287 replies to this topic

[Quintus Verus]

Delta 62, on 02 June 2016 - 10:46 PM, said:

I've made 2 new accounts for experimentation, you pretty much are thrown in against all tier 3 and 4 players. They have unlocked modules, leveled their mechs, and have made enough money to buy lots of gadgets, and etc.

This video might be a dramatic comparison, but I cant help imagining that its what new players feel when they get off that internet boat, and drop into MWO.

The thing is, the new player experience is 100% better than it was when I started either of my accounts. I ran one Hunchback 4SP for 200 matches before I had the cash to buy and fully outfit the mechs I wanted. At least 20+ of those matches were run with SHS! Their was no tiered system, no group queue split, and very few viable trial mechs. I was up against regular 8 man pre-made groups and sometimes even all assault mechs. This was also at the height of broken JJs and PPC/AC/Gauss sniping in 2012 and 2013.

I would not advertise MWO until a new, more modern game engine is picked. I'm a big WW2 buff but could never get into WoTs.

Edited by Quintus Verus, 03 June 2016 - 11:38 AM.

[WarHippy]

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

Depends on the game... and how timid the company is in regards to lawsuits.
Just look at how long it took PGI to find the stones to start releasing Unseen mechs, from the mere POSSIBLE threat of a suit from Harmony Gold (Cursed Be It's Name)

Somehow I don't see Wargaming lacking the resources to fight it compared to PGI and PGI having a potential opponent known for being sue crazy. Still seems unrealistic when you look at all of the games out there that do things like that without absurd lawsuits.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

Wargaming has a vested interest in making sure the ships are within the powercurve of each other. They would much rather be able to sell the ships over and over again, and not have one run roughshod over the other. (for one it lessens the sales of other ships)

Seems to me the better option would be to issue a mandatory recall so to speak on the Nikolai and then issue refunds for the ship. At which point they can make the changes that need to be made and offer it up for sale again.

I for one regret having ever spent money on the game if this is how they handle things going forward and I certainly won't be spending more if I ever even play again.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

The problem is..no one's perfect. The Nikolai's case is one of those cases where to remove what makes it so good would require a complete geometry rework from the ground up, or a fundamental change in game mechanics that would involve them rewriting EVERYTHING from the ground up. It really is one of those cases where no one really could have predicted just how good the Nikolai would be. Even guys on this forum, who haven't seen, or played with or against one frequently don't see how it could have been broken. It's one of those deals that it's execution has to be seen in the wild. The Nikolai, is a real ship that in Real Life, wasn't a good Battleship..it was barely mediocre for her time. It's only because the game mechanics exist in a particular way that favors the Nikolai, (and the game came WAY before Nikolai) that the Nikolai is so good. It's paper stats, literally don't lend any credence what so ever to an OverPerformer. It just Happened.

That may be, but it is not an excuse to leave it as is in my opinion.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

That or you started the game up the next week only to find the entire core game mechanics have shifted.

Heh, I think you just gave us a way to get rid of ghost heat because that is essentially what happened.

[Mavairo]

WarHippy, on 03 June 2016 - 12:01 PM, said:

Somehow I don't see Wargaming lacking the resources to fight it compared to PGI and PGI having a potential opponent known for being sue crazy. Still seems unrealistic when you look at all of the games out there that do things like that without absurd lawsuits.

Seems to me the better option would be to issue a mandatory recall so to speak on the Nikolai and then issue refunds for the ship. At which point they can make the changes that need to be made and offer it up for sale again.

I for one regret having ever spent money on the game if this is how they handle things going forward and I certainly won't be spending more if I ever even play again.
That may be, but it is not an excuse to leave it as is in my opinion.
Heh, I think you just gave us a way to get rid of ghost heat because that is essentially what happened.

And every other holder of the battletech franchise, including Wizkids, Microsoft... NO ONE wanted to fuss over it.
Also in my opinion it's ironically probably partly to blame as to how PGI got their hands on this franchise in the first place.

