68 replies to this topic

[Pika]

Bongfu, on 11 September 2014 - 04:24 PM, said:

Though low player turn it could also be because of a low population count that still plays.

I really don't want to derail this thread but I feel this needs to be said.

Your signature implies you should have already left. It implies you no longer care at all about the direction MWO is taking or will take in the future on any level. Your follow up post about player numbers is a direct attempt to stir the pot, as it were.

You're here not for answers. You're here not because you want to engage in a healthy discussion with any of the developers. You're here because he has shown himself publically and you're going to use another thread to hurl abuse at someone who, every time they attempt to engage, is shouted down by people who seem awfully keen to advertise how they're "Really leaving his time! Honest!"

Please, don't do this again to another thread. I recommend you make your own thread asking for sensible, balanced and level headed discussion.

Thanks.

Edited by Pika, 11 September 2014 - 04:51 PM.

[StillRadioactive]

That doesn't even touch on the fact that it's not correct. There was a guy on reddit who did some massive datamining, using screenshots sent to him by other people to compile KDRs and WLRs for various 'mechs.

He reported over 18,000 unique player IDs.

[NARCoMAN]

Bishop Steiner, on 11 September 2014 - 03:45 PM, said:

realities in the business world, and when developing product, is depending on needs, and market, nothing can be given as a 100%. (And yeah, I was pretty rabid about 3pV too)

Realities in he business world? They're not a multinational assessing quarterly market values of commodities in response to consumer demand. It's an independent game studio whom now has full creative control of workflow for their product. Their market is people who like or would be otherwise interested in battletech/mechwarrior that have money to spend

They said, 100%, that you would never have to play with anyone in 3pv, ever, period. So talk to them about realities, I'm not the one.

He's the co-owner of the company that no longer has a publisher dictating things. All I asked was no more "maybe we won't say something is sure and then lie about it and do something we said we wouldn't anyway". That doesn't get dictated by the business world, as there was enough of a player base to spend five million sight-unseen before whoever-is/was-to-blame "made" them pull a 2013 on us.

I can appreciate that you were also miffed about 3pv, but I still see a similar scenario as a possibility. I guess I am a cynic, but in my field, you use evidence-based practice to make decisions, and their track record is abysmal.

God bless.

Side note: Russ also just half-admitted the story about his son was made-up, and it was this evil publisher who pressured them to do 3rd person.

[Bongfu]

Pika, on 11 September 2014 - 04:48 PM, said:

I really don't want to derail this thread but I feel this needs to be said.

Your signature implies you should have already left. It implies you no longer care at all about the direction MWO is taking or will take in the future on any level. Your follow up post about player numbers is a direct attempt to stir the pot, as it were.

You're here not for answers. You're here not because you want to engage in a healthy discussion with any of the developers. You're here because he has shown himself publically and you're going to use another thread to hurl abuse at someone who, every time they attempt to engage, is shouted down by people who seem awfully keen to advertise how they're "Really leaving his time! Honest!"

Please, don't do this again to another thread. I recommend you make your own thread asking for sensible, balanced and level headed discussion.

Thanks.

My signature implies that Clan Diamond Shark has moved to MWO. That is because the direction the company took killed the game for my clan mates. I, along with very few others, are still die-hard Battletech/Mechwarrior fans. So before you make inferences, please us some common sense. The fact that I still claim to belong to a Battletech Clan (a not very popular one imo) speaks more about my weight in this argument than you seem to think.

That aside, I was simply pointing out that the low population in the Public Test is probably a direct correlation to the low population of the MWO community that still plays.

That said, I think the idea that Russ the and other player discussed is great, but too little too late. That won't bring people back to this game and that was the point I was trying to make. That should have been something done a long time ago, a long with a lot of other things.

Adults need to bring up serious facts when discussing said issues. Fact is, this game as a very low population compared to what estimates were two years ago. That doesn't mean people got bored and moved on, that means something happened to drive them away.

StillRadioactive, on 11 September 2014 - 04:56 PM, said:

That doesn't even touch on the fact that it's not correct. There was a guy on reddit who did some massive datamining, using screenshots sent to him by other people to compile KDRs and WLRs for various 'mechs.

He reported over 18,000 unique player IDs.

I seemed to have lost my bookmarks of this, but I will post them later if I find them to back you up. I do find it odd that PGI refuses to release numbers. I take it as a sign that they want to hide the ugly truth from their customers.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is even smaller now, since that was several months ago.

[StillRadioactive]

I don't think you can infer that 18,000 is the player total, or anywhere close to it. That's just the number of people who were in matches with his specific subset of contributors. The real player tally is likely much, much higher.

