5 replies to this topic

[Felio]

He's a game designer who's worked on a lot of RPGs, and I was watching a talk he gave about designing attribute scores in Pillars of Eternity, but something he said screamed "Mechwarrior Online" to me.

Quote

Ultimately, ideological purity doesn't necessarily mean the players are going to be happy.

You know, I think it's important to have ideology for what you are doing as a designer, but at a certain point, if what you're trying to accomplish sort of hits the players and the players go, "I don't like this. This isn't fun," you know, whatever your ideology is, you kind of have to step back and say, "Am I approaching this wrong? Is this a bad goal? Is this not really accomplishing what the players need it to accomplish?

So start with an ideological point, but then move toward the players in a sense of -- you want them to have fun with it, so yeah. That should always be a goal.

I think PGI has been a little bit flexible with this in some areas on occasion, but holy cow, not Faction Warfare, especially matchmaking. They'd rather fail than compromise when it comes to that. It was abundantly clear even before they proved it with the solo queue debacle.

Game designers often talk about opportunity cost. What can you do with your limited resources to gain the maximum benefit? What's the best bang for your work-hours buck? Here we have an entire game mode, ready to go, sitting unused or unenjoyed by who-knows-how-many-players. Making it more accessible is rich, juicy, low-hanging fruit, but ideology keeps PGI from grabbing it.

It's why Star Wars: The Old Republic added solo mode and story mode to its group and raid content. It's a multiplier for the best and most high-cost content they create.

I want to open this thread to other areas where PGI has had this problem, as well. This is just the thing that hit me like a truck when I heard Sawyer talking about it.

[Bud Crue]

Whew! OP! That...that is one of the funniest things I have ever read in these forums. Funniest. Ever.

So a guy actually gives a hoot as to what the players of the games he makes thinks. That he actually values their opinions. That he thinks his players opinions ought to have an actual impact on the games' development...

...and that made you think of Mechwarrior! Ahh, ha, ha, ha, ho!

Ah, dang, that's comedy gold right there. Whoo. Aw geez my sides hurt.

[LordNothing]

i think pgi went the way of derp on the freelancer mode. if anything it made games harder to get for pugs. i would have just had mercs and loyalists, either could be solo or unit players. all the solo players would just get a big button that says "play the damn game" they click on it and drop. it would have been so simple to get right. the 2 pug invasion games i did manage to play in the split queues were totally awesome.

i heard a lot of complaining from units that "there was no one to play", which my pug brain translated into "there is no one to farm". they still had the two many bucket problem and without pugs filling in the gaps, games just weren't forming. maybe they too should get a "just play the damn game" button as well.

it also ignores the fact that everybody was too busy playing scouting to death to play invasion. i would have postponed the inaugural event and the re-merge another week just to let player behaviors normalize. pulling the plug in a panic is not the way to fix a problem.

i remember russ's tirade from the last town hall about complexity. fp is a damn good example of that. getting into a game is more complex than the actual game itself and it doesnt need to be. you expect players who cant understand "omega doesnt matter" in counter attack expect to understand where to go to get a game that stands a chance at being fair and instead follow the lemmings into the pug funnel. if you throw out planet tagging and replace it with victory pay and unit leaderboard (which we have), you would solve the problem. owning planets still has no meaning other than trickle mc for units, and it never will, pgi made that damn clear. so just get rid of it. there just arent enough players to simulate planetary scale attacks (let alone inner sphere scale attacks). just let the map be a representation of each faction's collective effectiveness relative to the others.

Edited by LordNothing, 17 June 2016 - 02:08 PM.

[Kael Posavatz]

Felio, on 17 June 2016 - 12:07 PM, said:

I think PGI has been a little bit flexible with this in some areas on occasion, but holy cow, not Faction Warfare, especially matchmaking. They'd rather fail than compromise when it comes to that. It was abundantly clear even before they proved it with the solo queue debacle.

PGI, through their various spokespersons (especially Russ) have said repeatedly that they do not hate FW, MWO, or their players. The lack of a matchmaker is not PGI's fault. It is the fault of the player base for not having enough people playing FW to make a matchmaker possible.

If 'fault' is the right word for it. 'Fault' usually implies that someone or someones did something wrong and that is just not the case here. Rather the lack of MM in FW is a testament about FW and, more broadly, MWO's state of being. That is, there are not enough players playing to support what most others would consider core functionality.

