270 replies to this topic

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

KraftySOT, on 09 March 2015 - 01:39 PM, said:

Again incorrect. The most popular Mechwarrior title was MW3, which out sold all the others. Financially, MW2 mercs was the most popular, pulling in 70 million dollars by 1999.




I love you sir. Those are also PGI pioneered aspects of the franchise.

Dont forget to translate the money into 2015 ... "Inflation"

[KraftySOT]

Tell me when PGI has had over a million customers, made 70 million dollars, and gives you all the content for only 60 bucks.

Edited by KraftySOT, 09 March 2015 - 01:43 PM.

[Willard Phule]

Heffay, on 09 March 2015 - 01:39 PM, said:

I stand corrected then.

Well, give it another couple of years and we'll revisit this.

MW:O isn't going to be anywhere near the top of the list if they continue their current business model.

Right now, they're trying to get new people to join...and they don't seem to have a problem getting fresh meat. The problem is retention. New people come in, play their first 25 matches...maybe drop a few bucks along the way...then, since there isn't anything that actually teaches them anything useful like a tutorial or new player experience, they just go away.

Every month it's the same thing. New crop comes, last crop goes. Until they figure out a way to fix this, it's going to stay the way it is.

[Heffay]

KraftySOT, on 09 March 2015 - 01:42 PM, said:

Tell me when PGI has had over a million customers, made 70 million dollars, and gives you all the content for only 60 dollars.

Maybe we can use metrics like hours played? Or how about dollars per hour played?

[KraftySOT]

And thatll be the same time, they added in all the great game devices from MWLL, have left Pauleconomy in the dust, and have a real progression tree that has meaningful choices.

[Sylonce]

KraftySOT, on 09 March 2015 - 01:42 PM, said:

Tell me when PGI has had over a million customers, made 70 million dollars, and gives you all the content for only 60 bucks.

That was during a time when PC gaming is still barely an infant, and people ran Pentium 133 mhz machines and played multiplayer on 28.8 dial up modems. I've actually never knew MW2: Mercs made that much money before.

Edited by Sylonce, 09 March 2015 - 01:46 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 09 March 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

Frankly haffey is a house broker. he def know what you are talking about but his desire makes it impossible to understand your words i guess :C


Why are the gold mechs missing in your list? Thats ultimate pioneering

Gold-whatever was invented by world of tanks before PGI, unfortunately, so I can't credit that to them.

But I'm serious. PGI and IGP did pioneer the founder package model, paid betas, and 'early access betas' movement.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

Lack of tutorials isnt the real reason to stop playing. This game is grind intense and the pricing is insane. Also theresnt and wasnt for almost 3 years real content in this game( maps mechs, only)

I started with the wargame series. No tutorial, no explaination. Game is a blast and i learned all the stuff because i liked the game and i wanted to learn it

After the cadett bonus a newbee most likely has to do 100 matches just to buy a stock victor. Then another 100 matches to buy a xl and all the upgrades + weapons.

Go ahead and calculate how much 200 matches are in hours

Edited by ThisMachineKillsFascists, 09 March 2015 - 02:03 PM.

[Sylonce]

Heffay, on 09 March 2015 - 01:43 PM, said:

Maybe we can use metrics like hours played? Or how about dollars per hour played?

I've been playing MW2: Mercenaries for the past 19-20 years. I'm pretty sure that the dollars/hours for my $55 purchase back in 1996 far exceeds many stretches of imagination.

[KraftySOT]

Heffay, on 09 March 2015 - 01:43 PM, said:

Maybe we can use metrics like hours played? Or how about dollars per hour played?

Hours played, youre going to get dominated by MW2 Mercs, which still gets played. Which of course means at a lower price point, Mercs stomps you in dollars per hours of enjoyment.

Now for me. Ive never paid a dime (I gave 5 bucks or 15 to the kickstarter, meh bad). This is all free hilarity. Im good at these games and have alot of time on my hands. So I got space rich really quick, and troll clowns in my meta Robots. So I guess my enjoyment level will skew the science.

