32 replies to this topic

[Hobo Dan]

Greetings pilots, Hobo Dan here. You probably best know me for sleeping under your used newspapers and begging for small C-Bill donations, but I’m here today to report on the things overheard while being ignored by society.

So, there was some sort of “Town Hall” meeting yesterday. They held it on Twitch.tv, maybe you heard. I was able to watch on an iPad I “borrowed” from old lady that fell asleep waiting for the bus. At least I think she was only asleep. Russ Bullock was the guest speaker and I must say he did an admiral job answering the almost three hours of questions. I was impressed for the most part by his honest answers but wanted to cover a few points.

First, it was pretty obvious to this hobo that he badly did not want to throw IGP under the proverbial bus. I completely understand his stance here. Burning bridges is rarely the right move. That said, I got a very real feeling that he was holding back and there is more to the break from IGP that we will probably never know. Maybe that’s me hoping some of the more boneheaded moves of recent history were on IGP and not PGI. Glass half full.

It was very nice to hear him address the community concerns of the new game by PGI and at this point, I find no good reason to think he is lying to us. Clearly, the impetus is on MWO to perform in order to continue to receive continued support. Businesses must expand or die. No argument there.

Community Warfare will be here before the end of 2014, I’m calling it now. If I am wrong, I’ll outfit a Locust with one Small Laser and no leg armor and only drop in that mech for the entire month of January. I know Russ made it sound like it will be even sooner, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. They have a clear idea of what they want to do and it sounds pretty fun. Looking forward to Paul’s more detailed post.

I won’t spend too much time on the new maps because we already knew about them (industrial city and swamp). However, it is great to see their stance on community driven maps changing. I say release the assets and let the community go wild. Have a submission contest and let the community vote of the best idea. Then PGI can take that idea and polish it.

The solution for match making is the most common sense approach to fix the problem I have heard from PGI. If you didn’t listen in, he suggested making the option to choose game mode a soft choice (meaning if you get out voted by others in the MM queue, you may still drop in a mode you don’t want) but in return he suggested giving players to ability to choose the map preferences. If we as a community buck this suggestion, shame on us.

There is a new Clan pack coming with 4(5) new chassis. I would only like to echo Sean Lang and say that Founders would appreciate some rewards. I’ve bought into Founders, Phoenix, and Clan pack one, is giving those who have bought in at every level a free chassis as a reward so bad? I say it is not.

For some non-Town Hall news. Patch today will have a Griffon Hero and at long last a toggle for AMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s all for now. Can anyone float me some c-bills for lunch? I just need enough for a can of SPAM and three beers.

Sincerely, Hobo Dan

[Hobo Dan]

Oh and how could I forget?

#freeCN9-AH

[PANZERKAT]

Messing with maps means longer wait ques. Pretty sure that's not a good idea.

[Hobo Dan]

KOMMISSAR KITTY, on 09 September 2014 - 06:36 AM, said:

Messing with maps means longer wait ques. Pretty sure that's not a good idea.

Not sure I agree. As I understood his explanation, we wouldn’t be directly choosing maps, we would simply make our preferences known and the server would weigh the random map roll accordingly. I see no extra wait times there.

[PANZERKAT]

Well that makes more sense.

That's something that should be locked into premium status. I know some people wouldn't like that, but I was always saying that is needs more value and there isn't much to be done with it.

[Screech]

Thanks for the write-up.

I will disagree regarding the MM though. The proposed change mention would just mean playing more games that I have no interest in on a much smaller pool of maps. Seems like a lose/lose to me. If changes are needed in this regard I would rather they limit the opt-out of modes to one and leave the map selection random.

[Hobo Dan]

KOMMISSAR KITTY, on 09 September 2014 - 06:42 AM, said:

Well that makes more sense.

That's something that should be locked into premium status. I know some people wouldn't like that, but I was always saying that is needs more value and there isn't much to be done with it.

I would not oppose using premium time for map preference. They need to sweeten the pot on premium time so all of us sitting on months worth of it will use it. Russ spoke to that as well. Using banked time by the month instead of all at once is coming.

[CygnusX7]

10/10 would read again.

[Heffay]

Hobo Dan, on 09 September 2014 - 06:35 AM, said:

Oh and how could I forget?

#freeCN9-AH

I missed this. What's this all aboot?

[Hobo Dan]

Heffay, on 09 September 2014 - 07:08 AM, said:

I missed this. What's this all aboot?

The desire for the often overlooked but never forgotten in the hearts of those who loved it, CN9-AH variant to be returned to the game after its egregious removal all those years ago...

