100 replies to this topic

[Cyberiad]

Hopefully the next mechwarrior game will be open source like the new Unreal Tournament, which looks great. The financial plan for that game is to make money off of community generated content. I think some of UT's success is that it's not financially motivated and the game is made by un-paid contributors. Whatever money they make from community content (ala Team Fortress model) is used to keep servers running.

[Sarlic]

UT 4 Engine is totally free though.. Except the 5% when you are going to sale your game.

[SilentWolff]

Rebas Kradd, on 05 March 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

You WANT it to be that, so that you'll feel like you can hold things over PGI's head.

The reality is, nothing you say is going to magically double their manpower. They're working on things as hard as they can, and their development pace has accelerated quite a bit. It's not like they've been doing nothing for the last 14 months.

I'll say this one last time. This isn't about me. This post is what people told me were THEIR reasons for no longer playing the game. PGI and people like you can take it for what it's worth.

[Mawai]

SilentWolff, on 05 March 2015 - 10:19 AM, said:

I have been playing since closed beta, as has most of my unit. This post is not meant as a bash PGI thread, but rather an insight on why most people I know no longer play this game. This is an condensed list of the complaints that were expressed when I asked people why they no longer played.

So without further ado......


#1 Piss poor map design
The maps are too small. Information warfare/ scouting is not needed and plays no real part in the game. CW maps are bigger, but all the room is wasted, as almost all fighting takes place in one corner of the map.
This causes other issues as well. It makes most range weapons obsolete (not including dual gauss). You higher ELO's become nothing more than a Nascar deathball under ECM causing boring/stale game play.

#2 Matchmaker punishes higher ELO players. There is no incentive to take creative, fun, silly builds because you will end up getting beat like a drum. This means 90% of the mechs in your mechbay go unused. Go meta or go home.

#3 No real lobby system. Having to have premium to do private lobbies is insulting and a naked cash grab.

#4 Poor geometry, getting stuck on a pebble, invisible walls blocking shots.

#5 Jump jets are horrible. Useless on assault mechs ( see Highlander) Knee jerk reaction to poptarting

#6 Progress in the game moves at a snails pace. Lack of content (this has got better since IGP was booted, but its still too slow)

#7 Economy is too punishing. takes way too long to earn C-Bills

#8 No destructible terrain, which both MW3 and MW4 had. Inexcusable that we have actually went backwards since MW4 and that was over 10 years ago.

#9 Too many game breaking bugs.

Feel free to add to this list in this thread. Dont kill the messenger. This thread is meant to be productive and to let PGI know where the perceived shortcomings are and what they need to address to bring long time fans back to the game.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Hi! In my opinion, the main reason folks stop playing is BOREDOM ... since you run out of things to do. None of the items in your list are really decent reasons not to play. Lets go through them ...

#1 Maps could be better ... absolutely true but there are worse out there ... the maps are very pretty but on most the game plays out in only one or two variations every time unless one team specifically acts together to do something different.

#2 Matchmaker. LOL ... everyone blames the matchmaker because we don't have any data on it. Not everyone is "high" Elo. The bulk of folks are in the middle of the distribution ... that is the way it works. The truly high Elo folks can end up taking longer to find matches and end up in less evenly balanced matches just because there are fewer of them so they can't get matched together all the time. The whole "carry-harder" and putting high Elo with low Elo to balance a side meme is a little overused and I would like to see data from PGI. I suspect that the number of matched that have issues like this are very small.

#3 Lobby system would be useful ... but is it a reason to stop playing? Requiring premium for making private matches is a decent compromise between having to charge MC for each private match ... besides which a lot of folks have some sort of premium and it only takes one for every 12 people.

#4 Some geometry needs work. I haven't been stuck on pebbles but those cars and flag poles were annoying. A lot of the "invisible wall" issues have to do with the weapons having a different line of sight than the cockpit ... so they hit something that looks clear to the pilot. Not all are like this but certainly some are. Even weapons mounted close to the cockpit do not have the same line of sight to the aiming reticle as the pilot. The weapons are aimed from their mount location on the mech to the intersection of the aiming reticle with the target or the terrain it is aimed at. This then becomes the line of fire that is drawn to check for intersections with both the target and terrain. Would I quit over this? No.

