77 replies to this topic

[Mystere]

Johnny Z, on 03 August 2016 - 07:37 PM, said:

That trailer looks exactly like the game I am playin with some music added.

Huh? I am counting around 24 Mechs fighting on each side. Since when did MWO have 24 vs. 24?

[EvilCow]

Fact 1: community is mostly composed of MW/CBT fans
Fact 2: they are very loyal to the IP not the developer or publisher
Fact 3: most of them are (much) older than average players in other games
Fact 4: older people that play games are likely to 1) have disposable income 2) willing to pay for what they want 3) want quality time and a product worth the money they spend
Fact 5: younger people will try the game and then go to the next big thing, not spending a cent in the process
Fact 6: customers like to be able to hear about development and know feedback is at least heard and acknowledged.

Potentially MW is a cash cow.

Ways to screw up:

1) anger MW/CBT fans
2) not leveraging the IP
3, 5) appealing to the wrong audience with silly things just because game XYZ has those
4) not giving them reasons to spend because low quality or inadequate product, putting egos before business
6) build distrust, treat community like $hits infesting forums. See islands, we don't need feedback, we know better, our position at that time, twitter etc etc (this list could be very long)

I think PGI pretty much nailed all the above. They created a good core game but failed almost everything else.

respectfully

Edited by EvilCow, 03 August 2016 - 11:34 PM.

[ScarecrowES]

I'm not really sure what folks expected MWO to be. It's a F2P game by a single-A developer. On its best day it was going to be World of Tanks. And factually, MWO has a lot more going on than WoT. That might very well go against MWO... as most players who would be attracted to a game like MWO will be put off by the steep learning curve and high bar of entry.

[Kirkland Langue]

When MWO was in Closed Beta, the game was intended to build a living Mechwarrior universe. You were supposed to be building faction rep constantly and the top players were supposed to dictate which planets were chosen to attack.

The game was sold as something far deeper than simply an arena shooter. PGI built a very basic arena shooter, and then promptly dropped MWO calling it complete and tried to sell a SC/E:D clone.

That's my view of PGI, and I doubt it'll change no matter how much "tinkering" they do or how many Mechpacks they add to the game. TBH, I expect MWO has gone on for too long for PGI to actually be able to make meaningful changes. The playerbase is already too small - any shocks to the system are more likely to drive players away than bring in new blood.

Until PGI releases PVE campaigns that are strong enough to bring in new players, I'll continue to believe that they have no interest in bringing MWO to life.

[AnTi90d]

Kirkland Langue, on 04 August 2016 - 05:39 AM, said:

The playerbase is already too small - any shocks to the system are more likely to drive players away than bring in new blood.

Most of the people that hated the new, zoomed out minimap and the lack of directional information for friendly units have already quit MWO.

The Long Tom didn't help FP at all.

I'm certain the new ghost heat mechanic will drive more away.

I really wish they'd have never made the patches from April and onward and just focused on maps / mechs / possibly advancing the timeline for new weapons. They're wasting money developing features that chase people away from an already niche game.

[Alistair Winter]

I have zero confidence that someone else would do better than PGI. I mean, obviously some people could. But the odds of those people actually getting the rights and having the resources, they seem pretty low. It seems far more likely that the game would end up in the hands of EA or something, and we get Battlefront: MechAssault of Duty.

For all it's cardinal sins and critical failures, MWO is still one of the best games out there right now. The more PVP games I play, the less confident I feel that others would do a better job than PGI.

Just look at what happened to the Heavy Gear IP. <shudders>

[Bud Crue]

Alistair Winter, on 04 August 2016 - 06:00 AM, said:

Just look at what happened to the Heavy Gear IP. <shudders>

Yes. Look. Its about to be released again in an Online format.
For all those saying no one will touch this IP in the future, or that only PGI could have or would have made a MW game; I look to Heavy Gear and think...if some folks want to revive that niche brand, there will be someone who will revive this one too.

