503 replies to this topic

[Moldur]

MWO a caustic, virulent community? Uh. welcome to online gaming. I'm not sure what else to tell people.


as a sidenote, please use a thesaurus the next time you are using the word toxic. It has become such a buzzword. All I can think of is a neckbeard streamer in the most nasally voice saying "tawwwwxic."

[Random Carnage]

Pointing at the revenue base and blaming their attitude for PGI being all butt hurt is not a great business model.

Suck it up, get some clues, and start operating like a damned business. Get some real management for starters, get a project manager who knows what the hell is what, engage a dedicated community manager who isn't muzzled by previously referred to butt hurt person, and go from there.

The current toxic attitude on these forums is all that happens to be left after continuous mismanagement drove off all the rest of the community. The toxic attitude, are the genre die-hards that really wanted this game to succeed when all other fair weather warriors got smart and left for better games.

Instead of going all bunker mentality on those that are left, Russ should get a clue and actively reengage and get back to basics. It is clear that his direction to date has not worked. Any attempt to defend the current state of the game is blinkered fan-boi'ism.

Decisions like investing resources into the "World Championship" are just /face palm moments. Who, precisely, are their target market for such an event? I'd seriously love to see their business modelling that they came up with when designing this.

As a certain movie featuring a certain B grade actor once said "If you build it, he will come". Yes, innuendo aside, if PGI got back to basics and worked to deliver a game that was true to it's roots, people would return. If they stay the course, this endeavor is on a decline it will never recover from. Numbers are already critical.

[Scout Derek]

Lyoto Machida, on 06 June 2016 - 05:40 PM, said:

You get rid of police in real life and see what happens...being civil isn't required when you don't have to be.

So what you're saying is that if someone steals from you, you should steal from them?

How is that any right?

TKSax, on 06 June 2016 - 05:50 PM, said:

Exactely this, People are going to push boundaries, hell people are going to get pissed off sometimes and blow off steam, but PGI let that go on far to long so it became the norm. Things are better now, I stopped participating in the forums a long time ago because both the people who supposed PGI blindly and shouted down criticism and those who were super toxic ruled the forums.

Hey, just do what you think is right, that'll benefit you in the long run. if you didn't like the forums at the time, and left, good for you.

Anyhow PGI left it be, but nowadays they're a little more active than the last year or so. Just take a look at the academy sub-forum. Dave is always there talking to the folks over there.

[wanderer]

Scout Derek, on 06 June 2016 - 05:38 PM, said:

the forums became the way they are because people lacked self-control. common sense says to be civil and not act like it's a shouting arena here, but hey, it's the internet, you become anonymous, a unknown, and people will take advantage of such.

>self-control
>internet forum

When your game devs have been doing the equivalent of randomly shocking and/or shotgunning the playerbase with rock salt loads, this is what you get.

Be careful on that path, Derek. You'll go full Niko.

Never go full Niko.

[STEF_]

Scout Derek, on 06 June 2016 - 05:38 PM, said:

the forums became the way they are because people lacked self-control. common sense says to be civil and not act like it's a shouting arena here, but hey, it's the internet, you become anonymous, a unknown, and people will take advantage of such.

Should PGI try to take care of it? Yes.

Should they have to deal with Toxicity? No.

U get what u give.

DO u really think that lately forum toxicity has nothing to do with last Townhall, where pgi ceo said "we don't need any suggestions from playerbase, we perfectly know what to do"?
DO u really think that pgi ceo wasn't spitting toxic salt with that?
DO u really think they know what to do and they don0t need any suggestion?
Do you really think that ignoring playerbase suggestions made the game better or just a mediocre^tm shooting robotto fps?


Aren't they nerfing thier own ego yet, looking at the wonderful numbers they are getting?

[Scout Derek]

wanderer, on 06 June 2016 - 09:04 PM, said:

>self-control
>internet forum

When your game devs have been doing the equivalent of randomly shocking and/or shotgunning the playerbase with rock salt loads, this is what you get.

Be careful on that path, Derek. You'll go full Niko.

Never go full Niko.

Oh I will be careful, you just forget one thing;

I came from The Hive. I come from the recesses of forumwarriors that are here.

[Wan Chu Minge]

Corporate silence is what happens when something is about to happen. I would suggest one of three things is possible;

• PGI are about to announce their new product/title, and its all hands on deck for that.
  
• PGI are in the process of either selling controlling interest or are taking investment (the later strikes me as unlikely)
  
• There has been as much financial mismanagement as there has been with the their product development. Cashflow is collapsing and the advanced mech sales are dropping to a point where any structural agreement with their bank is no longer viable. Ergo, PGI are about to go bust and the Tourny money pot is actually going to be used to pay the redundancies to their staff (which includes them signing a gagging agreement)

I challenge PGI to come out and say that none of the above is true. I'd be delighted to have 'my assumptions' proved wrong.

[wanderer]

Whups! That's a #shotsfired if I ever heard one.

Given the immense number of Kodiaks sold, the "we just had our finances collapse" is unlikely. Also, the odds someone will respond approaches zero, given Russ lives on Twitter save for nuclear forumholocausts.

