93 replies to this topic

[ArmandTulsen]

Cion, on 12 July 2014 - 09:10 PM, said:

Personally, I believe development should have followed this route
1- basic battles
2- private lobbies
3- association
4- community warfare
5- formal competitive play (leaderboards, official tournaments and such)
6- Clan INVASION (clan mechs + community warfare component)

But hey, we got a Mechwarrior game, we didn't have one for a decade. I'm relatively happy (yes delayed and all) with how things are. It's a fun game and the PGI seems commited to keep going. They look like they are in for the long haul. (No, I'm no PGI lover, I just post my opinion)

Clans coming after CW is the most important point imo.

[Anjian]

Been with games that were designed with community warfare from the ground up. For example Chromehounds and the last two Armored Core games, all of which allows for map and territorial conquest.

CW in the scale implemented in those games resulted in some serious faults. Consider it as a social experiment.

1. Some really good squads are going to roll over less than great squads. Over and over again. Much of the decisive battles are fought by these few elite squads against each other.
2. The newbie/scrub experience is going to be awful. Squads of casual players are going to be roll overed, unless if they happen to meet each other.
3. The player base is going to be highly fragmented due to different factors, e.g. primetimes, etc,. Finding matches will be difficult and long. So are completing teams. Th result is that the games often resort in creating AI teammates to fill the blanks, or fight against AI teams.
4. It requires tons of maps (one game has 56).

It doesn't create an optimal match environment for casual players, whose numbers and wallets are going to be the ones subsidizing the game.

The priority of this game is simply to create the best, optimal match experience as possible. CW may not be aligned for such goals. I would rather see new maps and old bad maps removed or revised.

Edited by Anjian, 13 July 2014 - 08:22 PM.

[Fleeb the Mad]

ArmandTulsen, on 13 July 2014 - 03:26 PM, said:

Clans coming after CW is the most important point imo.

There could be a logical rationale behind the current development scheme. I think how willing people are to accept it depends on their satisfaction level. For example, people waiting for CW see implementing the Clans before CW as a cash grab. Given the package sales it could be true, but there's a flip side to it.

MWO was set in 3049, on the cusp of the invasion. The Clans were always intended to be part of the party, but just how much damage would it have done if CW was out the door and the Clans were thrown into the picture without much balancing? At the moment they are gathering a huge amount of data from gameplay that they will need to properly balance IS vs Clan fights.

However I don't think that's the full or necessarily correct story. As far as I understand it PGI actually did intend to do what they said originally. The problem from what the grapevine says is that due to issues with Cryengine, they couldn't just add CW on to the beta build as planned, rather it required significant rework before they could start to go forward. I think the time needed to get that done was time they didn't have, and they've relied on hero mechs and things like the phoenix pack as a means to keep players interested and keep money coming in while they've continued to work on it in the background.

But there's also of a vicious cycle to it. Spending effort to create short turnaround content to keep money coming in slows down the long-term goals by diverting resources. Hero mechs and stuff like the Phoenix pack didn't bring in any kind of new functionality or depth to the game. It's hard to argue they deserved to be brought in before CW or an official tournament system. So why?

I can only conclude it's because PGI hit a tipping point where they didn't have the money or the means to maintain a player base for the timeframe it would have taken to complete CW without any interim releases, and that's driven the priority of releases. I'm sure a lot of this could have been avoided if more of this work had been done up front, but given the state of the game when it was released to the founders, I don't think they had the money to spend another 6 months or a year in development.

[ArmandTulsen]

Damn, dude. If didn't know any better, I'd say that's insider info. lol

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Fleeb the Mad, on 13 July 2014 - 08:45 PM, said:

(an interesting perspective two posts up)

While your idea is plausible, I think it is deeper than just PGI ... or even IGP ... if you go back and read or watch the major milestone posts and videos, the Dec '13 "state of the inner sphere" and the launch party Community Warfare "reveal", for example, after U.I. 2.0, Community Warfare was supposed to be the "next big thing", and right around the corner. If they were planning to release Clan 'Mechs (after a six month pre-order period, and four-five months to release them for C-Bills) before CW, and they knew U.I. 2.0 would take as long as it did to implement, I don't think they would have said the things they did.

I believe that they honestly did want to start serious work on CW last fall, but got their resources diverted in order to keep the license. They had to do something that would bring in a few more million dollars and demonstrate the passion of the devoted fan base to MicroSoft. The only thing that could do that in a time frame that would make a small army of accountants and lawyers happy was selling clan 'mechs (for a ridiculous price).

As I said before, I wish it had been different. I would have preferred for a few months of the IS houses tearing each other apart before revealing the clan 'mechs, and I would have marketed it completely differently.

However, this is the game we have, and it's a good game with the potential to be great, in another year or so.

Edited by Kageru Ikazuchi, 14 July 2014 - 01:21 AM.

[Fleeb the Mad]

While the memory's a bit distant, the bits about Cryengine stem from something a few of us found on the dark depths of the internet that I would have difficulty finding again. Very much second or third-hand information, though also more specific than my generalities here. Despite that I do believe that much of the delay of new features from the early days stems from actual programming difficulties and they've been, however you want to phrase it, stalling for time and money in order to finish it.

New mechs and different variants could be included in the working product they had without much difficulty, so it makes sense to me they just kept on rolling with that. Clan mechs actually required a reworking of parts of the mechlab because they function differently. I'm seeing a pattern in the implementation of stuff in order of increasing change/complexity with what they had to do within the backend and the UI.

Though I have to admit the politics between the various entities has to play into it somewhere too. That ties into the finances behind the development of MWO, and ultimately I think has to be the biggest reason behind the priorities. Even if it's several layers deep in the chain of corporations, the developer needs to money from somewhere to keep the doors open. It's entirely possible they needed to justify to someone else that the game could still generate an income stream.

