503 replies to this topic

[Malleus011]

Waiting for the rescale patch.

I've played one match since the Kodiak dropped.

I haven't bought anything since the Phoenix Hawk pack (basic only, as there was no reason to preorder anything better).

I don't care about the 'world championships' in the slightest - no animosity towards those that do, but it's not going to improve my game experience in the slighest, so why should I care?

What is PGI giving me to look forward to?

[cazidin]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 08:32 AM, said:

I think that might not be too far from the truth lol.

From Paul's desk...

Why does Paul have a My Little Pony poster? That's the one and only question I have about this SS.

[Metus regem]

Scout Derek, on 05 June 2016 - 03:55 PM, said:

Maybe after this tourney or before they, or rather us as a whole can move on from nothing to something.

Yes. it's bad for everyone. The past has something to do with it as well, and the present.

I think it's both us and PGI that's the problem, us for allowing each other to talk crap about PGI, and PGI for allowing such anger to burn through.

It's hard not to talk about change happening and what not, but in the following months I hope there's some good changing coming soon, both before and after this tournament.

The community lost it in 2013, and we allow ourselves to keep this way, some of us still are angry at PGI no matter what so you can't change that.

I dunno, I wish the community could bring itself together and actually make a point across to PGI, because we're all so seperate. just look at the topics made everyday;

Clans are OP,

IS are OP

Kodiak is OP,

Kodiak isn't OP,

and on and on and on and on....

we keep repeating ourselves until we think PGI will listen. will they?

not if you keep calling up saying you're William from Microsoft saying your computer has a virus and that you need to let them into your computer and pay $300 and a gold VIP upgrade of $99.99 to fix it all the way.

It's funny Scout, I also play Star Trek Online, and watch their forums, and it is interesting to see how much more active the staff at Cryptic is with the community than PGI is. In big threads, you can see several DEV team member responses, community relations members actively taking part in discussion on a regular bases, nearly daily developer diaries/thoughts posted on their web site....

Now I know different games, with different target markets, but both ask a lot of $ for mechs/ships (ship prices range fro $5-$30 depending on T1-T6), but my point is, with an active and vocal community over there, just as there is one here, the level of toxicity is much lower over at STO then it is here, the only reason I can think of as to why, is because the staff at Cryptic actual engages the player-base on a regular basis.

So do I think PGI is at fault, yes, yes I do. How ever closing themselves off from the player-base isn't the right move, rather being more engaging with us is the right move, showing us that they still care about the IP, showing us some more consistent direction, rather than nearly monthly changes in direction would go a long way into fixing what this community has become.

Now that being said, we as a community should get our act together, and stop acting like a bunch of entitled spoiled brats, and let this company have a bit of breathing room to get their feet under them. Do I think PGI bit off more than they can chew with Mech Warrior, yes. Do I think they can, if given a chance, get it in a acceptable direction, yes. We, the community, just need to give them a chance to make up their minds on what they want to do.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

Bishop Steiner, on 05 June 2016 - 03:11 PM, said:

Over the last couple months, I will freely admit, we have been less than "gentle" on Russ. The last two Town Halls were... not well received. The Rifleman launch, lukewarm. Archer release? Outright disaster. CW phase 3? A whimper. And telling the playerbase as a whole we have no clue what we are talking about when it comes to balancing the game...well... not a great approach considering how demonstrably poor balance has been since open beta.

Rifleman and Archer were always gonna be meh at best so that was no real surprise IMO.

CW 3? honestly PGI should probably have just said, hey we added a cool new mode and changed how attack and defend lanes work. Don't build hype if you aren't gonna deliver a product that meets it, to do otherwise drives away your existing customer base and puts off potential new customers. What do I know though it's not like I ran a modestly successful business for years until my healthcare costs tripled due to a certain law.

Telling the playerbase that they have no clue when it comes to balance. Well... fair enough I suppose considering the amount of truly dreadful ideas I see on here. However, PGI should have handled it differently. They should have said, we balance based on statistical analysis of the data of mechs and weapon systems that are clear outliers. Then we examine the problem mechs in question and see what makes them stand out from other mechs with similar loadouts. Then we progressively and gradually alter the outliers until they are more in line with our intended power level.

Granted that's now how PGI balances things [they seem to always be reacting to the last crisis well after it's been solved or throwing darts at the problem like in the quirkening] but hypothetically if I were the balance guy that's how I would balance the game and how I would deal with concerns over the state of balance in the game (calmly reassuring the consumers that there is a method to the madness and that their concerns will be addressed in due time [and then actually doing that]). Going with your gut is good and all for a first pass, but then you need small iterative changes to get things where they need to be.

