869 replies to this topic

[habu86]

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

There has been no lack of ideas for making it better, beginning back in 2011 and 2012.

No one's got time to read through thousands of pages of circular arguments in the forums. When they put out a roundtable like this, especially one focused on fixing one or two issues at the time, pick your most salient ideas that contribute a solution and present them in a concise and coherent manner. It's not unlike running a political campaign; pick your most salient ideas, boil them down to an easy-to-digest concept and keep on repeating them every time you've got the opportunity to do so. Oh, and be prepared to argue in support of said ideas.

Throwing a tantrum because no one takes the time to read the hundreds of threads that have been put up on these forums won't get anyone to go back and read them; it's your job as a champion of your ideas to keep putting them forward. Also, bringing up X in a meeting dedicated to addressing Y doesn't help either.

Edited by habu86, 29 July 2016 - 10:15 AM.

[Dremnon]

Apologize if this was brought up already in here, haven't had a chance to read every post so far. I think that one of the major issues that was not touched on last night was when you see the larger Merc units stacking on the same faction for weeks at a time. As an example, Jade Falcon up until a few week ago saw a huge push and numbers due to this. Quite honestly, reducing the wait time or filling bucket faster is not going to matter much if everyone knows that you're likely going to draw a 12 man Merc unit almost every drop get rolled, especially if you're dropping solo or smaller groups. People will avoid planets where this is happening in the same way they avoid the planet if Long Tom is unlocked.

There needs to be a system in place (other than reduced Cbills on winning for taking contracts with factions) that prevents the larger Merc groups from doing this. It either needs to be something in the line of a "Merc Cap" that only allows "X" amount of merc players per faction per week, or not allow back to back contracts to be taken out with the same faction. Either that or there needs to be substantial changes to what Loyalist units get from FP to make that more appealing as a choice.

I'm glad there are discussions on going about this however, new found respect for a few of the units last night based on their comments.

~D

[AnTi90d]

Omaha, on 29 July 2016 - 09:58 AM, said:

..when the actual people that make the game reach out and ask us the players on ways to make it better. I wouldn't just personally mawk the lead developer, openly.

There was a great uprising of hope when Bombadil said that we'd have the roundtable. We were excited for the possibility that FP might see further development and that our feedback had a chance of being heard.

..but then we attended the meeting.. and it quickly became apparent that our feedback was not wanted. We had been gathered together so he could sales pitch us on his set-in-stone plan.

We went to the meeting, starry eyed and dreaming.. and left with tears in our eyes and salt in our pockets. It was the old bait-and-switch and we fell for it.

That's my new favorite GIF.

It's all downhill from here.

[Pat Kell]

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 06:30 AM, said:

What surprises me is that this "grey council" of players did not pursue a dialogue on the core design, the obvious fact that the gamemode does not appeal to the larger community.

If everything was on the table for discussion, an opportunity was missed to get at the heart of the matter:
Recognize flaws, fix, and profit. Granted, my vision of "fixing" is not popular with those who actually play FP, but that should be no bar to finding a better solution.

Everything was not on the table for discussion, so we took what we had in front of us and did the best we could. PGI is not going to spend months and months completely revamping CW just because you don't like something. They are a small company with limited resources and decisions have to be made with that in mind. Failure to recognize that has made many people on these forums put forward really good ideas that are completely out of the realm of reality when it comes to what CAN be done and then they get extremely upset when "PGI never listens to us."

[JaxRiot]

Dremnon, on 29 July 2016 - 10:19 AM, said:

Apologize if this was brought up already in here, haven't had a chance to read every post so far. I think that one of the major issues that was not touched on last night was when you see the larger Merc units stacking on the same faction for weeks at a time. As an example, Jade Falcon up until a few week ago saw a huge push and numbers due to this. Quite honestly, reducing the wait time or filling bucket faster is not going to matter much if everyone knows that you're likely going to draw a 12 man Merc unit almost every drop get rolled, especially if you're dropping solo or smaller groups. People will avoid planets where this is happening in the same way they avoid the planet if Long Tom is unlocked.

There needs to be a system in place (other than reduced Cbills on winning for taking contracts with factions) that prevents the larger Merc groups from doing this. It either needs to be something in the line of a "Merc Cap" that only allows "X" amount of merc players per faction per week, or not allow back to back contracts to be taken out with the same faction. Either that or there needs to be substantial changes to what Loyalist units get from FP to make that more appealing as a choice.

