66 replies to this topic

[Exilyth]

Johnny Gorbachev, on 27 February 2016 - 07:52 PM, said:

"steep learning curve and niche market" is everyone's scapegoat here when it comes to playerbase issues, when in reality this game is just a slight variation of Warthunder/ WoT with lazers instead of tank shells and taller tanks with an arguably worse business model of the three.

Thankfully we don't have gold ammo and vehicle tiers, which puts MWO at least a step above WOT/WT. Hopefully we'll see more variety in the future.

[Khobai]

its doing bad because

1) no hats

2) no trading cards

[Druarc]

Have steam account, but don't use it for MWO, ac's name is something like f@ckyousteam352 yup I was no where near the first to do it. I use steam for buying 90% off games, but that's it.

[Cath]

MWO is simply a futuristic, stompy robot version of WoT and Warthunder.

The game type IS the same. FPS using a vehicle. The PLAY is almost the same. Number of maps is similar, play modes similar as well. I have months(not hours) of play time invested in WoT and WT, so I think I can speak from an informed pov.

I played TT in the 80's and created an account here in 2013. Didn't play much past my first 25 games at that time, and shelved it for 2 years. Came back to find a functional game that was just like the games I'd previously ground the living daylights out of (WoT/WT). There is no reason that MWO couldn't easily have 5-10 times it's current player numbers. The games are so alike.

The monitization isn't that much different either imo. WoT and WT are actually getting worse and worse as time goes on. In WoT and WT it costs approximately $15 (us) for a month premium account, same as MWO. A premium tank or plane can run anywhere from $3 (low tier) to $50+++ in WoT. WT is a bit better on average, but they have been jacking prices up on a consistent basis for the last couple years now, so that now a plane can run 10-30 dollars.

One other thing now that PGI want to fund a championships. Russ - look up Warthunder's "Dog Tag" promotion. Amazing idea that would work here very well.

MWO's $20 for a months premium and 3 chassis is a very competitive price point for someone new that needs premium time for his/her grind. Could it be better? Sure. It could be much better. But it isnt like the forums of the WWII games is any less toxic than this one can be (and some of those forums are heavily moderated almost to the point where you remember their Russian, bye bye free speech)

Now there are a couple things MWO needs to look into to make it more palatable. The main one is: Give players a daily reason to login and play besides the grind. WT is currently trying a system where monthly a player can complete different tasks that change daily that reward them with tickets that can be used in a special store for certain items including premium vehicles. Now actually earning enough points to get a vehicle will take the full 30 days of grinding, but the OPTION is there. WoT does their "on track" ect.... The weekend events are a step in the right direction, but I'm thinking a more automated and automatic option. WT REMOVED the daily x2 for logging in and replaced it with a roulette wheel of crap rewards. Those other publishers make errors too.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I like this game and want to see it grow, the potential is there in spades.

Edited by Cath, 28 February 2016 - 06:52 PM.

[LegendaryArticuno]

With the upcoming decal system, MWO can really benefit from integration with STEAM Workshop.

[Kyrie]

I tend to agree that the Steam launch was underwhelming to say the least. As enumerated in this thread, there were a whole set of missed opportunities to make a bigger splash.

The offerings in the store were unimpressive as well.

[Mister Blastman]

Steam users aren't as dumb as many folks make them out to be. They see right through the pricing and content model.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

DjPush, on 27 February 2016 - 10:12 AM, said:

PGI did poorly on steam because they spent the last 2 years pandering to forum QQ threads about balance, map design and match maker woes. Then they put all their eggs in the "what mechs should be sold next" basket, instead of building a game model and match modes where all that **** worked itself out.

Now they have whales like myself choking to death on mech packs and begging to see something new in this game other than a re-skinned humanoid model and cockpit items to match it's paint scheme.

You won't get many new players out of a generation with the attention span of a puppy. They will spend 20 hours (I'm being generous with that estimate) doind the same thing until they realize there is nowhere to go in this game, and drop it without spending a dime.

I'm ranting. Nevermind the old salty vet. I really loved this game. However, I find myself playing a lot less and showing much more reserve when buying things from PGI these days.

I was going to comment on this thread, but I'll quote you instead since you said what I was planning on saying.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Mister Blastman, on 28 February 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:

Steam users aren't as dumb as many folks make them out to be. They see right through the pricing and content model.

