51 replies to this topic

[Jack Corban]

Hello Russ,

i am in this from the start and i supported you a great deal all the way. I made plenty of posts on the forums regarding a variety of topics and i have certainly vented alot of frustration over certain developments in the past and present.

Why am i writing you this letter now you ask?

The answer is easy. I'm the last!

Noone that started out with me when this game was still in closed beta is left. They are all gone.

My brother and me we got so hyped back then. "Wow finally a Mechwarrior game again. This is gonna be great!"
And yes it seemed to become a very good game. We both got the Legendary Founders Pack back then to support what seemed to be the long awaited revival of our beloved franchise.

And so we played and we were happy for a while. Sure the game was a little rough around the edges and there wasn't much content there back then but we enjoyed it.

Then time went past and the stream of content we got promised did not arrive.
Sure we got a map here and then. There was a Mech released every now and then. But the core concept of what we got promised never showed.

And yes i am talking about Community Warfare but this is not the main reason i write to you.

The main reason i write to you is you are loosing you core fanbase. Those guys like my brother and me that supported you right from the start no questions asked and long before all these players that spent not one dime on this game arrived at the scene.

Not that it matters really but i bought the Legendary Founders pack, the Phoenix Overloard pack + the Saber pack and recently i bought the Masakari Clan pack.

That adds up to a total of 470$ if i did not miscalculate or remember the pricing wrong.
I am sure i am not the only one that has a similar investment in this endevour and there is surly people out there that spent even more then me.

Yet i don't have the feeling i am beeing appriciated or heard.

In the last Q&A you stated that you wanna listen more to what we the players have to say to you the Developers.

Ok then here goes what i feel is right for this game and needs implementation. Most of this i have discussed with plenty of players over and over and i need to get this heard.

1) Monetization

While i do understand that this game is very costly to develop you really should give a thought towards you pricing. I mentioned before that i spent about 470$ on this allready. Do you realize what 470$ are? Do you realize what i could have done with this money instead ? What in Godsname makes you think it is ok to charge us so much money for so little actual content. I'm not even mad at the Packages. I get it they are Exclusive. But your general pricing ? 350MC for a Mechbay ? Every mech you buy with or without MC should come with a Mechbay included.

Mech pricings in general are slap in the face. ~30$ for a Atlas ? 1000 MC for a color ? 1500-1750 MC for a camo ?

For the money i have spent in this game allready i should have every Color and every camo unlocked for every mech. Lets draw a example here. Planetside 2 is free to play and it has monetization like its normal today with free to play games. If i spent the amount of money i have spent in this game i have everything unlocked twice for all factions. all cammos all stickers all gimmicks all weapons and sidegrades everything.

To make it short your monetization comes off as greedy and milking the customer. And you have been called on this many many times before. This game has not nearly enough to it to be so pricy in basically everything.

You know i have worked in a buisness aswell some time ago and i studied economics there for a while. And there is one rule that goes for pricing your product. "Find the sweetspot!"

The sweetspot is right where you see an increase in purchases across the line while still maintaining positive income. Yes i know you have investors and they want their share and yada yada.
I am seriously convinced that if you lower your general pricing you will make more money because the incentive to make a purchase is higher. If i go and buy a color now i have buyers remorse after i am honest with you here.

2) Balancing

Oh boy, i'm pretty sure you are sick to the bone of this topic. And i get it yes this game is hard to balance but what you do its not working man. Have you ever created a alternative account and played your own game over a period of lets say 8 hours. Because if you do you will realize how much unrest there actually is. The Meta sucks. And the Meta before that and before that sucked aswell.

Why do you try to forcefeed us Ghostheat, 3/3/3/3, Double Heatsinks with 70% efficiency?
This has nothing to do with Mechwarrior or Battletech anymore.

You have to realize that some of these things are broken by design from the very get go.

Battletech had a very elegant solution to Tech differences and high alpha builds. Its called Battle Value and i'm pretty sure you are very aware of this.

