68 replies to this topic

[TyphonCh]

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

We are the the oil to your engine PGI. Do you think people post here just to annoy you? No. We post and critique because we care.
We may not be a seasoned game developers, but we've put the man hours in to know what works and what doesn't. It doesn't take a game developer to know that the convergence and heat scale is garbage and promotes boating and bad gameplay. It doesn't take a developer to know that machine guns may look good on paper, but are terrible in game. We know what mechs work, what weapons systems blow goats. In short, we know the ins and outs of your game better than you do.

In the short time I've been here, November 2013, 180 hours since Steam, 5 times more before that, PGI has made it abundantly clear that in that same amount of time, they do not invest enough of their own time to balance their game.

Remember the last PTS? The one where 'Ghost damage' and locking targets for full damage was going to be a thing? Well imagine if they just implemented it into a patch on Live servers without a PTS. It would have been a ****ing catastrophe. Next time, instead of seeking our advice, just go ahead and do it. See how well that works out for you.

For months leading up to the new maps, the new mechlab, rescale phase 3, the public test for rebalance, etc, all you would see is "community driven feedback, community driven feedback, we thank the community for their feedback" ... What happened? Give your head a shake.

This may be a bitter pill to swallow PGI, but the opinions you don't want to hear are often the best ones.

PS: I want my cockpit island now.

(Edit: In case anyone is wondering what this is about, last night's town hall Russ basically said he doesn't value player feedback)

Edited by Team Chevy86, 30 April 2016 - 04:39 PM.

[Monkey Lover]

Ha-ha I still liked the lock dmg system. With a few range tweaks it would have been nice . Only people I saw crying about it were alpha peak spammers and people with a broker R button.

[Davers]

It's kinda funny how you don't see comp players endlessly complaining on the forums, and now we are all esport focused with PGI making tournaments to give them money.

Edited by Davers, 30 April 2016 - 11:37 AM.

[Mcgral18]

According to MadStats, I have 32 days on record (PLAYING, mind you, from the Map stats) since the reset, and 19 days archived.

That's over a thousand hours...without counting the research into game mechanics or following the patch notes.
I have little doubt I know more about certain aspects than some of the people responsible (but of course, I don't have the inside knowledge...just what's given, and the people who made the systems would know it more in depth...if they're still with PGI)

I've made some bug reports, giving the cause and possible solutions, some which were seemingly taken, others not.
I've had plenty of suggestions completely ignored over the past four years too, of course. To be expected, with such a large crowd.


What I've come to know is that, you'll get next to no acknowledgement on the Forums. I've gotten recent answers from Paul when I searched him out on the Stream, concerning the Long Tom, and the very occasional Tweet from Russ...but from the Forums? Nothing. Even the bug reports rarely get a post (but the fix occasionally comes in a later patch)

We used to have Forum interaction with the Devs, such as the old Karl Berg megathread, a Dev who would go out of his way to answer questions and give GOOD, INFORMATIVE answers. We haven't had that in a long time, as Karl went to Amazon (good for him, professionally)

But, at least we have the Mech Pack Annoucement halls to disappoint us, with a complete lack of details.

[Gas Guzzler]

Monkey Lover, on 30 April 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

Ha-ha I still liked the lock dmg system. With a few range tweaks it would have been nice . Only people I saw crying about it were alpha peak spammers and people with a broker R button.

It was a terrible system.

The only people who liked it where underhivers.


See? Anyone can make false claims.

[TyphonCh]

Monkey Lover, on 30 April 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

Ha-ha I still liked the lock dmg system. With a few range tweaks it would have been nice . Only people I saw crying about it were alpha peak spammers and people with a broker R button.

It wasn't all bad I suppose. The different sensor ranges would have been interesting with some refinement. But stacking convoluted mechanics on top of other mechanics doesn't work

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

I too like the "lock for full damage" change....

I liked the soft counter ecm more though

[FupDup]

It's like the "island" comment all over again.

[TyphonCh]

FupDup, on 30 April 2016 - 12:16 PM, said:

It's like the "island" comment all over again.

It's exactly what I was thinking.
You can't have a sub forum full of feedback threads, then consistently use feedback from players to do rescales, PTS's, mechlab, etc, then turn around and say we don't know anything? If Russ actually thinks that he can go pound sand. Any reasonable developer listens to their players because we're the ones that play the damn game. Doesn't get much more complicated than that

[4rcs1ne]

I find it sad that Russ really feels this way about a community that has kept him and his staff afloat for 4 years now.

[Y E O N N E]

Monkey Lover, on 30 April 2016 - 10:43 AM, said:

Ha-ha I still liked the lock dmg system. With a few range tweaks it would have been nice . Only people I saw crying about it were alpha peak spammers and people with a broker R button.

I wish they could have made it such that no lock makes your weapons converge slower and having one makes them converge dramatically more quickly, with both rates being proportional to the target's info-warfare profile (i.e. a Locust takes longer to converge on than a Black Knight).

But, IIRC, PGI said that convergence does bad things to the game quality in the netcode.

[Deathlike]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 April 2016 - 12:41 PM, said:

I wish they could have made it such that no lock makes your weapons converge slower and having one makes them converge dramatically more quickly, with both rates being proportional to the target's info-warfare profile (i.e. a Locust takes longer to converge on than a Black Knight).