They're still pretty dumb. When I left a review on Firefall stating I was a founder and had been playing for years and all that jazz, they still saw I had 13 minutes in the game via Steam and refused to listen to any point in the review.

Steam users are bloody, ******* idiots. No 'ands', 'ifs', or 'buts' about it. They are but a half step above console kiddies. Which means they share many of the same characteristics, two of them being: stupidity and niggardliness.

[Elizander]

The trading cards, animated emotes, backgrounds and Steam Community Market and other items you can trade should happen.

Having items drop and be traded ala-KF2/CS:GO/Dota 2 requires a dedicated content artist. PGI can start wtih cockpit items. Make them drop randomly at low chance per game and let people trade them or sell them on Steam. :3

[PocketYoda]

Very poor Social tools.
Very poor team play.
Team play is 99% stomps due to very poor tier mechanics
Tier mechanics based on teams...
Updates are incredibly slow.

That's why the population is dead.

Edited by Samial, 29 February 2016 - 01:22 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Add trading cards and badges and backgrounds, amybe even some emote MWO icons. And some play the a game purely fr this. Even if I never understood those.

Davegt27, on 27 February 2016 - 01:31 PM, said:

I have had steam on my PC for years but have never used it
You see I bought a game at the local Base Exchange but when I got home it said I must have internet and must get a steam account

Well I got the steam account but never played the game
You can say steam is the reason I stopped playing PC games
For the life of me I can’t figure out why I would want to go to a third party to get a game why not go straight to the developer?

Because I like to have ONE login for all my games and not to care about 180+ different accounts at each developer I play games of.

Quote

I see steam as an evolution to game stop and how they rip off little kids
The kids grew up and now get ripped off by someone else

Not steams fault to rip off people, it's the peoples fault for letting them get ripped off. Also if you ahve patience you get many games dirt cheap.

[MadcatX]

I figured it was par for the course in terms of Steam F2P games. You have your influx of folks that come and play for free, some will stay but then many will leave when either a new F2P goes up on the storefront or some retail game has an 80% off special.

[QuantumButler]

No op it's doing poorly on steam because it is doing poorly in general.

Thankfully the golden old men willing to spend thousands of dollars on the game still exist so it won't go away ever.

[xTrident]

DjPush, on 27 February 2016 - 10:12 AM, said:

PGI did poorly on steam because they spent the last 2 years pandering to forum QQ threads about balance, map design and match maker woes. Then they put all their eggs in the "what mechs should be sold next" basket, instead of building a game model and match modes where all that **** worked itself out.

Now they have whales like myself choking to death on mech packs and begging to see something new in this game other than a re-skinned humanoid model and cockpit items to match it's paint scheme.

You won't get many new players out of a generation with the attention span of a puppy. They will spend 20 hours (I'm being generous with that estimate) doind the same thing until they realize there is nowhere to go in this game, and drop it without spending a dime.

I'm ranting. Nevermind the old salty vet. I really loved this game. However, I find myself playing a lot less and showing much more reserve when buying things from PGI these days.

You mention the attention span of a puppy (sounds degrading) then in nearly the same breath mention there's nowhere to go in this game... Sounds contradictory to me. So what is it exactly? IMO, it's on the game, not the players.

I hear an awful lot of complaints about gamers that don't play MWO... Like the diehard MWO players are the Gods of the gaming realm while all the other gamers are young brainless peasants that wouldn't know a good game if it smacked them in the face. OR if they ever were to play MWO they're the mindless noobs that don't understand how to play as a team and essentially ruin the game for everyone else.

I don't think that's fair at all, especially with a game like MWO. Because you have it right - where is there to go with this game? I check out twitch.tv regularly and search MWO to see what's going on with it and the viewer rate always seems low to me. Luckily for me and I'm sure many many others that continue to play MWO the gameplay offers just enough. I quite enjoy walking around in mechs and battling. Believe it or not as much as I gripe about the grind in this game there is actually a fun factor involved with playing and "earning". (I just think it all comes way too slowly)

As for the OP's points concerning the Steam launch, I think they're all valid. Especially the value part of it. I've lost track on how many games I've bought on sale through Steam. That's one of the big reasons I've grown to love Steam. Hell just a couple weeks ago I bought a game that was released around the same time MWO's beta or whatever was out for under $8 bucks. And this game is continually worked on with balancing (if needed), DLC content and more. What happens with MWO when it hits Steam? Not a damn thing as far as incentive. Sure, it's F2P, and that's a damn good start for Steam users to get started. But it would have been cool, probably even smart if a really good deal would have come out of it a couple weeks to a month later.