Battle Value applied to every weapon, module, equipment, Mech Chassis and Upgrade would make for a wonderfull matchup system. Players with roughly the same Tech Tier would meet each other in combat and if players decide to bring there current Meta pinpoint "Machine o' Doom" they better be up for a equally equiped enemy.

I mean lets face it. You increased the Armor to a full double very early on. This doesn't even show anymore.
I had a situation earlier with a CTF-3D as enemy he gaussed me from 100% to dead in about 2 salvos without having a chance to react to it. Dual Gauss that is. Sure its a viable build but why do i have to face it in a much lower tech Tier then he is. Why can't he play Gauss duels with other pinpoint Maniacs out there.

Alot of people requested you make a Stockmech mode available a while back.
Whats the problem with that. Stock mechs are all pretty balanced and have their own right to exist compared with other stock mechs.

All i hear these days is "Nah that Hunchback is ****, there is way better Mech that can fit a AC/20 then him." O'really ? Well in Stock there is not many mechs with AC/20's now is there?

Many problems in the current meta are made by the lack of stock viability. All Players do is pick the mech that has preferably the ability to mount Jumpjets 1-2 PPC's and/or Gauss/ AC/5's - AC/20's. Does this sound very varied to you ? Does this stale soup of sameness sound any fun ?.

Stock Matches please add them. If anything i write is to be considered please for the love of God let it be stock matches.

And i know we have privat lobbies now. I know that but they aren't really what i am looking for here. And they are not nearly there where they should be. Which brings me to the next point.

3) Privat matches / E-Sport viability

Without a proper value system we can stop talking about E-Sport alltogether but what really grinds my gear these days is the fact that a Privat Lobby needs active Premium time and as i recently read will possibly cost MC in the future. Really ? Are you seriously suggesting you want to make this game more attractive to competetive folks. To hold tournaments and leagues and to do this you want to add yet another Paygate ?

This might come as a shock to you and the rest of the Development Team but this stuff should be free of charge. This should be a sellingpoint to play this game. Look what cool custom matches we can create with this game and they do this as a fanservice.

Instead you just come of as greedy yet again. Allways with the money... 470$ just a quick reminder... its ok

To end my wall of text on a positive note here i will stop complaining and tell you this. WE have not yet given up on you guys. And i think that showes atleast for me and a couple few that still purchase those preorder packs. But i will be truthfull with you i do not know how long this will stay this way anymore. There are plenty of players comming and going i know this and this is good as customers bring you money and if they leave they no longer cost you server bandwith, BUT!

If you really put all your heart and soul into this New Mechwarrior as you stated so many times in the past then you will realize that you owe US the core Battletech/Mechwarrior fans a great deal to your succsess and you need to implement what we ask for. And i'm not saying this will allways be the most profitable of ways to handle it but i do think it will be the most sensible way to do this.

So what do i ask for in short?

1) Rethink your monetization model. Buyers remorse is no way to found a good customer relationship.
2) Please add Battlevalue and throw away these useless ideas of fixing what has allways be broken in the core of Battletech. (On a quicknote this would make your effords of balancing Clan Tech way easier aswell because clantech is expensive thus giving claners a challenge in combat. Thats what playing clans is all about really)
3) Privat matches with all custom options need to become free of any charge if you ever want to have this game become a focuspoint of competitive League play of anyform.

4) and this one is very dear to me please go into yourselfe and find a way to realize what you promised us all the ways back. Put your heart into it and keep true to your promises.


best regards,

Jack Corban

Edited by Jack Corban, 24 May 2014 - 08:43 PM.

[Flaming oblivion]

Jack Corban, on 24 May 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

Hello Russ,

i am in this from the start and i supported you a great deal all the way. I made plenty of posts on the forums regarding a variety of topics and i have certainly vented alot of frustration over certain developments in the past and present.

your on a sinking ship here change course before its to late.

Jack Corban

That said if I understand it correctly your saying clans are supposed to be over powered and that's fine because there expensive , No its not fine I don't even need to explain why you know why,

Edited by Flaming oblivion, 24 May 2014 - 08:59 PM.

