333 replies to this topic

[cazidin]

DAYLEET, on 26 November 2016 - 11:39 AM, said:

You just need to start your thread with something insane like "ive realised that mwo helped faked the moon landing and that became obvious when i found out that pgi employees are Werepgi, that is people who turn into each others and no one really is anyone except everyone at any time, part of a multi-singular symbiosis"

No. PGI didn't fake the moon landing. IGP did. /x-files theme.

[JigglyMoobs]

• To my knowledge Phil and Daeron have been pretty open on their Twitch regarding their status as PGI contractors. You can see exactly what they do from all of their streams. Whether you like it or dislike it should be based on the contents and the results. The rest seem like semantics.
  
• PGI / IGP thing seems pretty self-consistent. PGI wants to do MWO, gets acquaintance to start IGP with their help, IGP starts as an independent business entity doing its own thing, PGI - IGP have problems in the relationship, they split. Did PGI help start IGP: yes. Is PGI the same as IGP, no.
  
• Russ not being on the forums vs Twitter. Is it easier to post short blurbs on twitter? Yes. Is it easier to avoid people writing books? Yes. Is it easier to avoid endless 15 page discussion threads? Yes. Now you know why he uses twitter but not the forums.
  
• PGI needs less community management and more community engagement (IE actually play the game enough to figure out the real issues with game play and what voices to listen to and what problems to solve). Yes. I agree. Though this kind of thing will also take effort, and wisdom.
  
• PGI needs to listen to MEEEEEEEE. Umm, I'll be polite and refer you back to point 4 above.

Edited by JigglyMoobs, 27 November 2016 - 01:26 AM.

[Hunka Junk]

JigglyMoobs, on 27 November 2016 - 01:22 AM, said:

• To my knowledge Phil and Daeron have been pretty open on their Twitch regarding their status as PGI contractors. You can see exactly what they do from all of their streams. Whether you like it or dislike it should be based on the contents and the results. The rest seem like semantics.

I'm fine with them as radio personalities/public faces of the game.

My OP says nothing about their employment as being news to me. As it says, my issue is with their claim to being community managers. Have you seen anyone managing/engaging with this community?

And, what is a more serious issue is when PGI stages "press conferences" with their own employees serving as the press.

Roundtable? Turned into a press conference with NGNG.

Town hall? Nope. Press conference with the three of them going off about how mechs packs do not impede other content.

And what all of this really comes down to is whether you think there are problems with communication between PGI and its playerbase. If you think there are communication problems, then the question is whether NGNG is alleviating or exacerbating this issue.

There is no problem having cheerleaders. There is a problem when you substitute interviews with your cheerleaders for actual community interaction.

To sum up, I see very little community "management", and, if serving as a surrogate community for interviews is what's considered community management, I think it's quite the opposite. It's community mismanagement.

Now, within 5 posts of this one, someone else is going to roll in and say, "But we new NGNG were on the payroll..."

[BattleBunny]

Rant incoming. /

This thread really shows how redundant these forums are.

A million issues are being adressed and discussed, and none of the devs/russ are part of any of the discussions.
But when PGI is said to be IGP, 2 devs + russ come out of the woodworks to dispute the claim. Dispute it with badly chosen words I might add, but they are just words so who cares right...

There have been so many situations where direct discussion with the devs / community managers / russ would have been benefitial. It could have prevented so many shitstorms. It could have prevented many development hours being wasted on needless features being implemented (Unwanted minimap changes / longtom / command console / 3rd person view/ etc) which nobody asked for. So many hours wasted on what PGI considered top priority where our ideas fell on deaf ears. The direction change from CW to E-sports was a terrible idea and even more badly executed.

But by all means, keep tweeting. Keep blocking the negative and retweeting the positive. Keep hyping up mechcon to the point where it can only dissapoint no matter what happens. Keep churning out mechpacks with ever more OP mechs and claiming it doesnt get in the way of developing other content, even though there hasnt been any new content for ages. Keep ignoring the actual community and keep holding press conferences featuring only your own employees. Keep implementing minor changes and calling it new content. Keep promising things in the hope people will keep shoveling you money without ever delivering on any of these promises.

