30 replies to this topic

[BoBo Jones]

** this is my thoughts and views about MWO from my own exspirience and those that i have talked to in game and on teamspeak servers. no hateing or trolling . just my conserns about the future of a game that i love to play more then any other game**

hi there fellow mechwarrior groups.

# a short history

i would like to take a moment to inform everyone in the commumity about the end of my group.
back when open beta first started , the devs were talking about all these things that they were going to do for community warfare and how great it was going to be. how many of you remember that video from the open beta festival they held in sanfransisco. where they stood up on stage and told the gathered community about the up coming community warfare and how it would be like , to roars and chears from the crowd. i for one remember how exsited this community was.
then as time went on the chears quieted down and players started waiting with antisipation. then it change to wonderment as to when this stuff would be ready.

and then nothing,

with the release of the phinix pack , the community exspected something to start happening as to community warfare. then there was a release of anger and frustration on the forums when instead of community warfare we got the start of the new clan mechs. that sucked so bad . the teamspeak servers were a wash with players complaining and worse.

now the point to this post , as a lot if not all players groups exspirienced over this time a drop in player numbers. old mech warrior fans and new ones alike , just stopped playing. angry , frustrated and bored with what was happening to this game and the lack of any kind of substence beyond the battlefield. i cant comment on P.U.G (yes i siad it "players un grouped") players . but the numbers of teamspeak players wishing to group up as a team , steaderly dropped off. the eu server began and is a desert to players. you still get a few players on there like nomads in deserts. but for the better part is empty.
me and my OTLWS group moved to the north american server. there was a time on there where 15 dropships was not enough space for the players wanting to group up , so they increased it to 30 dropships. thats how busy it was. then like the eu server numbers dropped away. now the north american teamspeak server is sparce on numbers to the exstent where it is going the same way as the eu server went.
and here is the point to this post. with this drop off on numbers , so has there been a drop off in clan/group numbers . every group i have talked to and with have all been the same on numbers dropping away. the player base is growing less and less . groups have got to the stage where they have had to join a forces just to get enough players so they can drop in 12 man groups. my group in question started out with myself and grew till its peak at 12 players and then started dropping away till now where we struggle to get a 4 man group together.
i have all manner of exscuses why these players no long play. but i get the true reason is that this game is heading into call of duty land. what i mean by this is that all there is to the game is drop into a match ....build mech ... drop another match . there is nothing more to the game then that. sometimes once or twice a year there is a new map. but for the most part there is only new mechs on offer for us to spend are real money on.
this is the call of duty effect . part joke , but i wouldnt be that surprised if mwo started chargeing money for new map packs.

well here we are with a devs blog 5 saying community warfare is coming , will it , realy , is it . as i see it this game is looseing hardcore mechs fans so fast that if there is anything such as a community warfare as the devs have mentioned , there will not be many left to play it.
i also get the fealing that this clan mech thing will go on for another year or more with more clan mechs release for sale , more weapon balenceing and more stuff that has no effect on the game(such as mech cockpit items) being made.
i dont see in the future any community warfare happening for at least a year and a half. by then who will be left but a handfull of diehards and P.U.G's.

some have said that community warfare is a myth , the true reason for MWO is just a big con by pgi to make money out of us . i dont want to , but there is a lot of evidence to this effect. since open beta whats new . a whole ton of mechs and a few new maps. ill not go into this more , you have to make your own mind up about this one.

i realy care about this game . i havent been involved like this in a game since call of duty modern warfare . i want it to be greater . i want it to be bigger , better , bader. but all i see is it dwindling and sign of this changeing in the future................. ??

[Onmyoudo]

MWO is ludicrously profitable. Look at the success of the clan packs, and the hype train heading towards final destination Tuesday. After some missteps PGI is starting to learn how to handle their customer base and delivering a solid CW is key to that at this point. As such in a year, maybe 18 months, there will probably be a solid CW to keep that money rolling in.

[Vassago Rain]

Onmyoudo, on 16 June 2014 - 04:23 AM, said:

MWO is ludicrously profitable. Look at the success of the clan packs, and the hype train heading towards final destination Tuesday. After some missteps PGI is starting to learn how to handle their customer base and delivering a solid CW is key to that at this point. As such in a year, maybe 18 months, there will probably be a solid CW to keep that money rolling in.