I just think it's going to be hard to compete with the constant "game" deals that Steam offers whether MWO is F2P or not. Aside from enjoying battling with mechs what's also got me interested in MWO again are the cbill deals they were running a couple weeks ago. That makes me want to play to earn cbills to get new mechs.

Edited by xTrident, 29 February 2016 - 07:03 AM.

[xTrident]

Saint Scarlett Johan, on 28 February 2016 - 11:09 PM, said:

They're still pretty dumb. When I left a review on Firefall stating I was a founder and had been playing for years and all that jazz, they still saw I had 13 minutes in the game via Steam and refused to listen to any point in the review.

Steam users are bloody, ******* idiots. No 'ands', 'ifs', or 'buts' about it. They are but a half step above console kiddies. Which means they share many of the same characteristics, two of them being: stupidity and niggardliness.

You're judging the entire Steam user-base based on comments you received on a review you left? The irony of such are the immature stupid idiotic replies I've seen MWO fans leave long time MWO players on their not so glorious review of the game (on Steam). Reviews in which they explained in detail what was good and what was bad (their opinion of course). They put a lot of time and effort into their review and they got nothing but slandered for it. And these people that are fans of MWO doing the insulting were playing before it was released on Steam as this was very shortly after it was released on Steam.

Are there morons on Steam? Sure, that's people for you. As for your 13 minutes play being brought up like it was, that's pretty damn normal. I see that in a lot of reviews. Thing is... You call them idiots when it's just as easy for someone to say they're a founder and have been playing for a long time. I'm not saying you lied or anything, but there is endless ******** online. I've met and gamed with morons through every single title I've played. Whether it's through Steam, Origin, or the game "client".. Whatever you want to call it, itself. From MWO to WoW - Stupid people, people that play stupidly, and people that just don't care are everywhere.

Edited by xTrident, 29 February 2016 - 07:52 AM.

[Mister Blastman]

Saint Scarlett Johan, on 28 February 2016 - 11:09 PM, said:

They're still pretty dumb. When I left a review on Firefall stating I was a founder and had been playing for years and all that jazz, they still saw I had 13 minutes in the game via Steam and refused to listen to any point in the review.

Steam users are bloody, ******* idiots. No 'ands', 'ifs', or 'buts' about it. They are but a half step above console kiddies. Which means they share many of the same characteristics, two of them being: stupidity and niggardliness.

I just don't buy that given a large number of bright folks I have on my Steam friend list. Like it or not, Steam is the biggest marketplace on the PC. It is, I dare say, one of the reasons PC gaming is still alive.

But a few idiots makes a population stupid not. Dumb people are everywhere. Half of the World has an IQ lower than 100. A score of 100 is not a good score, by the way. It is average--which... isn't great. Steam is most likely no worse than the average and hate it as some of us do--due to its large player base it is representative of the population as a whole moreso than a niche website.

If the average Steam user is... average... then it is where it probably should be. Steam is designed to be a mass market with ease of purchase.

If a game is selling poorly on Steam it might be for a few different reasons...

1. It is a bad game! (this is obvious but not so much as people play stuff like Hello Kitty Online, Myst sold millions of copies and Diablow was super popular and sold very well despite it being awful).

2. It has a horrible pricing model.

3. It is niche material that isn't appealing to the masses. (Look at the DCS sims--HOWEVER... those are held with disdain in the flight sim community due to a lack of dynamic campaign system--something Falcon 4.0 has)

MWO is #2 and #3. Battletech has always been a niche market. It was a tabletop nerd game! It still is!