#5 JJ may have issues on assaults but I have used them perfectly OK on every other class of mechs. Heavies, mediums, assaults ... all work fine. The provide enhanced mobility ... jump up onto small buildings, jump over gullies, turn in place. They don't let my mechs fly. Complaint yes ... reason to quit? Doubtful.

#6 Game progress.XP is slow. Yep ... I'd like to see it a bit faster.

#7 Cbills earning rate is slow. Yep ... I wouldn't mind it scaling up a bit. However, folks with premium time and cbill bonus mechs who win a match and have earned several play bonuses can get 300k cbills. On the other hand, losses with no bonus prizes can run down to about 35k. Earning needs to be slow to encourage folks to spend real money so the game continues to exist. MWO was not created just for you to have fun ... it was created to support itself, make money for the creator AND provide enjoyment to MW fans.

#8 Destructible terrain. Give me a break ... this is a reason to quit?! Anyway, destructible terrain and some other coolness is a TECHNICAL issue. MWO is SERVER AUTHORITATIVE ... this means all the decisions/damage is calculated server side. MWO has to be one of the best games out there in terms of lack of cheating and hacks BECAUSE it is server authoritative. However, this also introduces other issues. Lets say we have a nice destructible building ... how does the destruction of the building and the resulting change in lines of sight and fire get replicated to 24 clients that are all running on their own time base, different from the server and each other. Does the lowest ping client get to shoot through where the building was first and kill the person on the other side who, with their higher ping, doesn't even know it is gone yet? If you are going to complain about an issue I hope you have considered how to address it? Or do the devs get to magically overcome speed of light limitations and other elements of lag to let the building disappear instantaneously on every client? There are probably ways around this issue involving improved host state rewind or perhaps some sort of synchronized buidling destruction ... taking the average ping to each client and sending the building destruction event so that it arrives at each client more or less simultaneously (however, given the nature of lag and packet loss this won't be perfect and if a packet drops it could be a few seconds on one client before the building goes poof ... AND there is no practical way to overcome this issue). Finally, is destructible terrain REALLY a reason to quit the game?

#9 Too many game breaking bugs. REALLY? In 3 years playing this game my client has crashed maybe 6 times. There seem to be some hit reg issues but other than that MWO is probably, on balance, at least average if not above average in stability of the online games I have played. I just haven't run into too many things that I would call "game breaking bugs" ... though we might have different standards.

No .. I come back to my original statement ..

Why do most folks stop playing MWO? BOREDOM.

Buy a new mech, grind cbills and xp, level it up, buy two more variants, level them up, master one or more. Rinse and repeat. Same unlocks, all the time, every mech. The only difference with IS mechs were hard points and now quirks. Clan mechs are worse since CT are almost identical and you can swap omni-pods.

The addition of CW is an attempt to alleviate boredom and motivate folks to play. Maybe it is working but CW matches take more time and not everyone likes CW.

Other elements that PGI has yet to develop are:
1) Leagues for competitive play and Solaris arena battles with varying team sizes.
2 x 12
4 x 6
6 x4
8x 3
12 x 2
24 x 1

2) A customizable XP system so that you can pick different skills/quirks for each mech and train the different variants up the way YOU want so that two players wont always have identical mechs once they are mastered.

Anyway, PGI has a ways to go. They are working on it. However, your list of complaints are mostly not reasons to stop playing MWO ... they are the annoying irritations that just make a game they are bored with less appealing to play.

[Heffay]

SilentWolff, on 05 March 2015 - 11:59 AM, said:

This isn't an issue with me or about me . It's about the state of the game and it's obvious shortcomings.

What *is* the state of the game? It seems to be doing just fine. The existence or loss of particular individuals doesn't mean anything in the macro view. We do know they've been filling up servers, hiring people, yadda yadda yadda. Commercially, the game is a success at the very least.

Heck, even with the Transverse issue, that just showed that MWO is pulling in enough money to support not just MWO, but the development of a second game. They may have (at least temporarily) backed away from Transverse, but odds are they are working on something else as well to diversify.

Even if I were to quit the game, that doesn't mean MWO is doing poorly. People come and go. That's the nature of ALL games. And what we've seen lately is people are coming *back* to MWO as well.

So, what *is* the state of the game? Do you really think it's struggling in any sort of commercial sense?

[Demoncard]

SilentWolff, on 05 March 2015 - 10:19 AM, said:

#7 Economy is too punishing.

What economy? You mean the one shop and one source of income that is shooting other robots? That's not an economy.

