57 replies to this topic

[Alistair Winter]

This kind of goes back to what I was talking about in this thread (which is about MWO's lack of lore and how there's no real information about the Battletech universe itself), but let's just acknowledge that there is close to no information about lore in the UI or anywhere else in the actual game. The idea seems to be that players are supposed to gather information about the MWO setting through the website.

I started looking at the website yesterday, and I just realized something.

• There's absolutely no information about the background for the actual conflict in the game. New players have no idea why the factions are fighting or what they're fighting for. (An upcoming Clan invasion is mentioned in passing, once, but there's no explanation of why they're invading). Who are these Clanners and why are they invading?
  
• There's no information about Clan mechs in the Battlemech page. Only Inner Sphere mechs. Then again, the information for the Inner Sphere mechs is still some sort of diagram showing the strength and weaknesses of stock mechs, which is hilarious.
  
• The Clan page is virtually empty. Clan Jade Falcon gets three sentences and a bit of poetry. Who the hell was this Kerensky, anyway? What are Wardens and Crusaders?
  
• If you click Maps, there's a bunch of the maps missing. No Mining Collective, no Viridian Bog, and none of the 3 CW maps.
  
• If you click Game modes, you'll see some information about Conquest. Nothing about Assault, Skirmish or the two CW game modes.
  
• Very little information about the actual setting in 3050. Interstellar travel, HPG communication... and what is the "Inner Sphere" anyway? Is there an Outer Sphere?

This is pretty old news, but in 2013 I don't think anyone was too concerned. It was just Beta™. Now we're in 2015. I kind of hope PGI looks at this before the Steam release. The website still looks like an empty shell for an unreleased game. This wouldn't be such a big problem, except the actual game relies on the website to be the main source of information, because there's no information in the game itself.

PGI, if you need some volunteers, I'm sure a lot of players are ready to help you out with this stuff, especially the lore stuff. It's kind of silly that we have to go to Smurfy to see the maps, in addition to building mechs.

[Soy]

He's right I thought about this the other day. Lemme find this one thing that made me go "ughh..." one sec...

update -

Ok, on this page: https://mwomercs.com/cw

Notice the first lil blurb talks about "choose your faction wisely"

...you can't even get any info on that page, or linked off of it, to what the **** the factions are in the first place. I get it, go sarna.net or what-the-hell-ever-you-prolly-know-this-cuz-you-played-old-MW/BT... but what about some new guy who doesn't know anything? Wat???

Edited by Soy, 08 March 2015 - 12:55 AM.

[MandyB]

The battlemechs section is missing a lot of mechs. I wish they would add some art alongside the 3d models


edit: sorry just noticed you mentioned that as well. Maybe you should message Tina about this? Or tweet Russ or Paul it might get some attention to it.

Edited by MandyB, 08 March 2015 - 12:54 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

There used to be a page that talked about the factions.

Dracs were claimed to be AUTOCRAZY, due to a hilarious typo.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Sign me up!

[Alistair Winter]

Vassago Rain, on 08 March 2015 - 01:01 AM, said:

There used to be a page that talked about the factions.

Dracs were claimed to be AUTOCRAZY, due to a hilarious typo.

It's still there, but I've seen Angry birds-clones with more detailed background than this.

Compare MWO's lore section to
... this (World of Warcraft)
... or this (Star Wars: The Old Republic)
... or this (Star Conflict)

Unlike MWO, WOW and TOR, Star Conflict didn't have a decades-old franchise to build upon, so they had to create a whole new setting from scratch. But they still have a lot more information and lore available than MWO.

Edited by Alistair Winter, 08 March 2015 - 01:32 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Alistair Winter, on 08 March 2015 - 01:21 AM, said:

It's still there, but I've seen Angry birds-clones with more detailed background than this.

Compare MWO's lore section to
... this (World of Warcraft)
... or this (Star Wars: The Old Republic)
... or this (Star Conflict)

Unlike MWO, WOW and TOR, Star Conflict didn't have a decades-old franchies to build upon, so they had to create a whole new setting from scratch. But they still have a lot more information and lore available than MWO.

It's almost like those are videogames made by people who care about their work, as opposed to people who don't care about anything except the latest grab deal, and rely on the existence of third party tools, sources, communities, and people for their game to be playable and accessible, because all the in-game tools and features are so busted, under-developed, or user unfriendly, it's simply not worth even attempting to give them a chance, except when you absolutely can't avoid doing so.

But, you know, I'm not a game designer, so I'm probably wrong.

I bet if smurfy suddenly went away for a week, there wouldn't be chaos in the forums, reddit wouldn't catch on fire, and the game wouldn't suffer huge population droughts as people play other games 'while PGI fixes things.'

