169 replies to this topic

[Haitian Voodoo Ritualist]

Another CW event? Hah, no.

Everyone else can have fun with it, though.

[Neput Z34]

Looks like everyone will get a chance to experience / reenact the meat grindger, that was Wazan, at the beging of CW.

P.S. if you do chose to participate, for "better" experience do not que up solo, use the LFG feature. Also by what ever still holly do not drop in trial / un elited mech.

Edited by Neput Z34, 18 April 2015 - 08:04 AM.

[Michaelson Snow]

Wow, they really brought you haters out with a vengence did they not? keep it coming, it is entertaining to read.


Oh, and either play it or do not, i look forward to meeting the ones who do. <Salute>

[Stealth Fox]

PhoenixNMGLB, on 18 April 2015 - 07:06 AM, said:

I doubt this will be the last battle for Tukayyid, do you think as many players would get behind a random brawl for a random planet?

CW isn't broken - it's in development, there's a difference. It's still a beta test.

If it bothers you don't take part.

Yes, because doing constant rewinds, gimmies and do overs will work so well with the flowing evolving timeline they want to supposedly have.

No..the game is broken. You lose the right to say it is in development when you take the beta tag off. No one else does games like this.

Sure things like Skyrim have bug fixes and DLC, but this is poor business at its worst (or finest). Poor planning (GTA 5 and MK just dropped), bad form to have a historical beloved event turned into a item grab for an event, cherry picking and ignoring key problems till the players get pissed and leave, and let us not forget all the promises and features PGI has removed or dumped by the side or lied about as they "move forward" by staying in the same place.

No, I'm not gonna play. I've got actual finished, polished games to enjoy that won't swindle me out of money after I've paid a full price tag. I'm not buying any clan packs or anything else like that either.

Michaelson Snow, on 18 April 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

Wow, they really brought you haters out with a vengence did they not? keep it coming, it is entertaining to read.


Oh, and either play it or do not, i look forward to meeting the ones who do. <Salute>

Is it really hating when people are fed up with broken promises, shallow gaming and crappy handling of a game? Or is it not rolling over and being super easy to please?

Because you know..there are the people who buy Madden every year no matter how little it changes, and then there are the people who actually want to give their money to good games, and this game..which promised to be good, is not.

[TripleEhBeef]

Neput Z34, on 18 April 2015 - 07:23 AM, said:

Looks like everyone will get a chance to experience / reenact the meat grindger, that was Wazan, at the beging of CW.

Wazan, the bloodiest battle of the Fifth Succession War. Those fights were nail biters, and I only played on the first day. Those guys who were in it for the whole campaign probably have 'Nam style flashbacks.

I think someone actually estimated how many mechs were destroyed over that fight, it was well into the high hundreds if I remember correctly.

Edited by TripleEhBeef, 18 April 2015 - 07:51 AM.

[Insects]

Hmisay, on 18 April 2015 - 07:19 AM, said:

Another CW event? Hah, no.

Everyone else can have fun with it, though.

Should be quite good actually since everyone on a single planet will mean very quick drops.

Do yourself a favor and get Teamspeak and find a group with a coms channel, or find one on the mech-connect server.
Will get a much better team performance when coms are good bitrate and you can talk in the lobby to arrange tactics and reivite when people crash out.

[C E Dwyer]

Parnage, on 17 April 2015 - 11:01 PM, said:

What a shame that the most famous battle in the game is going to be played out on this fairly bland and dull take on community warfare.

Eh, might check it out. Maybe.

Actually its exactly the same as community warfare, its a few days of fighting for, four and a bit planets, only you won't get a planet.

If the clans get 50% they get a cockpit item, most likely a flag on a post, that will probably say something like, Victor of Tukayyid, imposed over the standard clan symbol.

If they don't then the Inner Sphere pilots will most likely get a similar flag, only with Defender of Tukayyid, imposed over their house banner.

I'd like to feel its worth doing, and feel great about it, but I don't, its just left me feeling rather depressed, as this 'great' event, is, as you say going to be played out, on the same tired maps using the same bland system CW uses.