Greece has a better economy than MWO. Zimbabwe has a better economy than MWO. Penguins have a better economy than MWO does. The sardine is up 0.54%. People love to pretend this game has the same level of depth as EVE, but it doesn't. It has no economy, and no meaningful player interaction with the world besides changing the colour of a blob on a map and providing the wizened Battletech veterans on the forums with roleplay material. It's not a stretch to say the money that you put into buying those a la carte packages goes to fund the hosting of Pope Davion's blog and whine threads rather than into the development of content.

I know what you meant, though. You can't actually go out and play with the intention to earn money you'll earn more or less the same amount as someone who isn't. There's no difference between thinking "Hm, today I will play for two hours with the intention of earning a Jenner or whatever" and "I will play for two hours". Whether you need to buy something or not, you have no way of focusing your efforts on earning cbills, apart from perhaps aiming at internals or playing skirmish or something like that. The difference in not doing those will be negligible, taking in account play styles and queue times and so forth, so you'll probably end up playing with whatever setup you were playing before you upped and decided to grind, and you'll get bored.

SilentWolff, on 05 March 2015 - 10:19 AM, said:

#6 Progress in the game moves at a snails pace. Lack of content (this has got better since IGP was booted, but its still too slow)

Yes.

Right now, the game's only actual gamemode is team deathmatch, regardless of what you choose at the menu. If it's anything else in practice, one or both teams are appalling, or one of them is a twelve man coordinating a quick win and going straight for the objective.

The CW maps are all the same on every planet. With or without a random map generator to produce maps for them, it can't be that hard to roll out a map for each planet, and playtest them afterwards. After all, we've been playtesting them anyway. It would break the monotony, and make CW somewhat interesting. "I liked that map! It might've have been a bit rough and unpolished, but let's go take it back!" rather than "I liked the name of that planet" Let's go play on Terra Therma again!".

Every match plays through one of a handful of ways. The overwhelming popularity of certain mechs, and certain paths on maps, lend themselves to mindnumbingly repetitive gameplay.

There's no meaningful gameplay whatsoever. CW is not meaningful in any way. CW is a leaderboard with a picture of the inner sphere on it. It's not important. Only roleplayers care about it. You can live without it. Some German guy made the exact same thing as a browser page in the time before CW came out - it's a cheap and effective way for keeping the mindless population satisfied. "Look guys! Community warfare! Just like you wanted, right?"

Every match follows the same handful of possible directions. If you stared at the command overlay for less than a minute or so, you could probably plot out what your teammates and the enemy were going to do next with ease.

Is it too late for a refund?

Edited by Demoncard, 05 March 2015 - 02:48 PM.

[Hellen Wheels]

PappySmurf, on 05 March 2015 - 11:35 AM, said:

twittard and facecrack .

BINGO!!

[Artgathan]

Balance - useless LRMs, wimpy SRMs, bad mediums/lights (currently only a few lights are good due to strong hitboxes and bad HSR - as soon as HSR works, we'll all be back to instagibbing them), terribad AC/2s, pitiful LBX, pointless flamers, mandatory DHS, no role warfare, deathmatch only games, tiny maps, instant pinpoint convergence, no information warfare, cruddy command console, bountiful boating.

[badaa]

because you touch urself

[N0MAD]

Heffay, on 05 March 2015 - 02:39 PM, said:

BNB propaganda......

So, what *is* the state of the game? Do you really think it's struggling in any sort of commercial sense?

You dont actually listen to twitch do you, probably because youre going "oh my god, oh my god, ohhh my god, yes Yes YES, hes talking" otherwise you would of heard Rus say several times in the last twitch that they couldnt do this or that because of a small population.. go figure..
Also to anyone with a bit of common sense its obvious they are running on credit..as in selling and trying to collect money for stuff now they cant deliver for 5 months or so, theres what 3 packages now paid for that are not delivered and as stated one packages wont be fully delivered for close to 5 months..
So now what? the next package to bring in some cash delivered in what 8 months a year??
Ohh and any further ventures by PGI will end up like Trans, would you like to wager on that??

[lsp]

SilentWolff, on 05 March 2015 - 10:19 AM, said:

#1 Piss poor map design
The maps are too small. Information warfare/ scouting is not needed and plays no real part in the game. CW maps are bigger, but all the room is wasted, as almost all fighting takes place in one corner of the map.
This causes other issues as well. It makes most range weapons obsolete (not including dual gauss). You higher ELO's become nothing more than a Nascar deathball under ECM causing boring/stale game play.

