151 replies to this topic

[Alienized]

metallio, on 03 August 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

I've started and operated two small companies, maybe a dozen employees. Not astoundingly successful but they paid the bills and are still operating. I've been in the military in charge of troops and allocated a few million dollars worth of funding while handling forty jackasses who thought my brains were ****. I've written code and my current day job involves doing so...window's open right now while I screw off writing this.

PGI is making changes...I'm just not sure why they're making the changes they're making. If they have the capacity to create this game (and I'm starting to think they no longer have that capacity) then they've got the capacity to make significant changes and shouldn't be wasting resources on things like a new minimap unless it's vital to implementation of a larger change. I don't think it is and at best they're hyper focused on something they "think" they need to move on to larger structural changes. If they outsourced immense amounts of the work (I seem to recall some of that was done) and have a tiny core of programmers incapable of making major changes then there's really no point in making any plans for this game.

That said, the vast majority of the big structural changes in constructing a global economy aren't super intensive from a programming standpoint. The framework of this sort of thing is entirely invisible and is purely text and mathematics, no animation required and is mostly database work. Deciding what to do takes time, designing the overall concept takes time, but all of this is something done by tiny companies regularly making tiny games on Steam or other places. Even individuals (teenagers/college students/etc) fascinated with programming produce games with more depth than community warfare has right now. It's not the graphics that make the game, and (even if it was) MWO already has perfectly good "looks".

Play testing? They essentially don't do any.

I'm nonplussed trying to determine where they allocate their resources, which is why I'm thinking they're financially on the ropes and incapable of further significant development. I also think the few remaining employees aren't interested in further development and are either depressed/not functioning at a significant level or have turned their attention to outside work where they hope for a better return.

In any other company the level of work being performed on this game wouldn't acceptable. Years go by and your primary income driver is wasting away without even minimal work being performed? Some of the fixes here are the sort of thing you grab one employee, set them on it, and tell them to have it finished in a week or a month. The recent database change is one of those.

Hotfixes? That's ...honestly it's pretty simple most of the time. PGI manages that fine. It's not something you spend all day on.

Content? The mech production that drives their sales is something that's straight out of the literature. The development of the mechs from a graphics/animation standpoint is half done and copied from previous mechs already and if they can't whip one out pretty quickly at this point they really don't have any business being in the game at all. It's a flippin' skin.

Maps? If they don't have a map creation tool I'd be...well I'd assume they're lying. If they're overproducing the maps so they can't put any out in a reasonable time (how many maps over how many years? seriously?) or don't want to expand on what they've got that's a different issue...Pretty maps are nice, maps that don't play well are a bigger problem than ugly and CW maps are frikkin' ugly anyway.

They don't want to spend their time expanding this IP. They're spending their time micromanaging instead of developing. That bodes poorly for absolutely any enterprise anywhere. You grow or you die. MWO hasn't grown a damn bit in years...mech packs and the CW nonsense aside (neither of which show any significant signs of sinking resources into the IP). There has been some refinement, yes, but not enough to justify the time spent on it.

If this is their day job they'd be fired if they had an employer. If it's not their day job they need to step up and admit it so there's an excuse for how slowly anything gets done. If they just don't give a damn...eh.

the thing is: we as community want so much at the same time, then turn our opinions around within a month and back and forth again and everything should be done now, yesterday at best without knowing if its actually possible atm. then spouting to PGI how bad they are.
we want this, we want that, everything now.

i have no idea how long it takes to programm stuff but we dont allow PGI to work at a useful pace. we are so unsatisfied and will never be satisfied if we push and apply so much pressure on them as we do now. its hurts both sides.

we need to lower OUR expectations. they just cant do much stuff in time properly as WE WANT it. we just dont let them and that might be one of the reasons PGI caved in, why so many things are implemented poorly because we FORCE such stuff to be thrown at us.