I'm glad there are discussions on going about this however, new found respect for a few of the units last night based on their comments.

~D

Actually, I did bring this up pages ago.

Having Merc Units that can migrate en mass practically at will throws off population balance in a major way. Which turns the tide of the battle because of the sheer number of sudden Mercs in a Faction, plus whacks out que times, increased ghost drops, ect ect.

Its also tragically against Lore since Clans never even used Mercs.

Its all around not good for the game

[habu86]

Dremnon, on 29 July 2016 - 10:19 AM, said:

I think that one of the major issues that was not touched on last night was when you see the larger Merc units stacking on the same faction for weeks at a time. As an example, Jade Falcon up until a few week ago saw a huge push and numbers due to this. Quite honestly, reducing the wait time or filling bucket faster is not going to matter much if everyone knows that you're likely going to draw a 12 man Merc unit almost every drop get rolled, especially if you're dropping solo or smaller groups.

Well, one of the things that was brought up, but maybe didn't get as much airtime and recognition as it should have, was the possibility of combining attack and defense lanes into a Tukkayyid-style format. This would forcibly serve to funnel large groups, who currently prefer to go on attack for more ease getting matches quickly, into each other a lot more often. I'm not overly worried about units all stacking up on side in that situation, since most of them absolutely hate the ghost drops that would ensue and tend to self-regulate over time to avoid those outcomes. We've actually seen this with the Tukkayyid events, where quite a few mercenary units chose Clan or IS based on what they perceived to be their best chance for getting actual drops

FWIW, while the CJF push was quite impressive, it was not nearly due to population size imbalance, so much as to who was lining up on each side of the conflict and on the Long Tom's unfortunate influence on invasion matches. In other words, if you looked at the queues, there weren't that many ghost drops taking place, but not only were there a greater number of higher-skilled groups dropping as CJF than Steiner, LT would often show up after 90 mins. and more or less button down the planet.

[Luscious Dan]

Watched most of the stream, definitely mixed results but I appreciate all the folks who are trying to make Faction Play work. It can be hard to stay constructive once emotions get involved.

My thoughts:

1. Mercs (and Solahma for Clan equivalents) shouldn't be bound to any main faction, they should just queue up and be allowed to fight in any bucket that exists for the parent faction (IS as a whole or Clans as a whole). This might be easier to implement than alliances.

2. For making rewards useful, have some gameplay modes offer supply caches to the victors, and other modes supply keys to the victors. Or, make keys part of the faction rank rewards. There could also be special mech variants available via loyalty ranks, instead of just empty mech bays. Make a new variant available only through Faction Play at first, them move it into MC/C-bill stores after x number of months. Or make it exclusively available through Faction Play... Fluffy Davion players might appreciate exclusive access to the Victor 9A1 with MGs in the side torsos, for example.

3. In terms of keeping the super long term loyalist folks happy, once you max your loyalty points with a faction (or reputation for Mercs) you should be able to keep it for a persistent bonus (maybe two chances of winning supply cache/key drops at the end of a match) or trade it all in to start at 0 loyalty points again for that faction. This option should only be available once you max the system out, not whenever you want.Think the "prestige" system from COD. And maybe it's a longer track to get the same rewards a subsequent time.

4. The only other thing I can think of would be a very simple Mass Effect 3 "galaxy at war" type of a thing for quick play; when you pledge for a faction and play in quick play matches, maybe your wins/losses to some small extent tie into the larger "tug of war" for your faction's battles. Tying the original game modes into Faction Play, even in a token manner, would maybe nudge people closer to giving it a try.

[Kyrie]

habu86, on 29 July 2016 - 10:14 AM, said:

No one's got time to read through thousands of pages of circular arguments in the forums. When they put out a roundtable like this, especially one focused on fixing one or two issues at the time, pick your most salient ideas that contribute a solution and present them in a concise and coherent manner. It's not unlike running a political campaign; pick your most salient ideas, boil them down to an easy-to-digest concept and keep on repeating them every time you've got the opportunity to do so. Oh, and be prepared to argue in support of said ideas.

