93 replies to this topic

[Mechteric]

You don't build foundations on the top of a house (unless you are making a bunker?)

[BLOOD WOLF]

CapperDeluxe, on 11 July 2014 - 06:18 AM, said:

You don't build foundations on the top of a house (unless you are making a bunker?)

that does not make sense

I get that you can not build a foundation on top of a house. The foundation is where you build up from. What i do not get what the bunker is supposed to mean in relation to the foundation of a house. I know a bunker is made below ground and that can even be considered a foundation for something. Maybe I am missing something?

then again a foundation can start on the top of a house, it just depends on what is being built.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 11 July 2014 - 06:26 AM.

[Yukichi Fukuzawa]

Ok So first off I REALLY want CW....However my question is, how much money would CW make them? This means on paper. It would give them so much good will and keep a large amount of players happy, but thats not what I mean. When they talk with their publishers about money, how much will this make? That is the problem I Think...the economics of it. What was their incentive to make CW first? I am sure clans made them much more than CW would have (ignoring the happiness it would bring the player base, which would get them to spend more money.) Companies tend to be short sighted.

[BLOOD WOLF]

assuming that CW will cost anybody anything. Which I doubt because CW aims to incorporate everyone, and you can not do that if you have to pay for it.

[CaptainDeez]

Yukichi Fukuzawa, on 11 July 2014 - 06:44 AM, said:

Ok So first off I REALLY want CW....However my question is, how much money would CW make them? This means on paper. It would give them so much good will and keep a large amount of players happy, but thats not what I mean. When they talk with their publishers about money, how much will this make? That is the problem I Think...the economics of it. What was their incentive to make CW first? I am sure clans made them much more than CW would have (ignoring the happiness it would bring the player base, which would get them to spend more money.) Companies tend to be short sighted.

Making a fun games brings in players and money. That hasn't changed. Anything that keeps them playing increases the chances they will open their wallets. Mechs don't really require that much money to make, make a 3d mesh, copy and paste the code you're using for the mechs you made before. The clan mech thing is a one off, they can't just provide a new pack of uber weapons and mechs again or the community will start feeling milked. So at some point, they will have to use the money they made to create new maps and other content.

Or, they could cash out and ride their lambos into the sunset.

Edited by CaptainDeez, 11 July 2014 - 06:52 AM.

[CeeKay Boques]

CW is very very very very very late.

But y'all complained very very very much about Mech combat balance.

Clan Mechs look like they took a lot balancing.

PGI is very slow, but doing things in the right order. They must know now though, that Maps and CW are next. Hopefully we wont' see IS or Clan packs until then... but its PGI so...

[Thorn Hallis]

Technoviking, on 11 July 2014 - 07:00 AM, said:

Hopefully we wont' see IS or Clan packs until then... but its PGI so...

As long as it doesn't take resources away from the development of CW they can throw out as much 'Mechpacks as they want. At least for some, 'Mechs are the endgame.

[CeeKay Boques]

Thorn Hallis, on 11 July 2014 - 07:21 AM, said:

As long as it doesn't take resources away from the development of CW they can throw out as much 'Mechpacks as they want. At least for some, 'Mechs are the endgame.

True, and its probably two different teams. The "Make Mech team" probably just does that, and that only.

[stjobe]

cleghorn6, on 11 July 2014 - 05:44 AM, said:

Ok, so for those who have no idea about software development, what we have been playing these last 2 years is the "in progress" game. For a typical AAA title, we would not even know that this existed yet. We would perhaps be starting to get the first marketing "leaks" or "exclusives" at this point in development.

From what I understand, PGI spent a couple of years trying to get someone to fund that game, which is where the MW5 trailer came from. No one bought it. No one was willing to commit the 30 or 40 million dollars it would have cost to bring that game to market, if they cut it to the bone. Keeping in mind that CoD4 cost over 200 million to develop and market. And that was (pretty much) just updating the art and doing a search replace for 3 and 4. No significant engine development.

So PGI, probably against better judgement, decided that there WAS a market for a new Battletech game and by gum they were going to do it. They got IGP to commit 5 million, made a couple more from Founders and went FTP/MMO as a pricing model.

This is reasonably accurate (if a bit whitewashing - it was never "against better judgement", they thought they could make money), but I have to correct you on the Founder program. It made over 5 million dollars (and what they didn't tell anyone was that the lion's part of that went to IGP, not PGI).

I think many of the founders would have thought twice about funding MWO if we knew most of our money would go to funding Sins of a Dark Age and MechWarrior Tactics - I know that I for one have exactly zero interest in funding those.