Someday the spinning wheel wont find any matches anymore. Maybe then you guys will finally sell your stuff and a new developer can make another mechwarrior simulation title.

/ end rant.

I feel a little better now, but I dont think i will post any more ideas or thoughts on these forums, as it seems to reach absolutely nobody that can actually do something with it.I'm sure most people active on these forums knew this already and are active for other reasons, but I still had some hope the information on this forum was used for developing this game.
Its a damn shame cause I love this game and have poured many hours into it over the last 4 years, and have made many friends within this fine community. I know all things end eventually, but this game had so much potential a year or two ago, its just depressing to see where it is now.

I guess the only conclusion is that this game is no longer being developed. Its just being milked.

Edited by BattleBunny, 27 November 2016 - 06:45 AM.

[JadeRaven]

Hi guys!

[cazidin]

JigglyMoobs, on 27 November 2016 - 01:22 AM, said:

• Russ not being on the forums vs Twitter. Is it easier to post short blurbs on twitter? Yes. Is it easier to avoid people writing books? Yes. Is it easier to avoid endless 15 page discussion threads? Yes. Now you know why he uses twitter but not the forums.
  
• PGI needs less community management and more community engagement (IE actually play the game enough to figure out the real issues with game play and what voices to listen to and what problems to solve). Yes. I agree. Though this kind of thing will also take effort, and wisdom.
  
• PGI needs to listen to MEEEEEEEE. Umm, I'll be polite and refer you back to point 2 above.

Points 3 and 4 appear to contradict eachother. You're suggesting that PGI cannot, because reading is just too hard for them and would take too long, reply to *any* forum topics and instead continue to use Twitter exclusively to limit the flow of information (and most likely, criticism), thus eliminating any meaningful discussions on... anything other than "Good job, guys!" BUT they should spend hours, and I agree with you on this, playing their own game and extensively testing it while simultaneously learning and becoming better players.

You're right. This will take effort and wisdom. Both will, and they aren't mutually exclusive.

Maybe PGI should listen to, not just me, but some of the people here who've a genuine interest to see this game succeed because they otherwise do enjoy playing, but there are some significant issues that are obvious to most of us that actually play, see point 4, right?

[smokefield]

i wanted to say something here but reading what battlebunny posted I knew I had nothing more to add.

+1 for a very correct post. probably closest to the reality of a lot of people still around.

[Ibrandul Mike]

Hah 6th post after yours Hunka Junk and no one did that

[Unnatural Growth]

BattleBunny, on 27 November 2016 - 06:28 AM, said:

Rant incoming. /

This thread really shows how redundant these forums are.

A million issues are being adressed and discussed, and none of the devs/russ are part of any of the discussions.
But when PGI is said to be IGP, 2 devs + russ come out of the woodworks to dispute the claim. Dispute it with badly chosen words I might add, but they are just words so who cares right...

There have been so many situations where direct discussion with the devs / community managers / russ would have been benefitial. It could have prevented so many shitstorms. It could have prevented many development hours being wasted on needless features being implemented (Unwanted minimap changes / longtom / command console / 3rd person view/ etc) which nobody asked for. So many hours wasted on what PGI considered top priority where our ideas fell on deaf ears. The direction change from CW to E-sports was a terrible idea and even more badly executed.

But by all means, keep tweeting. Keep blocking the negative and retweeting the positive. Keep hyping up mechcon to the point where it can only dissapoint no matter what happens. Keep churning out mechpacks with ever more OP mechs and claiming it doesnt get in the way of developing other content, even though there hasnt been any new content for ages. Keep ignoring the actual community and keep holding press conferences featuring only your own employees. Keep implementing minor changes and calling it new content. Keep promising things in the hope people will keep shoveling you money without ever delivering on any of these promises.

Someday the spinning wheel wont find any matches anymore. Maybe then you guys will finally sell your stuff and a new developer can make another mechwarrior simulation title.

/ end rant.

I feel a little better now, but I dont think i will post any more ideas or thoughts on these forums, as it seems to reach absolutely nobody that can actually do something with it.I'm sure most people active on these forums knew this already and are active for other reasons, but I still had some hope the information on this forum was used for developing this game.
Its a damn shame cause I love this game and have poured many hours into it over the last 4 years, and have made many friends within this fine community. I know all things end eventually, but this game had so much potential a year or two ago, its just depressing to see where it is now.

