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I've been playing this game for a little over a year and a half and I have noticed that PGI makes really bad game design decisions and then either rolls them back, or makes other changes to compensate for those decisions. What I mean by bad game design decisions are adding/removing/changing game mechanics seemingly without understanding the holistic effect of those changes when all things are considered, or balancing Mechs in a way that makes them overpowered or under-powered because of the compounding effect of other game mechanics. The following is a best practice that I have noticed a different developer follow for a more complicated game in terms of game mechanics, and I played that game for 4 years.
CCP that develops Eve Online has a section in the forums titled "Features and Ideas". CCP now has about a 6 week major patch update cycle. Before CCP releases a patch, sometimes several months prior to it, they release the detailed version of the patch notes for the major changes in the Features and Ideas section as stickies. Also CCP uses it as a focus group on how a particular change to a single ship or mechanic may affect the game. Since CCP started doing this several years ago, their patch and balance changes have been extremely good, because they get feedback from players who play the game for more hours than they ever could.
The link to Eve Online's Features and Ideas section:
https://forums.eveon...?g=topics&f=270
Since PGI is committed to a fast monthly update cycle, also because I always considered the Mech fitting in this game quite similar to Eve Online's ship fitting, and Mechwarrior Online actually has intricate mechanics that affect one another, I think it would be great if PGI could implement something along the lines of typing out and releasing the patch notes a month or two before the actual changes in a features and ideas, or proposes changes section of the forums.
1. This would allow PGI the opportunity to come up with a game design idea and then have it simmer for a month or two before the change is brought onto the live server
2. This would allow the community to comment on a change that may have an unintended consequence and give PGI enough time to revert it back.
3. Would provide PGI feedback from players who have time to play the game more than they do, and also give the players that are actually engaged on the forums a sense ownership of the changes (not saying you need to listen to everything everyone says, just get a "general idea").
The way the current system works where PGI releases a video about a major upcoming change and then highlights the change in a post, without actual detailed proposes changes being posted anywhere. The only time the community sees the detailed changes is the night before patch day, or the day of the patch.
Eve Online has been around since before World of Warcraft, and it has a large committed population that still pays a monthly subscription, and they have had the time to refine their development and update process for a very complicated game. I personally believe that a best practice change of this nature would be beneficial for the current state of the game, and the game design process at PGI because Mechwarrior Online is a very similar game to Eve when you break it down to the bare bones of asymmetric combat between different mechs. I hope the Devs at PGI take a loot at the Features and Ideas section of the Eve Online forums, and implement something along those lines.
Edited by Telemachus Rheade, 24 April 2016 - 09:56 AM.
