172 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Paul Inouye, on 11 August 2015 - 11:30 AM, said:

I guess this is me asking you not to make the assumption that the forums are a deadzone where feedback goes to die. I use twitter probably once or twice every two weeks. If I'm looking for the heartbeat of a certain topic.. I come here. Not Twitter, not Instagram, not Facebook, not Reddit.... here.. the MWO Forums.

These people demanding that the PGI Powers That Be talk to them directly are just so used to directly speaking to their Prime Minister, President, or C-level executives of the Fortune 50.








Oh no they don't ...

Edited by Mystere, 11 August 2015 - 04:58 PM.

[Deathlike]

Void Angel, on 11 August 2015 - 03:22 PM, said:

If the devs post complex explanations or let us in on what they're thinking in game design, they've always gotten two things out of it: massive, "burn all the things," raging flame wars, and people taking some quote or other and prating about it for years. Do the words "broken promises" ring a bell? Don't mention the fact that games very often deviate in some way from development plans; this was the plan at one time, and somebody paid money and they didn't like how it changed later, and now they get to be angry - forever. They have found their new hobby horse, and they are going to beat you with it:

First off.. never promise something that you can't keep. I hate the lame ambiguous stuff that never gets fleshed out (hello role warfare), but once you promise something... you are going to be held to that promise.

Even the simple "we make no promises" on certain things (3PV for instance) is more sufficient than "we promise X" or "we'll never do Y". Those are staples in establishing credibility. If you're going to promise something... you WILL be tested.

It's a huge mistake to make promises only for sales... and not deliver. It's almost like a verbal contract if you will. While you probably can't prove it in court (always gotta be written after all), only the court of public opinion matters.

It is what it is.

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All of these comments, and you guys know who you are, about how PGI needs to "acknowledge issues," or "post more so we know you're listening" come from a flawed premise - that PGI's entire staff is able and ought to engage at will with every thread and topic out there. This is not a realistic assumption, because a nontrivial and highly vocal minority don't want dialogue. They want validation and an audience.

I don't think anyone actually wants PGI to drop whatever they are doing and get that post answered immediately. Unless you really like your phone and your tweeting, it's always been unproductive.

You can't answer people that demand immediate answers.. but if tbere's something broken and you get enough inquiries... it's incumbent upon you to respond.

I'd rather have a dialog, but to date I don't think we've gotten a reasonably extended dialog on anything....

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Think about it: how many people still have their "how to fix," or "what X cost us" thread stamped into their fracking signatures, despite that ship having very obviously sailed? For better or for ill, this game has an extremely vocal and toxic minority who will simply stamp their nerd-foot and rage forever about this or that thing that should have been done, for whatever reason - the favorite justification is "the lore." Take a moment to remember how people shoehorn their favorite thing to hate into any remotely related topic. Pre-buff NARC is so underpowered that no one with experience ever uses it? Blame ECM! Locust legs too fragile? Blame ECM! Command Console doesn't do enough for the tonnage and space? The real issue is ECM!

ECM is broken in many ways, but that's not the point.

I think people in their own way is trying to show in their own way that some problems should be addressed... and not to just "harp" on the point.. they provide their own solution. It's the "I want to help, and here's my solution" type of deal.

However, just from the history of any gaming forum is that most of the time, it doesn't get much further than that as not everyone will agree with the proposed solution. It's normal, and it's not for a lack of trying. Everyone has their own solution but not always considers the alternatives or other related issues...

In essence, it's always been like "suggestion" and "take it for what it is worth" kind of deal. I know some people will go all out otherwise though, but at this point... it would always be better for a point of reference when stuff is "not as obvious". Writing a "hardpoint inflation" article took some effort despite PGI not even mentioning how they came to certain designs and conclusions. I'm still trying to guess on how they decide on "restricting" certain mechs/builds w/o lower arm actuators (I don't see the logic at all).

