323 replies to this topic

[GorlockTheDestroyer]

Going from ELO to PSR and not being able to play skirmish killed it for me and a good friend of mine.
"No Life"
Its a term young folks use to describe playing the hell out of a game. We used to no life MWO for a minimum of six hours every evening. Mostly we pulled ten plus a great many days of the week.
ELO had us butting heads with the same 4 to 6 teams in group play and the two of us loved it. As we got better at reading what our own team was trying to do, covering them and still executing what we wanted to do. The number of teams we would see in group play got smaller and more noteworthy. ELO had us at a point where we knew this lance or that lance of friendlies was not going to be an issue but an asset. This was due to seeing the same folk over and over again to the point you amassed a feel for their play style, even though you've never actually said Hi or communicated.
PSR came and so did every single person and will continue to do so. Id vote leave on PSR.
As far as being able to just only play skirmish. Its not about earnings or tunnel vision play style. Its simply a preference, a choice that was taken away for a good reason. Which i've yet to see.

Of all the things that annoy in MWO balance included. The above two are what truly killed it for us. ::shrug::

[Aresye]

Imagine if you could ONLY play competitive mode in CS:GO.
- No deathmatch to warm up, practice, or test out new guns.
- No casual mode to chill out and not give a **** on.
- No arms race.
- No community servers.
- No offline/bot servers.

Every time you log in, it's you on one team, facing another team. You win, lose, or draw, and that's it. Every game affects your stats, you can't do anything about what teammates/opponents you get, you can't leave, etc. Would you be cool with doing that, and ONLY that, for 3+ years?

Obviously there are bigger differences, but this has always been the main problem for MWO. It doesn't matter if you play FW, Scouting, Skirmish-A, Skirmish-B, Skirmish-C, or Skirmish-D. It's always a quick, one night stand. You ready up, drop, win, lose, or draw, and then you do it again.

IMHO, MWO's biggest flaw isn't the game modes or lack of immersion. It's the lack of anything else OTHER than the main game modes, and the complete refusal of PGI to give the community any sort of control whatsoever.

- Imagine if competitive players could play on community funded 128 tick servers?
- Imagine if you and your friends could play offline on a community created map?
- Imagine if those who want respawn could actually play respawn (on their own private server)?
- Imagine if you could download and play a variety of community created PvE missions?
- Imagine if you could setup an offline LAN event with some friends IRL?

In CS:GO, you can do all of these things, however CS:GO isn't a F2P game. On the other hand, Valve doesn't make the majority of their money off the game purchases themselves. They make their money off skins, cases, and keys for those cases, and that information is managed by Steam itself, so it's not like you can just "have" a $5000 weapon skin on private servers without actually having it in your Steam account.

If PGI allowed the community to run their own private servers, create unofficial content (ex: maps, PvE missions) that isn't attached to the main game, and overall give the community a tiny bit of freedom, that doesn't inherently mean that PGI will suddenly have no way of making money. They can still keep full control of what mechs a player has tied to their account.

Premium Time for private lobbies would be the biggest problem, however a simple solution could be to make it so premium time gives you ACCESS to the community server browser. They could require community servers to pay a monthly subscription in order to be listed, or some combination of payment between server hosts and players.

There's a lot of ways PGI could allow community managed servers, settings, and content that won't interfere with the main game servers, nor interfere with their ability to make money off the game, which is why I consider it to be MWO's biggest flaw to NOT take advantage of the community's own passion and dedication to the IP.

[DAYLEET]

Bishop Steiner, on 04 July 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

Why Did Thi Sgame Seem To Just Suddenly Become...unfun?

We all have our reasons, the only one we probably share is that playing the same game for years requires a lot of content to be injected or at least often changes to keep things new and interesting. All we are given is new chassis that add nothing, and maps, maps are good at least.