Throwing a tantrum because no one takes the time to read the hundreds of threads that have been put up on these forums won't get anyone to go back and read them; it's your job as a champion of your ideas to keep putting them forward. Also, bringing up X in a meeting dedicated to addressing Y doesn't help either.

Somewhat missing the point, IMHO. There have been champions for CW from the very beginning, lengthy epistles, sermons, promises, even videos made by PGI on the topic. No amount of campaigning is relevant if the people the campaign is directed at (PGI) are not interested. PGI in fact even ignored their own pillars when they came out with "FP".

My point here is that PGI is basically done with FP for all intents and purposes. I don't necessarily blame them at this stage. It does, however, depress me for the missed opportunities.

I will reiterate from previous posts why the design was flawed at inception:

-Map design
-Failure to incorporate mechanisms to promote one of the core monetization schemes in the game: "gotta collect'm all". One perfect drop deck is all you really need.
-Pugstomping ad nauseam exacerbated by the map design
-Failed to leverage the players as content creators
-Failure from the very beginning to create a "multi" player experience. Lack of comm tools addressed late even in CW stages.
-Poorly conceived end-game reward structures for the game mode, no growth is possible through the game-mode.

All of these are obvious issues, in fact, I am absolutely pconvinced PGI was aware of these issues -- but for whatever reason nothing was done to address it with the development resources in the first go-round. And that is what depresses me. If CW was done correctly it would make money, it should be the hook to keep players involved in the game; addressing one of the key problems in any F2P game, retaining players to milk them out of more cash.

Building something like CW is not like building a DLC. The expectation is that by making a fairly significant upfront development investment in CW you create what I would refer to as player-leveraging -- you empower the players to get involved and play out stories through their choices. A DLC is about providing content, CW should be about providing a sandbox. PGI did not visualize what they really wanted to do in CW.

Player-leveraging, if achieved, makes what you built fundamentally reusable -- the users create content for you by playing your game. You build a structure, players move in and take ownership of it. This should have been the design target for PGI, and if necessary, they should do fundraising to achieve it from the community.

Yes, I am a crazy Founder who would in fact go all-in again if PGI were to make me an offer on a new CW development plan. Call me insane, but my nostalgia is in fact that strong -- and there is nothing comparable even in other genres to what I had hoped, and continue to somehow hope PGI would build.

[JaxRiot]

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

Somewhat missing the point, IMHO. There have been champions for CW from the very beginning, lengthy epistles, sermons, promises, even videos made by PGI on the topic. No amount of campaigning is relevant if the people the campaign is directed at (PGI) are not interested. PGI in fact even ignored their own pillars when they came out with "FP".

My point here is that PGI is basically done with FP for all intents and purposes. I don't necessarily blame them at this stage. It does, however, depress me for the missed opportunities.

I will reiterate from previous posts why the design was flawed at inception:

-Map design
-Failure to incorporate mechanisms to promote one of the core monetization schemes in the game: "gotta collect'm all". One perfect drop deck is all you really need.
-Pugstomping ad nauseam exacerbated by the map design
-Failed to leverage the players as content creators
-Failure from the very beginning to create a "multi" player experience. Lack of comm tools addressed late even in CW stages.
-Poorly conceived end-game reward structures for the game mode, no growth is possible through the game-mode.

All of these are obvious issues, in fact, I am absolutely pconvinced PGI was aware of these issues -- but for whatever reason nothing was done to address it with the development resources in the first go-round. And that is what depresses me. If CW was done correctly it would make money, it should be the hook to keep players involved in the game; addressing one of the key problems in any F2P game, retaining players to milk them out of more cash.

Building something like CW is not like building a DLC. The expectation is that by making a fairly significant upfront development investment in CW you create what I would refer to as player-leveraging -- you empower the players to get involved and play out stories through their choices. A DLC is about providing content, CW should be about providing a sandbox. PGI did not visualize what they really wanted to do in CW.

Player-leveraging, if achieved, makes what you built fundamentally reusable -- the users create content for you by playing your game. You build a structure, players move in and take ownership of it. This should have been the design target for PGI, and if necessary, they should do fundraising to achieve it from the community.

Yes, I am a crazy Founder who would in fact go all-in again if PGI were to make me an offer on a new CW development plan. Call me insane, but my nostalgia is in fact that strong -- and there is nothing comparable even in other genres to what I had hoped, and continue to somehow hope PGI would build.