[Kilo 40]

Jack Corban, on 24 May 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

Great why bother answering to it then...

for the same reason you bothered to reply to me I suppose

[Fais]

Whats sad to me is that, the core fan base can drop a few $100 on a weekly budget. Because we played during the 80's and 90's and are mostly working pro's now. Funding the game wouldn't be a problem if it didn't feel like the core game is completely stagnant since closed beta. You added maps, and mechs. Its been fun, but we need more. You lost our faith a while back. I hope you can right the ship. I'll keep kicking it around for free, Until my overlord pack medallion actually does something.

[mekabuser]

only thing this game accomplished was dis a point. ! GJ GG U suck

[Jack Corban]

Flaming oblivion, on 24 May 2014 - 08:44 PM, said:

That said if I understand it correctly your saying clans are supposed to be over powered and that's fine because there expensive , No its not fine I don't even need to explain why you know why,

What i'm saying is Clans use better Tech. And this better Tech cost more Battle Value. For the same Battle Value you field a Lance of Heavy Clanners you can field 1 Lance in Inner Sphere Assaults.

Thats pretty balanced.

The whole problem you are refering to is pay to win due to the fact that Clan Mechs will only be available in waves way after the initial release of the Preorder packs. I do get that and thats a problem. Yet this is not my fault to blame. PGI decided this. Yet another oversight on their part.

With Battle Value in place you can atleast expect to see fair matches Clan vs. IS or IS. vs. IS doesn't matter.

Edited by Jack Corban, 24 May 2014 - 09:07 PM.

[GreyGriffin]

Open letters to the developers, specifically threads that name specific members of the development team, are a violation of the forum ToS and won't receive a response.

Stellar community outreach policies like this, instead of simple communication like, "Hey, as a rule we don't respond to these kinds of posts because responding to them would create a flood of directed posts that drown out community dialogue and a community expectation of response that we can't meet," are what make MWO the great game it is today.

[MonkeyCheese]

Jack Corban, on 24 May 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

The answer is easy. I'm the last!

Noone that started out with me when this game was still in closed beta is left. They are all gone.

I know that feeling, there was 12ish of my Teamspeak that got into the closed beta and most became founders. We would play for hours on end and much fun was had, eventually they all started leaving for lack of content or bug reasons and then there was just two of us left, we both quit playing for 3-4 months and have now come back.

I can still play for hours on end but the other guy is lucky to last even an hour these days with the matchmaker and the various bugs and even the tediousness of the user interface nowdays. Im sure he would put in plenty of time to play the masakari but the cbill version is not coming till like December and he is still on the refusing to spend anymore money side of the fence.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

1 - Monetization

If you look at actual direct competitor products, such as World of Tanks or Hawken, you see prices that are very similar to those of MWO, with WoT having the added problem of p2w mechanics.

That said, the prices for most anything other than Mechbays are rather higher than I'd like them to be, which is why I always recommend waiting for sales. PGI was pretty good about doing regular sales before, and since UI2.0 they've been even better, sometimes with daily sales (though the weekend deals are generally still the biggest).

2 - Balancing

To paraphrase the great political philosopher, MWO is the worst Mechwarrior game, except for all the other ones. Not a single MW game managed a truly balanced MP experience. Most of them didn't even try very hard, since they were PvE story games first and PvP games only second.

Still, there are several steps that PGI does need to take to make MWO a much healthier game. First, time to kill remains a problem. I favor a suite of changes to increase TtK - PPC damage arcing, dynamic precision reduction, increased cooldowns for non-brawling weapons, etc. ECM also needs a rework, from the current hard counter system to a soft counter system.

3 - Private Matches

First of all, basic private matches are free. The main thing stopping them from really taking off would be the lack of an integrated lobby, but there is already a major fan-run lobby system in place.