On a different subject:

As to all the discussion above about players/customers not knowing what they want...I for one know exactly what I want: MW5. Failing that, an online version of MW4 mercenaries with a FP mode set up like the missions from MW3. Point being is that I thought this game, especially after CW dropped, was supposed to be an online version of the Mechwarrior franchise, and that it would take place and/or be an extension of the Battletech universe. That promise is what got me interested, in any case. While we sort of do have that...so, well done PGI...but I think Phase 3 neutered that game, the e-sports push is in the process of kicking it while its down, and the lack of any vision or goals being communicated from the devs other than an insistence by Russ that the long tom is something that he "likes", suggest to me that it is not the Players who fail to understand what they want, but rather PGI doesn't know what it wants.

Go look at the 2012 trailer. Does that teaser suggest a game that has some semblance of what we have now or does it look suspiciously like the sort of thing we saw in previous mechwarrior titles? Is there anything in that trailer (showing an Atlas being preped for an orbital drop) that would lead one to think..."wow that is one great looking e-sport, twitch shooter" or does it suggest...oh, I don't know...Battletech maybe? Or Mechwarrior?

The subsequent schizophrenia of this games development is not due to the players' failure of knowing what they want, but rather the devs lack of vision.

[meteorol]

Alistair Winter, on 04 August 2016 - 06:00 AM, said:

I have zero confidence that someone else would do better than PGI. I mean, obviously some people could. But the odds of those people actually getting the rights and having the resources, they seem pretty low. It seems far more likely that the game would end up in the hands of EA or something, and we get Battlefront: MechAssault of Duty.

For all it's cardinal sins and critical failures, MWO is still one of the best games out there right now. The more PVP games I play, the less confident I feel that others would do a better job than PGI.

Just look at what happened to the Heavy Gear IP. <shudders>

TBH here, no one touched the IP for over a decade for a reason. If any major studio thought the IP was worth the money, they could have gone for it long time ago. I highly doubt EA or anyone else for that reason would be interested in picking the IP up. I feel like people really overestimate how much value the IP holds nowadays, because it's their "favorite" one.

"but but but but founders payed 5 million $"

Yeah, they did. And GTA V did cost 265 million $ and sold over 60 million copies. The videogame market is not the same it was 15 years ago. The Battletech fanbase is probably not large enough to make a major studio even consider it.

If, and that's a pretty big if, any studio would ever pick up the Mechwarrior IP again, it would probably be another small studio with no garantuee of doing any better than PGI did.

[Kirkland Langue]

After seeing the videos of players using aimbots, and seeing discussions proving that they had done so for years before getting caught, gives me no confidence that MWO could ever be an e-sport.

Plus, does slapping the "e-sport" label on a game bring in a ton of players?
Pretty sure they have to offer tournaments that pay significant cash to actually generate interest.

[Spleenslitta]

Davers, on 03 August 2016 - 04:38 PM, said:

It's funny since EVE was made by a small studio, who developed a rabid fan base for their very niche game. PGI started with a rabid fanbase and would have built it up if they had just set out to do what people thought they were going to originally, make a sim-like Mechwarrior game.

Mechwarrior simulator....Take a look at this picture from a DCS simulator game. All those buttons, toggles, gauges, lights, screens are functional.
You can flip a switch and that serves a purpose. Needless to say this would be far too advanced.
But a mech doesn't have that many buttons so a proper Mech simulator is not farfetched at all.
Look at Steel Battalion. A legendary game.

MWO could have been such a game. We could have had all the functions we expect from a mech.
Changing ammo type. Deciding yourself which box of ammo is used up first.

If the left torso internals is on fire you can eject the ammo if necessary. Press another button to activate internal fire extinguishers.
Rear view camera on a small monitor somewhere in the cockpit? No problem.

That would have been a game of real skill. Fact is since a mech is kinda like a tank it wouldn't be that hard to control.
I've played DCS Black Shark and let me just say that when i got that attack helicopter in the air i was actually proud of myself.
I hadn't even fired a weapon and i was on huge adrenalin high. My grin made my mouth nearly reach my ears.

[meteorol]

Kirkland Langue, on 04 August 2016 - 06:34 AM, said:

After seeing the videos of players using aimbots, and seeing discussions proving that they had done so for years before getting caught, gives me no confidence that MWO could ever be an e-sport.