The last drop for me, when i knew i wouldnt be able to play for months after months without break like i used to, was at the map voting system. I just cant stomac it. After playing invasion last 3 days ive not once felt the same aversion i get at the end of a night of quickplay(we know what map are going to drop but its not the same thing). It used to suck when you got the same map two or tree times in a row, now it's a common occurrence. When you start voting map to spite people it can't be good, not for the guy that wins and not the guy that complain in chat "who voted for this ****?". It's poisoning. If it wasnt for the past events id be doing something else for sure.

Spoiler

I see changes, too little, maybe too late too. The rescale is good, the new map is good if we get whats supposed to come with it. Comorose is great but how long did it take to get that out the door? It's been what, 4 years in developement and we are still at the stage where we try to implement basic gameplay stuff. We are not close to the polishing state the game should be at. At this rate, i wish i could just forget that the game exist for 4 years and come back then see where it's at... probably with 75% less players.

Then there's the "Its an esport game now". That pretty much tells me the game is never going to go anywhere in the gameplay departement and is going to stay in this state for ever with minor changes to UI added every 6 months. People who like that sort of things in FPS are anathema to changes and balance.



Theres the community. Everytime pgi want to add something concrete that changes things radicaly theres lots of people who want their nervous point and click as simple and braindead as possible and we never get anything.

Theres PGI who will not change anything for years, no mather how small and possibly inconsequential it could be, things are like flamers and mg's. It just sends a mesasge of "we don't care" or worse.

Theres shady decisions like "both sides will have a base to defend and attack in Assault" how? why? why do i want to attack or defend? what are my motivation when both side have a base with defence? What are my reason to go there and destroy everything? people cant spawn, cant repair, cant anything we have one life and we have to use it well. 2 weeks after release we will all play the game mode as we do today. More shady decisions "lets have a field nuclear arty" oh yeah thats brilliant, it took 3 days for people to stop queuing planets with Toms.

There's the "REALLY?" things going on too, Leaderboard is great, top position occupied by people with 1 match... REALLY! LIKE... REALLY REALLY? did you imagine me move my head to the side in a derisive manner with every word? because i did.

lets take a bunch of game content/improvement/mechanic and drop them down the stairs and the broken parts that make it to the second to last stairs gets released with one bit from the floor.

Theres shadier, tin foil hat, decisions that i just DONT buy one bit. No map rotation... that was either a smoke screen for the rescale or the dude was behind schedule and they had to release.

Starvation of informations about what is comming. That scares everyone. with good reasons. We want details because when you release stuff we have all those questions that should have been addressed beforehand.

All of this means we have less people to play with. downward spiral was a good album, not great for game development.

Maybe im wrong in all of this but we will never know because the guy who holds the cards wont show them to us.

Maybe im an hypocrite because when Russ gave the community a chance to make a comity and vote on stuff i got so appaled and scared that i left for 6 months straight with not a single visit on the forum. Im pretty sure i wasnt alone because when i came back the forum and people on it had changed drasticaly. The people who took "command" were the ones who i felt were ready to use TT and lore to create a living nightmare rather than create a fun and balanced game.

Im not going anywhere too far away, I still enjoy dropping, i just find myself, not angry but, exhausted? like after finishing a chore and you know theres more tomorrow, well i can play something else, we all can, thats a problem. Which is ironic because i started playing MWO to get away from BF4 because MWO got me relaxed and zen.

[adamts01]

My nail in the coffin was the CW3 disappointment. They built that up so much.

[Lootee]

Minimally viable product with no real content except to grind or pay RL $$$ for the next bag of hardpoints.

[badaa]

its an a event, plain and simple.

[WarPickle]

Domination...