They already did that with the Kitakami, and believe me, people were up in arms, and ready to burn the place down. (they did it because the Kitakami is so laughably bad) Wargaming takes a as few waves as possible (forgive the pun) approach to WOWS. It's a game just getting up off it's feet. Issuing a refund and "recall" of every Nikolai would generate more ill will.

There's NOTHING wargaming could do to fix Nikolai man. Short of nerfing her armor hilariously to the point that even cruiser shells loaded with AP could penetrate her hull while firing, there's really nothing going for it to nerf it with. It already Has **** Stats. It's purely a happy coincidence of geometry in the CORE game mechanics that allowed it to function as it does at Tier 4. The Nikolai goes down hard against BBs above her tier, like Kongo, New Mexico, and Fuso. The NY if it's dispersion along the sigma axis wasn't so hilarious would also ready sink the Nikolai. She's literally at her most broken, fighting Tier 4s and 3s. It's due to the wonky Overmatch Math, Wargaming used in the first place that lets the Nikolai do what she does to Tier 4 BBs.

DDs, and CAs and Carriers can still burn her *** down, or torpedo her brilliantly however.

Ironically enough, the Yamato, vs every other BB suffers from the exact OPPOSITE problem including herself, where the Yammy's shell's hilariously overmatch the armor of every ship in the game from every angle, while not suffering the same fate to 16" Super Heavy Shells, which should penetrate just as good as her own 18"s do (like they do in real life). And of the two cases, honestly you can make real arguments against this one, being damning and not the Nikolai, because Wargaming is catering to a bunch of Weeboos that think the Yamato is made with magical katanas engraved in her hull and her shells alike, and not in reality a ship made out of pig scrap iron, with powder loads so laughably varied the weight per powder load can be off by as much as 400lb her shell (which should make her accuracy a complete joke).

The Nikolai isn't really a problem in the game because they're so few of them, and because the only ships she presents a problem with, are Tier 4s like herself, and Tier 3s Battleships.

The thing is, Wargaming does handle things well. Certainly better than Second Rate Garbage companies like Cryptic (who intentionally breaks the game WIDE open with their lock box ships, Lock Box Doffs, and other misc crap, willfully and knowingly and will gladly do it more in the future.

Hell man I doubt you'll ever really see a Nikolai in game at this point. I've helped 5 people get through the early tiers, and I haven't seen a Nikolai in the last three months. They're that rare.

Literally so few people bought her, that it's a no harm no foul situation. That's how little she impacted the game, because she wasn't on sale long enough for everyone to catch on, most people prefer Tier 6 gameplay, and because she's Russian, she's not popular from that alone.
The Nikolai is only super effective at popping Wyomings, South Carolinas, Kawachis and Myogis (Both of the last...frankly every ship but the Chester can manage handily)

[WarHippy]

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:34 PM, said:

Literally so few people bought her, that it's a no harm no foul situation. That's how little she impacted the game, because she wasn't on sale long enough for everyone to catch on, most people prefer Tier 6 gameplay, and because she's Russian, she's not popular from that alone.
The Nikolai is only super effective at popping Wyomings, South Carolinas, Kawachis and Myogis (Both of the last...frankly every ship but the Chester can manage handily)

Rarity isn't an excuse I'm willing to accept. I'm also not a fan of exclusive content never to be available again type stuff either and given the performance advantage it has just adds more annoyance to the pile. I also can't say that it's not harm no foul because this creates a dangerous precedent for future ships that may end up being OP in an unforeseen way but sells in much larger numbers than the Nikolai did. Frankly this discussion has me pretty much set on never playing it again.

[Mavairo]

WarHippy, on 03 June 2016 - 12:47 PM, said:

Rarity isn't an excuse I'm willing to accept. I'm also not a fan of exclusive content never to be available again type stuff either and given the performance advantage it has just adds more annoyance to the pile. I also can't say that it's not harm no foul because this creates a dangerous precedent for future ships that may end up being OP in an unforeseen way but sells in much larger numbers than the Nikolai did. Frankly this discussion has me pretty much set on never playing it again.

Except that's not how Wargaming operates. They have a vested interest in keeping people playing, and paying for other ships. Releasing other ships, when a broken one exists next to it means they wasted resources on the other ship. Because no one's going to buy other the other ship.