[dervishx5]

wanderer, on 06 June 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

Whups! That's a #shotsfired if I ever heard one.

Given the immense number of Kodiaks sold, the "we just had our finances collapse" is unlikely. Also, the odds someone will respond approaches zero, given Russ lives on Twitter save for nuclear forumholocausts.

Yeah, maybe. But I stopped buying mechs like 4 mechs ago. I know I can't be the only one. There has to be less and less people buying overall. Some mechs might sell more than others but there has to be a downward trend. And since they've made mechs their primary source of income, well...

It's speculation but it's not impossible.

[nitra]

This Forum is no where near the levels of hate acidity and saltyness that people describe it as .

This forum has really only had one episode where things could be considered at their lowest.
That being 3pv.

and still that was no where nears as bad as other game forums when melt down occurs or core mechanics change or what ever happens to cause turmoil .

and ill reference 2 of the biggest forum riots just to prove how tame mwo community is .


1: eve online walking in stations and cash shop release to the player base.

you want to talk hate mongering and some serious unhappy players this was it, mwo no where near these levels.
in game riots, pants threads, pony threads, fedex em pants threads, shoot the in game structure threads. and all the other terrible hate that spewed that week .
this single event makes 3pv look like hello kitty online getting rid of the color black in game.


2: star wars galaxies NGE this one was epic in that not only did this further the flames of a on going forum that was a absolute cess pit. with community elected forum reps being fed to the flames (poor souls) and on going threads of pleas and cries for fixes .. the nge not only erupted the forums it went nuclear and caused one of the largest game exoduses to date .

70%+ quit within 3 - 6 months.


and hell for something out of left field just for a different point of reference

nexxon games antlantica online christmas 2013 or 14 ? Christmas critters being to damned hard ...(yeah should have seen the in game and forums light up when their fully winged mega weaponed scantily clad warriors cant beat rudeolph)





so no .. this is not the horrible forums that people make it out to be .



this is a forum filled with people who love battletech. are passionate about its success and when they see their beloved not fulfilling their expectations they get excited and post about it .

what do you expect ?


i feel the expectations of those who want this forum to be a gushing of love and praise for all thing mwo are sorely misguided.


the false pretense that these forums is caustic is overplayed and used to much as an excuse to ignore the player base as a whole .

when i read through the forums what i see is a fairly intelligent community with a wealth of ideas on how to make this a better game not just for the players but for pgi as well. and thats the thing, this community wants pgi to succeed. a large portion of the ideas posted here usually always include some way for pgi to benefit from the suggested feature .

how is that hate ?

this player base been begging pgi to take their money ever since it launched. all they wanted in return was a game that surpassed its predecessors and had some depth to keep them vested and playing for years to come.


when i read these forums, i dont see hate . i see love letters written to a estranged lover who rarely answers back and when they do its usually spiteful and abusive.

Edited by nitra, 06 June 2016 - 11:32 PM.

[Wan Chu Minge]

wanderer, on 06 June 2016 - 11:12 PM, said:

Given the immense number of Kodiaks sold, the "we just had our finances collapse" is unlikely.

Like I say, it depends on if those Kodiak sales covered borrowing that has already been spent doesn't it?

If you present a business plan and cash flow projection to a bank so that you can borrow against it and the sales don't meet the forecast, eventually you get to the point where the cash flow projections actually prove the business cant repay the debt.

That is why businesses appear to suddenly fail. The bank calls in the loans, cuts the overdraft arrangements and says; 'sorry bud, your numbers don't fly..'

Try this on for size, the Steam launch failed and numbers evaporate, desperately PGI throw whats left of their development into Phase 3, but it also fails. They push forward with the Tourny, convinced that a healthy e-sports business will prove the company is viable, but its mismanaged and over ambitious and it ultimately looks unlikely to be a success. They cant hide the user numbers and income from their financial backers, who eventually say enough's enough.

Add the costs of running this operation. Salaries + Loan Repayments (all companies have them), Office Rental, Infrastructure costs for the servers (co-located in three geographical regions), network fees, License fees to Microsoft among others for both the Mechwarrior name and OS. Add all those costs up. How do the numbers even begin to work? As a community, we are not big enough to provide enough income to them to keep things running. I would guess that PGI needs 4 or 5 times the number of users it actually has. Can you imagine that the business would have ever got of the ground with less than 10,000 active players as a projection? How could it survive now with obviously less than that.

Again, my assumptions..

Edited by Wan Chu Minge, 06 June 2016 - 11:33 PM.

[R A C E T R A C K]

You make some good assumptions in my opinion. I think I'll give it to the end of the week to actually hear something from PGI, If there is nothing I think its time to recall my advance purchases.

[Chrithu]

Wan Chu Minge, on 06 June 2016 - 11:25 PM, said:

...
Again, my assumptions..

In my view the biggest question mark with that train of thought is, whether or not PGI actually operates on loan from a bank.