[Hotthedd]

Alienized, on 03 August 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

the thing is: we as community want so much at the same time, then turn our opinions around within a month and back and forth again and everything should be done now, yesterday at best without knowing if its actually possible atm. then spouting to PGI how bad they are.
we want this, we want that, everything now.

i have no idea how long it takes to programm stuff but we dont allow PGI to work at a useful pace. we are so unsatisfied and will never be satisfied if we push and apply so much pressure on them as we do now. its hurts both sides.

we need to lower OUR expectations. they just cant do much stuff in time properly as WE WANT it. we just dont let them and that might be one of the reasons PGI caved in, why so many things are implemented poorly because we FORCE such stuff to be thrown at us.

MW:O is 3 years out of Beta.
FP was supposed to be a finished product 90 days out from Closed Beta.
In that time, many resources were devoted to things PGI said would never be in the game (3PV).

Any aggravation or impatience on the players' part is justified.

[Noxcuse]

mr. russ bucket the king of MWO..thats the fail..remove him..get professionell devs..and the game is going on

Edited by Noxcuse, 03 August 2016 - 11:20 AM.

[Alienized]

Hotthedd, on 03 August 2016 - 11:16 AM, said:

MW:O is 3 years out of Beta.
FP was supposed to be a finished product 90 days out from Closed Beta.
In that time, many resources were devoted to things PGI said would never be in the game (3PV).

Any aggravation or impatience on the players' part is justified.

it is to a degree. games like this are NEVER out of beta. never ever. we also shouldnt forget about IGP and how they worked.
no one of us has an idea what was happening between IGP and PGI and more important, what DIDN'T happen.

it just wont change things to rage at PGI other than them caving in more. in the past weeks alot of people talked in a more calm and constructive manner to PGI and see, we got something going now. it might not be much but let's continue with that instead of ragebombing the forum. we might get ourselfs on a island with that behaviour at some point without Russ' help.

[metallio]

Alienized, on 03 August 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

we need to lower OUR expectations.

I sincerely disagree. Some of us, certainly. There are astoundingly difficult to deliver propositions put forth now and then but the vast majority of suggestions are all viable and possible. It's game development, not an unsolvable ancient riddle.

I feel some empathy for the difficulty in deciding on what path to follow but I also have to point out that success determines the appropriateness of most business decisions. PGI is not showing success, nor have they painted a roadmap to it. The current stagnation of the game is not something to invest in and there is no plan, much less a detailed one, for improving the situation.

In its simplest form I expect someone whose business it is to develop an IP to do just that: Develop the IP. When they don't do so no one is unreasonable who questions why they have not and suggests that they continue with development. The joking nature of "buy a mech pack!" comments does not change that the minimal "development" required to produce those mech packs is precisely the sort of work whose sole purpose is milking the product for maximum return on minimum effort...and mech packs are the most extensive development this game has seen. CW got a star map you can zoom in on, a few new maps, and a UI to handle career paths. Skilled developers using templates produce that sort of thing with very little time input. Unskilled workers can spend a few months on it, but that's one or two people. There may be a few minor features that were difficult to implement but it's...it's barely even development. Every interesting decision about the map was made when it was drawn a generation ago. The emblems, the colors, the geography, the players, the politics, the names...everything. The gameplay obviously didn't receive much thought or time...and if it did it speaks extremely poorly of the developers. The technical aspects of the UI development and map are ridiculously minor. The gameplay is literally quick play with slight modifications...most of that the maps, the rest being respawns. This did not take a lot of development resources.

Even without the personal knowledge of the IP, they're simply not performing any discernible service to the product. THAT makes it unreasonable to lower the basic expectation that they do SOMETHING. What have they done to this game in the last 3-4 years? Made the database act like something better than a first year would write? Introduced minor gameplay balancing like ghost heat and quirks? These are literally tweaking of math in a line of code...writing literally a few lines and maybe a new subroutine. Hey, even with a dozen new subroutines it shouldn't take one person more than a week. Deciding what to do with every single mech? Call it a month for ONE PERSON. This is why it concerns me that we don't see any more development...is ANYONE doing real development at PGI? The things being done are not high end coding requiring complex rewrites. Maybe they spent all their time writing a CW format that's too complex to execute right now, that they realized they don't have the time to complete because it's too ambitious...but I've seen zero sign of it and claiming that they did would be the coding equivalent of a teenager bragging that he beat up ten MMA champs but didn't take any pics or video because he didn't want to embarrass them. It's a lie if there's nothing to show for it, and that's the way the real world works.