Second, private matches are expensive for PGI to run. Having certain customization features behind a token paywall (customizations that a general queue player lacks) goes at least a very little bit toward helping PGI to keep those private match servers going. Currently they simply require that the captain of each team have active Premium Time (which is super easy to arrange). Though PGI has indicated that this may change in the future, the form that change will take is still entirely unknown (and Russ apparently wants to stick with Premium Time, so the change might not even happen at all).

I'd love to see a lobby system brought into the MWO client, along with team-wide VOIP (with player mute option) and various other group-friendly systems, but ultimately PGI has done the player base a huge solid by finally delivering private matches. By most accounts, the current form is a great one, too.

4 - Promises

This one is a lot harder to speak to. PGI has missed a lot of deadlines, and both delivered things they said they wouldn't, and not delivered things they said they would. However, there are two questions you really need to ask yourself.

First, is MWO still fun to play? Even with the current FLD jump meta and the repeated botched MM upgrades, even with the terrible early state of UI2.0, and even with the unforgiving TtK and heat management systems, I really enjoy MWO. It may well be my favorite game currently available.

Second, do you think PGI will be able to deliver the key make-or-break features that you want to see in a MW game, whatever they may be (Mad Cats, Community Warfare, etc.)? Personally, I think they will, though it might take them a while longer. I really hope that the Clan roll-out will, like the UI2.0 launch, free up a lot of resources for them to return to work on things that I actually care about (IS now and IS forever!).

As an aside, you mentioned the Clan release for MC and c-bills coming in waves as if it were a problem. You do realize that the whole reason for early access is that it lets people pay real money for the convenience of accessing something early, right? Since free to play games live only on convenience and vanity, and since the Clan packs are selling people convenience (no need to buy mechs with in-game currency, no need to arrange mechbays for everything, extra premium time, boosted income rates on the Prime variants, etc.) and vanity (unique mech geometry and paint jobs), it seems only natural that something exactly like what PGI has in fact done would be the best way for them to monetize the Clan release. In that same vein, Gold mechs are taking the vanity bit to the logical extreme, allowing super-whales to unload a ton of money to stand out on the battlefield.

[Jack Corban]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 24 May 2014 - 09:35 PM, said:

As an aside, you mentioned the Clan release for MC and c-bills coming in waves as if it were a problem. You do realize that the whole reason for early access is that it lets people pay real money for the convenience of accessing something early, right? Since free to play games live only on convenience and vanity, and since the Clan packs are selling people convenience (no need to buy mechs with in-game currency, no need to arrange mechbays for everything, extra premium time, boosted income rates on the Prime variants, etc.) and vanity (unique mech geometry and paint jobs), it seems only natural that something exactly like what PGI has in fact done would be the best way for them to monetize the Clan release. In that same vein, Gold mechs are taking the vanity bit to the logical extreme, allowing super-whales to unload a ton of money to stand out on the battlefield.

Please read again what i said and in what context i replied.

P.s.: Its good some people still have faith in PGI mine is nearly gone and they will have to perform some miracle to get it back.

Edited by Jack Corban, 24 May 2014 - 09:51 PM.

[M0rpHeu5]

PGI has stated that topics that have title like "dear PGI" have silimer chance to be readen by them

Edited by M0rpHeu5, 25 May 2014 - 02:39 AM.

[Sidekick]

I don´t get you.

I really don´t.
You claim that you are disappointed, yet you stick to your clan purchase?
You claim that the pricing model is out of relation, but you still pay the prices?
You recognize that the communication doesn´t work, yet you monologue and expect a response.

Sorry, but you are part of the problem. Money talks. if you are no happy customer, don´t be a customer at all. Take it or leave it, but spare yourself the entitlement.

[Alymbic]

I guess we should all take a deep breathe, and recall my favourite quote of all time from Russ Bullock, El Presidente of Piranha Games Interactive:

Russ Bullock said:

Yes it is Minimum Viable Product

[Chemie]

you gave the $470, why should they change anything they are doing?

[Sidekick]

Chemie, on 25 May 2014 - 03:50 AM, said:

you gave the $470, why should they change anything they are doing?

My point exactly.

