297 replies to this topic

[Malleus011]

Yep. After much analysis, it seems that this is all there is; lots of new flavors of Battlemech supported by the simplest and most basic gameplay systems PGI can create. The game is cheap and shallow, and simply isn't ever going to become what they said they wanted to do. No serious attempt to follow the lore of the licensed IP. No immersion at all. No character, no soul, just endless Deathmatch that may, someday in the distant future, apply to a star map of generic planets with no connection to the IP's background. If you're lucky, it might be more than just IS vs Clans.

But probably not.

That's why I haven't purchased anything for MWO since October 2013, but I have concierge service on another game which people don't want us to talk about, lest it place this one in an unflattering light.

Edited by Malleus011, 27 August 2014 - 07:26 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Quote

we never got said dropships, despite them supposedly coming in as mutators well before conquest, late 2012. Dropship mode was silently scrapped early 2013.

I had just assumed this was another feature delayed. Like DX 11, SLI/Crossfire etc etc.

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

now thats a long post

now about the 2012-2013 estimates, I could care less. It's happening this year, so why does anybody need to bother with estimates from 2 years ago about prediction releases.

What good comes from what could have been in the years past?

Because it could be entirely likely, it won't appear again?
I think people mean, the precedent has been set.

Position at the time scenario.

Forgiving them and moving on is all well and good, you give them licence to screw up again because you'll forgive them after the implement the next basic feature.

Edited by DV McKenna, 27 August 2014 - 07:29 AM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

DV McKenna, on 27 August 2014 - 07:28 AM, said:

I had just assumed this was another feature delayed. Like DX 11, SLI/Crossfire etc etc.



Because it could be entirely likely, it won't appear again?
I think people mean, the precedent has been set.

Position at the time scenario.

Forgiving them and moving on is all well and good, you give them licence to screw up again because you'll forgive them after the implement the next basic feature.

This isnt a forgive and forget thread. This is just what the road may look like when CW gets up and out of the way. Progress doesn't stop I would think. despite the feeling, the wheels have been moving forward. I would think.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 27 August 2014 - 07:34 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:22 AM, said:

now thats a long post

now about the 2012-2013 estimates, I could care less. It's happening this year, so why does anybody need to bother with estimates from 2 years ago about prediction releases.

What good comes from what could have been in the years past?

Because if you don't pay attention to history, you're bound to repeat it, or worse, stand idle by while someone else repeats it for you.

It's now 2014.

MWO was a great dream back in the day. It's still a fairly entertaining game, which is why many of us play it so much still, but it's never gonna be this awesome, galaxy-spanning battle arena, where you guide your dropships across the starmap like it were a giant chessboard, and you're the grandmaster taking on upstarts from outside the sphere.

We have many other games RIGHT NOW that are doing what MWO was claiming it wanted to do back in 2012 - as opposed to what it actually ended up doing.

I don't know if they'll get there, but we're not starved for old man friendly videogames anymore. Even fighting games have seen a HUGE revival since 2011-2012.

Now, people always ask me why I spend so much time and effort here, but it's for the franchise. It's for the community. Even for people like you, who assume I'm the ENEMY, because I don't believe in the grand illusion anymore. There was mechwarrior and battletech before PGI made MWO, and there will be battletech and MWO ten years from now, regardless of what happens to this game.

If they were to put real love and attention into it, and learned from their community, they could likely manage a utopia style revival, where we have a partial realization of the inner sphere dream, but two years in? Not gonna hold out much hope.

Which is yet another lie, because it took over two years for OMAC industries to fall apart, and from their ashes rose a mighty phoenix made of love for the ancient game and the developers themselves, and to this day, it still manages 7500~ players every age. Utopia, by the way, is a 1997 browser game with no graphics, and rules so hardcore they put EVE to shame.

What I'm saying is even if you lose MWO for whatever reason, people like me, and every other oldtimer on the forums, aren't gonna vanish. We've already populated several other games. It's like, man, we went on an exodus, taking our mighty fleets and armies of robots with us.

Edited by Vassago Rain, 27 August 2014 - 07:37 AM.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Rain, you are not the enemy.

I think, they have been bare bones and just have been working on getting it out. Like we seen with releases since UI 2.0, they don't come out fully functional but look at it now. Of course things like balancing are more subjective and not everyone is going to like it. I hate em, some love em.

As far as functional of the game, their is always room for improvement, nothing is perfect and things can be fixed.

As far as this thread goes, I just think that we are going to see better things after the initial releases of CW. No doubt it's coming and we got the first phase, so that is good. Soon the others will follow, but hiccups can be found along the way.