[sokitumi]

OP, you make total sense but these guys are simply lazy entitled and/or just unqualified. Most of the leads have a grand total of 1 game of battletech and little passion for it, and it shows. I'm betting they'd just rather be out on their shiny new boats we bought them than actually making this game. You really think each team lead will burn 2hours a week on CR?

I listened to about an hour of Russ's town hall before my eyes just couldn't roll back into my head any further. 'Good progress' is apparently that terribad UI2, hitbox 'fixes' (to original sloppy/rushed mech work?), 12v12, mech-scammy-packs, some (pretty poorly made) maps, and polishing? And this paltry amount after seriously slow development in the preceding years, whilst consistently saying 90days for the goods - always well-timed with said mech-pak promos. This isn't marketing, this is dishonesty.

Then we have Russ repeatedly not blaming IGP but then actually foisting the blame on "compromises" with them. While probably true, this is just pathetic. When you're captain of the ship, you're captain. Every problem on your ship as captain is ultimately your responsibility to remedy or to take blame for... while your ship sinks. It's that simple.

At this point for the game to survive, with this history and reputation, they'll need to create revenue by actually raising the prices of mechs etc. To go the way they should have from the beginning, cheap prices to get buy-in-commitment and produce an economy of scale - would be suicide, because the pool of players remaining is very small compared to 2012. The beta had about 2k - 5k at any time, I doubt it's anywhere near that amount today.

Now they think they can start a 2nd game, basically a generic space sim (with arguably plagiarized assets), after they failed to get the rights to Wing Commander (thank god that didn't happen). All i can ask is: What planet are they on? Sure lots of companies handle multiple titles, but it helps if at least one of them is successful.

2012 I had hope.
2013 Hope mutated into skepticism, then into contempt.
2014 February - simply gave up on the game completely.
2014 After this Transverse reveal, I have pity, and a fair amount of shame for that gold tag to the left.

As always I REALLY hope I'm wrong about this all, and somehow this team pulls a rabbit out of it's hat. Just for the sake of the IP, but also for you people that still somehow believe. Whether that's the case or not I will not be re-installing this game ever again. Nor will I ever invest in a single pipe dream from this studio nor any studio which hires any of these leads for a management position from the inevitable(imo) ashes of PGI.

Good luck, you're gonna need it.

Why am I even here posting this you may ask. And that's fair and I probably shouldn't as i have no dog in this race anymore. I think just the shock and awe of this transverse fiasco has brought up a well of frustration with these people. Retrospect? Catharsis? Whatev's

Edited by sokitumi, 11 September 2014 - 06:24 PM.

[MischiefSC]

This is a lot of professional, well written and we'll considered ideas. I'd love to see more of this.

The irony is that I dropped in a match with the op after a long day during a tournament weekend of watching people sandbag and killsteal all day I misinterpreted how he played and flipped him **** in chat. Then I find out the next day that we have a bunch of friends in common and we end up dropping in group together and it becomes clear that I was wrong, and an *******.

This I excellent advice. Regardless of what PGI does we could do worse as a community than to take it to heart.

[ArmyOfWon]

Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

I appreciate your recognizing that in 2014 we have met all of our deadlines, I would love if that sentiment spread throughout the community.

I think the community as a whole IS recognizing that you're making deadlines now, but your past behavior is still not completely excused. You've missed too many deadlines, sidelined too many concerns at the expense of development of the game as a whole. (Note: This may not be entirely your fault! I do believe that IGP pushed for launch way too soon and that set you back much farther than expected. But YOU are the face of the game, not IGP, so you face the price)

It will be slow, it won't be easy, but you are starting to regain the trust of the community. Once you hit all of the deadlines for the features and content you've missed out (Read: Community Warfare, Smurfy-style mechlab, improved UI) then you will have reached a state of neutrality, something to build off.

And I eagerly await that day, Russ.

[Tezcatli]

Technically aren't you paying for the goods they're giving you? When you buy a hero mech, you're not doing it out of the goodness of your heart, you're doing it for the boost and whatever custom shinies it has. When you pay for premium time, if you do, it's not to keep the servers up, you do it because the bonuses combined with a hero mech make farming C-bills a breeze.

It's this weird thing that bothers me most about the people who get angry at the devs. They throw paying for digital goods in their faces as if they had donated a kidney and now expect a liver in return.

Maybe I just have a more reasonable view of what to expect from them.

[Nik Reaper]

Quick question, are PTS hosted on a seperate servers or the same, because for 1~2 hours every patch while the live servers are patching we could be doing some kind of PTS rebalance, and if just Cbills were transfered it would be worth it.