Note that I am not White Knighting here, but I can see why they would be willing to step away from the current direction of FP

To be honest they tried their best to deliver the kind of FP that the more Lore and Battletech enthusiasts wanted.

It has Multiple Factions, Units, Mercs, Loyalists, Rewards, Tactical maps, Attack/Defend Options, Scouting, Map Objectives, Voting (politics) ect ect.

The problem is that they due to their limited resources and development time, they could only do so much, and in the end they were not able to make anyone truly happy.

It wasnt in depth enough for the enthusiasts, and too casual unfriendly for the casuals. It quite simply failed.

So what do they do now? Keep pouring time and resources into a game mode that would further cater to the smallest part of the population while at the same time pushing the largest part of the population away? Or down size the hell out of it and basically start from scratch, and rebuild it with minimal more cost effective steps?

My opinion is that they should (and looks like they are) going to down size it and make small changes over time that appeal to broader audiences.

Time will tell though.

I really wish I was able to attend that Round Table though. But alas work and real life comes first.

Edited by JaxRiot, 29 July 2016 - 12:00 PM.

[Kyrie]

JaxRiot, on 29 July 2016 - 11:56 AM, said:

Note that I am not White Knighting here, but I can see why they would be willing to step away from the current direction of FP

To be honest they tried their best to deliver the kind of FP that the more Lore and Battletech enthusiasts wanted.

It has Multiple Factions, Units, Mercs, Loyalists, Rewards, Tactical maps, Attack/Defend Options, Scouting, Map Objectives, Voting (politics) ect ect.

The problem is that they due to their limited resources and development time, they could only do so much, and in the end they were not able to make anyone truly happy.

It wasnt in depth enough for the enthusiasts, and too casual unfriendly for the casuals. It quite simply failed.

So what do they do now? Keep pouring time and resources into a game mode that would further cater to the smallest part of the population while at the same time pushing the largest part of the population away? Or down size the hell out of it and basically start from scratch, and rebuild it with minimal more cost effective steps?

My opinion is that they should (and looks like they are) going to down size it and make small changes over time that appeal to broader audiences.

Time will tell though.

I really wish I was able to attend that Round Table though. But alas work and real life comes first.

It definitely failed, we can agree on that. It is hard for me to understand, but I believe you may be right. They began trying to paint a BT-like thing and then stopped themselves from following-through. To be honest, I would, as Russ, make an offer to the community to decide what CW they want and ask them to fund it in in a new round special CW packs. If enough BT addicts like myself are willing to pony up some cash for it, this should allow them to move forward on creating something "in-depth".

If not, they can wash their hands of it.

[JaxRiot]

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 12:30 PM, said:

It definitely failed, we can agree on that. It is hard for me to understand, but I believe you may be right. They began trying to paint a BT-like thing and then stopped themselves from following-through. To be honest, I would, as Russ, make an offer to the community to decide what CW they want and ask them to fund it in in a new round special CW packs. If enough BT addicts like myself are willing to pony up some cash for it, this should allow them to move forward on creating something "in-depth".

If not, they can wash their hands of it.

Kind of like a Kick Starter for FP only? That could possibly work. If enough people are willing to fund a FP only project that will cater to such a small part of the population and take development time from the rest of the game. Maybe.

But say it works and it gets funded. The level of detail wanted for a project like that could take years of development time and in the end be an extremely expensive and time consuming project that will still only cater to the very few.

It could still end up being a very expensive casket housing a dying corpse of a game mode.

My point is, that theyve tried it 3 times now and it hasnt worked yet.

Edited by JaxRiot, 29 July 2016 - 12:41 PM.

[habu86]

@Kyrie - thank you for reiterating your points. Regardless of the extent to which I agree or disagree, this kind of staying on a concise and clear message is how we get through to PGI. PGI is finally actively reaching out to the playerbase for suggestions, so now is the time for all CW champions to really come out with everything they have.

A couple of things regarding what you said

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

-Map design
[...]
-Failed to leverage the players as content creators

These were both addressed in the pre-roundtable meeting, but sadly did not really get any airtime due to focus on just a couple of issues really. The hope is that they'll be touched upon in future roundtables. Listen to the meeting recording if you want all the details, but the takeaway is that the panelists too want to move away from lane fights and leverage the existing map design experience in the community (multiple members have quite a bit of experience with map design from previous MW titles).