[Seeker Kirov]

Hobo Dan, on 09 September 2014 - 06:28 AM, said:

Community Warfare will be here before the end of 2014, I’m calling it now. If I am wrong, I’ll outfit a Locust with one Small Laser and no leg armor and only drop in that mech for the entire month of January.

I hope they delay it to January '15 just so I can hear about this.

[N a p e s]

I was only there for about a third of the twitch stream and it was mostly towards the end but it was interesting.

Just gonna keep looking forward, hoping for some nice progress and some fun times. January seems like it could be an exciting time with CW being released and new projects/objectives on the table for PGI.

I would like to see some sort of mandatory community poll to determine what development options will be made priorities at that time. That way no one will complain about not having voted.

[Torgun]

The only reason we'd be forced to drop in game modes that we don't want to can only mean there's a game mode that hardly any want to play anyway. Wouldn't it just make sense to remove or improve said game mode so people would want to drop there instead of forcing people to play it? Getting paid peanuts while working to fullfill one of the main options to win in Conquest is just going full "retort".

[Jacob Side]

Making the choice of game type " soft" is a terrible choice. I don't play conquest, I have unit mates that hate conquest also.
Making the choice soft is like having a limp tool why bother having it.

[Murphy7]

Hobo Dan, on 09 September 2014 - 07:10 AM, said:

The desire for the often overlooked but never forgotten in the hearts of those who loved it, CN9-AH variant to be returned to the game after its egregious removal all those years ago...

It "disappeared" shortly before the introduction of the Yen-Lo-Wang. Prior to that, CN9-AH was the only mech that could field an AC/20 in the arm, and its hardpoints were 3 missile in the LT and 2 ballistic in the right arm. It was a glorious beast, gone to mythology like the unicorn.

For added hilarity, mech XP advancement had been wiped, and there were only two Centurions available for C-bills while the CN9-D was developing in the wings. This put the chassis in the same boat as the Jenners for those without a Founder's Jenner, if I am remembering correctly.

[VanillaG]

Torgun, on 09 September 2014 - 07:43 AM, said:

The only reason we'd be forced to drop in game modes that we don't want to can only mean there's a game mode that hardly any want to play anyway. Wouldn't it just make sense to remove or improve said game mode so people would want to drop there instead of forcing people to play it? Getting paid peanuts while working to fullfill one of the main options to win in Conquest is just going full "retort".

As it was explained, there are some groups that want to only 1 game mode. The example that was given was 2 12 man teams that have similar ELO but only wants to play Conquest and the other only Skirmish. They have to throw that match away because of the hard limits and then fill each match with "worse" options that result in "MM sucks!" kind of complaints.

The change would match the two teams and their preferences would be set to a vote system instead of a hard lock for the game mode.

[Torgun]

VanillaG, on 09 September 2014 - 07:59 AM, said:

As it was explained, there are some groups that want to only 1 game mode. The example that was given was 2 12 man teams that have similar ELO but only wants to play Conquest and the other only Skirmish. They have to throw that match away because of the hard limits and then fill each match with "worse" options that result in "MM sucks!" kind of complaints.

The change would match the two teams and their preferences would be set to a vote system instead of a hard lock for the game mode.

I still think the main problem is there is one game mode that is a lot less popular and that mode is Conquest. You can only get paid peanuts so many matches until you say fugedabaudit and play the other modes where you can raise CBills so much faster for your second variant of the mech you're working on.

[Hobo Dan]

Jacob Side, on 09 September 2014 - 07:57 AM, said:

Making the choice of game type " soft" is a terrible choice. I don't play conquest, I have unit mates that hate conquest also.
Making the choice soft is like having a limp tool why bother having it.

So you would rather play stomp after stomp of Skirmish than a competitive Conquest every now and then when the MM is forced to place you there against your preferences ?

[Almeras]

everyone hates Terra Thermal but I like it . I hope they limit players to one map to bump off or people will go for only cold/brawl map rotations and optimising their loadouts.

for me I'd just pick river city night just because of its reverse darkness, maybe colony because of that horrid mud filter.

Edited by Almeras, 09 September 2014 - 08:18 AM.

[Murphy7]

Almeras, on 09 September 2014 - 08:08 AM, said:

for me I'd just pick river city night just because of its reverse darkness, maybe colony because of that horrid mud filter.

Yeah, I would pay MCs / Premium Time to avoid River City Night completely, or at least until they give us some other color options on night vision, since the green/red hud scheme is a bit of a blind spot for me, really.