Edited by Narcissistic Martyr, 06 June 2016 - 09:49 AM.

[Big Tin Man]

Well, I think a lot of PGI's recent silence has been due to the tournament. They've never attempted anything like this to date, and they've been putting out fires left and right, and probably a lot more behind the scenes that we don't know about, probably related to the tournament build server.

They've had a lot of gaff's with this since the initial announcement of the rules, schedules, etc., and the realization that they started this and put a real prize purse out there is forcing them to deal with it or face some serious consequences. All of this on top of their regular work load. Now that it's rolling, maybe communication might come back to normal (whatever that is).

I'd agree that it sounds like a lot of wind has come out of Russ's sails since CW3/FW dropped, and it may be due to the FW population numbers only being decent during events.

I'm still excited for the June patch, as I recall the following is coming

-Command wheel
-Changes to Assault (or was that July)
-Mech rescale/requirk
-"New map" (frozen city redux)
-Phoenix Hawk

That's still a big and significant patch, communication with us or not. I just think they bit off more than they could chew with the tourney and they're heads down working to meet all of this.

[1453 R]

Whether or not Piranha's Fortress Devpublic act of late is The Forum's Fault...well, honestly I can almost guarantee it is. This place is a horrible snake pit, with far too many players who would honestly be doing everyone involved, including themselves, a big favor by just leaving altogether spewing irrational, unfounded hatred and bile towards Piranha in every single post they make (GRIPS). The fact that there are people who honestly believe that Piranha intentionally releases 'Mechs in an overpowered state on pack release, only to deliberately nerf them down on C-bill release to perpetuate the cycle, really kinda says it all.

Would you talk to these pus-spewing ar.se-sores, if you had any choice in the matter? Half of the folks in this cesspool deserve a sound thrashing more than they deserve their 'questions' answered.

Unfortunately...Piranha, as a company, doesn't really have a choice. We're their customer base, and the most vocal and ardent part of it to boot. They can't pull Fortress Devpublic without devolving all the way back to 2013, and as Bishop said, there's no IGP to throw under the bus this time.

What needs to happen is that Piranha needs to develop a proper community interaction system, post-haste. Russ should not be talking to the forums, outside of high-level overview stuff like the roadmaps or possibly stopping by on Town Halls. That's not his job. He's the president, not the CM. I don't know where the hell Tina went after her strong start, but they need to dig her out of whatever closet she's got herself locked in and get her involved again, and they need to hire another couple-three guys to help. Those guys need to be exceptionally thick-skinned, and furthermore they need to be granted the power to actually slap down people who continue to perpetuate blatantly false, demonizing toxic bile like the Cash Grab Cycle, or people who never manage to say anything more than "F*** Piranha Forever".

The actual game devs, whose jobs are hard enough as it is, do deserve some insulation from the ******* who don't have anything better to do than armchair-dev and vomit hatred day and night. Piranha as a whole, the company itself, needs to start dealing with this stuff, though. It's already feeling more like the Dark Ages of 2013 around here than the Glorious Renaissance of immediately post-IGP. However Piranha needs to fix that, they'd better step on it before they lose any more ground.

[Felio]

The tournament does seem to be driven more by ambition than sense, and they seem to be making it an unreasonably big project for a first attempt.

[TercieI]

Felio, on 06 June 2016 - 10:39 AM, said:

The tournament does seem to be driven more by ambition than sense, and they seem to be making it an unreasonably big project for a first attempt.

Second attempt, actually, but, yeah, it's a truly unfortunate mix of ambition and absence of planning.

[Bishop Steiner]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 08:19 AM, said:

Maybe my post makes a bit more sense being in this thread, IDK. I'll post it again in here too...

Funny enough, I have not clicked at all with the HBS guys. And I find the DFA podcast banal. But I'm hoping it'll grow on me. (IDK too much hipster /Tryhard counter-culture feel for me).

That said, their "being set in what they are going to do", I think is one of their best attributes. PGI once had a "plan". Problem was, at the first opposition they started waffling and then lost all focus and identity. Hbs at least seems resolute to make the game they want to make, and confident that whatever teething issues it may encounter, they can overcome, and that more people will be happy with the finished product than not.