As far as I understand things (and that isn't very far I have to admit) they have their investors, but that is set up more in a sense of those being stakeholders that get a share of the revenue. Despite all the negative things MWO had it's fat years as far as mech sales go, so there should have been opportunity enough to settle debts. Heck they had enough to buy themselves out of the deal with IGP at a point where the community was in much more turmoil than now.

I could throw out my own assumption, that PGI nowadays works just for PGI and all debts are settled, the cashflow is enough to keep things running as they are but doesn't give room for team expansion.

Another assumption could be that the talent needed to make worthwhile additions to the team is currently wrapped up in much bigger projects. I mean pretty much any programmer worth their money that knows his way around cryengine (and that's what's needed the most on MWO) is either working on Star Citizen (heck CryTek is pretty much part of CIG now) or sits at Ubisoft working on the next FarCry.

Edited by Jason Parker, 07 June 2016 - 01:23 AM.

[Wan Chu Minge]

Jason Parker, on 07 June 2016 - 01:22 AM, said:

In my view the biggest question mark with that train of thought is, whether or not PGI actually operates on loan from a bank.

As far as I understand things (and that isn't very far I have to admit) they have their investors, but that is set up more in a sense of those being stakeholders that get a share of the revenue. Despite all the negative things MWO had it's fat years as far as mech sales go, so there should have been opportunity enough to settle debts. Heck they had enough to buy themselves out of the deal with IGP at a point where the community was in much more turmoil than now.

Ok, no bank loans and rich Investors that don't care about financial returns..

They have to be making a loss month on month. The IGP buyout must have cost quite a bit, the Mechwarrior license 'rental' from Microsoft must be expensive, heck they even purchased the rights to Wing Commander a while back, so add that to the failed Transverse launch, it must have eaten some cash reserves.

If PGI is financially well off, doesn't need money and is developing the game for the pure enjoyment of interacting with this community they treat with indifference, then all good I guess! We can stop worrying.

I suggest that the above scenario is rather unlikely though. Something is very wrong here.

Assume there are 5000 active users and that their average spend is 15 dollars a month (I think both are really high figures) thats $75,000 a month income. Deduct their operating costs, It doesn't add up.

So they are either operating on reserves or loans. Either way I don't see it as sustainable.

Edited by Wan Chu Minge, 07 June 2016 - 01:48 AM.

[dervishx5]

Also anyone notice how on the front page they have the "popular topics" section, but the FW and General Discussion of the forums is obviously disabled from showing up there.

More curtains and wizards.

[PyckenZot]

Scout Derek, on 05 June 2016 - 03:35 PM, said:

I don't blame them when people come on their forums telling You don't even know half the story on that...

With all due respect, but such a statement is worse than silence,...

[Toothless]

I couldnt not participate in a thread about the burning garbage fire that is PGI's management of Mechwarrior Online, I just couldnt.

[Thorn Hallis]

Wan Chu Minge, on 07 June 2016 - 01:41 AM, said:

They have to be making a loss month on month. The IGP buyout must have cost quite a bit, the Mechwarrior license 'rental' from Microsoft must be expensive, heck they even purchased the rights to Wing Commander a while back, so add that to the failed Transverse launch, it must have eaten some cash reserves.

According to EA they never reached an agreement in regards to the Wing Commander licence, even though PGI stated otherwise.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Thorn Hallis, on 07 June 2016 - 02:56 AM, said:

According to EA they never reached an agreement in regards to the Wing Commander licence, even though PGI stated otherwise.

You have to love it when a publisher (like EA) just sits on a license that they have no intention of doing anything with.

You think there might be a chance your old favorite Wing Commander games could get a new coat of polish and re-released...

"For a lot of companies, remakes are a way to drive revenue. It’s sub-cost, it’s an IP that’s there, you can remaster, and that’s great. We don’t do that here. I don’t think that’s ever been in our culture." - Peter Moore. COO of EA

http://www.ign.com/a...-for-hd-remakes

Lol Nope!

Maybe a whole new reboot? Sorry, space shooters don't sell. Maybe if they can reboot Wing Commander as a CoD-esque FPS, then we might see a reboot. Christopher Blair, go 360 no scope some Kilrathi!

It seems like there is enough value in it for them not to get a rid of, but not enough money in it for them to make. So it sits and it rots.

*sigh*

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 07 June 2016 - 03:14 AM.

[Bud Crue]

dervishx5, on 07 June 2016 - 01:57 AM, said:

Also anyone notice how on the front page they have the "popular topics" section, but the FW and General Discussion of the forums is obviously disabled from showing up there.

More curtains and wizards.

I have always just assumed that the front page content and arrangement is the core of the community manager's job. That job is not to interface with the community (on the forums, though it is nice when she or any of the PGI staff does) but rather to put on a good face on the MWO home page to the potential community. Thus why "popular forum topics" window is usually populated by innocuous threads or those lauding some aspect of the game (often in other than English language). I am guessing there is a bit of time finding appropriate content to put up there, and in "radio chatter" as well, given the often non-sequitur aspect of some of the posted topics I can't imagine it is an algorithm doing the work, but ya never know I guess.