...and if that's what's needed (complex rewrites) then for the love of god they need to start doing it because it's LITERALLY THEIR JOBS. It's not rhetoric or unreasonably shrill demands to ask for something more than has been produced because everyone here is assuming that PGI has more than one person on the programming staff. If they don't, they need to be clear about how ridiculously limited their investment in an internationally famous IP is so we can at least shake our heads and modify our expectations.

...I hope that I don't sound too "shrill" at this point myself. Business is a *****, and there's a point at which you realize you've overextended yourself way beyond the point of recovering and you have to write things off. You don't want to tell anyone about it because you look like an idiot and it's damned embarrassing. I'm honestly seriously confused about how this has been managed because even the general gameplay functions for a larger and more in depth world have been laid out for Battletech several times before. Coding it in a new engine takes time, but it's literally just copying a style that previously existed because it worked well and then tweaking it to make it your own. The 3D shooter part was the hard part and it's complete. The money is out there to develop this, it's Battletech. It's owned by Microsoft for a reason and it's not because there was ever any question as to the financial viability of the IP. Microsoft pivoted and plunged head first into pushing their tablet and phone interface and reduced their gaming development allocation so Battletech/Mechwarrior ended up licensed to an external developer so it would keep making money without internal resources being used to do it. We got MWO which started out looking great and has gone precisely nowhere.

I'm not a GOOD programmer and I could literally put together a team from some old friends and some family members that focus on that sort of development and yes, we literally could take a stab at doing something like this and I would absolutely bet that we'd do better given access to the IP on the level that PGI has. With half a dozen people. Is there not enough money to attract people with time and interest? Because I'm talking about mostly using people who aren't game developers and the ones who have done some of that work aren't going to be immediately familiar with cryengine, they all messed around with other things like Quake back in college, so we'd all have to familiarize ourselves with the current state of the art. Even with that I'm betting on better than even odds that we could produce this game. Art producers, sound men, graphics engine tweaking, they're all things that thousands and thousands of people know well just from playing at as a hobby and if I personally know enough to get something moving I'm not believing PGI couldn't find people to do the work.

So what's the real problem? It's that PGI isn't being honest about what's going on. In a business sense that's often what you need to do...but if you've gone silent after failing to deliver for years it's not a surprise feature that's looming on the horizon, it's bankruptcy. I really wish they'd open themselves up for community support. I don't have enough time or give a d@mn to do anything significant but I guarantee there are those that do in this community. At a minimum PGI can outline the costs associated with various changes and upgrades and give the whales (I...admit to spending a bit and stopping when I realized where this was going) an opportunity to pay for an upgrade they really want. Vague kickstarters are not going to fly, but if they published a detailed document concerning an immersive MWO CW experience with a design tree or other breakdown of the steps involved with a promise to use an outside developer to produce exactly these things...we could have a bake sale.

These people own one of my favorite IPs. Business is a *****, but right now they don't look like honest people having a hard time making things work, they look like (at best) people who have no idea what they're doing and at worst an office full of crooks lying their @sses off to get what they can out of it before closing up shop.

I'd really, really appreciate it if they'd put some more work into either delivering on the IP or at least making themselves look like honest folk having a hard time with the dearth of cash. I don't think they're crooks. Con artists make themselves look better than this.

[MischiefSC]

metallio, on 03 August 2016 - 07:29 AM, said:

I've started and operated two small companies, maybe a dozen employees. Not astoundingly successful but they paid the bills and are still operating. I've been in the military in charge of troops and allocated a few million dollars worth of funding while handling forty jackasses who thought my brains were ****. I've written code and my current day job involves doing so...window's open right now while I screw off writing this.

PGI is making changes...I'm just not sure why they're making the changes they're making. If they have the capacity to create this game (and I'm starting to think they no longer have that capacity) then they've got the capacity to make significant changes and shouldn't be wasting resources on things like a new minimap unless it's vital to implementation of a larger change. I don't think it is and at best they're hyper focused on something they "think" they need to move on to larger structural changes. If they outsourced immense amounts of the work (I seem to recall some of that was done) and have a tiny core of programmers incapable of making major changes then there's really no point in making any plans for this game.