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

-Failure to incorporate mechanisms to promote one of the core monetization schemes in the game: "gotta collect'm all". One perfect drop deck is all you really need.

Not really touched upon in the roundtable, but I'll personally have to disagree with that one. It is true that you can put together a drop deck that will be generally viable for all maps, especially with IS laser vomit, but there are plenty of opportunities to optimize for map and team tactics/gameplay strategy. In fact, most successful groups will promote and guide their members to, at the very least, build separate "hot" and "cold" decks. I've heard one KCom member commenting in chat that he has a separate deck for each map. For my own end, I've got separate decks for "hot" and "cold", offense and defense, brawl, midrange (dakka and laser/gaussvomit), and even a few long-range options for both Clan and IS. You can certainly work off a single deck, but running coordinated strategies requires a lot more specialization, especially against other coordinated groups.

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

-Pugstomping ad nauseam exacerbated by the map design

The combined attack/defense and "tug-of-war" concepts presented by the panelists are expected to help groups encounter each other more often. The "redlight button" feature also proposed by the panelists is also intended to make it easier for large groups (especially 12-mans) to find and challenge each other in high-stakes matches; PGI seemed intrigued, we'll see what happens.

The sad reality is that, as long as we're all looking to contest and influence a common map, we will never really be able to avoid skill and coordination mismatches. It's not all unlike a sports tournament where competitors all vie for the same prize (in our case, ownership of the Inner Sphere/Terra); sooner or later, competitive mismatches will occur as there can only be one winner. By the same token, everyone is in agreement that these kinds of situations are not desirable and active efforts are being made to find ways to avoid them as much as possible or, at the very least, either offer handicaps to the weaker teams or compensate the weaker teams for their time and suffering (e.g. the pre-roundtable meeting brought up the idea of "bounties" being placed on high-ranked players and units, offering C-Bill, XP, and LP/RP bonuses for individual kills and achievements against these units and individuals, but I don't think there was any airtime allocated to this at the actual roundtable).

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

-Failure from the very beginning to create a "multi" player experience. Lack of comm tools addressed late even in CW stages.

This was acknowledged and discussed in the context of enabling alliances between factions in an effort to ultimately find ways to reduce buckets. We'll see what comes of it.

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

-Poorly conceived end-game reward structures for the game mode, no growth is possible through the game-mode.

Blueduck of SWOL specifically brought up the fact that longtime loyalists were utterly screwed by a.) a lack of any kind of recognition of their efforts in affecting the map (he brought up Clan Wolf encircling Terra, but the same could be said of Kurita driving Smoke Jag back to their starting planet, CJF mauling Steiner, the Southern houses knocking the stuffing out of each other, etc.) and b.) any kind of new reward structure being available to enable further progression for the numerous loyalist players who have already reached rank 20 and have been there for a while. Russ, seemed to grasp that this was a crushing disappointment for a good many players; we'll see if anything gets done.

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

All of these are obvious issues, in fact, I am absolutely pconvinced PGI was aware of these issues -- but for whatever reason nothing was done to address it with the development resources in the first go-round. And that is what depresses me.

You might think so, but if you've listened to any of the townhalls, roundtables, and other engagements between Russ and the playerbase, the obliviousness becomes a lot less surprising. I'll stop here on the subject since I don't want to have the modhammer come down, but, as a community, we've got our work cut out for us in convincing the powers that be that many of their cherished mechanics and concepts are not working out and that we'd like to see them gone and replaced with other alternatives.

Kyrie, on 29 July 2016 - 11:15 AM, said:

Building something like CW is not like building a DLC. The expectation is that by making a fairly significant upfront development investment in CW you create what I would refer to as player-leveraging -- you empower the players to get involved and play out stories through their choices. A DLC is about providing content, CW should be about providing a sandbox. PGI did not visualize what they really wanted to do in CW.

Player-leveraging, if achieved, makes what you built fundamentally reusable -- the users create content for you by playing your game. You build a structure, players move in and take ownership of it. This should have been the design target for PGI, and if necessary, they should do fundraising to achieve it from the community.

Yes, I am a crazy Founder who would in fact go all-in again if PGI were to make me an offer on a new CW development plan. Call me insane, but my nostalgia is in fact that strong -- and there is nothing comparable even in other genres to what I had hoped, and continue to somehow hope PGI would build.