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Given these kinds of sadly typical posts in response to just about anything the devs do, it's hardly surprising that they tend to gravitate toward more controlled releases of information - Dev Outreach, Announcements, and the Command Chair. I'm sure someone will suggest that if they engaged more, the negativity would die away - this occurred to me, but I can't agree. They did engage more, a while back. There was posts all over the place, love and reconciliation were in the air, and the trolls complained about it all... if that's backed off, likely it's either because they're too busy to keep up that level of involvement, or glasnost failed to deliver on reduced player tensions.

Maybe my Open Beta recollection is broken, but I don't think there were that many troll responses, but I think PGI indirectly have tried to be "too inclusive" that it is somewhat to their own detriment once a certain change would affect a particular faction that disagrees.

Usually when you develop a product, you need to find out what's working and what's not, and then try to be SPECIFIC in what is being looked for, instead of being general... because you're not going to get the proper constructive criticism that is desired.

When you're vague, you'll get so many varied responses that don't fall on topic at all.

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Now, it's possible that they just let things slide because they were busy or something - but the swiftness with which dev posts on this thread have led to condescending jackassery aimed at PGI and an agument about all the Bad Things PGI "comes up with" when "left to their own devices." If you want more dev interation, hey, great! Just remember what they're dealing with out here, and think about maybe putting that feedback into a Support e-mail or a constructive thread.

Support is not the place I'd like to mention back in the IGP days. What bothers me more is that there isn't actually an in-game feature to accomplish the same task you'd see in other games (report bug or issue type of deal).

I don't think I'd want to send a Support an e-mail anyways (I'm also a little burned when Niko was responding to them just as well). The Forums are supposed to be that place for feedback... it just has to be more productive than it is now.

[KraftySOT]

Youre all welcome.

If youd like to donate your mechs to me in thanks. The name is Krafty. Craf-Tee. I take cash too.

For what its worth. Thanks for posting PGI.

If you guys could shoot down, or thumbs up the convergence debacle that has been the past 3 years while youre here. That would be just great. I dont care if you ever actually do it. But if you could just end the most common thread of this entire forum...id love you lots. A simple "Never." or "Maybe" is plenty.

While youre at it.

Id like a puppy.

I was never a cat guy. Bah humbug.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Tarogato, on 10 August 2015 - 09:32 PM, said:

Maybe... if they read forum posts... at least two of them will reply here in this thread to set us straight.

Didnt they start having technical guys doing that for a while? A thread paging karl Berg?

[Johnny Z]

I suspect also that who ever is responsible for the cat arguement in this topic had something to do with many of the cockpit items. https://www.youtube....e&v=2l_PmSOreGc

[Bishop Steiner]

Rebas Kradd, on 11 August 2015 - 09:11 PM, said:

And now he's finding out that posting without progress has a shelf life. That community is a powder keg.

Funny how I called that way back when, but the "experts" here held it up as a shining example of what would save gaming, led by the Messiah, Chris Roberts, his arm clad in shimmering samite...... so much so that schmucks shelled out for 15k packages.......

(redacted)

Edited by Catalina Steiner, 13 August 2015 - 07:28 AM.
removed off topic troll content

[Appogee]

KraftySOT, on 10 August 2015 - 09:23 PM, said:

Since December of last year.

Wait. You believe they were reading them prior to that...?!

As a marketing and communications specialist, I am continuously bamboozled by why PGI's leadership doesn't engage with its customers in its own forums.

Yes, there have been a lot of disgruntled customers. But by failing to engage with anyone here, they let such dissatisfaction go unresolved, and fester.

Russ did a reasonable job of trying to reboot the customer relationship post-IGP. But it's been sliding backwards since then.

[Bishop Steiner]

Appogee, on 12 August 2015 - 01:52 AM, said:

Wait. You believe they were reading them prior to that...?!

As a marketing and communications specialist, I am continuously bamboozled by why PGI's leadership doesn't engage with its customers in its own forums.

Yes, there have been a lot of disgruntled customers. But by failing to engage with anyone here, they let such dissatisfaction go unresolved, and fester.