I hope to hell, that this event and reset, does not herald P.G.I's announcement that CW beta has ended, as to me it will advertise that they are incapable of creating an interesting game enviroment, i'd like to rage and rant, but its not worth expending the energy over it, I was creating more complex world war two,campaigns at the age of fifteen, for combined forces, and for battle tech, a fourth succession war campaign, that had everything P.G.I said was going to be in their one, plus fighting from jump point, to planet fall, with supply and repair, shortly before the clans were introduced into the canon, can't remember when that was, around 1987-88 ??

Now its unrealistic to expect something as complex, as what I constructed, as it was made for dice games and a small group of people, but, in effect we have a game of snakes and ladders, or Ludo with guns.

I think the only thing that can save this from being a complete flop, is nothing less than reward camo, linked to chasis you used in your drop decks, similar to faction or clan, and decals you can put on your mechs.

[Stealth Fox]

Cathy, on 18 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

I hope to hell, that this event and reset, does not herald P.G.I's announcement that CW beta has ended,

Mind you. This IS the same company who took the Role Warfare feature they so deeply loved and said would balance.. and removed it, and who said phase one of the CW, was letting people make groups to play together as, and that Phase two was the beta.. yeah.. with two maps..

[Wintersdark]

Cathy, on 18 April 2015 - 08:42 AM, said:

Actually its exactly the same as community warfare, its a few days of fighting for, four and a bit planets, only you won't get a planet.

If the clans get 50% they get a cockpit item, most likely a flag on a post, that will probably say something like, Victor of Tukayyid, imposed over the standard clan symbol.

If they don't then the Inner Sphere pilots will most likely get a similar flag, only with Defender of Tukayyid, imposed over their house banner.

I'd like to feel its worth doing, and feel great about it, but I don't, its just left me feeling rather depressed, as this 'great' event, is, as you say going to be played out, on the same tired maps using the same bland system CW uses.

I hope to hell, that this event and reset, does not herald P.G.I's announcement that CW beta has ended, as to me it will advertise that they are incapable of creating an interesting game enviroment, i'd like to rage and rant, but its not worth expending the energy over it, I was creating more complex world war two,campaigns at the age of fifteen, for combined forces, and for battle tech, a fourth succession war campaign, that had everything P.G.I said was going to be in their one, plus fighting from jump point, to planet fall, with supply and repair, shortly before the clans were introduced into the canon, can't remember when that was, around 1987-88 ??

Now its unrealistic to expect something as complex, as what I constructed, as it was made for dice games and a small group of people, but, in effect we have a game of snakes and ladders, or Ludo with guns.

I think the only thing that can save this from being a complete flop, is nothing less than reward camo, linked to chasis you used in your drop decks, similar to faction or clan, and decals you can put on your mechs.

You understand that the limits of what we have are not due to incompetent or lazy design but rather design that has to fit inside extreme budget and time constraints? Its easy to design P&P campaigns of amazing detail and complexity, because design is all you need to do.

PGI has to implement things, and that's hard. It takes a lot of time to get even basic features in and relatively bug free in an MMO, from a large group of people. Artist, engineers, programmers designers, testers. Your P&P campaigns are so different an animal as to be totally unrelated.

I'm sure PGI would love to have maps for each world, several of them even. I'm sure they'd love detailed logistics and such as well... And have no doubt that those sorts of things are on the drawing board. But every single thing that gets added to the game must pass a cost:benefit analysis, and needs to be allocated very precious Dev and testing time. Thus, each of those things has to be weighed against everything else.

[Stealth Fox]

Wintersdark, on 18 April 2015 - 09:06 AM, said:

You understand that the limits of what we have are not due to incompetent or lazy design but rather design that has to fit inside extreme budget and time constraints? Its easy to design P&P campaigns of amazing detail and complexity, because design is all you need to do.

PGI has to implement things, and that's hard. It takes a lot of time to get even basic features in and relatively bug free in an MMO, from a large group of people. Artist, engineers, programmers designers, testers. Your P&P campaigns are so different an animal as to be totally unrelated.