No argument on that. As a matter of fact, you're not alone. Think for a second what just happened here this week. A couple of dozen (at least) adults, with work and family commitments, sunk (at least) 10-12 hours of their personal time to contribute ideas to fix CW and make it appealing again. And they (and many others) have all committed to following up and doing this again in the future.

I guess we'll see how it all pans out.

Edited by habu86, 29 July 2016 - 12:58 PM.

[Kyrie]

Yes, a kickstarter for CW with clear funding goals and an iron-clad promise to deliver. I believe the complexity to develop a workable CW system is being overstated.
1. Adopt the Kesmai approach of focusing on fhe role-playing shell. For reference, one guy did most of the work of both design and coding of the roleplaying shell in about a years time 1991-1992. PGI should be able to do better.
2. The focus of CW should be the communal aspects of the game. Implement social structures currently missing: Houses, military units, etc.
3. Adopt quick and dirty fixes such as adding slightly modified QP maps to FP.
4. Leverage mech collections as strategic and logistical assets

Edited by Kyrie, 29 July 2016 - 01:03 PM.

[Kyrie]

Pat Kell, on 29 July 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Everything was not on the table for discussion, so we took what we had in front of us and did the best we could. PGI is not going to spend months and months completely revamping CW just because you don't like something. They are a small company with limited resources and decisions have to be made with that in mind. Failure to recognize that has made many people on these forums put forward really good ideas that are completely out of the realm of reality when it comes to what CAN be done and then they get extremely upset when "PGI never listens to us."

Thanks Pat Kell for addressing this. What I propose is that PGI let the community choose what they want as a CW experience thru a new round of funding and implement accordingly. Set funding levels.and goals and make a truly great game.

[Kael Posavatz]

Pat Kell, on 29 July 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Everything was not on the table for discussion, so we took what we had in front of us and did the best we could. PGI is not going to spend months and months completely revamping CW just because you don't like something. They are a small company with limited resources and decisions have to be made with that in mind. Failure to recognize that has made many people on these forums put forward really good ideas that are completely out of the realm of reality when it comes to what CAN be done and then they get extremely upset when "PGI never listens to us."

One of the things I took away from the Wednesday 'pre-roundtable' is that a lot of the issues are really inter-connected. Picking something distinct that can be addressed in a straightforward and relatively simple manner was a good move on their part. I really appreciated how well everyone stayed on-topic and in a manner that was positive.

I realize that a lot of people feel negatively about where FW is, and feel that the round-table was an appropriate venue for venting...let's be polite and call it 'frustration', and were further frustrated when it wasn't used as such. For myself, I find it not particularly difficult to find that frustration on these boards, so I figure Russ probably knows in general how people feel if not specifically why they feel that way. The thing is, I think Blueduck did an excellent job of bringing that up. He did it in a way that was calm, reasoned, and respectful (hard enough to find a poster who does one of those things, he managed all three), and then he let it go.

As for the Long Tom, I think by this point most are pretty much soured on even then name 'Long Tom'. I'm not sure that any change to it, no matter how profound, would make the name more acceptable. I do think, however, that the third scouting reward should not interface directly with game-play. The first two unlocks are excellent, the third should be similar in character, although the 'universal' UAV or Seismic is perhaps a bit too much.

[p4r4g0n]

Talking about what the community wants or the community vision is unrealistic. If there is one thing I have learned in reading the forums over the last 4 years, it is that if you got 4 members of the community and asked them for what they wanted from MWO, you would get 5 (if not more) different opinions and they would likely be wildly divergent.

This is where the pre-Round Table meeting was invaluable in gathering input from a relatively diverse group (albeit mostly all NA region) and consolidating the separate views and opinions into a somewhat unified set of topics. If we realistically want to have more Round Tables with PGI to take this further, the community needs to maintain this transparent dialogue amongst itself and stop putting up barriers and excuses that serve no purpose but to splinter the community.

The big question in my mind at the moment is firstly, is PGI willing to commit to having more of these Round Tables on a regular basis and acting on the input received or if not, explaining why it is not possible. Secondly, whether the community can work together enough to create and maintain an open transparent channel like the pre-Round Table meeting to gather input, integrate it and interface with PGI to provide focused constructive input.