You can say "precedent omg omg wargaming hate omg omg!" all you like, but you play this game don't you?

How many of the mechs, from 2 years ago are even semi fieldable today? The TDR? Even with the generous quirks they all have? Garbage Mechs, compared to the mechs of today.
Shadowhawk? Garbage Tier now.
Lulcust? DOA.

Sure there's some utterly classic mechs that are still viable, like the Atlas...the mechs that PGI can't get away with what so ever having be a pile of Suck because of the amount of fans those mechs have. But by and large?
Be honest man, you support this game... and this game is very much Pay To Power In The Moment. Most of the new mechs barring a few duds here or there, were among the best in their classes along their Releases.

Then a few months later, they become Mediocre or maybe even Bad.

That has yet to happen what so ever in world of warships.

[Alan Davion]

Crushko, on 03 June 2016 - 10:02 AM, said:

The reason why I think that Mechwarrior has become so niche, is because it didnt have a singleplayer game for 14 years. Can you believe it? And MW: 4 Mercs didnt age well.

My hope is that they do a Mechwarrior 5 singleplayer game using the excellent MWO art assets. I think this is neccessary to bring the Mechwarrior franchise back to the spotlight - where it belongs. And if people buy MW 5 - many of them will also check out MWO.

MW5, or simply referred to as MW since there was no number attached when the original trailers came out, since it was for all intents and purposes a reboot, was what eventually became MWO. PGI got smacked hard by HG over the use of the Warhammer, and supposedly the Rifleman in the two trailers they'd made, which caused that project to get shut down and eventually brought back as MWO when IGP came along.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 11:06 AM, said:

Depends on the game... and how timid the company is in regards to lawsuits.
Just look at how long it took PGI to find the stones to start releasing Unseen mechs, from the mere POSSIBLE threat of a suit from Harmony Gold (Cursed Be It's Name)

PGI was able to start doing Classic/Unseen only after CGL started doing it because HG's greed finally exceeded its reach when they went after Hasbro over the GI Joe Sky Stryker that, in only the most BASIC way resembled the original Jet Fire toy which itself was a Macross Valkyrie fighter.

HG went after someone else around the same time but I'll be damned if I can remember who. That said though HG got bled of a lot of money over those two failed lawsuits, and the counter suits filed by both companies, so they didn't have the funds to try and go after CGL, and shortly thereafter PGI.

Edited by Alan Davion, 03 June 2016 - 01:10 PM.

[Aggravated Assault Mech]

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

Except that's not how Wargaming operates. They have a vested interest in keeping people playing, and paying for other ships. Releasing other ships, when a broken one exists next to it means they wasted resources on the other ship. Because no one's going to buy other the other ship.

You can say "precedent omg omg wargaming hate omg omg!" all you like, but you play this game don't you?

How many of the mechs, from 2 years ago are even semi fieldable today? The TDR? Even with the generous quirks they all have? Garbage Mechs, compared to the mechs of today.
Shadowhawk? Garbage Tier now.
Lulcust? DOA.

Sure there's some utterly classic mechs that are still viable, like the Atlas...the mechs that PGI can't get away with what so ever having be a pile of Suck because of the amount of fans those mechs have. But by and large?
Be honest man, you support this game... and this game is very much Pay To Power In The Moment. Most of the new mechs barring a few duds here or there, were among the best in their classes along their Releases.

Then a few months later, they become Mediocre or maybe even Bad.

That has yet to happen what so ever in world of warships.

Wow. Hard to tell if you're being serious or not.

Wargaming has a vested interest in making money. They learned a long time ago that they can make more money selling vehicles for a limited time, or threatening to remove them from the store. This is a lesson they learned long before WoWS.

MWO picked up on the same. People are willing to risk buying a garbage mech if they have and equal potential to have exclusive access to a good, to great, to OP mech for several months. So, this is the business model of MWO, just like WoT. Limited-time sales of premium vehicles.