#2 Matchmaker punishes higher ELO players. There is no incentive to take creative, fun, silly builds because you will end up getting beat like a drum. This means 90% of the mechs in your mechbay go unused. Go meta or go home.

#3 No real lobby system. Having to have premium to do private lobbies is insulting and a naked cash grab.

#4 Poor geometry, getting stuck on a pebble, invisible walls blocking shots.

#5 Jump jets are horrible. Useless on assault mechs ( see Highlander) Knee jerk reaction to poptarting

#6 Progress in the game moves at a snails pace. Lack of content (this has got better since IGP was booted, but its still too slow)

#7 Economy is too punishing. takes way too long to earn C-Bills

#8 No destructible terrain, which both MW3 and MW4 had. Inexcusable that we have actually went backwards since MW4 and that was over 10 years ago.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

lsp, on 05 March 2015 - 05:12 PM, said:

Those huge and detailed maps <3 MWo maps are just cheap arenashooter matches/maps with poor details and yet it takes them 100-250k $ to create 1 map

[Soy]

I was gone for 18 months and when I came back, it was like my friends list was frozen in ice. Seriously, it looked as if I had only been gone a day.

Sure, there are people on my list that I miss and haven't seen... they prolly quit... but since this is a free to play game with no subscription, I like to think of the whole thing as "leaving the door open". Call me the breeze, I come and go as I please. I think others operate like that, it's usually not some "oh this patch ****** **** up /ragequit" thing with this sort of game.

Anyways, yeah. I haven't made many new friends since I'm back but so far I've run into a lot of the same old folks.

[gurila]

I just started playing with a couple of friends of mine. I think this is my second post to these forums. Just wanted to say, love the game. Having a lot of fun. Have had no problems understanding how to play. Most of the bug's you've mentioned are either overly-sensationalized or more annoyances than show-stoppers. I've never seen a perfect video game. If you've found it, let us know, we'll play that next. People don't stop playing games because of bugs, or annoyances. They stop playing because they get bored with it. One day, i'll get bored of MWO, just like one day I got bored of MW4, and MW3, and MW2, and yes, if you're old enough, you may remember MW. By then, I'll probably play MW5, or COD14, whatever. Your post, and much of the replies are just whining. You're not being constructive. You used phrases like "piss poor map design" "punishing high elo" "cash grab". If you want to have a constructive conversation about making improvements to a game you purport to love, try to use language that is less confrontational.

[SilentWolff]

People getting bored certainly is also a reason people leave. That falls under #6 that I mentioned, content being added at a snails pace.

[StandingInFire]

While I agree the grind is a bit to much and information warfare doesn't exist. The big reason many people can't play is FPS, out of my regular gaming friends the 3 friends that are interested in MWO only 1 can run it above 10 fps (gets a max of 30) while playing league of legends they can get ~60 fps. Now I haven't gotten them to try it since the most recent fps fixes (after 64 bit client) but that area is what straight up prevents a lot of people from being able to play the game. Also because the grind is so slow, playing solo gets boring really quickly.

[lshtaria]

I think one of the problems facing this game is that it's slowly losing the essence of MechWarrior. There are now so many silly and unnecessary mechanics that it's now becoming its own robot shooter wrapped up in a Battletech frock.

While it's impossible to fully translate TT mechanics into a game like this, there has just been too much deviation away from it. Now I've never been a TT player but having it as close as possible to TT is still important to me as a fan of this franchise. Too many large deviations have been made to try and create balanced gameplay.

So much time was spent back and forth on balance in the early days along with trying to get to grips with what was then a new game engine, months of crucial development time was lost and since then PGI have been playing catch up in what always seems to be a losing battle for them.

From the start, double armour (and internal?) was the right decision to take along with the double ammo per ton. Heat generation is generally fine but I think the heat threshold needs to be lowered to prevent laser boating but to offset that heat dissipation needs increasing. Weapon recycle times also need increasing along with laser burn times to try and encourage slower and more tactical gameplay.

Why? Because right now the game is sitting awkardly between simulation and arcade style gameplay. It doesn't seem to know which side of the fence it wants to be on. Quirks, while necessary to a degree, have pushed ttk down too far and brought the game over towards the arcade side a bit more.