Ever since they added this game mode built for the brain dead my interest has been waning. Ooooo run to the middle and kill everyone to win... cause honestly if you cap it to win it's only because the other side is totally brain dead! There is no objective and quit pretending there is... the only objective is run to the middle and kill kill kill.... glorified skirmish mode is what they should call it.... so tired of everyone voting for it... tired of playing it...blah

Also my assaults die quicker than the heavies.. wtf is up with that? blah

Team runs off from assaults expecting them to catch up to the team when it should be the other way around...

grind is horrible even with premium... can't imagine what it's like f2p....

people really need to learn to shoot the uav's... even if I point them out because my trex arms can't look up enough to shoot it... it just gets ignored and then they wonder why they murdered by lurms

idiots like the one last night on Terrible Therma... breaks away from the team..alone.... charges past me away from the group around the volcano.. alone.... runs into enemy team.... promptly gets his buttocks handed to him... dies.... gets on chat and gives me hell and blames me for his moronic death because I didn't tell him the enemy team was over there.... duh.. of course it's my fault you were a friggin moron...

So mostly the scores of idiotic players are souring this game for me... clan wars is a joke and no fun... pugging is slightly better...

Oh and hit detection sucks balls... yeah and new "improved" maps are just beyond stupid...

Edited by WarPickle, 04 July 2016 - 05:40 PM.

[Mister Blastman]

Play some Moonstone. Classic game. Bloody good fun. You'll forget about MWO in no time. Here's a recent session of mine...

[Wintersdark]

I rarely play these days as well. I suspect much of that - to be totally fair - is just general burnout. I don't play ANY games for years, despite being an avid gamer since the early 80's.

So, honestly, there's really nothing PGI could have done to keep me logging in daily. Not to say they couldn't have done things better, but rather that after 4 years I'd probably be drifting away anyways.

However, to address a couple of Mr. Steiner's points:

I don't think players are dumber. I sure notice it more, but I think it's more a factor of being much more experienced myself, and having lost patience for stupidity a long time ago. I even see it here on these forums: people are certainly no dumber here than they were in OB, but I'm way, way less tolerant.

Now, Community Warfare was really a letdown for me; phase 3 in particular. I don't know what I expected, but I wanted *more*, and it really wasn't. I don't even like PvP games to start with, so my staying this long with quick play has been indicative of my love for Mechwarrior more than anything else. But really, I was hoping CW would find me something new to do... But it hasn't


I love 4v4, but hate lights, and find scouting very annoying when people are doing the "hidden ECM light rushes the drop ship" thing - a good 4v4 battle is fun, that isn't.

So, really, a game type I don't normally like to start with, and nothing new gameplay wise... Just can't really find much incentive to log in. I still grab a couple matches every week or two, and am interestedin ongoing development, but.. as things stand, I'm largely done as well.

Edited by Wintersdark, 04 July 2016 - 05:04 PM.

[Mavairo]

For me... it's because I started playing GOOD games again. It's hard for me to throw down a lot of games anymore.

I too questioned what it was, as I was playing more and more other games and then it hit me this afternoon.
It's because i'm playing real high quality games again, and at worst mediocre games. My friends, and twitch have reintroduced me to other better games, and in the case of World of Warships, deeper multiplayer games.

I suspect unless something truly epic happens to Mechwarrior online, the Cyclops pack is the last time I'm ever spending money on this game. I just can't justify it for a sub mediocre experience anymore.

For PVP, i want a deeper, more strategic experience, with greater play variety than MWO offers.

For single player and coop multiplayer... MWO has neither.
Then I start playing games like Skyrim, Tomb Raider, Witcher... hell The incredible adventures of van helsing, divinity original sin, borderlands...

then I look back at MWO and go "What do you offer really?"

Big stompy robots...and that's about it. But that's not enough to really fully hold me over. I'm still logging in and playing, because it's fun in VERY small doses. Maybe a few hours once a week or so at best.

I suspect that once Hairbrained releases Btech, MWO might even find itself uninstalled, because PGI's best effort ever.is this game.

Think about that. This is the best thing PGI has, and likely ever will do.
And there's quite a few studios that would consider this game an embarrassment as far as the talent required to make a product of this caliber compared to their own efforts.

MWO is lacking Soul, Depth, and variety in gameplay. And that directly correlates and detracts from the long term fun factor.

Edited by Mavairo, 04 July 2016 - 05:07 PM.