Show some perspective, please.

[wanderer]

Of course, why worry about rolling out CW when you can keep putting new 'Mechs in and make your cashflow that way?

[Ben Morgan]

Onmyoudo, on 16 June 2014 - 04:23 AM, said:

MWO is ludicrously profitable. Look at the success of the clan packs, and the hype train heading towards final destination Tuesday. After some missteps PGI is starting to learn how to handle their customer base and delivering a solid CW is key to that at this point. As such in a year, maybe 18 months, there will probably be a solid CW to keep that money rolling in.

I kind of have to agree with this. Yes, they promised so much and compared to that nearly nothing was delivered, but let's take a break from hating PGI for the delay of Community Warfare and look at what they have done recently:
1) The Phoenix-Package. I really like some of the mechs it brought to us.
2) For now, a fairly balanced game (yes we have the meta of pp fld and that kind of sucks, but every game will eventually develop a meta)
3) At least in the 2 days of testing the Clans felt to be more or less balanced, too. A completely new feature that seems to integrate well with existing content without being blatantly over or underpowered as many people on this forum feared? That's more than I would have trusted the "old PGI" to accomplish.
4) During the tests they actually listened to the players (enough ressources to try around with anything. That was pretty cool)
5) Mighty PGI overlords promised that after the clan release nearly every ressource will be devoted to Community Warfare. And I believe them. Partially because I want to and partially because it seems like they are actually back to caring about their community.

[Nik Reaper]

This is the beauty and the curse of the free to play model, they can afford to lose players to inactivity as they never depended on there subscription , they get by by some regular premium members and an explosion of sales at new packages.
At least as it seems this train will keep on going, an as slow as it is at least it is going somewhere , personally even though it takes some ******** detours it is going in the generaly positive direction.. slowly.

But most of all I I'm confused, why is so many ppl pushing for CW when we might as well say we know what it will be , judging by the speed of new feature production and inplementation. The first CW will just be getting grouped with players from your house and lone wolfs and mby chosing witch map to play as a group , and the outcome will decide if the planet is of color A or color B .... so much of an improvement over what we have now ...... RIGHT? Planetary conquest , with dropship/respowns and asymmetrical game play, attack and defend, really will take a year and a half or more....

The point of this rant is that for all the general negativity it seems this game will be around for a while ( even if further development is unprofitable , the servers will probly keep running with new mechs at least till the mechwarrior licence is expired ) and even at this pace it might get somehere after a while, so there is no need to cling to it if it's not good enough for you now, go do other things , come back for a bit when you have the ich and wait for it to get to a state you are happy with, while managing your expectations x) .

Edited by Nik Reaper, 16 June 2014 - 04:48 AM.

[Alex Warden]

even IF CW comes out on schedule this year, i wonder how many IS players will be left to defend against the invasion... i know during beta (closed and open) it was just about 50/50 clan vs IS debates... i think that´s another thing that changed drastically with the run-away of many oldschoolers (and those who were willing to become such^^) ...

i might be wrong, but my observations in-game, in the forums and teamspeaks talk that way... for IGP and all who demand a high income bringing clans before CW was a "good" decision... for the game it was bad imho, especially since it took (and still takes) that long...

Edited by Alex Warden, 16 June 2014 - 04:50 AM.

[Ziogualty]

IMHO the future of MWO is quite bright.

Forget about massive economic investimets for triple AAA, tv spots, megastands @ E3 or other happenings.

MWO is a fan-based, niche title.
I'm pretty sure PGi is well aware since day 1 that this game will never compete with the most famous titles around, nor that they want it.

There are a lot of smaller online titles that can last for years even with a small player base.

Players are the lenders of MWO. They spend enough (quite a lot) to let the company lives and keep the game alive.

MWO does not need this huge amount of money to live on: if something is broken, fixing it is not a "live or die" matter (hitboxes, srm, collisions, graphic glithes and so on).

Like this, stuff like interactive environments, full dx11, better net code, are not a "live or die" matter as well.

And even pumping out new maps, or new gamemodes it's really not vital. It just happen "when they can", and PGI don't think in terms of days or weeks, they already prove that "months" or "years" are they bread and butter.

Not enough money? No server in EU. Not a problem.

The core of Mechwwarrior is here: mechs, lore, the damage system, powerful weapons and arms ripped off, limping mechs, and mates to fight with.
Tons of new mechs, hero mechs, iconic mechs, clan mechs: it' all here.
The mechlab, the paintings, all there.
Graphic is not "last gen" but it's 100 times better than any other older MW titles out there.
And audio is quite amazing.

If this game should die for its flaws, it already did.
It does not.

This game has enough gamers that like it and wanna play it, (and for many of them spend money on it).
If this is not a good reason to let MWO ives, i dunno what else can be...

Edited by Attank, 16 June 2014 - 05:32 AM.

[NextGame]

Onmyoudo, on 16 June 2014 - 04:23 AM, said:

MWO is ludicrously profitable. Look at the success of the clan packs, and the hype train heading towards final destination Tuesday. After some missteps PGI is starting to learn how to handle their customer base and delivering a solid CW is key to that at this point. As such in a year, maybe 18 months, there will probably be a solid CW to keep that money rolling in.

Yeah because 2 years of community warfare coming soon™ and in 90 days and not actually being worked on until they got their Microsoft license renewed are great reasons to be brimming with confidence about it.

[Adridos]

BoBo Jones, on 16 June 2014 - 03:47 AM, said:

i would like to take a moment to inform everyone in the commumity about the end of my group.
back when open beta first started , the devs were talking about all these things that they were going to do for community warfare and how great it was going to be. how many of you remember that video from the open beta festival they held in sanfransisco. where they stood up on stage and told the gathered community about the up coming community warfare and how it would be like , to roars and chears from the crowd. i for one remember how exsited this community was.

Actually, CW was supposed to be released in Q4 2012, right after the game's launch in summer.

But then came the Founder's package success. PGI here were actually the first ones to create a successful founder scheme for a F2P game which are in practically every single one of them today.

This money supposedly went into production, which allowed them to postpone the release date and thus the CW on later.

The event you're referring to happened way, waaaay later and they also announced that they've finally started laying out the feature (which means there was NO work done on it... nil... nada). I don't remember any cheering aside from people saying: "You've got our money second time for Phoenix, now finally use it to finish the game!" After that, of course, came the Clan packages and the cycle repeated itself.

Onmyoudo, on 16 June 2014 - 04:23 AM, said:

After some missteps PGI is starting to learn how to handle their customer base and delivering a solid CW is key to that at this point.

I don't know... If I were to work at PGI, I'd say that the key to handle this community is to have fancy mech packs to buy every now and then... it worked for some 2 and a half years already, why bother with some CW that can't ever live up to any decent standard, anyway?
It's kinda like Battlefield: Heroes. People will complain en-masse, but the game is still profitable for EA to this day, despite being P2W, really old, unbalanced, barebones compared to any decent BF title and ridiculous to boot (at least they set out to be ridiculous... it's not like they sell national flags because of the World Cup in football in a setting which has had said nations written out in ages predating your RL birth, let alone the current in-universe time).

[Livewyr]

I *was* deeply concerned about that as well, up until the last 5 days: What happened in the last five days?

The devs play-tested a patch, twice, before it was released. This did two things, it allowed them to collect meta-data on the game before it goes live in order to prepare it. (Notice the difference in PTS startup between the two days, even with the explosive load yesterday.)
And that meta data resulted in balancing adjustments just in between the tests. I personally did not see anything hideous in the balance adjustments, and I did see some things that were necessary, such as the UAC restriction. It also allowed them to better prepare for the bombardment they will receive tomorrow when the server goes live.

Two other things that I think are very important are in regards to PGI itself.
1: They hosted the PTS (again) at player request, rather than the "Let them eat cake" attitude we are so used to. They also, at player request (by popular demand), funneled in Cbills and GXP to help players better test their machines at elite proficiencies, which they will ultimately be anyways.
2: They did it on a Sunday. How many of you, who work 9-5 M-F jobs want to come in on Sunday too, especially until 11 or 12 at night? I know I would not, but (extra) PGI staff did. (And I thank them again for that.)

Whether this heightened responsiveness is merely a fluke related to Clans, or the turning of a new page in PGI-player relations, obviously remains to be seen- but the fact that it happened at all breathes a little hope for the future.
(And it was also a brilliant financial move, letting players go wild with the clan mechs on the PTS where they didn't have to worry about lasting effects on their account, to get the most enveloping experience with them. I know I saw a good number of people being tipped to buying clan mechs, or upgrading their existing packages after playing on the PTS. It was not even underhanded.)

Russ has been more responsive on twitter (which still irks me a little bit, that it is twitter) but with that, Nikolai is rapidly posting information onto the forums and keeping himself very busy ensuring that players are up-to-date. Kudos to Nikolai as well. If you venture down towards Milwaukee, I will buy you a coffee or beer, brother. (That offer extends to the other faces/staff of PGI.)

I hope they keep up this pace of communication and responsiveness from here on. (No, I do not expect PTS sessions on weekends, though they are wonderful. )

Given the overwhelming response to the clan PTS, even after months of watching the player-base slowly melt, I think players do still emphatically want to play this game and that CW will receive a similar explosion of activity.

It will be up to PGI to make it an overwhelming success story, but given how the clan PTS event(s) went and concurrent PGI-player relations, I no longer think it is a foregone conclusion.

[Tombstoner]

BoBo Jones, on 16 June 2014 - 03:47 AM, said:

** this is my thoughts and views about MWO from my own exspirience and those that i have talked to in game and on teamspeak servers. no hateing or trolling . just my conserns about the future of a game that i love to play more then any other game**

hi there fellow mechwarrior groups.

# a short history

i would like to take a moment to inform everyone in the commumity about the end of my group.
back when open beta first started , the devs were talking about all these things that they were going to do for community warfare and how great it was going to be. how many of you remember that video from the open beta festival they held in sanfransisco. where they stood up on stage and told the gathered community about the up coming community warfare and how it would be like , to roars and chears from the crowd. i for one remember how exsited this community was.
then as time went on the chears quieted down and players started waiting with antisipation. then it change to wonderment as to when this stuff would be ready.

and then nothing,

with the release of the phinix pack , the community exspected something to start happening as to community warfare. then there was a release of anger and frustration on the forums when instead of community warfare we got the start of the new clan mechs. that sucked so bad . the teamspeak servers were a wash with players complaining and worse.

now the point to this post , as a lot if not all players groups exspirienced over this time a drop in player numbers. old mech warrior fans and new ones alike , just stopped playing. angry , frustrated and bored with what was happening to this game and the lack of any kind of substence beyond the battlefield. i cant comment on P.U.G (yes i siad it "players un grouped") players . but the numbers of teamspeak players wishing to group up as a team , steaderly dropped off. the eu server began and is a desert to players. you still get a few players on there like nomads in deserts. but for the better part is empty.
me and my OTLWS group moved to the north american server. there was a time on there where 15 dropships was not enough space for the players wanting to group up , so they increased it to 30 dropships. thats how busy it was. then like the eu server numbers dropped away. now the north american teamspeak server is sparce on numbers to the exstent where it is going the same way as the eu server went.
and here is the point to this post. with this drop off on numbers , so has there been a drop off in clan/group numbers . every group i have talked to and with have all been the same on numbers dropping away. the player base is growing less and less . groups have got to the stage where they have had to join a forces just to get enough players so they can drop in 12 man groups. my group in question started out with myself and grew till its peak at 12 players and then started dropping away till now where we struggle to get a 4 man group together.
i have all manner of exscuses why these players no long play. but i get the true reason is that this game is heading into call of duty land. what i mean by this is that all there is to the game is drop into a match ....build mech ... drop another match . there is nothing more to the game then that. sometimes once or twice a year there is a new map. but for the most part there is only new mechs on offer for us to spend are real money on.
this is the call of duty effect . part joke , but i wouldnt be that surprised if mwo started chargeing money for new map packs.