• Heat threshold needs reducing by 25-50% and heat dissipation needs increasing by 25-50%. This removes the need to apply ghost heat.
  
• Laser burn times need increasing - the ISLL burn time should be what the CerLL currently is.
  
• Recycle times need a slight increase on all weapons.
  
• Gauss needs to lose its charge mechanic but receive an increase in recycle time to still make the AC20 viable. HP and explosions are fine.
  
• PPC should have a charge mechanic which is a single click followed by an autofire after charging. Projectile speed should be as fast, if not faster than the gauss.
  
• Quirks should ONLY give general boosts, not weapon specific boosts and not be so high. The tiered structure for quirks doesn't work and each chassis needs to be looked at closer and more individually.
  
• More variety with quirks i.e. jump jets, mobility and speed.

The gameplay design was also flawed from the outset with too much emphasis on arena type deathmatches on maps which are now too small for 12v12.


What can be changed for the better now and what do we have to simply sit down and accept? Well that's not up to me, I don't work for PGI.

So, the reason my friends list is basically empty? It's because most of the people who come here want to enjoy the experience of playing MechWarrior, not a generic arcade robot shooter.

Edited by Kyocera, 05 March 2015 - 05:41 PM.

[SJ SCP Wolf]

Quote

#1 Piss poor map design


The maps are too small. Information warfare/ scouting is not needed and plays no real part in the game. CW maps are bigger, but all the room is wasted, as almost all fighting takes place in one corner of the map.
This causes other issues as well. It makes most range weapons obsolete (not including dual gauss). Your higher ELO's become nothing more than a Nascar deathball under ECM causing boring/stale game play.

Could not agree more. These maps take into account player number, but not the size of the mechs. We're forced on top of each other. The new map is terrible unless you have JJs. The spawns are spaced so that seconds after a match you are under fire. Scouting? What scouting.

Quote

#2 Matchmaker punishes higher ELO players. There is no incentive to take creative, fun, silly builds because you will end up getting beat like a drum. This means 90% of the mechs in your mechbay go unused. Go meta or go home.

A meta is result of balance attempts. MW is a tough job. While I disagree with many things PGI has done, some I really agree with. Quirks are great and a nice take from CBT post mechlab introduction. How they get applied however on a variant to variant basis? Well that's up for discussion.

Quote

#3 No real lobby system. Having to have premium to do private lobbies is insulting and a naked cash grab.

Check out this thread.
http://mwomercs.com/...81#entry4255081

Quote

#4 Poor geometry, getting stuck on a pebble, invisible walls blocking shots.

This goes back to number 1. Maps are not to scale for the size of the mechs.

Quote

#5 Jump jets are horrible. Useless on assault mechs ( see Highlander) Knee jerk reaction to poptarting

Pop tarting is bad.. JJs are't really in a bad spot. Assaults aren't really meant to jump. When you look at a heavy taking 4 JJs to really get them going, the weight investment for the thrust needed on an assault isn't worth what you lose. The maps however make them a issue because again, they are not scaled well enough. If you make JJs more powerful, you're buffing light mechs.

Quote

#7 Economy is too punishing. takes way too long to earn C-Bills

We all want to get everything in the game as quickly as we can. Progress isn't only in getting cbills, but unlocking the RPG aspects. The costs of those things in regard to the fun factor could be a problem.

Quote

#8 No destructible terrain, which both MW3 and MW4 had. Inexcusable that we have actually went backwards since MW4 and that was over 10 years ago.

IMO not a big deal.

Quote

#9 Too many game breaking bugs.

A very big deal, but I'd like to hear which ones you are talking about.

[SilentWolff]

SJ SCP Wolf, on 05 March 2015 - 05:38 PM, said:

A very big deal, but I'd like to hear which ones you are talking about.

I've edited the post to reflect the main issues mentioned. Keep in mind alot of the players haven't played in awhile and some of these issues have been addressed.

[SJ SCP Wolf]

Kyocera, on 05 March 2015 - 05:36 PM, said:

Trucated

You forgot one important thing. CBT was balanced on random chance. Video games, don't do that. Lasers are hit scan. They land pointed where they are going. Not suddenly missing or hitting something they weren't pointed at. A turn in CBT was balanced against a duration of 60 seconds. Can you imagine how this game would be if you could only choose to shoot some or all of your guns once a minute to random miss and heat and crit and fall and everything else?