That said, the vast majority of the big structural changes in constructing a global economy aren't super intensive from a programming standpoint. The framework of this sort of thing is entirely invisible and is purely text and mathematics, no animation required and is mostly database work. Deciding what to do takes time, designing the overall concept takes time, but all of this is something done by tiny companies regularly making tiny games on Steam or other places. Even individuals (teenagers/college students/etc) fascinated with programming produce games with more depth than community warfare has right now. It's not the graphics that make the game, and (even if it was) MWO already has perfectly good "looks".

Play testing? They essentially don't do any.

I'm nonplussed trying to determine where they allocate their resources, which is why I'm thinking they're financially on the ropes and incapable of further significant development. I also think the few remaining employees aren't interested in further development and are either depressed/not functioning at a significant level or have turned their attention to outside work where they hope for a better return.

In any other company the level of work being performed on this game wouldn't acceptable. Years go by and your primary income driver is wasting away without even minimal work being performed? Some of the fixes here are the sort of thing you grab one employee, set them on it, and tell them to have it finished in a week or a month. The recent database change is one of those.

Hotfixes? That's ...honestly it's pretty simple most of the time. PGI manages that fine. It's not something you spend all day on.

Content? The mech production that drives their sales is something that's straight out of the literature. The development of the mechs from a graphics/animation standpoint is half done and copied from previous mechs already and if they can't whip one out pretty quickly at this point they really don't have any business being in the game at all. It's a flippin' skin.

Maps? If they don't have a map creation tool I'd be...well I'd assume they're lying. If they're overproducing the maps so they can't put any out in a reasonable time (how many maps over how many years? seriously?) or don't want to expand on what they've got that's a different issue...Pretty maps are nice, maps that don't play well are a bigger problem than ugly and CW maps are frikkin' ugly anyway.

They don't want to spend their time expanding this IP. They're spending their time micromanaging instead of developing. That bodes poorly for absolutely any enterprise anywhere. You grow or you die. MWO hasn't grown a damn bit in years...mech packs and the CW nonsense aside (neither of which show any significant signs of sinking resources into the IP). There has been some refinement, yes, but not enough to justify the time spent on it.

If this is their day job they'd be fired if they had an employer. If it's not their day job they need to step up and admit it so there's an excuse for how slowly anything gets done. If they just don't give a damn...eh.

Pretty much sums it. Very effectively to boot.

It's possible they're working on another game in the interim and just want to milk this one to pay for it.

It's also possible that they're just utterly lacking motivation and have no more ***** to give. I just struggle to understand what degree of oblivious chucklehead incompetence is required to have this degree if casually driving your players out of the game. LT was low hanging fruit to quickly say "hey, this didn't work out as planned, we're going to rework it, sorryfor the drama". Instead they leave it for months, carpet bombing their playerbase and bayonetting the wounded.

Mistakes happen. Just years of stunningly poor choices though.... yeah.

[Hotthedd]

Alienized, on 03 August 2016 - 11:26 AM, said:

it is to a degree. games like this are NEVER out of beta. never ever. we also shouldnt forget about IGP and how they worked.
no one of us has an idea what was happening between IGP and PGI and more important, what DIDN'T happen.

it just wont change things to rage at PGI other than them caving in more. in the past weeks alot of people talked in a more calm and constructive manner to PGI and see, we got something going now. it might not be much but let's continue with that instead of ragebombing the forum. we might get ourselfs on a island with that behaviour at some point without Russ' help.

I agree that ragebombing is not constructive.
However, neither is the opposite extreme.

[Riitters]

Hotthedd, on 03 August 2016 - 01:15 PM, said:

I agree that ragebombing is not constructive.
However, neither is the opposite extreme.

[redacted] He has a valid point about the community treatment of PGI, but screaming and swearing at the T5 pugs you get matched with doesn't do a lot for the game. I hesitate to the extreme to post something personal like this but feel the need now that he's becoming involved in this thread.

