116 replies to this topic

[Fobhopper]

Russ, how come we dont get trailers for hero mechs anymore? Or really trailers for mech packages in general?

I think it would be a great opportunity to help convince people to buy the mechs if they saw them in action like the old Hero Mech videos.

I also I liked the music you guys did for the hero mech trailers.... I kind of wish you guys would do more music, or maybe have a Radio inside the cockpit that you could toggle so you could listen to it while shooting mechs in matches. It would help break up the monotony of FW matches. The music you guys did for the mechs is in the game in parts and pieces, but it would be nice if we could listen to those tracks (and more) while in the game.

[-Natural Selection-]

1. Can you get ride of mode vote and go back to selection?
2. Improve on game modes: go back to the original conquest timers, put back base defenses in assault?
3. You guys going to do anything about vision modes? Even the old predator was an improvement.

[Shino Tenshi]

https://www.twitch.t...ngtv/v/63620735

Above is the link for the town hall video in case anyone's looking for it.

[Odanan]

Did someone made notes?

[Sky Hawk]

Perhaps this is it:

https://www.reddit.c...l_starting_now/?

[Tordin]

Ok. Nice read from that link Sky Hawk. Alot of interesting stuff but alot of babbling and hushing too.

- Black Jack will get bigger

- We get the Night Gyr, a competitor to the Timmy Timber Wolf at 75 t with jj and looks kinda like the Kodiak and Atlas, shoulders, head, well overall looks are similar. Pre order sale in May, releases August.





Really ****** screencaps they mention, I halfway agree
I think it looks great though, but It got this Starcraft/ Warhammer Marine feel, just slightly..

Aaaand some pretty important and semi worriyng statements...

• 
  Question: Update on new heat scale? Russ: Long pause. "There is an update. It's in final design. Unfortunately, engineers are very concerned about the design." Worried server authoritative design would exacerbate people's perception of hit detection. "I can't explain this to a satisfactory level, but we need to regroup and think harder." (Editor: he's right, I'm not satisfied.) With phase 3, haven't had time to focus on it. Time now. Still a ways off, and a good chance of this summer. Daeron obtrusively steers Russ into saying that the system is key to addressing TTK/alphawarrioronline.
  
• 
  Question: What is the status on information warfare? Answer: Stream dying, apparently. Comes back semi-intermittent, sorry. Russ: I don't buy the theory that we don't have information warfare. Rest of answer missed.
  
• 
  Question: API? Russ: I'm not against it, but would have to task the network engineers. I'm sure we track a lot of things that people would like. Lots of cool possibilities but I don't know what we have. Will look into it.
  
• 
  Question: Further crit system functionality, eg actuators? Russ: Tough one. Possibly unnecessary complexity on an already complex and deep game. Can see benefit, recognizes that embracing complexity might be an option. Will it make current playerbase happy? Daeron defends the problem as recognizing business realities. Russ stumbles a bit, defends how well they've made Mechwarrior so far, thinks Microsoft would've made Mechassault 3 instead, says they're "riding a tough line that nobody else would've even come close to riding" wrt complexity and non-arcadey. Can't pander to the super hardcore if it's going to cost them their casuals. "Playerbase needs to forget the notion that they [know better than PGI] and will make it bigger than Halo" Phil: that's going to get lost in translation.

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[Cy Mitchell]

I got the answer to all three of my questions. I cannot say that the answers made me happy necessarily but I got them.

1. How is the work progressing on a system to control and penalize the Alpha strike meta? Replacemtnt for Ghost Heat?



The proposed new systems was run by the engineers and they expressed concerns that it might be too complicated and cause technical issues and opportunities for exploitation. The main concern seemed to be with hit registration issues and the amount of communication that would be needed between the client and the game server. PGI is continuing to work on the problem and Russ thinks that they will find a solution soon enough for implementation this summer. He mentioned that it could happen by July or August.



2. Solaris seems like the perfect venue for eSports in MWO. Is progress being made to get the Solaris arena into the game?



Development of Solaris is in its infancy. It is being worked on but CW Phase 3 was a priority. Now that it has been released more resources can be directed towards Solaris. Russ and PGI want it and say it will come but there is no ETA.



3. Is the re-scale still on track for a June release?



Yes, At this time the re-scale is scheduled for release in June. The recent angst over the re-scaling and sizing of Mechs such as the Pheonix Hawk is unfounded. Looking at a stream of Lauren doing texturing is no indication as to the comparative size of the Mechs as she is not necessarily using Mechs that are of proper scale. The re-scaling is based on science and all the Mechs will be of proper size in relationship to one another. After the re-scale, the balance passes will begin based on the new and right sized Mechs.

Edited by Rampage, 30 April 2016 - 04:39 AM.

