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[Smoked]

Not sure what happened to the Reporting Bugs subforums. There's work arounds and a few other things but for some reason PGI believes this is a mature product with few bugs that are to be reported via email and not logged aggressively and easily through the forums. Granted it's easier to avoid duplication and if you make the process more difficult and tedius, you are more likely to get true bugs logged rather than those minor glitches that are not worth the time and effort of logging.

However if PGI is actually going to steam release, maybe repackage MWO as an Open Beta product. Fresh sets of eyes may actually help identify the many bugs that the current playerbase is still living with and that may have been reported once but have been forgotten or lost. Not sure if PGI keeps an active bugs list with numbers assigned and resolutions/implementations/followup/testing/responsible person named/etc. Seems like the smaller the company, the fewer the necessary steps but then a lot of the documentation, followup and testing/verification is also missing. But in lieu of that, we have a lot of events and mech colors to choose from.

As a customer I haven't been very vocal with my feedback on how PGI is doing. I have actually enabled their current performance by buying every single thing they released other than some mechs released just for the gift shop and the phoenix package. This is very similar to providing unemployment money to people not actively looking for a job. They get used to the income and are not motivated to acquire a new job. So I will be more accountable and refrain from buying any more electronic items until I find the product performance acceptable and the bugs that irritate me, actually fixed.

Overall, is this product playable? Yes, most certainly it is. But am I personally getting a fair return for the time and money I put into the game? Probably not. If I had not spent a dime, I would say this product is excellent for a free game. But once you go over a certain amount of money spent, this game becomes a very inferior option compared to the alternatives you could have spent your money on.

Can the same be said for other games? I don't think so. I've probably spent about 25% of the money in WOT's as I've spent on MWO but yet have many more hours logged into WOT and have never regretted spending a dime there. However I enjoy the concept and BattleTech Universe elements so I had chosen to play MWO for the past year. I had stopped playing during closed Beta after I had purchased my founder's pack until Clan Wave 1 had been released and that this game seemed overall better, IMO.

So now they repackage "reseen" mechs and release 3 variants + collector's edition and a hero mech for $55 and call that a bargain when they had previously released resistance 2 for $80? How many hours of gameplay am I going to actually get from that $55 investment. That's almost the cost of a brand new released game. I would argue that I am getting much more from a complete game for $55. The argument could be, well you can just buy the lowest package for $20. For $20 you can get a "classics" version for most console games. Which would be a better option, purely from an unbiased prospective? PGI has employed the "bonus" idea where they are giving up other virtual products to give the consumers a sense of increased value for their price paid.

And what if Harmony Gold does go ahead and starts legal procedures, does the $55 mean that it's going to a legal fund reserved for that event or is it to keep PGI's doors open for another few weeks? In the event PGI loses any court battles and are ordered to remove those items off of the server, will the people that paid for those items get a refund? Can PGI keep running with that income and legal fees loss? More than likely the proceedings are going to be filed in California and PGI is in Vancouver. So again as a consumer, there are many questions as to even the continued operation of the game for me to continue to invest money to keep a product going.

One issue I always get and it bugs me no end is that if you are using a multimonitor system, with the game in windowed mode, and wanted to be productive while you are waiting for the infamous searching to end, your mouse/user input will get captured and released repeatedly as it goes through it's various stages of transferring you to the match server and actually initiating the match.

However if you had been using the second monitor, sometimes your active screen in windows will revert back to the second monitor leaving your mech unmanned.

To fix this you will have to reselect your active monitor.

Sometimes when you reselect your active monitor, your keyboard input will not work, so while you can face enemy mechs and return fire, you will not move your legs nor twist your torso leaving you dead.

Not sure if the searching window and wasting approximately 1/8 to 1/4 of your MWO online time (this time also includes in match ready up time) waiting for a match is part of the user experience that PGI is promoting. But for players whose gaming time is limited or their actual time is actually valuable (re: making $100K+/year), this game is a terrible option as far as using their available time wisely therefore you are losing an essential part of your player/income base.

Not sure if PGI will actually read this rather long post that has many different topics combined into a single thread. But hopefully they will take some feedback from one of their bigger customers. But I spent more time on this email than actually playing in a match probably in the past month.