It is not even a case about funds. There are simply not enough people playing FW at any given time to make a matchmaker a realistic addition to the game.

Edited by Kael Posavatz, 17 June 2016 - 02:18 PM.

[Appogee]

Kael Posavatz, on 17 June 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

The lack of a matchmaker is not PGI's fault. It is the fault of the player base for not having enough people playing FW to make a matchmaker possible.

Best circular argument, ever.

Kael Posavatz, on 17 June 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

There are simply not enough people playing FW at any given time to make a matchmaker a realistic addition to the game.

I agree a circular argument that good was worth a reprise.






Meanwhile, here in the real world, here's what actually happened...

For two years, PGI said they'd been working on Community Warfare. Instead they'd been doing nothing, as they were unsure whether their MW licence would be renewed by Microsoft out to 2020. When MS eventually gave them their renewal, PGI famously let slip that they "now had the confidence to press ahead with development" ...

And that was when anyone who had been paying attention realised they'd been lying about CW all alone. They'd done nothing more than dump ideas into Powerpoint. Nothing had been coded.

There was an uproar. Suddenly, PGI had to do a rush job to get Community Warfare coded. They kludged it together and released it just before Christmas, having run out of time to create any kind of matchmaker. So they just declared that Community Warfare was "hardcore mode", and stuck a tiny little disclaimer popup in front of any new player who wanted to try it ... as if that was a valid excuse for completely abandoning any kind of matchmaking in a 12v12 online game.

And, surprise surprise, many of the new players, or people not in large units, got tired of getting farmed and stomped, and decided not to play it any more because there was no matchmaker, and because the kludged-together design of CW doesn't funnel the available players into matches with any kind of efficiency or effectiveness.

Edited by Appogee, 17 June 2016 - 02:44 PM.

[Lord Baconburger]

Kael Posavatz, on 17 June 2016 - 02:14 PM, said:

PGI, through their various spokespersons (especially Russ) have said repeatedly that they do not hate FW, MWO, or their players. The lack of a matchmaker is not PGI's fault. It is the fault of the player base for not having enough people playing FW to make a matchmaker possible.

If 'fault' is the right word for it. 'Fault' usually implies that someone or someones did something wrong and that is just not the case here. Rather the lack of MM in FW is a testament about FW and, more broadly, MWO's state of being. That is, there are not enough players playing to support what most others would consider core functionality.

It is not even a case about funds. There are simply not enough people playing FW at any given time to make a matchmaker a realistic addition to the game.

I needed a good laugh today, thanks for providing it. But I feel somewhat sorry for you, and a tad jealous in a way, because you can't/won't/don't grasp the severity of the issue here in its entirety.


It's quite obvious that when you have a large pool of people, and I'm not talking just the 'big' units here, but the medium to small sized down to the solo guys and casuals, in a particular setting saying that what is going on is wrong, we're not being listened to, there have been no real improvements when we've been told that is whats going to happen, the current system is heavily flawed and is plain ridiculous; its a massive indication to any logical and leading body that something has to change. Putting fingers into your ears to what is being said then having the cheek, at the same time, to peddle mech packs to their audience, is abhorrent and ignorant. It makes us feel we're like that bit on the side when they call up to get their nuts then turf to curb when they're done.
This is how you lose customers, this is how you lose your loyalist playerbase, and yet they won't listen. Josh Sawyer, as quoted above, has it spot on. It's not like this approach is make-believe either, as we've seen this in practice with Blizzard and Square Enix. And look where they are now.

To sum it up, its like this; PGI will not and do not listen to their player base, they will do what they want to do. PGI, from what we've seen and through their actions, won't improve the game either by themselves or stump up the cash to hire someone of good caliber to take it further. PGI won't admit they're stuck, which there is no shame at all in admitting, and they won't take offers of help from this vast community. PGI give the idea that they listen by throwing peanuts to us, the proverbial monkies, then have the audacity to charge us for it and hope it keeps us happy. We feel like we're being squeezed for every last drop before they pack it in.


This game has so much potential, it has achieved so much so far, but people in large numbers have either become inactive or left entirely. The numbers, evidence and plethora of reasons are right there to see.