There are variants of the Battlemaster, Banshee, Quickdraw, Stalker, Firestarter Jagermech etc. that are top-tier. Hello? Oxide???? Look at how many new mechs turn out to be duds. Archer, Rifleman, Highlander IIC, Orion IIC, Crab, Wolfhound, Zeus, Panther. I think it's probably a true 50/50 split.

I quarantee you'll see the Nikolai come back into the store for another limited time sale.

Edited by vnlk65n, 03 June 2016 - 01:56 PM.

[Alan Davion]

vnlk65n, on 03 June 2016 - 01:55 PM, said:

Wow. Hard to tell if you're being serious or not.

Wargaming has a vested interest in making money. They learned a long time ago that they can make more money selling vehicles for a limited time, or threatening to remove them from the store. This is a lesson they learned long before WoWS.

MWO picked up on the same. People are willing to risk buying a garbage mech if they have and equal potential to have exclusive access to a good, to great, to OP mech for several months. So, this is the business model of MWO, just like WoT. Limited-time sales of premium vehicles.

There are variants of the Battlemaster, Banshee, Quickdraw, Stalker, Firestarter Jagermech etc. that are top-tier. Hello? Oxide???? Look at how many new mechs turn out to be duds. Archer, Rifleman, Highlander IIC, Orion IIC, Crab, Wolfhound, Zeus, Panther. I think it's probably a true 50/50 split.

I quarantee you'll see the Nikolai come back into the store for another limited time sale.

Yeah, except the thing is, the premium ships are special ships that fit into different roles comparable to ships of the same class and tier, and you only have the one ship, and are used primarily to help speed up the gain of credits and xp, acting as though you had premium time going if you don't. We don't have any mechs in MWO that act like that that I'm aware of.

In MWO, you either have premium time going, or you don't. The few mechs that actually have C-Bill bonuses attached to them don't give enough of a bonus to offset the gains you would have had if you had premium time going.

WG has a grand total of 15 ships on sale. while MWO has, if I counted this properly, 39 mechs on sale, and literally every mech that's going to come out from this point on will be sold for money.

WG has just added the UK and Poland to the tech tree in game, so we should be seeing the full trees for those nations over the next year or so.

Each nation has 34 non-premium ships when they are fully populated like the US and Japan. Now, granted Russia and Germany don't have their BBs or Carriers yet, nor does Germany have their DDs yet. So eventually when all those tech trees are populated, that's potentially 170 ships in total. Granted I don't know if Poland will have a full tech tree, nor if Germany will actually have aircraft carriers, hence the potential number instead of an actual number.

And those are all ships that don't have to be bought with real money. All those ships are completely obtainable in game without having to donate sperm every time you want to buy the newest mech for MWO and have it for however many months before it actually comes out in game.

How many mechs did we have in MWO that could only be bought in the game itself before the Phoenix and/or Clan 1 packs?

Not all that many if I had to guess.

[Lee]

#BecauseNoPVE and WoT gameplay is dirt simple compared to MWO. You don't have to spend hours, days, or weeks experimenting with crazy builds to stay competitive. It's been around a long time and it's hard to unseat something with such basic and accessible gameplay. MWO by comparison is like trying to learn how to fly a harrier jet. MWO will NEVER have anywhere near the same population. Just like Dark Souls will never have the same population as Call of Duty.

ADDING PVE would bring me back as a player. Until then, I'm not interested in PvP anymore, especially after crap like Cool Shot was added. If there was PVE and regularly quarterly campaigns or mission packs I'd gladly dump money into the game to pimp out my mechs. As it is, I don't have the time or motivation to c-bill grind for months to purchase then fully upgrade a single mech.

IMO, Warframe has one of the best monetization and crafting systems out there and the grind isn't bad at all. Then again, their game has always been PVE-focused.

[Anjian]

WarHippy, on 03 June 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

So they end up releasing a really OP ship from time to time, but instead of balancing it they just stop selling it? That is really disgusting. I'm also not sure I buy into that court case situation because if that actually worked how does any game ever made get away with changes to premium content?

Releasing an OP ship was never intentional. You never know when a new ship is OP until you have a few months worth of server's data, thousands of thousands of players playing it, without thousands and thousands of battles behind it. Initial server data tends to be misleading since early adopters tend to be very good players.