But the facts are, MW3 was the biggest mover of units, probably because it had cutting edge graphics at the time, a decent story, cool new game devices (floating cross hair, arms were seperate, heat threshold was changed, auto cannons were different, PPCs were bolts, active/passive sensors, they really innovated) and was pretty true to the TT.

Mercs sold so well because it was fairly deep single player wise, and Netmech was a thing of the past so you could actually play that game with people. Then the mods and mechs came out and extended the life of the game.

MW4 was more popular in the MP aspect than any of the previous titles but graphically was pretty subpar to things that were coming out at the time, didnt really add anything to the franchise (crouching? Hardpoints was Mech Commander, still a bad translation).

MWO treads water other than its mech packs, which people wll eventually tire of, because it did basically nothing to innovate the series.

[Vassago Rain]

Sylonce, on 09 March 2015 - 01:47 PM, said:

I've been playing MW2: Mercenaries for the past 19-20 years. I'm pretty sure that the dollars/hours for my $55 purchase back in 1996 far exceeds many stretches of imagination.

Yeah, same here, but for MW3. God damn, I played that one to death.

[dimachaerus]

Personally I'd kill to be able to pull tanks and Aerospace in MWO. Poptarts weren't an issue when you could sort them out with artillery or a coordinated airstrike. I was one of those guys who'd spend a the start of the match in an Uller till I could afford a "Beatstick" Shiva (for the record, an assault class Omnifighter with twin LBX20's and twin LBX10's) and go on a wrecking spree destroying poptart after poptart by coring their inattentive so-sniper-leet-badasses from behind. They would then rage complaining how "air is soooo OP!" but they'd never bother to actually get in either a mech or tank that was proficient at AA duty.

God help you if you zeroed in on their hill with a longtom aided by a spotter raven with tag, and started popping them off. The torrent of tears was nearly never-ending. Of course, those two units alone required much larger maps than we have in MWO. And hey, who DIDN'T love packing you and five buddies into an APC and going all commando on some poor suckers hiding behind a hill lobbing LRM's/Arty/ArrowIV's, with your battle armored brethren.

If we had BA, tanks, and Aero in MWO, with larger maps you wouldn't need ghost heat, projectile speed nerfs, gauss charge-ups or JJ nerfs, to combat Poptarts, there are assets essentially purpose built for that ready and available. Hell you'd be really well served dedicating a few tons of space on your mech to anti-BA or Aero weapons, diversifying loadouts and making "boating" less attractive. Imagine if we had actual servers, hostable on your local machine, or a rented server, that'd cut costs considerably for PGI, allowing them to make more mechs, maps and shiny bits for the masses. Imagine life without a matchmaker, or "ELO", or getting separated from your buddies in a match. "Community Warfare" would have been a non issue ages and ages and ages ago, because you'd have the community actually doing drops and map setups like we used to do back in the day, without any work needed by the devs.

It's fun to think "what if" if things between the two games had gone smoothly and an integration had occured. MW:LL's super diverse combined arms gameplay, with MWO's smoother and more immersive combat simulation, on big honkin maps, playing only with people you enjoy playing with, on a server/map of your choosing, with more community involvement in the way of maps...

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

I love how you compare twitch shooters (especially CS) to MW:LL, the one thing MWO was always critized of. After implementation of mechlab in MW:LL **** would've hit the fan balance wise.

Fact is, people want faster paced shooters.

[KraftySOT]

MWO surely has the best looking robots, and probably the best looking effects (MWLL had some good ones too, MWLL trounces some of our maps, but then again Viona's models are fantastic in all our maps, those cranes, little trucks, buildings, lamp posts, all her)

But as far as pioneering new game devices, or at least keeping up with what game devices are already IN the franchise...PGI fails miserably.

No active/passive. No heat threshold. No aiming arms left and right of you (to fire behind you) only one radar screen, no HTAL, no switching camera and paper doll modes...none of that great stuff, or the great stuff pioneered in MWLL.

PGI is killing themselves ignoring these game mechanics that integral and needed in the franchise.

We need to tackle the pinpoint convergence for instance. Thats been going on since MW1. Some say its a staple, but really its just a lack of initiative and a lack of vision and definitely, a lack of technological ability BACK THEN to do something more complex and meaningful to manage.