And the spiel they gave was that they wanted to make a MechWarrior game as close to the TT rules as possible, a game with a solid foundation of four "core design pillars"; Mech Warfare, Role Warfare, Information Warfare, and Community Warfare.

When I started playing two years ago, we had 'Mech Warfare, and the others were supposedly under development. Two years later, we still only have 'Mech Warfare, and only Community Warfare is supposedly under development (after having been misled about that so many times, I won't believe it until I see it with my own eyes) - the other two are nowhere to be seen.

Should they have developed CW first? No, we can't fight without 'mechs. But they should have started CW two years ago, and we should be playing it now. They should NOT have lied to us about it being in development when it was not and they were waiting for the license to renew before doing much else than cranking out 'mechs and milking their player base for cash.

CW is overdue, way overdue. As are the other two core design pillars.

Edited by stjobe, 11 July 2014 - 08:08 AM.

[TLBFestus]

ArmandTulsen, on 11 July 2014 - 01:51 AM, said:

CW is supposed to be the foundation of the game, much like a building structure has foundations made and placed before anything else is built. That would have given rhyme and reason to all of these drops, and it would have given playing some purpose. It wouldn't have the Call of Duty team deathmatch + grind feel. Planetary control battles, with hundreds of maps. THAT would have been something great.

PGI should have built the infrastructure of the game first - CW - then added regular content. That would have bolstered the game and increased long-term potential revenue.

I know for a fact that I would have went from pure F2P to buying stuff.

Who's with me on this? Who thinks adding CW LAST hurts the game more than it helps it? Who thinks CW shouldn't be added first?

What are you talking about? It's standard practice in PGI la-la land to put up roofs, landscaping, and string electrical and plumbing before you build the foundation.

But in reality they had to make some cash before they could roll out CW "in 90 days". Unfortunately for us they discovered that they could achieve their goal (which is "make money as easily as possible) without even doing any of the stuff they initially drew us Founders in with.

Welcome to the island of "not the target audience".

Edited by TLBFestus, 11 July 2014 - 08:22 AM.

[ztac]

Apparently CW has allways been in the pipe, it just never got out the pipe .

Maybe it really will appear this year , or maybe next year! Or maybe the year after that!

Unless PGI are pressed they will just side step the second they think they can make money somewhere else. Now if they figure out how to make money from CW it will appear faster than the fastest , fast thing you ever did see!

[TLBFestus]

BLOOD WOLF, on 11 July 2014 - 03:41 AM, said:

Not to mention many players who like me had to basically play IS mechs for 2 years without seeing clan mechs or got into this game because they thought clans mechs would be here in a short amount of time. it's just a thought

There were an awful lot of things we as Founders thought would "be here in a short amount of time" and many of them had nothing to do with clan mechs arriving, so don't expect any sympathy from me or others for the inconvenience you have suffered. Clan mechs arriving was a money play pure and simple. Why put resources into things that don't generate revenue when you have people with short memories clambering for shiny things?

[kuangmk11]

If they developed CW first they would have lost the carrot leading everyone on. They can't deliver the CW most of you want, and its going to be a massive disappointment if it ever gets finished. I expect much QQ.

Just give us new maps.

[Karamarka]

BLOOD WOLF, on 11 July 2014 - 06:48 AM, said:

assuming that CW will cost anybody anything. Which I doubt because CW aims to incorporate everyone, and you can not do that if you have to pay for it.

Yep. I believe they would want everyone to join a faction, and than battle out for "faction planets" and gain loyalty points and influence for their faction. etc.

[Bryan Ekman]

I'll make one short comment. We developed the core mechanics first - Mech Warfare, which is everything to do with making the in-game match experience fun.

• Game Rules (BT/Weapons/Movement/etc etc)
  
• Game Modes
  
• MechLab (mech construction rules)
  
• 12v12
  
• Matchmaking
  
• Host State Rewind
  
• Networking Architecture
  
• A host of bug fixes/balancing/engine upgrades and optimizations to make the game playable on a wide variety of systems from pretty much anywhere in the world
  
• And plenty more...

I won't make excuses why CW took this long, there too many reasons. I'm sincerely sorry it's been delayed this long, and one day soon we will have an opportunity to give you deeper insight.



That being said... DEVLOG 6 will have some new information about CW's latest phase, one that people will be really excited about. I have also updated The Plan - www.mwomercs.com/theplan - with some new info and the latest map data.

[CeeKay Boques]

Bryan Ekman, on 11 July 2014 - 09:05 AM, said:

I'll make one short comment. We developed the core mechanics first - Mech Warfare, which is everything to do with making the in-game match experience fun.