I guess the only conclusion is that this game is no longer being developed. Its just being milked.

Very well said 'Bunny

[s0da72]

Hunka Junk, on 27 November 2016 - 03:04 AM, said:

I'm fine with them as radio personalities/public faces of the game.

My OP says nothing about their employment as being news to me. As it says, my issue is with their claim to being community managers. Have you seen anyone managing/engaging with this community?

I'm fine with them claiming to be community managers. I've learned a lot about the game from both Phil and Daeron. I don't watch every stream or podcast they do, but the times that I have they answered almost every question I've brought up. They are both very professional and organized. I think PGI hiring them has been one of its better decisions.


Phil has spent many hours playing this game. He's not someone who plays 20 minutes every couple of months and calls himself an expert. He has good understanding of the mechanics of the game and knows the development history. I do put a lot of weight in his opinions about the game. Do I agree with 100% of everything he says? Of course not.

Edited by s0da72, 27 November 2016 - 01:13 PM.

[Hunka Junk]

s0da72, on 27 November 2016 - 09:21 AM, said:

I'm fine with them claiming to be community managers. I've learned a lot about the game from both Phil and Daren. I don't watch every stream or podcast they do, but the times that I have they answered almost every question I've brought up. They are both very professional and organized. I think PGI hiring them has been one of its better decisions.


Phil has spent many hours playing this game. He's not someone who plays 20 minutes every couple of months and calls himself an expert. He has good understanding of the mechanics of the game and knows the development history. I do put a lot of weight in his opinions about the game. Do I agree with 100% of everything he says? Of course not.

Fine examples of the good they do, and it was a good idea for PGI to hire them.

However...

In my time on this game, I've seen Bombadil engage the community once: before the roundtable. Sean Lang never. Not in my time at least.

Hanging out over at their twitch site and claiming to be community managers is problematic.

In my time, what they've done more than once is stand in for the community and, in so doing, accept Russ's ideas on behalf of the community. This is even more problematic.

[Y E O N N E]

Hunka Junk, on 27 November 2016 - 10:53 AM, said:

In my time, what they've done more than once is stand in for the community and, in so doing, accept Russ's ideas on behalf of the community. This is even more problematic.

This.

But, to their credit, I have also witnessed them push back on PGI, too. There was a Town Hall earlier this year where Russ was saying something and they got into a sort of debate over how FW actually plays during the stream.

[Deathlike]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 November 2016 - 11:24 AM, said:

This.

But, to their credit, I have also witnessed them push back on PGI, too. There was a Town Hall earlier this year where Russ was saying something and they got into a sort of debate over how FW actually plays during the stream.

Yet, that is not translating into actual FW changes (the non-reaction to changes show how backwards PGI prioritizes in addressing stuff). It's as if they didn't care, or didn't understand what their own designs brought to it.

It's fine if NGNG talks about it... whether PGI actually addresses it is a whole different matter.

[Y E O N N E]

Deathlike, on 27 November 2016 - 11:41 AM, said:

Yet, that is not translating into actual FW changes (the non-reaction to changes show how backwards PGI prioritizes in addressing stuff). It's as if they didn't care, or didn't understand what their own designs brought to it.

It's fine if NGNG talks about it... whether PGI actually addresses it is a whole different matter.

Of course it isn't translating to actual FW changes. Actual FW changes require more than just a shuffling of spawn points, dropship weapons, and timers. The issues are fundamental to the core mechanics of the game mode and exacerbated by the maps. The only time PGI has ever completely scrapped something is when they removed UI 1.0 for UI 2.0. Phil and Daeron can tell PGI whatever they want, but it won't get results unless it's a suggestion that's fast and cheap to implement.

Hell, this is true for the entire game, really. We don't see broad rebalancing of weapons because somebody has to sit down and tweak all of them, then test all of them, then retweak, etc. and they clearly don't want to allocate resources to that for whatever reason.

