Preamble (You can skip this)
Like I said in a different thread, I think the mood on the MWO forum right now is the most gloomy it has ever been. And I don't think this is a direct result of the current state of the game. While I do concede that MWO is missing a lot of stuff that hardcore and casual players have both been asking for, I also think there are a lot of positives. And really, sometimes when I fire up the old Mechwarrior 2 soundtrack by Jeehun Hwang as I play this game, I am grateful that I can play a relatively new Mechwarrior game in 2016 instead of just playing Mechwarrior 2 or Mechwarrior 4. You could say that MWO is a very narrow, simple game. But I would say that it's still better than most FPS games by a wide margin (I wouldn't play Overwatch or Call of Duty if you paid me) and on top of that, it's... a Mechwarrior game.
The state of the community (Don't skip this)
I'll repeat it again; the mood on the MWO forum right now is the most gloomy it has ever been. Now, a lot of MWO players never even visit the forum. But I would say that the forum is an important part of the MWO community, if not the most important part. If you see who is actually participating in Town Hall meetings, talking in the chat box, it's mostly people from the forum. There's also another part of the MWO community mostly posting on Reddit, and those guys are also quite active in MWO current events (tournaments, roundtable, etc), but I can't speak for them. But let me tell you one of the major reasons why the mood is so low on the MWO forums right now.
We have too little information.
I'll break it down:
- A lot of people are upset because PGI is missing features they consider important (e.g. info warfare, role warfare, pve, solaris) and they were expecting to see in the game. There is no easy solution for this.
- A lot of people are upset because they don't know where this game is headed. Now that PGI has reached their goals for UI 2.0 and CW Phase 3, there's no big feature in the horizon that people are talking about. Frankly, we don't know much about anything, except... mech packs.
- The absence of information about the future not only kills interest (nothing to talk about these days except mech packs) but it also makes people worried that PGI is taking money from MWO and investing it in another game, like Transverse. In other words, they feel like this game is no longer a priority for PGI, which means there's no reason to keep investing in new mech packs.
- We've had 3 community managers since 2012, I think. They don't generally interact too much with the players on the forum. There doesn't appear to be a lot of information going from the players to PGI through the community managers, and there is very little information going the other way too (so we have to keep checking Twitter all the time).
The real issue (don't skip this either)
Basically, PGI needs to talk more with the community and try to generate interest in future content. Because content is coming, at some point. And we know that PGI can't say exactly when, and shouldn't give out dates too early, but that doesn't mean they should keep everything secret either.
Look at the latest roadmap for August, September and October. There is very little talk about new content, actually. New mechs, cosmetic update for maps, UI fixes, and a bunch of quality of life improvements. In terms of new content that will add significantly to the game, I think it comes down to this:
- Terra Therma will be a new map in September
- Energy Draw coming at some point. PTS coming soon.
- Assault mode changes coming at some point. PTS coming at some point.
- Faction play changes coming at some point.
- Skill trees coming at some point. "Top secret"
And some of you will say "Well, what about Stock Mode?" and "What about Customer Appreciation mechs?" and things like that. Well, yes, that's all well and good. But in the big picture, those aren't significant updates to a game this old. They're nice, but they're not going to change the MWO experience significantly for most players.
The big things that have been discussed for MWO are:
- Faction play changes
- New skill trees
- Information warfare / Infotech
- Solaris
- PVE campaign
But we don't know anything about any of it.
The Solution (this is the most important bit)
Basically, PGI needs to communicate more with the players and keep us interested and invested in the game. If the community manager is busy with other tasks (like responding to emails, planning the world championship, creating vlogs or whatever) then PGI needs to have another person that interacts more with the community. It's very hard to have a complex discussion with PGI when the main channel of communication is 140 character long tweets with the president of the company.
But most importantly...
Don't keep the future content - the major things that players should look forward to - "top secret"
You don't have to say when it's coming out, but write some devlogs about what it will be like. Of course you can go back and change your ideas as time goes on, but show the players what you're thinking. Will there be 1 skill tree for all mechs? Will there be different skill trees for each mech? What can you tell us about the PVE campaign? Will there be coop? Will it be free or DLC that we pay for? Will Solaris replace QP or will it be a separate product? Will Solaris use the existing maps or new ones?
PGI used to write Dev blogs like
this and
this. They keep the players excited, they show the players what features are coming in the future. They give us something to talk about, besides mech packs. They have nice diagrams for us to look at. If future content wasn't "top secret" then, it shouldn't be "top secret" now.
Tell us more about what is coming. Give us a reason to invest in the game. Right now, all this silence only gives credence to the idea that PGI put the whole game on the "back burner", not just certain features.
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