As far as improving the game, they have tied so much into making and releasing CW, and the core features this year. I think when things ease up we can start so see some more forward progress made. Even if CW is fleshed out but we cant really do anything because of lack of maps, at least we would have had CW.

Keep in mind every since the 90 days saying, and CW misses and promise this and promise that. As far as that goes, its over with, CW is hear, we got the first phase so the game should be picking up. Or at least its heading in the right direction. I dont see too much reason to believe otherwise or the game can not improve. For as much reason as you have someone will always say otherwise.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 27 August 2014 - 07:43 AM.

[Redshift2k5]

It's an ingredient, but a bag of sugar is not a cake.

A neccesary step, though! And one many will enjoy.

[Jacob Side]

I'm glad some people get it and try to explain it to Blood Wolf but guys just give up, his head is just way too dense, it will never make it to his brain

[Oderint dum Metuant]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:33 AM, said:

This isnt a forgive and forget thread. This is just what the road may look like when CW gets up and out of the way. Progress doesn't stop I would think. despite the feeling, the wheels have been moving forward. I would think.

You obviously missed Niko saying that not only were maps low priority because they don't make pgi $ but all work has to stop to create maps because it takes every department (allegedly)

[BLOOD WOLF]

DV McKenna, on 27 August 2014 - 07:41 AM, said:

You obviously missed Niko saying that not only were maps low priority because they don't make pgi $ but all work has to stop to create maps because it takes every department (allegedly)

I did catch that.

UI 2.0 doest make them money.

The launch module doest make them much money.

Clans made them alot!!

Association didn't make them much money.(Unless you count C-bills)

I don't know about phase 2 but I don't think it will cost anyone anything because they want to make sure everyone will be able to play.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 27 August 2014 - 07:47 AM.

[Deathlike]

DV McKenna, on 27 August 2014 - 07:41 AM, said:

You obviously missed Niko saying that not only were maps low priority because they don't make pgi $ but all work has to stop to create maps because it takes every department (allegedly)

Actually, the map making department are probably the same guys doing the models (not necessarily the camos/skins).

[Sarlic]

Vassago Rain, on 27 August 2014 - 07:16 AM, said:

No, it won't be, because the initial planned costs were based around battletech income - which is why you'd be making anywhere from 300k to 1 million a game, with paid repairs and ammunition, and different maintenance costs depending on mech class and tech used.

The deal was that you'd have your own little stable of robots, that you put in your dropship (that would hold anywhere from 4 to 12 robots, each dropship costing anywhere from 80 to 350 million each), and you'd be fighting over territory against other players, so you could assemble more robots cheaper/faster/steal better tech/etc.

All these players would, ideally, be formed up into guilds under one name or another, and guilds would form loose alliances. There would likely be resetting ladders to keep score.

There are a bunch of problems with everything here.

1) RnR was awful, and/or PGI didn't have the skill to implement a functional one. Scrapped november 2012.
2) we never got information warfare or role warfare. It's ECM warfare and module grind warfare now. 2014 dropships would be all the best and biggest ships, full of assault gundams, outfitted with tens of millions in modules and consumables.
3) we never got said dropships, despite them supposedly coming in as mutators well before conquest, late 2012. Dropship mode was silently scrapped early 2013.
4) modules are magical end-game content. Mechs, while expensive on their own, are costed like EVE online ships now, in that the robot will be X million, but you'll likely be using a much bigger c-bill value of models to power the truly good ones. Losing something like that would be a disastrous, completely unacceptable goal.
5) assets were initially supposed to be destructible.
6) 2011-2012 PGI were implying there'd be procedurally generated maps, which is another word for 'all battlefields and planets will be generated on the fly, and not need separate hand-crafted, expensive maps, that take a long time to build.' It is IMPOSSIBLE to do any kind of community warfare that won't turn into a snore fest with 10 maps.
6) consumables have ruined the old c-bill to item balance.
7) income is now down from -X to +200k on a solid win. This isn't enough to farm out hundred million dollar dropships, or outfit companies of mechs. If RnR was in effect, it wouldn't be enough to fix up damaged equipment or mechs.
8) PGI has obviously scrapped the entire old income model. We now make peanuts, and the atlas has been called 'the top-tier end-game avatar' by Paul and Bryan. It's meant to be better than the awesome, which is a mere low-tier assault avatar.
9) they're not gonna overhaul the entire game to fit old man dreams of being the most pro mercenaries in. It's not gonna happen. Not after they spent years getting us to where we are today.
10) MWO will never be the game you think it should be. It'll never live up to its 'potential.' It's a livelihood of Russ, Bryan, Paul, Niko, Mr. Berg, and partially NGNG guys like Phil and Bombadil. This is how they make their paycheck, and they're not gonna risk it when they're making money already. You're playing the finished product. It's a pretty solid, if shallow, F2P robot shooter, but it is what it is.