[Tordin]

Puh! I missed that bit about Solaris, well glad PGI and Russ wants it. I jsut hope it will be free for all matches.

[The Boneshaman]

the Night Gyr seams like they just opened a TRO and side "Ok we will make....... THIS ONE!!!" feels like they should have made one that is a bit more popular with the community.

[Cy Mitchell]

The Boneshaman, on 30 April 2016 - 04:53 AM, said:

the Night Gyr seams like they just opened a TRO and side "Ok we will make....... THIS ONE!!!" feels like they should have made one that is a bit more popular with the community.

The Night Gyr was the #1 Heavy in this poll: http://mwomercs.com/...clan-omnimechs/

The last Clan Mech introduced was the Viper which was the #2 vote getter for Mediums. Russ said the next two Mechs will be a Clan Medium Omni and a Clan Heavy Omni. These Mechs were originally going to be part of a 4 Mech pack but they could not decide on which ones would be which in the pricing hierarchy so now they are being released as single packs.

For clues as to which Mechs will be next just look at the poll. The #1 Medium was the Black Lanner and the #2 Heavy was the Linebacker. Recently there has been a push from the Huntsman fans to get it in as the next Medium but will it be enough to overcome the Black Lanner's huge lead in the original poll?

[Smoked]

The number of posts for the "town hall" discussion is getting smaller and smaller as people realize that this twitchcast is inappropriately named. It should be called "MWO Infomercial" where the main purpose of the 2 to 3 hour telecast is to announce the newest mech to be released 5 months later for $20, $40, $15 hero(es), and an additional money grab of $15 for 2 additional variants with no discounts for getting multiple components of the sale.

I can imagine if MWO could either clone or reanimate Billy Mays, they would be much better off financially. However Vince Shlomi may be available to host "town halls" at a reduced rate since his difficulties with the law. MWO would probably increase its sales of it's products while having an entertaining infomercial that lasts 5 to 10 minutes instead of 2-3 hours while putting out a similar amount of useful information at the same fidelity.

However the 2-3 hours town hall length is a feature of PGI to remain consistent with the wait times (dead times) of all it's products carefully built into many aspects of its design. The MWO load times, the quick play queues, the CW queues, the long town halls are to build the PGI brand so that consumers can identify what the company stands for. If you have a longer wait time, you have feel more satisfied once you complete your task. PGI has taken DMV data from several US states, such as CT, NJ, NY, VA, and CA to come up with their requirements for match making wait times.

Speaking of efficacy and quality, I understand that PGI has probably not heard of ISO 9001 and because of their size (limited pool of employees, therefore unlikely anyone has worked for a Fortune 500 company), it would probably put an undue work load on it's employees because they obviously have no time for quality, especially when they have to broadcast playing MWO 2 to 3 times a week. It is funny how many man-hours most companies take to insure that whatever document/transmittal/letter that leaves the company externally has been quality checked for an audience of perhaps 5-25 people, where PGI posts wrong dates, times, and product information (such as hero names) regularly for a much larger audience. Which goes back to why they need to have a "town hall" monthly to keep the company going.

And I personally don't mind supporting the company because I love the MWO universe. But all these "micro" transactions ($70 for each mech package) starts to add up for a game that isn't improving much. I spent $120 total for Skyrim and all the DLC's so far. I probably spent at least $2000 on MWO. As far as entertainment value, I probably have about the same amount of time spent in both products however about 1/6 of my time in MWO was spent waiting. Which was the better purchase? While I want to support PGI in its quest for improvement, they are not implementing the changes that I expect to see or a company that learns how to improve after 3-5 years of floundering. Yes they added a few more maps, up to CW beta 3 and added destructive items to the maps. A lot of those items should have been in game when they came out of Beta or at least that's what I'm led to believe after taking a part of some Betas of other companies.

The purpose of the town hall should be to give the long time supporters of MWO the feeling of being involved in the game's development but if you take a high level view of MWO, it is incomplete in so many areas with an overwhelming amount of development of it's transaction products. I'll give an analogy so that PGI can follow what I mean, your house's foundation is riddled with termites but you spend $500 to replace one bathroom's working faucet with a gold colored one. After the last few products that I've purchased gets released (Viper, Kodiak, PXH, okay maybe Cyclops as well), I think I'm going to stop playing for a year or so. I understand PGI won't miss my $700-$900 during that time frame but it's a waste of my time hoping that this game will improve next month or the month after or the month after that. If I give it a more realistic time of a year to 5 years (based on PGI's current track record), it may be the more complete and polished game that I expected when it came out of Beta.

TL;DR Town Hall is an infomercial. PGI can buy gold grills if they hire Vince Offer or make Billy Mays a zombie.