I believe if PGI had simply had the intestinal fortitude to stick to their original plans, regardless of the QQ, the game would be better and they would have lost a whole lot less customers. Whether they had the ability to actually pull it off, we will never know, because they got cold feet at the first wind of QQ, and have been floundering without a destination ever since.

[Davers]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 08:19 AM, said:

Maybe my post makes a bit more sense being in this thread, IDK. I'll post it again in here too...e

PGI was very active pre and early beta too. They stopped around the time players complained that the game wasn't ready for launch.

[stun]

1453 R, on 06 June 2016 - 10:02 AM, said:

spewing irrational, unfounded hatred and bile towards Piranha

Stopped reading here. If you think this is all unfounded, you are seriously confused and need to get a grip on the reality of actions and consequences.

Please... put the crack pipe down, open up a dictionary and look up the word accountability.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2016 - 10:45 AM, said:

Funny enough, I have not clicked at all with the HBS guys. And I find the DFA podcast banal. But I'm hoping it'll grow on me. (IDK too much hipster /Tryhard counter-culture feel for me).

That said, their "being set in what they are going to do", I think is one of their best attributes. PGI once had a "plan". Problem was, at the first opposition they started waffling and then lost all focus and identity. Hbs at least seems resolute to make the game they want to make, and confident that whatever teething issues it may encounter, they can overcome, and that more people will be happy with the finished product than not.

I believe if PGI had simply had the intestinal fortitude to stick to their original plans, regardless of the QQ, the game would be better and they would have lost a whole lot less customers. Whether they had the ability to actually pull it off, we will never know, because they got cold feet at the first wind of QQ, and have been floundering without a destination ever since.

Overall I get a good feeling about HBS team. If there is anybody I am having a hard time clicking with, it's the community that does seem a bit too Table Top driven for me. It does become difficult sometime (or intimidating) to put certain suggestions out there when a TT player will always try to "correct" you with TT rules and facts.

That would be my one criticism of that forum. Sometimes I think the community there has a hard time separating TT from the actual game. It's inspired by TT, not a digital clone of it.

As for DFA, honestly I never watched it.

I agree 100% though about planning. I think PGI has been too aimless and tried to reinvent the direction too much. If they had more of a plan and stayed more true to it, we might have had a more developed product...maybe (even if the direction isn't what people wanted).

It's all speculation anyway. The reality is, what we have is what we have.

[Bishop Steiner]

Narcissistic Martyr, on 06 June 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

Rifleman and Archer were always gonna be meh at best so that was no real surprise IMO.

CW 3? honestly PGI should probably have just said, hey we added a cool new mode and changed how attack and defend lanes work. Don't build hype if you aren't gonna deliver a product that meets it, to do otherwise drives away your existing customer base and puts off potential new customers. What do I know though it's not like I ran a modestly successful business for years until my healthcare costs tripled due to a certain law.

Telling the playerbase that they have no clue when it comes to balance. Well... fair enough I suppose considering the amount of truly dreadful ideas I see on here. However, PGI should have handled it differently. They should have said, we balance based on statistical analysis of the data of mechs and weapon systems that are clear outliers. Then we examine the problem mechs in question and see what makes them stand out from other mechs with similar loadouts. Then we progressively and gradually alter the outliers until they are more in line with our intended power level.

Granted that's now how PGI balances things [they seem to always be reacting to the last crisis well after it's been solved or throwing darts at the problem like in the quirkening] but hypothetically if I were the balance guy that's how I would balance the game and how I would deal with concerns over the state of balance in the game (calmly reassuring the consumers that there is a method to the madness and that their concerns will be addressed in due time [and then actually doing that]). Going with your gut is good and all for a first pass, but then you need small iterative changes to get things where they need to be.

The mechs were going too be meh, yes. But the fatalistic who cares feel their reg releases had are what I'm referring to

[MeiSooHaityu]

Davers, on 06 June 2016 - 10:52 AM, said:

PGI was very active pre and early beta too. They stopped around the time players complained that the game wasn't ready for launch.

I must have came in after that. I don't remember them ever really being THAT interactive with the community.

Then again, it's been so long ago and I have been so used to what we have now, I could have easily forgotten how it was before.

[Bishop Steiner]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

Overall I get a good feeling about HBS team. If there is anybody I am having a hard time clicking with, it's the community that does seem a bit too Table Top driven for me. It does become difficult sometime (or intimidating) to put certain suggestions out there when a TT player will always try to "correct" you with TT rules and facts.