• Game Rules (BT/Weapons/Movement/etc etc)
  
• Game Modes
  
• MechLab (mech construction rules)
  
• 12v12
  
• Matchmaking
  
• Host State Rewind
  
• Networking Architecture
  
• A host of bug fixes/balancing/engine upgrades and optimizations to make the game playable on a wide variety of systems from pretty much anywhere in the world
  
• And plenty more...

I won't make excuses why CW took this long, there too many reasons. I'm sincerely sorry it's been delayed this long, and one day soon we will have an opportunity to give you deeper insight.



That being said... DEVLOG 6 will have some new information about CW's latest phase, one that people will be really excited about. I have also updated The Plan - www.mwomercs.com/theplan - with some new info and the latest map data.

Freaking awesome. Thanks!

[Davers]

Bryan Ekman, on 11 July 2014 - 09:05 AM, said:

I'll make one short comment. We developed the core mechanics first - Mech Warfare, which is everything to do with making the in-game match experience fun.

• Game Rules (BT/Weapons/Movement/etc etc)
  
• Game Modes
  
• MechLab (mech construction rules)
  
• 12v12
  
• Matchmaking
  
• Host State Rewind
  
• Networking Architecture
  
• A host of bug fixes/balancing/engine upgrades and optimizations to make the game playable on a wide variety of systems from pretty much anywhere in the world
  
• And plenty more...

I won't make excuses why CW took this long, there too many reasons. I'm sincerely sorry it's been delayed this long, and one day soon we will have an opportunity to give you deeper insight.




That being said... DEVLOG 6 will have some new information about CW's latest phase, one that people will be really excited about. I have also updated The Plan - www.mwomercs.com/theplan - with some new info and the latest map data.

I just wish you guys would talk more about it. That's it.

[Fishhawk]

Bryan Ekman, on 11 July 2014 - 09:05 AM, said:

I'll make one short comment.

Thanks, Bryan, for coming into this thread and commenting on it.

[Mawai]

Just to add my 2 cents ... I disagree with the OP.

The mech combat aspects of the game had to come first. Without those it would be impossible to build any form of CW if you did not know what sorts of game elements you would have to work with. In addition, by creating the mech combat elements and making them generally fun to play they were able to leverage it as an on-going revenue stream that is hopefully used to fund continuing development.

That said ... PGI has been far less than upfront about the entire CW situation. For some reason when they make public statements that are either wrong, lies or wishful thinking ... someone seems to feel that it would be bad PR to own up to these errors and clear the air.

1) CW ... they finally admitted that they had not even started it until after they received their license extension. Even then it was still only more detailed design and not code. Hopefully we will get some idea of the current status based on Bryan's post above. However, keep in mind that a player's definition of what constitutes CW and PGI's may be very different. Russ's comment of "90 days after open beta" should be put on a T-shirt and sold to software engineers to remind managers to ask folks before making public comments.

2) "86% of players drop solo" ... Paul's command chair post statement based on some numbers. Many times folks have asked for clarification. He could at least just admit that the numbers were wrong or he made a mistake, The current split in solo and group queues probably would not work if this were actually true.

Lots of egregious communications issues over the life of the product so far ... hopefully they are working on it.


Finally, PGI received a lot of feedback during closed beta that the game needed more meta elements to keep folks interested and playing. The mech combat is loads of fun by itself ... but to keep customers opening their wallet ... an ever increasing number of mechs is just not sufficient. Players need reasons to play as well as game elements to encourage them to buy and master additional mechs.

These elements are:
- CW - still not in
- improved experience system - not in - that allows for a choice of efficiencies for each mech variant - 8 level 1, 4 level 2 and 1 level 3 is fine ... but customization of choice by making it 8 out of 32 choices, 4 out of 16 choices and 1 out of 4 ... would allow players to make each chassis unique ... tailored to specific roles or abilities. Having three variants of the same mech to reach master then makes more sense since each could be configured by pilot experience to somewhat different roles.
- support for competitive players ... leader boards and competitions ... they seem to have made a start on this one and private matches help out a lot.

[Praehotec8]

Perhaps CW should have been developed first, and perhaps not, but what is the point of discussing it now? You can't change what already happened, and the game is progressing so it is what it is. It makes no sense to stay angry about what DIDN'T happen.

I think PGI is a small company that has had its hands full making a game of this scope, and it seems like they have learned a lot in a relatively short time. Not everything is perfect and all of us absolutely want more, but at least what we have so far is fun.