Crockdaddy, on 05 December 2016 - 02:16 PM, said:
For most of us unit forming closed beta folks ... the video sums up well why so many of us feel less than grateful towards PGI. I still contend if you are not a 4.5 year salty vet then this game is completely wonderful and different from almost any FPS out there. I still often love it some 20K matches in. But PGI has to iterate faster. Waiting for long periods to see updates and changes pretty much blows when the silence is so loud from the Developer.
I would counter this slightly by offering that having been tied to the game for so long, that tunnel vision can settle in, where a broader view is necessary. No one really accounts for the IGP/PGI split and what the internal recovery process was within PGI, both financially and in the company morale departments. From the outside, weird business decisions/game decisions, slowdown between significant content updates and the like, signify something not right over that time within PGI.
I bring this up because if you read through the Glassdoor company reviews and actually look at PGI behavior throughout the years, there seems to have been a pretty low period after the split morale wise, which would suggest financial woes initially after the split. If you continue reading those reviews, you find a gradual shift in the opinion of working there and of management in general. From the earlier ones you will find some very direct and pointed criticisms of the management and treatment of the employees. They really start to soften up as you go along and by the end, you find that people who have left recently find it mostly a pleasant place to work. There's been a clear culture shift within PGI which helps in recruitment and retaining of high quality talent.
In the last couple of days, we've had a public apology from Russ about some of what's happened and about going quiet leading up to Mechcon. With MW5 being a big part of that announcement and what it entails for MWO into the future (if you can read between the lines a bit), I probably would have done something similar but with some better hinting at what was coming with the things we did already know about, like the FW update. Also we have had the announcement and soon to be added features (next patch) that have seemingly on many levels taken some of what the community has asked for (reserving judgment on what it adds to the experience till when I've experienced the changes myself) and will be playable almost immediately.
We've had more interaction (not necessarily news) with the devs in the last month or so than in a long time, with Mark leading the charge to get back in touch with the community again as a community member himself at one time. We have a lot more positives going on now that people aren't seeing because of the tunnel vision they've developed (not saying a lot of the complaints over the years are not valid, but they seem to have been caused by a business and studio that needed to right it's ship after the split).
With the announcement of MW5 and a mostly successful Mechcon (stream issues), it's clear PGI is buckling up to champion the franchise going forward rather than use resources for projects outside of the IP (Transverse) with support from HBS and Catalyst. I've said it numerous times recently, but MW5 all but paints the path for us to MWO 2.0 running on UE4 and an expanding of the IP past the license renewal date while finally leaving the greatest bad/limiting design decision of MWO (Cryengine) behind in the history books.
If the feature updates are solid and well tested when we get them going forward (Russ acknowledged this as a major issue with the community in the new article/interview that just released following Mechcon(can't remember which outlet)), I can wait a bit for well polished stuff that only needs to be tweaked after it's release. Especially if we are getting notice as to what's coming/what order and how things are going now that it's officially out of the bag and we can stop speculating about what they've been working on.
My whole point is that I think, if you take the picture of PGI as a whole, we see a company that had to pull itself back together after a major split and has been actively and successfully changing it's internal culture and declared it's intentions to their fanbase that MWO and MW is being taken seriously because the life of PGI depends on them taking it seriously. Regardless of what many of us think of Russ, no business man or game developer ever sets out to create an unsuccessful business or be that failed owner of one, even if there is a check in the bank... failure sucks.
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