That would be my one criticism of that forum. Sometimes I think the community there has a hard time separating TT from the actual game. It's inspired by TT, not a digital clone of it.

As for DFA, honestly I never watched it.

I agree 100% though about planning. I think PGI has been too aimless and tried to reinvent the direction too much. If they had more of a plan and stayed more true to it, we might have had a more developed product...maybe (even if the direction isn't what people wanted).

It's all speculation anyway. The reality is, what we have is what we have.

In fairness, as a turn based game, this IS visual TT. Stop being TT grognards there is a bit more understandable than here. Here it's a matter of trying to keep true to the spirit of lore than slaves to the rules. For HBS?. There's no reason not to be TT correct.

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

I must have came in after that. I don't remember them ever really being THAT interactive with the community.

Then again, it's been so long ago and I have been so used to what we have now, I could have easily forgotten how it was before.

old closed beta forums were lively, and it wasn't unusual to have Paul answering questions for hours. In the old comstar rd server, at like 2am

[wanderer]

Quote

Why does Paul have a My Little Pony poster? That's the one and only question I have about this SS.

Given the character and their most famous quote, it seems quite appropriate.



(The Pony Thread is probably one of the oldest continuously running topics in the MWO forums, for that matter.)

Also, I recognize that poster.

[Karl Streiger]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 10:56 AM, said:

Overall I get a good feeling about HBS team. If there is anybody I am having a hard time clicking with, it's the community that does seem a bit too Table Top driven for me. It does become difficult sometime (or intimidating) to put certain suggestions out there when a TT player will always try to "correct" you with TT rules and facts.

That would be my one criticism of that forum. Sometimes I think the community there has a hard time separating TT from the actual game. It's inspired by TT, not a digital clone of it.

Exactly my feelings about the HBS Forum. To puristic not able to think outside of dice rolling - seriously when HBS Battletech rolls digital Dice i will run Amok.

This is my main concern about this forum either.
Why can't we have nice things? Because we don't have Christmas 1914, nobody will dig in No-Mans -Land.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 06 June 2016 - 11:12 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2016 - 11:03 AM, said:

In fairness, as a turn based game, this IS visual TT. Stop being TT grognards there is a bit more understandable than here. Here it's a matter of trying to keep true to the spirit of lore than slaves to the rules. For HBS?. There's no reason not to be TT correct.

old closed beta forums were lively, and it wasn't unusual to have Paul answering questions for hours. In the old comstar rd server, at like 2am

Well, yes and no for TT.

Yes a game like Battletech lends itself better to TT vs a FPS like MWO, but at the end of the day they are still different genres.

A game like HBS's Battletech will have different pacing requirements than TT does. A game like Battletech will also have to be a bit more accessible to newcomers than TT was too.

It should be able to stay closer to TT than MWO, but it will not copy it. Even HBS has already said that and their prototype turn order system is one example of that. As one would imagine, it has been a bit controversial with the TT hardcore.

As for Paul's communication with the community, that was nice that he did that. Question is, why don't we have something similar with Tina? As the community manager, you would think she should have something similar (even if it was biweekly and limited to certain hours). Just something more anyway.

[Bishop Steiner]

MeiSooHaityu, on 06 June 2016 - 11:10 AM, said:

Well, yes and no for TT.

Yes a game like Battletech lends itself better to TT vs a FPS like MWO, but at the end of the day they are still different genres.

A game like HBS's Battletech will have different pacing requirements than TT does. A game like Battletech will also have to be a bit more accessible to newcomers than TT was too.

It should be able to stay closer to TT than MWO, but it will not copy it. Even HBS has already said that and their prototype turn order system is one example of that. As one would imagine, it has been a bit controversial with the TT hardcore.

As for Paul's communication with the community, that was nice that he did that. Question is, why don't we have something similar with Tina? As the community manager, you would think she should have something similar (even if it was biweekly and limited to certain hours). Just something more anyway.

actually similar interaction with Tina at least was pretty easy...I haven't checked the last week or two, but she was doing dev drops, open to the public, for quite some time, and would chat away with anyone who got on the server.

I think the Forums...sadly are almost viewed as a trap, thanks to some folks getting so ...er...imperious with the help around here, ya know?

[MeiSooHaityu]

Bishop Steiner, on 06 June 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

I think the Forums...sadly are almost viewed as a trap, thanks to some folks getting so ...er...imperious with the help around here, ya know?

I can see that being the case for sure.