I personally don't really believe MWO is a cash grab. There are too many little flourishes in the game that someone only concerned with the bottom line wouldn't have bothered with. Things like mech appearance changing with loadout, the startup animations, missile door indicators. Cockpit glass effects. I'd find it hard to justify those sorts of things actually making revenue for PGI, they're just cool from an immersion standpoint. So if they're spending effort to make the game niftier in ways that don't necessarily translate directly to money, it's hard to argue money's all they're after.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Fleeb the Mad, on 14 July 2014 - 07:53 PM, said:

I personally don't really believe MWO is a cash grab.

This, I absolutely agree with ... I believe that PGI is passionate about making a great MechWarrior game, they just ran into more problems, issues, and outside priorities than they expected.

[Anjian]

Fleeb the Mad, on 14 July 2014 - 07:53 PM, said:

While the memory's a bit distant, the bits about Cryengine stem from something a few of us found on the dark depths of the internet that I would have difficulty finding again. Very much second or third-hand information, though also more specific than my generalities here. Despite that I do believe that much of the delay of new features from the early days stems from actual programming difficulties and they've been, however you want to phrase it, stalling for time and money in order to finish it.

New mechs and different variants could be included in the working product they had without much difficulty, so it makes sense to me they just kept on rolling with that. Clan mechs actually required a reworking of parts of the mechlab because they function differently. I'm seeing a pattern in the implementation of stuff in order of increasing change/complexity with what they had to do within the backend and the UI.

Though I have to admit the politics between the various entities has to play into it somewhere too. That ties into the finances behind the development of MWO, and ultimately I think has to be the biggest reason behind the priorities. Even if it's several layers deep in the chain of corporations, the developer needs to money from somewhere to keep the doors open. It's entirely possible they needed to justify to someone else that the game could still generate an income stream.

I personally don't really believe MWO is a cash grab. There are too many little flourishes in the game that someone only concerned with the bottom line wouldn't have bothered with. Things like mech appearance changing with loadout, the startup animations, missile door indicators. Cockpit glass effects. I'd find it hard to justify those sorts of things actually making revenue for PGI, they're just cool from an immersion standpoint. So if they're spending effort to make the game niftier in ways that don't necessarily translate directly to money, it's hard to argue money's all they're after.

The main problem with MWO, and people don't seem to notice this, is that it does not have much of a micro transaction economy. Means not enough people are buying consumables, premium mechs, premium time, camos, items and so on, that MWO has to resort to larger scale transactions (Project Phoenix, Saber and Clan packs) to make ends meet. This comes from the large pools of credits players can accumulate and that EXP has less value on this game and also accumulates large surpluses. Both results from two previous decisions PGI made for the player base, the first being there is no repair cost for the mechs and the second there is no research exp requirement to gain new mechs and weapons. In other games, these mechanisms would force players to buy more premium time or spend more in gold to silver conversions (MC to CB here).

But since the cat is out of the bag and you can't change this anymore, expect more packs and sets to come.

[Green Mamba]

Anjian, on 15 July 2014 - 01:00 AM, said:

The main problem with MWO, and people don't seem to notice this, is that it does not have much of a micro transaction economy. Means not enough people are buying consumables, premium mechs, premium time, camos, items and so on, that MWO has to resort to larger scale transactions (Project Phoenix, Saber and Clan packs) to make ends meet. This comes from the large pools of credits players can accumulate and that EXP has less value on this game and also accumulates large surpluses. Both results from two previous decisions PGI made for the player base, the first being there is no repair cost for the mechs and the second there is no research exp requirement to gain new mechs and weapons. In other games, these mechanisms would force players to buy more premium time or spend more in gold to silver conversions (MC to CB here).

But since the cat is out of the bag and you can't change this anymore, expect more packs and sets to come.

Everything they have is priced high including Paints and Camos. There is nothing priced fairly reasonable except maybe the Mechbays when you consider how important they are

[Mudhutwarrior]

CW... lol

[AlexEss]

I am pretty sure the plan was to have CW ready shortly after BETA. But that did not happen and seeing that they had less time to build the game, launch the game and make it profitable then most studios have to make a game (due to the short term license from Microsoft, it has now been extended by a few years) They had to create a lot of buzz and then get a playable game out as fast is it could be done. Hence the MVP release and the somewhat over enthusiastic original roadmap.

Buuuuut.... Here is the deal.... It is completely inconsequential, because that time can not be had back and all we really can do now is look forward and either put our faith in the team or take our business elsewhere. Because unless someone have a TARDIS tucked down their pants... We are stuck in this road for better or for worse.

And think of it this way, had they started with CW maybe this game would have ended up like CCP´s World of Darkness... And i rather have what we ahve no then have it suffer that fate.

No one is asking you black knights to trust PGI. But painting scenarios of what could have been is best saved for comic books and fiction novels,

[Zolaz]

Hey Paul addressed this matter already. He was under the impression that you wanted a game you could play before you wanted interstellar battles over planets.

[CeeKay Boques]

Zolaz, on 15 July 2014 - 06:42 AM, said:

Hey Paul addressed this matter already. He was under the impression that you wanted a game you could play before you wanted interstellar battles over planets.

Very true. But we all assumed it was taking sooooooo freaking long because they were simultaneously doing CW, AS THE YEARS WENT BY we found out they were just slow as hell.

[S13gtastic]

Davers, on 11 July 2014 - 09:53 AM, said:

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

That's my stand on a lot of MWO as well. Just talk to us, could be about the new Atlas-Nyann Neko Variant for all I care just some communication.