137 replies to this topic

[CDLord HHGD]

Livewyr, on 02 October 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

Mech development assets are different than level design or UI...
One does not simply tech a mech artist/engineer and throw him or her onto UI.

(Alex draws mechs... that what he does.)


PGI and MWO have many many many faults.. but this is not one of them.

Absolutely! If we don't need more mechs, then they may not need Alex anymore and that my friends is a bad thing. I'm very pleased with PGI's progress over 2015 and I look forward to 2016.

[Scratx]

Mech packs is how they make money and pay for the servers, staff, rent, etc.

Asking them to stop that is almost on the same level as asking the Moon to stop orbiting the Earth. It's not gonna happen.

[sycocys]

MechaBattler, on 02 October 2015 - 07:10 AM, said:

The real question is how much are they diverting for the big rebalance and will they ever get back to CW?

Considering what we saw on the PTS it is probably safe to say that they put Paul on it for about 3 hours while he was sitting in the bar after work.

[Anjian]

CW is unsustainable at this point. I don't see any economic reason to put more work on it any longer. Likely Russ saw that too, around the time when the last map Vitric Forge came out. There were supposed to be 12 maps for CW, one for each slice of the planet.

Better to put your efforts and resources where 90% of your player base is playing at. Not every idea is a good one and sometimes you have to admit your losses.

[Alistair Winter]

Hey, if people are willing to pay $110 for 2 heavy mechs, be my guest. Keep talking about how it's amazing value for money, I don't mind. I'm not going to argue.

Thanks for funding the game, because I don't see any reason to spend more money in the future, personally.

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

Livewyr, on 02 October 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

Mech development assets are different than level design or UI...
One does not simply tech a mech artist/engineer and throw him or her onto UI.

(Alex draws mechs... that what he does.)


PGI and MWO have many many many faults.. but this is not one of them.

Well they could always lay off / fire some of their artists and use that money to hire people to actually work on the game.

So "they can't use artists to do the game" is lame.

If people are getting paid, and they can't help build the game.... why are they getting paid again?

[Khobai]

Quote

The bottom line is that I feel like far too much of PGI's resources are being pushed at 'Mech development and sales.

Havent noticed that at all.

Seems like most of their resources are going towards new user experience to me. They said it took them 6 months to finish the tutorial. And now theyre working on a rebalance so the game wont be horribly unbalanced when it goes up on steam.

Quote

CW is unsustainable at this point. I don't see any economic reason to put more work on it any longer. Likely Russ saw that too, around the time when the last map Vitric Forge came out. There were supposed to be 12 maps for CW, one for each slice of the planet.

Better to put your efforts and resources where 90% of your player base is playing at. Not every idea is a good one and sometimes you have to admit your losses.

Blame the crybaby competitive units for that. They keep insisting CW is for units only and that pugs should have no place in CW.

Meanwhile there arnt enough players to keep CW going because the large units keep deterring pugs from playing when pugs are the only chance CW has of populating all the various factions.

What they need to do is combine ALL the gamemodes and queues into CW, and make EVERY single match that gets played count for CW. And they need to fix the CW matchmaker so it only matches large groups against other large groups. Pugstomping should not be a thing in CW.

They need to eliminate the divide between the players that they created.

Edited by Khobai, 02 October 2015 - 07:48 AM.

[Apnu]

Anjian, on 02 October 2015 - 07:25 AM, said:

CW is unsustainable at this point. I don't see any economic reason to put more work on it any longer. Likely Russ saw that too, around the time when the last map Vitric Forge came out. There were supposed to be 12 maps for CW, one for each slice of the planet.

Better to put your efforts and resources where 90% of your player base is playing at. Not every idea is a good one and sometimes you have to admit your losses.

IMO, they implemented it wrong.

They shouldn't have come out with Invasion and the 4 mechs per player thing out of the gate. They should have gone the efficient route and recycled modes and maps. They should have rolled assault, skirmish and conquest into CW and made those PUG games mean something on the Inner Sphere map. They should have come up with a CW idea that had space for teams to fight teams, and PUGs, solos and small groups too.

Instead they came out with Invasion, said to the community "hey tryhard teams, this one's for you" Which immediately divided the community and invited snobbery and trolling. CW fractured the community more, not less which I think was PGI's desire. Add on the fact that several teams got so bored with CW and the game in-general, their only purpose became trolling the players as much as possible and drive everybody out they can. CW's lack of depth was ripe for this kind of social engineering and those trolls won. Pretty much everybody's been driven out of CW.