I'm sure PGI would love to have maps for each world, several of them even. I'm sure they'd love detailed logistics and such as well... And have no doubt that those sorts of things are on the drawing board. But every single thing that gets added to the game must pass a cost:benefit analysis, and needs to be allocated very precious Dev and testing time. Thus, each of those things has to be weighed against everything else.

You know.. people seem to make plenty of return on games they sell only for 60 bucks and that is it, .. as a matter of fact, several people make amazingly successful businesses off of this idea of charging 60 for a full game and actually putting effort into it.

PGI has been taking 30 to 260 buck "purchases" for the longest time ..if not MORE money, and have shown pitifully little for it in return.

If PGI can't turn a profit with the cash cow they've been milking for the past 4 years? they're worse with their money then I was as a young rabbit fanboy in Japan.

No, they don't get off the hook for this bull any more. They're bleeding the players dry and giving a game as wide as a lake but as deep as a puddle in return.

[Malakie]

One thing the devs need to take into account...

It mentions we must maintain a personal level in the conflict in stats... What about those of us who are more roleplay types and handle more of the support roles? Some of us are not as good or quick on the controls as others or perhaps prefer to not just rush and shoot but use tactics, sensors, and the actual capabilities of our mech to play?

Many times I work to guard the flanks, use a mech with few weapons but loaded up defensively for scanning and fire support etc... Which means I do not get any where near the number of kills or assists others do.

Most of the game is geared toward that for getting scores, c-bills etc... Which I do think needs a major overhaul to be honest because it is so lopsided toward the killing shooting side of things.

So how do we roleplay and support players fit into this?

Many times I find myself out of the fight because I will pull in or put myself in a blocking position to allow others on the team to out flank or retreat back to a position where had I not they would have been toast without any warning from we support units..

With this battle, are those considerations being... well considered?

[Malakie]

Seph MacLeod, on 18 April 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

You know.. people seem to make plenty of return on games they sell only for 60 bucks and that is it, .. as a matter of fact, several people make amazingly successful businesses off of this idea of charging 60 for a full game and actually putting effort into it.

PGI has been taking 30 to 260 buck "purchases" for the longest time ..if not MORE money, and have shown pitifully little for it in return.

If PGI can't turn a profit with the cash cow they've been milking for the past 4 years? they're worse with their money then I was as a young rabbit fanboy in Japan.

No, they don't get off the hook for this bull any more. They're bleeding the players dry and giving a game as wide as a lake but as deep as a puddle in return.

I agree with you.. I too have been wondering about that because a lot of money has been invested and the possibilities for this game do not seem to be forthcoming in my opinion.. Each planet should have its own design. There could be so much more to this game than we currently see. I.E. a REAL live actual battle for the innersphere that is constantly changing as planets, sectors and more change hands.

In fact, as a planet is taken over, I think some ideas that would really make things interesting could be implemented... For example let's say a planet is liberated... Each time the defending team holds, they earn C-bills which allows them to buy planetary defenses, earn NPC bot defenders etc ..

This game could be turned into so much more than what it currently is... and my hope is that is actually what the future is bringing... because I am sure I am not alone is saying that right now it is getting to that boring point where we are basically doing the same thing over and over.. same maps, same defenses that never change etc...

I am not being critical nor complaining.. I WANT to see this game progress into something that truly reflects the Battletech genre. We have enough Battlemechs for now. Let's see some of this money we players spend used to enhance and add to the game giving us a REASON to want to play and battle. Build an actual real time campaign engine into things.. setup a real time ability to accept or decline MERC short time battle contracts...

I.E. I log in. My account then becomes part of the queue and randomly OR by someone selecting me that is running a mission, I am offered a short term contract because they need more mechwarriors to fulfill a mission, attack or defensive plan. I sign on for the mission based on the amount of C-Bills and salvage offered for that contract. Contracts could require me to stick with them one battle or for a short campaign of 10 battles... The point is, let's get some LIFE built into the game.. something to let us Mechwarriors live and play and fight as such.. not just click a button, wait for the computer to randomly pick a bunch of us, throw us onto one of the limited maps we have to shoot each other.... and then rinse and basically repeat it over and over....