Vassago Rain, on 09 March 2015 - 01:49 PM, said:

Yeah, same here, but for MW3. God damn, I played that one to death.

Yeah MW3 was my baby. Mercs was great but I never got past the lack of dynamic salvage ruining replays. MW3 had horrible AI, but it was extremely fun to play the game through differently with different mech choices, and the MP wasnt shabby either (though getting knocked around by LB2 annihilators was annoying)

[Aethon]

Heffay, on 09 March 2015 - 12:57 PM, said:

Actually, that is very debatable. There is more to a game than just having some things to do. You need the sense of progression, the game play, server side detection (to prevent cheaters) and a monetization strategy to keep development going and pay for the online servers. MW:LL had none of those things. Just replacing mwoclient.exe with the MW:LL game would pretty much destroy it in less than a month.

You have PGI to thank for the lack of any persistence between MWLL matches; that was one of their terms. Same with the mechlab.

[KraftySOT]

ugrakarma, on 09 March 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

I love how you compare twitch shooters (especially CS) to MW:LL, the one thing MWO was always critized of. After implementation of mechlab in MW:LL **** would've hit the fan balance wise.

Fact is, people want faster paced shooters.

Only comparing it with regards to the development and marketing of it. Not the actual function or gameplay.

Context. Its what separates us from the animals.

[Vassago Rain]

dimachaerus, on 09 March 2015 - 01:49 PM, said:

Personally I'd kill to be able to pull tanks and Aerospace in MWO. Poptarts weren't an issue when you could sort them out with artillery or a coordinated airstrike. I was one of those guys who'd spend a the start of the match in an Uller till I could afford a "Beatstick" Shiva (for the record, an assault class Omnifighter with twin LBX20's and twin LBX10's) and go on a wrecking spree destroying poptart after poptart by coring their inattentive so-sniper-leet-badasses from behind. They would then rage complaining how "air is soooo OP!" but they'd never bother to actually get in either a mech or tank that was proficient at AA duty.

God help you if you zeroed in on their hill with a longtom aided by a spotter raven with tag, and started popping them off. The torrent of tears was nearly never-ending. Of course, those two units alone required much larger maps than we have in MWO. And hey, who DIDN'T love packing you and five buddies into an APC and going all commando on some poor suckers hiding behind a hill lobbing LRM's/Arty/ArrowIV's, with your battle armored brethren.

If we had BA, tanks, and Aero in MWO, with larger maps you wouldn't need ghost heat, projectile speed nerfs, gauss charge-ups or JJ nerfs, to combat Poptarts, there are assets essentially purpose built for that ready and available. Hell you'd be really well served dedicating a few tons of space on your mech to anti-BA or Aero weapons, diversifying loadouts and making "boating" less attractive. Imagine if we had actual servers, hostable on your local machine, or a rented server, that'd cut costs considerably for PGI, allowing them to make more mechs, maps and shiny bits for the masses. Imagine life without a matchmaker, or "ELO", or getting separated from your buddies in a match. "Community Warfare" would have been a non issue ages and ages and ages ago, because you'd have the community actually doing drops and map setups like we used to do back in the day, without any work needed by the devs.

It's fun to think "what if" if things between the two games had gone smoothly and an integration had occured. MW:LL's super diverse combined arms gameplay, with MWO's smoother and more immersive combat simulation, on big honkin maps, playing only with people you enjoy playing with, on a server/map of your choosing, with more community involvement in the way of maps...

The walled garden design is necessary to squeeze money out of people.

If MWO could be modded, hosted locally, or there was a hack to simply take control away from PGI, their company would likely collapse overnight.

Lately, I've been questioning what PGI even does for the game in 2015. Heimdelight's little tournament has like 2000 dollars in the price pool already, with better tournament rules than any of PGI's events. The CW 'leagues' probably still have more people in them than you'll find in PGI's CW game mode.

I just don't know anymore, man.

[KraftySOT]

The whole point of Battletech is combined arms warfare. Realistic, sci fi based, combined arms warfare, and grand strategy.

