair.
(To be fair Armlock was added before Delayed Convergence was removed; it wasn't bad with Delayed Convergence but without it, it means perfect pinpoint with the current Instant Convergence).
So tie all that together, and that's why you can't survive at slow speeds.
PGI looked for a way to allow players to survive longer. Options:
Change weapons to damage over time. "Not happening."
Armor concept? "..."
Change Armlock to be 'locked within a tight radius around the + crosshair'. "Not happening."
PPC is a leading problem of combination boats, maybe a firing delay to simulate a charge up? "Sure thing! Look, we slapped a charge up on the Gauss Rifle." Not what we said. "*Creepy smile*."
Change the Engine DHS to 1.4 DHS instead of 2.0 DHS as once stated but never happened? "We're satisfied with the performance." Despite how it's exploitable and every mech with an engine lower than 250 is gimped in their heat threshold and cooling rates even when they have 1-to-2 more DHS than someone who has a 250 engine.
Reduce thresholds to 30, which removes most alpha strike abilities from mechs without the need for ghost heat and will make the game significantly more tactical. "Global nerf punishes everyone, makes mechs live longer. Not happening." Wait...we're looking for ways to increase the time to kill and you won't do it because it makes them live longer and nerfs everything universally?
Their solution?
Boost agility on lights, mediums and mention something about boosting the agility of heavies and raise the speed cap.
[color=#CCCCCC]Mr. Nikolai Lubkiewicz, [/color] [color=#cccccc]Could you possibly relay this to Russ or Paul at all. Or would there be a way to get in contact without flaming or pointing the finger. Im not gonna say I am entitled because Ive payed a lot of money, because there are others that have paid way more. As you can see 10 pages without a flamewar. Everyone is just concerned and looking for answers and it seems like ive been rather good lately of keeping the civility at a all time high.[/color]
Thanks ahead of time.
Do you guys think if I mention something to Sean Lang and NGNG about the thread that maybe he would ask PGI for a response?
Im not trying to be pessimistic, but you are hardly the first person to get the idea to try and reach out to PGI and have a dialogue or a question answered. Even back in the beta PGI largely did not respond to posts on the forums....to the point where we told them that going release without a proper matchmaker was suicide, but they went ahead anyway (and not a single staff member responded to any of the posts telling them that). The resulting fiasco is well known and i don't need to recount it here.
There have been plenty of units and other groups that have attempted to contact PGI and basically say, hey, there are a lot of problems here, why dont we talk about this, we can help you guys work it out. As far as i know not a single one got any actual response....some were lucky enough to get Garth or someone to say that they would pass it uptop, but nothing further came of that.
IIRC its even against the COC to ask for a response from the devs...
Sitting down and talking with players on the forums is something that PGI just doesnt do, which is a shame really because the forums are supposed to be a low cost marketing tool...a way of gathering feedback without needing to hire expensive consultants to collect hundreds of surveys or shell out big bucks for focus groups. But its just not being used that way.
I think Niko's post on page 8 is about the best you can expect. But anything further concrete than that....probably not gonna happen. I dont even know if the devs read the forums anymore, i think they just left it all to the GMs and CMs. Remember the 12 man queue vs pubs bug? I think someone else mentioned that the devs only found out about it when a NGNG staff member tweeted them...and not because they were reading their won forums and saw "oh wow we have a major bug here!".
I suppose you could try and get a NGNG staff member to pass on the message, but chances are they wont even bother responding to you or they will pass on the message but you wont get a response. Keep in mind that NGNG is well known for never asking tough questions...they ask very safe questions that are meant to make PGI look good in the interviews. I dont think they have ever mentioned things like the ridiculous PPC/Ballistic boating meta...because its not safe enough to ask.
What i really liked about this is the speed. In Closed Beta every mech felt like a heavy mech. Slower turns, not high speed. You really had to think more about your actions. It felt more realistic.
Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 09 May 2014 - 04:20 PM, said:
We certainly remain passionate about our game, which is why we could not let it suffer from being too demanding on the average users system. As has been pointed out by a number of players, we have had to tone down some of the graphical elements of the game in order to allow these players in.
Does this mean the end of those qualities forever? Certainly not. We still have a great deal of optimization work ahead of us and improvements to the average users specifications will allow us to push even further.
I can certainly respect the rationale for the decision to turn down the graphics.... I have been playing games long enough to remember the exact moment that "lower graphics = more people" proved to be the right business model. (FYI - It was when Wow and Everquest 2 came out. EQ2 was way better looking but very graphic card intensive and it lost the MMORPG title and tons of customers it had for years with EQ)
To add to the other discussion about removal of other features... well to sum up everything, this game is already geared towards a "mature" gamer mindset and if they kept it as complex as it was they could alienate even more potential customers by having designed something "too complex" to for the ADD gamer generation that can't appreciate dedicated servers or want instant satisfaction without practicing.... Don't believe me about how "mature" this group is?? Take a moment and ask yourself when is the last time in a Pug you saw a TK? If they did it, wasn't it usually an accident and they apologized? Now compare that to most other similar type games (fps, f2p, etc.)... ask yourself that same question... notice a big difference in the playerbase??