The Nikolai is a real ship, and the specs are modeled around that real ship. She was never finished due to the Bolshevik Revolution and after which she was judged to be too obsolete to finish construction.

https://en.wikipedia...Nikolai_I_(1916)


In paper there is nothing OP about the ship. Her guns were not the best in muzzle velocities, she has the lowest firing rate of any battleship, she lacks any AA. Her speed is average and her secondaries are also average.

This isn't a fictional creation, and compared to something that is completely imaginary like scifi battlemechs, you are attempting to do a digital recreation of that ship into a game.

But it turns out the whole proved to be much better than the sum of its parts in a way that is not predicted. The layout allows 9 to 12 guns to fire nearly forward in an angled position. Naval tactics dictate you minimize your broadside vulnerability by angling your ship to decrease the profile and increase shell deflection. With little superstructure, the guns have great turret arcs with minimal interruption, and with little superstructure, it also minimizes the effect of HE shells as there is no superstructure to strike and burn --- a lesson from the Battle of Tsushima.

Because Wargaming is not reissuing the ship, it is sales lost. Furthermore, the ship itself may have been the testing ground for the Russian battleship line, and the 'failure' of the Nikolai may have delayed introduction of the line altogether.

As for making changes in the premium content, that is a legally grey area. Bureaucrats and lawyers are going to take consumer protection laws by word. Bait and Switch tactics --- make it OP to attract early buyers then nerf later --- that may not sit lightly with consumer protection advocates (of certain countries) who won't care about game mechanics, are technocrats but not very technologically literate. These laws are made to cover not just games but also non game content, a very diverse range of products, from songs to books to emoji to software. You realize that this is going to be very hard to explain to a judge and a jury who are not technologically or gaming literate.

Edited by Anjian, 03 June 2016 - 07:18 PM.

[Sorbic]

Delta 62, on 30 May 2016 - 07:25 PM, said:

I saw a commercial the other day on television for World of Tanks. It was 45 seconds long and mentioned that it had almost 2 million players.

Keep in mind what's advertised is very often not reality.

[Alan Davion]

Sorbic, on 03 June 2016 - 08:30 PM, said:

Keep in mind what's advertised is very often not reality.

Except in this case it quite likely is true.

If you watch one of the recent videos Wargaming puts out, I found it on their World of Warships channel, they talk about the data center that handles their Asian/European data streams, and early in the video they actually mention the number 100 Million.

Now that could be profiles, and it most likely is, but it lends a great amount of credence to that 2 million number mentioned by the OP in the WoT commercial.

I saw exactly 1 TV commercial for MWO back in 2013 at some point. I have seen literally no advertisement for the game at all after that with the exception of the Steam Launch video which appeared on Steam itself, that was 2 years between the TV commercial and the subsequent advertisement.

That is working severely against PGI and MWO.

Edited by Alan Davion, 03 June 2016 - 09:01 PM.

[Anjian]

Web advertising isn't expensive and I see a lot of small business, startups, small gaming companies do it all the time via Google, YouTube and Facebook.

As for WoT player numbers, this is back three years ago. Not mentioned here is that the company's revenue is over $500 million US in 2015. If people are spending an average of $50 per player, the game should have around over 10 million active and spending users.

https://en.wikipedia.../World_of_Tanks

World of Tanks has received favorable reviews, and currently holds a Metacritic score of 80 out of 100.

World of Tanks holds a Guinness World Record in the category of Most Players Online Simultaneously on one MOG Server. The record was registered on 23 January 2011 when the number of players on the game's Russian server totaled 91,311.[70] This record was beaten by the European server on 13 April 2012 during the anniversary special weekend, where all players could enter a code to be Premium account holders for a day. Numbers of over 305,000 were recorded during this period.