There are many balance suggestions in the suggestions forum, you might give a try to some of those that are easy to change, like projectile speed, recharge and heat, and see what kinda numbers you come up with, as there is usually a patch every 2 weeks that could be about 4 hours of tests every month, not too much but still something rather than just the internal tests and some early feedback. Might be effective if the changes were focused and if there were some conditioned rewards , like play 10~20 games with weapon X while getting at least a game score of 45 and at the end you gain 1~2 Mil for your main account.

Edited by Nik Reaper, 11 September 2014 - 06:03 PM.

[N0MAD]

So the new meta is to blame IGP for everything bad over the last 2 years.
Yet at the time of 3PV two of the main reasons were given as, no one playing the game at gamecom or whatever and one of you saying to another over dinner that it was because there was no 3pv, and the final straw was someones 12 year old son couldnt master MWO beccause it was to difficult without 3pv.
So some one was not being honest then or are not being honest now, either way very convenient since IGP cant defend themselfs.

[Fitzbattleaxe]

Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

I appreciate your recognizing that in 2014 we have met all of our deadlines, I would love if that sentiment spread throughout the community.

The problem is that it's not really the past failure to meet deadlines that people are upset about. Software development is a tricky process, and sometimes delays happen - many of the people in this community have first hand experience with such things. People aren't upset because some things have happened slower than we would have like - they're upset because they've deliberately misled multiple times about the state of the game.

"Community Warfare in 90 days." When that deadline was repeatedly stated, and repeatedly missed, I was more than happy to give you the benefit of the doubt. I know I made a number of posts on here asking people to be careful with their tone, and to understand that the engineers working CW were trying their hardest to get something out, but that quality sometimes takes longer than one might plan for. But then, and I forget exactly when it was - maybe around the time of the "launch", you proudly announced that you had started design work on Community Warfare. Design. I don't care how good your engineers are. Knowing what we do about the size of your company, there is no way whatsoever a single one of your developers would have believed that a feature like CW could be implemented in a single quarter when it hadn't even been designed yet. We were lied to. That's why people are upset, and you're ability to deliver stuff on time is irrelevant. People want an apology. Not for the delays, but for the dishonesty.

[Captain Quirk]

I agree completely with OP

[StillRadioactive]

MischiefSC, on 11 September 2014 - 05:44 PM, said:

This is a lot of professional, well written and we'll considered ideas. I'd love to see more of this.

The irony is that I dropped in a match with the op after a long day during a tournament weekend of watching people sandbag and killsteal all day I misinterpreted how he played and flipped him **** in chat. Then I find out the next day that we have a bunch of friends in common and we end up dropping in group together and it becomes clear that I was wrong, and an *******.

This I excellent advice. Regardless of what PGI does we could do worse as a community than to take it to heart.

The Adder sniper attracts haters. I still don't really know why.

[MischiefSC]

Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

Thanks for this post, it obviously took a significant amount of your time to do so.

I hope you will appreciate and accept the fact that I will not be able to respond to the entire post in detail but lets discuss a few items here now.

Communication: Yes I think all have noticed a large increase in our communication recently and also a de-centralizing as well. As Paul mentioned we are going to update the community every 2 weeks on the progress of CW and supply screen shots as soon as possible.

Development: I want you to please believe me when I say we do actually feel like we are doing ONLY what the players want us to do in priority. But remember that the community has perhaps never agreed completely on anything so often times it comes down to us trying to find the perfect middle ground for all of us to exist in. This can make it look like we are not listening to your feedback or desires but in actuality we have been trying very hard to give you your desires.

There have been a very few exceptions like 3PV which were globally hated but our hands were somewhat tied by our publisher at time time. I don't think we will ever see situations like this again.

As to the smaller balance situations and items like that. It is true that Public test does not get a very good turn out, usually just 2-400 and I imagine all those that did not show up are not willing to leave the decision with those that did. It is a tough problem but we usually try to post about our changes. In the future we will try and post our desired changes ahead of time like we recently did with the CW post, which is something we have been fairly good at for the main features coming down the pipe.

I appreciate your recognizing that in 2014 we have met all of our deadlines, I would love if that sentiment spread throughout the community.

Feedback: Honestly I feel like we do this pretty frequently but usually ends in an argument because the community is quite split on these types of situations. But I can say we will try to be more consistent in posting our results and responses to your feedback.

Hope this helps.