[Deathlike]

Yeonne Greene, on 27 November 2016 - 11:48 AM, said:

Of course it isn't translating to actual FW changes. Actual FW changes require more than just a shuffling of spawn points, dropship weapons, and timers. The issues are fundamental to the core mechanics of the game mode and exacerbated by the maps. The only time PGI has ever completely scrapped something is when they removed UI 1.0 for UI 2.0. Phil and Daeron can tell PGI whatever they want, but it won't get results unless it's a suggestion that's fast and cheap to implement.

Hell, this is true for the entire game, really. We don't see broad rebalancing of weapons because somebody has to sit down and tweak all of them, then test all of them, then retweak, etc. and they clearly don't want to allocate resources to that for whatever reason.

Yes... less work and effort. Work smarter and not harder.... except not the case here.

[EgoSlayer]

Hunka Junk, on 27 November 2016 - 03:04 AM, said:

I'm fine with them as radio personalities/public faces of the game.

My OP says nothing about their employment as being news to me. As it says, my issue is with their claim to being community managers. Have you seen anyone managing/engaging with this community?

<snip>

And what all of this really comes down to is whether you think there are problems with communication between PGI and its playerbase. If you think there are communication problems, then the question is whether NGNG is alleviating or exacerbating this issue.

There is no problem having cheerleaders. There is a problem when you substitute interviews with your cheerleaders for actual community interaction.

To sum up, I see very little community "management", and, if serving as a surrogate community for interviews is what's considered community management, I think it's quite the opposite. It's community mismanagement.

The problem is one that PGI has everywhere - setting and managing expectations.
You see, your definition of a Community manager (and probably most other players as well) is someone who is active in the forums, communicating feedback, responding to concerns, etc. But the fact of the matter is, PGI defines what job tasks are required by the CM, because they are an employee of PGI.

So we know, beyond any measure of doubt, that the above expectations are not what PGI requires in the community manager role. Because if they were, Tina would have been let go a long time ago for not doing her job. She is still employed, ergo still doing her job - which means it doesn't require her to be active in the forums.

So while we can get miffed that we don't have what we feel is a Community Manager role, PGI is the one that decides what that role is, not us.


And on a related note: Anyone who is pinning their future of playing MWO thinking that MechCon is going to be the dawn of some new era of MWO: You can just quit now.
PGI, by not setting expectations, has allowed the speculation to run rampant and all kinds of pie-in-the-sky ideas are being thrown around and expected by some people. It's not going to happen. There might be some promising updates, but they are not going to be a great reset of the established game. And the time to implement them will likely be ~6 months from MechCon.

[RestosIII]

EgoSlayer, on 27 November 2016 - 02:24 PM, said:

And the time to implement them will likely be ~6 months from MechCon.

60-90 days^tm

We've gone over this.

[Deathlike]

RestosIII, on 27 November 2016 - 02:29 PM, said:

60-90 days^tm

We've gone over this.

More like 60 to 90 days... twice over.

[JigglyMoobs]

cazidin, on 27 November 2016 - 07:59 AM, said:

Points 3 and 4 appear to contradict eachother. You're suggesting that PGI cannot, because reading is just too hard for them and would take too long, reply to *any* forum topics and instead continue to use Twitter exclusively to limit the flow of information (and most likely, criticism), thus eliminating any meaningful discussions on... anything other than &quot;Good job, guys!&quot; BUT they should spend hours, and I agree with you on this, playing their own game and extensively testing it while simultaneously learning and becoming better players.

You're right. This will take effort and wisdom. Both will, and they aren't mutually exclusive.

Maybe PGI should listen to, not just me, but some of the people here who've a genuine interest to see this game succeed because they otherwise do enjoy playing, but there are some significant issues that are obvious to most of us that actually play, see point 4, right?

No I meant specifically that Russ, the guy who runs the business , won't. What Pgi as an organization should do is in point 4. Then point 5 addresses the presence of differing voices in the community, some of which diametrically oppose each other. Pgi needs to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[RestosIII]

JigglyMoobs, on 27 November 2016 - 03:05 PM, said:

No I meant specifically that Russ, the guy who runs the business , won't. What Pgi as an organization should do is in point 4. Then point 5 addresses the presence of differing voices in the community, some of which diametrically oppose each other. Pgi needs to separate the wheat from the chaff.

And instead Russ claimed that both the wheat and the chaff are on an island.