As of December 2013, there were 75,000,000 registered players worldwide and a 1.1 million peak concurrent players.[71] This is an increase of 15 million over the 60 million in June 2013[72] and 30 million over the 45 million in December 2012.[73] Within two weeks of the launch of the South Korean server, the number of concurrent users in Korea reached 10,000.[74]

In 2012, Wargaming's revenue was declared to be 217.9 million Euro, with net profit of 6.1 million Euro, as declared in an annual report for the Cyprus Stock Exchange. The money gained by Wargaming almost exclusively came from World of Tanks.[75]

In 2013, the microtransaction revenue of World of Tanks surpassed that of World of Warcraft, earning $372 million and ranking fourth highest amongst online game revenues.[76][77]

Edited by Anjian, 03 June 2016 - 11:12 PM.

[JC Daxion]

*edit... people dont get it.... my point is... why do people care what others like?

Edited by JC Daxion, 04 June 2016 - 01:10 AM.

[Mystere]

JC Daxion, on 04 June 2016 - 12:49 AM, said:

*edit... people dont get it.... my point is... why do people care what others like?

Well, from a business perspective (i.e. more players >> more income >> more money for development), that information makes all the difference.

Edited by Mystere, 04 June 2016 - 04:42 AM.

[Crushko]

Alan Davion, on 03 June 2016 - 01:03 PM, said:

MW5, or simply referred to as MW since there was no number attached when the original trailers came out, since it was for all intents and purposes a reboot, was what eventually became MWO. PGI got smacked hard by HG over the use of the Warhammer, and supposedly the Rifleman in the two trailers they'd made, which caused that project to get shut down and eventually brought back as MWO when IGP came along.

The 2009 Mechwarrior (5) regardless of the Unseen situation, would have been a very different game than MWO - I guess.

At the time Unreal Engine 3 wasnt too good at landscapes. Look at Mass Effect 1, Section 8, Tribes: Ascend and many more games of that era. Landscapes with high polygon counts and dense vegetation like we have in MWO would have been unlikely.
Nowadays UE 3 and - ofc - UE4 can easily do it. Back then you needed Cryengine or similar for sophisticated landscapes, while UE 3 was very good with lighning, textures, shaders etc in city like enviroments

So as the trailer has shown, the engine choice and also what I got from the interviews back then sounded to me like a Mechwarrior, that focuses on urban combat and information warfare. If they would do a MW 5 now, it would be a very different game. In a perfect world we would have the MW (5) from 2009 and would also play MW 6 at this point as offline/coop games while MWO would be the PvP game.

[WarHippy]

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

Except that's not how Wargaming operates. They have a vested interest in keeping people playing, and paying for other ships. Releasing other ships, when a broken one exists next to it means they wasted resources on the other ship. Because no one's going to buy other the other ship.

They do have a vested interest in keeping people playing and paying, but actions like this are not going to do that at least for players like me. I am done with them if this is how they are going to handle things.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

You can say "precedent omg omg wargaming hate omg omg!" all you like, but you play this game don't you?

This game I do but not WoW anymore this discussion has seen to that.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

How many of the mechs, from 2 years ago are even semi fieldable today? The TDR? Even with the generous quirks they all have? Garbage Mechs, compared to the mechs of today.
Shadowhawk? Garbage Tier now.
Lulcust? DOA.

I still use my Thunderbolts, but I liked them even before quirks were a thing. Same with the Shadowhawk. In addition PGI is about to role out new sizes and quirks for pretty much all of the mechs something Wargaming is apparently unwilling to do. Here is the thing though all of the mechs are still available to everyone. If a mech was OP it was fixed not just ignored and then removed from sale so nobody else could have them.

Mavairo, on 03 June 2016 - 12:54 PM, said:

Sure there's some utterly classic mechs that are still viable, like the Atlas...the mechs that PGI can't get away with what so ever having be a pile of Suck because of the amount of fans those mechs have. But by and large?
Be honest man, you support this game... and this game is very much Pay To Power In The Moment. Most of the new mechs barring a few duds here or there, were among the best in their classes along their Releases.

I still see a lot of older mechs being used to good effect. Jenners and Hunchbacks for example were original mechs from the start along with the Atlas and they all get used at least more so than a lot of these newer mechs. I think you overestimating the new is better line of thinking. New is simply new so they get a lot of use because they are new, but eventually some people gravitate back to their old favorites.