Second: Long Tom is not the biggest problem with population. I have played a LOT of CW games in the last week, I'm pretty sure the 420/228/EVIL guys have simply decided not to activate it. I have not seen it since before taking a break from the game. They easily have the numbers and skill to turn it on. The fact that the community denies themself an advantage and self regulates to promote participation is a symptom of a SEVERE problem with it, but since ive come back I've been able to introduce a few new players I met in QP to FW because there are games to be had.

We NEED a system where players interested can find mentors, in game links to information or guides, how to build a drop deck, what to expect, units who are willing to teach or train, et al.

For instance one guy I met has been playing for years, buys tons of mechs, owns lots of heroes and colors, had NEVER TRIED CW.
I spent some time explaining everything, helped him pick out mechs for the drop, explained what would be going on.
First drop was us, NS and a couple pugs vs MS and some other Jade falcons. I think we won, then we were against 420 and lost, another game against a team with pugs and lost, he still was having fun because it is FUNDAMENTALLY different than QP where you get blown up and quit to drop in something else. That's where the fun and unfun comes in. **** at this point I need to sleep and stop ranting because I'm not even making sense to myself.

[AngelusDD]

Alienized, on 03 August 2016 - 03:02 AM, said:

everytime i step into battle im not sure if the players itself arent the biggest problems with their bloated ego's, narrow mindset thinking that they can just sit somewhere and never move, then cry about getting killed by a single locust for example.
you can try to teach them in battle what went wrong after you died but all that will happen is that you get a trollboot because you died first. logical reasons mentioned in chat for that death? thats just like trying to argue with a small kid that just doesnt know better >_>
[...]
important things constantly beeing ignored by the majority of the players, no matter the tier they are in.
how should PGI fix such important things? they cant. and thats the biggest problem we have in this game.
PGI can change many things but they cant change the bad gameplay of too many players that also dont want to know more about how they can improve themselves first.

this not meant as an offending post to anyone, just my 2 cents directed at PGI if they still read here.

i agree, that is a major problem.
so, assuming you are right. and if PGI can not fix it. then they should not cater for casual robot fps gamers.
the average battletech fan knows how to play, so cater them first would be a clever idea.
(they did prove that in the last 4-8 Battletech games in the last 30 years )

but i think they could fix it, by implementing first things first => a proper, detailed, step-by-step learning academy experience - yes that takes a considerable effort for a small company, but it is nonetheless the most important step for any games company => teach the players how to play your game.

it would not take a new map. it would not take new mechs.
but it would take a bit of AI coding for AI targets, and some theatrical style like the intro-mission where you learn how to control your mech. that also adds some lore/fluff for those who want that => it even has a name: Immersion.
give that project 3 months of time and put 2 employees on it. just iterate on that first mech-control lesson. nothing extra-complicated.
it will work wonders for new players and the overall quality of the playstyle.
and make it NON-OPTIONAL.
edit: additionally put maybe 2 capable community members on it, who have knowledge in mech piloting and meta-gameplay. they can help setting the right training agenda.

overall, teaching players how to play the game would help all the game modes. FP, QP, Lobby, (future solaris).
even that would be only a stop-gap solution until real content comes in the game.you know...faction content.

as so many here have stated, Russ´ personal choice of action, reducing buckets, will not fix any problem, it is in the end just a cosmetic change of the interface (from the players perspective). maybe short-term, like 4-6 weeks max, it will stabilize the FP experience for those few hundred FP players. but few hundred players in FP are not enough for MWO to survive.

this whole recent roundtable is sending the wrong signal to those interested in a real "faction play". You know...with factions.
pgi has to communicate more. communicate their intentions for the next year, communication the intention for the next 8-12 weeks. communicate the state of work.
not fancy video or stuff. just a sticky text easy to find. right on the front row of the website. with a regular update every 4 weeks or so.
they have enough community guys and girls around to do that.

hell, i don´t know what is coming next. i do not know when or if new content is expected to arrive.
(except the new mechpacks. those can´t be overlooked.)
is it a fix in august patch for the buckets and longtom? i don´t know.
is it the weapons power draw feature? i don´t know.
what is the status of the solaris feature? is there a new FP phase 7? i do not know.

stupid thing with that is: i also do not know if i want to invest time and money here anymore if PGI does not tell me what i should looking forward to!