Russ did a reasonable job of trying to reboot the customer relationship post-IGP. But it's been sliding backwards since then.

sooo... the numerous threads by Tina, and others, plus the admittedly sporadic (but way too hard to keep track of) Devs popping into topics..... hasn't happened? I scroll through the Forums, I see plenty of Posts with little PGI emblems on them. Not as many here, in Generally Disgruntled, I mean General Discussion, but enough.

Honestly, what I generally see, is people don't get the Dev's to reply to THEIR hot button topic (or what they perceive as one) so the Devs must be bad and ignoring us.

Could they do better? (cough...Tina's let her contribution of the week thing fall away, for instance) Yes. But to act like they don't communicate at all, is pretty disingenuous, too.

[redacted]

Edited by Catalina Steiner, 13 August 2015 - 08:01 AM.
Removed unconstructive troll content

[Appogee]

Bishop Steiner, on 12 August 2015 - 01:58 AM, said:

sooo... the numerous threads by Tina, and others

I am going to call a spade a shovel in what I hope is a constructive encouragement to the leadership of PGI to leverage the latent potential of these forums.

Tina is a lovely girl. I'm glad PGI hired a community manager. But she's not a company leader, nor a developer. She's a middle person, very junior, and from her comments and Vlogs, much less experienced with the product than almost all of us using the forums. So, while I wish Tina every good will and success in the world, she's not a proxy for the people making decisions about this game. I'm told she relays our points of view to the developers... I guess that's a good thing.

But there are no 'numerous threads by others'. The monthly Command Chair Roadmap post became a month overdue, then got extended into a two month lookahead, and then three.

From Paul we get occasional incursions offering us thought bubbles and ideas (most recently, 'a new balancing plan' and a 'significant revision to ECM which may or may not lead to further changes'). These get we customers clamoring for details, though very little further detail is forthcoming. It may even worsen the frustration around lack of communication and sense of forward momentum.

The occasional (and appreciated) posts by shop floor devs tend to be about issues they are working on. It's good that they are seeking input on specific issues, but not good that the literally hundreds of good ideas posted in these forums each year clearly aren't being read, adopted in the development plan, etc. Because the leaders and key designers aren't readying those threads.

If you want to have any opportunity to influence leader/developer actions, you Tweet Russ. You don't bother posting it here.

I am not expecting PGI to respond to every thread or idea. But anyone who reads these forums daily, as I do, cannot help but notice that what is said here mostly has little to effect on MWO's direction. There is very little leader or developer engagement here... certainly in comparison to other games I play and forums I visit.

It's nice that Paul reassures us that he reads the forums. But savvy net gen companies today actually engage with their customers. Not doing so with the MWO community is a lost opportunity for PGI. A committed community, who passionately want the game to succeed - even those who have lost faith in PGI - but who could be brought on board and made into evangelists, with better communication in their own forums.

Edited by Appogee, 12 August 2015 - 12:41 PM.

[Raggedyman]

Appogee, on 12 August 2015 - 02:16 AM, said:

I am not expecting PGI to respond to every thread or idea. But anyone who reads these forums daily, as I do, cannot help but notice that what is said here mostly has no effect on MWO's direction.

There are two options here:
1 - PGI are ignoring what's being said on the forums
2 - What is being said on the forums is out of step with whats happening with the game (both how its being developed and how its being played)

[Hotthedd]

Raggedyman, on 12 August 2015 - 03:48 AM, said:

There are two options here:
1 - PGI are ignoring what's being said on the forums
2 - What is being said on the forums is out of step with whats happening with the game (both how its being developed and how its being played)

Well option 2 seems very unlikely, since you must have an account to post here. Therefore it is logical to assume those posting here ARE playing the game, and have their finger on the pulse of how the game is being played. When you have thousands of people (players) contributing to the forums, you have a very good representation of the player base.

So, that leaves us with option 1. Now we have had PGI devs and staff respond to this very thread telling us that they DO read over the forums, which is great, but still the overall FEELING from the base is that they are NOT being heard, AND that non-players are actually heard MORE on off-site forums.

[WarHippy]

Bishop Steiner, on 11 August 2015 - 05:21 PM, said:

hey...how about relax and enjoy some cats?