Anjian, on 03 June 2016 - 07:14 PM, said:

Releasing an OP ship was never intentional. You never know when a new ship is OP until you have a few months worth of server's data, thousands of thousands of players playing it, without thousands and thousands of battles behind it. Initial server data tends to be misleading since early adopters tend to be very good players.

The Nikolai is a real ship, and the specs are modeled around that real ship. She was never finished due to the Bolshevik Revolution and after which she was judged to be too obsolete to finish construction.

https://en.wikipedia...Nikolai_I_(1916)


In paper there is nothing OP about the ship. Her guns were not the best in muzzle velocities, she has the lowest firing rate of any battleship, she lacks any AA. Her speed is average and her secondaries are also average.

This isn't a fictional creation, and compared to something that is completely imaginary like scifi battlemechs, you are attempting to do a digital recreation of that ship into a game.

But it turns out the whole proved to be much better than the sum of its parts in a way that is not predicted. The layout allows 9 to 12 guns to fire nearly forward in an angled position. Naval tactics dictate you minimize your broadside vulnerability by angling your ship to decrease the profile and increase shell deflection. With little superstructure, the guns have great turret arcs with minimal interruption, and with little superstructure, it also minimizes the effect of HE shells as there is no superstructure to strike and burn --- a lesson from the Battle of Tsushima.

Because Wargaming is not reissuing the ship, it is sales lost. Furthermore, the ship itself may have been the testing ground for the Russian battleship line, and the 'failure' of the Nikolai may have delayed introduction of the line altogether.

As for making changes in the premium content, that is a legally grey area. Bureaucrats and lawyers are going to take consumer protection laws by word. Bait and Switch tactics --- make it OP to attract early buyers then nerf later --- that may not sit lightly with consumer protection advocates (of certain countries) who won't care about game mechanics, are technocrats but not very technologically literate. These laws are made to cover not just games but also non game content, a very diverse range of products, from songs to books to emoji to software. You realize that this is going to be very hard to explain to a judge and a jury who are not technologically or gaming literate.

I'm well aware that sometimes something slips through or was unforeseen and ends up OP. That however is not an excuse to essentially ignore it, or in this case do something even worse and make it unavailable to other players that didn't get it. Even if in the grand scheme of things the Nikolai is a non-issue a future ship could be a much more major problem and if they handle it the same was that is simply unacceptable.

[Green Mamba]

Alan Davion, on 03 June 2016 - 01:03 PM, said:

MW5, or simply referred to as MW since there was no number attached when the original trailers came out, since it was for all intents and purposes a reboot, was what eventually became MWO. PGI got smacked hard by HG over the use of the Warhammer, and supposedly the Rifleman in the two trailers they'd made, which caused that project to get shut down and eventually brought back as MWO when IGP came along.



PGI was able to start doing Classic/Unseen only after CGL started doing it because HG's greed finally exceeded its reach when they went after Hasbro over the GI Joe Sky Stryker that, in only the most BASIC way resembled the original Jet Fire toy which itself was a Macross Valkyrie fighter.

HG went after someone else around the same time but I'll be damned if I can remember who. That said though HG got bled of a lot of money over those two failed lawsuits, and the counter suits filed by both companies, so they didn't have the funds to try and go after CGL, and shortly thereafter PGI.

I thought it was still Smith & Tinker then ,that PGI wasn't involved yet

[Johnny Z]

LETS GET REAL HERE. World of Tanks is more popular because they haven't tried MechWarrior online yet or MechWarrior online is to slow adding new content.

REAR END OF 75 YEAR OLD TANK OR FIRST PERSON IN A SCI-FI FUTURE WAR MACHINE IN A GALACTIC WAR. WHICH IS BETTER?

SERIOUSLY, GET REAL.

Edited by Johnny Z, 04 June 2016 - 04:21 PM.

[Alan Davion]

Green Mamba, on 04 June 2016 - 04:13 PM, said:

I thought it was still Smith & Tinker then ,that PGI wasn't involved yet

It was PGI and S&T. If you watch the old videos you'll see both logos. The cease and desist from Harmony Gold, and the threat of a full on lawsuit pretty much destroyed the MW Reboot, and instead we got this.