[Wintersdark]

Seph MacLeod, on 18 April 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

You know.. people seem to make plenty of return on games they sell only for 60 bucks and that is it, .. as a matter of fact, several people make amazingly successful businesses off of this idea of charging 60 for a full game and actually putting effort into it.

Many, many more lose money on those games.

Also, many of those games are made by huge teams of developers who have massive resources that can be shared between projects.

Those successful $60 games are either

A: Fun but simple games
B: Awesome games that appeal to a far larger playerbase than MWO ever will. MWO will never be GTA, for example.

Quote

PGI has been taking 30 to 260 buck "purchases" for the longest time ..if not MORE money, and have shown pitifully little for it in return.

From a small set of people. Taking $60 from a couple million people makes you a lot more profitable than taking $200 from a couple hundred.

Quote

If PGI can't turn a profit with the cash cow they've been milking for the past 4 years? they're worse with their money then I was as a young rabbit fanboy in Japan.

No, they don't get off the hook for this bull any more. They're bleeding the players dry and giving a game as wide as a lake but as deep as a puddle in return.

I'm sure they turn a profit. If they didn't, they'd have closed up shop long ago. But there are still developer time limits that are real, hard limits. You can't just magically add content, it needs to be created, and that takes money and time.

But, whatever. You're bitter and sad. Why not just go do something else?

[AlexEss]

Seph MacLeod, on 18 April 2015 - 04:12 AM, said:

Or ..you know..they could reset the map and not have the most IMPORTANT BATTLE OF BATTLETECH

You do know that the planet in question has been fought over twice at least... The defacto battle ofr Turducken have come and gone...

But if it hurts your posterior so bad... Just think of this as a Wolfs Dragoons MilSim... To get us ready for the real thing....

See i just solved your canon.... And i did it for free. You can thank me later.

[C E Dwyer]

Wintersdark, on 18 April 2015 - 09:06 AM, said:

You understand that the limits of what we have are not due to incompetent or lazy design but rather design that has to fit inside extreme budget and time constraints? Its easy to design P&P campaigns of amazing detail and complexity, because design is all you need to do.

PGI has to implement things, and that's hard. It takes a lot of time to get even basic features in and relatively bug free in an MMO, from a large group of people. Artist, engineers, programmers designers, testers. Your P&P campaigns are so different an animal as to be totally unrelated.

I'm sure PGI would love to have maps for each world, several of them even. I'm sure they'd love detailed logistics and such as well... And have no doubt that those sorts of things are on the drawing board. But every single thing that gets added to the game must pass a cost:benefit analysis, and needs to be allocated very precious Dev and testing time. Thus, each of those things has to be weighed against everything else.

As I said

'Now its unrealistic to expect something as complex, as what I constructed, as it was made for dice games and a small group of people, but, in effect we have a game of snakes and ladders, or Ludo with guns'.


Now Warhammer the online game, closed it servers I think the middle of last year, and was considered by many players as a flop, was vastly more complex, and involved more people,thats players, I seem to remember it was 60 a side, where you had to use a combination of skills support each other and use..its version of role warfare.


Now I never expected CW to be the Ferrari of computer PvP campaigns, though it was talked up by Byran at the end of Beta Event, as if we were getting one, but I did expect something better than the wheelbarrow, with the flat tyre that we have ended up with.

[Jabilo]

It's a great idea! /salute

For the nay sayers, it has already been communicated that many of the issues with CW have been spotted and lessons learnt for after the reset.

Instead of just introducing the changes with a quiet whimper, they choose to host a huge community event with fun and prizes for all. No doubt the data gathered will also help improve the game in the future.

I am vocal when I see things I do not like (the last clan quirk pass was poor and a missed opportunity- the Mist Lynx quirks beggared belief ). But I also believe in credit where it's due and I think this is pretty awesome.

I think some of the people here would not be happy even if Russ popped round their house and cleaned their windows, cooked them a nice meal and gave them a back rub.