(I'm a nerd, btw)

But the pricing model also stinks and the Steam folks, who are used to getting deals, realize they are not getting a deal with MWO. It shoots itself in the foot with bad pricing in an already niche game.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

xTrident, on 29 February 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

You're judging the entire Steam user-base based on comments you received on a review you left? The irony of such are the immature stupid idiotic replies I've seen MWO fans leave long time MWO players on their not so glorious review of the game (on Steam). Reviews in which they explained in detail what was good and what was bad (their opinion of course). They put a lot of time and effort into their review and they got nothing but slandered for it. And these people that are fans of MWO doing the insulting were playing before it was released on Steam as this was very shortly after it was released on Steam.

Are there morons on Steam? Sure, that's people for you. As for your 13 minutes play being brought up like it was, that's pretty damn normal. I see that in a lot of reviews. Thing is... You call them idiots when it's just as easy for someone to say they're a founder and have been playing for a long time. I'm not saying you lied or anything, but there is endless ******** online. I've met and gamed with morons through every single title I've played. Whether it's through Steam, Origin, or the game "client".. Whatever you want to call it, itself. From MWO to WoW - Stupid people, people that play stupidly, and people that just don't care are everywhere.

I'm not judging off a singular incident. I'm judging off 9 years of experience with Steam. But when I can leave a review and leave links to my profile and screenshots backing up what I'm saying in my review and the average troglodyte there still goes "hurr durr, u oly heff 13 minutts in da gaem. yU r lior!", then all I can do is shake my head at humanity.

Hell, the average Steam user now reminds me of the average XBL user from back in my 360 days.

Mister Blastman, on 29 February 2016 - 09:16 AM, said:

I just don't buy that given a large number of bright folks I have on my Steam friend list. Like it or not, Steam is the biggest marketplace on the PC. It is, I dare say, one of the reasons PC gaming is still alive.

But a few idiots makes a population stupid not. Dumb people are everywhere. Half of the World has an IQ lower than 100. A score of 100 is not a good score, by the way. It is average--which... isn't great. Steam is most likely no worse than the average and hate it as some of us do--due to its large player base it is representative of the population as a whole moreso than a niche website.

If the average Steam user is... average... then it is where it probably should be. Steam is designed to be a mass market with ease of purchase.

If a game is selling poorly on Steam it might be for a few different reasons...

1. It is a bad game! (this is obvious but not so much as people play stuff like Hello Kitty Online, Myst sold millions of copies and Diablow was super popular and sold very well despite it being awful).

2. It has a horrible pricing model.

3. It is niche material that isn't appealing to the masses. (Look at the DCS sims--HOWEVER... those are held with disdain in the flight sim community due to a lack of dynamic campaign system--something Falcon 4.0 has)

MWO is #2 and #3. Battletech has always been a niche market. It was a tabletop nerd game! It still is!

(I'm a nerd, btw)

But the pricing model also stinks and the Steam folks, who are used to getting deals, realize they are not getting a deal with MWO. It shoots itself in the foot with bad pricing in an already niche game.

You can often be judged by the people you keep. I have numerous friends on Steam that are bright. Intelligent people don't associate with window licking, slack jawed, mouth breathers. And if half the population of a community is stupid, we no longer have a few idiots, have a pretty stupid community. And we're back to square one where the intelligent ones start to avoid the stupid ones.

I'll give it to Steamers that they are anything if not frugal. I don't know a single one that pays full price for anything. But when most of even my friends on Steam put on average 3 hours into a game before never touching it again can you blame them when they don't want to drop $60 on not even a full game in a F2P game?

If PGI wants to be successful on Steam they need to lower their prices. A lot.

There's likely a reason WoT doesn't go to Steam, and that's because their pricing model (same as MWO) is hot garbage.

[Lugh]

Khobai, on 28 February 2016 - 06:05 PM, said:

its doing bad because

1) no hats

2) no trading cards

You forgot
1) No hot chicks ooing and aahing over the mechs.

And

2) no hot guys ooing and aahing over the mechs

[Mister Blastman]

Saint Scarlett Johan, on 29 February 2016 - 10:08 AM, said:

If PGI wants to be successful on Steam they need to lower their prices. A lot.

For sure!

They need to sell it as a package deal. Sixty bucks buys the whole game. Everything--every 'mech, map and mode.

I know the whales here will balk at that idea but if MWO suddenly had a hundred thousand sixty dollar purchases it'd make PGI six million bucks. If they had five hundred thousand twenty dollar purchases, PGI would net ten million.

That money could be used to make content... and not 'mech packs.