I'm sorry.

Conclusion: moneysink.

[Vassago Rain]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:45 AM, said:

I did catch that.

UI 2.0 doest make them money.

The launch module doest make them much money.

Clans made them alot!!

Association didn't make them much money.(Unless you count C-bills)

I don't know about phase 2 but I don't think it will cost anyone anything because they want to make sure everyone will be able to play.

What we have now is phase #2. Phase #1 was the launch module itself. You know, grouping up in bigger than 4 manz, paid lobbies, and so on.

Even PGI's forgotten this.

[BLOOD WOLF]

I guess, but the game doesn't force you to pay for anything. People used free will to buy clan mechs. People use free will to pay for MC. People also use free will in determine what they want to pay for. Now subscription games on the other hand, Force not Coerce you to pay to play.

There is no advantage to be gained in this game by paying for MC. I have 4000 and it doesn't do me much good in any regard, expect for private matches.

[Kell Commander]

Oh wow they essentially gave us the ability to form guilds. That is such a minuscule, and so far overdue addition I'm not even remotely excited.

Get an actual in game VOIP and then I'll get excited. Until then this is just them claiming to make deadlines while still delivering next to nothing.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Vassago Rain, on 27 August 2014 - 07:50 AM, said:

What we have now is phase #2. Phase #1 was the launch module itself. You know, grouping up in bigger than 4 manz, paid lobbies, and so on.

Even PGI's forgotten this.

I not sure about that. was launch module part of phase 1? I thought it was association.

Kell Commander, on 27 August 2014 - 07:51 AM, said:

Oh wow they essentially gave us the ability to form guilds. That is such a minuscule, and so far overdue addition I'm not even remotely excited.

Get an actual in game VOIP and then I'll get excited. Until then this is just them claiming to make deadlines while still delivering next to nothing.

And people were so excited to from units are you in a unit, that meant something to a lot of players. Also the unit chat feature is a nice touch.

Edited by BLOOD WOLF, 27 August 2014 - 07:55 AM.

[Deathlike]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

And people were so excited to from units are you in a unit, that meant something to a lot of players. Also the unit chat feature is a nice touch.

Actually, the ability to form units should have been available PRIOR TO LAUNCH. This should not have taken literally 1 year post-launch for a basic function that everyone is somewhat taking for granted.

Plus, the unit chat stuff is mostly "worked around" through the existence of TS... not that it isn't useful in game, but the majority of units use some form of voice chat that does that work and then some.

[Vassago Rain]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:50 AM, said:

I guess, but the game doesn't force you to pay for anything. People used free will to buy clan mechs. People use free will to pay for MC. People also use free will in determine what they want to pay for. Now subscription games on the other hand, Force not Coerce you to pay to play.

There is no advantage to be gained in this game by paying for MC. I have 4000 and it doesn't do me much good in any regard, expect for private matches.

That's not the point at all.

The way the game's structured simply prohibits the CW people have been imagining from ever happening, and this is how PGI wants it.

If your job was to make a F2P robot game, would you gamble what's already a break-even operation on a complete game overhaul to maybe kinda sorta appeal to a bunch of old players who are now heavily invested in other games, anyway?

I'd personally never do that.

[BLOOD WOLF]

Deathlike, on 27 August 2014 - 07:58 AM, said:

Actually, the ability to form units should have been available PRIOR TO LAUNCH. This should not have taken literally 1 year post-launch for a basic function that everyone is somewhat taking for granted.

Plus, the unit chat stuff is mostly "worked around" through the existence of TS... not that it isn't useful in game, but the majority of units use some form of voice chat that does that work and then some.

Just becuase it should have been added before launch, doesn't mean the addition now is any less

[Jacob Side]

I'm convinced that shiny bauble is all you need to keep Blood Wolf happy with the game, any real content would make his head explode.

Don't get me wrong it's good that they hit a deadline on something they said they were giving us but in reality it's a year late. 90 days after launch remember.

Shiny bauble doesn't work on the rest of us.

[Sarlic]

BLOOD WOLF, on 27 August 2014 - 07:52 AM, said:

I not sure about that. was launch module part of phase 1? I thought it was association.


And people were so excited to from units are you in a unit, that meant something to a lot of players. Also the unit chat feature is a nice touch.

Then were did all the Founders money go? Some on the license. But not on CW they promised back. They made milions with Founders money and the game is still not playable but they sure pump each patch another MC mech out...

Unacceptable.