[Wintersdark]

Malakie, on 18 April 2015 - 09:47 AM, said:

I agree with you.. I too have been wondering about that because a lot of money has been invested and the possibilities for this game do not seem to be forthcoming in my opinion.. Each planet should have its own design. There could be so much more to this game than we currently see. I.E. a REAL live actual battle for the innersphere that is constantly changing as planets, sectors and more change hands.

Each planet should have it's own design? Do you know how many planets there are? Have you stopped to do the math there? They're chewing out maps pretty quick, now, but even at less than a month per match, they'd need decades to make a map for each planet.

Quote

In fact, as a planet is taken over, I think some ideas that would really make things interesting could be implemented... For example let's say a planet is liberated... Each time the defending team holds, they earn C-bills which allows them to buy planetary defenses, earn NPC bot defenders etc ..

Which would be great. And is something that I'm sure they've considered, or similar to such things. But all these things take design, development, art, and UI time. There's only so much time to be spread around. Right now, they're improving the mechlab (taking a small break from CW development, which saw a great deal of frenzied work for a while) so that's the UI team. There are lots of other features on the way, that are waiting on those UI team resources. This is the reality of game development: There are lots of different factors, and it's just not a matter of wanting to add something and banging off "a couple lines of code" to make them.

Quote

This game could be turned into so much more than what it currently is... and my hope is that is actually what the future is bringing... because I am sure I am not alone is saying that right now it is getting to that boring point where we are basically doing the same thing over and over.. same maps, same defenses that never change etc...

Huh? It's been changing all along. Maybe not as fast as you (or they!) would like, but as fast as they can. That's just the reality of it.

Quote

I am not being critical nor complaining.. I WANT to see this game progress into something that truly reflects the Battletech genre. We have enough Battlemechs for now. Let's see some of this money we players spend used to enhance and add to the game giving us a REASON to want to play and battle. Build an actual real time campaign engine into things.. setup a real time ability to accept or decline MERC short time battle contracts...

There will always be new mechs added, and other such income generating things. They have to, or else they won't make money, and if they don't make money, they can't pay developer salaries and the game simply ceases to progress at all.

[Stealth Fox]

Wintersdark, on 18 April 2015 - 10:10 AM, said:

Many, many more lose money on those games.

Also, many of those games are made by huge teams of developers who have massive resources that can be shared between projects.

Those successful $60 games are either

A: Fun but simple games
B: Awesome games that appeal to a far larger playerbase than MWO ever will. MWO will never be GTA, for example.
But, whatever. You're bitter and sad. Why not just go do something else?

You seem to forget that MW2 3 and 4 where the Call of Duty games of their times. If you didn't have it, you knew someone who did and at least saw them play it. Activation didn't sink money into 4 games repeatedly because it was fun for the fans, They did it because it sold very well.

AlexEss, on 18 April 2015 - 10:11 AM, said:

But if it hurts your posterior so bad...

yes yes.. the classic "this person expects the game to actually be a good game, thus he must be unreasonable and "butt hurt" about it because he wants Quality" non argument.

[Sereglach]

Seph MacLeod, on 18 April 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

You know.. people seem to make plenty of return on games they sell only for 60 bucks and that is it, .. as a matter of fact, several people make amazingly successful businesses off of this idea of charging 60 for a full game and actually putting effort into it.

PGI has been taking 30 to 260 buck "purchases" for the longest time ..if not MORE money, and have shown pitifully little for it in return.

If PGI can't turn a profit with the cash cow they've been milking for the past 4 years? they're worse with their money then I was as a young rabbit fanboy in Japan.

No, they don't get off the hook for this bull any more. They're bleeding the players dry and giving a game as wide as a lake but as deep as a puddle in return.

No offense, but there's a LOT of things you're missing with this statement that leads to terrible misinformation to people who are willing to take a post like this at its word:

1. Those people selling 60 dollar polished games only need to fund the creation of that minimum 60 dollar game, release it, and then only keep a TINY staff on that game for some bug fixes and patches . . . if they even do that. Afterwards the rest of the staff is either laid off or working on the next title for the multi-product company. Need I also add that MWO happens to be the only thing PGI is working on, with a relatively small development staff.