Edited by Vassago Rain, 08 March 2015 - 01:27 AM.

[Furious Zen Master]

They don't care to provide all these things because this game is not aimed at random people. This is a game for the middle-aged BT junkie who has the books, the old games, the mech wallpapers, can name the 3rd cousin of Hans Davion from his mother's side and tell you exactly how many manufacturers of the AC20 exist in the inner sphere and on which planets they are based.
PGI get a lot of criticism from those passionate people but at the same time they get an easy ride because of players' addiction to the Battletech universe. They ***** and moan (well, half of them do) but at the end of the day they keep playing and buying the nostalgiamechs.
If they dared present a random robot game missing all those features and not explaining anything to the new player, then they would have been ridiculed and closed up shop long ago. Right now they have the players doing their job for them, providing a proper mechlab, supporting the newbies on this forum or reddit or youtube, providing mech guides etc etc.
Don't expect things to change any time soon, they have found their small niche and the veterans are keeping the lights on. That seems to be enough for PGI.

[TyphonCh]

Yes yes and a thousand times yes. Maybe once they slow down pumping out content (yeah right) they'll remember that they bought an entire franchise and not simply a pile of robots that we can build to shoot at each other. There's a lot more to it than that

[Primetimex]

Who cares about writing poetry and background fluff for MW:0 when you can instead spend your time making and designing the latest "cash-grab" mechs - just stir up some posts to see what nostalgiamechs the BT-whales want (eg. Urbie) and do that instead - the whales don't care about incomplete website/fluff they just want one chance to see their nostalgiamech on the map and run them - and so perhaps MW:0 should be better called: Mechwarrior: Marketplace Online!

Mark my words, PGI will continue to run MW:0 this way until one day they find it is no longer profitable then they simply close up shop.

They only care about BT-lore insofar as it provides them avenues to generate the latest cash-grab - no further example like the grasshopper and the zeus - who cares about crap maps? crap UI? a friends / social list that is still broken (stuck on one random name further down the list), all that will be forgotten when the latest XXXx mech pak comes out for pre-order - did you notice even the latest Wave 3 clan mechs don't even have line-arts ready LOL.

Edited by GetterRobo, 08 March 2015 - 02:14 AM.

[zudukai]

bump

[Parnage Winters]

The best part is they could literally get someone to do it for free because fans love being informative about what they love. All it'd take is "hey guys we'd like your suggestions/help on updating info for the website" you'd literally have 20 different writeups on everything you can think of before the end of the first day.


Hell I'd do it just so I could fix the hilariously done clan pages that use "jaguar’s" over jaguar.

Edited by Parnage, 08 March 2015 - 02:24 AM.

[Warchild Corsair]

IIRC Russ has stated on Twitter (source?) that a huge do-over for the website is in the works. No release date atm (as usual).

And YES, I agree with the OP that the whole presentation, universe, lore are in dire need of love. The website currently really looks... loveless.

Edited by Warchild Corsair, 08 March 2015 - 02:27 AM.

[Trainee]

I'd be happy if they put Battlemechs/Builds as a main category on first page. Instead of a sub-category under Guides and Strategies. Sounds stupid, but it's taken me 3 weeks to find it.

[RockmachinE]

How long is it going to take you people to figure out that the developers are extremely extremely slow and simply bad. That's it. They're simply not good at what they are doing and, on top of that, they're extremely slow in doing it. This game gets just enough work to keep the players from running.

In fact, this is something most people seem to fail to notice, they set the expectations so low and they take so much time for every minor fix, that most people now find it normal.

If you objectively look at this developer you see that they do most things poorly, from maps, to net code, game code, weapon and game balance, user interfaces, marketing, websites, servers, time to finish projects...literally every aspect of it, (except the money they make) is sub par, not close to industry standard and simply very bad.

The reason I point this out, if you ever believe you will get "extra" stuff in MWO, dream on buddy, they've shown time and time again they are only willing and capable of doing the minimum work required to keep this game afloat.

Edited by Louis Brofist, 08 March 2015 - 03:34 AM.

[Mudhutwarrior]

[Trashhead]

@ OP: Agree.


The biggest Puzzler for me is the missing Lore in here.
Yes, MWO is not BattleTech, but it is based on it.

I knew a lot about BattleTech because after my first contact with BattleTech, which was the MEchWarrior2 games, i started to buy novels and even some Technical Readout books, although i never played the TableTop game.

So i think my knowledge about BattleTech is pretty decent for someone who has only played MW2, MW3, MechCommander(1) and nothing else.