[zagibu]

Well, it's basically 12 vs 12 team deathmatch with optional objectives and no respawn. On 15 maps. That's not really going to last very long in itself. Fortunately, it also has mech customization, but after a while you realize that most of the options are quite redundant, because all your targets are other mechs like you.

[Wintersdark]

I love the customization - that's always been my favourite part of the game - but yeah... I really need more major changes for that to be interesting. Infowar would have helped (if done interestingly), balance changes that disrupt meta's more frequently, that would have helped too.

Anything to necessitate major testing and thought. Sadly, that rarely happens now.

[Vashramire]

It started with the Clan Invasion. I'm not sure they understood how massive an impact that would have for years to come. It wasn't just the invasion but a couple things that also happened around that timeframe. Power creep led to Ghost Heat led to insane quirks led to more power creep and soon GH 2.0. Unclear user interface for new users is frustrating, FW is a joke with a whole other set of issues (read Long Tom). PSR and MMR changes make grinders that are mediocre rise to the top as long as thy have the time while those that are genuine good pilots with little time can get stuck lower and either smash face or suffer from infuriating teammates. Bipolar matchmaking wears on you after a while. The game (as just about any) is more fun with friends but that can't be relied on as a constant for all. The game needs an overhaul. Strip every mech and all quirks and take a hard look at weapons and geometry. If a doctor used bandaids on a wound for 4 years he'd be a ****** doctor. We need a balance transfer stat.

[Felio]

I don't have time to have a bad experience during my limited leisure time. I mostly just use the forums. I'll play again for PvE.

[Bud Crue]

Why has the game become "unfun"?

I have only played for a couple of years. But I feel like P3, PGI's "e-sports" fixation, and then Russ deciding to be insulting to the players really combined to take away about 50% of my enthusiasm for the game.

Before that I had held out hope that at some point PGI would put forth some effort/resources into making MWO "a battletech game" as advertised. The money and time that PGI chose to spend on "e-sports" instead, pretty much killed that hope. Russ's subsequent comments regarding islands, PGI knowing what's best, etc. pretty much confirmed that BT was not something that he or PGI have any real interest in pursuing.

P3 was built up by Russ and PGI as being a huge game changing, player immersing, experience. Instead it turned out to be some weird vendetta he has about punishing large units (think about it: they actually put in a mechanism to punish large groups of people for playing the game. Seriously.), added an overly powerful insta-death from the heavens mechanism (Long Tom) which functions to ensure that new players will try CW only once and encourage existing players to simply stop playing where the LT is active, etc. Point is yes P3 was "game changing" but it changed it in almost universally negative ways. At least they added 4x4, which is okay.

So between having the whole reason I started playing this game (CW and BT) being gutted or ignored...yeah, my enthusiasm is also at a nadir.

Only thing keeping me playing is the fun of playing group QP with my unit mates. Game itself is almost incidental to that.

[Mawai]

Bishop Steiner, on 04 July 2016 - 01:34 PM, said:

I've been here since late May, 2012.

For all it's bugs, enjoyed the heck out of Closed Beta.
Soldiered through the Hell of 2013.
Persevered through a year and a half of Poptardery.
The Clan Invasion.

Etc.

But about a year ago, an odd thing happened.... I stopped wanting to log on.

What I notice... is I play 4-5 matches... then log off in disgust. But I can't quite put my finger on the issue.

Is it only one, or a mix?

I PUG for the most part so can't really comment on Group or FW play. But in QP a few things I notice, that IDK..were probably there before...but seem more pronounced now.

1) Epic Player Stupidity. I can't prove it, but it feels like the average player IQ has dropped by at least 50 pts. MM has always served up streaks of bad matches. But every drop feels like I'm surrounded by morons, now. Simple concepts like "shoot the enemy UAV" just elude people.

2) TTK. This has been an on again/off again battle... even in Open Beta, people would complain about Medium Mechs getting instagibbed. Well, it is massively worse now than ever.