Edited by AngelusDD, 04 August 2016 - 08:26 AM.

[The Basilisk]

FallingAce, on 31 July 2016 - 05:51 PM, said:

Imagine a restaurant owner asks you how to improve his business. You put time and effort into many suggestions about food quality, service, ambiance, prices etc.

Then when you finally sit down with the restaurant owner, all he wants to talk about is the arrangements of the chairs in the dining area.

The image you create is very good.
The problem here is communication and expectation.
You and a lot of the community hear "how to improve the buisiness" and start to think BIG
But that was not the point the restaurant owner had in mind.
He wanted to make HIS BUISINESS AS IT IS, (nothing big groundshaking, fundamental here) be more appealing to his customers.
So he wanted to hear about a better deco other seating and eventually a new shop sign above the door.

So basicaly this boiled down to answering the question "how can I make my buissines better" with "screw you, close down and make an other bigger better shop"
Uh...yea that borders on trolling niveau, right ?

And exactly this was answered over and over again by russ and team:

NO

There wont be any short timed groundshakingly "improvements"
Nothing that would fundamentaly change gameplay.
They won't screw MWO and just go make MWO2 with everything just bigger better and Blizzar/Activision level tuned and fleshed out.
This...
...will...
........not...
.............happen !

If you want to help you have to grow smart and think very hard how to get more ppl play MWO as it is and what smal things could be done that not require fundamental coding and infrastructure changes to ease discontent resident players and new players into the game.

Edited by The Basilisk, 04 August 2016 - 04:51 AM.

[Hotthedd]

Riitters, on 04 August 2016 - 03:52 AM, said:

[redacted] He has a valid point about the community treatment of PGI, but screaming and swearing at the T5 pugs you get matched with doesn't do a lot for the game. I hesitate to the extreme to post something personal like this but feel the need now that he's becoming involved in this thread.

That reply was to me. Are you talking about me?
I am never a raging ******* in game, and I would think that Alienized is never matched up with T5s unless it is FP.

[metallio]

No. That's not an accurate analogy. The business owner asked for input as described, and the response was that the single serving steak that was all he was offering could be great if it had an option besides dry, unseasoned, and cold. Heat it up. Add some condiments, some sides, some garnishes. While we're at it maybe there's room for some live entertainment or even just ambient music. How about getting some chairs outside for an open air cafe experience? There were some completely unreasonable suggestions but the vast majority are perfectly viable options that don't require extensive re-writes. If the owner doesn't have the resources to do more than change table cloths and MAYBE consider some salt on the steak then he needs more than input and no input is going to help.

This wasn't burning down the building and starting anew, it was what's needed.

[AssaultPig]

if the core game experience is enjoyable, people will learn how to play it on their own. A tutorial for an unfun (or more charitably, a less-fun) experience won't convince anybody to stick with it.

Improvements to 'buckets' will help to some extent, since right now the new player experience is 1) waiting 2) confusion 3) getting crushed, usually decisively. Focusing on #2 is the wrong approach, since #2 will largely fix itself if you get a handle on #1 and #3.

[FallingAce]

The Basilisk, on 04 August 2016 - 04:44 AM, said:

The image you create is very good.
The problem here is communication and expectation.
You and a lot of the community hear "how to improve the buisiness" and start to think BIG

PGI communicated that the round table would be about faction warfare.
The community expected a round table about faction warfare.
What we got was a round table about buckets.

metallio, on 04 August 2016 - 06:21 AM, said:

No. That's not an accurate analogy. The business owner asked for input as described, and the response was that the single serving steak that was all he was offering could be great if it had an option besides dry, unseasoned, and cold. Heat it up. Add some condiments, some sides, some garnishes. While we're at it maybe there's room for some live entertainment or even just ambient music. How about getting some chairs outside for an open air cafe experience? There were some completely unreasonable suggestions but the vast majority are perfectly viable options that don't require extensive re-writes. If the owner doesn't have the resources to do more than change table cloths and MAYBE consider some salt on the steak then he needs more than input and no input is going to help.

This wasn't burning down the building and starting anew, it was what's needed.