But, IIRC, PGI said that convergence does bad things to the game quality in the netcode.

It would take more effort+resources to accomplish it in through the netcode.

[Y E O N N E]

Deathlike, on 30 April 2016 - 12:42 PM, said:

It would take more effort+resources to accomplish it in through the netcode.

I'm aware.

Maybe if they ditch plans for PvE...

[Cy Mitchell]

I first tried out MWO back in 2011 when it was still in Beta and dabbled a bit in 2012. At the time, I was heavily involved in MWLL and I much preferred it to what I saw early on in MWO. Real life interceded and I took an almost 5 year break before I came back to BT/MW. I came here because MWO was pretty much "the only game in town". I find that I enjoy the game a lot but, like others, I feel there are things that could be improved.

I often wonder if PGI has ever used a Player Advisory Council to cultivate input on design directions and decisions. I worked in industries for many years that used such entities with a variety of names to help gauge customer needs and desires and steer development to meet those needs and desires.

I would suggest a panel of 7-10 individuals, selected from the community, who would meet via Skype (or some other appropriate medium) with Russ and selected Devs on a pre-determined basis and who would provide input and feedback as representatives of the community as a whole. You would want members who were supportive of the game but who would offer varying (and even conflicting but not adversarial) viewpoints on game direction and decisions.The final decision of course would always come from Russ and PGI but the additional braintrust could prove to be a valuable asset to PGI. The panel would have to sign NDAs.

Edited by Rampage, 30 April 2016 - 12:57 PM.

[Alan Davion]

Rampage, on 30 April 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

I first tried out MWO back in 2011 when it was still in Beta and dabbled a bit in 2012. At the time, I was heavily involved in MWLL and I much preferred it to what I saw early on in MWO. Real life interceded and I took an almost 5 year break before I came back to BT/MW. I came here because MWO was pretty much "the only game in town". I find that I enjoy the game a lot but, like others, I feel there are things that could be improved.

I often wonder if PGI has ever used a Player Advisory Council to cultivate input on design directions and decisions. I worked in industries for many years that used such entities with a variety of names to help gauge customer needs and desires and steer development to meet those needs and desires.

I would suggest a panel of 7-10 individuals, selected from the community, who would meet via Skype (or some other appropriate medium) with Russ and selected Devs on a pre-determined basis and who would provide input and feedback as representatives of the community as a whole. You would want members who were supportive of the game but who would offer varying (and even conflicting but not adversarial) viewpoints on game direction and decisions.The final decision of course would always come from Russ and PGI but the additional braintrust could prove to be a valuable asset to PGI. The panel would have to sign NDAs.

There was talk of it back then supposedly, but obviously it never materialized.

I think now would be a great time to re-visit that idea.

[Monkey Lover]

Gas Guzzler, on 30 April 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

It was a terrible system.

The only people who liked it where underhivers.


See? Anyone can make false claims.

Listening to the town hall sounds like Russ might have scrapped it because of the underhivers. Anything to hard for new players they're going to turn down. Any new mechanics sounds like it's out of the question anymore. Best we can hope for is new maps,mechs and maybe a play mode.

Got to make it easy for the cod players to join us....

Edited by Monkey Lover, 30 April 2016 - 01:18 PM.

[Afuldan McKronik]

The "Community Feedback" was limited to 140 character Tweets to a personal Twitter account. This alone should have been a warning sign that there wasn't actually interest in what the community had to say.

There is a reason so many players are salivating over what we see happening with HBS. The devs there respond, regularily, in the General Discussion subthread on their forum. Players here wouldn't know what to do if we had an actual responce from Russ on the "Official Forums for Mechwarrior Online".

I am really quite dissapointed to realize that all our discussions and suggestions mean jack **** to the devs of one of the most addictive games I have found. This is not even Mediocre™ PR, this is a complete ******* failure.

[Deathlike]

Yeonne Greene, on 30 April 2016 - 12:45 PM, said:

I'm aware.

Maybe if they ditch plans for PvE...

You mean the institutional half-a-coder policy PGI runs on?

[MoonUnitBeta]

Matt2496, on 30 April 2016 - 12:40 PM, said:

I find it sad that Russ really feels this way about a community that has kept him and his staff afloat for 4 years now.

I guess how he sees it is that he knows what we want before we even ask for it. Or before we even know that we want it. Or even when we think we want it, he knows that it's not what we actually want.

So it's all been Russ the whole time, and we had nothing to do with it, ever. And he's upset because all we are doing is "stealing" his ideas. And the only reason we have helped them stay afloat is because Russ has done it all, and all we have done is pay money for it.


So maybe, I guess we need to resurrect that N O P E slogan again. I dunno? Obvious money has a voice, but it's now more apparent than ever that it's the only voice we have.

Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 30 April 2016 - 02:20 PM.

[Gas Guzzler]

Monkey Lover, on 30 April 2016 - 01:17 PM, said:

Listening to the town hall sounds like Russ might have scrapped it because of the underhivers. Anything to hard for new players they're going to turn down. Any new mechanics sounds like it's out of the question anymore. Best we can hope for is new maps,mechs and maybe a play mode.

Got to make it easy for the cod players to join us....

It was scrapped because it was bad and not intuitive, has nothing to do with "COD" players. What's funny is high level MWO players don't like COD. That's why they play MWO.