I know you think its cute for you and all of the others to post cat pics in some absurd crusade to shut people up because you don't care about or like what they have to say, but it really isn't. Kind of sad really.

Bishop Steiner, on 11 August 2015 - 05:21 PM, said:

(cuz of course we are talking things that NO other Dev team is guilty of *coughStarCitizencough*)

Why should I care about StarCitizen and its problems when I am on the MWO forums talking about MWO problems? Is it because it is somehow supposed to prove that the devs actually talking with their community doesn't lead to anything, or what exactly? There are plenty of examples of devs actually interacting with their communities to very positive effect so I'm not sure what your point is.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Bishop Steiner, on 11 August 2015 - 08:40 AM, said:

plus since no 3 people on here can agree on ANYTHING, just what pearls of wisdom are PGI supposed to drop everything to respond to and follow.... since no matter what they do, someone else will cry just as loudly it's wrong, lol.

Yup, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ask a hundred different mechwarrior players what the _perfect_ Mechwarrior game would be like and you're likely to get a thousand wildly different answers. We're honestly a ridiculously difficult bunch to please and have been so since the early days when the only way to play Battletech was on tabletop. I remember FASA getting tons of grief on rec.games.mecha back in the usenet days for everything from rules to typos and math mistakes in TROs, and then someone else praising those very things the other posts had lambasted.

The only thing the great unwashed generally can agree with eachother about 100 percent of the time is that everyone else is wrong.

[Almond Brown]

If we expect the Dev to take things more serious, then perhaps the Community as a whole should stop using the term "complete Overhaul" for every ******* thing ever brought up. Although most ideas posted here are obviously brilliant and way beyond what the actual Dev could ever imagine, even they cannot take the 12th floor out of a 23 story building. Well of course unless said Building is still on the Drawing Board but MWO is already at least 15 stories tall.

TLDR: It is to late to start over... sorry.

P.S. I got no cat memes, sorry again.

Edited by Almond Brown, 12 August 2015 - 07:31 AM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Kind of funny, Krafty posts about devs not reading the forums after getting jumped by Russ a week ago on this very forum. People respond that they never post, indeed, don't even read the forums, despite there being dev posts all over the place.

Devs respond, reconfirm what we've been told numerous times, they do read the forums daily, they just don't respond often because it's not worth the hassle that comes from it every single time. Something many of you in this VERY thread confirm for them!

We have multiple posts by some claiming that the devs need to lets us know they read something, somehow...'validate my existence!' is what every single one of those read as, go on, deny it, argue whatever, that's all they are, validation demands. PGI is under NO onus to validate anyone, they are only required to provide the software product they've contracted to provide, MechWarrior Online.

That's it boys and girls, PGI isn't required to do jack beyond provide the game, despite all your protestations to the contrary, they never contracted to do more than that, read your EULAs and ToS, they didn't agree to talk to us, just provide a software product. Some of you call it bad PR if they don't validate every single person's demands for validation, or at least YOUR demand for validation, and that's your opinion, nothing more. MOST of the playerbase don't give a damn if the devs validate you or not, they don't use these forums, so it literally means nothing to them. Keep that in mind folks, we are NOT the majority on these forums, we are the MINORITY, and our opinions and ideas are nothing but the ideas and opinions of a very small percentage of the playerbase, and most of them are utter garbage. Like the ones implemented that so many complain about, ghost heat, consumables, etc, ALL ideas from THIS small section of the playerbase, remember?

Of course you don't remember, you just blame Paul and PGI for being idiots and not having an effing clue because it wasn't YOUR personal hot button topic/idea/suggestion that was used, it was someone's else's idea, one which you don't agree with, therefore PGI obviously screwed up!

And you wonder why they don't post here often? Do you even READ what the hell you post? I know when I was doing dev and mod work I never EVER responded to the forums publically, not once. I would respond privately and request my response STAY private, something I know the devs here do, and avoided the problems a public post brings. Again, just look at the responses in this very thread, and ask yourself why would any sane dev post here if THAT is the type of bs they'll get for it?