Bad steak is bad steak.
People will not go to a fancy restaurant for bad food.
People will go to a dive for good food.

Fix the core game play and most the other problems will take care of themselves.


BIG thought there, maybe too big for PGI and some people on these forums

[Tina Benoit]

Russ, Neema and Derek have been in discussions about the Round Table since and they are planning on sharing their summary with you guys in the next couple weeks.

[Timicon]

Personally, I would be happy with the bugs being worked out of FP right now, and then work from there into other areas such as cue times et cetera. I mean, really, how can you expect to play it properly when half the time, it does not allow you to choose your next 'Mech once you get shot down in one (rare, but it DOES happen!) or that your HUD vanishes and the only way to get it back is to disconnect from the game server and then reconnect or even get stuck on the 'Mech selection screen, unable to do anything but (again) log off the game server and reconnect to be able to play with that 'Mech and having to disconnect and reconnect, you end up getting penalised by extra wait times for the next game?
Fix those problems first, then work on the others.

[Kael Posavatz]

MischiefSC, on 03 August 2016 - 12:45 PM, said:

It's possible they're working on another game in the interim and just want to milk this one to pay for it.

Um...they were working on another game in the interim. It was called Transverse and was supposed to compete with Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen. It didn't pan out, but I suppose they could be working on another one. Maybe do a whole series? 'World of War - Panzer', 'World of War - Aero', 'World of War - er, Boats.'

Tina Benoit, on 04 August 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

Russ, Neema and Derek have been in discussions about the Round Table since and they are planning on sharing their summary with you guys in the next couple weeks.

In all seriousness, thanks for the post, Tina. Looking forward to seeing what Russ and co took from the Round-Table.

Edited by Kael Posavatz, 04 August 2016 - 11:09 AM.

[Raubwurst]

Tina Benoit, on 04 August 2016 - 09:46 AM, said:

Russ, Neema and Derek have been in discussions about the Round Table since and they are planning on sharing their summary with you guys in the next couple weeks.

As Tina said, they are working on it. Let's give them some time to get the points together and see what they will say-
ETA for Mr. Bullocks response: ~2 Weeks
(As stated here:

Raubwurst, on 04 August 2016 - 12:31 PM, said:

)

[Baulven]

Well let's see what appears on the document. I have no issues with a road map as long as it meets the critical conditions of 1.) Addresses the issues 2.) Rough timelines (these can change of course but over communication is generally better than under communication) and most importantly 3.) Actions once the document is published.

If we get a document with what is deemed the way forward and everything goes silent again, that's as bad as if nothing was announced at all. I also hope that the person making this list and Russ both realize if they don't address the major issues of FP that there will be another round of aggravation, and it still won't solve faction play being a relative ghost town.

All we can do is wait and see if they actually listened to suggestions or if it will be more minor alterations under the guise of major retooling. I sincerely hope that it will be the first comments towards an amazing experience, since I want an awesome mechwarrior game to play.

[Deathlike]

Alienized, on 03 August 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

we need to lower OUR expectations. they just cant do much stuff in time properly as WE WANT it. we just dont let them and that might be one of the reasons PGI caved in, why so many things are implemented poorly because we FORCE such stuff to be thrown at us.

This is literally very comical. Even since Beta, expectations kept getting lowered by the patch... it's to the point where one hopes their mechpack goes off w/o a hitch. That still didn't excuse things like the horrendous minimap debacle that could've been prevented had feedback was even considered.

I mean... if the bar is set so low as such that it just about making sure the game doesn't crash itself... then there's not much to achieve. Praising things in a game where arguably a competent team would not have made too much of a fuss and just "made it happen"... you know - at least that's praiseworthy. We're still not even getting the bare minimum in some areas.

So... you can't just keep giving them every possible excuse when they are slowly exhausting them.. arguably to their own detriment. Eventually you're going to come the conclusion that they may just be incompetent... even if not malicious at all.

There's only so much you can do to prove that you care about your product... and only focusing on mechpacks where a lot of other things (not just FW) could be better is just going to either annoy people or make them indifferent to the future of the game.

Edited by Deathlike, 04 August 2016 - 03:57 PM.