[Jon Gotham]

M0rpHeu5, on 25 May 2014 - 02:39 AM, said:

PGI has stated that topics that have title like "dear PGI" have silimer chance to be readen by them

That's where they are going wrong. They NEED to start listening, their backers or shareholders don't have the right answers. The players-the ones who will spend the dollars do.
More truthful transparency=win.

[Zolaz]

Give money to PGI? I dont give money to people who habitually lie and dont do what they say. PGI has a lot of trust to rebuild and content to deliver before I give them a penny more.

[SirLANsalot]

Jack Corban, on 24 May 2014 - 09:05 PM, said:

What i'm saying is Clans use better Tech. And this better Tech cost more Battle Value. For the same Battle Value you field a Lance of Heavy Clanners you can field 1 Lance in Inner Sphere Assaults.

Thats pretty balanced.

The whole problem you are refering to is pay to win due to the fact that Clan Mechs will only be available in waves way after the initial release of the Preorder packs. I do get that and thats a problem. Yet this is not my fault to blame. PGI decided this. Yet another oversight on their part.

With Battle Value in place you can atleast expect to see fair matches Clan vs. IS or IS. vs. IS doesn't matter.

BV was a system built for a game around 4 or more mechs.....this doesn't apply to a first person game with a HUMAN behind the sticks calling the shots. BV would still be broken as ever by finding the lowest bang for your buck mech and weapons and just dominating, thus making even more of a Meta, and one that couldn't be changed as easily.

Its also a system that cannot be added to the game, its already set in stone how things are going to be, and those core things cannot ever be changed. Much like how the idiots with hardpoint sizes still think that would be good, and granted it would of been fine had the game STARTED that way.

kamiko kross, on 25 May 2014 - 06:20 AM, said:

That's where they are going wrong. They NEED to start listening, their backers or shareholders don't have the right answers. The players-the ones who will spend the dollars do.
More truthful transparency=win.

word of caution however. the players are not always right on how to go about fixing things. Many many many many games have been killed because "it was what the players wanted", Star Wars Galaxy was one such game along with Runescape.

[Bishop Steiner]

SirLANsalot, on 25 May 2014 - 06:32 AM, said:

BV was a system built for a game around 4 or more mechs.....this doesn't apply to a first person game with a HUMAN behind the sticks calling the shots. BV would still be broken as ever by finding the lowest bang for your buck mech and weapons and just dominating, thus making even more of a Meta, and one that couldn't be changed as easily.

Its also a system that cannot be added to the game, its already set in stone how things are going to be, and those core things cannot ever be changed. Much like how the idiots with hardpoint sizes still think that would be good, and granted it would of been fine had the game STARTED that way.




word of caution however. the players are not always right on how to go about fixing things. Many many many many games have been killed because "it was what the players wanted", Star Wars Galaxy was one such game along with Runescape.

And word of caution, the Players are no t always WRONG about how to fix things. And usually it's pretty obvious to anyone competent which ideas are viable or not. It's up to a good Dev team and Community Manager to have that open, transparent 2 way communication with their clientele, in not only determining which way to go, but in helping thei customers understand WHY.

If PGI was remotely capable of doing this, aside from Russ's semi-annual wall of text communications, and NGNG Podcasts full of vague promises and politician speak, perhaps, just perhaps, there would be less dissatisfaction. BTW; how's life over at the Round Table? I am guestimating we're down to about 2-3 White Knights left?

[Jack Corban]

Ok to all the nay sayers in regards to this Thread being read by the Devs or not. I send this to Russ personally long before i decided to post this on the forums.

The Reason why i posted it here aswell is to get feedback from the rest of the community.
The feedback i got so far was mostly on track with what i wrote so its a nice foundation to my statments.

I was fully aware that there would be white knights here to defend their PGI overloards long before i posted this.
When i look around me and see the empty seats of once happy players and i read the notes they left behind before they went behind the shed and never returned it paints a very clear picture for me though.

And its PGi's turn now to turn this into what has been promised. And while not everything i said might be viable or realizable it still is a valid critizism.

-Jack