2. You know what a lot of the money PGI is getting goes into? Maintaining those servers that run the game. Maintaining the constant FULL development staff that is constantly working on adding more to the game . . . not a tiny contingent of people set to release a few patches until the game is "good enough". Also, PGI's prices aren't that bad . . . if you think they are, then you need to do a lot of comparison to other games out there. About the only thing PGI really needs for its monetization are more dinky little 1-2 dollar purchase items (decals will be big for that) to allow more cosmetic customization. Those actually will help bring in a lot more revenue then you'd think.

3. Older MMO's were never Free To Play. Not only were you paying the 60 dollars to get the initial game; you were paying the 60 dollars for the initial game and THEN paying a subscription fee of 10-15 dollars PER MONTH! That's actually 120-180 dollars PER YEAR! Oh, and guess what . . . if you didn't pay the subscription? Then your 60 dollar game was a 60 dollar BRICK, because you couldn't do ANYTHING with it without paying that subscription fee. PGI is not only letting people play the basic game for free, but then they only charge real money for micro-transactions and pre-release sales for people to buy into and to help support the game. The only thing people truly pay money for in MWO is convenience.

4. Newer 60 dollar, single drop purchase games that do have multiplayer are leeching off of other services that they have nothing to do with. Xbox game? Guess what, you're paying a subscription to Microsoft for that multiplayer capability. PS3/4 game? Then you get minimal free and need to pay subscriptions to Sony for decent services. Either way, money is still being shelled out to pay for those servers that your "60 dollar" games are running their multiplayer on.

5. Even if you're not paying a subscription, then a small portion of that 60 dollars is getting shaved off to go to those console-makers or to something like a Steam service . . . and they can get away with it . . . because that tiny fraction is shaved off of every copy of every game sold. Not just that one game. Either way their servers get funded.

6. You want to talk about actually 100% polished games? Then you need to go back over two decades, to when games weren't patched, to when consoles and computers weren't hooked up to the internet for regular updates, and something needed to be completed, bug free, and polished, or the game flopped; because there was no second chance or patch day. Plenty of modern "polished" games you're referring to have things like day 1 patches to fix horrific game-breaking bugs. Know what would happen if that game was released 20+ years ago? The game would flop, all the copies would be returned, and the company would go bankrupt.

PGI actually does a really damned good job with MWO, and I respect them for that. The best thing that happened for MWO's development was the shedding of IGP from the game. Ever since then, they've been making their deadlines, delivering on promises, and have been paying closer attention to their community. Things will only keep getting better. They just need time.

Now . . . insert the obligatory "young entitled whipper-snapper" rant to go on top of this, in regards to modern gaming.

Edited by Sereglach, 18 April 2015 - 10:36 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

@sereglach

I personally would rather have a subscription game.

Developers didn't change methods for the benefit of the customers, they changed from subscription to F2P because it brings in more money. Guildwars proved the concept when others like SOE mocked it, and then they all rushed to make their games hybrids, or go the way GW did.

I do agree dropping IGP was the best thing they have done, but I don't think it was done, for development reasons, it was done for cash, and with the perceived need to be part of the Steam stable. With steam taking a 30% cut, something had to go.

Now while I don't really agree that all $60 games were complete units and better developed (I was on the Horizons Istaria beta, which is now back as a F2P) I find your example about the size of the developement team PGI has, interesting, you say its large, others say it small, but this is a refreshing change to the usual, you can't expect the game to be developed quickly with a small team.

I don't think any one, can ever expect PGI to work fast, that has been around since closed beta, but I think most of us would like more than the bare bones when we were told how great and complex CW was going to be.

There lies the real problem with this Game P.G.I can't get out the habit of talking big, and until they learn this, it causes big disapointments, and a ghost town called CW, that this 'great' event is not going to change, unless PGI produces something closer to the presentation.

Saturday night and steiner forces are 84 there are 91 opponents.

Round that up to 100 for each clan and house, that's 1000 people playing CW even if you double that number, that is still a Damning endorsement, of the quality of the campaign game.