The Round Table was what the Town Halls should have been.

[Kargush]

Russ speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all PGI. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Edited by Kargush, 29 July 2016 - 05:08 PM.

[Kael Posavatz]

p4r4g0n, on 29 July 2016 - 04:38 PM, said:

The big question in my mind at the moment is firstly, is PGI willing to commit to having more of these Round Tables on a regular basis and acting on the input received or if not, explaining why it is not possible. Secondly, whether the community can work together enough to create and maintain an open transparent channel like the pre-Round Table meeting to gather input, integrate it and interface with PGI to provide focused constructive input.

Answer the first: Yes, provided the following conditions are met. 1) The panelists retain the respect and confidence of the community. We may not agree with what they put forth, but we have to agree that we trust them to speak for us. 2) The panelists continue to put their ideas out in a respectful manner. This doesn't mean there can't be debate, even lively debate, but you hit the nail on the head with the need to provide PGI with "focused constructive input". The moment it turns into 'your game sucks, here's why', PGI will stop listening. 3) The proffered advice remains useful. PGI is a small studio, from what I recall they have something less than 50 people on staff. In contrast CIG has something like 7 people working on the Bengal for Star Citizen (7 people, one ship). It is unrealistic to think that PGI will nuke CW from orbit and start over. It is also unrealistic to expect some huge alterations to happen in a very short period of time. Frankly, it is unrealistic to expect huge alterations at all. This round-table was pretty much what they wanted, how to make minor alterations to the existing framework that will have profound impact on the player experience.

Answer the Second: I don't know. There is a great deal of frustration and anger on the forums. There are also a lot of people who have been angry in the past and aren't any more. Some of them have walked away, others have simply accepted that FW is what it is and will never be else. I've seen a lot of people say that last night didn't go far enough.

I didn't manage to sit through the 6+ hour pre-round-table, but I sat through a lot of it. One of the things I saw was that a lot of the other issues are deeply interconnected (mech/weapon balance, for example, ties into the nature/construction of the maps, etc). Trying to focus on one topic was a smart move, and the one they chose is something PGI should be able to take action on fairly easily. Will the community manage to remain patient enough to continue round-tables that take small discrete steps...I just don't know.

[p4r4g0n]

Kael Posavatz, on 29 July 2016 - 05:16 PM, said:

-snip-
I didn't manage to sit through the 6+ hour pre-round-table, but I sat through a lot of it. One of the things I saw was that a lot of the other issues are deeply interconnected (mech/weapon balance, for example, ties into the nature/construction of the maps, etc).
-snip-

Agreed ... as is most of the stuff in MWO which is why the presence of the phrase "easy fix" is the best way to totally ruin the credibility of any post/thread that contains it.

Kael Posavatz, on 29 July 2016 - 05:16 PM, said:

-snip-
Trying to focus on one topic was a smart move, and the one they chose is something PGI should be able to take action on fairly easily. Will the community manage to remain patient enough to continue round-tables that take small discrete steps...I just don't know.

At this juncture, I think the ball is in PGI's court. They need to show that they firstly, understood the input received correctly. Secondly, that they will implement in a timely manner and addresses the concerns highlighted or if not, why it could not be done.

Lastly, they need to indicate that they want to have more Round Tables and agree on the agenda/issues so that another pre-Round Table can be held to garner community input.

Edited by p4r4g0n, 29 July 2016 - 05:31 PM.

[Hunka Junk]

Bombadil,

I thought that the discussion itself was a productive exchange, but information access and flow is critical to keeping the roundtable round and the greater community in the loop.

You said at the start of the discussion that the PGI devs had "seen the bullet points" and that a longer list of things could be discussed in future round tables if this one was a success.

It's good that they saw the bullet points, but what about us?

If you show people a full list of what is meant to be covered over time, they'd be far less critical of this round table only covering 2 topics.

And, you said that someone would post a summary of round table discussion/outcomes. Instead, this thread is still going and you have the community summarizing what happened. Not to knock the community members for doing this, but it would carry more weight if someone from your side provided this information as a kind of official acknowledgement what progress was made.

I think all of the above is crucial to counter the skepticism out there. People think that all of the ideas from this thread and that 6 hour pre-discussion will just fall by the wayside as they have (or at least are perceived to have) in earlier rounds of feedback.