But for players who's first contact to BattleTech is via this game.. well... there is no story to dig into.

Its basically a "huge robots shooting other huge robots" game with odd rules no one ever explains.
Best example is the Flamer:
"what good is this Flamer for ? it suxxx ! PGI make it an uber-weapons plse"
- ehem... it is used for killing infantry, burning down stuff so the enemy mechs will avoid the area so they wont overheat... tactical stuff, you know ?
"but we have nothing like that in MWO !!!1!!11!eleven!!"
- ... err.. good point

Also: factions:
I have never played World of Tanks, but i can imagine that the concept of "Axes vs. Allies" is pretty well known by everyone, even without any further explanation.
Whereas in MWO, this is never ever explained.
"Why can't i use this cool AC20 on my Direwolf, why can't i put the Clan Medium Laser on my Centurion ?"
Because they are build by different factions and are not compatible
"Say's who?"
Well, you can search the internet to get more background information, you know ?"
"Why is it not explained in the game ?"
...


The list goes on and on.
Point is, this is a game (mostly) for players who are already familiar with the basics.

If i had the skill and time, i would create a video providing the backgrounds... telling the story of the fall of the star-league, who the 5 houses started to fight over territory, what ComStar is, the Exodus... some more Succession Wars... and then... in 3049.. BOOM! - out of nowhere - Clan invasion!
Actually, this would be a job for PGI, but.. well.
Can anyone hire -> wauweli* for that job,. please ?

* the video in the link is not the most accurate representation of the IS vs. Clan - conflict, as it uses sound samples that have nothing to do with BattleTech (i think they are from various video games an SciFi-Films/Series); but it's still way better then anything PGI created.. which is nothing.


The game itself should show the Player via it's UI that we have two factions.
Lers face it: the garage.. pardon: hangar.. is a mess in that regard.
All mechs piled up, who's not familiar with the game or has background information can't tell IS from Clans. Oh, wait... you can.. via the standard paint-job on them... the Clan mechs are grey and green, the Is ones only green.... Wow.



tl;dr:
if i need to search for background info's of an epic war (such as the Clan vs. IS conflict) in the Internet, rather then being able to find them in the game itself... don't expect the game to turn new players into fans.
The only thing you can expect is that fans are coming to the game because the already know how epic this game is can be.

Still tl,still dr.:
MWO does not so much create BattleTech fans; it rather consumes them.
(IMHO; i might be wrong here, but i have no actual numbers available to support my claim, or the opposite of it; it#s more a gut feeling, to be honest.)

[Senor Cataclysmo]

Couldn't agree more. MWO isn't an RPG where you can piece the lore together from clues left about the place in game. If you have no prior BT experience you'll be totally clueless

[Alistair Winter]

Trashhead, on 08 March 2015 - 04:03 AM, said:

Still tl,still dr.:
MWO does not so much create BattleTech fans; it rather consumes them.

Very well put. Of course, it's an exaggeration. This game has a lot of players who never heard of Battletech before, especially the younger ones. But I think your comment still hits pretty close to the mark.

Mechwarrior 2 made you a fan of Battletech by being incredibly immersive. You weren't simply an anonymous entity shooting robots, you were a Clan Mechwarrior on the road to Terra. Similarly, MW2:Mercenaries really made you feel like an Inner Sphere mercenary commander, and introduced you to the different factions in a great way. I think those games actually made lots of people look up Battletech novels and table top, where MWO probably doesn't have the same effect.

[StraferX]

I whole heartedly disagree as I think the website is great. I actually prefer subpar and mediocre workmanship. Unfinished incomplete leaves me longing for more, this way I have the need to keep returning and stirring through the wreckage looking to see if I missed any deadbeats or carnage.

The Op is the typical greedy grubby poser that makes up the MWO community, always wanting MOAR MOAR MOAR.

I don't know what more one could ask for, seriously look around we have great stuff hear like a #radiochatter feed that has great adds for energy drinks and pr0n sites with a smattering of #mwonews. We even have a media page that has, well there is no cool Wallpapers but there are a couple screenshots. WE have great training videos right? Well actually they suck but one could look up Bishop Steiner or Joseph Mallan - with 90,000 post between them they must know everything there is to know about this game. Need to know how buying paint works? do a forum search because you are not intelligent enough to receive proper instruction just give me the money.

For so long I have asked and asked for updates to web site and to training grounds, We even know they have bots for testing the servers why not put them into training missions for newbs? I know nothing about the lore and I am not going to scour the interwebs for it but if it were here I might make it my Sunday morning before church read and afterwards have some more knowledge and care more about each mech and the game.

Incomplete website is credit to incomplete game.