Even CS:GO, which is undoubtly an esport, had scandals of people on pro level getting caught cheating. And they did it while having more eyes on them than any MWO player will ever have, and it still took plenty of time to convict them. That's why every tournament with big money prices is played offline. You can't really completely prevent cheating in online games.

There are plenty of reasons why MWO will "never" be an esports title, but cheating isn't even close to be one of the biggest issues.

Edited by meteorol, 04 August 2016 - 06:41 AM.

[Flitzomat]

Don´t know if I prefer founders still raging or newbies joining in. What I like most about all of them that they know it all and share their wisdom

I made some experiences with stock mech tourneys. Funny thing is that people who were raging about Meta-Mech-Tryhards destroying their game kept loosing in Stock Mechs. They kept blaming it on other things (map design, or lately size of minimap or Mech parts and so on) and eventually left. I am totally fine with that. So my personal opinion is that many are frustrated about their own forthcoming and blame it on PGI.

Bottom line is that many enjoy this game (while still not being white-knighting and denying all problems) as it is and do not like many of the “PGI did it all wrong and I know how to fix this” ideas. Most of them just play and don´t hang around in the forums. The client base some are talking about does not exist and never has existed in such great numbers, otherwise there would be 0 population by now.

If you realy don´t like the game it is ok. Maybe you need to stop playing. In the meantime you can use this form to express your complaints:

[LowSubmarino]

Johnny Z, on 03 August 2016 - 05:01 PM, said:

Star Citizen is stonewalling to. What have they offered players? Really? A lot of dreams only.

MechWarrior Online is still the best bet for an amazing game. Star Citizen is in there somewhere.... it wont offer amazing battles though... MechWarrior Online can.

Theres quite a few offline games that are going to be amazing though.

When I saw all the things they planned to to for star citizen I kinda expected most of it to simply never finish or be totally bugged or just plain bad. There are not many studio who can pull off grand games on a massive scale and even for those studios its 50 % luck to get something like that done.

Either its me or the entire industry but games seem less inspired theses days. Less fun. Less of everything.

Mwos core gameplay is fun though. More sim or more stim is a controversy but the gameplay - at least for me - is fun.

A lot of other things are not as good though.

If mwo had more weapons, more fun and cool game modes, actually fun cw that was somehow integrated into QP and vice versa among some other things then it would even be great.

[TheVent]

Rip this to shreds if you want to, but I for one don't see anything wrong with the gameplay other than the amount of people on a team. I only see problems with the game types and how games are carried out/won.

[Pjwned]

Dino Might, on 03 August 2016 - 10:15 PM, said:

Go search all my feature suggestions posts, as well as a number I made in gen disc., one of the most recent being sensor mechanics. Tell me I don't know what I want or how it should work in game...

I had a look and didn't find a whole lot, probably because the search only goes back by 1 year. The feedback on sensors makes sense but yet again that seems to be a different category of problem.

Maybe I should just drop the whole point because if I keep going it's probably going to be "yeah but I don't see what that has to do with a mech sim" for every example, both because there doesn't seem to be any cohesion to what certain people want and because I personally don't care if MWO is a "[proper] mech sim" or not.

Edited by Pjwned, 04 August 2016 - 03:29 PM.

[SamsungNinja]

Flitzomat, on 04 August 2016 - 07:14 AM, said:

This is horrifyingly accurate to an overwhelming majority of feedback. Pick a game, this is what you see.

There's one problem I see here, and it's probably because it's aimed at WoW (dat Swifty doe), but there's no mention of...

Edited by SamsungNinja, 04 August 2016 - 04:01 PM.

[Mystere]

ScarecrowES, on 04 August 2016 - 05:14 AM, said:

I'm not really sure what folks expected MWO to be. It's a F2P game by a single-A developer. On its best day it was going to be World of Tanks.

Except WoT has how many players again?

[Mystere]

Kirkland Langue, on 04 August 2016 - 06:34 AM, said:

After seeing the videos of players using aimbots, and seeing discussions proving that they had done so for years before getting caught, gives me no confidence that MWO could ever be an e-sport.

Saying that cheating is the reason MWO can never be an eSport is vastly overstating the quality of MWO.