Sweet baby jebus, can you just make a post more or less like this about once a month? We're like children - we need regular direct attention or we're likely to throw a bender. I know you're working constantly on MW:O; I don't see that though. I don't see the meetings or the testing or the development decisions or any of that. When that content does arrive it's less direct to connect that content back to the amount of effort that went into it; I don't see the mock-ups, the feasibility study, the numerous iterations and build tests, the reworks and retests, etc. that went into it. I just notice at some point in the middle of a match that a spot that used to block my shots doesn't any more because the collision meshes got fixed or something like that.

I do see your posts on the forum. They make me happy. Pictures would be good though Russ; worth 1,000 words. Pics of someone working on CW even. I get that you love to tease stuff and then go for the big reveal but show gets more attention than tell.

Pics! Pics or it didn't happen!

Thank you very, very much for all the updates and communication lately however. The forums were starting to get a bit... ripe... and needed a good shaking out which all this has done.

StillRadioactive, on 11 September 2014 - 06:35 PM, said:

The Adder sniper attracts haters. I still don't really know why.

Nah, I just didn't see you helping those guys and had just spectated 3 people getting just barely beat down by the simple fact that they were too worn down to give the push needed. I'd seen a lot of sandbagging that day and unloaded on you because, well, you were there

it was 100% my bad.

[StillRadioactive]

MischiefSC, on 11 September 2014 - 07:04 PM, said:

Sweet baby jebus, can you just make a post more or less like this about once a month? We're like children - we need regular direct attention or we're likely to throw a bender. I know you're working constantly on MW:O; I don't see that though. I don't see the meetings or the testing or the development decisions or any of that. When that content does arrive it's less direct to connect that content back to the amount of effort that went into it; I don't see the mock-ups, the feasibility study, the numerous iterations and build tests, the reworks and retests, etc. that went into it. I just notice at some point in the middle of a match that a spot that used to block my shots doesn't any more because the collision meshes got fixed or something like that.

I do see your posts on the forum. They make me happy. Pictures would be good though Russ; worth 1,000 words. Pics of someone working on CW even. I get that you love to tease stuff and then go for the big reveal but show gets more attention than tell.

Pics! Pics or it didn't happen!

Thank you very, very much for all the updates and communication lately however. The forums were starting to get a bit... ripe... and needed a good shaking out which all this has done.



Nah, I just didn't see you helping those guys and had just spectated 3 people getting just barely beat down by the simple fact that they were too worn down to give the push needed. I'd seen a lot of sandbagging that day and unloaded on you because, well, you were there

it was 100% my bad.

Pictures. Oh my god, pictures. At this point, surprise launches are not a feasible PR plan. We need map design art, we need player pathway plans, we need pictures of assets being tested.

He said in another thread that they're working on a new vlog... GOOD. We want to see people working on things, just like the map editor shots of the industrial map. The community was able to see the map being worked on, and then connect it to the result on the PTS a few weeks later. Soon, when the industrial map is launched, we'll have the full picture of how long it takes to get a map, through each step... from "focus on making a map" to "plan the map out" to "model and place the assets" to "public test" to "launch."

We need to see those steps, and we need to see them for more than just maps... because while I trust that work is getting done, many don't. So don't tell us... SHOW US.

[CMetz]

So glad I could connect you two <3 lol

In all seriousness, however-

How cool is it that we play a game where the PRESIDENT and FOUNDER of the company will directly reply to a customer?

Let that marinade for a second. It doesn't happen. Go ahead and ask the president of EA something. Good luck.

This is a step in the right direction, Russ. The town hall was huge for me. I believe in this company, and of late I have seen a passion not just for this game, but more importantly for the playerbase. Please don't lose focus on this.

Finally, I would ask you to not just aim to produce a fun game that is loved by many. Aim higher, because there is more here. Aim to revolutionize the mech genre. I'll be patient. I always have been. Others will be too. Find the game changer. The CW module 2 announcement was so much more than I even hoped for. I know you've got more of those in you.

[Domoneky]

I'll let this vide speak on my behalf

[van Uber]

Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 03:35 PM, said:

There have been a very few exceptions like 3PV which were globally hated but our hands were somewhat tied by our publisher at time time. I don't think we will ever see situations like this again.

Interesting. So if that debacle was IGP doing, can we move 3PV to Traininggrounds only, now that you are in total control over MWO?

Poll it and act accordingly. That would probably make a lot of grumpy Founders a lot more happy than some loyalty bonus.

[Kageru Ikazuchi]

Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 03:40 PM, said:

What about XP, stats? there would be a limit but want to make sure I understand what exactly would be required.

While I usually buy a 'mech I would (almost) never consider running in the live game, just to see if it's worth trying (it usually isn't), I would appreciate earned to carry over to live. Stats or XP, I'm indifferent.

More PT opportunities in Asia time zones ... I'll be there to help you guys figure stuff out every chance you give me.