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Hello PGI. It's been over half a year now since I've pretty much stopped playing, but in order to make a point I've come back recently and played a few games. I know that you're intent on releasing the Griffin and the Wolverine on the same scale as the Shadow Hawk; which was in turn based on the Kintaro. I would caution against this idea, and would instead devote my time and energy to a different path. One that could, for all intents and purposes, drum up further sales and still works within your current financial model.
For the record I am not 100% up to date on your release schedule for the upcoming Mechs, but I remember hearing that you intend to release the Phoenix Mechs over the next several months in the CBill/MC versions for non-Phoenix players, followed by the Griffin and Wolverine. This is actually a pretty great strategy, it should give you 4 months of time in which you can work on other things while you re-release content that you've already generated. Four months where you can focus on the much awaited community aspects of the game, but if I could direct your attention towards something that's a much larger problem that directly effects the core of MWO's gameplay. And that's the scaling.
(I apologize but I cannot remember who created this image, if you know, please tell me.)
Like I said before, I would caution against releasing the Wolverine and the Griffin on the size of the Shadow Hawk, and this is simply because of the numerous errors made in regards to scaling for the majority of the Mechs in MWO. As you can see, the above image (albeit is slightly outdated) shows how each Mech should be sized in proportion to the other. I will also casually mention that these sizes are inherently wrong since the Mechs themselves are wrong. They cannot fit a standard human model, the pilot model itself is significantly smaller than the average human in the CryEngine and often (especially in the case of the smaller Mechs) he doesn't even occupy an area within the Mech since the model cannot fit anyway. But this is an aside, so let me pull back to the topic. The below image will exemplify just what I mean...
As you can see, there is some extremely inconsistent scaling going on. 55 ton Mechs that are the size of 70 ton Mechs. 85 ton Mechs that are smaller than 60 ton Mechs. Inconsistency is really the only word that can describe what is going on here. Now PGI, I know that your economic model is based around people purchasing MC. So long as people keep buying MC, you can keep making the game. That's okay, that's completely acceptable to me, I've never criticized MC as a way to generate income for your studio. But while I have not personally played MWO in a very long time (aside from yesterday) I have kept my ear to the ground and have watched the past six months roll on by. I know that you haven't had an Hero Mech sell as good as the Heavy Metal in a long time, the Protector came close, but even after all this time the Ilya is your best selling Hero Mech. I've seen you openly state this. So! As for my suggestion...
Take a month off from creating new Mechs and new Hero Mechs. Stop all major production besides what you need to do in order to make sure that the Wolverine and Griffin come in on time. Devote a month, a quarter of the 4 months you should have freed up, to the rescaling of your current Mech lineup. This does two positive things, it accurately scales Mechs that need to be larger/smaller so that they actually fit their intended tonnage. You're using the Kintaro as a Metric for the other 55 tonners, but the Kintaro itself is woefully out of place. Having all of the Mechs on the same metric is a wonderful thing. Secondly, this change will most certainly drum up sales. People will actually want to buy the YLW, the Golden Boy, the Protector, the Dragon Slayer, and the inevitable future Quickdraw Hero Mech. I've seen month after month of people complaining about hit boxes on the newly released Mechs, but altering the locations of the hitboxes can only do so much when your Quickdraw is larger than some Assaults. Squashing these unusually King Kong sized Mechs makes them more viable by default, meaning customers are willing to spend more MC and CBills on them in order to experiment, which means fewer cases of buyer's remorse (Golden Boy).
I think everyone here would like to use some of the Mechs that they honestly cannot use outside of the low end of the ELO spectrum. And I think that you want to make as many Mechs enjoyable and fun to use. If you do this, I promise you that more people will buy Mechs, and more people will have fun piloting Mechs previously portrayed as lepers and lemons.
- Norris
Edited by Norris J Packard, 21 October 2013 - 01:59 PM.