Most nights when I look at the IS map, I only see maybe 48 total players on all 10 planets Davion can attack or defend. This game has tens of thousands of players, that's pathetic.

So the fix is easy. Quit trying to be fancy with CW, and start making Assault, Skirmish and Conquest games have some kind of affect on the IS map and have players earn points with the houses from it. Drive all games towards the IS map. That's where the drama is and that's were everybody can go and see what's going on, where the games are, who's playing and where they want to focus their games.

Its fine to have a game mode geared towards organized teams, but it should be in addition to, regular game play, not the only game play in CW.

The factions need more players, as it is now, one or two large teams can dominate a faction's population and then run the table in CW. Look at the map right now.

What we have in CW is not at all what I imagined it based of what PGI was saying before the launch. I avoid it like the plague.

[TLBFestus]

I haven't looked at the CW map in something like 6 months, such is my lack of interest in it.

From the outset I felt that the design of the maps, with nothing but bottlenecks, choke points, and gates was going to make for horrible game play and overall I think I was right.

It's almost as they decided to make it so unpalatable for the majority of players that they would have a reason to finally say..."Sorry it's a waste of resources". At least in the manner they designed it, unattractive to 90% of players, I'd have to agree.

[Ghogiel]

Khobai, on 02 October 2015 - 07:40 AM, said:

Blame the crybaby competitive units for that. They keep insisting CW is for units only and that pugs should have no place in CW.

Meanwhile there arnt enough players to keep CW going because the large units keep deterring pugs from playing when pugs are the only chance CW has of populating all the various factions.

Competive players and units hardly play CW as is, there are hardly even any groups in there at all. The overwhelming majority of players there are solo players. To the point of seeing 4 players on every team in trials. premade boogyman presence in CW is a bit exaggerated.

Edited by Ghogiel, 02 October 2015 - 07:52 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Competive players and units hardly play CW as is, there are hardly even any groups in there at all. The overwhelming majority of players there are solo players. To the point of seeing 4 players on every team in trials. premade boogyman presence in CW is a bit exaggerated.

Then whos capturing all the planets? Of course competitive units are playing. And they win planets by pugstomping. I would say at least least half the games I play in CW are against 8-12 man groups that mostly belong to the same unit and stomp my team of pugs in trial mechs. And sometimes you have to keep playing against the same 8-12 man group over and over.

They need to cap unit sizes to 50-100. Russ talked about doing this but they still havent done it. Large units should not be allowed to dominate entire factions. They need to bust up the large units of hundreds of players into smaller units.

They also need to incorporate assault/conquest/skirmish gamemodes into CW. They need to make every single match that gets played count towards CW in some way.

And they need to do something to get rid of pugstomping. Pugs and small groups should not have to play against groups of 8+ people. Make large groups play against other large groups.

Trial mechs should also be banned from CW (until a proper matchmaker is put into place) but thats another issue entirely.

Edited by Khobai, 02 October 2015 - 08:00 AM.

[Apnu]

Khobai, on 02 October 2015 - 07:40 AM, said:

Havent noticed that at all.

Seems like most of their resources are going towards new user experience to me. They said it took them 6 months to finish the tutorial. And now theyre working on a rebalance so the game wont be horribly unbalanced when it goes up on steam.



Blame the crybaby competitive units for that. They keep insisting CW is for units only and that pugs should have no place in CW.

Meanwhile there arnt enough players to keep CW going because the large units keep deterring pugs from playing when pugs are the only chance CW has of populating all the various factions.

What they need to do is combine ALL the gamemodes and queues into CW, and make EVERY single match that gets played count for CW. And they need to fix the CW matchmaker so it only matches large groups against other large groups. Pugstomping should not be a thing in CW.

I agree, they're also caught up in this rebalance project and that seems to be consuming more software engineer time than new content that is not mechs. While that's happening, they've got the level editors working on map refreshes.

Like I said in the post above. CW should not be this way. CW should be an actual pillar of the game, not a separated game mode in some other tab of the game. Almost all games should impact the IS map in some way. Maybe a PUG game for conquest on Frozen City earns the winning team's faction some kind of points that give a .25% discount in the c-bill store. That's just one little idea, the point is, not all games have to be about territory acquisition.

Now ignoring the game play flaws in CW, what's the point of flipping planets? Is anything gained besides stroking the ego of a team? CW is pointless, the map is meaningless, its just colored balls. Its an inch deep and an inch wide. This game would improve 1000% if there was more depth, and all players were encouraged to take a contract with a faction and earn rewards from that, in every game.