Not Big Stompy Robots™.

Vassago Rain, on 09 March 2015 - 01:56 PM, said:

The walled garden design is necessary to squeeze money out of people.

If MWO could be modded, hosted locally, or there was a hack to simply take control away from PGI, their company would likely collapse overnight.

Lately, I've been questioning what PGI even does for the game in 2015. Heimdelight's little tournament has like 2000 dollars in the price pool already, with better tournament rules than any of PGI's events. The CW 'leagues' probably still have more people in them than you'll find in PGI's CW game mode.

I just don't know anymore, man.

Homeless Bill save us before its too late.

Sadly I think it is. Too late.

[Scandinavian Jawbreaker]

KraftySOT, on 09 March 2015 - 01:56 PM, said:

Only comparing it with regards to the development and marketing of it. Not the actual function or gameplay.

Context. Its what separates us from the animals.

However it was the gameplay and function that made those titles succesful. I understand the mod aspect, but you're selecting a certain aspect of a succesful title to use it as a defense to your argument, which is not entirely true.

Context.

[Rebas Kradd]

TrentTheWanderer, on 08 March 2015 - 09:33 PM, said:

It was fun, though not perfect. The scandal comes from the fact that this OK free mod was enough competition for MWO that PGI had to shut it down with (unfounded) threats of litigation.

If your primary means of competition in a market is threatening all your competitors it's usually because you know you aren't capable of creating an actually competitive product.

And yet, in the end, MWLL was never the one with the superior player base. Not even close. Either PGI felt threatened unnecessarily or, much more likely, they were just covering their bases in a niche-game environment. To stretch that into "PGI knows they suck" is a laughable and unprovable leap of logic.

That's assuming that PGI ever actually did force them to shut down. Nobody has convinced me of squat yet, which is usually the case with people trying to fling mud at MWO.

KraftySOT, on 08 March 2015 - 10:53 PM, said:

Not to mention a plethora of weapons MWO doesnt have, tanks, battle armor, aero...

Its not simply that MW LL isnt as polished up by a medium sized team, its the technical hurdle they jumped, that a medium sized team (PGI) cant.

It also wasn't build server-side authoritative like MWO was (from what I've read), and therefore could get away with things that MWO can't.

Of course, that also makes it far more vulnerable to cheating, which is exactly what you'd have gotten plenty of had MWLL ever made it to Steam like you wish.

Sylonce, on 09 March 2015 - 08:29 AM, said:

I've never really got into MwLL, as the mechanics felt a little weird, and it's certainly not a jump into your favorite mech and kick ass kind of game.

And there you have the reason for MWLL's inferior popularity. To put it simply, it's the silent majority again. Being the only game where you can jump into your favorite mech, drop right into instant action, and enjoy GOOD-LOOKING gameplay is a huge part of MWO's appeal. In fact, it IS MWO's appeal. For all the complaining about MWO's elegance and design from the ivory-tower sim-snobs around here, there are more people who want good effects and instant gratification than "emergent gameplay" and "tactical complexity".

You want to succeed in today's marketplace, you need to have the boxes checked that MWO currently has checked. I would guess that this explains a great deal of MWO's course changes since Closed Beta, particularly those involving 3PV, consumables, map design, and even lack of gameplay. At some point, whether through hard experience or IGP tapping them on the shoulder, they realized that catering to the hardcores was suicide (the game is already impenetrable without 20 tutorials) and they needed to build a foundation with casuals and new players first. After that, they could start addressing the hardcore players with their demands for complicated "keep out the CoD kiddies" gameplay.

(This explanation also avoids the "they lied" explanation. They didn't lie about the game's original goals; they were probably just naive/careless/swept up in the enthusiasm.)

What would I pull out of MWLL's toolbox for use in MWO? Not a damned thing until PGI goes on Steam and has the player stream necessary to split the queues realistically between the purists and the "GUD GRAPHIX NA0" crowd. Then start releasing maps like MWLL and cranking out new game modes.

Edited by Rebas Kradd, 09 March 2015 - 02:03 PM.