3) Stagnant boring game modes and mechanics. Zero immersion.

IDK.. I could go on and on... but I really don't want to. I want a reason to play this game. But... I can't. Just logged on for 5 matches.... and same stupidity when I ran 4 matches last week.

I emphasized the choice I think is the most common.

I don't think "stupidity" or "TTK" have changed that much. PPFLD and poptarts made TTK faster than it is now, as did LRMageddon, high alphas have been around as long as the clans. If TTK feels shorter now then it is probably because folks are doing a bit better job of focus firing. Folks who peek tend to get blasted by everyone who can see them.

On the other hand, the basic game has always been boring and repetitive. There were many threads on these forums during closed beta about exactly this aspect. MWO is FUN to play as an instant action short mech multiplayer combat game. However, there are very limited long term hooks ... things that make you look forward to the next game.

The boring XP system which is identical for every mech is the most obvious one. Having an XP system that allowed choice of quirks for each variant of every mech makes planning builds more interesting. It makes the next XP level on a new mech mean something different if you are planning a different set of XP unlocked quirks. It makes the 3 chassis required for eliting a mech play differently by unlocking different XP boosts and the system could be designed to support role warfare. PGI could have made the game more interesting for a very limited cost in programmer time ... they chose not to.

Similarly, the game modes and maps provide a limited kind of replayability but once you have played each mode 30+ times on every map ... for a wide range of mechs ... well there just isn't much left.

Which is the fundamental issue with MWO, which you hit with the 3rd point. Long term, the game gets boring and stale since it is pretty much the same thing over and over again ... the only thing that changes is the mech chassis ... and the XP system doesn't support enough variety to keep the chassis changes more interesting over the longer term. As a result, folks take a break ... then they take longer and longer breaks. Sometimes they drop in a few matches but not much has changed in the basic game play so they just take another break. Eventually, they may not come back.

[DaZur]

I'm here almost every night for a quick couple hours of mindless mech on mech action... In this regard MWO fixes my itch.

That said, this is not the game I was promised when I Foundered and when I joined closed-beta. This supposed to be a much deeper experience. One where my action or inactions could bear weight and influence my standing in the great houses.

Sadly, PGI went with the lowest common denominator and decided to cater to the e-sport crowd and as a result we have a play experience about as deep as a milk saucer.

At the end of the day I'm not bitter... I'm just moreso fustrated over what this game should have been and could have been.

I still have tons of fun playing. It's just mindless game play...

[Mudhutwarrior]

This is easy. PGI does not care about you or care about the game. Its and ego driven cluster**** . Always been that way.

I was gone near a year. Came back just before last weekend and double xp. Bought the warhammers and leveled them so I could deal with the grind like before the hammer fell on rewards. Many of you will remember those days.

Now that I am done I am back to bored with it and the same old stale gameplay. I may idle around a bit but this quit cycle is coming on much faster than the last.

[Bishop Steiner]

zagibu, on 04 July 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

Well, it's basically 12 vs 12 team deathmatch with optional objectives and no respawn. On 15 maps. That's not really going to last very long in itself. Fortunately, it also has mech customization, but after a while you realize that most of the options are quite redundant, because all your targets are other mechs like you.

well respawn would have led to an instant uninstall from me.

Wintersdark, on 04 July 2016 - 05:02 PM, said:

I don't think players are dumber. I sure notice it more, but I think it's more a factor of being much more experienced myself, and having lost patience for stupidity a long time ago. I even see it here on these forums: people are certainly no dumber

Naw, I'm 99% convinced that with a lot of good players either gone, or playing Group Queue almost exclusively, that the playerbase has gotten a lot dumber.

[Y E O N N E]

Bishop Steiner, on 04 July 2016 - 05:35 PM, said:

well respawn would have led to an instant uninstall from me.

Even if it were a big combined-arms, conquest-style game where 'Mechs are locked to their lore values and what you can drop in is dependent on C-bills available to the team at that moment?