To add to the other discussion about removal of other features... well to sum up everything, this game is already geared towards a "mature" gamer mindset and if they kept it as complex as it was they could alienate even more potential customers by having designed something "too complex" to for the ADD gamer generation that can't appreciate dedicated servers or want instant satisfaction without practicing.... Don't believe me about how "mature" this group is?? Take a moment and ask yourself when is the last time in a Pug you saw a TK? If they did it, wasn't it usually an accident and they apologized? Now compare that to most other similar type games (fps, f2p, etc.)... ask yourself that same question... notice a big difference in the playerbase??
To go above and beyond this:
There is nothing wrong with a game expecting a lot out of a player to succeed. Countless games in this generation is too worried about being too hard to the point that they overly simplify or hand-hold the the players.
Accessibility isn't directly related to the amount of effort expected from the player or the difficulty of the game itself. Accessibility is about making game mechanics clear, concise and logical within the game itself as well as ensuring players that have not mastered the expected basics of the game are not matched against players that have.
Lack of accessibility puts up brick walls to the playerbase and limits player retention. MWO is not accessible at all, from mechanics like Ghost Heat, hidden numbers and values (in an effort not to overwhelm players,) a new UI that chooses form (lots of pretty wire meshes) over function (the most important data on a mech/component hidden in tiny font in a corner on a delayed mouseover tooltip,) to a complete lack of explanation of mechanics and an inability to see the loadout of things in the store. No information about MWO is available within the game outside of a very limited tutorial.
To compare how difficulty doesn't relate I'll use SC2 as an example. Starcraft 2 is one of the most difficult games in existence, it has an extremely high expectation of the player. It expects you to be able to form a solid plan before a match, change the plan on the fly during the match, manage an economy and infrastructure, build an army, maintain map awareness, control individual units and react/exploit the movements and choices of your opponent. All of this, often at the same time. Yet SC2 is accessible due to massive amounts of coverage on the game, every piece of information about the game is detailed within the game itself, a replay system so someone can review their mistakes or why the match turned out as it did and most importantly players are matched against opponents that can meet the expectations of the game to a similar level. Players that have trouble managing more than one or two things on that list don't get tossed into matches against players that can easily handle most of that list.
Making the game far more simple isn't the way to make it accessible. Making the game explain itself far better and ensuring that players are matched against opponents of equal skill does wonders to ease perceptions and make it more accessible to a wider playerbase, turns a sheer cliff into a manageable mountain trail.
Mechanics from the Closed Beta like Heat Penalties And Risks were complex in their execution yet easy to explain, just the explanation was lacking/missing from the game as it was a Beta. So we lost those mechanics and got things like Ghost Heat, things that are extremely convoluted and never fully explained by anything in game.
Even with all the bugs in CB, it was a Beta after all, the game was much more fun in my opinion. Maybe it was the 'new car' experience since it was all shiny and new to me when I got in during CB, but I have a feeling its got more to do with how stale the game has become recently.
We have essentially the exact same game mode in three different flavors. You can kill mechs with a base, kill mechs with lots of bases, or kill mechs with no base. There is zero meta-game, and by meta-game I mean something aside from playing pokemech or grinding space bucks. There is literally zero point to the matches you play in currently and it's beginning to look like the Community will be responsible for it through the use of private matches since PGI is failing to implement even just faction/house affiliation.
Some of the weapon changes since CB have been good, making MGs not complete crap, NARC is now semi useful, and UAC5 auto clears itself. However we have been stuck with this PPC+Ballistic 'meta' for over a year now with almost zero real attempts to address this. PGI continues to put bandaids on a festering wound. Ghost Heat would've been unnecessary had PPC/ERPPC heat been tuned to it's current TT values. Not to mention the complete and total lack of any real clear explanation of the mechanic in the game; instead you have to dig through the forums to find out how it works and then the mechanic for AC2 GH is so confusing I didn't even bother to try to understand it other than 'lots of AC2s is bad.' Convergence was completely removed from the game for who knows what reason, however PGI refuses to add any sort of mechanic to make aiming difficult under any kind of situation other than pressing the space bar.
There is also the issue of coolant/consumables. PGI repeatedly told founders that there would be no coolant mechanic in the game yet they reneged. Of course coolant seems a good deal less useful to the poptarts and their massed arty/air stirkes as most matches I play in seem to have an abundance of air and artillery support. UAV is less probably the closest to any kind of real role warfare that we will see in this game.
I could probably write a novel on why I feel PGI seems to be trying to do a smash and grab with our wallets while simultaneously driving whatever was left of the community out of the game.
I do still play though I will most likely be playing more of the stock mech matches and less of the public matches.
There is also the issue of coolant/consumables. PGI repeatedly told founders that there would be no coolant mechanic in the game yet they reneged. Of course coolant seems a good deal less useful to the poptarts and their massed arty/air stirkes as most matches I play in seem to have an abundance of air and artillery support. UAV is less probably the closest to any kind of real role warfare that we will see in this game.
Here comes the PGI reneg list. Not on your case, but it is coming.
Consumables
3PV
.....
6
Mycrus, on 09 May 2014 - 10:11 AM, said:
