65 replies to this topic

[Rebas Kradd]

OK, critics, this one's for you, and I mean it sincerely. Call this a research project. HPG regulars and supporters of the game, feel free to skip on to the next post. I'm actually interested in negative opinions for once (as long as they're respectfully submitted, PLEASE. I know this sort of thread is just asking for hate and K-Town, but maybe it can stay focused?).

I see voluminous complaints about how the game has disappointed, and I don't mean the delays of Community Warfare. I mean the surprise over the fact that MWO is nothing but a repetitive 12-vs-12 arena shooter. I won't deny that there's little more to the game than that right now. And from the frustration over it, there seems to have been an expectation otherwise, that there was supposed to be something more to the gameplay itself, other than CW, some other kind of model or environment to the gameplay perhaps.

Full disclosure: I wasn't around in Closed Beta, didn't start playing until the December after that.

So for the purposes of understanding the discontent better, I want to know what was promised by PGI OTHER than this repetitive shooter. Was this game supposed to be more than 12-vs-12 on a limited set of maps? Were we offered randomly generated terrain in our maps? Were we led to expect a persistent-state sandbox where you piloted your mechs anywhere on a Terra-sized planet and randomly encountered whoever else was there a la Star Wars: Galaxies or EVE Online?

Or, when people say "the gameplay hasn't evolved since 2012", is it just the delay of CW being spoken of?

What is missing from this glowing pitch of this game from 2010-2012, other than Community Warfare, that has people let down?

Feel free to post links from dev quotes. I am genuinely curious about this and welcome specific feedback from those who are discontent.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 18 June 2014 - 08:15 PM.

[cSand]

AHHH FORMATTING!!!!


sorry,

Edited by cSand, 18 June 2014 - 08:08 PM.

[Sandpit]

Oh boy!
This gon be gewd!

I'll do some digging for some links when I have time. In the meantime I'm just going to enjoy the view

ok so we'll start with this for what I'm sure will turn into a very lengthy list for me

sooooo


Progress as a whole
Citation:
http://mwomercs.com/...phere-feedback/

Quote

March 4 – DX11 – it has been complete essentially since the last Public test but we have waited to get the Christmas break and UI 2.0 behind us before releasing. Some further exploration into FPS concerns before release. It is possible upon release some will use DX 11 where others will stick with DX9 for frame rate concerns while we continue to optimize it.[/color]

March 18– Achievement System.

April 1-April 15 – Launch Module – in depth description already in a command chair post.


June 17 – Clan Invasion.

out of that list, which things form the original 2013 state of the inner sphere are actually 100% complete and/or even working well? (keep in mind these are 2013 "goals")
This is a good starting point. So in a year's time the only two things they've been able to achieve full functionality (or ANY functionality in the launch module's case) are "achievements" which equate to nothing more than a line of text and a badge and some xp or cbills and clan mechs?

This is one of my chief complaints. EVERYTHING in this game is half-assed or half-finished with the exception of monetized items and mechs. Every single time they announce a mech pack everything else gets shafted because it apparently takes an entire company a year to design a couple of dozen mechs.


here's the next thing I "expected"
MERC UNITS
http://mwomercs.com/...re-association/
so merc units have to spend hundreds of millions of cbills and now they can't play with the people in their unit if they have more than 4 on but less than a full 12? How exactly does this make sense to anyone?

So you must have 12 players and over 200 MILLION cbills but you can't play with them if you've got 5 on. Keep in mind that post was made in September 2013. yet another in a looooooooooooong list (which I'll be posting here) of stuff that was expected and has gone nowhere


MEDALLIONS
yet another thing I expected. I expected the faction medallions I purchased in my Phoenix Pack ONE YEAR AGO to actually be worth something by now


TUTORIALS
Ok here's another thing I expected to be implemented by now. Tutorials. 2 years of development and they can't get a robust tutorial together for new players in a game that has an extremely (and sometimes impeding to new players) learning curve? They can sure as hell implement phoenix and clan packs and a 40 second video that apparently took weeks if not months to develop but they can't get a tutorial together that actually helps new players? Gotcha

I'll be adding to this list as I have time to dig up links for citation purposes

Edited by Sandpit, 20 June 2014 - 08:33 AM.

[FupDup]

Sandpit, on 18 June 2014 - 08:11 PM, said:

Oh boy!
This gon be gewd!

I'll do some digging for some links when I have time. In the meantime I'm just going to enjoy the view

Obligatory:

[Rebas Kradd]

cSand, on 18 June 2014 - 08:08 PM, said:

AHHH FORMATTING!!!!


sorry,

Yeah, I copied it from reddit and it freaked out on me. Sorry.

[Fitzbattleaxe]

CW is the big one, of course. I like games to have a story, and CW was meant to provide that for MWO. You can have the best gameplay in the world, but I need something on top of that to keep me caring whether I win or lose any individual match. Other than that, I would probably have to point to role warfare as the biggest undelivered feature.

But then there are all the regressions, and that, I think is what really annoys a lot of people. This game was better in closed beta than it is today. The weapons were better balanced without resorting to nonsensical ghost heat mechanics, the hit detection wasn't great, but it made lights and mediums slightly more viable, and we had knockdowns which yes, could technically be abused, but I never experienced a match in which that happened. It was a really fun game, and I hope that someday it finds it's way back there.

[Roland]

Biggest problems with MWO which have driven away most of the mechwarrior fans I used to play with:

1) Inability to easily play as a group
2) Lack of any real underlying universe, economy, etc.
3) Poor weapons balance, with many weapons being consistently useless for years now, with very little response from the developers to repeated suggestions for their fix
4) Consistently broken promises and seemingly intentional misrepresentations of progress on important features
5) Consistent lack of respect and interest on the part of the developers towards their player base

The first one is probably the biggest, as the "temporary" 4 man limit which was instituted over a year ago made it very difficult to play as a group for many small units.

The second is related to community warfare, in that it's the lack of any kind of persistent universe. Indeed, we actually have LESS in this regard than we had in closed beta, where at least they had a notional system of repair and ammo costs. The system was by no means perfect, or even good, but its removal constituted removal of a layer of depth which is necessary for the game world to feel like more than just an arena shooter.


For those of us who played mechwarrior 4 in the planetary leagues for the better part of a decade, I believe that a reason why the disappointment is so staggering is that we already know that it COULD be done. For the most part, we actually implemented many of the elements of community warfare back in the early 00's with fairly simple php based websites... As amateurs... for free, in our spare time.

When we came to MWO, and funded the founders program (and make no mistake, there were thousands of us who hopped on board.. many, if not most of the top MWO players had a history back in those leagues), we expected that MWO was going to be a game like we played back in those leagues, but with all of the persistent world stuff hooked directly into the game.

And when we first joined, the future looked bright. Even back in closed beta, the game was largely what we have today. Honestly, many aspects were better. Things like graphical fidelity were clearly better at the time.

Repeatedly, we were told that things like community warfare was in development... and then later found out that it wasn't, but we were assured that it'd be "starting soon". This happened multiple times over the past 3 years.

And today we get almost exactly the same message.. that the first part of community warfare which will be entering development will be unit formation.

This was told to us in 2011.. and then again in 2012... and then again in 2013. I posted a more detailed timeline with specific links to all of those promises, but I don't feel like digging it up again. Maybe later.

The thing is, it's not simply missing deadlines which has so many folks so disillusioned... its the fact that they kept saying, "It's coming real soon!" only to have us later find out that when they made those promises they had to have known that they couldn't have possibly met them. They had to have known they were blowing smoke up our asses. And they did it anyway.

Man, I defended them for years.. literally years. It wasn't until said, "Yeah.. we can't figure out how to allow groups bigger than 4, so we're just not gonna do that." that I took off the gloves and just started laying into them. Because they lied to me and led me on for years... and I probably could have overlooked everything else, but not that. Because for me, mechwarrior has always been about playing with the guys in my unit. We played mechawarrior 4 together for ages, and we still play other games. We were looking forward to this game so much.. and that limit made the simple act of playing together such a pain in the ass that it just wasn't worth the effort for most of them.

With that single inability to simply try out suggestions of things like a solo queue and an unrestricted queue, PGI basically killed mechwarrior for a ton of small to mid size units.

[crossflip]

Rebas Kradd, on 18 June 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

"the gameplay hasn't evolved since 2012"

This here's my problem. I won't comment on the effectiveness of PGI's content delivery or the amount of actual content they put put out. What I don't like is their approach to developing the game. just look at anything that's old. Old mechs, old maps, old mechanics. They're all ****.

River city is too small for 12v12. Dragons and Awesomes are abysmal. Mechanics like ghost heat and the gauss charge-up are widely regarded as bandaid fixes that have stuck. There's innumerable tiny annoyances that have lingered from the past that add up. Raven leg hitboxes. Broken flamers and useless AC2s. A ****** UI that beeps more than Gordon Ramsay on a bad day. Hell, look at how long it took for them to fix SRMs.

This game is one big mass of scar tissue. PGI keeps piling on the hurt.

Aside from that though, if you look at the game itself the way you referred to it in your post, you're completely right.
MWO isn't lacking a vital component that would make it much better once added. CW would just be a colorful map and a bunch of discounts for davions and steiners. This latest patch wasn't an invasion, it was just a bunch of new mechs.

The problem is no one wants to believe that. The players need to think the game can still be added to because if not then their investment in it would be invalid. PGI wants players to keep thinking that because they want your money.

Truth is, MWO's already become all it ever could be, and now we're just beating a soon-to-be-dead horse.

Edited by crossflip, 18 June 2014 - 08:54 PM.

[Rebas Kradd]

Roland, on 18 June 2014 - 08:40 PM, said:

Biggest problems with MWO which have driven away most of the mechwarrior fans I used to play with:

1) Inability to easily play as a group
2) Lack of any real underlying universe, economy, etc.
3) Poor weapons balance, with many weapons being consistently useless for years now, with very little response from the developers to repeated suggestions for their fix
4) Consistently broken promises and seemingly intentional misrepresentations of progress on important features
5) Consistent lack of respect and interest on the part of the developers towards their player base

The first one is probably the biggest, as the "temporary" 4 man limit which was instituted over a year ago made it very difficult to play as a group for many small units.

The second is related to community warfare, in that it's the lack of any kind of persistent universe. Indeed, we actually have LESS in this regard than we had in closed beta, where at least they had a notional system of repair and ammo costs. The system was by no means perfect, or even good, but its removal constituted removal of a layer of depth which is necessary for the game world to feel like more than just an arena shooter.


For those of us who played mechwarrior 4 in the planetary leagues for the better part of a decade, I believe that a reason why the disappointment is so staggering is that we already know that it COULD be done. For the most part, we actually implemented many of the elements of community warfare back in the early 00's with fairly simple php based websites... As amateurs... for free, in our spare time.

When we came to MWO, and funded the founders program (and make no mistake, there were thousands of us who hopped on board.. many, if not most of the top MWO players had a history back in those leagues), we expected that MWO was going to be a game like we played back in those leagues, but with all of the persistent world stuff hooked directly into the game.

And when we first joined, the future looked bright. Even back in closed beta, the game was largely what we have today. Honestly, many aspects were better. Things like graphical fidelity were clearly better at the time.

Repeatedly, we were told that things like community warfare was in development... and then later found out that it wasn't, but we were assured that it'd be "starting soon". This happened multiple times over the past 3 years.

And today we get almost exactly the same message.. that the first part of community warfare which will be entering development will be unit formation.

This was told to us in 2011.. and then again in 2012... and then again in 2013. I posted a more detailed timeline with specific links to all of those promises, but I don't feel like digging it up again. Maybe later.

The thing is, it's not simply missing deadlines which has so many folks so disillusioned... its the fact that they kept saying, "It's coming real soon!" only to have us later find out that when they made those promises they had to have known that they couldn't have possibly met them. They had to have known they were blowing smoke up our asses. And they did it anyway.

Man, I defended them for years.. literally years. It wasn't until said, "Yeah.. we can't figure out how to allow groups bigger than 4, so we're just not gonna do that." that I took off the gloves and just started laying into them. Because they lied to me and led me on for years... and I probably could have overlooked everything else, but not that. Because for me, mechwarrior has always been about playing with the guys in my unit. We played mechawarrior 4 together for ages, and we still play other games. We were looking forward to this game so much.. and that limit made the simple act of playing together such a pain in the ass that it just wasn't worth the effort for most of them.

With that single inability to simply try out suggestions of things like a solo queue and an unrestricted queue, PGI basically killed mechwarrior for a ton of small to mid size units.

I've heard all that already. Seen it myself, called them out on it. Remember, I started December 2012.

What I'm asking for is what style of gameplay the players were promised directly by PGI, in detail, during Closed Beta. Not just what the players started filling in the blanks with as their hope took off. I realize that's a bit of a research project, but the constant refrain of "broken promises" seems to hint at some kind of PGI Holy Bible that they posted back in CB and which players literally and exegetically cling to. I'm wondering where it is.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 18 June 2014 - 09:03 PM.

[Roland]

Rebas Kradd, on 18 June 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

I've heard all that already. What I'm asking for is what style of gameplay the players were promised directly by PGI, in detail. Not just what the players started filling in the blanks with as their hope took off. I realize that's a bit of a research project, but I figured I'd finally get to the bottom of this.

Well, PGI promised directly that the 4 man limit was temporary (and it didn't exist at all originally). Being able to easily play with your friends is a pretty fundamental gameplay element.

Beyond that, in terms of other gameplay elements?

Again, folks who played mechwarrior 4 have a better idea of what mech battles CAN be... the maps were all HUGE compared to what we have in MWO... Many of them made Alpine look tiny by comparison.

This, coupled with a more interactive (and basically deeper) sensor model, facilitated much deeper tactical gameplay in no respawn games. Using active and passive sensor modes, and ECM and BAP were a critical element of that game, and yet were not nearly as disruptive to balance as what we've seen with ECM at many points in MWO's development.

Back in MW4, light mechs actually scouted... Finding the enemy force was actually something you had to work at... especially to spot them without being spotted, because there was no little red triangle that popped up over any mech within view.

It was further deepened by varying weather and sensor conditions... different times of day, rain/shine, light/heavy/pea-soup fog... electromagnetic storms which disabled radar...

The sensor model, compared with the environmental conditions, and the large maps enabled battles that took an hour to play out... with the teams engaging, disengaging, and re-engaging multiple times in some matches.

You never see anything approaching that level of complexity in MWO.

[Davers]

Role Warfare

[Toadkillerdog]

Rebas Kradd, on 18 June 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

I've heard all that already. What I'm asking for is what style of gameplay the players were promised directly by PGI, in detail. Not just what the players started filling in the blanks with as their hope took off. I realize that's a bit of a research project, but I figured I'd finally get to the bottom of this.

well, aside from the most obvious CW parts (such as all the faction bonuses from the phoenix mechs that still do absolutely nothing) you can go with the stall of any new maps, mechs, or weapons that don't have to be bought with actual money. There were many references to a map every 3 months, mech for cbills every month, we're now about 5 months in with no map and about to be 4-5 months with no new mechs at all. The first new weapons will be the clan ones, meaning we've gone almost two years with no new weapons of any sort, the only actual implementations I can think of in that entire time frame was ECM, BAP, ARTEMIS, and NARC, all kind of tied to eachother anyways. There's obviously the group size limit, but that's been mentioned several times by now.
I think the biggest one is the hilariously slow weapon balancing and fixing. I've tried to be patient, but there's only been two actual metas since closed beta, and a small collection of gimmicky builds. First there were the several LRM-ageddons, and then the almost eternal jump-snipers. I guess 6 PPC stalkers could be considered a meta, but they died out pretty quickly to be honest. The fact that there's very few and very slow balance tweaks when one single setup is the indisputable best with no viable counter stinks of either a lack of knowledge, or a lack of care. I know plenty of the PGI guys are low elos (as many times as they talk about running single heat sinks and meta-Trebs you know they are), but when you see a full lance of poptarts EVERY SINGLE GAME it's obviously not just a fad anymore. To be honest, since clans these are some of the first games I've had where there's not at least 4 poptarts between the two teams. I'm actually amazed when I see a Victor or a Cataphract 3d that's not meta, or a 4man that's not 3 victors and a cataphract, or a similar combination.
So, it pretty much boils down to a lack of any real balancing and a total drought of content that doesn't have to be bought with actual money.

[Tezcatli]

I don't expect much. Sorry PGI. But you guys have had to rebuild things a few times and as such major features are lacking. I just expect the usual balance changes, new hero, hopefully new mechs outside of packs. Oh and maps. Was really disappointing no new map for a while.

I think what would make the game more interesting is more objective based game modes. I don't really have any ideas atm. But anything that gives purpose outside of the usual death match. Would be really nice to softening the grind.

[Jez]

pinging the map
pre-formatted messages on hot-keys
re-equip button for consumables
5+ groups
at least 4 more maps than what we currently have
A new game mode aside from conquest and assault/skirmish
chat log
friending from in-game
DOCUMENTATION (jesus does this one piss me off)
acutal in-depth tutorials (what we currently have is a joke)
my personal fav - collisions and knockdowns

Honestly, a bunch of basic and standard stuff that you'd expect from any other multiplayer game

Edited by Jez, 18 June 2014 - 10:47 PM.

[-Natural Selection-]

Maps, group drops larger than 4 less than 12, maps, group drops larger than 4 less than 12.

Pretty much why our group hasn't been playing and the ones who do don't spend hardly anything.

[MadcatX]

Rebas Kradd, on 18 June 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

Or, when people say "the gameplay hasn't evolved since 2012", is it just the delay of CW being spoken of?

What is missing from this glowing pitch of this game from 2010-2012, other than Community Warfare, that has people let down?

This game's slogan from the very beginning was "A Thinking Man's Shooter".

In my opinion, it still lacks to deliver on the original slogan due to the design choices which led to the MW:O gameplay mechanics and the tactics (or lack thereof) and builds being employed as a result. Mind you there are many good players out there that do much more then the basics of not running off alone, pressing "r" and using cover, we are still lacking in-game tools, and the sole one we do have is hardly used, to quickly convey a strategy or change of strategy to the entire team.

[Rick Rawlings]

The lack of ambition. Any time an interesting option presents itself, PGI's default position seems to be to surrender in advance. This is a game that screams for assymetricality and tiered objectives and linked missions and what we have is geriatric Call of Duty...

[GreyGriffin]

Here's the original Dev blogs on the 4 pillars. I read them all before buying my Founder's package.

Community Warfare
Information Warfare
Role Warfare (Overview)
Role Warfare (Efficiencies and Modules)
'Mech Warfare (Core Gameplay)
'Mech Warfare (Mechlab)

Reading some of those you can understand how we Founders are consistently upset.

My personal bugaboos? The bastardization of the Module system (which was supposed to be one of the core elements of Role Warfare) into an air strike dispenser (and most recently a rich man's Radar Disrupter - funny how that module wasn't included in the Clan Packs). Then there's the ridiculous nature of ECM subbing in for the pillar of Information Warfare.

The binary, have/have not nature of ECM means that any sort of scouting is virtually useless, especially with gimped communication tools. Any sort of nuance in the implementation of this system would solve a huge number of problems with lock-only weapons, light 'mechs that lack ECM, and terrified PUGs.

The Battlegrid is also an abomination. They couldn't even manage to give the placed icons a degree of transparency to show terrain and layer them underneath the Battlemechs and the map grid, turning them into huge obstructions rather than useful coordination tools.

Efficiencies are also a sore point for me. The opportunity to create differentiated skill trees for each 'mech, allowing each to have unique traits that differentiated it was a big deal to me when I bought in. One of the big problems with mechwarrior games has always been that too-open customization has resulted in homogenized 'Mechs, and this part of the game is an enormous wasted opportunity to not only bring some variety in, but also create more balance in builds, and reinforce 'mechs traditional roles.

The abandonment of delayed convergence has basically ended 'Mech Warfare as a pillar, leaving us with gameplay that was State of the Art circa 2000, with jump snipers landing laser precise (ha, irony) PPC/Gauss. Any thought of implementing any sort of cone of fire to disperse damage is rudely shot down by people who claim it is a skill nerf without considering that marksmanship is not the only skill that should be rewarded.

The game's Free to Play economy is also an enormous drag. The high price of everything ingame, from paint to 'mechs to modules and efficiencies makes advancement a chore. It wouldn't be so bad if we were at least fighting for something, flying our flag and making a difference. But we're not talking about community warfare.

[Sean von Steinike]

Other than CW (which is huge....) I would say lobbies, MASC, Dropship mode, more comprehensive role warfare, more game modes and far more maps.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Rebas Kradd, on 18 June 2014 - 08:07 PM, said:

OK, critics, this one's for you, and I mean it sincerely. Call this a research project. HPG regulars and supporters of the game, feel free to skip on to the next post. I'm actually interested in negative opinions for once (as long as they're respectfully submitted, PLEASE. I know this sort of thread is just asking for hate and K-Town, but maybe it can stay focused?).

I see voluminous complaints about how the game has disappointed, and I don't mean the delays of Community Warfare. I mean the surprise over the fact that MWO is nothing but a repetitive 12-vs-12 arena shooter. I won't deny that there's little more to the game than that right now. And from the frustration over it, there seems to have been an expectation otherwise, that there was supposed to be something more to the gameplay itself, other than CW, some other kind of model or environment to the gameplay perhaps.

Full disclosure: I wasn't around in Closed Beta, didn't start playing until the December after that.

So for the purposes of understanding the discontent better, I want to know what was promised by PGI OTHER than this repetitive shooter. Was this game supposed to be more than 12-vs-12 on a limited set of maps? Were we offered randomly generated terrain in our maps? Were we led to expect a persistent-state sandbox where you piloted your mechs anywhere on a Terra-sized planet and randomly encountered whoever else was there a la Star Wars: Galaxies or EVE Online?

Or, when people say "the gameplay hasn't evolved since 2012", is it just the delay of CW being spoken of?

What is missing from this glowing pitch of this game from 2010-2012, other than Community Warfare, that has people let down?

Feel free to post links from dev quotes. I am genuinely curious about this and welcome specific feedback from those who are discontent.

Well, there are things I would like to see.
Since community warfare is one of the things offlimits here [and it's really the biggest pillar of the game we have yet to get.] My concerns are mostly small.

I'd like to see a form of Repair/Rearm hit the game, even in the form of a "hard core" side account type of thing, where those of us who want to strive for tougher matches can start out with say, the hero mechs, legendary mechs, ect.... all at stock on this alt format. And we start with, say, 1 million c-bills in the bank. From there, you fight matches, increase rewards for things like IS vs Clan kills, lighter mechs taking out heavier mechs, Assaults taking down lights [because that can be a very tough feat.] proper use of stripping weapons from others, ect. Make the fights matter, so that when we end up back in the mechlab, we can properly repair and rearm the mechs. Add a salvage mechanic where parts not blown off your kills can end up in your mechbay as repairable, giving you essentially a discount on the weapon.

Make it so that if you fire a heavily damaged weapon, it has a chance to disable itself from shorting out, or jamming or the like.

I just really want to see more dynamic things. MORE MAPS PLEASE. We need a forrest map, we need a swamp map, we need to take a look at the first 2 major maps [frozen city and forrest colony] and do an optimization pass and expand these maps a bit [Forrest Colony especially is NOT ment for 12v12.]

Give us Era based matches... let's have some 3025/3039 era matches, let's get stock configuration only matches. Let's get something like Solaris arena where you can wager C-bills on your matches and try to make even more.

Seriously there's tons of things we could do to expand this game, let's do it! MWO has almost infinate potential.