Solos, PUGs, T4/5 players, they should feel like they're part of a faction, and even in their disorganized bracket, those games mean something.

[Ghogiel]

Khobai, on 02 October 2015 - 07:53 AM, said:

Then whos capturing all the planets? Of course competitive units are playing. And they win planets by pugstomping.

Trial mechs should also be banned from CW but thats another issue entirely.

most of these units aren't competive. About the closest Ive seen is seeing B teams from comp units in months. And it only takes a 4 man from the same unit to play a few games to get tags on a planet now due to everyone else being pugs/solo.

also they can't pug stomp if the queue isnt mostly full of... pugs.

Edited by Ghogiel, 02 October 2015 - 08:00 AM.

[XX Sulla XX]

They have to make money some how. Do you have other suggestions on how they make it?

[DAYLEET]

Adding mech is like adding guns to any other fps, it's content, just not meaningful content that actualy adds to the gameplay. It just gives you something to try/do for a short while. At some point it makes the job of balancing very hard or just dilute the gameplay.

My biggest complaint about the other fps out there(like Battlefield) is that they add way too much guns and gadget. It makes the game very spammy and generic. It makes the game flavorless and generic in the sense that now everybody, regardless of class can be and do the same thing and adjust to meta. You can relate that to mwo to the mech that have 7+ energy points light or assault.

XX Sulla XX, on 02 October 2015 - 08:02 AM, said:

They have to make money some how. Do you have other suggestions on how they make it?

Yes, i have tons of suggestion, many others have also voiced many suggestion, for years. I can assure you they all get ignored. Last DevLog that was about cockpit item was soul crushing to say the least when a Dev said "the (L)Centurion (L)Atlas has a unique shield/head, we used that to gauge community enthusiasms about customisation". It's not like anyone here expect them to actually care or take into account our suggestion about vanity item, or anything for that matter. Hell we have been asking for more color for fkin ever, how hard is it to just make new colors?

Edited by DAYLEET, 02 October 2015 - 08:11 AM.

[Koorstag]

The problem here is that mechs are their bread and butter. I think there will be a problem for them eventually where everyone has all the mechs they want and their funding will dry up. PGI needs to start looking for other ways to monetize this game.

Eventually, it seems that they will have to monetize the content more. Maybe new maps that can only be accessed if you have premium time for the first 6 months or so. Solo campaigns that must be purchased. Things like that.

I have not been playing long, so I have a shortage of mechs and am purchasing them. However, I will not keep doing that for much longer because, really, how many mechs do I need? Will more mechs improve my game experience significantly?

I know gamers have largely rejected subscription based games for some reason, but a gaming company needs money to develop their game. How does an online game raise that money over an extended timeframe? For PGI it means more mech releases and so funding has to be dedicated to the mech division often at the expense of the other content divisions.

The argument that the mech creators are separate from the level designers is only partly true. Any company has a finite number of employees they can pay for. When PGI has to have a full complement of mech designers, they have to take those resources away from other areas that don't monetize the game.

[RedDragon]

cdlord, on 02 October 2015 - 07:19 AM, said:

Absolutely! If we don't need more mechs, then they may not need Alex anymore and that my friends is a bad thing.

Alex should just change over to HBS. They'd have a lot more use for his talents.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

Sarlic, on 02 October 2015 - 06:34 AM, said:

Free to play concept and minimum viable product.

It ain't going nowere.

Welcome to the dark side. Glad you see the truth finally. Just took yu 2 years?

[GreyNovember]

Admittedly the Warhammer announcement bothered me greatly when I woke up to it. The Origins date had me squinting at why it would take so long when it was announced, but, fine I guess. The Marauder? Sounds like a good occasion to celebrate. Now though? Ehhhh.

I don't even.. know half the mechs in this game personally from other games, so I can't understand any nostalgia some of you oldies are feeling.

I'd like what is essentially class based drops in CW; What is essentially a regular match with special rules. ( LIGHTS ONLY! NO LASERS! EVERYONE HAS NO RADAR OR IFF!)

Hearthstone Tavern Brawl, if you will.

[Ghogiel]

Khobai, on 02 October 2015 - 07:53 AM, said:

And sometimes you have to keep playing against the same 8-12 man group over and over.

I've see exactly 3 8+ mans in CW since 2nd of sept. only one was comp> 228th black watch. we rushed the omega and won that one.