[Malleus011]

Yeah, that was a real letdown. As a general solo player, I'm glad Russ let me know that this isn't the game for me - that'll save me a lot of money in the future.

[Cy Mitchell]

The one real disappointment to me was Russ' comments on re-merging the FW queues. He indicated that he was against splitting them and knew what the results would be but he did it anyway as a experiment due to popular demand of the players. At the risk of coming off sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think the failure of the split was a self fulfilling prophesy. If Russ and PGI had really wanted it to work then they would have just made the split a mirror image of the QP split queues with solos and groups separated and left it at that. Instead they created roadblocks to solo players actually being able to enter FW games.

My, rather naive, understanding was that the goal was to allow an avenue for new players to transition into FW play without suffering the frustration and humiliation of the so called "baby seal clubbing". Thus, it would have increased the population of FW by providing a sort of minor league training ground to the big leagues. Instead a system was put into place that protected the existing FW from the loss of players moving over to the "easy" queue. After only a week of increased wait times in the unit queue and low population in the solo queue, the split was declared a failure and it was announce that it would be reverted. Russ even admitted on the Town Hall that he had talked to a unit player earlier that day that was telling him about being back to "seal clubbing". So the cannon fodder has returned to fill out the queues. I cannot help but think that the big units and PGI like it this way despite some of their protest to the contrary.

This is one topic that I will not waste my time discussing in the future. I am sure it is a dead debate. Any attempt to resurrect discussing separate queues will be met with a "We tried that and it did not work. End of discussion."

IMO, so much potential was left untapped. Ah well, as Russ likes to say, "It is what it is."

Edited by Rampage, 30 April 2016 - 10:38 AM.

[Randy Poffo]

Even if they genuinely didn't like seal clubbing, in effect it doesn't matter. An analogy:

Fred loves ice cream. He eats it every day.

Ted hates ice cream. When he eats it he scrunches up his face, feels nauseous, etc. Nonetheless every day Ted goes to the ice cream parlor and has two cones for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He bypasses other types of food in favor of ice cream; if he can't make it to the ice cream parlor on a given day he becomes restless and irritable.

Does it matter whether Ted actually hates ice cream? Maybe to Ted. But to anyone else it doesn't particularly make a difference, other than the fact that Ted's repeated insistence that he hates ice cream will start to get really obnoxious to anyone that knows him.

Similarly it is hard to see why it matters whether PGI is Fred or Ted in this story. Same with the elements of the community that demand the system be built on seal clubbing.

[The Boneshaman]

Rampage, on 30 April 2016 - 05:11 AM, said:

The Night Gyr was the #1 Heavy in this poll: http://mwomercs.com/...clan-omnimechs/

The last Clan Mech introduced was the Viper which was the #2 vote getter for Mediums. Russ said the next two Mechs will be a Clan Medium Omni and a Clan Heavy Omni. These Mechs were originally going to be part of a 4 Mech pack but they could not decide on which ones would be which in the pricing hierarchy so now they are being released as single packs.

For clues as to which Mechs will be next just look at the poll. The #1 Medium was the Black Lanner and the #2 Heavy was the Linebacker. Recently there has been a push from the Huntsman fans to get it in as the next Medium but will it be enough to overcome the Black Lanner's huge lead in the original poll?

Ah.. I did not know of this poll.
and now I know

[Dee Eight]

Insufficient Skill, on 29 April 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

Don't offer mechs that allow mad boating in the first place....*cough* Viper 11E-hardpoints *cough*

wOW.... 11 but only 8.5 tons to use them with... maximum output would be a mix of ERSL and SPLs. You could do 6 SPL and 5 ERSL and get a 51 point alpha...

Edited by Dee Eight, 30 April 2016 - 09:05 PM.

[Rebel Ace Fryslan]

I just want them to make a better logic-menu structures and easy/developed-GUI.
It sucks!


This also has implications on how info is presented, passive instead of having to do it all active or that it is hidden/unacceseble, in some cases gone.

[Zolaz]

Hmmmmm ... this isnt so much a Town Hall as it is a propaganda session. Russ never answers any questions from the playerbase. Oh, and got to sell that new mech pack.

[Cy Mitchell]

Zolaz, on 01 May 2016 - 01:06 AM, said:

Hmmmmm ... this isnt so much a Town Hall as it is a propaganda session. Russ never answers any questions from the playerbase. Oh, and got to sell that new mech pack.

He actually did. He answered all three of mine either from me asking or from others asking the same questions.

[p4r4g0n]

Biggest take from the Town Hall for me - Russ is now waffling on the engine upgrade.

I will not post what I think the reason is but this was to me a pretty significant indicator of PGI's own expectations of where they think MWO is going.