well here we are with a devs blog 5 saying community warfare is coming , will it , realy , is it . as i see it this game is looseing hardcore mechs fans so fast that if there is anything such as a community warfare as the devs have mentioned , there will not be many left to play it.
i also get the fealing that this clan mech thing will go on for another year or more with more clan mechs release for sale , more weapon balenceing and more stuff that has no effect on the game(such as mech cockpit items) being made.
i dont see in the future any community warfare happening for at least a year and a half. by then who will be left but a handfull of diehards and P.U.G's.

some have said that community warfare is a myth , the true reason for MWO is just a big con by pgi to make money out of us . i dont want to , but there is a lot of evidence to this effect. since open beta whats new . a whole ton of mechs and a few new maps. ill not go into this more , you have to make your own mind up about this one.

i really care about this game . i haven't been involved like this in a game since call of duty modern warfare . i want it to be greater . i want it to be bigger , better , bader. but all i see is it dwindling and sign of this changeing in the future................. ??

So what is the name for your main?

This is obviously an alt account with an ax to grind,but with a few valid points.

yes it seems that mech sale are driving new mech development but that is a very small amount of dev resources. resources that cant be diverted to other areas.

It's simply that they lack the skill sets and are not interchangeable, think cardiologist vs. gastrointestinal.

NextGame, on 16 June 2014 - 05:05 AM, said:

Yeah because 2 years of community warfare coming soon™ and in 90 days and not actually being worked on until they got their Microsoft license renewed are great reasons to be brimming with confidence about it.

PGI's management are better business men then developers.

[CheeseThief]

Good thing their in management then where they can't do any harm.

[Livewyr]

Tombstoner, on 16 June 2014 - 05:14 AM, said:

So what is the name for your main?

This is obviously an alt account with an ax to grind,but with a few valid points.

That is his main.

[EDIT] Or at least an actively used accound. I have seen him in matches for quite a while now.

Edited by Livewyr, 16 June 2014 - 05:19 AM.

[kesmai]

From my point of view it is easy: as long as I am having fun, I play and pay them. Even if a lot of things are 'broken' and all the bugs this game has, I still have fun. Pugging. In a group, or even 12mans.
I'm not in the minmax, super competitive group of players (actually I suck ������), but I have fun.
sometimes I rant and rave about pgi's development style, but find myself logging in on a regular basis.

it is battletech. All the other mechs shooters out there can't compete and star citizen is light years away. So I stick to mwo.

did I say I have fun?

[Javin]

I used to drop with a regular crowd of 10 players. I am the last one left. I guess I am still hopelessly wishing for CW. But now with about 2/3 of IS going clan, the mythical CW will just be clan warfare. I do not blame the clan players. New, cooler mechs that are faster, better armed,, longer ranged, with better heat dispersal - whats not to like? IS mechs will disappear and only clan mechs will remain until IS mechs can use clan weapons.

Even with all this, I still have fun. I hope it can continue as outgunned as IS will be.

Edited by Javin, 16 June 2014 - 05:23 AM.

[Rhent]

Don't worry about the future of MWO, with how the clans are being implemented (DOT instead of FLD), we will all have our VTR-DS popsniper masters back in 1 month after the clan excitement wears off. Can't wait for the next official tournament to happen after clans to see 80% of the mechs be VTR-DS. The game is so well balanced now, glad I own a VTR-DS, best mech I've ever bought. I'm hyper glad that to be competitive I only have to have one play style.

[kesmai]

Yesterday there were about 20 guys of of our brigade on the pts. We did pms clan vs is. The inner sphere is not dead, nor are the old mechs obsolete.


out of the 4 matches I played yesterday the is won 3.

[Rhent]

kesmai, on 16 June 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

Yesterday there were about 20 guys of of our brigade on the pts. We did pms clan vs is. The inner sphere is not dead, nor are the old mechs obsolete.


out of the 4 matches I played yesterday the is won 3.

It's called FLD + Perfect Convergence, then add in JJ's for good measure and you'll see why clans blows.

[Ozric]

kesmai, on 16 June 2014 - 05:46 AM, said:

Yesterday there were about 20 guys of of our brigade on the pts. We did pms clan vs is. The inner sphere is not dead, nor are the old mechs obsolete.

I hope this turns out to be the case, I really do. If by this time next week everybody is still saying that all is well I will be quite happy to admit that I was fretting for nothing and for the next two months MWO will not be on the wrong side of the P2W divide.