[WarHippy]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 August 2015 - 08:50 AM, said:

Kind of funny, Krafty posts about devs not reading the forums after getting jumped by Russ a week ago on this very forum. People respond that they never post, indeed, don't even read the forums, despite there being dev posts all over the place.

Devs respond, reconfirm what we've been told numerous times, they do read the forums daily, they just don't respond often because it's not worth the hassle that comes from it every single time. Something many of you in this VERY thread confirm for them!

We have multiple posts by some claiming that the devs need to lets us know they read something, somehow...'validate my existence!' is what every single one of those read as, go on, deny it, argue whatever, that's all they are, validation demands. PGI is under NO onus to validate anyone, they are only required to provide the software product they've contracted to provide, MechWarrior Online.

That's it boys and girls, PGI isn't required to do jack beyond provide the game, despite all your protestations to the contrary, they never contracted to do more than that, read your EULAs and ToS, they didn't agree to talk to us, just provide a software product. Some of you call it bad PR if they don't validate every single person's demands for validation, or at least YOUR demand for validation, and that's your opinion, nothing more. MOST of the playerbase don't give a damn if the devs validate you or not, they don't use these forums, so it literally means nothing to them. Keep that in mind folks, we are NOT the majority on these forums, we are the MINORITY, and our opinions and ideas are nothing but the ideas and opinions of a very small percentage of the playerbase, and most of them are utter garbage. Like the ones implemented that so many complain about, ghost heat, consumables, etc, ALL ideas from THIS small section of the playerbase, remember?

Of course you don't remember, you just blame Paul and PGI for being idiots and not having an effing clue because it wasn't YOUR personal hot button topic/idea/suggestion that was used, it was someone's else's idea, one which you don't agree with, therefore PGI obviously screwed up!

And you wonder why they don't post here often? Do you even READ what the hell you post? I know when I was doing dev and mod work I never EVER responded to the forums publically, not once. I would respond privately and request my response STAY private, something I know the devs here do, and avoided the problems a public post brings. Again, just look at the responses in this very thread, and ask yourself why would any sane dev post here if THAT is the type of bs they'll get for it?

It is rather impressive how self-righteous and condescending someone can be when they exaggerate and misconstrue most of what others are saying. Kudos to you have a cookie.

[KraftySOT]

I deserve something for this thread.

The only dev post in months, and this is the only thread on the first page where everyone is getting along.

STOP THE WORLD I WANT TO GET OFF

[Bilbo]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 12 August 2015 - 10:27 AM, said:

SQUAWWWK



whatever happened to Karl Berg? and that thread

Moved on.

Russ Bullock, on 20 March 2015 - 03:06 PM, said:

My Apologies. I intended multiple times to inform the community in a command chair post that Karl was no longer with us. We were really lucky to have a dedicated engineer of his caliber work on our product and for our studio for the past ~5 years. He was one of the most self motivated people I have ever known and was only interested in making a great product. We wish him nothing but the best.



Yes thank you. Karl loved working here and loved the product, but just could not turn down the opportunity he received. We completely understood and were grateful to have him as long as we did.

Edited by Bilbo, 12 August 2015 - 10:57 AM.

[Clownwarlord]

If PGI reads a forum post a single forum post the world will end ...

[NephyrisX]

clownwarlord, on 12 August 2015 - 10:59 AM, said:

If PGI reads a forum post a single forum post the world will end ...

Paul Inouye, on 11 August 2015 - 11:30 AM, said:

....


Again... I read the forums daily. I do not have the time to respond to them because that would generally lead to a discussion. If I did this for every post/idea/feedback thread I would have zero time to get my day to day and feature planning tasks done. The forums actually ARE the best place to give feedback/suggestions. The CM (Tina) also collates and highlights all high activity threads for us which are brought up in a weekly production meeting.

I guess this is me asking you not to make the assumption that the forums are a deadzone where feedback goes to die. I use twitter probably once or twice every two weeks. If I'm looking for the heartbeat of a certain topic.. I come here. Not Twitter, not Instagram, not Facebook, not Reddit.... here.. the MWO Forums.

Looks like someone didn't even read the thread he posted in